The Strange History of Buckingham Palace by Patricia Wright

Author:Patricia Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752487137
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Sketch plan showing the area around Buckingham Palace about 1630, with Blake House inserted into highway waste and gravel workings near old Eye Cross. Mulberry Garden is shown immediately to the north of the house. A slaughterhouse probably existed on the site of the present Royal Mews, indicated near the fork in the road south-west of Blake House.

Where Cranfield had at least worked hard in royal service for the favours he received, wealth simply fell into Goring’s hands: duties worth £4,000 on sugar, the right to tax gold and silver thread manufacture, butter exports, taverns. In 1637 he pulled off the coup of his courtly life by landing the sole right to license the import and sale of tobacco, and the following year he fronted a syndicate which displaced City financiers from the Great Farm of Customs. For all the goodfellow image of this next character in the palace site’s history, there can be no doubt that Goring was one of the most rapacious exploiters of his time, mostly at Crown expense but also taking bribes from outsiders to use his influence at Court.4

When such a third-rate parasite as Goring could pick up gifts which gave him an income not far short of total national expenditure on the Navy,5 it is reasonable to wonder why King Charles ever needed to embark on dubious constitutional expedients in an attempt to increase his revenues. Jobbery on such a scale and for no return in service was considered scandalous even by contemporaries, but Goring remained always short of cash. Constant novelty of a kind to entertain kings and queens was expensive, as was the extravagance to advertise his position, and the search for more favours never ended. Sharp teeth, a tenacious digestion and unwearying application to pleasure were the vital attributes of predatory courtiers, like so many tiger worms processing garbage.

Goring bought Blake House for an undisclosed sum, using intermediaries to help safeguard what clearly remained a highly dubious title, completing the deal in 1633. Meanwhile he negotiated directly with Audley to purchase more land around Blake’s half acre, consisting of two large enclosures known as Upper and Lower Crow Fields, now part of the modern palace gardens.6

Why Audley agreed to this sale when he was still violently contesting the title to Blake House is uncertain, but in the early 1630s Goring was an exceptionally useful man to know, always willing at a price to carry out favours within the inner reaches of the Court. Once someone so close to the king was in possession of Blake House he would be impossible to dislodge, and Audley extracted a high price for the 20 acres he sold: at £7,000 perhaps nearly a quarter the agricultural price for wetlands even today. But he knew Goring’s spendthrift reputation and offered easy terms, probably calculating that the payments would not be kept up. In fact, Goring paid £520 on taking possession and then no more. In law he was at Audley’s mercy, which did not prevent him from spending money as if indebtedness had no meaning.

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