1 6 6 9; 1 i of Californiaj n Regional y Facility Ex Lihris C. K. OGDEN ^- rz^ ^^ b^y THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES *.-:*•>-.;. ^>. •V li^l • #> ■^-^L- Nj ^ X 1/ Vo \^ hi "h' 3 ^ -y Old and New London. Old and New London.- A NARR.\TIVE OF Its History, its People, axd its Places. BY Walter Thornbury. JHustratfij toid) numrrous (CnsraSinss from tit most autijcntic sources. VOL. I. Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW YORK. D/) 73fo V.I CONTENTS. I I'Ar.K iNTRODLXTION 1 CHAl'TEK 1. K O M AN L O X DOS Biiried London— Our Early Relations— The Founder of London— A Distinguished Visitor at Romney Marsh— Cajsar rc-visits the " Town on the Lake" -The Borders of Old London— Cajsar fails to make much out of the Britons— King Brmvii -The Derivation o( the Name of London— The Queen of the Iceni— London Stone and London Roads— London's Earlier and Newer Walls— The Site of St. Paul': — Fahulous Claims to Idolatrous Renown— Existing Relics of Roman London— Treasures from the lied of the Thames- What we Tread undepfoot in London — A vast Field of Stor>' 1 6 CHAPTER II. T E M I' L E B A R . Temple Ear— The Golgotha of KllgIi^h Traitors— When Temple Bar was made of Wood— Hist(jrlcal Pageants at Temple Ear— The Associa- tions of Temple Bar— Mischievous Progressions through Temple Bar— The First Grim Trophy — Rye-House Plot Conspirators . . 22 CHAPTER III. FLEET STREET:— GENERAL L\ TRODUCTION. :Frays in Fleet Street — Chaucer and the Friar— The Duchess of Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft— Riots between Law Students and Citizens — 'Prentice Riots— Gates in the Pillory — Entertainments in Fleet Street- Shop Signs—Burning ilie lioot — Trial of Hardy— IJueen Caroline's Funeral , • . . . 3" CHAPTER I\'. ITJ;I-:T street (coniuna-d). Dr. Jf'hnson in Ambuscade at Temple B;ir— The First Child — Dryden and Black Will- Rupert's Jewels -Telson's Bank— Tlic Apollo Club at the " I.fevil " — " Old Sir Simon the King" — " Mull Sack"— Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lennox— Will Waterproof nX. the "Cock " — The Duel at " Dick's Coffee House '— Lintot's Shop— Pope and Warburton — Lamb and the Albion — The Palace of Cardinal Wolsey — Mrs. Salmon's Wa.\work — Isaak Walton — ^Praed's Bank — Murray and Byron — St. Dunstan's — Fleet Street Printers — Hoare's Bank and the *' Golden Bottle" — The Real and Spurious '* Mitre"— Hone's Trial— Cobbett's .Shop—" Peele's Coffee House"' . • - 35 CHAPTER W ELEET STREET" {iontinnai). The '' Green Dragon" — Tompion and Pinchbeck — The Record — St. Bride's and its Memories — Punch and his Contributors- The Dispatch — Th^ Dai /y Teirgraph—'VYiG " Globe Tavern " and I -oldsmith — Th^ Mamifig .\d7'erliscy — The Stnudard — The Lortdor: Magazine — A Strange Story — Alderman Waithman — Brutus Billy Hardham and his " 37 " , , . . . .53 CHAPTER VI. i-'LEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBLTARIES-SHIRE L.\NE AM.) H!:LL YARD). The Kit-Kat Club — The Toast for the Year— Little Lady Mary — Dnmken John Sly— Garth's Patients— Club Removed to Bam Elms— Steele at the '* Trumpet " — Rogues' Lane — Murder — Beggars' Haunts -Thieves' Dens — Coiners^Tbeodore Hook in Hemp's Sponging-house — Pope In Bell 'S'ard— .Minor Celebrities — Apollo Court 7*^ CHAPTER VII. FLEET STREET {NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES- CHANCERY I,.\NE). The Asylum for Jewish Converts — The Rolls Chapel —Ancient Monuments — A Speaker Expelled for Bribery—" Reineml>er Carsar "— 'J'rampHng on a Master of the Rolls— Sir William Grant's Oddities Sir John LeacBft^Fiuieral of Lord Giffurd— Mrs. Clark and the Duke f)f York — Wolsey in his Pomp— Strafford--" Honest Isaak" — Jhe Lord Keeper— Lady Fanshawe — Jack Randal— Serjeant--' Inn -An Evening with HazHtt at the " Southampton "—Charles Lamb— Sheridan— The Sponging Houses— The Law Insiipiie- A Tragical Story- , . 7^ CHAPTER VIII. FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRmLTARIES-,w///////.-a:). £lirrord's Inn— Dyer's Chambers— The Settlement after the Great Fire— Peter Wilkins and his Flying Wives— Fetter Lane— Waller's Plot and its Victims— Praise-flod P.arebone and his Doings —Charles Lamb at .School — Hobljcs the Philusophcr— .\ Strange Marriage— Mrs. Brownrigge — Paul Whitehead— The Mor-ivians— The Record Office and its Treasures— Rival I'oets 9- i>0CG752 73fo CONTENTS. yi t ^ I'ACK Tntrodixtion I CHAl'TEK I. R O M AN L O X D O N AJ.iried London— Our Early Relations— The Founder of London— A Distinguished Visitor at Romncy Marsh— Ca;s.ir re-visits the '■Town en the Lake" -The Borders of Old London— Ca:sar fails to make much out of the Britons— King £rOTt/« -The Derivation of the Name uf London— The Queen of the Iceni— London Stone and London Roads— London's Earlier and Newer Walls— The Site of St. Paul': Fabulous Claims to Idolatrous Renown— Existing Relics of Roman London- I'reasures from the Hed of the Thames— What we Tread imdepfool in London — A vast I'ield of Story 1 6 CHAPTER 11. T E M 1' L E B A K . J'cmpic Ear— The Golgotha of English Traitors— When Temple Bar was made of Wood— Historical Pageants at Temple Ear— The .Associa- tions of Temple Bar— Mischievous Processions through Temple Bar— The First Grim Trophy— Rye-House Plot Conspinitors . . 22 CHAPTER III. FLEET STREET :— GENERAL INTRODUCTION. :Frays in Fleet Street — Chaucer and the Friar— The Duchess of Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft — Riots between I.a\v Students and Citizens — 'Prentice Riots— Oates in the Pillory— Entertainments in Fleet Street -Shop Signs— Burning the Boot — Trial of Hardy- Queen Caroline's Funeral , • , . . .l2 CHAPTKR IV. rU::j:T street (aw//;//av/). Dr. Johnson In Ambuscade at Temple l?;ir— TIic First Child — Dryden and Black Will— Rupert's Jewels -Tclson's Bank— The Apolld Club at the " Devil "--'• Old Sir Simon the King "- "' Mull Sack "—Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lennox— Will Waterproof id the " Cock " — The Duel at " Dick's Coffee House '— LIntot's Shop — Pope and Warburton — Lamb and the Albioii — The Palace of Cardinal Wolscy — Mrs. Salmon's Wa-xwork— Isa:tk Walton — Praed's Bank— Murray and Byron— St. Dunstan's — Fleet Street Printers — Hoare's Bank and the " Golden Bottle"' — The Real and Spuriou's " Mil re "—Hone's Tri.d Cobbett's Shop—" Peele's Coffee House*' . • ■ - 35 CHAPTER V. FLEET STREET {.out i mud). The " Green Dragon" — Tompion and Pinchbeck^Tlie Record^-^x.. Bride's and its Memories — Pumh and his Contributors —The Dispatch^ The Dai /jf Telegraph — The " Globe Tavern " and Goldsmith — Hh^ Morning Adveriiicr— The Standard — "Wmz Lotldon Magazine — A Strange Story — Alderman Waithman — Brutus Billy HarJham and his " 37 " .....,,,.... 53 CHAPTER VI. t-LEET STKE1:T (NORTHERN TRIBL-IARIES-SHI RE EAM: AM) P.i:[.E YARD). The Kit-Kat Chib— The Tuast for the "\'ear— Little Lady Mary— Drunken John Sly- Garth's Patients— Club Removed to Bam Kims— Steele at ihe " Trumpet " — Rogues' Lane— Murder — Beggars' Haunts Thieves' Dens — Coiners — 'I'beodore Hook in Hemp's Sponging-house — Pope in EeU Yard— .Minor Celebrities— Apollo Court 7^ CHAPTER VIE FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTAR1]';S-CHANC1-:RV EAXI-:). The Asylum for Jewish Converts — The Rolls Chapel —Ancient Monuments — A Speaker Expelled for Bribery—'* Rcmemi)er Carsar"— Trampling on a Master of the Rolls— Sir William firant's Oddities Sir John Leacflfiif-Fnneral of Lord Gifford— Mr-., Clark and the Duke of York — Wolsey in his Pomp— Strafford -" Honest Isaak"— The Lord Keeper— Latly Faiishawe — Jack Randal—Serjeant-.' Inn -An Evening with Hai^litt at the " Southampton"— Charles Lamb— Sheridan — The Sponginj; Houses— The Law rnsiiniic— A Tr.ifiii.al Story . . 7** CHAPTER VI U. FLEET STREET (NORTHICRN TRIBLTAKIES-,v/.Y/////rrf). £liiTord's Inn— Dyer's Chambers- The Settlement after the Great Fire— Peter Wilkins and his Flying Wives — Fetter Line— Waller's Plot and its Victims— Praise-God Karebone and his Doings— Charles Lamb at School— Hobbes the Philosopher- A Strange Marriage— Mrs. Brownrigge— Paul Whitehead— The Moravians— The Rccurd Office and its J'reasiires— Rival 1'o^.is 9^ 20(>0^ ^5; CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. I-Li:i-T STRHliT TRlBUT.\KIi:S-CR.\Ni; COURT. JOHNSON'S COURT, I'.OI.T tOURI. Rcnoval of .he Roy.l Socicly fro... Grc*h»m College -Opposition to Ncwlon-Objec.ion. to Rc.oyal The Kir.t Catalogu<:-S« ifis Jeer at .he Society-Fmnklia'/Lightning Conductor a„d King George Ill.^Sir Hans Sloane ■„s„l>e,.-The Scott.sh Soc.e.y-XV.lke. s Pr.n e, •Ihe Delphi,. Classic^John»o.,s Cuur.-Johnson's Opinion on Pope and Dryden-H,. Re.noval to Uol. Co..rt -fhe John bull- Hook a..d Tcit>— Prosecutions for Libel— Hook's Impudence CHAPTER X. I-LliliT STREET TRIBUTARIES. Dr Johnso,. in Bott Cou..-Hls Motley Household-His Life there-Still CMsting The Gallant " Lumber Troop "-Reform Bill Riols-.Slr lk.ud.u- Hunter-Cobbett in Holt Court-lhe Bird Boy-The Private Soldier- 1.. the H<,use-Dr. Johnson .n Gt.ugh Square -Busy at the 1 .■.ctionary-<;oldsmilh in Wine Office Court-Selling " The Vicar of Wakefield "-Goldsm.th's Troubles-\\-...e Office Cmul- I he Old "Cheihire Cheese" CHAPTER XI. FEEET STREET TRIBUTARIES- SHOE LANE. The Kits. Lucifers-Perkins' Steam Gun-A Link between Shakespeare and Shoe Lane-Florio a.id his Labours-" Cogers" Hall "-Famous •■ Coi;en,"-A Saturday Night's Debate-Gunpowder Alley-Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet-" To Althea, from Prison"— L.lly .he Astrologer and his Knaveries^\ Search for Treasure with Davy Ramsay-Hogarth in Harp Alley— The " Society of Sign Painters" —Hudson, the Song Writer— "Jack Robinson "-The Bishop's Residence— Bangor House -A Strange Story of Unstamped Newspapers — Chatlerton's Death— Curio.is Legend of his Burial— A well-timed Joke 104 CHAPTER XII. FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIE.S-SOUTH. Worthy Mr. ^■i^hcr— Lamb's Wednesday Evenings— Persons one would wish to have seen— Ram Alley— Serjeant's Inn— The Daily Ne-.os— "Memory" Woodfall— A Mug-Ho..se Riot— Richardson's Printing Office— Fielding and Richardson— Johnson's Estimate of Richardson —Hogarth and Richardson's Guest- An Egotist Rebuked— The Kings " Housewife "—Caleb Colton : his Life, Works, and Sentiments 135 CHAPTER XIII. THE TEMPLE.— GEXER.\L INTRODUCTION. Origin of the Order of Templars— First Home of the Order— Removal to the Banks of the Thames— Rules of the Order— The Templar-, at the Crusade--, and their DecdJ of Valour— Decay and Corruption of the Older— Charges brought against the Knights- Abolition of 1112 Order H/ CHAPTER XIV. THE TEMPLE CHURCH AND PRECINCT. ITie Temple Chiurch — Its Restorations— Discoveries of Antiquities— The Penitential Cell— Discipline in the Temple— The Tombs of the Templars in the " Round "—William and Gilbert Marshall— Stone Coffins in the Churchyard— Masters of the Temple— The "Judicious" Hooker— Edmund Gibbon, the Historian— The Organ in the Temple Church— The Rival Builders- -" Straw Bail "—History of the Precinct— Chaucer and the Friar— His Mention of the Temple— The Serjeants— Erection of New Buildings— The " Roses "—Sumptuary Edicts- The Flying Horse '49 CHAPTER XV. THE TEMPLE (continued). The Middle Ten.lilc Hall : its Roof, Busts, and Portraits- Manningham's Diary — Fox Hunts in Hall— The Grand Revels— Spencer— Sir J. D.ivis -A Present to a King — Masques and Royal Visitors at the Temple— Fires in the Temple — The Last Great Revel in the Hall - Temple Anecdotes — The Gordon Riots— John Scott and his Pretty Wife — Colman '" Keeping Terms" — blackstone's " Farewell " — Burke — Sheridan — A Pair of Epigrams — Hare Court — The Barber's Shop — ^Johnson and the Literary Club — Charles Lamb — Goldsmith : his Life, Troubles, and Extravagances — " Hack Work*' for Booksellers — The Descried Village — She Strops to Conquer — Goldsmith's Death and Burial 15^ CHAPTER XVI. THE TE.MPLE [continued). Founuin Court and the Temple Fountain— Ruth Pinch— L. E. L.'s Poem— Fig-tree Court— The Inner Temple Library— Paper Buildings- Thc Temple Gate— Guildford North and Jeffreys— Cowper, the Poet : his Melancholy and Attempted Suicide— A Tragedy in Tanfield Court— I.ord Mansfield— " Mr. Murray" and his Client— Lamb's Pictures of the Temple- The Sun-dials— Porson and his Eccentricities — Rules of the Temple— Coke and his Labours— Temple Riots— Scuffles with the Alsatians — Temple Dinners—" Calling " to the Bar— The Temple Gardens— The Chrysanthemums— Sir Matthew Hale's Tree— Revenues of the Temple— Temple Celebrities .... I/I CHAPTER XVII. WHITEFRIARS. The Present Whitefriars— The Carmelite Convent— Dr. Butts— The Sanctuary— Lord Sanquhar murders the Fencing-Master — lIisTri.,1 — Bacon and Velverton— His Execution— Sir Walter Scott's " Fortunes of Nigel" — Shadwell's Squire o/Alsatia—A Riot in Whitefriars— Elizabethan Edicts against the Ruffians of Alsatia— Bridewell— A Roman Fortification— A Saxon Palace— Wolsey's Residence — Queen Katherine's Trial — Her Behaviour in Court— Persecution of the first Congregationalists— Granaries and Coal Stores destroyed by the Great Fire— The Flogging in Bridewell- Sermon on Madame Creswell— Hogarth and the " Harlot's Progress ''—Pennant's Account of Bridewell- Bridewell in 1S43— lis Latter Days— Pictures in the Court Room— Bride*ell Dock— The Cias Works— Theatres in 'Whilerriaiii - Pepys' Visits to the Theatre— Drj'den and the Dorset Gardens Theatre— Davenant—Kynaston— Dorset House— The PoctEari. . 1S2 CONTENTS. CII APTE R XVI 1 I. BLACK FKIAR.^. PACE Three N^irman l*'oi tresses on ihc lna;nci' 13;uik — The Bluck Parii.iinent — ^The Trial of Kathcrinu of Arragon— Sliakcspcarc a Blackfriar> ?.uinager— The Blackfriars Puritans — The Jesuit Sermon .it Huiisdon House— Fatal Accident— Extraordinary Escapes— Queen Eh/abcth at Lord Herbert^ Marriage— <) Id Blackfriars Bridge— Johnson and Mylne— Laying of the Stone— Thi: Inscription— A Toll Kiot — FaiUtre of the Bridge— The New Bridge— Bridge Street— Sir Richard Phillips and his Works— Painters in Blackfriars— The King's Printing Office — Printing House Square— The Ti't'cs and its History — Walter's Enterprise— War with the Dispatch— The gigantic Swindling Scheme e.\po.-«cd by the Tinu^s — Apothecaries' Hall— Quarrel with the College of Physicians 200 CHAl'TER XIX. L L' L) (] AT L: H I K I.. An Ugly Bridge and " \ e Belle Savage" — A Radical Pubtislicr The Principal Gate of London— Kroni a Fortress to a Prison — " Remember the I'oor Prisoners" — Relics of Early Times — St. Martin's, Ludgate — The London Cofiee House — Celebnited Cloldsniitlis on Ludgate Hill — Mrs. Rundell's Cookery Book— Stationers' Hall — Old Burgavenny House and its History — Early Days of the Stationers' Company — The Almanacks — An Awkward Misprint — The Hall and its Decorations — The St. Cecilia Festivals — Drydcn's " St. Cecilia's Day " and "Alexander's Feast "—Handel s Setting of them— A Modest Poet— Funeral Feasts and Political Banquets—The Company's Plate Their Chariii-s— 'I he Pictures at StCLtioners' Hall — The Company's Arms— Famous Masters 220 CHAPTER XX. ST. PAUL'S. London's Chief Sanctuary of Religion— The Site of St. PauPs- The Earliest authenticated Church there— The Shrine of Erkenwald- St. Paul's Burnt and Rebuilt— It becomes ihc Scene of a Strange Incident— Important Political Meeting within its Walls— The Great Charter published there~St. Paul's and Papal Power in England — Turmoils around the Grand Cathedral— Relics and Chantry Chapels in St. Paul's— Royal Visits to St. Paul's— Richard, Duke of York, and Henr>- \T.— A Fruitless Reconciliation— Jane Shore's Penance— A Tragedy of the Lollards' Tower— A Royal Marriage — Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey at St. Paul's — " Peter of Westminster" — A Bonfire of Bibles— The Cathedral Clergy Fined— A Miraculous Rood— St. Paul's under Edward VI. and Bishop Ridley— A Protestant Tumult at Paul's Cross— Strange Ceremonials— Queen Elizabeth's Munificence— The Burning of the Spire— Desecration of the Nave— Elizabeth and Dean Nowell— Thanksgiving for the Armada — The " Children of Paul's " — Government Lotteries— Executions in the Churchyard— Liigo Jones's Restorations and the Puritan Parliament — The Great Fire of i666— Burning of Old St. Paul's, and Dcstructi. n of its Monuments— E\elyn's Descripti'^n of the Firc-^Sir Christopher Wren called in 23.4 CHAPTER XXI. ST. PAUL'S [continufd). The Rebuilding of St. Paul's— III Treatineht of its Architect— Cost of the Present Fabric — Royal Visitors -The First Grave in St. Paul's— ^Monuments in St. Paul's — Nelson's Funeral — Military Heroes in St. Paul's— The Duke of Wellington's Funeral— Other Great Men in St. Paul's— Proposal for the Completion and Decoration of the Building — Dimensions of St. Paul's— Plan of Construction— The Dome. Ball, and Cross — Mr. Horner and his Observatory— Two Narrow Escapes^ — Sir James Thornhill — Peregrine Falcons on St. P-lul's — - Nooks and Corners of the Cathedral — The Library, Model Room, and Clock — The Great Bell — A Lucky Error — Curious Story of a Monomaniac— The Poets and the Cathedral — The Festivals of the Charity Schools and of the Sons of the Clergy 249 CHAPTER XXII. ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. St Paul's Churchyard and Literature- Queen Anne's Statue— Execution of a Jesuit in .St. Paul's Churchyard— Miracle of the " Face in the Straw" — Wilkinson's Story — Newbery the Bookseller — Paul's Chain— "Cocker"— Chapter House of St. Paul's— St. Paul's Coffee House — Child's Coffee House and the Clergy — Garrick's Club at the " Queen's Arms," and the Company there—" Sir Benjamin" Figgins — Johnson the Bookseller— Hunter and his Guests — Fuseli— Bonnycastle — Kinnaird— Musical Associations of the Churchyard — Jeremiah Clark and his Works— Handel at IMeares' Shop — Young the Violin Maker — The " Castle " ConcerLs— An Old Adverti.semenl—Wrcn at the "Goose and Gridiron" — St. Paul's School— Famous Paulines — Pcpys visiting his Old School — Milton at St. Paul's • . . . 202 CHAPTER XXIIL P AT L R X O S T E R ROW. Its Successions of Traders — ^The House of Longman — tioldsmith at Fault — Tarleton. Actor, Host, and Wit — Ordinaries around St. Paul's: their Rules and Custom- — The " Castle "— " Dolly's "— " The Chapter" and its Frequenters — Chaticrton and Goldsmith — Dr. Buthan and his Prescriptions— Dr. Gower — Dr. Fordyce — T he " Wittinugemot " at the " Chapter*' — The " Printing Conger " — Mrs. Turner, the Poisoner — 'I'he Church of St. Michael " ad Bladum "—The Boy in Panier Alley 274 CHAPTER XXIV. BAYNARD'S CASTLE AND DOCTORS' COMMONS. Baron Fitzwalter and King John- The Duties of the Chief Bannerer of London— Am Old-fashioned Punishment for Treason— Shakcsperian Allusions to Baynard's "Castle" — Doctors" Commons and its Five Courts -The Court of Probate Act, 1857- The Court of Arches— The Will Office— Business of the Court— Prerogative Court— Faculty Office— Lord Stowell, the Admiralty Judge— Stories of him— His Marriage— Sir Herbert Jenner Fust— The Court " Rising "—Doctor Lushington— Marriage Licences— Old Weller and the "Touters"— Doctors Common.-, at the Present Day 20l CHAPTER XXV. H r, K A I. DS' COLL KG L. Early Homes of the Heralds— The Constitution of tlie Heralds' Cullege— Garter King at Arms— Ciarenciciix and Korroy — The Pursuivants- Duties and Privileges of Heralds — Good, Bad, and Jovial Heralds — A Notable Norroy ICii-j; at Arm; — The Tragic End of Two Famous Heralds— Tile College of Arms' Library .... ..... ....... . 294 vi.i CONTEN'IS. CIIArXER XXVl. ClIKAPSinii-lN TKOUL'CTOKY AND HISTORICAL. I'AGB Ancient Retninisoenci-i cf Chcniisli:c - SHirmy Hays therein -The Westchepc Market— Something about the I'illorj— The Cheapsldc Conduits — 1 he I ioldsnllths' .Monopoly— (.hra|)>ide .Market-Hossip anent Cheapsidc hy Mr. Pc;>ys A .S.ixnn Kieii/i—Arti Tree-Trade Riots in Cheap^ide- .\rrc-;t of the kiolers— A Roy.d I'ardon— J;ine .Slmre 3^4 ClIAl'TKK XWll. (:Hi:.\l'SIDE SHOWS AND I'ACilJAN i'S. A Tournament in Chcapsidc-The Queen in Danger— The Street in Hohday .\ttire— The Earliest Civic Show on Record— The Watct IVoccs- sions- A Lord Mayor's Show in yneen Elizabeth's Reign— l.ossip abi.ut Lord .Mayors' Shows- Splendid I'ageants— Royal Visitors at Lord Mayors' Shows— A Grand lianquct in Guildhall- -Cieorge 111. and the Lord iLiyor's Shr)W-Tht Lord Mayor'.s State Coach— The Men in Armour— Sir Claudius Hunter and Ellislon— Stow and the Midsummer W.atch 3'5 CH.VPTER XXV'III. C H i; A P S I D E-C li N T k .\ L . Grim Chronicles of Cheapsidc— Cheapsiile Cross— Puriunical Intolerance— The Old London Conduits— Mcdixval Y/atcr-cr.rriers- The Church of St. .\lary.lc-Uow-" Murder will out"— The " Sound of How Bells "—Sir Christopher Wren's Bow Church— Remains of the Old Church— The Seld.un- Interesting Houses in Cheapside and their .Memories— Goldsmiths' Row — The "Nag's Head" and the Self- consecrated Bishops- Keats' House— Saddlers" Hall-A Prince Disguised-lilackmore, the Poet— -Mderraan Jioydell, the Printseller— His Edition of Shakespeare— "Puck"— The Loitery—Deathand Burial 3o^ CHAPTER XXIX. CHKAPSIDE TRIBUTARIliS-SOUIH. The King's Exchange-Friday Street and the Poet Chaucer— The Wednesday Club in Friday Street— William Paterson, Founder of The Dank of England— How Easy it is lo Redeem the National Debt— St. Matthew's and St. Margaret Moses— Bread Street and the Bakers' Shops-St. Austin's, Watling Street— Ihc Fraternity of St. Austin's— St. .Mildred's, Bread Street— The Mitre Tavern— .\ Priestly Duel —Milton's Birtll-place- The " .Merm.oid"— Sir Walter Raleigh and the .Mermaid Club— Thomas Coryatt, the Traveller— Bow Lane— (Jueen Street— Soper's Lane— A .Mercer Knight— St. Bennet Sherehog— Epitaphs in the Church ..f St. Tiiomas .■^p istle— A Charitable .Merchant 34° CHAPTER XX.X. CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES— NORTH. Golusmiths' Hall - Its Earl)' Days — Tailors and Goldsmiths at Loggerheads — The Goldsmiths' Company's Charters and Records- Their Great Annual Feast— They receive Queen Margaret of Anjou in State— A Curious Trial of .Skill — Civic and State Duties — The Goldsmiths break up the Image \\c\ witli Martin— His Expulsion— Personal Appearance — Anecdotes of Wilkes- A Reason for m:iking a Speech— Wilkes and the King^Tlie Lord Mayor at the (lurdon Riots- " Suap-suds" versus " Har" - Sir William Curtis and his Kill — A (lanibliiig Lurd Mayor — Sir William Staines, Bricklayer and Lord Mayor—** Patty-pan" Birch —Sir Matthew Wood — Waithmau— Sir Peter Laurie and the "Dregs of the People" — Recent l.urd Mayors 4IO CHAPTER XXXV L THE POULTRY. The Early Home of the London Poulterers— Its Mysterious Desertion— Noteworthy Sites in the PouUrj— The Birthplace of Tom Hood* Senior— A Pretty Quarrel at the Rose Tavern -A Costly Sign-board- The'Thrce Cranes — The Home of the Dillys—JohnsAtilaua^ St. Mildred's Church, Po::l try— Quaint Epitaphs— The Poultry Compter— Attack on Dr. Lamb, the Conjurer — Dekkcr. the I-)ramatiA — Ned Ward's Description I'f the Compter— Gninville Shai-p and the Slave Trade — Important Ueci>ion in favour of the Slave — iloyse — Dunton • . . . . 416 CHAPTER XXXVII. OLD Jl'.WRV. Vhe Old Jewry— Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford— Bad I'inics for the Isnelites— Jews' Alms— A Kini; in I )cbt — Rachel weeping for her Children— Jewish Converts— Wholesale Expulsion of the Chosen People from Kngland— The Rich House of a Rich Citizen — The London Institution, formerly in the Old Jewry — Porsoniana — Nonconformists in the Old Jewry- -Samuel Chandler, Richard Price, and James Foster— The Grocers Company- Their SnBerings under the Commonwealth— Almost liankrupt— .^aain ^* they Flourish — The Grocers' Hall Garden — Fairfax and the Grocers — A Uich and (Generous Grocer — A W.ar!i!ve Groc-rr — Walbrook- - Bucklersbury 4^5 CHAPTER XXX\'HJ. THE MANSION HO U S i:. The Palace of the Lord Mayor The Old Stocks' Market—A Notable Statue of Charle.s IL-'l'he Mansion House dc-icrihcd— The K^jyptian Hall-Works of Art in the Mansion House — The Election of the Lord Mayor — Lord Mayor's Day-'i'hc Duties of a Lord Mayor^Days of the Year on which the Lord ftLiyor holds High State — The Patronage of the Lord Mayor Hii Powers— The Lljuttnancy of the City uf London—The Conservancy of the Thames and Medway — The Lord Mayor's Advisers— The Man.sion House Hoii.^ehold and Expenditure — Theodore Hook — Lord Mayor Scropps —The Lord Mayor's Insignia — The State Harge The Maria M'o'd .... 435 CHAPTER XX XIX. SAXON LONDON. A Glance at Sa.\on London— The Three Component Parts of Saxon London — The First Saxon Bridge over the 'J"hamcs — Edward the Confessor at Westmin.-ter— City Residences of the Saxon Kings— Political Position of London in Early Times- The ilrst recorded Great Fire of London — The Early Commercial Dignity of London — The Kings of Norway and Denmark besiege Londun in vain — A great Gemot held in London— Edmund Ironside elected King by the Londoners — Canute besieges them, and is driven off"— The Seamen of London— Us Citizens as Electors of Kings 447 CHAPTER XL. ■\ H V. n .-\ X K. O F li X G L A \ D. The Jews and the Lomliards— The Goldsmiths the fir.t L.indon Ilankers— William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England— Difficult Parturition of the Ihink Bill— Whig Principles of the Bank of England— The Groat Company described by Addison— A Crisis at the Bank —Effects of a Silver Re-coinage— Paterson quits the Bank of England -The Ministry resolves that it shall be enlarged The Credit of the Bank shaken— The Whigs to the Rescue— Effects of the Sacheverell Riots— The South Sea Company— The Cost of a New Ch.artcr— Forged Bank Notes -The Foundation of the " Three per Cent. Consols"— Anecdotes relating to the Bank of England and Bank Notes- Description of the Building— Statue of William III. -Bank Clearing House— Dividend Day at the Bank . ..... .453 CHAPTER XLI. THE STOCK E X C H .\ X G E. The Kingdom of Change Alley— .A William III. Reuter— Stock Exchange Tricks— Bills and Bears- 'I'lioma, Guj-, the Hospit.il Founder— Sir John Barnard, the "Great Commoner "-Samson Gideon, the famous Jew Broker— .Alexander Fordyce— A cruel l^)uaker Criticism- Stockbrokers .and Longevit) — The Stock Exchange in 1795— The Money Articles in the London Papers— The Case of Benjamin \\'al5h, I I\LP.— The De Bererg^r Conspiracy— Lord Cochrane unjustly accused— "Ticket Pocketing"- System of Business at the Slock Exchange—" Popgun John "—Nathan Rothschild— Secrecy of his Operations -Rothschild outdone hy Stratagem- Orotestjiic Sketch of Rothschild — Abraham Goldsmid — Vicissitudes of the Stock Exchange — The Spanish Panic of 1S35 — The Railway Mania — Ricardo's Gulden Rules— A Clerical Intruder in Capel Court — .\muscments of Stockbrokers — Laws of the Slock Exchange — The I*i-^.-'in Express — The " Alley Man " — Purchase of Stock— Eminent Members of the Stock Exchange 47.> CHAPTER XLIL T H ]■: R O \\\ L E X C H A N G L. The Greshams — Important Negotiations — Building of the Old Exchange — Queen Eli;;abeth visit.s it — Its Milliners' Shops — A Resort for Idlers — Access of Nuisances — The various Walks in the Exchange — Shakespeare's Visits to it — Prccautinns against Fire — Lady Grcsham and the Council — The " Eye of London" — Con tempo rar>- Allusions— The Royal Ex;hange during the Pl,i;;ue and the Great Fire — Wren's Design for a New Royal Exchaivge — The Plan which was ultimately accepted — Addison and Steele upon the F-xchangc — The Shops of the Second Exchange 494 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XLIII. PACK The Second Exchange on Firc-Chimcs Kxlraordinary- Incidciils of ihc Fire-Sale of Salvage— Designs for the New Building-Details of the PirseTit Kxchange-The Ambulatory, or ^lcrehalll^■ Walk— Royal Exchange Assurance Company—" Lloyd's "^Origin of " Lloyd's' — Marine Assurance- Benevolent Contribulions of " Lloyd's "—A " Good " and '• Had " Book 5*^3 CHAPTER XLIV. NKIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BANK — LOTHBURY. Lothbury- Its Former Inhabitants— St. .Margaret's Church— Tokcnhou>c Yard— Origin of the Name —Farthings and Fokcns- Silver Halfpence and Pennies— Queen -■Vnnc's Farthings— Sir William Pctty—Dcfocs Account of the Plague .a Tokenhousc Yard . . . . ■ 5'j CHAPTER XLV. THROGMORTON STREET.— THE DR.A,PERS' COMP.WY. Halls of the Drapers' Company— Throgmoiton Street and its many Fair Houses— Drapers and Wool Merchants- The Drapers in Olden Times — Milbomc's Charity— Uress and Livery -Election Dinner of the Drapers' Company— -A Draper's Funeral— Ordinances and Pensions- Fifty-three Draper .Mayors.— Pageants and Processions of the Drapers— Charters— Details of the present Dr.ipers' Hall— .Arms of the Drai>ers* Company S^S CHAPTER XLVI. B.AKrHOLOMEW L.\.\E AND LOMBARD STREET. George Robins- His Sale of the Lease of the Olympic— St. Bartholomew's Church— The Lombards and Lombard Street- William .le la Pole — Greshani I'he Post Ofliee, Lombard Street— Alexander Pope's Father in Plough Court- Lombard .Street Tributaries— ' VII. enrolled as a .Member of the Taylors' Company — A Oivalcade of .Archers— The Hall of Commerce in Threadnecdle Street — A Painful Reminiscence— The Baltic Coffee-house— St. Anthony's School — The North and South American Coffee- house — The South .Sea House — Hi-story of the South .Sea Bubble — Bubble Companies of the Period — Singular Infatuation of the Public — Burvting of the Bubble — Parliamentary Intjuiry into the Company's .Affairs — Punishment of the Chief Delinquents — Restoration of Public Credit -The Poets during the E.xcitemenl — Charles Lamb's Reverie - 53^ CHAPTER XLV I II. CANNON STREET. London Stone and Jack Cade— Southwark Bridge- Old City Churches— The Sailers' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History- Oxford House — Baiters' Banquets— Salters' Hall Chapel— .A Wjsterious .Murder in Cannon Street— St. Martin Orgar — King William's Statue — Cannon Street Station 544 CHAPTER XLLX. CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP. Budge Row— Cordwainers' Hall— St. Swithin's Church— Founders" Hall— The Oldest Street in London— Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob — I'he Queen's Wardrobe— St. Antholin's Church— "St. .Antlin's Bell"— The London Fire Brigade— Captain Shaw's Statistics— St. Mary Alderraary— A Quaint Epitaph— Crooked Lane— An Early "Gun .Accident "—St. Michael's and Sir William W.^lworth's Epitaph —Gerard's Hall and its History— The Early Qosing -Movement— St. Mary Woolchurch— Roman Remains in Nicholas Lane— St. Stephen's. Walbrook-Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops-The "Boar's Head"— Prince Hal and his Companions— A Giant Plum- pudding -Goldsmith at the " Boar's Hcail "—The Wei-h-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers— Reynolds, Clayton, Binney . .55° CHAPTER L. THE MONUMENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. The Monument— How shall it be fashioned '—Commemorative Inscriptions— The Monument's Place in History— Suicides and the Monument —The C;reat Fire of London— On the Top of the Monument by N"ight-The Source of the Fire- -A Terrible Description- .Miles Cover- dale— St. Magnus, London Bridge 5G5 CHAPTER LI. C H .\ U C E R • S LONDON. London Citi7ens in the Reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.— The Knight-The Young Bachelor-The Yco-ian— The Prioress -"Hie Monk who goes a Hunting— I'he Merchant—The Poor Clerk -The Franklin- The Shipman— The Poor Parsju 5/5 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Introiliictioii of RancIol;3li tn r>cii Jonsoii . Frontispiece The OU Wooden Temple I!ar ..... 6 Burniny tlic Pope in Eft'igy at Temple Har ... 7 liiidcwell in 1666 12 Part of Modem London, showing the Ancient Wall . 13 Plan of Roman London . . . . . . ■ 5 .-\ncient Roman Pavement ...... 18 I'art of Old London Wall, near Falcon .Square . . 19 Proclamation of Charles IL at Temple Bar . . 24 Penance of the Duchess of Gloucester ... 25 The Room over Temple Ear ..... 30 Titus Oates in the Pillory 31 Dr. Titus Oates 36 Temple Bar .ind the " Devil Tavern'' • . • 37 Temple Bar in Dr. Johnson's Time .... 42 Mull Sack and Lad)- F.iirfax ..... 43 Mrs. Salmon's %Va\-work, Fleet Street . . .48 St, Liunstan's Clock ....... 49 An Evening with Dr. Johnson at the "Mitre" . . 54 Old Houses (still standing) in Fleet Street ... 55 St. Bride's Church, Meet Street, after the Fire, 1S24 . 60 Waithman's Shop . . . . . . .61 Alderman Waithman, from an Authentic Portrait . 66 Group at Hardha.n's Tobacco Shop .... 67 Lady .Mary Wortley Montagu and the Kit-Kats . . 72 Bishop Butler . . ...... 73 Wolsey in Chancery L.ane ...... 78 Izaak Walton's House 79 Old Serjeants' Inn 84 Hazlitt 85 Clifford's Inn ........ 90 Execution of Torakins and Challoner . ... 91 Roasting the Rumps in Fleet Street (from an old Print) 96 Interior of the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane . 97 House said to have been occupied by Dryden in Fetter Lane ......... 102 A Meeting of the Royal Society in Crane Court . . 103 The Royal .Society's House in Crane Court . . loS Theodore E. Hook 109 Dr. Johnson's House in Bolt Court . . . .114 A Tea Party at Dr. Johnson's 115 Gough Square . . . . . . . .120 Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese" . . 121 Cogers' Hall . . . . , . . .126 Lovelace in Prison 127 Bangor House, iSiS 132 Old St. Unnstan's Church 133 The Dorset Gardens Theatre, Whitefriars . . . 138 Attack on a Whig Mug-house '39 Fleet Street, the Temple, &c., 1563 . . . .144 FJeet Street, the Temple, .See., 1720 . . . .145 .\ Knight Templar .... Interior of the Temple Church . Tombs of Knights Templars The Temple in 167 1 . The Old Hall of the Inner Temple . .\ntiquities of the Temple . Oliver Goldsmith .... (Goldsmith's Tomb in i860 The Temple Fountain, from an Old Print A Scuffle between Templars and Alsatians .Sun-dial in the Temple The Temjile .Stairs .... The Murder of Turner Bridewell, as Rebuilt after tUe Fire, ;ron\ an OK Beating Hemp in Bridewell, after Mo-garth Interior of the Duke's Theatre . Baynard's Castle, from a View publisliecl in 1790 Falling-in of the Chapel at Blackfriars Richard Burbage, from an Original Portrait Laying the Foundation-stone of Blackfriais. Brid: Printing House Scpiare and the "Times" Office Blackfriars Old Bridge during its Construction, The College of Physicians, Warwick Lane . Outer Court of La Belle .Sauvage in 1S28 . The Inner Court of the Belle Sauvage The Mutilated Statues from Lud Gate, 179S Old Lud Gate, from a Print pulilished about Ruins of the Barbican on I.udgate Hill Interior of .Stationers' Hall Old St. Paul's, from a Viev.- by Hollar Old St. Paul's — the Interior, looking East The Church of St. Faith, the Crypt of Old St. P: St. Paul's after the Fall of the Spire . The Chapter House of Old St. Paul's Dr. Bourne preaching at Paul's Cross The Rebuilding of St. Paul's . The Choir of St. Paul's .... The Scaffolding and Obscrv.atory on St. Paul's i St. Paul's and the Neighbourhood in 1540 . The Library of St. P.aul's .... The "Face in the Str.aw," 1613 . Execution of Father Garnet Old St. Paul's School .... Richard Tarleton, the -Actor Dolly's Coffee House .... The Figure in Panier .Mley The Church of St. Michael ad Bkadum The Prerogative Office, Doctors' Commons St. Paul's and Neighbourhood, from Aggas' Plan Heralds' College ]fn>m an Old Print) The Last Heraldic Court (from an Old Picture) Print 50 aul's 184S LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Swor• 377. col. 1, line ^(),for " 1321," read " 1329." line yi,/or " F.Is;;up," read " EUinq." „ -I'jo, col. J, line 19,/Dr " RicliarJ," rejd " Edmund." Page 400, col. I, line 23,y&r "Walter," read " Wi'liam." M 1, >, line 42. _/or " 1500," rfrtf/ " 1505." ,, ,, col. 2. line 24. ./ir " P.axton," r^aii " Pastou." ,, 404, col. I, line 10 from bottom. 7;/>- " Peninsula," read *' Pemxi.' solar." ,, 416, col. 2, The inscription on the Monument w.ns really erased in 1831. ^gs London as it was and as it is, RITING the histor)- of a vast city like London is like writing a history of the ocean-the area is so vast, its inhabitants are so multifarious, the treasures that lie in its depths so countless^ What aspect of the great chameleon city should one select. for IS Boswell, with more than his usual sense, once re- marked, " London is to the politician merely a seat of govern- ment, to the grazier a cattle market, to the merchant a huge exchange, to the dramatic enthusiast a congenes of thea res, to the man of pleasure an assemblage of taverns." If we follow one path alone, we must neglect other roads equal y impor ant let us then, consider the metropolis as a whole, for, as Johnson's friend well says, "the intellectual man is struck ;-ith London as comprehending the whole of 1-"-" {^ ? all its varietv, the contemplation of which is ^-^f'^^^. In histories, in biographies, in sc.ent.tic ^-<^onl^f'^ J chronicles of the past, however humble, 1^' "^ S^'^^^^^J^'^. nals for a record of the great and the -}^- ^ '^'^^J^ ^ , noble, the odd and the witt.-, who have inhabited London am -,.11-. \viif>rpvi'r the dimmer of the left their names upon its wall.. ^^ htiex u tne ^ cross of St. Paul's can be seen we shall wander from strce Talley, from alley to street, noting almost ever)- ev t of interest that has taken place there smce London «as a citj. OLD AND NEW LONDON. Had it been our lot to write of London before the Great i'ire, we should have only had to visit 65,000 houses. If in Dr. Johnson's time, we might ha\e done like energetic Dr. Birch, and have perambulated the twenty-mile circuit of ].ondon in six hours' hard walking ; but who now could put a girdle round the metropolis in less than double that time ? The houses now grow by streets at a time, and the nearly four million inhabitants would take a lifetime to study. Addison probably knev.' something of London when he called it " an aggregate of various nations, distinguished from each other by their respective customs, manners, and interests — the St. James's courtiers from the Cheapside citizens, the Temple lawyers from the Smithfield drovers;" but what would the Spectator say now to the 168,701 domestic servants, the 23,517 tailors, the 18,321 carpenters, the 29,780 dressmakers, the 7,002 seamen, the 4,861 pub- licans, the 6,716 blacksmiths, Src, to which the poi)ulation returns of thirty years ago depose, whom he would have to observe and visit before he could say he knew all the ways, oddities, humours — the joys and sorrows, in fact — of this great centre of civilisation ? The houses of old London are incrusted as thick with anecdotes, legends, and traditions as an old ship is with barnacles. Strange stories about strange men grow like moss in every cre\ice of the bricks. Let us, then, roll together like a great snowball the mass of information that time and our predecessors have accumulated, and reduce it to some shape and form. Old London is passing away even as we dip our jien in the ink, and we would fain erect quickly our itinerant photographic machine, and secure some \iews of it before it passes. Roman London, Saxon London, Norman London, Elizabethan London, Stuart London, Queen .\nne's London, we shall in turn rifle to fill our museum, on whose shelves the Roman lamp and the vessel full-of tears will stand side by side with Vanessas' fan ; the sword-knot of Rochester by the note-book of Goldsmith. The history of London is an epitome of the history of England. Few great men indeed that England has produced but have some associations that connect them with London. To be able to recall these associations in a London walk is a pleasure perpetually renewing, and to all- intents inex- ha\istible. Let us, then, at once, without lonLrcr haltina at the gate, seize the pilgrim staff and start upon our voyage of discovery, through a dreamland that will be now Goldsmith's, now Gower's, now Shakespeare's, now Poiie's, London. In Cannon Street, by the old central milestone of London, grave Romans will meet us and talk of Cxsar and his legions. In Fleet Street we shall come upon Chaucer beating the malapert Franciscan friar ; at Temple Bar, stare upwards at the ghastly Jacobite heads. In Smith- field we sh.-iU meet Froissart's knights riding to tlie tournament ; in the Strand see the misguided Earl of Essex defending his house against Queen Eliza- beth's troops, who are turning towards him the cannon on the roof of St. Clement's church. But let us first, rather than glance at scattered pictures in a gallery which is so full of them, measure out, as it were, our future walks, briefly glancing at the special doors where we shall billet our readers. The brief summary will serve to broadly epitomise the subject, and \\ill prove the ceaseless variety of interest which it involves. We have selected Temple Bar, that old gatew.ay, as a point of departure, because it is the centre, as near as can be, of historical London, and is in itself full of interest, ^^'e begin with it as a rude wooden building, which, after the Great Fire, Wren turned into the present arch of stone, with a room above, where Messrs. Childs, the bankers, store their books and archives. The lieads X)f some of the Rye House conspirators, in Charles II. 's time, first adorned the Bar; and after that, one after the other, many rash Jacobite heads, in 17 15 and 1 745, arrived at the same bad eminence. In man)- a royal pro- cession and many a City riot, this gate has figured as a halting-place and a point of defence. The last rebel's head blew down in 1772 ; and the last spike was not removed till the beginning of the present century. In the Popish Plot days of Charles II. vast processions used to come to Temple Bar to illuminate the supposed statue of Queen Elizabeth, in the south-east niche (though it probably really represents Anne of Denmark) ; and at great bonfires at the Temple gate the frenzied people burned effigies of the Pope, while thousands of squibs were discharged, with shouts that frightened the Popish Portuguese Queen, at that time living at Somerset House, forsaken by her dissolute scape- grace of a husband. Turning our faces now towards the old black dome that rises like a half-eclipsed planet' over Ludgate Hill, we first pass along Fleet Street, a locality full to overflowing with ancient memori.ils, and in its modern aspect not less interesting. This street has been from time immemorial the high road for royal processions. Richard II. has passed along here to St. Paul's, his parti-coloured robes jingling with golden bells ; and Queen Elizabeth, be-ru filed and bc-fardin;;alcd, has glanced at those gable-ends east FLEET STREET AND CHANCERY LANE. of St. Dunstan's, as she rode in her cumbrous plumed coach to thank God at St. Paul's for the scattering and shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obse- (juious ^Layor. William of Orange and Queen Anne both clattered over these stones to return thanks for victories over the French ; and old George I XL honoured the street when, with his handsome but worthless son, he came to thank God for his partial restoration from that darker region than the valley of the shadow of death, insanity. We recall many odd and pleasant figures in this street ; first the old printers who succeeded Caxton, who published for Shakespeare or who timidly speculated in Milton's epic, that great product of a sorry age ; next, the old bankers, who, at Child's and Hoare's, laid the foundations of permanent wealth, and from simple City goldsmiths were gradually transformed to great capitalists. Izaak Walton, honest shopkeeper and patient angler, eyes us from his latticed window near Chancery Lane ; and close by we see the child Cowley reading the " Fairy Queen" in a window-seat, and already feeling in himself the inspiration of his later years. The lesser celebrities of later times call to us as we pass. Garrick's friend Hardham, of the snuff-shop ; and that busy, vain demagogue. Alderman Waithman, whom Cobbett abused bec-ause he was not zealous enough for poor hunted Queen Caroline. Then there is the shop where barometers were first sold, the great watchmakers, Tompion and Pinchbeck, to chronicle, and the two churches to notice. St. Dunstan's is interesting for its early preachers, the good Romaine and the pious Baxter ; and St. Bride's has anecdotes and legends of its own, and a peal of bells which have in their time excited as much admiration as those giant hammermen at the old St. Dunstan's clock, which are now in Regent's Park. The newspaper offices, too, furnish many curious illustrations of the progress of that great organ of modern civilisation, the ])ress. At the " Devil " we meet Ben Jonson and his club ; and at John Murray's old shop we stop to see Byron lunging with his stick at favourite volumes on the shelves, to the bookseller's great but concealed annoyance. Nor do we forget to sketch Dr. Johnson at Temple Bar, bantering his fellow Jacobite, Gold- smith, about the warning heads upon the gate ; at Child's bank pausing to observe the dinnerless authors returning downcast at the rejection of brilliant but fruitless proposals ; or stopping with Boswell, one hand upon a street post, to shake the night air with his Cyclopean laughter. Varied as the colours in a kaleidoscope arc the figures that.will meet us in these perambulations ; mutable as an opal are the feelings they arouse. To the man of facts they furnish facts ; to the m.an of imagination, quick-changing fancies ; to the man of science, curious memoranda ; to the historian, bright-worded detaiks, that' vivify old ])ictures now often dim in tone ; to the man of the world, traits of manners ; to the general thinker, aspects of feelings and of passions whicli ex[)and the knowledge of human nature ; for all tliese many-coloured stones are joined by the one golden string of London's history. But if Fleet Street itself is ricji in associations, its side streets, north and soutli, are yet richer. Here anecdote and story are clustered in even closer compass. In these side binns lies hid the choicest wine, for when Fleet Street had, long since, become two vast rows of shops, authors, wits, poets, and memorable persons of all kinds, still inhabited the "closes " and alleys that branch from the main thoroughfare. Nobles and lawyers long dwelt round St. Dunstan's and St. Bride's. Scholars, poets, and literati of all kind, long sought refuge from the grind and busy roar of commerce in the quiet inns and " closes," north and south. In what was Shire Lane we come upon the great Kit-Kat Club, where Addison, Garth, Steele, and Congreve dis- ported ; and we look in on that very evening when the Duke of Kingston, with fatherly pride, brought his little daughter, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and, setting her on the table, proposed her as a toast. Following the lane down till it becomes a nest of coiners, tliieves, and bullies, we pass on to Bell Yard, to call on Pope's lawyer friend, Fortescue ; and in Chancery Lane we are deep among the lawyers again. Ghosts of Jarn- dyces v. Jarndyces, from the Middle Ages down- wards, haunt this thoroughfare, where Wolsey once lived in his pride and state. Izaak Walton dwelt in this lane once upon a time ; .and that mischievous adviser of Charles I., Earl Strafford, was born here. Hazlitt resided in Southampton Buildings when he fell in love witli the tailor's daugliter and wrote that most stultifying confession of his vanity and weakness, " The New Pygmalion." Fetter Lane brings us fresh stores of subjects, all essentially connected with the place, deriving an interest from and imparting a new interest to it. Praise-God- Barebones, Dryden, Otway, Baxter, and Mrs. Brown- rigg form truly a strange bouciuet. By mutual contrast the incongruous group serves, however, to illustrate various epochs of London life, and tlie background serves to explain the actions and the social position of each and all these motley beings. OLD AND NEW LONDON. In Crane Court, the early home of the Royal Society, Newton is tlie central personage, and we tarry to sketch the progress of science and to smile at the crudity of its early experiments and theories. In Bolt Court we pause to see a great man die. Here especially Dr. Johnson's figure ever stands like a statue, and we shall find his black senant at the door and his dependents wrangling in the front i)arlour. Burke and Hoswell are on their way to call, and Reynolds is Uking coach in the adjoining street. Nor is even Shoe Lane without its associations, for at the north-east end the corpse of poor, dishonoured Chatterton lies still under some neglected rubbish heap ; and close by the brilliant Cavalier poet, Lovelace, pined and perished, almost in beggary. The soutliern side of Fleet Street is somewhat less noticeable. Still, in Salisbury Square the worthy old printer Richardson, amid the din of a noisy office, wrote his great and pathetic novels; while in Mitre Buildings Charles Lamb held those delightful conversations, so full of quaint and kindly thoughts, which were shared in by Hazlitt and all the odd people Lamb has immortalised in his "Elia" — bibulous Burney, George Dyer, Holcroft. Coleridge, Hone, Godwin, and Leigh Hunt. Wliitefriars and Blackfriars are our next places of pilgrimage, and they open up quite new lines of reading and of thought. Though the Great Fire swept them bare, no district of London has preserved its old lines so closely ; and, w\alking in Whitefriars, we can still stare through the gate that once barred off the brawling Copper Captains of Charles II.'s .Vlsatia from the contemiituous Templars of King's Bench \Valk. ^\'hitefriars was at first a Cannelite convent, founded, before Blackfriars, on land given by Edward I.; the chapter-house was given by Henry VII. to his physician. Dr. Butts .