“It is regularly paved with two flag stones, leaving a border of six inches of earth; width 3 feet, length 5½ feet.
“This passage was discovered, owing to the proprietor having been robbed of a quantity of paper for years. The man now alive volunteered to detect the thief; the paper was found on the staircase descending to the passage.
Alston House was for many years the residence of the Shrewsbury family.
George, Earl of Shrewsbury, succeeded his father in the title, June 28th, the 13th Edward IV., while a minor. In the reign of Henry VIII. he was in high favour with that monarch, was steward of the household, and a privy counsellor, and accompanied the King at his interview with Francis I. at Guisnes.
In 28 Henry VIII., on the rebellion in the North, called “the pilgrimage of grace,” occasioned by the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, he was constituted the King’s Lieutenant, to march thither with a powerful army, he himself having raised a number of men at his own expense, when the Earl, and the Duke of Norfolk, succeeded in bringing the rebels to submission, and obtained for them the King’s pardon. This nobleman resided occasionally at Chelsea; and here his sixth son, by his first wife, was born. The Earl died 1538; he is characterised by Polydore Virgil, “as a person noble, prudent, and moderate through the whole course of his life.”
Francis, his son and heir, is mentioned among the freeholders in the court rolls of the Manor of Chelsea, 35 Henry VIII. This nobleman also enjoyed the favour of his sovereign during three succeeding reigns. In 1545 he was appointed the King’s Lieutenant in the North; and in the following year was installed one of the Knights Companions of the most noble order of the Garter. In 2 Edward VI. he had the command of a large army that was sent into Scotland, and in 1st of Queen Mary was made President of the Council of the North. He died September 21, 1560.
George, Earl of Shrewsbury, son of the preceding, was installed a Knight of the Garter, May 17, 1562. In 1568 the custody of the Queen of Scots was committed to his charge. In 1573, he presided as Lord High Steward at the trial of the Duke of Norfolk; and on the death of his Grace, which happened soon after, he was constituted Earl Marshal of England. He died 1590, and was buried at Sheffield, in the county of York. “An inquisition, taken at Derby, 3rd April, 33 Elizabeth, on the death of George, Earl of Shrewsbury; after reciting lands, &c., in many counties, adds Middlesex, one capital messuage, &c., in Chelsea. The value is lumped in many manors, into a gross sum of £800 a year.” The inscription on his monument, among other things, sets forth, “That, as he excelled in mind, so was he skilled in the affairs of war.” On the arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots, in England, she was again put under his care, and so continued till 1584. His behaviour to her was ever generous and honourable, sparing no cost for her entertainment. Words cannot fully express the care and concern he had for her, nor can envy itself say otherwise than he was a faithful and prudent person; in a word, his integrity in his high office was not to be suspected, although evil disposed persons secretly and vaguely gave out that he had used too much familiarity with his royal prisoner. Thus, noble by descent, he was more noble and illustrious in his actions; famous at home and abroad; loyal to his prince and true to his country; and he resigned his soul in “a good old age.” The Earl married to his second wife, Elizabeth, widow of Sir William St. Loo, Captain of the Guards to Queen Elizabeth, who survived him, and to whom he probably bequeathed his house at Chelsea, as it appears to have descended to her son William, first Earl of Devonshire. In “Lodge’s Illustrations of English History,” is a letter of this nobleman, dated from Chelsea, in 1585.