6
9;

1 i

of Californiaj
n Regional
y Facility

Ex Lihris
C. K. OGDEN

^- rz^

b^y

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

*.-:*•>-.;.

^>.

•V

li^l

• #>

■^-^L-

"h' 3

-y

Old and New London.

Old and New London.-

A NARR.\TIVE OF

Its History, its People, axd its Places.

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'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.

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 <tf their Patron Saint — The Goldsmiths' Company's Assays — The .Ancient Goldsmiths' Feasts — The Goldsmiths at
Work— Goldsmiths' Hall at the Present Day — The Portraits — St. Leonard's Church — .Sl Vedasl — Discovery, of a Stone Coffin— Coach-
nukers' Hall 353

CH.APTER XXXI.

CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH ;— WOOD STREET.

Wood Street — Pleasant Memories— St. Peter's in Chepe — St. Michael's and St. Mary Staining — St. Alban's. Wood Street — Some Quaint
Epitaphs— Wood Street Comptei and the Hapless Prisoners therein — Wood Street Painful, Wood Street Cheerful — Thomas Ripley — The
An.abaptist Rising- A Remarkable Wine Cooper- St. John Zachary and St Anne-in-the-Willows — Haberdashers' Hall— .Something
about the Meicers 3^4

CHAPTER XXXII.

CHKArsUJE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH ytoiitinucd).

Milk Street- Sir Thomas More— The City of London Scliool— St. Mnry Magdalen— Honey Lane— All Hallows* Church— Lawrence Lane and
St. Lawrence Church— Ironmonger Lane and Mercers' Hall-The Mercers' Company — Early Life Assurance Companies — The !Merctrs'
Company in 'IVouble — Mercers' Chapel— St. Thomas Aeon— The Mercers' School— Restoration of the Carvings in Mercers' Hall — Tlie
Glories of the Mercers' Company —Ironmonger Lane 374

C H A 1' T E R XXXIII.
GUILDH-.'VLL.
The Original GuildhalL-A fearful Civic Spectacle- The 'Value of Land increased by the Great Fire-GuiUUiail as it was and is--Tlic Statues
over the South Porch— Dance's Disfigurements The Renovation in 1864— The Crypt— Gog and Magog— Shopkeepers in Guildhall—
The Cenotaphs in Guildhall— The Court of .\ldermen -The City Courts— The Chamberlain's Office -Pictures in the Guildhall— Sir
Robert I'orter— The Common Council Room— Pictures and Statues-Guildhall Chapel— The New Library and Museum-Some Rare
Books-Historical Events in Guildhall— Chaucer in Trouble— Buckingham at (luiklhall— Anue .^skew's Trial and Death - Surrey-
Throckmorton— (jarnet—,A Grand Banquet 3S3

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE LORD M.WORS OK LONDON.

The First Mayor of Loudon— Portrait of him— Presentation to the King -An Outspoken Mayor— Sir N. Farindon— Sir William Xl'alworth

-Origin of the prefix "Ij)rd"-Sir Richard Whittington and his Liberality— Institutions founded by him-Sir Simon Eyre and his

■|'able-A .Musical Ij.rd Mayor— Henry VI 11. and Gresham— Loyalty of the Lord Mayor and Citizens to Queen Mary- Osborne's

l.-.ap into iJic Tlianies-Sir W. Craven— Brass Crosby— His Commitlal to the Tower— A Victory for the Citizens . . . 396

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXV.
THK LORD MAYORS OK LONDON [co»ti:ine({).

lA'.l-

J vhn Wil!;es ; his Eirtli and Parentage — The North Briton— V>\\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— <t. .Mary
Woolnoth -St. Clement's— Dr. Benjamin Stone— Discovery of Roman Remains— St. -Mary Abchurch . ... ■ S~-

CHAPTEP XLVH.

THREADNEEDLE STREET.

The Centre of Roman London— St. Benct Fink— The Monks of St. .Anthony— 'Ihc Merchant Taylors— Stow, Antiquary and Tailor— A
.M.lgnificent Roll— The Good Deeds of the .Merchant Taylors— The Old and the Modern Merchant Tr.ylors' Hall—" Concordia parv^
res cre!,cunt"— Hetir>' 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)

aul's

184S

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Swor<l, Dagger, ami Ring of King James of Scotland

Linacrt's House ....

Ancient View of Cheapsiile.

Hcginning of the Riot in Cliea])siile

Clieapsiile Cross, as it appeared in 1547

The Lord Mayor's Procession, from Hogartli

Tlie Marriage Procession of Anne Boleyn

Figures of Gog and Magog set up in Guildliall

The Royal Banciuct in Guildhall in 1761

The Lord Mayor's Coach .

The Demolition of Cheapside Cross .

Old Map of the Ward of Cheap — about 1 7

The .Seal of Bow Church .

Bow Church, Cheapside, from a View t.iken about 1750

No. 73, Cheapside, from an Old View

The Door of .S.-iddlers' Hall

Milton's House and Milton's B.uial-place

Interior of Goldsmiths' Hall

Trial of the I'ix

Exterior of Goldsmiths' Hall

Alt.ir of Diana .....

Wood .Street Compter, from a View published in 1793

The Tree at the Corner of Wood Street

Pulpit Hour-glass ....

Interior of St. .Michael's, Wood Street

Interior of Haberdashers' Hall .

The "Swan with Two Necks," Lad Lane

City of London School

Mercers' Chapel, as Rebuilt after the Fire

The Crypt of Guildhall

The Court of .\klermen, Guildhall

Old Front of Guildhall

The New Library, Guildhall

Sir Richard Whittingtou .

Whittington's Almshouses, College Hill

Osborne's Leap .....

A Lord Mayor and his Lady

Wilkes on his Trial ....

Birch's Shop, Cornhill

The Stocks' Market, Site of the Mansion H.

John Wilkes .....

The Poultiy Compter

Richard Porson .....

Sir R. Clayton's House, Garden Front

Exterior of Grocers' Hall .

Interior of Grocers' Hall .

The Mansion House Kitchen

300

3'2

313

3'S
3'9
324
325
330
33'
336
337
342
343
348
349
354
355
360

361
366

367
370
372
373
378
379
384
38s
390
391
396
397
402

403
408
409
414

415

420

421

426
427
432
433
438

The Mansion House in 175^"*

Interior of the Egypti.in Hail

The ''Maria Wood"

Broad .Street and Cornhill Waiis

Lord Mayor's Water Procession

The Old Bank, looking from the Mansion House

Old Patch

The Bank Parlour, Exterior Vicii'
Dividend Day at the Bank .
The Church of St. Benet Fink .
Court of the Bank of England .
"Jonathan's," from an Old Skelc'i
Capel Court ....

The Clearing House ....

The Present .Stock Exchange

On Ch.ange (from an Old Print, about 1800)

Inner Court of the First Royal Exchange

Sir Thomas Gresham

Wren's Plan for Rebuilding London .

Plan of the Exchange in 1S37

The I'irst Royal Exchange

The .Second Royal Exchange. CornliiU

The Present Royal Exchange

Blackwell Hall in 1812

Interior of Lloyd's ....

The Subscription Room at " Lloyd's"

Interior of Drapers' Hal! .

Drapers' Hall Garden

Cromwell's House, from Aggas's Map

Pope's House, Plough Court, Lombard St

St. Mary Woolnoth ....

Interior of Merchant Taylors' H.all

Ground Plan of the Church of St. Martin O

March of the Archers

The Old South Sea House

London .Stone .....

The Fourth .Salters' Hal! .
Cordwainers' Hall ....

St. Antholin's Church, W.atling Street

The Crypt of Gerard's Hall

Old Sign cf the " Boar's Head ''

Exterior'of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, in 17^

The Weigh-house Chapel .

Miles Coverdale ....

Wren's Original Design for the Summit of
ment ......

The .Monument and the Church of St. Mac-nus,

eet

utwich

the

Monu

1800

439
444

445
450

451
456

457
462

463
468
469
472
474
475
481

487
492

493
496

497
49S

499
504

505
5'o
511
516

5'7
520

523
528
529
534

535
540

541
546
547
552
553
558
559
564
565

570
571

ERRA r.-I.

P^ge 53. col. I, line 12 from bottom,/?^ " Watt's," reiui " \V.ilf!."
„ 206, col. 2, line io,/or " clgkt arches," r^-ad " nine arche-;."
„ 261. The date of the anniversary of the Charity Schools has since

been altered.
>• 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

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

THE CITV AND ITS MEMORIES.

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
<iuarrels with sword and buckler. Here the brave
A\'allace was executed like a common robber ; and
here " tiie gentle Mortimer " was led to a shamefiil
death. The spot was the scene of great jousts in
Edward HL's chivalrous reign, when, after the battle
of Poictiers, the Kings of France and Scotland
came seven da)"s running to see spears shivered
and " the Lady of the Sun " bestow the prizes of
valour. In this same field Walworth slew the
rebel Wat Tyler, who had treated Richard II. with
insolence, and by this prompt bloAV dispersed the
insurgents, wlio hid grown so dangerously strong.
In Henry VIII.'s reign poisoners were boiled to
death in Smithfield ; and in cruel Mary's reign the
Protestant martyrs were burned in the same place.
" Of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons
burnt for heresy in Mar)''s reign," says a modern
antiquary, " the greater number perished in Smith-
field ; and ashes and charred bodies have been dug
up opposite to the gateway of Bartholomew's
Church and at the west end of Long I,ane. After
the Great Fire the houseless citizens were sheltered
here in tents. Over against the corner where the

Great Fire abated is Cock Lane, the scene of the
rapping ghost, in which Dr. Johnson believed and
concerning which Goldsmith ^vrote a catchpenny
pamphlet.

Holborn and its tributaries come next, and arc-
by no means deficient in legends and matter
of general interest. " The original name of the
street was the Hollow Bourne," says a modem
etymologist, " not the Old Bourne ; " it was not
jmved till the reign of Henry V. The ride up
" the Heavy Hill " from Newgate to Tyburn has
been sketched by Hogarth and sung by Swift. In
Ely Place once lived the Bishop of Ely ; and in
Hatton Garden resided Queen Elizabeth's favourite,
the dancing chancellor. Sir Christopher Hatton.
In Furnival's Inn Dickens wrote " Pickwick." In
Barnard's Inn died the last of the alchemists. In
Staple's Inn Ur. Johnson wrote " Rasselas," to pay
the expenses of his mother's funeral. In Brooke
Street, where Chatterton poisoned himself, lived
Lord Brooke, a poet and statesman, who was a
patron of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, and who
was assassinated by a servant whose name he had
omitted in his will. Milton lived for some time in
a house in Holborn that opened at the back on
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Fox Court leads us to the
curious inquiry whether Savage, the poet, was a
conscious or an unconscious impostor ; • and at the
Blue Boar Inn Cromwell and Ireton discovered by
stratagem the treacherous letter of Kmg Charles
to his queen, that rendered Cromwell for ever the
King's enemy. These are only a few of the
countless associations of Holborn.

Newgate is a gloomy but an interesting subject
for us. Many wild faces have stared through its
bars since, in King John's time, it became a City
prison. We shall look in on Sarah Malcolm, Mrs.
Brownrigg, Jack Sheppard, Governor Wall, and
other interesting criminals ; we shall stand at Wren's
elbow when he designs the new prison, and follow
the Gordon Rioters when they storm in over the
burning walls.

The Strand stands next to Fleet Street as a
central point of old memories. It is not merely full,
it positively teems. For centuries it was a fashion-
able street, and noblemen inhabited the south side
especially, for the sake of the river. In Essex:
Street, on a part of the Temple, Queen Elizabeth's
rash favourite (the Earl of Essex) was besieged,
after his hopeless foray into the City. In Arundel
Street lived the Earls of Anmdel ; in Buckingham
Street Charles I.'s greedy favourite began a palace.
There were royal palaces, too, in the Strand, for
at the Savoy lived John of Gaunt ; and Somerset
House was built by the Protector Somerset with

ARTISTS AND ACIORS IN C0\ KNT GARDExN.

i-i

the stones of tlie churches he had luilled down.
Henrietta Maria (Charles I.'s Queen) and poor
neglected Catherine of Braganza dwelt at Somer-
set House ; and it was here that Sir Edmondbury
Godfrey, the zealous Protestant magistrate, was
supposed to have been murdered. There is, too,
the history of Lord Burleigh's house (in Cecil
Street) to record ; and Northumberland House still
stands to recall to us its many noble inmates. On
the other side of the Strand we have to note
Batcher Row (now i)ulled down), where the Gun-
powder Plot conspirators met ; Exeter House, where
Lord Burleigh's wily son lived ; and. finally, Exeter
'Change, where the poet Gay lay in state. Nor
shall ve forget Cross's menagerie and the elephant
Chunee; nor omit mention of many of the eccentric
old shopkeepers who once inhabited the 'Change.
At Charing Cross we shall stop to see the old Crom-
wellians die bravely, and to stare at the pillory,
where in their time many incomparable scoundrels
ignominiously stood. The Nelson Column and the
surrounding statues have stories of their own ; and
St. Martin's Lane is specially interesting as the
haunt of half the painters of the early Georgian era.
There are anecdotes of Hogarth and his friends to
be picked up here in abundance, and the locality
genera'i'y deserves exploration, from the ([uaintness
and cleverness of its former inhabitants.

In Covent Garden we break fresh ground. A\'e
found St. Martin's T.ane full of artists, Guildhall
full of aldermen, the Strand full of noblemen — the
old monastic garden will prove to be crowded with
actors. We shall trace the market from the first
few sheds under the wall of Bedford House to the
present gi-and temple of Flora and Pomona. We
shall see Evans's a new mansion. Inhabited by Ben
Jonson's friend and patron. Sir Kenelm Digby,
alternately tenanted by Sir Hariy Vane, Denzil
Holies (one of the five refractory members whom
Charles I. went to the House of Commons so
imprudently to seize), and Admiral Russell, who
defeated the French at La Hogue. Tlje ghost
of Parson Ford, in which Johnson believed, awaits
us at the doorway of the Hummums. There are
several duels to witness in the Piazza ; Dryden
to call upon as he sits, the arbiter of wits, by the
fireside at ^\'il^s Coffee House ; Addison is to be
found at Button's; at the "Bedford" we shall meet
Garrick and Quin, and stop a moment at Tom
King's, close to St. Paul's portico, to watch
Hogarth's revellers fight with swords and shovels,
tli.at frosty morning that the painter sketched the
prim old maid going to early service. We shall
look in at the Tavistock to see Sir Peter Lely
and Sir Godfrey Knellcr at work at portraits of

beauties of the Carolean and Jacobean Courts;
remembering that in the same rooms Sir James
Thornhill afterwards painted, and poor Richard
Wilson proiluced those line landscapes which so few
had the taste to buy. The old hustings deserve a
word, and we shall have to record the lamentable
murder of Miss Ray by her lover, at the north-east
angle of the square. The neighbourhood of Covent
Garden, too, is rife with stories of great actors and
painters, and nearly every house furnishes its quota
of anecdote.

The history of Drury Lane and Co\ent Garden
theatres supplies us with endless anecdotes of actors,
and with Itumorous and pathetic narratives that em-
brace the whole region both of tragedy and comedy.
Quin's jokes, Garrick's weaknesses, the celebrated
O. P. riots, contrast -with the miserable end of some
popular favourites and the caprices of genius. The
oddities of Munden, the humour of Liston, only
serve to render the gloom of Kean's downfall
more terrible, and to show the wreck and ruin of
many unhappy men, equally wilful though less
gifted. There is a perennial charm about theatri-
cal stories, and the history of these theatres must
be illustrated by many a sketch of the loves and
rivalries of actors, their fantastic tricks, their jjrac-
tical jokes, their gay progress to success or ruin.
Changes of popular taste are marked by the
change of character in the pieces that have been
performed in various ages ; and the history of the
two theatres will include various illustrative sketches
of dramatic writers, as well as actors. There was
a vast interval in literature between the tragedies
of Addison and Murphey and the comedies of
Holcroft, O'Keefe, and Morton ; the descent to
modern melodrama and burlesque must be traced
through various gradations, and the reasons shown
for the many modifications both classes of enter-
tainments have undergone.

Westminster, from the night St. Peter came over
from Lambeth in the fisherman's boat, and chose
a site for the Abbey in the midst of Thorney Island,
to the present day, has been a spot where the
pilgrim to historic shrines loves to linger. Need
we remind our readers that Edward the Conlessor
built the Abbey, or that William the Contjueror
was crowned here, the ceremony ending in tumult
and blood? How vast the store of lacts from
! which we have to cull ! We see the Jews being
, beaten nearly to death for dating to attend the
coronation of Richard I. ; we ol)serve Edward I.
watching the sacred stone of Scotland being placed
beneath his coronation chair ; we behold for the
first time, at Richard 1 I.'s cc>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.

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

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,

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

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:!

Sfflffi s

-rrritrtmr r

b^lirife^

-] -' :r ti t

iitSii^iff^

.s4.?=™.rtwr^

Wm$ ^^'^'M

■

niliiTn' ~ f^t ^^m 'u^ 1^ ' i^

B ^ S^^^^^^^^^^

|;|

:::|jMM i ^M

(V^jj^^^*IB^MjQMj^^^^^hu^^^

' ' wlHffl^B ' |*^ttfi=|

[:'_-]-[ ['-

^^1

B^^s

^^^s

P™

-j^B^K

BSR pS?^

I - - :

yrm

^^m

S^^fl

B '^^

'' f:^M

hm-- If-^'V-

Srt 1 ■ ■

H- ■ w^

^^■1^1

§.::'.^::: 1^ ::{'. .^ • ^

ll^^^i^s

\ ri'-PS

J ■ tflT T ^S ■ ■p'- - " f= - j

OTj|:^g

i: ■•.WS. ^^ j^j ^" ■ :- i

flfrrf.'ii,iYi;-tff>iP

l-'ffi^H -a^; 1 =Hi

i '''W^

mttjj[||||||||:[||:

E ' ^^^tftttBHtt^^M

:-:-:-:-;

||::::P«;;I

B ■ 1'

1 ■ ■■^1

-T ::B| :

; ^r ----^t t^

H+lf ^■■■■B :1

t|::::t

: f ■"S ■"" : : ■ ^ i ^

- W^

W i'liS

1 i:p||:l

jnTrmrn

\ ^M

Jf "'■; :|:!

: f -"lit iHfr

: j ;; f

,y* ji; ■! ■ ''■■■■'"■ ; < -^ \ 1 ',' • "., 1 ,:,', 1,,''.' '.;„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.

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.

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.

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."

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,

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."

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

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.

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<l all the five shillings' he had exacted,
and repair all the l''lcct Street doors his too handy
gunner had destroyed. The very next year the
quarrelsoine street broke again into a rage, and
four persons lost their lives. Of the riotens, two
were executed within the week. One of these was
John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the other
Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about
politics, and the courtiers seem to have been the
offenders.

In Charles II. 's time the pillory was sometimes
set up at the Temple gate ; and here the wretch
Titus Oates stood, amidst showers of unsavoury
eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see
the horror of his crimes. Well said Judge Withers
to this man, " I never pronounce criminal sentence
but with some compassion ; but you are such a
villain and hardened sinner, that I can find no
sentiment of compassion for you." The pillory
had no fixed place, for in 1670 we find a Scotch-
man suffering at the Chancery Lane end for telling
a victualler that his house would be fired by the
Papists; and the next year a man stood upon the
pillory at the end of Shoe Lane for insulting Lord
Ambassador Coventry as he was starting for
Sweden.

In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the
London streets, the " Mohocks," seem to have in-
fested Fleet Street. These drunken desperadoes —
the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times
of the Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke
windows, and stole knockers — used to find a cruel
pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound
citizen and pricking him with their swords.
Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as
much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself;
and the old baronet congratulates himself on
escaping from the clutches of "the emperor and
his black men," who had followed him half-way
down Fleet Street He, however, boasts that he
threw them out at the end of Norfolk Street, where
he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his
([uiet lodgings.

From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street
was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning
these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with
great industry, collected the following curious
enumeration : —

" Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, " in
Every Man in Ids Humour, speaks of ' a new
motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the
whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 161 1 ' the Fleet Street

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street.

mandrakes ' were to be seen for a penny ; and
years later the giants of St. Diinstan's clock caused
the street to be blocked up, and people to lose
their time, their temper, and their money. During
Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders of
Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a
model of Amsterdam, thirty feet long by twenty
feet wide, which had taken twelve years in making,
was exhibited in Bell Yard ; a child, foilrteen years
old, without thighs or legs, and eighteen inches
high, was to be seen ' at the " Eagle and Child," a
grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane ; ' a great Lincoln-
shire ox, nineteen hands high, four yards long, as
latel)- shown at Cambridge, was on view ' at the
" White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;'
and ' between the " Queen's Head " and " Crooked
Billet," near Fleet Bridge,' were exhibited daily
' two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous
creatures — an old she-dromedary, se\en feet high
and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, and
her young one ; being the greatest rarity and novelty
that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.'
In 1 7 10, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,'
in Fleet Street (by Shoe Lane), was exhibited the
'moving picture' mentioned in the Tatkr ; and
here, in 17 n, ' the great posture-master of Europe,'
eclipsing the deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly
startled sight-seeing London. ' He extends his
body into all deformed shapes ; makes his hip and
shoulder-bones meet together ; lays his head upon
the ground, and turns his body round twice or
thrice, without stirring his face from the spot ;
stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a
perpendicular line half a yard above his head ; and
extends his body from a table with his head a foot
below his heels, having nothing to balance his
body but his feet ; with several other postures too
tedious to mention.'

"And here, in 17 18, De Hightrehight, the fire-
eater, ate burning coals, swallowed flaming brim-
stone, and sucked a red-hot poker, five times a day 1

" What will my billiard-loving friends say to the
St. Dunstan's Inquest of the year 1720? 'Item,
we present Tiiomas Bruce, for suffering a gaming-
table (called a billiard-table, where people com-
monly frequent and game) to be kept in his house.'
A score of years later, at the end of Wine Office
Court, was exhibited an automaton clock, with
three figures or statues, which at the word of com-
mand poured out red or white wine, represented a
grocer shutting up his shop and a blackamoor
who struck upon a bell the number of times asked.
Giants and dwarfs were special features in Fleet
Street. At the ' Rummer,' in Three Kings' Court,
was to be seen an Essex woman, named Gordon,

not nineteen years old, though seven feet high,
who died in 1737. At the ' Blew Boar and Green
Tree ' was on view an Italian giantess, above seven
feet, weighing 425 lbs., who had been seen by ten
reigning sovereigns. In 1768 died, in Shire Lane,
Edward Bamford, another giant, seven feet four
inches in height, who was buried in St. Dunstan's,
though ^200 was offered for his body for dis-
section. At the 'Globe,' in 17 17, was shown
Matthew Buckinger, a German dwarf, born in 1674,
without hands, legs, feet, or thighs, twenty-nine
inches high ; yet can write, thread a needle, shullle
a pack of cards, play skittles, &c. A facsimile of
his writing is among the Harleian MSS. And
in 17 12 appeared the Black Prince and his wife,
each three feet high ; and a Turkey horse, two feet
odd high and twelve years old, in a box. Modern
times have seen giants and dwarfs, but have they
really equalled these? In 1822 the exhibition of
a mermaid here was put a stop to by the Lord
Chamberlain."

In old times Fleet Street was rendered picturesque,
not only by its many gable-ended houses adorned
with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in jiat-
terns, but also by the countless signs, gay with
gilding and painted with strange devices, which
hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry e.xhausted
all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades.
Lions blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all-
colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist,
flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day
these huge masses of painted timber creaked and
waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians,
nor were accidents by any means rare. On the
2nd of December, 1718 (Queen Anne), a signboard
opposite Bride Lane, Fleet Street, having loosened
the brickwork by its weight and movement, sud-
denly gave way, fell, and brought the house down
with it, killing four persons, one of whom was
the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till 1761
(George II.) that these dangerous signboards were
ordered to be placed fiat against the walls of the
houses.

When Dr. Johnson said, " Come and let us
take a walk down Fleet Street," he proposed a no
very easy task. The streets in his early days,
in London, had no side-pavements, and were
roughly paved, with detestable gutters running
down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling
coaches of those days liberally scattered the mud on
the unoffending pedestrians who happened to be
crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were
awkward impediments, and choleric people were
disposed to fight for the wall. In 1766, when
Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolbov, and

Fleet Street. 1

BURNING THE JACK-BOOT.

put up at that humble hostelry the " White Horse," '
in Fetter Lane, he describes coming home from
Drury l.ane with his brother in a sedan. Turning
out of Fleet .Street into Fetter Lane, some rough
fellows ]nished against the chair at the corner and
upset it, in their eagerness to pass first. Dr.
Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every
street-post he passed was cured in 1766, by the
laying down of side-pavements. On that occasion
V. is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet
that they would pave more in a day than four
Scotchmen could. By three o'clock the English-
men had got so much ahead that they went into a
public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards return-
ing to their work, won the wager.

In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a
large jack-boot in the centre of Fleet Street, in
ridicule of Lord Bute ; but a more serious atiray
took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy
Wilkites closed the Bar, to stop a procession
of 600 loyal citizens m route to St. James's to
present an address denouncing all attempts to
spread sedition and uproot the constitution. The
carriages were pelted with stones, and the City
marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed
with mud. Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took
shelter in "Nando's Coffee House.' About 150 of
the frightened citizens, passing up Chancer)' Lane,
got to the palace by a dc\ious way, a hearse with
two white liorses and two black following them to
St. James's Palace. Even there the Riot Act 'had to
be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm
fled into " Nando's," in his alann, he sent home his
carriage containing the address. The mob searched
the vehicle, but could not fintl the paper, upon

which Mr. Boehm hastened to the Court, and
arrived just in time witli the important document.

The treason trials of 1794 brought more noise
and trouble to Fleet Street. - Hardy, the secretary
to the London Corresjjonding Society, was a shoe-
maker at No. 161 ; and during the trial of this
approver of the French Revolution, Mr. John Scott
(afterwards Lord F.klon) was in great danger from
a Fleet Street crowd. " The mob," he says,
" kept thickening round me till I came to Fleet
Street, one of the worst parts that I had to pass
through, and the cries began to be rather threat-
ening. ' Down with him !' ' Now is the time, lads ;
do for him !' and various others, horrible enough ;
but I stood up, and spoke as loud as I could :
' You may do for me, if you like ; but, remember,
there will be another Attorney-General before eight
o'clock to-morrow morning, and the king will not
allow the trials to be stopped.' Upon this one
man shouted out, ' Say you so ? you are right to
tell us. Let us give him three cheers, my lads I'
So they actually cheered jiie, ami I got safe to
my own door."

There was great consternation in Fleet Street in
November, 1820, when Queen Caroline, attended by
700 persons on horseback, passed publicly through
it to return thanks at St. Paul's. Many alarmed
people barricaded their doors and windows. Still
greater was the alarm in August, 1821, when the
(jueen's funeral procession went by, after the deplor-
able fight with the Horse Guards at Cumberland
Gate, when two of the rioters were killed.

With this rapid sketch of a few of the events in
the history of Fleet Street, we begin our patient
l)eregTination from house to house.

CHAPTER IV.

FLEET STREET (continued).

Dr. Johnson in Ambuscade at Temple Ear— The First Child— Dryden and Black Will— Rupert's Jewels— Telson's Bank— The Apollo Club at
the "Devil"— "Old Sir Simon the King"— ".Mull Sack"— Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lenno.v- Will Waterproof at the "Cock"— The
Duel at "Dick's Coffee House"— Lintot's Sho;o— Pope and Warburton— Lamb and the AIbi n -The Palace of Cardinal Wolsey-Mrs.
Salmon's Waxwork— ls.iak Walton— Praed's li.ink— .Murray and Hyron— St. Dunstan's- Fleet Street Printers— Hoarc's Hank and the
"Golden Bottle"— The Real and Spurious " lIitre"—Hone's Trial— Cobbett's Shop— " Peek's Coffee House."

There is a delightful jiassage in an almost un-
known essay by Dr. Johnson that connects him
indissolubly with the neighbourhood of Temple
Bar. The essay, ^\Titten in 1756 for the Universal
Visitor, is entitled "A Project for the Employ-
ment of .\uthors," and is full of humour, which,
indeed, those who knew him best considered the
chief feature of Johnson's genius. We rather pride
Ourselves on the discovery of this pleasant bit of
autobiography : — " It is my practice," says John.son,

" when I am in want of amusement, to place my-
self for an hour at Temple liar, or any other narrow
pass much frequented, and examine one by one
the looks of the passengers, and I have commonly
found that between the hours of eleven and four
every si.xth man is an author. They are seldom
to be seen very early in the morning or late in the
evening, but about dinner-time they are all in
motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their
faces, which gives little opportunity of diSceHiing

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street

their hopes or fears, their pleasures or their pains.
But in the afternoon, when they have all tlined, or
composed themselves to pass the day without a
dinner, their passions have full play, and I can
perceive one man wondering at the stujiidity of the
public, by which his new book has been totally
neglected ; another cursing the French, who fright
away literary curiosity by their threat of an invasion ;

That quiet grave house (No. i), that seems to
demurely huddle close to Temple Bar, as if for
protection, is the oldest banking-house in London
except one. For two centuries gold has been
shovelled about in those dark rooms, and reams
of bank-notes have been shuffled over by prac-
tised thumbs. Private banks originated in the
stormy days before the Civil War, when wealthy

DE. TITUS OATES.

another swearing at his bookseller, who will ad-
vance no money without copy ; another perusing
as he Avalks his publisher's bill; another mur-
muring at an unanswerable criticism ; another
determining to write no more to a generation of
barbarians ; and another wishing to try once again
whether he cannot awaken the drowsy world to a
sense of his merit." This extract seems to us to
form an admirable companion picture to that in
which we have already shown Goldsmith bantering
his brother Jacobite, Johnson, as they looked up
together at the grim heads on Temple Bar.

citizens, afraid of what might happen, entrusted
their money to their goldsmiths to take care of till
the troubles had blown over. In the reign of
Charles I., Francis Child, an industrious apprentice
of the old school, married the daughter of his
master, William Wheeler, a goldsmith, who lived
one door west of Temple Bar, and in due time
succeeded to his estate and business. Li the first
London Directory (1677), among the fifty-eight
goldsmiths, thirty-eight of whom lived in Lombard
Street, " Blanchard & Child," at the " Marygold,"
Fleet Street, figure conspicuously as " keeping

Fleet Street.]

BLACK WILL AND HIS CUDGEL.

running cashes." The original Marygold (some-
times mistaken for a rising sun), with the motto,
" Ainsi mon ame," gilt upon a green ground,
elegantly designed in the French manner, is still to
be seen in the front office, and a marigold in full
bloom still blossoms on the bank cheques. In the
year 167S it was at Mr. Blanchard's, the gold-
smith's, ne.xt door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the
poet, bruised and angry, deposited ;^So as a re-
ward for any one who woidd discover the bullies

Bar the firm still preserve the dusty books of the
unfortunate alderman, who fled to Holland. There,
on the sallow leaves over wliich the poor alderman
once groaned, you can read the items of our sale of
Dunkirk to the French, the dishonourable surrender
of which drove the nation almost to madness, and
hastened the downfall of Lord Clarendon, who was
supposed to have built a magniticent house (on tiie
site of Albemarle Street, Piccadilly) with some of
the very money. Charles II. himself banked here,

TEMPLE BAR AND THE "DEVIL TAVERN" (icY /il^V I^S).

of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose
Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by
the Earl of Dorset. The advertisement promises, if
the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall
still have the ;^5o, without letting his name be
known or receiving the least trouble by any prose-
cution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy
way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s
reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm;
but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary
closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy
and unprincipled king jiocketed at one swoop more
than a mill'on and a half of money, which he soon
squandered on his shameless mistresses and un-
worthy favourites. In that quaint room over Temple
4

and drew his thousands with all the careless non-
chalance of his nature. Nell Gwynne, Pepys, of
the " Diary," and Prince Rupert also had accounts
at Child's, and some of these ledgers are still
hoarded over Temple Bar in that Venetian-looking
room, approached by strange prison-like passages,
for which chamber Messrs. Child pay something
less than ^^50 a-year.

When Prince Rupert died at his house in the
Barbican, the valuable jewels of the old cavalry
soldier, valued at ^20.000, were disposed of in a
lottery, managed by Mr. Francis Child, the gold-
smith ; the king himself, who took a half-business-
like, half-boyish interest in tlie matter, counting the
tickets among all the lords and ladies at Whitehall.

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

r Fleet Street.

In North's " Life of Lord Keeper Guildford," the
courtier and lawyer of the reign of Charles IL,
there is an anecdote that pleasantly connects Child's
bank witli the fees of the great lawyers who in tliat
evil reign ruled in Chancery Lane : —

"The Lord Keeper Guildford's business in-
creased," says his biographer, " even while he was
solicitor, " to be so much as to have overwhelmed
one lessdexterous ; but when he was made Attorney-
General, though his gains by his office were great,
they were much greater by his practice, for that
flowed in upon him like an orage, enough to
overset one that had not an extraordinary readi-
ness in business. His skull-caps, which he wore
when he had leisure to observe his constitution,
as I touched before, were now destined to lie in
a drawer, to receive the money tliat came in by
fees. One had the gold, another the crowns and
half-crowns, and another the smaller money. When
these vessels were full, they were committed to his
friend (the Hon. Roger North), who was constantly
near him, to tell out the cash and put it into the
bags according to the contents ; and so they went
to his treasurers, Blanchard & Child, goldsmiths.
Temple Bar."

V^ear by year the second Sir Francis Child grew
in honour. He was alderman, sheriff. Lord Mayor,
President of Christ's Hospital, and M.P. for the
City, and finally, dying in 17 13, full of years, was
buried under a grand black marble tomb in Fulham
churchyard, and his account closed for ever. The
family went on living in the sunshine. Sir Robert,
the son of the Sir Francis, was also alderman of his
ward; and, on his death, his brother. Sir Francis,
succeeded to all his father's dignities, became an
East Indian director, and in 1725 received the
special thanks of the citizens for promoting a
special act for regulating City elections. Another
member of this family (Sir Josiah Child) deserves
special mention as one of the earliest writers
on political economy and a man much in ad-
vance of his time. He saw through the old
fallacy about the balance of trade, and ex-
plained clearly the true causes of the commercial
prosperity of the Dutch. He also condemned the
practice of each parish paying for its own poor, an
evil which all Poor-law reformers have endea-
voured to alter. Sir Josiah was at the head of the
East India Company, already feeling its way to-
wards the gold and diamonds of India. His
brother was Governor of Bomba)-, and by the
marriage of his numerous daughters the rich
merchant became allied to half the peers and peer-
esses of England. The grandson of Aldennan
Backwell married a daughter of the second Sir

Francis Child, and his daughter married M'illiam
Pried, the Truro banker, \\ ho early in the present
centur)' opened a bank at 1S9, Fleet Street. So,
like tliree strands of a gold chain, the three bank-
ing families were welded together. In 1689 Child's
bank seems to have for a moment tottered, but
was saved by the timely loan of ^^1,400 proffered
by that overbe^ing woman the Duchess of Marl-
borough. Hogarth is said to have made an oil
sketch of the scene, which was sold at Hcdg.son's
sale-room in 1834, and has since disappeared.

In Pennant's time (1793) the original gold.smith's
shop seems to have still existed in Fleet Street, in
connection with this bank. The principal of the
firm was the celebrated Countess of Jersey, a former
earl having assumed the name of Child on the
countess inheriting the estates of her maternal
grandfather, Robert Child, Esq., of Osterly Park,
Middlesex. A small full-length portrait of this
great beauty of George IV.'s court, painted by
Lawrence in his elegant but meretricious manner,
hangs in the first-floor room of the old bank. The
last Child died early in this century. A descendant
of Addison is a member of the present firm. In
Chapter i.. Book I., of his " Tale of Two Cities,"
Dickens has sketched Child's bank with quite an
Hogarthian force and colour. He has playfully
exaggerated the smallness, darkness, and ugliness
of the building, of which he describes the jxirtners
as so proud; but there is all his usual delightful
humour, occasionally passing into caricature : —

" Tlius it had come to pass that Telson's was tlie
triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open
a door of idiotic obstinacy with a wealc rattle in its throat,
you fell into Telson's down two steps, and came to your
senses in a miserable little shop with two little counters,
where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the
wind rustled it, while they CNamined the signature by the
dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-
bath of mud from Fleet Street, and which were made the
dingier by their own iron bars and the heavy shadow of
Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing ' the
House,' you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at
the b.ack, where you meditated on a mis-spent life, until the
House came with its hanils in its pockets, and you could
hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight."

In 1788 (George III.) the firm purchased the
renowned " Devil Tavern," next door eastward, and
upon the site erected the retiring row of houses up
a dim court, now called Child's Place, finally ab-
sorbing the old place of revelry and hushing the
unseemly clatter of pewter pots and the clamorous
shouts of " Score a pint of sherry in the Apollo "
for ever.

The noisy " Devil Tavern " (No. 2, Fleet Street)
had stood next the quiet goldsmith's shop evei

Fleet Street.]

BEN JONSON IN THE CHAIR.

39>

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

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."

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

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

<
fc.

c
<

c
z

o
<

►J

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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

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-lea<lers and bill-discounters ;
though crowds of barristers and solicitors also
frequented it, in order to consult the useful files of
London and country newspapers hoarded there
for now more than a century. Mr. Jay has left us an
amusing sketch of one of the former frequenters
of "Peele's" — the latQ Sir William Owen Barlow,

Fleet Street.]

TOMPION AND PINCHBECK.

a bencher of the ^Middle Temple. This methodical angry if any loud talkers disturbed him at his

Did gentleman had never travelled in a stagecoach evening paper. He once requested the instant

or railway-carriage in his life, and had not for years discharge of a waiter at " I'eele's," because tlie

read a book. He came in for dinner at the same , civil but ungrammatical man had said, " There are

hour every day, except in Term-time, and was very a leg of mutton, and there is chops.''

CHAPTER V.
FLEET STREET {contimu-d).

The " Green Dragon "—Tompion and Pinchbeck— The Recoyd—'&\.. Uridc's and its Memories— /'////c// and his Conlriliutors— The t)ispaUh—^
The Daily TcUgraph—'\\\c " Globe Tavern " and Goldsmith — The Morniiig Advertiser — The Standard — The London Magazine— K
Strange Story— Alderman Waithman — Brutus Uilly — Hardham and his "37."

The original " Green Dragon" (No. 56, south) was
destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new building
set six feet backward. During the Popish Plot
several anti-papal clubs met here ; and from the
windows Roger North stood to see the shouting,
torch-waving procession pass along, to burn the
Pope's effigy at Temple Bar. In the " Discussion
Forum" many Lord Chancellors of the future have
tried tlieir eloquence. It was celebrated some years
ago from an allusion to it made by Napoleon III.

At No. 67 (corner of Whitefriars Street) once
lived that famous watchmaker of Queen Anne's
reign, Thomas Tompion, who is said, in 1702, to
have begun a clock for St. Paul's Cathedral which
was to go one hundred years without winding
up. He died in 17 13. His apprentice, George
Graham, invented, as ?*lr. Noble tells us, the hori-
zontal escapement, in 1724. He was succeeded
by Mudge and Dutton, who, in 1768, made Dr.
Johnson his first watch. The old shop was (1850)
one of the last in Fleet Street to be modernised.

Between Bolt and Johnson's courts (152-166,
north) — say near " Anderton's Hotel" — there
lived, in the reign of George II., at the sign of
the " Astronomer's Musical Clock," Christopher
Pinchbeck, an ingenious musical-clockmaker,
who invented the " cheap and useful imitation of
gold," which still bears his name. (Watt's, in his
" Dictionary of Chemistry," says " pinchbeck " is
an alloy of copper and zinc, usually containing
about nine parts copper to one part zinc. Brandt
says it is an alloy containing more copper than
exists in brass, and consequently made by fusing
various proportions of copper with brass.) Pinch-
beck often exhibited his musical automata in
a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and, in conjunc-
tion with Fawkes the Conjuror, at Southwark Fair.
He made, according to Mr. Wood, an ex(]uisite
musical clock, worth about ;^5oo, for Louis XIV.,

and a fine organ for the Great Mogul, valued at;i^30d.
He died in 1733. He removed to Fleet Street
(between Bolt and Johnson's courts, north side)
from Clerkenwell in 1721. His clocks played tunes
and imitated the notes of birds. In 1765 he set
up, at the Queen's House, a clock with four faces,
showing the age of the moon, the day of the week
and month, the time of sun rising, &c.

No. 161 (north) was the shop of Thomas Hardy,
that agitating bootmaker, secretary to the London
Corresponding Society, who was implicated in the
John Home Tooke trials of 1794; and next door,
years after (No. 162), Richard Carlisle, a "free-
thinker," opened a lecturing, conversation, and
discussion establishment, preached the "only true
gospel,'' liung effigies of bishops outside his shup, and
was eventually quieted by nine years' imprisonment,
a punishment by no means undeserved. No. 76
(south) was once the entrance to the printing-ollice
of Samuel Richardson, the author of "Clarissa,"
who afterwards lived in Salisbury Square, and
there held levees of his admirers, to whom he
read his works with an innocent vanity which
occasionally met with disagreeable rebufis.

"Anderton's Hotel "(No. 164, north side) occu-
pies the site of a house given, as Mr. Noble says,
in 1405, to the Goldsmitlis' Company, under the
singular litle of " Tlie Horn in the Hooj)," pro-
bably at that time a tavern. In the register of
St. Dunstan's is an entry (1597), " Rali)h slaine
at the Home, buryed," but no further recortl
exists of this hot-headed roysterer. In the reign
of King James I. the "Horn"' is described as
" between the ' Red Lion,' over against Serjeants'
Inn, and Three-legged Alley."

The J?iwrd (So. 169, north side) started in 1828
as an organ of the extreme Evangelical jjarty. Tlie
first promoters were the late Mr. James E\ans,
a brother of Sir Andrew Agnew, and Mr. Andrew

OLD AND NEW LONDON

[Fleet Street.

Fleet Street.!

ST. BRIDE'S.

Hamilton, of West Ham Common (the first .secre-
t.iry of the AlUance Insurance Company). Among
their supporters were Henry Law, Dean of Glou-
cester, and Francis Close, afterwards Dean of
Carlisle. Amongst its earliest writers was the
celebrated Dr. John Henry Newman, of 0.\ford.
The paper was all but dyin^ when a new " whip "

celebrated for its uncompromising religious tone
and, as Mr. James Crant truly says, for the
earliness and accuracy of its politico-ecclesiastical
information.

The old church of St. Bride (Bridget) was of
great antiquity. As early as 12.^5 we find a turbu-
lent foreigner, named Henry de IJattl-j, after slaj ing

OLD HOUSES (STILL ST.\NDING) IN FLLEr STREET, NEAR ST. UUNSIAN's LULkLil (..,,■ /.i,<- 52).

was made for money, and the Rev. Henry Blunt,
of Chelsea, became for a short time its ediior.
The Record at last began to tlourisli and to
assume a bolder and a more independent tcine.
Dean Milman's neology, the peculiarities of the
Irvingites, and the dangerous Oxford tracts, were
alternately denounced. In due course the Record
began to appear three times a week, and became

one Thomas de Hall on the king's highway, flying
for sanctuary to St. Bride's, where he was guarded
by the aldermen and sheriffs, and eramined in the
church by the Constable of the Tower. The mur-
derer, after confessing his crime, abjured the realm.
In 1413 a priest of St. Bride's was hung for an
intrigue in which he had been detected. Williait
Venor, a warden of the Fleet TrisPi', ai'ded

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street.

a body and side-aisles in 14S0 (Edward IV.) At
the Reformation there were orchards between
:he parsonage gardens and the Thames. In 1637,
a docimient in the Record Oflice, quoted by
Mr. Noble, mentions that Mr. Palmer, vicar of
St. Bride's, at the service at seven a.m., sometimes
omitted the prayer for the bishop, and, beirg gene-
rally lax as to forms, often read service without
surplice, gown, or even his cloak. This worthy man,
n'hose living was sequestered in 1642, is recorded,
in order to save money for the poor, to have lived in
a bed-chamber in St. Bride's steeple. He founded
an almshouse in Westminster, upon which Fuller
remarks, in his quaint way, " It gi\-eth the best light
when one carrieth his lantern before him." The
brother of Pepys was buried here in 1664 under
his mother's pew. The old church was swallowed
up by the Great Fire, and the present building
erected in 1680, at a cost of ^11,430 5s. iid.
The tower and spire were considered master-pieces
of Wren. The spire, originally 234 feet high, was
struck by lightning in 1754, and it is now only 226
feet high. --It was again struck in 1803. The
illuminated dial (the second erected in London) was
set up permanenriy in 1827. The Spital sermons,
now preached in Christ Church, Newgate Street,
■were preached in St. Bride's from the Restoration
till 1797. They were originally all preached
in the yard of the hospital of St. Mary Spital,
Bishopsgate. Mr. Noble, has ransacked the
records relating to St. Bride's with the patience of
old Stow. St. Bride's, he says, was renowned for
its tithe-rate contests ; but after many lawsuits
and great expense, a final settlement of the question
was come to in the years 1705-6. An Act was
passed in 1706, by w-hich Thomas Townley, who
had rented the tithes for twenty-one years, was to
be paid;£'i,200 within two years, by quarterly pa)'-
ments and ;^4oo a year afterwards. In 1869 the
inappropriate rectory of St. Bridget and the tithes
thereof, except the advowson, the parsonage house,
and Easter-dues offerings, were sold by auction for
;^2,7oo. It may be here worthy to note, says
Mr. Noble, that in 1705 the number of rateable
houses in the parish of St. Bride was 1,016, and
the rental .;^i8,374 ; in 1868 the rental was
^^205,407 gross, or ^168,996 rateable.

Mr. Noble also records pleasantly the musical
feats accomplished on the bells of St. Bride's. In
1710 ten bells were cast for this church by Abra-
ham Rudhall, of Gloucester, and on the nth of
Januarj', 17 17, it is recorded that the first com-
plete peal of 5,040 grandsire caters ever rung was
effected by the "London scholars." In 17 18 two
treble bells were added ; and on the gth of January,

1724, the first peal ever completed in this kingdom
upon twelve bells was rung by the college youths ;
and in 1726 the first peal of Bob Maximus, one
of the ringers being Mr. Francis (afterwards Admiral)
Geary. It was reported by the ancient ringers,
says our trustworthy authority, that every one who
rang in the last-mentioned peal left the church in
his own carriage. Such was the dignity of the " cam-
panularian " art in those day.s. When St. Bride's
bells were first put up. Fleet Street used to be
thronged with carriages full of gentry, who had come
far and near to hear the pleasant music float aloft.
During the terrible Gordon Riots, in 1780, Bras-
bridge, the silversmith, who wrote an autobiography,
says he went up to the top of St. Bride's steeple to
see the awful spectacle of the conflagration of the
Fleet Prison, but the flakes of fire, even at that
great height, fell so thickly as to render -the situa-
tion untenable.

Many great people lie in and around St. Bride's ;
and Mr. Noble gives several curious extracts from
the registers. Among the names we find Wynkyn
de Worde, the second printer in London ; Baker,
the chronicler ; Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, who
died of want in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane ;
Ogilby, the translator of Homer ; the Countess of
Orrery (17 10) ; Elizabeth Thomas, a lady immor-
talised by Pope ; and John Hardham, the Fleet Street
tobacconist. The entrance to the vault of Mr.
Holden (a friend of Pepy.s), on the north side of
the church, is a relic of the older building. Inside
St. Bride's are monuments to Richardson, the
novelist; Nichols, the historian of Leicestershire ;
and Alderman Waitliman. Among the clergy of
St. Bride's Mr. Noble notes John Cardmaker, who
was burnt at Smithfield for heresy, in 1555; Fuller,
the Church historian and author of the "Worthies,"
who was lecturer here ; Dr. Isaac Madox, originally
an apprentice to a pastrycook, and who died Bishop
of Winchester in 1759 ; and Dr. John Thomas, vicar,
who died in 1 793. There were two John Thomases
among the City clergy of that time. They were both
chaplains to the king, both good preachers, both
squinted, arid both died bishops !

The present approach to St. Bride's, designed by
J. P. Papworth, in 1824, cost ;^i 0,000, and was
urged forward by Mr. Blades, a Tory tradesman of
Ludgate Hill, and a great opponent of Alderman
Waithman. A fire that had destroyed some
ricketty old houses gave the requisite opportunity
for letting air and light round poor, smothered-up
St. Bride's.

The office of Punch (No. 85, south side) is said
to occupy the site of the small school, in the hous?
of a tailor, in which Milton once earned a precarious

Fleet Street.]

THE ORIGIN OF PUNCH.

living. Here, ever since i S41, the pleasant jester of
Fleet Street has scared folly ijy the jangle of liis bells
and the blows of his staff. The best and most
authentic account of the origin of Punch is to be
found in the following communication to Noles ami
Queries, September 30, 1S70. Mr. W. H. Wills, who
was one of the earliest contii')utors to Punch, says : —
" The idea of converting Punch from a strolling
to a literary laughing philosopher belongs to Mr.
Henry Mayhew, former editor (with his school-
fellow Mr. Gilbert a Beckett) of Figaro in London.
TJie first three mmibers, issued in July and August,
1S41, were composed almost entirely by that
gentleman, Mr. Mark Lemon, Wx. Henry Plunkett
('Fusbos'), Mr. Stirling Coyne, and the writer of
these lines. Messrs. Mayhew and Lemon put the
numbers together, but did not formally dub them-
selves editors until the appearance of their 'Sliilling's
Worth of Nonsense.' I'he cartoons, then 'Punch's
Pencillings,' and the smaller cuts, were drawn by
Mr. A. S. Hcnning, Mr. Newman, and Mr. Alfred
Forester ('Crowquill') ; later, by Mr. Hablot Browne
and Mr. Kenny Meadows. The designs \\-ere en-
graved by Mr. Ebenezer Landells, who occupied also
the important position of ' capitalist.' Mr. Gilbert
k Beckett's first contribution to Punch, 'The Above-
bridge Navy,' appeared in No. 4, with Mr. John
Leech's earliest cartoon, ' Foreign Affairs.' It was
not till Mr. Leech's strong objection to treat
political subjects was overcome, that, long after, he
began to illustrate Punch's pages regularly. This
he did, with the brilliant results that made his
name famous, down to his untimely death. The
letterpress description of ' Foreign Affairs ' was
written by Mr. Percival Leigh, who — also after
an interval — steadily contributed. Mr. Douglas
Jerrold began to wield Punch's baton in No. 9.
His ' Peel Regularly Called in ' was the first of
those withering political satires, signed with a ' J '
in the corner of each page opposite to the cartoon,
that conferred on Punch a wholesome influence in
politics. Mr. Albert Smith made his de/nit in this
wise : — At the birth of Punch had just died a
periodical called (I think) the Cosnwrama. When
moribund, Mr. Henry Mayhew was called in to
resuscitate it. This periodical bequeathed a comic
census-paper filled up, in the character of a show-
man, so cleverly that the author was eagerly sought
at the starting of Punch. He proved to be a
medical student hailing from Chertsey, and signing
the initials A. S. — ' only,' remarked Jerrold, ' two-
thirds of the truth, perhaps.' This pleasant sup-
position was, however, reversed at the very first
introduction. On that occasion Mr. Albert
Smith left the ' copy ' of the opening of ' The

Physiology of the London Medical Student.'
The writers already nanie<i. witii a few volun-
teers selected from the edit r'.s box, filled tlic first
volume, and belonged to the ante-' B. & E.' era of
Punch's history. The proprietary had hitlierto
coi->sisted 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 :^

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.~ii<s, nor become a member
of Parliament, was then introducing that since
celebrated medicine to the public, and for that
purpose had rented some rooms on the premises
of his friend Mr. Last.

The circumstance which led to Punch's birth was
simple enough. In June, 1841, Mr. Last called
upon Mr. Alfred Mayhew, then in the office of his
father, Mr. Joshua >Layhew, 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."

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

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."

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,

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.

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

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."

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

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<a7ii
shoemaker then refused to pay the lawyer's bill,
and, moreover, called him a rogue. The enraged
lawyer replied, " I have put you into possession of
this property by my exertions, now I will spend
;£'ioo out of my own pocket to take it away again,
for you are not deserving of it." The lawyer
accordingly advertised again for the surgeon's
nearest of kin; Mr. Willcocks, a bookseller in

to London to seek their fortunes, ;^5 on their joint
note.

Nos. 103 (now the Siiin/av Times office) and 104
were the shop of that bustling politician Alderman
AVaithman ; and to his memory was erected the
obelisk on the site of his first shop, formerly the
i north-west end of Fleet Market. Waithman,
according to Mr. Timbs, had a genius for the stage,
and especially shone as IVLacbeth. He was uncle to
John Reeve, the comic actor. Cobbett, who hated
Waithman, has left a portrait of the alderman,
written in his usual racy English. " Among these

Fleet Street.]

ALDERMAN WAITHMAN.

persons," he says, talking of the Princess Carohne
agitation, in 1813, "there was a common council-
man named Robert ^Vaitl^man, a man who for
many years had taken a conspicuous jjart in the
pohtics of the City ; a man not destitute of the
powers of utterance, and a man of sound prin-
ciples also. But a man so enveloped, so com-
pletely swallowed up by self-conceit, who, though
perfectly illiterate, though unable to give to three
ronserutivc sentences a grammatical construction.

talking about rotten boroughs and parliamentary
reform. Ikit all in vain. Then rose cries of
' No, no! the address — the address !' which appear
I to have stung him to the ([uick. His face, which
was none of the whitest, assumed a ten times
darker die. His look was furious, while he uttered
the words,- ' I am sorry that my well-weighed
opinions are in opposition to the general sentiment
so hastily adopted ; but I hope the Livery will
consider the necessity of jjreserving its character

GKUUP Al HAKUHA.M'S TOBACCO bllUP (sCl page 69).

seemed to look upon himself as the first orator, the
first -writer, and the first statesman of the whole
world. He had long been the cock of the Demo-
cratic party in the City ; he was a great speech-
maker ; could make very free with facts, and when
it suited his purpose could resort to as foul play as
most men." According to Cobbett, who grows
more than usua' ly virulent on the occasion, AVaith-
man, vexed that Alderman Wood had been the
first to propose an address of condolence to the
Princess at the Common Council, opposed it,
and was defeated. As Cobbett says, " He then
checked himself, endeavoured to recover his
ground, floundered about got some applause by

for purity and wisdom.' " On the appointed day
the Princess was presented with the address, to
the delight of the more zealous Radicals. The
procession of more than one hundred carriages
came back ])ast Carlton House on their return
from Kensington, the people groaning and hissing
to torment the Regent.

Brasbridgc, the Tory silversmith of Fleet Street,
writes very contemptuously in his autobiography
of Waithman. Sneering at his boast of reading,
he says : ''I own my curiosity was a little excited

! to know when and where he began his studies.
It could not be in his shop in Fleet Market, for

, there he was too busily employed in attending to

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street.

the fishwomcn and other ladies connected with
the busine.ss of the market. Nor could it be at
the comer of Fleet Street, where he was always
no less assiduously engaged in ticketing his super-
super calicoes at two and two pence, and cutting
them off for two and twenty pence." According to
Brasbridge,Waithman made his first speech in 1792,
in Founder's Hall, Lothbury, " called by some at
that time the cauldron of sedition." Waithman
was Lord Mayor in 1 8 23-2 4, and was returned to
Parliament five times for the City. The portrait of
Waithman on page 66, and the view of his shop,
page 61, are taken from pictures in Mr. Gardiner's
magnificent collection.

A short biography of this civic orator will not be
uninteresting : — Robert Waithman was born of
humble parentage, at Wrexham, in North Wales.
Becoming an orphan w-hen only four months old, he
was placed at the school of a Mr. Moore by his
uncle, on whose death, about 17 78, he obtained a
situation at Reading, whence he proceeded to
London, and entered into the service of a respect-
able linen-draper, with whom he continued till he
became of age. He then entered into business at
the south end of Fleet Market, whence, some years
afterwards, he removed to the corner of New Bridge
Street. He appears to have commenced his poli-
tical career about 1792, at the oratorical displays
made in admiration and imitation of the proceed-
ings of the French revolutionists, at Founder's
Hall, in Lothbury. In 1794 he brought forward a
series of resolutions, at a common hall, animad-
verting upon the war with revolutionised France,
and enforcing the necessity of a reform in Parlia-
ment. In 1796 he was first elected a member of
the Common Council for the Ward of Farringdon
AVithout, and became a very frequent speaker in
that public body. It was supposed that Mr. Fox
intended to have rewarded his political exertions
by the place of Receiver-General of the Land Tax.
In 18 18, after having been defeated on several pre-
vious occasions, he was elected as one of the repre-
sentatives in Parliament of the City of London,
defeating the old member, Sir William Curtis.

Very shortly after, on the 4th of August, he was
elected Alderman of his ward, on the death of
Sir Charles Price, Bart On the 25 th of January,
18 1 9, he made his maiden speech in Parliament,
on the presentation of a petition praying for a
revision of the criminal code, the existing state of
wliich he severely censured. At the ensuing
election of 1820 the friends of Sir William Curtis
turned the tables upon him, Waithman being de-
feated. In this year, however, he attained the
honour cf the shrievalty; and in October, 1S23, he

was chosen Lord Mayor. In 1826 he stood another
contest for the City, with better success. In 1830,
1831, and 1832 he obtained his re-election with
difficulty; but in 1831 he suffered a severe disap-
pointment in losing the chamberlainship, in the
competition for which Sir James Shaw obtained a
large majority of votes.

We subjoin the remarks made on his death by
the editor of the Times newspaper : — " The magis-
tracy of London has been deprived of one of its
most respectable members, and the City of one of
its most upright representatives. Everybody knows
that Mr. Alderman Waithman has filled a large
space in City politics ; and most people who were
acquainted with him will be ready to admit that,
had his early education been better directed, or his
early circumstances more favourable to his am-
bition, he might have become an important man in
a wider and higher sphere. His natural parts, his
political integrity, his consistency of conduct, and
the energy and perseverance with which he per-
formed his duties, placed him far above the com-
mon run of persons whose reputation is gained by
their oratorical displays at meetings of the Common
Council. In looking back at City proceedings for
the last thirty-five or forty years, we find him alwa}-s
rising above his rivals as the steady and consistent
advocate of the rights of his countrymen and the
liberties and privileges of his fellow-citizens."

There is a curious story told of the Fleet Street
crossing, opposite Waithman's corner. It was
swept for years by an old black man named Charles
M'Ghee, whose father had died in Jamaica at the
age of 108. According to Mr. Noble, when he laid
down his broom h-e sold his professional right for
^1,000 (^100 ?). Retiring into private life much
respected, he was ahvays to be seen on Sundays at
Rowland Hill's chapel. When in his seventy
third year his portrait was taken and hung in the
parlour of the " Twelve Bells," Bride Lane. To
Miss Waithman, who used to send him out soup
and bread, he is, untiiily, said to have left ^7,000.

Mr. Diprose, in his " History of St. Clement," tells
us more of this black sweeper. " Brutus Billy," or
" Tim-buc-too," as he was generally called, lived in
a passage leading from Stanhope Street into Drury
Lane. He was a short, thick-set man, with his
white-grey hair carefully brushed up into a toupee,
the fashion of his youth. He was found in his
shop, as he called his crossing, in all weathers,
and was invariably civil. At night, after he had shut
up shop (swept mud over his crossing), he carried
round a basket of nuts and fruit to places of public
entertainment, so that in time hs laid by a con-
siderable amount of money, Brutus Lilly was

Fleet Siteet.]

HARDHAM'S " THIRTY-SEVKN.

brimful of story and anecdote. He died in Chapel
Court in 1S54, in his eighty-seventh year. This
worthy man was perhaps the model for Billy
Waters, the negro beggar in Tom ami Jcny, who
is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing
" a turkey without sassenges."

In Garrick's time John Hardham, the well-
known tobacconist, opened a shop at No. 106.
There, at the sign of the " Red Lion," Hardham's
Highlander kept steatly guard at a doorvvay
tlirough which half the celebrities of the day made
their exits and entrances. His celebrated " No. 37 "
snuff was said, like the French millefleur, to be
composed of a great number of ingredients, and
Garrick in his kind way helped it into fashion by
mentioning it favourably on the stage. Hardham,
a native of Chichester, began life as a servant,
WTOte a comedy, acted, and at last became
Garrick's " numberer," having a general's quick
coup d'cuil at gauging an audience, and so checking
the money-takers. Garrick once became his security
for a hundred pounds, but eventually Hardham
grew rich, and died in 1772, bequeathing ^^2 2,289
to Chichester, 10 guineas to Garrick, and merely
setting apart ;!^io for his funeral, only vain fools,
as he said, spending more. We can fancy the
great actors of that day seated on Hardham's
tobacco-chests discussing the drollery of Foote or
the vivacity of Clive.

" It has long been a source of inquiry,'' says a
writer in the City Fress, " wlience the origin of the
cognomen, 'No. 37,' to the celebrated snuff com-
pounded still under the name of John Hardham,
in Fleet Street. There is a tradition that Lord
Townsend, on being applied to by Hardham, whom
he patronised, to name the snuft", suggested the
cabalistic iwjraber of 37, it being the exact number
of a majority obtained in some proceedings in the
Irish Parliament during the time he was Lord Lieu-
tenant there, and which was considered a triumph
for his Government. The dates, however, do not
serve this theorj-, as Lord Townsend was not viceroy
till the years 1767-72, when the snuff must have
been well established in public fame and Hardham
in the last years of his life. It has already been
printed elsewhere that, on the famed snuff coming
out in the first instance, David Garrick, hearing of
it, called in Fleet Street, as he was wont frequently
to do, and offered to bring it under the public notice
in the most effectual manner, by introducing an
incident in a new comedy then about to be pro-
duced by him, where he would, in his part in the
play, offer another character a pinch of snuff, who
would extol its excellence, whereupon Garrick
arranged to continue the conversation by naming

the snuff as the renowned '37 of John Hardham.'
]Jut the enigma, even now, is not solved ; so we
will, for what it may be worth, venture our own
explanation. It is well known that in most of the '
celebrated snuffs before the public a great variety
of qualities and descriptions of tobacco, and of'
various ages, are introduced. Hardham, like the
rest, never told his secret liow tlie snuff was made,
bat left it as a heritage to his successors. It is very
jjrobaljle, therefore, that the mystic figures, 37, we
have quoted represented the number of qualities,
growths, and description of the 'fragrant weed'
introduced by him into his snuff, and may be re-
garded as a sort of appellative rebus, or conceit,
founded thereon."*

But Hardham occupied himself in other ways
than in the making of snuff and of money — for the
Chichester youth had now grown wealthy — and
in extending his circle of acquaintances amongst
dramatists and players ; he was abundantly dis-
tinguished for Christian charity, for, in the language
of a contemporary writer, we find that " his deeds in
that respect were extensive," and his bounty " was
conveyed to many of the objects of it in the most
delicate manner." From the same authority we find
that Hardham once failed in business (we presume,
as a lapidary) more creditably than he could have
made a fortune by it. This spirit of integrity,
which remained a remarkable feature in his cha-
racter throughout life, induced him to be often
resorted to by his wealthy patrons as trustee for
the payment of their bounties to deserving objects ;
in many cases the patrons died before the re-
cipients of their relief. With Hardham, how-
ever, this made no difference ; the annuities once
granted, although stopped by the decease of the
donors, were paid ever after by Hardham so long
as he lived ; and his delicacy of feeling induced
him even to persuade the recipients into the belief
that they were still derived from the same source.

No. 102 (south) was opened as a shop, in 17 19,
by one Lockyer, who called it " Mount Pleasant."
It then became a '" saloop-house," where the poor
purchased a beverage made out of sassatVas chips.
The proprietor, who began life, as Mr. Noble
says, with half-a-crown, died in March, 1739, worth
_;^i,ooo. Thomas Read was a later tenant Charles
Lamb mentions " saloop " in one of his essays, and
says, " Palates olher\vise not uninstructed in diet-
etical elegancies sup it up with avidity." Chimney-
sweeps, beloved by Lamb, approved it, and eventu-
ally stalls were set up in the streets, as at present
to reach even humbler customers.

* The re.-il fact is, the famous siiuflTwas merely c.aUejl from
the number of the cliawer that held it.

7°

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

CHAPTER VL
FLEET STREET (.N'ORTUEKN TRIBUT.AKIES -SHOE LANE AND BELL YARD).

The Kit-Kal Clab — The Toast for the Year— Little Lidy Mary— Drunken John Sly— Garth's Patients— Club removed to liarn Elms— Steele at the
"Trumpet" — Rogues' Lane— Murder— licgsars' Haunts — Thieves* Dens — Coiners— Theodore Hook in Hemp's Sponglng-houic— Pope in
Bell Yard — Minor Celebrities — Apollo Court."

Opposite Child's Bank, and almost within sound
of the jingle of its gold, once stood Shire Lane,
afterwards known as Lower Serle's Place. It latterly
became a dingy, disreputable defile, where lawyers'
clerks and the hangers-on of the law-courts were
often allured and sometimes robbed ; yet it had
been in its day a place of great repute. In this lane
the Kit-Kat, the great club of Queen Anne's reign,
held its sittings, at the "Cat and Fiddle," the shop of
a pastrycook named Christopher Kat. The house,
according to local antiquaries, afterwards became the
"Trumpet," a tavern mentioned by Steele in the
Taller, and latterly known as the " Duke of York."
The Kit-Kats were originally A\'hig patriots, who, at
the end of King 'William's reign, met in this out-of-
the-way place to devise measures to secure the
Protestant succession and keep out the pestilent
Stuarts. Latterly they assembled for simple enjoy-
ment ; and there have been grave disputes as to
whether the club took its name from the punning
sign, the " Cat and Kit," or from the flivourite pies
which Christopher Kat had christened ; and as this
question will probably last the antiquaries another
two centuries, we leave it alone. According to some
verses by Arbuthnot, the chosen friend of Pope and
Swift, the question was mooted even in his time, as
if the very founders of the club had forgotten.
Some think that the club really began with a weekly
dinner given by Jacob Tonson, the great book-
seller of Gray's Inn Lane, to his chief authors and
patrons. This Tonson, one of the patriarchs of
English booksellers, who published Dryden's
" Virgil,'' purchased a share of Milton's works, and
first made Shakespeare's works cheap enough to be
accessible to the many, was secretary to the club
from the commencement. An average of thirty-
nine poets, wits, noblemen, and gentlemen formed
the staple of the association. The noblemen were
perhaps rather too numerous for that republican
equality that should prevail in the best intellectual
society; yet above all the dukes shine out Steele
and Addison, the two great luminaries of the club.
Among the Kit-Kat dukes was the great Marl-
borough; among the earls the poetic Dorset, the
patron of Dryden and Prior ; among the lords the
wise Halifax; among the baronets bluff Sir Robert
Walpole. Of the poets and wits there were

Congreve, the most courtly of dramatists ; Garth,
the poetical physician — "well-natured Garth," as
Pope somewhat awkwardly calls him ; and Vanbrugh,
the ^\Tite^ of admirable comedies. Dryden could
hardly have seriously belonged to a Whig club ;
Pope was inadmissible as a Catholic, and Prior as
a renegade. Latterly objectionable men pushed in,
worst of all. Lord Mohun, a disreputable debauchee
and duellist, afterwards run through by the Duke
of Hamilton in Hyde Par'k, the duke himself
perishing in the encounter. When Mohun, in a
drunken pet, broke a gilded emblem off a club
chair, respectable old Tonson predicted the down-
fall of the society, and said with a sigh, " The man
who would do that would cut a man's throat." Sir
Godfrey Kneller, the great Court painter of the
reigns of William and Anne, was a member ; and
he painted for his friend Tonson the portraits of
forty-two gentlemen of the Kit-Kat, including
Dryden, who died a year after it started. The
forty-two portraits, painted three-quarter size (hence
called Kit-Kat), to suit the walls of Tonson's villa
at Barn Elms, still exist, and are treasured by Mr.
R. \s. Baker, a representative of the Tonson family,
at Hertingfordbury, in Hertfordshire. Among the
lesser men of this distinguished club we must
include Pope's friends, the " knowing Walsh " and
" Granville the polite."

As at the "Devil," "the tribe of Ben" must
have often discussed the downfall of Lord Bacon,
the poisoning of Overbury, the war in the Pala-
tinate, and the murder of Buckingham ; so in
Shire Lane, opposite, the talk must have run on
Marlborough's victories, Jacobite plots, and the
South-Sea Bubble ; Addison must have discussed
Swift, and Steele condemned the littleness of Pope.
It was the custom of this aristocratic club every year
to elect some reigning beauty as a toast. To the
queen of the year the gallant members wrote
epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a
diamond on the club glasses. The niost cele-
brated of these toasts were the four daughters of
the Duke of Marlborough — Lady Godolphin, Lady
Sunderland (generally known as " the Little
Whig''), Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer.
Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, was another ; a.iv so
was a niece of Sir Isaac Newton. The verses

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

THE LITTLE TOAST.

seem flat and dead now, like flowers found be-
tween the leaves of an old book ; but in their
time no doubt they had their special bloom and
fragrance. The most tolerable are those written
by Lord Halifax on " the Little Whig" :—

" AH nature's charms in Siiinlcrl.-ind appear,
Briglit as her eyes and as her reason clear ;
Yet still their force, to man not safely known,
Seems undiscovered to herself alone."

Yet how poor after all is this laboured compli-
ment in comparison to a sentence of Steele's on
some lady of rank whose virtues he honoured, —
" that even to have known her was in itself a
liberal education."

But few stories connected with the Kit-Kat
meetings are to be dug out of books, though no
doubt many snatches of the best conversation
ar^ embalmed in the Spectator and the Tatkr.
Yet Lady Mary Wortley IMontagu, whom Pope
first admired and then reviled, tells one pleasant
incident of her childhood tliat connects her with
the great club.

One evening when toasts were being chosen,
her father, Evelyn Pierpoint, Duke of Kingston,
took- it into his head to nominate Lady IMary, tlicn
a child only eight years of age. She was prettier,
he vowed, than any beauty on the list. "You
shall see her," cried the duke, and instantly sent a
chaise for her. Presently she came ushered in,
dressed in her best, and was elected by acclama-
tion. The Whig gentlemen drank the little lady's
health up-standing and, feasting her with sweet-
meats and passing her round with kisses, at once
inscribed her name with a diamond on a drinking-
glass. " Pleasure," she says, " w\as too poor a
word to express my sensations. They amounted
to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole life
did I pass so happy an evening."

It us^ed to be said that it took so much wine to
raise Addison to his best mood, that Steele gene-
rally got drunk before that golden hour arrived.
Steele, that warm-hearted careless fellow in whom
Thackeray so delighted, certainly shone at the Kit-
Kat; and an anecdote still extant shows him to
us with all his amiable weaknesses. On the night
of that great Whig festival — the celebration of King
William's anniversary — Steele and Addison brought
Dr. Hoa(Jley, the Bishop of Bangor, with them, and
solemnly drank " the immortal memory." Pre-
sently John Sly, an eccentric hatter and enthu-
siastic politician, crawled into the room on his
knees, in the old Cavalier fashion, and drank the
Orange toast in a tankard of foaming October. No
one laughed at the tipsy hatter ; but Steele, kindly

even when in li(iuor, kcjjt wliispering to tlie
rather shocked prelate, " Do laugh ; it is humanity
to laugh." The bishop soon put on his liat and
withdrew, and Steele by and by subsided tmder tlie
table. Picked up and crammed into a scdan-cliair,
he insisted, late as it was, in going to the Bishop of
Bangor's to- apologise. Eventually he was coaxed
home and got upstairs, but then, in a gush of
politeness, he insisted on seeing the chairmen out ;
after which lie retired with self-complacency to
bed. The next morning, in spite of headache the
most racking, Steele sent the tolerant bishop the
following exquisite couplet, which covered a mul-
titude of such sins : —

" Virtue with so much case on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons, though he none commits."

One night when ainiable Garth lingered over the
Kit-Kat wine, though patients were pining for him,
Steele reproved the epicurean doctor. " Nay,
nay, Dick," said Garth, pulling out a list of fifteen,
"it's no great matter after all, for nine of tlicin
have such bad constitutions that not all the ])liy-
sicians in tlie world could save them ; and the
other six have sucli good constitutions that all the
physicians in the world could not kill them."

Three o'clock in the morning seems to have
been no uncommon hour for the Kit-Kat to break
up, and a Tory lampooner says that at this club
the youth of Anne's reign learned

" To sleep away the days and drink away tlie nights."

The club latterly held its meetings at Tonson's
villa at Barn Elms (previously the residence cf
Cowley), or at the " Upper Flask " ta\ern, on
Hampstead Heath. The club died out before
1727 (George II.); for Vanbrugh, writing to
Tonson, says, — " Both Lord Carlisle and Cobham
expressed a great desire of having one meeting
next winter, not as a club, but as old friends
that have been of a club — and the best club that
ever met." In 1709 we find the Kit-Kat sub-
scribing 400 guineas for the encouragement of
good comedies. Altogether such a body of men
must have had great influence on the literature of
the age, for, in spite of the bitterness of party, there
was some generous .cf/r// dc corps then, and the
Whig wits and poets were a power, and were
backed by rank and wealth.

Wliether the "Tnmipet" (formerly halfway u]i
on the left-hand side ascending from Temple Bar)
was the citadel of the Kit^Kats or not, Steele intro-
duces it as the scene oi two of the best of his
Tatla- papers. It was ili re, in Uctohcr, 1709, tliat
he received his deputaii ju of Staftbrdshire county

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

Fleet Street Tributaries]

THE FIFTEEN TRUMPETERS.

gentlemen, delightful old fogies, standing much on
form and precedence. There be prepares tea for
Sir Harry Quickset, Bart. ; Sir Giles Wheelbarrow ;
Thomas Rentfree, Esq., J. P. ; Andrew Windmill,
Esq., the steward, with boots and whip ; and Mr.
Nicholas Doubt, of the Inner Temple, Sir Harry's
mischievous young nephew. After much dispute
about precedence, the sturdy old fellows are taken

humour Steele sketches Sir Geoffrey Notch, the
president, who had spent all his money on liorses,
dogs, and gamecocks, and who looked on all
thriving jjcrsons as pitiful upstarts. Then comes
Major Matchlock, who thought nothing of any
battle since Marston Moor, and who usually began
his story of Naseby at three-quarters past six.
Dick Reptile was a silent man, with a nephew

LISUUP BUTLER (jtV/irjb' 77).

by Steele to " Dick's " Coffee-house for a morning
draught ; and safely, after some danger, effect the
passage of Fleet Street, Steele rallying them at the
Temple Gate. In Sir Harry we fancy we see a
faint sketch of the more dignified Sir Roger de
Coverley, which Addison afterwards so exquisitely
elaborated.

