York House, Strand

[6] The mansions facing in the Strand were built there partly because they had direct access from their rear gardens to the River Thames, then a much-used transport artery.

Its rusticated design in a Serlian manner has been attributed to three plausible candidates,[7] Sir Balthazar Gerbier,[8] to Inigo Jones,[9] and to the sculptor and master-mason Nicholas Stone.

The York House Conference which assembled there in February 1626 ended unsatisfactorily with the final rupture between Puritan members of Parliament and Buckingham.

York House was the setting for a masque presented before their majesties in May 1627, in which Buckingham appeared followed by "Envy, with divers open-mouthed dogs' heads representing the people's barking, while next came Fame and Truth", just before his departure for his unsuccessful second foray against France.

Although the Duchess tried to expel the latter after the Duke's assassination in 1628, it was in Gerbier's lodgings that Peter Paul Rubens sojourned during his visit to London the following year.

[13] Two inventories of the contents of York House were drawn up by 1635,[14] and are a valuable source for the insight into one of the handful of great art collections of the period.

Apparently the only modern sculpture at York House was Giambologna's Samson and a Philistine, a royal gift from King Philip IV of Spain to Charles I, who passed it to his favourite, Buckingham.