had taken
from Wolsey. It had afterwards come into possession of the Keepers of
the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was born in York House, his father having
lived there; and the
'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,'
built here an aviary which cost L300. When the Duke of Lennox wished to
buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him:--'For this you will pardon me:
York House is the house where my father died, and where I first
breathed; and there will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and
the King.' It did not, however, please the King that he should; the
house was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the
Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on the plea
that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign potentates, and
for entertainments given to royalty.
The duke pulled it down: and the house, which was erected as a temporary
structure, was so superb that even Pepys, twenty years after it had been
left to bats and cobwebs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in
which the great duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were
shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers--peacocks and
lions--were quartered.
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