At the "Trumpet" Steele also introduces us to a
delightful club of old citizens that met every even-
ing precisely at si.x. The humours of the fifteen
Trumpeters are painted with the breadth and vigour
of Hosarth's best manner. With a delightful

whom he often reproved. The wit of the club,
an old Temple bencher, never left the room till
he had quoted ten distiches from " Hudibras " and
told long stories of a certain extinct man about
town named Jack Ogle. Old Reptile was extremely
attentive to all that was said, though he had heard
the same stories every night for twenty years, and
upon all occasions winked oracularly to hi---
nephew to particularly mind what passed. About
ten the innocent twaddle closed by a man coming
in with a lantern to light home old BickerstalT.
They were simple and happy times that Steele

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

describes wiih such kiivUy humour ; and die
London of his days must have been lull of such
quiet, homely haunts.

Mr. R. Wehs, of Cohie Park, Halstead, kindly
informs us that as late as the year 1765 there
was a club that still kept up the name of Kit-Kat.
The members in 1765 included, among others,
Lord Sandwich (Jemmy Twitcher, as he was gene-
rally called), Mr. Beard, Lord Weymouth, Lord
Bohngbroke, the Duke of Queensbury, Lord
Caresford, Mr. Cadogan, the Marquis of Caracciollo,
Mr. Seymour, and Sir George Armytage. One
of the most active managers of the club was
Richard Phelps (who, we believe, afterwards was
secretary to Pitt). Among letters and receipts
p.reserved by Mr. Wells, is one from Thomas
Pingo, jeweller, of the "Golden He.ad," on the
" Paved Stones," Gray's Inn Lane, for gold medals,
probably to be worn by the members.

Even in the reign of James L Shire Lane was
christened Rogues' Lane, and, in spite of all the
dukes and lords of the Kit-Kat, it never grew very
respectable. In 1724 that incomparable young
rascal, Jack Sheppard, used to frequent the
"Bible'' public-house — a jjrinters' house of call — at
No. 13. There was a trap in one of the rooms
by which Jack could drop into a subterraneous
passage leading to Bell Yard. Tyburn gibbet
cured Jack of this trick. In 1738 the lane went
on even worse, for there Thomas Carr (a low
attorney, of Elm Court) and Elizabeth Adams
robbed and murdered a gentleman named Quarring-
ton at the "Angel and Crown" Tavern, and the
miscreants were hung at Tyburn. Hogarth painted
a portrait of the woman. One night, many years
ago, a man was robbed, thrown downstairs, and
killed, in one of the dens in Shire Lane. There
was snow on the ground, and about two o'clock,
when the watchmen grew drowsy and were a long
while between their rounds, the frightened mur-
derers carried the stiftened body up the lane and
placed it bolt upright, near a dim oil lamp, at a
neighbour's door. There the watchmen found it ;
but there was no clue to guide them, for nearly
every house in the lane was infamous. Years after,
two ruffianly fellows who were confined in the
King's Bench were heard accusing each other of
the murder in Shire Lane, and justice pounced
upon her prey.

One thieves' house, known as the "Retreat,"
led, Mr. Diprose says, by a back way into
Crown Court ; and other dens had a passage into
No. 242, Strand. Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were known
as Cadgers' Hall, and were much frequented by
beggars, and bushels of bread, thrown aside by

the professional mendicants, were found there by
the police.

The " Sun " Tavern, afterwards the " Temple Bar
Stores," had been a great resort for the Tom and
Jerry frolics of the Regency ; and the " Anti-Galli-
can" Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being
kept by Harry Lee, father of the first and original
" tiger," invented and made fashionable by the
notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist
times violent meetings were held at a club in
Shire Lane. A good story is told of one of these.
A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting,
leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a
frantic hatter rose, denounced the detective as a
spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out of
window. Permitted by the more peaceable to
depart, the policeman scuttled downstairs as fast
as he could, and, not being recognised in his dis-
guise, was instandy knocked down by his friends'
prompt truncheons.

In Ship Yard, close to Shire Lane, once stood a
block of disreputable, tumble down houses, used by
coiners, and known as the " Smashing Lumber."
Every room had a secret trap, and from the work-
shop abo\-e a shaft reached the cellars to hurry away
by means of a basket and pulley all the apparatus
at the first alarm. The first man made his fortune,
but the new police soon ransacked the den and
broke up the business.

In .\ugust, 1S23, Theodore Hook, the witty and
the heartless, was brought to a sponging-house
kept by a sheriff's officer named Hemp, at the
upper end of Shire Lane, being under arrest for a
Crown debt of ;^i 2,000, due to the Crown for
defalcations during his careless consulship at the
Mauritius. He was editor of John Bull at the
time, and continued whib in this horrid den to
write his " Sayings and Doings," and to pour forth
for royal pay his usual scurrilous lampoons at all
who supported poor, persecuted Queen Caroline.
Dr. Maginn, who had just come over from Cork
to practise Toryism, was his constant visitor, and
Hemp's barred door no doubt often shook at their
reckless lauglUer. Hook at length left Shire Lane
for the Rules of the Bench (Temple Place) in
April, 1824. Previously to his arrest he had
been living in retirement at lodgings, in Somer's
Town, with a poor girl whom he had seduced.
Here he renewed the mad scenes of his thought-
less youth with Terry, Matthews, and wonderful
old Tom Hill ; and here he resumed (but not at
these revels) his former acquaintanceship with
that miscliievous obstructive, Wilson Crokcr. After
he left Shire Lane and the Rules of the Bench he
went to Putney.

Fleet Street T.iljula

A RARE LAWYER.

In spite of all bad proclivities, Shire I.ane had
its fits of respectability. In 1603 there was living
there Sir Arthur Atie, Knt., in early life secretary
to the great Earl of Leicester, and afterwards
attendant on his step-son, the luckless Earl of Essex.
Elias Ashmole, the great antiquary and student in
alchemy and astrology, also honoured this lane,
but he gathered in the Temple those great col-
lections of books and coins, some of which perished
by fire, and some of which he afterwards gave to
the University of O.xford, where they were placed
in a building called, in memory of the illustrious
collector, the Ashmolcan Museum.

To Mr. Noble's research we are indebted for the
knowledge that in 1767 Mr. Hoole, the translator of
Tasso, ^^•as living in Shire Lane, and from thence
wrote to Dr. Percy, who was collecting his "Ancient
Ballads," to ask him Dr. Wharton's address. Hoole
was at that time writing a dramatic piece called
Cyrus, for Covent Garden Theatre. He seems to
have been an amiable man but a feeble poet, was
an esteemed friend of Dr. Johnson, and had a
situation in the East India House.

Another illustrious tenant of Shire Lane was
James Perry, the proprietor of the Morning
Chronicle, who died, as it was reported, worth
_;^i3o,ooo. That lively memoir-writer, Taylor, of
the Sun, who v/rote " Monsieur Tonson," describes
Perry as living in the narrow part of Shire Lane,
opposite a passage which led to the stairs from
Boswell Court. He lodged with Mr. Lunan, a
bookbinder, who had married his sister, who
subsequently became the wife of that great Greek
scholar, thirsty Dr. Porson. Perry had begun life
as the editor of the Gazetecr, but being dis-
missed by a Tory proprietor, and on the
Morning Chronicle being abandoned by Wood-
fall, some friends of Perry's bought the derelict
for ;^2io, and he and Gray, a friend of Barett,
became the joint-proprietors of the concern. Their
printer, Mr. Lambert, lived in Shire Lane, and
here the partners, too, lived for three or four years,
when they removed to the corner-house of Lancaster
Court, Strand.

Bell Yard can boast of but few associations ; yet
Pope often visited the dingy passage, because there
for some years resided his old friend Fortescue,
then a barrister, but afterwards a judge and Master
of the Rolls. To Fortescue Pope dedicated his
"Imitation of the First Satire of Hqrace," pub-
lished in 1733. It contains what the late Mr.
Roger.5, the banker and poet, used to consider the
best line Pope ever wrote, and it is certainly
almost perfect, —

" Bare the T.ean he.-irt that lurks behind a star."

In that delightful collection of Pope's "Table
Talk," called " Spcnce's Anecdotes," we find that
a chance remark of Lord Bqlingbroke, on taking
up a "Horace" in Pope's sick-room, led to those
fine " Imitations of Horace" which we now possess.
The " First Satire" consists of an imaginary con-
versation between Pope and Fortescue, who advises
him to write no more dangerous invectives against
vice or folly. It was Fortescue who assisted Pope
in writing the humorous law-report of "Stradling
versus Stiles," in " Scriblerus." The intricate case
is this, and is worthy of Anstey himself : Sir John
Swale, of Swale's Hall, in Swale Dale, by the river
Swale, knight, made his last will and testament,
in which, among other bequests, was this : " Out
of the kind love and respect that I bear my mucli-
honoured and good friend, Mr. Matthew Stradling,
gent., I do bequeath unto the said Matthew Strad-
ling, gent., all my black and white horses." Now
the testator had si.x black horses, six white, and
six pied horses. The debate, therefore, was whether
the said Matthew Stradling should have the said
pied horses, by virtue of the said bequest. The
case, after much debate, is suddenly terminated
by a motion in arrest of judgment that the pied
horses were mares, and thereupon an inspection was
prayed. This, it must be confessed, is admirable
fooling. If the Scriblerus Club had carried out
their plan of bantering the follies of the followers
of every branch of knowledge, Fortescue would no
doubt have selected the lasv as his special butt.
" This friend of Pope," says Mr. Carruthers, "was
consulted by the poet about all his affairs, as
well as those of Martha Blount, and, as may be
gathered, he gave him advice without a fee. The
intercourse between the poet and his ' learned
counsel ' was cordial and sincere ; and of the letters
that passed between them sixty-eight have been
published, ranging from 17 14 to the last year of
Pope's life. They are short, unaffected letters —
more truly letters than any others in the series."
Fortescue was promoted to the bench of the
Exchequer in 1735, from thence to the Common
Pleas in 1738, and in 1741 was made Master of
the Rolls. Pope's letters are often addressed to
" his counsel learned in the law, at his house at the
upper end of Bell Yard, near unto Lincoln's Inn."
In March, 1736, he writes of " that filthy old place,
Bell Yard, which I want diem and you to quit."

Apollo Court, next Bell Yard, has little about it
worth)- of notice beyond the fact that it derived
its name from the great club-room at the " Devil"
Tavern, that once stood on the opposite side of
Fleet Street, and the jovialities of which we have
already chronicled.

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

£Fleet Strent Tributaries.

CHAPTER VI L
FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES- CHANCERY LANE).

The Asylum for Jewish Converts— The Rolls Chapel— Ancient MMUiments— A Spc-ikcr Expelled for Bribery—" Eamember Casar "— Trampling
OB a Master of the Rolls— Sir William Grant's Oddities- Sir Juhn Leach- Funeral of Lord Giflbrd— Mrs Clark and the Duke of York—
Wolsey in his Pomp— Straffard-" Honest Lsaak"— The Lord Keeper— Lady Fj.nsh.awe— Jack Randal— Serjeants' Inn— An Evening with
Ha/litt ;.t the " Southampton "—Charles Lamli- Sheridan— The Sponging Houses— The Law Institute— A Tragical Story.

Chancery, or Chancellor's, Lane, as it was first
called, mu5t have been a mere quagmire, or cart-
track, in ihe reign of Edward L, for Strype tells
us that at that period it had become so impassable
to knight, monk, and citizen, that John Breton,
Custos of London, had it barred up, to "hinder
any hami ;" and the Bishop of Chichester, whose
house was there (now Chichester Rents), kept up
the bar te:i years; at the end of that time, on
an inquisition of the annoyances of London, the
bishop was proscribed at an inquest for setting up
two staples and a bar, "whereby men with carts
and other carriages could not pass." The bishop
pleaded John Breton's order, and the sheriff was
then conrnanded to remove the annoyance, and
the hooded men with their carts once more cracked
their whips and whistled to their horses up and
down the long disused lane.

Half-way up on the east side of Chancery Lane
a dull archway, through which can be caught
glimpses of the door of an old chapel, leads to the
Rolls Court. On the site of that chapel, in the
year 1233, liiKtory tells us that Henry HL erected
a Carthusian house of maintenance for converted
Jews, who there lived under a Christian governor.
At a time when Norman barons were not unac-
customed to pull out a Jew's teeth, or to fry
him on gridirons till he paid handsomely for his
release, conversion, which secured safety from such
rough practices, may not have been unfrequent.
However, the converts decreasing when Edward L,
after hanging 280 Jews for clipping coin, banished
the rest from the realm, half the proiserty of the
Jews who were hung stern Edward gave to the
preachers who tried to convert the obstinate and
stiff-necked generation, and half to the Domus
Conversoruni, in Chancellor's Lane. Li 12 78 we
find the converts calling themselves, in a letter
sent to the king by John the Convert, " Pauperes
Ccelicote Christi." In the reign of Richard II.
a certain converted Jew received twopence a day
for life; and in the reign of Henry IV. we find
the daughter of a rabbi paid by the keepers of
the house of- converts a penny a day for life, by
special patent.

Edward III., in 1377, broke up the Jewish
almshouse in Chancellor's Lane, and annexed the
house and chapel to the newly-created office of
Custos Rotulorum, or Keeper of the Rolls. Some
of the stones the old gaberdines have rubbed
against are no doubt incorporated in the present
chapel, which, however, has been so often altered,
that, like the Highlandman's gun, it is "new stock
and new barrel." The first Master of the Rolls,
in 1377, was William Burstal ; but till Thomas
Cromwell, in 1534, the Masters of the Rolls were
generally priests, and often king's chaplains.

The Rolls Chapel was built, says Pennant, by
Inigo Jones, in i6i7,atacost of^2,ooo. Dr. Donne,
the poet, preached the consecration sermon. One
of the monuments belonging to the earlier chapel
is that of Dr. John Yonge, Master of the Rolls in
the reign of Henry VIII. Vertue and Walpole
attribute the tomb to Torregiano, Michael Angelo's
contemporary and the sculptor of the tomb of
Henry VII. at ^Vestminster. The master is repre-
sented by the artist (who starved himself to death
at Seville) in effigy on an altar-tomb, in a red gown
and deep square cap ; his hands are crossed, his
face wears an expression of calm resignation and
profound devotion. In a recess at the back is a
head of Christ, and an angel's head appears on either
side in high relief. Another monument of interest
in this quiet, legal chapel is that of Sir Edward.
Bruce, created by James I. Baron of Kinloss. He
was one of the crafty ambassadors sent by wily
James to openly congratulate Elizabeth on the
failure of the revolt of Essex, but secretly to com-
mence a correspondence with Cecil. The place of
Master of the Rolls was Bruce's reward for this useful
service. The ex-master lies with his head resting on
his hand, in the "toothache" attitude ridiculed by
the old dramatists. His hair is short, his beard
long, and he wears a long furred robe. Before him
kneels a man in armour, possibly his son, Lord
Kinloss, who, three years after his father's death,
perished in a most savage duel with Sir Edward
Sackville, ancestor to the Earls of Elgin and
Aylesbury. Another fine monument is that of Sir
Richard Allington, of Horseheath, Cambridgeshire,

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

NOT DEAD, BUT BURIED.

brother-in law of Sir William Cordall, a former
Master of the Rolls, who died in 1561. Clad in
armour, Sir Richard kneels, —

" As for past sins he would atone,
By saying endless prayers in stone."

His wife faces him, and beneath on a tablet kneel
their three daughters. Sir Richard's charitable
widow lived after his death in Holborn, in a house
long known as Alllngton Place. Many of the past
masters sleep within these walls, and amongst them
Sir John Trevor, who died in 1717 (George I.),
and Sir John Strange; but the latter has not had
inscribed over his bones, as Pennant remarks, the
old punning epitaph, —

" Here lies an honest lawyer — that is Strange!"

The above-mentioned Sir John Trevor, while
Speaker of the House of Commons, being denounced
for bribery, was compelled himself to preside over
the subsequent debate — an unparalleled disgrace.
The indictment ran : —

" That Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House,
receiving a gratuity of 1,000 guineas from the City
of London, after the passing of the Orphans' Bill,
is guilty of high crime and misdemeanour." Trevor
was himself, as Speaker, compelled to put this re-
solution from the chair. The "Ayes" were not met
by a single "No," and the culprit was required to
officially announce that, in the unanimous opinion
of the House over which he presided, he stood
convicted of a high crime. " His expulsion from
the House," says Mr. Jeafifreson, in his " Book
about Lawyers," "followed in due course. One
is inclined to think that in these days no English
gendeman could oudive such humiliation for four-
and-twenty hours. Sir John Trevor not only
survived the humiliation, but remained a personage
of importance in London society. Convicted of
bribery, he was not called upon to refund the
bribe ; and expelled from the House of Commons,
he was not driven from his judicial office. He
continued to be- tht Master of the Rolls till his
death, which took place on May 20, 171 7, in his
official mansion in Chancery Lane. His retention
of office is easily accounted for. Having acted
as a vile negotiator between the two great political
parties, they were equally afraid of him. Neither
the Whigs nor the Tories dared to demand his
expulsion from office, fearing that in revenge he
would make revelations alike disgraceful to all
parties concerned."

The arms of Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Harbottle
Grimstone gleam in the chapel windows. Swift's
detestation. Bishop Burnet, the historian and friend

of William of Orange, was preacher here for nine
years, and here delivered his celebrated sermon,
" Save me from the lion's mouth : thou hast heard
me from the horns of the unicorn." Burnet was
appointed by Sir Harbottle, who was Master of
the Rolls ; and in his " Own Times" he has inserted
a warm eulogy of Sir Harbottle as a worthy and
pious man. Atterbury, the Jacobite Bishop of
Rochester, was also preacher here ; nor can we
forget that amiable man and great theologian.
Bishop Butler, the author of the "Analogy of
Religion." Butler, the son of a Dissenting trades-
man at Wantage, was for a long time lost in a
small country living, a loss to the Church which
Archbishop Blackburne lamented to Queen Caroline.
"Why, I thought he had been dead!" exclaimed
the queen. "No, madam," replied the arch-
bishop; " he is only buried." In 171S Buder was
appointed preacher at the Rolls by Sir Joseph
Jekyll. This excellent man afterwards became
Bishop of Bristol, and died Bishop of Durham.

A few anecdotes about past dignitaries at the
Rolls. Of Sir Julius Ccesar, Master of the Rolls in
the reign of Charles I., Lord Clarendon, in his
" History of the Rebellion," tells a story too good
to be passed by. This Sir Julius, having by right
of office the power of appointing the six clerks,
designed one of the profitable posts for his son,
Robert Caesar. One of the clerks dying before
Sir Julius could appoint his son, the imperious
treasurer, Sir Richard ^Veston, promised his place
to a dependant of his, who gave him for it ;^6,ooo
down. The vexation of old Sir Julius at this arbi-
trary step so moved his friends, that King Charles
was induced to promise Robert Cresar the next
post in the clerks' office that should fall vacant,
and the Lord Treasurer was bound by this pro-
mise. One day the Earl of TuUibardinc, passion-
ately pressing the treasurer about his business, was
told by Sir Richard that he had quite forgotten
the matter, but begged for a memorandum, that
he might remind tiie king that very afternoon.
The earl then wrote on a sm.iU bit of paper the
words, " Remember Cresar 1" and Sir Richard,
without reading it, placed it carefully in a little
pocket, where he said he kept all the memorials
first to be transacted. Many da}'s passed, and
the ambitious treasurer forgot all about Caesar.
At length one night, changing his clothes, his
servant brought him the notes and papers from
his pocket, which he looked over according to his
custom. Among these he found the litdc billet
with merely the words "Remember Cajsar !" and
on the sight of this the arrogant yet timid courtier
was utterly confounded. Turning pale, he sent

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

f Fleet Street Tributaries

Fleet S:v=et Tributaries.]

"REMEMBER C^SAR!'

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).

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.

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

<fr?

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

t Fleet Street, Tributnries.

crimson velvet, while the gentlemen ushers, bare-
headed, cried, — " On, masters, before, and make
room for my lord cardinal." When Wolsey was
mounted lie was preceded by his two cross-bearers
and his two pillow-bearers, all upon horses trapped
in scarlet ; and four footmen with pole-axes guarded
the cardinal till he came to Westminster. And
every Sunday, when he repaired to the king's court
at Greenwich, he landed at the Three Cranes, in
the Vintrey, and took water again at Billingsgate.
"He had," says Cavendish, "a long season, ruling
all things in the realm appertaining to the king, by
his wisdom, and all other matters of foreign regions
with whom the king had any occasion to meddle,
and then he fell like Lucifer, never to rise again.
Here," says Cavendish, " is the end and fall of
pride ; for I assure you he was in his time the
proudest man alive, having more regard to the
honour of his person than to his spiritual functions^
■wherein he should have expressed more meekness
and humility."

One of the greatest names connected with Chan-
cery Lane is that of the unfortunate Wentworth,
Earl of Straffbrtl, who, after leading his master,
Charles L, on the path to the scaffold, was the first
to lay his head upon the block. Vv'entworth, the
son of a Yorkshire gentleman, was born in 1593
in Chancery Lane, at the house of Mr. Atkinson,
his maternal grandfather, a bencher of Lincoln's
Inn. At first an enemy of Buckingham, the king's
favourite, and opposed to the Court, he was won over
by a peerage and the counsels of his friend Lord
Treasurer Weston. He soon became a headlong
and unscrupulous advocate of arbitrary power, and,
as Lord Deputy of Ireland, did his best to raise an
army for the king and to earn his Court name of
" Thorough.'' Impeached, for high treason, and
accused by Sir Henry Vane of a design to subdue
England by force, he was forsaken by the weak
king and condemned to the block. " Put not
your trust in princes," he said, when he heard of
the king's consent to the execution of so faithful a
servant, " nor in any child of man, for in them is
no salvation." He died on Tower Hill, with calm
and undaunted courage, expressing his devotion to
the Church of England, his loyalty to the king,
and his earnest desire for the peace and welfare of
the kingdom.

Of this steadfast and dangerous man Clarendon
has left one of those Titianesque portraits in wh.ich
he excelled. " He was a man," says the historian,
" of great parts and extraordinary endowment of
nature, and of great observation and a piercing
judgment both into things and persons ; but his
too good skill in persons made him judge the

worse of things, and so that upon the matter he
wholly relied upon himself; and discerning many
defects in most men, he too much neglected what
they said or did. Of all his passions his pride
was most predominant, which a moderate exercise
of ill fortune might have corrected and reformed ;
and which was by the hand of Heaven strangely
punished by bringing his destruction on him by
two things that he most despised — the people and
Sir Harry Vane. In a word, the epitaph which
Plutarch records that Sylla wrote for himself may
not be unfitly applied to him — ' that no man did
ever pass him either in doing good to his friends
or in doing harm to his enemies.' "

Izaak Walton, that amiable old angler, lived for
some years (1627 to 1644) of his happy and con-
tented life in a house (No. 120) on the west side of
Chancery Lane (Fleet Street end). This was many
years before he published his " Complete Angler,"
which did not, indeed, appear till the year before
the Restoration. Yet we imagine that at this time
the honest citizen often sallied forth to the Lea
banks with his friends, the Roes, on those fine
cool May mornings upon which he expatiates so
pleasantly. A quiet man and a lover of peace was
old Izaak ; and we may be sure no jingle of money
ever hurried him back from the green fields where
the lark, singing as she ascended higher and higher
into the air, and nearer to the heavens, excelled, as
he says, in her simple piety " all those little nimble
musicians of the air (her fellows) who warble forth
their various ditties with which Nature has fur-
nished them, to the shame of art." Refreshed and
exhilarated by the pure country air, we can fancy
Walton returning homeward to his Chancery Lane
shop, humming to himself that fine old song of
Marlowe's which the milkmaid sung to him as he sat
under the honeysuckle-hedge out of the shower, —

"Come live with me and be my love.
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, or hills, or field.
Or woods, or steepy mountain, yield."

How Byron had the heart to call a man who
loved such simple pleasures, and was so guileless
and pure-hearted as Walton, "a cruel old coxcomb,"
and to wish that in his gullet he had a hook, and
" a strong trout to pull it," we never could under-
stand ; but Byron was no angler, and we suppose
he thought Walton's advice about sewing up frogs'
mouths, &c., somewhat hard-hearted.

North, in his life of that faithful courtier of
Charles II., Lord Keeper Guildford, mentions that
his lordship " settled himself in the great brick
house in Serjeants' Inn, near Chancery Lane, which

Fleet Street TrlbutarieSi]

THE "HOLE IN THE WALL.'

Was formerly the Lord Chief Justice Hyde's, and
th;-,t he held it till he had the Great Seal, and some
time after. When his lordship lived in this house,
before his lady began to want her health, he was
in the height of all the fehcity his nature was
capable of He had a seat in St. Dunstan's Church
appropriated to him, and constantly kept the
church in the morninge, and so his house was to
llis mind ; and having, with leave, a doof into
Serjeants' Inn garden, he passed daily with ease
to his chambers, dedicated to business and study.
His friends he enjoyed at home, and politic ones
often found him out at his chambers." He rebuilt
Serjeants' Inn Hall, which had become poor and
ruinous, and improved all the dwellings in Chancery
Lane from Jackanapes Alley down to Fleet Street.
He also drained the street for the first time, and
had 1 rate levied on thd unwilling inhabitants, after
which his at first reluctant neighbours thanked
him warmly. This same Lord Keeper, a time-servef
and friend of arbitrary power, according to Burnet,
seems to have been a learned and studious man,
for he encouraged the sale of barometers and
wrote a philosophical essay on music. It was this
timid courtier that unscrupulous Jeffreys vexed by
spreading a report that he had been seen riding
on a rhinoceros, then one of the great sights of
London. Jeffreys was at the time hoping to super-
sede the Lord Keeper in office, and was anxious to
cover him with ridicule.

Besides the Caesars, Cecils, Throckmortons,
Lincolns, Sir John Franklin, and Edward Reeve,
who, according to Mr. Noble, all resided in Chan-
cery Lane, when it was a fashionable legal quarter,
we must not forget that on the site of No. 115
lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the ambassador sent
by Charles II. to arrange his marriage with the
Portuguese princess. This accomplished man,
who translated Guarini's " Pastor Fido," and tlie
" Lusiad" of Camoens, died at Madrid in 1666. His
brave yet gentle wife, who wrote some interesting
memoirs, gives a graphic account of herself and
her husband taking leave of his royal master,
Charles I., at Hampton Court. At parting, the
king saluted her, and she prayed God to preserve
his majesty witli long life and happy years. The
king stroked her on the cheek, and said, " Child,
if God pleaseth, it shall be so ; but both you and I
must submit to God's will, for you know whose
hands I am in." Then turning to Sir Richard,
Charles said, " Be sure, Dick, to tell my son all
that I have said, and deliver these letters to my
wife. Pray God bless her ; and I hope I shall do
well." Then, embracing Sir Richard, the king
added. " Thou liast ever been an honest man, and

I hope God will bless thee, and make thee a
hapi^y scr\ant to mj' son, whom I have charged in
my letter to continue liis love and trust to you ;
and I do promise you, if I am ever restored to
my dignity, I will bountifully reward you both for
your services and sufferings." " Thus," says the
noble Royalist lady, enthusiastically, " did we part
from that glorious sun that within a {i:\v months
after was extinguished, to the grief of all Christians
who are not forsaken of their God."

No. 45 (east side) is the "Hole in the Wall"
Tavern, kept early in the century by Jack Randal,
a/nis " Nonpareil," a fighting man, whom Tom Moore
visited, says Mr. Noble, to get materials for his
" Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress," " Randal's
Diary," and other satirical poems. Hazlitt, when
living in Southampton Buildings, describes going
to this haunt of the fancy tlie night before the
great fight between Neate, the Bristol butcher,
and Hickman, the gas-man, to find out where the
encounter was to take place, although Randal had
once rather too forcibly expelled him for some
trifling complaint about a chop. Hazlitt went
down to the fight with Thurtell, the betting man,
who afterwards murdered Mr. Weare, a gambler
and bill-discounter of Lyon's Inn. In Byron's
early days taverns like Randal's were frequented by
all the men about town, wlio considered that to
wear bird's-eye handkerchiefs and heavy-caped box
coats was the height of manliness and fashion.

Chichester Rents, a sorry place now, jireserves
a memory of the site of the town-house of the
Bishops of Chichester. It was originally built in a
garden belonging to one John Herberton, granted
the bishops by Henry III., who excepted it out of
the charter of the Jew converts' house, now the
Rolls Chapel.

Serjeants' Inn, originally designed for Serjeants
alone, is now open to all students, though it sliU
more especially affects the Freres Serjens, or Fratres
Servientes, who derived their name originally from
being the lower grade or servitors of the Knights
Templars. Serjeants sdll address each other as
" brother," and indeed, as fir as Cain and Abel go,
the brotherhood of lawyers cannot be disputetl.
The old formula at Westminster, when a new
Serjeant approached the judges, was, " I think I
see a brother."

One of Chaucer's Canterbuiy pilgrims was a
" Serjeant of law." This inn dates back as early
as the reign of Henry IV., when it was held
under a lease from the Bishop of Ely. In 1442 a
William Antrobus, citizen and t^ylor of Lo:idon,
held it at the rent of ten marks a year. In the hall
windows arc emblazoned the arms of Lord Keeper

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Sireet Tributaries.

Guildford (16S4). The inn was rebuilt, all but
the old dining-hall, by Sir Robert Smirke, in the
years 1837-38.

The humours of Southampton Buildings, Chan-
cery Lane, have been admirably described by
Hazlitt, and are well condensed by a contem-

essayist, fine-art and theatrical critic, thoughtful
metaphysician, and miserable man, William Hazlitt.
He lodged at the house of Mr. Walker, a tailor,
who was blessed with two fair daughters, with
one of whom (Sarah) Hazlitt, then a married man,
fell madly in love. He declared she was like the

OLD SERJEANTS' INN (j^t" /(7f ^ 83).

poraneous writer, of whose labours we gratefully
avail ourselves.

"In 1S20 a ray of light strikes the Buildings,
for one of the least popular, but by no means the
least remarkable, of the Charles Lamb set came to
lodge at No. 9, half-way down on the right-hand side
as you come from Holborn. There for four years
lived, ^^ught, wrote, and sufiered that admirable

Madonna (she seems really to have been a cold,
calculating flirt, rather afraid of her wild lover).
To his ' Liber Amoris,' a most stultifying series of
dialogues between himself and the lodging-house
keeper's daughter, the author appended a drawing
of an antique gem (Lucretia), which he declared to
be the very image of the obdurate tailor's daughter.
This untoward but remarkably gifted man, whom

Fleet Street Tribut.iries.]

A CLUB BORE.

Lamb admired, if he did not love, and whom
Leigh Hunt regarded as a spirit highly en-
dowed, usually spent his evenings at the ' South-
ampton \ as we take it, that coffee-house on the
left hand, next the Patent Office, as you enter the
Buildings frojn Chancery Lane. It is an unpre-
tending public-house now, with the quiet, bald-
looking coffee-room altered, but still one likes to

admired by William, the sleek, neat waiter (wjio
had a music-master to teach him the flageolet two
hours every morning before the maids were up),
for his temper in managing an argument. Mr.
Kirkpatrick was one oi those bland, sim])ering,
self-comphcent men, wlio, imshakable from the
high tower of their own selfsatisdiction, look
down upon your arguments from their magnificent

IIAZLITT (j-ii- page S7).

wander past the place and think that Hazlitt, his
hand still warm with the grip of Lamb's, has
entered it often. In an essay on ' Coffee-House
Politicians,' in the second volume of his ' Table
Talk,' Hazlitt has sketched the coterie at the
' Southampton,' in a manner not unworthy of Steele.
The picture wants Sir Richard's mellow, Jan Steen
colour, but it possesses much of Wilkie's dainty
touch and keen appreciation of character. Let us call
up, he says, the old customers at the ' Southampton'
from the dead, and take a glass with them. First
of all comes Mr. George Kirkpatrick, who was
8

elevation. ' I will explain,' was his condescending
phrase. If you corrected the intolerable magnifico,
he corrected your correction ; if you hinted at an
obvious blunder, he was always aware what your
mistaken objection would be. He and his clique
would spend a whole evening on a wager as to
whether the first edition of Dr. Johnson's ' Dic-
tionary' was quarto or folio. The confident asser-
tions, the cautious ventures, the length of time
demanded to ascertain the flict, the precise
terms of the forfeit, the ])rovisoes for getting out
of payaig it at last, led to a long and inextricable

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one
night L'd him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly
ventured money on the lact that The Mourning
Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he
fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch
for which he had lo pay. As a rule his nightly
outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours'
good conversation for sevenpence made the ' South-
ampton' the cheapest of London clubs.

'• Kirkpatrick's brother Roger was the Mercutio
to his Shallow. Roger was a rare fellow, ' of the
driest humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights
and evasions, of a jjicked phraseology, and the
very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a
hariequin ; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somer-
saults. He took in a character at a glance, and
threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher
casts his fly over a trout's nose. ' How finely,'
says Hazlltt, in his best and heartiest mood ; ' how
fmely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company
at the "Southampton I" Poor and faint are my
sketches compared to his ! It was like looking
into a camera-obscura — you saw faces shining and
speaking. The smoke curled, the lights dazzled,
the oak wainscoting took a higher polish. There
was old S., tall and gaunt, with his couplet from
Pope and case at Nisi Prius ; Mudford, eyeing the
ventilator and lying perdu for a moral ; and H. and
A. t.aking another friendly finishing glass. These
and many more windfiills of character he gave us
in thougiit, word, and action. I remember his
once describing three different persons together to
myself and Martin Buriiey [a bibulous nephew of
Madame d'Arblay's and a great friend of Charles
Lamb's], namsly, the manager of a country theatre,
a tragic and a comic performer, till we were ready
to tumble on the floor with laughing at the oddity
of their humours, and at Roger's extraordinary
powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental ; and
Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene)
that when he awoke the next morning he wondered
what three amusing characters he had been in
company with the evening before.' He was fond
also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat,
pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle
in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned
for having written a reply to ' Ccelebs.' He would
enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out a
little pocket volume, lay it down to think, rubbing
all the time the fleshy calf of his leg with dull
gravity and intense and stolid self-complacency,
and start out of his reveries when addressed with
the same inimitable vapid exclamation of ' Eh !'
Dr. Whittle, a large, jilain-faced Moravian preacher,
who had turned physician, was another of his

chosen impersonations. Roger represented the
honest, vain, empty man purchasing an ounce of
tea by stratagem to astonish a favoured guest ; he
■portrayed him on the summit of a narrow, winding,
and very steep staircase, contemplating in airy
security the imaginary approach of duns. This
worthy doctor on one occasion, when watching
Sarratt, the great chess-player, turned suddenly to
Hazlitt, and said, ' I think I could dance. Lm
sure I could; aye, I could dance like Vestris.'
Such were the odd people Roger caricatured on
the memorable night he pulled off his coat to eat
beef-steaks on equal terms with Martin Burney.

"Then there was C, who, from his slender neck,
shrillness of voice, and his ever-ready quibble and
laugh at himself, was for some time taken for a
lawyer, with which folk the Buildings were then,
as now, much infested. But on careful inquiry
he turned out to be a patent-medicine seller, who
at leisure moments had studied Blackstone and
the statutes at large from mere sympathy with the
neighbourhood. E. came next, a rich tradesman,
Tory in grain, and an everlasting babbler on the
strong side of politics ; querulous, dictatorial, and
with a peevish whine in his voice like a beaten
schoolboy. He was a stout advocate for the Bour-
bons and the National Debt, and was duly disliked
by Hazlitt, we may feel assured. The Bourbons
he affirmed to be the choice of the French people,
the Debt necessary to the salvation of these king-
doms. To a little inoffensive man, ' of a saturnine
aspect but simple conceptions,' Hazlitt once heard
him say grandly, ' I will tell you, sir. I will make
my proposition so clear that you will be convinced
of the truth of my observation in a moment. Con-
sider, sir, the number of trades that would be
thrown out of employ if the Debt were done away
with. What would become of the porcelain manu-
facture without it?' He would then show the
company a flower, the production of his own
garden, calling it a unique and curious e.xotic, and
hold forth on his carnations, his country-house, and
his old English hospitalit}', though he never invited
a friend to come down to a Sunday's dinner.
Mean and ostentatious, insolent and servile, he
did not know whether to treat those he conversed
with as if they were his porters or his customers.
The 'prentice boy was not yet ground out of him,
and his imagination hovered between his grand
new country mansion and the workhouse. Opposed
to him and every one else was K., a Radical re-
former and tedious logician, who wanted to make
short work of the taxes and National Debt, recon-
struct the Government from first principles, and
shatter the Holy Alliance at a blow. He was for

Fleet Sireet Tribuiarics] THE WORTHIES OF THE "SOUTHAAU'TON."

crushing out the future prospects of society as with
a machine, and for starling where the Frencli
Re\o!ution had begun five-and-twenty years before.
He was a born disturber, and never agreed to
more than haU" a proposition at a time. Jieing
very stingy, he generally brought a bunch of
radishes with him for economy, and would give a
penny to a band of musicians at the door, observing
that he liked their performance better than all the
opera -squalling. His objections to the National
Debt arose from motives of personal economy;
and he objected to Mr. Canning's pension because
it took a farthing a year out of his own pocket.

" Another great sachem at the ' Southampton '
was Mr. George Mouncey, of the firm of Mouncey
& dray, solicitors, Stajile's Inn. ' He was,' says
Hazlitt, ' the oldest frequenter of the jilace and
the latest sitter-up ; well-informed, unobtrusive, and
that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth
and justice. Mouncey never approved of anything
unfair or illiberal, and, though good-natured and
gentleman-like, never let an absurd or unjust pro-
position pass him without expressing dissent.' He
was much liked by Hazlitt, for they had mutual
friends, and Mouncey had been intimate with most
of the wits and men about town for twenty years
before. ' He had in his time known Tobin,
W^ordsworth, Porson, 'Wilson, Paley, and Erskine.
He would speak of Paley's pleasantry and un-
assuming manners, and describe Porson's deep
potations and long quotations at the " Cider
Cellars."' Warming with his theme, Hazlitt goes
on in his essay to etch one memorable evening
at the 'Southampton.' A few only were left, 'like
stars at break of da)',' the discourse and the ale
were growing sweeter ; but Mouncey, Hazlitt, and a
man named Wells, alone remained. The conversa-
tion turned on the frail beauties of Charles II. 's
Court, and from thence passed to Count Gram-
mont, their gallant, gay, and not over-scrupulous
historian. Each one cited his favourite passage
in turn ; from Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, they
progressed by pleasant stages of talk to pole Miss
Churchill and her fortunate fall from her horse.
Wells then spoke of 'Apuleius and his Golden
Ass,' ' Cupid and Psyche,' and the romance of
' Heliodorus, Theogenes, and Chariclea,' which, as
he affirmed, opened with a pastoral landscape
equal to one of Claude's. ' The night waned,' says
the delightful essayist, ' but our glasses brightened,
enriched with the pearls of Grecian story. Our
cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like
another Endymion, in the pale rays of a half-
extinguished lamp, and, starting up at a fresh
summons for a fiirther supply, he §\vore it was

too late, and was inexorable to entreaty. Mouncey
sat with his hat on and a hectic Hush in his face
while any hope remained, but as .soon as we rose
to go, he dashed out of the room as (juick as
lightning, determined not to be the last. I said
some time after to the waiter that " Mr. Mouncey.
was no llinther." " Oh, sir !" says he, " you should
have known him formerly. Now he is (luite another
man : he seldom stays later than one or two ; then
he used to lielp sing catches, and all sorts." '

" It was at the 'Southampton' that George Cruik-
shank, Hazlitt, and Hone used to often meet, to
discuss subjects for Hone's squibs on the Queen's
trial (1S20). Cruikshank would sometimes dij) his
finger in ale and sketch a suggestion on the table.

" While living in that state of half-assumed
love frenzy at No. 9, Southampton lUiildings, Haz-
litt produced some of his best work. His noble
lectures on the age of Elizabeth had just been
delivered, and he was writing for the Edinbin-gh
Rcviav, the New Monthly, and the London Mai^a
sine, in conjunction with Charles Lamb, Reynolds,
Barry Cornwall, De Quincey, and Wamwright
{■Janus Weathercock') the poisoner. In 1821 he
published his volume of ' Draiflatic Criticisms,'
and his subtle 'Table Talk;' in 1823, his foolish
'Liber Amoris;' and in 1S24, his fine 'Sketches of
the Principal English Picture Galleries.'

" Plazlitt, who was born in 177S and died in
1830, was the son of a LTnitarian minister of Irish
descent. Hazlitt was at first intended for an artist,
but, coming to London, soon drifted into literature.
He became a parliamentary reporter to the Morning
Chronicle in 1813, and in that wearing occupation
injured his naturally weak digestion. In 1814 he
succeeded Mudford as theatrical critic on Perry's
paper. In 181 5 he joined the Champion, and in
18 1 8 wrote for the Yellow Dwarf. Hazlitt's habits
at No. 9 were enough to have killed a rhinocero.s.
He sat up half the night, and rose about one or
two. He then remained drinking the strongest
black tea, nibbling a roil, and reading (no appe-
tite, of course) till about five p.m. At supper at the
'Southampton,' his jaded stomach then rousing,
he ate a heavy meal of steak or game, frequently
drinking during his long and suicidal vigils three
or four ([uarts of water, ^\'ine and sjiirits he latterly
never touched. Morbidly self-consciou.s, touchy,
morose, he believed that his aspect and manner
were strange and disagreeable to his friends, and
that every one was perpetually insulting him. He
had a magnificent forehead, regular features, pale
as marble, and a profusion of curly black hair, but
his eyes were sliy and sus[)icious. His manner
wlien not at his ease Mr. P. (.'>. Patniore describes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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'.

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

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."

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- /><l^r I02).

Dryden and Otway were contemporaries, and
lived, it is said, for some time opposite to each other
in Fetter Lane. One morning the latter happened
to call upon his brother bard about breakfast-
time, but was told by the servant that his master
was gone to breakfast with the Earl of Pembroke.
" Very well," said Otway, " tell your master that I
will call to-morrow morning." Accordingly he
called about the same hour. " Well, is your master
at home now?" "No, sir; he is just gone to

The next morning, at breakfast, Dryden recognised
the handwriting, and told the servant to go to
Otway and desire his company to breakfast wUh
him. In the meantime, to Otway's line of

** Here lives Dryden, a pod and a wity^

he added, —

" This was written by Otway, cpposit..

When Otway arrived he saw that hi^ iine was
linked with a rhyme, and being a man of rather

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

RIVAL POETS.

164

Ol.t) AND NEW LONDON.

[fleet Street tributaries.

petulant disposition, he took it in dudgeon, and,
turning upon his heel, told Dryden " that he was
welcome to keep his wit and his breakfast to
himself."

A curious old book, a radc viccum for malt worms,
temp. George I., thus immortalises the patriotism
of a tavern-keeper in Fetter Lane : —

" Thoiif;h there are some who, with invidious lool;,
H.ive sij'l'd this liird more like a Russian duck
Than what he stands depicted for on sign,
He proves he well has croaked for prey within,
From massy tankards, formed of silver plate,
That walk throughout tliis noted house in state,
Ever since EnglafidJ, in Aniin's reign.
To compliment each fortunate campaign,
Made one be hammered out for ev'ry town was ta'cn.

CHAPTER IX.
FLEET STREET (TRIBUTARIES-CRANE COURT, JOHNSON'S COURT, BOLT COURT).

Removal of the Royal Society from Gresham College— Opposition to Newton — Objections to Removal — The First Catalogue — Swift's jeer at the
.^ iciety — Franklin's Lightning Conductor and King George III, — Sir Hans Sloanc Insulted — The Scottish Society — Wilkes's Prliuer —
'I'lie Dolphin Classics — Johnson's Court — Johnson's Opinion on Pope and Dryden— His Removal to Bolt Court — The yo/in Bull — Hook
and Terry — Prosecutions for Libel — Hook's Impudence.

In the old times, when newspapers could not
legally be published without a stamp, "various in-
genious devices," says a writer in the Bookseller
(1S67), " were employed to deceive and mislead the
officers employed by the Government. Many of
the unstamped papers were printed in Crane Court,
Fleet .Street ; and there, on their several days of
publication, the officers of the Somerset House soli-
citor would watch, ready to seize them immediately
they came from the press. But the printers were
quite equal to the emergency. They would make up
sham parcels of waste-paper, and send them out
with an ostentatious show of secrecy. The officers
— simple fellows enough, though they were called
'Governrnent spies,' 'Somerset House myrmidons,'
and other opprobrious names, in the unstamped
papers — duly took possession of the parcels, after a
decent show of resistance by their bearers, while
the real newspapers intended for sale to the public
were sent flying by thousands down a shoot in
Fleur-de-Lys Court, and thence distributed in the
course of the next hour or two all over the
town."

The Royal Society came to Crane Court from
Gresham College in 17 10, and removed in 1782 to
Somerset House. This society, according to Dr.
Wallis, one of the earliest members, originated in
London in 1645, when Dr. Wilkins and certain
philosophical friends met weekly to discuss scientific
questions. They afterwards met at Oxford, and in
Gresham College, till that place was turned into a
Puritan barracks. After the Restoration, in i66j,
the king, wishing to turn men's minds to philosophy
— or, indeed, anywhere away from politics — incor-

porated the members in what Boyle has called
" the Invisible College," and gave it the name of
the Royal Society. In 17 10, the Mercers' Com-
pany growing tired of their visitors, the society
moved to a house rebuilt by Wren in 1670, and pur-
chased by the society for ;!^t,4So. It had bsen the
residence, before the Great Fire, of Dr. Nicholas
Barebone (son of Praise-God Barebone), a great
building speculator, who had much property in the
Strand, and who was the first promoter of the
Phcenix Fire Office. It seems to have been
thought at the time that Newton was somewhat
despotic in his announcement of the removal, and
the members in council grumbled at the new house,
and complained of it as small, inconvenient, and
dilapidated. Nevertheless, Sir Isaac, unaccus-
tomed to opposition, overruled all these objections,
and the society flourished in this Fleet Street
" close " seventy-two years. Before the society
came to Crane Court, Pepys and 'Wren had been
presidents; while at Crane Court the presidents
were — Newton (i 703-1727), Sir Thomas Hoare,
Matthew Folkes, Esq. (whose portrait Hogarth
painted), the Earl of Macclesfield, the Earl of
Morton, James Burrow, Esq., James ^^'est, Esq.,
Sir John Pringle, and Sir Joseph Banks. The
earliest records of this useful society are filled with
accounts of experiments on the Baconian induc-
tive principle, many of which now appear to us
puerile, but which were valuable in the childhood of
science. Among the labours of the society while in
Fleet Street, we may enumerate its efforts to promote
inoculation, 1714-1722; electrical experiments on
fourteen miles of wires near Shooter's Hill, 1745 ;

Fleet rt-ect Tributaries. 1

THE ROYAT, SOCIETY IN ITS IXFAXCY.

105

ventilation, apropos of gaol fever, 1750; discus-
sions onCavendish's improved thermometers, 1757;
a medal to Dollond for experiments on the laws of
light, 175S; observations on the transit of Venus,
in 1761 ; superintendence of the Observatory at
Greenwich, 1765; observations of the transit of
Venus in the Pacific, 1769 (Lieutenant Cook com-
menced the expedition) ; the promotion of an
Arctic expedition, 1773; the Raa-horse meteoro-
logical observations, 1773; experiments on light-
ning conductors by Franklin, Cavendish, &c., 1772.
The removal of the society was, as we have said,
at first strongly objected to, and in a pamphlet
published at the time, the new purchase is thus
described : " The approach to it, I confess, is very
fair and handsome, through a long court ; but, then,
they have no other property in this than in the
street before it, and in a heavy rain a man may
hardly escape being thoroughly wet before he can
pass through it. The front of the house towards
the garden is nearly half as long again as that
towards Crane Court. Upon the ground floor there
is a little hall, and a direct passage from the stairs
into the garden, and on each sid,e of it a little
room. The stairs are easy, which carry you up to
the next floor. Here there is a room fronting the
court, directly over the hall ; and towards the garden
is the meeting-room, and at the end another, also
fronting the garden. There are three rooms upon
the next floor. These are all that are as yet pro-
vided for the reception of the society, except you
will have the garrets, a platform of lead over them,
and the usual cellars, &c., below, of which they
have more and better at Gresham College." j

When the society got settled, by Newton's order
the porter was clothed in a suitable gown and pro-
vided with a staff surmounted by the arms of the
society in silver, and on the meeting nights a lamp
was hung out over the entrance to the court from
Fleet Street. The repository was built at the rear
of the house, and thither the society's museum
was removed. The first catalogue, compiled by
Dr. Green, contains the following, among many
other marvellous notices : —

" The quills of a porcupine, which on certain
occasions the creature can shoot at the pursuing
enemy and erect at pleasure. |

" The flying squirrel, which for a good nut-tree j
will pass a river on the bark of a tree, erecting
his tail for a sail.

" The leg-bone of an elephant, brought out of
Syria for the thigh-bone of a giant. In winter,
when it begins to rain, elephants are mad, and so
continue from April to September, chained to some
tree, aqd then become tame again.

" Tortoises, when turned on their backs, will
sometimes fetch deep sighs and shed abundance
of tears.

" A humming-bird and nest, said to weigh but
twelve grains ; his feathers are set in gold, and
sell at a great rate.

" A bone, said to be taken out of a mermaid's
head.

" The largest whide — likcr an island than arj
animal.

" 'J'he white shark, which sometimes swallows
men whole.

" A siphalter, said with its sucker to fasten on a
ship and stop it under sail.

"A stag-beetle, whose horns, worn in a ring, are
good against the cramp.

"A mountain cabbage — one reported 300 feet
high."

The author of " Hudibras," who died in 1680,
attacked the Royal Society fur exjierimcnts that
seemed to him futile and frivolous, in a severe
and bitter poem, entitled, "The Elephant in the
i\Ioon," the elephant proving to be a mouse
inside a philosopher's telescope. The poem
expresses the current opinion of the society,
on which King Charles II. is once said to have
played a joke.

In 1726-27 Swift, too, had his bitter jeer at the
society. In Laputa, he thus describes the ex-
perimental philosophers : —

" The first man I saw," he says, " was of a meagre
aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and
beard long, ragged, and singed in several places.
His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same
colour. He had been eight years upon a project
for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which
were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and
let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
He told me he did not doubt that, in eight
years more, he should be able to supply the
governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable
rate ; but he complained that his stock was low,
and entreated me 'to give him something as an
encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this
had been a very dear season for cucumbers.' I
made him a small present, for my lord had fur-
nished me with money on purpose, because he
knew their practice of begging from all who go to
see them. I saw another at work to calcine ice into
gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treatise he
had written concerning the ' Malleability of Fire,'
which he intended to publish.

" There was a most ingenious architect, who had
contrived a new method of building houses, by
beginning at the roof and working downward to

io6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

Fleet Street Tribularics.

the foundation ; which he justified to me by the
like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee
anch the spider. I went into another room,
where the walls and ceiling's were all hung round
with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the
architect to go in and out. At my entrance, he
called aloud to me ' not to disturb his webs.'
He lamented ' the fatal mistake the world had
been so long in, of using silk-worms, while we had
such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely
excelled the former, because they understood how
to weave as well as spin.' And he proposed,
farther, ' that, by employing spiders, the charge
of dying silks would be wholly saved;' whereof
I was fully convinced when he showetl me a vast
number of flies, most beautifully coloured, where-
with he fed his sjjiders, assuring us, ' that the webs
would take a tincture from them ; ' and, as he had
them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's
fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the
flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous
matter, to give a strength and consistence to the
threads."

Mr. Grosley, who, in 1 770, at Lausanne, published
a book on London, has drawn a curious picture
of the society at that date. " The Royal Society,"
he says, " combines within itself the purposes of
the Parisian Academy of Sciences and that of
Inscriptions ; it cultivates, in fact, not only the
higher branches of science, but literature also.
Every one, whatever his position, and whether
English or foreign, who has made observations
which appear to the society worthy of its af^ention,
is allowed to submit them to it either by word of
mouth or in writing. I once saw a joiner, in his
working clothes, announce to the society a means
he had discovered of explaining the causes of tides.
He spoke a long time, evidently not knowing
what he was talking about; but he was listened
to with the greatest attention, thanked for his
confidence in the value of the society's opinion,
requested to put his ideas into writing, and con-
ducted to the door by one of the principal
members.

"The place in which the society holds its
meetings is neither large nor handsome. It is a
l.mg, low, narrow room, only furnished with a
table (covered with green cloth), some morocco
chairs, and some wooden benches, which rise
above each other along the room. The table,
l)laced in front of the fire-place at the bottom of
the room, is occupied by the president (who sits
with his back to the fire) and the secretaries.
On this table is placed a large silver-gilt mace,
similar to the one in use in the House of Commons,

and which, as is the case with the latter, is laid at
the foot of the table when the society is in com-
mittee. The president is preceded on his entrance
and departure by the beadle of the societ)', bearing
this mace. He has beside him, on his taljle, a
little wooden mallet for the pur[)ose of imposing
silence when occasion arises, but this is very
seldom the case. With the exception of the
secretaries and the president, everyone takes his
place hap-hazard, at the same time taking great
pains to avoid causing any confusion or noise. The
society may be said to consist, as a body corporate,
of a committee of about twenty persons, chosen
from those of its associates who have the fuller
opportunities of devoting themselves to their
favourite studies. The president and the secre-
taries are (.\-jffido members of the conmiittee,
which is renewed every year — an arrangement
which is so much the more necessary that, in 1765,
the society numbered 400 British members, of
whom more than forty were peers of the realm, five
of the latter being most assiduous members of the
committee.

'• The fore'gn honorary members, who number
about 150, comprise within their number all the
most famous learned men of Europe, and amongst
them we find the names of D'Alembert, Bernouilli,
Bonnet, Buftbn, Euler, Jussieu, Linne, Voltaire,
&:c. : together with those, in simple alphabetical
order, ol the Dukes of Braganza, &c., and the
chief Ministers of many European sovereigns."

During the dispute about lightning conductors
(after St. Bride's Church was struck in 1764), in
the year 1772, George III. (says Mr. Weld, in
his "History of the Royal Society") is stated to
have taken the side of Wilson — ^not on scientific
grounds, but from political motives ; he even had
blunt conductors fixed on his palace, and actually
endeavoured to make the Royal Society rescind
their resolution in favour of pointed conductors.
The king, it is declared, had an interview with
Sir John' Pringle, during which his Majesty ear-
nestly entreated him to use his influence in sup-
porting Mr. Wilson. The reply of the president
was highly honourable to himself and the society
whom he represented. It was to the effect that
duty as well as inclination would always induce
him to execute his INLajesty's wishes to the utmost
of his power ; " But, sire," said he, " I cannot
reverse the laws and operations of Nature." It
is stated that when Sir John regretted his inability
to alter the laws of Nature, the king replied,
"Perhaps, Sir John, you had better resign." It
was shortly after this occurrence that a friend of
D.-. Franklin's wrote this epigram : —

Fleet Street Tiibutarlea.]

THE SCOTTISH SOClliTY.

107

" While you, great George, for Unowledge limit.
And sharp conductors cliange for blunt,

The nation's out of joint ;
Franklin a wiser course pursues.
And all your thunder u.-,L-less views,

By keeping to the point."

A Strange scene in the Royal Society in 17 10
(Queen Anne) deserves record. It ended in the
expulsion from the council of that irascible Dr.
AVoodward who once fought a duel with Dr. Mead
inside the gate of Gresham College. " The sense,"
says Mr. Ward, in his " Memoirs," " entertained
by the society of Sir Hans Sloane's services and
virtues was evinced by the manner in wliich they
resented an insult offered him by Dr. Woodward,
■who, as the reader is aware, was expelled the
council. Sir Hans was reading a paper of his own
comjiosition, when Woodward made some grossly
insulting remarks. Dr. Sloane complained, and
moreover stated that Dr. Woodward had often
affronted him by making griinaces at him ; upon
which Dr. Arbuthnot rose and begged to be ' in-
formed what distortion of a man's face constituted
a grimace.' Sir Isaac Newton was in the chair
when the question of expulsion was agitated, and
when it was pleaded in Woodward's favour tliat
' he was a good natural philosopher,' Sir Isaac
remarked that in order to belong to that society a
man ought to be a good moral philosopher as well
as a natural one."

The Scottish Society held its meetings in Crane
Court. " Elizabeth," says Mr. Timbs, " kept down
the number of Scotsmen in London to the astonish-
ingly small one of fifty-eight ; but with James I.
came such a host of traders and craftsmen, many of
whom filling to obtain employment, gave rise, as
early as 16 13, to the institution of the 'Scottish
Box,' a sort of friendly society's treasury, when
there were no banks to take charge of money. In
1638 the company, then only twenty, met in
Lamb's Conduit Street. In this year upwards of
300 poor Scotsmen, swept off by the great plague
of 1665-66, were buried at the expense of the
' box,' while numbers more were nourished during
thL-lr sickness, without subjecting the parishes in
which they resided to the smallest expense.

"In the year 1665 the 'box' was exalted into the
character of a corporation by a royal charter, the
expenses attendant on which were disbursed by
gentlemen who, when they met at the ' Cross Keys,'
in Covent Garden, found their receipts to be
;^ii6 Ss. 5d. The character of the times is seen
in one of their regulations, which imposed a fine
of 2S. 6d. for every oath used in the course of
their quarterly business.

"Presents now flocked in. One of the corpora-
tion gave a silver cup ; another, an ivory mallet
or hammer for the chairman ; and among the con-
tributors we find (Jilbcrt Burnet, afterwards bislio]),
giving ^i halfyearly. In no very Scotsman-like
spirit the governors distributed each quarter-day
all that had been collected during the preceding
interval. But in 1775 a permanent fund was
established. The hospital now distributes about
^2,200 a year, chiefly in /^lo pensions to old
people ; and the princely bequest of ^£^76,495 by
Mr. W. Kinloch, who had realised a fortune in
India, allows of ^i,Soo being given in pensions
of ^4 to disabled soldiers and sailors.

"All this is highly honourable to those connected,
by birth or otherwise, wnth Scotland. The monthly
meetings of the society are precedetl by divine
service in the chapel, which is in the rear of the
house in Crane Court. Twice a year is held a
festival, at which large sums are collected. On
St. Andrew's Day, 1863, Viscount Palmerston pre-
sided, with the brilliant result of the addition of
;^i,2oo to the hospital fund."

Appended to the account of the society already
quoted we find the following remarkable " note by
an Englishman " : —

" It is not one of the least curious particulars in
the history of the Scottish Hospital that it sub-
stantiates by documentary evidence the fact that
Scotsmen who have gone to England occasionally
find their way back to their own country. It
appears from the books of the corporation that
in the year ending 30th November, 1850, the
sum of ;£^o 1 6s. 6d. was spent in passages from
London to LeitlT ; and there is actually a cor-
responding society in Edinburgh to receive the
rnrnants and pass them on to their respective
districts."

In Crane Court, says Mr. Timbs, lived Drvdcn
Leach, the printer, who, in 1763, was arrested cm
a general warrant ujjon suspicion of having printed
Wilkes's North Briton, No 45. Leach was taken
out of his bed in the night, his papers were seized,
and even his journeymen and servants were appre-
hended, die only fountlation for the arrest being a
hearsay that Wilkes had been seen going into
Leach's house. Wilkes had been sent to the Tower
for the No. 45. After much litigation, he obtained a
verdict of ^4,000, and Leach ^"300, damages from
three of the king's messengers, who had executeil
the illegal warrant. Kearslcy, the bookseller, of
Fleet Street (whom we recollect by his tax-tables),
had been taken up for publisliing No. 45, when also
at Kearsley's were seized the letters of Wilkes,
which seemed to fix upon him the writing of the

to8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

obscene and blasphemous " Essay on Woman," and
of which he was convicted in the Court of King's
Bench and expelled the House of Commons. The
author of this " indecent patchwork '' was not
Wilkes (says Walpole), but Thomas Potter, the
■wild son of the learned Archbishop of Canterbury,

George Dyer, of Clifford's Inn, laboriously edited,
and which opened the eyes of the subscribers very
wide indeed as to the singular richness of ancient
literature. At the press of an eminent printer in
this court, that useful and perennial serial the
Genilcmaii s Magir^i/ic {started in 1 731) was partly

THE ROVAL SOCIETY'S HOUSE IN CRANE COURT (sce fage IO4).

who had tned to fix the authorship on the learned
and arrogant Warburion — a piece of matchless
impudence worthy of Wilkes himself.

Red Lion Court (No. 169), though an unlikely
spot, has been, of all the side binns of Fleet Street,
one of the most specially favoured by Minerva.
Here Valpy published that interminable series of
Latin and Greek authors, which he called the
" Delphin Classics," which Lamb's eccentric friend,

printed from 1779 to 1781, and entirely printed
from 1792 to 1S20.

Johnson's Court, Fleet Street (a narrow court on
the north side of Fleet Street, the fourth iVom
Fetter Lane, eastward), was not named from Dr.
Johnson, although inhabited by him.

Dr. Johnson was living at Johnson's Court in
1765, after he left No. i, Inner Temple Lane, and
before he removed to Bolt Court. At Johnson's

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

THE IMMORTAL PARASITE.

109

Couvi; he made the acquaintance of Murphey, and
he worked at his edition of "Shakespeare." He saw
much of Reynolds and Burke. On the accession
of George III. a pension of jC3°° ^ Y'^^'^ 'i'i<l
been bestowed on him, and from that time lie
became comparatively an affluent man. In 1763,
Boswell had become acquainted with Dr. Johnson,

"He "(Johnson), says Hawkins, "removed from
the Temple into a house in Johnson's Court,
Fleet Street, and invited thither his friend Mrs.
Williams. An upi)cr room, whicli had the advan-
tage of a good light and free air, he fitted up for
a study and furnished with books, chosen with so
little regard to editions or their external appearances

(Set page 1 lo).

and from that period his wonderful conversations
are recorded. The indefatigable biographer de-
scribes, in 1763, being taken by Mr. Levett to see
Dr. Johnson's library, which was contained in his
garret over his Temple chambers, where the son of
the well-known Lintot used to have his warehouse.
The floor was strewn with manuscript leaves ; and
there was an apparatus for chemical experiments, of
which Johnson was all his life very fond. Johnson
often hid himself in this garret for study, but never
told his servant, as the Doctor would never allow
him to say he was not at home when he was.
10

as showed they jwere intcndcil for use, and that he
disdained the ostentation of learning,"

" I returned to London,' says Boswell, " in
February, 1766, and found Dr. Johnson in a good
house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, in which
he had accommodated Mrs. Williams with an
apartment on the ground-tloor, wliile Mr. Levett
occupied his post in the garret. His faithful Francis
was still attending upon him. He received me
with much kindness. The fragments of our first
conversation, which I have preserved, are these : —
I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

t Fleet Street Tributaries.

me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden, thus :
' Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple
of neat, trim nags; Dryden, a coach and six stately
horses.' Johnson: 'Why, sir, the truth is, they
both drive coaches and six, but Dryden's horses
are either galloping or stumbling ; Pope's go at
a steady, even trot.' He said of Goldsmith's
'Traveller,' which had been published in my
absence, ' There's not been so fine a poem since
Pope's time.' Dr. Johnson at the same time
favoured me by marking the lines which he fur-
nished to Goldsmith's ' Deserted Village,' which
are only the last four : —

' That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away ;
. While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.'

At night I supped with him at the ' Mitre' tavern,
that we might renew our social intimacy at the
original place of meeting. But there was now con-
siderable difference in his way of living. Having
had an illness, in which he was advised to leave oft"
wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain
from it, and drank only water or lemonade."

" Mr. Beauclerk and I," says Boswell, in another
place, " called on him in the morning. As we
walked up Johnson's Court, I said, ' I have a
veneration for this court,' and was glad to find
that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthu-
siasm." The Doctor's removal Boswell thus duly
chronicles: — "Having arrived," he says, "in
London late on Friday, the 15th of March, 1776,
I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson,
at his house, but found he was removed from
Johnson's Court, No. 7, to Bolt Court, No. 8,
still keeping to his favourite Fleet Street. My
reflection at the time, upon this change, as marked
in my journal, is as follows : ' I felt a foolish
regret that he had left a court which bore his
name ; but it was not foolish to be affected with
some tenderness of regard for a jilace in which
I had seen him a great deal, from whence I liad
often issued a better and a happier man than when
I went in ; and which had often appeared to my
imagination, while I trod its pavement in the
solemn darkness of the night, to be sacred to
wisdom and piety.' "

Johnson was living at Johnson's Court when he
was introduced to George IIL, an interview in
which he conducted himself, considering he was
an ingrained Jacobite, with great dignity, self-
respect, and good sense.

That clever, but most shameless and scurrilous,
paper, John Bull, was started in Johnson's Court,

at the close of 1820. Its specific and real object
was to slander unfortunate Queen Caroline and to
torment, stigmatise, and blacken " the Branden-
burg House party," as her honest sympathisers
were called. Theodore Hook was chosen editor,
because he knew society, was quick, witty, satirical,
and thoroughly unscrupulous. For his " splendid
abuse" — as his biographer, the unreverend Mr.
Barham, calls it — he received the full pay of a
greedy hireling. Tom Moore and the Whigs
now met with a terrible adversary. Hook did not
hew or stab, like Churchill and the old rough
lampooners of earlier days, but he filled crackers
with wild fire, or laughingly stuck the enemies
of George IV. over with pins. Hook had only
a year before returned from the Treasuryship
of the Mauritius, charged with a defalcation of
;,^i5,ooo — the result of the grossest and most
culpable neglect. Hungry for money, as he
had e\er been, he was eager to show his zeal
for the master who had hired his pen. Hook
and Daniel Terry, the comedian, joined to start
the new satirical paper ; but Miller, a publisher in
the Burlington Arcade, was naturally afraid of
libel, and refused to have anything to do with the
new venture. With Miller, as Hook said in his
clever, punning way, all argument in favour of it
proved Newgate-ory. Hook at first wanted to
start a magazine upon the model of Blackwood,
but the final decision was for a weekly newspaper,
to be called _/('/';« Bull, a title already discussed for
a previous scheme by Hook and EUiston. The
first number appeared on Saturday, December 16,
1820, in the publishing office. No. 11, Johnson's
Court. The modest projectors only printed seven
hundred and fifty copies of the first number, but the
sale proved considerable. By the sixth week the
sale had reached ten thousand weekly. The first
five numbers were reprinted, and the first two
actually stereotyped.

Hook's favourite axiom — worthy of such a
satirist — was " that there was always a concealed
wound in every family, and the point was to strike
exactly at the source of pain." Hook's clerical
elder brother, Dr. James Hook, the author of
" Pen Owen " and other novels, and afterwards
Dean of A\'orcester, assisted him ; but Terry was
too busy in what Sir Walter Scott, his great friend
and sleeping partner, used to call " Tir/jfying the
novelists by not very brilliant adaptations of their
works." Dr. Maginn, summoned from Cork to
edit a newspaper for Hook (who had bought up
two dying newspapers for th; small expenditure of
three hundred guineas), wrote only one article for
the Bull. Mr. Haynes Bayley contributed some of

Fleet Street Tributaries]

HOOK'S TMPgDENCE.

Ill

his graceful verses, and Ingoldsby (Barham) some
of his rather ribald fun. The anonymous editor of
John Bull became for a time as much talked about
as Junius in earlier times. By many witty
James Saiith was suspected, but his fun had not
malignity enough for the Tory purposes of those
bitter days. Latterly Hook let Alderman Wood
alone, and set all liis staff on Hume, the great
economist, and the Hon. Henry Clrey Bennett.

Several prosecutions followed, says Mr. Barham,
that for libel on the Queen among the rest ; but the
grand attempt on the part of the Whigs to crush the
paper was not made till the 6th of May, 182 i. A
short and insignificant paragraph, containing some
observations upon the Hon. Henry Grey Bennett,
a brother of Lord TankerviUe's, was selected for
attack, as involving a breach of privilege ; in con-
se(iuence of whicli the printer, Mr.H. F. Cooper,
the editor, and Mr. Shackell were ordered to
attend at the bar of the House of Commons. A
long debate ensued, during which Ministers made
as fair a stand as tlie nature of the case would admit
in behalf of their guerrilla allies, but which termi-
nated at length in the committal of Cooper to
Newgate, where he was detained from the nth of
May till the nth of July, when Parliament was
prorogued.

Meanwhile the most strenuous exertions were
made to detect the real delinquents — for, of course,
honourable gentlemen were not to be imposed
upon by the unfortunate " men of straw " who
had fallen into their clutches, and who, by the
way, suffered for an offence of which their judges
and accusers openly proclaimed them to be not
only innocent, but incapable. The terror of im-
prisonment and the various arts of cross-examina-
tion proving insufficient to elicit the truth, recourse
was had to a simpler and more conciliatory mode
of treatment — bribery. The storm had failed to
force off the editorial cloak — the golden beams
were brought to bear upon it. We have it for
certain that an offer was made to a member of
the establishment to stay all impending proceed-
ings, and, further, to pay down a sum of ^500
on the names of the actual writers being given
up. It was rejected with disdain, v/hile such
were the precautions taken that it was impossible
to fix Hook, though suspicion began to be
awakened, with any share in the concern. Li
order, also, to cross the scent already hit off,
and announced by sundry deep-mouthed pursuers,
the following " Reply " — framed upon the prin-
ciple, we presume, that in literature, as in love,
everything •'■• fair — was thrown out in an early
number : —

".MR. THKODORE HOOK.

"The conceit of some people is amazing, and it
has not been unfreiiuently remarked that conc-it
is in abundance where talent is most scarce. Our
readers will see tiiat we have received a letter from
Mr. Hook, disowning and disavowing all connec-
tion with 'this paper. Partly out of good nature,
and partly from an anxiety to show tiie gentleman
how little desirous we are to be associated with
him, we have made a declaration which will
doubtless be quite satisfactory to his morbid
sensibility and affected squeamishness. 'We are
free to confess that two tilings sur[)rise us in this
business ; the first, that anytiiing which we liave
thought worth giving to the public should have
been mistaken for Mr. Hook's ; and, secondly
that such a person as Mr. Hook should think
himself disgraced by a connection with John

Bull:'

For sheer impudence this, perliaps, may be
admitted to " defy com|)etition " ; but in point of
tact and delicacy of finish it falls infinitely short of
a subsequent notice, a perfect gem of its class,
added by way of clenching the denial : —

" We have received Mr. Theodore Hook's
second letter. We are ready to confess that we
may have appeared to treat him too uncere-
moniously, but we will put it to his own feelings
whether the terms of his denial were not, in some
degree, calculated to produce a little asperity on
our part. We shall never be ashamed, however, to
do justice, and we readily declare that we meant
no kind of imputation on Mr. Hook's personal
cliaracter."

The ruse answered for awhile, and tlie p.q)er
went on with unabated audacity.

The death of the Queen, in the siunmer of 1821,
Ijroduced a -decided alteration in the tone and
temper of the piper. In point of fact its occupa-
tion was now gone. The miin, if not the sole,
object of its establishment had been brought about
by other and unforeseen events. The combination
it had laboured so energetically to thwart was now
dissolved by a higher and resistless agency. Still,
it is rot to be supposed tiiat a machine which
brought in a profit of something above ^^4,000
per annum, half of which fell to tlie share of Hook,
was to be lightly thrown up, sim[)ly because its
original purpose was attained. The dissolution of
the " League " did not exist then as a precedent.
The Queen was no longer t5 be feared ; but there
were Whigs and Radicals enough to be held in
check, and, above all, there was a handsome
income to be realised.

" Latterly Hook's desultory nature made him

112

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tribulnries.

v.-ander from the BitU, v;hich might have furnished
the thoughtless and heartless man of pleasure with
fin income for life. Tl-.e paper naturally lost sap and
vigour, at once declined in sale, and sank into

a mere respectable club-house and party organ."
" Mr. Hook," says Barham, " received to the day
of his death a fixed salary, but the i^roprietorship
had long since passed into other hands."

CHAPTER X.

FLEET .STREET TRIBUTARIES.

Dr. Juhnson in Bolt Court— His motley Household— His Life there— Still existing— The gallant ** Lumber Troop " — Reform Bill Riots— Sir
Claudius H inner— Cobbett in liolt Court— The Bird Boy — The Private Soldier— In the House— Dr. Johnson in Gough Square — Busy at the
Dictionary— lioldsmith in Wine OiKcc Ccurt— Selling "The Vicar of VVakciield "—Goldsmith's Troubles— Wine Office Court— The Old
" Cheshire Cheese."

Of all the nooks of London associated with the
memory of that good giant of literature. Dr. John-
son, not one is more sacred to those who love
that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this
monastic court Johnson came in 1776, and re-
mained till that December day in 1784, when a
procession of all the learned and worthy men who
honoured him followed his body to its grave in the
Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the
sdde of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways
and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart,
are so familiar to us — thanks to that faithful parasite
who secured an immortality by getting up behind
his triumphal chariot — came to Bolt Court from
Johnson's Court, whither he had flitted from
Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the
young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his
biographer first knew him. His strange household
of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well
known as our own. At the head of these pen-
sioners was the daughter of a Welsh doctor, (a blind
old lady named ^^'illiams), who had wTitten some
trivial poems ; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Stafford-
shire lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael.
The relationships of these fretful and quarrelsome
old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a
letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale :— " ^Villiams
hates everybody ; Levett hates Desmoulins, and
does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them
both ; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them."
This Levett was a poor eccentric apothecary, whom
Johnson supported, and who seems to have been
a charitable man.

The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular
oddities must have driven Johnson more than ever
to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the best
intellects of the day, and generally retire vic-
torious. He had done nearly all his best work
by this time, and was sinking into the sere and

yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of
honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends,
and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His
Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved
chiefly in Gough Square; his " Rasselas"— that
grave and wise Oriental story — he had wTitten in a
few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of
his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however,
produced his " Lives of the Poets," a noble com-
pendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter
Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the
insertion of many worthless and the omission of
several good poets.

It is pleasant to think of some of the events
that happened while Joliason lived in Eo'.t Court.
Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his
nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched
man, Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From
Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to
the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer
and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London
lion they had captured. To Bolt Court came John-
son's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick,
and Percy, and Langton ; but poor Goldsmith had
died before Johnson left Johnson's Court. To
Bolt Court he stalked home the niglit of his
memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt re-
gretting the violence and boisterous rudeness
with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted
man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at
St. Clement's Church on tlie day he rejoiced in
comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the
desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt
Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine w th General
Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on
that occasion Johnson uttered his first ar.d only
recorded pun.

Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots
broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale.

Fleet Strc~t Tributaries.]

DR. JOPINSON'S DEATH.

Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt
Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was
there, and jNIr. Allen, a printer; Johnson pro-
duced his silver salvers, and it was " a great
day." It was on this occasion that the conversa-
tion fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always
superstitious to the last degree, told the story of
hearing his mother's voice call him one day at
Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was over-
v/orked). On this great occasion also, Johnson,
talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the
same moment, gaily quoted the line from the
£c^gi!rs' Opera, —

" But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,"

and Boswell playfully compared the great man
to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old
and peevish ; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy ;
Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a
debate ; Boswell, stooping forward on the per-
petual listen ; Mr. Levett, sour and silent ; Frank,
the black servant, proud of the silver salvers — and
you have the group as in a picture.

In Bolt Court we find Johnson nov,- returning
from pleasant dinners with Wilkes and Garrick,
Malone and Dr. Burney ; now sitting alone over
his Greek Testament, or praying with his black
servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that
Good Friday morning (17S3), when he anid Boswell,
returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on
the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court,
talking about gardens and country hospitality.

Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene
of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind
physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage of
Shakespeare's, —

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain ;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
AYhich weighs upon the heart ?"

Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise
and good men. To Burke he said, " I must be
in a wretched state indeed, when your company
would not be a delight to me." To another friend
he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner,
" Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration
I advance towards death." Nor did his old vehe- ^
mence and humour by an)' means forsake him, for
he described a man who sat up to watch him
" as an idiot, sir ; awkward as a turnspit when first
put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse."
Kis remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer.
The last words he uttered were those of bei -

diction upon the daughter of a friend who came to
ask his blessing.

Some years before Dr. Jolmson's death, when
the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary pro-
clivities at his fiither's bank, he one day stole sur-
reptitiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of
I his 3edgefing poems to the great I'olyphemus of
literature. He and young Maltby, an ancestor of
the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through
the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door
on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked
at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker
struck terror to the young debutants' hearts, and
before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro foot-
man, could appear, the two lads, like street-boys
who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock,
took to their heels and darted back into noisy
Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has collected so
many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in
his three large volumes on " London's Celebrated
Characters and Places," says that tho elder Mr.
Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to re-
late an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager
for literary glory, but urged towards the counter
by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some
of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson,
and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an
oi)inion of their value. Having waited seme time
in vain for a repl)', the ambitious Jew-'sh youth
at last (December 13, 1784) resolved to face the
lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (as his pre-
decessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker
echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings
of the young votary at the shrine of learning,
when the servant (probably Frank Barber), wlio
slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr.
Johnson had breathed his last only a few short
hours before.

Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr.
Johnson, whicli will not be out of place here. It
is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity and
forethought of that great man's mind. One evening
Dr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court
window, saw the slovenly lamp -lighter of those
days ascending a ladder (ju«t as Hogarth has
drawn him in the " Rake's Progress'"), and fill the
little receptacle in the globular lam[) with detestable
whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull
light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again,
the son of Prometheus lifted tlie cover, thrust the
torch he carried into the heated vapour rising
from the wick, and instantly the ready tlame
sprang restored to life. " Ah," said the old seer,
" one of these days the streets of London will be
lighted by smoke."

114

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

Johnson's house (No. 8), according to Mr. Noble, ' itur ad astra. The back room, first floor, in which

was not destroyed by fire in 1819, as Mr. Timbs
and other writers assert. The house destroyed was
Densley the printer's (next door to No. 8), the
successor of Johnson's friend, Allen, who in 1772
published ^Lanning's Saxon, Gothic, and Latin

the great man died, had been pulled down by Mr.
Bensley, to make way for a staircase. Bensley
was one of the first introducers of the German
invention of steam-printing.

At " Dr. Johnson's " tavern, establislicd forty years

DR. JOHNSO.\'s HOUSE IN BOLT COURT {ste pa^c 112).

Dictionary, and died in 17 So. In Bensley's destruc-
tive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's
" History of Sussex" were consumed. Johnson's
house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by
the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap
school (six shillings a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss,
-Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since
then a university scholarship has been founded — sic

ago (now the Albert Club), the well-known society
of the " Lumber Troop " once drained tlieir porter
and held their solemn smokings. This gallant
force of supposititious fighting men " came out " with
great force during the Reform Riots of 1S30. These
useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolisii
warning letter, written by John Key, the Lord Mayor
elect (he was generally known in the City as Don

Fleet Street Tributaries 1

THE "LUMBER TROOP."

:i6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

Key after this), to the Duke of Wellington, then as
terribl)' unpopular with the English Reformers as
he had been with the French after the battle of
Waterloo, urging him (the duke) if he came with
King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with
the new Lord JVLayor, (his worshipful self), to
come "strongly and sufficiently guarded." This
imjirudent step greatly offended the people, who
were also just then much vexed with the severities
of Peel's obnoxious new police. The result was
that the new king and queen (for the not over-
beloved George IV. had only died in June of
that year) thought it better to decline coming
to the City festivities altogether. Great, then,
was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest
alderman trotted about, eager to discuss the
grievance, the waste of half-cooked turtle, and
tiie general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor
elect's conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had
shared in the Lord ]\Layor's fears, generously
marched to his aid. Li a published statement that
he made, he enumerated the force available for
the defence of the (in his mind) endangered
City in the following way: —

Ward Constables

Fellowsliip, Ticl;ct, and T.ickle Pollers

Firemen ...

Corn Porters

E.xtra men hired

City Police or own men

400
250
150
100
130
54

Tradesmen with emblems in the procession. . 300

Some gentlemen called the Lumber Troopers 150

The Artillery Company ... ... ... 150

The East Iiitlia Volunteers ... ... ... 600

Total of all comer

1,284

In the same statement Sir Claudius says : —
" The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking
club, well known to every candidate for a seat in
Parliament for London, and most famed for the
quantity of tobacco they consume and the porter
they drink, which, I believe (from my own observa-
tion, made nineteen years ago, when I was a can-
didate for that office), is the only liquor allowed.
They were to ha\-e had no pay, and I am sure they
would have done their best."

Along the line of procession, to oppose this
civic force, the right worshipful but foolish man
reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons. I
With all these aldermanic fears, and all these '
irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place. I
On Monday, November 8th, that glib, unsatisfiictory
man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the
day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda,
in Blackfriars Road. At half-past eleven, when
the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat

(the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly
waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember,
of the Revolution in Paris), with the word " Re-
form " painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry
was raised by the more violent of, " Now for
the West End ! " About one thousand men then
rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, "Reform !"
"Down with the police!" "No Peel !" "No Wel-
lington 1" Hurrying along the Strand, the mob
first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing
Street. A foolish gentleman of the house, hear-
ing the cries, came out on the balcony, armed
with a brace of pistols, and declared he would
fire on the first man who attempted to enter the
place. Another gentleman at this moment came
out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his
friend, on which the mob retired. The rioters
were then making for the House of Commons,
but were stopped by a string line of police, just
arrived in time from Scotland Yard. One hundred
and forty more men soon joined the constal)les,
and a general fight ensued, in which many heads
were quickly broken, and the Reform flag was cap-
tured. Three of the rioters Avere arrested, and
taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in A\'est-
minster. A troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue)
reviained during the night ready in the court of the
Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded
the streets.

On Tuesday the riots continued. About half-
past five p.m., 300 or 400 persons, chiefly boys,
came along the Strand, shouting, " No Peel !"
" Down with the raw lobsters !" (the new police) ;
"This way, my lads; we'll give it theml" At
the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the
police rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put
them to flight. At seven o'clock the vast crowd
by Temple Par compelled every coachman and
passenger in a coach, as a passport, to pull off
his hat and shout " Huzza 1' Stones were thrown,
and attempts were made to close the gates of the
Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them
to be reopened, and opposed the passage of the
mob to the Strand, but the pass was soon forced.
The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with
stones and pieces of wood, broken from the
scaflblding of the Law Institute, then building in
Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500
persons ran up Piccadilly to Apsley House
and hissed and hooted the stubborn, unprogressi^-e
old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police ; the con-
stables, however, soon dispersed tiiem. The same
evening dangerous mobs collected in Bethnal
Green, Spitalfields, and Whilechapel, one party
of them displaying tricoloured f.ags. They broke

Fleet Street Tributaries.!

T0^[ TAIXF.'S liDXKS.

117

a lamp r.nd a window or two, but did little else.
Alas for poor Sir Clautlius and his profound com-
putations ! His 2,284 figlit'Hg loyal men dwindled
down to 600, including even those strange hybrids, t
the firemen-watermen ; and as for the gallant Lumber
Troop, they were nowhere visible to the naked eye.

To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., [
William Cobbett, came from Fleet Street to sell his
Indian corn, for which no one cared, and to print
and publish his twopenny rolitical Kcgistcr, for
which the London Radicals of that day hungered.
Nearly opposite the office of " this good hater,"
says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept
shop, and published a searching criticism on
Cobbett's excellent English Grammar as soon
as it appeared. A\'e only wonder that Cobbett
did not reply to him as Johnson did to a friend
after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing bookseller
of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow — "Sir, he
was impertinent, and I beat him."

A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not
be inappropriate here. This sturdy Englishman,
born in the year 1762, was the son of an honest
and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called
the " Jolly Farmer," at Farnham, in Surrey. " My
first occupation/' says Cobbett, " was driving the
small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks
from the peas. When I first trudged a-field with
my wooden bottle r.nd my satchel over my
shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates
and stiles." In 1783 the restless lad (a plant
grown too high for the pot) ran away to London,
and turned lawyer's clerk. At the end of nine
months he enlisted, and sailed for Nova Scotia.
Before long he became sergeant-major, over the
heads of thirty other non-commissioned officers.
Frugal and diligent, the young soldier soon educated
himself. Discharged at his own request in 1791,
he married a respectable girl, to whom he had
before entrusted .3^1 50 hard-earned savings. Obtain-
ing a trial against four officers of his late regiment
for embezzlement of stores, for some strange reason
Cobbett fled to France on the eve of the trial,
but finding the king of that country dethroned, he
started at once for America. At Philadelphia
he boldly began as a high Tory bookseller, and
denounced Democracy in his virulent " Porcupine
Papers." Finally, overwhelmed with actions for
libel, Cobbett in 1800 returned to England.
Failing with a daily paper and a bookseller's shop,
Cobbett then started his Weekly Register, which
for thirty years continued to e.xpress the changes
of his honest but impulsive and vindictive mind.
Gradually — it is said, owing to some slight shown
him by Pitt (more probably from real conviction) —

Cobbclt grew Radical and progressive, and in 1S09
was fined ^500 for libels on the Irish Government.
In 1S17 he w.as fined ^1,000 and imprisoned two
years for violent remarks about some Ely militiamen
who had been flogged under a guard of fixed
bayonets. This inmishment he never forgave. He
followed up his Register by his Twopenny Trash,
of which he eventually sold 100,000 a number.
The Six Acts being passed — as he boasted, to gag
him — he fled, in 18 17, again to America. The
persecuted man returned to England in 18 19,
bringing with him, much to tlie amusement of
the Tory lampooners, the bones of that foul man,
Tom Paine, the infidel, whom (in 1796) this change-
ful politician had branded as "base, malignant,
treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous." During
the Queen Caroline trial Cobbett worked heart and
soul for that (|uestionable martyr. He went out
to Shooter's Hill to welcome her to London, and
boasted of having waved a laurel bough above
her head.

In 1825 he wrote a scurrilous " History of the
Reformation " (by many still attributed to a priest),
in which he declared Luther, Cabin, and Beza
to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the
world. In his old age, too late to be either bril-
liant or useful, Cobbett got into Parliament,
being returned in 1832 (thanks to the Reform Bill)
member for Oldham. He died at his house
near Farnham, in 1835. Cobbett was an egotist,
it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vin-
dictive man ; but his honesty, his love of truth r.nd
liberty, few who are not blinded by party opinion
can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous
and racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais'r,
and as terse and simple as Swift's.

Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, " Random
Recollections of the House of Commons," written
circa 1834, gives lis an elaborate full-length
portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less
than six feet high, and broad and athletic in
proportion. His hair was siher-white, his com-
plexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes
sparkled with laughter, he looked a mere duU-
pated clodpole. His dress was a light, loose, grey
tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere
breeches, and he usually walked about the House
with both his hands plunged into his breeches
pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way
of sometimes suddenly shifting his scat, and on
one important night, bi:i; with the fate of Peel's
Administration, delibc-aicly anchored down in the
very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very-
back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoy-
ance of the somewhat supercilious party.

Ilf

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

We next penetrate into Goiigli Square, in search
of the great lexicographer.

As far as can be ascertained from Boswell,
Dr. Johnson resided at Gough Square from
174S to 1758, an eventful period of his life, and one
of struggle, pain, and difficulty. In this gloomy
side square near Fleet Street, he achieved many
results and abandoned many hopes. Here he
nursed his hypochondria — the nightmare of his life
— and sought the only true relief in hard work.
Here he toiled over books, drudging for Cave
and Dodsley. Here he commenced both the
Rambler and the Idler, and formed his ac-
quaintance with Bennet Langton. Here his wife
died, and left him more than ever a prey to his
natural melancholy ; and here he toiled on his
great work, the Dictionary, in which he and six
amanuenses effected what it took all the French
Academicians to perform for their language.

A short epitome of what this great man accom-
plished while in Gough Square will clearly recall
to our readers his way of life while in that locality.
In 1740, Johnson formed a quiet club in Ivy
Lane, wrote that fine paraphrase of Juvenal,
" The Vanity of Human Wishes," and brought
out, with dubious success, under Garrick's auspices,
his tragedy of Irene. In 1750, he commenced
the Rambler. In 1752, the year his wife died,
he laboured on at the Dictionary. In 1753,
he became acquainted with Bennet Langton.
In 1754 he wrote the life of his early patron.
Cave, who died that year. In 1755, the great
Dictionary, begun in 1747, was at last published,
and Johnson wrote that scathing letter to the
Earl of Chesterfield, who, too late, thrust upon
him the patronage the poor scholar had once
sought in vain. In 1756, the still struggling man
was arrested for a paltry debt of ^^5 i8j-., from
which Richardson the worthy relieved him. In
1758, when he began the Idler, Johnson is de-
scribed as " being in as easy and pleasant a state
of existence as constitutional unhappiness ever
permitted him to enjoy."

While the Dictionary was going forward, " John-
son," says Boswell, "lived part of the time in Hol-
uorn, part in Gough Square (Fleet Street) ; and
he had an upper room fitted up like a counting-
house for the purpose, in which he gave to the
copyists their several tasks. The words, partly
taken from other dictionaries and partly supplied
by himself, having been first written down with
space left between them, he delivered in writing
their etjTnologies, definitions, and various signifi-
cations. The authorities were copied from the
books themsehes, in which he had marked the

passages with a black-lead pencil, the traces of
which could be easily efiaced. I have seen se\eral
of them in wjiich that trouble had not been taken,
so that they were just as when used by the copy-
ists. It is remarkable that he was so attentive to
the choice of the passages in which words were
authorised, that one may read page after page of
his Dictionary with improvement and pleasure ;
and it should not pass unobserved, that he has
quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to
hurt sound religion and morality."

To this account Bishop Percy adds a note of
great value for its lucid exactitude. " Boswell's
account of the manner in which Johnson compiled
his Dictionary," he says, " is confused and erro-
neous. He began his task (as he himself expressly
described to me) by devoting his first care to
a diligent perusal of all such English writers as
were most correct in their language, and under
every sentence which he meant to quote he drew
a line, and noted in the margin the first letter of
the word under which it was to occur. He then
delivered these books to his clerks, who transcribed
each sentence on a separate slip of paper and
arranged the same under the word referred to. By
these means he collected the several words, and
their different significations, and when the whole
arrangement was alphabetically formed, he ga\e
the definitions of their meanings, and collected
their etymologies from Skinner, and other writers
on the subject." To these accounts, Hawkins
adds his usual carping, pompous testimony. " Dr.
Johnson," he says, "who, before this time, to-
gether with his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging
at different houses in the courts and alleys in
and about the Strand and Fleet Street, had, for
the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and
being near the printers employed in it, taken a
handsome house in Gough Square, and fitted up
a room in it with books and other accommodations
for amanuenses, who, to the number of fi\'e or six,
he kept constantly under his eye. An inter-
leaved copy of " Bailey's Dictionary," in folio, he
made the repository of the several articles, and
these he collected by incessantly reading the best
authors in our language, in the practice whereof
his method was to score with a black-lead pencil
the words by him selected. The books he used
for this purpose were what he had in his own
collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one,
and all such as he could borrow ; which latter, if
ever they came back to those that lent them, were
so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and
yet some of his friends were glad to recei\e and
entertain them as curiosities."

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

GOLDSiMITH'S CORNER.

119

" Mr. Burney," says Boswell, " during a visit to
the capital, had an interview with Johnson in
Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with
him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of
Mrs. Williams. After dinner Mr. Johnson proposed
to Mr. Burney to go up with hiui into his garret,
which being accepted, he found there about five or
six Greek folios, a poor writing-desk, and a chair
and a half. Johnson, giving to his guest the entire
seat, balanced himself on one with only three legs
and one arm. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs.
Williams's history, and showed him some notes
on Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he
was in earnest. Upon Mr. Burney 's opening
the first \-olume at the Merchant of Venice he
observed to him that he seemed to be more severe
on Warburton than on Theobald. ' Uh, poor
Tib!' said Johnson, 'he was nearly knocked
down to my hands ; Warburton stands between
me and him.' ' But, sir,' said Mr. Burney, ' You'll
have Warburton on your bones, won't you ?
'No, sir;' he'll not come out; he'll only growl
in his den.' ' But do you think, sir, Warburton
is a superior critic to Theobald?' 'Oh, sir, he'll
make two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices ! The
worst of Warburton is that he has a rage for saying
something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr.
Burney then asked him whether he had seen the
letter Warburton had written in answer to a
pamphlet addressed ' to the most impudent man
alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney
told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet.
A controversy now raged between the friends of
Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet
were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney
asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book
against Bolingbroke's philosophy ! ' No, sir ; I
have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and there-
fore am not interested about its refutation.'"

Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6,
Wine Office Court from 1760 to 1762, during
which period he earned a precarious livelihood by
writing for the booksellers.

They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith's
fiivourite seats in the north-east corner of the
window of that cozy though utterly unpretentious
tavern, the " Che.shire Cheese," in this court.

It was while living in Wine Office Court that
Goldsmith is supposed to have partly written that
delightful novel " The Vicar of Wakefield," which
he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to
think that, seated at the " Cheese," he perhaps
espied and listened to die worthy but credulous
vicar and his gosling son attending to the profound
theories of the learned and philosophic but shifty

Mr. Jenkinson. We think now by the window,
with a cross light upon his coarse Irish features,
and his round prominent brow, we see the watchful
poet sit eyeing his i)rey, secretly enjoying the
grandiloquence of the swindler and the admiration
of the honest country parson.

"One -day," says Mrs. Pioz/.i, "Johnson was
called abruptly from our house at Southwark,
after dinner, and, returning in about three hours,
said he had been with an enraged author, whose
landlady pressed him within doors wliile the bailiffs
beset him without ; that he was drinking him-
self drunk with Madeira to drown care, and
fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to
be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done
for distraction, nor dared he stir out of doors to
offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore, " she
continues, " sent away the bottle and went to the
bookseller, recommending the performance, and
devising some immediate relief; which, when he
brought back to the writer, the latter called the
woman of the house directly to partake of jiunch
and pass their time in merriment. It was not," she
concludes, "till ten years after, I dare say, that
something in Dr. Goldsmith's beliaviour struck me
with an idea that he was the very man ; and then
Johnson confessed that he was so."

" A more scrupulous and patient writer," says
the admirable biographer of the poet, !Mr. John
Forster, "corrects some inaccuracies of the lively
little lady, and professes to give the anecdote
authentically from Johnson's own exact narration.
' I received one morning,' Boswell represents
Johnson to have said, ' a message from jjoor
Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and, as
it was not in his power to come to me, begging
that I would come to him as soon as possible. I
sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him
directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was
dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested
him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
passion. I perceived that he had already changed
my guinea, and had got a botde of Madeira and a
glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle,
desired he would be calm, and began to talk to
him of the means by which he might be extricated.
He then told me that he had a novel ready for
the press, which he produced to me. I looked into
it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should
soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold
it for £(io. I brought Goldsmith the money, and
he discharged his rent, not without rating his land-
lady in a high tone for having used him so ill.' "

The arrest is plainly connected witli Ncwbcry's
reluctance to make funlier advances, and of all

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fket Street Tributaries.

Mrs. Fleming's accounts found among Goldsmith's
papers, the only one unsettled is that for the
summer months preceding the arrest. The manu-
script of the novel seems by both statements (in

would surely have carried it to the elder Newbery.
He did not do this. He went with it to Francis
Newbery, the nephew ; does not seem to have
given a very brilliant account of the " merit " he

which the discrepancies are not so great but that
Johnson himself maybe held accountable for them)
to have been produced reluctantly, as a last re-
source; and it is possible, as Mrs. Piozzi intimates,
that it was still regarded as unfinished. But if
strong adverse reasons had not e.xisted, Johnson

had percei\-ed in it — four years after its author's
death he told Reynolds that he did not think it
would have had much success — and rather with
regard to Goldsmith's immediate want than to any
confident sense of the value of the copy, asked and
obtained the £,60. "And, sir," he said afterwards

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

GOLDSMITH'S STRUGGLES.

121

" a sufficient price, too, when it was sold, for then
tlie fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as
it afterwards was, by his 'Traveller,' and the book-
seller had faint hopes of profit by his bargain.
After ' The Traveller,' to be sure, it was accidentally
worth more money."

fears which centred in it doubtless mingled on
tliat miserable day with the fumes of the Madeira.
In the excitement of putting it to press, which
followed immediately after, the nameless novel
recedes altogether from the view, but will reappear
in due time. Johnson apjiroved the verses more

WINE OFFICE COURT AND THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE'' (ScY />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.

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 an<l alarmed at the number
of funerals, as they believed them to be, which the

OLD ST. dunstan's CiiUKCH (see pa!;e 135).

got them filled with thousands of his Gazettes. It
had been arranged beforehand that particular
houses in various parts of the town should be in
readiness to receive them with blinds down, as if
some relative had been dead, and was about to be
borne away to the house appointed for all living.
The deal coffin was opened, and the contents were
taken out, tied up in a parcel so as to conceal
from the prying curiosity of any chance person that
they were Cleave' s Police Gazettes, and then sent oft"
to the railway stations most convenient for their
transmission to the provinces. The coffins after
this were returned in the middle of next night to
the 'undertaker's' in Shoe Lane, there to be in
12

departure of so many coffins from the ' undertaker's '
necessarily implied. The very natural conclusion
to which they came was, that this supposed sudden
and extensive number of deaths could only be ac-
counted for on the assumption that some fatal
epidemic had visited the neighbourhood, and
there made itself a local habitation. 'I'he parochial
authorities, responding to the prevailing alarm,
([uestioned the 'undertaker' friend and fellow-
labourer of Mr. Cleave as to the causes of his sudden
and extensive accession of business in the colhn-
making way ; and the result of the close eiuestions
put to him was the discovery of the whole aftair.
It need h.Tnllv be added that an immediate anj

134

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

complete collapse took place in Mr. Cleave's busi-
ness, so far as his Police Gazttte was concerned.
Not another number of the publication ever made
its appearance, while the coffin-trade of the ' under-
, taker' all at once returned to its normal proportions."
This stratagem of Cleave's was rivalled a few
years ago by M. Herzen's clever plan of sending
great numbers of his treasonable and forbidden
paper, the Kolokol, to Russia, soldered up in sar-
dine-boxes. No Government, in fact, can ever baffle
determined and ingenious smugglers.

One especially sad association attaches to Shoe
Lane, and that is the burial in the workhouse
graveyard (the site of the late Farringdon Market) of
that unhappy child of genius, Chatterton the poet.
In August, 1770, the poor lad, who had come from
Bristol full of hope and ambition to make his fortune
in London by his pen, broken-hearted and mad-
dened by disappointment, destroyed himself in his
mean garret-lodging in Brooke Street, Holborn, by
swallowing arsenic. Mr. John Dix, his very un-
scrupulous biographer, has noted down a curious
legend about the possible removal of the poet's
corpse from London to Bristol, which, doubtful as
it is, is at least interesting as a possibility : —
■ " I found," says Mr. Dix, " that Mrs. Stockwell,
of Peter Street, wife of Mr. Stockwell, a basket-
maker, was the person who had communicated to
Sir R. Wilmot her grounds for believing Chatterton
to have been so interred ; and on my requesting
her to repeat to me what she knew of that affair,
she commenced by informing me that at ten years
of age she was a scholar of Mrs. Chatterton, his
mother, where she was taught plain work, and re-
mained with her until she was near twenty years of
age ; that she slept with her, and found her kind
and motherly, insomuch that there were many
things which in moments of affliction Mrs. C. com-
municated to her, that she would not have wished
to have been generally known ; and among others,
she often repeated how happy she was that her
unfortunate son lay buried in Redclifif, through the
kind attention of a friend or relation in London,
who, after the body had been cased in a parish
shell, had it properly secured and sent to her by
the waggon ; that when it arrived it was opened,
and the corpse found to be black and half putrid
(having been burst with the motion of the car-
riage, or from some other cause), so that it became
necessary to inter it speedily; and that it was early
interred by Phillips, the sexton, who was of her
family. That the effect of the loss of her son was
a nervous disorder, which never quitted her, and
she was often seen weeping at the bitter remem-
brance of her misfortune. She described the poet

as having been sharp-tempered, but that it was soon
over; and she often said he had cost her many
uneasy hours, from the apprehension she entertained
of his going mad, as he was accustomed to remain
fixed for above an hour at a time quite motionless,
and then he would snatch up a pen and write
incessantly; but he was always, she added, affec-
tionate

" In addition to this, .Mrs. Stockwell told the
\vriter that the grave was on the right-hand side
of the lime-tree, middle paved walk, in Redcliff
Churchyard, about twenty feet from the father's
grave, which is, she says, in the paved walk, and
where now Mrs. Chatterton and Mrs. Newton, her
daughter, also lie. Also, that ]\Irs. Chatterton
gave a person leave to bury his child over her
son's coffin, and was much vexed to find that he
afterwards put the stone over it, which, when
Chatterton was buried, had been taken up for the
purpose of digging the grave, and set against the
church-wall ; that afterwards, when Mr. Hutchin-
son's or Mr. Taylor's wife died, they buried her
also in the same grave, and put tliis stone over
with a new inscription. (Query, did he erase the
first, or turn the stone ? — as this might lead to a dis-
covery of the spot.) ....

" Being referred to Mrs. Jane Phillips, of Rolls
Alley, Rolls Lane, Great Gardens, Temple Parish
(who is sister to that Richard Phillips who was sexton
at Redcliff Church in the year 1772), she informed
me that his widow and a daughter were living in
Cathay ; the wdow is sexton, a Mr. Perrin, of
Colston's Parade, acting for her. She remembers
Chatterton having been at his father's school, and
that he always called Richard Phillips, her brother,
' uncle,' and was much liked by him. He liked him
for his spirit, and there can be no doubt he would
have risked the privately burying him on that ac-
count. When she heard he was gone to London
she was sorry to hear it, for all loved him, and
thought he could get no good there.

"Soon after his death her brother, R. Phillips,
told her that poor Chatterton had killed himself;
on which she said she would go to Madame Chat-
terton's, to know the rights of it ; but that he forbade
her, and said, if she did so he should be sorry he
had told her. She, however, did go, and asking if it
was true that he was dead, Mrs. Chatterton began
to weep bitterly, saying, ' My son indeed is dead ! '
and when she asked her where he was buried,
she replied, ' Ask me nothing ; he is dead and
buried.'

Poppin's Court (No. 109) marks the site of the
ancient hostel (hotel) of the Abbots of Cirencester
— though what they did there, when they ought to

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

THE MEMORY OF MR. FISHER.

»3S

have been on their knees in their own far-away
Gloucestershire abbey, history does not choose to
record. The sign of their inn was the " Poppin-
gaye" (popinjay, parrot), and in 1602 (last year of
EHzabeth) the alley was called Popi)ingay Alley.
That excellent man Van Miklert (then a poor
curate, living in Ely Place, afterwards Bishop of
Durham — a prelate remarkable for this above all
his many other Christian virtues, that he was not
proud) was once driven into this alley with a young

barrister friend by a noisy illumination-night crowd.
The street boys began firing a volley of squibs at
the young curate, who found all iiope of escape
barred, and dreaded the pickpockets, who take ra])id
advantage of such temporary embarrassments ; but
his good-patured exclamation, " Ah ! here you are,
popping away in Pojjpin's Court ! " so pleased the
crowd that they at once laughingly opened a pas-
sage for him. " Sic me servavit, Apollo," he used
afterwards to add when telling the story.

CHAPTER XII.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES SOUTH.

W^orthy Mr. Fisher— Lamb's Wednesday Evenings—Persons one would wish to have seen— Ram Alley— Serjeants' Inn— The Dnily Xnvs-
" Memory " Woodfall— A Mug-House Riot— Richardson's Printing Office— Fielding and Richardson— Johnson's Estimate of Richardson-
Hogarth and Richardson's Guest— An Egotist Rebuked— The King's " Housewife "—Caleb Colton : his Life. Works, and Sentiments.

Falco.v Court, Fleet Street, took its name from
an inn which bore the sign of the " Falcon." This
passage formerly belonged to a gentleman named
Fisher, who, out of gratitude to the Cordwainers'
Company, bequeathed it to them by will. His
gratitude is commonly said to have arisen from the
number of good dinners that the Company had
given him. However this may be, the Cordwainers
are the present owners of the estate, and are under
the obligation of having a sermon preached annu-
ally at the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan, on
the loth of July, when certain sums are given to
the poor. Formerly it was the custom to drink sack
in the church to the pious memory of Mr. Fisher,
but this appears to have been discontinued for a
considerable period. This Fisher was a jolly fellow,
if all the tales are true which are related of him,
as, besides the sack drinking, he stipulated that
the Cordwainers should give a grand feast on the
same day yearly to all their tenants. What a .quaint
picture might be made of the churchwardens in
the old church drinking to the memory of Mr.
Fisher ! Wynkyn de Worde, the father of printing
in England, lived in Fleet Street, at his messu.age
or inn known by the sign of the Falcon. Whether
it was the inn that stood on the site of Falcon
Court is not known with certainty, but most pro-
bably it was.

Charles Lamb came to 16, Mitre Court Build-
ings in iSoo, after leaving Southampton Buildings,
and remained in that quiet harbour out of Fleet

Street till 1S09, when he removed to Inner Temple
Lane.

It was whilst Lamb was residing in Mitre Court
Buildings that those Wednesday evenings of his
were in their glory. In two of Mr. Hazlitt's papers
are graphic pictures of these delightful Wednesdays
and the Wednesday men, and admirable notes of
several choice conversations. There is a curious
sketch in one of a little tilt between Coleridge and
Holcroft, which must not be omitted. " Coleridge
was riding the high German horse, and demon-
strating the ' Categories of the Transcendental
Philosophy' to the author of T/ic Road to Ruin,
who insisted on his knowledge of German and
German .metaphysics, having read the 'Critique
of Pure Reason ' in the original. 'My dear Mr.
Holcroft,' said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely
provoking co.nciliation, 'you really put me in mind
of a sweet pretty ( ierman girl of about fifteen, in
the Hartz Forest, in Germany, and who one day,
as I was reading "The Limits of the Knowable
and the Unknowable," the profoundest of all his
works, \\-ith great attention, came behind my chair,
and leaning over, said, " What ! you read Kant ?
Why, I, that am a German born, don't under-
stand him ! " ' This was too much to bear, and
Holcroft, starting up, called out, in no measured
tone, ' Mr. Coleridge, you are the most eloquent
man I ever met with, and the most troublesome
with your eloquence.' Phillips held the cribbage-
peg, that was to mark him game, suspended in his

136

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Fleet Street Tributaries.

hand, and the whist-table was silent for a moment.
I saw Holcroft downstairs, and on coming to the
landing-place in Mitre Court he stopped me to
observe tliat he thought Mr. Coleridge a very
clever man, with a great command of language,
but that he feared he did not always affix very
proper ideas to the words he used. After he was
gone we had our laugh out, and went on with the
argument on ' The Nature of Reason, the Imagi-
nation, and the Will.' .... It would make a
supplement to the 'Biographia Literaria,' in a
volume and a half, octavo."

It was at one of these Wednesdays that Lamb
started his famous question as to persons " one
would wish to have seen." It was a suggestive
topic, and proved a fruitful one. Mr. Hazlitt, who
was there, has left an account behind him of the
kind of talk which arose out of this hint, so lightly
thro^vn out by the author of "Elia," and it is
worth giving in his own words : —

" On the question being started, Ayrton said,
' I suppose the two first persons you would choose
to see would be the two greatest names in English
literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Locke ? ' In this
Ayrton, as usual, reckoned without his host.
Everyone burst out a laughing at the expression of
Lamb's face, in which impatience was restrained
by courtesy. ' Y— yes, the greatest names,' he
stammered out hastily ; ' but they were not persons
— not persons.' ' Not persons ? ' said Ayrton,
looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his
triumph might be premature. ' That is,' rejoined
Lamb, ' not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke
and Sir Isaac Newton you mean the " Essay on
the Human Understanding" and "Principia,"
which we have to this day. Beyond their contents,
there is nothing personally interesting in the men.
But what we want to see anyone bodily for is
when there is something peculiar, striking in the
individuals, more than we can learn from their
writings and yet are curious to know. I dare say
Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits
of them ; but who could paint Shakespeare ? '
' Ay,' retorted Ayrton, ' there it is. Then I sup-
pose you would prefer seeing him and Milton
instead ? ' ' No,' said Lamb, ' neither ; I have seen
so much of Shakespeare on the stage.' . . . . ' I
shall guess no more,' said Ayrton. ' Who is it, then,
you would like to see " in his habit as he lived,"
if you had your choice of the whole range of
English literature?' Lamb then named Sir
Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of
Sir Philip Sydney, as the two worthies whom he
should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on
the floor of his apartment in their night-gowns

and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with
them. At this Ayrton laughed outright, and con-
ceived Lamb was jesting with him ; but as no one
followed his example he thought there might be
something in it, and waited for an explanation in
a state of whimsical suspense

" When Lamb had given his explanation, some
one inquired of him if he could not see from the
window the Temple walk in which Chaucer used
to take his exercise, and on his name being put
to the vote I was pleased to find there was a
general sensation in his favour in all but Ayrton,
who said something about the ruggedness of the
metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the
orthography

" Captain Burney muttered something about
Columbus, and Martin Burney hinted at the
Wandering Jew ; but the last was set aside as
spurious, and the first made over to the New
World.

"'I should like,' said Mr. Reynolds, ' to have
seen Pope talking with Patty Blount, and I have
seen Goldsmith.' Everyone turned round to look
at Mr. Reynolds, as if by so doing they too could
get a sight of Goldsmith

" Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of
piquet at the other end of the room, whispered to
Martin Burney to ask if Junius would not be a
fit person to invoke from the dead. ' Yes,' said
Lamb, ' provided he would agree to lay aside his
mask.'

" We were now at a stand for a short time, when
Fielding was mentioned as a candidate. Only one,
however, seconded the proposition. ' Richard-
son?' 'By all means; but only to look at him
through the glass door of his back-shop, hard at
work upon one of his novels (the most extraor-
dinary contrast that ever was presented between an
author and his works), but not to let him come
behind his counter, lest he should want you to turn
customer ; nor to go upstairs with him, lest he
should offer to read the first manuscript of " Sir
Charles Grandison," which was originally written in
twenty-eight volumes octavo ; or get out the letters
of his female correspondents to prove that " Joseph
Andrews " was low.'

" There was but one statesman in the whole of
English history that any pne expressed the least
desire to see — Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank,
rough, pimply face and wily policy — and one
enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of
' The Pilgrim's Progress.' ....

" Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's
name was received with the greatest enthusiasm.
He presently superseded both Hogarth and

Fleet Street Tributaries.]

THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT.

137

Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was
on condition that he should sit in tragedy and
comedy, in the play and the farce, — Lear and
Wildair, and Abel Drugger

" Lamb inquired if there was any one that was
hanged that I would choose to mention, anil I
answered, 'Eugene Aram.'"

Tlie present Hare Place was the once dis-
reputable Ram Alley, the scene of a comedy of
that name, written by Lodowick Bany and drama-
tised in the reign of James I. ; the plot Killigrew
afterwards used in his vulgar Parson's JVcJdiitg.
Barry, an Irishman, of whom nothing much is
known, makes one of his roystering characters say, —

" And rough Ram Alley stinks with cooks' .shops vile ;
Yet, stay, there's many a worthy lawyer's chamber
'Buts upon Ram Alley."

As a precinct of Whitefriars, Ram Alley en-
joyed the mischievous privilege of sanctuary for
murderers, thieves, and debtors — indeed, any class
of rascals except traitors — till the fifteenth century.
After this it sheltered only debtors. Barry
speaks of its cooks, salesmen, and laundresses ;
and Shadwell classes it (Charles II.) with Pye
Corner, as the resort of "rascally stuff" Lord
Clarendon, in his autobiography, describes the
Great Fire as burning on the Thames side as far as
the " new buildings of the Inner Temple next to
Whitefriars," striking next on some of the build-
ings which joined to Ram Alley, and sweeping
all those into Fleet Street, In the reign of
George I. Ram Alley was full of public-houses,
and was a place of no reputation, having passages
into the Temple and Serjeants' Inn. " A kind of
privileged place for debtors," adds Hatton, " before
the late Act of Parliament (9 & 10 William III.
c. 17, s. 15) for taking them away." This useful
Act swept out all the London sanctuaries, those
vicious relics of monastic rights, including Mitre
Court, Salisbury Court (Fleet Street), the Savoy,
Fulwood Rents (Holborn), Baldwin's Gardens
(Gray's Inn Lane), the Minories, Deadman's Place,
•Montague Close (Southwark), the Clink, and the
Mint in the same locality. The Savoy and the
Mint, however, remained disreputable a generation
or two later

Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street, now deserted by the
faithless Serjeants, is supposed to have been
given to the Dean and Chapter of York in 1409
(Henry IV.) It then consisted of shops, &c. In
1627 (Charles I.) the inn began its legal career
by being leased for forty years to nine judges and
fifteen Serjeants. In this hall, in 1629, the judges
in full bench struck a sturdy blow at feudal privi-

leges by agreeing that peers might be attached
upon process for contempt out of Chancery. In
1723 (George I.) the inn was Jiighly aristocratic,
its inmates being the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord
Chief Baron, justices, and Serjeants. In 1730,
however, the fickle Serjeants removed to Chancery
Lane, an'd Adam, the arcliitect of the Adeliihi,
designed the present nineteen houses and the
present street frontage. On the site of the hall
arose the Amicable Assurance Society, which in
1865 transferred its business to the Economic, and
the house is now the Norwich Union Office. The
inn is a parish in itself, making its own assessment,
and contributing to the City rates. Its pavement,
wliicli had been part of the stonework of Old
St. Paul's, was not replaced till i860. The con-
servative old inn retained its old oil lamps lung
after the introduction of gas.

The arms of Serjeants' Inn, worked into the
iron gate opening on Fleet Street, are a dove and a
serpent, the serpent twisted into a kind of true
lover's knot. The lawyers of Serjeants' Inn, no
doubt, unite the wisdom of the serpent with the
guilelessness of the dove. Singularly enougli Dr.
Dodd, the popular preacher, ^\■ho was hanged, borq
arms nearly similar.

Half way down Bouverie Street, in the centre of
old Whitefriars, is tlie office of the Daily Naos.
The first number of this popular and influential
paper appeared on January 21, 1846. The pub-
lishers, and part proprietors, were Messrs. Brad-
bury & Evans, the printers ; the editor was Charles
Dickens ; the manager w'as Dickens's father, Mr.
John Dickens ; the second, or assistant, editor,
Douglas Jerrold ; and among the other " leader "
writers were Albany Fonblanque and John Forster,
both of the Examiner. " Father Prout" (Mahoncy)
acted as Roman correspondent. The musical critic
was the late Mr. George Hogarth, Dickens's father-
in-law ; and the new journal had an " Irish Famine
Commissioner" in the person of Mr. R. H. Home,
the poet. Miss Martineau wTote leading articles in
the new paper for several years, and Mr. M'CuUagh
Torrens was also a recognised contributor. The
staff of Parliamentary rejiorters was said to be the
best in London, several having been taken, at an
advanced salary, off the Times.

" The speculative jiroprietorship," says Mr.
Grant, in his " History of the Newspaper Press,"
was divided into one hundred shares, some of
which were held by Sir William Jackson, M.P.,
Sir Joshua Watkins, and the late Sir Joseph Paxton.
Mr. Charles Dickens, as editor, received a salary
of ;^2,ooo a year."

The early numbers of the paper contained

13^

OLD ANt) NEW LONDON.

fKleet Street Tributarifes.

instalments of Dickens's " Pictures from Italy ; "
yet the new venture did not succeed. Charles
Dickens and Douglas Jerrold took the night-work'
on alternate days; but Dickens, who never made
politics a special study, very soon retired from
the editorship altogether, and Jerrold was chief
editor for a little while till he left to set up his

paper, was in effect three halfpence. One of the
features of the new plan was that the sheet
should vary in size, according to the requirements
of the day — with an eye, nevertheless, at all
times to selection and condensation. It was a
bold attempt, carried out with great intelligence
and spirit ; but it was soon found necessary to put

THE DOKSET GARDENS TIIEAIKE, W 11 1 lEl- KI ARS (-W /i;^V I40).

Weekly Newspaper. IMr. Forster also had the
editorship for a short period, and the paper then
fell into the hands of the late Mr. Dilke, of the
Athe>iceum,%\\\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.

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<lious.
"Why, sir," replied Johnson, "if you were to
read Richardson for the story, your impatience
would be so great that you would hang yourself.
But you must read him for the sentiment, anil
consider the story as only giving occasion to the

partisan of George II., he obscr\c(l to Riiiiard-
son that certainly there must have been some
\ery inifavourable circumstances lately discovered
in this particular case which had induced the
king to ajjprove of an execution for rebellion so
long after the time it was committed, as this iiad the
appearanc'e of putting a man to death in cold blood,
and was very unlike his majesty's usual clemency.
While he was talking he perceived a person stand-
[ ing at a window in the room shaking his head

FLEET STREET, THE TEMPLE, ETC., FROM A M.\P OF LONDO.N, PUBLISHED I72O.

sentiment." After all, it must be considered that,
old-fashioned as Richardson's novels have now
become, the old printer dissected the human heart
with profound knowledge and exquisite care, and
that in the back shop in Salisbury Court, amid the
jar of printing-presses, the quiet old citizen drew
his ideal beings with far subtler hnes and touches
than any previous novelist had done.

On one occasion at least Hogarth and Johnson
met at Richardson's house.

'•■ Mr. Hogarth," says Nichols, " came one day

to see Richardson, soon after the execution of

Dr. Cameron, for having taken arms for the

house of Stuart in 1745-46; and, being a warm

and rolling himself about in a ridiculous manner.
He concluded he was an idiot, whom his relations
had put under the care of Mr. Richardson as a very
good man. To his great suri)rise, however, this
figure stalked forward to where he and Mr.
Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up
the argument, and burst out into an invective
against George H., as one who, ui)on all
occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous ; men-
tioning many instances, particularly that, where
an officer of high rank had been ac(|uitted by
a court martial, George H. had, with his own
hand, struck his name otV the list. In short,
he displayed such a power of eloquence that

146

OLD AND NEW LUX DUN.

[Fleet Strcel Tributaries.

Hogarth looked at him in astonishment, and
actually imagined that this idiot had been at the
moment inspired. Neither Johnson nor Hogarth
were made known to each otiier at this interview."

Boswell tells a good story of a rebuke that
Richardson'a amiable but inordinate egotism
on one occasion received, much to Johnson's
secret delight, which is certainly worth quoting
before we dismiss the old printer altogether.
" One day,'' says, Boswell " at liis country house
at Northcnd, where a large company was assem-
bled at dinner, a gentleman who was just re-
turned from Paris, wishing to please Richardson,
mentioned to him a flattering circumstance, that he
had seen his ' Clarissa ' lying on the king's brother's
table. Richardson observing that part of the com-
pany were engaged in talking to each other, affected
then not to attend to it ; but by and bye, when
there was a general silence, and he thouglit that
the flattery might be fully heard, he addressed him-
self to the gentleman : ' I think, sir, you were
saying somewhat about ' — pausing in a high flutter
of expectation. The gentleman provoked at his
inordinate vanity resolved not to indulge it, and
with an exquisitely sly air of indifference answered,
'A mere trifle, sir; not worth repeating.' The
mortification of Richardson was visible, and he
did not speak ten words more the whole da)-.
Dr. Johnson was present, and ajjpeared to enjoy
it much."

At one corner of Salisbury Square (says Mr.
Timbs) are the premises of Peacock, Bampton,
& Mansfield, the famous pocket-book makers,
whose "Polite Repository'' for 1778 is "the
patriarch of all pocket-books." Its picturesque
engravings have never been surpassed, and their
morocco and russia bindings scarcely equalled.
In our tune Queen Adelaide and her several maids
of honour used the " Repository.'' George I"V.
was provided by the firm with a ten-guinea house-
wife (an antique-looking pocket-book, with gold-
mounted scissors, tweezers, &c.) ; and Mr. Mans-
field relates that on one occasion the king took
his housewife from his pocket and handed it
round the table to his guests, and next day the
firm received orders for twenty-five, "just like the
king's."

In St. Bride's Passage, westward (says Mr.
Timbs), was a large dining-house, where, some forty
years ago, Colton, the author, used to dine, and
•publicly boast that he wrote the whole of his
" Lacon ; or, Many Things in Few 'Words," upon
a small rickety deal table, with one pen. Another
frequenter of this ])lace was one Webb, who seems
to have been so well up in the topics of the day

that he was a sort of walking newspaper, who was
much with the King and Queen of the Sandwich
Islands when they visitetl England in 1825.

This Caleb Colton, mentioned by Mr. Timbs,
was that most degraded ' being, a disreputable
clergyman, with all. the vices but little of the
genius of Churchill, and had been, in his flourishing
time, vicar of Kew and Petersham. He was edu-
cated at Eton, and eventually became Fellow of
King's College, Cambridge. He wrote "A Plain
and Authentic Narrative of the Stamford Ghost,"
"Remarks on the Tendencies of 'Don Juan,''' a
poem on Napoleon, and a satire entitled " Hypo-
crisy." His best known work, however, was
" Lacon ; or. Many Things in Few \\'ords," pub-
lished in 1820. These aphorisms want the terse
brevity of Rochefoucauld, and are in many
instances vapid and trivial. A passion for gaming at
last swallowed up Colton's other vices, and becom-
ing involved, he cut the Gordian knot of debt in
1828 by absconding; his living was then seized
and given to another. He fled to America, and
from there returned to that syren city, Paris,
where he is said in two years to have won no
less than ;^2 5,000. The miserable man died by
his own hand at Fontainebleau, in 1832. In the
j " Lacon " is the subjoined passage, that seeins
j almost prophetic of the miserable author's mise-
I rable fate : —

"The gamester, if he die a martyr to his pro-
fession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to
every loss, and by the act of suicide renounces
earth to forfeit heaven." . . . . " Anguish of
mind has driven thousands to suicide, anguish of
body none. This pro\'es that the health of the
mind is of far more consequence to our happiness
than the health of the body, although both are
deserving of much more attention than either of
them receive."

And here is a fine sentiment, worthy of Dr.
Dodd himself : —

" There is but one pursuit in life which it is
in the power of all to follow and of all to attain.
It is subject to no disappointments, since he that
perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement
and every contest a victory — and this the pursuit
of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain
her, and zealously to labour after her wages is to
receive them. Those that seek her early will find
her before it is late ; her reward also is with her,
and she will come quickly. For the breast of a
good man is a little heaven commencing on earth,
where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivalled
influence, every subjugated passion, ' like the wind
and storm, fulfilling his word.'"

The Temple

THK K.N Kill IS 1 i;.Ml'l,ARS.

CHAPTKR Mil.

THE TKMl'I.i;.— Gli.NKRAI. INTRODUCTION.

Origin of ihe Order of Templars— First Home of the OiJer— Rcinov.il to Ihc I!;inks of ilic I lanics— Kiiles of ilic Order— The TcniiiLif^ al ihc
Crusades, and their Pccds of Valour— Decay and Corruption of the tJrdcr— Charges brought against the Knights— Ahulitiun of the Order.

The Order of Knight.s Templars, establisheil l)y
Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, in 1118, to protect
Christian pilgrims on their road to Jerusalem, first
found a home in England in 11 28 (Henry I.),
when Hugh de Payens, tiie first Master of the
Order, visited our shores to obtain succours and
subsidies against the Infidel.

The i)roud, and at first zealous, brotlierhood ori-
ginally settled on the south side of Holborn, with-

to bed it was not permitted tliem to speak again
in public, except upon urgent necessity, and then
only in an undertone. All sciirrihty, jests, and
idle words were to be avoidetl ; and after any
foolish sa\iiig, tile rei)etition of the Lord's I'rayer
was enjoined. All jjrofessed knights were to wear
white garments, both in summer and winter, as
emblems of chastity. The estjuires and retainers
were requireil to wear black or, in provinces where

out the Bars. Indeed, about a century and a half 1 that coloured cloth could not be procured, brown.

ago, part of a round chapel, built of Caen stone, was
found under the foundation of some old houses at
the Holborn end of Southampton Buildings. In
time, howe\er, the Order amassed riches, and, grow-
ing ambitious, purchased a large space of ground
extending from Fleet Street to the river, and from
Whitefriars to Essex House in the Strand. The ne^v
Temijle was a \ast monastery, fitted for the resi-
dence of tlie jirior, his chaplain, serving brethren
and knights ; and it boasted a council-chamber, a
refectory, a barrack, a church, a range of cloisters,
and a river terrace for religious meditation, military
exercise, and the training of chargers. In 11 85
Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, wlio liad come
to England with tjie Masters of tlie Temple and tlie
Hospital to procure help from Henry II. against
the victorious Saladin, consecrated the beautiful
river-side church, which the proud Oriler had dedi-

No gold or silver was to be used in bridles, breast-
plates, or spears, and if ever tliat furniture was given
them in charity, it was to be discoloured to prevent
an appearance of su|)eriority or arrogance. No
brother was to receive or despatch letters without
the leave of the master or i)rocurator, who might
read them if he chose. No gift was to be accepted
by a Temi)lar till permission was first obtained
from the Master. No knight should talk to any
brotlier of his jjrevious frolics and irregularities in
the world. No brother, in pursuit of worldly delight,
was to hawk, to shoot in the woods with long or
cros.s-bow, to halloo to dogs, or to sjjur a horse after
game. There might be married brothers, but they
were to leave part of their goods to the chapter,
and not to wear the white habit. \\'idows were not
to dwell in the preccptories. ^\■hen travelling.
Templars were to lodge only with men of the best

cated to the Virgin Lady Mary. The late Master repute, and to keep a light burning all night "lest
of the Temple had only recently died in a dungeon I the dark enemy, from whom God [neserve us, should

at Damascus, and the new Master of the Hospital,
after the great defeat of the Christians at Jacob's
Ford, on the Jordan, had swam the river covered with
wounds, and escaped to tlie Castle of Beaufort.

The singular rules of tlie " Order of the Poor
Fellow-Soldiers of Jes is Christ and of the Temple
of Solomon," were revised by the first Abbot of
Clairvaux, St. Bernard himself. Extremely austere
and earnest, they were divided into seventy-two
heads, and enjoined severe and constant devotional
exercises, self-mortification, fasting, prayer, and

find some opportunity." Unrepentant brothers were
to be cast out. Last of all, every Temjjlar was to
shun " feminine kisses,' whether from witlow, virgin,
mother, sister, aunt, or any other woman.

During six of the seven Cru.sades (1096-1272),
during which the Christians of Europe endeavoured,
with tremendous yet fitful energy, to wrest the
birthplace of Christianity from the equally fanatic-
Moslems, the Knights Templars fought bravely
among the foremost. Whether by the side of
(;odfrev of Bouillon, Louis VH., I'hilip V., Richard

regular attendance at matins, vespers, and all the l Cceur de Lion, Louis IX., or Prince Edward, the
services of the Church. Dining in one common stern, sunburnt men in the white mantles were ever
refectory, the Templars were to make known wants

that could not be expressed by signs, in a gentle,

foremost in the shock of sjKjars. Under many a
clump of palm trees, in many a scorched desert

soft, and private way. Two and two were in ^ track, by many a hill fortress, smitten with s;ibrc
general to live together, so that one might watch or i)ierced with arrow, the holy brotlierhood dug th ;

the other After departing from the supper liall irraves of tlieir slain companions.

14S

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple*

A few of the deeds, which must liave been so
often talked of upon the Temple terrace and in the
Temple 'cloister, must be narrated, to show that,
however mistaken was the ideal of the Crusaders,
these monkish warriors fought their best to turn it
into a reality. In 1146 the whole brotherhood
joined the second Crusade, and protected the rear
of the Christian army in its toilsome march through
Asia Minor. In 1151, the Order saved Jerusalem,
and drove back the Infidels with terrible slaughter.
Two years later the Master of the Temple was slain,
with m.my of the white mantles, in fiercely essaying
to storm the walls of Ascalon. Three years after
this 300 Templars were slain in a Moslem ambus-
cade, near Tiberias, and 87 were taken prisoners.
We next find the Templars repelling the redoubt-
able Saladin from Gaza ; and in a great battle near
Ascalon, in 1177, the Master of the Temple and
ten knights broke through the Mameluke Guards,
and all but captured Saladin in his tent. The
Templars certainly had their share of Infidel blows,
for, in 1 178, the whole Order was nearly slain in a
battle with Saladin ; and in another fierce conflict,
only the Grand Master and two knights escaped;
while again at Tiberias, in 1 187, they received a cruel
repulse, and were all but totally destroyed.

In 11S7, when Saladin took Jerusalem, he next
besieged the great Templar stronghold of Tyre ;
and soon after a body of the knights, sent from
London, attacked Saladin's camp in vain, and the
Grand Master and nearly half of the Order perished.
In the subsequent siege of Acre the Crusaders lost
nearly 100,000 men in nine pitched battles. In
1 191, however. Acre was taken, and the Kings of
France and England, and the Masters of the
Temple and the Hospital, gave the throne of the
Latin kingdom to Guy de Lusignan. ^^l^en Richard
Cceur de Lion had cruelly put to death 2,000
Moslem prisoners, we find the Templars inter-
posing to prevent Richard and the English fighting
against the Austrian allies ; and soon after the
Templars bought Cyjirus of Richard for 300,000
livres of gold. In the advance to Jerusalem the
Templars led the van of Richard's army. AVhen the
attack on Jerusalem was suspended, the Templars
followed Richard to Ascalon, and soon afterwards
gave Cyprus to Guy de Lusignan, on condition of
his surrendering the Latin crown. A\'hen Richard
abandoned the Crusade, after his treaty with
Saladin, it was the Templars who gave him a galley
and the disguise of a Templar's white robe to
secure his safe passage to an Adriatic port. Upon
Richard's departure they erected many fortresses in
Palestine, especially one on Mount Carmel, which
they named Pilgrim's Castle.

The fourth Crusade was looked on unfavourably
by the brotherhood, who now wished to remain at

I peace with the Infidel, but they nevertheless soon

; warmed to the fighting, and we find a band of the
white mantles defeated and slain at Jafta. With a
second division of Crusaders the Templars quar-
relled, and were then deserted by them. Soon after
the Templars and Hospitallers, now grown corrupt

, and rich, quarrelled about lands and fortresses; but
they were still flivoured by the Po])e, and helped lo
maintain the Latin tiirone. In 1209 they were

I strong enough to resist the interdict of Pope Inno-
cent; and in the Crusade of 1217 they invaded

! Egypt, and took Damietta by assault, but, at the
sr.me time, to the indignation of England, «Tote
home urgently for more money. An attack on
Cairo proving disastrous, they concluded a truce
with the Sultan in 1221. In the Crusade of the
Emperor Frederick the Templars refused to join

I an excommunicated man. In 1240, the Templars

j wrested Jerusalem from the Sultan of Damascus,
but, in 1243, were ousted by the Sultan of Egypt
and the Sultan or Damascus, and were almost ex-
termmated m a two days' battle; and, in 1250, they

, were again defeated at Mansourah. A\'hen King
Louis was taken prisoner, the Infidels demanded
the surrender of all the Templar fortresses in
Palestine, but eventually accepted Damietta alone

; and a ransom, which Louis exacted from the
Templars. In 1257 the [Moguls and Tartars took
Jerusalem, and almost annihilated the Order, whose
instant submission they required. In 1268 Pope
Urban excommunicated the jNIarshal of the Order,
but the Templars nevertheless held by their com-
rade, and Bendocdar, the Mameluke, took all the
castles belonging to the Templars in Armenia, and
also stormed .\ntioch, which had been a Christian
city 170 years.

After Prince Edward's Crusade the Templars were
close pressed. In 1291, Aschraf Khalil besieged
the two Orders and 12,000 Christians in Acre for
six terrible weeks. The town was stormed, and
all the Christian prisoners, who flew to the Infidel
camp, were ruthlessly beheaded. A few of the
Templars flew to the Convent of the Temple, and
there perished ; the Grand Master had already
fallen ; a handful of the knights only escaping to
Cyprus.

The persecution of the now corrupt and useless
Order commenced sixteen years afterwards. In
1306, both in London and Paris, terrible murmurs
arose at their infidelity and their vices. At the
Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate, where the English
Templars were accused, the following charges were,
broueht atrainst them ; — •

Ihc Temple.]

THE ROUND CHURCH.

149

I. That at thc-ir first recc[)tion into the Order,
tliey were admonished by tliuse who liad received
them within the bosom of the fraternity to deny
Christ, the crucifixion, the blessed Virgin, and all
the saints. 5. That the receivers instructed those
that were received that Christ was not the true
God. 7. That they said Christ had not suffered for
the redemption of mankind, nor been crucified but
for His own sins. 9. That tliey made those they
received into the Order spit iqwn the cross.
I o. That they caused the cross itself to be trampled
under foot. 11. That the brethren themselves did
sometimes trample on the same cross. 14. That
they worshipped a cat, which was placed in the midst
of the congregation. 16. That they did not believe
the sacrament of the altar, nor the other sacra-
ments of the Church. 24. That they believed that
the Grand Master of the Order could absolve them
from their sins. 25. That the visitor could do so.
26. That the preceptors, of ^\hom many were
laymen, could do it. 36. That the receptions of
the brethren were made clandestinely. 37. That
none were present but the brothers of the said
Order. 38. That for this reason there has for ,1
long time been a vehement suspicion against them.

46. That the brothers themselves had idols in
every province, viz., heads, some of which had
three faces, and some one, and some a inan's skull.

47. That they adored that idol, or those idols,
especially in their great chapters and assemblies.

48. That they worshipped them. 49. As their

God. 50. As their sa\iour. 51. That some of
them (lid so. 52. That tlie greater part did. 53.
They r.aid those heads could save them. 54. That
they could produce riches. 55. That they had
given to the Order all its wealth. 56. That they
caused the earth to bring forth seed. 57. That
they made the trees to flourish. 58. That they
bound or touched the heads of the said idols with
cords, wherewith they bound themselves about
their shirts, or next tlieir skins. 59. That at their
reception, the aforesaid little cords, or others of
the same length, were delivered to each of the
brothers. 61. That it was enjoined them to gird
themselves with the said little ccrds, as before
mentioned, and ccntinually to wear them. 62.
That the brethren of the Order were generally
received in that manner. 63. That they did these
things out of devotion. 64. That they did them
everywhere. 65. That the greater part did. 66.
That those who refused the things above mentioned
at their reception, or to observe them afterwards,
were killed or cast into prison.

The Order was proud and arrogant, and had
many enemies. The Order was rich, and spoil
would reward its persecutors. The charges against
the knights were eagerly believed ; many of the
Templars were burned at the stake in Paris, and
many more in vari6us jwrts of France. In Eng-
land their punishment seem.'? to have been less
severe. The Order was formally abolished by
Pope Clement V., in the year 1312.

CHAPTER XI V.
THE TEMPLE CHURCH AM) PRECIN'CT.

The Temple Clu:rch-IlsRcstomlions-niscover!espf.'\n.!qmt:cs-ThcI'c„itcni;M CcU-nUcipIinc in the Tcmple-The Tombs of the Templars
in ihe"Ruuud"-Willi.-,manJ Gilbert M.irshall-Stune Coffins i.i the C-hurchyard-M.isters of the lemple-Ihe Judicious Hool-er-
Edmund Gibbon, the Historian-The Org-n in the Temple Church~The Rival Builders-" Stra« Hail "-History of the Precinct-Chaucer
and the Friar-His Mention of the Temple-The Serjeants-Erection of New Buildings-The - Roses --Sumptuary Edicts- 1 he Hying
Horse.

The round church of the Temple is the finest of
the four round churches still existing in England.
The Templars did not, however, always build round
towers, resembling the Temiile at Jerusalem, though
such was generally their practice. The restoration
of this beautiful relic was one of the first symptoms
of the modern Gothic revival.

In the reign of Charles II. the body of the
church was filled with formal jiews, which con-
cealed the bases of the columns, while the walls

were encumbered, to the height of eight feet
from the ground, with oak wainscoting, which was
carried entirely round the church, so as to hide the
elegant marble i)iscina, the interesting almerics over
the high altar, and the saaariiim on the eastern
side of the edifice. The elegant Gothic arches
connecting the round with the stjuarc church were
choked up with an oak screen and glass windows
and doors, and with an organ gallery adorned with
Corinthian columns, pilasters, and Grecian onia-

tid

OLt) AND NEW LONDON.

[Tlic Temple.

merits, whicli divided the building into two parts,
altogether altered its original character and ai)i)ear-
ance, and sadly marring its architectural beauty.
The eastern end of the church was at the same
time disfigured by an enormous altar-piece in the
f/assic style, decorated with Corinthian columns and
Grecian cornices and entablatures, and with enrich-
ments of cherubims and wreaths of fruit, flowers,
and leaves, heavy and cum-
brous, and quite at variance
with the Gothic character of
the building. A large pulpit
and carved sounding-board
were erected in the middle of
the dome, and the walls and
whinns were encrusted and
disfigured with hideous mural
monuments and pagan tro-
phies of forgotten wealth and
vanity.

The following account of
the earliest repairs of the
Temple Church is given in
" The New View of London" :
" Having narrowly escaped
the flames in 1666, it was
in 16S2 beautified, and the
curious wainscot screen set
up. The south-west part
was, in the year 1695, new
built with stone. In the year
1706 the church was wholly
new whitewashed, gilt, and
painted within, and the pillars
of the round tower wainscoted
with a new battlement and
buttresses on the south side,
and other parts of the out-
side were well repaired. Also
the figures of the Knights
Templars were cleaned and
painted, and the iron-work
enclosing them new painted
and gilt with gold. The east

end of the church was rejiaired and beautified in
1707." In 1737 the e.Kteiior of the north side
and east end «ere again repairetl.

The first step towards the real restoration of
the Temple Church was made in 1825. It had
been generally repaired in 181 1, but in 1825 Sir
Robert .Smirke restored the whole south side ex-
ternally and the lower part of the circular portion
of the round church. The stone seat was renewed,
the arcade was restored, the heads which had
been defaced or removed were supplied. The wain-

A KNIGHT TKMTLAR.

scoting of the columns was taken away, the monu-
ments affixed to some of the columns were removed,
and the position of others altered. There still re-
mained, however, monuments in the round church
materially affecting the relative proportions of the two
circles ; the clustered columns still retained their
incrustations of paint, plaster, and whitewash ; the
three archway entrances into the oblong church re-
mained in their former state,
detaching the two portions
from each other, and entirely
destroying the perspective
which those ardies afforded.
A\'lien the genuine restora-
tion was commenced in 1845,
the removal of the bcaiitifica-
tions and adoniments which
had so long disfigured the
Temple Church, was regarded
as an act of vandalism. Seats
were substituted for pews,
and a smaller puliiit and read-
ing-desk supplied more ap-
propriate to the character of
tlie building. The pavement
was lowered to its original
level ; and thus the bases of
the columns became once
more visible. The altar screen
and railing were taken down.
The organ was removed, and
thus all the arches from the
round church to the body
of the oblong church were
thrown open. By this altera-
tion the character of the
church was shown in its ori-
ginal beauty.

In the summer of 1840, the
two Societies of the Inner and
Middle Temple had the paint
and whitewash scraped off the
marble columns and ceiling.
The removal of the modern
oak wainscoting led to the discovery of a very
beautiful double marble piscina near the east end
of the south side of the building, together with
an adjoining elegantly-shaped recess, and also a
picturesque Gothic niche on the north side of the
church.

On taking up the modern floor, remains of
the original tesselated pavement were discovered.
When the whitewash and plaster were remo\-ed from
the ceiling it was found in a dangerous cond tion.
There were also found there remains of ancient

The Temp.c.J

RESTORATION OF TlIK ClUkCll.

iSi

INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH (w /",;''' '50)'

v=;2

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(The Temple.

decorative paintings and rich ornaments worked in
gold and silver ; but they were too fragmentary to
give an idea of the general pattern. Lender these
circumstances it was resolved to redecorate the
ceiling in a style corresponding with the ancient
decorative paintings observable in many Gothic
churches in Italy and France.

As the plaster and whitewash were removed it
was found that the columns were of the most beau-
tiful Purbeck marble. The six elegant clustered
columns in the round tower had been concealed
with a thick coating of Roman cement, which had
altogether concealed the graceful form of the
mouldings and carved foliage of their capitals.
Barbarous slabs of Portland stone had been cased
round theirbases and entirely altered their character.
All -this modern patchwork was thrown away ; but
the venerable marble proved so mutilated that new
columns were found necessary to support the fabric.
These are exact imitations of the old ones. The
si.K elegant clustered columns already alluded to,
however, needed but slight repair. Almost all, the
other marble-work required renewal, and a special
messenger was despatched to Purbeck to open the
ancient quarries.

Above the western doorway was discovered
a beautiful Norman window, composed of Caen
stone. The porch before the western door of the
Temple Church, which formerly communicated
with an ancient cloister leading to the hall of the
Knights Templars, had been filled up with rubbish
to a height of nearly two feet above the level of the
ancient pavement, so that all the bases of the
magnificent Norman doorway were entirely hidden
from view.

Previous to the recent restoration the round
tower was surmounted by a wooden, flat, white-
washed ceiling, altogether different from the ancient
roof This ceiling and the timber roof above it
have been entirely removed, and replaced by the
present elegant and substantial roof, which is com-
posed of oak, protected externally by sheet copper,
and has been painted by Mr. "Willement in accord-
ance with an existing e.xample of decorative painting
in an ancient church in Sicily. Many buildings
were also removed to give a clearer view of the
fine old church.

"Among the many interesting objects," says
Mr. Addison, "to be seen in the ancient church of
the Knights Templars is -o, penitential cell, a dreary
place of solitary confinement formed within the
thick wall of the building, only four feet six inches
long and two feet six inches wide, so narrow and
small that a grown person cannot lie down within
it. In this narrow prison the disobedient brethren

of the ancient Templars were temporarily confined
in chains and fetters, ' in order that their souls
might be saved from the eternal prison of hell.'
The hinges and catch of a door, firmly attached to
the doorway of this dreary chamber, still remain,
and at the bottom of the staircase is a stone recess
or cupboard, where bread and water were placed
for the prisoner. In this cell Brother Walter le
Bacheler, Knight, and Grand Preceptor of Ireland, is
said to have been starved to death for disobedience
to his superior, the Master of the Temple. His
body was removed at daybreak and buried by
Brother John de Stoke and Brother Radulph de
Barton in the middle of the court between the
: church and the hall."

The Temple discipline in the early times was very
severe : disobedient brethren were scourged by the
Master himself in the Temple Church, and fie-
quently whipped publicly on Fridays in the church.
Adam de Valaincourt, a deserter, was sentenced to
eat meat with the dogs for a whole year, to fast
four days in the week, and every Monday to
present himself naked at the high altar to be
publicly scourged by the officiating priest.

At the time of the restoration of the church
stained glass windows were added, and the panels
of the circular vaulting were emblazoned with the
lamb and horse — the tlevices of the Inner and
Middle Temple — and the Beauseant, or black and
white banner of the Templars.

The mail-clad effigies on the pavement of the
" Round " of the Temple Church are not monu-
ments of Knights Templars, but of " Associates of
the Temple," persons only partially .admitted to the
privileges of the powerful Order. During the last
repairs there were found two Norman stone coflins
and four ornamented leaden coffins in small vaults
beneath these effigies, but not in their original
positions. Stow, in 1598, speaks of eight images
of armed knights in the round walk. The effigies
have been restored by Mr. Richardson, the sculptor.
The most interesting of these represents GeoftVey
de Klagnaville, Earl of Essex, a bold baron, who
fought against King Stephen, sacked Cambridge,
and plundered Ramsey Abbe}'. He was excom-
municated, and while besieging Burwell Castle was
struck by an arrow from a crossbow just as he had
taken off his helmet to get air. The Templars,
not daring to bury him, soldered him up in lead,
and hung him on a crooked tree in thei* river-
side orchard. The corpse being at last absolved,
the Templars buried it before the west door of their
church. He is to be known by a long, pointed
shield charged with rays on a diamonded field.
The next figure, of Purbeck marble in low relief,

The Ti:mple.J

THE TK-MrLK .MONU-MKNTS.

153

is supposed to be tlie most ancient of all. The
sliield is kite-shaped, the armour composed of
rude rings — name unknown. \'estiges of gilding
were discovered upon this monument. The two
effigies on the north-east of the '" Round ' are
also anonymous. They are the tallest of all tlie
stone brethren ; one of them is straight-legged ; the
crossed legs of his comrade denote a Crusading
vow. The feet of the first rests on two grotes(iue
human heads, probably Infidels ; the second
wears a mouth guard like a respirator. Between
the two figures is the copestone lid of an ancient
sarcophagus, probably that of a Master or Visitor-
General of the Templars, as it has the head of the
cross which decorates it adorned with a lion's head,
and the foot rests on the head of a lamb, the joint
emblems of the Order of the Tem[jlars. During
the excavations in the " Round,' a magnificent
Purbeck marble sarcojihagus, the lid decorated
with a foliated cross, was dug up and re-interred.

Un the south side of the " Round," between two
columns, his feet resting upon a lion, rejioses a
great historical personage, William Marshall, the
Protector of PLngland during the minority of
King Henry III., a warrior and a statesman
whose name is sullied by no crimes.' The features
are handsome, and the whole body is wrapped in
chain mail. A Crusader in early life, the earl
became one of Richard Caur de Lion's vice-
gerents during his absence in Palestine. He
fought in Normandy for King John, helped in the
capture of Prince Arthur and his sister, urged the
usurper to sign Magna Charta, and secured the
throne for Prince Henry. Finally, he defeated the
French invaders, routed the French at sea, and i
died, in the fidness of years, a warrior whose '
deeds had been notable, a statesman whose motives I
could seldom be impugned. Sliakespeare, with j
ever a keen eye fur great men, makes the earl the
interceder for Prince Arthur. He was a great |
benefactor of the brethren of the Chivalry of the
Temple.

By the side of the earl reposes his warlike son
William Marshall the younger, cut in freestone. He
was one of the chief leaders of the Barons against
John, and in Henry's reign he overtlirew Prince
Llewellyn, and slew 8,000 wild Welsh. He fought
with credit in Brittany and Ireland, and eventually
married Eleanor, the king's sister. He gave an
estate to the Templars. The effigy is clad in a
shirt of ring mail, above which is a loose garment,
girded at the waist. The shield on the left arm
bears a lion rampant.

Near the western doorway reclines the mailed
f ffigy of Gilbert Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, third

Eon of the Protector. He is in the act of drawing
a sword, and his left foot rests on a winged dragon.
This earl, at the nuirder of a brother iu Ireland,
succeeded to the title, and married Margaret, a
daughter of the King of Scotland. He was just
startinj; for the Crusades, when he was killed l)y a
fall from his horse, in a tournament held at Ware,
(1241). Like the other Marshalls, he was a bene-
factor of the Temiile, and, like all the four sons of
the Protector, died without issue, in the reign of
Henry HI., the f.miily becoming extinct with
him. Matdiew Paris ileclared that the race had
been cursed by the Bishop of Femes, from whom
the Protector had stolen lands. The bishop,
says the chronicler, with great awe came with King
Henry to the 'I'emiile Church, and, standing at the
earl's tomb, promised the dead man absolution if
the lands were returned. No restitution was made,
so the curse fell on tiie doomed race. All these
Pembrokes wear chain hoods and have animals
recumbent at their feet.

The name of a beautiful recumbent mailed figure
ne.xt Gilbert Marshall is unknown, and near him,
on the south side of the '• Round," rests the ever-
praying effigy of Robert, Lord de Ros. This
lord was no Templar, for lie has no beard,
and wears fiowing hair, contrary to the rules
of the Order. His shield bears three water
buckets. The figure is cut out of yellow Roach
Abbey stone. The armour is linked. This knight
was fined ^800 by Richard Cocur de Lion for
allowing a French i)risoner of • consequence to
escape from his custody. He married a daughter
of a King of Scotland, was Sheriff of Cumberland,
helped to extort Magna Charta from King John,
and gave much public property to the Templars.

During the rei)airs of the round tower several
sarco[)hagi of Purbeck marble were discovered.
On the coflins being removed while the tower
was being propi)e(l, the bodies all crumbled to
dust. The sarcoiih.agi were all reinterred in the
centre of the " Round.'

