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‘London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewell of that Ring’: New Light on Covent Garden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Dianne Duggan
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Extract

It has long been accepted that St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, and the porticoed houses along the north and east sides of the Piazza, were built to the designs of Inigo Jones in the early years of the 1630s, although this has been based on little concrete evidence. There are no surviving drawings for the project, for example, and there is no mention of the architect in the surviving building accounts for the church or the houses. Jones does, however, mention Covent Garden in a note he made later in his copy of Barbaro’s Vitruvius, and attribution has been confirmed through contemporary allusions to Jones’s authorship, and John Webb’s biographical notes. Jones was the King’s Surveyor of Works, also, and the executive officer of the Commission on Buildings, initially formed in 1618, and as such appointed to implement Charles’s building proclamation of 1625. The licence granted to Francis Russell, fourth Earl of Bedford, in February 1630/31 to develop Covent Garden reflected accurately the mandate of the commission text, and so the King’s Surveyor, obviously, would have exercised control over such an extensive project. As well, Jones’s design of St Paul’s Church, its flanking gates and houses, and the arcaded buildings of the Piazza, have been aptly described as ‘a comprehensive essay in the Tuscan mood, all the way from the high sophistication of the [church] portico to the vernacular of the houses’, and as such can be seen as a continuation of his ‘Tuscan mode’ following on from the Park Gate at St James’s Palace in 1627, and the Sculpture Gallery in 1629–30.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 43 , 2000 , pp. 140 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2000

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References

Notes

1 Although there are no drawings by Inigo Jones, there are several by John Webb, Jones’s pupil from 1628, which appear to be related to St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, and one possibly by Jones, which may be related to the Piazza houses. These are nos 71, p. 28; 146 A-D, p. 65; 167 A-E, p. 71; 188 A, p. 77 in Harris, John and Tait, A. A., Catalogue of the Drawings by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Isaac De Caus at Worcester College Oxford (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar. One of these, 167 A-E, shows the quoining on the transepts’ outer corners laid in the same way as at St Paul’s. It is stated in Sheppard, F. H. W. (ed.), The Survey of London, XXXVI: The Parish of St Paul, Covent Garden (London, 1970 Google Scholar; hereafter Survey) p. 68, that this quoining was of an ‘unorthodox and unconstructional manner’ (and therefore unusual) ‘being equally long or short on both faces’. Margaret Whinney thought another of Webb’s drawings (Harris and Tait, Catalogue, no. 151, p. 66) possibly could have been connected with the Covent Garden church (‘Some Church Designs by John Webb’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, VI (1942), pp. 142-50 (p. 149) ).

2 Sheppard, Survey, pp. 272-92.

3 In referring to Barbaro’s missing the meaning of antepagmenta (casings to hide the ends of mutules), Jones says, ‘and so I did in Covent garden’: Barbaro, Daniele, I Dieci Libri dell’ Architettura di M. Vitruvio (Venice, 1567), fol. 192 Google Scholar. Jones’s annotated copy is in the library at Chatsworth.

4 Turnbull, G., ‘Samuel Hartlib’s Connection with Sir Francis Kynaston’s Musaeum Minervae’, Notes and Queries, 197 (1952), pp. 33–37 Google Scholar (p. 34). Webb, John, A Vindication of Stone-Heng Restored (London, 1665), P. 36 Google Scholar.

5 Summerson, John, The Unromantic Castle and Other Essays (London, 1990), p. 44 Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 50.

7 See Higgott, Gordon, The Architectural Drawings of Inigo Jones: Attribution, Dating and Analysis, 2 vols (Doctoral thesis, University of London, 1987), 1, p. 123 Google Scholar; Harris, John and Higgott, Gordon, Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (London, 1989), pp. 140-41Google Scholar; Harris, John, Orgel, Stephen and Strong, Roy, The King’s Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court (London, 1973), pp. 185-86Google Scholar. Prototypes for Covent Garden are thought to have been the piazza at Livorno in Italy, and the Place Royale in Paris. John Bold has also suggested that the Plaza Mayor, which Charles I visited when he was in Madrid as the Prince Of Wales, may have been infuential (John Webb: Architectural Theory and Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1989), pp. 12, 15).

