Winter, 1664–1665 • 35The nation’s nobility flocked in for the coronation and stayed on with
their families and servants, attending the House of Lord’s sessions at Parlia-
ment and occupying grand estates bordering the Strand thoroughfare that
connected Whitehall with Fleet Street and the city. These Strand estates,
boasting dwellings with twenty, thirty, even fifty hearths, combined elegant
living with isolation from clutter and crime outside their gates. The immense
grounds of Bedford House, designed by royalty’s architect, Inigo Jones,
stretched from the north side of the Strand all the way to Covent Garden’s
Piazza. Its neighbor, Exeter House, featured a turreted, Tudor-style façade
and a chapel where Samuel Pepys and a throng of Londoners had secretly
worshiped according to the illegal Anglican rite near the end of the Puritan
era. Set back behind protective high walls from the south side of the Strand
lay a series of miniature palaces also called “Houses,” named after their dis-
tinguished founders, York, Worcester, Somerset, Arundel, and Essex. Most
of these palatial complexes had a great hall, a chapel, stables, extensive gar-
dens, a commanding view of the Thames, and private stairs leading down to
the water. The duke and duchess of York were married in Worcester House
at the beginning of the Restoration, and the queen mother, Henrietta Maria,
moved into Somerset House at the same time.^46
Country gentry and squires who aped these social betters added to the
swelling throng. As historian Roy Porter has written, “Squires weary of the
idiocy of rural life rode up to town for business and pleasure—to dabble in
politics, beg favors from the great, sell acres, borrow gold, arrange marriages
for daughters, purchase fine fabrics, see the sights, and sup with boon com-
panions in the dozens of hostelries, inns and... coffee houses.”^47 Many of
these squires stayed for only a fortnight; others rented lodgings for a season
or for years on end. The presence of all these socially conscious folk and their
bulging purses attracted many other groups to Westminster. Scriveners and
barristers stood poised to write legal documents and plead cases. Doctors,
apothecaries, and surgeons prescribed regimens and cures for the health-
conscious. Shops and inns proliferated. Household servants and coachmen
abounded.
Of the five parishes in royal Westminster, Covent Garden was the jewel.
Its tax base showed it off as the wealthiest parish in the entire metropolitan
area. Its array of peers and high royal officials in residence made it thesociety
parish of Greater London. And it was beautiful. The earls of Bedford were
real estate developers par excellence. Acquiring a sparsely populated forty-
acre area where Westminster Abbey had a convent garden, they transformed
it into a showpiece of the suburbs. The present earl’s father had struck a bar-