(a man mentioned by Shakespeare), and in the reign of Edward VI. the church was demolished. Whitefriars then, though still partially inhabited by great people, soon sank into a sanctuary for nmaway bankrupts, cheats, and gamblers. The hall of the monastery was turnesl into a theatre, where many of Dryden's likiys first appeared. The players favoured this ([ua-rter, where, in the reign of James I., two henchmen of Lord Sanquire, a revengeful young Scottish nobleman, shot at his own door a poor fencing-master, who had accidenally put out their Piaster's eye several years before in a contest of skill. The two men were hung opposite the AVhite- friars gate in Fleet Street. This disreputable and lawless nest of river-side alleys was called Alsatia, from its resemblance to the seat of the war then raging on the frontiers of France, in the dominions of King James's son-in-law, tlie Prince Palatine. Its roystering bullies and shifty money-lenders are admirably sketched by Shadwell in his Squire of Alsatia, an excellent comedy freely used by Sir Walter Scott in his " Fortunes of Nigel,'' who has laid several of his strongest scenes in this once scampish region. That great scholar Selden lived in Wiitefriars with the Countess Dowager of Kent, whom he was supposed to have married ; and, singularly enough, the best edition of his works was jjrinted in Dogwell Court, A\'hitefriars, by those eminent printers, Bowyer & Son. At the back of Wliitefriars we come upon Bridewell, the site of a palace of the Norman kings. Cardinal A\^oIsey afterwards owned the house, which Henry A^III. reclaimed in his rough and not very scrupulous manner. It was the old palace to which Henry summoned all the priors and abbots of F2ngland, and where he first announced his intention of divorcing Katherine of Arragon. After this it fell into deca}-. The good Ridley, the martyr, begged it of Edward VI. for a workhouse and a school. Hogarth painted the female pri- soners here beating hemp under the lash of a cruel turnkey ; and Pennant has left a curious sketch of the herd of girls whom he saw run like hounds to be fed when a gaoler entered. If Whitefriars was inhabited by actors, Black- friars was equally favoured by players and by painters. The old convent, r-emoved from Hol- born, was often used for Parliaments. Charles V. lodged here when he came over to win Henry against Francis ; and Burbage, the great player of '■ Richard the Third," built a theatre in Blackfriars, because the Precinct was out of the jurisdiction [ of the City, then ill-disposed to the players. I Shakespeare had a house here, which he left to his favourite daughter, the deed of conveyance of which sold, in 1841, for ^165 15s. He must have thought of his well-known neighbourhood when he WTOte the scenes of Henry VIIL, w'here Katherine was divorced and Wolsey fell, for both events were decided in Blackfriars Parliaments. Oliver, the gi^eat miniature painter, and Jansen, a favourite portrait painter of James I., lived in Blackfriars, where we shall call upon them ; and Vandyke spent nine happy years here by the ri\er side. The mor.t remarkable event connected with Blackfriars is the falling in of the floor of a Roman Catholic private chapel 1623, by which fifty-nine persons perished, including the priest, to the exultation of the Puritans, who pronounced the event a visitation of Hea;en on Popish superstition. Pamphlets of the time, well rummaged by us, describe the scene with curious exactness, and mention the sinRular s LEGENDS OF ST. PAUL'S. escapes of several persons on the "Fatal Vespers," as they were afterwards called. Leavmg the racket of .-Vlsatia and its wild doings behind us, we come next to that great monastery of lawyers, the Temple — like A\'hitefriars and Blackfriars, also the site of a bygone convent. Tlie warlike Templars came here in their white cloaks and red crosses from their first establishment in Southampton Buildings, and they held it during all the Crusades, in which the}- fought so valorously agr(inst the Paynim, till they grew proud and cor- rupt, and were suspected of worshipping idols and ridiculing Christianit)-. Their work done, they perished, and the Knights of St. John took i)0sses- sion of their halls, church; and cloisters. The in- coming lawyers became tenants of the Crown, and' the parade-ground of the Templars and the ri\-er-side terrace and gardens were tenanted b}- more peaceful occupants. The manners and customs of the lawyers of various ages, their quaint revels, fox-huntings in hall, and dances round the coal fire, deserve s;»ecial notice ; and swarms of anecdotes and odd sayings and doings buzz round us as we write of the various denizens of the Temple — Dr. John- son, Goldsmith, Lamb, Coke, Plowden, Jefiferies, Cowper, Butler, Parsons, Sheridan, and Tom ]Moore ; and we linger at the pretty little fount- ain and think of those who have celebrated its jiraise. Every binn of this cellar of law)ers has its stor}-, and a volume might well be wTitten in record- ing the toils and struggles, successes and failures, of the illustrious owners of Temple chambers. Thence we pass to Ludgate, where that old London inn, the " Belle Sauvage," calls up associa- tions of the early days of theatres, especially of Banks and his wonderful performing horse, that walked ujj one of the towers of Old St. Paul's. Hone's old shop reminds usof the delightful books he published, aided by Lamb and Leigh Hunt. The old entrance of the City, Ludgate, has quite a history of its own. It was a debtors' prison, rebuilt in the time of King John from the remains of demolished Jewish houses, and was enlarged by the widow of Stephen Forster, Lord J^Layor in the reign of Henry VI., who, tradition says, had been himself a prisoner in Ludgate, till released by a rich widow, who saw his handsome face through the grate and married him. St. Martin's church, Ludgate, is one of 'Wren's churches, and is chiefly remarkable for its stolid conceit in always getting in the wa)- of the west front of St. Paul's. The great Cathedral has been the scene of events that illustrate almost every age of English histor)-. This is the third St. Paul's. The first, falsely sup- posed to have been built on the site of a Roman . temple of Diana, was burnt down in tlie last )-ear of AVilliam the Conqueror. Innumerable events connected with the history of the City hajjpencd here, from the killing a bishop at the north door, in the reign of Edward II., to the public exposure of Richard II. 's l)od_\- after his murder ; while at the Cross in tlie churchyard the authorities of the City, and even our kings, often attended thepublic sermons, and in the same place the citizens once held their Folkmotes, riotous enough on many an occasion. Great men's tombs abounded in Old St. Paul's — John of Gaunt, Lord Bacon's father. Sir Philii) Sj^dney, Donne, the poet, and Vandyke being ver)' jirominent among them. Fired by lightning in Elizabeth's reign, when the Cathedral had become a resort of newsmongers and a tlioroughfare for porters and carriers, it was partly rebuilt in Charles I.'s reign b\' Inigo Jones. The repairs were stopped by the civil wars, when the Puritans seized the funds, pulled down the scaffolding, and turned the church into a cavalr}' barracks. The Great Fire swept all clear for Wren, who now found a fine field for his genius ; but vexatious difficulties embarrassed him at the very outset. His first great plan was rejected, and the Duke of York (aftenvards James 11.) is said to have insisted on side recesses, that might sen'e as chantry chapels when the church Ijecame Roman Catholic, ^\'ren was accused of dela}s and chidden for the faults of petty workmen, and, as the Duchess of Marlborough laughingl}" remarked, was dragged u]) and down in a basket two or three times a week for a paltr\'^2ooa year. The narrow escape of Sir James Thornhill from falling from a scaffold while painting the dome is a tradition of St. Paul's, matched b)- the terrible ad\enture of Mr. Gwyn, who wlien measuring the dome slid down the coirvex surface till his foot was stayed by a small projecting lump of lead. This leads us naturally on to the curious monomaniac who believed himself the slave of a demon who lived in the bell of the Cathedral, and whose case is singularly deserving of analysis. '\\'e shall give a short sketch of the heroes whose tombs have been admitted into St. Paul's, and having come to those of the great demi-gods of the old wars. Nelson and Wellington, jjass to anecdotes about the clock and bells, and arrive at the singular stor)- of the soldier whose life was saved by his proving that he liad heard St. Paul's clock strike thirteen. Queen Anne's statue in the churchyard, too, has given rise to ei^grams worth}- of jireservation, and the progress of the restoration will be carefully detailed. Cheapside, famous from the Saxon days, next invites our wandering feet, 'i'he north side re- mained an open field as late as Edward III.'s reign, OLD AND NEW LONDON. and tournaments were held there. The knights, ' rising, who was besieged there, and eventually whose deeds Froissart has immortalised, broke burned out and put to death. The great Cross of spears there, in the presence of the Queen and her Cheapside recalls many interesting associations, for ladies, who smiled on their champions from a it was one of the nine Eleanor crosses. Regilt wooden tower erected across the street Aftenvards for many coronations, it was eventually pulled a stone shed was raised for the same siglUs, and down by the Puritans during the civil wars. Then THE OLD WOODEN TEMPLE BAR {sir plj^'d 2). there Henry VIII., disguised as a yeoman, with a halbert on his shoulder, came on one occasion to see the great City procession of the night watch by torchlight on St. John's Eve. Wren afterwards, when he rebuilt Bow Church, provided a balcony in the tower for the Royal Family to witness similar pageants. Old Bow Church, we must not forget to record, was seized in the reign of Richard L by Longbeard, the desperate ringleader of a Saxon I there was the Standard, near Bow Church, w-here Wat Tyler and Jack Cade beheaded several objec- tionable nobles and citizens ; and the great Conduit at the east end — each with its memorable history. But the great feature of Cheapside is, after all, Guildhall. This is the hall that AVhit- tington paved and where AVahvorth once ruled. In Guildhall Lady Jane Grey and her husband I were tried ; here the Jesuit Garnet was arraigned c THE CITV AND ITS MEMORIES. t 8 Ol.U AND NEW LONDON. for his share in the Gunpowder Plot ; here it was Charles I. aiipealed to the Common Council to arrest Hampden and the other patriots who had fled from his eager claws into the fricndl)- City; and here, in the spot still sacred to liberty, the Lords and Parliament declared for the Prince of Orange. To pass this spot without some salient anecdotes of the various Lord Mayors would be a disgr-ice : and the banquets themselves, from that ofWhittington, when he threw Henry V.'s bonds for _;^6o,ooo into a spice bonfire, to those in the present reign, deserve some notice and comment. The curiosities of Guildhall in themselves are not to be lightly passed over, for they record many vicissitudes of the great City ; and Gog and Magog are personages of importance only secondary to that of Lord Mayor, and not in any way to be dis- regarded. The Mansion House, built in 1789, leads us to much chat about " gold chains, wanii furs, broad banners and broad faces ; " for a folio might be well filled with curious anecdotes of the Lord ^Liyors of various ages — from Sir John Norman, who first went in procession to West- minster by water, to Sir John Shorter (James IL), who was killed by a fall from his horse as he stopped at Newgate, according to custom, to take a tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar. There is a word to say of many a celebrity in the long roll of Mayors — more especially of Beckford, who is said to have startled George HI. by a violent patriotic remon- strance, and of the notorious John Wilkes, that ugly demagogue, who led the City in many an attack on the King and his unwise Ministers. The tributaries of Cheapside also abound in interest, and mark various stages in the history of the great City. Bread Street was the bread market of the time of Edward L, and is especially honoured for being the birthplace of Milton ; and in Milk Street (the old milk market) Sir Thomas More was born. Gutter Lane reminds us of its first Danish owner ; and many other turnings have their memorable legends and traditions. The Halls of the City Companies, the great hos- pitals, and Gothic schools, will each by turn detain us ; and we shall not forget to call at the Bank, the South-Sea House, and other great proofs of past commercial folly and present wealth. The Bank, projected by a Scotch theorist in 1691 (William HL), after many migrations, settled down in Threadneedle Street in 1734. It has a his- torj- of its own, and we shall see during the Gordon Riots the old pewter inkstands melted down for bullets, and, prodigy of prodigies ! Wilkes I himself rushing out to seize the cowardly ring- ' leaders ! By many old houses of good pedigree and bj- several City churches worthy a visit, we come at last to the Monument, wliich Wren erected and which Cihber decorated. This pillar, which Pope compared to "a tnll bully,'' once bore an inscrip- tion that greatly offended the Court. It attributed the Great Fire of London, which began close by there, to the Popish faction ; but the words were erased in 183T. Littleton, who compiled the Dic- tionary, once wrote a Latin inscription for the Monument, which contained the names of seven Lord Mayors in one word ; — " r'oiJo-W.itermanno-IIarrisono-HooUero-Vincro- bheldono-D.ivisonam." But the learned production was, singularly enough, never used. The word, which Littleton called " nn heptastic vocable," comprehended the names of the seven Lord Mayors in whose mayoralties the Monument was begun, continued, and completed. On London Bridge we might linger for many chapters. The first bridge thrown over the Thames was a wooden one, erected by the nuns of St. Mary's Monastery, a convent of sisters endowed by the daughter of a rich Thames ferryman. The bridge figures as a fortified place in the early Danish invasions, and the Norwegian Prince Olaf nearly- dragged it to pieces in tr)'ing to dispossess the Danes, who held it in 1008. It was swept away in a flood, and its successor was burnt. In the reign of Henry II. , Pious Peter, a chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch, in the Poultr)-, built a stone bridge a little further west, and the king heljicd him with the proceeds of a tax on wool, which gave rise to the old saying that " London Bridge was built upon woolpacks." Peter's bridge was a curious structure, with nineteen pointed arches and a drawbridge. There was a fortified gate- house at each end, and a gothic chapel towards the centre, dedicated to St. Thomas h. Becket, the spurious martyr of Canterbury. In Queen Elizabeth's reign there were shops on either side, with flat roofs, arbours, and gardens, and at the south end rose a great four-storey wooden house, brought from Holland, which was covered with car\ing and gilding. In the Middle Ages, London Bridge was the scene of affrays of all kinds. Soon after it was built, the houses upon it caught fire at both ends, and 3,000 persons perished, wedged in among the flames. Henry III. was driven back here by the rebellious De Montfort, Earl of Leicester. A\'at Tyler entered the City b}' I^ondon Bridge; and, later, Richard II. was received here with gorgeous ceremonies. It was the scene of one of Henry V.'s gi-eatest triumphs, and also LONDON BRIDGE AND THE TOWER. of liis stattly funeral procession. Jack Cade seized London IJridge, and as he passed slashed in two tI.-_' ropes of the drawbridge, though soon after his head was stuck on the gate-house. From this bridge the rebel Wyatt was driven by the guns of the Tower ; and in Elizabeth's reign water- works were erected on the bridge. There was a great conflagration on the bridge in 1632, and eventually the Great Fire almost destroyed it. In the Middle Ages countless rebels' heads were stuck on the gate-houses of London Bridge. Bra^-e ^Vallace's was placed there; and so were the heads of Henry VIII.'s victims — Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More, the latter trophy being can'ied off by the stratagem of his hrave daughter. Garnet, the Gunpo«der-Plot Jesuit, also contributed to the ghastly triumphs of justice. Several celebrated painters, including Hogarth, lived at one time or another on the bridge ; and Swift and Pope used to frequent the shop of a ^vitty bookseller, who lived under the northern gate. One or two celebrated suicides have taken ]ilace at London Bridge, and among these we may mention that of .Sir A\'illiani Temple's son, who was Secretary of War, and Eusta'-.e Budgell, a broken- down author, who left behind him as an apology the following sophism : — ** What Cato did and Addison approved of cannot he wrong." Tleasanter is it to remember the anecdote of the brave apprentice, who leaped into the Thames from the window of a house on the bridge to save his master's infant daughter, whom a care- less nurse had dropped into the river. When the girl grew up, many noble suitors came, but the generous father was obdurate. " No," said the honest citizen ; " Osborne saved her, and Osborne shall have her." And so he had ; and Osborne's great gi-andson throve and became the first Duke of Leeds. The frequent loss of lives in shooting the arches of the old bridge, where the lall was at times five feet, led at last to a cry for a new bridge, and one was commenced in 1824. Rennie designed it, and in 1S31 A\'illiam IV. and Queen Adelaide opened it. One hundred and twenty thousand tons of stone went to its forma- tion. The old bridge was not entirely removed till 1832, when the bones of the builder. Pious Peter of Colechurch, were found in the crypt of die central chapel, wliere tradition had de- clared they lay. The iron of the piles of the old bridge was bought by a cutler in the Strand, and produced steel of the highest quality. Part of the old stone was purchased by Alderman Harmer, to buil.-l his house, Ingress Al)bey, near Greenhithe. Southwark, a Roman station and cemetery, is by no means without a history. It was burned by William the Conqueror, and had been the scene of battle against the Danes. It possessed palaces, monasteries, a mint, and fortifications. 'I'he Bishops of Winchester and Rochester once lived here in splendour ; and the locality boasted its four Elizabethan theatres. The (Jlobe was Shake- speare's summer theatre, and here it was that his greatest triumphs were attained. \\'hat was acted there is best told by making Shakespeare's share in the management distinctly understood ; nor can we leave .Southwark without visiting the " Tabard Inn," from whence Chaucer's nine-and- twenty jovial pilgrims set out for Canterbury. The Tower rises next before our eyes ; and as we pass under its battlements the grimmest and most tragic scenes of English history seem again rising before us. Whether Caesar first built a tower here or William the Conqueror, may never be decided ; but one thing is certain, that more tears have been shed within these walls than anywhere else in London. Every stone has its story. Here Wallace, in chains, thought of Scotland ; lierc Queen Anne Boleyn placed her white hands round her slender neck, and said the headsman would have little trouble. Here Catharine Howard, Sir Thomas More, Cranmer, Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey, Wyatt, and the Earl of Essex all perished. Here, Clarence was drowned in a butt of wine and the two boy princes were murdered. Many ^■ictims of kings, many kingly victims, have here perished. Many patriots have here sighed for liberty. The poisoning of Overbury is a mystery of tlie Tower, the perusal of which never wearies though the dark secret be unsolvable ; and we can never cease to sympathise with that brave woman, the Countess of Nithsdale, who risked her life to save her husband's. From Laud and Strafford we turn to F",liot and Hutchinson — for Ca\aliers and Puritans were both by turns prisoners in the Tower. From Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney we come down in the chronicle of suff'ering to the Jacobites of 17 15 and 1745; from them to Wilkes, Lord George Gordon, Burdett, and, last of all the Tower jm- soners, to the infamous Thistlewood. Leaving the crimson scaffold on Tower Hill, we return as sightseers to glance over the armoury and to catch the sparkle of the Royal jewels. Here is the identical crown that that daring villain Blood stole and the heart-shaped ruby that the Black Prince once wore ; here we see the swords, scejjtrcs, and diadems of many of our monarchs. In the OLD AND NEW LONDON. armoury are suits on wliich many lances have splin- tered and swords struck ; the imperishable steel clothes of many a dead king are here, unchanged since the owners defied them. This suit was the Earl of Leicester's — the "Kenilworth " earl, for see his cognizance of the bear and ragged Stafif on the horse's chanfron. Tliis richly-gilt suit was worn by James IL's ill-starred son, Prince Henrj-, whom many thought was poisoned by Buckingham ; and this quaint mask, with ram's horns and spectacles, belonged to Will Somers, Henry VIIL's jester. From the Tower we break away into the far cast, among the old clothes shops, the bird markets, the costermongers, and the weavers of White- chajiel and Spitalfields. We are far from jewels here and Court splendour, and we come to plain working ])eopIe and their homely ways. Spital- fields was the site of a priory of Augustine canons, however, and has ancient traditions of its own. The weavers, of French origin, are an interesting race — we shall have to sketch their sayings and doings ; and we shall search Whitechapel diligently for old houses and odd people. The district may not furnish so many interesting scenes and anec- dotes as the West End, but it is well worthy of study from many modem points of view. Smithfield and Holborn are regions fertile in associations. Smithfield, that broad plain, the scene of so many martyrdoms, tournaments, and executions, forms an interesting subject for a diversified chapter. In this market-place the ruflians of Henry VIII.'s time met to fight out their ronation, the champion riding into the Hall, to challenge all who refuse OLD AND XKW LONDON. allegiance ; \vc see, at the funeral of Anne of Bo- ' hernia, Richard beating the Earl of Arundel for wishing to leave before the service is over. We hear the Tc Daim that is sung for the victory of Agin- court, and watch Henry VL selecting a site for a resting-place ; we hear for the last time, at the coronation of Henry VHL, the sanction of the Pope bestowed upon an Englisli monarch ; we pity poor Queen Caroline attempting to enter the Abbey to see her worthless husband crowned ; and we view through them : in St. James's seeing Charles H. feed- ing his ducks or playing "pall-mall ; " in Hyde Park observing the fashions and extravagancies of many generations. Romeo Coates will whisk past us in his fantastic chariot, and the beaus and oddities of many generations will pace past us in review. There will be celebrated duels to describe, and %-arious strange follies to deride. AVe shall see Cromwell thrown from his coach, and shall witness the foot-races that Pepys describes. Dryden's BRIDEWELL IN l665 {scc pa^i' \). the last coronation, and draw auguries of a purer if not a hapi)ier age. The old Hall, too ; could we neglect that ancient chamber, where Charles L was sentenced to death, and where Cromwell was throned in almost regal splendour? We must see it in all its special moments ; when the seven bishops were acquitted, and the shout of joy shook London as with an earthquake ; and when the rebel lords were tried. We must hear Lord Byron tried for his duel with Mr. Chaworth, and mad Lord Ferrers condemned for shooting his steward. We shall get a side-view of the sliameless Duchess of Kingston, and hear Burke and Sheridan grow eloquent over the misdeeds of Warren Hastings. The parks now draw us w^estward, and we wander gallants and masked ladies will receive some men- tion ; and we shall tell of l3}-gone encampments and of many events now almost forgotten. Kensington will recall many anecdotes of Willia ai of Orange, his beloved Queen, stupid Prince George of Denmark, and George II., who all died at tlie palace, the old seat of the Finches. We are sure to find good company in the gardens. Still as when Tickell sang, every walk I "Seems from afar a moving tulip bed, I Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow, I And chintz, the rival of the showery bow." There is Newton's house at South Kensington to visit, and Wilkie's and Mrs. Inchbald's; and, CHELSEA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 13 above all, there is Holland House, the scene of the delightful AVhig coteries of Tom Moore's time. Here Addison lived to regret his marriage with a lady of rank, and here he died. At Kensington Charles James Fox spent his youth. And now Chelsea brings us pleasant recollec- tions of Sir Thomas More, Swift, Sir Robert Walpole, and Atterbury. " Chelsith," Sir Thomas More used to call it when Holbein was lodging in his house and King Henry, who afterwards fiddle. Saltero was a barber, who drew teeth, drew customers, wrote verses, and collected curiosities. "Some relics of the Slicban qiiecii And fragments of the famed Hob Crusoe." Swift lodged at Chelsea, over against the Jacobite Bishop Atterbury, who so nearly lost his head. In one of his delightful letters to Stella Swift describes " the Old Original Chelsea Bun House," and the r-r-r-r-rare Chelsea buns. He used to leave his best gown and peniwig at Mrs. Vanhomrig's, in PART OF MODERN LONDON', SHOWING THE ANCIENT WALL {slV /(7;,V 20). beheaded his old friend, used to come to dinner, and after dinner walk round the fair garden with his arm round his host's neck. More was fond of walking on the flat roof of his gate-house, which commanded a pleasant prospect of the Thames and the fields beyond. Let us hope the tradition is not true that he used to bind heretics to a tree in his garden. In 17 17 Chelsea only contained 350 houses, and these in 1725 had grown to 1,350. There is Cheyne Walk, so called from the Lords Cheyne, owners of the manor; and we must not forget Don Saltero and his famous coftee-house, the oddities of which Steele pleasantly sketched in the Tatler. The Don was famous for his skill in brewing punch and for his excellent playing on the Suffolk Street, then walk up Pall Mall, througli the park, out at Buckingham House, and on to Chelsea, a little beyond the church (5,748 stejis), he says, in less than an hour, which was leisurely walking even for the contemplative and obser\ant dean. SmoUet laid a scene of his " Humphrey Clinker" in Chelsea, where he lived for some time. The Princess Elizabeth, when a girl, lived at Chelsea, with that dangerous man, with whom she is said to have fallen in lo\e, tlie Lord Admiral Seymour, afterwards beheaded. He was the second husband of Katherine Parr, one of the many wives of Elizabetli's father. Cremorne was, in Walpole's days, the villa of Lord Cremorne, nn Iri.sh nobleman; and near here, at a river-side u OLD AND XKW LONDON. cottage .died, in miserly and cynical obscurity, the greatest of our modern landscape painters, Turner. Then there is Chelsea Hospital to visit. This hospital was built by Wren ; Charles IL, it is said at Nell Gwynn's suggestion, originated the good wo;!:, .which was finished by William and ^L^ry. Dr. Arbuthnot, that good man so beloved by the I'ope set, was physician here, and the Rev. I'liilip Francis, who translated Horace, w-as chaplain. Nor can we leave Chelsea without remembering Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of antiquities, sold for ^;o,ooo, formed the first nucleus of the British Museum, and who resided at Chelsea ; nor shall we forget the Chelsea china manufactory, one of the earliest porcelain manu- factories in England, patronized by George 11., who brought over German artificers from Bruns- wick and Saxony. In the reign of Louis XV. the French manufiicturers began to regard it with jealousy and petitioned their king for special jnivileges. Ranelagh, too, that old pleasure-garden which Dr. Johnson declared was " the finest thing he had ever seen,'' deserves a word; Horace Walpole was constantly there, though at first, he owns, he prefen^ed ^'auxhall : and Lord Cliester- field was so fond of it that he used to say he should order all his letters to be directed there. The West End squares are pleasant spots for our purpose, and at many doors we shall have to make a call. In Landsdowne House (in Berkeley Square) it is supposed by many that Lord Shelbume, Colonel Barre, and Dunning wrote " Junius " ; certain it is that the Marquis of Landsdowne, in 1S09, acknowledged the posses- sion of tlie secret, but died the following week, before hs could disclose it. Here, in 1774, that persecuted philosopher. Dr. Priestley, the librarian to Lord Shelbume, discovered oxygen. In this square Horace A\'alpole (that delightful letter- WTiter) died and Lord Clive destroyed himself. Then there is Grosvenor Square, where that fat, easy-going Minister, Lord North, lived, where Wilkes the notorious resided, and where the Cato-Street conspirators planned to kill all the Cabinet Ministers, who had been invited to dinner by the Earl of Harro'.vby. In Hanover Square we visit Lord Rodney, &c. In St. James's Square we recall William III. coming to the Earl of Romney's to see fireworks let off and, later, the Prince Regent, from a balcony, displaying to the people the Eagles ' captured at Waterloo. Queen Caroline resided I here during her trial, and many of Charles II. 's frail beauties also resided in the same spot. In Cavendish Square we stop to describe the splendid projects of tliat great Duke of Chnndos whom Pope ridiculed. Nor are the lesser squares by any means devoid of interest. In Pall Mall the laziest gleaner of London tradi- tions might find a harvest. On the site of Carlton House — the Prince Regent's palace — were, in the reign of Henry VI., monastic buildings, in which (reign of Henry VIII.) Erasmus afterwards resided. They' were pulled down at the Reformation. Nell Gw_\-nn lived here, and so did Sir William Temple, Swift's early patron, the pious Boyle, and that i)oor puft-ball of vanity and pretence — Bubb Doddington. Here we have to record the unhaj^py duel at the "Star and Garter" tavern between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, and the murder of Mr. Thynne by his rival, Count Koningsmark. There is Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery to notice, and Dodsley's shop, which Burke, Johnson, and Garrick so often visited. There is also the origin of the Royal Academy, at a house opposite Market Lane, to chronicle, many club-houses to visit, and curious memorabilia of all kinds to be sifted, selected, contrasted, mounted, and placed in sequence for view. Then comes Marylebone, formerly a suburb, famous only for its hunting park (now Regent's Park), its gardens, and its bowling-greens. In Queen Elizabeth's time the Russian ambassadors were sent to hunt in Marylebone Park ; Cromwell sold it — deer, timber, and all — for ^13,000. The Marylebone Bowling Greens, which preceded the gardens, were at first the resort of noblemen and gentlemen, but eventually highwaymen began to frequent them. The Duke of Buckingham (whom Lady Mary ^^'ortley Montagu glances at in the line, " Some dukes at Marybone bowl time away '') used, at an annual dinner to the frequenters of the gardens, to give the agreeable toast, — " yiay as many of us as remain unhanged next spring meet here again." Eventually burlettas were \>yo- duced — one written by Chatterton ; and Dr. Arne conducted Handel's music. Marylebone, in the time of Hogarth, was a favourite place for jirize fight-s and back-sword combats, the great champion being Figg, that bullet-headed man with the bald, plaistered head, whom Hogarth has represented mounting grim sentry in his "Southwark Fair." The great building at Marylebone began between 17 18 and 1729. In 1739 there were only 577 houses in the parish; in 185 1 there were 16,669. In many of the nooks and corners of !Mary- lebone we shall find curious facts and stories worth the unravelling. The east-ern squares, in Bloomsbury and St. Pancras, are regions not by any means to be lightly THE NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS. «5 passed hj. Bloonisbur)- Square was built by the Earl of Southampton, about the time of the Restoration, and was thought one of the wonders of England. Baxter lived here when he was tormented by Judge Jefferies ; Sir Hans Sloane was one of its inhabit- ants ; so was that great physician. Dr. Radclifte, The burning of Mansfield House by Lord George Gordon's rioters has to be minutely described. In Russell Square we visit the houses of Sir Thomas SirCloudesleyShovel, .Sir Joseph Banks,and Hurnet, the historian, were all inhabitants of this locality. Islington brings us back to days wlien Henry VI 1 1, came there to hawk the jjartridge and the heron, and when the London citizens wandered out across the northern fields to drink milk and cat cheese- cakes. 7'he old houses abound in legends of Sir Walter Raleigh, Tophani, the strong man, George Morland, the artist, and Henderson, the actor. At Lawrence and of Judge Talfourd, and search for Canonbury, the oW tower of the country house of S,ffl£^* " *■ '\ BAREACAN'f'^i •a^s>Yc!L.<^ PLAN OK ROMAN I.O.NDON (j-iV /(Tjv 20). that celebrated spot in London legend, " The Field of the Forty Footsteps," where two brothers, it is said, killed each other in a duel for a lady, who sat by watching the fight. Then there is Red Lion Square, where tradition says some faithful adherents, at the Restoration, buried the body of Cromwell, to prevent its desecration at T\burn ; and we have to cull some stories of a good old inhabitant, Jonas Hanway, the great promoter of many of the Lon- don charities, the first man- who habitually used an umbrella and Dr. Johnson's spirited opponent on the important question of tea. Soho Square, too, has many a tradition, for the Duke of Monmoutli lived there in great splendour; and in Hogartli's time Mrs. Comelys made the square celebrated by her masquerades, which in time became disreputable. the Prior of St. Bartholomew recalls to us Gold- smith, who used to come there to hide from liis creditors, go to bed early, and write steadily. At Highgate and Hampstead we shall scour the northern uplands of London by no means in vain, as we shall find Belsize House, in Charles XL's time, openly besieged by robbers and, long after- wards, highwaymen swarming in the same locality. The chalybeate wells of Hampstead lead us on to the Heath, where wolves were to be found in the twelfth century and highwaymen as late as 1803. Good company awaits us at pleasant Hampstead — Lord Erskine, Lord Chatham, Keats, Akenside, Leigh Hunt, and Sir Fowell Buxton ; Booth, Wilkes, and CoUey Gibber ; Mrs. Barbauld, honest Dick Steele, and Joanna Baillie. As for Highgate, l6 Ol.l) AN'D XKW LONDON. [Roman London. for ages a mere hamlet, a forest, it once boasted a bishop's palace, and there we gather, wiili free hand, memories of Sacheverell, Rowe, Dr. Watts, Hogarth, Coleridge, and Loril Mansfield ; Ireton, Marvell, and Dick Whittington, the wortliy demi-god of London apprentices to the end of time. Lambefh, wiiere Harold was crowned, can hold its own in interest with any part of London — for it once possessed two ecclesiastical palaces and many places of amusement. Lambedf Palace itself is a spot ot extreme interest. Here Wat Tyler's men dragged off Archbishop Sudbury to execution ; here, when Laud was seized, the Parliamentary soldiers turned the palace into a prison for Royalists and de- molished the great hall. Outside the walls of the church James H.'s Queen cowered in the December rain with her child, till a coach could be brought from the neighbouring inn to convey her to (jravesend to take ship for France. The Gordon rioters attacked the palace in 1780, but were driven off by a detach- ment of Guards. The Lollards' Tower has to be visited, and the sayings and doings of a long line of l)relates to be re\ iewed. \'auxhall brings us back to the days when ^\'alpole went with Lady Caroline Petersham and helped to stew chickens in a china dish over a lamp : or we go further back and accom- pany Addison and the worthy Sir Roger de Coverley, and join them over a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung beef Astley's Amphitheatre recalls to us many amusing stories of that old soldier, Ducrow, and of his friends and rivals, which join on very naturally to those other theatrical traditions to which Drury Lane and Covent Garden have already led us. So we mean to roam from tlower to flower, over as varied a garden as the imagination can well conceive. There have been brave workers before us in the field, and we shall build upon good founda- tions. We hope to be catholic in our selections ; we shall prune away only the superfluous ; we shall condense anecdotes onlv where we tliink vre can make them jjithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topogra])hical history, its manners and customs. Such is a brief summary of our plan. St. Paul's rises before us with its great black dome and stately row of sable columns ; the Tower, with its central citadel, flanked by the spear-like masts of the river shipping ; the great world of roofs spreads below us as we launch upon our venturous voyage of discover}'. From Boadicea leading on her scythed chariots at Battle Bridge to Queen Victoria in the Thanksgiving procession of jesterday is a long period over which to range. We have whole generations of 'Londoners to defile before us — painted Britons, hooded Saxons, mailed Crusaders, Chaucer's men in hoods, friars, citizens, warriors, Shakespeare's friends, Johnson's compa- nions, Goldsmith's jovial " Bohemians," Hogarth's fellow-painters, soldiers, lawyers, statesmen, mer- chants. Nevertheless, at our spells they will gather from the four 'rtinds, and at our command march off to their old billets in their old houses, where we may best cross-examine them and collect their imjjressions of the life of their times. The subject is as entertaining as ar.y dream Lnagination ever evoked and as varied as human nature. Its classification is a certain bond of union, and will act as an excellent cement for the multiform stones with whit:h we shall rear cur build- ing. Lists of names, dry jiedigrees, rows of dates, we leave to the herald and the topographer ; but we shall pass by little that can throw light on the history of London in any generation, and we shall dwell more especially on the events of the later centuries, because they are more akin to us and are bound to us by closer sympathies CHAPTER I. ROM.\N LONDON. Buried London— Our Early Relations— The Founder of London— A distinguished Visitor at Romney Marsh— Casar re-visils I'ac "Town on the LaWe" — The Borders of Old London — Cajsar fails to make much out of the Britons — Kinff Brcivii — The Derivation of the name of Loudon —The yucen of the Iceni— London Stone and London Roads— London's Earlier and Ntwcr Walis— The Site of St. Paul's- FaLulous Claims to Idolatrous Renown- Existing Relics of Roman London --'I'reasures front llie Ued of tlu 'I'hames— What we Tread underfoot in London ~~\ vast Field of Story. Eighteen- feet below the level of Che.ipside lies hidden Roman London, and deeper even than that is buried the earlier London of those savage charioteers who, long ages ago, bravely confronted the legions of Rome. \\\ nearly all p.irts of the City there have been discovered tesselated pave- ments, Roman tombs, lamps, vases, sandals, keys, ornaments, weapons, coins, and statues of the ancient Roman gods. So the present has grown up upon the ashes of the past. Komau LoiiJ'-'n.] THE iOLWDER OF J.OXDOX. •7 Trees tliat are to live long grow slowly. Slow and stately as an oak London grew and grew, till now nearly four million souls represent its leaves. Our London is very old. Centuries before Christ there probably came the first few half-naked fisher- men and hunters, who reared, with flint axes and such rude tools, some miserable huts on the rising' ground that, forming the north bank of the Thames, slopes to the river some sixty miles from where it joins the sea. According to some, the river spread out like a vast lake between the Surrey and the Essex hills in those times when the half-savage first settlers found the low slopes of tlie future London places of health and defence amid a vast and dismal region of fen, swamp, and forest. The heroism and the cruelties, the hopes and fears of tliose poor barbarians, darkness never to be re- moved has hidden from us for ever. In later days monkish historians, whom Milton afterwards fol- lowed, ignored these poor early relations of ours and invented, as a more fitting ancestor of English- men, Brute, a fugitive nephew of /Eneas of Troy. But, stroll on where we will, the pertinacious savage, with his limbs stained blue and his flint axe red with blood, is a ghost not easily to be exorcised from the banks of the Thames, and in some 'Welsh veins his blood no doubt flows at this very day. The founder of London had no historian to record his hopes — a place Mhere big salmon were to be found, and plenty of wild boars were to be met with, was probably his highest ambition. How he bartered with Phoenicians or Gauls for amber or iron no Druid has recorded. How he slew the foraging Belgee, or was slain by them and dis- possessed, no bard has sung, ^^'hether he was generous and heroic as the New Zealander, or apc- li-ke and thievish as the Bushman, no ethnologist has yet proved. The very ashes of the founder of I^ondon have long since turned to earth, air, and water. No doubt the few huts that formed early London were fought for over and over again, as wolves wrangle round a carcass. On CornhlU there pro- bably dwelt petty kings \\ho warred with the kings of Ludgate ; and in Southwark there lurked or bur- rowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street. But of such infusoria History (glorying only in oftenders, criminals, and robbers on the largest scale) justly pays no heed. This alone we know, that the early nilers of London before the Christian era passed away like the wild beasts they fought and slew, and their very names have perished. One line of an old blind Creek poet might have immortalised them among the inotlcv nations that crowded into Troy or swarmed under its walls ; but, alas for them, that line was never written I No, Founder of London ! thy name was written on fluid oo/.e of the mar.sh, and the first tide that washed over it from the Nore obliterated it for ever. Vet, perhaps even now thou sleepcst as quiet,ly fathoms deep in soft mud, in some still nook of Barking Creek, as if all the world was ringing with thy glory. But descending quick to the lower but safer and firmer ground of fact, let us cautiously drive our first pile into the shaky morass of early London histor)-. A learned modern antiquaiy, Tliomas Lewin, Esq., has proved, as nearly as such things can be proved, that Julius Ctesar and 8,000 men, wlio had sailed from Boulogne, landed near Romne\- Marsh about half-past five o'clock on Sunday the 27th of August, 55 years before the birth of our Saviour. Centuries before that very remarkable August day on which the brave standard-bearer of Cresar's Tenth Legion sprang from his gilt galley into the sea and, eagle in hand, advanced against the javelins of the painted Britons who lined the .shore, there is now no doubt London was already existing as a British town of some import- ance, and known to the fishermen and merchants of the Gauls and Belgians. Strabo, a Greek geo- grapher who flourished in the reign of Augustus, speaks of British merchants as bringing to the Seine and the Rhine shiploads of corn, cattle, iron, hides, slaves, and dogs, and taking liack brass, ivor)-, amber ornaments, and vessels of glass. By these merchants the desirability of such a depot as London, with its great and always na\igable ri\-er, could not have been long overlooked. In Caesar's second and longer invasion in the next year (54 n.c), when his 2S many-oared triremes and 560 transports, &c., in all 800, poured on the same Kentish coast 21,000 legionaries and 2,000 cavalry, there is little doubt that his strong foot left its imprint near that cluster of stockaded huts (more resembling a New Zealand pah than a modern English town) perhaps already called London— Llyn-don, the "town on the lake." After a battle at Challock AVood, Cresar and his men crossed the Thames, as is supposed, at Cowa\- Stakes, an ancient ford a litUe above Walton and below Weybridge. Cassivellaunus, King o( Hertfordshire and I\Iiddlesex, had just slain in war Lnmanuent, King of Essex, and had driven out his^ son Mandubert. The Trinobantes, IMandu- bert's subjects, joined the Roman spearmen against the 4.000 scythed chariots of Cassivellaunus and the Catveudilani. Straight as the flight of an iS OLD AND XKW LONDON. [Roman London. arrow was Cxsar's march upon the capital of Cassivellaunus, a city the barbaric name of which he either forgot or disregarded, but which he merely says was "protected by woods and marshes." This place north of the Thames has usually been thought to be Verulamium (St. Alban's) ; but it was far more likely London, as the Cassi, whose capital Verulamium was, were among the traitorous tribes who joined Csesar against their oppressor Cas- sivellaunus. Moreover, Cresar's brief description of the spot perfectly applies to Roman London, for least is certain, that the legionaries carried their eagles swiftly over his stockades of earth and fallen trees, drove off the blue-stained warriors, and swept off the half-wild cattle stored up by the Britons. Shortly after, Ctesar returned to Gaul, having heard while in Britain ot the death of his favourite daughter Julia, the wife of Pompey, his great rival. His camp at Richborough or Sandwich was far distant, the dreaded equinoctial gales were at hand, and Gaul, he knew, might at any moment of his absence start into a flame. His inglorious |l|l! lill llliillll 1 llJWJJi'illlllllll'l ■niiii l",l,. |i lir'll'i 1 1 I .\yjj !.i.,i:.j'. ±J^-U j,.ii.i.i:..]:ii;rL!i-]-'";aiiiiM ||fe.«:...H,,..,»^^ l->"-.-| M:! 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'.;„i','' '.',im!"'