8 See Summerson, Unromantic Castle, p. 43; Survey, pp. 26-27.

9 Because of the building proclamation, and the trouble that Bedford was currently facing because of the development along Long Acre that had been going on ever since the third earl’s time (see Survey, 1970, p. 26), Summerson (loc. cit.) believed the fourth earl must have approached the larger development with ‘more circumspection’, although he says, ‘By what stages he attained his goal we do not know.’ Another suggestion has been that to ensure he would be granted a building licence, Bedford ‘took care that he involved Jones in his plans’ (Harris, Orgel, Strong, op. cit., p. 185).

10 Survey, pp. 98-99. See also Summerson, John, Inigo Jones (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 87 Google Scholar; Butler, M., Theatre in Crisis, 1632–1642 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 147–48Google Scholar; Newman, J., ‘Laudian Literature and Caroline Churches’, Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts, ed. Howarth, D. (Cambridge 1993), pp. 168-88Google Scholar (pp. 181-83); Thomas, K., ‘English Protestantism and Classical Art’, in Albion’s Classicism, ed. Gent, L. (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 221-38 (pp. 228-29)Google Scholar; Mowl, T. and Earnshaw, B., Architects Without Kings (Manchester, 1995), pp. 9, 18, 134–35 Google Scholar.

11 Isaac de Caus, along with Edward Carter, was one of Jones’s executant architects at Covent Garden. The implication that de Caus may have been responsible for the design was made in Whinney, Margaret and Millar, Oliver, English Art 1625–1714 (Oxford, 1957), p. 29 Google Scholar. Globe, A., in Peter Stent: London Printseiler (Vancouver, 1985), p. 25 Google Scholar, attributes the design to de Caus. See also Harris and Higgott, Complete, pp. 191–92; and Lubbock, Jules, in The Tyranny of Taste — The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain 1550–1960 (New Haven and London, 1995), p. 85 Google Scholar.

12 The attractive, but apocryphal, tale of Walpole that ‘the earl of Bedford sent for Inigo, [and] told him he wanted a chapel for the parishioners of Covent Garden’, has probably been responsible for this impression; see Summerson, Inigo Jones, p. 87; Survey, p. 98; Harris, Orgel, Strong, King’s Arcadia, p. 185. Summerson, Unromantic Castle, p. 44, also writes that ‘there is a strong suggestion — that the church got into the scheme because the Earl of Bedford was shrewd enough to see that the scheme would not work without one.’

13 Public Record Office, SP 16 44/51. This undated petition is listed in CSPD, 1967, vol. XLIV, 1625-26, p. 525 as ‘[1626?]’.

14 Malcolm Smuts has carried out some research on these documents, and his references are mentioned below in notes 16, 24, and 37.

15 Conrad Russell has carried out some research on the earl’s books; see The Origin of the English Civil War, ed. Russell, Conrad (London, 1973), p. 21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter Revolution’, in Russell, Origin, pp. 119-743 (p. 136).

16 Alnwick Castle MSS Syon Y III 2 (hereafter ‘Alnwick’), Box 4 Envelope 10. This map is briefly discussed by Smuts, R. Malcolm, ‘The Court and Its Neighbourhood: Royal Policy and Urban Growth in the Early Stuart West End’, Journal of British Studies, 30, Number 2 (April 1991), pp. 117-49CrossRefGoogle Scholar (P. 136).

17 See Survey, pp. 20-22 for a comprehensive history of the area before the seventeenth century.

18 The map shows that this area had already been sub-divided into some smaller plots for people such as Sir Edward Cecil, perhaps to house servants, for his own house stood nearby, next to Bedford House on the north side of the Strand.