During the repairs of 1850 the workmen dis-
covered and stole an ancient seal of the Order ; it
had the name of Berengarius, and on one side was
represented the Holy .Sepulchre. "The churchyard
abounds," Mr. Addison says, " with ancient stone
coffins. According to Burton, an antiquary of
Elizabeth's time, there then existed in th« Temple
Church a monument to a Visitor-General of the
Order. Among other distinguished persons buried
in the Temple Church, for so many ages a place of
special sanctity, was William Plantagenet, fifth son
of Henry HI., who died when a youth. Henry III.
himself, had at one time resolved to be buried " with

154

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple.

the brethren uf tlie Chivahy of the 'IVniiple, expect-
ing and hoping that, through our Lord and
Saviour, it will greatly contribute to the salvation
of our soul." Queen Eleanor also provided for her
interment in the Temple, but it was otherwise
decreed.

h\ the triforium of the Temple Church have been
[jacked away, like lumber, the greater part of the j
clumsy monuments that once disfigured the walls I
and columns below. In this strange museum lord
chancellors, councillors of state, learned benchers,
barons of the exchequer, masters of the rolls, trea-
surers, readers, jirothonotaries, poets, and authors
jostle each other in dusty confusion. At the en-
trance, under a canopy, is the recumbent figure of
the great lawyer of Elizabeth's time, Edmund
Plovvden. This grave and wise man, being a
staunch Romanist, was slighted by the Protestant
Queen. It is said that he was so studious in his
youth that at one period he never went out of the
Temple precincts for three whole years. He was
Treasurer of the Middle Temple the year the hall
was Ijuilt.

Selden (that great writer on international law,
whose " Mare clausum " was a reply to the " Mare
liberuni" of Crrotius) is buried to tlie left of the
altar, the spot being marked by a monument of white
marble. " His grave," says Aubrey, " was about
ten feet deepe or better, walled up a good way with
bricks, of which also the bottome was paved, but
the sides at the bottome for about two foot high wert^
of black polished marble, wherein his coffin (covered
with black bayes) lyeth, and upon that wall of
marble was presently lett downe a huge black
marble stone of great thicknesse, with tliis inscriji-
tion — 'Hie jacet corpus Johannis Seldeni, qui
obijt 30 die Novembris, 1654.' Over this was
turned an arch of brick (for the house would not
lose their ground), and upon that was throwne the
earth," &c.

There is a monument in the triforium to F,d-
mund Gibbon, a herald and an ancestor of the his-
torian. The great writer alluding to this monment
says — " My family arms are the same which were
borne by the (libbons of Kent, in an age when the
College of Heralds religiously guarded the distinc-
tions of blood and name — a lion rampant gardant
between three schollop shells argent, on a field
azure. I should not, Jiowever, have been tempted
to blazon my coat of arms were it not connected
with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of
James I., the three harmless schollop shells were
changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three
ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of
stigmatising three ladies, his kinswomen, who had

provoked him by an unjust lawsuit. But this
singuk^r mode of revenge, for which he obtained
tlie sanction of Sir William Seager, King-at-.\rms,
soon expired with its author ; and on his own
monument in the Temple Church the monsters
vanish, and the three schollop shells resume their
proper and hereditary jjlace."

At the latter end of Charles II. 's reign the organ in
the Temple Church became the subject of a singular
contest, which was decided by a most remarkable
judge. The benchers had determined to have the
best organ in London ; the competitors for the build-
ing were Smith and Harris. Father Smith, a CJerman,
was renowned for his care in choosing wood without
knot or tlaw, and for throwing aside every metal
or wooden jiipe that was not perfect and sound.
His stops were also allowed by all to be singularly
equal and sweet in tone. The two competitors
were each to erect an organ in the 'I'emple Church,
and the best one was to be retained. The com-
petition was carried on with such violence that
some of the partisans almost ruined themselves by
the money they expended. The night preceding
the trial the too zealous friends of Harris cut the
bellows of Smith's ors^^n, and rendered it for the
time useless. Drs. Blow and Purcell were employed
to show the powers of Smith's instrument, and
the French organist of Queen Catherine performed
on Harris's. The contest continued, with varying
success, for nearly a twelvemonth. At length
Harris challenged his redoubtable rival to make
certain additional reed stops, rv.v huiiiana, crcmoiia,
double bassoon and other stops, widiin a given
time. The controversy was at last terminated by
Lord Chief Justice Jefteries — the cruel and de-
bauched Jefteries, who was himself an accom-
plished musician — deciding in favour of Father
Smith. Part of Harris's rejected organ was erected
at St. Andrew's, Holborn, jiart at Christ Church
Cathedral, Dublin. Father Smith, in consequence
of his success at the Temple, was employed to
build an organ for St. Paul's, but Sir Christopher
\\'ren would never allow the case to be made large
enough to receive all the stops. " The sound and
general mechanism of modern instruments," says
Mr. Burge, " are certainly superior to those of Father
Smith's, but for sweetness of tone I have never
met in any part of Europe with pipes that have
equalled his."

In the reign of James I. there was a great dispute
between the Custos of the Temple and the two
Societies. This sinecure office, the gift of the
Crown, was a rectory without tithes, and the Custos
was dependent upon \oluntary contributions. I'he
benchers, irritated at Ur. Micklethwaitc's arrogant

The Temple.]

THE RIVAL ORGANISTS.

pretensions, shut the doctor out from their dinners.
In the reign of Ciiarlesl., the doctor complain.-d to
the' king that lie received no tithes, was refused
precedence as Master of tlie Temple, was allou'ed
no share in the deliberations, was not paid for iiis
supernumeraiy sermans, and was denied ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction. The doctor thereupon locked
up the church and took away the keys ; but Noy,
the Attorney-General, snubbed him, and called
him " dafus el su/icrbus ;'' and he got nothi..g,
after all, but hard words, for his petition.

The learned and judicious Hooker, author of
"The Ecclesiastical Polity," was for six years Master
of the Temple — "a place," says Izaak Walton,
"which he accepted rather than desired." Travers,
a disciple of Cartwright the Noncomforn ist, was the
lecturer ; so Hooker, it was said, preacned Canter-
liv.ry in the forenoon, and Travers Geneva in the
afternoon. The benchers «ere divided, and Travers
being at last silenced by the archbisbop. Hooker
resigned, and in his quiet parsonage of Boscombe
renewed the contest in print, in his " Ecclesiastical
Polity."

When Bishop Sherlock, was Master of the Temple,
the sees of Canterbury and London were vacant
about the same time (1748); tliis occasioned an
epigram upon Sherlock, —

" A; the Temple one day, Slierlock taking .1 bo.it,
The waterman asked him, ' Whicli way will you float ?'
' Which way?' says the Doctor ; 'why, fool, with tlie

stream !' '
To St. Paid's or to Lambeth was all one to him."

The tide in favour of Sherlock was running to
St. Paul's. He was made Bishop of London.

During the repairs of 1827 the ancient freestone
chapel of St. Anne, which stood on the south side
of the " Round," was ruthlessly removed. We had
less reverence for antiquity then. The upper storey
communicated witli the Temple Church by a stair-
case opening on the west end of the south aisle of
the choir; the lower joined the "Round" by a door-
way under one of the arches of the circular arcade.
The chapel anciently opened upon the cloisters,
and formed a private way from the convent to the
church. Here the Papal legate and the highest
bishops frequently held conferences; and on Sunday
mornings the Master of the Temple held chapters,
enjoined penances, made up quarrels, and pro-
nounced absolution. The chapel of St. Anne was
in the old time much resorted to by barren women,
who there prayed for children.

In Charles II.'s time, according to " Hudibras,"
"straw bail" and low rascals of that sort lingered
about the Round, waiting for hire. Butler says : —

15s

" Retain all sorts of wilncssj.!
That ply i' the Temple, under trees,
I )r walk the Round with KniylUs o' ih' Posts
.Vbout the cross-legii'd knii,'hl^, their hosts ;
I )r wait for customers btt\>een
The pillar rows in Lincoln'- Inn."

In Jariies I.'s time the Round, as we find in Ben
Jonson, was a place for appointments ; and in 1681
Otway describes bullies of Alsatia, with flapping
hats pinned up on one side, sandy, weather-beaten
periwigs, and clumsy iron swords clattering at their
heels, as conspicuous personages among the Knights
of the Posts and tile other peripatetic jjliilosophers
of the Temj)le walks.

We nuist now turn to the history of the whole
precinct. When the proud Order was abolished
by the Pope, l-^dward II. granted the Tem[)le to
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who, how-
ever, soon surrendered it to the king's cousin, the
Earl of Lancaster, who let it, at their special
request, to the student . id professors of the com-
mon laws ; the colony then gradually becoming an
organised and collegiate body, Edward I. having
authorised laymen for the first time to read and
plead causes.

Hugh le Dcspenser for a time held the Temple,
and on his execution Eilward HI. appointed the
Mayor of London its guardian. The mayor closing
the Watergate caused much vexation to the lawyers
rowing by boat to Westminster, and the king had
to interfere. In 1333 the king farmed out the
Temple rents at £2^^ a year. In the meantime,
the Knights Hospitallers, affecting to be olfended
at the desecration of holy ground — the. liisliop
of Ely's lodgings, a chapel dedicated to .\ Becket,
and the door to the Temple Hall — claimed
the forfeited spot. The king granted their re-
(juest, the annual revenue of the Temple then
being ^73 6s. ud., equal to about ^'1,000 of oar
present money. In 1340, in consideration of ;^ioo
towards an expedition to France, the warlike king
made over the residue of the Tenii)le to the
Hospitallers, who instantly endowed the church
with lands and one thousand fagots a year from
I.illerton Wood to keep uj) the church fires.

In this reign Cliaucer, who is supposed to have
been a student of the Middle Temple, and who
is said to have once beaten an insolent Franciscan
friar in Fleet Street, gives a eulogistic sketch of a
Temple manciple, or ])urveyor of provisions, in the
prologue to his wonderful " Canterbury Tales.''

•' A gentil manciple was there of the Temple
Of whom achalours misjhtcn take ensample,
For to ben wise in bying of vltiille ;
For, whether that he paid or (oke by laiUc,

156

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

rThe Temple.

Al^ate lie waited so in liis achate
Tli.U he was aye before ia good estate.
Xuw is not that of God a full fayre grace
'I'hat swiche a lewcd iiiannes wit sliall face
The wisdom of au licpc of Icrned men ?

" Of maisters had lie more than thrici ten,
That "iWre of law expert and curious ;
Of which there was a doscin in ih it hous
Worthy to ben stewardes of ic it and land
Of any lord that is in Engleland :
To niaken him live by his propre good,
In honour detteles ; but if he were wood,
Or live as scarsly as him list desire.
And able for to helpen all a shire,
In any cos that mighte fallen or happe :
And yet this manciple sett ' liir allcr cappe."

at-law exactly resembles that once used for re-
ceiving Fratres Servientes into the fraternity of
the Temple.

In Wat Tyler's rebellion the wild men of Kent
poured down on the dens of the Temple lawyers,
pulled down their houses, carried off the books,
deeds, and rolls of remembrance, and burnt them
in Fleet Street, to spite the Knights Hospitallers.
Walsingham, the chronicler, indeed, says that the
rebels — who, by the by, claimed only their rights
— had resolved to decapitate all the lawyers of
London, to put an end to all the laws that had
oppressed them, and to clear the ground for better
times. In the reign of Henry VI. the overgrown

^^^m^'^^^^^-m^^^^^

TOMBS OF i-cnights templars {see fa^e 152).

In the Middle Temple Chaucer is supposed to
have formed the acquainianceship of his graver
contemporary, " the moral Gower."

Many of the old retainers of the Templars became
servants of the new lawyers, who had ousted their
masters. The attendants at table were still called
paniers, as they had formerly been. The dining
in pairs, the expulsion from hall for misconduct,
and the locking out of chambers were old customs
also kept up. The judges of Common Pleas re-
tained the title of knight, and the Fratres Servientes
of the Templars arose again in the character of
learned serjeants-at-lfc', the coif of the modern
Serjeant being the linen coif of the old Freres
Serjens of the Temple. The coif was never, as
some suppose, intended to hide the tonsure of
priests practising law contrary to ecclesiastical pro-
hibition. The old ceremony of creating serjeants-

society of the Temple divided into two halls, or
rather the original two halls of the knights and
Fratres Servientes separated into two societies.
Brooke, the Elizabethan antiquary, says : " To this
da)-, in memor)' of the old custom, the benchers or
ancients of the one society dine once every year in
the hall of the other society."

Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's
Bench in the reign of Henry VI., computed the
annual expenses of each law student at more than
^28 — (";!£'4So of our present money" — Addison).
The students were all gentlemen by birth, and at
each Inn of Court there was an academy, where
singing, music, and dancing were taught. On
festival days, after the offices of the Church, the
students employed themselves in the study of
history and in reading the Scriptures. Any student
expelled one society was refused admission to any.

The Temp'e]

THE RIVER WALL.

'57

of the other societies. A manuscript (tt-mp.
Henry Vin.) in, the ("otlon Library tlwclls nuicii
on the readings, moolings, boltings, and other
practices of the Temple students, and analyses
the various classes of benchers, readers, cupboard-
men, inner barristers, outer barristers, and students.
The writer also mentions the fact that in term
times the students met to talk law and confer on
business in the church, which was, he says, as
noisy as St. Paul's. When the plague broke out
the students went home to the country.

The attention jmid by the governors of the house
both to the morals and dress of its members is
evidenced by the imposition, in the thirteenth year
of the reign of Henry \ IH., of a fine of 6s. 8d.
on any one wJio should exercise the plays of
"shove-grote" or " slyji-grote," and by the mandate
afterwards issued in the thirty-eighth year of the
same reign, that students should relorm themselves
in their cut, or disguised apparel, and should not
have long beards.

It is in the Temple Gardens that Shakespeare —

THE TEMPLE IN 1671. (FROM A.N OLD 1!1RD's-EVE VIEW IN THE INNER TEMPLE.)

The Society of the Inner Temple was very active
(says Mr. Foss) during the reign of Henry VIII.
in the erection of new buildings. Several houses
for chambers were constructed near the library,
and were called Pakington's Rents, from the name
of the treasurer who superintended them. Henry
Bradshaw, treasurer in the twenty-sixth year, gave
his name to another set then built, which it kei^t
until Chief Baron Tanfield resided there in the
reign of James I., since which it has been called
Tanfield Court. Other improvements were made
about the same period, one of these being the con-
struction of a new ceiling to the hall and the erec-
tion of a wall between the garden and the Thames.
14

' relying, probably, on some old tradition which
does not exist in print— has laid one of the scenes
of his King Henry F/.— that, namely, in which the
partisans of the rival houses of York and Lan-
caster first assume their distinctive badges of the
white and red roses :—

" Suffolk. Within Ihc Tenii)le Il.ill we were too loud ;
The yanleii here is more coiiveiiieiU.

• • • •

" rUinlii^ciict. I.el him that is a true-born pciulcman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have ple.adcd truth,
Kroni ofT thi-, brier pluek a while rose with me.

" Sjnicncl. Let him tli.it x-. no coward, nor no (latlercr,

'58

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The remple.

But dare niainttiin the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

• * * •

" Plantageiiel. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset ?
" Somerset. Hath not tliy rose a thorn. Plantagenct ?

• » » *

" Warwki. This brawl to-day,

Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the wliite,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."

A'iii£ Henry V/., Part I., Act ii., sc. 4.

The books of the Middle Temple do not com-
mence till the reign of King Henry VII., the first
treasurer named in them being John Brooke, in the
sixteenth year of Henry VII. (1500-1). Readers
were not appointed till the following year, the
earliest being John Vavasour — probably son of the
judge, and not, as Dugdale calls him, the judge
himself, who had then been on the bench for twelve
years. Members of the house might be excused
from living in commons on account of their wives
being in town, or for other special reasons (Foss).

In the last year of Philip and Mary (1558)
eight gentlemen of the Temple were expelled the
society and committed to the Fleet for wilful dis-
obedience to the Bench, but on their humble
submission they were readmitted. A year before
this a severe Act of Parliament was passed, pro-
hibiting Templars weaiing beards of more than

three weeks' growth, upon pain of a forty-shilling
fine, and double for every week after monition.
The young lawyers were evidently getting too
foppish. They were required to cease wearing
Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers, rapiers, gowns,
hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only knights
and benchers were to display doublets or hose- of
any light colour, except scarlet and crimson, or
to aft'ect velvet caps, scarf-wings to their gowns,
white jerkins, buskins, velvet shoes, double shir.-
cuffs, or feathers or ribbons in their caps. More-
over, no attorney was to be admitted into either
house. These monastic rules were intended to
preserve the gravity of the profession, and must
have pleased the Poloniuses and galled the Mer-
cutios of those troublous days.

In Elizabeth's days Master Gerard Leigh, a
pedantic scholar of the College of Heralds, per-
suaded the misguided Inner Temple to abandon
the old Templar arms — a plain red cross on a
shield argent, with a lamb bearing the banner of
the sinless profession, surmounted by a red cross.
The heraldic euphuist substituted for this a flying
Pegasus striking out the fountain of Hippocrene
with its hoofs, with the appended motto of " Volat
ad astera virtus," a recondite allusion to men, like
Chaucer and Gower, who, it is said, had turned
i from lawyers to poets.

CHAPTER XV.

THE TEMPLE [conlimmi).

The Middle Temple Hall : its Roof, Busts, and Portraits — Manningham's Diary — Fox Hunts in Hall — The Grand Revels — Spenser — Sir J, Davis
—A Present to a King— Masques and Royal Visitors at the I'emple— 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" — UlacksLone's " Fare. veil " — Burke — Sheridan
—A Pair of Epigrams— Hare Court— Th<; barber's Shop— Johnson and the Literary Club— Charles Lamb — Goldsmith : his Life, Troubles,
and Extravagances—" Hack Work" for Booksellers— 77;^ DeserUd Village— S!u Stoops to Co-i<juer — Goldsmith's Death and Burial.

In the glorious reign of Elizabeth the old Middle
Temple Hall was converted into chambers, and a
new hall built. The present roof (says Mr. Peter
Cunningham) is the best piece of Elizabethan
architecture in I^ondon. The screen, in the
Renaissance style, was long supposed to be an
exact copy of the Strand front of Old Somerset
House ; but this is a vulgar error; nor could it have
been made of timber from the Spanish Armada, for
the simple reason that it was set up thirteen years
before the Armada was organised. The busts of
" doubting" Lord Eldon -and his brother, Lord
Stdwell, the great Admiralty judge, are by Behnes.
The portraits are chiefly second-rate copies. The
exterior was cased with stone, in " wretched taste,"

in 1757. The diary of an Elizabethan barrister,
named Manningham, preserved in the Harleian
Miscellanies, has preserved the interesting fact that
in this hall in February, 1602 — probably, says
Mr. Collier, six months after its first appearance
at the Globe — Shakespeare's Tic'elfth Night was
acted.

" Feb. 2, 1 601 (2). — At our feast," says Manning-
ham, " we had a play called Twelve Night, or What
you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors or
Menechmi in Plautns, but most like and neere to
that in Italian called Ligamii. A good practice in
it is to make the steward believe his lady widdowe
was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, -as
from his lady, in general! tej-ms telling him what

The Temple.]

THE FOX HUNTS IN HALL.

IS9

shee liked best in iiiin, and prescribing liis gestures,
inscribing his a[)p.uaile, &c., and then, when he
c.ime to practise, making him believe they tooke
him to be mad.'

The Temple revels in tlie olden time were indeed
gorgeous outbursts of mirth and hospitality. One ot"
the most splendid of" these took place in the fourth
year of Elizabeth's reign, when the queen's favourite.
Lord Robert Dudley (afterwards the great Earl of
Leicester) was elected Palaphilos, constable or
marshal of the inn, to preside over the Christmas
festivities. He had lord chancellor and judges,
eighty guards, officers of the household, and other
distinguished persons to attend him ; and another
of tiie queen's subsequent favourites, Chnstopher
Hatton — a handsome youth, remarkable for his
skill in dancing — was appointed master of the
games. The daily bamiuets of the Constable were
announced by the discharge of a double cannon,
and drums and fifes summoned the mock court
to the common hall, while sackbuts, cornets, and
recorders heralded the arrival of every course. At
the first remove a herald at the high table cried, —
"The mighty Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie, High
Constable, Marshal of the Knights Templars,
Patron of the Honourable Order of Pegasus I —
a largesse ! a largesse ! " upon which the Prince of
Sophie tossed the man a gold chain worth a
thousand talents. The supper ended, the king-
at-arms entered, and, doing homage, announced
twenty-four special gentlemen, whom Pallas had
ordered him to present to Palaphilos as knights-
elect of the Order of Pegasus. The twenty-four
gentlemen at once appeared, in long white vestures,
with scarves of Pallas's colours, and the king-at-
arms, bowing to each, explained to them the laws
of the new order.

P'or every feast the steward provided five fat
hams, with spices and cakes, and the chief butler
seven dozen gilt and silver spoons, twelve damask
table-cloths, and twenty candlesticks. The Con-
stable wore gilt armour and a plumed helmet,
and bore a pole-axe in his hands. On St.
Thomas's Eve a parliament was held, when the
two youngest brothers, bearing torches, preceded
the procession of benchers, the ofticers' names
were called, and the whole society passed round
the hearth singing a carol. On Christmas Eve the
minstrels, sounding, jireceded the dishes, and, ,
dinner done, sang a song at the high table; after
dinner the oldest master of the revels and other
gentlemen singing songs.

On Christmas Day the fe'ast grew still more
feudal and splendid. At the great meal at noon
the minstrels and a long train of servitors bore in

the blanched boar's head, with a golden lemon in
its jaws, the trumpeters being preceded by two
gentlemen in gowns, bearing four torches of white
wax. On St. Stephen's Day the younger Templars
waited at table upon the benchers. At the first
course the Constable entered, to the sound of
horns, preceded by sixteen swaggering trumpeters,
while the halberdier^i bore '' the tower " on their
shoulders and marched gravely three times round
the fire.

On St. John's Day tlie Constable was up at seven,
and personally called and reprimanded any tardy
officers, . who were sometimes committed to the
Tower for disorder. If any officer absented him-
self at meals, any one sitting in his place was
compelled to pay his fee and assume his office.
Any offender, if he escaped into the oratory, could
claim sanctuary, and was pardoned if he returned
into the hall humbly and as a servitor, carrying a
roll on the point of a knife. No one was allowed
to sing after the cheese was served.

On Childermas Day, New Year's Day, and
Twelfth Night the same costly feasts were con-
tinued, only that on Thursday there was roast
beef and venison pasty for dinner, and mutton and
roast hens were served for supper. The final ban-
quet- closing all was preceded by a dance, revel,
play, or mask, the gentlemen of every Inn of Court
and Chancery being invited, and the hall furnished
with side scaffolds for the ladies, who were feasted in
the library. The Lord Chancellor and the ancients
feasted in the hall, the Templars serving. The
feast over, the Constable, in his gilt armour, ambled
into the hall on a caparisoned mule, and arranged
the sequence of sports.

The Constable then, with three reverences, knelt
before the lying of the Revels, and, delivering up his
naked sword, prayed to be taken into the royal
service. Next entered Hatton, the Master of the
Game, clad in green velvet, his rangers arrayed
in green satin. Blowing "a blast of venery " three
times on their horns, and holding green-coloured
bows and arrows in their hands, the rangers paced
three times round the central fire, then knelt to the
King of the Revels, and desired admission into the
royal service. Next ensued a strange and bar-
barous ceremony. .\ huntsman entered with a
live fox and cat and nine or ten coui)le of hounds,
and, to the blast of horns and wild shouting, the
poor creatures were torn to shreds, for the amuse-
ment of the applauding Templars. At supper the
Constable entered to the sound of drums, borne
u[)on a scaftbld by four men, and as he was carried
three times round the hearth every one shouted,
" A lord ! a lord : "

i6o

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Thi: Temple.

He" then descended, called together his mock
court, by such fantastic names as —
Sir Francis Flatterer, of Fowlershurst, in the county

of Buckingham ;
Sir Randal Rakabite, of Rascal Hall, in the county

of Rakebell ;
Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much !Monkcr_\-, in the

county of Mad Mopery ; .
and the banquet then began, every man having a
gilt pot full of wine, and each one paying sixpence
for his repast. That night, when tlie lights were
put out, the noisy, laughing train passed out of the
portal, and the long re\'els were ended.

" Sir Edward Coke,'' says Lord Campbell, writing
of this period, " first evinced his forensic powers
when 'deputed by the students to make a repre-
sentation to the benchers of the Inner Temple
respecting the bad (juality of their ioininons in the
hall. After laboriously studying the facts and the
law of the case, he clearly proved that the cook had
broken his engagement, and was liable to be dis-
missed. This, according to the phraseology of the
day, was called 'the cook's ca:;e,' and he was said
to have argued it with so much (juickness of pene-
tration and solidity of judgment, that he gave entire
satisfaction to the students, and was much admired
by the Bench."

In his exiiuisite " Prothalamion " Spenser alludes
to the Temple as if he had sketched it from the
river, after a visit to his great patron, the Earl of
Essex, —

"Those bricky towei-s.
The which on Thames' broad, aged back doe ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide.
Till they decayed through pride."

Sir John Davis, the author of " Nosce Teipsirm,''
that fine mystic poem on the immortality of the
soul, and of that strange philosophical rhapsody on
dancing, was expelled the Temple in Elizabeth's
reign, for thrashing his friend, another roysterer
of the day, Mr. Richard Martin, in tlie Middle
Temple Hall; but afterwards, on proper submission,
he was readmitted. Davis afterwards reformed, and
became t!.e wise Attorney-General of Ireland. His
biographer says, that the preface to his " Irish
Reports " vies with Coke for solidity and Black-
stone for elegance. ]\Lartin (whose monument is
now hoarded up in the Triforium) also became p.
learned lawyer and a friend of Selden's, and was
the person to whom Ben Jonson dedicated his
bitter play, The Poetaster. In the dedication the
poet says, "For whose innocence as for the authors
you were once a noWe and kindly undertaker :
signed, your true lover, Ben Jonson."

On the accession of James I. some of his hungry
Scotch courtiers attempted to obtain from the king
a grant of the fee-simple of the Temple ; upon
which the two indignant societies made "humble
suit" to the king, and obtained a grant of the
property to themselves. The grant was signed in
1609, the benchers paying ;^io annually to the
king for the Inner Temple, and ^to for the
Middle. In gratitude for this concession, the two
loyal societies presented his majesty with a stately
gold cup, weigliing 200'j ounces, v/liich James
" most graciously " accepted. On one side was
engraved a temple, on the other a flaming altar,
with the words ;/// nisi '\>l>:s ; on the pyramidical
cover stood a Roman soldier leaning on his shield.
This cup die bibulous monarch e\er afterwards
esteemed as one of his rarest and richest jewels.
In 1623 James issued another of those absurd and
trumpery sumptuar)- edicts, recommending the
ancient way of wearing caps, and requesting the
Templars to la}- aside their unseemly boots and
spurs, the badges of "' roarers, rakes, and bullies.''

The Temple feasts continued to be as lavish
and magnificent as in the days of Queen Mary,
v.-hen no reader was allowed to contribute less than
fifteen bucks to the hall dinner, and many during
their readings gave fourscore or a hundred.

On the m.irriage (1613) of the Lady Elizabeth,

daughter of King James I., with Prince Frederick,

the unfortunate Elector-Palatine, the Temple and

Gray's Inn men gave a masque, of which Sir Francis

Bacon was the chief contriver. The masque came

to Whitehall by water from 'W'inchester Place,

in Southwark ; three peals of ordnance greeting

them as they embarked with torches and lamps,

as diey passed the Temple Garden, and as they

landed. This short trip cost ^^300. The king,

after all, was so tired, and the hall so crowded,

that the masque was adjourned till the Saturday

following, when all went w-ell. The next night the

king gave a supper to the forty masquers ; Prince

I Charles and his courtiers, who had lost a wager

' to the king at running at the ring, paying for the

; banquet ;£^3o a man. The masquers, who dined

wuth forty of the chief nobles, kissed his majesty's

hand. Shortly after this twenty I'emplars fought

at barriers, in honour of Prince Charles, the

benchers contributing thirty shillings each to the

j expenses ; the barristers of seven years' standing,

I fifteen shillings ; and the other gentlemen in com-

j mons, ten shillings.

One of the grandest masques ever given by llie
Templars was one which cost ;!^2i,ooo,and was pre-
sented, in 1633, to Cliarles I. and his French queen.
I Bulstrode ^Vhitelock, then in his youth, gives a vivid

fhcTcmpli.]

THE READER'S FEAST.

i6t

picture of this pageant, which was meant to refute
Prynne's angry "Histro-Mastix." Noy and Seidell
were members of the committee, antl many grave
heads met together to discuss the dances, dresses,
and music. The music was written by Milton's
friend, Lawes, the libretto by Shirley. The pro-
cession set out from Ely House, in Holborn, on
Candlemas Day, in the evening. The four chariots
that bore the si.xteen masquers were preceded by
twenty footmen in silver-lace'd scarlet liveries, who
carried torches and clearerl the way. After these
rode loo gentlemen from the Inns of Court,
mounted and richly clad, every gentleman having
two lackeys with torches and a jiage to carry
his cloak. Then followed the other masquers —
beggars on horseback and boys dressed as birds.
The colours of the first chariot were crimsori and
sil\-er, the four horses being plumed and trapped
in parti-coloured tissue. The Middle Temple rode
next, in blue and silver; and the Inner Temple and
Lincoln's Inn folic wed in equal braver)', loo of
the suits being reckoned to have cost ;^i 0,000.
Tlie masque was most perfectly ijerformed in the
Banqueting House at Whitehall, the Queen dancing
with several of the masquers, and declaring them
to be as good dancers as ever she saw.

The year after the Restoration Sir Heneage Finch,
afterwards Earl of Nottingham, kept his " reader's
feast '' in the great hall of the Inner Temple.
At that time of universal vice, luxur}% and extrava-
gance, the banquet lasted from the 4th to the 1 7th
of August. It was, in fact, open house to all
London. The first day came the nobles and ]irivy
councillors ; the second, the Lord Mayor and alder-
men ; the third, the whole College of Physicians in
their mortuary caps and gowns ; the fourth, the
doctors and advocates of civil law ; on the fifth day,
the archbishops, bishops, and obsequious clergy ;
and on the fifteenth, as a last grand explosion, the
King, the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham,
and half the ])eers. An entrance was made from
the river through the wall of the Temple Garden,
the King being received on landing by the Reader
and the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ;
the path from the garden to the wall was lined
with the Reader's servants, clad in scarlet cloaks
and white doublets ; while above them stood the
benchers, barristers, and students, music playing
all the while, and twenty violins welcoming Charles
into the hall with unanimous scrape and quaver.
Dinner was served by fifty young students in their
gowns, no meaner servants appearing. In tlie
November following the Duke of York, the Duke
of Buckingham, and tlie Earl of Dorset were '
admitted members of thci Society of the Inne

Temp'.e. Six years after. Prince Riii)ert, then a
gri/,/ly old cavalry .soldier, and addii ted to experi-
ments in chemistry and engraving in his jiouse in
the Barbican, received the same honour.
,' The great, fire of 1666, says Mr. Jeaffreson, in
his " Law and Lawyers," was stayed in its westward
I course at the Temple ; but it was not suppressed
until the (lames had consumed many sets of cham-
j bers, had devoured the title-deeds of a vast number
^ of valuable estates, and had almost licked the
windows of the Temi)le Church. Clarendon has
recorded that on the occasion of this stu])endous
calamity, which occurred when a large proportion
of the Templars were out of town, the lawyers
in residence declined to break open the chambers
and rescue the property of absent members of their
society, through fear of i)ro>;ecution for burglary.
Another great fire, some years later (January,
1678-79), destroyed the old cloisters and part of the
old hall of the Inner Temi)lc, and the greater part
of the residential buildings of the "Old Temple."
Breaking out at midnight, and lasting till noon of
next day, it devoured, in the Miildle Temi)le, the
whole of Pump Court (in which locality it origi-
nated). Elm-tree Court, Vine Court, and part of
Brick Court; in the Inner Temple the cloisters,
the greater part of Hare Court, and part of the hall.
The night was bitterly cold, and the Templars,
aroused from their beds to preserve life and pro-
perty, could not get an adequate supply of water
from the Thames, which the unusual severity of
the season had frozen. In this ditficulty they
actually brought barrels of ale from the Tem[)le
butteries, and fed the engines with the malt liquor.
Of course this supply of fluid was soon exhausted,
so the fire spreading eastward, the lawyers fought
it by blowing up the buildings that were in imme-
diate danger. Gunpowder was more effectual than
beer; but the explosions were .sadly destructive
to human life. Amongst the buildings thus de-
molished was the library of the Inner Temple.
Naturally, but with no apparent good re.ason, the
sufferers by the fire attributed it to treachery on
the part of persons unknown, just as the citizens
attributed the fire of 1666 to the Papists. It is more
])robablc tl;at the calamity was caused by some
such accident as that which occasioned the fire
which, during John Campbell's attorney-generalship,
destroyed a large amount of valuable property,
and had its origin in the clumsiness of a barrister
who upset upon his fire a vessel full of spirit.
Of this fire Lord Campbell observes: — "When
I was Attorney-General, my chambers in Taper
Buildini;s, Temple, were liMrnt to the ground in
the night-time, and all my books and manuscripts,

l62

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(The Temple.

with some valuable official papers, were coiisumed.
Above all, I had to lament a collection of letters
written to me by my dear father, from the time
of my going to college till his death in 1824. All
lamented this calamity except the claimant of a
peerage, some of whose documents (suspected to

chambers, which latter had been for the benefit of
the Middle Temple ; but, in regard that it could
not be done without the consent of the Inner
Houses, the masters of the Middle Houses waited
upon the tlien Mr. Attorney Finch to desire the
concurrence of his society uiion a proposition of

THE OLD HALL OF THE INNER TEMPLE {s,V fa^V 164).

be forged) he hoped were destroyed ; but fortu-
nately they liad been removed into safe custody a
few days before, and the claim was dropped."
The fire here alluded to broke out in the chambers
of one Thornbury, in Pump Court.

" I remember," says North in his " Life of Lord
Keeper Guildford," "that after the fire of the
Temple it was considered whether the old cloister
walks should be rebuilt or rather improved into '

some benefit to be thrown in on his side. But
Mr. Attorney would by no means give way to it,
and reproved the Middle Templars very bitterly
and eloquently upon the subject of students walking
in evenings there, and putting ' cases,' which, he
said, ' was done in his time, mean and low as tlie
buildings were then. However, it comes,' lie said,
' that such a benefit to students is now made little
account of.' .A.nd thereupon the cloisters, by the

Ihc Temple. 3

MASQUES IN THE TEMPLE.

^(>i

■ from the MiJdlo Temple.

Fiie-lacc in i!ic Inner Ternplj,

Dour from the Inner 'Icmplc

\Vii;-.Shop in the Middle 'Icmplc.

Screen of the Middle Temple IKdl. umtco' of the Inner Tcn-Ie.

t64

OLD ANt) NKW LONDO^^

[tKe tempts.

order and disposition of Sir Christopher Wren,
were built as they now stand."

The last revel in any of the Inns of Court
•was held irf the Inner Temple, February, 1733
(George II.), in honour of Mr. Talbot, a bencher
of that house, accepting the Great Seal. The cere-
mony is described by an eye-witness in " Wynne's
Eunomus." The Lord Chancellor arrived at two
o'clock, preceded by Mr. Wollaston, Master of the
Revels, and followed by Dr. Sherlock, Bishop of |
Bangor, Master of the Temple, and the judges and
Serjeants formerly of the Inner Temple. There !
was an elegant dinner provided for them and the |
chancellor's officers, but the barristers and students
had only the usual meal of grand days, except that
each man was furnished with a flask of claret
besides the usual allowance of port and sack.
Fourteen students waited on the Bench table :
among them was Mr. Talbot, the Lord Chancellor's
eldest son, and by their means any special dish
was easily obtainable from the upper table. A
large gallery was built over the screen for the
ladies ; and music, placed in the little gallery at the
upper end of the hall, played all dinner-time. As
soon as dinner was over, the play of Lcrcefor Love
and the farce of The Devil to Pay were acted, the
actors coming from the Haymarket in chaises,
all ready-dressed. It was said they refused all
gratuity, being satisfied with the honour of per-
forming before such an audience. After the play,
the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Temple,
the judges and benchers retired into their parlia-
ment chamber, and in about half an hour after-
wards came into the hall again, and a large ring
was formed round the fire-place (but no fire nor
embers were in it). Then the Master of the Revels,
who went first, took the Lord Chancellor by the
right hand, and he with his left took Mr. J [ustice]
Page, who, joined to the other judges, Serjeants,
and benchers present, danced, or rather walked,
round about the coal fire, according to the old
ceremony, three times, during which they were aided
in the figure of the dance by Mr. George Cooke,
the prothonotiiry, then upwards of sixty ; and all
the time of the dance the ancient song, accompanied
with music, was sung by one Tony Aston (an actor),
dressed in a bar gown, whose fiither had been for-
merly Master of the Plea Office in the King's Bench.
When this was over, the ladies came down from
the gallery, went into the parliament chamber, and
stayed about a quarter of an hour, while the hall
was putting in order. Then they went into the hall
and danced a few minutes. Country dances began
about ten, and at twelve a very fine collation was '
provided for the whole company, from which they |

returned to dancing. The Prince of Wales honoured
the performance with his company part of the time.
He came into the music gallery wing about the
middle of the play, and went away as soon as the
farce of walking round the coal fire was over.

Mr. Peter Cunningham, apropos of these revels,
mentions that when the floor of the Middle Temple
Hall was taken up in 1764 there were found nearly
one hundred pair of very small dice, yellowed by
time, which had dropped through the chinks above.
The same writer caps this fact by one of his usually
apposite quotations. Wycherly, in his Plain Dealer
(1676 — Charles II.), makes Freeman, one of his
characters, say : — " Methinks 'tis like one of the
Halls in Christmas time, whither from all parts fools
bring their money to try the dice (nor the worst
judges), whether it shall be their own or no."

The Inner Temple Hall (the refectory of the
ancient knights) was almost entirely rebuilt in
1816. The roof was overloaded with timber, the
west wall was cracking, and the wooden cupola
of the bell let in the rain. The pointed arches
and rude sculpture at the entrance doors showed
great antiquity, but the northern wall had been
rebuilt in 16S0. The incongruous Doric screen
was surmounted by lions' heads, cones, and
other anomalous devices, and in 1741 low, classic
windows had been inserted in the south front. Of
the old hall, where the Templars frequently held
their chapters, and at different times entertained
King John, King Henry III., and several of the
legates, several portions still remain. A very
ancient groined Gothic arch forms the roof of the
present buttery, and in the apartment beyond
there is a fine groined and vaulted ceiling. In the
cellars below are old walls of vast thickness, part
of an ancient window, a curious fire-place, and
some pointed arches, all now choked with 'modern
brick partitions and dusty staircases. These
vaults formerly communicated by a cloister with
the chapel of St. Anne, on the south side of the
church. In the reign of James I. some brick
chambers, three storeys high, were erected over
the cloister, but were burnt down in 167S. In
1 68 1 the cloister chambers were again rebuilt.

During the formation of the present new entrance
to the Temple by the church at the bottom of
Inner Temple Lane, when some old houses were
removed, the masons came on a strong ancient wall
of chalk and ragstone, supposed to have been the
ancient northern boundary of the convent.

Let us cull a few Temple anecdotes fram various
ages : —

In November, 1S19, Erskine, in the House of
Lords, speaking upon Lord Lansdowne's motion for

The Temple.]

COLMAN AND JEK.VLL.

.6s

an inquiry into the state of the country, condemned
the conduct of the yeomanry at the " Manclicster
massacre." " By an ordinary display of spirit and
resolution," observed the brilliant egotist to his
brother peers (who were so impressed by his com-
placent volubility and good-humoured self-esteem,
that they were for the moment' ready to take him
at his own valuation), " insurrection may be re-
pressed without violating the law or the constitu-
tion. In the riots of 17S0, when tlie mob were
preparing to attack the house of Lord Mansfield, I
oflered to defend it with a small military force ;
but this offer was unluckily rejected. Afterwards,
being in the Temple when the rioters were pre-
paring to force the gate and had fired several
times, I went to the gate, opened it, and showed
them a field-piece, which I was prepared to dis-
charge in case the attack was persisted in. They
were daunted, fell back, and dispersed."

Judge Burrough (says Mr. Jeafi'reson, in his
" Law and Lawyers") used to relate that whtn the
Gordon Rioters besieged the Temple he and a
strong body of barristers, headed by a sergeant
of the Guards, were stationed in Liner Temple
Lane, and that, having complete confidence in the
strength of their massive gate, they spoke bravely
of their desire to be fighting on the other side. At
length the gate was forced. The lawyers fell into
confusion and were about to beat a retreat, when
the sergeant, a man of infinite humour, cried out in
a magnificent voice, " Take care no gentleman
fires from behind." The words struck aw^e.into the
assailants and caaised the banisters to laugh. The
mob, who had expected neither laughter nor armed
resistance, took to flight, telling all whom they met
that the bloody-minded lawyers were armed to the
teeth and enjoying themselves. The Temple was
saved. When these Gordon Rioters filled London
with alarm, no member of the junior bar was more
prosperous and popular than handsome Jack Scott,
and as he walked from his house in Carey Street
to the Temple, with his wife on his arm, he returned
the greetings of the barristers, who, besides liking
him for a good fellow, thought it prudent to be on
good terras with a man sure to achieve eminence.
Dilatory in his early as well as his later years,
Scott left his house that morning half an hour late.
Already it was known to the mob that the Templars
were assembling in their college, and a cry of " The
Temple ! kill the lawyers 1 " had been raised in
Whitefriars and Essex Street. Before they reached
the Middle Temple gate Mr. and Mrs. Scott were
assaulted more than once. The man who won
Bessie Surlees from a host of rivals and carried her
gtway against the will of her parents and the wishes

of his own father, was able to ])rotect her from
serious violence. But before the beautiful creature
was safe within the Temple her dress was lorn, and
when at length she stood in the centre of a crowd
of excited and admiring banisters, her head was
bare and her ringlets fell loose upon her shoulders.
" The scoundrels have got your hat, Bessie," whis-
pered John Scott ; " but never mind— they have left
you your hair."

Li Lord Eldon's " Anecdote Book " iliere is
another gate story amongst the notes on the
Gordon Riots. " We youngsters," says the aged
lawyer, " at the Temple determined that we would
not remain inactive during such times ; so we intro-
duced ourselves into a troop to assist the military.
We armed ourselves as well as we could, and ne.vt
morning we drew up in the court, ready to follow
out a troop of soldiers who were on guard. When,
however, the soldiers !iad passed tlirough the gate it
was suddenly shut in our faces, and the officer in
command shouted from the other side, ' Gentle-
men, I am much obliged to you for your intended
assistance; but I do not choose to allow my soldiers
to be shot, so I have ordered you to be locked
in.' " And away he galloped.

The elder Colman decided on making the
younger one a barrister ; and after visits to Scot-
land and Switzerland, the son returned to Soho
Square, and found that his father had taken for
him chambers in the Temple, and entered him as a
student at Lincoln's Inn, where he afterwards kept
a few terms by eating oysters. Upon this Mr.
Peake notes: — "The students of Lincoln's Inn
keep term by dining, or pretending to dine, in the
hall during the term time. Those who feed there
are accommodated w'ith wooden trenchers instead
of plates, and previously to the dinner oysters are
served up by way of prologue to the play. Ealing
the oysters, or going into the hall without eating
them, if you please, and then departing to dine
elsewhere, is quite sufiicient for term-keepiiig."'
The chambers in King's Bench Walk were fur-
nished with a tent-bedstead, two tables, half-a-dozen
chairs, and a carpet as much too scanty for the
boards as Sheridan's "rivulet of rhyme" for its
" meadow of margin." To these the elder Colman
added ^10 worth of law books which had been
given to him in his own Lincoln's Inn days by
Lord Bath ; then enjoining the son to work hard,
the father left town u])on a party of pleasure.

Colman had sent his son to Switzerland to get
him away from a certain Miss Catherine Morris, an
actress of the Haymarket company. This answered
for a time, but no sooner had the father left the
son in the Temple than he sgt otf with Miss Morris

i66

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple.

to Gretna Green, and was there married, in 17S4 ;
and four years after, the f;ither's sanction having
been duly obtained, tliey were pubHcly married at
Chelsea Church".

In the same staircase with Cohiian, in tiie
Temple, lived the witty Jekyll, who, seeing in
Colman's chambers a round cage with a sciuirrel in
it, looked for a minute or two at the little animal,
which was performing the same operation as a man
in the treadmill, and then quietly said, " Ah, poor
devil ! he is going the Home Circuit ;" the locality
where it was uttered — the Temple — favouring this
technical joke.

On the morning 3'oung Colman began his studies
(December 20, 1784) he was interrupted by the
intelligence that the funeral jirocession of the great
Dr. Johnson was on its way from his late residence.
Bolt Court, through Fleet Street, to AVestminster
Abbe\-. Colman at once threw down his pen,
and ran forth to see the procession, but was disap-
pointed to find it much less splendid and imposing
than the sepulchral pomp of Garrick five years
before.

Dr. DibJin thus describes the Garden walks of
the last century: — "Towards evening it was the
fashion for the leading counsel to promenade
during the summer months in the Temple Gardens.
Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes
and silk stockings, at this time constituted the usual
evening dress. Lord Erskine, though a great deal
shorter than, his brethren, somehow always seemed
to take the lead, both in jjlace and in discourse,
and shouts of laughter would frequently follow his
dicta."

Ugly Dunning, afterwards the famous Lord Ash-
burton, entered the Middle Temple in 1752, and
was called four years later, in 1756. Lord Chan-
cellor Thurlow used to describe him witt!h' as '• the
knave of clubs."

Home Tooke, Dunning, and Kenyon were accus-
tomed to dine together, during the vacation, at a
little eating-house in the neighbourhood of Chan-
cery Lane for the sum of sevenpence-halfpenny
each. "As to Dunning and myself," said Tooke,
"we were generous, for we gave the girl who
waited upon us a penny a piece ; but Kenyon, who
always knew the value . of money, sometimes re-
warded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a
promise."

blackstone, before dedicating his powers finally
to the study af the law in which he afterwards
became so fomous, wrote in Temple chambers his
"Farewell to the Muse:"—

" Lulled by the lapse of gliilinjj floods,
Clieer'd by the warbling of the woods,

How blest my days, my thoughts how free,
In sweet society with thee I
Then all was joyous, all was young.
And years unheeded roU'd along ;
Cut no'v the pleasing dream is o'er —
These scenes must charm me now no more.
Lost to the field, and torn from you,
Farewell I — a long, a last adiea !

* • * »

Then welcome business, welcome .-strife,
Welcome the cares, the thorns of life,
Tlie visage wan, the purblind sight,
The toil by day, the lamp by night.
The tedious forms, the tolemn prate.
The pert dispute, the dull debate,
The drowsy bench, the babbling hall, —
For thee, fair Justice, welcome all 1 "

That great orator, Edmund Burke, was entered
at the Middle Temple in 1747, when the heads of
'the Scotch rebels of 1745 were still fresh on the
spikes of Temple Bar, and he afterwards came to
1 keep his terms in 1750. In 1756 he occuined a
! two-pair chamber at the '• Pope's Head," the shop
of Jacob Robinson, the Twickenham poet's pub-
lisher, just within the Inner Temple gateway.
Burke took a dislike, however, perhaps fortunately
for posterity, to the calf-skin books, and was never
called to the bar.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irishman e\en
more brilliant, but unfortunately far less prudent,
than Burke, entered his name in the Middle Temple
books a few days before his elopement with Miss
Linley.

'■ A wit," says Archdeacon Nares, in his jileasant
book, " Fleraldic Anomalies,' "once chalked the
following lines on the Temple gate : " —

" As by the Temjilars' hold you go,
'I'he horse and lamb display'il
In emblematic figures show
The merits of their trade,

" The clients may infer from thence
How just is their profession;
The lamb sets forth their innocence,
The horse their expedition.

" Oh, happy Britons 1 happy isle !
Ixt foreign nations say,
AVhere you gel justice without guile
And law without delay."

A rival wag replied to these lively lines by the
following severer ones : —

" Deluded men, these holds forego,
Nor trust such cunning elves ;
Th;se artful emblems tend to sV.ow
Their clients — not tlicmsc'vcs.

" 'Tis all a trick ; these are all sha:iis
liy which they mean to cheat you :
Ent have a care — ^oxyoure the l.tnihs.
And they the v'oh'is that eat you,

Tlie Temple.)

" Nor let the thought of ' no delay'

To tliese their courts misguide you ;
'Tis you're the showy horse, and they
'^\\t jockeys tliat will ride you."

Hare Court is s.iid to derive its ivame from
Sir Nicholas Hare, who was Privy Councillor
to Henry VHI. the despotic, and Master of the
Rolls to Queen Mary the cruel. Heaven only
knows what stern decisions and anti-heretical in-
dictments have not been drawn up in that quaint
enclosure. The immortal pump, which stands as
a special feature of the court, has been mentioned
by the poet Garth in his " Dispensary :" —

" And dare the college insolently aim, '

To equal our fraternity in fame ?
Then let crabs' eye-s with pearl for virtue try,
Or Ilighgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie ;
So glowworms may compare with Titan's beam;,
And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams."

In Essex Court one solitary barber remains :
his shop is the last wigwam of a departing tribe.
Dick Danby's, in the cloisters, used to be f;imous.
In his '"Lives of the Chief Justices," Lord Camp-
bell has some pleasant gossip about Dick Danby,
the Temple barber. In our group of antiquities
of the Temple on page 163 will be found an
engraving of the existing barber's shop.

"One of the most intimate friends," he says, " I
have ever had in the world was Dick Danby, who
kept a hairdresser's shop under the cloisters in the
Inner Temple. I first made his acquaintance from
fiis assisting me, whsn a student at law, to engage
a set of chambers. He afterwards cut my hair,
made my bar wigs, and aided me at all times with
his valuable advice. He was on the same good
terms with most of my forensic contemporaries.
Thus he became master of all the news of the pro-
fession, and he could tell who were getting on, and
who were without a brief — who succeeded by their
talents, and who hugged the attorneys — who were
desirous of becoming puisne judges, and who meant
to try their fortunes in Parliament — which of the
chiefs was in a failing state of health, and who was
next to be promoted to the collar of S.S. Poor
fellow ! he died suddenly, and his death threw a
universal gloom over Westminster Hall, unrelieved
by the thought that the survivors who mourned him
might pick up some of his business — a consolation
which wonderfully softens the grief felt for a
favourite Nisi Prius leader."

In spite of all the great lawyers who have been
nurtured in the Temple, it has derived its chief
fame from the residence within its jjrecincts of
three civilians — Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, and
Charles Lamb.

JOHNSON IN INNER TEMPLE LANE.

.67

Dr. Johnson came to the Temple (No. i, Inner
Temple Lane) from Gray's Inn in 1760, and left
it for Johnson's Court (I'leet Street) about 1765.
When he first came to the Temple he was loiter-
ing over his edition of "Shakespeare." In 1762 a
pension of ^300 a year for the first time made
him intlependcnt of the booksellers. In 1763
Boswell made his acquaintance and visited Ursa
Major in his den.

"It must be confessed," says Boswcll, "that
his apartments, furniture, and morning dress wore
sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes
looked very rusty ; he had on a little old siiriveiied,
unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head ;
his shirt neck and the knees of his breeches were
loose, liis black worsted stockings ill drawn up,
and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of
slippers."

At this time Johnson generally went abroad at
four in the afternoon, and seldom came home till
two in the morning. He owned it was a bad habit.
He generally had a levee of morning visitors,
chiefly men of letters — Hawkesworth, Goldsmith,
Murphy, Langton, Stevens, Beauclerk, &c. — and
sometimes learned ladies. " When Madame de
lioufflers (the mistress of the Prince of Conti) was
first in England," said Beauclerk, "she was desirous
to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to
his chambers in the Temple, where slie was enter-
tained with his conversation for some time. When
our visit was over, she and I left him, antl were got
into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once I lieard
a voice like thunder. This was occasioned by
Johnson, who, it seems, upon a little reflection,
liad taken it into his head that he ought to have
done the honours of his literary residence to a
foreign lady of quality, and, eager to show himself
a man of gallantry, was hurryitig down the staircase
in violent agitation. He overtook us before we
reached the Temple Gate, and, brushing in between
me and Madame de Bouftlcrs, seized her hand
and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a
rusty-brown morning suit, a jair of old shoes by
way of slippers, &c. A considerable crowd of
people gathered round, and were not a little struck
by his singular appearance."

It was in the year 1763, while Johnson was
living in the Temple, that the Literary Club was
founded; and it was in the following year that
this wise and good man was seized with one of
those fits of hypochondria tliat occasionally weighed
upon that great intellect. Boswell had chambers,
not far from the god of his idolatry, at wliat were
once called " Farrar's Buildings," at the bottom of
Inner Temple Lane.

i68

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple.

Charles Lamb cnme to 4, Liner Temple Lane, in
1809. Writing to Coleridge, the delightful humorist
says : — " I have been turned out of my chambers in
the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for him-
self; but I have got others at No. 4, Liner Temple
Lane, flir more commodious and roomy. I have
two rooms on the third floor, and five rooms above,
with an inner staircase to myself, and all new

best room commands a court, in which there are
trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent,
cold — with brandy ; and not very insipid without."
He sends Manning some of his little books, to
give him " some idea of European literature.'' . It
is in this letter that he speaks of Rraham and his
singing, and jokes '"on tides of honour," exem-
plifyir.-j the eleven gradations, by which Mr. C.

OLIVER GOLDS.MITH [sce fa^e 167).

painted, &c., for ^^30 a year. The rooms are
delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare
Court, where there is a pump always going ; just
now it is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the
window, so that it's like living in a garden." In
18 10 he says : — "The household gods are slow to
come ; but here I mean to live and die." From
this place (since pulled down and rebuilt) he writes
to Mann ng, who is in China : — " Come, and bring
any of )our friends the mandarins with you. My

Lamb rose m succession to be Laron, Marquis,
Duke, Emperor Lamb, and finally Pope Innocent ;
and other li\ely matters fit to solace an English
mathematician self-banished to China. The same
year Mary Lamb describes her brother taking

j to water like a hungry otter — abstaining from all
spirituous liquors, but with the most indiftercnf

< result, as he became full of cramps and rheumatism,
and so cold internally that fire could not warm
him. It is but just to Lamb to mention that this

The Temple]

GOLDSMITH LAUNCHING OUT.

169

ascetic period was brief. This same year Lamb I some say, to secretly write the emdite history of
wrote his fine essays on Hogarth and the tragedies j " Goody Two-Shoes" for Newbcry. In 1765

I various publications, or perhaps tlie money for

" The Vicar," enabled the author to move to larger

1 chambers in CSarden Court, close to his first set,

and one of tlie most agreeable localities in the

Tcni|)le.' He now carried out his threat to Juhn-

i son— started a man-servant, and ran into debt with

of Shakespeare. He was already getting weary
of the dull routine of official work at the India
House.

Goldsmith came to the Temple, early in 1764,
from Wine Office Court. It was a hard year with
him, though he published "The Traveller," and

goldsmith's tomb in i860 (see j>a^ 171).

opened fruitless negotiations with Dodsley and
Tonson. " He took," says Mr. Forster, " rooms on
the then library-staircase of the Temple. They
were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jefts,
the butler of the society, shared them with him),
and on Johnson's prying and peering about in
them, after his short-sighted fashion flattening his
face against every object he looked at. Gold-
smith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke
out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir,
than these,' he said. ' Nay, sir,' answered Johnson,
' never mind that — nil te qucTsiTCiis extra.' " He
soon hurried off to the quiet of Islington, as
15

his usual gay and thoughtless vanity to Mr. Filby,
the tailor, of Water Lane, for coats of divers
colours. Goldsmith began to feel his importance,
and determined to show it. In 1766 "The
Vicar of Wakefield ' (price five shillings, sewed)
secured his fame, but he still remained in diffi-
culties. In 1767 he wrote T/ie Good-Xatiircd
Man, knocked off an English Grammar for five
guineas, and was only saved from e.\trenie want
by Davies employing hun to wrue a " History of
Kome" for 250 guineas. In 1767 Parson Scott
(Lord Sandwich's chaplain), busily going about to
negotiate for writers, describes himaclf as applying

■170

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple.

to Goldsmith, among others, to induce hun to write
in favour of the Administration. " I found him,"
he said, " in a miserable set of chambers in the
Temple. I told him my authority ; I told him
that I was empowered to pay most liberally for
his exertions ; and — -would you believe it ! — he was
so absurd as to say, ' I can earn as much as will
supply my wants without WTiting for any party ;
the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary
to me.' And so I left him," added the Rev. Dr.
Scott, indignantly, "' in his garret."

On the partial success of TJic Good-A^atitird
Man (January, 176S), Goldsmith, having cleared
j/^500, broke out like a successful gambler. He
purchased a set of chambers (No. 2, up two
pairs of stairs, in Brick Court) for ^£400, squan-
dered the remaining ;^ioo, ran in debt to his
tailor, and borrowed of Mr. Bolt, a man on the
same floor. He purchased Wilton carpets, blue
merino curtains, chimney-glasses, book-cases, and
card-tables, and, by the aid of Filby, enrobed him
in a suit of Tyrian bloom, satin grain, with darker
blue silk breeches, price ;^8 2S. yd., and he even
ventured at a more costly suit, lined with silk
and ornamented with gilt buttons. Below him
lived that learned lawyer, Mr. Blackstone, then
poring over the fourth volume of his precious
"Commentaries," and the noise and dancing over-
head nearly drove him mad, as it also did a Mr.
Children, who succeeded him. What these noises
arose from, Mr. Forster relates in his delightful
biography of the poet. An Irish merchant named
Seguin " remembered dinners at which John-
son, Percy, Bickerstaff', Kelly, ' and a variety of
authors of minor note,' were guests. They talked
of supper-parties with younger people, as well in
the London chambers as in suburban lodgings ;
preceded by blind-man's buff", forfeits, or games of
cards ; and where Goldsmith, festively entertaining
them all, would make frugal supper for himself off"
boiled milk. They related how he would sing all
kinds of Irish songs ; with what special enjoyment
he gave the Scotch ballad of ' Johnny Armstrong '
(his old nurse's favourite); how cheerfully he would
]jut the front of his wig behind, or contribute in
any other way to the general amusement ; and to
^vhat accompaniment of uncontrolled laughter he
once ' danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin.' "

In 1 7 68 appeared "The Deserted Village." It
was about this time that one of Goldy's Grub Street
acquaintances called upon him, whilst he was
conversing with Topham Beauclerk, and General
Oglethorpe, and the fellow, telling Goldsmith that
he was sorry he could not pay the two guineas he
ov;ed him, offered him a quarter of a pound of tea

and half a pound of sugar as an acknowledgment
" 1769. Goldsmith fell in love with Mary Horneck
known as the ' Jessamy Bride.' Unfortunately he
obtained an advance of ;^5oo for his ' Natural
History,' and wholly expended it when only sI.k
chapters were written." In 1771 he published
his " History of England." It was in this year that
Reynolds, coming one day to Brick Court, perhaps
about the portrait of Goldsmith he had painted
the year before, found the mercurial poet kicking a
bundle, which contained a masquerade dress, about
the room, in disgust at his folly in wasting money in
so foolish a way. In 1772, Mr. Forster mentions a
very characteristic story of Goldsmith's warmth of
heart. He one day found a poor Irish student
(afterwards Dr. M'Veagh M'Donnell, a well-known
physician) sitting and moping in despair on a
bench in the Temple Gardens. Goldsmidi soon
talked and laughed him into hope and spirits,
then taking him off to his chambers, employed him
to translate some chapters of Buffbn. In 1773
She Stoops to Conquer made a great hit ; but Noll
was still writing at hack-work, and was deeper
in debt than ever. In 1774, when Goldsmith was
still grinding on at his hopeless drudge-work, as far
from the goal of fortune as ever, and even resolving
to abandon London life, with all its temptations,
Mr. Forster relates that Johnson, dining with the
poet, Reynolds, and some one else, silently reproved
the extravagance of so expensive a dinner by send-
ing away the whole second course untouched.

In March, 1774, Goldsmith returned from Edg-
ware to the Temple chambers, which he was trying
to sell, suffering from a low nervous fever, partly
the result of vexation at his pecuniary embarrass-
ments. Mr. Hawes, an apothecary in the Strand
(and one of the first founders of the Humane
Society), was called in; but Goldsmith insisted on
taking James's fever-powders, a valuable medicine,
but dangerous under the circumstances. This was
Friday, the 25th. He told the doctor then his mind
was not at ease, and he died on Monday, April 4th,
in his forty-fifth year. His debts amounted to
over ;^2,ooo. " Was ever poet so trusted before?"
writes Johnson to Boswell. The staircase of Brick
Court was filled with poor outcasts, to whom Gold-
smith had been kind and charitable. His coffin was
opened by Miss Horneck, that a lock might be cut
from his hair. Burke and Reynolds superintended
the funeral, Reynolds' nephew (Palmer, afterivards
Dean of Cashel) being chief mourner. Hugh
Kelly, who had so often lampooned the poet, was
present. At five o'clock on Saturday, the 9th of
April, Goldsmith was buried in the Temple church-
yard. In 1S37, a slab of white marble, to the

The Temple]

THE TEMPLE FOUNTAIN.

I7t

kindly jjoet's memory, was placcii in the Temple
Churcli, and afterwards transferred to a recess of
the vestry chamber. Of the poet, Mr. Forster
savs, " no memorial indicates the grave to the
pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer
to iilentify the spot which received all that was
mortal of the delightful writer." The present site
is entirely conjectural ; but it appears from the
following note, communicated to us by T. C Noble,
the well-known City antiijuary, that tlie real site
was remembered as late as 1830. .Mr. Noble
says : —

" In 1842, after some consideration, the benchers
of the Temple deciding that no more burials sliould
take place in the churchyard, resolved to pave it
over. For about fifteen years the burial-place of Dr.
C'loldsmith continued in obscurity ; for while some
would have it that the interment took jilace to
the east of the choir, others clung to an ojjinion,
handed down by Mr. Broome, the gardener, who
stated that when he commenced his duties, about
1830, a Mr. Collett, sexton, a very old man, and a
penurious one, too, employed him to prune an
elder-tree which, he stated, he venerated, because

it marked the site of Cioldsmith's grave. The
stone which has been placeil in the yard, ' to mark
the spot' where tlie poet was buried, is not U»o
site of this tree. The tomb was erected in i860,
but the exact ])osition of the grave has never been
discovered." The engraving on page 169 shows
the spot as it ajjpeared in the autumn of that year.
The old houses at the back were jiulled dowTi
soon after.

Mr. Forster, alluding to Cioldsniiih's love for the
rooks, the former ileni/.ens of the Temple (lardens,
says : "He saw tiie rookery (in the winter deserted, or
guarded only by some five or six, ' like old soldiers
in a garrison ') resume its activity and bustle in the
spring; and he moralised, like a great reformer,
on the legal constitution established, the social
laws enforced, and the particular castigations en-
dured for the good of the community, by those
black-dressed and black-eyed chatterers. ' I have
often amused myself,' Goldsmith remarks, ' with
observing their plans of policy from my window
in the Temple, that looks upon a gro\e where
they have made a colony, in the midst of the
city.'"

CHAPTER XVI.
THE TEMl'LE (,w///a7/.</).

Fountain Court and the Temple Fountain— Ruth Pinch— L. E. L.'s Poem— Fig-lree Court— The Inner Temple Library— Paper Buildings— The
Temple Gate— Guildford North and Jeffreys— Cowper. the Poet : his Melancholy and Attempted Suicide- .\ Tr.iijcdy in Tanlicid Court-
Lord Mansfield—" Mr. Murray" and his Client— Lamb's Pictures of the Temple— The S\indials— Porson and his F.cccntricitics— Rules of
the Temple— Coke and his Labours— Temple Kiots— Scuffles with the Als.atians— Temple dinners— " Calling " to the Bar— The Templa
Gardens— The Chrysanthemums— Sii Matthew Hale's Tree— Revenues of the Temple— Temple Celebrities.

Lives there a man with soul so dead as to write
about the Temple without mentioning the little
fountain in Fountain Court ? — that jiet and play-
thing of the Temple, that, like a little fairy, sings to
beguile the cares of men oppressed with legal
duties. It used to look like a wagoner's silver
whip — now a modern writer cruelly calls it "a pert
squirt." In Queen Anne's time Hatton describes
it as forcing its stream " to a vast and almost
incredible altitude " — it is now only ten feet high,
no higher than a giant lord chancellor. Then it
was fenced with palisades — now it is caged in iron ;
then it stood in a square — now it is in a round. liut
it still sparkles and glitters, and si)rinkles and play-
fully splashes the jaunty sparrows that come to
wash oiif the London dust in its variegated spray.
It is quite careless now, however, of notice, for has _
it not been immortalised by the pen of Dickens,
who has made it the centre of one of his most

charming love scenes? It was in Fountain Court,
our readers will like to remember, that Ruth Pinch
— gentle, loving Ruth — met her lover, by the merest
accident of course.

" There was," says Mr. Dickens, " a little plot
between them that Tom should always come out
of the Temple by one way, ami that was past the
fountain. Coming through Fountain Court, he
was just to glance ilown the steps leading into
Garden Court, and ta look once all round him ;
and if Ruth had come to meet him, there he
would see her — not sauntering, you understand (on
account of the clerks), but coming briskly up, with
the best little laugh upon her flice that ever
pl.ayed in opposition to the fountain and beat it all
to nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been
looking for her in the wrong direction, and had
quite given her up, while she h.ad been tripping
towards him from the first, jingling that little

tjz

OLU AND NEW LONDON.

Lllni i'emple,

reticule of hers (with all the keys in it) to attract
his wondering observatiou.

"Wjiether there was life enough left in the
slow vegetation of Fountain Court for the smoky
shrubs to liave any consciousness of the brightest
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is
a ([uestion for gardeners and those who are learned
in the loves of plants. But that it was a good
thing for that same paved yard to have such a
delicate little figure flitting through it, that it
passed like a smile from the grimy old houses and
the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker,
sterner than before, there is no sort of doubt. Tlie
Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty
feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood
that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the
dry and dusty channels of the law ; the chirping
sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies,
might have held their peace to listen to imaginary
skylarks as so fresh a little creature passed ; the
dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in
their puny growth, might have bent down in a
kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on
her graceful head ; old love-letters, shut up in iron
boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no
account among the heaps of family papers into
which tb.ey had strayed, and of which in their
ilegeneracy they formed a part, might have stirred
and fluttered with a moment's recollection of their
ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by. Any-
thing might have happened that did not happen,
and never will, for the love of Ruth. . . .

" Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily
the dimples sparkled on its sunny face. John
Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whispering
water broke and fell, and roguishly the dimples
twinkled as he stole upon her footsteps.

" Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart ! why did
she feign to be unconscious of hs coming ? . . .

" Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and
merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and expanded
more and more, until they broke into a laugh
against the basin's rim and vanished."

"L. E. L." (Miss Landon) has left a graceful
poem on this much-petted fountain, which begins, —

" Tlie fountain's low singing is heard on tlie wind,
Like a melody, bringing sweet fancies to mind — ■
Some to grieve, some to gladden; around them

they cast
The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
From the streets of the city that compass it round,
Like the eclio of fountains or ocean's deep call ;
Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.'

Fig-tree Court derived its nanie from obvious

sources. Next to the plane, that has the strange
power of sloughing off its sooty bark, the fig seems
the tree that best endures London's corrupted atmo-
sphere. Thomas Fairchild, a Hoxton gardener,
who wrote in 1723 (quoted by Mr. Peter Cunning-
ham), allugles to figs ripening well in the Rolls
Gardens, Chancery Lane, and to the tree thriving in
close places about Bridewell. Who can say that
some Templar pilgrim did not bring from the
banks of " Abana or Pharpar, rivers of Damascus,"
the first leafy inhabitant of inky and dusty Fig-
tree Court ? Lord Thurlow was living here in
175S, the year he was called to the bar, and when,
it was said, he had not money enough even to hire
a horse to attend the circuit.

The Inner Temple Library stands on the terrace
facing the river. The Parliament Chambers and
Hall, in the Tudor style, were the work of Sidney
Smirke, R.A., in 1S35. The library, designed by
Mr. Abrahams, is 96 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 63
feet high ; it has a hammer-beam roof One of the
stained glass windows is blazoned with the arms of
the Templars. Below the library are chambers.
The cost of the whole was about ;^i 3,000. The
north window is thought to too much resemble
the great window at Westminster.

Paper Buildings, a name more suitable for the
oflices of some City companies, were first built
in the reign of James L, by a Mr. Edward Hay-
ward and others; and the learned Diigdale de-
scribes them as eighty-eight feet long, twenty feet
broad, and four storeys high. This Hayward was
Selden's chamber-fellow, and to him Selden dedi-
cated his " Titles of Honour." Selden, according
to Aubrey, had chambers in these pleasant river-
side buildings, looking towards the gardens, and in
the uppermost storey he had a little gallery, to pace
in and meditate. The Great Fire swept away
Selden's chambers, and their successors were de-
stroyed by the fire which broke out in Mr. Maule's
chambers. Coming home at night from a dinner-
party, that gentleman, it is said, put the lighted
candle under his bed by mistake. The stately new
buildings were designed by Mr. Sidney Smirke,
A.R./\., In 1S48. The red brick and stone har-
monise pleasantly, and the overhanging oriels and
angle turrets (Continental Tudor) are by no means
ineftective.

The. entrance to the Middle Temple from Fleet
Street is a gatehouse of red brick pointed with
stone, and is the work of Wren. It was erected
in 16S4, after the Great Fire, and is in the style of
Inigo Jones — "not inelegant," s.ays Ralph. It pro-
bably occupies the site of the gatehouse erected
by order of Wolsey, at the expense of his prisoner,

The tthlpli;

COWrKR'S ATTKMl'T AT SUlClUK.

'?.?

Sir Ani)-as Paulct. TIic frightened man covered
the front witli the cardinal's hat and arms, ho[)ing
to appease \Volsey's anger by gralif\'ing his pride.
The Inner Temple gateway was built in the fifth
year of James I.

Elm Court was built in the sixth year of Charles I.
Up one pair of stairs that successful . courtier,
Guildford North, whom Jeffreys so tormented by
the rumour that he had been seen riding on a
rhinoceros, then exhibiting in London, commenced
the practicetliat soon won him such high honours.

In 1752 the poet Cowper, on leaving a solicitor's
office, had chambers in the Middle Temple, and
in that solitude the horror of his future malady
began to darken over him. He gave up the
classics, which had been his previous delight, and
read George Herbert's poems all day long. In
1759, after his father's death, he purchased another
set of .rooms for ;^25o, in an airy situation in the
Inner Temple. He belonged, at this time, to the
" Nonsense Club," of which Bonnell Thornton,
Colman junior, and Lloyd were members. Thurlow
also was his friend. In 1763 his despondency
deepened into insanity. An approaching appoint-
ment to the clerkship of the Journals of the House
of Lords overwlielmed him with nervous fears.
Dreading to appear in public, he resolved to destroy
himself. He purchased laudanum, then threw it
away. He packed up his portmanteau to go to
France and enter a monastery. He went down to
the Custom House Quay, to throw himself into the
river. He tried to slab himself At last the poor
fellow actually hung himself, and was only saved by
an accident. The following is his own relation : —

" Not one hesitating thought now remained, but
I fell greedily to the execution of my purpose. My
garter was made of a broad piece of scarlet bind-
ing, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together at
the ends. By the help of the buckle I formed a
noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so
tight that I hardly left a passage for my breath, or
for the blood to circulate. The tongue of the
buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed
was placed a wreath of carved work fastened by
an iron pin, which passed up through the midst
of it ; the otiier part of the garter, whicli made a
loop, I slipjjcd over one of them, and hung by it
some seconds, drawing up my feet under me, that
they might not touch the floor ; but the iron bent,
and the carved work slipped off, and the garter
\Tith it ■ I then fastened it to the frame of the
tester, winding it round and tying it in a strong
knot. The frame broke short, and let me down
again.

" The third effort was more likely to succeed.

I set the door open, which reached to within a
foot of the ceiling. l!y the help of a chair I could
conmiand the top of il, and the loop being large
enough to admit a large angle of the door, was
easily fixed, so as not to slip off again. I pushed
away the chair with my feet, anil hung at my whole
length. \\'hile I hung there I distinctly heard a
voice say three times, ' Tis Crt'cr ! ' , Though I an>,
sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it,
did not at all alarm me or affect my resolution. 1.
hung so long that I lost all sense, all conscious-
ness of existence.

" When I came to myself again I thought 1
was in hell ; the sound of my own dreadful groans
was all that I Iieard, and a feeling like that pro-
duced by a Hash of lightning just beginning to
seize upon me, passed over my whole body. In
a few seconds I found myself fallen on my face to
the floor. In about half a minute I recovered my
feet, and reeling and struggling, stumbled into bed
again.

" By the blessed providence of God, the garter
which had held me till the bitterness of temporal
death was past broke just before eternal death had
taken place upon me. The stagnation of tlie blood
under one eye in a broad crimson spot, and a red
circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had
been on the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed,
miglit have been occasioned by the pressure of the
garter, but the former was certainly the etVect of
strangulation, for.it was not attended with the
sensation of a bniise, as it must have been had I
in my fall received one in so tender a part ; and I
rather think the circle round my neck was owing
to the same cause, for the part was not excoriated,
nor at all in pain.

"Soon after I got into bed I was surprised to
hear a voice in the dining room, where the laundress
was lighting a fire. She had found the door un-
bolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and
must have passed the bed-chamber door while I
wv.s hanging on it, and yet never perceived me.
She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if
I was well, adding, she feared I had been in a fit.

" I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the
whole affair, and dispatched hirn to niy kinsman'
at tlie coffee-house. As soon as the latter arrived '
I pointed to the broken garter \Vhich lay in the"
middle of the room, and apprised him also of the"
attempt T had been making.' His words were,
' My dear Mr. Cowjier, you terrify me ! To be
sure you cannot hold the oltice at this rate. Where
is the deputation ?' I gave him the key of the
drawer where it was dejiosited, and his business
requiring his immediate attendance, he took it

174

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Temple.

away witli him ; and thus ended all my connection
with the Parliament office."

In February, 1732, Tanfield Court, a quiet, dull
nook on the east side of the Temple, to the south
of that sombre Grecian temple where the Master
resides, was the scene of a very horrible crime.
Sarah Malcolm, a laundress, aged twenty-two,
employed by a young barrister named Kerrol in
the same court, gaining access to the rooms of
an old lady named Duncomb, whom she knew

Malcolm went to execution neatly dressed in a crape
gown, held up her head in the cart with an air,
and seemed to be painted. A copy of her con-
fession was sold for twenty guineas. Two days
! before her execution she dressed in scarlet, and
j sat to Hogarth for a sketch, which Horace Walpole
j bought for ^5. The portrait represent.s a cruel,
I thin-lipped woman, not uncomely, sitting at a table.
j The Duke of Roxburghe purchased a perfect im-
pression of this print, Mr. Timbs says, for ^8 5s.

