"NO. 10 DOWNING STREET."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—In your issue of March 28th is a review of Mr. C. E. Pascoe's "No. 10 Downing Street." The first two chapters of this work treat of the Downings. On pp. 31-32 we read:— " In its [Downing College] hall, over the Fellows' table, bang portraits of Sir George Downing, the grandson of him who had once sat on 'the throne' in Gamlingay Church ; of his grandson, the founder and his lady." This means six generations of Downings, and a portrait of the third and another of the sixth Downing. There were only three generations of Downings. There is one Downing portrait; that of the founder. Downing Street, Whitehall, is named after the first Sir George ; Downing College after the third Sir George. On p. 29 there are eighteen lines about the Downing family pew, called "the throne" by local tradition. [" A very noble pew over the north chapel."—Cole MSS.] This is based on the impossibility that the first Sir George, who in his will is described as of East Hatley, inhabited the mansion at Gamlingay constructed by his grandson, the founder of the College. On p. 8 the Downings are described as of Suffolk or of Cambs., and on p. 33 we read : "Suffolk (sic) Downings." But the Downings were a Suffolk family. See "Life and Letters of John Winthrop" (Boston, U.S.A.) The mother of the first Sir George Downing was Lucy, sister of this (Governor) John Winthrop. She was the second wife. There was a family by the first wife. It was these historic Suffolk families who in the seventeenth century took over with them to America the peculiar Suffolk pro- nunciation out of which has developed the modern semi-nasal Yankee twang. The unfavourable view taken by Professor Firth in " The Dictionary of National Biography" of the first Sir George is followed by your reviewer. But it must be remembered we have not the " case " of the first Sir George, by no means a weak man. Moreover, he lived in a period of rapid political changes, and strong men in days of stress cannot help making enemies. So it is well to bear in mind that the apparently historical account of the first Sir George having at great personal risk saved the life of Charles II. has never been disproved. This certainly is a reasonable explanation of Charles II.'s liberality after the Restoration to Downing. When it is remembered that Cromwell's enemies have forged entries in parish registers of the Puritan Protector having done penance for immoralities, we may feel sure that George Downing, one of his right- hand men, would have had no favourable construction put on anything he achieved. Dr. W. A. Shaw's "Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660-7," shows Downing's zeal as a public servant. His statesmanship is shown by the epoch-making Constitutional changes due to hia keen insight in national politics. It was he who inspired the Navigation Act, the foundation of our mercantile marine, and consequently of our Navy, and consequently of our Colonies and spheres of influence. It was he, again, who was the direct cause of the Appropriation Act—what Charles did with this money before it was thus earmarked was notorious—an Act indispensable in every Session for government at home, and an Act which has been adopted by all our self-governing Colonies. The date which fixes the name Downing Street is found in the will of the first Sir George, quoted by Dr. J. J. Muskett in his classic on the "Suffolk Manorial Families." This will, signed August 24th, 1683, mentions Hampden House, held by lease from the Crown, and Peacock Court (omitted by Mr. Pascoe in the chapter of sixteen pages entitled "The Beginnings of Downing Street "), "which I hold of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, all of which are now demolished and rebuilt or rebuilding and called Downing Street."—I am, Sir, H. W. P. STEVENS, LL.D.,
Author of the "History of Downing College."
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