19 Survey, pp. 23-25.

20 Survey, p. 25.

21 Alnwick, Box 1, Envelope 2. Dr M. Mercer of the Public Record Office says that this warrant is a preliminary document, yet to be approved by the king, from where it would pass to the Signet, and later to the Privy and Great Seal. The later warrant dated 10 January 1631/2, PRO SP16/182, was also a preliminary document, but is one step further on since it has passed the royal ‘Sign Manual’, that is Charles’s signature, ready to be passed onto the Signet. The church is not mentioned in this later warrant for the development of Covent Garden, or in the licence dated 7 February 1631/2, PRO C66/2535, which is a Chancery enrolment under the Great Seal. It is not clear why there was a lapse of time between the initial request in 1629 for a licence to build houses in the Covent Garden area and the repeated application in 1630/1. There are two probable causes contributing to the delay, one being a dispute concerning tithe payments required by the long-standing tenants of the area (which is mentioned below), and the other the arrest of the fourth earl in November 1629. He was detained, along with several others, because of possession of a political tract written during the reign of James I exalting the prerogatives of the Crown, which potentially could be seen to breed sedition. Although the earl was soon set free, the matter was not completely cleared up until May 1630; see Wiffen, J. H., Memoirs of the House of Russell, 2 vols (London, 1833), 11, pp. 142-49Google Scholar.

22 Alnwick, Box 4, Envelope 8. Because it is undated, it is impossible to position this draft before or after the mainly similar and more complete warrant dated 3 May 1629. Both documents mention the decision to build a church as given. I am grateful to Alexandrina Buchanan, assistant archivist at Lambeth Palace Library, for informing me that the secular and ecclesiastical aspects of royal jurisdiction are entirely separate, and that there has never been any requirement of a royal licence in order to build a chapel of ease.

23 Summerson, having seen the petition of the fifth Earl of Bedford to Parliament in 1657 (see n. 25), questions the motives involved when he states, ‘Just how far the Earl was blackmailed into building architecture for the King’s pleasure rather than merely houses for his own profit there is not enough evidence to make out’, although he later also acknowledges that the earl would have been aware of the added attraction for speculators and buyers by the presence of a local chapel (Summerson, Inigo Jones, p. 14 (and see n. 12) ).

24 Alnwick, Box 4, Envelope 10, fol. 5. This document is an undated, lengthy, and much edited draft entitled ‘The charges of the informacõn which M’ Attorney hath delivered to the Earle of Bedford’ (fol. 1), and ‘The state of the case of the Right ho[noura]ble the Earle of Bedford, concerning the houses in Covent garden & Long acre of which the building and the not demolishing of them he is charged’ (fol. 3). A separate note states, ‘At the Starr chamber the 18th June 1634’; this refers to Bedford’s appearance in the Star Chamber to answer ‘about some Buildings anciently built about Covent-Garden before he had leave to build there’; see Sheppard Survey, p. 33. Bedford was fined £2,000 in addition to the £2,000 he had paid for the licence in 1631. A section of this statement is in Smuts, R. M., Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 128 Google Scholar. Smuts, however, mistakenly omits the word ‘church’, and replaces it with ‘plot’.

25 This petition was mentioned, but not its contents, in Summerson, John, Georgian London (London, 1948), p. 14 Google Scholar. The petition is now in the London Metropolitan Archives, E/BER/CG/E8/1/1, tied in a bundle with a note attached: ‘I believe these to be the papers which Sir John Summerson saw and listed some years ago. They were not seen by the “Survey of London” staff and therefore contain material not in the survey volume. (Signed) Marie Draper 18/ 6/ 70.’ (Marie Draper was the archivist at Woburn Abbey at that time, and obviously some documents had been temporarily misplaced when they were transferred from the Bedford Estate Archives to the (then) GLRO in the late 1960s.) See also, Survey, pp. 34-35.

26 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 3.

27 John Newman accepts that this is Jones’s handwriting. I am grateful to Gordon Higgott who first drew my attention to the fact that the handwriting of‘Convent garden 1629’, largely obscured under a copyright stamp, seemed to be different from the rest on the document.

28 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 3. The Commission on fees was revived by Charles I in 1627 to redress or alleviate a general grievance (and raise money for the crown at the same time) against excessive fees taken in all courts — central, local, civil and ecclesiastical, right down to churchwardens. The Commissioners turned first to the Chancery, and the Court of Common Pleas which was a court for civil actions between private parties, especially for cases which involved property; see Aylmer, G. E., The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I, 1621-1642 (London, 1974), pp. 45, 186, 194 Google Scholar.