THE TE.Ml'LE FOUNTAIN, FROM AN OLD I'KINI' (s,c- /il^c I 7 1 ).

to have money, strangled her and an old servant,
and cut the throat of a young girl, whose bed she
had probably shared. Some of her blood-stained
linen, and a silver tankard of Mrs. Duncomb's,
stained with blood, were found by Mr. Kerrol
concealed in his chambers. Fifty-three pounds
of tlie money were discovered at Newgate hidden
in the prisoner's hair. She confessed to a share in
the robbery, but laid the murder to two lads with
whom she was acquainted. ' She was, however,
found guilty, and hung opposite Mitre Court, Fleet
Street. The crowd was so great that one woman
crossed from near Serjeants' Inn to the other side
of the way on the shoulders of the mob. Sarah

Its originaLprice was sixpence. After her execution
the corpse was taken to an undertaker's on Snow
Hill, and there exhibited for money. Among tlie
rest, a gentleman in deep mourning — j)erhaps
her late master, Mr. Kerrol — stooped and kissed
it, and gave the attendant half-a-crown. She was,
by special favour (for superiority even in wicked-
ness has its admirers), buried in St. Sepulchre's
Churchyard, from which criminals had been ex-
cluded for a century and a half. The corpse of
the murderess was disinterred, and her skeleton,
in a glass case, is still to be seen at the Botanic
Garden, Cambridge.

Not many recorded crimes have taken place in

The Templs.]

CRIMES IN THE TEMPLE.

'75

176

OLD AND NEW LONDOM.

[the Temple.

the Temple, for youth, however poor, is hopeful. It
takes time to make a man despair, and when he de-
spairs, the devil is soon at his elbow. Nevertheless.
greed and madness have upset some TempLirs'
brains. In October, 1573, a crazed, fanatical man
of the Middle Temple, named Peter Burchet,
mistaking John Hawkins (afterwards the naval
hero) for Sir Christopher Hatton, flew at him in
the Strand, and dangerously wounded him with a
dagger. The queen was so furious that at first she
wanted Burchet tried by camp law ; but, being
found to hold heretical opinions, he was committed
to the Lollards' Tower (south front of St. Paul's),
and afterwards sent to the Tower. Growing still
madder there, Burchet slew one of his keepers with
a billet from his fire, and was then condemned to
death and hung in the Strand, close by where he
had stabbed Hawkins, his right hand being first
stricken off and nailed to the gibbet.

In 1685 John Aylotf, a barrister of the Innei
Temple, was hung for high treason opposite the
Temple Gate.

In 1738 Thomas Carr, an attorney, of Elm
Court, and Elizabeth Adams, his accomplice, were
executed for robbing a Mr. Quarrington in Shire
Lane (see page 74); and in 1752 Henry Justice,
of the Middle Temple, in spite of his well-omened
name, was cruelly sentenced to death for stealing
books from the library of TrinityCollege, Cambridge,
but eventually he was only transported for life.

The celebrated Earl of Mansfield, when Mr.
Murray, had chambers at No. 5, King's Bench
Walk, apropos of which Pope wrote —
" To Number Five direct your (jloves,

There spread round Murray all your bloomiiT; loves."

(Pope "to Venus," from " Horace.")

A second compliment by Pope to this great man
occasioned a famous parody : —

" Graced as thou art by nil the power of words,
So known, so honoured at ihe House of Lords "

(Pope, of Lord Mansfield) ;

which was thus cleverly parodied by Colley Cibber :

" Per-suasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,
And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks."

One of Mansfield's biographers tells us that "once
he was surprised by a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn
(who took the liberty of entering his room in the
Temple without the ceremonious introduction of a
servant), in the act of practising the graces of a
speaker at a glass, while Pope sat by in the cha-
racter of a friendly preceptor." Of the friendship
of Pope and Murray, Warburton has said : " Mr.
Pope had all the warmth of aftection for this great
lawyer ; and, indeed, no man e\er more deserved

to have a poet for his friend, in the obtaining of
which, as neither vanity, party, nor fear had a share,
so he supported his title to it by all the oftlces of a
generous and true friendship."

"A good story," says Mr. JeaflTreson, "is told
of certain visit: paid to William Murray's chambers
at No. 5, King's Bench Walk, Temple, in the year
1738. Born in 1705, Murray was still a young
man when, in 173S, he made his brilliant speech
on behalf of Colonel Sloper, against whom Colley
Gibber's rascally son had brought an action for
immorality with his wife, the lovely actress, wiio
on the stage was the rival of Mrs. Clive, and in
private life was remarkable for immorality and
fascinating manners. Amongst the many clients
who were drawn to Murray by that speech, Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, was neither the least
powerful nor the least distinguished. Her grace
began by sending the rising advocate a general
retainer, with a fee of a thousand guineas, of wliich
sum he accepted only the two-hundredth part,
explaining to the astonished duchess that ' the pro-
fessional fee, with a general retainer, could not be
less nor more than five guineas.' If Murray had
accepted the whole sura he would not have been
overpaid for his trouble, for her grace persecuted
him with calls at most unseasonable hours. On
one occasion, returning to his chambers after
' drinking champagne with the wits,' he found
the duchess's carriage and attendants on King's
Bench Walk. A numerous crowd of footmen and
link-bearers surrounded the coach, and when the
barrister entered his chambers he encountered the
mistress of that army of lackeys. ' Young man,'
exclaimed the grand lady, eyeing the future Lord
Mansfield with a look of displeasure, ' if you mean
to rise in the world, you must not sup out.' On a
subsequent night Sarah of Marlborough called with-
out appointment at the chambers, and waited till
past midnight in the hope that she would see the
lawyer ere she went to bed. But Murray, being at
an unusually late supper-party, did not return till
her grace had departed in an overpowering rage.
' I could not make out, sir, who she was,' said
Murray's clerk, describing her grace's appearance
and manner, ' for she would not tell me her name ;
but she swore so dreadfully that I am sure she viust
be a lady of quality.' "

Charles Lamb, who was born in Crown Office
Row, in his exquisite way has sketched the benchers
of the Temple whom he had seen pacing the
terrace in his youth. Jekyll, with the roguit-h eye,
and Thomas Coventr}', of the elephantine step, the
! scarecrow of inferiors, the browbeater of equals,
who made a solitude of children wherever he came,

"The Temple.)

CHARLES LAMB IN THE TEMPLE.

177

who took snuff by palmfuls, diving for it under
the miglUy flap of hi: old-fashioned red waistcoat.
In the gentle Samuel Salt we discover a portrait of
the employer of Lamb's father. Salt was a shy
indolent, absent man, wiio never dressed for a dinner
jiarty but he forgot his sword. The day of Miss
Blandy's execution he went to dine widi a relative
of the murderess, first carefully schooled by his clerk
to avoid the disagreeable subject. However, during
the pause for dinner, Salt went to the window,
looked out, pulled down his ruffles, and observed,
" It's a gloomy day ; Miss Blandy must be hanged
by this time, I suppose." Salt never laughed. He
was a well-known toast with the ladies, having a fine
figure and person. Coventry, on the other hand, was
a man worth four or five hundred thousand, and
lived in a gloomy house, like a strong box, opposite
the pump in Serjeants' Lin, Fleet Street. Fond
of money as he was, he gave away ;^3o,ooo at once
to a charity for the blind, and kept a hospitable
house. Salt was indolent and careless of money,
and but for Lovcl, his clerk, would have been
universally robbed. This Lovel was a clever little
fellow, with a face like Garrick, who could mould
heads in clay, turn cribbage-boards, take a hand
at a quadrille or bowls, and brew punch with any
man of his degree in Europe. With Coventry and
Salt, Peter Pierson often perambulated the terrace,
with hands folded behind him. Contemporary with
these was Daines Barrington, a burly, square man.
Lamb also mentions Burton, "a jolly negation,"
who drew up the bills of fare for the parliament
chamber, where the benchers dined ; thin, fragile
Wharry, who used to spitefully pinch his cat's
ears when anything offended him ; and Jackson,
the musician, to whom the cook once applied for
instructions how to write down " edge bone of beef "
iin a bill of commons. Then there was Blustering
Mingay, who had a grappling-hook in substitute for
a hand he had lost, which Lamb, when a child,
used to take for an emblem of power ; and Baron
Mascres, who retained the costume of the reign of
George IL

hi his "Essays," Lamb says: — "I was born
and passed the first seven years of my life in the
Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its foun-
tain, its river I had almost said — for in those young
years what was the king of rivers to me but a stream
that watered our pleasant places? — these are of
my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no
verses to myself more frequently or with kindlier
emotion than those cf Spenser where he speaks of
this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in
the metropolis. What a transition for a country-
man visiting London for the first time — the passing

from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unex-
|)ected avenues, into its magnificent, ample sijuares,
its classic green recesses ! What a cliecrfiil, liberal
look hath that portion of it which, from three sides,
overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

' Of bi,iiklinj3 stron;;, albeit of [Lipcr lii.;lil,'

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older,
more fantastically shrouded one named of Har-
court, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately
stream, which washes the garden foot with her yet
scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just
weaned from Twickenham Naiades I A man would
give something to have been born in such places.
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made
to rise and fall, how many times ! to the astonish-
ment of the young urchins, my contemporaries,
who, not being able to guess at its recondite
machinery, were almost tempted to hail the won-
drous work as magic

" So may tiie winged horse, your ancient badge
and cognisance, still flourish ! So may future
Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and
chambers ! So may the s|jarrows, in default of
more melodious quiristers, imprisoned hop about
your walks ! So may the fresh-coloured and
cleanly nursery-maid, who by lea\e airs her playful
charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest
blushing curtsey as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent
emotion I So may the younkers of this generation
eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same
superstitious veneration with which the child Elia
gazed on the old worthies that solemnised the
parade before ye ! "

Charles Lamb, in his " Essay " on the old
benchers, speaks of many changes he had wit-
nessed in the Temple — i.e., the Gothicising the
entrance to the Inner Temple Hall and the
Library front, to assimihte them to the hall,
which they did not resemble ; to tlie removal of
the winged horse over the Temple Hall, and the
frescoes of the Virtues which once Italianised it.
He praises, loo, the antique air of the " now almost
effaced sun-dials," with their moral inscriptions,
seeming almost coeval with the time which they
measured, and taking their revelations imme-
diately from heaven, holding correspondence with
the fountain of light. Of these dials there still
remain — one in Temple Lane, with the motto,
" Pcreunt et imputantur;" one in Essex Court,
" Vestigia nulla retrorsum ;" and one in Brick Court
on which Goldsmith must often have gazed— the
motto, "Time and tide tjrry for no man." In

178

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Tlic Temple.

Pump Court and Garden Court are two dials
without mottoes ; and in each Temple garden is a
pillar dial — " the natural garden god of Christian
gardens." On an old brick house at the east end
of Inner Temple Terrace, removed in 1828, was a
dial with the odd inscription, " Begone about your
business," words with which an old bencher is said
to have once dismissed a troublesome lad who had
come from the dial-maker's for a motto, and who
mistook liis meaning. The one we have engraved
at page 180 is in Pump Court. The date and the
initials are renewed every time it is fresh painted.

There are many old Temple anecdotes relating
to that learned disciple of Bacchus, Porson. ]\Lany
a time (says Mr. Timbs), at earl)- morn, did Porson
stagger from his old haunt, the " Cider Cellars " in
Maiden Lane, where he scarcely ever failed to
pass some hours, after spending the evening else-
where. It is related of him, upon better authority
than most of the stories told to his discredit, that
one night, or rather morning, Gurney (the Baron),
who had chambers in Essex Court under Porson's,
was awakened by a tremendous thump in the
chamber above. Porson had just come home dead
drunk, and had fallen on the floor. Having ex-
tinguished the candle in the fall, he presently
staggered downstairs to re-light it, and Gurney
heard him dodging and poking with the candle
at the staircase lamp for about five minutes, and all
the time very lustily cursing the nature of things.

We read also of Porson's shutting himself up in
these chambers for three or four days together,
admitting no visitor. One morning his friend
Rogers went to call, having ascertained from the
barber's hard by that Porson was at home, but had
not been seen by any one for two days. Rogers
proceeded to his chambers, and knocked at the
door more than once ; he would not open it, and
Rogers came downstairs, but as he was crossing
the court Porson opened the window and stopped
him. He was then busy about the Grenville
" Homer," for which he collated the Harleian MS.
of the " Odyssey," and received for his labour but
;^5o and a large-paper copy. His chambers must
have presented a strange scene, for he used books
most cruelly, whether they were his own or belonged
to others. He said that he possessed more hatl
copies of ^i^.w/ books than any private gentleman in
England.

Rogers, when a Templar, occasionally had some
visitors who absorbed more of his time than was
alwa)s agreeable ; an instance of which he thus
relates : " When I lived in the Temple, Mackintosh
and Richard Sharp used to come to my chambers
and stay there for hours, talking metaphysics. One

day they were so intent on their ' first cause,' ' sjiirit,'
and ' matter,' that they were un(;onscious of my
having left them, paid a visit, and returned. I
was a little angry at this ; and to show^ my in-
difference about them, I sat down and wrote letters,
without taking any notice of thein. I never met
a man with a fuller mind than Mackintosh — such
readiness on all subjects, such a talker."

Before any person can be admitted a member of
the Temple, he must furnish a statement in writing,
describing his age, residence, and condition in life,
and adding a certificate of his respectabiHty and fit-
ness, signed by himself and a bencher of the society,
or two barristers. The AlidJ/c Temple requires the
signatures of two barristers of that Inn and of a
bencher, but in each of the three other Inns the
signatures of barristers of any of tlie four Inns
will suffice. No ]5erson is admitted without tlie
approbation of a bencher, or of the benchers in
council assembled.

The Middle Temple includes the uni\'ersities of
Durliam and London. At the Inner Temple the
candidate for admission who has taken the degree
of B.A., or passed an examination at the LTniversi-
ties of Oxford, Cambridge, or London, is required
to pass an examination by a barrister, appointed
by the Bench for that purpose, in the Greek and
Latin languages, and history or literature in general.
No person in priest's or deacon's orders can be
called to the bar. In the Inner Temple, an attorney
must have ceased to be on the rolls, and an articled
clerk to be in articles for three years, before he can
be called to the bar.

Legal students ^^•orked hard in the old times ;
Coke's career is an example. In 1572 he rose
every morning at five o'clock, lighting his own
fire ; and then reatl Bracton, Littleton, and the
ponderous folio abridgments of the law till the
court met, at eight o'clock. He then took
boat for Westminster, and heard cases argued till
twelve o'clock, when the pleas ceased for dinner.
After a meal in the Inner Temple Hall, he at-
tended " readings" or lectures in tiie afternoon, and
then resumed his private studies till supper-time
at five. Next came the moots, after which 'he
slammed his chamber-door, and set to work with
his commonplace book to index all the law he had
amassed during the day. .^t nine, the steady
student went to bed, securing three good hours of
sleep before midnight. It is .said Coke never saw
a play or read a plav in his life — and that was
Shakespeare's time ! In the reign of James I. the
Temple was often called " my Lord Coke's shop."
He had Ijecome a great lawyer then, and lived to
become Lord Chief Justice. Pity 'tis tlmt wc have

rhn Temple.l

TEMPLE CUSTOMS.

'79

to remember that lie reviled Essex and insulted
Raleigh. King James once saiil of Coke in mis-
fortune that he was like a cat, he always fell on his
feet.

History does not record many riots in the
Temple, full of wild life as that quiet precinct
has been. In different reigns, however, two out-
breaks occurred. In both cases the Templars,
though rather hot and prompt, seem to have been
right. At the dinner of John Prideaux, reader of
the Inner Temple, in 1553, the students took
offence at Sir John Lyon, the Lord Mayor, coming
in state, with his sword up, and the sword was
dragged down as he passed through the cloisters.
The same sort of affray took place again in 1669,
when Lord Mayor Peake came to Sir Christopher
Goodfellow's feast, and the Lord Mayor had to be
hidden in a bencher's chambers till, as Pepys re-
lates, the fiery young sparks were decoyed away to
dinner. The case was tried before Charles II., and
Heneage Tinch pleaded for the Temple, claiming
immemorial exemption from City jurisdiction. The
case was never decided. From that day to this
(says Mr. Noble) a settlement appears never to
have been made ; hence it is that the Temples
claim to be " extra parochial," closing nightly all
their gates as the clock strikes ten, and keeping
extra watch and ward when the parochial authorities
" beat the bounds " upon Ascension Day. Many
struggles have taken place to make the property
rateable, and even of late the question has once
more arisen ; and it is hardly to be wondered at,
for it would be a nice bit of business to assess the
Templars upon the ;£^32,866 which they have
returned as the annual rental of their estates.

A third riot was with those ceaseless enemies
of the Templ.-irs, the Alsatians, or lawless inhabitants
of disreputable Whitefriars. In July, i6gi, weary
of their riotous and thievish neighbours, the
benchers of the Inner Temple bricked up the gate
(still existing in King's Bencli Walk) leading into
the high street of Whitefriars ; but the Alsatians,
swarming out, pulled down as fast as the bricklayers
built up. The Templars hurried together, swords
flew out, the Alsatians plied pokers and shovels,
and many heads were broken. Ultimately, two men
were killed, several wounded, and many hurried off
to prison. Eventually, the ringleader of the Alsa-
tians, Captain Francis White — a " copper captain,"
no doubt — was convicted of murder, in April, 1693.
This riot eventually did good, for it led to the
abolition of London sanctuaries, those dens of
bullies, low gamblers, thieves, and courtesans.

As the Middle Temple lias grown gradually
poorer and more neglected, many curious customs

of the old banquets have died out. The loving cup,
once fragrant with sweetened sack, is now used to
hold the almost supcrlluous toothpicks. Oysters
are no longer brought in, in term, every Friilay
before dinner ; nor when one bencher dines does
he, on leaving the hall, invite tlie senior bar man
to come and take wine with him in the parliament
cliambcr (the accommodation-room of Oxford col-
leges). Yet the rich and epicurean Inner Temple
still cherishes many worthy customs, alTects reditrchi
French dishes, and is curious in eiiticmets ; while
the Middle Temple growls over its geological
salad, that some hungry wit has compared to
" eating a gravel walk, and meeting an occasional
weed." A writer in Blackwood, quoting the old
proverb, " The Inner Temple for the rich, the
Middle for the poor," says few great men have
come from the Middle Temple. How can acumen
be derived from the scrag-end of a neck of mutton,
or inspiration from griskins ? At a late dinner, says
Mr. Timbs (1865), there were present only three
benchers, seven barristers, and six students.

An Inner Temple banquet is a very grand
thing. At five, or half-past five, the barristers and
students in their gowns follow the benchers in
procession to the dais ; the steward strikes the
table solemnly a mystic three times, grace is said
by the treasurer, or senior bencher present, and the
men of law fall to. In former times it was the
custom to blow a horn in every court to announce
the meal, but how long this ancient Templar prac-
tice has been discontinued we do not know. The
benchers observe somewhat more style at' their
table than the other members do at theirs. The
general repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat,
a tart, and cheese, to each mess, consisting of four
persons, and each mess is allowed a botde of pr>it
wine. Dinner is served daily to the members of
the Inn during term time ; the masters of the Bench
dining on the state, or dais, and the barristers
and students at long tables extending down the
hall. On grand days tiie judges are present, who
dine in succession with each of the four Inns of
Court. To the parliament chamber, adjoining the
hall, the benchers repair after dinner. The loving
cups used on certain grand occasions are huge
silver goblets, which are passed down the table,
filled with a delicious composition, immemorially
termed •' sack," consisting of sweetened and ex-
quisitely-flavoured white wine. The butler attends
the progress of the cup, to replenish it ; and each
student is by rule restricted to a sip; yet it is re-
corded that once, though the number present fell
short of seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were
sipped aw.i)'. At the Inner Temple, on May 29th,

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(The Temple.

a gold cup of sack is handed to eacli member, who ! ings or discussions on points of law. The mere

drinks to the happy restoration of Charles IL j student sat farthest from the bar.

The writer in .AV(?^/J'7iW(/ before referred to alludes When these- mootings were discontinued depo-
to the strict silence enjoined at the Inner Temple . nent sayeth not. Li Coke's time (1543), that
dinners, the only intercourse between the several great lawyer, after supper at five o'clock, used to
members of the mess being the usual social scowl j join the moots, when questions of law were pro-
vouchsafed by your true-born Englishman to per- ' posed and discussed, when fine on the garden

.L-'l.-

t^^mm^

'ii_*«-a-^.

flQr

SUN-DIAL I.M THE TEMPLE [sce fagf I77).

sons who have not the honour of his acquaintance.
You may, indeed, on an emergency, ask your neigh-
bour for the salt ; but then it is abo perfectly
understood that he is not obliged to notice your
request.

The old term of "calling to the bar" seems to
have originated in the custom of summoning
students, that had attained a certain standing, to
the bar that separated the benchers' dais from
the hall, to take part in certain probationary moot-

terrace, in rainy weather in the Temple cloisters.
The dinner alone now remains ; dining is now the
only legal study of Temple students.

In the Midtile Tcmpkvi three years' standing and
twelve commons kept suffices to entitle a gentle-
man to be called to the bar, provided he is above
twenty-three years of age. No person can be
called to the bar at any of the Inns of Court before
he is twenty-one years of age ; and a standing of
five years is understood to be required of eveiy

Th; Temple]

THE TEMPLE GARDENS.

member before being called. The members of the
several universities, iVc, may, however, be called
after three years' standing.

The Inner Temple Garden (three acres m extent)
has probably been a garden from the time the
white-mantled Templars first came from Holborn
and settled by the river-side. This little paradise of
nurser)'maids and London children is entered from
the terrace by an iron gate (date, 1730); and the
winged horse that surmounts the portal has looked

l)resent ; and when Paper Buildings were erected,
part of this wall was dug u]). The view given on
this page, and taken from an old view in the
Temple, shows a portion of the old wall, with the
doorway opening upon the Temple Stairs.

The Temple Garden, half a century since, was
famous for its white and red roses (the Old Provence,
Cabbage, and the Maiden's Blush — Timbs) ; and
the lime trees were delightful in the time of bloom.
There were only two steamboats on the river then ;

TIIK ri.MI'I.i: SIAIRS.

down on many a distinguished visitor. In the
centre of the grass is such a sun-dial as Charles
Lamb loved, with the date, 1770. A little to the
east of this stands an old sycamore, which, fifteen
years since, was railed in as the august mummy
of that umbrageous tree under whose shade, as
tradition says, Johnson and Goldsmith used to sit
and converse. According to an engraving of 167 1
there were formerly three trees; so that Shake-
speare himself may have sat under them and medi-
tated on the Wars of the Roses. The print shows.
a brick terrace faced with stone, with a flight of
steps at the north. The old river wall of 1670
stood fifty or si.xty yards farther north than the
16

but the steamers and factory smoke soon spoiled
everything but the hardy chrysanthemums. How-
ever, since the Smoke Consuming Act has been en-
forced, the roses, stocks, and hawthorns have again
taken heart, and blossom with grateful luxuriance.
In 1864 Mr. Broome, the zealous gardener of the
Inner Temple, exhibited at the Central Horticul-
tural Society twenty-four trusses of roses grown
under his care. In the flower-beds next the main
walk he managed to secure four successive crops
of flowers — the pompones were especially gaudy and
beiutiful ; but his chief triumph were the chrysan-
themums of the northern border. ' The trees, how-
ever, seem dehcate, and suffering from the cold

l82

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Whitefriars.

winds, dwindle as they approach the river. The
planes, limes, and wych elms stand best. The
Temple rooks — the wise birds Goldsmith delightud
to watch — were originally brought by Sir William
Northcote from ^\'oodcote Green, P'psom, but they
left in disgust, many }-ears since. Mr. Timbs says
that 200 families enjoy these gardens throughout the
year, and about 10,000 of the outer world, chiefly
children, who are always in search of the lost Eden,
come here annually. The flowers and trees are
rarely injured, thanks to the much-abused London
public.

In the secluded Middle Temple Garden is an
old catalpa tree, supposed to have been planted by
that grave and just judge, Sir Matthew Hale. On
the lawn is a large table sun-dial, elaborately gilt
and embellished. From the library oriel the
Thames and its bridges, Somerset House and the
Houses of Parliament, form a grand coup ifcvil.

The revenue of the Middle Temple alone is
said to be ^13,000 a year. With the savings
we are, of course, entirely ignorant. Tlie students'
dinners are half paid for by themselves, the
library is kept up o^ very little fodder, and alto-
gether the system of auditing the Inns of Court
accounts is as incomprehensible as the Sybilline
oracles ; but there can be no doubt it is all right,
and ver_\' well managed.

In tile seventeenth century (says Mr. Noble) a
benevolent member of the Middle Temple co>i-
veyed to the benchers in fee several houses in the
City, out of the rents of which to pay a stated
salary to each of two referees, who were to meet
on two days weekly, in term, from two to five, in
the hall or other convenient place, and without fee
on either side, to settle as best they could all dis-
putes submitted to them. From that time the

referees have been appointed, but there is no record
of a single case being tried by them. The two
gentlemen, finding their oflice a sinecure, have
devoted their salaries to making periodical addi-
tions to the library. May we be allowed to ask,
was this benevolent object ever made known to
the public generally ? We cannot but think, if it had
been, that the two respected arbitrators would not
have had to complain of the office as a sinecure.

He who can enumerate the wise and great men
who have been educated in the Temple can count
off the stars on his finger and measure the sands of
the sea-shore by teacupsful. To cull a few, we
may mention that the Inner Temple boasts among
its eminent members — Audley, Chancellor to
Henry VIIL; Nicholas Hare, of Hare Court cele-
brity; the great lawyer, Littleton (1481), and
Coke, his commentator : Sir Christopher Hatton,
the dancing Chancellor ; Lord Buckhurst ; Selden ;
Judge Jeffries ; Beaumont, the poet ; William
Browne, the author of " Britannia's Pastorals " (so
much praised by the Lamb and Hazlitt school) ;
Cowper, the poet ; and Sir William Follett.

From the Middle Temple have also sprung
swarms of great lawyers. ^Ve may mention
specially Plowden, the jurist, Sir Walter Raleigh,
Sir Thomas Overbury (who was poisoned in the
Tower), John Ford (one of the latest of the great
dramatists). Sir Edward Bramston (ciiamber-fellow
to Mr. Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon),'Bulstrode
Whitelocke (one of Cromwell's Ministers), Lord-
Keeper Guildford (Charles II.), -Lord Chancellor
Somers, Wycherley and Congreve (the dramatists),
Shadwell and Southern (comedy writers). Sir William
Blackstone, Edmund Burke, Sheridan, Dunning
(Lord Ashburton), Lord Chancellor Eldon, Lord
Stowell, as a few among a multitude.

CHAPTER XVII.
WHITEFRIARS.

The Present Whitefriars— The Carmelite Convent— Dr. Butts— The Sanctuary— Lord Sanquhar Murders the Fencing-Master— His Trial— Bacon
and Yelverlon— His Execution— Sir Walter Scott's *' Fortunes of Nigel " — Shadwell's Squire o/Ahutia—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
m Bridewell — Sermon on Madame Creswell— Hogarth and the *' Harlot's Progress" — Pennant's Account of Bridewell— Bridewell in 1843—
Its Latter D.ays— Pictures in the Court Room— Bridewell Dock— The Gas Works- Theatres iu Whitefriars— Pepys' Visits to the Theatre—
Dryden and the Dorset Gardens Theatre— Davenant -Kynaston— Dorset House— The Poet-Earl.

So rich is London in legend and tradition, that i Whitefriars — that dull, narrow, uninviting lane
even some of the spots that now appear the | sloping from Fleet Street to the river, with gas
blankest, baldest, and most uninteresting, are works at its foot and mean shops on either side —
really vaults of entombed anecdote and treas'.ire- was once the centre of a district full of noblemen's
houses of old story. | mansions ; but Time's harlequin wand by-and-by

THE FENCING-MASTER.

183

turned it into a debtors' sanctuary and thieves'
paradise, and for half a century Us bullies and
swindlers waged a ceaseless war with their proud
and rackety neighbours of the Temple. The dingy
lane, now only awakened by the ([uick wheel of the
swift newspaper cart or the ponderous tires of the
sullen coal-wagon, was in olden times for ever
ringing with clash of swords, the cries of quarrel-
some gamblers, and the drunken songs of noisy
liobadils.

In the reign of Edward I., a certain Sir Robert
Gray, moved by qualms of conscience or honest
impulse, founded on the bank of the Thames, east
of the well-guarded Temple, a Carmelite convent,
with broad gardens, where the white friars might
stroll, and with shady nooks where they might con
their missals. Bouverie Street and Ram Alley
were then part of their domain, and there they
watched the river and prayed for their patrons' i
souls. In 1350 Courtenay, Earl of Devon, rebuilt
the Whitefriars Church, and in 1420 a Bishop of
Hereford added a steeple. In time, greedy
hands were laid roughly on cope and chalice, and
Henry YIIL, seizing on the friars' domains, gave
his physician — that Doctor Butts mentioned by
Shakespeare — the chapter-house for a residence.
Edward VI. — who, with all his promise, was as ready
for such pillage as his tyrannical father — pulled
down the church, and built noblemen's houses in
its stead. The refectory of the convent, being pre-
served, afterwards became the Whitefriars Theatre.
The mischievous right of sanctuary was preserved
to the district, and confirmed by James I., in whose
reign the slum became jocosely known as Alsatia —
from Alsace, that unhappy frontier then, and later,
contended for by French and Germans — ^just as
Chandos Street and that shy neighbourhood at the
north-west side of the Strand used to be called
the Caribbee Islands, from its counUess straits and
intricate thieves' passages. The outskirts of the
Carmelite monastery had no doubt become disre-
putable at an early time, for even in Edward III.'s
reign the holy friars had complained of the gross
temptations of Lombard Street (an alley near
Bouverie Street). Sirens and Dulcineas of all descrip-
tions were ever apt to gather round monasteries.
Whitefriars, however, even as late as Cromwell's
reign, preserved a certain respectability ; tor here,
with liis supposed wife, the Dowager Countess of
Kent, Selden lived and studied. ■

In the reign of James I. a strange murder was
committed in Whitefriars. The cause of the crime
was highly singular. In 1607 young Lord Sanquhar,
a Scotch nobleman, who with others of his country-
men had followed his king to England, had an

eye put out by a fencing-master of Whitefriars. The
young lord^a man of a very ancient, proud, and
noble Scotch family, as renowned for courage as
for wit — had striven to put some aflront on the
fencing-master at Lord Norris's house, in 0.\ford-
shiTe, wishing to render him contemptible before
his patrons and assistants — a common bravado
of the rash Tybalts and hot-headed Mercutios of
those fiery days of the tluello, when even to crack
a nut too loud was enqjigh to make your tavern
neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the
master, jealous of his professional honour, chal-
lenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and, deter-
mined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried
all his most skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in
his turn pressed Sanquhar with his foil so hotly and
boldly that he unfortunately thrust out one of his
eyes. The young baron, ashamed of his own rash-
ness, and not convinced that Turner's thrust was only
a slip and an accident, bore with jjatience several
days of extreme danger. As for Turner, he dis-
played natural regret, and was exonerated by
everybody. Some time after, Lord Sanquhar being
in the court of Henry IV. of France, that chivalrous
and gallant king, always courteous to strangers,
seeing the patch of green tat^eta, unfortunately,
merely to make conversation, asked the young
Scotchman how he lost his eye. Sanquhar, not
willing to lose the credit of a wound, answered
cannily, " It was done, your majesty, with a sword."
The king replied, thoughdessly, "Doth the man
live ? " and no more was said. This remark,
however, awoke the viper of revenge in the young
man's soul. He brooded over those words, and
never ceased to dwell on the hope of some requital
on his old opponent. Two years he remained in
France, hoping that his wound might be cured,
and at last, in despair of such a result, set sail for
England, still brooding over revenge against the
author of his cruel and, as it now appeared, irre-
parable misfortune. The King of Denmark,
James's toss-pot father-in-law, was on a visit here
at the time, and the court was very gay. The first
news that Lord Sanquhar heard was, that the
accursed Turner was down at Greenwich I'alace,
fencing there in public matches before the two
kings. To these entertainments the young Scotch-
man went, and there, from some corner of a gallery,
j the man with a patch o\-er his e>-c no doubt scowled
and bit his lip at the fencing-master, as he strutted
beneath, proud of his skill and flushed with
triumph. The moment the prizes were given,
Sanquhar hurried below, and sought Turner up
and down, through court and corridor, resolved
to stab him on the spot, though even drawing a

1 84

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Whitcfriars.

sword in the precincts of the palace was an offence
punishable with the loss of a hand. Turner, how-
ever, at that time escaped, for Sanquhar never
came across him in the throng, though he beat
it as a dog beats a covert. The ne.xt day, there-
fore, still on his trail. Lord Sanijuhar went after
him to London, seeking for him up and down
the Strand, and in all the chief Fleet Street and
Cheapside taverns. The Scot could not have
come to a more dangerous place than London.
Some, with malicious pity, would tell him that
Turner had vaunted of his skilful thrust, and the
way he had punished a man who tried to publicly
shame him. Others would thoughtlessly lament
the spoiling of a good swordsman and a brave
soldier. The mere sight of the turnings to White-
friars would rouse the evil spirit nestling in San-
([uiiar's heart. Eagerly he sought for Turner, till
he found he was gone down to Norris's house, in
O.xfordshire — the very place where the fatal wound
had been inflicted. Being thus for the time foiled,
.Sanquhar returned to Scotland, and for the present
delayed his revenge. On his next visit to London
Sanquhar, cruel and steadfast as a bloodhound,
again sought for Turner. Yet the difliculty was to
surprise the man, for Sanquhar was well known in
all the taverns and fencing-schools of Whitefriars,
and yet did not remember Turner sufficiently
well to be sure of him. He therefore hired two
Scotchmen, who undertook his assassination ; but,
in spite of this, Turner somehow or other was hard
to get at, and escaped his two pursuers and the
relentless man whose money had bought them.
Business then took Sanquhar again to France, but
on his return the brooding revenge, now grown
to a monomania, once more burst into a flame.

At last he hired Carlisle and Gray, two Scotch-
men, who were to take a lodging in ^Vhitefriars,
to discover the best way for Sanquhar himself to
strike a sure blow at the unconscious fencing-
master. These men, after some reconnoitring,
assured their employer that he could not himself get
at Turner, but that they would undertake to do so,
to which Sanquhar assented. But Gray's heart
failed him after this, and he slipped away, and
Turner went again out of town, to fence at some
country mansion. Upon this Carlisle, a resolute
villain, came to his employer and told him with
grim set face that, as Gray had deceived him and
there was " trust in no knave of them all," he would
e'en have nobody but himself, and would assuredly
kill Turner on his return, though it were with the
loss of his own life. Irving, a Border lad, and page
to Lord Sanquhar, ultimately joined Carlisle in the
assassination.

On the 1 1 th of May, 1 6 1 2, about seven o'clock
in the evening, the two murderers came to a tavern
in Whitefriars, which Turner usually frequented as
he returned from his fencing-school. Turner,
sitting at the door with one of his friends, Seeing
the men, saluted them, and asked them to drink.
Carlisle turned to cock the pistol he had prepared,
then wheeled round, and drawing the pistol from
under his coat, discharged it full at the unfortunate
fencing-master, and shot him near the left breast.
Turner had only time to cry, " Lord have mercy
upon me — I am killed,'' and fell from the ale-bench,
dead. Carlisle and Irving at once fled — Carlisle
to the^ town, Irving towards the river ; but the
latter, mistaking a court where wood was sold for
the turning into an alley, was instantly run down
and taken. Carlisle was caught in Scotland, Gray
as he was shipping at a sea-port for Sweden ; and
Sanquhar himself, hearing one hundred pounds
were offered for his head, threw himself on the
king's mercy by surrendering himself as an object
of pity to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But no
intercession could avail. It was necessary for
James to show that he would not spare Scottish
more than English malefactors.

Sanquhar was tried in Westminster Hall on the
27th of June, before Mr. Justice Yelverton. Sir
Francis Bacon, the Solicitor-General, did what he
could to save the revengeful Scot, but it was im-
possible to keep him from the gallows. Robert
Creighton, Lord Sanquhar, therefore, confessed
himself guilty, but pleaded extenuating circum-
stances. He had, he said, always believed that
Turner boasted he had put out his eye of set
purpose, though at the taking up the foils he
(Sanquhar) had specially protested that he played
as a scholar, and not as one able to contend with a
master in the profession. The mode of playing
among scholars was always to spare the face.

"After this loss of my eye," continued the
quasi-repentant murderer, " and with the great
hazard of the loss of life, I must confess that I ever
kept a grudge of my soul against Turner, but had
no purpose to take so high a revenge ; yet in the
course of my revenge I considered not my wrongs
upon terms of Christianity — for then I should have
sought for other satisfaction — but, being trained
up in the courts of princes and in arms, I stood
upon the terms of honour, and thence befell this
act of dishonour, whereby I have offended — first,
God ; second, my prince ; third, my native country;
fourth, this country; fifth, the party murdered;
sixth, his wife ; seventh, posterity ; eighth, Carlisle,
now to be executed ; and lastly, ninth, my own soul,
and I ani now to die for my offence. But, my

Whitefriars.]

LORD BACOlSf'S FLATtRRY.

lords," he added, " besides my own offence, which
in its nature needs no aggravation, divers scandalous
reports arc given out which blemish my reputation,
which is more dear to me than my life : first, that I
made show of reconciliation with Turner, the
which, I protest, is utterly untrue, for what I have
formerly said I do again assure your good lordships,
that ever after my hurt received I kept a grudge in
my soul against him, and never made the least
pretence of reconciliation with him. Yet this, my
lords, I will say, that if he would ha\-e confessed
and sworn he did it not of purpose, and withal
would have foresworn arms, I would have jjardoned
him ; for, my lords, I considered that it must be
done either of set purpose or ignorantly. If the
first, 1 had no occasion to pardon him ; if the last,
that is no excuse in a master, and therefore for
revenge of such a wrong I thought him unworthy to
bear arms.''

Lord Sanquhar then proceeded to tleny the
aspersion that he was an ill-natured fellow, ever
revengeful, and delighting in blood. He con-
fessed, however, that he was never willing to put
up with a wrong, nor to pardon where he had a
power to retaliate. He had never been guilty of
blood till now, though he had occasion to draw his
sword, both in the field and on sudden violences,
where he had both given and received hurts. He
allowed that, upon commission from the king to
suppress wrongs done him in his own country, he
had put divers of the Johnsons to death, but for
that he hoped he had need neither to ask God nor
man for forgiveness. He denied, on his salvation,
that by the help of his countrymen he had at-
tempted to break prison and escape. The con-
demned prisoner finally begged the lords to let the
following circumstances move them to pity and the
king to mercy : — First, the indignity received from
so mean a man ; second, that it was done willingly,
for he had been informed that Turner iiad bragged
of it after it was done ; third, the perpetual loss of
his eye ; fourth, the want of law to give satisfaction
in such a case ; fifth, the continued blemish he had
received tliereby.

The Solicitor-General (Bacon), in his speech, took
the opportunity of fulsomely bepraising the king
after his manner. He represented the sputtering,
drunken, corrupt James as almost divine, in his
energy and sagacity. He had stretched forth his
long arms (for kings, he said, had long amis), and
taken Gray as he shipped for Sweden, Carlisle
ere he was yet warm in his house in Scotland. He
had jjrosecuted the offenders "with the breath and
blasts of his mouth ;" " so that," said this gross
time-server, " I may conclude that his majesty

hath showed himself God's true licuicnani, and
that he is no respecter of persons, but iMiglish,
Scots, noblemen, fencers (which is but an ignoble
trade), are all to him alike in re.'!i)ect of justice.
Nay, I may say further, that his majesty hath Jiad
in this matter a kind of prophetical spirit, for at
what tinie Carlisle and Gray, and you, my lord,
yourself, were fled no man knew whither, to the
four winds, the king ever spoke in confident and
undertaking manner, that wheresoever the offenders
were in Eurojie, he would produce them to
justice."

Mr. Justice Velverton, though IJacon liad alto-
gether taken the wind out of his sails, summed up
in the same vein, to jjrove that James was a
Solomon and a prophet, and would show no
favouritism to Scotchmen. He held out no hope
of a reprieve. " The base and barbarous murder,"
he said, with ample legal verbiage, " was exceed-
ing strange ; — done upon the sudden ! done in an
instant ! done with a pistol ! done with your own
pistol ! under the colour of kindness. As Cain
talked with his brother Abel, he rose up and slew
him. Your executioners of the murder left the
poor miserable man no time to defend himself,
scarce any time to breathe out those last words,
' Lord, have mercy upon me !' The ground of the
malice that you bore him grew not out of any
ottence that he ever willingly gave you, but out of
the jjride and haughtiness of your own self; for
that in the false conceit of your own skill you
would needs importune him to that action, the
sequel whereof did most unhappily breed \-our
blemish — the loss of your eye." The manner uf
his death would be, no doubt, as he (the jirisoner)
would think, unbefitting to a man of his honour
and blood (a baron of 300 years' antiquity), but
was fit enough for such an oftender. Lord San-
quhar was then sentenced to be hung till he was
dead. The populace, from whom he exjjccted
" scorn and disgrace.' were full of ])ity for a man
to be cut off, like Shakespeare's Claudio, in his
prime, and showed great compassion.

On the 29th of June (St. Peter's Day) Lord
Sanquhar was hung before Westminster Hall. ( )n
the ladder he confessed the enormity of his sins,
but said that till liis trial, blinded by the devil, he
could not see he had done anything unfitting a
man of his rank and quality, who had been trained
up in the wars, and had lived the life of a soldier,
standing more on points of honour than religion.
He then i)rofesscd that he died a Roman Catholi< ,
and begged all Rom.in Catholics ])resent to pray
for him. He had long, he said, for worldly
reasons, neglected the public profession of his

1 86

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tWhitcfriars.

faith, and he thought God was angry with him.
His religion was a good rehgion— a saving rehgion
— and if he had been constant to it he was verily
persuaded he should never have fallen into that
misery. He then prayed for the king, queen, their
issue, the State of England and Scotland, and the
lords of the Council and Church, after which the
wearied executioner threw him from the ladder,
suffering him to hang a long time to display the
king's justice. The compassion and sympathy of ,

to our remembrance by Mr. Andrew Halliday's
de.xterous dramatic adaptation. Sir Walter chooses
a den of Alsatia as a sanctuary for young Nigel,
after his duel with Dalgarno. At one stroke of
Scott's pen, the foggy, crowded streets eastward of
the Temple rise before us, and are thronged with
shaggy, uncombed ruffians, with greasy shoulder-
belts, discoloured scarves, enormous moustaches,
and torn hats. With what a Teniers' pencil the
great novelist sketches the dingy precincts, with it3

:.rjKD::R of iuu:;i;i; {scv /mje lo^).

the people present had abated directly they found
he was a Roman Catholic. The same morning, very
earl>», Carlisle and Irving were hung on two gibbets
in Elect Street, over against the great gate of the
Whitefriars. The page's gibbet was six feet higher
than the serving-man's, it being the custom at that
time in Scotland that, when a gentleman was hung
at the same time with one of meaner quality, the
gentleman had the honour of the higher gibbet,
feeling much aggrieved if he had not.

The riotous little kingdom of \Vhitefriars, with
all its frowzy and questionable population, has been
admirably drawn by Scott in his fine novel of " The
Fortunes of Nigel," recently so pleasantly recalled

blackguardly population : — " The wailing of chil-
dren,'' says the author of "Nigel," "the scolding
of their mothers, the miserable exhibition of ragged
linen hung from the windows to dry, spoke the
wants and distresses of the wretched inhabitants ;
while the sounds of complaint were mocked and
overwhelmed by the riotous shouts, oaths, profane
songs, and boisterous laughter that issued from the
alehouses and taverns, which, as the signs indicated,
were equal in number to all the other houses ; and
that the full character of the place might be evident,
several faded, tinselled, and painted females looked
boldly at the strangers from their open lattices, or
more modestly seemed busied with the cracked

Whitefriars 1

M.SA'ITA.

i88

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Whitefnars.

flower-pots, filled with mignonette and rosemary,
which were disposed in front of the windows, to the
great risk of the passengers." It is to a dilaj)idated
tavern in the same foul neighbourhood that the
gay Templar, it will be remembered, takes Nigel to
be sworn in a brother of AMiitefriars by drunken
and knavish Duke Hildebrod, whom he finds
surrounded by his councillors — a bullying Low
Country soldier, a broken attorney, and a hedge
parson ; and it is here also, at the house of old
Miser Trapbois, the young Scot so narrowly escapes
death at the hands of the ]50or old wretch's cowardly
assassins.

Tiie scoundrels and cheats of Whitefriars are
admirably etched by Dryden's rival, Shadwell.
That unjustly-treated writer (for he was by no
means a fool) has called one of his comedies, in
the Ben Jonson manner, The Squire of Alsatia. It
paints the manners of the place at the latter end
of Charles II.'s reign, when the dregs of an age
that was indeed full of dregs were vatted in that
disreputable sanctuary east of the Temple. The
"copper captains," the degraded clergymen who
married anybody, without inquiry, for five shillings,
the broken lawyers, skulking bankrupts, sullen homi-
cides, thievish money-lenders, and gaudy courtesans,
Dryden's burly rival has painted with a brush full
of colour, and with a brightness, clearness, and
sharpness which are photographic in their force
and truth. In his dedication, which is inscribed
to that great patron of poets, the poetical Earl of
Dorset, Shadwell dwells on the great success of the
piece, the plot of which he 'had cleverly " adapted "
from the Adclphi of Terence. In the prologue,
which was spoken by Mountfort, the actor, whom
the infamous Lord Mohun stabbed in Norfolk Street,
the dramatist ridicules his tormenter Dryden, for his
noise and bombast, and with some vigour writes — ■

" With what prodigious scarcity of wit
Did the new authors starve the hungiy pit .'
Infected by the French, you must have rhyme,
W hich long to please the ladies' ears did chime.
Soon after this came ranting fustian in,
And none but plays upon the fret were seen,
Such daring bombast stuff which fops would praise,
Tore our best actors" lungs, cut short their days.
Some in small time did this distemper kill ;
And had the savage authors gone on still,
Fustian had been a new disease i' the Inll."

The moral of Shadwell's piece is the danger of
severity in parents. An elder son, being bred up
under restraint, turns a rakehell in 'Wliitefriars,
whilst the younger, who has had his own wa)-, be-
comes '"an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman.
a man of honour in King's Bench Walk, and of
excellent disposition and temijer," in spite of a

good deal more gallantry than our stricter age
would pardon. The worst of it is that the worthy
.son is always being mistaken for the .scamp, wliile
the miserable Tony Lumpkin passes for a time as
the pink of propriet)'. Eventually, he falls into the
hands of some Alsatian tricksters. The first of these,
Cheatley, is a rascal who, " by reason of debts, does
not stir out of Whitefriars, but there inveigles young
men of fortune, and helps them to goods and money
upon great disadvantage, is bound for them, and
shares with them till he undoes them." Shatlwell
tickets him, in his dramatis persomr, as " a lewd,
impudent, debauched fellow." According to his own
account, the cheat lies perdu, because his unnatural
father is looking for him, to send him home into
the country. Number two, Shamwell, is a young
man of fortune, who, ruined by Cheatley, has turned
decoy-duck, and lives on a share of the spoil. His
ostensible reason for concealment is that an alder-
man's young wife had run away with him. The
third rascal, Scrapeall, is a low, hypocritical money-
lender, who is secretly in partnership with Cheatley.
The fourth rascal is Captain Hackman, a bullying
coward, whose wife keeps lodgings, sells cherry
brandy, and is of more than doubtful virtue. He
had formerly been a sergeant in Flanders, but ran
from his colours, dubbed himself captain, and
sought refuge in the Friars from a paltry debt.
This blustering scamp stands much upon his
honour, and is alternately drawing his enormous
sword and being tweaked by the nose. A lion in
the estimation of fools, he boasts over his cups that
he has whipped five men through the lungs. He
talks a detestable cant language, calling guineas
"megs," and half-guineas " smelts." Money, with
him is "the ready," "the rhino," "the darby;"
a good hat is "a rum nab;" to be well oft" is to
be " rhinocerical." This consummate scoundrel
teaches young country Tony Lumpkins to break
windows, scour the streets, to thrash the constables,
to doctor the dice, and get into all depths of low
mi.schief Finally, when old Sir William Belfond,
the severe old countrj' gentleman, comes to con-
front his son, during his disgraceful revels at the
" George " tavern, in Dogwell Court, Bou\'erie
Street, the four scamps raise a shout of " An arrest I
an arrest ! A bailift' ' a bailiff I " The drawers
join in the tumult; the Friars, in a moment, is in
an uproar ; and eventually the old gentleman i:
chased by all the scum of Alsatia, shouting at the
top of their voices, " Stop ! stop ! A bailiff ! a
bailiff ! " He has a narrow escape of being pulled
to pieces, and emerges in Fleet Street, hot, be-
spattered, and bruised. It was no joke then to
threaten the privileges of Whitefriars.

\Vhitefriars.]

A RIOT IN WHITEFRIARS.

189

Presently a horn is blown, there is a cry
from Water Lane to Hanging-sword Alley, from
Ashen-tree Court to Temple Gardens, of " 'l"ip-
staff ! An arrest ! an arrest ! " and in a moment
they are "up in the Friars," with a cry of "Fall
on." The skulking debtors scuttle into their
burrows, the bullies fling down cup and can, lug
out their rusty blades, and rush into the nwlce.
From every den and crib red-faced, bloated women
hurr)- with fire-forks, spits, cudgels, lookers, and
shovels. They're " up in the Friars," witli a ven-
geance. Pouring into the Temple before the
Templars can gather, the\- are about to drag old
Sir \Mlliam under the pump, when the worthy son
comes to the rescue, and the Templars, with drawn
swords, drive back the rabble, and make the porters
shut the gates leading into Alsatia. Cheatley,
Shamwell, and Hackman, taken prisoners, are then
well drubbed and pumped on by the Templars,
and the gallant captain loses half his whiskers.
"The terror of his face," he moans, "is gone."
" Indeed," says Cheatley, " your magnanimous phiz
is somewhat disfigured by it, captain." Cheatley
threatened endless actions. Hackman swears his
honour is very tender, and that this one affront will
cost him at least five murders. As for Shamwell, he
is inconsolable. " What reparation are actions ? "
he moans, as he shakes his wet hair and rubs his
bruised back. " I am a gentleman, and can never
show my face amongst my kindred more." When
at last they have got free, they all console them-
selves with cherry brandy from Hackman's shop,
after which the " copper captain " observes, some-
what in Falstaft" s manner, " A fish has a cursed life
on't. I shall have that aversion to water after this,
that I shall scarce ever be cleanly enough to wash
my face again."

L.ater in the play there is still another rising in
Alsatia, but this time the musketeers come in force,
in spite of all privileges, and the scuffle is greater
than ever. Some debtors run up and down with-
out coats, others with still more conspicuous de-
ficiencies. Some cry, " Oars ! oars I sculler ; five
pound for a boat ; ten pound for a boat ; twenty
pound for a boat ;" many leap from balconies, and
make for the water, to escape to the Savoy or the j
Alint, also sanctuaries of that day. The play ends
with a dignified protest, which doubtless j^roved |
thoroughly eftective with the audience, against the |
privileges of places that harboured such knots of '
scoundrels. " ^Vas ever," Shadwell says, " such im-
pudence suffered in a Government ? Ireland con-
quered ; Wales subdued ; Scotland united. But
there are some few spots of ground in London, just
in the face of the Government, unconquered yet,

that hold in rebellion still. Mefhinks 'ti.s strange
that places so near the king's palace should be no
part of his dominions. 'Tis a shame in the society
of law to countenance such practices. Should
any i)lace be shut against tlie king's writ or posse
comitatus ?"

Be sure the pugnacious young Templars present
all rose at that, and great was tlie thundering of
red-heeled shoes. King William probably agreed
with Shadwell, for at the latter end of his reign the
privilege of sanctuary was taken from Whitefriars,
and the dogs were at last let in on tlie rats for
whom they had been so long waiting. Two other
places of refuge — the l\Iint and the Savoy — how-
ever, escaped a good deal longer ; and there the
Hackmans and Ch'eatleys of the day still hid their
ugly faces after daylight had been let into White-
friars and the wild days of Alsatia hatl ceased for
ever.

In earlier times there had been evidently special
endeavours to preserve order in Whitefriars, for
in the State Paper Office there e.xist the follow-
ing rules for the inhabitants of the sanctuary in the
reign of Elizabeth : —

"//(•OT. Theise gates .shalbe orderly shutt and
opened at convenient times, and porters ap])ointed
for the same. Also, a scavenger to keep the pre-
cincte clean.

'■^ Item. Tipling houses shalbe bound for good
order.

" Item. Searches to be made by tlie constables,
with the assistance of the inhabitants, at the com-
mandmente of the justices.

" Item. Rogues and vagabondes and otiier dis-
turbers of the public peace shall be corrected and
punished by the authoretie of the justices.

''Item. A bailife to be appointed for leavienge
of such duties and profittes which a|)pertcine unto
her Ma''« ; as also for returne of proces for execu-
tion of justice.

" Item. Incontinent persons to be presenteil unto
the Ordenary, to be tried, and punished.

''Item. Tlie poore witliin tlie iirecim^te shalbe
provyded for by the inhabitaiites of tlie same.

"■Item. In tyme of ])lague, good order shalbe
taken for the restrainte of the same.

" Item. Lanterne and light to be mainteined
duringe winter time."

All traces of its former condition ha\e long
since disappeared from Whitefriars, ami it is diffi-
cult indeed to believe that the dull, uninteresting
region that now lies between Fleet Street and the
Thames was once the riotous .\lsatia of Scott and
Shadwell.

Aiid now we come to Bridewell, first a palace, then

I go

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[WTiitefrlars,

a prison. The old palace of Bridewell (Bridget's
Well) was rebuilt upon the site of the old Tower
of Montfiquet (a soldier of the Conqueror's) by
Henry VIIL, for the reception of Charles V.
of France in 1522. There had been a Roman
fortification in the same place, and a palace both
of the Saxon and Norman kings. Henry L partly
rebuilt the palace ; and in 1847 a vault with Norman
billet moulding was discovered in excavating the
site of a public-house in Bride Lane. It remained
neglected till Cardinal Wolsey {cirai 15 12) came
in pomp to live here. Here, in 1525, when
Henry's affection for Anne Boleyn was growing,
he made her father (Thomas Boleyn, Treasurer of
the King's House) Viscount Rochforde. A letter
of Wolsey's, June 6, 1513, to the Lord Admiral, is
dated from " my poor house at Bridewell ; " and
from 1515 to 1521 no less than ^^21,924 was paid
in repairs. Another letter from Wolsey, at Bride-
well, mentions that tlie house of the Lord Prior of
St. John's Hospital, at Bridewell, had been granted
by the king for a record ofiice. The palace must
have been detestable enough to the monks, for it
was to his palace of Bridewell that Henry VHL
summoned the abbots and other heads of religious
societies, and succeeded in squeezing out of them
^100,000, the contumacious Cistercians alone
yielding up ^33,000.

It was at the palace at Bridewell (in 1528) that
King Henry VIII. first disclosed the scruples that,
after his acquaintance with Anne Boleyn, troubled
his sensitive conscience as to his marriage with
Katherine of Arragon. " A few days later," says
Lingard, condensing the old chronicles, " the king
undertook to silence the murmurs of the people,
and summoned to his residence in the Bridewell
the members of the Council, the lords of his Court,
and the mayor, aldermen, and principal citizens.
Before them he enumerated the several injuries
which lie had received from the emperor, and the
motives which induced him to seek the alliance of
France. Then, taking to himself credit for deli-
cacy of conscience, he described the scruples which
had long tormented his mind on account of his
marriage with his deceased brother's widow. Tiiese
he had at first endeavoured to suppress, but they
had been revived and confirmed by the alarming
declaration of the Bishop of Tarbes in the presence
of his Council. To tranquillise his mind he had
recourse to the only legitimate remedy : he had
consulted the Pontiff, who had appointed two dele-
gates to hear the case, and by their judgment he
was determined to abide. He would therefore warn
his su'njects to be cautious how they ventured to
arraign his conduct. The proudest among them

should learn that he was their sovereign, and
should answer with their heads for the presumption
of their tongues." Yet, notwithstanding he made
all this parade of conscious superiority, Henry was
prudent enough not by any means to refuse the aid
of precaution. A rigorous search was made for
arms, and all strangers, with the exception only of
ten merchants from each nation, were ordered to
leave the capital.

At the trial for divorce the poor queen behaved
with much womanly dignity. " The judges," says
Hall, the chronicler, and after him Stow, " com-
manded the crier to proclaim silence while their com-
mission was read, both to the court and the people
assembled. That done, the scribes commanded the
crier to call the king by the name of ' King Henry of
England, come into court,' &c. With that the king
answered, and said, ' Here.' Then he called the
queen, by the name of ' Katherine, Queen of Eng-
land, come into court,' &c., who made no answer,
but rose incontinent out of her chair, and because
she could not come to the king directly, for the dis-
tance secured between them, she went about, and
came to the king, kneeling down at his feet in the
sight of all the court and people, to whom she said
in effect these words, as foUoweth : ' Sir,' quoth
she, ' I desire you to do me justice and right, and
take some pity upon me, for I am a poor woman
and a stranger, born out of your dominion, having
here so indifferent counsel, and less assurance of
friendship. Alas ! sir, in what have I offended
you ? or \\'hat occasion of displeasure have I
showed you, intending thus to put me from you
after this sort? I take God to judge, I have been
to you a true and humble wife, ever conformable
to your will and pleasure ; that never contrarised
or gainsaid anything thereof; and being always
contented with all things wherein you had any
dehght or dalliance, whether little or much, without
grudge or countenance of discontent or displeasure.
I loved for your sake all them you loved, whether
I had cause or no cause, whether they were my
friends or my enemies. I have been your wife
these twenty years or more, and you have had by
me divers children ; and when ye had me at the
first, I take God to be judge that I was a very
maid ; and whether it be true or not, I put it to
your conscience. If there be any just cause that
you can allege against me, either of dishonesty or
matter lawful, to put me from you, I am content
to depart, to my shame and rebuke ; and if there be
none, then I pray you to let me have justice at your
hands. The king, your father, was, in his time, of
such excellent wit, that he was accounted among all
men for wisdom to be a second Solomon ; and the

Whitcfriars.]

THE CONGREGATIONALISTS.

191

King of Spain, my fatlier, Ferdinand, was reckoned
one of the wisest princes that reigned in Spain many
years before. It is not, tlierefore, to be doubted
but that they had gathered as wise counsellors unto
them of every realm as to their wisdom they thought
meet ; and as to me seemeth, there were in those
days as wise -and well-learned in both realms as
now at this day, who thought the marriage between
3-ou and me good and lawful. Therefore it is a
wonder to me to hear what new inventions are
now invented against me, that never intended but
honesty, and now to cause me to stand to the
order and judgment of this court. Ye should, as
seemeth me, do me much wrong, for ye may con-
demn me for lack of answer, having no counsel but
such as ye have assigned me ; ye must consider
that they cannot but be indifterent on my part,
where they be your own subjects, and such as ye
have taken and chosen out of your council, where-
unto they be privy, and dare not disclose your will
and intent. Therefore, I humbly desire you, in the
way of charity, to spare me until I may know what
counsel and advice my friends in Spain will adver-
tise me to take ; and if you will not, then your
pleasure be fulfilled.' With that she rose up,
malting a low curtsey to the king, and departed
from thence, people supposing that she would have
resorted again to her former place, but she took
her way straight oi.t of the court, leaning upon the
arm of one of her servants, who was her receiver-
general, called Master Griffith. The king, being
advertised that she was ready to go out of the
house where the court was kept, commanded the
crier to call her again by these words, ' Katherine,
Queen of England,' &c. With that, quoth Master
Griffith, ' Madam, ye be called again.' ' Oh ! oh !'
quoth she, ' it maketh no matter ; it is no indifierent
(impartial) court for me, therefore I will not tarry :
go on your ways.' And thus she departed without
any further answer at that time, or any other, and
never would appear after in any court."

Bridewell was endowed with the revenues of the
Sa'.'oy. In 1555 the City companies were taxed
for fitting it up ; and the next year Machyn records
that a thief was hung in one of the courts, and,
later on, a riotous attempt was made to rescue
prisoners.

In 1863 Mr. Lemon discovered in the State
Paper Office some interesting documents relative to
the imprisonment in Bridewell, in 1567 (Elizabeth),
of many members of the first Congregational Church.
Bishop Grindal, writing to Bullinger, in 156S de-
scribes this schism, and estimates its adherents at
about 200, but more women than men. Grindal
says they held meetings and administered the

sacrament in private houses, fields, and even in
ships, and ordained ministers, elders, and deacons,
after their own manner. The Lord Ma)or. in
pity, urged tliem to recant, but they remained firm.
Several of these sufterers for conscience' sake died
in prison, including Richard Fitz, their minister,
and Thomas Rowland, a deacon. In the year 1597,
within two montlis, 5,468 jjrisoners, including many
Spaniards, were sent to Bridewell.

The Bridewell soon jffoved costly and incon-
venient to the citizens, by attracting idle, aban-
doned, and "masterless" people. In 160S (James I.)
the City erected at Bridewell twelve large granaries
and two coal-stores; and in 1620 the old chapel
was enlarged. In the Great Fire (six years after
the Restoration) the buildings were nearly all de-
stroyed, and the old castellated river-side mansion
of Elizabeth's time was rebuilt in two quadrangles,
the chief of which fronted the Fleet river (now a
sewer under the centre of Bridge Street). We have
already given on page 1 2 a view of Bridewell as it
appeared previous to the Great Fire; and the
general bird's-eye view given on page 187 in the
present number shows its appearance after it was
rebuilt. Within the present century, Mr. Timbs says,
the committee-rooms, chapel, and prisons were re-
built, and the vhole formed a large quadrangle, with
an entrance from Bridge Street, the keystone of the
arch being sculptured with the head of Edward \'I.
Bridewell stone bridge over the Fleet was painted
by Hayman, Hogarth's friend, and engraved by
Grignon, as tne frontispiece to llie third volume
of " The Dunciad." In the burial-ground at Bride-
well, now the coal-yard of the City Gas Companj-,
was buried, in 1752, Dr. Johnson's friend a.nd protege,
poor blameless Levett. The last interment took
place here, Mr. Noble says, in 1844, and the trees
and tombstones were then carted away. The
gateway into Bridge Street is still standing, and
such portions of the building as still remain are
used for the house and offices of the treasury of
the Bridewell Hospital property, which includes
Bedlam.

The flogging at Bridewell is described by AV'ard,
in his " London Spy." Both men and women, it
appears, were whipped on their naked backs be-
fore the court of governors. The jn-esident sat
with his hammer in his hand, and Uie culprit was
taken from the post when the hammer fell. The
calls to knock when women were flogged were loud
and incessant. "Oh, good Sir Robert, knock!
Pray, good Sir Robert, knock ! " which became at
length a common cry of reproach among the lower
orders, to denote that a woman had been whiii])ed
in Bridewell. Madame Creswell, the celebrated

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(Whitefriars.

procuress of King Charles IL's reign, died a pri-
soner in Bridewell. She desired by A'/// to h.ive a
sermon preached at her funeral, for which the
l)reacher was to have ;£^io, but upon this express
condition, that he was to say nothing but what was
well of her. A preacher was with some difficulty
found who undertook the task. He, after a sermon
])reached on the general subject of mortality, con-
cluded with saying, " By the will of the deceased,
it is expected that I should mention her, and say

of ;i^io each. Many of these boys, says Hatton,
" arrived from nothing to be governors." Tliey
wore a blue dress and white hats, and attended
fires, with an engine belonging to the hospital.
The lads at last became so turbulent, that in 1785
their special costume was abandoned. "Job's
Pound " was the old cant name for Bridewell, and
it is so called in "Hudibras."

The scene of the fourth plate of Horarth's
"Harlot's Progress," finished in 1733 (tjeorge II.),

BEATING HEMP IN ISRIDEWELL, AFTER HOGARTH.

nothing b Jt what was 7i'£v7 of her. All that I shall
say of her, therefore, is this : She was born tcc//,
she lived 7i:v//, and she died wd/; for she was born
with the name of Creswe//, she lived in Clerken-
7eie//, and she died in Brideri';-//." (Cunningham.)

In 1708 (Queen Anne) Hatton describes Bride-
well " as a house of correction for idle, vagrant,
loose, and disorderly persons, and ' night walkers,'
who are there set to hard labour, but receive clothes
and diet." It was also a hospital for indigent persons.
Twenty art-masters (decayed traders) were also
lodged, and received about 140 apprentices. The
boys, after learning tailorinr. weaving, flax-dressing,
&c., received the freedom of the City, and donations

.is laid in Bridewell. There, in a long, dilapidated,
tiled shed, a row of female prisoners are beating
hemp on wooden blocks, while a truculent-looking
warder, with an apron on, is raising his rattan to
strike a poor girl not without some remains of her
youthful beauty, who seems hardly able to lift the
heavy mallet, while the ^vretches around leeringly
deride her fine apron, laced hood, and figured gown.
There are two degraded men among the female
hemp-beaters — one an old card-sharper in laced coat
and foppish wig ; another who stands with his hands
in a pillory, on which is inscribed the admonitory
legend, "Better to work than stand thus." A cocked
hat and a dilapidated hoop hang on the wall.

Whrtefriars.]

THE PRISONERS IN BRIDEWELL.

193

That excellent man, Howard, visiting Bridewell
in 17S3, gives it a bad name, in li s book on
" Prisons." He describes the rooms as offensive,
and the prisoners only receiving a penny loaf a
day each. The steward received eightpence a day
for each prisoner, and a hemp-dresser, paid a salary

])alace remaining, and a magnificent flight of ancient
stairs leading to the court of justice. In the next
room, where the whipping-stocks were, tradition
says sentence of divorce was pronounced against
Katherine of Arragon.

" The first time," says Pennant, " I visited the

INTERIOR OF T

HE duke's theatre, FROM SETTLE's "EMPRESS OF MOROCCO" {sd; />il^e I95).

of ;£20, had the profit of the culprits' labour. For
bedding the prisoners had fresh straw given them
once a month. It was the only London prison
where either straw or bedding was allowed. No
out-door exercise was permitted. In the year 1782
there had been confined in Bridewell 659 prisoners.
In 1790, Pennant describes Bridewell as still
having arches and octagonal towers of the old
17

place, there was not a single male prisoner, but
about twenty females. They were confined on a
ground floor, and employed on the beating of
hemp. When the door was opened by the keeper,
they ran towards it like so many hounds in kennel,
and presented a most moving sight. About twenty
young creatures, the eldest not exceeding sixteen.
many of them with angelic faces divested of every

194

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

nVhitefriars.

angelic expression, featured with impudence, im-
penitency, and i)rofligacy, and clodied in the
silken tatters of squalid tinery. A magisterial — a
national — opprobrium ! AVhat a disadvantageous
contrast to the Spin/iaiis, in Amsterdam, where the
confined sit under the eye of a matron, spinning
or sewing, in plain and neat dresses provided by
the public ! No traces of their former lives appear
in their countenances ; a thorough reformation
seems to have been effected, equally to the emolu-
ment and the honour of the republic. This is also
the place of confinement for disobedient and idle
apprentices. They are kept separate, in airy cells,
and have an allotted task to be performed in a
certain time. They, the men and women, are
employed in beating hemp, picking oakum, and
packing of goods, and are said to earn their main-
tenance."

A writer in "Knight's London" (1843) gives a
very bad account of Bridewell. " Brideweil, another
place of confinement in the City of London, is
under the jurisdiction of the governors of Bride-
well and Bethlehem Hospitals, but it is supported
out of the funds of the hospital. The entrance is
in Bridge Street, Blackfriars. The prisoners con-
fined here are persons summarily convicted by
the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and are, for the
most part, petty pilferers, misdemeanants, vagrants,
and refractory apprentices, sentenced to solitary
confinement ; which term need not terrify the said
refractory oflfenders, for the persons condemned to
solitude," says the writer, " can with ease keep up
a conversation with each other from morning to
night. The total number of persons confined here
in 1842 was 1,324, of whom 233 were under seven-
teen, and 466 were known or reputed thieves. In
1818 no employment was furnished to the prisonens.
The men sauntered about from hour to hour in
those chambers where the worn blocks still stood
and exhibited the marks of the toil of those who
are represented in Hogarth's prints.

"The treadmill has been now introduced, and
more than five-sixths of the prisoners are sen-
tenced to hard labour, the ' mill ' being employed
in grinding corn for Bridewell, Bethlehem, and the
House of Occupation. The ' Seventh Report of
the Inspectors of Prisons on the City Bridewell ' is
as follows : — ' The establishment answers no one
object of imprisonment except that of safe custody.
It does not correct, deter, nor reform ; but we are
convinced that the association to which all but the
City apprentices are subjected proves highly in-
jurious, counteracts any eftbrts that can be made
for the moral and religious improvement of the
prisoners, corrupts the less criminal, and confirms

the degradation of the more hardened offenders.
The cells in the old part of the prison are greatly
superior to those in the adjoining building, which
is of comparatively recent erection, but the whole
of the arrangements are exceedingly defective. It
is quite lamentable to see such an injudicious and
unprofitable expenditure as that which was incurred
in the erecUon of this part of the prison.' "

Latterly Bridewell was used as a receptacle for
vagrants, and as a temporary lodging for paupers
on their way to their respective parishes. The
prisoners sentenced to hard labour were put on a
treadmill which ground corn. The other prisoners
picked junk. The women cleaned the prison,
picked junk, and mended the linen. In 1829
there was built adjoining Bedlam a House of Occu-
pation for young prisoners. It was decided that
from the revenue of the Bridewell hospital (;£^i2,ooo)
reformatory schools were to be built. The annual
number of contumacious apprentices sent to Bride-
well rarely exceeded twenty-five, and when Mr.
Timbs visited the prison in 1863 he says he found
only one lad out of the three thousand appren-
tices of the great City. In 1868 (says Mr. Noble) the
governors refused to receive a convicted appren-
tice, for the very excellent reason that there was
no cell to receive him.

The old court-room of Bridewell (84 by 29)
was a handsome wainscoted room, adorned with a
great picture, erroneously attributed to Holbein,
and representing Edward VI. granting the Royal
Charter of Endowment to the Mayor, which now
hangs over the western gallery of the hall of Christ's
Hospital. It was engraved by Vertue in 1750,
and represents an event which happened ten years
after the death of the supposed artist. Beneath
this was a cartoon of the Good Samaritan, by
Dadd, the young artist of promise who went mad
and murdered his father, and who is now confined
for life in Broadmoor. The picture is now at
Bedlam. There was a fine full-length of swarthy
Charles II., by Lely, and full-lengths of George III.
and Queen Charlotte, after Reynolds. There were
also murky portraits of past presidents, including
an equestrian portrait of Sir William Withers (1708).
Tables of benefactions also adorned the walls. In
this hall the governors of Bridewell dined annually,
each steward contributing ^15 towards the ex-
penses, the dinner being dressed in a large kitchen
below, only used for that purpose. The hall and
kitchen were taken down in 1862.

In the entrance corridor from Bridge Street (says
Mr. Timbs) are the old chapel gates, of fine iron-
work, originally presented by the equestrian Sir
William \\'ithers, and on the staircase is a bust of

Whitefriars.]

DAVENANT'S THEATRE.

195

the venerable Chamberlain Clarke, who dieil in liis
ninjty-third year.

I'lie Bridewell prison (whose inmates were sent
to HoUoway) was pulled down (e.xcept the lull,
trL>asurer's house, and offices) in 1863.

Ijridewell Dock (now Tudor and William Streets
and Chatham Place) was loni^ noted for its taverns,
and was a favourite landing-place for the Thames
watermen. (Noble.)

The gas-works of Whitefriars are of great size.
In 1807 Mr. Winsor, a German, first lit a part of
London (Pall Mall) with gas, and in 1809 he ap-
plied for a charter. Yet, even as late as 1813, says
Mr. Noble, the inquest-men of St. Dunstan's, full
of the vulgar prejudice of the day, prosecuted
William Start, of 183, Fleet Street, for continuing
for three months past "the making of gaslight, and
making and causing to be made divers large fires
of coal and other things,' by reason whereof and
"divers noisome and offensive stinks and smells
and va]50urs he causes the houses and dwellings
near to be unhealthy, for which said nuisance one
William Knight, the occupier, was indicted at
the sessions." The early users of cotifee at the
"Rainbow," as we have seen in a previous chapter,
underwent the same persecution. Yet Knight went
on boldly committing his harmless misdemeanour,
and even so far, in the ne.\t year (1814), as to start
a company and build gas-works on the river's
bank at Whitefriars. Gas spoke for itself, and
its brilliancy could not be gainsaid. Times have
changed. There are now thirteen London com-
panies, producing a rental of a million and a half,
using in their manufacture 882,770 tons of coal,
and employing a capital of more than five and a
half millions. Luckily for the beauty of the
Embankment, these gas-works at Whitefriars, with
their vast black reservoirs and all their smoke and
fire, are about to be removed to Barking, seven
miles from London.

The first theatre in Whitefriars seems to have
been one built in the hall of the old Whitefriars
Monastery. Mr. Collier gives the duration of this
theatre as from 1586 to 1613. A memorandum
from the manuscript-book of Sir Henry Herbert,
Master of the Revels to King Charles L, notes that
" I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane,
the 1 6th of February, 1634, to the Marshalsey, for
lending a Church robe, with the name of Jesus
upon it, to the players in Salisbury Court, to
represent a flamen, a priest of the heathens.
Upon his petition of submission and acknowledg-
ment of his fault, I released him the 1 7th February,
1634." From entries of the Wardmote Inquests of
St. Dunstan's, quoted by Mr. Noble, it appears that

the Whitefriars Theatre (erected originally in the
precincts of the monastery, to be out of the juris-
diction of the mayor) seems to have become dis-
reputable in 1609, and ruinous in 16 19, when it is
mentioned that " the rain hath made its way in, and
if it be not repaired it must soon be i)lucked down,
or it will fall." The Salisbury Court Theatre, that
took its place, was erected about 1629, and the
Earl of Dorset somewhat illegally let it for a term
of si.\ty-one years and ^950 down, Dorset House
being afterwards soltl for ^4,000. The theatre
was destroyed by the Puritan soldiers in 1649,
and not rebuilt till the Restoration.

