Note 138 — XXX.—SITE OF ROSE FIELD (MACKLIN STREET, SHELTON STREET, NEWTON STREET (PART), AND PARKER STREET (PART)).

It need hardly be said that Blott’s (Blemundsbury, pp. 357–362) identification of Lewknor’s house with “Cornwallis House, Drury Lane,” the residence of Sir William Cornwallis, “adjoining the grounds of the White Hart Inn ... at the Holborn end of Drury Lane” is a pure fiction. There is no evidence that Sir William Cornwallis ever lived in Drury Lane. His statement that “it is a long task to trace how the Christmasse estate passed into the Cornwallis family, who appears to have been the immediate successors to the great inheritance in Drury Lane,” is delightful, seeing that “the Christmasse estate” was situated at White Hart corner, and the Cornwallis “inheritance,” which, by the way, was acquired only in 1613, some years after Sir William Cornwallis’s death, consisted of Purse Field, which nowhere reached within 500 feet of Drury Lane.