Royal Visitors and Ministers
In the 16th century the area was connected to the court of Henry VIII. The king himself used a house on the south side of the Green as a base for hunting the wild bulls, stags and wild boars that roamed the surrounding forest.
In 1523 a resident of the north side of the Green, the future 6th Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy became engaged to Anne Boleyn. At the time he was page to Cardinal Wolsey. Lord Percy had not sought permission from either his father or the king, causing Wolsey to scold him and his father to refuse the marriage. He later found himself a member of the jury that convicted Anne of adultery. His home, Brook House, stood at the northeast corner of the square. It contained a central courtyard and was decorated with gilded and painted wainscotting. It was later demolished, renamed Bishop's Place, and divided into tenements for the poor.
In 1535 Henry VIII's chief minister (i.e. prime minister), Thomas Cromwell, took up residence at Canonbury Tower to the south of the area, from where he organised the Dissolution of the Monasteries and their transfer into royal ownership. (Just a year later Cromwell was accused of treason and executed on spurious evidence.) Other Tower residents included, in the 16th century, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and afterwards Duke of Northumberland, general, admiral, and politician; in the 17th century, Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method, at that time the Attorney General, and Sir Thomas Coventry, afterwards Lord Keeper of the Great Seal; in the 18th century, Oliver Goldsmith, the writer.
Read more about this topic: Newington Green
Famous quotes containing the words royal, visitors and/or ministers:
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
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—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)