!,'""7'; ANCIENT ROMAN PAVEMENT FOUND IN THREADNEEDLE STREET, 1S4I {see page 2l). ages protected on the north by a vast forest, full of deer and wild boars, and which, even as late as the reign of Henry II., covered a great region, and has now shrunk into the not very wild districts of St John's Wood and Caen Wood. On the north the town found a natural moat in the broad fens of Moorfields, Finsbury, and Houndsditch, while on the south ran the Fleet and the Old Bourne. Indeed, according to that credulous old enthusiast Stukeley, Cxsar, marching from Staines to London, encampf d on the site of Old St. Pancras Church, round which edifice Stukeley found evident traces of a great Praetorian camp. However, whether Cassivellaunus, the King of Middlesex and Hertfordshire, had his capital at London or St. Alban's, this much at campaign had lasted just four months and a half — his first had been far shorter. As Caesar himself wTOte to Cicero, our rude island was defended by stupendous rocks, there was not a scrap of the gold that had been reported, and the only pros- pect of booty was in slaves, from whom there could be expected neither " skill in letters nor in music." In sober truth, all Caesar had won from the people of Kent and Hertfordshire had been blo«s and buffets, for there were men in Britain even then. The prowess of the British charioteers became a standing joke in Rome against the soldiers of Cresar. Horace and Tibullus both speak of the Briton as unconquered. The steel bow the strong Roman hand had for a moment bent, quickly Roman London.] DERIVATION OF ITS NAME. 19 relapsed to its old shape the moment Cresar, mount- ing his tall galley, turned his eyes towards Gaul. The Mandubert who sought Cresar's help is by some thought to be the son of the semi-fabulous King Lud (King Brown), the mythical founder of London, and, according to Milton, who, as -we have said, follows the old historians, a descendant I conjecture is, however, now the most generally re- ceived, as it at once gives tlie motlern pronunciati(jn, to which JJyn-don would never have assimilated. The first British town was indeed a simple Celtic hill fortress, formed first on Tower Hill, and afterwards continued to Cornhill and Ludgate. Jt was moated on the south by the river, which it controlled; -^Vr^^sr^ TART OF OLD LOXDON WALL, NEAR FALCON SOUARE {see Jvr^e 2l). of Brute of Troy. The successor of the warlike Cassivellaunus had his capital at St. Alban's ; his son Cunobelin (Shakespeare's Cymbeline) — a name which seems to glow with perpetual sunshine as we write it — had a palace at Colchester; and the son of Cunobelin. was the famed Caradoc, or Caractacus, that hero of the Silures, who struggled bravely for nine long years against the generals of Rome. Celtic etymologists differ, as etymologists usually do, about the derivation of the name of London. Lon, or Long, meant, they say, either a lake, a wood, a populous place, a plam, or a ship-town. This last by fens on the north ; and on the east by the marshy low ground of ^Vapplng. It was a high, dry, and fortified point of communication between the river and the inland country of Essex and Hert- fordshire, a safe sixty miles from the sea, and central as a depot and meeting-place for the tribes of Kent and Middlesex. Hitherto the London about which we have been conjecturing has been a mere cloud city. The first mention of real London is by Tacitus, who, writing in the reign of Nero (a.d. 62, more than a century after the landing of Ca;sar), in that style of his so full of vigour and so sharp in outline, OLD AXD NF.W LONDON'. (Uoinnii Londom that it seems fit rather to be engraved on steel tli.m written on perishable paper, says that Londi- nium, though not, indeed, dignified with the name ol" colony, was a place highly celebrated for the number of its merchants and the confluence of; traffic. In the year 62 London was probably still without walls, and its inhabitants were not Roman < itizens. like those of Verulamiimi (St. Alban's). \\'hen the Britons, roused by the wrongs of the fierce ]!oadicea (Queen of the Iceni, the people of Norfolk and Suffolk), bore down on London, her back still " bleeding from the Roman rods," she slew- in London and Verulamium alone 70,000 citizens and allies of Rome ; impaling many beautiful and well-born women, amid revelling sacrifices, in the grove of Andate, the British Goddess of Victory. It is supposed that after this reckless slaughter the tigress and her savage followers burned the cluster of wooden houses that then formed London to the ground. Certain it is, that when deep sections were made for a sewer in Lombard Street in 1786, the lowest stratum consisted of tesselated Roman pave- ments, their coloured dice laying scattered like flower leaves, and above that of a thick layer of wood asiies, as of the debris of charred wooden buildings. This niin the Romans avenged by the slaughter of SOjOoo Britons in a butchering fight, generally be- lieved to have taken place at King's Cross (otherwise Battle Bridge), after which the fugitive Boadicea, in rage and despair, took poison and perished. London probably soon sprang, phcenix-like, from the fire, though history leaves it in darkness to enjoy a lull of 200 years. In the early part of the second centur\- Ptolemy, the geogi'apher, speaks of it as a city of the Kentish people : but Mr. Craik very ingeniously conjectures tkat the Greek writer took his information from Phoenician works de- scriptive of Britain, written before even the invasion of Caesar. Theodosius, a general of the Emperor Valentinian, who saved London from gathered hordes of Scots, Picts, Franks, and Saxons, is sup- posed to have repaired the walls of London, which had been first built by the Emperor Constantine early in the fourth centur}'. - In the reign of Theodosius, London, now called Augusta, became one of the chief, if not the chief, of the seVv°nty Roman cities in Britain. In the famous " Itinerary '' of Antoninus (about the end of the third century) London stands as the goal or starting-point of seven out of the fifteen great central Roman roads in England. Camden considers the London Stone, now enshrined in the south wall of St. Switbin's Church, Cannon Street, to have been the central milestone of Roman England, from which all tlie •chief roads radiated, and bv whitli the distances were reckoned. W'x^vi supposed that AVatling Street, of which Cannon Street is a part, was the High Street of Roman London. Another street ran west along Holborn from Cheapside, and from Cheapside probabl)- north. A northern road ran by Aldgate, and probably Bishopsgate. The road from Dover came either over a bridge near the site of the present London Bridge, or higher up at Dowgate, from Stoney Street on the Surrey side. Early Roman London was scarcely larger than Hyde Park. Mr. Roach Smith, the best of all authorities on the subject, gives its length from the Tower to Ludgate, east and west, at about a mile ; and north and south, that is from London ^\'all to the Thames, at about half a mile. The earliest Roman city was even .smaller, for Roman sepulchres have been found in Bow Lane, Moorgate Street, Bishopsgate Within, which must at that time have been beyond the walls. The Roman cemeteries of Smithfield, St. Paul's, Whitechapel, the j\Iinones, and Spitalfields, are of later dates, and are in all cases beyond the old line of circumvallation, according to the sound Roman custom fixed by law. The earlier London j\Ir. Roach Smith describes as an irregular space, the five main gates correspond- ing with Bridgegate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate, Alders- gate, and Aldgate. The north wall followed for • some part the course of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street ; the eastern Billiter Street and Mark Lane ;, the southern Thames Street ; and the western the east side of Walbrook, Of the larger Roman wall, there were within the memory of man huge, shape- less masses, with trees growing upon them, opposite what is now Finsbury Circus. In 1S52 a piece of Roman wall on Tower Hill was rescued from the impro^-ers, and built into some stables and out- houses ; but not before a careful sketch had been effected by the late Mr. Fairholt, one of the best of our antiquarian draughtsmen. The later Roman London was in general outline the same in shape and size as the London of the Saxons and Nor- mans. The newer walls Pennant calculates at 3 miles 165 feet in circumference, they were 22 feet high, and guarded with forty lofty towers. At the end of the last century large portions of the old Roman wall were traceable in many places, but time has devoured almost the last morsels of that ^^At pihc dc rcsisiaiicc. In 1763 Mr. Gough made a drawing of a square Roman tower (one of three) then standing in Houndsditch. It was built in alternate layers of massive square stones and red tiles. The old loophole for the sentinel had been enlarged into a square latticed window. In 1S57, while digging foimdations for houses on the north- east side of Aldermanburv Postern, the workmen Rotnnn I.nntlon. J Rl^l.MAlXS OF RO.MAX WALL. 21 came on a portion of the Roman wall strengthened by blind arches. All that now substantially remains of the old fortification is a bastion in St. (jiles's Church, Cripplegate ; a fragment in St. Martin's Court, off Ludgate Hill; another portion exists in the Old Bailey, concealed behind houses ; and a fourth, near George Street, Tower Hill. Portions of the wall have, however, been also broached in Falcon Square (one of which we have engraved). Bush Lane, Scott's Yard, and Cornhill, and others built in cellars an-d warehouses from opposite the Tower and Cripplegate. The line of the Roman walls ran from the Tower straight to Aldgate ; there making an angle, it continued to Bishopsgate. From there it turned eastward to St. Cliles's Churchyard, where it veered south to Falcon Square. At this point it continued west to Aldersgate, running under Christ's Hospital, and onward to Giltspur Street. There forming an angle, it proceeded directly to Ludgate towards the Thames, passing to the south of St. Andrew's Church. The wall then crossed Addle Street, and took a course along Upper and Lower Thames Street towards the Tower. In Thames Street the v.-all has been found built on oaken piles ; on these was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and over this a course of large, hewn sandstones, cemented with quicklime, sand, and pounded tile. The body of the wall was con- structed of ragstone, flint, and lime, bonded at intervals with courses of plain and curve-edged tiles. That Roman London grew slowly there is abundant proof. In building the new Exchange, the workmen came on a gravel-pit full of oyster- shells, cattle bones, old sandals, and .shattered pottery. No coin found there being later than Severus indicates that this ground was bare waste outside the original city until at least the latter part of the third century. How far Roman London eventually spread its advancing waves of houses may be seen from the fact that Roman wall-paintings, indicating villas of men of wealth and position, have been found on both sides of High Street, Soutliwark, almost up to St. George's Church ; while one of the outlying Roman cemeteries bordered the Kent Road. From the horns of cattle having been dug up in St. Paul's Church)'ard, the monks, ever eager to ■discover traces of that Paganism with which they amalgamated Christianity, conjectured that a temple of Diana once stood on the site of St. Paul's. A stone altar, with a rude figure of the amazon goddess sculptured upon it, was indeed discovered in making the foundations for Goldsmiths' Hall, ■Cheapside ; but this was a mere votive or private I altar, and jiroves nothing ; and the ox bones, if any, found at St. Paul's, were merely refiise thrown : into a rubbish-heap outside the old walls. As j to the Temple of Apollo, supposed to have been replaced by Westminster Abbey, that is merely an invention of rival monks to glorify Thorney Island, 1 and to render its anticiuity eiiual to the labulous claims of St. Paul's. Nor is there any positive proof that shrines to British gods ever stood on ' either place, though that tliey may have done so is not at all imi)rob.'ible. The existing relics of Roman London are far more valuable and more numerous than is gene- rally supposed. Innumerable tesselated jjavements, masterpieces of artistic industry and taste, have been found in the City. A few of these should be noted. In 1854 part of the pavement of a room, twenty-eight feet square, was discovered, when the Excise Office was pulled down, between ]5ishops- gate Street and Broad Street. The central subject was supposed to be the Rape of Europa. A few years before another pavement was met witli near the same spot. In 1841 two pavements were dug up under the French Protestant Church in Thread- needle Street. The best of these we have en- graved. In 1792 a circular pavement was found in the .same locality ; and there has also been dug up in the same street a carious female head, the size of life, formed of coloured stones and glass. In 1S05 a beautiful Roman jjavement was disinterred on the south-west angle of the Bank of England, near the gate opening into Lothbury, and is now in the ]5ritish Museum. In 1S03 a fine specimen of pavement was found in front of tlie East-India House, Leadenhall Street, the central design being Bacchus reclining on a panther. In this pavement twenty distinct tints had been suc- cessfully used. Other pavements have been cut tlirough in Crosby Square, Bartholemew Lane, Fenchurch Street, and College Street. The soil, according to Mr. Roach Smith, seems to have risen over them at tlie rate of nearly a foot a century. The statuary found in London should also not be forgotten. One of the most remarkable pieces was a colossal bronze head of the Ivmperor Hadrian, dredged up from the Thames a litde below London Bridge. It is now in the British Museum. A colossal bronze hand, tliirtccn inches long, was also found in Thames Street, near the Tower. In 1S57, near London Bridge, the dredgers found a beautiful bronze Apollino, a Mercury of exijuisite design, a priest of Cybele, and a figure supposed to be Jupiter. The Apollino and Mercury are masterpieces of ideal beauty and OLD AND NKW LONDON. I lemple Bar. grace. In 1842 a chef d'tviivir was dug out near the old Roman wall in Queen Street, Cheapside. It was the bronze stooping figure of an archer. It has silver eyes ; and the perfect expression and anatomy display the highest art. In 1825 a graceful little silver figure of the chikl Harpocrates, the God of Silence, looped with a gold chain, was found in the Thames, and is now in the British Museum. In 1859 a jiair of gold armlets were dug up in Queen Street, Cheapside. In a kiln in St. Paul's Churchyard, in 1677, there were found lamps, bottles, urns, and dishes. Among other relics of Roman London drifted down by time we may instance articles of red glazed pottery, tiles, glass cups, window glass, bath scrapers, gold hair- pins, enamelled clasps, sandals, writing tablets, bronze spoons, forks, distaffs, bells, dice, and mill- stones. As for coins, which the Romans seem to have hid in every concei\able nook, Mr. Roach Smith says that within twenty years upwards of j 2,000 were, to his own knowledge, found in London, chiefly in the bed of the Thames. Only one Greek coin, as far as we know, has ever been met with in London excavations. The Romans left deep footprints wherever they trod. Many of our London streets still follow the lines they first laid down. The river bank still heaves beneath the ruins of their palaces. London Stone, as we iiave already shown, still stands to mark the starting-point of the great roads that they designed. In a lane out of the Strand there still exists a b.''th where their sinewy youth laved their limbs, dusty from the chariot races at the Campus Martius at Finsburj'. The pavements trodden by the feet of Hadrian and Constantine still lie buried under the restless wheels that roll over our City streets. The ramparts the legionaries guarded have not yet quite crumbled to dust, though tiie rude people they conquered have themselves long since grown into conquerors. Roman London now exists only in fragments, invisible save to the jirying antiquary. As the seed is to be found hanging to the root of the ripe wheat, so some filaments of the first germ of London, of the British hut and the Roman villa, still exist hidden under the foundations of the busy city that now teems with thousands of inhabitants. We tread under foot daily the pride of our old oppressors. CHAPTER II. TEMPLE B.\R. Temple Bar— The Oolgotha of English Traitors— When Temple Bar was made of Wood — Historical Pageants at Temple Bar — The Associations of Temple Bar— Mischievous Processions through Temple Bar--The First grim Trophy— Rye-House Plot Conspirators. Temple B.\r was rebuilt by Sir Christopher ^^'ren, in 1670-72, soon after the Great Fire had swept away eighty-nine London churches, four out of the seven City gates, 460 streets, and 13,200 houses, and had destroyed fifteen of the twenty-six wards, and laid waste 436 acres of buildings, from the Tower east- ward to the Inner Temple westward. The old black gateway, once the dreaded Gol- gotha of English traitors, separates, it should be remembered, the Strand from Fleet Street, the cit)' from the shire, and the Freedom of the City of London from the Liberty of the City of Westminster. As Hatton (1708 — Queen Anne) says, — " This gate opens not immediately into the City itself, but into the Liberty or Freedom thereof" We need hardly say that nothing can be more eiToneous than the ordinary London supposition that Temple Bar ever formed part of the City fortifications. Mr. Gilbert k Beckett, laughing at this tradition, once said in Punch : " Temple Bar ha* always seemed to me a weak point in the fortifications of London. Bless you, the besieging army would never stay to bom- bard it — thev would dash through the barber's." The Great Fire never reached nearer Temple Bar than the Inner Temple, on the south side of Fleet Steet, and St. Dunstan's Church, on the north. The Bar is of Portland stone, which London smoke alternately blackens and calcines ; and each farade has four Corinthian pilasters, an entablature, and an arched pediment. On the west (Strand) side, in two niches, stand, as eternal sentries, Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman costume. Charles I. has long ago lost his baton, as he once deliberately lost his head. Over the keystone of the central arch there used to be the royal arms. On the east side are James I. and Elizabeth (by many able writers supposed to be Anne of Denmark, James I.'s queen). She is pointing her white finger at Child's ; wliile he, looking down on the passing cabs, seems to say, " I am nearly tired of standing ; suppose we go to Whitehall, and sit down a bit?" The slab over the eastern side of the arch bears the following inscription, now all but smoothed down by time : — • Temple Ear.] THE ASSOCIATIONS OF TKMl'J.l': F.AR. " Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel Starlint;, Mayor ; continued in tlie year 1671, Sir Richard Ford, Lord ilayor ; and tinished in the year, 1672, Sir George Waterman, Lord Mayor." All these persons were friends of Pepys. The upper part of the Bar is Hanked by scrolls, but the fruit and flowers once sculptured on the pedin-rent, and the supporters of the royal arms over the posterns, have crumbled away. , In the centre of each facade is a semicircular-headed, ecclesiastical-looking whidow, that casts a dim horny light into a room above the gate, held of the City, at an annual rent of some ^50, by Messrs. Childs, the bankers, as a sort of muniment-room for their old account-books. There is here pre- served, among other costlier treasures of Mammon, the private account-book of Charles II. The original Child was a friend of Pepys, and is men- tioned by him as quarrelling with the Duke of York on Admiralty matters. The Child who succeeded him was a friend of Pope, and all but led him into the South-Sea Bubble speculation. Those affected, mean statues, with the crinkly drapery, were the work of a vain, half-crazed sculptor named John Bushnell, who died mad in 1 701. Bushnell, who had visited Rome and Venice, executed Cowley's monument in West- minster Abbey, and the statues of Charles I., Charles II., and Gresham, in the Old Exchange. There is no extant historical account of Temple 3ar in which the following passage from Strype {George I.) is not to be found embedded like a fossil ; it is, in fact, nearly all we London topo- graphers know of the early history of the Bar :^ " Anciently," says Strype, " there were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south -side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map of London (Charles II.) The date of the erection of the " wooden house " is not to be ascertained ; but there is the house plain enough in a view of London to which Mait- lawd affixes the date about 1560 (the second year of Elizabeth), so we may perhaps safely put it down as early as Edward VI. or Henry VIII. Indeed, if a certain scrap of history is correct — i.e.. that bluff" King Hal once threatened, if a certain Bill did not pass the Commons a little quicker, to fix the heads of several refractory jM.P.s on the top of Temple Bar — we must suppose the old City toll-gate to be as old as the early Tudors. After Simon de Montfort's death, at the battle of Evesham, 1265, Prince luhvard, afterwards Edward I., punishetl the rebellious Londoners, who had befriended Montfort, by taking away all their street chains and bars, and locking ihcm up in the Tower. The earliest known documentary and historical notice of Temple Bar is in 1327, the first year of Edward III. ; and in the thirty-fourth year ef the same reign \ve find, at an inquisition before the mayor, twelve witnesses deposing tiiat the com- monalty of the City had, time out of mind, had free ingress and egress from the City to Tliamcs and from Thames to the City, through the great gate of the Templars situate within Temple Bar. This referred to some dispute about the right of way through the Temple, built in the reign of Henry I. In 1384 Richard II. granted a licence for paving Strand Street from Temple Bar to the Savoy, and collecting tolls to cover such charges. The historical pageants that have taken place at Temple Bar deserve a notice, however short. On the 5th of November, 1422, the corpse of that brave and chivalrous king, the h-ero of Agincourt, Henry V., was borne to its rest at Westminster Abbey by the chief citizens and nobles, and every doorway from Southwark to Temple Bar had its mournful torch-bearer. In 1502-3 the hearse of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., halted at Temple Bar, on its way from the Tower to West- minster, and at the Bar the Abbots of ^Vestminster and Bermondsey blessed the corpse, and the Earl of Derby and a large company of nobles joinetl the sable funeral throng. After sorrow came joy, and after joy sorrow — Ifa vita. In the next reign poor Anne Boleyn, radiant with happiness and triumph, came through the Baj (May 31, 1534), on her way to the Tower, to be welcomed by the clamorous citizens, the day before her ill-starred coronation. Temple Bar on that occasion was new painted and repaired, and near it stood singing men and children— the Fleet Street conduit all the time running claret. The old gate figures more conspicuously the day before the coronation of that wondrous child, Edward VI. Two hogs- heads of wine were then ladled out to the tiiirsty mob, and the gate at Temple Bar was painted with battlements and buttresses, richly hung witli cloth of Arras, and all in a flutter with •' fourteen standard flags." There were eight French trum- peters blowing their best, besides -'a pair of regals," with children singing to the same. In September, 1553, when Edward's cold-hearted half-sister, Mary Tudor, came through the Cit)-, according to ancient English custom, the day Ol.l) AND NEW LONDON [ lemple Bar. Temple Bar ] GOG AND MAGOG. 25 befoie her coronation, slie did not ride on horse- back, as Edward had done, but sat in a chariot covered with clotli of tissue and drawn by six horses draped with the same. Minstrels piped and trumpeted at Liidgate, and Temple Bar was newly painted and hung. Old Temple Bar, the background to many historical scenes, figures in the rash rebellion of Sir Thomas ^Vyatt. M'hcn he had fought his way down Piccadilly to tlie Strand, Temple Bar was thrown open to him, or forced open by him ; God solemnly at St. Paul's. The City waits stood in triumph on the roof of the gate. 'J'he Lord Mayor and Aldermen, in scarlet gowns, welcomed the queen and delivered up the City sword, then on her return they took horse and rode before her. The City Companies lined the north side of the street, the lawyers and gentlemen of the Inns of Court the soiuh. .\niong the latter stood a person afterwards not altogether unknown, one Francis Piacon, who displayed his wit by saving to a friend, " Mark the courtiers ! Those who PENANCE Ol' THE DUCUEbS UF GLuULtb 1 1 K {iiV /'it^'t: ^Z). but when he l.ad been repulsed at Ludgate he was hemmed in by cavalry at Temple Bar, where he surrendered. This foolish revolt led to the death of innocent Lady Jane Grey, and brought sixt)- brave gentlemen to the scaffold and the gallows. On Elizabeth's procession from the Tower be- fore her coronation, January, 1559, Gogmagog the Albion, and Corineus the Briton, the two Guildhall giants, stood on the Bar; and on the south side there were chorister lads, one of whom, richly attired as a page, bade the queen farewell in the name of .the whole City. In 15^8, the glorious year that the Annada was defeated, Elizabeth passed through the Bar on her way to return thanks to bow first to the citizens are in debt ; those who bow first to us are at lawl" In 1601, when the Earl of Esse.\made his insane attempt to rouse the City to rebellion, Tem])le Bar, we are told, was thrown open to him; but Ludgate being closed against him on his retreat from Cheap- side, he came back by boat to Esse.x House, where he surrendered after a short and useless resistance. King James made his first ])ublic entry into his royal City of London, widi his consort and son Henry, upon the 15th of March, 1603-4. The king was mounted upon a white genet, ambling through the crowded streets under a canopy held by eight gentlen>eH of the Privy Chamber, as re- presentatives of the Barons of the Cinque Ports, OLD AND NEW LONDON. n'cmplc Bar. and jiassed under six arclies of triumph, to take his leave at the Temple of Janus, erected for the occasion at 'remple Bar. Tliis edifice was fifty- seven feet high, proportioned in every respect like a temple. In June, 1649 {^^^ ys^'" °^ ^''"^ execution of Charies), Cromwell and the Parliament dined at Ciuildhall in state, and the mayor, says Whitelocke, delivered up the sword to the Speaker, at Temple Bar, as he had before done to King Charles. Philips, Milton's nephew, who wrote the con- tinuation of Baker's Chronicle, describes the cere- mony at Temjile Bar on the proclamation of Charles IL The old oak gates being shut, the king-at-arms, with tabard on and trumpet before him, knocked and gravely demanded entrance. The Lord Mayor apjiointed some one to ask who knocked. The king-at-arms replied, that if they would open the wicket, and let the Lord Mayor come thither, he would to him deliver his message. The Lord Mayor tlien appeared, tremendous in crimson \-elvet gown, and on horse- back, of all things in the world, the trumpets sounding as the gallant knight pricked forth to demand of the herald, who he was and what was his message. The bold herald, with his hat on, answered, regardless of Lindley Murray, who was yet unknown, " Wc are the herald-at-arms appointed and commanded by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, and demand an entrance into the famous City of London, to proclaim Charles IL King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, and we expect your speedy answer to our demand.'' An alderman then re- plied, " The message is accepted," and the gates were thrown open. When 'William III. came to see the City and the Lord Mayor's Sliow in 1689, the City militia, holding lighted flambeaux, lined Fleet Street as far as Temple Bar. The shadow of every monarch and popular hero since Charles II. 's time has rested for at least a passing moment at the old gateway. Queen Anne passed here to return thanks at St. Paul's for the victory of Blenheim. Here Marlborough's coach ominously broke down in 17 14, when he returned in triumph from liis voluntary exile. George III. passed through Temple Bar, young and happy, the year after his coronation, and again when, old and almost broken-hearted, he returned thanks for his partial recovery from insanity; and in our time that graceless son of his, the Prince Regent, came through the Bar in 18 14, to thank God at St. Paul's for the downfall of llonapartej On the 9th November, 1837, the accession of Queen 'Victoria, Sir Peter Laurie, picturesque in scariet gown, Spanish hat, and black feathers, pre- sented the City sword to the Queen at Temple Bar; Sir Peter was again ready with the same weapon in 1844, when the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange; but in 1851, when her Majesty once more visited the City, the old ceremony was (wrongly, we think) dispensed ^Tith. At the funeral of Lord Nelson, the honoured corpse, followed by downcast old sailors, was met at the Bar by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation ; and the Great Duke's funeral car, and the long train of representative soldiers, rested at the Bar, which was hung with black velvet. A few earlier associations connected with the present Bar deserve a moment or two's recollection. On February 12th, when General Monk — " Honest George," as his old Cromwellian soldiers used to call him — entered London, dislodged the "Rump" Parliament, and prepared for the Restoration of Charles II.. bonfires were lit, the City bells rung, and London broke into a sudden flame of joy. Pepys, walking homeward about ten o'clock, says : — " The common joy was everywhere to be seen. The number of bonfires — there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge, east of Catherine Street, I could at one time tell thirty-one fires." On November 17, 1679, the year after the sham Popish Plot concocted by those matchless scoun- drels, Titus Oates, an expelled naval chaplain, and Bedloe, a swindler and thief. Temple Bar was made the spot for a great mob pilgrimage, on the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth, The ceremonial is supposed to have been organised by that restless plotter against a Popish succession, Lord Shaftesbury, and the gentlemen of the Green Ribbon Club, whose tavern, the " King's Head," was at the corner of Chancery Lane, opposite the Inner Temple gate. To scare and ve.x the Papists, the church bells began to clash out as early as three o'clock on the morning of that dangerous day. At dusk the procession of several thousand half-crazed torch-bearers started from Moorgate, along Bishops- gate Street, and down Houndsditch and Aldgate (passing Shaftesbury's house imagine the roar of the monster mob, the wave of torches, and the fiery fountains of s(iuibs at th't point!), then through Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, by the Royal Exchange, along Cheapside and on to Temple Bar, where the bonfire awaited the puppets. In a torrent of fire the noisy Protestants passed through the exulting City, making the Papists cower and shudder in their garrets and cellars, and before the flaming deluge opened a storm of shouting people. Temple Bar] "SQUEEZING THE ORANGE." 27 This procession consisted of fifteen groups of priests, Jesuits, and friars, two following a man on a horse, holding up before him a dumni)-, dressed to represent Sir Edmontlbury Godfrc)-, a Protestant justice and wood merchant, supposed to have been murdered by Roman Catholics at Somerset House. It was attended by a body-guard of 150 sword- bearers and a man roaring a political cry of the time tlirough a brazen speaking-trumpet. The great bonfire was built up mountain high opposite the Inner Temple gate. Some . zealous Protestants, by pre-arrangement, had crowned the prim and meagre statue of Elizabeth (still on the east side of the Bar) with a wreath of gilt laurel, and placed under her hand (that now points to Child's Bank) a golden glistening shield, with the motto, " The Protestant Religion and Magna Charta," inscribed upon it. Several lighted torches were stuck before her niche. Lastly, amidst a fiery shower of squibs from every door and window, the Pope and his companions were toppled into the huge bonfire, with shouts that reached almost to Charing Cross. These mischievous processions were continued till the reign of George I. There was to have been a magnificent one on November 17, 17 11, when the Whigs were dreading the contemplated peace with the French and the return of Marlborough. But the Tories, declaring that the Kit-Cat Club was urging the mob to destroy the house of Harky, the Minister, and to tear him to pieces, seized on the wax figures in Drury Lane, and forbade the ceremony. As early as two years after the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, a restless architectural quack and adventurer of those days, wrote a pamphlet proposing a sumptuous gate at Temple Bar, and the levelling of th^ Fleet Valley. After the Great Fire Charles II. himself hurried the erection of the Bar, and promised money to carry out the work. During the Great Fire, Temple Bar was one of the stations for constables, 100 firemen, and 30 soldiers. The Rye-House Plot brought the first trophy to the Golgotha of the Bar, in 16S4, twelve years after its erection. Sir Thomas Armstrong was deep in the scheme. If the discreditable witnesses examined against Lord William Russell are to be believed, , a plot had been concocted by a few desperate men to assassinate " the Blackbird and the Gold- finch •"' — as the conspirators called the King and the Duke of York — as they were in their coach on their way from Newmarket to London. This plan seems to have been the suggestion of Rumbold, a maltster, who lived in a lonely moated farm- house, called Rye House, about eigliteen miles from London, near the river Ware, close to a by-road that leads from Bishop Stortford to Hoddesdon. Charles II. had a violent hatred to Armstrong, who had been his Clentleman of the Hor.se, and was supposed to have incited his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to rebellion. Sir Thomas was hanged at Tyburn, .\fter the body had hung half an hour, the hangman cut it down, stripped it, lop])ed off the liead, threw the heart into a fire, and dis idul the body into four parts. The fore-quarter (after being boiled in pitch at Newgate) was set en Temple Bar, the head was placed on AN'estminsler Hall, and the rest of the body was sent to Stafford, which town Sir Thomas represented in Pailiament. Eleven years after, the heads of two tnore traitors — this time conspirators against William III. — joined the relic of Armstrong. Sir John Friend was a rich brewer at Aldgate. Parkyns was an old Warwickshire county gentleman. The plotters had several plans. One was to attack Kensington Palace at night, scale the outer wall, and storm or fire the building; another was to kill William on a Sunday, as he drove from Kensington to the chapel at St. James's Palace. The murderers agreed to assemble near where Apsley House now stands. Just as the royal coach passed from H}de Park across to the Green Park, thirty conspirators agreed to fall on the twenty-five guards, and butcher the king before he could leap out of his carriage. These two Jacobite gentlemen died bravely, pro- claiming their entire loyalty to King James and the " Prince of Wales." The unfortunate gentlemen who took a moody pleasure m drinking " the squeezing of the rotten Orange ' had long passed on their doleful journey from Newgate to Tyburn before the ghastly pro- cession of the brave and unlucky men of the rising in 17 15 began its mournful march.'" Sir Bernard Burke mentions a tradition that the head of the young Earl of Der^ventwatcr was exposed on Temple Bar in 17 16, and that his wife drove in a cart under the arch while a man In'red for the purpose threw down to her the beloved head from the parapet above. But the story is entirely untrue, and is only a version of the way in which the head of Sir Thomas More was re- moved by his son-in-law and daughter from London Bridge, where that cruel tyrant Henry VIII. had placed it. Some years ago, when the Earl of * Amongst these we must not forget Joseph .Sulliv.nii, wlio was e.xecuted at Tybiim for high treason, for enlisting men in the service of the Tretender. In the collection of broad- sides belonging to the Society of Antiquaries there is one of great interest, entitled " I'erkins .against I'erkin, a dialogvie between Sir William I'erkins and .Major SuUiviane, the two loggerheads upon Temple liar, concerning the ))rcscnt junc- ture of affaires." D.ate unccrt.ain, 28 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Temple Bar. Derwentwater's coffin was found in tlie Aimily vniilt, the head was lying safe with the body, In 1716 there was, however, a traitor's liead spiked on the Bar — that of Colonel John Oxburgh, the victim of mistaken fidelity to a bad cause, He was a brave Lancashire gentleman, who had surrendered with his forces at Preston. He ilisplayed signal courage and resignation in prison, forgetting himself to comfort others. The next victim w.\s .Mr. Christopher Layer, a young Norfolk man and a Jacobite barrister, living in Southam])ton Buildings, Chancery Lane. He plunged deeply into the Atterbury Plot of 1722, and, with Lords North and Grey, enlisted men, hired officers, and, taking advantage of the universal misery caused by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, planned a general rising against George I, The scheme was, with four distinct bodies of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill Lord Cadogan, one of the Ministers. At the trial it was proved that Layer had been over to Rome, and had seen the Pretender, who, by proxy, had stood godfather to his child. Troops were to be sent from France ; barricades were to be thrown up all over London. The Jacobites had calculated that the Government had only 14,000 men to meet them — 3,000 of these would be wanted to guard London, J, 000 for Scotland, and 2,000 for the garrisons. The original design had been to take advantage of the king's departure for Hanover, and, in the words of one of the conspirators, the Jacobites were fully convinced that " they should walk King George out before Lady-day." Layer was hanged at Tybum, and his head fixed upon Temple Bar. Years after, one stormy night in 1753, the rebel's skull blew down, and was jjicked up by a non- juring attorney, named Pierce, who preserved it as a relic of the Jacobite martyr. It is said that Dr. Richard Rawlinson, an eminent antiquary, obtained what he thought was Layer's head, and desired in his will that it should be placed in his right hand when he was buried. Another version of the story is, that a spurious skull was foisted upon Rawlinson, who died happy in the possession of the doubtful treasure. Rawlinson was bantered by Addison for his pedantry, in one of the Tath-rs, and was praised by Dr. Johnson for his learning. The 1745 rebellion brought the heads of fresh victims to the Bar, and this was the last triumph of barbarous justice. Colonel Francis Townley's was the sixth head ; Fletcher's (his fellow-officer), the seventh and last. The Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, Lord Balmerino, and thirty-seven other rebels (thirty-six of them having been captured in Carlisle) were tried the same session. Townley was a man of about fifty-four years of age, nephew of Mr. Townley of Townley Hall, in Lancashire (the "Townley Marbles" family), who had been tried and acquitted in 1715, though many of his men were found guilty and executed. The nephew had gone over to France in 1727, and obtained a commission from the French kin*, whom he served for fifteen years, being at the siege of Philipsburg, and close to the Duke of Berwick when that general's head was shot off. About 1740, Townley stole over to England to see his friends and to plot against the Hanover family ; and as soon as the rebels came into England, he met them between Lancaster and Preston, and came with them to Manchester. At the trial Roger M'Donald, an officer's servant, deposed to seeing Townley on the retreat from Derby, and between Lancaster and Preston riding at the head of the Manchester regiment on a bay horse. He had a white cockade in his hat and wore a plaid sash. George Fletcher, who was tried at the same time as Townley, was a rash young chapman, who managed his widowed mother's provision shop " at Salford, just over the bridge in Manchester." His mother had begged him on her knees to keep out of the rebellion, even offering him a thousand pounds for his own pocket, if he would stay at home. He bought a captain's commission of Murray, the Pretender's secretary, for fifty pounds ; wore the smart white cockade and a Highland plaid sash lined with white silk; and headed the very first captain's guard mounted for the Pre- tender at Carlisle. A Manchester man deposed to seeing at the Exchange a sergeant, with a dnmi, beating up for volunteers for the Manchester regiment. Fletcher, Townley, and seven other unfortunate Jacobites were hanged on Kennington Common. Before the carts drove away, the men flung their prayer-books, written speeches, and gold-laced hats gaily to the crowd. Mr. James (Jemmy) Dawson, the hero of Shenstone's touching ballad, Avas one of the nine. As soon as they were dead the hangman cut down the bodies, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered them, throwing the hearts into the fire. A monster — a fighting-man of the day, named Buckhorse — is said to have actually eaten a piece of Townley's flesh, to show his loyalty. Before the ghastly scene was over, the heart of one unhappy spectator had already broken. The lady to whom James Dawson was engaged to be married followed the rebels to the common, and even came near enough to see, with pallid face, the fire kindling, the axe, the coffins, and all the other dreadfiil Temple liar,] THE CITY "GOLGOTHA." 29 preparations. She bore up bravely, until she heard her lover was no more. Then she drew her heatl back into the coach, and crj'ing out, " My dear, I follow thee — I follow thee ! Lord God, receive our souls, I pray Thee 1 " fell on the neck of a companion and expired. Mr. Dawson had behaved gallantly in prison, saying, " He did not care if they put a ton weight of iron upon him, it would not daunt him." A curious old print of 1746, full of vulgar triumph, reproduces a " Temple Bar, the City Golgotha," re- presenting the Bar with three heads on the top of it, spiked on long iron rods. The devil looks down in ribald triumph from above, and waves a rebel banner, on which, besides three coffins and a crown, is the motto, " A crown or a grave." Underneath are written these patriotic but doggrel lines : — " Observe tlie banner which woukl all enslave, Which misled traytors did so proudly wave : The devil seems the project to surprise ; A fiend confused from off the trophy flies. \Vliile trembling rebels at the fabric gaze, And dread their fate with horror and amaze, I.L't Britain's sons the emblematic view. And plainly see what is rebellion's due." The heads of Fletcher and Townley were put on the Bar August 12, 1746. On August 15th Horace Walpole, writing to a friend, says he had just been roaming in the City, and "passed under the new heads on Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spy-glasses at a halfpenny a look." According to Mr. J. T. Smith, an old man living in 1825 remembered the last heads on Temple Bar being visible through a telescope across the space between the Bar and Leicester Fields. Between two and three a.m., on the morning of January 20, 1766, a mysterious man was arrested by the watch as he was discharging, by the dim light, musket bullets at the two heads then re- maining upon Temple Bar. On being ques- tioned by the puzzled magistrate, he affected a disorder in his senses, and craftily declared that the patriotic reason for his eccentric conduct was his strong attachment to the present Government, and that he thought it not sufficient that a traitor should merely suffer death ; that this provoked his indignation, and it had been his constant practice for three nights past to amuse himself in the same manner. " And it is much to be feared," says the past record of the event, "that the man is a near relation to one of the unhappy sufferers." Upon searching this very suspicious marksman, about fifty musket bullets were found on him, wrapped up in a jiaper on which was written the motto, " Eripuit ille vitam." After this, history leaves the heads of the unhappy Jacobites — those lips that love had kissed, those cheeks children had patted— to moulder on in the sun and in the rain, till the last day of March, 1772, when one of them (Townley or Fletcher) fell. The last stormy gust of March threw it down, and a short time after a strong wind blew down the other; and against the sky no more relics remained of a barbarous and luichristian revenge. In April, i773i Boswell, whom we all despise and all like, dined at courtly Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson, Lord Charlemont (Hogarth's friend). Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other members of the literary club, in Gerrard Street, Soho, it being the awful evening when Boswell was to be balloted for. The conversation turned on the new and com- mendable practice of erecting monuments to great men in St. Paul's. The Doctor observed : " 1 re- member once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. Whilst we stood at Poet's Corner, I said to him, — " Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur isti.s." — Ovid. When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, and pointing to the heads upon it, slily whispered, — " Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur is/i's." This anecdote, so full of clever, arch wit, is sufficient to endear the old gateway to all lovers of Johnson and of Goldsmith. According to Mr. Tinibs, in his " London and Westminster," Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the Morning Chromdc, when asked if she remem- bered any heads on Temjjle Bar, used to reply, in her brusque, hearty way, " Boys, I fecoikct the scene well! I have seen on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads — real heads — traitors' heads — spiked on iron poles. There were two; I saw one fall (March 31, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell ; men, as I have heard, shrieked. One woman near me faulted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads upon Temple Bar." The cruel-looking sjjikes were removed early in the present century. The panelled oak gates have often been renewed, though certainly shutting them too often never wore them out. As early as 1790 Alderman Pickett (who built the St. Clement's arch), with other subversive re- formers, tried to pull down Temple Bar. It was pronounced imworthy of form, of no antiquity, an ambuscade for pickpockets, and a record of only the dark and crimson jiages of history. A writer in the Gcnllcman's Mai;azine, in 18 13 chronicling the clearance away of some hovels encroaching upon the building, says : " It will not 30 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Temple Eaf. be surprising if certain amateurs, busy in improving I the architectural concerns of the City, should at length request of their brethren to allow the Bar or j grand gate of entrance into the City of London to stand, after they have so repeatedly sought to obtain its destruction." Li 1852 a proposal for it5 repair and restoration was defeated in the Common Council ; and twelve months later, a number of bankers, merchants, and traders set their hands to a petition for its removal altogether, as serving no practical purpose, as it impeded ventilation and of this sum ;£^48o for his four stone monarchs. The mason was John Marshall, who carved the pedestal of the statue of Charles L at Charing Cross and worked on the Monument in Fish Street Hill. In 1636 Inigo Jones had designed a new arch, the plan of which still exists. Wren, it is .said, took his design of the Bar from an old templo at Rome. The old Bar is now a mere piece of useless and disused armour. Once a protection, then an orna- ment, it has now become an obstruction— the too THE ROOM OVER TEMPLE BAR (ScV pi!^ retarded improvements. Since then Mr. Heywood has proposed to make a circus at Temple Bar, leaving the archway in the centre; and Mr. W. Burges, the architect, suggested a new arch in keeping with the new Law Courts opposite. It is a singular fact that the " Parentalia," a chronicle of Wren's works written by Wren's clever son, contains hardly anything about Temple Bar. According to Mr Noble, the Wren manuscripts in the British Museum, Wren's ledger in the Bodleian, and the Record Office documents, are equally silent; but from a folio at the Guildhall, entitled " Expenses of Public Buildings after the Great Fire," it would appear that the Bar cost altogether ;^i,397 los. ; Bushnell, the sculptor, receiving out narrow neck of a large decanter — a bone in the throat of Fleet Street. Yet still we have a lingering fondness for the old barrier that we have seen draped in black for a dead hero and glittering with gold in honour of a young bride. We have shared the sunshine that brightened it and the gloom that has darkened it, and we feel for it a species of friendship, in which it mutely shares. To us there seems to be a dignity in its dirt and pathos in the mud that bespatters its patient old face, as, like a sturdy fortress, it holds out against all its enemies, and Charles L and IL, and Elizabeth and James L keep a bright look-out day and night for all attacks. Nevertheless, it must go in time, we fear. Poor old Temple Bar, we shall miss )ou when you are gone! Temple Bar] THE PILLORY. OLD AM) NEW LONbON. ' I'lcct Sbfcct. C H A P '1" }■: R III. rLKF.T STKKET— GENERAL IXTRODUCTION. Frays ill Fleet Street— Chaucer .ind the Friar — The Duchess of Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft — Riots between Law Students and Citizens— Treiitice Riots — Oates in the I*illory— Kntcrtainments in Fleet Street — Shop Sii;ns — Burning the Boot — Trial of Hardy — Queen Caroline's Funeral. Al.