29 Alnwick, Box 4, Envelope 10.

30 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 3.

31 Survey, pp. 26-27.

32 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 2.

33 Alnwick, Box 4, Envelope 8.

34 Survey, pp. 32-33.

35 See n. 24. Apart from the drainage problem, other charges included erecting houses on new foundations during the reign of both James I and Charles 1, and contravening required building specifications which resulted in buildings ‘very unfit for able men and persons of quality … [and thus] let … to persons of mean and loose condition’. On 3 December 1634, Inigo Jones, was ‘hereby authorized and required to take a view and Survey of the said pitts’ which Bedford had dug to assist ‘the drayning of the soyle and filth issueing from the new erected Buildings within … Covent Garden’, and which had cause ‘great annoyance … and … nuisance’ to nearby residents; see PRO, SP 16/278.

36 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 3.

37 Ibid., loc. cit. In an attempt to date this plan, consideration was given to the fact that Bedford Street is drawn in its present-day alignment, an amendment supposedly made in 1631. Richard Brigham, lessee of a plot on the corner of Chandos and Bedford Streets, had accused the earl of reducing his agreed plot area, when a deal to buy other property with a view to making a passageway into the Strand fell through. This repossession has been interpreted as necessary to re-align Bedford Street with Half Moon Passage, a narrow way through to the Strand; see Survey, pp. 27, 253. In the document cited in Survey (PRO, C3/420/24), however, Brigham states that in reducing his plot, ‘the earl gayned 4 mesuages or Ten⌊e⌋m⌊en⌋ts’, which does not sound as if Bedford intended to demolish them to re-align Bedford Street. Furthermore, it would have been necessary for re-alignment to have altered many other, if not all, of the leased plots on the east and west side of Bedford Street, and of this there is no evidence. Smuts, Court and its Neighbourhood, p. 141, briefly refers to a plan showing Bridget [sic] Street, and although his Alnwick reference is incomplete, it is probably the same document. He mistakenly, on p. 148, associates Bridget with other royal street names in Covent Garden. Brydges was actually the family name of the (then) Countess of Bedford, daughter of the third Lord Chandos of Sudeley.

38 It is not known whether the Bedford House garden with its apsed wall was built by the fourth earl, or by the Countess of Bedford, wife of the third earl, apparently an avid and extravagant ‘gardener’; see Strong, Roy, The Renaissance Garden in England (London, 1979), pp. 139-44Google Scholar. See also Downs, Arthur Channing, ‘Inigo Jones’s Covent Garden: The First Seventy-Five Years’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 10, (1967), pp. 8–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 29-30). The analysis of the early ground plan of Covent Garden (Fig. 5) suggests that the apsed wall was in existence before the building works were carried out, possibly concurrent with a newly designed Bedford House garden; see Appendix: Analysis of the Early Ground Plan of Covent Garden.

39 Bedford’s articles of agreement with the builders in Covent Garden required brick sewers to be built in front of each plot to carry away surface water, and presumably waste from each building. These were to be below cellar level, 4 feet in height, 2½ feet in breadth at the top and 1 foot 3 inches wide at the bottom, and were to slope into the main sewer built by Bedford. There were subsequent problems with the dispersal of this ‘liquid’ waste further along on its way to the Thames, and it was 1635 before the main sewer from Covent Garden was actually linked to an efficient public sewer; see Survey, p. 32.

40 See the Appendix.

41 See Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 298-99Google Scholar; see also Survey, p. 28.

42 Colvin, Howard, ‘The South Front of Wilton House’, Essays in English Architectural History (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 136–57Google Scholar (p. 138). De Caus is known to have worked with Jones on a number of other occasions; see Summerson, , Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 117 Google Scholar, 130, 136, 550.

43 There are marked similarities (and no discrepancies) of the letters in the handwriting of the plan, including some which are quite distinctive, to other samples of de Caus’s handwriting.

