Recollections of the Old Foreign Office Author:Edward Hertslet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III DOWNING STREET AND FLUDYER STREET OWN ING STREET was so called after Sir George Downing, of East Hatley in Cambridgeshire, who, when Mr. Downin... more »g, was sent by Cromwell on a mission to Holland; but, after the Restoration, Mr. Downing became a Royalist, and was appointed Secretary to the Treasury, when the office of Lord High Treasurer was in commission (May, 1667) on the death of Lord Southampton. Downing Street was a narrow street of from twenty-five to thirty feet in width, which ended in a cul-de-sac. The street is described by Strype as being— in 1698—"a pretty open space, especially at the upper end, where are four or five very large and well-built houses, fit for persons of honour and quality, each house having a pleasant prospect into St. James's Park, with a terras (sic) walk."1 A drawing of the upper end of Downing Street is preserved in the British Museum (Portfolio xvi.), and another of the houses as they appeared facing St. James's Park (No. 63). The United States Ambassador in London, theHon. Joseph H. Choate, in a speech made at the Mansion House on November 9, 19oo,1 claimed that Downing Street was an American street, and that it derived its origin and its history from the earliest periods of the English colonies in America, He mentioned that at the school which he attended in Massachusetts, over the archway at the entrance there were inscribed the words, " Schola publica prima "—the first school organised in Massachusetts, —and underneath was inscribed the name of George Downing, the first pupil educated at that school. Mr. Choate then went on to say that Mr. Downing went to Harvard College, where he graduated in the first year that it sent any youths into the world, the year 1642 ; that he found his way to England, and became the chapla...« less