\s, for the changes of time ! The Fleet, that little, quick-flowing stream, once so bright and clear, is now a sewer ! but its name remains im- mortalised by the street called after it. Although, according to a modern antiquary, a Roman amphitheatre once stood on the site of the Fleet Piison, and Roman citizens were certainly interred outside Ludgate, we know but little whether Roman buildings ever stood on the west side of the City gates. Stow, however, describes a stone jjavement supported on jjiles being found, in 1595, near tlie Fleet Street end of Chancery Lane ; so that we may presume the soil of the neighbour- hood was originally marsliy. The first British settlers there must probably have been restless spirits, impatient of the high rents and insufficient room inside the City walls and willing, for economy, to risk the forays of any Sa.xon ]iirates who chose to steal up the river on a dusky night and sack the outlying cabins of London. Tliere were certainly rough doings in Fleet Street in the Middle Ages, for the City chronicles tell us of much blood spilt there and of many deeds of violence. In 1228 (Henry III.) we find, for instance, one Henry de Buke slaying a man named Le Ireis, le Tylor, of Fleet Bridge, then fleeing to the church of St. Mary, Southwark, and there claiming sanctuary. In 13 11 (Edward II.) five of the king's not very respectable or law-fearing household were arrested in Fleet Street for a burglary; and though the weak king demanded them (they were perhaps servants of his Gascon favourite. Piers Gaveston, whom the barons after- wards killed), the City refused to give them up, and they probably had short shrive. In the same reign, wlien the Strand was full of bushes and thickets. Fleet Street could hardly have been much better. Still, the shops in Fleet Street were, no doubt, even in Edward II.'s reign, of importance, for we find, in 1321, a Fleet Street bootmaker supplying the luxurious king with "six pairs of boots, with tassels of silk and drops of silver-gilt, the price of each pair being ss." In Richard II.'s reign it is especially mentioned that Wat Tyler's fierce Kentish men sacked the Savoy church, ])art of the Temple, and destroyed two forges which had been originally erected on each side of St. Dunstan's church by the Knight Templars. The Priory of St. John of Jerusalem had paid a rent of 1 iSs. for these forges, wliich same rent was given for more than a century after their destruction. The poet Chaucer is said to have beaten a saucy Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, and to have been fined 2S. for the offence by the Honour- able Society of the Inner Temple ; so Speight had heard from one who had seen tlie entry in the records of the Inner Temple. In King Henry IV.'s reign another crime dis- turbed Fleet Street. A Fleet Street goldsmith was murdered by rufiians in the Strand, and his body thrown under the Temple Stairs. In 1440 (Henry VI.) a strange procession startled London citizens. Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, did penance through Fleet Street for witchcraft practised against the king. She and certain priests and necromancers had, it was said, melted a wax figure of young King Henry before a slow fire, praying that as that figure melted his life might melt also. Of the duchess's confederates, the Witch of F;iy, was burned at Smithfield, a canon of Westminster died in the Tower, anil a third culprit was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The duchess was brought from Westminster, and landed at the Temple Stairs, from whence, with a tall wax taper in her hand, she walked bareheaded to St. Paul's, where she offered at the high altar. Another day she did penance at Christ Church, Aldgate ; a third day at St. Michael's, Cornhill, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and most of the Corporation following. She was then banished to the Isle of Man, and her ghost they say still haunts Peel Castle. And now, in the long panorama of years, there rises in Fleet Street a clash of swords and a clatter of bucklers. In 1441 (Henry VI.) the general effervescence of the times spread beyond Ludgate, and there was a great affray in Fleet Street between the hot-blooded youths of the Inns of Court and the citizens, which lasted two days ; the chief man in the riot was one of Clifford's Inn, named Harbottle ; and this irrepressible Harbottle and his fellows only the appearance of the mayor and sheriffs could quiet. In 145S (in the same reign) there was a more serious riot of the same kind; the students were then driven back by archers from the Conduit near Shoe Lane to their several inns, and some slain, including " the Queen's attornie," who certainly ought to have known better and kept closer to his parchments. E\"en the king's meek Fleet Street.] THE 'PRENTICE RIOTS. 33 nature was ■ roused at this, he committed the principal governors of Furnival's, Clifford's, and Barnard's inns, to the castle of Hertford, and sent for several aldermen to Windsor Castle, where he either rated or imprisoned them, or both. Fleet Street often figures in the chronicles of Elizabeth's reign. On one visit it is particularly said that she often graciously stopped her coach to speak to the poor ; and a green branch of rose- mary given to her by a poor woman near Fleet Bridge was seen, not without marvellous wonder of such as knew the presenter, when her Majesty reached \Vestminster. In the same reign we are told that the young Earl of Oxford, after attending his father's funeral in Esse.x, rode through Fleet Street to Westminster, attended by seven score horsemen, all in black. Such was the splendid and proud profusion of Elizabeth's nobles. James's reign was a stormy one for Fleet Street. Many a time the ready 'prehtices snatched their clubs (as we read in " The Fortunes of Nigel"), and, vaulting over their counters, joined in the fray that surged past their shops. In 1 621 particularly, three 'prentices having abused Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, as he passed their master's door in Fenchurch Street, the king ordered the riotous youths to be whipped from Aldgate to Temple Bar. In Fleet Street, howe\er, the ai)prentices rose in force, and shouting "Rescue!" quickly released the lads and beat the marshalmen. If there had been any resistance, another thousand sturdy 'prentices would soon have carried on the war. Nor did Charles's reign bring any quiet to Fleet Street, for then the Templars began to lug out their swords. On the 12th of January, 1627, the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went out late at night into Fleet Street to collect his rents. At every door the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, " Give fire, gunner," and a sturdy smith burst the pannels open with a huge sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived, attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare Alley (now Hare Court). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to him, but Palmer, omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetchinj^ the fallen monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule had, neverthe- less, to refun since the time of James I. Shakespeare liimself must, day after day, have looked up at the old sign of St. Dunstan tweaking the Uevil by the nose, that flaunted in the wind near the Bar. Perhaps the sign was originally a compliment to the gold- smith's men who freijuented it, for St. Dunstan was, like St. Eloy, a patron saint of goldsmiths, and him- self worked at the forge as an amateur artificer of church plate. It may, however, have only been a mark of respect to the saint, whose church stood hard by, to the east of Chancery Lane. At the " Devil " the Apollo Club, almost the first institution of the kind in London, held its merry meetings, presided over by that grim yet jovial despot, Ben Jonson. The bust of Apollo, skilfully modelled from the head of the Apollo Belvidere, that once kept watch over the door, and heard in its time millions of witty things and scores of fond recollec- tions of Shakespeare by those who personally knew and loved him, is still preserved at Child's bank. They also show there among their heirlooms " The Welcome," probably written by immortal Ben him- self, which is full of a jovial inspiration that speaks w&U for the canary at the " Devil." It used to stand over the chimney-piece, written in gilt letters on a black board, and some of the wittiest and wisest men of the reigns of James and Charles must have read it over their cups. The verses run, — " Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo," &c. Beneath these verses some enthusiastic disciple of The later rules forbid the discussion of serious and! sacred subjects. No itinerant fiddlers (who then,, as now, frequented taverns) were to be allowed to. obtrude themselves. The feasts were to be cele- brated with laughing, leaping, dancing, jests, and songs, and tlie jests were to be " without reflection." No man (and this smacks of Ben's arrogance) was to recite "insipid" poems, and no person was to be pressed to write verse. There were to be in this little Elysium of an evening no vain disputes, and no lovers were to mope about unsocially in corners. No fighting or brawling was to be tolerated, and no glasses or windows broken, or was tapestry to be torn down in wantonness. The rooms were to be kept warm ; and, above all, any one who betrayed what the club chose to do or say was to be, nolens volens, banished. Over the clock in the kitchen some wit had inscribed in neat Latin the merry motto, " If the wine of last night hurts you, drink more today, and it will cure you " — a happy \ersion of the dangerous axiom of " Take a hair of the dog that bit you." At these club feasts the old poet with " the mountain belly and the rocky face," as he has painted himself, presided, ready to enter the ring against all comers. By degrees the stern man with the worn features, darkened by prison cell and hard- ened by battle-fields, had mellowed into a Falstaff. Long struggles with poverty had made Ben arrogant, for he had worked as a bricklayer in early life and had served in Flanders as a common soldier ; he had killed a rival actor in a duel, and had been in the author has added the brief epitaph inscribed \ danger of having his nose slit in the pillory for a by an admirer on the crabbed old poet's tomb- stone in Westminster Abbey, — " O, rare Ben Jonson." The rules of the club (said to have been originally cut on a slab of black marble) were placed above the fireplace. They were devised by Ben Jonson, in imitation of the rules of the Roman entertainments, collected by the learned Lipsius ; and, as Leigh Hunt says, they display the authors usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency that made him so many enemies. They were translated by Alexander Brome, a poetical attorney of the day, who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poeti- cal sons. We have room only for the first few, to show the poetical character of the club : — " Let none but guests or clubbers hither come ; Let dunces, fools, and sordid men keep home ; Let learned, civil, merry men b' invited, And modest, too ; nor be choice liquor slighted. Let nothing in the treat offend the guest: More for delight than cost prepare the feast" libel against King James's Scotch courtiers. Intel- lectually, too, Ben had reason to claim a sort of sovereignty over the minor poets. His Every Man in h:s Humour had been a great success; Shakespeare had helped him forward, and been his bosom friend. Parts of his Srjanus, such as the speech of Envy, beginning, — " Light, I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wi.hing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness," are as sublime as his songs, such as " Drink to nic only with thine eyes," are graceful, serious, and lyrical. The great com- pass of his power and the command he had of tiie lyre no one could deny ; his learning Donne and Camden could vouch for. He had written the mnst beautiful of court mapques ; his Bobadil some men preferred to Falstaft". Alas I no Pepys or BoswcU has noted the talk of those evenings. A few glimpses of the meetings we have, and but a few. One night at the " Devil " a country 40 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Slrect. gentleman was boastful of his property. It was all he had to boast about among the poets ; Ben, chafed out of all decency and patience, at last roared, " What signify to us your dirt and your clods ? Where you have an acre of land I have ten acres of wit !" " Have you so, good Mr. A\'ise-acre," retorted Master Shallow. " \\'liy, now, Ben,'' cried out a laughing friend, "you seem to be quite stung.'' " i' faith, I never was so ])ricked by a hobnail before," growled Ik-n, with a surly smile. Another story records the first visit to the "Devil" of Randolph, a clever poet and dramatist, who became a clergyman, and died young. The young poet, who had squandered all his money away in London pleasures, on a certain night, before he returned to Cambridge, resolved to go and see Ben and his associates at the " Devil,'' cost what it might. But there were two great obstacles — he was poor, and he was not invited. Nevertheless, drawn magneticaliy by the voices of the illustrious men in the Apollo, Randolph at last peeped in at the door among the waiters. Ben's quick eye soon detected the eager, pale face and the scholar's threadbare habit. "Jolin Bo-peep," he sliouted, "come in !" a summons Randolph gladly j obeyed. The club-men instantly began rhyming on the meanness of the intruder's dress, and told him if he could not at once make a verse he must call for a quart of sack. There being four of his tor- mentors, Randolph, ready enough at such work, replied as quick as lightning : — " I, John Bo-peep, and you four sheep. With eacli one his good fleece ; If that you are willing to give me your shilling, 'Tis fifteen pi'nce apiece. " " By the Lord ! " roared the giant president, " I believe this is my son Randolph !" and on his owning himself, the young poet was kindly enter- tained, spent a glorious evening, was soaked in sack, "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and became one of the old ])oet's twelve adopted sons. j Shakerley ]\Larmion, a contemporary dramatist of ! the day, has left a glowing Rubenesque picture of the Apollo evenings, evidently coloured from life. Careless, one of his characters, tells his friends he is full of oracles, for he has just come from Apollo. " From Apollo ?" says his wonder- ing friend. Then Careless replies, with an in- spired fervour worthy of a Cavalier poet who fought bravely for King Charles :— ** From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks s.ack and keep his Kicchanalia, And has his incense and his pilars smoking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies ; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits .\nd from a mighty continent of pleasure Sails thy brave Careless." Simon Wadloe, the host of the " Devil," who died in 1627, seems to have been a witty butt of a man, much such another as honest Jack Falstafl'; a merry boon comijanion, not only witty himself, but the occasion of wit in others, quick at repartee, fond of proverbial sayings, curious in his wines. A good old song, set to a fine old tune, was written about him, and called "Old Sir Simon the King." This was the favourite old-fashioned ditty in which Fielding's rough and jovial Squire Western after- wards delighted. Old Simon's successor, John A\'adloe (probably his son), made a great figure at the Restoration procession by heading a band of young men all dressed in white. After the Great Fire John rebuilt the " San Tavern," behind the Royal Exchange, and was loyal, Avealthy, and foolish enough to lend King Charles certain considerable sums, duly recorded in Exchequer documents, but not so duly paid. In the troublous times of the Commonwealth the " Devil" was the favourite haunt of John Cot- tington, generally known as " Mull Sack,"' from his favourite beverage of spiced sherry negus. This impudent rascal, a sweep who had turned high- wayman, with the most perfect impartiality rifled the pockets alternately of Cavaliers and Round- heads. Gold is of no religion ; and your true cut-purse is of the broadest and most sceptical Church. He emptied the pockets of Lord Pro- tector Cromwell one day, and another he stripped Charles II., then a Bohemian exile at Cologne, of plate valued at ;^i,5oo. One of his most impu- dent exploits was stealing a watch from Lady Fairfax, that brave woman who had the courage to denounce, from the gallery at Westminster Hall, the persons whom she considered were about to become the murderers of Charles I. "This lady" (and a portly handsome woman she was, to judge by the old portraits), says a pamphlet-writer of the day, " used to go to a lecture on a week-day to Ludgate Church, where one Mr. Jacomb preached, being much followed by the Puritans. Mull Sack, observing this, and that she constantly wore her watch hanging by a chain from her waist, against the next time she came there dressed himself like an officer in the army ; and having his comrades attending him like troopers, one of them takes off the pin of a coach-wlieel that was going upwards through the gate, by wliich means it falling oft", th^ Fleet Street.] SCENES AT THE "DEVIL." Al passage was obstructed, so that the lady could not ahght at the church door, but was forced to leave her coach without. Mull Sack, taking advantage of this, readily jiresented himself to her ladyship, and having the impudence to take her from her gentleinan usher who attended her alighting, led her by the arm into the church ; and by the way, with a pair of keen sharp scissors for the purpose, cut the chain in two, and got the watch clear a\va\-, she not missing it till the sermon was done, when she was going to see the time of the day." The portrait of Mull Sack has the following verses beneath : — " I walk tlie Strand and Westminster, and scorn Tu march i' the City, tho\i<;h I bear tlie horn. My feather and my yellow band accord, . < To prove me courtier ; my boot, spur, and sword, My smoking-pipe, scarf, garter, rose on shoe, Sliow my brave tnind t' alTect wliat gallants do. I sing, danc>.«, drink, and n\orrily jiass the day. And, like a chimney, swee.;) all care away." In Charles II. 's time the " Devil " became fre- ([uented by lawyers and physicians. The talk now was about drugs and latitats, jalap and the law of escheats. Yet, still good company frequented it, for Steele describes Bickerstaff's sister Jenny's wedding entertainment there in October, 1709; and in 1710 (Queen Anne) Swift writes one of those charming letters to Stella to tell her that he had dined on October 12th at the "Devil," with Addison and Dr. Garth, when the good-natured doctor, whom every one loved, stood treat, and there must have been talk worth hearing. In the Apollo chamber the intolerable court odes of Colley Cibber, the poet laureate, used to be solemnly rehearsed with fitting music ; and Pope, in " The Dunciad," says, scornfully : — ■ "Back to the ' Devil ' the loud echoes roll, And 'Coll ' each butcher roars in Hockly Hole." But Colley had talent and he h.ad brass, and it took many such lines to put him down. A gootl epigram on these public recitations runs thus : — "When laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good or are evil? You may judge : from the 'Devil' they come to the Court, And go from the Court to the 'Devil.'" Dr. Kenrick afterwards gave lectures on Shake- speare at the Apollo. This Kenrick, originally a ruie- maker, and the malicious assailant of Johnson and Garrick, was the Croker of his da}-. He originated the Lofidon I^eriew, and when he assailed Johnson's "Shakespeare," Johnson laughingly replied, "That he was not going to be bound by Kenrick's rules." In 1746 the Royal Society held its annual dinner in the old consecrated room, and in the year 1752 concerts of vocal antl instrumental music were given in the same place. It was an upstairs chamber, probably detached from the tavf rn, and lay up a " close," or court, like some of the old Edinburgh' taverns. The last ray of light that fell on the " Devil " was on a memoralile spring e\ening in 1751. Dr. Johnson (aged forty-two), then busy all day with his six amanuenses in a garret in Gough Square compiling his Dictionary, at night enjoyed his elephantine mirth at a club in I\\- Lane, Pater- noster Row. One night at the club, Johnson pro- posed to celebrate the appearance of Mrs. Lenno.x's iw%t novel, " The Life of Harriet Stuart," by a supper at the " Devil Tavern." Mrs. Lennox was a lady for whom Johnson — ranking licr afterwards above Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Hannah More, or even his favourite, Miss Burney — had the greatest esteem. Sir John Hawkins, that somewhat malign rival of Boswell, describes the night in a manner, for him, unusually genial. "Johnson," says Hawkins (and his words are too pleasant to condense), " proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lenno.x's first literary child, as he called her book, by a whole night spent in festivity. Upon his mentioning it to me, I told him I had never sat up a night in my life ; but he continuing to press me, and saying that I should find great delight in it, I, as did a'd the rest of the company, consented." (The club consisted of Hawkins, an attorney ; Dr. Salter, father of a master of the Charter House ; Dr. Hawkesworth, a popular author of the day ; Mr. Ryland, a merchant ; Mr. John Payne, a bookseller ; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a young man training for a Dis- senting minister; Dr. William M'Ghie, a Scotch physician ; Dr. Barker and Dr. Bathurst, young physicians.) " The place appointed was the ' Devil Tavern ;' and there, about the hour of eight, Mrs. Lennox and her husband (a tide-waiter in the Customs), a lady of her acquaintance, with the club and friends, to the number of twenty, assemliled. The supper was elegant ; Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an cuthoress and had written verses ; and, fiirther, he iiad prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. The night passed, as must be imagined, in pleasant conversation and harmless mirth, inter- mingled at different periods with the refreshment of coftee and tea. About five a.m., Johnson's face 42 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [!l<.-cl Sircof. shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade ; but the far greater part of the company had deserted the colours of Bacchus, and were with ditTiculty rallied to partake of a second refreshment of coffee, which was scarcely ended when the day began to dawn. opposite side of Fleet Street, still preserves the memory of the great club-room at the " Devil." In 1764, on an Act passing for the removal of the dangerous projecting signs, the weather-beaten picture of the saint, with the Devil gibbering over his shoulder, was nailed up flat to the front of the TKMl'LE BAR IN DR. JOHNSON'S TIME [stV />i!^i- 2()) . This phenomenon began to put us in mind of our reckoning ; but the waiters were all so over- come with sleep that it was two hours before a bill could be had, and it was not till near eight that the creaking of the street-door gave the signal of our departure." How one longs to dredge up some notes of such a night's conversation from the cruel river of oblivion ! The Apollo Court, on the old gable-ended house. In lecturer and mimic, gave a "Devil" on modern oratory, lawyers founded there a and after that there is no "Devil" till it was pulled the neighbouring bankers, was a " Devil Tavern " at 1775, Collins, a public satirical lecture at the In 1776 some young Pandemonium Club ; further record of the down and annexed by In Steele's time there Charin-:; Crjss, and a Fleet Street. MULL SACK. AND LADV KAIRI'W I. < fc. < c < c z o < ►J 44 OLD AND MLU" LONDON. [Fleet Street rival " Devil Tavern " near St. Dunstan's ; but these comijetiiors made no mark. The " Cock Tavern ' (201), opposite the Temple, has been immortalised by Tennyson as thoroughly as the " Devil " was by Ben Jonson. The playful verses inspired by a pint of generous port have made " The violet of a legend blow Among the chojis and bteaks " for ever, though old WM Waterproof has long since descended for the last time the well-known cellar- stairs. The poem which has embalmed his name was, we believe, written when Mr. Tennyson had chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. At that time the room was lined with wainscoting, and the silver tankards of special customers hung in glittering rows in the bar. This tavern was shut up at the time of the Plague, and the advertisement an- nouncing such closing is still extant. Pepys, in his " Diary," mentions bringing pretty Mrs. Knipp, an actress, of whom his wife was very jealous, here ; and the gay couple " drank, eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry till almost midnight." On his way home to Seething Lane, the amorous Navy Ofiice clerk with difficulty avoided two thieves with clubs, who met him at the entrance into the ruins of the Great Fire near St. Dunstan's. These dangerous meetings with Mrs. Knipp went on till one night Mrs. Pepys came to his bedside and threatened to pinch him with the red-hot tongs. The waiters at the " Cock " arc fond of showing visitors one of the old tokens of the house in the time of Charles IL The old carved chimney- piece is of the age of James L ; and there is a doubtful tradition that the gilt bird that struts with such self-serene importance over the portal was the work of that great carver, Grinling Gibbons. " Dick's Coffee House " (No. 8, soudi) was kept in George IL's time by a Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who were much admired by the young Templars who patronised the place. The Rev. James Miller, reviving an old French comedietta by Rousseau, called " The Coffee House," and in- troducing malicious allusions to the landlady and her fair daughter, so exasperated the young barristers that frequented " Dick's," that they went in a body and hissed the piece from the boards. The author then wrote an apology, and published the play; but unluckily the artist who illustrated it took the bar at " Dick's " as the background of his sketch. The Templars went madder than ever at this, and the Rev. Miller, who translated Voltaire's "Mahomet" for Garrick, never came up to tile surface again. It was at "Dick's" that Cowper the poet showed the first s}-mptoms of derangement. When his mind was off its balance he read a letter in a newspaper at " Dick's," which he believed had j been written to drive him to suicide. He went away and tried to hang himself; the garter breaking, he then resolved to drown himself; but, being hindered by some occurrence, repented for the moment. He was soon after sent to a madhouse in Huntingdon. In 1 68 1 a quarrel arose between two hot-headed i gallants in " Dick's " about the size of two dishes they had both seen at the " St. John's Head " in Chancery Lane. The matter eventually was roughly ended at the "Three Cranes" in the Vintry — a tavern mentioned by Ben Jonson — by one of them, Rowland St. John, running his com- panion, John Stiles, of Lincoln's Inn, through the . body. The St. Dunstan's Club, founded in 1796, holds its dinner at " Dick's." The "Rainbow Tavern" (No. 15, south) was the second coflee-house started in London. Four years before the Restoration, Mr. Farr, a barber, began the trade here, trusting probably to the young Temple barristers for support. The vintners grew jealous, and the neighbours, disliking the smell of the roasting coffee, indicted Farr as a nuisance. But he persevered, and the Arabian drink became popular. A satirist had soon to write regretfully, — " And now, alas ! the drink has credit got, And he's no gentleman that drinks it not." About 1780, according to Mr. Timbs, the "Rain- bow" was kept by Alexander Moncrieff, grandfather of the dramatist who wrote Tom and Jerry. Bernard Lintot, the bookseller, who published Pope's " Homer," lived in a shop between the two Temple gates (No. 16). In an inimitable letter to the Earl of Burlington, Pope has described how Lintot (Tonson's rival) overtook him once in Windsor Forest, as he was riding down to Oxford. When they were resting under a tree in the forest, Lintot, with a keen eye to business, pulled out " a mighty pretty ' Horace,' " and said to Pope, " ^Vhat if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again?" The poet smiled, but said nothing. Presently they remounted, and as they rode on Lintot stopped short, and broke out, after a long silence : " Well, sir, how far have we got?" "Seven miles," replied Pope, naively. He told Pope that by giving the hungry critics a dinner of a piece of beef and a pudding, he could make them see beauties in any author he chose. After all. Pope did well with Lintot, for he gained ^£5,320 by his "Homer." Dr. Young, the poet, once unfortunately sent to Lintot a letttr meant Fleet Street. I THE HATRED OE COKEEE. 45 for Tonson, and the first words that Lintot read were : ".That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." In the same shop, which was then occupied by Jacob Robinson, the publisher, Pope first met Warburton. An interesting account of this meeting is given by .Sir John Hawkins, \\hich it may not be out of place to quote here. " The friendship of Pope and M'arburton,' he says, " had its commencement in that bookseller's shop which is situate on the west side of the gateway le.iding down the Inner Temple Lane. A\'arbur- ton had some dealings with Jacob Robinson, the publisher, to whom the shop belonged, and ma}- be supposed to have been drawn there on business ; Pope might have made a call of the like kind. However that may be, there they met, and entering into conversation, which was not soon ended, conceived a mutual liking, and, as we may suppose, plighted their faith to each other. The fruit of this interview, and the subsequent communications of tlie parties, was the publi- cation, in November, 1739, of a pamphlet with this title, ' A Vindication of Mr. Pope's " Essay on Man," by the Author of "The Divine Legation of Moses." Printed for J. Robinson.' " At t.e Middle Temple Gate, Benjamin Motte, successor to Ben Tooke, jjublished .Swift's " Gulliver's Travels," for which he had grudgingly given only j^2oo. The third doorfrom Chancery Lane(No.i97, north side), Mr. Timbs points out, was in Charles II. 's time a tombstone-cutter's; and here, in 16S4, Howe!, whose " Letters" give us many curious pictures of his time, saw a huge monument to four of the 0.\en- ham family, at the death of each of whom a wliite bird appeared tluttering about their bed. These miraculous occurrences had taken place at a town near Exeter, and the witnesses names duly ap- peared below the epitaph. No. 197 was afterwards Rackstrow's museum of natural curiosities and ana- tomical figures ; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign. Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet long. Dono\'an, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the office of the Albion newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from the Moniing Fosf. The editor, John Fenwick, the " Bigot" of Lamb's " Essay," was a needy, sanginne man, who had purchased the paper of a person named Lovell, who had stood in the pillory for a libel against the Prince of Wales. For a long time Fenwick contrived to pay the Stamp Office dues by money borrowed from compliant Iriends. " We," says Lamb, in his delightful way, "attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write treason." Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and Whitehall tribunals were co\'ercd witli (lowers of so cunning a periphrasis — as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the //«//;'• directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney-General w^as insuftiiient to detect ihe lurking snake among them. At the south-west corner of Cliancer\- Lane (No. 193) once stood an old house said to have been the residence of that unfortunate refomier, Sir JoJin Oldcastle, Baron CobJiam, who was burnt in St. Giles's Fields in 1417 (Henry V.) \\\ Charles II. 's reign the celebrated Whig Green Ribbon Club used to meet here, and from tlie balcony flourish their periwigs, discharge squibs, and wave torches, when a great Protestant proces- sion passed by, to burn the effig)' of the Pope at the Temple Gate. The house, five stories high and covered with car\ings, was pulled down, for City improvements in 1799. ITpon the site of No. 192 (east corner of Chancer)' Lane) the father of Cowley, that fantastic poet of Charles II. 's time, it is saiil carried on the trade ot a grocer. In 1740 a later grocer there sold the finest caper tea for 24s. per lb., his fine green for i8s. per lb., hyson at i6s. per lb., and bohea at 7 s. per lb. No house in Fleet Street has a more curious pedigree than that gilt and painted" shop opposite (Hiancery Lane (No. 17, south side), falsel)- called " the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." It was originally the office of the Duchy of Corn- wall, in the reign of James I. It is just possible that it was the house originally built by Sir Amyas Paulet, at Wolsey's command, in resentment for Sir Amyas having set \\'olsey, when a mere parisli priest, in the stocks for a brawl. Wolsey, at the time of the ignominious punishment, was schoolmaster to the children of the Marquis of Dorset. Paulet was confined to this house for five or six years, to appease the proud cardinal, who lived in Chancery Lane. Sir Amyas rebuilt his prison, covering the front with badges of the cardinal. It was after- wards '■ Nando's," a famous cofl'ee-house, where Thurlow picked up his first great brief One night Thuriow, arguing here keenly about the celebrated Douglas case, was heard by some lawyers with delight, and the next day, to his astonishment, was appointed junior counsel. This cause won him a silk gown, and so liis fortune was made by that one lucky night at "Nando's." No. 17 was after\\ards the place wliere Mrs. Salmon (the Madame Tussaud of eariy times) e-xhibited her 46 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street. waxwork kings and cjueens. Tliere was a figure on crutches at the door ; and Old Mother Shipton, the witch, kicked the astonished visitor as he left. Mrs. SiiJnion died in 1812. The exhibition was then sold for ^500, and removed to Water Lane. When Mrs. Salmon first removed from St. Martin's- leGrand to near St. Dunstan's Church, she an- nounced, with true professional dignity, that the new locality " was more convenient for the quality's coaches to stand unmolested." Her " Royal Court of England" included 150 figures. When the exhibition removed to Water Lane, some thieves one night got in, stripped the effigies of their finery, and broke half of them, throwing them into a heap that almost touched the ceiling. Tonson, Dryden's publisher, commenced business at the " Judge's Head," near the Inner Temple gate, so that when at the Kit-Kat Club he was not far from his own shop. One day Dryderi, in a rage, drew the greedy bookseller with terrible force : — " With leerln^:^ looks, bull-faced, anJ speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair. And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air." The poet promised a fuller portrait if the " dog " tormented liim further. Opposite Mrs. Salmon's, two doors west of old Chancery Lane, till 1799, when the lawyer's lane was widened, stood an old, picturesque, gabled hou.se, which was once the milliner's shop kept, in 1624, by that good old soul, Isaak Walton. He was on the Vestry Board of St. Dunstan's, and was constable and overseer for the precinct next Temple Bar; and on pleasant summer evenings he used to stroll out to the Tottenham fields, rod in hand, to enjoy the gentle sport which he so much loved. He afterwards (1632) lived seven doors up Chancery Lane, west side, and there married the sister of that good Christian, Bishop Ken, who wrote the " Evening Hymn," one of the most simply beautiful religious poems ever written. It is pleasant in busy Fleet Street to think of the good old citizen on his guileless way to the river Lea, conning his verses on the delights of angling. Praed's Bank (No. 189, north side) was founded early in the century by Mr. William Praed, a banker of Truro. The house had been originally the shop of Mrs. Salmon, till she moved to opposite Chancery Lane, and her wax kings and frail queens were replaced by piles of strong boxes and chests of gold. The house was rebuilt in 1802, from the designs of Sir John Soane, whose curious museum still exists in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Praed, that delightful poet of society, was of the banker's family, and in him the poetry of refined wealth found a fitting exponent. Fleet Street, indeed, is rich in associations connected with bankers and booksellers ; for at No. 1 9 (south side) we come to Messrs. Gosling's. This bank was founded in 1650 by Henry Pinckney, a goldsmith, at the sign of the "Three Squirrels" — a sign still to be seen in the ironwork over the centre window. The original sign of solid silver, about two feet in height, made to lock and unlock, was discovered in the house in 1S58. It had probably been taken down on the general removal of out-door signs and forgotten. In a secret service-money account of the time of Charles II., there is an entry of a sum of ;^646 8s. 6d. for several parcels of gold and silver lace bought of William Gosling and partners by the fair Duchess of Cleveland, for the wedding clothes of the Lady Sussex and Lichfield. No. 32 (south side), still a bookseller's, was origin.-illy kept for forty years by William Sandby, one of the partners of Snow's bank in the Strand. He sold the business and goodwill in 1762 for ;^4oo, to a lieutenant of the Royal Navy, named John M'Murray, who, dropping the Mac, became the well-known Tory publisher. Murray tried in vain to induce Falconer, the author of " The Shipwieck," to join him as a partner. The first Murray died in 1793. In 1812 John Murray, tlie son of the founder, removed to 50, Albemarle Street. In the Athaiaum of 1S43 a writer de- scribes how Byron used to stroll in here fresh from his fencing-lessons at Angelo's or his sparring- bouts ■with Jackson. He was wont to make cruel lunges with his stick at what he called " the spruce books" on Murray's shelves, generally striking the doomed volume, and by no means improving the bindings. " I was sometimes, as you will guess," Murray used to say with a laugh, "glad to get rid of him." Here, in 1807, was publislied "Mrs. Rundell's Domestic Cookery;" in 1809, the Quartn-ly Review; and, in 181 1, Byron's " Childe Harold." The original Columbarian Society, long since extinct, was born at oflnces in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan's. This society was replaced by lie Pholoperisteron, dear to all pigeon-fanciers, which held its meetings at " Freemasons' Tavern,'' and eventually amalgamated with its rival, the National Columbarian, the fruitful union producing the National Peristeronic Society, now a flourishing in- stitution, meeting periodically at " Evans's," and holding a great fluttering and most pleasant annual show at the Crystal Palace. It is on these occa- sions that clouds of carrier-pigeons are let off", to decide the speed with which the swiftest and best- Fleet Street.] THE GIANTS AT ST. DUNSTAN'S. 47 trained bird can reach a certain spot (a flight, of course, previously known to the bird), generally in Belgium. The first St. Dunstan's Church—" in the West," as it is now called, to distinguish it from one near Tower Street — was built prior to 1237. The present building was erected in 1831. The older church stood thirty feet forward, blocking the carriage-way, and shops with projecting signs were built against the east and west walls. The churchyard was a favourite locality for booksellers. One of the most interesting stories connected with the old building relates to Felton, the fanatical assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of Charles I. The murflerer's mother and sisters lodged at a haber- dasher's in Fleet Street, and were attending' ser- vice in St. Dunstan's Church when the news arrived from Portsmouth ; they swooned away when they heard the name of the assassin. ■ Many of the clergy of St. Dunstan's have been eminent men. Tyndale, the tianslator of the New Testament, did duty here. The poet Donne was another of the St. Dunstan's worthies ; and Sherlock and Romaine both lectured at this church. The rectory house, sold in 1693, was No. 183. The clock of old St. Dunstan's was one of the great London sights in the last cen- tury. The giants that struck the hours had been set up in 167 1, and were made by Thomas Harrys, of A\'ater Lane, for ^^35 and the old clock. Lord Hertford purchased them, in 1830, for ^^210, and set them up at his villa in Regent's Park. When a child he was often taken to see them ; and he then used to say that some day he would buy "those giants." Hatton, writing in 1708, says that these figures were more admired on Sundays by the poiKilace than the most eloquent preacher in the ])ulpit within ; and Cowper, in his " Table Talk," cleverly compares dull poets to the St. Dunstan's giants : — ' ' When labour .md when dulness, club in hand, Like the two ligures at St. Dunstan stand, Beating alternately, in measured time, The clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme." The most interesting relic of modern St. Dunstan's •is that unobtrusive figure of Queen Elizabeth at the east end. This figure from the old church came from Ludgate when the City gates were destroyed in 1786. It was bought for jQid los. when the old church came to the ground, and was re-erected over the vestry entrance. The com- jjanion statues of King Lud and his two sons were deposited in the parish bone-house. On one occasion when Baxter was preaching in the old church of St. Dunstan's, there arose a panic among the audience from two alarms of the building falling. Every face turned ])ale ; hut the preacher, full of faith, sat calmly down in the pulpit till the panic subsided, then, resuming his sermon, said reprovingly, " We are in the service of (lod, to jjreijare ourselves that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world when the heavens shall pass. away and the elements melt with fervent heat." Mr. Noble, in his record of this parish, lias remarked on the extraordinary longevity attainetl by the incumbents of St. Dunstan's. Dr. White held the living for forty-nine years ; Dr. Grant, for fifty-nine ; the Rev. Joseph William.son (Wilkes's chajjlain) for forty-one years ; while the Rev. William Romaine continued lecturer for forty-six years. The solution of the problem i^robably is that a good and secure income is the best [jromoter of longevity. Several members of the great bank- ing family of Hoare are buried in St. Dunstan's ; but by far the most remarkable monument in the church bears the following inscription : — " HoBSON JUDKINS, EsQ., late of Clifford's Inn, the Honest Solicitor, who departed this life June 30, 1S12. This tablet was erected by his clients, as a token of gratitude and respect for his honest, faithful, and Iricndly conduct to them throughout life. Go, reader, and imitate Hobson Judkins. ' Among the burials at St. Dunstan's noted in the registers, the following are the most remark- able : — 1559-60, Doctor Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle, who crowned Queen Elizabeth; 1664, Dame Bridgett Browne, wife of Sir Richard Browne, major-general of the City forces, who ottered ;^i,ooo reward for the capture of Oliver Cromwell; 1732, Christopher Pinchbeck, the in- ventor of the metal named after him and a maker of musical clocks. The Plague seems to have made great havoc in St. Dunstan'.s, for in 1665, out of 856 burials, 568 in only three months are marked " P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. Tlie two heads o\cr the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne ; and the painted winilow is the gift of the Hoare family. According to Aubrey, Drayton, the great tojio- graphical poet, lived at " the bay-window house next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church." Now it is a clearly proved fact that the Great Fire stopped just three doors east of St. Dunstan's, as did also, Mr. Timbs says, another remarkable 48 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street. firc in 1730 ; so it is not impossible that the author of " The Polyolbion," that good epic poem, once lived at the present No. 180, though the next house eastward is certainly older than its neigh- bour. We have given a drawing of tlie house. That shameless rogue, Edmund Curll, lived at translators lay three in a bed at the " Pewter Platter Inn " at Holborn. He published the most disgraceful books and forged letters. Curll, in his revengeful spite, accused Pope of pouring an emetic into his half-i)int of canary when he and Curll and Lintot met by appointment at the "Swan Ta\ern," MRS. salmon's waxwork, FLEET STREET— " PALACE OF HENRY VIIL AND CAr.DI.SAL WOLSEV " {see /aj;e 4-^). the "Dial and Bible," against St. Dunstan's Church. ■\Vhen this clever rascal was put in the pillory at Charing Cross, he persuaded the mob he was in for a political offence, and so secured the pity of the crowd. The author of "John Buncle " de- scribes Curll as a tall, thin, awkward man, with goggle eyes, splay feet, and knock-knees. His Fleet Street. By St. Dunstan's, at the " Homer's Head," also lived the publisher of the first correct edition of " The Dunciad." Among the booksellers who crow-ded round old St. Dunstan's were Thomas Marsh, of the " Prince's Arms," who printed Stow's " Chronicles : " and William Griffith, of the " Falcon," in St. Dunstan's Fleet Street.] PRINTERS IN FLEET STREET. 49 Churchyard, who, in the year 1565, issued, widiout the authors' consent, Gorlwduc, written by Thomas Norton and Lord Buckhurst, the first real F^ngHsh tragedy and the first jjlay -written in Enghsh blank verse. John Smethwicke, a still more honoured name, " under the diall " of St. Dunstan's Church, the three timid publishers who ventured on a certain poem, called " The I'aradise Lost," giving John Milton, the blind poet, the enormous sum of ;^5 down, ^5 on the sale of 1,300 copies of the first, second, and third impressions, in all the munificent recompense of ^20 ; the agreement ir^~^ fr=-^3|f- — ^^— 7--^ --^V^- ' ^ *■ ST. dunstan's clock [sei ptr;c i,-,).' published " Hamlet " and " Romeo and Juliet." Richard Harriot, another St. Dunstan's booksellei, published Quark's " Emblems," Dr. Donne's " Sermons," that delightful, simple-hearted book, Isaak Walton's "Complete Angler," and Butler's "Hudibras," that wonderful mass of puns and quibbles, pressed close as potted meat. Matthias Walker, a St. Dunstan's bookseller, was one of was given to the British Museum in 1S52, by Samuel Rogers, the banker poet. Nor in this list of Fleet Street printers must we forget to insert Richard Pynson, from Normandy, who had worked at Caxton's press, and was a contemporary of De Worde. According to Mr. Noble (to whose work wc arj so deeply indebted), Pynson printed in I'leet Street, at his office, the 53 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [riccl Street. " George" (first in the Strand, and afterwards beside St. Diinstan's Church), no less than 215 works The first of these, completed in the year 1483, w.is pro- bably the first book printed in Fleet Street, after- wards a gathering-place for the ink-stained craft. , A copy of this book, " Dives and Pauper," was sold a few years since for no less than ^49. In 1497 the same busy Frenchman publislied an edition of "'rerence,"the first Latin classic printed in England. In 1508 he became printer to King Henry VII., and after this produced editions of Fabyan's and Froissart's "Chronicles." He seems to have had a bitter feud with a rival printer, named Robert Rudman, who pirated his trade-mark. In one of his books he thus quaintly falls foul of the enemy : " But truly Rudeman, because he is the rudest out of a thousand men Truly I wonder now at last that h^ hath confessed it in his own typography, unless it chanced that even as the de\'il made a cobbler a mariner, he made him a printer. Formerly this scoundrel did prefer him- self a bookseller, as well skilled as if he had started forth from Utopia. He knows well that he is free who pretendeth to books, although it be nothing more." ']"o this brief chronicle of early Fleet Street printers let us add Richard Bancks, who, in 1600, at his office, " the sigii of the White Hart," printed that exquisite fairy poem, Shakespeare's " Mid- summer Night's Dream." How one envies the " reader" of that office, the compositors — n-ay, even the sable imp who pulled the proof, and snatched r- massage or two about Mustard and Pease Blossom in a s-.'irsDtitious glance! Another great Fleet Street printer was Richard Grafton, the printer, as Mr. Noble says, of the first correct folio English translation of the Bible, bypermission of Henry VIII. ■\Vhen in Paris, Grafton had to fly with his books from the Inquisition. After his patron Cromwell's execution, in 1540, Grafton was sent to the Fleet for printing Bibles, but in the happier times of Edward VI. he became king's printer at the Grey Friars (now Christ's Hospital). His former fellow- worker in Paris, Edward Whitchurch, set up his press at De Worde's old house, the "Sun," near the Fleet Street conduit. He published the " Para- phrase of Erasmus," a copy of which, Mr. Noble says, existed, with its desk-chains, in the vestry of St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street. Whitchurch married the widow of Archbishop Cranmer. The "Hercules Pillars" (now No. 27, Fleet Street, south) was a celebrated tavern as early as the reign of James I., and in the now nameless alley by its side several houses of entertainment nestled themselves. The tavern is interesting to us chiefly because it was a favourite resort of Pepys, who frequently mentions it in his (luaint and graphic way. No. 37 (Hoare's Bank), south, is well known by the golden bottle that still hangs, exciting curiosity, over tire fanlight of the entrance. Popular legend has it that this gilt case contains the original leather bottle carried by the founder when he came up to London, with the usual half-crown in his pocket, to seek his fortune. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, how- ever, in his family history, destroys this romance. The bottle is merely a sign adopted by James Hoare, the founder of the bank, from his father having been a citizen and cooper of the city of London. James Hoare was a goldsmith who kept " running cash" at the "Golden Bottle " in Cheap- side in 1677. The bank was removed to Fleet Street between 1687 and 1692. The original bank, described by Mr. Timbs as " a low-browed building with a narrow entrance," was pulled down about forty years since. In the records of the debts of Lord Clarendon is the item, " To Mr, Hoare, for plate, ^^27 los. 3d."; and, by the secret service exjjenses of James II., "Charles Duncombe and James Hoare, Esqrs.," appear to have executed for a time the office of master-workers at the Mint. A Sir Richard Hoare was Lord Mayor in 1 7 13; and another of the same family, sheriff in i74o-4iand Lord Mayor in 1745, distinguished him- self by his preparations to defend London against the Pretender. In an autobiographical record still extant of the shrievalty of the first of these gentle- men, the writer says : — " After being regaled with sack and walnuts, I returned to my own house in Fleet Street, in my private capacity, to my great consolation and comfort.'' This Richard Hoare, with Beau Nash, Lady Hastings, &c., founded, in 1 7 16, the Bath General Hospital, to which charity the firm still continue treasurers ; and to this same philanthropic gentleman, Robert Nelson, who wrote the well-known book on " Fasts and Fes- tivals," gave ;^ioo in trust as the first legacy to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Mr, Noble quotes a curious broadside still extant in which the second Sir Richard Hoare, who died in 1754, denies a folse and malicious report that he had attempted to cause a run on the Bank of England, and to occasion a disturbance in the City, by sending persons to the Bank with ten notes of ^10 each. What a state of commercial wealth, to be shaken by the sudden demand of a mere _;^ioo ! Next to Hoare's once stood the " Mitre Tavern," where some of the most interesting of the meetings between Dr. Johnson and Boswell took place. Fleet Street.; DR. JOHNSON AT THE "MITRE." SI The old tavern was pulled down, in 1829, by the I.Iessre. Hoare, to extend their banking-house. Tlie original "Mitre" was of Shakespeare's time. In some MS. poems by Richard Jackson, a con- temporary of the great poet, are some verses be- ginning, " From the rich La\inian shore," inscribed as " Shakespeare's rime, whicli he made at ye 'Mitre,' in Fleet Street." The balcony was set on flames during the Great Fire, and had to be pulled down. Here, in June, 1763, Boswell came by solemn appointment to meet Johnson, so long the god of his idolatry. They had first met at the shop of Davis, the actor and bookseller, and afterwards near an eating-house in Butcher Row. Boswell describes his feelings with delightful sin- cerity and self-complacency. " We had," he says, " a good supper and port wine, of which Johnson then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodo.x High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the e.vtra- ordinary power of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his f om- panion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever before experienced." That memorable evening Johnson ridiculed Colley Gibber's birthday odes and Paul \\'ciitehead's " grand nonsense," and ran down Gray, ivho had declined his acquaintance. He talked of other poets, and praised poor Goldsmith as a worth)' man and excellent author. Boswell fairly won the great man by his frank avowals and his adroit flattery. " Give me your hand,'' at last cried the great man to the small man : " I have taken a liking to you." They then finished a bottle of port each, and parted between one and two in the morning. As they shook hands, on their way to No. i. Inner Temple Lane, where Johnson then lived, Johnson said, " Sir, I am glad we have met. I hojie we shall pass many evenings, and mornings too, together." A few weeks after the Doctor and his young disciple met again at die " Mitre," and Goldsmith was present. The poet was full of love for Dr. Johnson, and speaking of some scapegrace, said tenderly, " He is now be- come miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." At another "Mitre " meeting, on a Scotch gentleman present praising Scotch scenery, Johnson uttered his bitter gibe, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England." In the same month Johnson and Bos- well met again at the " Mitre." The latter con- fessed his nerves were much shaken by the old port and the late tavern hours ; and Johnson laughed at people who had accepted a pension from tlie house of Hanover abusing him as a Jacobite. It was at the "Mitre" that Johnson urged Boswell to i)ublish his "Travels in Corsica :" and at the " Mitre " he said finely of London, " Sir, the happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to s:iy there is more learning and science within tlie circumference of ten miles from where wj sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." It was here the famous "Tour to the Hebrides" was planned and laid out. Another time we find Goldsmith and Boswell going arm-in-arm to Bolt Court, to prevail on Johnson to go and sup at the " Mitre ;" but lie was indisposed. (Joldsinith, since " the big man " could not go, would not venture at the "Mitre" with Boswell alone. At Boswell's last " Mitre " evening with Johnson, May, 1778, Johnson would not leave Mrs. ^Villiams, the blind old lady who lived with him, till he had promised to send her over some little dainty from the tavern. This was very kindly and worthy of the man who had the coat l)ut not the heart of a bear. From 1728 to 1753 the Society of .'\nti(iuaries met at the " Mitre," and discussed subjects then wrongly con- sidered fri\-olous. The Royal Society had also conclaves at the same celebrated tavern ; and here, '" i733i Thomas Topham, the strongest man of his day, in the presence of eight persons, rolled up with his iron fingers a large pewter dish. In 1788 the "Mitre" ceased to be a tavern, and became, first Macklin's Poet's Gallery, and then an auction- room. The present spurious " Mitre Tavern," in Mitre Court, was originally known as "Joe's Coffee- House." It was at No. 56 (south side) that Lamb's friend, William Hone, the publisher of the delightful "Table Book" and "Every-day Book," commenced business about 1812. In 1815 he was brought before the Wardmote Inquest of St. Dunstan's for placarding his shop on Sundays, and for carrying on a retail trade as bookseller and stationer, not being a freeman. The Government had no doubt .suggested the jiersecution of so troublesome an ojjiionent, v.-hose defence of himself is said to have all but killed Lord EUenborough, the judge who tried him for publishing blasphemous parodies. In 1815 Hone took great interest in the case of Eliza Fanning, a poor innocent servant girl, who was hung for a sujiposed attempt to poison her master, a law stationer in ChancL-ry Lane. It was afterwards believed that a neiihew .of Mr. Turner really put the poison in the dough of some dump- lings, in revenge at being kept short of money. Mr. Cynis Jav, a shrewd observer, was jiresent at Hone's trial, and li,is described it with vi\jdne5s :— i 52 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street. " Hone defended himself firmly and well, but he had no sp;irk of eloiiuence about him. For years afterwards I was often with him, and he was made a great deal of in society. He became very re- ligious, and died a member of Mr. Clayton's In- dependent chapel, worshijiijingat the Weigh I louse. Tlie last important inciilent of Lord ]'",llenborough's political life was the part he took as presiding judge in Hone's trials for the jjublication of certain blasphemous parodies. At this time he was suf- fering from the most intense exhaustion, anil his constitution was sinking under the fatigues of a long and sedulous discharge of his important duties. This did not deter him from taking his seat upon the bench on this occasion. When he entered the court, previous to the trial, Hone shouted out, ' I am glad to see you. Lord Ellen- borough. I know \vhat you are come here for ; I know what you want.' 'I am come to do justice,' replied his lordship. ' My wish is to see justice done.' ' Is it not rather, my lord,' retorted Hone, ' to send a poor devil of a bookseller to rot in a dungeon ? ' In the course of the proceedings Lord Ellenborough more than once interfered. Hone, it must be acknowledged, with less vehe- mence than might have been expected, requested him to forbear. Tlie r.ext time his lordship made an observation, in answer to something the de- fendant urged in the course of his speech. Hone exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, ' I do not speak to you, my lord ; you are not my judge ; these,' pointing to the jury, ' these are my judges, and it is to fhem that I address myself.' Hone avenged himself on what he called the Chief Justice's par- tiality ; he wounded him where he could not defend himself. Arguing that Athanasius was not the author of the creed that bears his name, he cited, by way of authority, passages from the writings of Gibbon and Warburton to establish his position. Fixing his eyes on Lord Ellenborough, lie then said, ' And, further, your lordship's father, the late worthy Bishop of Carlisle, has taken a similar view of tlie same creed.' Lord Ellenborough could not endure this allusion to his father's heterodoxy. In a broken voice he exclaimed, ' For the sake of decency, forbear!' The request \\a.s immediately complied with. The jury acquitted Hone, a result which is said to have killed the Chief Justice ; but this is probably not true. That he suffered in consequence of the trial is certain. After he entered his private room, when the trial was over, his strength had so Sir deserted him that his son was obliged to put his hat on for him. But he quickly recovered his spirits ; and on his way home, in passing through Charing Cross, he pulled the check-string, and said, ' It just occurs to me that they sell here the best herrings in London ; buy six.' Indeed Dr. Turner, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who accompanied him in his carriage, said that so far from his nerves being shaken by the hootings of the mob. Lord Ellenborough only observed that their saliva was worse than their bite "When Hone was tried before him for blas- phemy. Lord Tenterden treated him with great for- bearance ; but Hone, not content with the in- dulgence, took to vilifying the judge. ' Even in a Turkish court I should not have met with the treat- ment I have experienced here,' he exclaimed. ' Certainly,' replied Lord Tenterden ; ' the bow- string would have been round your neck an hour ago.' " That sturdy political writer, William Cobbett, lived at No. 1S3 (north), and there published his Political Register. In 18 19 he wrote from America, declaring that if Sir Robert Peel's Bank Bill passed, he would give Castlereagh leave to lay him on a gridiron and broil him alive, while Sidmouth stirred the coals, and Canning stood by and laughed at his groans. In 1S27 he announced in his Register that he would place a gridiron on the front of his shop whenever Peel's Bill was repealed. The " Small Note Bill " was repealed, when there was a reduction of the interest of the National Debt. The gridiron so often threatened never actually went up, but it was to be seen a few years ago nailed on the gable end of a candle manu- facturer's at Kensington. The two houses next to Cobbett's (184 and 185) are the oldest houses standing in Fleet Street. " Peele's Coffee-House" (Nos, 177 and 17S, north side) once boasted a portrait of Dr. Johnson, said to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the keystone of the mantelpiece. This coffee-house is of antiquity, but is chietly memorable for its useful files of news- papers and for its having been the central com- mittee-room of the Society for Repealing the Paper Duty. The struggle began in 185S, and eventually triumphed, thanks to the president, the Right Hon. Milner Gibson, and the chairman, the late Mr. John Ca.ssell. The house within the last few years has been entirely rebuilt. In former times " Peele's Coffee-House" was quite a house of call and post- office for money-leasisted of Messrs. Henry Mayhew, LenKjn, Coyne, and Landells. The printer and i)ubli>l".er also lield shares, and were treasurers. Although the ]jopularity of Punch exceeded all expectation, ' the first volume ended in difficulties. From these storm-tossed seas Punch was rescued and brought into smooth water by Messrs. Bradbury & l-^vans, who acquired the copyright and organised the staff. j Then it was that Mr. Mark Lemon was appoiuteil ! sole editor, a new office having been created for I Mr. Henry Mayhew — that of Suggestor-in-Cliief ; ! Mr. Mayhew's contributions, and his felicity in in- venting pictorial and in ' putting' verbal witticisms, having already set a deep mark upon Punch's suc- cess. The second volume started merrily. Mr. John O.xenford contributed his firstyW/ d'esprit in its final number on ' Herr Diibler and the Candle-Counter.' Mr. Thackeray commenced his connection in the beginning of the tliird volume with ' Miss Tickle- toby's Lectures on English History,' illustrated by himself. A few weeks later a handsome young student returned from Germany. He was heartily welcomed by his brother, Mr. Henry Mayhew, and then by tlie rest of the fraternity. Mr. Horace Mayhew's diploma joke consisted, I believe, of ' Questions addressees au Grand Concours aux Elfeves d'Anglais du Colle'ge St. Badaud, dans le Departement de la Haute Cockaigne ' (vol. iii., p. Sg). Mr. Richard Doyle, Mr. Tenniel, Mr. Shirley Brooks, Mr. Tom Taylor, and the )'ou.nger celebrities who now keep Mr. Puiu'h in vigorous and jovial vitality, joined his establishment after some of the birth-mates had been drafted off to graver literary and other tasks." Mr. Mark Lemon remained editor of Punch from 1841 till 1870, when he died. Mr. Gilbert ^ Beckett died at Boulogne in 1856. This most accomi)Iished and gifted writer succeeded in tiie more varied kinds of composition, turning with extraordinary rapidity from a Times leader to a Punch epigram. A pamphlet attributed to Mr. Blanchard conveys, after all, the most minute account of tlie origin of Punch. A favourite story of the literary gossijiers who have made Mr. Punch their subject from time to time, says the writer, is that he was born in a tavern parlour. The idea usually jiresented to tlie public is, tliat a little society of great men used to meet togetirer in a private room in a tavern close to Drury Lane Theatre — the " Crown Tavern,'' in Vinegar Yard. The truth is this :^ 58 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street. In the year 1S41 there was a printing-office in a court running out of Fleet Street — No. 3, Crane oourt — wherein was carried on the business of Mr. William Last. It was here that Punch first saw the light. The house, by the way, enjoys besides a distinction of a different kind — that of being the birthpl.ice of ''Parr's Life PiUs;" for Mr. Herbert Ingram, who had not at that time launched the Illustrated London Ni.~iiLayhew, the well-known solicitor, of Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr. May- hew was Mr. Last's legal adviser, and Mr. Last was well acquainted with several of his sons. Upon the occasion in question Mr. Last made some inquiries of Mr. Alfred Mayhew concerning his brother Henry, and his occupation at the time. Mr. Henry Mayhew had, even at his then early age, a reputation for the high abilities which he afterwards developed, had already experience in various departments of literature, and had exer- cised his projective and inventive faculties in various ways. If his friends had heard nothing of him for a few months, they usually found that he had a new design in hand, which was, however, in many cases, of a more original than practical cha- racter. Mr. Henry Mayhew, as it appeared from his brother Alfred's reply, was not at that time engaged in any new effort of his creative genius, and would be open to a proposal for active service. Having obtained Mr. Henry Mayhew's address, which was in Clement's Inn, Mr. Last called upon that gentleman on the following morning, and opened to him a proposal for a comic and satirical journal. Henry Mayhew readily entertained the idea ; and the next question was, " Can you get up a staff?" Henry Mayhew mentioned his friend Mark Lemon as a good commencement ; and the pair proceeded to call upon that gentleman, who was Hving, not far off, in Newcastle Street, Strand. The almost immediate result was the starting of Punch. At a meeting at the " Edinburgh Castle " Mr. Mark Lemon drew up the original prospectus. It was at first intended to call the new publication " The Funny Dog," or " Funny Dog, with Comic Tales," and from the first the subsidiary title of the -■ London Charivari " was agreed upon. At a sub- I seouent meeting at the printing-office, some one nxde some allusion to the "Punch," and some joke about the " Lemon" in it. Henry Mayhew, with his usual electric quickness, at once flew at the idea, and cried out, "A good thought; we'll call it Punch." It was then remembered that, years before, Douglas Jerrold had edited a Penny Punch for Mr. Duncombe, of Middle Row, Holborn, but this was thought no objection, and the new name was carried by acclamation. It was agreed that there should be four proprietors — Messrs. Last, Landells, Lemon, and Mayhew. Last was to supply the printing, Landells the engraving, and Ixmon and Mayhew were to be co-editors. George Hodder, with his usual good-nature, at once secured Mr. Percival Leigh as a contributor, and Leigh brought in his friend Mr. John Leech, and Leech brought in Albert Smith. Mr. Henning designed the cover. AVhen Last had sunk ^600, he sold it to Bradbury & E\ans, on receiving the amount of his then outstanding liabilities. At the transfer^ Henning and Newman both retired, Mr. Coyne and Mr. Grattan seldom contributed, and Mi'ssrs. Mayhew and Landells also seceded. Mr.Hine,the artist, remained \s\\\\ Punchiox many years ; and among other artistic contributors who " came and went,"to use Mr. Blanchard's own words, v.'e must mention Birket Foster, Alfred Crowquil!, Lee, Hamerton, John Gilbert, William Harvey, and Kenny Meadows, the last of whom illustrated one of Jerrold's earliest series, " Punch's Letters to His Son." Punches Almanac for 1841 was con- cocted for the greater part by Dr. Maginn, who was then in the Fleet Prison, where Thackeray has drawn him, in the character of Captain Shandon, writing the famous prospectus for the Pall Mall Gazette. The earliest hits of Punch were Douglas Jerrold's articles signed " J.'" and Gilbert a Beckett's "Adventures of Mr. Britflass." In October, 1841, Mr. W. H. Wills, afterwards working editor o{ House- hold Words and All the Year Round, commenced " Punch's Guide to the Watering- Places." In January, 1842, Albert Smith commenced his lively " Physiology of London Evening Parties," which were illustrated by Newman ; and he wrote the " Physiology of the London Idler," which Leech illustrated. In the third volume, Jerrold com- menced " Punch's Letters to His Son ; " and in the fourth volume, his " Story of a Feather ; " Albert Smith's "Side -Scenes of Society" carried on the social dissections of the comic physiologist, and a Beckett began his " Heathen Mythology," and created the character of "Jenkins," the sup- posed fashionable correspondent of the Morning Post. Punch had begun his career by ridiculing Lord Melbourne ; he now attacked Brougham, for his temporary subservience to 'Wellington ; and Sir Fleet Street.] "HOT, CROSS BUNN." 59 James Graham came also in for a share of the rod ; and the Morning Herald and Standard were chris- tened "Mrs. Gamp" and "Mrs. Harris," as old- fogyish opponents of Peel and the Free-Traders. A Beckett's '" Comic Blackstone ' proved a great hit, from its daring originality ; and incessant jokes were squibbed oft" on Lord John Russell, Prince Albert (for his military tailoring), Mr. Silk Bucking- ham and Lord A\"illiam Lennox, Mr. Samuel Carter Hall and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. Tennyson once, and once only, wrote for Punch, a reply to Lord Lytton (then Mr. Bulwer), who had coarsely attackc-d him in his " New Timon," where he had spoken flippantly of *' A quaint farrago of absurd conceits, Out-babying Wordsworth and out-qliltering Keats." The epigram ended with these bitter and con- temptuous lines, — ' ' A Timon you ? Xay, nay, for shame ! It looks too arrogant a jest — That fierce old man — to take his name, You bandbox ! Off, and let him rest." Albert Smitli left Punch many years before his death. In 1S45, on his return from the East, Mr. Thackeray began his " Jeames's Diary," and became a regular contributor. Gilbert a Beckett was now beginning his " Comic History of England " and Douglas Jerrold his inimitable "Caudle Lectures." Thomas Hood occasionally contributed, but his immortal " Song of the Shirt " was his chef-d'ceuvre. Coventry Patmore contributed once to Punch; his verses denounced General Pellisier and his cruelty at the caves of Dahra. Laman Blanchard occasionally wrote ; his best poem was one on the marriage and temporary retirement of charming Mrs. Nisbett. In 1S46 Thackeray's "Snobs of England " was higlily successful. Richard Doyle's " Manners and Customs of ye English " brought Punch much increase. The present cover of Punch is by Doyle, who, being a zealous Roman Catholic, eventually left Punch when it began to ridicule the Pope and condemn Papal aggression. Punch in his time has had his raps, but not many and not hard ones. Poor Angus B. Reach (whose mind went early in life), with Albert Smith and Shirley Brooks, ridiculed Punch in the Man in the Moon, and in 1847 the Poet Bunn — -"Hot, cross Bunn" — provoked at incessant attacks on his operatic verses, hired a man of letters to write "A Word Avith Punch" and a few smart person- alities soon silenced the jester. "Towards 184S," says Mr. Blanchard, " Douglas Jerrold, then writing plays and editing a magazine, begaii to write less iox Punch." In 1857 he died. Among the later additions to the stalf were Mr. Tom Taylor and Mr. Shirley Brooks. The Dispatch (No. 139, north) was established by Mr. Bell, in iSoi. .Moving from Bride I^ane to Newca-tle Street, and thence to \\ine Oftke Court, it bcttled down in the present locality in 1824. Mt. Bell was an energetic man. and the paper succeeded in obtaining a good i)osition ; but hciwas not a man of large capital, and other persons had shares in the property. In conse- quence of difficulties between the proprietors there were at one time three Dispatches in tiie field — Bell's, Kent's, and Duckett's ; but the two last- mentioned were short-lived, and Mr. Bell maintained his position. Bell's was a sporting jiaper, with many columns devoted to pugilism, and a woodcut ex- hibiting two boxers ready for an encounter. But the editor (says a story more or less authentic), Mr. Samuel Smith, who had obtained his post by cleverly reporting a fight near Canterbur)-, one day received a severe thrashing from a famous member of the ring. This changed the editor's opinions as to the propriety of boxing — at any- rate pugilism was repudiated by the Dispatch about 1829 ; and boxing, from the Dispatch jioint of view, was henceforwartl treated as a degrading and brutal amusement, unworthy of our civilisation. Mr. Harmer (afterwards Alderman), a solicitor in extensive practice in Old Bailey cases, became connected with the paper about the time when the Fleet Street office was established, and contributed capital, which soon bore fruit. The success was so great, that for many years the Dispatch as a property was inferior only to the Times. It be- came famous for its letters on political subjects. The original "Publicola" was Mr. A\'illiams, a violent and coarse but very vigorous and popular writer. He wrote weekly for about sixteen or seventeen years, and after his death the signature was assumed by Mr. Fox, tlie famous orator and member for Oldliam. Other writers also borrowed i tlie well-known signature. Eliza Cooke wrote in the Dispatch in 1S36, at first signing her poems " E." and "E. C-" ; but in the course of the following year her name appeared in full. She contributed a poem weekly for several years, relinquishing her con- nection with the paper in 1850. Afterwards, in 1869, when the property changed hands, she wTOte two or three poems. Under the signature "Caustic," Mr. Serle, the dramatic author and editor, con- tributed a weekly letter for about twenty-seven years; and from 1856 till 1869 was editor-in chief. In 1841-42 the Dispatch had a hard-fought duel with the Times. "Publicola" wrote a series of letters, which had the effect of preventing the 6o OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Strep;. election of Mr. Walter for Southwark. The Times retaliated when the time came for Alderman Harmer to succeed to the lord mayoralty. Day after day the Times returned to the attack, denouncing the Dispatch as an infidel paper ; and .Mdernian Harmer, rejected by the City, resigned in conse- Tekgraph was started on June 29, 1855, by the late Colonel Sleigh. It was a single sheet, and the price twopence. Colonel Sleigh failing to make it a success, Mr. Levy, the present chief proprietor of the paper, took the copyright as part security for money owed him by Colonel Sleigh. quence his aldermanic gown. In 1 85 7 the Dispatch commenced the publication of its famous " Atlas," giving away a good map weekly for about five years. The price was reduced from fivepence to twopence, at the beginning of 1869, and to a penny in 1870. The Daily Telegraph office is No. 136 (north). Mr. Ingram, of the Illustrated London A'eivs, originated a paper called the Telegraph, which lasted only seven or eight weeks. The present Daily In Mr. Levy's hands the paper, reduced to a penny, became a great success. " It was," says Mr. Grant, in his "History of the Newspaper Press," "the first of the penny papers, while a single sheet, and as such was regarded as a newspaper marvel ; but when it came out — which it did soon after the Standard — as a double sheet the size of the Times, published at fourpence, fo': a penny, it created quite a sensation. Here was a penny paper, containing Fleet Street.] GOLDSMITH AT THE "GLOBE." 6i not only the same amount of telegraphic and general information as the other high-priced papers — their price being then fourpence — but also evidently written, in its leading article de- partment, with an ability which could only be surpassed by that of the leading articles of the Times itself. This was indeed a new era in the morning journalism of the metropolis." When Mr. Levy bought the Tvhxraph, the sum which he received for advertisements in the first number was The "Globe Tavern" (No. 134, north), though now only a memory, abounds with tr.-iditions of Goldsmith and his motley friends. The house, in 1649, was leased to one Henry Hottcrsall for forty-one years, at the yearly rent of ^75, ten gallons of Ganary sack, and ^400 fine. Mr. John Forster gives a delightful sketch of Goldsmith's Wednesday even- ing club at the "Globe," in 1767. When not at Johnson's great club, Oliver beguiled his cares at a shilling rubber club at the " Devil Tavern," or at a \\ AIlllMAN's SHOP (SA- /(l^r 6j). exactly 73. 6d. The daily receipts for advertise- ments are now said to exceed ^^500. Mr. Grant says that the remission of the tax on paper brought ^12,000 a year extra to the Telegraph. Ten pages for a penny is no uncommon thing with the Telegraph during the Parliamentary session. The returns of sales given by the Telegraph for the half-year ending 1S70 show an average daily sale of 190,885 ; and though this was war time, a competent authority estimates the average daily sale at 175,000 copies. One of the printing- machines recently set up by the proprietors of the Telegraph throws off upwards of 200 copies per minute, or 12,000 an hour. 6 humble gathering in the parlour of the " Bedford," Covent Garden. A hanger-on of the theatres, who frequented the " Globe," has left notes which Mr. Forster has admirably used, antl which we now abridge without further apology. Grim old Mack- lin belonged to the club it is certain ; and among the less obscure members was King, the comedian, the celebrated impersonator of Lord Ogleby. Hugh Kelly, another member, was a clever young Irishman, who hail chambers near Goldsmith in the Temple. He had been a stay- maker's apprentice, who, turning law writer, and soon landing as a hack for the magazines, set up as a satirist for the stage, and eventually, 62 OLD AND NEW LONDON. tFIeet Street. through Garric'.c'.s patronage, succ.»eded in senti- mental comedy. It was of liim Johnson said, " Sir, I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read." Poor Kelly afterwards went to the Bar, and died of disappoint- ment and over-work. A tliird member was Captain Thompson, a friend of Garrick's, who wrote some good sea songs and edited "Andrew Marvell ;" but foremost among all the boon companions was a needy Irish doctor named Glover, who had r.ppcarod on t'.ie stage, and who was said to have restored to life a man who had been hung ; this Glover, who was famous for his songs and imita- tions, once had the impudence, like Theodore Hook, to introduce Goldsmith, during a summer ramble in Hampstead , to a party where he was an entire stranger, and to pass himself off as a friend of the host. " Our Dr. Glover," says Goldsmith, " had a constant levee of his distressed countrymen, whose wants, as far as he was able, he always relieved." Gordon, the fattest man in the club, was renowned for his jovial song of "Notting- ham Ale;" and on special occasions Goldsmith himself would sing his favourite nonsense about the little old woman who was tossed seventeen times higher than the moon. A fat pork-butcher at the " Globe " used to oflend Goldsmith by constantly shouting out, " Come, Noll, here's my service to you, old boy." After the success of The Good- natured Man, this coarse familiarity was more than Goldsmith's vanity could bear, so one special night he addressed the butcher with grave reproof. The stolid man, taking no notice, replied briskly, "Thankee, Mister Noll." "Well, where is the advantage of your reproof ?" asked Glover. "In truth," said Goldsmith, good-naturedly, " I give it up ; I ouglit to have known before that there is no putting a pig in the right way." Sometimes rather cruel tricks were played on the credulous poet. One evening Goldsmith came in clamorous for his supper, and ordered chops. Directly the supper came in, the wags, by pre-agreement, began to sniff and swear. Some pushed the plate away ; others declared the rascal who had dared set such chops before a gentleman should be made to swallow them himself. The waiter was savagely rung up, and forced to eat the supper, to which he consented with well-feigned reluctance, the poet calmly ordering a fresh supper and a dram for the poor waiter, " who otherwise might get sick from so nauseating a meal." Poor Goldy ! kindly even at his most foolish moments. A sadder story still connects Goldsmith with the "Globe." Ned Pardon, a worn-out Ijooksellers' hack and a protivc of Goldsmith's, dropped down dead in Smitlifield. Goldsmith wrote his epitaph as he came from his chambers in the Temple to the '• Globe." The lines are :— " Here lies poor Neil Purcloii, from misery freed, Wlio long was a booksellers' hack ; He led sucli a miscr.ible life ira this world, I don't think lie'll wi.^h to come back." Goldsmith sat ne,\t Glover that night at the club, and Glo\-er heard the poet repeat, sotlo vocr, \\\\\\ a mournful intonation, the words, — ■ "I don't tliiiik he'il wish to come back." Oliver was musing over his own life, and Mr. Forster says touchingly, " It is not without a certain pathos to me, indeed, that he should have so repeated it." Among other frequenters of the "Globe" were Boswell's friend Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who always thought it jjrudent never to return home till daybreak ; and William Woodfiill, the celebrated Parliamentary reporter. In later times Brasbridge, the sporting silversmith of Fleet Street, was a fre- quenter of the club. He tells us that among his associates was a surgeon, who, living on the Surrey side of the Thames, had to take a boat every night (Blackfriar's Bridge not being then built). This nightly navigation cost him three or four shillings a time, yet, when the bridge came, he grumbled at having to pay a penny toll. Among other frequenters of the " Globe," Mr. Timbs enumerates " Archibald Hamilton, whose mind was 'lit for a lord chancellor;' Dunstall, the comedian ; Carnan, the bookseller, who defeated the Stationers' Company in the almanack trial ; and, later still, the eccentric Hugh Evelyn, who set up a claim upon the great Surrey estate of Sir Frederic Evelyn." TX^Q Standard i^Q. 129, north), "the largest daily paper," was originally an evening paper alone. In 1826 a deputation of the leading men opposed to Catholic Emancipation waited on Mr. Charles Baldwin, proprietor of the St. James's Chronicle, and begged him to start an anti-Catholic evening paper, but Mr. Baldwin refused unless a preliminary sum of _;^i5,ooo was lodged at the banker's. A year later this sum was deposited, and in 1827 the Evening Standard, edited by Dr. Giffard, ex-editor of the St. James's Chronicle, appeared. Mr. Alaric ^^'atts, the poet, was succeeded as sub-editor of the Standard by the celebrated Dr. Maginn. The daily circulation soon rose from 700 or 800 copies to 3,000 and over.' The profits Mr. Grant cal- culates at j£,i,ooo to /^8,ooo a year. On the bankruptcy of Mr. Charles Baldwin, Mr. James Johnson bought the Morning Herald and Standard, plant and all, for ^^16,500. The new Fled Street.] A DISCIPLE OF CAXTON. 63 proprietor reduced the Standard from fourpence to twopence, and mad^; it a morning as well as an evening paper. In 1858 he reduced it to a penny only. The result was a great success. The annual income of the Standard \% now, Mr. Grant says, " much e.\ceeding yearly the annual mcomes of most of the ducal dignities of the land." The legend of the Duke of Newcasde presenting Dr. Giftard, in 1827, with ;^i,20o for a violent article against Roman Catholic claims, has been denied by Dr. GifT-ird's son in the Times. The Duke of Wellington once wrote to Dr. Giftard to dictate the line the Stand.ird and Morning Herald were to adopt on a certain question during the agitation on the M.iynooth Bill ; and Dr. Giftard withdrew his opposi- tion to please Sir Robert Peel — a concession which injured the Standard. Yet in the following year, when Sir Robert Peel brought in his Bill for the abolition of the corn laws, he did not even pay Dr. Giffard the compliment of apprising him of his intention. Such is official gratitude when a tool is done with. Near Shoe Lane lived one of Caxton's disciples. Wynkyn de Worde, who is supposed to have been one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, was a native of Lorraine. He carried on a prosperous career, says Dibdin, from 1502 to 1534, at the sign of the "Sun," in the parish of St. Bride's, Fleet Street. In upwards of four hundred works published by this industrious man he displayed unprecedented skill, elegance, and care, and his Gothic type was considered a pattern for his successors. . The books ' that cam; from his press were chiefly grammars, romances, legends of the saints, and fugitive poems ; he never ventured on an English New Testament, nor was any drama published bearing his name. His great patroness, Margaret, the mother ofi Henry VII., seems to have had little taste to guide De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted the works of Chaucer or of Gower ; nor did his j humble patron, Robert Thorney, the mercer, lead him in a better direction. De Worde filled his black- letter books with rude engravings, which he used so indiscriminately that the same cut often served for books of a totally opposite character. By some writers De Worde is considered to be the first introducer of Roman letters into this country; but the honour of that mode of printing is now generally claimed by Pynson, a contemporary. Among other works published by De ^\"orde were "The Ship of Fools," that great satire that was so long popular in England ; Mandeville's lying " Travels ; " " La Morte d'Arthur " (from which Tennyson has derived so much inspiration); "The Golden Legend;" and those curious treatises on " Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing," partly written by _,ohanna Berners, a prioress of St. Alban's. In De Worde's "Collection of Christmas Carols" we find the -vords of that fine old song, still sung a""iually at Queen's College, Oxford, — ■ " The boar's head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary. " De Worde also published some writings of Erasmus. The old i)rinter was buried in the parish church of St. Bride's, before the high altar of St. Katherine ; and he left land to the parish so that masses should be said for his soul. To his servants, not forgetting his bookbinder, Nowel, in Shoe Lane, he be- queathed books. De Worde lived near the Conduit, a little west of Shoe Lane. This conduit, which was begun in the year 1439 l^Y Sir \VilIiam Estfielde, a former Lord Mayor, and finished in 147 1, was, according to Stow's account, a stone tower, with images of St. Christopher on the top and angels, who, on sweet-sounding bells, hourly chimed a hymn with hammers, thus anticipating the wonders of St. Dunstan's. These London conduits were great resorts for the apprentices, whom their masters sent with big leather and metal jugs to bring home the daily supply of water. Here these noisy, quarrelsome yoiTng rascals stayed to gossip, idle, and fight. At the coronation of ."Vnne Boleyn this conduit was newly painted, all the arms and angels refreshed, and "the music melodi- ously sounding." Upon the conduit was raised a tower with four turrets, and in every turret stood one of the cardinal virtues, promising never to leave the queen, while, to the delight and wonder of thirsty citizens, the taps ran with claret and red wine. Fleet Street, according to Mr. Noble, was supplied with water in the Middle Ages from the conduit at Marylebone and the holy wells of St. Clement's and St. Bridget's. The tradition is that the latter well was drained dry for the supply of the coronation bancjuet of George IV. As early as 1358 the inhabitants of Fleet Street complained of aqueduct pipes bursting and flooding their cellars, upon which they were allowed the jirivilege of erecting a pent-house over an aqueduct oppo- site the tavern of John Walworth, and near the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1478 a Fleet Street wax-chandler, having been detected tajjping the conduit pipes for his own use, was sentenced to ride through the City with a vessel shaped like a conduit on his felonious head, and the City crier walking before him to proclaim his offence. The " Castle Tavern," mentioned as early as 1432, stood at the south-west corner of Shoe Lane. Here the Clockmakers' Company held their 64 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street. meetings before the Great Fire, and in 1708 the " Castle " possessed the largest sign in London. Early in tlie last century, says Mr. Noble, its pro- prietor was Alderman Sir John Task, a wine mer- chant, who died in 1735 (George IL), worth, it was understood, a quarter of a million of money. The Monii/iii- Advertiser (No. 127, north) was established in 1794, by the .Soeiciy of Licensed Victuallers, on the mutual lienefit society principle. Every member is bound to take in the paper and is entitled to a share in its profits. Members un- successful in business become pensioners on the funds of the institution. The paper, which took the place of the Daily Advertiser, and was the suggestion of Mr. Grant, a master printer, was an immediate success. Down to 1S50 the Morning Advertiser circulated chiefly in public-houses and coffee-houses at the rate of nearly 5,000 copies a day. But in 1850, the circulation beginning to decline, the committee resolved to enlarge the paper to the size of the Times, and Mr. James Grant was appointed editor. The profits now increased, and the paper found its way to the clubs. The late Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster con- tributed to the Advertiser ; and the letters signed "An Englishman" excited much interest. This paper has always been Liberal. Mr. Grant remained the editor for twenty years. No. 91 (south side) was till lately the office of that old-established paper, Belfs JVeckly Messenger. Mr. Bell, the spirited publisher who founded this paper, is delightfully sketched by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography. " About the period of my waiting the above essays," he says, in his easy manner, "circumstances introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. Bell, the proprietor of the Weekly Messenger. In his house, in the Strand, I used to hear of politics and dramatic criticisms, and of the persons who wrote them. Mr. Bell had been well known as a book- seller and a speculator in elegant typography. It is to him the public are indebted for the small editions of the poets that preceded Cooke's. Bell was, upon the whole, a remarkable person. He was a plain man, with a red face and a nose exaggerated by intemperance ; and yet there was something not unpleasing in his countenance, especially when he spoke. He had sparkling black eyes, a good-natured smile, gentlemanly manners, and one of the most agreeable voices I ever heard. He had no acquirements — perhaps not even grammar ; but his taste in putting forth a publication and getting the best artists to adorn it was new in those times, and may be admired in any. Unfortunately for Mr. Bell, the Prince of Wales, to whom he was bookseller, once did him the honour to jiartake of an entertainment or refreshment (I forget which — most probably the latter) at his house. He afterwards became a bankrupt. After his bankruptcy he set up a news- paper, which became profitable to everybody but himself."* No. 93, Fleet Street (south side) is endeared to us by its connection with Charles Lamb. At that number, in 1823, that great humorist, the king of all London clerks that ever were or will be, published his " Elia," a collection of essays im- mortal as the language, full of quaint and tender thoughts antl gleaming with cross-lights of humour as shot silk does with interchanging colours. In 1S21, when the first editor was shot in a duel, the London Magazine fell into the hands of Messrs. 'I aylor & Hessey, of No. 93 ; but they published the excellent periodical and gave their " magazine dinners " at their publishing house in Waterloo Place. Mr. John Scott, a man of great promise, the editor of the London for the first publishers — ■ Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy — met with a very tragic death in 1821. The duel in which he fell arose from a cpiarrel between the men on the London and the clever but bitter and unscrupulous writers in Blackwood, started in 181 7. Lockhart, who had cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the " Cockney School," as the Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharjily attacked in the London. Fiery and vindictive Lockhart flew at once up to town, and angrily demanded from Mr. Scott, the editor, an explanation, an apology, or a meeting. Mr. Scott declined giving an apology unless Mr. Lockhart would first deny that he was editor of Blackwood. Lockhart refused to give this denial, and retorted by expressing a mean opinion of Mr. Scott's courage. Lockhart and Scott both printed contradictory versions of the quarrel, which worked up till at last Mr. Christie, a friend of Lockhart's, challenged Scott ; and they met at Chalk Farm by moonlight on February i6th, at nine o'clock at night, attended by their seconds and surgeons, in the old business-like, bloodthirsty waj'. The first time Mr. Christie did not fire at Mr. Scott, a fact of which Mr. Patmore, the author, Scott's second, with most blamable indiscretion, did not inform his principal. At the second fire Christie's ball stmck Scott just above the right hip, and he * An intelligent compositor (Mr. J. P. .S. tSiclcnell), who has been a noter of curious passages in his time, informs me that Bell was the first printer who confined the small leLtcr " s " to its present shape, .aui rejected altogether the older forra"f," Fleet Street.] "JANUS WEATHERCOCK." 6S fell. He lingered till the 27th. It was said at the time that Hazlitt, perhaps unintentionally, had driven .Scott to fight by indirect taunts. " I don't pretend," Hazlitt is reported to have said, " to hold the principles of honour which you hold. I would neidier give nor accept a challenge. You hold the opinions of the world ; with you it is different. As for me, it would be nothing. I do not think as you and the world think," and so on. Poor Scott, not yet forty, had married the pretty dauglUer of Colnaghi, the print-seller in Pall Mall, and left two children. For the five years it lasted, perhaps no magazine — not even the mighty Afaga itself — ever drew talent towards it with such magnetic attraction. In Mr. Barry Cornwall's delightful memoir of his old friend Lamb, written when the writer was in his seventy-third year, he has summarised the writers on the London, and shown how deep and varied was the intellect brought to bear on its production. First of all he mentions poor Scott, a shrewd, critical, rather hasty man, who wrote essays on Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Godwin, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt, his wonderful contemporaries, in a fruitful age. Hazlitt, glowing and capricious, produced the twelve essays of his " Table Talk," many dramatic articles, and papers on Beckford's Fonthill, the Angerstein pictures, and the Elgin marbles — pages wealthy with thought. Lamb contributed in three years all the matchless essays of " Elia." Mr. Thomas Carlyle, then only a promising young Scotch philosopher, wrote several articles on the " Life and Writings of Schiller." Mr. de Quincey, that subtle thinker and bitter Tory, contributed his wonderful "Confessions of an Opium-Eater." That learned and amiable man, the Rev. H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante, wrote several in- teresting notices of early French poets. Allan Cunningham, the vigorous Scottish bard, sent the romantic " Tales of Lyddal Cross " and a series of papers styled " Traditional Literature." Mr. John Poole — recently deceased, 1S72 — (tlie author of Fai/l Fry and that humorous novel, " Little Ped- lington," which is suitposed to have furnished Mr. Charles Dickens with some suggestions for " Pickwick ") wrote burlesque imitations of con- temporaneous dramatic writers — Morton, Dibdin, Reynolds, Moncrieff, &c. Mr. J. H. Reynolds wrote, under the name of Henry Herbert, notices of contemporaneous events, such as a scene at the Cockpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to the London his first poems of any ambition or length — " Lycus the Centaur," and "The Two Peacocks of Bed- font." Keat.'