TOPOGRAPHICAL RECOLLECTIONS.* NO. 1.—EXETER 'CHANGE.
THE first Exeter 'Change was a very handsome pile, with an arcade in front, a gallery above, and shops in both. On its site stood the parsonage-house for the
parish of St. Clement's. Sir Thomas Palmer, a creature of the Duke of Somerset, obtained it by composition, in the time of Edward VI., and began to build there a magnificent house of brick and timber ; but upon his attainder for high treason, in the first year of Queen Mary, it reverted to the Crown ; and Queen Elizabeth gave it to William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer of England,—or, as Camden calls him, the most wise Lord Treasurer; who rebuilt it, when it was railed Burleigh House and Cecil House. It " was a very faire house, rayscd upon bricks, proportionably adorned with four square turrets, placed on the four quarters of the house ; wherein it is curiously bewtified with rare devices, and
especially the Gratday,placed in the angle of the great chamber." Lord Burleigh
was in this house honoured by a visit from Queen Elizabeth, who knowing he had a fit of the gout, made him sit down in her presence, saying, "My lord, we make use of you not for the badness of your legs, bur for the goodness of your head."
Lord Burleigh died here in 1598 ; and it was afterwards called Exeter House, from the title of his son and successor. At what time it was deserted by the Exeter family, does not appear; - but it was before the Fire of Londons:as an advertisement occurs in the London Gazette of the following year, giving the public notice, that the business of one of the Government offices (the Excise)
would he carried on there, in consequence of that calamity. It was also occupied
by the doctors of civil law, &c. till 1672; and here the various courts of Arches, Admiralty, &c. were kept. Malcolm, in his Customs of London, vol. i. p. 434,
quotes an advertisement from the Post Boy, 12th Feb. 1698, announcing an en- tertainment, called a Redoubt, after the Venetian manner, with Basset Banks, and other entertainments; a masquerade evidently belonging to the class called by the Italians Ridotto : no person to be admitted before ten o'clock at night. "Whatever," says Mr. Malcolm, "might have been the intent of the projectors we know not, for an order from the Westminster Sessions was directed to the High Bailiff of that city, requiring himself and his petty constables to attend before Exeter ' Change for the purpose of preventing the assembly." The plan of the first Exeter 'Change, in the beginning, did not succeed; for the Now Exchange had the preference, and stole away both tenants and cus- tomers. This New Exchange was built in 1608, out of the rubbish of the old stables of Durham House (which occupied the site of the present Adelphi). The King, Queen, and Royal Family, honoured the opening with their presence, and
named it "Britannia's Burse." The building bad a façade of stone built after the Gothic style. It contained two long and double galleries, one above the other, in which were distributed rows of shops, filled chiefly with milliners, semp- stresses, and the like. It was a fashionable place of resort. Above stairs sat, in the character of a. milliner, the reduced Duchess of Tyrconne'l, wife to Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of Ireland under James II. She supported herself, for a few days, says Walpole, (till she was known, and otherwise provided for,) by the little trade of this place, and had delicacy enough to wish not to be detected : she sat in a white mask and a white dress, and was known by the name of the "White Milliner." This Exchange has long since given way to a row of good houses, which form a part of the Strand, opposite the Adelphi Theatre. The last memento of the place, was the New Exchange. Coffee-house, now occupied as a depot for the sale of filleritrg.iestets.
Exeter 'Change, as it lately stood, is said to have been built by Dr. I3arbon, a speculator in houses, about the time of William and Mary ; who mortgaged it to the Duke of Devonshire and Sir Francis Child, in,1748- Thelower story con- tained forty-eight shops, then occupied by milliners. In 1714, John Gumley rented all the upper part of the building, as a warehouse for pier and chimney glasses ; and Sir Richard Steele dedicated part of one of his papers to that which Mr. Sneer, in The Critic, would have called a puff direct in his favour. In 1721, Mr. Normand Cany exhibited here a singular bed of his own construction, the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty. In 1747, the upper rooms were in the tenure of the Company of Undertakers; connected with which company, a very curious funeral invitation ticket, allegorical of the cutting the thread of life, is now extant. In 1765, Mr. John Moore opened the great rooms, as an improvement, on modern statute-halls, in the most sumptuous and elegant taste, as he says in his advertise- ment, at an expense of several hundred pounds, for the convenience of providing the nobility, gentry, and others, with servants, in a manner never before attempted.
In 177t), in " Ody's Assembly Room over Exeter 'Change. there was a re- presentation of a View of Figures and Distances. called The Theatre of Europe : to conclude with a Ball: Admittance 5s." In 1772, Lord Baltimore's body lay in state, in the great room, previous to its interment at Epsom. hi June 1775, there was an entertainment in the grand saloon, in three acts, called " The Comic Mirror, or the Mirld as it wags : the whole to be represented upon an entire new plan, by characteristic figures, of about thirty inches in height, properly ha- bited." The great rooms were afterwards,for some years, used as a warehouse for the reception of the printed volumes of the Rolls and Journals of the House of Lords ; until occupied as a Museum of Natural History, which was opened by the late celebrated Mr. Thomas Clark, who became proprietor of Exeter 'Change, and occupied the lower part with the sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. to every pur- chaser of which lie gave a free admission to view the collection of natural his- tory. This excellent and eccentric gentleman died September 1816, leaving pro- perty estimated at upwards of 300,0001., the fruits of his honest ti7o o lusftryo,atitnirtae-f inte-
grity, and frugality. Some time before his death, he sold the collection history to Mr. l'idcock ; who added to it several living rare birds and beasts. On this gentleman's death, it passed into the hands of Mr. Polito, who was suc- ceeded by'his son-in-lain, Mr. Cross, the proprietor of the celebrated Cluny, the stupendous elephant, that was shot here, lst March 1826. Mr. Cross continued to conduct the exhibition with great spirit, until April 1829, when lie removed his menagerie to the King's Mews, Charing-cross, where it now is. One of the apartments of Exeter 'Change, at the back looking to Burleigh Street, was for many years occupied by a Mrs. Phillips, for an exhibition of grotto- work ; among which was a model of the grotto at ()admit's, Kew Gardens, &c. Beneath this room was a dancing-academy, which was afterwards used for reli- gious worship. An act of Parliament having passed, 7th Geo. IV., for the improvement of the Strand, the building-materials of Exeter 'Change were sold by the Commissiuters of his Majesty's Woods and Forests, in June 1829 ; and, by the middle of the present month, the celebrated building was razed to the ground. There are only two engraved views known of Exeter 'Change,—one is Mr. Cooke's work ; and one of the east end, in the large print of the Charity Children going to St. Paul's, in the reign of Queen Anne.
* The writer's intention is to give, occasionally, histories of celebrated places in the me- trOPOSI whlchi lathe rap fariavroremeat And altertitioa, are tlefltJAPtI to be (WM.
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