44 Mr John Fisher, Acting Keeper, Prints and Maps at the Guildhall Library has not seen a similar plan before.

45 Survey, p. 71.

46 Alnwick, Box 3, Envelope 5. The agreement was for 43 King Street, and 1-3 Great Piazza, all of which comprised the four houses of the northern Piazza buildings to the left of James Street. For some unknown reason the agreement was not executed. It can be dated to c. 1634, as Maurice Aubert (the Mr Awbert mentioned), principal surgeon to the Queen, took out a lease for 39-42 King St which ran from 24 June 1633; Daniel Charlewood, a bricklayer, and Thomas Barnes, a carpenter, took out leases on 1–3 Great Piazza, the first of which ran from 25 March 1635; see Survey, 1970, pp. 27, 304. ‘Mr Indimmian Porter’ is named a year later as living in the ‘South Side’ of the Covent Garden area; see London Metropolitan Archives, E/ BER/CG, Survey 1635, South Side, p. 3.

47 It has been a puzzle that in all of the known early illustrations of the finished Piazza, the pilasters and principal-storey window aprons are depicted as if they had a stucco finish, although there is no evidence of this in the building accounts for the houses; see Survey, pp. 71–72. It is clear from this agreement, and the surviving building accounts, that originally only the plinths, the piers below the imposts, the keystones, and the window dressings of the façade were of stone. The voussoirs, window aprons and pilasters were of brick. The agreement also shows that the floors, inside walls and window dressings of the portico walks were to be of stone, although it is known from the building accounts that the vaulted ceilings were plastered.

48 See the Appendix for a discussion of the possible sewer plan.

49 For an account of the financial side of Covent Garden, see Survey, 1970, pp. 33–34.

50 See Tyacke, in Russell, Origin, pp. 119-67 (p. 121). Bedford’s toleration of non-conformism (if not of radicalism), evident in his own writing and remarked upon by Clarendon, along with his prominent parliamentary patronage, would have made him an ideal candidate for this re-definition.

51 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. Macray, W., 6 vols (Oxford, 1888), 1, pp. 308-09Google Scholar. This statement of Clarendon’s is mentioned in Survey, p. 100.

52 Blair, Ann, ‘Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: the Commonplace Book’, Journal of History of Ideas, 53 (1992), P. 541 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The complete list of Bedford’s books is in HMC, Second Report, Appendix (London, 1874, pp. 1-4), ‘A List of the Manuscripts in the Duke of Bedford’s Study at Woburn Abbey’, numbering thirty-nine articles ranging from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. In his books Francis Russell’s own handwriting, largely illegible, is instantly recognizable. However, he used an amanuensis for many of his notes, to which he often added some of his own shorter comments, or underlining, or emphasis with a # mark in the margin. The huge volume of information in his books has been partially researched previously. Nicholas Tyacke mentions a few excerpts from these books in Russell, Origin, p. 136. Russell carried out research on Bedford’s commonplace books, and came to the conclusion that the earl ‘had a profound contempt’ for radical Puritanism; see Origin, pp. 23-24. Survey, pp. 2-3, briefly mentions the commonplace books in the introduction.

53 Nicholas Tyacke refers to the importance of the commonplace book of Oliver St John, and how ‘an illuminating portrait [of his religious beliefs] emerges’; Tyacke in Russell, Origin, p. 135. WifFen in Memoirs, pp. 125-26, wrote that ‘the voluminous observations entered in [the fourth earl’s] commonplace books … though written in a rapid hand unfortunately little legible, [show] that there was scarcely a parliamentary debate to which he listened, a book which he read, a sermon which he heard, or a subject to which he gave his steady thoughts, that was not systematically subjected by him to analysis, and in some shape or other made to furnish accessories to his wit or weapons for his wisdom.’

54 This was possibly Henry King who was to become Bishop of Chichester. The fourth Earl of Bedford’s papers are hereafter referred to as the Russell MSS. This entry is from (HMG List, Book) 11/(Volume) iv/ (Folio)1293, (entitled) ‘Puritanes’.