-, "that sleepless soul that perished in its pride," and Montgomery, both contributed poems. Sir John Bowring, the accomjilislied linguist, wrote on Spanish poetry. Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of that excellent work the Rdrospcdi'i'c Rrcinu, contributed " The Conversa- tions of Lord Byron." Mr. Walter Savage Landor, that very original and eccentric thinker, published in the extraordinary magazine one of his admirable " Imaginary Conversations." Mr. Julius (afterwards Archdeacon) Hare re\iewed the rolnist works of Landor. Mr. Elton contributed graceful translations from Catullus, Propertius, &c. Even ainong the lesser contributors there were very eminent writers, not forgetting Barry Cornwall, Hartley Coleridge, John Clare, the Northam[)tonshire peasant poet; and Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Nor must we omit that strange contrast to these pure-hearted and wise men, " Janus ^Veathercock " (\\'ainwright), the polished villain who murdered his young niece and most probably se\-eral other friends and rela- tions, for the money insured upon their lives. This gay and evil being, by no means a dull writer upon art and the drama, was much liked by Lamb and the Russell Street set. The news of his cokl- blooded crimes (transpiring in 1837) seem to have struck a deep hoiTor among all the scoundrel's fashionable associates. Although \vhen arrested in France it was discovered that Wainwright habitually carried strychnine about with him, he was only tried for forgery, and for that otifence transported for life. A fine old citizen of the last century, Josepli Brasbridge, who jjublished his memoirs, kept a silversmith's shop at No. 98, several doors from Alderman Waithman's. At one time Brasbridge confesses he divided his time between the tavern club, the card party, the hunt, and the fight, and left his shop to be looked after by others, whilst he decided on the respective merits of Humphries and Mendoza, Cribb and Big Ben. Among Brasbrldge's early customers were the Duko of Marlborough, the Duke of Argyle, and other men of rank, and he glories in having once paid an elaborate compliment to Lady Hamilton. The most curious story in Brasbridge's " Fruits of Experience" is the following, various versions of which have been paraphrased by modern writers. A surgeon in Gough Square had purchased for dis- section the body of a man who had been hanged at Tyburn. The servant gid, wishing to look at the corpse, stole upstairs in the doctor's absence, and, to her horror, found the body sitting up on the board, wondering where it was. The girl almost 66 OLD AND NEW LONDON. (Fleet Street. threw herself down the stairs in her fright. Tlie surgeon, on learning of the resuscitation of his subject, humanely concealed the man in the house till he could fit him out for America. The fellow proved as clever and industrious as he was grateful, and having amassed a fortune, he eventually left it all to his benefactor. The seoviel is still more the Strand, then came forward, and deposed that his wife and her mother, he remembered, used to visit the surgeon in Gough Square. On inquiry Mrs. Willcocks was proved the next of kin, and the base shoemaker returned to his last. The lucky Mr. Willcocks was the good-natured bookseller who lent Johnson and Garrick, when they first came up ALDERMAN WAITHMAN, FROM AN AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT {sce page 6S). curious. The surgeon dying some years after, his heirs were advertised for. A shoemaker at Isling- ton eventually established a claim and inherited the money. Mean in prosperity, the d-da O Fleet S:v=et Tributaries.] "REMEMBER C^SAR!' 79 for his bosom friends, showed them the paper, and held a solemn deliberation over it. It was decided that it must have 'been dropped into his hand by some secret friend, as he was on his way to the priory lodgings. Every one agreed that some con- spiracy was planned against his life by his many and mighty enemies, and that Caesar's flite might soon be his unless great precautions were taken. The friends there- fore persuaded him to be at once indis- posed, and not ven- ture forth in that neighbourhood, nor to admit to an au- dience any but per- sons of undoubted .affection. At nigl t the gates were shut and barred early, and the porter solemnly enjoined not to open them to any one, or to venture on even a moment's sleep. Some servants were sent to watch with him, and the friends sat up all night to await the event. " Such houses," says Clarendon, who did not like the trea- surer, "are always in the morning haunted by early suitors ;" but it was very late before any one could now get admittance into the house, the porter having tasted some of the arrears of sleep which he owed to him- self for his night watching, which he accounted fcr to his acquaintance by whispering to them " that his lord should have been killed that night, w hich had kept all the house from going to bed." Shortly afterwards, however, the Earl of Tulli- birdine asking the treasurer whether he had re- n embered Caesar, the treasurer quickly recollected- tl e ground of his perturbation, could not forbear imparting it to his friends, and so the whole jest C3.me to be discovered. Tn 1614, ;i^6 i2s. 6d. was claimed by Sir Julius Coesar for paving the part of Chancery Lane over against the Rolls Gate. Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master 01 the Rolls in the reign of George I., was an ancestor of that witty Jekyll, the friend and adviser of George IV. Sir Joseph was very active in introducing a Bill for increasing the duty on gin, in consequence of which he became so odious to the mob that they one day hu.stled and tranipled on him in a riot in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Ho- garth, who painted his " Gin Lane" to express his alarm and disgust at the growing intempe- rance of the London poor, has in ona of his extraordinary ])ictures represented a low fellow writing J.J. under a gibbet. Sir William Grant, w ho succeeded Lord Alvanle}', was the last Master but one that resided in the Rolls. He had jiractised at the Canadian bar, and on returning to Eng- land attracted the attention of Lord ri-,urlow, then chan- cellor. He was an admirable speaker in the House, and even Fox is said to have girded him- self tighter for an encounter with such an adversary. "He iised," says Mr. Cyrus Jay, in his amusing book, " The Law," " to sit from five o'clock till one, and seldom spoke during that time. He dined before going into court, his allowance being a bottle of Madeira at dinner and a bottle of port after. He ' dined alone, and the unfortunate servant was expected to anticipate his master's wishes by intuition. Sir William never spoke if he could help it. On one occasion when the favourite dish of a leg of pork was on the table, the servant saw by Sir William's face that something was wrong, but he could not tell what. Suddenly a thought IZAAK Walton's house {see pa^c 82). So OLD AND NEW LONDON. fFleet Street Triblitames. flashed upon him — the Madeira was not on the table. He at once placed the decanter before Sir William, who immediately flung it into the grate, exclaiming, " Mustard, you fool !" Sir John Leach, another Master of the Rolls, ■was the son of a tradesman at Bedford, afterwards a merchant's clerk and an embryo architect. !Mr. Canning appointed him Master of the Rolls, an office previously, it has been said, offered to Mr. Brougham. Leach w-as fond, says Mr. Jay, of saying sharp, bitter things in a bland and courtly voice. " No submission could ameliorate his temper, no opposition lend asperity to his voice.' In court two large fan shades were always placed in a way to shade him from the light, and to render Sir John entirely invisible. " After the counsel who was addressing the court had finished, and resumed his seat, there would be an awful pause for a minute or two, when at length out of the darkness which surrounded the chair of justice would come a voice, distinct, awful, solemn, but with the solemnity of suppressed anger — ' the bill is dismissed with costs.' " No explanations, no long series of arguments were advanced to support the conclusion. The decision was given with the air of a man who knew he was right, and that only folly or villainy could doubt the propriety of his judgments. Sir John was the Prince Regent's great adviser during Queen Caroline's trial, and assisted in getting up the evidence. " How often," says Mr. Jay, " have I seen him, when walking through the Green Park between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, knock at the pri\-ate door of Carlton Palace. I have seen him go in four or five days following." Gififord was another eminent M.stcr of the Rolls, though he did not hold the office long. He first attracted attention \\hen a lawyer's clerk by his clever observations on a case in which he was consulted by his employers, in the presence of an important client. The high opinion which Lord EUenborough formed ot his talents induced Lord Liverpool to appoint him Solicitor-General. While in the House he had frequently to encounter Sir Samuel Romilly. Mr. Cyrus Jay has an interesting anecdote about the funeral of Lord Gifford, who was buried in the Rolls Chapel. " I was," he says, " in the little gallery when the procession came into the chapel, and Lord Eldon and Lord Chief Justice Abbott were placed in a pew by them- selves. I could observe everything that took place in the pew, it being a small chapel, and noted that Lord Eldon was very shaky, and during the most solemn part of the service saw him touch the Chief Justice. I have no doubt he asked for his snuff- box, for the snuff-box was produced, and he took a large pinch of snuff. The Chief Justice was a very great snuff-taker, but he only took it up one nostril. I kept my eye on the pinch of snuff, and saw that Lord Eldon, the moment he had taken it from the box, threw it away. I was sorry at the time, and was astonished at the deception practised by so great a man, with the grave yawning before him.'' When Sir Thomas Plumer was ALaster of the Rolls, and gave a succession of dinners to the Bar, Romilly, alluding to Lord Eldon's stinginess, said, " Verily he is working oflf the arrears of the Lord Chancellor." At the back of the Rolls Chapel, in Bowling- Pin Alley, Bream's Buildings (No. 28, Chancery Lane), there once lived, according to party calumny, a journeyman labourer, named Thompson, whose clever and pretty daughter, tlie wife of Clark, a bricklayer, became the mischievous mistress of the good-natured but weak Duke of York. After making great scandal about the sale of commissions obtained by her influence, the shrewd woman wrote some memoirs, 10,000 copies of which, Mr. Timbs records, were, the year after, burnt at a printer's in Salisbury Square, upon condition of her debts being paid, and an annuity of ^400 granted her. Wilberforce's unscrupulous party statement, that INIrs. Clark was a low, vulgar, and extravagant woman, was entirely untrue. Mrs. Clark, how- ever imprudent and devoid of virtue, was no more the daughter of a journeyman bricklayer than she was the daughter of Pope Pius. She was really, as Mr. Cyrus Redding, who knew most of the political secrets of his day, has proved, the unfor- tunate granddaughter of that unfortunate man, Theodore, King of Corsica, and ctaughter of even a more unhappy man. Colonel Frederick, a brave, well-read gentleman, who, under the pressure of a temporary monetary difficulty, occasioned by the dishonourable conduct of a friend, blew out his brains in the church}-ard of St. Margaret's, ^^'est- minster. In 1798 a poem, written, we believe, by Mrs., then Miss Clark, called "lanthe," was published by subscription at Hookham's, in New Bond Street, for the benefit of Colonel Frederick's daughter and children, and dedicated to the Prince of Wales. The girl married an Excise officer, much older than herself, and became the mistress of the Duke of York, to whom probably she had applied for assistance, or subscriptions to her poem. The fact is, the duke's vices were turned, as vices frequently are, into scourges for his own back. He was a jovial, good-natured, affable, selfish man, an incessant and reckless gambler, quite devoid of all conscience about debts, and, indeed, of moral Fleet Street Tribiit.lries ] WOLSEY IN CHANCERY LANE. 8i principle in general AVhen he got tired of Mrs. Clark, he meanly and heartlessly left her, with a promised annuity which he never paid, and with debts mutually incurred at their house in Glou- cester Place, which he shamefully allowed to fall upon her. In despair and revengeful rage the discarded mistress sought the eager enemies whom the duke's careless neglect had sown round him, and the scandal broke forth. The Prince of Wales, who was as fond of his brother as he could be of any one, was greatly vexed at the exposure, and sent Lord Moira to buy up the correspondence from the Radical bookseller, Sir Richard Phillips who had advanced money upon it, and was glorying in the escapade. Mr. Timbs informs us that .Sir Richard Phillips, used to narrate the strange and mysterious story of the real secret cause of the Duke of York scan- dal. The exposure originated in the resent- ment of one M'Callum against Sir Thomas Picton, who, as Governor of Trinidad, had, among other arbitrary acts, imprisoned M'Callum in an under- ground dungeon. On getting to England he sought justic^ ; but, finding himself baffled, he first published his travels in Trinidad, to expose Picton ; then ferreted out charges against the War Office, and at last, through Colonel Wardle, brought for- ward the notorious great-coat contract. This being negatived by a Ministerial majority, he then traced Mrs. Clark, and arranged the whole of the exposure for Wardle and others. To effect this in the teeth of power, though destitute of resources, he wrought night and day for months. He lodged in a garret in Hungerford Market, and often did not taste food for twenty-four hours. He lived to see the Duke of York dismissed from office, had time to publish a short narrative, then died of exhaustion and want. • An eye-witness of Mrs. Clark's behaviour at the bar of the House of Commons pronounced her replies as full of sharpness against the more insolent of her adversaries, but her bearing is de- scribed as being " full of grace." Mr. Redding, who had read twenty or thirty of this lady's letters, tells us that they showed a good education in the writer. A writer who was present during her examina- tion before the House of Commons, has pleasantly described the singular scene. " I was," he says, " in the House of Commons when Mary Anne Clark first made her appearance at the bar, dressed in her light-blue pelisse, light muff and tippet. She was a pretty woman, rather of a slender make. It was debated whether she should have a chair ; this occasioned a hubbub, and she was asked who the person with her deeply veiled was. She re|)licd that she was her friend. The lady was instantly ordered to withdraw, then a chair was ordered for Mrs. Clark, and she seemed to jjluck up courage, for when she was asked about the jjarticulars of .^.n annuity promised to be settled on her by the Duke • of York, she said, pointing with her hand, ' You may ask Mr. William Adam there, as he knows all about it.' She was asked if .she was quite certain that General Clavering ever was at any of her parties ; she replied, ' So certain, that I always told him he need not use any ceremony, but come in his boots.' It will be remembered that General C. was sent to Newgate for prevarica- tion on that account, not ha'i'iiig recollected in time- this circumstance. " Perceval fought the battle manfully. The Duke of York could not be justified for some of his acts — for instance, giving a footboy of Mrs. Clark's a commission in the army, and allowing an improper influence to be exerted over him in his thoughtless moments ; but that the trial originated in pique and party spirit, there can be no doubt; and, as he justly merited. Colonel Wardle, the prosecutor in the case, sunk into utter oblivion, whilst the Duke of York, the soldier's friend and the beloved of the army, was, after a short period (having been superseded by Sir David Dundas), replaced as commander-in-chief, and died deeply regretted and fully meriting die colossal statue erected to him, with his hand pointing to the Horse Guards." Cardinal Wolsey lived, at some period of his extraordinary career, in a house in Chancery Lane, at the Holborn end, and on the east side, opposite the Six Clerks' Office. We do not know what rank the proud favourite held at this time, whether he was almoner to the kfng, privy councillor. Canon of Windsor, Bishop of Lincoln, Archbishop of York, or Cardinal of the Cecilia. We like to think that down that dingy legal lane he rode on his way to Westminster H.all, witli all that magnificence de- scribed by his faithful gentleman usher. Cavendish. He would come out of his chamber, we read, about eight o'clock in his cardinal's robes of scarlet taffeta and crimson satin, with a black velvet tippet edged with sable round his neck, holding in his hand an orange filled with a sponge containing aromatic vinegar, in case the crowd of suitors should in commode him. Before him was borne the broad seal of England, and the scarlet cardinal's hat. A sergeant-at-arms preceded him bearing a great mace of silver, and two gentlemen carrj-ing silver platcj. At the hall-door he mounted his mule, trapped with crimson and having a saddle covered with . Patniore describes 88 OLD AXD NP:W LONDON. I'l^leet Street Tributaries. as worthy of Apemantus liimself. He would enter a room as if he had been brought in in custody. He .shuffled sidelong to the nearest chair, sat down on the extreme corner of it, dropped his liat on , tlie lloor, buried his chin in hh stock, vented his uscual pet phrase on such occasions, ' It's a fine , da)',' and resigned himself moodily to social misery. ] If the talk did not suit him, he bore it a certain time, silent, self-absorbed, as a man condemned to death, then suddenly, with a brusque ' Well, good morning,' shuffled to the door and blundered his way out, audibly cursing himself for his folly in voluntarily making himself the laughing-stock of an idiot's critical servants. It must have been hard to bear with such a man, whatever might be his talent ; and yet his dying words were, 'I've led a happy life.' " That delightfid Jiumorist, Lamb, lived in .South- ampton Buildings, in 1800, coming from Penton- ville, and moving to Mitre Court Buildings, Fleet Street. Here, then, must have taken place some of those enjoyable evenings which have been so ])leasantly sketched by Hazlitt, one of the most favoured of Lamb's guests : — " At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes, at the Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether the small-coal man's musical parties could exceed them. Oh, for the pen of John Buncle to con- secrate a /(•/// soin'iiiir to their memory ! There I was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, the most witty, and the most sensible of men. He alwa\'s made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is the best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half-a-dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a (juestion with a jilay upon words. \Miat a keen- laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth ! What choice venom ! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters ! how we skimmed the cream of criticism ! How we picked out the marrow of authors ! Need I go over the names ? They were but the old, everlasting set — ^Milton and Shakes- peare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Richard- son, Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch novels had not then been heard of, so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon the moderns. The author of the RamMcr was only tolerated in Boswell's life of him ; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not bear ' Gil Bias ;' this was a fault. I remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some years' difticulty, tliat Fielding was better than Smollett. On one occasion he was for making out a list of persons famous in history that one would wish to see again, at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Tliomas Browne, and L)r. Faustus ; but we black-balled most of his list. But with what a gusto he woukl describe his favourite authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages ddicions. He tried them en his palate, as epicures taste olives, and his observa- tions had a smack in them like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admirei-1 most, as in saying the display of the sumptuous banquet in ' Paradise Regained' was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the ex- tremity of hunger, and stating that .\dam and Eve, in ' Paradise Lost,' were too much like married people. He has furnished man)- a text for Cole- ridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant about him ; nor were his sweets or sours ever diluted with one particle of affectation.'' Towards the unhappy close of Sheridan's life, when weighed down by illness and debt (he had just lost the election at .Stafford, and felt clouds and darkness gathering closer round him), he was thrown for several days (about 1814) into a sponging- house in Tooke's Court, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. Tom Moore describes meetijig him shortly before with Lord Byron, at the table of Rogers, and some da)s after Sheridan burst into tears on hearing that Byron had said that he (Sheridan) had written the best comedy, the best operetta, the best farce, the best address, and delivered the best oration e\-er produced in England. Sheridan's books and pictures had been sold ; and from his sordid prison he wrote a piteous letter to his kind but severely business-like friend, Whitbread, the brewer. " I have done everything," he says, " to obtain my release, but in vain ; and, Whitbread, putting all false professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you have no right to keep me here, for it is in truth your act ; if you had not forcibly withheld from me the ;£'i 2,000, in consequence of a letter from a miserable swindler, whose claim you in particular know to be a lie, I should at least have been out of the reach of this miserable insult ; for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament." • Even in the depths of this den, however. .Sheri- dan still remained sanguine ; and when Whitbread came to release him, he found him confidently calculating on the representation of Westminster, then about to become vacant by the unjust disgrace of Lord Cochran^. On his return home to his wife. Fleet Street Tributiries.') A spoNGmo liotjsti. §9 fortified perhaps by wine, Slieridan burst into a long and passionate fi-t of weeping, at the profanation, as he termed it, which his person had suffered. In Lord Eldon's youth, when he was simply plain John Scott, of the Northern Circuit, he lived with the pretty little wife with whom he had rim away, in very frugal and humble lodgings in Cursitor Street, just opposite No. 2, the chained and barred door of Sloman's sponging-house (now the Imperial Club). Here, in after life he used to boast, although his struggles had really been very few, that he used to run out into Clare Market for sixijennyworth of sprats. Mr. Disraeli, in " Henrietta Temple," an early novel written in the Theodore Hook manner, has sketched Sloman's with a remarkable verve and intimate knowledge of the place : — " In pursuance of this suggestion. Captain Armine was ushered into the best drawing-room with barred windows and treated in the most aris- tocratic manner. It was evidently the chamber reserved only for unfortunate gentlemen of the utmost distinction ; it was simply furnished with a mirror, a loo-table, and a very hard sofa. The walls were hung with old-fashioned caricatures by Bunbury ; the fire-irons were of polished brass ; over the mantelpiece was the portrait of the master of the house, which was evidently a speaking like- ness, and in which Captain Armine fancied he 1 traced no slight resemblance to his friend Mr. | Levison ; and there were also some sources of literary amusement in the room, in the shape of a Hebrew Bible and the Racing Calendar. " After walking up and down the room for an hour, meditating over the past — for it seemed hope- less to trouble himself any further with the future — Ferdinand began to feel very faint, for it may be recollected that he had not even breakfasted. So, pulling the bell-rope with such force that it fell to the ground, a funny little waiter immediately appeared, awed by the sovereign ring, and having indeed received private intelligence from the bailiff that the gentleman in the drawing-room was a regular nob. "And here, perhaps, I should remind the reader that of all the great distinctions in life none, perhaps, is more important than that which divides mankind into the two great sections of nobs and snobs. It might seem at the first glance that if there were a place in the world which should level all distinctions, it would be a debtors' pri.son ; but this would be quite an error. Almost at the very moment that Captain Armine arrived at his sor- rowful hotel, a poor devil of a tradesman, who had been arrested for fifty pounds and torn from his wife and family, had been forced to retire to the same asylum. He was introduced into what is styled the coffee-room, being a long, low, unfur- nished, sanded chamber, widi a table and benches ; and being very anxious to conununicale with some friend, in order, if possible, to effect his release, and preveilt himself from being a bankru])t, he had continued meekly to ring at intervals for the last half hour, in order that he might write and forward his letter. The waiter heard the cofiee-room bell ring, but never dreamed iif noticing it ; though the moment the signal of the private room .sounded, and sounded with so much emphasis, he rushed u])- stairs three steps at a time, and instantly ai)peared before our hero ; and all this difterence was occa- sioned by the simple circumstance that Captain Armine was a nob, and the poor tradesman a sinib. " ' I am hungry,' said Ferdinand. ' Can I get anything to eat at this ])lace ? ' '"What would you like, sir? Anything you choose, sir^mutton chop, rump steak, weal cutlet ? Do you a fowl in a quarter of an hour — roast or boiled, sir? ' " ' I have not breakfasted yet ; bring me some breakfast.' " ' Yes, sir,' said the waiter. ' Tea, sir? coffee, eggs, toast, buttered toast, sir? Like any meat, sir? ham, sir? tongue, sir? Like a devil, sir?' " ' Anything — everything ; only be rjuick.' " ' Yes, sir,' responded the waiter. ' Beg par- don, sir. No offence, I hojje ; but custom to pay here, sir. Shall be hapjiy to accommodate you, sir. Know what a gentleman is.' "'Thank you, I will not trouble you,' said Fer- dinand. ' Get me that note changed.' " ' Yes, sir,' rejilied the little waiter, bowing very low, as he disappeared. '"Gentleman in best drawing-room wants break- fast. Gentleman in best drawing-room wants change for a ten-pound note. Breakfast imme- diately for gentleman in best drawing-room. Tea, coffee, toast, liam, tongue, and a devil. A regular nob ! ' " Sloman's has been sketched both by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Thackeray. In " N'anity Fair" we find it described as the temporar)- abode of the impecunious Colonel Crawley, and Moss describes his uncomfortable past and present guests in a manner worthy of Fielding himself There is the '• Honourable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose 'mar' had just taken him out after a fortnight, jest to punisli him, ^^ho puni>hed the champagne, and had a party every night of regular tip-top swells down from the clubs at the '; West End; and Capting Ragg and the Honourable QO OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Klect Street Tributaries. Deuceace, who lived, when at home, in the Temple. There's a doctor of divinity upstairs, and five gents in the coftec-room who know a good glass of wine when they see it. There is a tably d'hote for visitors, and a dark-eyed maid in curling-papers brings in the tea." The Law Institute, that Grecian temple that has wedcred itself into the south-west end of at half-past five in the front parlour, and cards and Chancery Lane, was built in the stormy year of music afterwards." Moss's house of durance the 1S30. On the Lord ALiyor's day that year there Clifford's inn (see page ()2). great novelist describes as splendid witli dirty ' huge old gilt cornices, dingy yellow satin hangings, ' while the barred-up windows contrasted with "vast and oddlj-gilt picture-frames surrounding pieces sporting and sacred, all of which works were by the greatest masters, and fetched the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in the course of which they were sold and bought over and over again. A quick-eyed Jew boy locks and unlocks the door was a riot ; the Reform Bill was still pending, and ' it was feared might not pass, for the Lords were foaming at the mouth. The Iron Duke was de- tested as an opposer of all change, good or bad ; the new police were distasteful to the people ; above all, there was r.o Lord ]\La)'or's show, and no man in l)rass armour to look at. The rioters assembled outside No. 62, Fleet Street, were there harangued by some dirty-faced demagogue, r.nd Fleet Street Tributaries.] THE RIOT OF i8^,o. 9i ^s OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Klcct Street Tributaries. then marched westward. At Temple Bar the zealous new " Peelers " slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob ; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared apjiroval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now broke the scaffold- ing at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through tlie Bar towards Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and perhaps (delicious thought !) plunder. But at St. ALiry's, Commissioner TiLiyne and his men in the blue tail-coats received the roughs in battle array, and at the first charge the coward mob broke and fled. In 181 5, No. 68, Chancery Lane, not far from the north-east corner, was the scene of an event which terminated in the legal murder of a young and innocent girl. It was here, at Olibar Turners, a law stationer's, that Eliza Fenning lived, whom we have already mentioned when we entered Hone's shop, in Fleet Street. This poor girl, on the e\e of a hapjiy marriage, was hanged at Newgate, on the 26th of July, 1815, for attempting to poison her master and mistress. The trial took place at the Old Bailey on April 1 1 th of the same year, and Mr. Gurney conducted the prosecution before that rough, violent, unfeeling man. Sir John Sylvester {alias Black Jack), Recorder of London, who, it is said, used to call the calendar "a bill of fare." The arsenic for rats, kept in a drawer by Mr. Turner, had been mixed with the dougli of some yeast dumplings, of which all the family, including the poor servant, freely partook. There was no evidence of malice, no suspicion of any ill-will, except that Mrs. Turner had once scolded the girl for being free with one of the clerks. It was, moreover, remembered that the girl had par- ticularly pressed her mistress to let her make some yeast dumplings on the day in question. The defence was shamefully conducted. No one pressed the fact of the girl having left the dough in the kitchen for some time untended ; nor was weight laid on the fact of P^liza Fenning's own danger and sufferings. All the poor, half-paralysed, Irish girl could say was, " I am truly innocent of the whole charge — indeed I am. I liked my place. I was very comfortable." And there was pathos in those simple, stammering words, more vhan in half the self-conscious diffuseness of tragic poetiy. In her white bridal dress (the cap she had joyfully worked for herself) she went to her cruel death, still re- peating the words, " I am innocent." The funeral, at St. George the Martyr, was attended by 10,000 people. Curran used to declaim eloquently on her unhappy fate, and Mr. Charles Phillips Avrote a glowing rhapsody on this victim of legal dulness. But such mistakes not even Justice herself can correct. A city mourned over her early grave ; but the life w-as taken, and there was no redress. Gadsden, the clerk, whom she liad warned not to eat any dumpling, as it was heavy (this was thought, suspicious), afterwards became a wealthy solicitor in Bedford Row. CHAPTER VIII. FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES— (■«;;/»«,■,■,/). Clifford's Inn — Dyer's Ch.lmbers— The Settlement .^fler the Creat Fire — Pc;er Wilkins and his Flying Wives— Fetter Lane — Waller's Plot and its Victims — Praise-God Barebone and his Doings— Charles Lamb at School — Hubbes the Philosopher— A Strange Marriage — Mrs. Brownrigge— Paul Whitehead — The Moravians — Ihe KLCord OtTice and its Treasures — Ri\'al Poets. Clifford's Inn, originally a town house of the Lords Clifford, ancestors of the Earls of Cumber- land, given to them by Edward II., was first let to the students of law in the eighteenth year of King Edward III., at a time when might was too often right, and hard knocks decided legal questifens oftener than deed or statute. Harrison the regicide was in youth clerk to an attorney in Clifibrd's Inn, but when the Civil War broke out he rode off and joined the Puritan troopers. Clifford's Inn is the oldest Inn in Chancery. There was formerly, we learn from Mr. Jay, an office there, out of which were issued writs, called " Bills of Middlesex," the appointment of which office was in the gift of the senior judge of the Queen's Bench. " But what made this Inn once noted was that all the six attorneys of the Mar- shalsea Court (better known as the Palace Court) had their chambers there, as also had the satellites, who paid so much per year for using their names and looking at the nature of their practice. I should say that more misery emanated from this small spot than from any one of the most populous counties in England. The causes in this court Fleet Stren Tr'lvitnnos.l GEORGE DYER'S CHAMBERS. 93 were obliged to be tried in the city of Westminster, near the Palace, and it was a melancholy sight (except to lawyers) to observe in the court the crowd of every description of persons suing one another. The most remarkable man in the court was the extremely fat prothonotary, Mr. Hewlett, who sat under the judge or the judge's deputy, with a wig on his head like a thrush's nest, and with only one book before him, which was one of the volumes of ' Jkirns' Justice.' I knew a respectable gentleman (Mr. G. Dyer) who resided here in chambers (where he died) o\er a firm of Marshalsea attorneys. This gentleman, who wrote a history of Cambridge University and a bio- graphy of Robinson of Cambridge, had been a Bluecoat boy, went as a Grecian to Cambridge, and, after the University, visited almost every celebrated library in Europe. It often struck me what a mighty difference there was between what was going on in the one set of chambers and the other underneath. At Mr. Dyer's I have seen Sir Walter Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, Talfourd, and many other celebrated literati, ' all benefiting by hearing, which was but of little advantage to the owner.' In the lawyers' chamliers below were people wrangling, swearing, and shouting, and some, too, even fighting, the only relief to which was the eternal stamping of cognovits, bound in a book as large as a family Bible." The Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord Chelmsford both at one time practiseil in the County Court, pur- chased their situations for large sums, and after- wards sold them. " It was not a bad nursery for a young barrister, as he had an opportunity of addressing a jury. There were only four counsel who had a right to practise in this court, and if you took a first-rate advocate in there specially, you were obliged to give briefs to two of the privileged four. On the tombstone of one of the compensated Marshalsea attorneys is cut the bitterly ironical epitaph, " Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God." Coke, that great luminary of English jurispru- dence, resided at Cliftbrd's Inn for a year, and then entered himself at the Inner Temple. Coke, it will be remembered, conducted the prosecution of , both Essex and Raleigh ; in both cases he was grossly unfeeling to fallen great men. I The George Dyer mentioned by Mr. Jay was not the author of " Tlie Fleece," but that eccentric j and amiable old scholar sketched by Charles Lamb I in " The Essays of Elia." Dyer was a poet and an antiquary, and edited nearly all the 140 volumes of the Delphin Classics for Valpy. Alternately \yt-iter, Bapdst minister, anc} reporter, he even- great pleasure. I believe that ' Robinson Crusoe ' tually settled down in the monastic solitude of Clifford's Inn to compose verses, annotate Greek plays, and write for the magazines. How the worthy, simple-hearted bookworm once walked straight from Lamb's jiariour in Colebrooke Row into the New River, and was then fished out and restored with brandy-and-water. Lamb was never tired of telling. At the latter part of his life poor old Dyer became totally blind. He died in 1.S41. The hall of Clifford's Inn is memorable as being the place where Sir Matthew Hale and seventeen other wise and patient judges sat, after the (Ireat Fire of 1666, to adjudicate upon the claims of the landlords and tenants of burned houses, and jire- vent future lawsuits. The difficulty of discovering the old boundaries, under the mountains of ashes, must have been great ; and forty thick folio volumes of decisions, now preserved in the British Museum, tell of many a legal headache in Clifford's Inn. A very singular custom, and probably of great antiquity, prevails after the dinners at Clifford's Inn. The society is divided into two sections — the Principal and Aules, and the Junior or " Kentish Men." When the meal is over, tlie chairman of the Kentish Men, standing up at the Junior table, bows gravely to the Principal, takes from the liand of a servitor standing by four small rolls of bread, silently dashes them three times on the table, and then pushes them down to the further end of the Iioard, from whence they are removed. Perfect silence is preserved during this mystic ceremony, which some antiquary who sees deeper into mill- stones than his brethren thinks typifies offerings to Ceres, who first taught mankind the use of laws and originated those peculiar ornaments of civilisa- tion, thiir expounders, the lawyers. In the hall is preserved an old oak folding case, containing the forty-seven rules of the institution, now almost defaced, and probably of the reign of Henry VTII. The hall casement contains armorial glass with the bearings of Baptist Hicks, Viscount Camden, &c. Robert Pultock, the almost unknown author of that graceful story, " Peter Wilkins," from whose flying women Southey drew his poetical notion of the Glendoveer, or tlying spirit, in his wild poem of "The Curse of Kehania," lived in this Inn, paced on its terrace, and mused in its gartien. " ' Peter Wilkins ' is to my mind," says Coleridge (in his "Table Talk"), "a work of uncommon beauty, aind yet Stothard's illustrations have adihd beauties to it. If it were not fur a certain tend- ency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for Stothard's designs. They give me 94 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. and ' Peter Wilkins' could only have been written by islanders. No continentalist could have con- ceived either tale. Uavis's story is an imitation of ' Peter Wilkins,' but tliere are many beautiful things in it, especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside, she having, in his absence, plucked out all her feathers, to be like him ! It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, ejnsdcm generis, to ' Peter \Mlkins ' and 'Robinson Crusoe.' I once projected such a thing, but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La Motte Fouque might effect something ; but I should fear that neither he nor any other German could entirely understand what may be called the ' desert island ' feeling. I would try the marvellous line of ' Peter Wilkins/ if I attempted it, rather than the real fiction of ' Robinson Crusoe.'" The name of the author of " Peter Wilkins" was discovered only a few years ago. In the year 1835 Mr. Nicol, tlie printer, sold by auction a number of books and manuscripts in his possession, which had formerly belonged to the well-known publisher, Dodsley ; and in arranging them for sale, the ori- ginal agreement for the sale of the manuscript of " Peter Wilkins," by the author, " Robert Pultock, of Clifford's Lrn," to Dodsley, was discovered. From this document it appears that Mr. Pultock received twenty pounds, twelve copies of the work, and "the cuts of the first impression" — i.e., a set of proof impressions of the fanciful engravings that professed to illustrate the first edition of the work — as the price of the entire copyright. This curious document had been sold afterwards to John Wilkes, Esq., M.P. Inns of Chancery, like Clifibrd's Inn, were originally liw schools, to prepare students for the larger Inns of Court. Fetter Lane did not derive its name from the manuflicture of Newgate fetters. Stow, who died early in the reign of James I., calls it " Fewtor Lane," from the Norman -French word "fewtor" (idle person, loafer), perhaps analogous to the even less complimentary modern French word " foutre" (blackguard). Mr. Jesse, however, derives the word "fetter" from the Norman "defaytor" (defaulter), as if the lane had once been a sanctuary for skulking debtors. In either case the derivation is somewhat ignoble, but the inhabitants have long since lived it down. Stow says it was once a mere byway leading to gardens {quantum mutatus .') If men of the Bobadil and Pistol character ever did look over the garden-gates and puff their 'I'ri.iidado in the faces of res]3ectable passers-by, the lane at least regained its character later, when poets and philosophers condescended to live in it, and persons of considerable consequence rustled their silks and trailed their velvet along its narrow roadway. During the Middle Ages Fetter Lane slumbered, but it woke up on the breaking out of the Ci\'il War, and in 1643 became unpleasantly celebrated as tlie spot where Waller's plot disastrously terminated. In the second year of the war between King and Parliament, the Royal successes at Bath, Bristol, and Cornwall, as well as the partial victory at Edgehill, had roused the moderate party and chilled many lukewarm adherents of the Puritans. The distrust of Pym and his friends soon broke out into a reactionary plot, or, more probably, tivo plots, in one or both of which Waller, the poet, was dangerously mixed up. The chief conspirators were Tomkins and Challoner, the former \\"aller's brother-in-law, a gentleman living in Holborn, near the end of Fetter Lane, and a secretary to the Commissioners of the Royal Revenues ; the latter an eminent ciii/eii, w-ell known on 'Cliange. Many noblemen and Cavalier officers and gentlemen had also a whispering knowledge of the ticklish affair. The projects of these men, or of some of the more desperate, at least, were — (i) to secure the king's children ; (2) to seize Mr. Pym, Colonel Hampden, and other members of Parliament specially hostile to the king; (3) to arrest the Puritan Lord Mayor, and all the sour-faced committee of the City Militia; (4) to capture the outworks, forts, magazines, and gates of the Tower and City, and to admit 3,000 Cavaliers sent from O.xford by a pre-arranged plan; (5) to resist all payments imposed by Parlia- ment for support of the armies of the Earl of Essex. Unfortunately, just as the white ribbons were pre- paring to tie round the arms of the conspirators, to mark them on the night of action, a treacherous servant of Mr. Tomkins, of Holborn, overheard Waller's plans from behind a convenient arras, and disclosed them to the angry Parliament. In a cellar at Tomkins's the soldiers who rummaged it found a commission sent from the king by Lady Aubigny, whose husband had been recently killed at Edgehill. Tomkins and Challoner w^ere hung at the Hol- born end of Fetter Lane. On the ladder, Tomkins said : — " Gentlemen, I humbly acknowledge, in the sight of Almighty God (to whom, and to angels, and to this great assembly of people, I am now a spectacle), that my sins have deserved of Him this untimely and shameful death ; and, touching the business for which I suffer, I acknowledge that affection to a brother-in-law, and affection and gratitude to the king, whose brea^ I have eaten Fleet Street Tributaries.] THE SPEECH ON THE LADDER. 95 now about twenty-two years (I luue been servant to him when he was prince, and ever since : it will be twenty-three years in August next) — I confess these two motives drew me into this foolish business. I have often since declared to good friends that I was glad it was discovered, because it might have occasioned very ill con- sequences ; and truly I have repented having any hand in it." Challoner was equally fatal against Waller, and said, when at the same gidtly altitude as Tom- kins, ''Gentlemen, this is the happiest day that ever I had. ' I shall now, gentlemen, declare a little more of the occasion of this, as I am desired by : Mr. Peters [the famous Puritan divine, Hugh Peters] to give him and the world satisfaction in it. It came from Mr. Waller, under this notion, that if we could make a moderate party here in London, and stand betwixt and in the gap to unite the king and the Parliament, it would be a very acceptable work, for now the three kingdoms lay a-bleeding ; and unless that were done, there was no hopes to unite them," &:c. Waller had a very narrow escape, but he extri- cated himself with the most subtle skill, perhaps secretly aided by his kinsman, Cromwell. He talked of his " carnal eye," of his repentance, of the danger of letting the army try a memljcr of the House. As Lord Clarendon says : " With in- credible dissimulation he acted such a remorse of conscience, that his trial was put oft", out of Chris- tian compassion, till he could recover his under- standing." In the meantime, he bribed the Puritan preachers, and listened with humble deference to their prayers for his repentance. He bent abjectly before the House ; and evefitually, with a year's imprisonment and a fine of ^^ 10,000, obtained leave to retire to France. Having spent all his money in Paris, Waller at last obtained permission from Cromwell to return to England. " There cannot,'' says Clarendon, " be a greater evidence of the inestimable value of his (Waller's) parts, than that he lived after this in the good esteem and affection of many, the pity of most, and the re- proach and scorn of few or none." The body of the unlucky Tomkins was buried in the church- yard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. According to Peter Cunningham, that shining light of the Puritan party in the early days of Crom- well, " Praise-God Barebone," was a leather-seller in Fetter Lane, having a house, either at the same time or later, called the "Lock and Key," near Crane Court, at which place his son, a great speculator and builder, afterwards resided. Bare- bone (probably Barbon, of a French Huguenot family) was one of those gloomy religionists who looked on surplices, plum-porridge, theatres, dances, Christmas pudding, and hwmicide as eiiually de- testable, anil did his bewt to shut out all sunshine from that long, rainy, stormy day tliat is called life. He was at the liead of tliat fonatical, tender- conscienced Parliament of 1653 that Cromwell convened from among the elect in J.ondon, after untoward Sir Harry Vane had been expelled from Westminster at the muz/les of Pride's muskets. Of Barebone, also, and his crochetty, impracticable fellows, Cromwell had soon enough ; and, in despair of all aid but from his own brain and hand, he then took the title of Lord Protector, and became the most inflexible and wisest monarch we have ever had, or indeed ever hope to have. Barebone is first heard of in local history as preaching in 1 641, tog<;ther with Mr. Greene, a felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, who did not like long sermons, and thought all religion but their own hypocrisy, delighted in gaunt Bare- bone's appropriate name, and made fun of him in those ribald ballads in which they consigned red- nosed Noll, the brewer, to the reddest and hottest portion of the unknown world. At the Restoration, when all Fleet Street was ablaze with bonfires to roast the Rumps, the street boys, always on the strongest side, broke poor Barebone's windows, though he had been constable and common- councilman, and was a wealthy leather-seller to boot. But he was not looked upon as of the regicide or extreme dangerous jjarty, and a year afterwards attended a vestry-meeting unmolested. After the Great Fire he came to the Cliftbrd's Inn Appeal Court about his Fleet Street house, which had been burnt over the heads of his tenants, and eventually he rebuilt it. In Irving's "History of Dissenters" there is a curious account, from an old pamphlet entitled " New Preachers," " of Barebone, Greene the felt-maker, Spencer the horse-rubber, Quartermaine the brewer's clerk, and some few others, who are mighty sticklers in this new kind of talking trade, which many ignorant co.xcombs call preaching ; whereunto is added the last tumult in Fleet Street, raised by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlin^s of Mr. Barebone the leathe<--seller, and Mr. Greene the feltmakcr. on Siaulay last, the 19th December." The tumult alluded to i^ thus described : " A brief touch in memory of the fiery zeal of Mr. Barebone, a reverend unlearned leather-seller, who with Mr. Greene the felt-nuker were both taken preaching or prating in a conventicle 96 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. amongst a hundred persons, on Sunday, the 19th of December last, 1641." One of the pleasantest memories of Fetter Lane is that which connects it with the school- days of that delightful essay-writer, Charles Lamb. He himself, in one of Hone's chatty books, has described the school, and Bird, its master, in his own charming way. Both Lamb and his sister, says Mr. Fitzgerald, in his Memoir of Lamb, went to a school where Starkey had been usher about a year before they were not frequent ; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room ad- joining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and solemnity." He then describes the fenile — " that almost obsolete weapon now." " To make him look more formidable — if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings — Bird wore one of those flowered Lidian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering." This JASIING THE RUMPS IN FLEET STREET (FROM AN OLD PRINf) {stV pll^'f 95). came to it— a room that looked into " a discoloured, dingy garden, in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. This was close to Holborn. Queen Street, where Lamb lived when a boy, was in Holborn." Bird is described as an "eminent writer" who taught mathematics, which was no more than " cyphering." " Heaven knows what languages were taught there. I am sure that neither my sister nor myself brought any out of it but a little of our native English. It was, in fact, a humble day-school." Bird and Cook, he says, were the masters. Bird had "that peculiar mild tone — especially when he was inflicting punish- ment — which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings is in Lamb's most delightful vein. So, too, with other incidents of the school, especially " our little leaden ink-stands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks ; and the agonising benches on which we were all cramped together, and yet encouraged to attain a free hand, unattainable in this position." Lamb recollected even his first copy — " Art improves nature," and could look back with " pardonable pride to his carrying off the first premium for spelling. Long after, certainly thirty years, the school was still going on, only there was a Latin inscription over the entrance in the lane, unknown in our humbler days. ' In the evening was a short attendance of girls, to which Miss Lamb went, and she recollected the t'reatricals, Fleet Street Tributaries.] POOR "CAPTAIN STARKFA'. 