At the outbreak of pleasure and vice, after the
Restoration, the actors, long starved and rrcstfallcn,
brushed up their plumes and burnished their tinsel.
Killigrew, that clever buffoon of the Court, opened
a new theatre in Drury Lane in 1663, with a play of
Beaumont and Fletcher's ; and Davenant (supposed
to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son) opened the
little theatre, long disused, in Salisbury Court, the
rebuilding of which was commenced in 1660, on
the site of the granary of Salisbury House. In time
Davenant migrated to the old Tennis Court, in
Portugal Street, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn
Fields, and when the Great Fire came it erased the
Granary Theatre. In 167 1, on Davenant's death,
the company (nominally managed by his widow)
returned to the new theatre in Salisbur)- Court,
designed by Wren, and decorated, it is said, by
Grinling Gibbons. It opened with Dryden's Sir
Martin Marall, whicli had alread\' had a run,
having been first plaj'ed in 1668. On Killigrew's
death, the King's and Duke's Servants united, and
removed to Drury Lane in 1682 ; so that the
Dorset Gardens Theatre only flourished for eleven
years in all. It was subsequently let to wrestlers,
fencers, and other brawny and wiry performers.
The engraving on page 193, taken from Settle's '
"Empress of Morocco" (1678), rejjresents the
stage of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Wren's
new theatre in Dorset Gardens, an engraving of
which is given on page 13S, fronted the river, and
had public stairs for the convenience of those
who came by water. There was also an open
place before the theatre for the coaches of the
"quality." In 169S it was used for the drawing
of a penny letter)', but in 1703, when it threatened
to re-open,' Queen Anne finally closed it. It was
standing in 1720 (George I.), when Strype drew
up the continuation of Stow, but it was shortly
after turned into a timber-yard. Tiie New River
Company ne.xt had their offices there, and in
1S14 water was ousted by fire, and the City
Gas Works were established in this quarter, with

196

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Whitefriars.

a dismal front to the bright and pleasant Em-
bankment.

Pepys, the indefatigable, was a frequent visitor
to the Whitefriars Theatre. A few of his quaint
remarks will not be uninteresting : —

" 1660. — By water to Salsbury Court Playhouse,
where, not liking to sit, we went out again, and
by coach to the theatre, &c. — To the playhouse,
and there saw The Chaiigduig, the first time it
hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes
exceedingly. Besides, I see the gallants do begin
to be tyred with the vanity and pride of the theatre
actors, who are indeed grown very proud and
rich.

" 1661. — To White-fryars, and saw ThcBondiiian
acted ; an excellent play, and well done ; but above
all that I ever saw, Betterton do the Bondman the
best.

" 1661. — After dinner I went to the theatre, where
I found so few people (which is strange, and the
reason I do not know) that I went out again, and
so to Salisbury Court, where the house as full as
could be ; and it seems it was a new play, The
Queen's Maske, wherein there are some good
humours ; among others, a good jeer to the old
story of the siege of Troy, making it to be a common
country tale. But above all it was strange to see
so litde a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is
one of the greatest parts in it.

" Creed and I to Salisbury Court, and there saw
Lm'e's Qiiarrdl acted the first time, but I do not

like the design or words To Salsbury

Court Playhouse, where was acted the first time
a simple play, and ill acted, only it was my fortune
to sit by a most pretty and most ingenuous lady,
>vhich pleased me much." 5,

Dryden, in his prologues, makes frequent mention
of the Dorset Gardens Theatre, more especially
in the address on the opening of the new Drury
Lane, March, 1674. The Whitefriars house, under
Davenant, liad been the first to introduce regular
scenery, and it prided itself on stage pomp and
show. The year before, in Shadwell's opera of
The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island, the machinery
was very costly, and one scene, in which the spirits
flew away with the wicked duke's table and viands
just as the company was sitting dowm, had excited
the town to enthusiasm. Psyche, another opera by
Shadwell, perhaps adapted from Moliere's Court
spectacle, had succeeded the Tempest. St. Andre'
and his French dancers were probably engaged
in Shadwell's piece. The king, whose taste and
good sense the poet praises, had recommended
simplicity of dress and frugality of orntiment. This
Dryden took care to well remember. He says : —

" You who cacli iKiy cin t'lieatrcs IjclioUl,
Like Nero's palace, shining all in goUl,
(Jur mean, ungilded stage will scorn, v. c fear.
And for tlie homely room disdain the cheer."

Then he brings in the dictum of the king :—

" Vet if some pride with want may be allowed,
We in our plainness may be justly proud. :
Our royal master willed it should be so ;
Whate'er he's pleased to own can need no show.
That sacred name gives ornament and grace,
And, like his stamp, m.akes basest metal pass.
'Trt-ere folly now a stately pile to raise,
To build a playhouse, while you throw down plays.
While scenes, machines, and empty operas reign,
And for the pencil you the pen disdain :
While troops of famished Frenchmen hither drive,
And laugh at those upon whose alms they live,
Old English authors vanish, and give place
To these new conquerors of the Norman race."

And when, in 167 1, the burnt-out Drury Lane com-
pany had removed to the Portugal Street Theatre,
Dryden had said, in the same strain, —

" So we expect the lovers, braves, and wits ;
The gaudy house with scenes will serve for cits."

In another epilogue Dryden alludes sarcastically
to the death of Mr. Scroop, a young rake of fortune,
who had just been run through by Sir Thomas
Armstrong, a sworn friend of the Duke of Mon-
mouth, in a quarrel at the Dorset Gardens Theatre,
and died soon after. This fatal aftray took place
during the representation of Davenant's adaptation
of Macbeth.

From Dryden's various prologues and epi-
logues we cull many sharply-outlined and bright-
coloured pictures of the wild and riotous audiences
of those evil days. We see again the " hot Bur-
gundians " in the upper boxes wooing tb.e masked
beauties, crying " boii " to the French dancers and
beating cadence to the music that had stirred even
the stately Court of Versailles. Again we see the
scornful critics, bunched with glistening ribbons,
shaking back their cascades of blonde hair, lolling
contemptuously on the foremost benches, and "look-
ing big through their curls." There from "Fop's
Corner " rises the tipsy laugh, the prattle, and the
chatter, as the dukes and lords, the wits and cour-
tiers, practise what Dryden calls " the divin^*; bow,"
or " the toss and the new French wallow '' — tiie
diving bow being especially admired, because it —

" With a shog casts all the hair before.
Till he, with full decorum, brings it back.
And rises with a water-spaniel's shake."

Nor does the poet fail to recall the aftrays in the
upper boxes, when some quarrelsome rake was often
pinned to the wainscoat by the sword of his insulted
rival. Below, at the door, the Flemish horses and

Whitefriars.]

THE DORSET GARDENS THE ATRT?.

19?

the hea\y gilded coach, lighted by flambeaux, are
waiting for the noisy gallant, and will take back
only his corpse.

Of Drj-den's coldly licentious comedies and
ranting bombastic tragedies a few only seem to
have been produced at the Dorset Gardens Theatre.
Among these we may mention Limb.er/iam, CEdipus,
Troiliis and C/rssida, and T/w S/>a>tisA Friar.
Lind'crham was acted at the Duke's Theatre, in
Dorset Gardens ; because, being a satire upon a
Court vice, it was deemed peculiarly calculated for
that playhouse. The concourse of the citizens
thither is alluded to in the prologue to Marriage
<i la Mode. Ravenscroft, also, in his epilogue to
the play of Citizen Turned Gentleman, which was
acted at the same theatre, takes occasion to disown
the patronage of the more dissolute courtiers, in all
probability because they formed the minor part of
his audience. The citizens were his great patrons.

In the Post ma?!, December 8, 1679, there is the
following notice, quoted by Smith: — "At the
request of several persons of quality, on Saturday
next, being the 9th instant, at the theatre in Dorset
Gardens, the famous Kentish men, Wm. and Rich.
Joy, design to show to the town before they leave
it the same tryals of strength, both of them, that
Wm. had the honour of showing before his majesty
and their royal highnesses, with several other per-
sons of quality, for which he received a considerable
gratuity. The lifting a weight of two thousand two
hundred and forty pounds. His holding an e.xtra-
ordinary large cart-horse ; and breaking a rope
which will bear three thousand five hundred weight.
Beginning exactly at two, and ending at four. The
boxes, 4s. ; the pit, 2S. 6d. ; first gallery, 2S. ; upper
gallery, is. Whereas several scandalous persons
have given out that they can do as much as any of
the brothers, we do offer to such persons ^~ioo
reward, if he can perform the said matters of
strength as they do, provided the pretender will
forfeit ;£2o if he doth not. The day it is per-
formed will be affixed a signal-flag on the theatre.
No money to be returned after once paid."

In 1 68 1 Dr. Davenant seems, by rather unfair
tactics, to have bought off and pensioned both
Hart and Kynaston from the King's Company,
and so to have greatly weakened his rivals. Of
these two actors some short notice may not be
uninteresting. .Hart had been a. Cavalier captain
.during the Civil Wars, and was a pupil of Robinson,
the actor, who was shot down at the taking of
Basing House. Hart was a tragedian who excelled
in parts that required a certain heroic and chivalrous
dignity. As a youth, before the Restoration, when
boys played female parts, Hart was successful as

the Duchess, in Shirley's Cardinal. In Charles's
time he played Othello, by the king's command,
and rivalled Betterton's Hamlet at the other house.
He created the part of Ale.xander, was excellent
as Brutus, and terribly and vigorously wicked as
Ben Jonson's Cataline. Rymer, says Dr. Doran,
styled Hart and Mohun the .-Ksopus and Roscius
of their time. As Amintor and Melanthus, in 77/1?
Maiifs Tragedy, they were incomparable. Pepys
is loud too in his praises of Hart. His salary,
was, however, at the most, j£^ a week, though he
realised ;^i,ooo yearly after he became a share-
holder of the theatre. Hart died in 1683, within a
year of his being bought off.

KjTiaston, in his way, was also a celebrity. As
a handsome boy he had been renowned for ]jlaying.
heroines, and he afterwards acquired celebrity by
his dignified impersonation of kings and tyrants.
Betterton, the greatest of all the Charles II.
actors, also played occasionally at Dorset Gardens.
Pope knew him ; Drj'den was his friend ; Kneller
painted him. He was probably the greatest
Hamlet that ever appeared ; and Cibber sums up
all eulogy of him when he says, " I never heard a
line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my
judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not
fully satisfied, which since his time I cannot equally
say of any one actor whatsoever." The enchantment
of his voice was such, adds the same excellent
dramatic critic, that the multitude no more cared
for sense in the words he spoke, " than our musical
connoiseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs
of an Italian opera."

Even when Whitefriars was at its grandest, and
plumes moved about its narrow river-side streets,
Dorset House was its central and most stately
mansion. It was originally a mansion witli gardens,
belonging to a Bishop of Winchester ; but about
the year 1217 (Henry III.) a lease was granted
by William, Abbot of Westminster, to Richard,
Bishop of Sarum, at the yearly rent of twenty
shillings, the Abbot retaining the advowson of
St. Bride's Church, and promising to impart to the
said bishop any needful ecclesiastical advice. It
afterwards fell into the hands of the Sackvilles,
held at first by a long lease from the see," but
was eventually alienated by the good Bishop Jewel.
A grant in 16 11 (James I.) confirmed the manor of
Salisbury Court to Richard, Earl of Dorset.

The Earl of Dorset, to whom Bishop Jewel
alienated the Whitefriars House, was the father of
the poet, Thomas Sackville, Lord High Treasurer
to Queen Elizabeth. The bishop received in
exchange for tlie famous old house a piece
of land near Cricklade, in Wiltshire. The poet

1 98

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Whitefriars.

earl was that wise old statesman who began " The
Mirror for ALigistratcs," an allegorical poem of
gloomy power, in which the poet intended to
make all the great statesmen of England since the
Conquest pass one by one to tell their troublous
stories. He, however, only lived to write one
legend — that of Henry Stafford, Duke of Bucking-

Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four,
With old lame bones, that rattled by his side ;
His scalp all pil'd, and he with eld forelore,
His withor'd fist still knocking at death's door ;
Fumbling and drivelling, as he draw; his breath ;
For brief, the shape and messenger of death. "

At the Restoration, the Marquis of Newcastle,
-the author of a magnificent book on horseman-

baynard's castle, from a view published in 1790 (.(.V /i7;v 200).

ham. One of his finest and most Holbeinesque
passages relates to old age : —

" And next in order sad. Old Age we found;
His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind ;
AVith drooping cheer still poring on the ground.
As on the place where Nature him assigned
To rest, when that the sisters had untwined
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast declining life.
Crooked-back'd he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed,

ship— and his pedantic wife, whom Scott has
sketched so well in " Peveril of the Peak," inha-
bited a part of Dorset House ; but whether Great
Dorset House or Little Dorset House, topographers
do not record. "Great Dorset House," says
Mr. Peter Cunningham, quoting Lady Anne
Clifford's "Memoirs," "was the jointure house of
Cicely Baker, Dowager Countess of Dorset, who
died in it in 16 1 5 (James L)."

!V. ic!;fi-i.irs,|

A POKT EART,.

i9()

200

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Blackfriars.

C H A P T L R X \' I 1 1 .
BLACKFRIARS.

Three Norman Fortresses on the Thames' Bank — The Black Parliament — The Trial of Katheriiie of Arragon— Shakespeare a Blackfriars Manager
— 'I'hc Blackfriars Puritans— The Jesuit Sermon at Hinisdon House— Fatal Accident— Extraordinary Escapes— Queen Elizabeth at Lord
Herbert's Marriage — Old Blackfriars Bridge — Johnson and Mylne — Laying of the Stone — The Inscription — A Tell Riot — Failure 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 Times and its Historj' — Walter's Enterprise — War with the Dispatck — The gigantic Swindling Sclicine exposed
by the Times — Apothecaries' Hall — t^uarrel with the College of Physicians.

On the river-side, between St. Paul's and White-
friars, there stood, in the Middle Ages, three Norman
fortresses. Caslle Baynard and the old tower of
!Mountfiquet were two of them. Baynard Castle,
granted to the Earls of Clare and afterwards
rebuilt by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, was
the palace in which the Duke of Buckingham
offered the crown to his wily confederate, Richard
the Crookback. In Queen Elizabeth's time it
was granted to the Earls of Pembroke, who lived
there in splendour till the Great Fire melted
their gold, calcined their jewels, and drove them

monastery, and here Cardinal Campeggio presided
at the trial which ended with the tyrant's divorce
from the ill-used Katherine of Arragon. In the
same house the Parliament also sat that condemned
Wolsey, and sent him to beg " a little earth for
charity" of the monks of Leicester. The rapa-
cious king laid his rough hand on the treasures of
the house in 1538, and Edward VI. sold the hall
and prior's lodgings to Sir Francis Bryan, a courtier,
afterwards granting Sir Francis Cawarden, Master
of the Revels, the whole house and precincts of the
Preacher Friars, the yearly value being then valued

into the fashionable flood that was already moving ! at nineteen pounds. The holy brothers were dis-

westward. Mountfiquet Castle was pulled down in
1276, when Hubert de Berg, Earl of Kent, trans-
planted a colony of Black Dominican friars from
Holborn, near Lincoln's Inn, to the river-side,
south of Ludgate Hill. Yet so conservative is
even Time in England, that a recent correspondent
oi Notes and Queries points out a piece of medieval
walling and the fragment of a buttress, still standing,
at the foot of the Times Office, in Printing House
Square, which seem to have formed part of the
stronghold of the Mountfiquets. This interesting
relic is on the left hand of Queen Victoria Street,
going up from the bridge, just where there was
formerly a picturesque but dangerous descent by a
flight of break-neck stone steps. At the right-hand
side of the same street stands an old rubble chalk
wall, even older. It is just past the new house of
the Bible Society, and seems to have formed part
of the old City wall, which at first ended at Baynard
Castle. The rampart advanced to Mountfiquet,
and, lastly, to please and protect the Dominicans,
was pushed forward outside Ludgate to the Fleet,
which served as a moat, the Old Bailey being an
ad\-anced work.

King Edward I. and Queen Eleanor heaped many
gifts on these sable friars. Charles V. of France was
lodged at their monastery when he visited England,
but his nobles resided in Henry's newly-built
palace of Bridewell, a gallery being thrown over
the Fleet and driven through the City wall, to serve
as a communication between the two mansions.
Henry held the "Black Parliament" in this

persed to beg or thieve, and the church was pulled
down, but the mischievous right of sanctuary con-
tinued.

And now we come to the event which connects
the old monastic ground with the name of the great
genius of England. James Burbage (afterwards
Shakespeare's friend and fellow actor), and other
servants of the Earl of Leicester, tormented out of
the City by the angry edicts of over-scrupulous Lord
Mayors, took shelter in the Precinct, and there, in
1578, erected a playhouse (Playhouse Yard). Every
attempt was in vain made to crush the intruders.
About the year 1586, according to the best autho-
rities, the young Shakespeare came to London and
joined the company at the Blackfriars Tlieatre.
Only three years later we find the new arrival —
and this is one of the unsolvable mysteries of
Shakespeare's life — one of sixteen sharers in the
prosperous though persecuted theatre. It is true
that Mr. Halliwell has lately discovered that he
was not exactly a proprietor, but only an actor,
receiving a share of the profits of the house,
exclusive of the galleries (the boxes and dress
circle of those days), but this is, after all, only a
lessening of the difiiculty ; and it is almost as
remarkable that a young, unknown Warwickshire
poet should receive such jirofits as it is that he
should have held a sixteenth of the whole property.
Without the generous patronage of such patrons
as the Earl of Southampton or Lord Brooke, how
could the young actor ha\'e thri\'en ? He was only
t'.venty-six, and may have written "Venus and

Plackfriars.]

THE PURITAN FEATHER-SELLERS.

201

Adonis ' or " Lucrece ;" yet the first of these poems
was not published till 1593. He may already, it
is true, have adapted one or two tolerably success-
ful historical plays, and, as Mr. Collier thinks, might
• have written The Comedy of Errors, Loves Labours
Lost, or T/ie Two Gcntkmen of Veroim. One thing
is certain, that in 1587 five companies of players,
including the Blackfriars Company, performed at
Stratford, and in his native town Mr. Collier thinks
Shakespeare first proved himself useful to his new
comrades.

In 15S9 the Lord Mayor closed two theatres
for ridiculing the Puritans. Burbage and his
friends, alarmed at this, petitioned the Privy
Council, and pleaded that they had never intro-
duced into their plays matters of state or religion.
The Blackfriars company, in 1593, began to build
a summer theatre, the Globe, in Southwark ; and
Mr. Collier, remembering that this was the very
year " Venus and Adonis ' was published, attributes
some great gift of the Earl of Southampton to Shake-
speare to have immediately followed this poem,
which was dedicated to him. By 1 594 the poet had
written King Richard LL. and King Richard III.,
and Burbage's son Richard had made himself famous
as the first representative of the crook-backed king.
In 1596 we find Shakespeare and his partners (only
eight now) petitioning the Privy Council to allow
them to repair and enlarge their theatre, which the
Puritans of Blackfriars wanted to close. The
Council allowed the repairs, but forbade the
enlargement. At this time Shakespeare was living
near the Bear Garden, Southwark, to be close to
the Globe. He was now evidently a thriving,
'•warm'' man, for in 1597 he purchased for £,()o
New Place, one of the best houses in Stratford.
In 16 1 3 we find Shakespeare purchasing a plot
of ground not far from Blackfriars Theatre, and
abutting on a street leading down to Puddle
Wharf, "right against the king's majesty's ward-
robe ;" but he had retired to Stratford, and given
up London and the stage before this. The deed
of this sale was sold in 1841 for ^^162 5s.

In 160S the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London
made a final attempt to crush the Blackfriars
players, but failing to prove to the Lord Chancellor
that the City had ever exercised any authority
widiin the precinct and liberty of Blackfriars, their
cause fell to the ground. The Corporation then
opened a negotiation for purchase with Burbage,
Shakespeare, and the other (now nine) shareholders.
The players asked about ^^7,000, Shakespeare's four
shares being valued at ^1,433 6s. 8d., including
the wardrobe and properties, estimated at ;^5oo.
The poet's income at this time Mr. Collier esti-

mates at ^400 a year. The Blackfriars Tiieatre
was pulled down in Cromwell's time (1655), and
houses built in its room.

Randolph, the dramatist, a pupil of Ben Jonson's,
ridicules, in The Muses' Looking-Glass, that strange
" morality " play of his, the Puritan feather-sellers
of Blackfriars, whom Ben Jonson also taunts ;
Randolph's pretty Puritan, Mrs. Flowerdew, says
of the ungodly of Blackfriars : —

" Indeed, it sometimes pricks my conscience,
I come to sell 'em jiins and loolcing-glasses."

To which her friend, Mr. Bird, replies, with the sly
sanctity of Tartuffe : —

" I liave tliis custom, too, for my feathers ;
'Tis fit tliat we, wliich arc sincere professors,
Sliould gain l)y infidels."

Ben Jonson, that smiter of all such hypocrites,
wrote Volpone at his house in Blackfriars, where he
laid the scene of The Aicliymist. The Friars were
fashionable, however, in spite of the players, for
Vandyke lived in the precinct for nine years (he
died in 1641); and the wicked Earl and Countess
of Somerset resided in the same locality when they
poisoned their former favourite, Sir Thomas Over-
bury. As late as 1 735, Mr. Peter Cunningham says,
chere was an attempt to assert precinct privileges,
but years before sherifts had arrested in the Friars.
In 1623 Blackfriars was the scene of a most
fatal and extraordinary accident. It occurred in
the chief house of the Friary, then a district
declining fast in respectability. Hunsdon House
derived its name from Queen I'Llizabeth's favourite
cousin, the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey,
Baron Hunsdon, and was at the time occupied by
Count de Tillier, the French ambassador. About
three o'clock on Sunday, October 26th, a large
Roman Catholic congregation of about three hun-
dred persons, worshipping to a certain degree in
stealth, not without fear from the Puritan feather-
makers of the theatrical neighbourhood, had assem-
bled in a long garret on the third and uppermost
storey. Master Drury, a Jesuit prelate of celebrity,
had drawn together this crowd of timid people.
The garret, looking over the gateway, was ap-
proached by a passage having a door opening mto
the street, and also by a corridor from the ambas-
sador's withdrawing-room. The garret was about
seventeen feet wide and forty feet long, with a
vestry for a priest partitioned oft" at one end. In
the middle of the garret, and near the wall, stood
a raised table and chair for the preacher. The
gentry sat on chairs and stools facing the pulpit, the
rest stood behind, crowding as far as the head of
the stairs. At the appointed hour Master Drury,

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

1 Illackfriars,

the priest, cume from the inner room in white robe
a.ul scarlet stole, ■ an attendant carrying a book
and an hour-glass, by which to measure his
sermon. He knelt down at the chair for about an
Ave Maria, but uttered no audible prayer. He
then took the Jesuits' Testament, and read for the
text the Gospel for the day, which was, according
to the Gregorian Calendar, the twenty-first Sunday
after Pentecost — "Therefore is the kingdom of
luavea like unto a man being a king that would
make an account of his servants. And when he
began to make account there was one presented
unto- him that owed him ten thousand talents."
Having read the text, the Jesuit preacher sat down,
and putting on his head a red quilt cap, with a white
linen one beneath it, commenced his sermon. He
had spoken for about half an hour when the
calamity happened. The great weight of the crowd-
in the old room suddenly snapped the main
summer beam of the floor, which instantly crashed
in and fell into the room below. The main beams
there also snapped and broke through to the
ambassador's drawing-room over the gate-house, a
distance of twenty-two feet. Only a part, however,
of the gallery floor, immediately over Father Rud-
gate's chamber, a small room used for secret mass,
gave way. The rest of the floor, being less crowded,
stood firm, and the people on it, having no other
means of escape, drew their knives and cut a way
through a plaster wall into a neighbouring room.

A contemporary pamphleteer, who visited the
ruins and wrote fresh from the first outburst of
sympathy, says : " What ear without tingling can
bear the doleful and confused cries of such a troop
of men, women, -and children, all falling suddenly
in the same pit, and apprehending with one horror
the same ruin ? What eye can behold without
inundation of tears such a spectacle of men over-
whelmed with breaches of mighty timber, burled in
rubbish and smothered with dust? What heart
without evaporating ia sighs can ponder the burden
of deepest sorrows and lamentations of parents,
children, husbands, wives, kinsmen, friends, for
their dearest pledges and chiefest comforts ? This
world all bereft and swept away with one blast of
the same dismal tempest."

The news of the accident fast echoing through
London, Serjeant Finch, the Recorder, and the
Lord Mayor and aldermen at once provided for the
safety of the ambassador's family, who were natu-
rally shaking in their shoes, and shutting up the
gates to keep off the curious and thievish crowd, set
guards at all the Blackfriars passages. Workmen
were employed to remove the debris and rescue the
suferers v/ho were still alive. The pamphleteer,

again rousing himself to the occasion, and turning
on his tears, says : — " At the opening hereof what a
chaos ! what fearful objects ! what lamentable repre-
sentations ! Here some buried, some dismembered,
some only parts of men ; here some wounded and
weltering in their own and others' blood ; others
putting forth their fainting hands and crying
out for help. Here some gasping and panting
for breath ; others stifled for want of air. So the
most of them being thus covered with dust, their
death w-as a kind of burial." All that night and
part of the next day the workmen spent in removing
the bodies, and the inquest was then held. It was
found that the main beams were only ten inches
square, and had two mortise-holes, where the
girders were inserted, facing each other, so that
only three inches of solid timber were left. The
main beam of the lower room, about thirteen inches
square, without mortise-holes, broke obliquely near
the end. No wall gave way, and the roof and
ceiling of the garret remained entire. Father
Drury perished, as did also Father Rudgate, who
was in his own apartment, underneath. Lady
Webb, of Southwark, Lady Blackstone's daughter,
from Scroope's Court, Mr. Fowell, a Warwickshire
gentleman, and many tradesmen, servants, and
artisans — ninety-five in all — perished. Seme of
the escapes seemed almost miraculous. Mistress
Lucie Penruddock fell between Lady Webb and
a servant, who were both killed, yet was saved by
her chair falling over her head. Lady Webb's
daughter was found alive near her dead mother,
and a girl named Elizabeth Sanders was also saved
by the dead who fell and covered her. A Protestant
scholar, though one of the very undermost, escaped
by the timbers arching over him and some of them
slanting against the wall. He tore a way out
through the laths of the ceiling by main strength,
then crept between two joists to a hole where he
saw light, and was drawn through a door by one
of the ambassador's family. He at once returned
to rescue others. There was a girl of ten who
cried to him, " Oh, my mother ! — oh, my sister ! —
•they are down under the timber." He told her to
be patient, and by God's grace they would be
quickly got forth. The chiid replied, " This will
be a great scandal to our religion." One of the
men that fell said to a fellow-sufterer, " Oh, what
advantage our adversaries will take at this !" The
other replied, " If it be God's will this should befall
us, what can we say to it ? " One gentleman was
saved by keeping near the stairs, while his friend,
who had pushed near the pulpit, perished.

Many of those who were saved died in a few
hours after their extrication. The bodies of Lady

Blnckfriars.]

THE FATAL VESPERS.

203

Webb, Mistress Udall, and Lady Blackstone's
daughter, were carried to Ely House, Holborn, and
there buried in the back courtyard. In the fore
courtyard, by the French ambassador's house, a
huge grave, eighteen feet long and twelve feet
broad, was dug, and forty-four corpses piled within
it. In another pit, twelve feet long and eight feet
broad, in the ambassador's garden, they buried
fifteen more. Others were interred in St. Andrew's,
St. Bride's, and Blackfriars churches. The list of
the killed and wounded is curious, from its topo-
graphical allusions. Amongst other entries, we find
"John Halifa.x, a water-bearer " (in the old times
of street conduits the water-bearer was an important
person) ; " a son of Mr. Flood, the scrivener, in
Holborn ; a man of Sir Ives Pemberton ; Thomas
Brisket, his wife, son, and maid, in Montague
Close ; Richard Fitzgarret, of Gray's Inn, gentle-
man ; Davie, an Irishman, in Angell Alley, Gray's
Inn, gentleman ; Sarah Watson, daughter of Master
Watson, chi-rurgeon ; Master Grimes, near the
'Hori : Shoe ' tavern, in Drury Lane ; John Bevan,
at the ' Seven Stars', in Drury Lane ; Francis Man,
Thieving Lane, Westminster," &c. As might have
been e.xpected, the fanatics of both parties had
much to say about this terrible accident. The
Catholics declared that the Protestants, knowing
this to be a chief place of meeting for men of their
faith, had secretly drawn out the pins, or sawn
the supporting timbers partly asunder. The Pro-
testants, on the other hand, lustily declared that
the planks would not bear such a weight of Romish
sin, and that God was displeased with their pulpits
and altars, their doctrine and sacrifice. One
zealot remembered that, at the return of Prince
Charles from the madcap expedition to Spain, a
Catholic had lamented, or was said to have lamented,
the street bonfires, as there would be never a fagot
left to burn the heretics. " If it had been a Pro-
testant chapel," the Puritans cried, "the Jesuits
would have called the calamity an omen of the
speedy downfall of heresy." A Catholic writer
replied " with a word of comfort," and pronounced
the accident to be a presage of good fortune to
Catholics and of the overthrow of error and heresy.
This zealous, but not well-informed, writer compared
Father Drury's death with that of Zuinglius, who
fell in battle, and with that of Calvin, "who, being
in despair, and calling upon the devil, gave up
his wicked soul, swearing, cursing, and blas-
pheming." So intolerance, we see, is neither
specially Protestant nor Catholic, but of every
party. " The Fatal Vespers," as that terrible day
at Blackfriars was afterw-ards called, were long
remembered with a shudder by Catholic England.

In a curious old pamphlet entitled " Something
Written by Occasion of that Fatall and Memorable
Accident in the Blacke-fricrs, on Sonday, being the
26th October, 1623, sti/o antiqiw, and the 5th
November, stilo novo, or Romano" the author re-
lates a singular escape of one of the listeners.
" When all things were ready," he saj-s, " and the
prayer finished, the Jesuite tooke for his text the
gospell of the day, being (as I take it) the 22nd
Sunday after Trinity, and extracted out of the iSth
of Matthew, beginning at the 21st verse, to the end.
The story concerns forgiveness of sinnes, and de-
scribeth the wicked cruelty of the unjust steward,
whom his maister remitted, though he owed him
10,000 talents, but he would not forgive his fellow
a 100 pence, whereupon he was called to a new
reckoning, and cast into prison, and then the par-
ticular words are, which he insisted upon, the 34th
verse : ' So his master was wroth, and delivered
him to the jaylor, till he should pay all that was
due to him.' For the generall, he urged many
good doctrines and cases; for the particular, he
modelled out that fantasie of purgatory, which he
followed with a full crie of pennance, satisfiiction,
paying of money, and such like.

" While this exercise was in hand, a gentleman
brought up his friend to see the place, and bee
partaker of the sermon, who all the time he was
going up stairs cried out, ' Whither doe I goe ? I
protest my heart trembles;' and when he came
into the roome, the priest being very loud, he whis-
pered his friend in the eare that he was afraid, for,
as he supposed, the room did shake under him ;
at which his friend, between smiling and anger, left
him, and went close to the wall behind the preacher's
chaire. The gentleman durst not stirre from the
staires, and came not full two yards in the roome,
when on a sudden there was a kinde of murmuring
amongst the people, and some were heard to say,
' The roome shakes ; ' which words being taken up
one of another, the whole company rose up with a
strong suddainnesse, and some of the women
screeched. I cannot compare it better than to
many passengers in a boat in a tempest, who are
commanded to sit still and let the waterman alone
with managing the oares, but some unruly peojile
rising overthrowes them all. So was this company
served ; for the people thus affrighted started up
with extraordinary quicknesse, and at an instant
the maine summer bcame broke in sunder, being
mortised in the wall some five foot from the same ;
and so the whole roofe or floore fell at once, with
all the people that stood thronging on it, and
with the violent impetuosity drove downe the
nether roome quite to the ground, so that they fell

204

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fBlackfnars.

twenty-four foot high, and were most of tliem buried
and bruised betweene the rubbish and the timber ;
and though some were questionlesse smothered,
yet for the most part they were hurt and bled, and
being taken forth the next day, and laid all along
in the gallery, presented to the lookers-on a wofuU
spectacle of fourscore and seventeen dead persons,
besides eight or nine which perished since, unable
to recovvir themselves.

of a grand festivity at the house of Lord Herbert,
which the Queen honoured by her attendance.
The account is worth inserting, if only for the sake
of a characteristic bit of temper which the Queen
exhibited on the occasion.

" Lord Herbert, son of ^Vlllia^n, fourth Earl of
Worcester," says Pennant, " had a house in Black-
friars, which Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, honoured
with her presence, on occasion of his nuptials

RICHARD BURBAGE, FROM THE ORIGINAL PORTRAIT IN' Dl'LWICII COLLEGE (,see fa«e 201).

" They that kept themselves close to the walls,
or remained by the windows, or held by the rafters,
or setded themselves by the stayres, or were driven
away by fear and suspition, sauved themselves
without further hurt ; but such as seemed more
devoute, and thronged neere the preacher, perished
in a moment with himselfe and other priests and
Jesuites ; and this was the summe of that unhappy
disaster."

la earlier days Blackfriars had been a locality
much inhabited by fashionable people, especially
about the time of Queen Elizabeth. Pennant
quotes from the Sytincy Papers a curious nrrnnnt

with the daughter and heiress of John, Lord
Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The
queen was met at the water-side by the bride,
and carried to her house in a hxtka by six
knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped
in the same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham,
where there was 'a memorable maske of eight
ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their
attire is this : each hath a skirt of cloth of silver,
a manteh of coruscian taffete, cast under the
arme, and their haire loose about their shoulders,
curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton
leade. These eight ladys maskers choose eight

El.icVfriars.l

OLD BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE.

205

ladies more to tlawnce the measures. Mrs. Fitton
went to the queen and woed her dawnce. Her
majesty (the love of Esse.\ rankling in her heart)
asked what she was? "Affection," she said.
" Affection r said the queen ; " affection is false ;
vet her majestic rose up and dawnced.' At this

Sunday, November ly, 1769. It was built from
the design of Robert Mylnc, a clever young
Scotch engineer, whose family had been master
masons to the kings of Scotland for five hundred
years. Mylne had just returned from a pro-
fessional tour in Italy, where he had followed in

• %A m i^^)

. -Wl ~ ' — ^

LAYING THE FOU.ND.VrlON-STGNE OF BLACKI- ul.VRS BRIDGE, 1760, FRO^f A CONTEMPORARY PRINT (j<V /ajV 206).

time the queen was sixty. Surely, as Mr. Walpole
observed, it was at that period as natural for her
as to be in love ! I must not forget that in her
passage from the bride's to Lord Cobham's she
went through the house of Dr. Puddin, and was
presented by the doctor with a fan."

Old Blackfriars Bridge, pulled down a few years
since, was begun in 1760, and first opened on
18

the footsteps of Vitruvius, and gained the first
prize at the Academy of St. Luke. He arrived
in London friendless and imknown, and at once
entered into competition with twenty other archi-
tects for the new bridge. Among these rivals
was Smeaton, the great engineer {a. protei;!- of Lord
Bute's), and Dr. Johnson's friend, Gwynn, well
known for his admirable work on London improve-

206

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Blackfriars.

merits. The committee were, however, just enough
to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown
Scotchman, and he carried otT the prize. Directly
it was known that Mylne's arclies were to be
elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject
began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch.
Among the champions Dr. Johnson was. if not the
most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three
letters to the printer of the Gazetteer, praising
Gwynn's plans and denouncing the Scotch con-
queror. Gwynn had "coached " the learned Doctor
in a very unsatisfactory way. In his early days the
giant of Bolt Court had been accustomed to get
up subjects rapidly, but the science of architecture
was not so easily digested. The Doctor contended
" that the first excellence of a bridge built for
commerce over a large river is strength." So far
so good ; but he then went on to try and show
that the pointed arch is necessarily weak, and here
he himself broke down. He allowed that there
was an elliptical bridge at Florence, but he said
carts were not allowed to go over it, which proved
its fragility. He also condemned a proposed cast-
iron parapet, in imitation of one at Rome, as too
poor and trifling for a great design. He allowed
that a certain arch of Perault's was elliptical, but
then he contended that it had to be held together
by iron clamps. He allowed that Mr. Mylne had
gained the prize at Rome, but the competitors, the
arrogant despot of London clubs asserted, were
only boys ; and, moreover, architecture had sunk
so low, at Rome, that even the Pantheon had been
deformed by petty decorations. In his third letter
the Doctor grew more scientific, a.-.d even more
confused. He was very angry with Mr. Mylne's
friends for asserting that though a semi-ellipse
might be weaker than a semicircle, it had quite
strength enough to support a bridge. " I again
venture to declare," he wrote — " I again venture to
declare, in defiance of all this contemptuous supe-
riority" (how arrogant men hate other people's
arrogance !), " that a straight line will bear no weight.
Not even the science of Vasari will make that form
strong which the laws of nature have condemned
to weakness. By the position that a straight line
will bear nothing is meant that it receives no
strength from straightness ; for that many bodies
laid in straight lines will support weight by the
cohesion of their parts, every one has found who
has seen dishes on a shelf, or a thief upon the
gallows. It is not denied that stones may be so
crushed together by enormous pressure on each
side, that a heavy mass may be safely laid
upon them ; but the strength must be derived
merely from the lateral resistance, and the line so

loaded will be itself part of the load. The semi-
elliptical arch has one recommendation yet un-
examined. We are told that it is difiicult of
execution.'

In the face of this noisy newspaper thunder,
Mylne went on, and produced one of the most
beautiful bridges in England for ;^i52, 640 3s. lod.,
actually ^^'i-dj, less than the original estimate — an
admirable example for all architects, present and to
come. The bridge, which had eight arches, and was
995 yards from wharf to wharf, was erected in ten
years and three quarters. Mylne received ;^5oo
a year and ten per cent, on the expenditure. His
claims, however, were disputed, and not allowed
by the grateful City till 1776. The bridge-tolls
were bought -by Government in 1785, and the
passage then became free. It was afterwards
lowered, and the open parapet, condemned by
Johnson, removed. It was supposed that Mylne's
mode of centreing was a secret, but in contempt
of all quackery he deposited exact models of his
system in the British Museum. He was afterwards
made surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in i S 1 1
was interred near the tomb of Wren. He was a
despot amongst his workmen, and ruled them with
a rod of iron. However, the foundations of this
bridge were never safely built, and latterly the
piers began visibly to subside. The semi-circular
arches would have been far stronger.

The foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge was
laid by Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor, on the
31st of October, 1760. Horace Walpole, always
Whiggish, describing the event, says : — " The Lord
Mayor laid the first stone of the new bridge yester-
day. There is an inscription on it in honour of
Mr. Pitt, which has a very Roman air, though very
unclassically expressed. They talk of the conta-
gion of his public spirit ; I believe they had not got
rid of their panic about mad dogs." Several gold,
silver, and copper coins of the reign of George II.
(just dead) were placed under the stone, with a
silver medal presented to Mr. Mylne by the
Academy of St. Luke's, and upon two plates of tin
— Bonnel Thornton said they should have been
lead — was engraved a very shaky Latin inscrip-
tion, thus rendered into English : —

On the last day of October, in the year 1760,

And in the beginning of the most auspicious reign of

George the Third,

Sir Thomas Chittv, Knight, Lord Mayor,

laid the first stone of this Bridge,

undertaken by the Commop Council of London

(amidst tlie rage of an extensive war)

for the public accommodation

and ornament of tlie City ;

Robert .Mylne being the .architect.

Dlaclifriars.]

MYLNE, THE ARCHITECT.

207

Anil that there might reinani to posterity

.1 monument of this city's alTection to the man

who, In- the strength of his genius,

the steadiness of his minil,

and a certain kind of happy contagion of his

Probity and Spirit

(under tlie Dfvine favour

and fortunate auspices of Gi;orgi; the Second)

recovered, augmented, and secured

the liritish Empire

in Asia, Africa, and America,

and restored the ancient reputation

and influence of his country

amongst the nations of Europe ;

the citizens of London have unanimously voted this

Bridge to be inscribed with the name of

William Pitt.

On this pretentious and unlticky inscription, that
reckless wit, Bonnel Thornton, instantly wrote a
squib, under the obvious pseudonym of the " Rev.
Busby Birch." In these critical and political
remarks (which he entitled " City Latin ") the gay
scoffer professed in his preface to prove "almost
every word and every letter to be erroneous and
contrary to the practice of both ancients and
moderns in this kind of writing," and appended a
plan or pattern for a new inscription. The clever
little lampoon soon ran to three editions. The
ordinary of Newgate, my lord's chaplain, or the
masters of Merchant Taylors', Paul's, or Charter-
house schools, who produced the wonderful pon-
tine inscription, must have winced under the blows
of this jester's bladderful of peas. Thornton
laughed most at the awkward phrase implying that
Mr. Pitt had caught the happy contagion of his own
probity and spirit. He said that " Gulielmi Pitt ''
should have been "Gulielmi Fossre." Lastly, he
proposed, for a more curt and suitable inscription,
the simple words —

" GuiL. Foss.E,

Patri Patrice D.D.D. {i.e., Datur, Dicatiir, Dedicatur)."

Party feeling, as usual at those times, was rife.
Mylne was a friend of Paterson, the City solicitor,
an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord Bute, who no
doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being
a Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took jileasure in
opposing him, and for the same reason Churchill,
in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane gho.st, after
ridiculing Johnson's credulity, goes out of his way
to sneer at Mylne : —

" Wh.at nfth.it bridge which, void of sense,
l!ut well supplied with impudence.
Englishmen, knowing not the duild.
Thought they might have the claim to build :
Till Paterson, as white as milk.
As smooth as oil, as soft as silk.
In solemn manner had decreed
That, on the other side the Tweed,

.•\rt, born and lued and fully grown.
Was with one Mylne, a man unknown '!
Hut grace, preferment, and renown
Deserving, just arrived in town ;
One .Mylne, an artist, perfect quite,
Both in his own and country's right.
As fit to make a bridge as he,
\Vilh glorious Patavinity,
To liuild inscriptions, worthy found
To lie for ever underground."

In 1766 it was opened for foot passengers, the
completed portion being connected with the shore
by a temporary wooden structure ; two years later
it was made passable for horses, and in 1769 it was
fully opened. An unpopular toll of one halfpenny
on week-days for every person, and of one penny
on Sundays, was exacted. The result of this was
that while the Gordon Riots were raging, in 1780,
the too zealous Protestants, forgetting for a time
the poor tormented Papists, attacked and burned
down the toll-gates, stole the money, and destroyed
all the account-books. Several rascals' lives were
lost, and one rioter, being struck with a bullet, ran
howling for thirty or forty yards, and then drojiped
down dead. Nevertheless, the iniquitous toll
continued until 1785, when it was redeemed by
Government.

The bridge, according to the order of Common
Council, was first named Pitt Bridge, and the
adjacent streets (in honour of the great earl)
Chatham Place, AVilliam Street, and Earl Street.
But the first name of the bridge soon dropped oft",
and the monastic locality asserted its prior right.
This is the more remarkable (as Mr. Timbs judi-
ciously observes), because with another Tliames
bridge the reverse change took place. A\'atcrloo
Bridge was first called Strand Bridge, but it was
soon dedicated by the people to the memory of
the most famous of British victories.

The 77152,640 that the bridge cost does not
include the ^5.830 spent in altering and filling up
the Fleet Ditch, or the £2,16-] the cost of the tem-
porary wooden bridge. The piers, of bad Portland
stone, were decorated by soine columns of unequal
sizes, and the line of parapet was low and curved.
The approaches to the bridge were also designed
by Mylne, who built himself a house at the corner
of Little Bridge Street. The walls of the rooms
were adorned with classical medallions, and on the
exterior was the date (1780), with Mylne's crest,
and the initials " R. M.'' Dr. Johnson, became a
friend of Mvlne's, and dined with hiin at this
residence at least on one occasion. The house
afterwards became the " ^'ork Hotel,'" and, .accord-
ing to Mr. Timbs, was t.aken down in 1863.

The Bridge refwirs (between 1833 and 1840). by

208

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tninclrrinrs.

Walker and Burgess, engineers, at an expense of
^74,000, produced a loss to the contractors ; and
the removal of the cornice and: balustrade spoiled
the bridge, from whence old Richard \\'ilson, the
landscape-painter, used to come and .'admire the
grand view of St. Paul's. The bridge seemed to be
as unlucky as if it had incurred Dr. Johnson's curse.
In 1S43 the Chamberlain reported to the Common
Council that the sum of ;^ioo,96o had been
already e.\pended in repairing Mylne's faulty work,
besides the ;£Sioo spent in procuring a local Act
(4 WiOiam IV.). According to a subsequent report,
_;^io,2oo had been spent in si.x years in repairing
one arch alone. From 1851 to 1859 the expendi-
ture had been at the rate of ^600 a year. Boswell,
indeed, with all his zealous partiality for the Scotch
architect, had allowed that the best Portland stone
belonged to Government quarries, and from this
Parliamentary interest had debarred Mylne.

The tardy Common Council was at last forced,
in common decency, to build a new bridge. The
architect began by building a temporary structure
of great strength. It consisted of two storeys —
the lower for carriages, the upper for- pedestrians —
and stretching 990 feet from wharf to wharf The
lower piles were driven ten feet into the bed of the
river, and braced with horizontal and diagonal
bracings. The demolition began with vigour in
1864. In four months only, the navigators' brawny
arms had removed twenty thousand tons of earth,
stone, and rubble above the turning of the arches,
and the pulling down those enemies of Dr. Johnson
commenced by the removal of the key-stone of the
second arch on the Surrey side. The masonry of
the arches proved to be rather thinner than it
appeared to be, and was stuffed with river ballast,
mixed with bones and small old-fashioned pipes.
The bridge had taken nearly ten years to build ; it
was entirely demolished in less than a year, and
rebuilt in two. In some cases the work of removal
and re-construction went on harmoniously and
simultaneously side by side. Ingenious steam
cranes travelled upon rails laid on the upper
scaffold beams, and lifted the blocks of stone with
playful ease and speed. In December, 1864, the
men worked in the evenings, by the aid of naphtha
lamps.

According to a report printed in the Times,
Blackfriars Bridge had suffered from the removal of
London Bridge, which served as a mill-dam, to
restrain the speed and scour of the river.

Twelve designs had been sent in at the competi-
tion, and, singularly enough, among the competitors
was a Mr. Mylne, grandson of Johnson's foe. The
design of Mr. Page was first selected, as the hand-

somest and cheapest. ' It consisted of only three
arches. Ultimately Mr. Joseph Cubitt won the
prize. Cubitt's bridge has five arches, the centre
one eighty-nine feet span ; the style, Venetian
Gothic ; the cost, ^^265, 000. The piers are grey,
the columns red, granite ; the bases and capitals are
of carved Portland stone ; the bases, balustrades,
and roads of somewhat over-ornamented iron.

The Quarterly Reviciv, of April, 1872, contains
the following bitter criticisms of the new double
bridge : — " With Blackfriars Bridge," says the writer,
" we find the public thoroughly well pleased, though
the design is really a wonder of depravity. Polished
granite columns of amazing thickness, with carved
capitals of stupendous weight, all made to give
shop-room for an apple-woinan, or a convenient
platform for a suicide. The parapet is a fiddle-
faddle of pretty cast-iron arcading, out of scale
with the columns, incongruous with the capitals,
and quite unsuited for a work that should be simply
grand in its usefulness ; and at each corner of the
bridge is a huge block of masonry, apropos of
nothing, a well-known evidence of desperate im-
becility."

Bridge Street is too new for many traditions. Its
chief hero is that active-minded and somewhat
shallow speculator. Sir Richard Phillips, the book-
seller and projector. An interesting memoir by
Mr. Timbs, his intimate friend, furnishes us with
many curious facts, and shows how the publisher
of Bridge Street impinged on many of the most
illustrious of his contemporaries, and how in a way
he pushed forward the good work which afterwards-
owed so much to Mr. Charles Knight. Phillips, born
in London in 1767, was educated in Soho Square,
and afterwards at Chiswick, where he remembered
often seeing Hogarth's widow and Dr. Griffith, of
the ATonthly Reviao (Goldsmith's tyrant), attending
church. He was brought up to be a brewer, but
in 1788 settled as a schoolmaster, first at Chester
and afterwards at Leicester. At Leicester he opened
a bookseller's shop, started a newspaper (the
Leieester Herald), and established a philosophical
society.- Obnoxious as a Radical, he was at last
entrapped for selling Tom Paine's " Rights of
Man," and was sent to gaol for eighteen months,
where he was visited by Lord Moira, the Duke of
Norfolk, and other advanced men of the day. His
house being burned down, he removed to London,
and projected a Sunday newspaper, but even-
tually Mr. Bell stole the idea and started the
Messenger. In 1795 this restless and energetic
man commenced the Monthly Magazine. Before
this he had already been a hosier, a tutor, and a
speculator in canals. The politico-literary magazine

Black friars.]

PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE.

209

was advertised by circulars sent to eminent men
of the opposition in commercial parcels, to save
the enormous postage of those unregenerate days.
Dr. Aiken, the literary editor, afterwards started a
rival magazine, called the Allicmcttm. The Gentle-
man's Magazine never rose to a circulation above
10,000, which soon sank to 3,000. Phillips's maga-
zine sold about 3,750. With all these multifarious
pursuits, Phillips was an antiquary — purchasing
Wolsey's skull for a shilling, a portion of his stone
coffin, that had been turned into a horse-trough
at the "AVhite Horse" inn, Leicester; and Rufus's
stirrup, from, a descendant of the charcoal-burner
who drove the body of the slain king to Win-
chester.

As a pushing publisher Phillips soon distinguished
himself, for the Liberals came to him, and he had
quite enough sense to discover if a book was good.
He produced many capital volumes of Ana, on the
French system, and memoirs of Foote, Monk, Lewes,
Wilkes, and LadyMary Wortley Montagu. He pub-
. lished Holcroft's " Travels," Godwin's best novels,
and Miss Owenson's (Lady Morgan's) first work,
"The Novice of St. Dominick." In 1807, when he
removed to New Bridge Street, he served the office
of sheriff ; was knighted on presenting an address,
and effected many reforms in the prisons and lock-
up houses. In his useful " Letter to the Livery of
London" he computes the number of writs then
annually issued at 24,000 ; the sheriffs' expenses at
;^2,ooo. He also did his best to repress the
cruelties of the mob to poor wretches in the pillory.
He was a steady friend of Alderman Waithman,
and was with him in the carriage at the. funeral of
Queen Caroline, in 1821, when a bullet from a
soldier's carbine passed through the carriage window
near Hyde Park. In 1809 Phillips had some
reverses, and breaking up his publishing-office in
Bridge Street, devoted himself to the profitable
reform of school-books, publishing them under the
names of Goldsmith, Ma\'or, and Blair.

This active-minded man was the first to assert
that Dr. Wilmot wrote " Junius," and to start the
celebrated scand.il about George III. and the
young Quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot, daughter of a
linendraper, at the corner of Market Street, St.
James's. She afterwards, it is said, married a grocer,
named Axford, on Ludgate Hill, was then carried
oft" by the prince, and bore him three sons, who
in time became generals. ■■• The story is perhaps
traceable to Dr. Wilmot, whose daughter married
the Duke of Cumberland. Phillips found time to
attack the Newtonian theory of gravitation, to
advocate a memorial to Shakespeare, to compile a
book containing a million of facts, to write on

Divine philosophy, and to suggest (as he asserted) to

Mr. Brougham, in 1S25, the first idea of the .Society
for Useful Knowledge. Almost ruined by the
foilures during the panic in 1826, he retired to
Brighton, and there pushed forward his books and
his interrogative system of education. Sir Ricliard's
greatest mistakes, he used to say, had been the
rejection of Byron's early poems, of " Waverley,"
of Bloomfield's " Fanner's Boy," and O'Meara's
"Napoleon in Exile." He always stoutly main-
tained his claim to the suggestion of the '"Percy
Anecdotes." Phillips died in 1840. Superficial
as he was, and commercial as were his literary
aims, we nevertheless cannot refuse him the praise
awarded in his epitaph : — " He advocated civil
liberty, general benevolence, ascendancy of justice,
and the improvement of the human race."

The old monastic ground of the Black Friars
seems to have been beloved by painters, for, as we
have seen, Vandyke lived luxuriously here, and was
frequently visited by Charles I. and his Court.
Cornelius Jansen, the great portrait-painter of
James's Court, arranged his black draperies and
ground his fine carnations in the same locality ;
and at the same time Isaac Oliver, the exquisite
Court miniature-painter, dwelt in the same ])lace.
It was to him Lady Ayres, to the rage of her
jealous husband, came for a portrait of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, an imprudence that \cry
nearly led to the assassination of the poet-lord, who
believed himself so specially favoured of Heaven.

The king's printing-office for proclamations, &c.,
used to be in Printing-house Square, but was re-
moved in 1770 ; and we must not forget that where
a Norman fortress once rose to oppress the weak,
to guard the spoils of robbers, and to protect the
oppressor, the Times printing-office now stands, to
diffuse its ceaseless floods of. knowledge, to spread
its resistless regis over the poor and the. oppressed,
and ever to use its vast power to extend liberty
and crush injustice, whatever shape the Proteus
assumes, whether it sits u[)on a throne or lurks in
a swindler's office.

This great paper was started in the year 1785,
by Mr. John ^Valter, under the name of tlie Daily
Universal Hegister. It was first called the Times,
January i, 17SS, when the following prospectus
appeared : —

'' The Universal Register has been a name as
injurious to the logographic news])apcr as Tristram
was to Mr. Shandy's son ; but old Shandy forgot
he might have rectified by confirmation the mistake
of the jjarson at baptism, ami with the touch
of a bishop changed Tristram into Trismegistus.
The Universal Register, from the day of its first

2IO

OLD AND NEW LONDuN.

( Biuckfriurs.

him with the Court and City Register, the Old
Annual Register, or the New Annual Register, or,
if the house be within the purUeus of Covent

appearance to the day of its confirmation, had,

hke Tristram, sutifcred from innumerable casualties,

both laughable and serious, arising from its name,

which in its introduction was immediately curtailed j Garden or the hundreds of Drury, slips into the

of its fair proportions by all who called for it, the j politician's hand Harris's Register of Ladies.

word ' l^niversal ' beinsr universally omitted, and ! " For these and other reasons the printer of the

Z^riM^ZMlI^^

PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE AND THE " TIMES " OFFICE (sec page 209).

the word ' Register ' only retained. ' Boy, bring
me the Register.' The waiter answers, ' Sir, we
have no library ; but you may see it in the " New
Exchange" coffee-house.' ' Then I will see it there,'
answers the disappointed politician ; and he goes
to the 'New Exchange' coffee-house, and calls for
the Register; upon which the waiter tells him he
cannot have it, as he is not a subscriber, or presents

Universal Register has added to its original name
that of the Times, which, being a monosyllable,
bids defiance to the corruptions and mutilation;, of
the language.

" The Times ! what a monstrous name ! Granted
— for the Times is a many-headed monster, that
speaks with a hundred tongues, and displays a
thousand characters ; and in the course of its

THE "TIMES" PROSPECTUS.

211

212

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[ ijlackfria-rs.

transitions in life, assumes innumerable shapes and
humours.

" The critical reader will observe, we personify
our new name ; but as we give it no distinction of
sex, and though it will be active in its vocation,
yet we apply to it the neuter gender.

" The Times, being formed of and possessing
qualities of opposite and heterogeneous natures,
cannot be classed either in the animal or vegetable
genus, but, like the polypus, is doubtful ; and in
the discussion, description, and illustration, will
employ the pens of the most celebrated literati.

" The heads of the Times, as has already been
said, are many ; these will, however, not always
appear at the same time, but casually, as public or
private aftairs may call them forth.

" The principal or leading heads are — the literaiy,
political, commercial, philosophical, critical, thea-
trical, fashionable, humorous, witty, &c., each of
which is supplied with a competent share of
intellect for the pursuit of their several functions
an endowment which is not in all cases to be found,
even in the heads of the State, the heads of the
Church, the heads of the law, the heads of the
navy, the heads of tlie army, and, though last not
least, the great heads of the universities.

"The political head of the Times — like that of
Janus, the Roman deity — is double-faced. With
one countenance it will smile continually on the
friends of Old England, and with the other will
frown incessantly on her enemies.

" The alteration we have made in our paper is
not without precedents. The World has parted
with half its caput mortittim and a moiety of its
brains ; theZTfra/^/has cutoff oitfe half of its head and
has lost its original humour ; the Post, it is true,
retains its whole head and its old features ; and as
to the other public prints, they appear as having
neither heads nor tails.

"On the Parliamentary head, every communica-
tion that ability and industry can produce may be
expected. To tliis great national object the Times
will be most sedulously attentive, most accurately
correct, and strictly impartial in its reports."

Both the Times and its predecessor were printed
" logographically," IMr. Walter having obtained a
patent for his peculiar system. The plan consisted
in abridging the compositors' labour by casting
all the more frequently recurring words in metal.
It was, in fact, a system of^ partial stereotyping.
The English language, said the sanguine inventor,
contained above 90,000 words. This number
Walter had reduced to about 5,000. The pro-
jector was assailed by the wits, who declared that
his orders to the type-founders ran, — " Send me a

hundredweight, in separate pounds, of heat, eoUl,
-luct, dry, murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious
outrage, fearful calamity, and alarming explosion."
But nothing could daunt or stop Walter. One
eccentricity of the Daily Hegister was that on red-
letter days the tide was printed in red ink, and
the character of the day stated under tlie date-line.
For instance, on Friday, August 11, 17 86, there
is a ;ed heading, and underneath the words —

" Princess of Brunswick born.
K.'Jiday at the Bank, E.\cise offices, and the Exchequer."

The first number of the Times is not so large as
the Morning Herald or Morning Chronicle of the
same date, but larger than the London Chronicle,
and of the saine size as the Public Advertiser.
(Knight Hunt.)

The first Walter lived in rough times, and suffered
from the political storms that then prevailed. He
was several times imprisoned for articles against
great people, and it has been asserted that he
stood in the pillory in 1790 for a libel against the
Duke of York. This is not, however, true ; but it
is a fact that he was sentenced to such a punish-
ment, and remained sixteen months in Newgate,
till released at the intercession of the Prince of
Wales. The first Walter died in 1 81 2. The second
Mr. Walter, who came to the helm in 1803, was
the real founder of the future greatness of the
Times : and he, too, had his rubs. In 1S04 he
offended the Government by denouncing the foolish
Catamaran expedition. For this the Government
meanly deprived his 'family of the printing for the
Customs, and also withdrew their advertisements.
During the war of 1805 the Government stopped
all the foreign papers sent to the Times. Walter,
stopped by no obstacle, at once contri\ed other
means to secure early news, and had the triumph of
announcing the capitulation of Flushing forty-eight
hours before the intelligence had arrived through
any other channel.

There were no reviews of books in the Tunes '
till long after it was started, but it paid great atten-
tion to the drama from its commencement. There
were no leading articles for several y£ars, yet in
the .very first year the Times displays threefold as
many advertisements as its contemporaries. For
many years Mr. ^\■alter, with his usual sagacity
and energ)-, endeavoured to mature some plan for
printing the 7}'wc-.f by steam! As early as 1804 a
compositor named Martyn had invented a machine
for the purpose of superseding the hand-press,
which took hours struggling over the three or four
thousand copies of the Times. The pressmen
threatened destruction to the new machine, and it

Blaclcfririrs.]

THE "TIMES."

213

had to be smuggled piecemeal into the premises,
while Martyn sheltered himself under various dis-
guises to escape the vengeance of the workmen.
On the eve of success, however, Waller's father lost
courage, stopped the supplies, and the jjroject was
for the time abandoned. In 1S14 Walter, however,
returned to the charge. Kcjenig and Barnes put
their machinery in premises adjoining the Times
office, to avoid the violence of the pressmen. At
one time the two inventors are said to have aban-
doned their machinery in despair, but a clerical
friend of Walter examined the difficulty and removed
it. The night came at last when the great experi-
ment was to be made. The unconscious pressmen
were kept waiting in the next office for news from
the Continent. At six o'clock in the morning Mr.
, Walter entered the press-room, with a wet paper in
his hand, and astonished the men by telling them
that the Times had just been printed by steam. If
they attempted violence, he said, there was a force
ready to suppress it ; but if they were peaceable their
wages should be continued until employment was
found for them. He could now print 1,100 sheets
an hour. By-and-by Kcenig's machine proved too
complicated, and Messrs. Applegarth and Cowper
invented a cylindrical one, that printed 8,000 an
hour. .Then came Hoe's process, which is now
said to print at the rate of from 18,000 to 22,000
copies an hour (Grant). The various improvements
in steam-printing have altogether cost the Times,
according to general report, not less than ^So,ooo.
About 181 3 Dr. Stoddart, the brother-in-law
of Hazlitt (afterwards Sir John Stoddart, a judge
in Malta), edited the Times with ability, till his
almost insane hatred of Bonaparte, " the Corsican
fiend," as he called him, led to his secession in
1815 or 1816. Stoddart was the "Doctor Slop"
whom Tom Moore derided in his gay little "\\'hig
lampoons. The next editor was Thomas Barnes,
a better scholar and a far abler man. He had
been a contemporary of Lamb at Christ's Hospital,
and a rival of Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of
London. AVhile a student in the Temple he
wrote the Times a series of political letters in the
manner of " Junius," and was at once placed as a
reporter in the gallery of the House. Under his
editorship Walter secured some of his ablest contri-
butors, including that Captain Stirling, " The Thun-
derer,'' whom Carlyle lias sketched so happily.
Stirling was an Irishman, who had fought with the
Royal troops at "Vinegar Hill, then joined the line,
end afterwards turned gentleman farmer in the Isle
of Bute. He began writing for the Times about
1S15, and, it is said, eventually received ^2,000 a
year as a writer of dashing and effective leaders.

Lord Brougham also, it is- said, wrote occasional
articles. Tom Moore was even olVered ^100 a
month if he would contribute, and Souliiey declined
an offer of ;i^2,ooo a year for editing the Times.
Macaulay in his day wrote many brilliant S(|uibs in
the Times ; amongst them one containing the line:

" ^'o (linors out, finni wliom \vc guanl our spoons,"

and another on tlie subject of Wat Banks's candi-
dateship for Cambridge. Barnes died in 1S41.
Horace Twiss, the biographer of Lord Eldon and
nephew of Mrs. Siddons, also helped the Times
forwaril by his admirable Parliamentary summaries,
the first the Times had attempted. This able man
died suddenly in 1848, while speaking at a meeting
of the Rock Assurance Society at Radley's Hotel,
Bridge Street.

One of the longest wars the Times ever carried
on was that against Alderman Harmer. It was
Harmer's turn, in due order of rotation, to become
Lord Mayor. A strong feeling had arisen against
Harmer because, as the avowed proprietor of
the Weekly Dispateh, he inserted certain letters
of the late Mr. Williams (" Publicola "), which
were said to have had the effect of preventing
Mr. Walter's return for Southwark (see page 59).
The Titm's upon this wrote twelve powerful leaders
against Harmer, which at once decided the ques-
tion. This was a great assertion of power, and
raised the Times in the estimation of all England.
For these twelve articles, originally intended for
letters, the ^\Titer (says Mr. Grant) received ;^2oo.
But in 1841 the extraordinary social influence of
this giant paper was even still more shown. Mr.
O'Reilly, their Paris correspondent, obtained a clue
to a vast scheme of fraud concocting in Paris by a
gang of fourteen accomplished swindlers, who had
already netted ^10,700 of the million for which
they had planned. W. the risk of assassination,
O'Reilly exposed the scheme in the Times, dating
the expose Brussels, in order to throw the swindlers
on the wrong scent.

At a public meeting of merchants, bankers, and
others held in the Egyptian Hall, .Mansion House,
October i, 1841, the Lord Mayor (Thomas Johnson)
in the chair, it was unanimously resolved to thank
the proprietors of the Times for the services they had
rendered in having exposed the most remarkable
and extensively fraudulent conspiracy (the famous
" Bogle " swindle) ever brought to light in the mer-
cantile world, and to record in some substantial
manner the sense of obligation conferred by the
proprietors of the Times on the commercial world.

The proprietors of the Times declining to receive
the ^2,625 subscribed by the London merchants

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Blackfriars.

to recompense them for doing their duty, it was
resolved, in 1842, to set apart the funds for the
endowment of two scholarships, one at Christ's
Hospital, and one at the City of London School.
In both schools a commemorative tablet was put
up, as well as one at the Royal Exchange and the
Times printing-office.

At various periods the Times has had to endure
violent attacks in the House of Comnlons, and
many strenuous efforts to restrain its vast powers.
In 1819 John Payne Collier, one of their Parlia-
mentary reporters, and better known as one of the
greatest of Shakesperian critics, was committed
into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms for a
report in which he had attacked Canning. The
Times, however, had some powerful friends in the
House; and in 1S21 we find Mr. Hume complaining
that the Government advertisements were syste-
matically withheld from the Times. In 183 1
Sir R. H. Inglis comnlained that the Times haj
been guilty of a breach of privilege, in asserting
that there were borough nominees and lackeys in
the House. Sir Charles Wetherell, that titled, in-
comparable old Tory, joined in the attack, which
Burdett chivalrously cantered forward to repel. Sir
Henry Hardinge wanted the paper prosecuted, but
Lord John Russell, Orator Hunt, and O'Connell,
however, moved the previous question, and the
great debate on the Reform Bill then proceeded.
The same year the House of Lords flew at the
great paper. The Earl of Limerick had been called
" an absentee, and a thing with human pretensions."
The Marquis of Londonderry joined in the attack.
The ne.\t day Mr. Lawson, printer of the Times,
was examined and worried by the House ; and
Lord Wynford moved that Mr. Lawson, as printer
of a scandalous libel, should be fined ^100, and
committed to Newgate till the fine be paid. The
next day Mr. Lawson handed in an apology, but
Lord Brougham generously rose and denied the
power of the House to imprison and fine without a
trial by jury. The Tory lords spoke angrily; the
Earl of Limerick called the press a tyrant that
ruled all things, and crushed everything under its
feet ; and the Marquis of Londonderry complained
of the coarse and virulent libels against Queen
Adelaide, for her supposed opposition to Reform.

In 1833 O'Connell attributed dishonest motives
to the London reporter who had suppressed his
speeches, and the reporters in the Times expressed
their resolution not to report any more of his
speeches unless he retracted. O'Connell then
moved in the House that the printer of the Times be
summoned to the bar for printing their resolution,
but Jiis motion was rejected. In 1838 Mr. Lawson

was fined ;^2oo for accusing Sir John Conroy,
treasurer of the household of the Duchess of Kent,
of peculation. In 1S40 an angry member brouglit
a breach of privilege motion against the Times, and
advised every one who was attacked in that paper
to horsewhip the editor.

In January, 1829, the Times came out with a
double sheet, consisting of eight pages, or forty-
eight columns. In 1830 it paid ^^70,000 adver-
tisement duty. In 1800 its sale had been below
that of the Morning Chronicle, Post, Ilcrali/, and
Advertiser.

The Times, according to Mr. Grant, in one day
of 1870, received no less than ^1,500 for adver-
tisements. On June 22, 1862, it produced a
paper containing no less than twenty-four pages, or
144 columns. In 1854 the Times had a circulation
of 51,000 copies; in i860, 60,000. For special
numbers its sale is enormous. The biography of
Prince Albert sold 90,000 copies; the marriage of
the Prince of Wales, 1 1 0,000 copies. The income
of the Ti?nes from advertisements alone has been
calculated at ;^26o,ooo. A writer in a Philadelphia
paper of 1867 estimates the paper consumed weekly
by the Times at seventy tons ; the ink at two tons.
There are employed in the office ten stereotypers,
sixteen firemen and engineers, ninety machine-men,
six men who prei»re the paper for printing, and
seven to transfer the papers to the news-agents.
The new Walter press prints 22,000 to 24,000 im-
pressions an hour, or 12,000 perfect sheets printed
on both sides. It prints from a roll of paper three-
quarters of a mile long, and cuts the sheets and piles
them without help. It is a self-feeder, and requires
only a man and two boys to guide its operations.
A copy of the Times has been known to contain
4,000 advertisements ; and for every daily copy
it is computed that the compositors mass together
not less than 2,500,000 separate types.

The number of persons engaged in daily working
for the Times is put at ne^arly 350.

In the annals of this paper we must not forget
the energj' that, in 1834, established a system of
home expresses, that enabled them to give the
earliest intelligence before any other paper; and at
an expense of ^200 brought a report of Lord
Durham's speech at Glasgow to London at the
then unprecedented rate of fifteen miles an hour ;
nor should we forget their noble disinterestedness
during the railway mania of 1845, when, although
they were receiving more than ;^3,ooo a week for
railway advertisements, they warned the country
unceasingly of the misery and ruin that must in-
evitalily follow. The Times proprietors are known
to pay the highest sums for articles, and to be

Blaclifriars.]

ArOTTTKCARTES' TTAT,],.

uniformly generous in pensioning niL-n who liavc
spent their lives in its service.

The late Mr. Walter, even when M.P. for Berk-
shire and Nottingham, never forgot Printing-house
Square when tlie debate, however late, had closed.
One afternoon, says Mr. Grant, he cam.e to the office
and found the compositors gone to dinner. Just at
that moment a parcel, marked " immediate and im-
portant," arri\'ed. It was news of vast imjiortance.
He at once slipped oft" his coat, and set uj) the
news with his own hands ; a pressman was at his
post, and by the time the men returned a second
edition was actually printed and published. ■ P)Ut
his foresight and energy was most conspicuously
shown in 1S45, when the jealousy of the French
Government had thrown obstacles in the way of the
T///ies' conriers, who brought their Indian despatches
from Marseilles. What were seas and deserts to
A\'alter ? He at once took counsel with Lieutenant
Waghorn, who had opened up the overland route
to India, and proposed to try a new route by
Trieste. The result was that Waghorn reached
London two days before the regular mail — the
usual mail aided by the French Government. The
jMoniiiig Herald was at first forty-eight hours before
the Times, but after that the Times got a fortnight
ahead ; and although the Trieste route was aban-
doned, the Times, eventually, was left alone as a
troublesome and invincible adversar}-.

Apothecaries' Hall, the grave stone and brick
building, in ^\'ater Lane, Blackfriars, was erected in
1670 (Charles II.), as the dispensary and hall of
the Company of Apothecaries, incorporated by a
charter of James I., at the suit of Gideon Delaune,
the king's own apothecary. Drugs in the Middle
Ages were sold by grocers and pepperers, or by
the doctors themselves, who, early in James's reign,
formed one company with the apothecaries ; but
the ill-assorted union lasted only eleven years, for
the apothecaries were then fast becoming doctors
themselves.

Garth, in his " Dispensary," describes, in the
Hogarthian manner, the topographical position of
Apothecaries' Hall : —

' ' Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable stre.ims.
To wash the sooty Naiads in the Thames,
There stands a structure on a rising hill.
Where tyros take their freedom out to kill."

Gradually the apothecaries, refusing to be merely
"the doctors' tools," began to encroach more and
more on the doctors' province, and to prescribe for
and even cure the poor. In 1687 (James II.) open
war broke out. First Dryden, then Pope, fought on
the side of the doctors against the humbler men,
whom they were taught to consider as mere greedy

mechanics and cni[)irics. Dryden first let fly his
mighty shaft : —

" The apothecary trifee is wholiy rjiin.l ;
From flics a random recipe they take.
And many deaths from one prescription make.
Gartli, generous as Ids mu^e, jircscrihes and gives ;
The shopman sells, and liy destruction lives."

Pope followed widi a smaller but keener arrow : —

" So modern 'potliecaries, taught the art
' By doctors' bills to Jilay tire doctor's jiart,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules.
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools."

The origin of the memorable affray between the
College of Physicians and the Company of Apothe-
caries is admirably told by Mr. Jeaffreson, in his
" Book of Doctors." The younger physicians,
impatient at beliolding the increasing prosperity
and influence of the apothecaries, and the older
ones indignant at seeing a class of men they had
despised creeping into th'eir quarters, and craftily
laying hold of a portion of their monopoly, con-
cocted a scheme to reinstate themselves in public
favour. Without a doubt, many of the pliysicians
who countenanced this scheme gave it their support
from purely charitable motives ; but it cannot be
questioned that, as a body, the dispensarians were
only actuated in their humanitarian exertions by a
desire to lower the apothecaries and raise them-
selves in the eyes of the world. In 1687 the
physicians, at a college meeting, voted "that all
members of the college, whether fellows, candi-
dates, or licentiates, should give their advice gratis
to all their sick neighbouring poor, when desired,
within the city of London, or seven miles round."
The poor folk carried their prescriptions to the
apothecaries, to learn that the trade charge for
dispensing them was beyond their means. The
physicians asserted that the demands of the drug-
vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced
to meet the finances of the applicants, to the end
that the undertakings of benevolence might prove
abortive. This was, of course, absurd. Tlie
apothecaries knew their own interests better than
to oppose a system which at least rendered drug-
consuming fashionable with the lower orders.
Perhaps they regarded the poor as their peculiar
property as a field of practice, and felt insulted at
having the same humble people for whom they
had pompously prescribed, and put up boluses at
twopence apiece, now entering their shops with
papers dictating what the twopenny bolus was to
be composed of. But the charge preferred against
them was groundless. Indeed, a numerous body
of the apothecaries expressly offered to sell medi-
cines " to the poor within their respective parishes

2l6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Blackfriars.

at such rates as the committee of physicians should
think reasonable."

But this would not suit the game of the phy-
sicians. " A proposal was started by a committee
of the college that the college should furnish the
medicines of the poor, and perfect alone that

paring and delivering medicines at their intrinsic
value."

Such was the version of the affair given by
the college apologists. The plan was acted upon,
and a dispensary was eventually established (some
nine years after the vote of 1687) at the College

nil. Cul.I.EGE OF PHYSICIANS, WARWICK LANE [see pa[;r ZlTi)

ch.irity which the apothecaries refused to concur
in ; and, after divers methods ineffectuallv tried,
and much time wasted in endeavouring to bring
tlie apothecaries to terms of reason in relation to
*'ie poor, an instrument was subscribed by divers
cnaritably-disposed members of the college, now
in numbers about fifty, wherein they obliged them-
selves to pay ten pounds apiece towards the pre-

of Physicians, Warwick Lane, where medicines
were vended to the poor at cost price. This
measure of the college was impolitic and unjusti-
fiable. It was unjust to that important division of
the trade who were ready to vend the medicines at
rates to be paid by the college authorities, for it
took altogether out of their hands the small amount
of profit which they, as i/arkrs, could have realised

Blacljfriars.]

