een set up when the Civil War broke out, and was sold
by the Parliament to John Rivit, a brazier, who lived by the Holborn
Conduit, on condition that it should be broken up. John Rivit, however,
buried the statue, and dug it up again after the Restoration. It was not
until 1674 that it was actually erected, on a new pedestal made by
Grinling Gibbons, in the place which it now occupies, which is the site
of the old cross, the place where the regicides were executed, and where
the Charing Cross pillory stood. It is curious to remark on the
preservation of the site of the cross. It was apparently railed in; some
of the stones of which it was made were used in paving Whitehall.
Ballads were written on its destruction:

"Undone, undone, the lawyers are;
They wander about the towne,
Nor can find the way to Westminster
Now Charing Cross is downe.
At the end of the Strand they make a stand,
Swearing they are at a loss,
And chaffing say that's not the way,
They must go by Charing Cross."

CUNNINGHAM.

Many of the regicides were executed at this spot in Charles II.'s reign,
within sight of the place where they had murdered their King. These men,
according to the brutal temper of the times, were cut down when half
hanged and disembowelled before a great concourse of people. Pepys
mentions going to the executions as to a show. Later the pillory stood
here in which, among others, Titus Oates suffered. But, besides these
dismal reminiscences, Charing Cross was at one time famed for its
taverns and festive places of amusement, and was the resort of wits and
literati in the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson speaks of the "full tide
of human existence" being at Charing Cross, and if he could see it now
he might be confirmed in his opinion.

At the top of the present Northumberland Avenue stood formerly
Northumberland House, the last of the Strand palaces to be destroyed,
and until its destruction the chief glory and ornament of the street and
Charing Cross. It was never an episcopal palace, having been built in
1605 by the Earl of Northampton; from him it went to the Earl of
Suffolk, and was called for a time Suffolk House; in 1642 it fell into
the hands of the Earl of Northumberland, and by marriage into those of
the Duke of Somerset until 1749, when the daughter of the Duke of
Somerset succeeded, and by her marriage with Sir Hugh Smithson the house
became the prop