97 and even Cato being performed by the young gentlemen. " She describes the cast of the charac- ters with relish. ' Martha,' by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa." The Starkey mentioned by Lamb was a poor, crippled dwarf, generally known at Newcastle in his old age as "Captain Starkey," the butt of the street-boys and the pensioner of benevolent citi- zens. In iSiS, when he had been an inmate of the Freemen's Hospital, Newcastle, for twenty-si.\ was lodging in Fetter Lane when he published his " Leviathan." He was not there, however, in 1660, at the Restoration, since we are told that on that ghirioiis occasion he was standing at the door of Salisbury House, the mansion of his kind and generous patron, the Earl of Devonshire ; and that the king, formerly Hobbes's pupil in mathematics, nodded to his old tutor. A short duodecimo skctoh of Hobbes may not be uninteresting. This scei)ti- cal philosopher, hardened into dogmatic selfishness INTERIOR OF THE MORAVIAN CHAPEL IN FETTER LANE (see fn^e lOO). years, the poor old ex-usher of the Fetter Lane school wrote " The Memoirs of his Life," a humble little pamphlet of only fourteen pages, upon which Hone good-naturedly wrote an article which educed Lamb's pleasant postscript. Starkey, it appears, had been usher, not in Lamb's own time, but in that of Mary Lamb's, who came after her brother had left. She describes Starkey running away on one occasion, being brought back by his father, and sitting the remainder of the day with his head buried in his hands, even the most mischievous boys respecting his utter desolation. That clever liut mischievous advocate of divine right and absolute power, Hobbes of Alalmesbury, 8 by exile, was the son of a Wiltshire clergyman, and he first saw the light the year of the Armada, his mother being prematurely confined during the first panic of the Spanish invasion. Hobbes, with that same want of self-respect and love of inde- pendence that actuated Gay and Thomson, re- mained his whole life a tolerated pensioner of his former pupil, the Earl of Devonshire ; bearing, no doubt, in his time many rebuffs ; for pride will be proud, and rich men require wisdom, when in their pay, to remember its place. Hobbes in his time was a friend of, and, it is said, a translator for, Lord Lacon ; and Ben Jonson, that ripe scholar, re\ ised his sound translation of " Thucydides." lie sat at 98 OLD AND NEW LONDON. tFleet Street Tributaries. the feet of Galileo and by the side of Gassendi and Descartes. While in Fetter Lane he associated with Harvey, Selden, and Cowley. He talked and wrangled with the wise men of half Europe. He had sat at Richelieu's table and been loaded with honours by Cosmo de Medici. Tlie laurels Hobbes won in the schools he lost on Parnassus. His trans- lation of Homer is tasteless and contemptible. In mathematics, too, he was dismounted by Wallis and otliers. Personally he had weaknesses.' He was afraid of apparitions, he dreaded assassination, and had a fear that Burnet and the bishops would bum him as a heretic. His philosophy, though useful, as Mr. Mill says, in expanding free thought and exciting inquiry, was based on selfishness. Nothing can be falser and more detestable than the maxims of this sage of the Restoration and of reaction. He holds the natural condition of man to be a state of war — a war of all men against all men ; might making right, and the conqueror trampling down all the rest. The civil laws, he declares, are the only standards of good or evil. The sovereign, he asserts, possesses absolute power, and is not bound by any compact with the people (who pay him as their head servant). Nothing he does can be wrong. The sovereign has the right of interpreting Scripture ; and he thinks that Christians are bound to obey the laws of an infidel king, even in matters of religion. He sneers at the belief in a future state, and hints at materialism. These monstrous doctrines, which even Charles H. would not fully sanction, were naturally battered and bombarded by Harrington, Dr. Henry More, and others. Hobbes was also vehemently attacked by that disagreeable Dr. Fell, the subject of the well-known epigram, — " I ilo not like thee, Dr. Fell ; The reason why I cannot tell ; But this I know, and know full well, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell," who rudely called Hobbes " irritabile illud et vanissimiun Mahnsbiiriense animal." The philo- sopher of Fetter Lane, who was short-sighted enough to deride the early efforts of the Royal Society, though they were founded on the strict inductive Baconian theory, seems to have been a vain man, loving paradox rather than truth, and desirous of founding, at all risks, a new school of philosophy. The Civil War had warped him ; solitary thinking had turned him into a cynical dogmatiser. He was timid as Erasmus ; and once confessed that if he was cast into a deep pit, and the devil should put down his hot cloven foot, he would take hold of it to draw himself out. This was not the metal that such men as Luther and Latimer were made of; but it served for the Aris- totle of Rochester and Buckingham. A wit of the day proposed as Hobbes's epitaph the simple words, "The philosopher's stone." Hobbes's professed rule of health was to dedicate the morning to his exercise and the afternoon to his studies. At his first rising, therefore, he walked out and climbed any hill within his reach ; or, if the weather was not dry, he fatigued himself within doors by some exercise or other, in order to per- spire, recommending that practice upon this opinion, that an old man had more moisture than heat, and therefore by such motion heat was to be acquired and moisture expelled. After this he took a comfortable breakfast, then went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, the countess, the children, and any considerable strangers, paying some short addresses to all of them. He kept these rounds till about twelve o'clock, when he had a little dinner provided for him, which he ate always by himself, without ceremony. Soon after dinner he retired to his study, and had his candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco, laid by him ; then, shutting his door, he fell to smoking, think- ing, and writing for several hours. At a small coal-shed (just one of those black bins still to be seen at the south-west end) in Fetter Lane, Dr. Johnson's friend, Levett, the poor apothe- cary, met a woman of bad character, who duped him into marriage. The whole story, Dr. Johnson used to say, was as marvellous as any page of " The Arabian Nights." Lord Macaulay, in his highly- coloured and somewhat exaggerated way, calls Levett " an old quack doctor, who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney-coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and a little copper." Levett, however, was neither a quack nor a doctor, but an honest man and an apothecary, and the list of his patients is entirely hypothetical. This simple-hearted, bene- volent man was persuaded by the proprietress of the coal-shed that she had been defrauded of her birthright by her kinsman, a man of fortune. Levett, then nearly sixty, married her ; and four months after, a writ was issued against him for debts con- tracted by his wife, and he had to lie close to avoid the gaol. Not long afterwards his amiable wife ran away from him, and, being taken up for picking pockets, was tried at the Old Bailey, where she defended herself, and was acquitted. Dr. Johnson then, touched by Levett's misfortunes arid goodness, took him to his own home at Bolt Court. It was in a house on the east side of this lane, lookng into Fleur-de-Lys Court, that (in 176;) Fleet Street Tributaries.) "THE SCALD MISERABLES." 99 Elizabeth Brownrigge, midwife to the St. Dunstan's workhouse and wife of a house-painter, cruelly ill- used her two female apprentices. Mary Jones, one of these unfortunate children, after being often beaten, rnn back to the Foundling, from whence she had been taken. On the remaining one, Mary Mitchell, tlie wrath of the avaricious hag now fell with redoubled severity. l"he poor creature was perpetually being stripped and beaten, was fre- quently chained up at night nearly naked, was scratched, and her tongue cut with scissors. It was the constant practice of Mrs. Brownrigge to fasten the girl's hands to a rope slung from a beam in the kitchen, after which this old wretch beat her four or five times in the same day with a broom or a whip. The moanings and groans of the dying child, whose wounds were mortifying from neglect, aroused the pity of a baker opposite, who sent the overseers of the parish to see the child, who was found hid in a buffet cupboard. She was taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and soon died. Brownrigge was at once arrested ; but Mrs. Brown- rigge and her son, disguising themselves in Rag Fair, fled to Wandsworth, and there took lodgings in a chandler's shop, where they were arrested. The woman was tried at the Old Bailey sessions, and found guilty of murder. Mr. Silas Told, an excellent Methodist preacher, who attended her in the condemned cell, has left a curious, simple- hearted account of her behaviour and of what he considered her repentance. She talked a great deal of religion, and stood much on the goodness of her past life. The mob raged terribly as she passed tlirough the streets on her way to Tyburn. 'J'he women especially screamed, " Tear off her hat ; let us see her face ! The devil will fetch her ! " and threw stones and mud, pitiless in their hatred. After execution her corpse was thrust into a hackney-coach and driven to Surgeons' Hall for' dissection ; the skeleton is still preserved in a London collection. The cruel hag's husband and son were sentenced to six months' imprisonment. A curious old drawing is still extant, representing Mrs. Brownrigge in the condemned cell. She wears a large, broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied under her chin, and a cape ; and her long, hard face wears a horrible smirk of resigned hypocrisy. Canning, in one of his bitter banters on Southey's republican odes, writes, — " For this act Did Browniigge swing. Harsh laws ! But time shall come When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed." In Castle Street (an ofifshoot of Fetter Lane), in 1709-10 (Queen Anne), at the house of his f;ither, a master tailor, was born a very small poet, Paul Whitehead. This poor satirist and worthless man became a Jacobite barrister and i)roteg6 of Bubb Doddington and the Prince of Wales and his Leices- ter Fields Court. Yox libelling Whig noblemen, in his poem called " Manners," Uodsley, \\'hite- head's ])ublisher, was summoned by the Ministers, who wishd-d to intimidate Pope, before the House of Lords. He appears to have been an atheist, and was a member of the infamous Hell-Fire Club, that held its obscene and blasplienious orgies at Medmenham Abbey, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir Francis j Dashwood, where every member assumed the name of an Apostle. Later in life Whitehead was bought ofT by the Ministry, and then settled down at a villa on Twickenham Common, where Hogarth used to visit him. If Whitehead is e\er remem- bered, it will be only for that splash of vitriol that Churchill threw in his face, when he wrote of the turncoat, — " M.ay I -can worse disgrace on manhood fall ? — Be born a Whitehead and ba|itised a Paul." It was this Whitehead, with Carey, the surgeon of the Prince of Wales, who got up a mock ])ro- cession, in ridicule of the Freemasons' annual caval- cade from Brooke Street to Haberdashers' Hall. The ribald procession consisted of shoe-blacks and chimney-sweeps, in carts drawn by asses, followed by a mourning-coach with six horses, each of a dif- ferent colour. The City authorities very properly refused to let them pass through Temple Bar, but they waited there and saluted the Masons. Hogarth published a print of "The Scald Miserables," which is coarse, and even dull. The Prince of \Vale.s, with more good sense than usual, dismissed Carey for this olTensive buffoonery. Whitehead bequeathed his heart to Earl Despenser, who buried it in his mausoleum with absurd ceremonial. At Pemberton Row, formerly Three-Leg Alley, Fetter Lane, lived that very indifterent poet but admirable miniature-painter of Charles II.'s time, Flatman. He was a briefless barrister of the Inner Temple, and resided with his father till the period of his death. Anthony Wood tells us that having written a scurrilous ballad against marriage, beginning, — " Like a dog with a bollle tied close to his tail, Like a Tory in a bug, or a thief in a jail," his comrades serenaded him with the song on his wedding-night. Rochester wrote some vigorous lines on Flatman, which are not unworthy even of Dryden himself, — " Not that slow drudge, in swift Pijidiric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins." OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. We find Dr. Johnson quoting these lines with approval, in a conversation in which he suggested that Pope had partly borrowed his " Dying Christian " from Idatman. " The chapel of the United Brethren, or Mora- vians, 32, Fet-ter Lane," says Smith, in his "Streets of London," "was the meeting-house of the celebrated Thomas Bradbury. During the riots which occurred on the trial of Dr. Sacheveral, this chapel was as- saulted by the mob and dismantled, the preacher himself escaping with some difficulty. The other meeting-houses that suffered on this occasion were those of Daniel Burgess, in New Court, Carey Street ; Jvlr. Earl's, in Hanover Street, Long Acre ; Mr. Taylor's, Leather Lane ; Mr. A\'right's, Great Carter Lane ; and Mr. Hamilton's, in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell. With the benches and pulpits of several of these, the mob, after conducting Dr. Sacheveral in triumph to his lodgings in the Temple, made a bonfire in the midst of Lincoln's Inn Fields, around which they danced with shouts of ' High Church and Sacheveral,' swearing, if they found Daniel Burgess, that they would roast him in his own pulpit in the midst of the pile." This Moravian chapel was one of the original eight conventicles where Divine worship was per- mitted. Baxter preached here in 1672, and Wesley and Whitefield also struck great blows at the devil in this pulpit, where Zinzendorf's followers after- wards prayed and sang their fer\-ent hymns. Count Zinzendorf, the poet, theologian, pastor, missionary, and statesman, who first gave the Moravian body a vital organisation, and who preached in Fetter Lane to the most tolerant class of all Protestants, was born in Dresden in 1700. His ancestors, originally from Austria, had been Crusaders and Counts of Zinzendorf. One of the Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest con- verts to Lutheranism, and became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith. For a long time there was a close kinsmanship maintained between Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the Moravians ; but eventually Wesley pronounced Zinzendorf as verging on anti-Moravianism, and Zinzendorf objected to Wesley's doctrine of sinless perfection. In 1722 Zinzendorf gave an asylum to two families of persecuted Moravian brothers, and built houses for them on a spot he called Hernhut (" watched of the Lord "), a marshy tract in Saxony, near the main road to Zittau. These simple and pious men were Taborites, a section of the okl Hussites, who had renounced obedience to the Pope and embraced the Vaudois doctrines. Tliis was the first formation of the Moravian sect. "On January 24th, 1672-73," says Baxter, "I began a Tuesday lecture at Mr. Turner's church, in New Street, near Fetter Lane, with great convenience and God's encouraging blessing ; but I never took a penny for it from any one." The cliapel in which Baxter officiated in Fetter Lane is that between Nevil's Court and New Street, once occupied by the Moravians, It appears to have existed, though perhaps in a difterent form, before the Great Fire of London. Turner, who was the first minister, was a very active man during the plague. He was ejected from Sunbury, in Middlesex, and continued to preach in Fetter Lane till towards the end of the reign of Charles II., when he removed to Leather Lane. Baxter carried on the Tuesday morning lecture till the 24th of August, 1682. The Church which then met in it was under the care of Mr. Lobb, whose predecessor had been Thankful Owen, president of St. John's College, Oxford. Ejected by the commissioners in 1660, he be- came a preacher in Fetter Lane. " He was," says Calamy, " a man of genteel learning and an excellent temper, admir'd for an uncommon fluency and easiness and sweetness in all his composures. After he was ejected he retired to London, where he preached privately and was much respected. He dy'd at his house in Hatton Garden, April i, 1681. He was preparing for the press, and had almost finished, a book entituled ' Imago Imaginis,' the design of which was to show that Rome Papal was an image of Rome Pagan." At No. 96, Fetter Lane is an Independent Chapel, whose first minister was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, 1660- 16S1 — troublous times for Dissenters. Goodwin had been a pastor in Holland and a favourite of Cromwell. The Protector made him one of his com- missioners for selecting preachers, and he was also President of Magdalen College, Oxford. When Cromwell became sick unto death, Goodwin boldly prophesied his recovery, and when the great man died, in spite of him, he is said to have exclaimed, "Thou hast deceived us, and we are deceived;" which is no doubt a Cavalier calumny. On the Restoration, the Oxford men showed Goodwin the door, and he retired to the seclusion of Fetter Lane. He seems to have been a good scholar and an eminent Calvinist divine, and he left on Puritan shelves five ponderous folio volumes of his works. The present chapel, says Mr. Noble, dates froni iW Street triWariesj THE kECOkt) OFEIcE AND ITS TREASURES. 101 1732, and the pastor is the Rev. John Spurgeon, the father of the eloquent Baptist preacher, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. The disgraceful disorder of the national records had long been a subject of regret among English antiquaries. There was no certainty of finding any required document among such a mass of ill-stored, dusty, unclassified bundles and rolls — many of them never opened since the day King John sullenly signed Magna Charta. We are a great conservative people, and abuses take a long time ripening before they seem to us fit for re- moval, so it happened that this evil went on several centuries before it roused the attention of Parliament, and then it was talked over and over, till in 1850 something was at last done. It was resolved to build a special storehouse for national records, where the various collections might be united under one roof, and there be arranged and classified by learned men. The first stone of a magnificent Gothic building was therefore laid by Lord Romilly on 24th May, 185 1, and slowly and surely, in the Anglo-Saxon manner, the walls grew till, in the summer of 1866, all the new Search Oflices were formally opened, to the great convenience of all students of records. The archi- tect, Sir James Fennethorne, has produced a stately building, useful for its purpose, but not very re- markable for picturesque light and shade, and tame, as all imitations of bygone ages, adapted for bygone uses, must ever be. The number of records stored within this building can only be reckoned by " hundreds of millions." These are Sir Thomas Duflus Hardy's own words. There, in cramped bundles and rolls, dusty as papyri, lie charters and official notices that once made mailed .knights tremble and proud priests shake in their sandals. Now — the magic gone, the words powerless — they lie in their several binns in strange companionship. Many years will elapse before all these records of State and Goverament documents can be classi- fied ; but the small staft" is industrious. Sir Thomas Hardy is working, and in time the Augean stable of crabbed writings will be cleansed and ranged ici order. The useful and accurate calendars of Everett Green, John Bruce, (Sec, are books of reference invaluable to historical students ; and the old chronicles published by order of Lord Romilly, so long Master of the Rolls and Keeper of the Records, are most useful mines for the Froudes and Freer«ans of the future. In time it \i hoped that all the episcopal records of England will be gathered together in this great treasure- house, and that many of our English noblemen will imitate the patriotic generosity of Lord j Shaftesbur)-, in contributing their family papers to the same Gaza in Fetter Lane. Under the concen- trated gaze of learned eyes, family papers (valueless and almost unintelligible to their original posses- sors), often reveal very curious and iniportant fiicts. Mere lumber in the manor-house, fit only for the butterman; sometimes turns to leaves of gold when submitted to such microscopic analysis. It was such a gift that led to the discovery of the Locke papers among the records of the nobleman above mentioned. The pleasant rooms of the Record Oflice are open to all applicants ; nor is any reference or troublesome preliminary form required from tliose wishing to consult Court rolls or State papers over twenty years old. Among other priceless treasures the Record Office contains the original, uninjured, Domesday Hook, comjiiled by order of William, the conqueror of England. It is written in a beautiful clerkly hand in close fine character, and is in a perfect state of preservation. It is in two volumes, the covers of which are cut with due economy from the same skin of parchment. Bound in massive board covers, and kept with religious care under glass cases, the precious volumes seem indeed likely to last to the very break of doom. It is curious to remark that London only occupies some three or four pages. There is also preserved the original Papal Bull sent to Henry VIII., with a golden seal attached to it, the work of Benvenuto Cellini. The same collection contains the celebrated Treaty of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the initial por- trait of Francis I. being beautifully illuminated and the vellum volume adorned by an exquisite gold seal, in the finest relievo, also by Benvenuto Cellini. The figures in this seal are so perfect in their finish, that even the knee-cap of one of the nymphs is shaped with the strictest anatomical accuracy. The visitor should also see the interesting Inventory Books relating to the foundation of Henry \Tl.'s chapel. The national records were formerly bundled up any how in the Rolls Chapel, the White Tower, the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, Carlton Ride in St. James's Park, the State Paper Office, and the Prerogative Will Oflice. No one knew where anything was. They were unnoticed— mere dusty lumber, in fact — useless to men or printers' devils. Hot-headed Hugh Peters, during the Commonwealth, had, in his hatred of royalty, proposed to make one great heap of them and burn them ui) in Smithfield. In that way he hoped to clear the ground of many mischievous traditions. This desperate act of Communism that tough- headed old lawyer, Pryiine, ojjposed tpot'i ^nd nail. 102 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. In 1656 he wrote a pamphlet, which he called '•A Short Demurrer against Cromwell's Project of Recallin;; the Tews from their Banishment," and breakfast with the Duke of Buckingham." " The d he is," said Otway, and, actuated either by envy, pi-ide, or disappointment, in a kind of in- in this work he very nobly epitomizes the value of 1 voluntary manner, he took up a piece of chalk which these treasures ; indeed, there could not be found a more lucid syllabus of the contents of the present Record Office than Prynne has there set forth. lay on a table which stood upon the landing-pilace, near Dryden's chamber, and wrote over the door, — " Here lives Dr)-den, a poet and a wit" HOUSE SAID TO HAVE BEEX OCCLTIED DV IlKYDEN IN FETTER LANE {srt- />il£c- 122). On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery /lad consented to speculate, and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a second work of fancy. For, on that very day of the arrest, "The Traveller" lay completed in the poet's desk. The dream of eight years, the solace and sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at last to fulfilment or e.xtinction, and the hopes and H than the novel; read the proof-sheets for his friend ; substituted here and there, in more emphatic testimony of general ap|)roval, a line of his own ; prepared a brief but hearty notice for the Cn/i,ral Revinv, which was to appear simultaneously with the poem, and, as the day of publication drew near, bade Goldsmith be of good heart. Oliver Goldsmith came first to London in 1756, 122 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. a raw Irish student, aged twenty-eight. He was just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine or Padua, had been " bear leader " to the stingy nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played the flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught of beer and a crust of bread. No city of golden pavement did London prove to those worn and dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been, tlien an apothecary's journeyman and quack doctor, next a reader of proofs for Richardson, the novelist and printer ; after that a tormented and jaded usher at a Peckham school ; last, and worst of all, a hack writer of articles for Griffith's Mo/ithly Review, then being opposed by Smollett in a rival publica- tion. In Green Arbour Court Goldsmith spent the roughest part of the toilsome years before- he became known to the world. There he formed an acquaintance with Johnson and his set, and wrote essays for Smollett's British Magazitie. Wine Office Court is supposed to have derived its name from an office where licenses to sell wine were formerly issued. " In this court," says Mr. Noble, " once flourished a fig tree, planted a century ago by the Vicar of St. Bride's, who resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if not common, to Christianity, at No. 12. It was a slip from another e.xile of a tree, formerly flourish- ing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the sign of the 'Fig Tree,' in Fleet Street. This tree was struck by lightning in 1820, but slips from the growing stump were planted in 1822, in various parts of England." The old-fashioned and changeless character of the " Cheese," in whose low-roofed and sanded rooms Goldsmith and Johnson have so often hung up their cocked hats and sat down facing «ach other to a snug dinner, not unattended with punch, has been capitally sketched by a modem essayist, who possesses a thorough knowledge of the physi- ology of London. In an admirable paper entitled " Brain Street," Mr. George Augustus Sala thus describes Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese":— "The vast establishments," says Mr. Sala, "of Messrs. Pewter & Antimony, typefounders (Alder- man Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46); of Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge & Treecalf, bookbinders ; with the smaller in- dustries of Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack, printing- roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in a cask. The ' Cheese ' is at the Brain Street end. It is a litde lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of a high- shouldered man with his hands in his pockets. It is full of holes anil corners and cupboards and sharp turnings ; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at the ' Cheese ' are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity ; and the guests and the waiters are the oldest of familiars. Yet the waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure when you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter's soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury odour of steaks, and ' muts ' to follow ; of cheese-bubbling in '.iny tins — the ' specialty ' of the house ; of floury potatoes and fragrant green peas ; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer ; of e.xtra-creaming stout and 'goes' of Cork and 'rack,' by which is meant gin ; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every sense ? To be compelled to run to and fro with these succulent viands from noon to late at night, without being able to spare time to consume them in comfort — ^where do waiters dine, and when, and how? — to be continually taking other people's money only for the purpose of handing it to other people — are not these grievances sufficient to cross- grain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter ? Somebody is always in a passion at the ' Cheese : ' either a customer, because there is not fat enough on his ' point '-steak, or because there is too much bone in his mutton-chop ; or else the waiter is wrath with the cook ; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes, there is a barmaid at the ' Cheese,' mewed up in a box not much bigger than a birdcage, surrounded by groves of lemons, ' ones ' of cheese, punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a punch-ladle, having a William-the- Third guinea soldered in the bowl. " Let it be noted in candour that Law finds its way to the ' Cheese ' as well as Literature ; but the Law is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and, conse- quently, harmless order. Literary men who have been called to the bar, but do not practise ; briefless young barristers, who do not object to mingling with newspaper men ; with a sprinkling of retired solicitors (amazing dogs these for old port-wine ; the landlord has some of the same bin which Fleet Street Tributaries.] SHOE LANE AND SHAKESPEARE. "3 served as Hippocrene to Judge Blackstone when he wrote his 'Commentaries') — these make up the legal element of the ' Cheese.' Sharp attorneys in practice are not popular there. There is a legend that a process-server once came in at a back door to serve a writ ; but being detected by a waiter, was skilfully edged by that wary retainer into Wine Bottle Court, right past the person on whom he was desirous to inflict the ' Victoria, by the grace, &c.' Once in the court, he was set upon by a mob of inky-faced boys just released from the works of Messrs. Ball, Roller, & Scraper, machine printers^ and by the skin of his teeth only escaped being converted into ' pie.' " Mr. William Sawyer has also written a very admirable sketch of the " Cheese " and its old- fashioned, conservati\e ways, which we cannot resist quoting : — " We are a close, conservative, inflexible body — we, the regular frequenters of the ' Cheddar,' " says Mr. Sawyer. " No new-fangled notions, new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have our history, our traditions, and our observances, all sacred and inviolable. Look around ! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or effeminately luxurious here. A small room with heavily-timbered windows. A low planked ceiling. A huge, projecting fire-place, with a great copper boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which might have roused even old John Willett, of the ' Maypole,' to admiration. High, stiff-backed, inflexible ' settles,' hard and grainy in texture, box oft" the guests, half-a-dozen each to a table. Sawdust covers the floor, giving forth that peculiar faint odour which the French avoid by the use of the vine sawdust with its pleasant aroma. The only ornament in which we indulge is a solitary picture over the mantelpiece, a full-length of a now departed waiter, whom in the long past we caused to be paiiited, by subscription of the whole room, to commemorate his virtues and our esteem. He is depicted in the scene of his triumphs— in the act of giving change to a customer. We sit bolt up- right round our tables, waiting, but not impatient. A time-honoured solemnity is about to be ob- served, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to precipitate it ? There are men in this room who have dined here every day for a quarter of a century — aye, the whisper goes that one man did it even on his wedding-day ! In all that time the more staid and well-regulated among us have observed a steady regularity of feeding. Five days in the week we have our ' Rotherham steak ' — that mystery of mysteries — or our ' chop and choj) to follow,' with the indispensable wedge of Cheddar — unless it is preferred stewed or toasted — and on Saturday decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the world- renowned 'Cheddar' pudding. It is of this latter luxury that we are now assembled to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony and observance. As we sit, like pensioners in hall, the silence is broken only by a strange sound, as of a hardly human voice, muttering cabalistic words, ' Ullo mul lum de loodle wumble jum ! ' it cries, and we know that chops and potatoes are being ordered for some benighted outsider, ignorant of the fact that it is pudding-day." CHATTER XI. FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES- .SHOE LANE. The First Lucifers— Perkins' Sleam Gun— A Link between Shakespeare and Shoe Lane— Florio and his Labours— " Cogers' Hall" — Famous "Cogers"— A Saturday Night's Deb.ate— Gunpowder Allej — Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet— "To Althe.l, from Prison"— Lilly the Astrologer, and his Knaveries— A Search for Treasure with Davy Ramsay— Hogarth in Harp AUej — The " Society of Sign Painters"— Hudson, the Song Writer— "Jack Robinson "—The Bishop's Residence- Bangor House— A Strange Story of Unstamped Newspapers— Chatterton's Death — Curious Legend of his Burial— A well-timed Joke. At the east corner of Peterborough Court (says Mr. Timbs) was one of the earliest shops for the instantaneous light apparatus, " Hertner's Eupy- rion" (phosphorus and oxymuriate matches, to be dipped in sulphuric acid and asbestos), tlie costly predecessor of the lucifer match. Nearly opposite were the works of Jacob Perkins, the engineer of the steam gun exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery, Strand, antl wliith the Duke of Wellington truly foretold woukl never be advan- tageously employed in l)attle. I One golden thread of association links Shake- speare to Shoe Lane. Slight and frail is the thread, yet it has a double strand. In this narrow side- I aisle of Fleet Street, in 1624, lived John Florio, ! the compiler of our first Italian dictionary. Now 1*4 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. it is more than probable that our great poet knew this industrious ItaHan, as we shall presently show. Florio was a Waldensian teacher, no doubt driven to England by religious persecution. He taught Erench and Italian with success at Oxford, and finally was appointed tutor to that generous- minded, hopeful, and unfortunate Prince Henry, son of James L Florio's " Worlde of Wordes" (a most copious ancj exact dictionary in Italian and English) was printed in 1598, and published by Arnold Hatfield for Edward Church, and "sold at his shop over against the north door of Paul's Church." It is dedicated to " The Right Honour- able Patrons of Virtue, Patterns of Honour, Roger Earle of Rutland, Henrie Earle of Southampton, and Lucie Countess of Bedford." In the dedica- tion, worthy of the fantastic author of " Euphues " himself, the author says: — "My hope springs out of three stems — your Honours' natural! benig- nitie; your, able emploiment of such servitours ; and the towardly like-lie-hood of this springall to do you honest service. The first, to vouchsafe all ; the second, to accept this ; the third, to applie it selfe to the first and second. Of the first, your birth, your place, and your custome ; of the second, your studies, your conceits, and your exercise ; of the thirde, my endeavours, my pro- ceedings, and my project giues assurance. Your birth, highly noble, more than gentle ; your place, above others, as in degree, so in height of bountie, and other vertues ; your custome, never wearie of well doing ; your studies much in all, most in Italian excellence ; your conceits, by understanding others to worke above them in your owne ; your exercise, to reade what the world's best writers have written, and to speake as they write. My endeavour, to apprehend the best, if not all ; my proceedings, to impart my best, first to your Honours, then to all that emploie me ; my proiect in this volume to comprehend the best and all, in truth, I acknowledge an entyre debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all, yea, of more than I know or can, to your bounteous lordship, most noble, most vertuous, and most Honorable Earle of Southampton, in whose paie and patronage I haue liued some yeeres ; to whom I owe and vowe the yeeres I haue to live Good parts imparted are not empaired ; your springs are first to serue yourself, yet may yeelde your neigh- bours sweete water ; your taper is to light you first, and yet it may light your neighbour's candle. .... Accepting, therefore, of the childe, I hope your Honors' wish as well to the Father, who to your Honors' all deuoted wisheth meede of your merits, renowne of your vertues, and health of your persons, humblie with gracious leave kissing your thrice-honored hands, protesteth to continue euer your Honors' most humble and boimden in true.seruice, John Florid." And now to connect Florio with Shakespeare. The industrious Savoyard, besides his dictionary — of great use at a time when the tour to Italy was a necessary completion of a rich gallant's educa- tion — tr.-mslated the essays of that delightful old Gascon egotist, Montaigne. Now in a copy of Florio's " Montaigne " there was found some years ago one of the very few genuine Shakespeare signatures. Moreover, as Florio speaks of the Earl of Southampton as his steady patron, we may fairly presume that the great poet, who must have been constantly at Southampton's house, often met there the old Italian master. May not the bard in those conversations have perhaps gathered some hints for the details of Cyinbdiiw, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and -had his attention turned by the old scholar to fresh chapters of Italian story? No chronicle of Shoe Lane would be complete without some mention of the " Cogers' Discussion Hall," formerly at No. 10. This useful debating society — a great resort for local politicians — was founded by Mr. Daniel Mason as long ago as 1755, and among its most eminent members it glories in the names of John Wilkes, Judge Keogh, Daniel O'Connell, and the eloquent Curran. The word " Coger " does not imply codger, or a drinker of cogs, but comes from eogito, to cogitate. The Grand, Vice-Grand, and secretary were elected on the night of every 14th of June by show of hands. The room was open to strangers, but the members had the right to speak first. The society was Republican in the best sense, for side by side with master tradesmen, shopmen, and mechanics, re- porters and young barristers gravely sipped their grog, and abstractedly emitted wreathing columns of tobacco-smoke from their pipes. Mr. J. Par- kinson has sketched the little parliament very pleasantly in the columns of a contemporary. " A long low room," says the writer, " like the saloon of a large steamer, ^\'ainscoat dimmed and ornaments tarnished by tobacco-smoke and the lingering dews of steaming compounds. A room with large niches at each end, like shrines for full- grown saints, one niche containing ' My Grand ' in a framework of shabby gold, the other ' My Grand's Deputy' in a bordering more substantial. More than one hundred listeners are wating patiently for My Grand's utterances this Saturday night, and are whiling away the time philosophically with bibulous and nicotian refreshment. The narrow tables of t'leet Street Tributaries."] THE "COGERS." the long room are filled with students and per- formers, and quite a little crowd is congregated at the door and in a room adjacent until places can be found for them in the presence-chamber. ' Established 1755 ' >s inscribed on the ornamental signboard above us, and 'Instituted 1756' on another signboard near. Dingy portraits of de- parted Grands and Deputies decorate the walls. Punctually at nine My Grand opens the proceed- ings amid profound silence. The deputy buries himself in his newspaper, and maintains as pro- found a calm as the Speaker ' in another place.' The most perfect order is preserved. The Speaker or deputy, who seems to know all about it, rolls silently in his chair : he is a fat dark man, with a small and rather sleepy eye, such as I have seen come to the surface and wink lazily at the fashion- able people clustered round a certain tank in the Zoological Gardens. He re-folds his newspaper from time to time until deep in the advertisements. The Avaiters silently remove empty tumblers and tankards, and replace them full. But My Grand comrriands profound attention from the room, and a neighbour, who afterwards proved a per- fect Boanerges in debate, whispered to us con- cerning his vast attainments and high literary position. "This chieftain of the Thoughtful Men is, we learn, the leading contributor to a newspaper of large circulation, and, under his signature of ' Locksley Hall,' rouses the sons of toil to a sense of the dignity and rights of labour, and exposes the profligacy and corruption of the rich to the extent of a column and a quarter every week. A shrewd, hard-headed man of business, with a perfect know- ledge of what he had to do, and with a humorous twinkle of the eye. My Grand went steadily through his work, and gave the Thoughtful Men his epitome of the week's intelligence. It seemed clear that the Cogers had either not read the news- papers, or liked to be told what they already knew. They listened with every token of interest to facts which had been published for days, and it seemed difficult to understand how a debate could be car- ried on when the text admitted so little dispute. But we sadly underrated the capacity of the orators near us. The sound of My Grand's last sentence had not died out when a fresh-coloured, rather aristocratic-looking elderly man, whose white hair was carefully combed and smoothed, and whose appearance and manner suggested a very different arena to the one he waged battle in now, claimed the attention of the Thoughtful ones. Addressing ' Mee Grand ' in the rich and unctuous tones which a Scotchman and Englishman might try for in vain, this orator proceeded, with every profession of respect, to contradict most of the cliicf's statements,, to ridicule his logic, and to compliment him with much irony on his overwhelming goodness to the society 'to which I have the honour to belong. Full of that hard northern logic ' (much emphasis on ' northern,' which was warmly ac(:ei)tc(l as a hit by the room) — 'that hard northern logic which demonstrates everything to its own satisfaction ; abounding in that talent which makes you, sir, a leader in politics, a guide in theology, and generally an instructor of the people ; yet even you, sir, are perhaps, if I may say so, somewhat deficient in the lighter graces of patlios and humour. Your speech, sir, has commanded the attention of the room. Its close accuracy of style, its exactitude of expression, its consistent argument, and its generally transcendant ability will exercise, I doubt not, an influence which will extend far beyond this chamber, filled as this chamber is by gentlemen of intellect and education, men of the time, who both think and feel, and who make their feelings and their thoughts felt by others. Still, sir,' and the orator smiles the smile of ineftable superiority, ' grateful as the members of the society you have so kindly alluded to ought to be for your counte- nance and patronage, it needed not' (turning to the Thoughtful Men generally, with a sarcastic smile) — ' it needed not even Mee Grand's enco- miums to endear this society to its people, and to strengthen their belief in its eflJicacy in time of trouble, its power to help, to relieve, and to assuage. No, Mee Grand, an authoritee whose dictum even you will accept without dispute — mee Lord Macaulee — that great historian whose un- dying pages record those struggles and trials of constitutionalism in which the Cogers have borne no mean part — me Lord Macaulee mentions, with a respect and reverence not exceeded by Mee Grand's utterances of to-night' (more smiles of mock humility to the room) ' that great association which claims me as an unworthy son. AVc could, therefore, have dispensed with the recognition given us by Mee Grand ; we could afford to wait our time until the nations of the earth are fused by one common wish for each other's benefit, when the principles of Cogerism are spread over the civilised world, when justice reigns supreme, and loving-kindness takes the ])lace of jealousy and hate.' We looked round the room while these fervid words were being triumphantly rolled forth, and were struck with the calm impassiveness of the listeners. There seemed to be no partisanship either for the speaker or the Grand. Once, when the former was more than usually emphatic in his 126 OLD AND NEW LONDON. (Fleet Street Trilmtaries. denunciations, a tall pale man, with a Shakespeare forehead, rose suddenly, with a determined air, as if about to fiercely interrupt ; but it turned out he only wanted to catch the waiter's eye, and this done, he pointed silently to his empty glass, and remarked, in a hoarse whisper, ' Without sugar, as before.' " Gunpowder Alley, a side-twig of Shoe Lane, leads us to the death-bed of an unhappy poet, poor Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier, who, dying here only to waste his fortune in Royalist plots. He served in the French army, raised a regiment for Louis XIIL, and was left for dead at Dunkirk. On his return to England, he found Lucy Sache- verell — his " Lucretia," the lady of his love — married, his death having been reported. All went ill. He was again imprisoned, grew penniless, had to borrow, and fell into a consumption from despair for love and loyalty. " Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood, " he grew very COCEIts' IIAI.L [ic-L-/,t^L- 124). two years before the " blessed " Restoration, in a very mean lodging, was buried at the west end of St. Bride's Churcli. The son of a knight, and brought up at Oxford, Anthony AVood describes the gallant and hopeful lad at si.xteen, when pre- sented at the Court of Charles L, as " the most amiable and beautiful youth that eye ever beheld. A person, also, of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but specially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex." Presenting a daring petition from Kent in favour of the king, the Cavalier poet was thrown into prison by the Long Parliament, and was released melancholy, which at length brought him into a consumption ; became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants." There is a doubt, how- ever, as to whether Lovelace died in such abject poverty, poor, dependent, and unhappy as he might have been. Lovelace's verse is often strained, affected, and wanting in judgment ; but at times he mounts a bright-winged Pegasus, and with plume and feather flying, tosses his hand up, gay and chivalrous as Rupert's bravest. His verses to Lucy Fleet Street Tril>vit.ines 1 LOVELACE IN DURANCE. tJ7 i,OVELACE IN FKlbON ^« /.;^r 12Sj. 12* OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. Sacheverell, on leaving her for the French camp, are worthy of Montrose himself. The last two lines — " I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not honour more " — contain the thirty-nine articles of a soldier's faith. And what Wildrake could have sung in the Gate House or the Compter more gaily of liberty than Lovelace, when he wrote, — " Slone walls do not a prison make. Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a liermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above. Enjoy such liberty " ? Whenever we read the verse that begins,—' ■ " When love, with unconfined wings, Hovers within my gates. And my divine Althea brings. To whisper at my grates," the scene rises before us — we see a fair pale face, with its aureole of golden hair gleaming between the rusty bars of the prison door, and the worn visage of the wounded Cavalier turning towards it as the flower turns to the sun. And surely Master Wildrake himself, with his glass of sack halfway to his mouth, never put it down to sing a finer Royalist stave than Lovelace's " To Althea, from Prison," — " When, linnet-like, confined, I With shriller note shall sing The mercy, sweetness, majesty, And glories of my king ; When I sliall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Th' enlarged winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty." In the Cromwell times there resided in Gun- powder Alley, probably to the scorn of poor dying Lovelace, that remarkable cheat and early medium, Lilly the astrologer, the Sidrophel of " Hudibras." This rascal, who supplied the King and Parliament alternately with equally veracious predictions, was in youth apprenticed to a mantua-maker in the Strand, and on his master's death married his widow. Lilly studied astrology under one Evans, an ex-clergyman, who told fortunes in Gunpowder Alley. Besotted by the perusal of Cornelius Agrippa and other such trash, Lilly, found fools plenty, and the stars, though potent in their spheres, unable to contradict his lies. This artful cheat was consulted as to the most propitious day and hour for Charles's escape from Carisbrook, and was even sent for by the Puritan generals to encourage their men before Colchester. Lilly was a spy of the Parlia- ment, yet at the Restoration professed to disclose the fact that Cornet Joyce had beheaded Charles. Whenever his predictions or his divining-rod failed, he always attributed his failures, as the modern spiritualists, the successors of the old wizards, still conveniently do, to want of faith in the spectators. By means of his own shrewdness, rather than by stellar influence, Lilly obtained many useful friends, among whom we may specially particularise the King of Sweden, Lenthal the Puritan Speaker, Bulstrode, Whitelocke (Cromwell's Minister), and the learned but credulous Elias Ashmole. Lilly's Almanac, the predecessor of Moore's and Zadkiel's, was car- ried on by him for six-and-thirty years. He claimed to be a special protege of an angel called Sal- monreus, and to have a more than bowing acquaint- ance with Salmael and ALilchidael, the gtiardian angels of England. Among his works are his auto- biography, and his " Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late King of England." The rest of his effusions are pretentious, mystical, muddle-headed rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as " The White King's Prophecy," " Supernatural Light," " The Starry Messenger," and " Annus Tenebrosus, or the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son, a tailor, whom he named Merlin, junior. The credulity of the atheistical times of Charles H. is only equalled by that of our own day. Lilly himself, in his amusing, half-knavish auto- biography, has described his first introduction to the Welsh astrologer of Gunpowder Alley : — " It happened," he says, "on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of peace's clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar — nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to me then was strange ; one speech begot another, till, at last, he said he could bring me acquainted with one Evans, in Gunpowder Alley, who had formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an ex- cellent wise man, and studied the black art. The same week after we went to see ]\Ir. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed, if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he then lay. He roused up himself, and after some compliments he was content to instruct me in astrology. I attended his best opportunities for seven or eight weeks, in which time I could set a figure perfectly. Books he had not any, except Haly, ' De Judiciis Astro- rum,' and Orriganus's ' Ephemerides ; ' so that as often as I entered his house I thoucrht I was in Fleet Street Tributaries.! HOGARTH IN HARP ALT.F.Y. 129 the wldemess. Now, something of the man. He was by birth a Welshman, a master of arts, and in sacred orders. He had formerly had a cure of souls in Staffordshire, but now was come to try his fortunes at London, being in a manner enforced to fly, for some offences very scandalous committed by him in those parts where he had lately lived ; for he gave judgment upon things lost, the only shame of astrology. He was the most saturnine person my eye ever beheld, either before I i)rac- tised or since ; of a middle stature, broad fore- head, beetle-browed, thick shoulders, flat-nosed, full lips, do^vn-looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay-footed. To give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal ; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments ; was much addicted to de- bauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome ; seldom without a black eye or one mischief or other. This is the same Evans who made so many antimonial cups, upon the sale whereof he chiefly subsisted. He understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue not all ; he had some arts above and beyond astrology, for he was well versed in the nature of spirits, and had many times used the circular way of invocating, as in the time of our familiarity he told me." One of Lilly's most impudent attempts to avail himself of demoniacal assistance was when he dug for treasure (like Scott's Dousterswivel) with David Ramsay (Scott again), one stormy night, in the cloisters at Westminster. " Davy Ramsay," says the arch rogue, " his majesty's clockmaker, had been informed that there was a great quantity of treasure buried in the cloisters of ^\'estminster Abbey ; he acquaints Dean Williams therewith, who was also then Bishop of Lincoln ; the dean gave him liberty to search after it, with this proviso, that if any was discovered his church should have a share of it. Davy Ramsay finds out one John Scott,* who pretended the use of the Mosaical rods, to assist him therein. I was desired to join with him, unto which I consented. One winter's night Davy Ramsay,+ with several gentlemen, myself, and Scott, entered the cloisters ; upon the west side of the cloisters the rods turned one over another, an argument that the treasure was there. The labourers digged at least six feet deep, and then we met with a coffin, but in regard it was not heavy, we did not open, which we after- * "This Scott lived in Pudding Lane, and had some time been a page (or such-like) to the Lord Norris." + " Davy Ramsay brought a half-quartern sack to put the treasure in." wards much repented. From the cloisters we went into the abbey church, where upon a sudden (there being no wind when we began) so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a wind did rise, that we verily believed the west-end of the church would have fallen upon us ; our rods would not move at all ; the candles and torches, all but one, were extinguished, or burned very dimly. John Scott, my partner, was amazed, looked pale, knew not what to think or do, until I gave directions and command to dismiss the demons, which when done all was quiet again, and each man returned unto his lodging late, about twelve o'clock at night. I could never since be induced to join with any in such-like actions. " The true miscarriage of the business was by reason of so many people being present at the operation, for there was about thirty — some laugh- ing, others deriding us ; so that if we had not dismissed the demons, I believe most part of the abbey church had been blown down. Secrecy and intelligent operators, with a strong confidence and knowledge of what they are doing, are best for this work." Li the last century, when every shop had its sign and London streets were so many out-of- door picture-galleries, a Dutchman named Vander- trout opened a manufiictory of these pictorial advertisements in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane, a dirty passage now laid open to the sun and air on tlie east side of the new transverse street running from Ludgate Hill to Holborn. In riilicule of the spurious black, treacly old masters then profusely offered for sale by the picture-dealers of the day, Hogarth and Bonnell Thornton opened an exhi- bition of shop-signs. In Nicholls and Stevens' " Life of Hogarth" there is a full and racy account of this sarcastic exhibition : — "At the entrance of the large passage-room was written, 'N.B. That the merit of the modern masters may be fairly examined into, it has been thought proper to place some admired works of the most eminent old masters \\\ this room, and along the passage through the yard.' Among these are ' A Barge ' in still life, by Vander- trout. He cannot be properly called an F.nglisii artist ; but not being sufticiently encouraged in his own country, he left Holland with ^\■illiam the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp Alley. An original halflength of Camden, the great historian and antiquary, in his lierald's coat ; by Vandertrout. As this artist was originally colour-grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there arc some of that great master's touches in this piece. ' Nobody, alias Somebody,' a cha- racter. (The figure of an officer, all head, arms, 130 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. legs, and thighs. This piece has a very odd eftect, bt-ing so droUy executed that you do not miss the body.) ' Somebody, alias Nobody,' a caricature, its companion ; both these by Hagarty. (A rosy figure, with a Httle head and a huge body, whose belly sways over almost quite down to his shoe-buckles. By the staff in his hand, it appears to be intended to represent a constable. It might else have been intended for an eminent justice of peace.) ' A Perspective View of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution;' and ' The True Robin Hood Society, a Conversation or Lectures on Elocution,' its com- panion ; these two by Banisley. (These two strike r.t a famous lecturer on elocution and the reverend projector of a rlietorical academy, are admirably conceived and executed, and — the latter more espe- cially — almost worthy the hand of Hogarth. They are full of a variety of droll figures, and seem, in- deed, to be the work of a great master struggling ta suppress his superiority of genius, and endeavouring to paint do'u'ii to the common style and manner of sign-painting.) . " At the entrance to the grand room : — ' The Society of Sign Painters take this opportunity of refuting a most malicious suggestion that their exhibition is designed as a ridicule on the exhi- bitions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., and of the artists. They intend theirs only as an appendix or (in the style of painters) a companion to the other. There is nothing in their collection which will be understood by any candid person as a reflection on anybod}-, or any body of men. They are not in the least prompted by any mean jealousy to depreciate the merit of their brother artists. Animated by the same public spirit, their sole view is to convince foreigners, as well as their own blinded countrymen, that how- ever inferior this nation may be unjustly deemed in other branches of the pohte arts, the palm for sign-painting must be ceded to us, the Dutch them- selves not excepted.' Projected in 1762 by Mr. Bonnel Thornton, of festive memory ; but I am in- formed that he contributed no otherwise towards this display than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary', he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note. — These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the " Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written ' The Zarr,' and under the other ' The Empress Quean.' They were lolling their tongues out at each other ; and over their heads tan a wooden label, inscribed, ' The present state of Europe.' " Li 1762 was published, in quarto, undated, ' A Catalogue of the Original Paintings, Busts, and Carved Figures, &c. &c., now Exhibiting by the Society of Sign-painters, at the Large Room, the upper end of Bow Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite the Playhouse.' " At 98, Shoe Lane lived, now some fifty years ago, a tobacconist named Hudson, a great humorist, a fellow of infinite fancy, and the writer of half the comic songs that once amused festive London. Hudson afterwards, we believe, kept the " Kean's Head " tavern, in Russell Court, Drury Lane, and about 1830 had a shop of some kind or other in Museum Street, Bloomsbury. Hudson was one of those professional song-writers and vocalists who used to be engaged to sing at such supper-rooms and theatrical houses as Offley's, in Henrietta Street (north-west end), Covent Garden ; the " Coal Hole," in the Strand ; and the " Cider Cellars," Maiden Lane. Sitting among the company, Hudson used to get up at the call of the chairman and "chant" one of his lively and really witty songs. The plat- form belongs to " Evans's " .and a later period. Hudson was at his best long after Captain Morris's day, and at the time when Moore's melodies were popular. Many of the melodies Hudson parodied very happily, and with considerable tact and taste. Many of Hudson's songs, such as "Jack Robinson" (infinitely funnier than most of Dibdin's), became coined into catch-words and street sayings of the day. " Before you could say Jack Robinson" is a phrase, still cun-ent, derived from this highly droll song. The verse in which Jack Robinson's " engaged " apologises for her infidelity is as good as anything that James Smith e\er wrote. To the returned sailor, — " Says the lady, says she, 'I've changed my .state.' ' Why, you don't mean,' says Jack, ' that you've got a mate ? You know you promised me.' .Says she, ' I couldn't wait. For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson. And somebody one day came to me and said That somebody else had somewhere read, In some newspaper, that you was somewhere dead.' — ' I've not been dead at all,' says Jnck Robinson." Another song, " The Spider and the Fly," is still often sung ; and " Going to Coronation " is by no means forgotten in Yorkshire. " There was a Man in the West Countrie" figures in most current collections of songs. Hudson particularly excelled in stage-Irishman songs, which were then popular ; and some of these, particularly one that ends with Fleet Street Tributaries.] BANGOR HOUSE. 131 the refrain, " My brogue and my blarney and bothering ways," have real humour in them. Many of these Irish songs were written for and sung* by the late Mr. Fitzwilliam, the comedian, as others of Hudson's songs were by Mr. Rayner. Collectors of comic ditties will not readily forget " Walker, the Twopenny Postman," or "The Dogs'-meat Man" — rough caricatures of low life, unstained by the vulgarity of many of the modern music-hall ditties. In the motto to one of his collections of poems, Hudson borrows {torn Churchill an excuse for the rough, humorous effusions that he scattered broad- cast over the town, — " Wlien the mad fit comes on, I seize the pen, Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down ; Rough as they run, discharge them on the town. Hence rude, unfinished brats, before tlieir time, Are born into this idle workl of rhyme ; And the poor slattern muse is brought to bed, With all her im|)erfections on her head." We subjoin a very good specimen of Hudson's songs, from his once vefy popular " Coronation of William and Adelaide ''( 1830), which, we think, will be allowed to fully justify our praise of the author : — " And when we got to town, quite tired, The bells all rung, the guns they fired. The people looking all bemired, In one conglomeration. Soldiers red, policemen blue, Horse-guards, foot-guards, and blackguards too, Beef-eaters, dukes, and Lord knows who, To see the coronation. While Dolly bridled up, so proud. At us the people lauglied aloud ; Dobbin stood in thickest crowd, Wi' quiet resignation. To move again he warn't inclined ; ' Here's a chap ! ' says one behind, ' He's brought an old horse, lame and blind, To see the coronation.' Dolly cried, ' Oh ! dear, oh ! dear, 1 wish I never had come here. To suffer every jibe and jeer, • In such a situation.' While so busy, she and I To get a little ease did try. By goles ! the king and queen went by. And all the coronation. I struggled hard, and Dolly cried ; And tho' to help myself I tried. We both were carried with the tide. Against our inclination. ' The reign's begun !' folks cried ; ' 'tis true ;' * Sure^' said Dolly, * I think so too ; * The rain's begun, for I'm wet thro'. All through the coronation.' We bade good-bye to Lunnun town ; The king and queen they gain'd a crown ; Dolly spoilt her bran-new gown. To her mortification. I'll drink our king and queen wi' glee, In home-brewed ale, ami so will she ; But Dull and 1 ne'er want to see Another coronation." Our English bishops, who had not the same taste as the Cistercians in selecting pleasant places for their habitations, seem during the Middle Ages to have much affected the neighbourhood of Fleet Street. Ely Place still marks the residence of one rich prelate. In Cliichester Rents we have already met with the humble successors of the nctmaker of Galilee. In a siding on the north-west side of Shoe Lane the Bisliops of liangor lived, with their spluttering and choleric Welsh retinue, as early as 1378. Recent improvements have laid open the miserable " close " called Bangor Court, that once glowed with the reflections of scarlet hoods and jewelled copes; and a schoolhouse of bastard Tudor ai-chitecture, \vith sham turrets and flimsy mullioned windows, now occupies the site of the proud Christian prelate's palace. Bishop Dolben, who died in 1633 (Charles I.), was the last Welsh bishop who deigned to reside in a neighbourhood from which wealth and fashion was fast ebbing. Brayley says that a part of the old episcopal garden, where the ecclesiastical subjects of centuries had been discussed by shaven men and frocked scholars, still existed in 1759 (George II.); and, indeed, as Mr. Jesse records, even as late as 1828 (George IV.) a portion of the old mansion, once redolent with the stupefying incense of the semi- pagan Church, still lingered. Bangor House, accord- ing to Mr. J. T. Smith, is mentioned in the patent rolls as early as Edward 1 1 1. The lawyers' barbarous dog-Latin of the old-deed describe, "unum messuag, unum placeam terrte, ac unam gardniam, cum aliis edificis," in Shoe Lane, London. In 1647 (Charles I.) Sir John Birkstead purchased of the Parliamentary tmstees the bishop's lands, that had jirobably been confiscated, to build streets upon the site. But Sir John went on paving the old place, and never built at all. Cromwell's Act of 1657, to check the increase of London, entailed a special exemption in his favour. At the Restoration, the land returned to its Welsh bishop ; but it had degenerated— the palace was divided into several residences, and mean buildings sprang up like fungi around it. A drawing of Malcolm's, early in the century, shows us its two Tudor windows. Latterly it became divided into WTCtched rooms, and two or three hundred poor people, chiefly Irish, herded 13' OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributaries. in them. The house was entirely pulled down in a time to elude their vigilance ; and in order_ to the autumn of 1828. ' jirevent the seizure of his paper, he resorted to' an Mr. Grant, that veteran of the press, tells a j expedient which was equally ingenious and laugh- capital story, in his " History of the Newspaper , able. Close by his little shop in Shoe Lane there Press," of one of the early vendors of unstamped j was an undertaker, whose business, as might be newspapers in Shoe Lane : — I inferred from the neighbourhood, as well as from BANGOR HOUSE, iSiS [see paj^e 131). " Cleavis Police Gazette" says Mr. Grant, " con- sisted chiefly of reports of police cases. It cer- tainly was a newspaper to all intents and pur- poses, and was ultimately so declared to be in a court of law by a jury. But in the meantime, while the action was .pending, the police had in- structions to arrest Mr. John Cleave, the proprietor, and seize all the copies of the paper as they came out of his office in Shoe Lane. He contrived for his personal appearance and the homeliness of his shop, was exclusively among the lower and poorer classes of the community. With him Mr. Cleave made an arrangement to construct several coffins of the plainest and cheapest kind, for purposes which were fully explained. The ' undertaker,' whose ultra-republican principles were in perfect unison with those of Mr. Cleave, not only heartily undertook the work, but did so on terms so Fleet Street Trilutaries.] CLEAVE'S COPFINS. >35 moderate Aat he would not ask for nor accept any profit. He, indeed, could imagine no higlier nor holier duty than that of assisting in the dissemina- tion of a paper which boldly and energetically preached the extinction of the aristocracy and the perfect equality in social position, and in property too, of all classes of the community. Accordingly the coffins, with a rudeness in make and material which were in perfect keeping with the purpose to which they were to be applied, were got ready ; and Mr. Cleave, in the dead of night, readiness to render a similar service to Mr. Cleave and the cause of red Rei)ublicanism when the next Gazette appeared. "In this way Mr. Cleave contrived for some time to elude the vigilance of the police and to sell about 50,900 copies weekly of each impression of his paper. But the expedient, ingenious and emi- nently successful as it was for a time, failed at last. The people in Shoe Lane and the neighbourhood began to be surprised aniceum,%\\\o excited some curiosity by extensively advertising these words : " See the Daily A'^exvs of June ist." The Dai/y News of June i, 1846 (which began No. i again), was a paper of four pages, issued at lid., which, deducting the stamp, at that time affixed to every copy of every news- on another halfpenny, and in a year or two 1I12 Dai/y Neivs was obliged to return to the usual price of " dailies " at that time— fivepence. The chief editors of the paper, besides those already mentioned, have been Mr. Eyre Evans Crowe, Mr. Frederick Knight Hunt, Mr. Weir, and Mr. Thomas Walker, who retired in January, 1870, on receiving the editorsliip of the London Gazette. The journal came down to a penny in June, 1S6S. f'Icel Street Tributaries.] THE DAILY NEWS. 146 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [i'leet Street Tributaries.; The Daily News, at the beginning, inspired the Times with some dread of rivalry ; and it is notewortliy that, for several years afterwards, the great journal was very unfriendly in its criticisms on Dickens's books. There is no doubt that, over sanguine of success, the Daily News proprietors began by sinking too much money in the foundations. In 1846, the Times' reporters received on an average only five guineas a week, while the Daily Neios gave seven ; but the pay was soon of necessity reduced. Mr. Grant computes the losses of the Daily N^etus for the first ten years at not much less than ^200,000. The talent and enterprise of this paper, during the recent (1870) Gemian invasion of France, and the excellence of their correspondents in either camp, is said to have trebled its circulation, which Mr. Grant computes at a daily issue of 90,000. As an organ of the highest and most enlightened form of Liberalism and progress, the Daily News now stands pre-eminent. Many actors, poets, and authors dwelt in Salis- bury Court in Charles IL's time, and the great Bet- terton. Underbill, and Sandford affected this neigh- bourhood, to be near the theatres. Lady Davenant here presided over the Dorset Gardens Company ; Shadwell, "round as a butt and liquored every chink," nightly reeled home to the same precinct, unsteadily following the guidance of a will-o'-the- wsp link-boy ; and in the square lived and died Sir John King, the Duke of York's solicitor -general. If Salisbury Square boasts of Richardson, the , respectable citizen and admirable novelist, it must also plead guilty to having been the residence of that not very reputable personage, Mr. John Eyre, who, although worth, as it was said, some ^20,000, was transported on November i, 1771 (George III.) for systematic pilfering of paper from the alder- man's chamber, in the justice room, Guildhall. This man, led away by the thirst for money, had an uncle who made two wills, one leaving Eyre all his money, except a legacy of ^^500 to a clergyman ; another leaving the bulk to the clergy- man, and ^£^500 only to his nephew. Eyre, not knowing of the second will, destroyed the first, in order to cancel the vexatious bequest. When the real will was produced his disappointment and selfish remorse must have produced an expression Df repressed rage worthy of Hogarth's pencil. In Salisbury Square Mr. Clarke's disagreeable confessions about the Duke of York were publicly burned, on the very spot (says Mr. Noble) where the zealous radical demagogue, Waithman, subse- quently addressed the people from a temporary platform, not being able to obtain' the use of St. Bride's Vestry. Nor must we forget to chronicle No. 53 as the house of Tatum, a silversmith, to whom, in 1S12, that eminent man John Faraday acted as humble friend and assistant. How often does young genius act the herdsman, as Apollo did when he tended the kine of Admetus ! The Woodfalls, too, in their time, lent celebrity to Salisbury Square. The first 'Woodtall who became eminent was Henry Woodfall, at the " Elzevir's Head " at Temple Bar. He commenced business under the auspices of Pojje. His son Henry, who rose to be a Common Council- man and Master of the Stationers' Company, bought of Theophilus Cibber, in 1736-37, one- third of a tenth share of the London Daily Post, an organ which gi-aduVUy grew into the Public Advertiser, that daring paper in which the celebrated letters of Junius first appeared. Those letters, scathing and full of Greek fire, brought down Lords and Commons, King's Bench and Old Bailey, on Woodfall, and he was fined and impri- soned. Whether Burke, Barre, Chatham, Home Tooke, or Sir Philip Francis \vrote them, will now probably never be known. The stern writer in the iron mask went down into the grave shrouded in his own mystery, and that grave no in.quisitive eyes will ever find. " I am the sole depository of my secret,'' he wrote, " and it shall perish with me." The Junius Woodfall died in 1805. William Wood- fall, the younger brother, was born in 1745, and educated at St. Paul's School. He was editor and printer of the Morning Chronicle, and in 1790 had his office in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square (Noble). " Memory" Woodfall, as William was generally called, acquired fame by his extraordinary power of reporting from memory the speeches he heard in the House of Commons. His practice during a debate (says his friend Mr. Taylor, ot the Sun) was to close his eyes and lean with both hands upon his stick. He was so well acquainted with the tone and manner of the several speakers that he seldom changed his attitude but to catch tire name of a new member. His memory was as accurate as it was capacious, and, what was almost miraculous, he could retain full recollection of any particular debate for a full fortnight, and after many long nights of speaking. Woodfall used to say he could put a speech away on a corner shelf of his mind for future reference. This is an instance of power of memory scarcely equalled by Fuller, who, it is said, could repeat the names of all the shops down the Strand (at a time every shop had a sign) in regular and correct sequence ; and it even sur- passes "Memory" Thompson, who used to boast he could remember every shop from Ludgate Hill Fleet Street Tributaries.] MUG-HOUSES. Ml, to the end of Piccadilly. Yet, with all his sensitively retentive memory, WoodfaU did not care for slight interruptions during his writing. Dr. Johnson used to \vrite abridged reports of debates for the Gentleman' s Magazine from memory, but, then, reports at that time were short and tri\ial. W'ood- fill was also a most excellent dramatic critic — slow to censure, yet never sparing just rebuke. At the theatre his extreme attention gave his coun- tenance a look of gloom and severity. Mr. J. Taylor, of the Swi^ describes Kenible as watching Woodfall in one of those serious moods, and say- ing to a friend, " How applicable to that man is the passage in Hamlet, — ' thoughts black, hands apt."' Finding himself hampered on the Morning Chronicle, Woodfall started a new daily paper, with the title of the Diary, but eventually [he was overpowered- by his competitors and their large staff of reporters. His eldest son, who displayed great abilities, went mad. Mr. Woodfall's hospit- able parties at his house at Kentish Town are sketched for us by Mr. J. Taylor. On one parti- cular occasion he mentions meeting Mr. Tickel, Richardson (a partner in " The Rolliad "), John Kemble, Perry (of the Chronicle), Dr. Glover (a humorist of the day), and John Const.' Kemble and Perry fell out over their wine, and Perry was rude to the stately tragedian. Kemble, eyeing him with the scorn of Coriolanus, exclaimed, in the words of Zanga, — " A lion preys not upon ctrcases." Perry very naturally effervesced at this, and war would have been instantly proclaimed between the belligerents had not Cousti and Richardson promptly interposed. The warlike powers were carefully sent home in separate vehicles. Mr. Woodfall had a high sense of the importance of a Parliamentary reporter's duties, and once, during a heavy week, when his eldest son came to town to assist him, he said, "And Charles Fox to have a debate on a Saturday ! What ! does he think that reporters are made of iron ? " Woodfall used to tell a characteristic story of Dr. Dodd. When that miserable man was in Newgate wait- ing sentence of death he sent earnestly for the editor of the Morning Chronicle. Woodfall, a kind and unselfish man, instantly hurried off, ex- pecting that Dodd wished his serious advice. In the midst of Woodfall's condolement he was stopped by the Doctor, who said he had wished to see him on quite a different subject. Knowing Woodfall's judgment in dramatic matters, he was anxious to have his opinion on a comedy which he had written, and to request his interest with a manager to bring it on the stage. Woodfall was the more surprised and shocked as on entering Newgate he had been informed by Ackcrman, the keeper of Newgate, that the order for Dr. Dodd's execution had just arrived. Before parting with the Woodfall family, we may mention that it is quite certain that Henry Samp- son Woodfall did not know who the author of ''Junius" was. Long after the letters appeared he used to say, — " I hope and trust Junius is not dead, as I think he would have left me a legacy ; for though I derived much honour from his preference, I suffered much by the freedom of his pen." The grandson of William, Henry Dick Wood- fall, died in Nice, April 13, 1S69, aged sixty-nine, carrying to the grave (says Mr. Noble) the last chance of discovering one of the best kept secrets ever known. The Whig " mug-house " of Salisbury Court de- serves notice. The death of Queen Anne (17 14) roused the hopes of the Jacobites. The rebellion of 1715 proved how bitterly they felt the peaceful accession of the Elector of Hanover. The northern revolt convinced them of their strength, hut its failure taught them no lesson. They attributed its want of success to the rashness of the leaders and the absence of unaniniity in their followers, to the out- break not being simultaneous ; to every cause, indeed, but the right one. It was about this time that the Whig gentlemen of London, to unite their party and to organise places of gathering, esta- blished " mug-houses " in various parts of the City. At these places, " free-and-easy " clubs were held, where \Vhig citizens could take their mug of ale, drink loyal toasts, sing loyal songs, and arrange party processions. These assemblies, not always very just or forbearing, soon led to violent re- taliations on the part of the Tories, attacks were made on several of tiie mug-houses, and dan- gerous riots naturally ensued. From the papers of the time we learn that the Tories wore white roses, or rue, thyme, and rosemary in their hats, flourished oak branches and green ribbons, and shouted " High Church ;" " Ormond for ever ;" " No King George ; " " Down with the Presbyterians ;" "Down with the mug-houses." The Whigs, on the other side, roared "King George for ever," displayed orange cockades, with the motto, — " With heart and hand By George we'll staml," and did their best on royal birthdays and other thanksgivings, by illuminations and blazing bonfires 142 OLD AND NEW LONDON. [Fleet Street Tributarie-;. outside the mug-house doors, to irritate their adver- saries and drive them to acts of illegal violence. The chief Whig mug-houses were in Long Acre, Cheapside, St. John's Lane (Clerkenwell), Tower Street, and Salisbury Court. ALackey, a traveller, who wrote "A Journey through England " about this time, describes the mug-houses very lucidly :— " The most amusing and diverting of all," he says, " is the ' Mug-House Club,' in Long Acre, where every Wednesday and Saturday a mixture of gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen meet in a great room, and are seldom under a hundred. They have a grave old gentleman in his own grey hairs, now within a few months of ninety years old, who is their president, and sits in an armed-chair some steps higher than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A harp always plays all the time at the lower end of the room, and every now and then one or other of the company rises and entertains the rest with a song ; and, by-the-by, some are good masters. Here is nothing drank but ale ; and every gentleman hath his separate mug, which he chalks on the table where he sits as it is brought in, and everyone retires when he pleases, as in a coffee-house. The room is always so diverted with songs, and drinking from one table to another to one another's healths, that there is no room for politics, or anything that can sour con- versation. One must be up by seven to get room, and after ten the company are, for the most part, gone. This is a winter's amusement that is agree- able enough to a stranger for once or twice, and he is well diverted with the different humours when the mugs overflow." An attack on a Whig mug-house, the "Roebuck," in Cheapside, June, 1716, was followed by a still more stormy assault on the Salisbury Court mug- house in July of the same year. The riot began on a Friday, but the Whigs kept a resolute f;ice, and the mob dwindled away. On the Monda)' they renewed the attack, declaring that the Whigs were drinking " Down with the Church," and reviling the memory of Queen Anne ; and they swore they would level the house and make a bonfire of the timber in the middle of Fleet Street. But the wily Whigs, barri- cading the door, slipped out a messenger at a back door, and sent to a mug-house in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, for reinforcements. Presently a band of Whig bludgeon-men arrived, and the Whigs of Salisbury Court then snatched up pokers, tongs, pitchforks, and legs of stools, and sallied out on the Tory mob, who soon fled before them. For two days the Tory mob seethed, fretted, and swore revenge. But the report of a squadron of horse being drawn up at Whitehall ready to ride down on the City kept them gloomily (luiet. On the third day a Jacobite, named Vaughan, formerly a Bridewell boy, led them on to revenge ; and on Tuesday they stormed the place in earnest. " Th.e best of the Tory mob," says a Whig paper of the day, " were High Church scaramouches, chimney- sweeps, hackney coachmen, foot-boys, tinkers, shoe- blacks, street idlers, ballad singers, and strumpets." The contemporaneous account will most vividly describe the scene. The IVt-ek/y Journal (a Whig paper) of July 28, 17 16, says: "The Papists and Jacobites, in pur- suance of their rebellious designs, assembled a mob on Friday night last, and threatened to attack Mr. Read's mug-house in Salisbury Court, in Fleet Street ; but, seeing the loyal gentlemen that were there were resolved to defend themselves, the cowardly Papists and Jacobites desisted for that time. But on Monday night the villains meeting together again in a most rebellious manner, they began first to attack Mr. Goslin's house, at the sign of the ' Blew Boar's Head,' near Water Lane, in Fleet Street, breaking the windows thereof, for no other reason but because he is well-aftected to his RLijesty King George and the present Government. Afterwards they went to the above-said mug-house in Salisbury Court ; but the cowardly Jacks not being able to accomplish their hellish designs that night, they assembled next day in great numbers from all parts of the town, breaking the windows with brick-bats, broke open the cellar, got into the lower rooms, which they robb'd, and puU'd down the sign, which was carried in triumph before the mob by one Thomas Bean, servant to Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Cassey, two rebels under sen- tence of death, and for which he is committed to Newgate, as well as several others, particularly one Hook, a joyner, in Blackfriars, who is charged with acting a part in gutting the mug-house. Some of the rioters were desperately wounded, and one Vaughan, a seditious weaver, formerly an appren- tice in Bridewell, and since emplo)'ed there, who was a notorious ringleader of mobs, was kill'd at the aforesaid mug-house. Many notorious Papists were seen to abet and assist in this villanous rabble, as were others, who call themselves Church- men, and are like to meet with a suitable reward in due time for their assaulting gentlemen who meet at these mug-houses only to drink prosperity to the Church of England as by law established, the King's health, the Prince of Wales's, and the rest of the Royal Family, and those of his faidiful and loyal Ministers. But it is farther to be obsened that women of mean, scandalous lives, do frequently Fleet Street Tributaries.] RICHARDSON TN HT?! OFFICE. i« point, hiss, and cry out ' AVhigs ' upon his Majesty's good and loyal subjects, by which, raising a mob, they are often insulted by them. But 'tis hoped the magistrates will take such methods which may prevent the like insults for tlic future. " Thursday last the coroner's inquest sat on the body of the person killed in Salisbury Court, •who were for bringing in their verdict, wilful murder against I\Ir. Read, the man of the mug- house ; but some of the jury stick out, and will not agree with that verdict ; so that the matter is deferr'd till Monday next." "On Tuesday last," says the same paper (August 4, 17 16), "a petition, signed by some of the inhabitants of Salisburj- Court, was deliver'd to the Court of Aldermen, setting forth some late riots occasioned by the meeting of some persons at the mug-house there. The petition was referr'd to, and a hearing appointed the same day before the Lord Ma\or. The witnesses on the side of the petition were a butcher woman, a barber's 'prentice, and two or three other inferior people. These swore, in substance — that the day the man was killed there, they saw a great many people gathered together about the mug-house, throwing stones and dirt, &:c. ; that about twelve o'clock they saw Mr. Read come out with a gun, and shoot a man who was before the mob at some distance, and had no stick in his hand. Those wlio were call'd in Mr. Read's behalf depos'd that a very great mob attacked the house, cr>-ing, ' High Church and Ormond ; No Hanover; No King George ; ' that then the constable read the Pro- clamation, charging them to disperse, but they still continued to cry, ' Down with the mug-house ;' tliat two soldiers then issued out of the house, and drove the mob into Fleet Street ; but by throwing sticks and stones, they drove these two back to the house, and the person shot returned at the head of the mob with a stick in his hand flourish- ing, and crying, ' No Hanover ; No King George ;' and ' Down with the mug-house.' That then Mr. Read desired them to disperse, or he would shoot amongst them, and the deceased making at him, he shot him and retired indoors ; that then the ^ mob forced into the house, rifled all below stairs, ! took the money out of the till, let the beer about the cellar, and what goods they could not carry away, they brought into the streets and broke to pieces ; that they would have forced their way up stairs and murdered all in the house, but that a person who lodged in the house made a barricade at the stair-head, where he defended himself above half an hour against all the mob, wounded some bf them, and compelled them to give over the assault. Tliere were several very credible witnesses to tliese circumstances, and many more were rc-iilv to have confirmed it, but the Lord M.iyor thougiit suflicient had been said, .and the following gentle- men, who are men of undoubted reputation and worth, offering to be bail for Mr. Read, namely, Mr. Johnson, a justice of the peace, and Colonels Coote and A\'estall, they were accepted, and accord- ingly entered into a recognisance." Five of the rioters were eventually hung at T)bum Turnpike, in the presence of a vast crowd. .Accord- ing to Mr. J. T. Smith, in his "Streets of London," a Whig mug-house existed as early as 1694. It has been said the slang word " mug" owes its derivation to Lord Shaftesbur}-'s " ugly mug," which the beer cups were moulded to resemble. In the F/yitig Post of June 30, 17 16, we find a doggerel old mug-house ballad, which is so cha- racteristic of the violence of the times that it is worth presen-ing : — " Since the Tories couIJ not fight, And their master took his flight, They labour to keep up their faction ; With a bough and a stick, And a stone and a brick, They equip their roaring crew for action. " Thus in battle array At the close of the day, After wisely debating their deep plot, Upon windows and stall, They courageously fall, And boast a great victory they have got. " But, alas! silly boys. For all the mighty noise, Of their 'High Church and Ormond for ever,' A brave Whig with one hand. At George's command. Can make their mightiest hero to quiver. " Richardson's printing ofince was at the north- west corner of Salisbury Square, communicating with the court, No. 76, Fleet Street. Here the thoughtful old citizen wTOte "Pamela," and here, in 1756, Oliver Goldsmith acted as his "reader." Richardson seems to have been an amiable and benevolent man, kind to his compositors and ser- vants and beloved by children. All the anecdotes relating to his private life .are plea.sant. He used to encourage early rising among his workmen by hiding half crowns among the disordered t>'pe, so that the earliest comer might find his virtue re- warded ; and he would frcciuently bring up fniit from the countrj' to give to those of his sen'ants who had been zealous and good-tempered. Samuel Richardson, the author of " Pamela" and "Clarissa," was the son of a Derbyshire joiner. He was bom in 1689, and died in 1761. Apprenticed 144 OLD AND NEW LONDON. (Fleet Street Triblitarie:, to a London printer, he rose by steady industry and prudence to be the manager of a large business, printer of the Journals of the House of Commons, Master of the Stationers' Company, and part-printer to the king. In 1741, at the age of fifty-two, publishers urging the thriving citizen to write them a book of moral letters, Richardson produced " Pamela," a novel which ran through five editions the first year, and became the rage of the town. Ladies carried the precious volumes to from the foolish romances of his day. In " Pamela" he rewarded struggling virtue; in "Clarissa" he painted the cruel selfishness of vice • in " Sir Charles " he tried to represent the perfect Christian gentleman. Coleridge said that to read Fieldin" after Richardson was like emerging from a sick room, heated by stoves, into an open lawn on a breezy May morning. Richardson, indeed, wrote more for women than men. Fielding was coarser, but more manly ; he had humour, but no moral FLEET STREET, THE TEMPLE, ETC., FROM A PLAN PUBLISHED bV RALPH AGGAS, I563. Ranelagh, and held them up in smiling triumph to each other. Pope praised the novel as more useful than twenty volumes of sermons, and Dr. Sherlock gravely recommended it from the pulpit. In 1749 Richardson wrote "Clarissa Harlowe," his most perfect work, and in 1753 his somewhat tedious " Sir Charles Grandison " (7 vols.) In " Pamela " he drew a servant, whom her master attempts to seduce and eventually marries, but in " Clarissa " the heroine, after harrowing misfortunes, dies un- rewarded. Richardson had always a moral end in view. He hated vice and honoured virtue, but he is too often prolix and wearisome. He wished to write novels that should wean the young purpose at all. The natural result was that Fielding and his set looked on Richardson as a grave, dull, respectable old prig ; Richardson on Fielding as a low rake, who wrote like a man who had been an ostler born in a stable, or a runner in a sponging- house. "The virtues of Fielding's heroes," the vain old printer used to say to his feminine cUque, " are the vices of a truly good man." Dr. Johnson, who had been befriended by Richardson, was never tired of depreciating Fielding and crying up the author of " Pamela." " Sir," he used to thunder out, " there is as much difference between the two as between a man who knows how a watch is made and a man who can merely Fleet Street Tributaries.] JOHNSON AND HOGARTH. MS tell the hour on the dial-plate." He called t'ielding a " barren rascal." " Sir, there is more know- ledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all 'Tom Jones.''' Some one present here mildly .suggested tiiat Richardson was very te