A MEDICAL CIVIL WAR.

217

on those terms. It was also an eminently unwise
course. The College sank to the level of the
Apothecaries' Hall, becoming an emporium for the
sale of medicines. It was all very well to say that
no profit was made on such sale, the censorious
world would not believe it. The apothecaries and

fees. They therefore joined in the cry against
the dispensary. The profession was split up
into two parties — Dispensarians and Anti-Dispen-
sarians. The apothecaries combined, and agreed
not to recommend the Dispensarians. The Anti-
Dispensarians repaid this ill service by refusing to

OUTER. COURT OK L.\ BELLE bALVAGE IN lS2S, KKUM AN

('ee page 221).

RIGINAL DRAWING IN MR. GARU.NEk's COLLECTION

their friends denied that such was the fact, and
vowed that the benevolent dispensarians were bent
only on underselling and ruining them.

Again, the movement introduced dissensions
within the walls of the college. Many of the first
physicians, with the conservatism of success, did
not care to offend the apothecaries, who were
continually calling them in and paying them
19

meet Dispensarians in consultation. Sir Thomas
Millington, the President of the College, Hans
Sloane, John Woodward, Sir Edmund King, and
Sir Samuel Garth, were amongst the latter. Of
these the last named was the man who rendered
the most efficient service to his party. For a time
Garth's great poem, "The Dispensary," covered
the apothecaries and Anti-Dispensarians with ridi-

2lS

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Blackfriars.

cule. It rapidly passed through numerous editions.
To say that of all the books, pamphlets, and broad-
sheets thrown out by the combatants on both
sides, it is by far the one of the greatest merit,
would be scant justice, when it might almost be
said that it is the only one of them that can now
be read by a gentleman witliout a sense of annoy-
ance and disgust. There is no point of view from
which the medical profession ajjpears in a more
humiliating and contemptible light than that which
the literature of this memorable squabble presents
to the student. Charges of ignorance, dishonesty,
and extortion were preferred on both sides. And
the Dispensarian physicians did not hesitate to
taunt their brethren of the opposite camp with
l)laying corruptly into the hands of the apothecaries
■ — prescribing enormous and unnecessary quantities
of medicine, so that the drug-vendors might make
heavy bills, and, as a consequence, recommend in
all directions such complacent superiors to be
called in. Garth's, unfair and violent though it is,
nowhere offends against decenc\'. As a work of art
it cannot be ranked high, and is now deservedly
forgotten, although it has many good lines and
some felicitous satire. Garth lived to see the
apothecaries gradually emancipate themselves from
the ignominious regulations to which they con-
sented when their vocation was first separated from
the grocery trade. Four years after his death they
obtained legal acknowledgment of their right to
dispense and sell medicines without the prescrip-
tion of a physician; and si.\ years later the law
again decided in their favour with regard to the
physicians' right of examining and condemning
their drugs. In 1721, Mr. Rose, an apothecary,
on being prosecuted by the college for prescribing
as well as compounding medicines, carried the
matter into the House of Lords, and obtained a
favourable decision; and from 1727, in which year
Mr. Goodwin, an apothecary, obtained in a court
of law a considerable sum for an illegal seizure of
his wares (by Drs. Arbuthnot, Bale, and Levit), the
physicians may be said to have discontinued to
exercise their privileges of inspection.

In his elaborate poem Garth cruelly caricatures
the apothecaries of his day : —

" Long has he been of that amphibious fry,
Bold lo prescribe, and busy to apply ;
His shop the gazing; vulgar's eyes employs.
With foreign trinkets and domestic toys.
Here mummies lay, most reverently stale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail ;
Not far from some huge shark's devouring head
The flying-fish their finny pinions spread.
Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung.
And near, a scatv alligator hunf.

In this place drugs in musty heaps decay'd,
In that dried bladders and false teeth were laid.

" An inner room receives the num'rous shoals
Of such as pay to be reiiuted fools ;
CJlobes stand by globes, volumes on volume; lie,
And planetary schemes amuse the eye.
The sage in velvet chair here lolls at ease.
To promise future healtli for present fees ;
Then, as from tripod, solemn shams reveals,
And what the stars know nothing of foretells.
Our manufactures now they merely sell,
And their true value treacherously tell ;
Nay, they discover, too, their spite is such.
That health, than crowns more valued, cost not much ;
Whilst we must steer our conduct by these rules,
To cheat as tradesmen, or to starve as fools."

Before finally leaving Blackfriars, let us gather
up a few reminiscences of the King's and Queen's
printers who here first worked their inky presses.

Queen Anne, by patent in 17 13, constituted
Benjamin Tooke, of Fleet Street, and John Barber
(afterwards Alderman Barber), Queen's printers fur
thirty years. This Barber, a high Tory and sus-
pected Jacobite, was Swift's printer and warm friend.
A remarkable story is told of Barber's dexterity in
his profession. Being threatened with a prosecution
by the House of Lords, for an offensive paragraph
in a pamphlet which he had printed, and being
warned of his danger by Lord Bolingbroke, he
called in all the copies from the publishers, can-
celled the leaf which contained the obnoxious
passage, and returned them to the booksellers with
a new paragraph supplied by Lord Bolingbroke; so
that when the pamjshlet was produced before the
House, and the passage referred to, it was found
unexceptionable. He added greatly to his wealth
by the South Sea Scheme, which he had prudence
enough to secure in time, and purchased an estate
at East Sheen with part of his gain. In principles
he was a Jacobite ; and in his travels to Itah-,
whither he went for the recovery of his health, he
was introduced to the Pretender, which exposed
him to some danger on his return to England ;
for, immediately on his arrival, he was taken into
custody by a King's messenger, but was released
without punishment. After his success in the South
Sea Scheme, he was elected Alderman of Castle
BaynardWard, 1722 ; sherifif, 1730; and, in 1732-3,
Lord Mayor of London.

John Baskett subsequently purchased both shares
of the patent, but his printing-olBces in Blackfriars
(now Printing House Square) were soon after^vards
destroyed by fire. In 1739 George II. granted a
fresh patent to Baskett for sixty years, with the
privilege of supplying Parliament with stationery.
Half this lease Baskett sold to Charles Eyre, who
cvcnttially appnintcd William Str.ihan Iji,; i>rinter.

Blackfriars.]

A NOTEWORTHY MAN AND A NOTEWORTHY PLACK.

219

Strahan soon after brought in Mr. Eyre, and in
1770 erected extensive premises in Printer Street,
New Street Square, between Gough Square and
Fetter Lane, near the present offices of Mr. Spotlis-
woode, one of whose family married Mr. Strahan's
daughter. Strahan died a year after his old friend.
Dr. Johnson, at his house in New Street, leaving
^1,000 to the Stationers' Comiiany, which his
son Andrew augmented with ^2,000 more. This
son died in 183 1, aged eighty-three.

William Strahan, the son of a Scotch Custom-
house officer, had come up to London a poor
j)rinters' boy, and worked his way to wealth and
social distinction. He was associated with Cadell
in the purchase of copyrights, on the death of
Cadell's partner and former master, Andrew Millar,
who died circa 1768. The names of Strahan and
Cadell appeared on the title-pages of the great works
of Gibbon, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Black-
stone. In 1776 Hume wrote to Strahan, "There
will be no books of reputation now to be printed
in London, but through your hands and Mr.
Cadell's." Gibbon's history was a vast success.
The first edition of 1,000 went off in a few days.
This produced ^490, of which Gibbon received
^326 13s. 4d. The great history was finished in
1788, by the publication of the fourth quarto
volume. It appeared on the author's fifty-first
birthday, and the double festival was celebrated
by a dinner at Mr. Cadell's, when complimentary
verses from that wretched poet, Hayley, made the
great man with the button-hole mouth blush or
feign to blush. That was a proud day for Gibbon,
and a proud day for Messrs. Cadell and Strahan.

The first Strahan, Johnson's friend, was M.P.
for Malmesbury and Wootton Bassett (1775-84),
and his taking to a carriage was the subject of a
recorded conversation between Boswell and John-
son, who gloried in his friend's success. It was
Strahan who, with Johnston and Dodsley, pur-
chased, in 1759, for ^100, the first edition of
Johnson's " Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," that
sententious story, which Johnson wrote in a week,
to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral.

Boswell has recorded several conversations be-
tween Dr. Johnson and Strahan. Strahan, at the
doctor's return from the Hebrides, asked him, with
a firm tone of voice, what he thought of his country.
"That it is a very vile country, to be sure, sir,"
returned for answer Dr. Johnson. " Well, sir," re-
plied the other, somewhat mortified, "God made
it." "Certainly he did," answered Dr. Johnson
again; "but we must always remember that be
made it for Scotchmen, and — comparisons are
odious, Mr. Strahan — but God made hell."

Boswell has also a pretty anecdote relating to
one of the doctor's visits to Strahan's printing-
office, which show* the "Great Bear" in a very
amiable light, and the scene altogether is not un-
worthy of the artist's pencil.

" Mr. Strahan," says Boswell, " had taken a poor
boy from the country as an apprentice, upon John-
son's recommendation. Johnson having inquired
after him, said, 'Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas
on account, and I'll give this boy one. Nay, if a
man recommends a boy, and does nothing for hirn,
it is a sad work. Call him down.' I followed him
into the court-yard, behind Mr. Strahan's house,
and there I had a proof of what 1 heard him
profess — that he talked alike to all. 'Some peoi)le
will tell you that they let themselves down to the
capacity of their hearers. I never do that. I speak
uniformly in as intelligible a manner as I can.'
' Well, my boy, how do you go on ?' ' Pretty well,
sir ; but they are afraid I'm not strong enough for
some parts of the business.' Johnson : ' Why, I
shall be sorry for it ; for when you consider with
how little mental power and corporal labour a
printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very de-
sirable occupation for you. Do you hear ? Take
all the pains you can ; and if this does not do,
we must think of some other way of life for you.
There's a guinea.' Here was one of the many
instances of his active benevolence. At the same
time the slow and sonorous solemnity with which,
while he bent himself down, he addressed a little
thick, short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy's
awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some
ludicrous emotions."

In Ireland Yard, on the west side of St. Andrew's
Hill, and in the parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars,
stood the house which Shakespeare bought, in the
year 161 2, and which he bequeathed by will to his
daughter, Susanna Hall. In the deed of conveyance
to the poet, the house is described as " abutting
upon a street leading down to Puddle Wharf, and
now or late in the tenure or occupation of one
William Ireland " (hence, we suppose, Ireland Yard),
" part of which said tenement is erected over a
great gate leading to a capital messuage, which
some time was in the tenure of William Blackwell,
Esq., deceased, and since that in the tenure or
occupation of the Right Honourable Henr)', now
Earl of Northumberland." The original deed of
conveyance is shown in the City of London
Library, at Guildhall, under a h.Tndsome glass case.

The street leading down to Puddle ^\'harf is
called St. Andrew's Hill, from the Church of St.
Andrew's-in-the- Wardrobe. The proper name (says
Cunningham) is Puddle Dock Hill.

220

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Ludgate Hill.

CHAPTER XIX.
LUDGATE HILL.

An I'gly Bridge and " Vc EcUe Savage "—.K Radical Publislier— The Principal Gate of London— From a Fortress to a Prison—" Remember the
Poor Prisoners "- Relics of Early Times— St. Martin's, Ludgate— The London Coftce House— Celebrated Goldsmiths on Ludgate Hill-
Mrs. Rnndell's Cookery Book— Stationers' Hall— Old Burgaver.ny House and its History— Early Days of the Stationers' Company— The
Almanacks— An Awkward Misprint The Hall and its Decorations— The Sir. Cecilia Festivals— Dryden's "St. Cecilia's Day" and
" -•Mc.vander's Feast "—Handel's Setting of them— A Modest Poet— Funeral Feasts and Political Banquets— The Company's Plate— Their
Cliarities— The Pictures at Stationers' Hall— The Company's Arms— Famous Masters.

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely
the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct —
that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of
Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of
a WTetch in a torture-chamber. Let us hope that
a time will come when all designs for City improve-
ments will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and
win the approval of a committee of taste. The
useful and the beautiful must not for ever be
divorced. The railway bridge lies flat across the
street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is
a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely
spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings
in London. The five girders of wrought iron cross
the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the
span is si.xty feet, in order to allow of future
enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work,
decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions,
and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination
that only the unsettled and imitative art of the
ruthless nineteenth century could have put together.
Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the
Pharaohs did with granite ! and observe what we
Englishmen of the present day do with iron.
Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and
barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did
with colour in the courts of the Alhambral A
viaduct was necessary, we allow, but such a viaduct
even the architect of the National Gallery would
have shuddered at. The difliculties, we however
allow, were great. The London, Chatham, and
Dover, eager for dividends, was bent on wedding
the Metropolitan Railway near Smithfield; but how
could the hands of the affianced couple he joined ?
If there was no viaduct, there must be a tunnel.
Now, the bank of the river being a very short dis-
tance from Smithfield, a very steep and -dangerous
gradient would have been required to eflect the
junction. Moreover, had the line been carried
under Ludgate Hill, there must have been a slight
detour to ease the ascent, the cost of which detour
would have been enormous. The tunnel proposed
would have involved the destruction of a few trifles
— such, for instance, as Apothecaries' Hall, the
churchyard adjoining, the T/z/as printing office —

besides doing injury to the foundations of St.
Martin's Church, the Old Bailey Sessions House,
and Newgate. Moreover, no station would have
been possible between the Thames and Smithfield.
The puzzled inhabitants, therefore, ended in despair
by giving evidence in favour of the viaduct. The
stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron
nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian
hideousness.

The enormous sum of upwards of ^10,000 was
awarded as the Metropolitan Board's quota for
removing the hoarding, for widening the pavement
a few feet under the railway bridge over Ludgate
Hill, and for rounding oft" the corner.

An incredible quantity of ink has been shed
about the origin of the sign of the " Belle Sauvage "
inn, and even now the controversy is scarcely settled.
Mr. Riley records that in 1380 (Richard II.) a
certain ^\llliam Lawton was sentenced to an uncom-
fortable hour in the pillory for trying to obtain,
by means of a forged letter, twenty shillings from
AVilliam Savage, Elect Street, in the parish of St.
Bridget. This at least shows that Savage was
the name of a citizen of the locality. In 1453
(Henry 'VI.) a clause roll quoted by Mr. Lysons
notices the bequest of John French to his mother,
Joan French, widow, of " Savage's Inn," otherwise
called the " Bell in the Hoop," in the parish of
St. Bride's. Stow (Elizabeth) mentions a Mrs.
Savage as having given the inn to the Cutlers' Com-
pany, which, however, the books of that company
disprove. This, anyhow, is certain, that in 1568
(Elizabeth) a John Craythorne gave the reversion
of the " Belle Sauvage ' to the Cutlers' Company,
on condition that two exhibitions to the uni\'ersity
and certain sums to poor prisoners be paid by them
out of the estate. A portrait of Craythorne's wfe
still hangs in Cutler's Hall. In 1584 the inn was
described as "Ye Belle Savage." In 1648 and
1672 the landlords' tokens exhibited (says Mr.
Noble) an Indian woman holding a bow and
arrow. The sign in Queen Anne's time was a
savage man standing by a bell The question,
therefore, is, whether the name of the inn was
originally derived from Isabel (Bel) Savage, the land-

Ludgale Hill.]

THE "BF.I.LE SAUVAGE"— A RADICAL PUBLISHER.

2 21

lady, or the .sign of the bell ami savage; or whether
it was, as the Spectator cleverly suggests, from La
Belle Sauvage, " the beautiful savage," which is a
derivation very generally received. There is an old
French romance formerly po])ular in this country,
the heroine of which was known as La Belle
Sauvage ; and it is possible that Mrs. Isabel Savage,
the ancient landlady, might have become in time
confused widi the heroine of the old romance.

In the ante-Shakespearean days our early actors
performed in inn-yards, the court-yard representing
the pit, the upper and lower galleries the boxes
and gallery of the modern theatre. The " Belle
Sauvage," says Mr. Collier, was a favourite place
for these performances. There was also a school of
defence, or fencing school, here in Queen Eliza-
beth's time ; so many a hot Tybalt and fiery
Mercutio have here crossed rapiers, and many a silk
button has been reft from gay doublets by the
quick passadoes of the young swordsmen who ruffled
it in the Strand. This quondam inn was also the
place where Banks, the showman (so often men-
tioned by Nash and others in Elizabethan pamphlets
and lampoons), exhibited his wonderful trained
horse " Marocco," the animal which once ascended
the tower of St. Paul's, and who on another occa-
sion, at hiij.TOaster's bidding, delighted the mob by
selecting Tarletdh, the low comedian, as the greatest
fool present. Banks eventually took his horse, which
was shod with silver, to Rome, and the priests,
frightened at the circus tricks, burnt both " Marocco"
and his, master for witchcraft. At No. 1 1 in this
yard — now such a little world of industry, although
it no longer rings with the stage-coach horn — lived
in his obscurer days that great carver in wood,
Grinling Gibbons, whose genius Evelyn first brought
under the notice of Charles II. Horace Walpole
says that, as a sort of advertisement. Gibbons carved
an exquisite pot of flowers in wood, which stood
on his window-sill, and shook surprisingly with the
motion of the coaches that passed beneath. No
man (says Walpole) before Gibbons had " ever given
to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, or
linked together the various productions of the
elements widi a free disorder natural to each
species." His chef d'xuvre of skill was an imitation
point-lace cravat, which he carved at Chatsworth for
the Duke of Devonshire. Petworth is also gar-
landed with Gibbons' fruit, flowers, and dead game.

Belle Sauvage Yard no longer re-echoes with the
guard's rejoicing horn, and the old coaching in-
terest is now only represented by a railway parcel
oflice huddled up in the left-hand corner. The old
galleries are gone over which pretty chambermaids
leant and waved their dusters in farewell greeting

to the handsome guards or smart coachmen. In-
dustries of a very different character have n6w
turned the old yard into a busy hive. It is not for
us to dilate uiron the firm whose operations, are
carried on here, hut it may interest the reader to
know that .the very sheet he is now perusing was
printed on the site of the old coaching inn, and
published very near the old tap-room of La Belle
Sauvage ; for where coach-wheels once rolled and
clattered, only jirinting-press wheels now revolve,

The old inn-yard is now very much altered jij
plan from what it was in former days. Originally it
consisted of two courts. Into the outer one of these
the present arcliway from Ludgate Hill led. It at
one period certainly had contained jirivate houses,
in one of which Grinling Gibbons had lived, TJj^
inn stood round an inner court, entered by a
second archway which stood about half-way up the
present yard. Over the archway facing the outer
court was the sign of "The Bell," and all rouixl
the interior ran those covered galleries, so pro-
minent a feature in old London inns.

Near the " Belle Sauvage " resided that proud
cobbler mentioned by Steele, who has recorded his
eccentricities. This man had bought a wooden
figure of a beau of the period, who stood before him
in a bending position, and humbly presented him
with his awl, wax, bristles, or whatever else his
tyrannical master chose to place in his hand.

To No. 45 (south side), Ludgate Hill, that
strange, independent man. Lamb's friend, William
Hone, the Radical publisher, came from Ship Court,
Old Bailey, where he had published those blas-
phemous " Parodies," for which he was three times
tried and acquitted, to the vexation of Lord F.llen-
borough. Here, having sown his seditious wild oats
and broken free from the lawyers. Hone continued
his occasional clever political satires, sometimes
suggested by bitter Hazlitt and illustrated by
George Cruikshank's inexhaustible fancy. Here
Hone devised those delightful miscellanies, the
" Every-Day Book" and " Year Book," into which
Lamb and many young poets threw all their humour
and power. The books were commercially not
very successful, but they have delighted generations,
and will delight generations to come. Mr. Timbs,
who saw much of Hone, describes him as sitting
in a second-floor back room, surrounded, by rare
books and black-letter volumes. His conversion
from materialism to Christianity was apparently
sudden, though the jirocess of change had no
doubt long been maturing. The stor)' of his con-
version is thus related by Mr. Timbs : — " Hone
was once called to a house, in a certain street in
a part of the world of London entirely unknown

222

OLD AND NFAV LONDON.

ILudgale Hill.

f.'"f'rfif'l'f''?If'l'f r ^

Ipiorjiiiifi

w
J

<
(J

p
<

1^
o

>
<:

w
.-;
►J
w

P
O

o
«

W
X

Ludgate Hill.]

THE PRINCIPAL GATE OF LONDON.

223

to him. As he walked he reflected on the entirely
unknown region. He arrived at the house, and was
shown into a room to wait. All at once, on looking
round, to his astonishment and almost horror,
every object he saw seemed familiar to him. He
said to himself, ' \^'hat is this ? I was never here
before, and yet I have seen all this before, and as a

the knot in the particular place was a mere coinci-
dence. But, considering that Hone was a self-
educated man, and, like many sceptics, was
incredulous only with regard to Christianity, and
even believed he once saw an ap[)arition in Ludgatj
Hill, who can be surprised?

At No. 7', opposite Hone's, "The Percy Ar..;-

THE MUTIL.VTEI) sr.VrllES FROM LUI) GATE, I "98 (see faj^e 226).

proof I have I now remember a very peculiar knot
behind tlie shutters.' He opened the shutters, and
found the very knot. ' Now, then,' he thought,
' here is something I cannot explain on any prin-
ciple — there must be some power beyond matter.'"
The argument that so happily convinced Hone does
not seem to us in itself as very convincing. Hone's
recognition of the room was but some confused
Jiemory of an analogous place. Knots are not
uncommon in deal shutters, and the discovery of i

dotes," that well-chosen and fortunate selection of
every sort of story, were first published.

Lud Gate, which Stow in his " Survey " designates
the si.xth and principal gate of London, taken
down in 1760 at the solicitation of the chief
inhabitants of Farringdon Without and Farring-
don Within, stood between the present London
Tavern and the church of St. Martin. According
to old Geoffry of l^Ionmouth's fabulous history of
England, this entrance to London was first built

2 24

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Ludgate HilL

by King Lud, a iJritish monarch, sixtysix years
before Christ. Our later antiquaries, ruthless
as to legends, however romantic, consider its
original name to have been the Flood or Fleet
Gate, which is far more feasible. Lud Gate was
either repaired or rebuilt in the year 12 15, when
the armed barons, under Robert Fitzwalter, re-
pulsed at Northampton, were welcomed to London,
and there awaited King John's concession of the
iMagna Charta. While in the metropolis these
greedy and fanatical barons spent their time in
spoiling the houses of the rich Jews, and used
the stones in strengthening the walls and gates of
the City. That this tradition is true was proved
in 1586, when (as Stow says) all the gate was
rebuilt. Embedded among other stones was found
one on which was engraved, in Hebrew characters,
the words " This is the ward of Rabbi Moses, the
son of the honourable Rabbi Isaac." This stone
was probably the sign of one of the Jewish houses
pulled down by Fitzwalter, Magnaville, and the
Earl of Gloucester, perhaps for the express pul-pose
of obtaining ready materials for strengthening the
bulwarks of London. In 1260 (Henry III.) Lud
Gate was repaired, and beautified with images of
King Lud and other monarchs. In the reign of
Edward VI. the citizens, zealous against everything
that approached idolatry, smote oft' the heads of
Lud and his family ; but Queen Mary, partial to
all images, afterwards replaced the heads on the
old bodies.

In 1554 King Lud and his sons looked down
on a street seething with angry men, and saw blood
shed upon the hill leading to St. Paul's. Sir Thomas
Wyat, a Kentish gentleman, urged by the Earl of
Devon, and led on by the almost universal dread of
Queen Mary's marriage w-ith the bigoted Philip of
Spain, assembled 1,500 armed men at Rochester
Castle, and, aided by 500 Londoners, who deserted
to him, raised the standard of insurrection. Five
vessels of the fleet joined him, and with seven pieces
of artiller)-, captured from the Duke of Norfolk, he
marched upon London. Soon followed by 15,000
men, eager to save the Princess Elizabeth, ^Vyat
marched through Dartford to Greenwich and
Deptford. With a force now dwindled to 7,000
men, Wyat attacked London Bridge. Driven from
there by the Tower guns, he marched to Kingston,
crossed the river, resolving to beat back the
Queen's troops at Brentford, and attempt to enter
the City by Lud Gate, which some of the Protestant
citizens had offered to throw open to him. The
Queen, with true Tudor courage, refused to leave
St. James's, and in a council of war it was agreed
to throw a strong force into Lud Gate, and, per-

mitting Wyat's advance up Fleet Street, to enclose
him like a wild boar in the toils. At nine on a
February morning, 1554, Wyat reached Hyde Park
Corner, was cannonaded at Hay Hill, and further
on towards Charing Cross he and some three or
four hundred men were cut off from his other
followers. Rushing on with a standard througii
Piccadilly, Wyat reached Lud Gate. There (says
Stow) he knocked, calling out, " I am Wyat ; the
Queen has granted all my petitions."

But the only reply from the strongly-guarded
gate was the rough, stern voice of Lord William
How^ard — " Avaunt, traitor ; thou shalt have no
entrance here."

No friends appearing, and the Royal troops
closing upon him, ^Vyat said, " I have kept my
promise," and retiring, silent and desponding, sat
down to rest on a stall opposite the gate of the
" Belle Sauvage." Roused by the shouts and
sounds of fighting, he fought his way back, with
forty of his staunchest followers, to Temple Bar,
which was held by a squadron of horse. There
the Norroy King-of-Arms exhorted him to spare
blood and yield himself a prisoner. Wyat then sur-
rendered himself to Sir Maurice Berkeley, who just
then happened to ride by, ignorant of the aftray,
and, seated behind Sir Maurice, he was taken to
St. James's. On April nth Wyat perished on the
scaftbld at Tower Hill. This rash rebellion also
led to the immediate execution of the innocent
and unhappy Lady Jane Grey and her husband,
Guilford Dudley, endangered the life of the Princess
Elizabeth, and hastened the Queen's marriage with
Philip, which took place at AVinchester, July 25th
of the same year.

In the reign of Elizabeth (15S6), the old gate,
being " sore decayed," was pulled down, and was
newly built, with images of Lud and others on the
east side, and a "picture of the lion-hearted
queen " on the west, the cost of the whole being
over ;^i,5oo.

Lud Gate became a free debtors' prison the first
year of Richard II., and was enlarged in 1463
(Edward IV.) by that "well-disposed, blessed, and
devout woman," the widow of Stephen Forster,
fishmonger, Mayor of London in 1454. Of this
benefactress of Lud Gate, Maitland (1739) has the
following legend. P'orster himself, according to
this stor}', in his younger days had once been
a pining prisoner in Lud Gate. Being one day at
the begging grate, a rich widow asked how much
would release him. He said, "Twenty pounds."
She paid it, and took him into her service, where,
by his indefatigable application to business, he so
gained her afiections that she mai-ried him, and he

Whitefriars.]

REMEMBER THE POOR PRISONERS."

225

earned so great riches by commerce that she con-
curred with him to make his former prison more
commodious, and to endow a new cha])el, where,
on a wall, there was this inscription on a brass
plate : —

" Devout souls that pass this way,
For Stephen Forster, late Lord Mayor, heartily pray,
And Dame Agues, his spouse, to God consecrate.
That of pity this house made for Londoners in Lud Gate ;
So that for lodging and water prisoners here nought pay,
As their keepers shall all answer at dreadful doomsday/'

This legend of Lud Gate is also the foundation of
Rowley's comedy of^^ IVoman A'avr Vcxt ; or. The
IJ'ii/mc of Com/iill, which has in our times been
revived, with alterations, by Mr. Planche'. In the first
scene of the fifth act occurs the following passage : —

" Mis. S. Forster. But why remove the prisoners from

Ludgate ?
" Stephen Forster. To take the prison down and build it
new.
With leads to walk on, chambers large and fair ;
For when myself lay there the noxious air
Choked up my spirits. None but captives, viife, /

Can know what captives feel."

Stow, however, seems to deny this storj', and
suggests that it arose from some mistake. The
stone with the inscription was preserved by Stow
when the gate was rebuilt, together with Forster's
arms, " three broad arrow-heads," and was fixed
over the entry to the prison. The enlargement of
the prison on the south-east side formed a quadrant
thirty-eight feet long and twenty-nine feet wide.
There were prisoners' rooms above it, with a leaden
roof, where the debtors could walk, and both lodging
and water were free of charge.

Strype says the prisoners in Ludgate were chiefly
merchants and tradesmen, who had been driven to
want by losses at sea. AVhen King Philip came
to London after his marriage with Mary in 1554
thirty prisoners in Lud Gate, who were in gaol for
,-/^io,ooo, compounded for at ;^2,ooo, presented
the king a well-penned Latin speech, written by
"■the curious pen " of Roger Ascham, praying the
king to redress their miseries, and by his royal
generosity to free them, inasmuch as the place was
not sctiemtorum career, sed miscrorum custodia (not
a dungeon for the wicked, but a place of detention
for the wretched).

Marmaduke Johnson, a poor debtor in Lud Gate
the year before the Restoration, wrote a curious
account of the prison, which Strype printed. The
officials in " King Lud's House " seem to have
been — i, a reader of Divine service; 2, the
upper steward, called the master of the box ; 3,
the under steward ; 4, seven assistants — that is,
one for every day of the week ; 5, a running

assistant ; 6, two churchwardens ; 7, a scavenger ;

8, a chamberlain; 9, a runner ; 10, the crycrs at
the grate, six in number, who by turns kept up the
ceaseless cry to the passers-by of " Remember the
poor prisoners ! " The officers' charge (says John-
son) for taking a debtor to Ludgate was sometimes
three, four, or five shillings, though their just due is
but twopence ; for entering name and address,
fourteen pence to the turnkey; a lodging is one
penny, twopence, or threepence ; 'for sheets to the
chamberlain, eighteenpence ; to chamber-fellows a
garnish of four shillings (for non-payment of this
his clothes were taken away, or " mobbed," as it was
called, till he did pay) ; and the next day a due of
sixteen pence to one of the stewards, which was
called table money. At his discharge the several fees
were as follows : — Two shillings the master's fee ;
fourteen pence for the turning of the key ; twelve
pence for every action that lay against him. For
leave to go out with a keeper upon security (as
formerly in the Queen's Bench) the prisoners paid
for the first time four shillings and tenpence,
and two shillings every day afterwards. The exor-
bitant prison fees of three shillings a day swallowed
up all the prison bequests, and the miserable debtors
had to rely on better means from the Lord Mayor's
table, the light bread seized by the clerk of the
markets, and presents of under-sized and illegal
fish from the water-bailiffs.

A curious handbill of the year 1664, preserved by
Mr. Collier, and containing the petition of iSo poor
Ludgate prisoners, seems to have been a circular
taken round by the alms-seekers of the prison,
who perambulated the streets with baskets at their
backs and a sealed money-box in their hands.
"We most humbly beseech you," says the handbill,
" even for God's cause, to reHevc us with your
charitable benevolence, and to put into this bearer's
box — the same being sealed with the house seal,
as it is figured upon this petition."

A quarto tract, entitled " Prison Thoughts," by
Thomas Browning, citizen and cook of London, a
prisoner in Lud Gate, "where poor citizens are con-
fined and starve amidst copies of their freedom,"
was published in that prison, by the author, in
1682. It is written both in prose and verse, and
probably gave origin to Ur. Dodd's more elaborate
work on the same subject. The following is a
specimen of the poetry : —

" ON PATIENCE.
" Patience is the poor man's walk,
Patience is the dumb man's talk.
Patience is the lame man's thighs,
Patience is the blind man's eyes.
Patience is the poor man's ditty,
Patience is the e.xil'd man's city,

226

OLD AND NEW LONTDON.

[Liu'gate Hill.

Patience is the sick man's bed of down,
PaticBce is tlic wise man's crown,
Patience is the live man's story.
Patience is the dead man's glory.

" When your troubles do controul,
In Patience then possess your soul."

In the spectator (Queen Anne) a writer says :
" Passing under Lud Gate the other day, I heard a
voice bawUng for charity which I thought I had
heard somewhere before. Coming near to the
grate, the jirisoner called me by niy name, and
desired I would throw something into the box."

The prison at Lud
Gate was gutted by the
Great Fire of 1666, and
in 1760, the year of
George IIL's acces-
sion, the gate, impeding
traffic, was taken down,
and the materials sold
for ^148. The pri-
soners were removed
to the London Work-
house, in Bishopsgate
Street, a part whereof
was fitted up for that
purpose, and Lud Gate
prisoners continued to
be received there until
the year 1794, when
they were removed to
the prison of Lud Gate,
adjoining the compter
in Giltspur Street.

When old Lud Gat,'
was pulled down, Lud
and his worthy sons
were given by the City
to Sir Francis Gosling,
who intended to set
them up at the east end of St. Dunstan's. Never-
theless the royal effigies, of very rude workmanship,
were sent to end their days in the parish bone-house ;
a better fate, however, awaited them, for the late
^Llrquis of Hertford eventually purchased them,
and they are now, with St. Dunstan's clock, in
Hertford Villa, Regent's Park. The statue of
Elizabeth was placed in a niche in the outer wall
of old St. Dunstan's Church, and it still adorns the
new church, as we have before mentioned in our
chapter on Fleet Street.

In 1792 an interesting discovery was made in
St. Martin's Court, Ludgate Hill. Workmen came
upon the remains of a small barbican, or watch-
tower, part of the old City wall of 1276 ; and in a

OLD LUD G.A.TE, FRU.M A I'K
(see pa^

line with the Old Bailey they found another outwork.
A fragment of it in a court is now built up. A fire
which took place on the premises of Messrs. Kay,
Ludgate Hill, May i, 1792, disclosed these interesting
ruins, probably left by the builders after the fire of
1666 as a foundation for new buildings. The tower
projected four feet from the wall into the City ditch,
and measured twenty-two feet from top to bottom.
The stones were of different sizes, the largest and
the corner rudely squared. They had been bound
together with cement of hot lime, so that wedges
had to be used to split the blocks asunder. Small

square holes in the
sides of the tower
seemed to have been
used either to receive
floor timbers, or as
peep-holes for the sen-
tries. The adjacent
part of the City wall
was about eight feet
thick, and of rude
workmanship, consist-
ing of irregular-sized
stones, chalk, and flint.
The only bricks seen
in this part of the
wall were on the south
side, bounding Stone-
cutters' Alley. On the
east half of Chatham
Place, Blackfriars
Bridge, stood the tower
built by order of Ed-
ward I., at the end of
a continuation of the
City wall, running from
Lud Gate behind the
houses in Fleet Ditch
to the Thames. A rare
plan of London, by Hollar (says Mr. J. T. Smith),
marks this tower. Roman monuments have been
so frequently dug up near St. Martin's Church, that
there is no doubt that a Roman extra-mural ceme-
tery once existed here ; in the same locality, in
1800, a sepulchral monument was dug up, dedi-
cated to Claudina Mertina, by her husband, a
Roman soldier. A fragment of a statue of Hercules
and a female head were also found, and were pre-
served at the " London " Coffee House.

Ludgate Hill and Street is probably the greatest

thoroughfare in London. Througli Ludgate Hill

and Street there have passed in twelve hours 8,752

vehicles, 13,025 horses, and 105,352 persons.

St. Martin's, Ludgate, though one of Wren's

'Y/lff'."^-

INT rUULlSHED AHOUT 1750
223).

Ludsato IIUI.I

ST. MARTIN'S, LUDGATK.

227

churches, is not a romantic building; yet it has
its legends. Robert of Gloucester, a rhyming
chronicler, describes it as built by Cadwallo, a
British prince, in the seventh century : — ■

" A chiich of Sent Maityn livying lie let rere,
In whyclie yet man shouKl CJockly's seruys do,
And binge for his ^unle, and al C-luistinj also."

The church seems to have been rebuilt in 1437
(Henry VI.). From the parish books, which com-
mence in 141 o, we find the old church to have had
several chapels, and to have been well furnished
with plate, paintings, and vestments, and to have
had two projecting porches on the south side,
ne.\t Ludgate Hill. The right of presentation to
St. Martin's belong-'d to the Abbot of Westminster,
but Queen I\Iary granted it to the Bishop of London.
The following curious epitaph in St. Martin's, found
also elsewhere, has been beautifully paraphrased
by the Quaker poet, Bernard Barton : — •

JIai-th goes to -i f As mold to mold.

Earth tie.ads on 1 I Glittering in gold.

Earth as to ' ''•"''"'' ) Return nere sliould.

Earth, shall to ) i Goe ere he would.

Earth upon ~| ( Consider may,

Eartli goes to I J Naked away,

Earth though on J Eartli, "j gg stout and gay,
Earth shrill from I [ Passe poore away.

Strype says of St. Martin's — " It is very comely,
and ascended up by stone steps, well finished
within ; and hath a most curious spire steeple, of
excellent workmanship, pleasant to behold." The
new church stands farther back than the old.
The little black spire that adorns the tower rises
from a sm.rll bull) of a cupola, round which runs
a light gallery. Between the street and the body
of the church Wren, always ingenious, contrived
an ambulatory the whole depth of the tower, to
deaden the sound of passing traffic. The church
is a cube, the length 57 feet, the breadth 66 feet;
the spire, 168 feet high, is dwarfed by St. Paul's.
Tiie church cost in erection ^^5,378 i8s. 8d.

The composite pillars, organ balcony, and oaken
altar-piece are tasteless and pagan. The font was
the gift of Thomas Moiley, in 1673, and is en-
circled by a favourite old Greek palindrome, that
is, a puzzle sentence that reads equally well back-
wards or forwards —

" Tripson anonieema me monan opsin."
(Cleanse thy sins; not merely thy outward self.)

This inscription, according to Mr. G. Godwin
(" Churclies of London "), is also found on the font
in the basilica of St. Sophia, Constantinople. In the
vestry-foom, approached by a flight of stairs at the
north-east an^le Oi the church, there is a carved

seat (date 1690) and several chests, covered with
curious indented ornaments.

On this church, and other satellites of St. Paul's,
a poet has written —

" So, like a bishop upon dainties fed,
St. I'-aul's lifts up his sacerdotal lie.ad ;
While his lean curates, slim and lank to view,
Around him point their steeples to the blue."

Coleridge used to compare a Mr. H , who

was always putting himself forward to interpret Fox's
sentiments, to the steeple of St. Martin's, wiiich
is constantly getting in the way when you wish to
see the dome of St. Paul's.

One great man, at least, has been connected
with this church, where the Knights Templars were
put to trial, and that was good old Purchas, the
editor and enlarger of " Hakluyt's Voyages." He
was rector of this parish. Hakluyt was a pre-
bendary of Westminster, who, with a passion for
geographical research, though he himself never
ventured farther than Paris, had devoted his life,
encouraged by Drake and Raleigh, in collecting
from old libraries and the lips of venturous
merchants and sea - captains travels in various
countries. The manuscript remains were bought
by Purchas, who, with a veneration worthy of that
heroic and chivalrous age, wove them into his
"Pilgrims" (five vols., folio), which are a treasury
of travel, exploit, and curious adventures. It has
been said that Purchas ruined himself by this pub-
lication, and that he died in prison. This is not,
however, true. He seems to have impoverished
himself chiefly by taking upon himself the care and
cost of his brother and brother-in-law's children.
He appears to have been a single-minded man, with
a thorough devotion to geographic study. Charles I.
promised him a deanery, but Purchas did not live
to enjoy it.

There is an architectural tradition tliat Wren pur-
posely designed the spire of St. Martin's, Ludgate,
small and slender, to give a greater dignity to the
dome of St. Paul's.

The London Coffee House, 24 to 26, Ludgate
Hill, a place of celebrity in its day, was first opened
in May, 1731. The proprietor, James Ashley, in
his advertisement announcing the opening, pro-
fesses cheap prices, especially for punch. The usual '
price of a (juart of arrack was then eight shillings,
and six shillings for a quart of rum made into
punch. This new jninch house, Dorchester beer,
and Welsh ale warehouse, on the contrary, professed
to charge six shillings for a quart of arrack made
into punch ; while a quart of rum or brandy made
into punch was to be four shillings, and half a
quartern fourpence halfpenny, and gentlemen were

228

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

Ludgate Hill.)

to have ])unch as quickly made as a gill of wine
could be drawn. After Roney and Ellis, the house,
according to Mr. Timbs, was taken by Messrs.
Leech and Dallimore. Mr. Leech was the father
of one of the most admirable caricaturists of
modern times. Then came Mr. Lovegrove, from
the "Horn," Doctors' Commons. In 1S56 Mr.
Robert Clarke took possession, and was the last
tenant, the house being closed in 1867, and pur-

Prison. At the bar of the London Coffee House
was sold Rowley's British Cephalic Snuff. A
shigular incident occurred here many years since.
Mr. Brayley, the topographer, was present at a
party, when Mr. Broadhurst, the famous tenor, by
singing a high note caused a wine-glass on the
table to break, the bowl being separated from the
stem.

At No. 32 (north side) for many years Messrs.

RUI.NS OF THE BARBICA.N ON LUDG.ATE HILL (iiV /ij^v 226).

chased by the Corporation for ^^38,000. Several
lodges of Freemasons and sundry clubs were wont
to assemble here periodically — among them " The
Sons of Industry," to which many of the influential
tradesmen of the wards of Farringdon have been
long attached. Here, too, in the large hall, the
juries from the Central Criminal Court were lodged
during the night when important cases lasted more
than one day. During the Exeter Hall May
meetings the London Coffee House was frequently
resorted to as a favourite place of meeting. It was
also noted for its publishers' sales of stocks and
copyrights. It was within the rules of the Fleet

' Rundell and Bridge, the celebrated goldsmiths and
diamond merchants, carried on their business. Here
Flaxman's chef d'cciivre, the Shield of Achilles, in
silver gilt, was executed ; also the crown worn by
that august monarch, George IV. at his corona-
tion, for the loan of the jewels of which £,-j,ooo
was charged, and among the elaborate luxuries a
gigantic silver wine-cooler (now at Windsor), that
took two years in chasing. Two men could be
seated inside that great cup, and on grand occasions
it has been filled with wine and served round to
the guests. Two golden salmon, leaning against
each other, was the sign of this old shop, now

Ludgatc Hill.l

THE STATIONERS' COMPANY.

229

removed. Mrs. RurnloU met a great want of
her day by wriling her well-known book, " The
Art of Cookery," published in 1806, and which
lias gone through countless editions. Up to 1853
she had received no remuneration for it, but she
ultimately obtained 2,000 guineas. People had
no idea of cooking in those days ; and she laments
in her preface the scarcity of good melted butter,
good toast and water, and good coffee. Her direc-
tions were sensible and clear ; and she studied

was first incor|)orated. The old house had been,
in the reign of Edward III., the palace of John,
Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond. It was
afterwards occupied by the Ivirls of Pembroke. In
Elizabeth's reign it belonged to Lord Abergavenny,
whose daughter married Sir Thomas Vane. In
161 1 (James I.) the Stationers' Company purchased
it and took comjilete possession. The house was
swept away in the Great Fire of 1666, when
the Stationers — the greatest sufferers on that

INTERIOR OF STATIONERS' HALL {slV page 230).

economical cooking, which great cooks like Ude
and Francatelli despised. It is not every one who
can afford to prepare for a good dish by stewing
down half-a-dozen hams.

The hall of the Stationers' Company hides itself
wth the modesty of an author in Stationers' Hall
Court, Ludgate Hill, close abutting on Paternoster
Row, a congenial neighbourhood. This hall of
the master, and keeper, and wardens, and com-
monalty of the mystery or art of the Stationers of
the City of London stands on the site of Burga-
venny House, which the Stationers modified and
re-erected in the third and fourth years of Philip
and Mary — the dangerous period when the company
20

occasion — lost property to the amount of

;^200,000.

The fraternity of the Stationers of London (says
Mr. John Gough Nichols, F.S.A., who has written
a most valuable and interesting historical notice of
the Worshipful Company) is first mentioned in the
fourth year of Henry IV., when their bye-laws were
approved by the City authorities, and they are
then described as " ^vriters (transcribers), lymners of
books and dyverse things for the Church and other
uses." In early times all special books were pro-
tected by special letters patent, so that the early
registers of Stationers' Hall chiefly comprise books
of entertainment, sermons, pamphlets, and ballads.

OLD AND NP:\V LONDON.

[Ludgate Hill.

ULiry originally incorporated the society in order
to jwt a stop to heretical writings, and gave the
Comjiany ])o\ver to search in any shop, house,
chamher, or building of printer, binder, or seller,
for books published contrary to statutes, acts, and
proclamations. King James, in the first year of his
reign, by letters-patent, granted the Stationers' Com-
pany the exclusive privilege of printing Almanacs,
Primers, Psalters, the ABC, the "Little Cate-
chism," and Nowell's Catechism.

The Stationers' Company, for two important
centuries in English history (says Mr. Cunningliam),
had pretty well the monopoly of learning. Printers
were obliged to serve their time to a member of
the Company ; and almost every publication, from
a Bible to a ballad, was required to be " entered at
Stationers' Hall." The service is now unnecessary,
but Parliament still requires, under the recent
Copyright Act, that the proprietor of every pub-
lished work should register his claim in the books
of the Stationers' Company, -and pay a fee of five
shillings. The number of the freemen of the
Company is between i,ooo and i,ioo, and of the
livery, or leading persons, about 450. The capital
of the Company amounts to upwards of ^40,000,
divided into shares, varying in value from ;^4o to
;^4oo each. The great treasure of the Stationers'
Company is its series of registers of works entered
for publication. This valuable collection of entries
commences in 1557, and, though often consulted
and quoted, was never properly understood till Mr.
J. Payne Collier published two carefully-edited
volumes of extracts from its earlier pages.

The celebrated Bible of the year 1632, with the
important word "not" omitted in the seventh
commandment — "Thou shalV no/ commit adul-
tery" — was printed by the Stationers' Company.
Archbishop Laud made a Star-Chamber matter
of the omission, and a heavy fine was laid upon
the Company for their neglect. And in another
later edition, in P.salm xiv. the text ran, " The fool
hath said in his heart. There is a God." J"or the
omission of the important word "no" the printer
was fined _;^3,ooo. Several other errors have
occurred, but the wonder is that they have not been
more frequent.

The only publications which the Company con-
tinues to issue are a Latin gradus and almanacks,
of which it had at one time the entire monopoly.
Almanack-day at Stationers' Hall (every 22nd of
November, at three o'clock) is a sight worth seeing,
from the bustle of the porters anxious to get off
with early supplies. The Stationers' Company's
almanacks are now by no means the best of the day.
?vr:-. ('liarles Knight, who worked so strenuously

and so successfully for the spread of popular
I education, first struck a blow at the absurd
monopoly of almanack [printing. So much behind
the age is this privileged Company, that it actually
still continues to publish Moore's quack almanack,
with the nonsensical old astrological tables, de-
scribing the moon's influence on various parts 01
the human body. One year it is said they had
the courage to leave out this farrago, with the
hieroglyphics originally stolen by Lilly from monkish
manuscripts, and from Lilly stolen by Moore. The
result was that most of the copies were returned on
their hands. They have not since dared to oppose
the stolid force of vulgar ignorance. The)- still
publish 'Wing's sheet almanack, though Wing was
an impostor and fortune-teller, who died eight
years after the Restoration. All this is very un-
worthy of a privileged company, with an invested
capital of ;^4o,ooo, and does not much help
forward the enlightenment of the poorer classes.
This Company is entitled, for the supposed securit)-
of the copyright, to two copies of every work,
however costly, published in the United Kingdom,
a mischievous tax, which restrains the publication
of many valuable but expensi\'e works.

The first Stationers' Hall was in Milk Street.
In 1553 they removed to St. Peter's College, near
St. Paul's Deanery, where the chantry priests of
St. Paul's had previously resided. The present
hall closely resembles the hall at Bridewell, having
a row of oval windows above the lower range,
which were fitted up by Mr. Mylne in iSoo, when
the chamber was cased with Portland stone and the
lower windows lengthened.

The great window at the upper end of the hall
was erected in 1801, at the expense of Mr. Alder-
man Cadell. It includes some older glass blazoned
with the arms and crest of the company, the two
emblematic figures of Religion and Learning being
designed by Smirke. Like most ancient halls, it
has a raised dais, or haut place, which is occupied
by the Court table at the two great dinners in
August and November. On the wall, above the
wainscoting that has glowed red with the reflection
of many a bumper of generous wine, are hung in
decorous state the pavises or shields of arms of
members of the court, which in civic processions
are usually borne by a body of pensioners, the
number of whom, when the I^ord Mayor is a member
of the Company, corresponds with the years of that
august dignitary's age. In the old water-show these
escutcheons decorated the sides of the Company's
barge when they accompanied the Lord Mayor to
Westminster, and called at the landing of Lambeth
Palace to pay tlieir res[)e(ts to tlie representative of

Ludg:ite Hill.]

THE COMMEMORATION OF ST. CECILIA.

their former ecclesiastical censors. On this occa-
sion the Archbishop usually sent out the thirsty
Stationers a hamper of wine, while the rowers of
the barge had bread and cheese and ale to their
hearts' content. It is still the custom (says Mr.
Nichols) to forward the Archbishop annually a
set of the Company's almanacks, and some also
to the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the
Rolls. Formerly the twelve judges and various
other jjersons received the same compliment. Alas
for the mutation of other things than almanacs,
however; for in 1850 the Company's barge, being
sold, was taken to 0.\ford, where it may still be
seen on the Isis, the property of one of the College
boat clubs. At the upper end of the hall is a
court cupboard or buffet for the display of the
Company's plate, and at the lower end, on either
side of the doorway, is a similar recess. The
entrance-screen of the hall, guarded by allegorical
figures, and crowned by the royal arms (with the
inescutcheon of Nassau — William III.), is richly
adorned with carsings.

Stationers' Hall was in 1677 used for Divine
service by the parish of St. Martin's, Ludgate, and
towards the end of the seventeenth century an
annual musical festival was instituted on the 22nd of
November, in commemoration of Saint Cecilia, and
as an excuse for some good music. A splendid
entertainment was provided in the hall, preceded
by a grand concert of vocal and instrumental
music, which was attended by people of the first
rank. The special attraction was always an ode to
Saint Cecilia, set by Purcell, Blow, or some other
eminent composer of the day. Dryden's and
Pope's odes are almost too well known to need
mention ; but Addison, Yalden, Shadwell, and even
D'Urfey, tried their hands on praises of the same
musical saint.

After several odes by the mediocre satirist,
Oldham, and that poor verse-maker, Nahum Tate,
who scribbled upon King David's tomb, came
Dryden. The music to the first ode, says Scott,
was first written by Percival Clarke, who killed
himself in a fit of lovers' melancholy in 1707. It
was then reset by Draghi, the Italian composer,
and in 1 7 1 1 was again set by Clayton for one of
Sir Richard Steele's public concerts. The first ode
'(1687) contains those fine lines : —

" From harmony, rom heavenly harmony,
This universal franu- began ;
From Iiarmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man."

Of the composition of this ode, for which
Dryden received ^40, and which was afterwards

eclipsed by the glories of its successor, the follow-
ing interesting anecdote is told : —

" Mr. St. John, afterwards Lonl Bolingbrokc,
happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden,
whom he always respected, found him in an un-
usual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On
inquiring the cause, ' I have been up all night,'
replied the old bard. ' My musical friends made
me promise to write them an ode for their feast of
St. Cecilia. I have been so struck with the subject
which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till
I had completed it. Here it is, finished at one
sitting.' Apd immediately he showed him tlie
ode."

Dryden's second ode, " Alexander's Feast ; or,
the Power of Music," was written for the St.
Cecilian Feast at Stationers' Hall in 1697. This
ode ends with those fine and often-quoted lines on
the fair saint : —

" Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown ;

He raised a mortal to the skies.

She drew an angel down."

Handel, in 1736, set this ode, and reproduced it
at Covent Garden, with deserved success. Not
often do such a poet and such a musician meet
at the same anvil. The great German also set the
former ode, which is known as " The Ode on
St. Cecilia's Day." Dryden himself told Tonson
that he thought with the town that this ode was
the best of all his poetry ; and he said to a young
flatterer at Will's, with honest pride — " You are
right, young gentleman ; a nobler never was pro-
duced, nor ever will."

Many magnificent funerals have been marshalled
in the Stationers' Hall ; it has also been used for
several great political banquets. In September,
1 83 1, the Reform members of the House of
Commons gave a dinner to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer (Lord Althorp) and to Lord John
Russell — Mr. Abercromby (afterwards Speaker)
presiding. In May, 1842, the Duke of Wellington
presided over a dinner for the Infant Orphan
Asylum, and in June, 1S47, a dinner for the King's
College Hospital was given under Sir Robert Peel's
presidency. In the great kitchen below the hall,
Mr. Nichols, who is an honorary member of the
Company, says there have l)cen sometimes seen at
the same time as many as eighteen hainiches of
venison, besides a dozen necks and other joints ;
for these companies are as hospitable as they are
rich.

The funeral feast of Thomas Sutton, of the
Charterhouse, was given May 28th, 1612, in
Stationers' Hall, the procession having started

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

LLudgatc Hill.

from Doctor Law's, in Paternoster Row. For the
repast were provided "32 neats' tongues, 40 stone
of beef, 24 marrow-hones, i lamb, 46 capons, 32
geese, 4 pheasants, 12 pheasants' pullets, 12 god-
wits, 24 rabbits, 6 hearnshaws, 43 turkey-chickens,
48 roast chickens, 18 house pigeons, 72 field
pigeons, 36 quails, 48 ducklings, 160 eggs, 3
salmon. 4 congers, 10 turbots, 2 dories, 24 lobsters,
4 mullets, a firkin and keg of sturgeon, 3 barrels
of pickled oysters, 6 gammon of bacon, 4 West-
])halia gammons, 16 fried tongues, 16 chicken pies,
1 6 pasties, 1 6 made dishes of rice, 1 6 ncats'-tongue
pies, 1 6 custards, 1 6 dishes of bait, 1 6 mince pies,
t6 orange pies, 16 gooseberry tarts, 8' redcare pies,
6 dishes of whitebait, and 6 grand salads."

To the west of the hall is the handsome court-
room, where the meetings of the Company are
held. The wainscoting, &c., were renewed in the
year 1757, and an octagonal card-room was added
by Mr. ilylne in 1828. On the opposite side
of the hall is the stock-room, adorned by beautiful
carvings of the school of Grinling Gibbons. Here
the commercial committees of the Company usually
meet.

The nine painted storeys which stood in the
old hall, above the wainscot in the council parlour,
probably crackled to dust in the Great Fire, which
also rolled up and took away the portraits of John
Cawood, printer to Philip and Mary, and his
master, John Raynes. This same John Cawood
seems to have been specially munificent in his
donations to the Company, for he gave two new
stained-glass window, to the hall ; also a hearse-
cover, of cloth and gold, powdered witli blue velvet
and bordered with black velvet, embroidered and
stained with blue, yellow, red, and green, besides
considerable plate.

The Company's rurious collection of plate is
carefully described by Mr. Nichols. In 15S1 it
seems even,- master on quitting the chair was
required to give a piece of plate, weighing fourteen
ounces at least ; and every upper or under warden
a piece of plate of at least three ounces. In this
accumulative manner the Worshipful Company soon
became possessed of a glittering store of " salts,"
gilt bowls, college pots, snuffers, cups, and flagons.
Their greatest trophy seems to have been a large
silver-gilt bowl, given in 1626 by a Mr. Hulet
(Owlett), weighing sixty ounces, and shaped like an
owl, in allusion to the donor's name. In the early
Civil ^\'ar, when the Company had to pledge their
plate to meet the heavy loans exacted by Charles
the Martyr from a good many of his unfortunate
subjects, the cherished Owlett was specially ex-
cepted. Among other memorials in the posses-

sion of the Company was a silver college cup
bought in memory of Mr. John Sweeting, who, dying
in 1659 (the \ear before the Restoration), founded
by will the pleasant annual venison dinner of the
Company in August.

It is supposed that all the great cupboards of
plate were lost in the fire of 1666, for there is no
piece now existing (says Mr. Nichols) of an earlier
date than 1676. It has been the custom also
from time to time to melt down obsolete plate
into newer forms and more useful \-essels. Thus
salvers and salt-cellars were in 1720-21 turned into
monteaths, or bowls, filled with water, to keep the
wine-glasses cool ; and in 1844 a handsome rose-
water dish was made out of a silver bowl, and an
old tea-urn and coffee-urn. This custom is rather
too much like Saturn devouring his own children,
and has led to the destruction of many curious old
relics. The massive old plate now remaining is
chiefly of the reign of Charles II. High among
these presents tower the quaint silver candlesticks
bequeathed by Mr. Richard Royston, twice Master
of the Stationers' Company, who died in 1686, and
had been bookseller to three kings — James I.,
Charles I., and Charles II. The ponderous snuffers
and snuffer-box are gone. There were also three
other pairs of candlesticks, given by Mr. Nathanael
Cole, who had been clerk of the Company, at his
death in 1760. A small two-handled cup was
bequeathed in 177 1 by that worthy old printer,
William Bowyer, as a memorial of the Company's
munificence to his father after his loss by fire in
1712-13.

The Stationers are very charitable. Their funds
spring chiefly from ^£1,^5° bequeathed to them
by Mr. John Norton, the printer to the learned
Queen Elizabeth in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
alderman of London in the reign of James I., and
thrice Master of this Company. The money laid
out by Norton's wish in the purchase of estates
in fee-simple in Wood Street has grown and grown.
One hundred and fifty pounds out of this bequest
the old printer left to the minister and church-
wardens of St. Faith, in order to have distributed
weekly to twelve poor persons — six appointed by
the parish, and six by the Stationers' Company —
twopence each and a penny loaf, the vantage loaf
(the thirteenth allowed by the baker) to be the
clerk's ; ten shillings to be paid for an annual
sermon on Ash '\\'ednesday at St Faith's ; the
residue to be laid out in cakes, wine, and ale for
the Company of Stationers, either before or after
the sermon. The liverymen still (according to Mr.
Nichols) enjoy this annual dole of well-spiced and
substantial buns. The sum of ;^i,ooo was left for

Ludgate Hill.] PICTURES POSSESSED BV THE STATIONERS' COMPANY.

233

the generous purpose of advancing small loans to
struggling young men in business. In 1S61, how-
ever, the Company, imder the direction of the
Court of Chancery, devoted the sum to the found-
ing of a commercial school in Bolt Court for the
sons of liverymen and freemen of the Company,
and ^8,500 were spent in purchasing Mr. Bensley's
premises ■ and Dr. Johnson's old house. The
doctor's usual sitting-room is now occupied by the
head master. The school itself is built on the site
formerly occupied by Johnson's garden. The boys
pay a quarterage not exceeding ^2. The school
has four e.xhibitions.

The pictures at Stationers' Hall are worthy of
mention. In the stock-room are portraits, after
Kneller, of Prior and Steele, which formerly be-
longed to Harley, Earl of Oxford, Swift's great
patron. The best picture in the room is a portrait
by an unknow^n painter of Tycho Wing, the astro-
nomer, holding a celestial globe. Tycho was the
son of Vincent ^Ving, the first author of the
almanacks still published under his name, and who
died in 166S. There are also portraits of that
worthy old printer, Samuel Richardson' and his
wife ; Archbishop Tillotson, by Kneller ; Bishop
Hoadley, prelate of the Order of the Garter ;
Robert Nelson, the author of the " Fasts and
Festivals," who died in 1714-15, by Kneller; and
one of 'William Bowyer, the Whitefriars printer,
with a posthumous bust beneath it of his son, the
|irinter of the votes of the House of Commons.
There was formerly a brass ]3late beneath this bust
expressing the son's gratitude to the Company for
their munificence to his father after the fire which
destroyed his printing-oflice.

In the court-room hangs a portrait of John
Boydell, who was Lord Mayor of London in
the year 1791. This picture, by Graham, was
formerly surrounded by allegorical figures of Jus-
tice, Prudence, Industry, and Commerce; but
they have been cut out to reduce the canvas
to Kit-cat size. There is a portrait, by Owen,
of Lord Mayor Domville, Master of the Stationers'
Company, in the actual robe he wore when he rode
before the Prince Regent and the Allies in 18 14 to
the Guildhall banquet and the Peace thanksgiving.
In the card-room is an early picture, by West, of
King Alfred dividing his loaf with the pilgrim —
a representation, by the way, of a purely imaginary
occurrence — in fact, the old legend is that it
was really St. Cuthbert who executed this gene-
rous partition. There are also portraits of the
two Strahans, Masters in 1774 and 1816; one of
Alderman Cadell, Master in 1798, by Sir William
Beechey ; and one of John Nicholls, Master of the

Company in 1S04, after a portrait by Jackson. In
the hall, over the gallery, is a jjicture, by (jraham,
of Mary Queen of Scots escaping from the Castle
of Lochleven. It was engraved by Dawe, after-
wards a Royal Academician, when he was only
fourteen years of age.

The arms of the Company appear from a Herald
visitation of 1634 to have been azure on a chevron,
an eagle volant, with- a diadem between two red
roses, with leaves vert, between three books clasped
gold ; in chief, issuing out of a cloud, the sun-
beams gold, a holy spirit, the wings displayed silver,
with a diadem gold. In later tiines the books have
been blazoned as Bibles. In a " tricking " in the
volume before mentioned, in the College of Arms,
St. John the Evangelist stands behind the shield
in the attitude of benediction, and bearing in his
left hand a cross with a serpent rising from it
(much more suitable for the scriveners or law
writers, by the bye). On one side of the shield
stands the Evangelist's emblematic eagle, holding an
inkhorn in his beak. The Company never re-
ceived any grant of arms or supporters, but about
the year 1790 two angels seem to have been used
as supporters. About 1788 the motto " Verbum
Domini manet in eternum "(The word of the Lord
endureth for ever) began to be adopted, and in the
same year the crest of an eagle was used. On
the silver badge of the Company's porter the sup-
porters are naked winged boys, and the eagle on
the chevron is turned into a dove holding an olive-
branch. Some of the buildings of the present hall
are still let to Paternoster Row booksellers as ware-
houses.

The list of masters of this Company includes
Sir John Key, Bart. (" Don Key"), Lord Mayor in
1831-1832. In 1712 Thomas Parkhurst, who had
been Master of the Worshipfiil Company in 1683,
left ^37 to purchase Bibles and Psalters, to be
annually given to the poor ; hence the old custom
of giving Bibles to apprentices bound at Stationers'
Hall.

This is the first of the many City companies of
which we shall have by turns to make mention
in the course of this work. Though no longer
useful as a guild to };Totect a trade which now
needs no fostering, we liave seen thy.t it still retains
some of its mediaeval virtues. It is hospitable and
charitable as ever, if not so given to grand funeral
services and ecclesiastical ceremonials. Its ]jri-
vileges have grown out of date and obsolete, but
they harm no one but .authors,* and to the w rongs
of authors both Governments and Parliaments have
been from time immemorial systematically in-
difterent..

2J4

OLD AM; NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

OLD ST. PAULS, FROM A VIEW BY HOLLAR.

CHAPTER XX.

ST. PAUL'S.

London's chief Snnct4l.-try of Religion — The Site of St. Paul's— The Earliest authenticated Church there— The Shrine of Erkenwald— St. Paul* .
Burnt and Rebuilt — It becomes the .Scene of a Strange Incident — Important Political Meeting within its Walls — The Great Charter pub-
lished 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 Henry VI.— .\ Fruitless Reconciliation — Jane Shore's Penance— A Tragedy of the
Lollards' Tower— A Royal Marri.age— 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 — .V Protestant Tumult at Paul's Cross —
Stran,ge Ceremonials — (,)ueen 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 — Inigo Jones's
Restorations and the Puritan Parliament — The Great Fire of 1666— Burning of Old St. Paul's, and Destruction of its Monuments— Evelyn's
Description of the Fire — Sir Christopher Wren called in.

Stooping under the flat iron bar that lies hke a
bone in the mouth of Ludgate Hill, we pass up
the gentle ascent between shops hung with gold
chains, brimming with wealth, or crowded with all
the luxuries that civilisation has turned into neces-
sities ; and once past the impertinent black spire of
St. Martin's, we come full-butt upon the great grey
dome. The finest building in London, with the
worst approach ; the shrine of heroes ; the model
of grace ; the cluf-d'auvic of a great genius, rises

before us, and between its sable Corinthian pillars
we have now to thread our way in search of the
old legends of St. Paul's.

The old associations rise around us as we pass
across the paved area that surrounds Queen .'\nne's
mean and sooty statue. From the times of the
Saxons to the present day, London's chief sanctuary
of religion has stood here above the river, a land-
mark to the ships of 'all nations that have floated
on the welcoming waters of the Thames. That

St. Paul's.]

THE SriE UF ST. PAUL'S.

235

great dome, circled with its coronet of gold, is the of I-ondon from two Welsh words, " Llan-den " —
first object the pilgrim traveller sees, whether he I church of Diana. Dugdale, to confirm these tra-
approach by river or by land ; the sj)arkle of that ditions, drags a legi:nd out of an obscure monkisii
golden cross is seen from many a distant hill and chronicle, to the effect that during the Diocletian
plain. St. Paul's is the central object — the very persecution, in which St. Alban, a centurion, was
palladium— of modern London. , martyred, the Romans demolished a church stand-

OLD ST. PAtJL's.— THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.

Camden, the Elizabethan historian, revived an
old tradition that a Roman temple to Diana once
stood where St. Paul's was afterwards built ; and
he asserts that in the reign of Edward II L an in-
credible quantity of o.x-skulis, stag-horns, and boars'
tusks, together with some sacrificial vessels, were
exhumed on this site. Selden, a better Orientalist
than Celtic scholar (Charles I.), derived the name

ins on the site of St. Paul's, and raised a temple to
Diana on its ruins, wiiile in Thorny Island, West-
minster, St. Peter, in the like manner, gave way
to Apollo. These myths are, however, more than
doubtful.

Sir Christopher Wren's excavations for the
foundation of modern St. Paul's entirely refuted
these confused stories, to v,-hich the l.arncd and

236

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.^

the credulous had paid too much deference. He
tlug down to the river-level, and found neither ox-
bone nor stag-horn. \Vhat he did find, however,
was curious. It was this : — -i. Below the medireval
graves Saxon stone coffins and Saxon tombs, lined
with slabs of chalk. 2. Lower still, British graves,
and in the earth around the i\ory and box-wood
skewers that had flistened the Saxons' woollen
shrouds. 3. At the same level with the Saxon
graves, and also deeper, Roman funeral urns.
These were discovered as deep as eighteen feet.
Roman lamps, tear vessels, and fragments of
sacrificial vessels of Samian ware were met with
chiefly towards the Cheapside corner of the church-
yard.

There had evidently been a Roman cemetery out-
side this Prretorian camp, and beyond the ancient
walls of London, the wise nation, by the laws of the
Twel\-e Tables, forbidding the interment of the dead
within the w;alls of a city. There may liave been
a British or a Saxon temple here ; for the Church
tried hard to conquer and consecrate places where
idolatry had once triumphed. But the Temple of
Uiana was moonshine from the beginning, and moon-
shine it will ever remain. The antiquaries were,
however, angry with ^Vren for the logical refutation
of their belief. Dr. Woodward (the " Martinus
Scriblerus "' of Pope and his set) was especially
vehement at the slaying of his hobby, and produced
a small brass votive image of Diana, that had been
found between the Deanery and Blackfriars. Wren,
who could be contemptuous, disdained a reply, and
so the matter remained till 1830, when the discovery
of a rude stone altar, with an image of Diana,
under the foundation of the new Goldsmith's Hall,
Foster Lane, Cheapside, revived the old dispute, yet
did not help a whit to prove the existence of the
supposed temple to the goddess of moonshine.
. The earliest authenticated church of St. Paul's
was built and endowed by Ethelbert, King of East
Kent, with the sanction of Sebert, King of the
East Angles: and the first bishop .',-ho preached
within its walls was Mellitus, the companion of
St. Augustine, the first Christian missionary who
visited the heathen Saxons. The visit of St. Paul
to England in the time of Boadicea's war, and that
of Joseph of Arimathea, are mere monkish legends.
The Londoners again became pagan, and for
thirty-eight years there Mas no bishop at St.
Paul's, till a brother of St. Chad of Lichfield
came and set his foot on the images of Thor and
Wodin. With the fourth .successor of Mellitus,
Saint Erkenwald, wealth and splendour returned
to St. Paul's. This zealous man worked miracles
both before and after his death. He used to be

driven about in a cart, and one legend says that he
often preached to the woodmen in the wild forests
that lay to the north of London. On a certain day
one of the cart-wheels came oft" in a slough. The
worthy confessor was in a dilemma. The congre-
gation under the oaks might have waited for ever,
but the one wheel left was equal to the occasion,
for it suddenly grew invested with special powers of
balancing, and went on as steadily as a velocipede
with the smiling saint. This was pretty well, but
still nothing to what happened after the good man's
death.

St. Erkenwald departed at last in the odour of
sanctity at his sister's convent at Barking. Eager to
get hold of so valuable a body, the Chertsey monks
instantly made a dash for it, pursued by the equally
eager clergy of St. Paul's, who were fully alive to
the value of their dead bishop, whose shrine would
become a money-box for pilgrim's offerings. The
London priests, by a forced march, got first to
Barking and bore oft' the body ; but the monks of
Chertsey and the nuns of Barking followed, wringing
their hands and loudly protesting against the theft.
The river Lea, sympathising with their prayers, rose
in a flood. There was no boat, no bridge, and a
fight for the body seemed imminent. A pious man
present, however, exhorted the monks to peace,
and begged them to leave the matter to heavenly
decision. The clergy of St. Paul's then broke forth
into a litany. The Lea at once subsided, the
cavalcade crossed at Stratford, the sun cast tiown
its benediction, and the clergy passed on to St.
Paul's with their holy spoil. From that time the
shrine of Erkenwald became a source of wealth and
power to the cathedral.

The Saxon kings, according to Dean Milman,
were munificent to St. Paul's. The clergy claimed
Tillingham, in Essex, as a grant from King Ethel-
bert, and that place still contributes to the mainte-
nance of the cathedral. The charters of Athel-
stane are questionable, but the places mentioned in
them certainly belonged to St. Paul's till the Eccle-
siastical Commissioners broke in upon that wealth ;
and the charter of Canute, still preserved, and no
doubt authentic, ratifies the donations of his Saxon
predecessors.

William the Conqueror's Norman Bishop of
London was a good, peace-loving man, who inter-
ceded with the stern monarch, and recovered the
forfeited privileges of the refractory London citizens.
For centuries — indeed, even up to the end of
Queen Mary's reign — the ma)-or, aldermen, and
crafts used to make an annual procession to St.
Paul's, to visit the tomb of good Bishop William
in the na\'e. In 1622 the Lord Mayor, Edward

St. Paul's.]

ST. PAUL'S BURNT AND RE15LTLT.

237

Barkham, caused these quaint lines to be carved
on tlie bishop's toml) : —

" \V.-\lker-;, ^\■llosoe'er ye bee.
If it prove you chance to see,
L'poii a solemn scarlet ilay.
The City senate pass this way,
Their grateful memory for to show,
Which they tire reverent ashes owe
Of Bishop Norman here inhumed, • ■'
By whom this city has assumed
Large privileges ; 'Jhose obtained
By him when Con<iueror William reigned.
This being by Barliham's thankful mind renewed,
Call it the monument of gratitude. ''

The ruthless Conqueror granted valuable privi-
les.';es to St. Paul's. He freed the church from the
payment of Danegeld, and all services to the Crown.
His words (if they are authentic) are — "Some
lands I give to God and the church of St^ Paul's,
in London, and special franchises, because I wish
that this church ma)' be free in all things, as I wish
my soul to be on tiie day of judgment." In this
same reign tire Primate Lanfranc held a great
council at St. Paul's — a council which Milman
calls " the first full Ecclesiastical Parliament of
England." Twelve years after (1087), the year
jthe Conqueror died, fire, that persistent enemy
of St. Paul's, almost entirely consumed the
cathedral.

Bishop Maurice set to work to erect a more
splendid building, with a vast crypt, in which the
\-aluable remains of St. Erkenwald were enshrined.
^\'illiam of Malmesbury ranked it among the great
buildings of his time. One of the last acts of the
Conqueror was to give tlie stone of a Palatine
tower (on the subsequent site of Blackfriars) for the
building. The next bishop, De Balmeis, is said
to have devoted the whole of his revenues for
twent)' years to this pious work. Fierce Rufus —
no friend of monks — did little ; but the miUier
monarch, Henry I., granted exemption of toll to
ail vessels, laden with stone for St. Paul's, that
entered the Fleet.

To enlarge the area of the church. King Henry
gave part of the Palatine Tower estate, which was
turned into a churchyard and encircled with a wall,
which ran along Carter Lane to Creed Lane, and
was freed of buildings. The bishop, on his part,
contributed to the service of the altar the rents of
Paul's ^Vharf, and for a school gave the house of
Durandus, at the corner of Bell Court. On the
bishop's death, the Crown seized his wealth, and
tlic bishop's boots were carried to the Exchequer
full of gold and silver. St. Bernard, however,
praises him, and sa)'s : " It was not wonderful that
Master Gilbert should be a bishop ; but that the

Bi.shop of London should li\c like a ]ioor man,
tliat was magnificent."

Ill the reign of Stephen a dreadful fire broke out
and raged from London liridge to St. Clement
Daiie.s. In this fire St. Paul's was partially
destroyed. The Bishop, in his appeals for contri-
butions to the church, pleaded that this was the
only London church specially dedicated to St.
Paul. The citizens of London were staunch advo-
cates of King Stephen against the Empress Maud,
and at their folkmote, held at the Cheapside end
of St. Paul's, claimed the privilege of naming a
monarch.

In the reign of Henry II. St. Paul's was the
scene of a strange incident connected with the
quarrel between the King and that amlntious
Churchman, the Primate Becket. Gilbert Foliot,
the learned and austere Bishop of London, had
sided with the King and provoked the bitter hatred
of Becket. During the celebration of mass a
daring emissary of Becket had the boldness to
thrust a roll, bearing the dreaded sentence of
excommunication against Foliot, into the hands
of the officiating priest, and at the same time to
cry aloud — " Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop
of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Arch-
bishop of Canterlmry 1'' Foliot for a time defied
the interdict, but at last bowed to his enemy's
authority, and refrained from entering the Church
of St. Paul's.