55 Russell MSS, II/IV/1293: ‘Puritanes’. Dr Wickham is saying that a reverential act of worship, such as kneeling to receive Holy Communion, is a visible indication of the inner presence of Christ. A puritan who states that outer exhibition of Christ’s presence is unnecessary, is as bad as the hypocrite who displays a mendacious godliness.

56 RussellMSS, II/IV/1638: ‘Puritanes’.

57 Russell MSS, II/IV/1293: ‘Puritanes’: ‘As for their easie silencing of them in sych greate scarcity all preachers, it is to punishe the people, and not them, ought they not (I meane the bishops) to keep one eye open to looke upon the good men doe, but to fix them both upon the hurte that they suppose cometh by them.’ Nonetheless, although this particular entry appears to be accommodating towards puritan preachers, Bedford is also, in several facetious entries, quite sarcastic towards ‘Puritanes [who] make longest sermons [and think] that it is their dutie to speake until their auditorie wake againe’ (Russell MSS, 11/IV/1290).

58 Russell MSS, 11/1/234:’PreachersBenefices — Preaching’.

59 Russell MSS, II/IV/1342.

60 Russell MSS, II/IV/1343: ‘Religion’, unattributed (so possibly the earl’s own opinion); ‘The Hugonots hold the foundations of Divinitie, but only the roof tyles are out of order.’

61 Russell MSS II/Iv/1236, unattributed; II/III/2308: ‘Predestination’, attributed to ‘fFt: R:’, that is, Francis Russell.

62 Russell MSS 11/11/2958: ‘Churches’. This can be dated to sometime after 1631, when plans for the restoration of the cathedral were instigated.

63 Russell MSS 11/1/361: ‘Churches service Prayer’, unattributed.

64 Of the preachers named, Lo: Warwick’s and Lo: Salisbury’s chaplains were known to be Puritan. A Dr ‘Winise’ was probably Thomas Winnife, chaplain to Prince Charles, and later Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and Bishop of London, and who allegedly had puritan tendencies. Other identifiable and relevant preachers are Tho: Blech[inden] (a mainstream Anglican, and a long-standing friend of Bedford who left him a bequest in his will; see Woburn Abbey Archives, fourth earl, will n. 36, fol. 16), William Bray (a Laudian), Thomas Swadling (anti-puritan and a Laudian), ffruine (Accepted Frewen), Hackit (if John Hacket, anti-puritan), the chaplain of Sir Thomas Edmunds (a leading courtier), and the Bishop of London (twice mentioned c. 1632, and thus identifiable as William Laud). As to the contents of Bedford’s notes on the sermons he heard, unfortunately most are written by the earl himself in his largely illegible hand.

65 The exterior tablet records that ‘Lorde Francis Russell’ had the wall erected in 1623 to prevent swine from violating the graves within the churchyard. William Walker graduated BA 1593–94, MA 1597, BD 1612 from St John’s College, Cambridge, and was incorporated at Oxford 1600. He was vicar at Chiswick from 1597 to 1642.

66 Russell MSS, II/II/3028:‘Church Cerimonise’, unattributed.

67 Newman in Howarth, Art and Patronage, p. 181. See also Survey, pp. 99-100, where Sheppard discusses this, and refers to William Prynne’s later account; also Thomas in Gent, Albion’s Classicism, 1995, p. 229.

68 A comprehensive account of the controversy can be found in Roberts, B. Drew, Mitre and Musket (London, 1938), pp. 136-38Google Scholar.

69 Russell MSS 11/1/96: ‘Alters — Temples’. It is clear that this addition to Williams’s letter, concerning the altar at the east end, is Bedford’s own opinion, as a more lengthy excerpt from the letter is found in (HMC) Book 24, p. 3. On the first page is a note in Bedford’s own hand saying ‘This book begun 1 of May 1634’, so although Bishop Williams letter to Tytler (or Tyler) was written in 1628, the earl was commenting on that controversy after the orientation controversy of the Covent Garden church in 1631.

