a
fine old Queen Anne house still standing at the back of the court.

Opposite Scotland Yard is the Admiralty, built round a courtyard, and
hidden by a stone screen surmounted by sea-horses. The screen was the
work of the brothers Adam, and was put up to hide a building which even
the taste of George III.'s reign declared to be insufferable. This had
been built for the Admiralty in 1726, and replaced old Wallingford
House, so called from its first owner, Viscount Wallingford, who built
it in the reign of James I. George Villiers, the well-known Duke of
Buckingham, bought the house, and used it until his death. Archbishop
Usher saw the execution of Charles I. from the roof, and swooned with
horror at the sight. The house was occupied by Cromwell's son-in-law,
General Fleetwood, and in 1680 became Government property. In one of the
large rooms the body of Nelson lay in state before his national funeral.

St. Catherine's Hermitage, Charing Cross, stood somewhere near Charing
Cross. It is believed to have been about the position of the
post-office. It belonged to the See of Llandaff, and was occasionally
used as a lodging by such Bishops of that See as came to attend the
Court and had no town-house.

St. Mary Rounceval, on the site of Northumberland House, was founded by
William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, in Henry III.'s reign. The Earl
gave several tenements to the Prior of Rounceval, in Navarre, who
established here the chief house of the priory in England. The hospital
was finally suppressed by Edward VI. The little village of Charing then
stood between London and Westminster. It formed part of the great
demesne belonging to the Abbey of Westminster, and was inhabited chiefly
by Thames fishermen, who had a settlement on the bank, and by the
farmers of the Westminster estates. The derivation of the name from _La
Chere Reine_ is purely fanciful.

There is certainly no part of London which has been so much changed as
Charing Cross. In other parts the houses are changed, but the streets
remain. Here the whole disposition of the streets has been transformed.
The secondary part of the name recalls the beautiful cross, the last of
the nine which marked the places where Queen Eleanor's coffin rested on
its journey from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey. The cross was
destroyed by the fanatical zeal of the Reformers. The equestrian statue
of Charles I., cast in 1633 by Le Soeur, occupies the site of the
cross. It had not b