70 Russell MSS 11/11/3458-59: ‘Churches — Liturgie’. This entry was taken from Heylyn, Peter, Antidotum Lincolniense, London, 1637 Google Scholar. Heylyn, who was one of Laud’s chaplains, was attacking the Bishop of Lincoln for his liberal policies. Bedford copied into his book at least eleven lengthy entries from Heylyn’s book. Only one of the many entries Bedford made concerning the position of the altar refers to its being placed otherwise than at the east end. This entry is also from Heylyn’s book, and is merely an observation that someone else had stated that St Augustine placed his altar ‘in the very midst’ of the Cathedral Church at Dover. See Russell MSS 11/ 11/3459: ‘Churches — Liturgie’.

71 Russell MSS 11/11/3338: ‘Church Cerimonies’, unattributed.

72 Wittkower, Rudolph, in ‘Inigo Jones — Puritanissimo Fiero’, Burlington Magazine, XC (1948), pp. 50–51 Google Scholar, discusses the labelling of Jones as both a ‘fierce Puritan’, and a man ‘without religion’ by Gregorio Panzani, and Jean-Marie de Trélon, the Father Superior of the Queen’s Capuchins. Howarth, David, in Images of Rule: Art and Politics in The English Renaissance, 1485-1641) (London, 1997), p. 46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out that the epithet ‘puritan’ in the parlance of the day could, appropriately, mean that Jones was a man given to ‘affected preciseness, or a dogmatic certainty’, but not necessarily a Puritan in religion. See also Sharpe, Kevin, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London, 1992), p. 412 Google Scholar, quoting Arundel. Sheppard (Survey, p. 100), states that Jones ‘may have been indifferent to the internecine conflicts of Anglicanism’. An interesting parallel occurred eighty years later in 1711 when a sub-committee of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches in London issued orders that the east-west orientation had to be respected. Christopher Wren, as later recounted by Stephen Wren in Parentalia, 1750, had been flexible on the issue, and had written: ‘Nor are we, I think, too nicely to observe east or west in our position, unless it falls out properly …’; see Pierre de la Ruffinière Prey, Du, ‘Hawksmoor’s “Basilica after the Primitive Christians”: Architecture and Theology’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLVIII (March 1989), pp. 38–52 Google Scholar. I am grateful to John Newman for drawing both this point, and Howarth’s interpretation above, to my attention.

73 Summerson, Inigo Jones, p. 76.

74 Sheppard, Survey, pp. 99-100.

75 Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 33-35, 343, 345. Charles’s preference for ‘east-end’ altars and communion tables should be considered in the context of the ‘liturgical’ east, given the orientation of Somerset House Chapel, and the new evidence concerning St Paul’s, Covent Garden. In that the former was a Catholic chapel for Henrietta Maria, Laud would not have been concerned with its orientation.

76 Albion, Gordon, Charles I and the Court of Rome (London, 1935), p. 191 Google Scholar.

77 Davies, Julian, The Caroline Captivity of the Church (Oxford, 1992), pp. 46, 174 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 See Survey, pp. 99-100 for an account of the delay of the consecration ceremony.

79 Russell MSS Book 24, p. 237. Bedford also records many dates of church attendance and sermons by William Bray, a Laudian, at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

80 Russell MSS Book 25, p. 149 (rear of book, author’s number as pages are unpaginated). Nicholas Tyacke has suggested to me that it is possible ‘Mr Price’ was William Price, the puritan chaplain of the Earl of Salisbury who lived nearby.

81 See Colvin, Howard, ‘Inigo Jones and the Church of St Michael le Querne’, London Journal, 12 (1) (1986), pp. 36–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an account of another ‘direct confrontation between the architectural ideas of the Court and those of the ordinary citizens of London’ during the 1630s.

82 Howarth states that for Jones, ‘architecture was the physical expression of a carefully constructed system of social and political values’; Howarth, Art and Patronage, p. 68.

83 Summerson, Georgian London, p. 14. As well, Colvin (op. cit., p. 37) states, in writing about the Church of St Michael le Querne on Cheapside, that Jones’s involvement was actually an act of interference by the Privy Council who wanted the new building to be ‘an ornament’ to the street.

84 Russell MSS 11/1/284, unattributed.

85 Summerson, Unromantic Castle, p. 43.