The reign of Richard I. was an eventful one to
St. Paul's. In 1191, when Cceur de Lion* was in
Palestine, Prince John and all the bishops met in
the nave of St. Paul's to arraign William de Long-
champ, one of the King's regents, of many acts of
tyranny. In the reign of their absentee monarch
the Londoners grew mutinous, and their leader,
William Fitzosbert, or Longbeard, denounced their
oppressors from Paul's Cross. These disturbances
ended in the siege of Bow Church, where Fitz-
osbert had fortified himself, and by the burning
alive of him and other ringleaders. It was at this
period that Dean Radulph de Diceto, a monkish
chronicler of learning, built the Deanery, " inha-
bited," says Milman, " after him, by many men of
letters ;" before the Reformation, by the admirable
Colet; after the Reformation by Alexander Nowell,
Donne, Sancroft (who rebuilt the mansion after the
Great Fire), Stillingtleet, Tillotson, A\'. Sherlock,
Butler, Seeker, Newton, ^'an Mildert, Copleston,
and Milman.

St. Paul's was also the scene of one of those great
meetings of i^relates, abbots, deans, priors, and
barons that finally led to King John's concession
of Magna Charta. On this solemn occasion — so

^3S

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

important for the progress of England — the Primate
Langton displayed the old charter of Henry L to
the chief barons, and made them sacredly pledge
tliemsclves to stand up for Magna Charta and the
liberties of England.

One of the first acts of King Henry HL was
to hold a council in St. Paul's, and there publish
the Great Charter. Twelve years after, when a
Papal Legate enthroned himself in St. Paul's, he
was there openly resisted by Cantelupe, Bishop of
AVorcester.

Papal power in this reign attained its greatest
height in England. On the death of Bishop Roger,
an opponent of these inroads, the King gave orders
that out of the episcopal revenue 1,500 poor
should be feasted on the day of the conversion of
St. Paul, and 1,500 lights offered in the church.
The country was filled with Italian prelates. An
Italian Archbishop of Canterbury, coming to St.
Paul's, with a cuirass under his robes, to demand
first-fruits from the Bishop, found the doors closed
in his face ; and two canons of the Papal party,
endeavouring to install themselves at St. Paul's,
were in 1259 killed by the angry populace.

In the reign of this weak king several folkmotes
of the London citizens were held at Paul's Cross,
in the churchyard. On one occasion the king
himself, and his brother, the King of Almayne,
were present. All citizens, even to the age of
twelve, were sworn to allegiance, for a great out-
break for liberty was then imminent. The inventory
of the goods of Bishop Richard de Gravesend,
Bishop of London for twenty-five years of this
reign, is still preserved in the archives of St.
Paul's. It is a roll twenty-eight feet long. The
value of the whole property was nearly _;^3,ooo,
and this sum (says Milman) must be multiplied by
about fifteen to bring it to its present value.

When the citizens of London justly ranged
themselves on the side of Simon de Montfort, who
stood up for their liberties, the great bell of St.
Paul's was the tocsin that summoned the burghers
to arms, especially on that memorable occasion
when Queen P^leanor tried to escape by water from
the Tower to Windsor, where her husband was,
and the people who detested her tried to sink her
barge as it passed London Bridge.

In the etiually troublous reign of Edward II.
St. Paul's was again splashed witli blood. The
citizens, detesting the king's foreign favourites, rose
against the Bishop of Exeter, Edward's regent in
London. A letter from the queen, appealing to
them, was affi.\ed to the cross in Cheapside. The
bishop demanded the City keys of the Lord
Mayor, and the people sprang to arms, with cries

of "Death to the queen's enemies!" They cut
off the head of a servant of the De Spensers, burst
open the gates of the Bishop of Exeter's palace
(Essex Street, Strand), and plundered, sacked,
and destroyed everything. The bishop, at the
time riding in the Islington fields, hearing the
danger, dashed home, and made straight for
sanctuary in St. Paul's. At .the north door, how-
ever, the mob thickening, tore him from his horse,
and, hurrying him into Cheapside, proclaimed
him a traitor, and beheaded him there, with two
of his servants. They then dragged his body
back to his palace, and flung the corpse into the
river.

In the inglorious close of the glorious reign of
Edward III., Courtenay, Bishop of London, an
inflexible prelate, did his best to induce some of
the London rabble to plunder the Florentines, at
that time the great bankers and money-lenders of
the metropolis, by reading at Paul's Cross the
interdict Gregory XL had launched against them ;
but on this occasion the Lord Mayor, leading the
principal Florentine merchants into the presence
of the aged king, obtained the royal protection for
them.

Wycliffe and his adherents (amongst whom
figured John of Gaunt — " old John of Gaunt,
time - honoured Lancaster " — Chaucer's patron)
soon brewed more trouble in St. Paul's for the
proud bishop. The great reformer being sum-
moned to an ecclesiastical council at St. Paul's,
was accompanied by his friends, John of Gaunt
and the Earl Marshal, Lord Percy. When in the
lady chapel Percy demanded a soft seat for
Wycliffe. The bishop said it was law and reason
that a cited man should stand before the ordinary.
Angry words ensued, and the Duke of Lancaster
taunted Courtenay with his pride. The bishop
answered, " I trust not in man, but in God alone,
who will give me boldness to speak the truth."
A rumour was spread that John of Gaunt had
threatened to drag the bishop out of the church
by the hair, and that he had vowed lo abolish
the title of Lord Mayor. A tumult began. All
through the City the billmen and bowmen gathered.
The Savoy, John of Gaunt's palace, would have
been burned but for the intercession of the bishop.
A priest mistaken for Percy was murdered. Tiie
duke fled to Kensington, and joined the Princess
of Wales.

Richard II., that dissolute, rash, and unfortunate
monarch, once only (alive) came to St. Paul's in
great pomp, his robes hung with bells, and after-
wards feasted at the house of his favourite. Sir
Nicholas Brember, who was eventually put to death.

Se. Paul's.]

THE CATHKDRAI, STRUCTURE.

239

The Lollards were now making way, and Arch-
bishop Courtenay had a great barefooted proces-
sion to St. Paul's to hear a fonious Carmelite
preacher inveigh against the Wycliffe doctrines.
A Lollard, indeed, had the courage to nail to tiie
doors of St. Paul's twelve articles of the new creed
denouncing the mischievous celibacy of the clergy,
transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, pilgrim-
ages, and other mistaken and idolatrous usages.
When Henry Bolingbroke (not yet crowned Henry
IV.) came to St. Paul's to offer prayer' for the
dethronement of his ill-fated cousin, Richard, he
paused at the north side of the altar to shed tears
over the grave of his father, John of Gaunt,
interred early that very year in the Cathedral.
Not long after the shrunken body of the dead
king, on its way to the Abbey, was exposed in
St. Paul's, to prove to the populace that Richard
was not still alive. Hardynge, in his chronicles
(quoted by Milman), says that the usurping king
and his nobles spread — some seven, some nine —
cloths of gold on the bier of the murdered king.

Bishop Braybroke, in the reign of Edward IV.-,
was strenuous in denouncing ecclesiastical abuses.
Edward III. himself had denounced the resort of
mechanics to the refectory, the personal vices of
the priests, and the pilfering of sacred vessels. He
restored the communion-table, and insisted on daily
alms-giving. But Braybroke also condemned worse
abuses. He issued a prohibition at Paul's Cross
against barbers shaving on Sundays ; he forbade
the buying and selling in the Cathedral, the
flinging stones and shooting arrows at the pigeons
and jackdaws nestling in the walls of the church,
and the playing at ball, both within and without
the church, a practice which led to the breaking of
many beautiful and costly painted windows.

But here we stop awhile in our history of St.
Paul's, on the eve of the sanguinary wars of
the Roses, to describe medixval St. Paul's, its
structure, and internal government. Foremost
among the relics were two arms of St. Mellitus
(miraculously enough, of quite different sizes).
Behind the high altar — what Dean Milman justly
calls " the pride, glory, and fountain of wealth " to
St. Paul's — was the body of St. Erkenwald, covered
with a shrine which three London goldsmiths had
spent a whole year in chiselling ; and this shrine was
covered with a grate of tinned iron. The very dust
of the chapel floor, mingled with water, was said to
work instantaneous cures. On the anniversary of St.
Erkenwald the whole clergy of tlie diocese attended
in procession in their copes. When King John
of France was made captive at Poictiers. and paid
his orisons at St. Paul's, he presL-nted four golden

basins to the high altar, antl twenty-two nobles
at the shrine of St. Erkenwald. Milman calculates
that in 1344 the oblation-box alone at St. Paul's
produced an annual sum to the dean and chapter
of .^'9,000. Among other relics that were milcli
cows to the monks were a knife of our Lord,
some hair. of Mary Magdalen, blood of St. Paul,
milk of the Virgin, the hand of St. John, pieces
of the mischievous skull of Thomas h. Becket,
and the head and jaw of King Ethslbert. These
were all preserved in jewelled cases. One hun-
dred and eleven anniversary masses were cele-
brated. The chantry chapels in the Cathedral
were very numerous, and they were served by an
army of idle and often dissolute mass priests.
There was one chantry in Pardon Churchyard, on
the north side of St. Paul's, east of the bishop's
chapel, whefe St. Thomas Becket's ancestors were
buried. The grandest was one near the na\e,
built by Bishop Kemp, to pray for himself and
his royal master, Edward IV. Another was
founded by Henry IV. for the souls of his father,
John of Gaunt, and his mother, Blanche of Castile.
A third was built by Lord ]\Iayor Pulteney, who
was buried in St. Lawrence Pulteney, so called
from him. The revenues of these chantries were
vast.

But to return to our historical sequence. During
the ruthless Wars of the 'Roses St. Paul's became
the scene of many curious ceremonials, on which
Shakespeare himself has touched, in his early his-
torical plays. It was on a platform at the cathedral
door that Roger Bolingbroke, the spiirious necro-
mancer who was supposed to have aided the am-
bitious designs of the Duke and Duchess of Glou-
cester, was exhibited. The Duchess's penance for
the same offence, according to Milman's opinion,
commenced or closed near the cathedral, in that
shameful journey when she was led through the
streets wrapped in a sheet, and carrying a lighted
taper in her hand. The duke, her husband, was
eventually buried at St. Paul's, where his tomb
became the haunt of needy men about town,
whence the well-known proverb of " dining with
I Duke Humphrey."

Henry VI. 's first peaceful visit to St. Paul's is
quaintly sketched by that dull old poet, Lydgate,
who describes " the bishops in poniificalibus, the
Dean of Paules and canons, every one who con-
veyed the king "

" Up into the church, with full devout singing ;
And when he h.id made his olTering,
The mayor, the citizens, lowed and left him."

While nil the dark troubles still were pending,
we tind tlie Uuke of York tal;i;< a solemn oath

240

OI.D AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

on tlie host of fealty to King Henry. Six j'ears
later, after the battle of .St. Albans, the Yorkists and
Lancastrians met again at the altar of St. Paul's in
feigned unity. The poorweak monarch was crowned,
and had sceptre in hand, and his proud brilliant
queen followed him in smiling converse witli the
Duke of York. Again the city poet broke into
rejoicing at the final jicace : —

" At Paul's in Lontlon, with gie.it renown,
On Lady Day in Lent, tliis jieaee was wrousht ;

knelt before the primate, and swore allegiance to
the king ; and the duke's two sons, March and
Rutland, took the same oath.

Within a few months Wakefield was fought ;
Richard was slain, and the duke's head, adorned
with a mocking paper crown, was sent, by the she-
wolf of a (jueen, to adorn the walls of York.

The next year, however, fortune forsook Henry
for ever, and St. Paul's welcomed Edward IV. and
the redoubtable " king-maker," who had won the

THE CHURCH OF .ST. FAITH, THE CliVPT OF OLD ST. PAUL'S, FRO.M A VIEW BY HOLLAR.

The King, the Queen, with lords many an one,

To worship the \'irgin as they ought.
Went in procession, and spared right nought

In sight of all the commonalty ;
In token this love was in heart and thought.

Rejoice England in concord and unity."

Alas for such reconciliations ! Four years later
more blood had been shed, more battle-fields
strewn with dead. The king was a captive,
had disinherited his own son, and granted the
succession to the Duke of York, whose right a
Parliament had acknowledged. His proud queen
was in the North rallying the scattered Lancas-
trians. York and Warwick, Henry's deadly enemies,

crown for him at the battle of Mortimer's Cross ;
and no Lancastrian dared show his face on that
triumphant day. Ten years later \Varwick, veering
to the downfallen king, was slain at Barnet, and
the body of the old warrior, and that of his brother,
were exposed, barefaced, for three days in St. Paul's,
to the delight of all true Yorkists. Those were
terrible times, and the generosity of the old chivalry
seemed nowdespised and forgotten. The next month
there was even a sadder sight, for the body of King
Henry himself was displayed in the Cathedral.
Broken-hearted, said the Yorkists, but the Lancas-
trian belief (favoured by Shakespeare) was that
Richard Duke of Gloucester, the wicked Crook-

St. Paul's.]

MORE SAD MEMORIES AROUND ST. PAUL'S.

241

back, stabbed him witli his own liand in the Tower,
and it was said that blood poured from the body
when it lay in the Cathedral. Again St. Paul's was
profaned at the death of Edward IV., when Richard
came to pay his ostentatious orisons in the Cathe-
dral, while he was already planning the removal
of the princes to the Tower. Always anxious to
please the London citizens, it was to St. Paul's
Cross that Richard sent Dr. Shaw to accuse
Clarence of illegitimacy. At St. Paul's, too, ac-
cording to Shakespeare, who in his historic plays
often follows traditions now forgotten, or chronicles
that have perished, the charges against Hastings

mangled; and ill-sliaped body thrown, like carrion,
across a pack-horse and driven off to Leicester, and
Henry VH., the astute, the wily, the thrifty, reigned
in his stead. After Henry's victory over Simnel he
came two successive days to St. Paul's to offer his
thanksgi\'ing, antl Sinniel (afterwards a scullion in
the royal kitchen) rode humbly at his conqueror's
side.

The last ceremonial of the reign of Henry VH.
that look ])la e at St. Paul's was the ill-fated
marriage of Prince Arthur (a mere boy, who died
si.K months after) with Katherine of Arragon. The
whole church was hung with tapestry, and there

ST. Paul's after the fall of the si'ike, from a view by hullar ^s,r/'<l^v 244).

were publicly read. Jane Shore, the mistress, and
supposed accomplice of Hastings in bewitching
Richard, did penance in St. Paul's. She was the
wife of a London goldsmith, and had been mistress
of Edward I'V". Her beauty, as she walked down-
cast with shame, is said to have moved every heart
to pity. On his accession, King Richard, nervously
fingering his dagger, as was his wont to do accord-
ing to the chronicles, rode to St. Paul's, and was
received by procession, amid great congratulation
and acclamation from the fickle people. Kemp,
who was the Yorkist bishop during all these
dreadful times, rebuilt St. Paul's Cross, which then
became one of the chief ornaments of London.

Richard's crown was ])rosently beaten into a
hawthorn bush on Bosworlh I'ield, and his defaced.
21

was a huge scaffold, with seats round it, reaching
from the west door to the choir. On this platform
the ceremony was performed. All day, at several
places in the city, and at the west door of the
Cathedral, the conduits ran for the delighted people
with red and white wine. The wedded children
were lodged in the bishop's palace, and three days
later returned by water to Westminster. When
Henry VH. died, his body lay in state in St. Paul's,
and from thence it was taken to Windsor, to remain
there till the beautiful chapel he had endowed at
Westminster was ready for his reception. The
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's were among the
trustees for the endowment he left, and the Cathe-
dral still possesses the royal testament.

A Venetian ambassador who was prcc^nt has

242

OLD AXn \K\V LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

left a graphic description of one of the carUest
ceremonies (15 14) which Henry VI I L witnessed
at St. Paul's. The Pope (Leo X.) had sent the
youn^ and chivalrous king a sword and cap of
maintenance, as a special mark of honour. The
cap was of purple satin, covered with embroidery
and pearls, and decked with ermine. The king
rode from the bishop's iialace to the cathedral
on a beautiful black palfrey, the nobility walking
before him in ])airs. At the high altar the king
donned the caj), and was girt with the sword.
The procession then made the entire circuit of the
cliurch. The king wore a gown of pin-ple satin
and gold in chequer, and a jewelled collar; his
cap of purple vehet had two jewelled rosettes,
and his doublet was of gold brocade. The nobles
wore massive chains of gold, and their chequered
silk gowns were lined with sables, lynx-fur, and
swansdown.

In the same reign Richard Fitz James, the
fanatical Bishop of London, persecuted the Lol-
lards, and burned two of the most obstinate at
Smithfield. It is indeed, doubtful, even now, if
Fitz James, in his hatred of the reformers, stopped
short of murder. In 1514, Richard Ilunn, a citizen
who h:id disputed the jurisdiction of the obnoxious
Ecclesiastical Court, was thrown into the Lollard's
Tower (the bishop's prison, at the south-west corner
of the Cathedral). A Wycliffc Bible had been
found in his house : he was adjudged a heretic,
and one night this obstinate man was found hung
in his cell. The clergy called it suicide, but the
coroner brought in a verdict of wilful murder
against the Uishop's Chancellor, the sumncr, and
the bell-ringer of the Cathedral. The king, how-
ever, ]»rdoned them all on their paying ^1,500 to
Hunn's family. The bishop, still furious, burned
Hunn's body sixteen days after, as that, of a
iieretic, in Smithfield. This fanatical bishop was
the ceaseless persecutor of Dean Colet, that ex-
cellent and enlightened man, who founded St.
Paul's School, and was the untiring friend of
Erasmus, whom he accompanied on his memorable
visit to Becket's shrine at Canterbury.

In 15 18 Wolsey, proud and portly, appears
upon the scene, coming to St. Paul's to sing mass
and celebrate eternal peace between France, Eng-
land, and Spain, and the betrothal of the beautiful
Princess Mary to the Dauphin of France. The
large chapel and the choir were hung with gold
brocade, blazoned with the king's arms. Near
the altar was the king's pew, formed of cloth of
gold, and in front of it a small altar covered with
silver-gilt images, with a gold cross in the centre.
Two low masses were said at this before the kins.

while high mass was being sung to the rest. On
the opposite side of the altar, on a raised and
canopied chair, sat Wolsey ; further off stood the
legate Campeggio. . The twelve bishops and six
abbots present all wore their jewelled mitres, while
the king himself shone out in a tunic of purple
velvet, "powdered" with pearls and rubies, sap-
phires and diamonds. His collar was studded
with carbuncles as large as walnuts. A year later
Charles \'. was proclaimed emperor by the heralds
at St. Paul's. Wolsey gave the benediction, no
doubt with full hope of the Pope's tiara.

In 1521, but a little later, Wolsey, "Cardinal of
St. Cecilia and Archbishop of York," was welcomed
by Dean Pace to St. Paul's. He had come to
sit near Paul's Cross, to hear Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, by the Pope's command, denounce
" Martinus Eleutherius " and his accursed works,
many of which were burned in the churchyard
during the sermon, no doubt to the infinite alarm
of all heretical booksellers in the neighbouring
street. Wolsey had always an eye to the emperor's
helping him to the papacy; and when Charles V.
came to England to visit Henry, in 1522, Wolsey
said mass, censed by more than twenty obsequious
prelates. It was Wolsey who first, as papal legate,
removed the convocation entirely from St. Paul's
to Westminster, to be near his house at Whitehall.
His ribald enemy, Skelton, then hiding from the
cardinal's wrath in the Sanctuary at Westminster,
wrote the following rough distich on the arbitrary
removal : —

" Gentle Paul, lay down thy sword,
For Peter of Westminster hath shiven thy beard. "

On the startling news of the battle of Pavia,
when Francis I. was taken prisoner by his great
rival of Spain, a huge bonfire illumined the west front
of St. Paul's, and hogsheads of claret were broached
at the Cathedral door, to celebrate the welcome
tidings. On the Sunday after, the bluft' king, the
queen, and both houses of Parliament, attended a
solemn " Te Deum " at the cathedral ; while on
St. Matthew's Day there was a great procession of
all the religious orders in London, and Wolsey,
with his obsequious bishops, performed service at
the high altar. Two years later Wolsey came
again, to lament or rejoice over the sack of Rome
by the Constable Bourbon, and the captivity of
the Pope.

Singularly enough, the fire lighted by Wolsey in
St. Paul's Churchyard had failed to totally burn up
Luther and all his works ; and on Shrove Tuesday,
1527, Wolsey mad; another attempt to reduce the
new-formed Bible to ashes. In the great pro-
cession that caine on this day to St. Paul's there

St. Ruirs.)

POLITICAL PEACE AND RIILIGIOUS WARFARE.

=43

were six Lutherans in jjcnitential dresses, carrying
terribly symbolical fagots and huge lighted tapers.
On a platform in the nave sat the portly and proud
cardinal, supported by thirty-six zealous bishops,
abbots, and priests. At the foot of the great rood
over the northern door the heretical tracts and
Testaments were thrown into a fire. The prisoners,
on their knees, begLjed ])ardon of God and the
Catholic Church, and were then led three times
round the fire, which they fed with tlie fagots they
had carried.

Four years later, after Wolsey's fall, the London
clergy were sunnnoned to St. Paul's Chapter-house
(near the south side). The king, oftended at the
Church having yielded to Wolsey's claims as a
papal legate, by which the penalty of prremunire
had been incurred, had demanded from it the
alarming fine of _;^i 00,000. Immediately six
hundred clergy of all ranks thronged riotously to
the chapter-house, to resist this outrageous tax.
The bisliop was all for concession ; their goods
and lands were forfeit, their bodies liable to im-
prisonment. The humble clergy cried out, " We
have never meddled in the cardinal's business.
Let the bishops and abbots, who have offended,
pay." Blows were struck, and eventually fifteen
priests and four laymen were condemned to terms
of imprisonment in the Fleet and Tower, for their
resistance to despotic power.

In 1535 nineteen German Anabaptists were
examined in St. Paul's, and fourteen .of them sent
to the stake. Then came plain signs that the
Reformation had commenced. The Pope's autho-
rity had been denied at Paul's Cross in 1534.
A miraculous rood from Kent was brought to St.
Paul's, and the machinery that moved the eyes
and lips was shown to the populace, after which
it was thrown down and broken amid contemptuous
laughter. Nor would this chapter be complete if
we did not mention a great civic procession at the
close of the reign of Henry VIII. On Whit
Sunday, 1546, the children of Paul's School, with
parsons and vicars of every London church, in
their copes, went from St. Paul's to St. Peter's,
Cornhill, Bishop Bonner bearing the sacrament
under a canopy ; and at the Cross, before the
mayor, aldermen, and all the crafts, heralds pro-
claimed perpetual peace between England, France,
and the Emperor. Two months after, the ex-
bishop of Rochester preached a sermon at Paul's
Cross recanting his heresy, four of his late fellow-
prisoners in Newgate having obstinately perished
at the stake.

In the reign of Edward VI. St. Paul's witnessed
far difterent scenes. The year of the accession of

'the child -king, funeral service was read to the
I memory of Francis I., Latin dirges were chanted,
I and eight mitred bishops sang a retjuiem to the
monarch lately deceased. At the coronation,
while the guilds were marshalled along Cheap-
side, and ta])estries hung from every window, ai
acrobat descended by a cable from St. Paul's
steeple to the anchor of a ship near the Deanery
door. In November of the ne.\t year, at night, the
crucifixes and images in St. Paul's were pulled
down and removed, to the horror of the faithful,
and all obits and chantreys were confiscated, and
the vestments and altar cloths were sold. The
early reformers were backed by greedy partisans.
The Protector Somerset, who was desirous of
building rapidly a sumptuous iialace in the Strand,
jJuUed down the chapel and charnel-house in the
Pardon churchyard, and carted off the stones of
St. Paul's cloister. When the good Ridley was
installed Bishop of London, he would not enter
the choir until the lights on the altar were ex-
tinguished. Very soon a table was substitute 1 for
the altar, and there was an attempt made to re-
move the organ. The altar, and chapel, and
tombs (all but John of Gaunt's) were then ruth-
lessly destroyed.

During the Lady Jane Grey rebellion, Ridley
denounced Mary and Elizabeth as bastards. The
accession of gloomy Queen Mary soon turned the
tables. As the Queen passed to her coronation, a
daring Dutchman stood on the cross of St. Paul's
waving a long streamer, and shifting from foot to
foot as he shook two torches which he held over
his head.

But the citizens were Protestants at heart. At the
first sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross, Dr. Bourne,
a rash Essex clergyman, prayed for the dead, praised
Bonner, and denounced Ridley. The mob, in-
flamed to madness, shouted, " He preaches dam-
nation ! Pull him down ! pull him down 1" A
dagger, thrown at the preacher, stuck quivering in
a side-post of the pulpit. With difficulty two good
men dragged the rash zealot safely into St. Paul's
School. For this riot several persons were sent to
the Tower, and a priest and a barber had their
eirs nailed to the pillory at St. Paul's Cross. The
crosses were raised again in St. Paul's, and the old
ceremonies and superstitions revived. On St.
Katherine's Day (in honour of the queen's mother's
patron saint) there was a procession with lights,
and the image of St. Katherine, round St. Paul's
steeple, and the bells rang. Yet not long after this,
when a Dr. Pendleton preached old doctrines at
St. Paul's Cross, a gun was fired at him. When
Booner was released from the Marshalsca and

844

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Sf. PaoVs.-

restored to his see, the people shouted, " Welcome
home ;" and a woman ran forward and kissed
him. We are told that he knelt in prayer on the
Cathedral steps.

In 1554, at the reception in St. Paul's of Car-
dinal Pole, King Philip attended with English,
Spanish, and German guards, and a great retinue
of nobles. Bishop Gardiner preached on the widen-
ing heresy till the audience groaned and wept. Of
the cruel persecutions of the Protestants in this
reign St. Paul's was now and then a witness, and
likewise of the preparations for the execution of
Protestants, which Bonner's party called " trials."
Thus we find Master Cardmaker, vicar of St.
Bride's, and Warne, an upholsterer in Walbrook,
both arraigned at St. Paul's before the bishop for
heresy, and carried back from there to Newgate,
to be shortly after burned alive in Smithfield.

In the midst of these horrors, a strange cere-
mony took place at St. Paul's, more worth)-, indeed,
of the supposititious temple of Diana than of
a Christian cathedral, did it not remind us that
Popery was always strangely intermingled with frag-
ments of old paganism. In June, 1557 (St. Paul's
Day, says Machyn, an undertaker and chronicler
of Mary's reign), a fat buck was presented to the
dean and chapter, according to an annual grant
made by Sir Walter le Baud, an Essex knight, in the
reign of Edward I. A priest from each London
parish attended in his cope, and the Bishop of
London wore his mitre, while behind the burly,
bullying, persecutor Bonner came a fat buck, his
head with his horns borne upon a pole ; forty
huntsmen's horns blowing a rejoicing chorus.

Tiie last event of this blood-stained reign was
the celebration at St. Paul's of the victory over
the French at the battle of St. Quintin hf Philip
and the Spaniards. A sermon was preached to
the city at Paul's Cross, bells were rung, and bon-
fires blazed in every street.

At Elizabeth's accession its new mistress soon
purged St. Paul's of all its images : copes and
shaven crowns disappeared. The first ceremony of
the new reigu was the performance of the obsequies
of- Henry II. of France. The empty hearse was
hung with cloth of gold, the choir draped in black,
the clergy appearing in plain black gowns and caps.
And now,w-hat the Catholics called a great judgment
Yell on the old Cathedral. During a great storm in
1 56 1, St. Martin's Church, Ludgate, w^as struck by
lightning ; immediately after, the wooden steeple of
St. Paul's started into a flame. The fire burned
dow-nwards furiously for four hours, the bells melted,
the lead poured in torrents ; tiie roof fell in, and
the whole Cathedral became for a time a ruin.

Soon after, at the Cross, Dean Nowell rebuked the
Papists for crying out "a judgment." In papal
times the church had also suffered. In Richard I.'g
reign an earthijuake shook down the spire, and iii
Stephen's time fire had also brought destruction.
The Crown and City were roused by this misfortune.
Thrifty Elizabeth gave 1,000 marks in gold, and
1,000 marks' worth of timber; the City gave
a great benevolence, and the clergy subscribed
;^i,4io. In one month a false roof was erected,
and by the end of the year the aisles were leaded
in. Oa the ist of November, the same year, the
mayor, aldermen, and crafts, with eighty torch-
bearers, w-ent to attend service at St. Paul's. The
steeple, however, was never re-erected, in spite of
Queen Elizabeth's angry remonstrances.

In the first year of Philip and Mary, the Common
Council of London passed an act which shows the
degradation into w-hich St. Paul's had sunk even
before the fire. It forbade the carrying of beer-
casks, or baskets of bread, fish, fksh, or fruit, or
leading mules or horses through the Cathedral,
under pain of fines and imprisonment. Elizabeth
also issued a proclamation to a similar effect, for-
bidding a fray, drawing of swords in the church,
or shooting with hand-gun or dagg within the
church or churchyard, under pain of two months'
imprisonment. Neither were agreements to be
made for the payment of money within the church.
Soon after the fire, a man that had provoked a fray
in the church was set in the pillory in the church-
yard, and had his ears nailed to a post, and then
cut oft". These proclamations, however, led to no re-
form. Cheats, gulls, assassins, and thieves thronged
the middle aisle of St. Paul's ; advertisements of all
kinds covered the w-alls, the worst class of servants
came there to be hired ; worthless rascals and dis-
reputable flaunting women met there by appoint-
ment. Parasites, hunting for a dinner, hung about
a monument of the Beauchamps, foolishly believed
to be the tomb of the good Duke Humphrey.
Shakespeare makes Falstaff hire red-nosed Bardolph
in St. Paul's, and Ben Jonson lays the third act
of his E'lXry Man in his Hnmoui- in the middle
aisle. Bishop Earle, in his " Microcosmography,"
describes the noise of the crowd of idlers in Paul's
" as that of bees, a strange hum mixed of walking
tongues and feet, a kind of still roar or loud
whisper." He describes the crowd of young curates,
copper captains, thieves, and dinngrless adventurers
and gossip-mongers. Bishop Corbet, that jolly
prelate, speaks of

" The walk,
AVhere all our British sinners swear and talk,
Old hardy ruffians, bankrupts, soothsayers,
And Youtlis wliose cousensge is old as th^ivs."'

St. Paul's.]

iFINE PROSPEfCtS FOR ST. PAUL'S.

245

On the eve of the election of Sandys as Bishop
of London, May, 1570, all London was roused by
a papal bull against I^lizabeth being found nailed
on the gates of the bishop's pakce. It declared
her crown forfeited and her people absolved from
their oaths of allegiance. The fanatic maniac,
Felton, was soon discovered, and hung on a gallows
at the bishop's gates.

One or two anecdotes of interest specially con-
nect Elizabeth with St. Paul's. On one occa-
sion Dean Nowell placed in the queen's closet
(pew) a splendid prayer-book, full of German
scriptural engravings, richly illuminated. The
zealous queen was furious ; the book seemed to
her of Catholic tendencies.

" Who placed this book on_my cushion? You
know I have an aversion to idolatry. The cuts
resemble angels and saints — nay, even grosser
absurdities."

The frightened dean pleaded innocence of all
evil intentions. The queen prayed God to grant
him more wisdom for the future, and asked him
v/here they came from. When told Germany, she
repHed, "It is well it was a stranger. Had it
been one of my subjects, we should have ques- j
tioned the matter."

Once again Dean Nowell vexed the queen — this
time from being too Puritan. On Ash Wed-
neiday, 1572, the dean preaching before her, he
denounced certain popish superstitions in a book
recently dedicated to her majesty. He specially
denounced the use of the sign of the cross. Sud-
denly a harsh voice was heard in the royal closet.
It was Elizabeth's. She chidingly bade Mr. Dean
return from his ungodly digression and revert to
his text. The next day the frightened dean
wrote a most abject apology to the high-spirited
queen.

The victory over the Armada was, of course,
not forgotten at St. Paul's. Wh.en the thanks-
giving sermon was preached at Paul's Cross, eleven
Spanish ensigns waved over the cathedral battle-
ments, and one idolatrous streamer with an image
of the Virgin fluttered over the preacher. That
was in September ; the Queen herself came in
November, drawn by four white horses, and with
the privy council and all the nobility. Elizabeth
heard a sermon, and dined at the bishop's palace.

The '• children of Paul's," whom Shakespeare, in
Hamkt, mentions with the jealousy of a rival
manager, were, as Dean Milman has proved, the
chorister-boys of St. Paul's. They acted, it is sup-
posed, in their singing-school. The .play began at
four p.m., after prayers, and the price of admission
was 4d. The\- are known at a later period to

have acted some of Lily's Euphuistic plays, and
one of Middleton's.

In this reign lotteries for Government purposes
were held at the west door of St. Paul's, where a
wootlen shed was erected for draw ing the jiri/es,
wliich wore first plate and then suits of armour.
In the first lottery (1569) there were 40,000 lots
at I OS. a lot, and the profits were applied to re-
pairing the harbours of England.

In the reign of James I. blood was again shed
before St. Paul's. Years before a bishop had been
murdered at the north door;. now, before the west
entrance (in January, 1603-6), four of tlie despe-
rate Gunpowder Plot conspirators (Sir Everard
Digby, Winter, Grant, and Bates) were there hung,
drawn, and quartered. Their attempt to restore
the old religion by one blow ended in the hang-
man's strangling rope and the executioner's cruel
knife. In the May following a man of less-proven
guilt (Garnet, the Jesuit) suffered the same fate in
St. Paul's Churchyard ; and zealots of his faith
affirmed that on straws saved from the scaftbld
miraculous portraits of their martyr were discovered.

The ruinous state of the great cathedral, still
without a tower, now aroused the theological king.
He first tried to saddle the bishop and chapter,
but Lord Southampton, Shakespeare's friend, inter-
posed to save them. Then the matter went to
sleep for twelve years. In 1620 the king again
awoke, and came in state with all his lords on
horseback, to hear a sermon at the Cross and to
view the church. A royal commission followed,
Inigo' Jones, tlie king's protcgi; whom James had
brought from Denmark, being one of the com-
missioners. The sum required was estimated at
^^22,536. The king's zeal ended here ; and his
favourite, Buckingham, borrowed the stone col-
lected for St. Paul's for his Strand palace, and from
parts of it was raised that fine water-gate still exist-
ing in the Thames Embankment gardens.

When Charles I. made*' that narrow - minded
churchman. Laud, Bishop of London, one of Laud's
first endeavours was to restore St. Paul's. Charles I.
was a man of taste, and patronised painting and
architecture. Inigo Jones was already building
the Banqueting House at Wliitchall. Tlie king
was so pleased with Inigo's design for the new
portico of St. Paul's, that he proposed to pay for
that himself Laud gave ^^1,200. The fines of
the obnoxious and illegal High Commission Court
were set apart for the same object. The small
sheds and houses round the west front were ruth-
lessly cleared awa)'. All shops in Clicapside and
Lombard Street, except goldsmiths, were to be
shut up, that the eastern approach to St. Paul's

246

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Sl. Paul's.

miglU ajipoar more splendid. The church of
St. Gregory, at the south-west wing of the cathedral,
was removed and rebuilt. Inigo Jones cut away
all the decayed stone and crumbling Gothic work of
the Cathedral, and on the west portico expended
all the knowledge he had actjuired in his visit to
Rome. The result was a jjagan composite, beautiful
but incongruous. The front, 161 feet long and
162 feet high, was supported by fourteen Corinthian
columns. On the parapet above the pillars Inigo
proposed that there should stand ten statues of

1639, a paper was found in the yard of the deanery,
before Laud's house, inscribed — " Laud, look to
thyself. Be assured that thy life is sought, as thou
art the fountain of all wickedness ;" and in October,

1640, the High Commission sitting at St. Paul's,
nearly 2,000 Puritans made a tumult, tore down
the benches in the consistory, and shouted, "We
will have no bishops and no High Commission."

The Parliament made short work' with St. Paul's,
of Laud's projects, and Liigo Jones's classicalisms.
They at once seized the ^17,000 or so left of the

-y . , y.

/. "//"J/ ' ':"MT7im^h.>..

THE CHAl'TER HOUSE OF ULU ST. PAUL's, FRO.M A VIEW BY HOLLAR (see pa^^c 243).

princely benefactors of St. Paul's. At each angle
of the west front there was a tower. The portico
was intended for a Paul's Walk, to drain off the
profanation from within.

Nor were the London citizens backward. One
most large-hearted man. Sir Paul Pindar, a Turkey
merchant who had been ambassador at Constanti-
nople, and whose house is still to be seen in Bishops-
gate Street, contributed ;^i 0,000 towards the screen
and south transept. The statues of James and
Charles were set up over the portico, and tlie
steeple Avas begtm, when the storm arose that soon
whistled off the king's unlucky head. The coming
troubles cast shadows around St. Paul's. In March,

subscription. To Colonel Jephson's regiment, in
arrears for pay, ;^i,746, they gave the scaffolding
round St. Paul's tower, and in pulling it to pieces
down came part of St. Paul's south transept. The
copes*in St. Paul's were burnt (to extract the gold),
and the money sent to the persecuted Protestant
poor in Ireland. The silver vessels were sold to buy
artillery for Cromwell. There was a story current
that Cromwell intended to sell St. Paul's to the Jews
for a synagogue. The east end of the church was
walled in for a Puritan lecturer ; the graves were
desecrated ; the choir became a cavalry barracks ;
the portico was let out to sempsters and hucksters,
who lodged in rooms above ; James and Charles

S:. tr.uVz.-\

REPAIRS OF ST. J'AUL'is,

UK. BOURNE PREACHING AT PAUL'S CROSS (.w /",?■<• 243

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fjt. Paul';.

were toppled from the portico ; while the pul])it and
cross were entirely destroyed. The dragoons in
St. Paul's became so troublesome to the inhabitants
by their noisy brawling games and their rough
interruption of passengers, that in 1651 we find
them forbidden to play at ninepins from six a.m.
to nine p.m.

M'hen the Restoration came, sunshine again fell
upon the ruins. Wren, that great genius, was called
in. His report was not very favourable. The
pillars were giving way ; the whole work had been
from the beginning ill designed and ill built ; the
tower was leaning. He proposed to have a rotunda,
with cupola and kntern, to give the church light,
" and incomparable more grace" than the lean shaft
of a steeple could possibly afford. He closed his
report by a eulogy on the portico of Inigo Jones, as
"an absolute piece in itself" Some of the stone
collected for St. PauFs went, it is said, to b\uld
Lord Clarendon's house (site of Albemarle Street).
On August 27, 1661, good Mr. Evelyn, one of
the commissioners, describes going with AVren, the
Bishop and Dean of St. Paul's, &c., and resolving
finally on a new foundation. On Sunday, Sep-
tember 2, the Great Fire drew a red cancelling line
over Wren's half-drawn plans. The old cathedral
passed away, like Elijah, in flames. The fire broke
out about ten o'clock on Saturday night at a bake-
house in Pudding Lane, near East Smithfield. Sun-
day afternoon Pepys found all the goods carried
that morning to Cannon Street now removing to
Lombard Street. At St. Paul's Wharf he takes
water, follows the king's party, and lands at Bank-
side. " In corners and upon steeples, and between
churches and houses, as far as we could see up the
city, a most horrid, bloody, malicious flame, not
like the flame of an ordinary fire." On the 7th,
he saw St. Paul's Church with all the roof off, and
the body of the quire fallen into St. Faith's.

On Monday, the 3rd, Mr. Evelyn describes the
whole north of the City on fire, the sky light for
ten miles round, and the scaffolds round St. Paul's
catching. On the 4th he saw the stones of St.
Paul's flying like grenades, the melting lead running
in streams down the streets, the very pavements
too hot for the feet, and the approaches too
blocked for any help to be applied. A Westminster
boy named Tasvvell (quoted by Dean Milman
from " Camden's Miscellany," vol. ii., p. 12) has also
sketched the scene. On Monday, the 3rd, from
■Westminster he saw, about eight o'clock, the fire
burst forth, and before nine he could read by the
blaze a i6mo " Terence " which he had with him.
The boy at once set out for St. Paul's, resting by
the way upon Fleet Bridge, being almost faint with

the intense heat of the air. The bells were melting,
and vast avalanches of stones were pouring from
the walls. Near the east end he found the body
of an old woman, who had cowered there, burned:
to a coal. Taswell also relates that the ashes of
the books kept in St. Faith's were blown as far
as Eton.

On the 7th (Friday) Evelyn again visited St.
Paul's. T!ie portico he found rent in pieces, the
vast stones split asunder, and nothing remaining
entire but the inscription on the architrave, not
one letter of which was injured. Six acres of lead
on the roof were all melted. The roof of St.
Faith's had fallen in, and all the magazines and
books from Paternoster Row were consumed,
burning for a week together. Singularly enough,
the lead over the altar at the east end was
untouched, and among the monuments the body
of one bishop (Braybroke — Richard II.) remained
entire. The old tombs nearly all perished; amongst
them those of two Saxon kings, John of Gaunt, his
wife Constance of Castile, poor St. Erkenwald, and
scores of bishops, good and bad; Sir Nicholas
Bacon, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and father of the
great philosopher ; the last of the true knights, the
gallant Sir Philip Sidney ; and AValsingham, that
astute counsellor of Elizabeth. Then there was Sir
Christopher Hatton, the dancing chancellor, whose
proud monument crowded back Walsingham and
Sidney's. According to the old scoffing distich,
" Philip and Francis they have no tomb,
For great Christopher takes all the room."

Men of letters in old St. Paul's (says Dean Milman)
there were few. The chief were Lily, the gram-
marian, second master of St. Paul's ; and Linacre.
the physician, the friend of Colet and Erasmus.
Of artists there was at least one great man—
Vandyck, who was buried near John of Gaunt.
Among citizens, the chief was Sir William Hewet,
whose daughter married Osborne, an apprentice,
who saved her from drowning, and who was the
ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds.

After the fire. Bishop Sancroft preached in a
patched-up part of the west end of the ruins. All
hopes of restoration were soon abandoned, as Wren
had, with his instinctive genius, at once predicted.
Sancroft at once wrote to the great architect,
"What you last whispered in my ear is now come
to pass." A pillar has fallen, and the rest
threatens to follow." The letter concludes thus :
" You are so absolutely necessary to us, that we
can do nothing, resolve on nothing, without you."
There was plenty of zeal in London still ; but,
nevertheless, after all, nothing was done to the re-
building till the year 1673.

St. Paurs.]

THE NKW CATTIKDRAT,.

249

C li A r r K R XXI.

ST. I'AUL'.S {coiiliiiiici).

The RobiiilUing of St, Paul's — 111 Tre.-ilinent of its Architect— Cost of llic Present Fabric — Royal Visitois — The First Cra\*c in ,St, Paul's—
Mtiliumeiits ill St. Paul's— Nelson's, Funeral — Military Heroes in .St. Paul'-s— The Puke of Wellington's Funeral — Other Great -Men in
St. Paul's— Proposals for the Completion and Decoration of the P.uilding— Dimensions v( St. Paul's Plan of Cunstr\icli-Dn — The Du::ie,
Hall, anU Cross— .\Ir. Horner and his Observatory -Two Narrow Escapes- Sir James 'J'hornhill— Peregrine Falcons uu St. Paul's— N'ooUs
and Corners of the Cathedral— The Library, Model Rowni, and Clock— The (Ireat liell— .-\ Lucky I-^rror — (curious Story of a Monomaniac—
The Pofts and the Cathedral— 'i'he Festivals of the Charity Schools and of the Sons of the Clergy.

I'ow.ARDS tlie I'cbuikling of St. Paul's Cathedral,
Charles II., generous as usual in promises, offered
an annual contribution of ;^i,ooo ; but this,
however, never seems to have been paid. It, no
doubt, went to pay Nell Gwynne's losses at the
gambling-table, or to feed the Duchess of Ports-
mouth's lap-dogs. Some ^1,700 in fines, however,
were set apart for the new building. The Primate
Sheldon gave ;^2,ooo. ]Many of the bishops con-
tributed largely, and there were parochial collec-
tions all over England. But the bulk of the money
was obtained from the City duty on coals, which (as
Dean Milman remarks) in time had their revenge
in destroying the stonework of the Cathedral. It
was only by a fortunate accident that Wren became
the builder ; for Charles II., whose tastes and vices
were all French, had in vain invited over Perrault,
the designer of one of the fronts of the Louvre.

The great architect, Wren, was the son of a
Dean of Windsor, and nephew of a Bishop of
Norwich whom Cromwell had imprisoned for his
Romish tendencies. From a boy AVren had shown
a genius for scientific discovery. He distinguished
himself in almost every branch of knowledge, and
to his fruitful brain we are indebted for some fifty-
two suggestive discoveries. He now. hoped to
rebuild London on a magnificent scale ; but it was
not to be. Even in the plans for the new
cathedral AVren was from the beginning thwarted
and impeded. Ignorance, envy, jealousy, and
selfishness met him at every line he drew. He
made two designs — the first a Greek, the second
a Latin cross. The Greek cross the clergy con-
sidered as unsuitable for a cathedral. The model
for it was long preserved in the Trophy Room of
St. Paul's, where, either from neglect or the zeal of
relic-hunters, the western portico was lost. It is
now at South Kensington, and is still imperfect.
The interior of the first design is by many con-
sidered superior to the present interior. The
present recesses along the aisles of the nave,
tradition says, were insisted on by James II., who
thought they would be useful as side chapels when
masses were once more introduced.

The first stone was laid by 'Wren on the sist

June, 1675, but there was no iniblit; ceremonial.
Soon after the great geometrician hatl drawn the
circle for the beautiful dome, he sent a workman
for a stone to mark tlie e.xact centre. The man re.
turned with a fragment of a tombstone, on which
was the one ominous word (as every one observed)
"Resurgaml" The ruins of old St. Paul's were
stubborn. In trying to blow up the tower, a
passer-by was killed, and Wren, witli his usual
ingenuity, resorted successfully to the old Roman
battering-ram, which soon cleared a way. '• I build
for eternitj'," said ^\'ren, with the true confidence
of genius, as he searched for a firm foundation.
Below the Norman, Saxon, and Roman graves he
dug and probed till he could find the most reliable
stratum. Below the loam was sand ; under the sand
a layer of fresh-water shells ; under these were sand,
gravel, and London clay. At the north-east corner
of the dome Wren was vexed by coming upon a pit
dug by the Roman potters in search of clay. He,
however, began from the solid earth a strong i)ier
of masonry, and above turned a short arch to the
former foundation. He also slanted the new
liuilding more to the north-east than its predecessor,
in order to widen the street south of St. Paul's.

^\'ell begun is half done. The Cathedral grew
fast, and in two-and-twenty years from the laying
of the first stone the choir was opened for Divine
service. The master mason who helped to lay the
first stone assisted in fixing the last in the lantern.
A great day was chosen for the opening of St.
Paul's. December 2nd, 1697, was the thanksgiving
day for the Peace of Ryswick — the treaty which
humbled France, and seated William firmly and
permanently on the English throne. The king,
much against his will, was persuaded to stay at
home by his courtiers, who dreaded armed Jacobites
among the 300,000 people who would throng the
streets. Worthy Bishop Compton, who, dressed as
a trooper, had guarded the Princess Anne in lier
fiigiit from her father, preached that inspiring day
on the text, " I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of the Lord." From
then till now the daily voice of prayer and praise
has never ceased in St. Paul's.

2.iO

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

Queen Anne, during her eventful reign, went
seven times to St. Paul's in solemn procession, to
commemorate victories over France or Spain. The
first of these (1702) was a jubilee for Marlborough's
triumph in the Low Countries, and Rooke's de-
struction of the Spanisli lleet at Vigo. TJie Queen
sat on a raised and canopied throne ; the Duke
of Marlborough, as Croom of the Stole, on a
stool behind lier. The Lords and Commons, who
had arrived in procession, were arranged in the
choir. The brave old Whig Bishop of E.xeter, Sir
Jonathan Trelawney (" and shall Trelawney die ?"),
preached tlie sermon. Guns at the Tower, on the
river, and in St. James's Park, fired off the Te
Deuni, and when the Queen started and returned.
In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was celebrated;
in 1705, the forcing of the French lines at Tirle-
mont; in 1706, the battle of Ramillies and Lord
Peterborough's successes in Spain; in 1707, more
triumphs; in 1708, the batde of Oudenarde ; and
last of all, in 1713, the Peace of Utrecht, when the
Queen was unable to attend. On this last day
the charity children of London (4,000 in number)
first attended outside the church.

St. Paul's was already, to all intents and pur-
poses, completed. The dome was ringed with its
golden gallery, and crowned with its glittering cross.
In 1 7 10, Wren's son and the body of Freemasons
had laid the highest stone of the lantern of the
cupola, and now commenced the bitterest morti-
fications of Wren's life. The commissioners had
dwindled down to Dean Godolphin and six or
seven civilians from Doctors' Commons. Wren's
old friends were dead. His foes compelled him
to pile the organ on the screen, though he had in-
tended it to be under the north-east arch of the
choir, where it now is. A\'ren wished to use
mosaic for internal decoration ; they pronounced
it too costly, and they took the painting of the
eupola out of Wren's hands and gave it to
Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill. They
complained of wilful delay in the work, and
accused Wren or. his assistant of corruption; they
also withheld part of his salary till the work was
completed, ^^'ren covered the cupola with lead,
at a cost of ^2.500 ; the committee were for
copper, at ^3,050. About the iron railing for the
churchyard there was also wrangling. Wren wished
a low fence, to leave the vestibule and the steps
free and open. The commissioners thought Wren's
design mean and weak, and chose the present heavy
and cumbrous iron-work, which breaks up the view
of the west front.

The new organ, by Father Bernard Smitli, which
cost ^2,000, was shorn of its full size by Wren,

perhaps in vexation at its misplacement. The
paltry statue of Queen Anne, in the churchyard,
was by Bird, and cost ;^ 1,1 30, exclusive of the
marble, which the Queen provided. The carvings in
the choir, by Crinling (libiions, cost ;^i,337 7s. 5d.
On some of the exterior sculpture Gibber worked.

In 1718 a violent pamphlet appeared, written,
it was supposed, by one of the commissioners. It
accused 'Wren's head workmen of pilfering timber
and cracking the bells. Wren jiroved the charges
to be malicious and untrue. The commissioners
now insisted on adding a stone balustrade all
round St. Paul's, in spite of Wren's protests. He
condemned the addition as "contrary to the ])rin-
ciples of architecture, and as breaking into the
harmony of the whole design ;" but, he said,
"ladies think nothing well without an edging."

The next year, the commissioners went a step
further. Wren, then eighty-six years old, and in
the forty-ninth year of office, was dismissed without
apology from his post of Surveyor of Public
Works. The German Court, hostile to all who
had served the Stuarts, appointed in his place a
poor pretender, named Benson. This charlatan —
now only remembered by a line in the " Dunciad,"
which ridicules the singular vanity of a man who
erected a monument to Milton, in Westminster
Abbey, and crowded the marble with his own titles
— was afterwards dismissed from his surveyorsliip
with ignominy, but had yet influence enough at
Court to escape prosecution and obtain several
valuable sinecures. Wren retired to his house at
Hampton Court, and there sought consolation in
philosophical and religious studies. Once a year,
says Horace Walpole, the good old man was
carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious
chcf-iVo'uvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatlcr,
refers to Wren s vexatfons, and attributes them to
his modesty and bashfulness.

The total sum expended on the building of St.
Paul's Cathedral, according to Dean Milman, was
_;^736,7S2 2s. 3-4d. ; a small residue from the coal
duty was all that was left for future repairs. To
this Dean Clark added about ;if 500, part of the
profits arising from an Essex estate (the gift of
an old Saxon king), leased from the Dean and
Chapter. The charge of the fabric was vested not
in the Dean and Chapter, but in the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Lord
Mayor for the time being. These trustees elect the
surveyor and audit the accounts.

On the accession of George I. (1715), the new
king, princes, and princesses went in state to St.
Paul's. Seventy years elapsed before an English
king again entered Wren's cathedral. In April,

St. Paul's.]

NELSON'S FUNERAL IN ST. PAULS.

251

1789, George IIL came to thank God for his tem-
porary recovery from insanity. Queen Charlotte,
the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were
present, and both Houses of Parliament. Bisliop
Porteous preached the sermon, and 6,000 charity
children joined in the service. In 1797, King
George came again to attend a thanksgiving for
Lord Duncan's and Lord Howe's naval victories ;
French, Spanish, and Dutch flags waved above
the procession, and Sir Horatio Nelson was there
among other heroes.

The first grave sunk in St. Paul's was fittingly |
that of Wren, its builder. He lies in the place of
honour, the extreme east of the crypt. The black
marble slab is railed in, and the light from a small
window-grating fails upon the venerated name.
Sir Christopher died in 1723, aged ninety-one.
The fine inscription, " Si monumentum requiris,
circumspice," writtcji probably by his son, or Mylne,
the builder of Blackfriars Bridge, was formerly in
front of the organ-gallery, but is now placed over
the north-western entrance.

The clergy of St. Paul's were for a long time
jealous of allowing any monument in the cathedral.
Dean Newton wished for a tomb, but it was after-
wards erected in St. Mary-le-Bow. A better man
than the vain, place-hunting dean was the first
honoured. The earliest statue admitted was that of
the benevolent Howard, who had mitigated suffering
and sorrow in all the prisons of Europe ; he stands
at the corner of the dome facing that half stripped
athlete, Dr. Jolmson, and the two are generally
taken by country visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul.
He who with Goldsmith had wandered through the
Abbey, wondering if one day their names might
not be recorded there, found a grave in West-
minster, and, thanks to Reynolds, the first place of
honour. Sir Joshua himself, as one of our greatest
painters, took the third place, that Hogarth should
have occupied ; and the fourth was awarded to that
great Oriental scholar. Sir William Jones. The
clerical opposition was now broken through, for the
world felt that the Abbey was full enough, and that
St. Paul's required adorning.

Henceforward St. Paul's was chiefly set apart for
naval and military heroes whom the city could
best appreciate, while the poets, great writers, and
statesmen were honoured in the Abbey, and laid
among the old historic dead. From the beginning
our sculptors resorted to pagan emblems and
pagan allegorical figures ; the result is that St.
Paul's resembles a Pantheon of the Lower Empire,
and is a hospital of third-rate art. The first naval
conqueror so honoured was Rodney ; Rossi re-
ceived ;^6,ooo for his cold and clumsy design :

Lord Howe's statue followed ; and next that
of Lord Duncan, the hero of Camperdown. It is
a simple statue by Westmacott, with a seaman and
liis wife and child on the pedestal. For Earl St.
Vincent, Bailey produced a colossal statue and the
usual scribbling. History and a trumpeting Victory.
Then came Nelson's brothers in arms; — men of
lesser mark ; but the nation was grateful, and the
Government was anxious to justify its wars by its
victories. St. Paul's was growing less particular, and
now opened its arms to the best men it could get.
Many of Nelson's captains preceded him on the
red road to death — Westcott, who fell at Aboukir ;
Mosse and Riou, who fell before Copenhagen (a
far from stainless victory). Riou was the brave man
whom Campbell immortalised in his fiery "Battle
of the Baltic." Riou lies

"Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep,

Elsinore."

Then at last, in 1806, came a hero worthy, indeed,
of such a cathedral — Nelson himself At what a
moment had Nelson expired ! At the close of a
victory that had annihilated the fleets of France
and Spain, and secured to Britain the empire of
the seas. The whole nation that day shed tears of
" pride and of sorrow." The Prince of Wales and
all his brothers led the procession of nearly 8,000
soldiers, and the chief mourner was Admiral
Parker (the Mutiny of the Nore Parker). Nelson's
coflin was formed out of a mast of the L' Orient — ■
a vessel blown up at the battle of the Nile, and
presented to Nelson by his friend, the captain
of the Swiftsurc. The sarcophagus, singularly
enough, had been designed by Michael Angelo's
contemporary, Torreguiano, for Wolsey, in the
days of his most insatiable pride, and had re-
mained ever since in Wolsey's chapel at A\'indsor ;
Nelson's flag was to have been placed over the
coffin, but as it was about to be lowered, the
sailors who had borne it, as if by an irresistible
impulse, stepped forward and tore it in pieces,
for relics. Dean Milman, who, as a youth, was
present, says, " I heard, or fancied I heard, the
low wail of the sailors who encircled the remains of
their admiral." Nelson's trusty companion. Lord
CoUingwood, who led the vanguard at Trafalgar,
sleeps near his old captain, and Lord Northesk,
who led the rear-guard, is buried opposite. A brass
plate on the pavement under the dome marks
the spot of Nelson's tomb. The monument to
Nelson, inconveniently placed at the opening of
the choir, is -by one of our greatest sculptors —
Flaxman. It is hardly worthy of the occasion,
and the figures on the pedestal are puerile. Lord

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[3l. Taul's.

Lyons is the last admiral whose monument has
been erected in St. Paul's.

The military heroes have been contributed by
various wars, just and unjust, successful and the
reverse. There is that tough old veteran, Lord
Heathfield, who drove off two angry nations from the
scorclicd rock of Gibraltar ; Sir Isaac Brock, who fell
near Niagara ; Sir Ralph Abercromby, who perished
in Egypt ; and Sir John Moore, who played so
well a losing game at Corunna. Cohorts of Welling-
ton's soldiers too lie in St. Paul's — brave men, who

15,000 persons were present. The impressive
funeral procession, with the representatives of the
various regiments, and the solemn bursts of the
" Dead IVLarch of Saul " at measured intervals, can
never be forgotten by those who were present.
The pall was borne by the general officers wlio had
fought by the side of Wellington, and the cathedral
was illuminated for the occasion. The service was
read by Dean Milman, who had been, as we have
before mentioned, a spectator of Nelson's funeral.
So perfectly adapted for sound is St. Paul's, that

THE REBUILDING OF SI. PAlLb. UvUM AN OKIOINAL DRAW INU I.N THE PUbbEbblON OF J. G. CKACt, !-.,(,.

sacrificed their lives at Talavera, Vimiera, Ciudad
Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Bayonne. Nor
has our proud and just nation disdained to honour
even equally gallant men who were defeated. There
are monuments in St. Paul's to the vanquished at
Bergen-op-Zoom, New Orleans, and Baltimore.

That clima.x of victory, Waterloo, brought Pon-
sonby and Picton to St. Paul's. Picton lies in the
vestibule of the Wellington chapel. Thirty-seven
years after Waterloo, in the fulness of his years,
Wellington was deservedly honoured by a tomb in
St. Paul's. It was impossible to lay him beside
Nelson, so the eastern chapel of the crypt was
appropriated for his sarcophagus. From 1 2,000 to

though the walls were muffled with black cloth, the
Dean's voice could be heard distinctly, even up in
the western gallery. The sarcophagus which holds
Wellington's ashes is of massive and imperishable
Cornish porphyry, grand from its perfect simplicity,
and worthy of the man who, without gasconade or
theatrical display, trod stedfaatly the path of duty.

After Nelson and Wellington, the lesser names
seem to dwindle down. Yet among the great,
pure, and good, we may mention, there are some
Crimean memorials. There also is the monument
of Cornwallis, that good Governor-General of India ;
those of the two Napiers, the historian and the
conqueror of Scinde, true knights both ; that

St. r.-.urs.]

GENIUS WORTHILY ENSHRINtD.

253

of Elphinstone, who twice refused the dignity of | monument in such a place, is the historian Hallam,

Governor-General of India ; and that of the saviour
of o'lr Indian empire, Sir Henry Lawrence. Nor
shojld we forget the monuments of two Indian
bishops — the scholarly Middleton, and the excellent
and lovable Ilebcr. There is an unsatisfiictory

a calm, sometimes cold, but always imi)artial writer.
In the crypt near Wren lie many of our most
celebrated English artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds
died in 1792. His pall was borne by peers, and
upwards of a hundred carnages followed his hearse.

THE CHOIR OF .ST. PAULS HtKORE THE REMOV.\L OF THE SCREEN, /ivm an ai^raz'iuj; /llMls/li;i I'jl 1754.

Statue of Turner, by Bailey ; and monuments to
Dr. Babington, a London physician, and Sir Astley
Cooper, the great surgeon. The ambitious monu-
ment to Viscount Melbourne, the Queen's first
prime minister, by Baron Marochetti, stands in one
of the alcoves of the nave ; great gates of black
marble represent the entrance to a tomb, guarded
by two angels of white marble at the portals. More
worthy than the gay Melbourne of the honour of a
22

Near him lies his successor as president. West, the
Quaker painter ; courtly Lawrence ; Barry, whom
Reynolds detested; rough, clever Opie ; Dance;
and eccentric Fuseli. In this goodly company, also,
sleeps a greater than all of these — Joseph Mallord
William Turner, the first landscape painter of the
world. He had requested, when dying, to be buried
as near to his old master, Reynolds, as possible. It
is said that Turner, soured with the world, haj

254

OLD .\:SID NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

threatened to make his shroud out of his grand
picture of "The liuilding of Carthage." In this
consecrated spot also rests Robert ^Mylne, the
builder of Blackfriars Bridge, and Mr. Charles
Robert Cockerell, the eminent architect.

Only one r.-bbery has occurred in modern times
in St. Paul's. In December, 1810, the jjlate reposi-
tory of the cathedral was broken open by thieves,
with the connivance of, as is supposed, some official,
and 1,761 ounces of plate, valued at above ^2,000,
were stolen. The thieves broke open nine doors
to get at the treasure, which was never afterwards
heard of. The spoil included the chased silver-gilt
co\er3 of the large (1640) Bibk', chalices, plates,
tankards, and candlesticks.

The cathedral, left colourless and blank by
AVren, his never yet been finished. The Protestant
choir remains in one corner, like a dry, shrivelled
nut in a large shell. Like the proud snail in the
fable, that took possession of. the lobster-shell and
starved there, we remained for more than a century
complacently content with our unfurnished house.
At length our tardy zeal awoke. In 1858 the
Bishop of London wrote to the Dean and Chapter,
urging a series of Sunday evening services, for the
benefit of the floating masses of Londoners. Dean
Milman replied, at once warming to the proposal,
and suggested the decoration and completion of
St. Paul's. The earnest appeal for " the noblest
church, in its style, of Christian Europe, the master-
piece of Wren, the glory and pride of London,"
was at once responded to. A committee of the
leading merchants and bankers was formed, in-
cluding those great authorities. Sir Charles Barr)-,
Mr. Cockerell, Mr. Tite, and Mr. Penrose. They
at once resolved to gladden the eye with colour,
without disturbing the solemn and harmonious
simplicity. Paintings, mosaics, marble and gilding
were requisite ; the dome was to be relieved of
Thornhill's lifeless i^risaincs ; and above all, stained-
glass windows were pronounced indispensable.

The dome had originally been filled by Thorn-
hill with eight scenes from the life of St. Paul. He
received for them the not very munificent but quite
adequate sum of 40s. per square yard. They soon
began to show symptoms of decay, and Mr. Parris,
the painter, invented an apparatus by which they
could easily be repaired, but no funds could then be
found ; yet when the paintings fell off in flakes, much
money and labour was expended on the restoration,
which has now proved useless. Mr. Penrose has
shown that so ignorant was Sir James of per-
spective, that his painted architecture has actually
the effect of making Wren's thirty-two pilasters
seem to lean forward.

Much has already been done in St. Paul's. Two
out of the eight large spandrel pictures round the
dome are already executed. There^ are eventually
j to be four evangelists and four major prophets.
Above the gilt rails of the .whispering gallery
an inscription on a mosaic and gold ground has
been placed. A marble memorial pulpit has been
l)ut up. The screen has been removed, and the
organ, greatly enlarged and improved, has been
divided into two parts, which have been plac-ed on
either side of the choir, above the stalls ; the dome
is lighted with gas ; the golden gallery, ball, and
cross have been re-gilt. The great baldachino is still
wanting, but nine stained-glass windows have been
erected, and among the donors have been the
Drapers' and Goldsmiths' Companies; there are also
memorial windows to the late Bishop BlomfieU and
W. Cotton, Esq. The Grocers', Merchant Taylors',
Goldsmiths', Mercers, and Fishmongers' Com-
panies have generously gilt the vaults of the choir
and the arches adjoining the dome. Some fifty
or more windows still require stained glass. The
wall panels are to be in various places adorned with
inlaid marbles. It is not intended that St. Paula
should try to rival St. Peter's at Rome in exube-
rance of ornament, but it still requires a good deal
of clothing. The great army of sable martyrs in
marble have been at last washed white, and the
fire-engines might now ad\'antageously be used
upon the exterior.

A few figures about the dimensions of St. Paul's
will not be uninteresting. The cathedral is 2,292
fpet in circumference, and the height from the nave
pavement to the top of the cross is 365 feet. The
height of St. Peter's at Rome being 432 feet, St.
Paul's could stand inside St. Peter's. The western
towers are 220 feet high. From east to west,
St. Paul's is 500 feet long, while St. Peter's is 669
feet. The cupola is considered by many as more
graceful than that of St. Peter's, " though in its
connection with the church by an order higher
than that below it there is a violation of the laws
of the art. " The e.xternal appearance of St. Paul's
rivals, if not excels, that of St. Peter's, but the
inside is much inferior. The double portico of
St. Paul's has been greatly censured. The commis-
sioners insisted on twelve columns, as emblematical
of the twelve apostles, and Wren could not obtain
stones of sufficient size ; but (as Mr. Gwilt ob-
serves) it would have been better to have had
joined pillars rather than a Composite heaped en a
Corinthian portico. In the tympanum is the Con-
version of St. Paul, sculptured in high relief by
Bird; on the apex is a colossal .figure of St. Paul,
and on the right and left are St. Peter and St.

St. Paul's.

ANECDOTES AND FACTS CONCERNING ST. PAUL'S.

255

James. Over the southern portico is sculptured
the Phceriix ; over the north are the royal arms
and regalia, while on each side stand on guard five
statues of the apostles. The ascent to the whisper-
ing gallery is by 260 steps, to the outor and high-.':;t
golden gallery 560 steps, and to the ball 616 steps.
The outer golden gallery is at the summit of the
dome. The inner golden gallery is at the base of
the lantern. Through this the ascent is by ladders
to the small dome, immediately below the inverted
consoles which support the ball and cross. Ascend-
ing through the cross iron-work in the centre, you
look into the dark ball, which is said to weigh
5, 600 pounds ; thence to the cross, which weighs
3,360 pounds, and is 30 feet high. In 1821-2 Mr.
Cockerell removed for a time the ball and cross.

From the haunclies of the dome, says Mr. Gwilt,
200 feet above the pavement of the church,
another cone of brickwork commences, 85 feet
high and 94 feet diameter at the bottom. This
cone is pierced with apertures, as well for the
purpose of diminishing its weight as for distributing
the light between it and the outer dome. At the
top it is gathered into a dome in the form of a
hyperboloid, pierced near the verte.v with an aper-
ture 1 2 feet in diameter. The top of this cone is
285 feet from the pa\'ement, and carries a lantern
55 feet high, terminating in a dome whereon a ball
and (Aveline) cross is raised. The last-named
cone is provided with corbels, sufficient in number
to receive the hammer-beams of the external dome,
v/hich is of oak, and its base 220 feet from the
pavement, its summit beiny, level with the top of
the cone. In form it is nearly hemispherical, and
generated by radii 57 feet in length, whose centres
are in a horizontal diameter passing through its
base. The cone and the interior dome are re-
strained in their lateral thrust on the supports by
four tiers of strong iron chains (weighing 95 cwt.
3 qrs. 23 lbs.), placed in grooves prepared for their
reception, and run v.ith lead. The lowest of these
is inserted in masonry round their common base,
and the other three at different heights on the
exterior of the cone. Over the intersection of the
na\'e and transepts for the external work, ami for
a height of 25 feet above the roof of the church,
a cylindrical wall rises, whose diameter is 146 feet.
Between it and the lower conical wall is a space,
but at intervals they are connected by cross-walls.
This cylinder is quite plain, but perforated by two
courses of rectangular apertures. On it stands a
peristyle of thirty columns of the Corinthian order,
40 feet high, including bases and capitals, with a
plain entablature crowned by a balustrade. In this
peristyle every fourth intercolumniation is filled up

solid, with a niche, and connection is provided
between it and the wall of the lower cone. Ver-
tically over the base of that cone, above the peri-
style, rises another cylindrical wall, api)earing above
the balustrade. It is ornamented with pilasters,
between which are two tiers of rectangular windows.
From this wall the external dome springs. The
lantern receives no sujiport from it. It is merely
ornamental, differing entirely, in that respect, from
the dome of St. Peter's.

In 1 82 2 Mr. Horner passed the summer in the
lantern, sketching the metropolis ; lie afterwards
erected an observatory several feet higher than
the cross, and made sketches for a panorama on a
surface of 1,680 feet of drawing paper. From these
sheets was painted a panorama of London and
the environs, first exhibited at the Colosseum, in
Regent's Park, in 1829. The view from St. Paul's
extends for twenty miles round. On the south
the horizon is bounded by Leith Hill. In high
winds the scaffold used to creak and whistle like a
sliip labouring in a storm, and once the observatory
was torn from its lashings and turned partly over on
the edge of the platform. The sight and sounds
of awaking London are said to have much impressed
the artist.

On entering the cathedral, says Mr. Horner, a\.
three in the morning, the stillness which then pre-
vailed in the streets of this populous city, con-
trasted with their midday bustle, was only surpassed
by the more solemn and sepulchral stillness of the
cathedral itself. But not less impressive was the
development at that early hour of the immense
scene from its lofty summit, whence was frequently
beheld '" the forest of London," without any indica-
tion of animated existence. It was interesting to
mark the gradual symptoms of returning life, until
the rising sun vivified the whole into activity,
bustle, and business. On one occasion the night
was passed in the observatory, for the purpose of
meeting the first glimpse of day ; but the cold was
so intense as to preclude any wish to repeat the
experiment.

Mr. Horner, in his narrative, mentions a nairow
escape of Mr. Gwyn, while engaged in measuring
the top of the dome for a sectional drawing he
was making of the cathedral. Wiile absorbed in
his work Mr. Gwyn slipped down the globular
surface of the dome till his foot stopped on a
projecting lump of lead. In this awful situation,
like a man hanging to the moon, he remained till
one of his assistants providentially saw and rescued
him.

The following was, if possible, an even narrower
escape ; — When Sir James ThomhiU was painting

2S(J

OLD AND Ni:W LONDON.

[St. PmA's.

the cupola of St Paul's Cathedral, a gentleman of
his acquaintance was one day with him on the
scafibkling, which, though wide, was not railed ; he
had just finished the head of one of the apostles,
and running back, as is usual with painters, to
observe the effect, had almost reached the ex-
tremity ; the gentleman, seeing his danger, and not
having time for words, snatched up a large brush
and smeared the f;ice. Sir James ran hastily for-
ward, cr\ing out, " Bless my soul, what have you
done ?" ' '• 1 have only saved your life '." responded
his friend.

Sir James Thornhill was the son of a reduced
Dorsetshire gentleman. His uncle, the well-known
physician. Dr. Sydenham, helped to eJucate him.
He travelled to see the old masters, and on his
return Queen Anne appointed him to paint the
dome of St. Paul's. He was considered to have
executed the work, in the eight panels, " in a noble
manner." " He afterwards," says Pilkington, " exe-
cuted several public works — painting, at Hampton
Court, the Queen and Prince George of Denmark,
allegorically ; and in the chapel of All Souls, Oxford,
the portrait of the founder, over the altar the ceiling,
and figures between the windows. His masterpiece
is the refectory and saloon at Greenwich Hospital.
He was knighted by George H. He died May 4,
1734, leaving a son, John, who became serjeant
painter to the king, and a daughter, who married
Hogarth. He was a well-made and pleasant man,
and sat in Parliament for some years."

The cathedral was artificially secured from
lightning, according to the suggestion of the Royal
Society, in 1769. The seven iron scrolls sup-
porting the ball and cross are connected with other
rods (used merely as conductors), which miite them
with several large bars descending obliquely to the
stone-work of the lantern, and connected by an
iron ring with four other iron bars to the lead
covering of the great cupola, a distance of forty-
eight feet ; thence the communication is continued
by the rain-water pipes, which pass into the earth,
thus completing the entire communication from
the cross to the ground, partly tlirough iron and
partly through lead. On the clock-tower a bar of
iron connects the pine-apple on the top with the
iron staircase, and thence with the lead on the
roof of the church. The bell-tower is similarly
protected. By these means the metal used in the
building is made available as conductors, the metal
employed merely for that purpose being exceedingly
small in quantity.

In 1841 the exterior of the dome was repaired
by workmen resting upon a shifting iron frame.
In 1S48 a scaffold and observatory, as shown on

page 258, were raised round the cross, and in t!;ree
months some four thousand observations were made
for a new trigonometrical survey of London.

Harting, in his " Birds of Middlesex," mentions
tliC peregrine falcons of St. Paul's. "A pair of
these birds," he says, " for many years frequented
the top of St. Paul's, where it was supposed they
had a nest ; and a gentleman with whom I am
acquainted has assured me that a friend of his
once saw a peregrine strike down a pigeon in
London, his attention having been first attracted
by seeing a crowd of persons gazing upwards at
the hawk as it sailed in circles over the houses."
A pair frequenting the buildings at AVestminster
is referred to in " Annals of an Eventful Life/'
by G. W. Dasent, D.C.L.

A few nooks and corners of the cathedral have
still escaped us. The library in the gallery over
the southern aisle was formed by Bishop Compton,
and consists of some 7,000 volumes, including
some manuscriiJts from old St. Paul's. The room
contains some loosely hung flowers, e.xquisitely
carved in wood by Grinling Gibbons, and the
floor is composed of 2,300 pieces of oak, inlaid
without nails or pegs. At the end of the gallery
is a geometrical staircase of no steps, which was
constructed by AVren to furnish a private access
to the library. In crossing thence to the nonheni
gallery, there is a fine view of the entire vista of
the cathedral. The model-room used to contain
Wren's first design, and some tattered flags onco
hung beneath the dome. 'Wren's noble model,
we regret to learn, is " a ruin, after one hundred
and forty years of neglect," the funds being
insufficient for its repair. A staircase from the
southern gallery leads to the south-western cam-
panile tower, in which is the clock-room. The
clock, which cost ;!^3oo, was made by Langley
Bradley in 1708. The minute-hands are 9 feet
8 inches long, and weigh 75 pounds each. The
pendulum is 16 feet long, and the bob weighs 180
pounds, and yet is suspended by a spring no thicker
than a shilling. The clock goes eight da3's, and
strikes the hours on the great bell, the clapper of
which weigl'iS 180 pounds. Below the great bell
are two smaller bells, on which the clock strikes the
quarters. In the northern tower is the bell that
tolls for prayers. Mr. E. B. Denison pronounced
the St. Paul's bell, although the smallest, as by
far the best of the four large bells of England —
York, Lincoln, and Oxford being the other three.

The great bell of St. Paul's (about five tons) has
a diameter of nine feet, and weighs 11,474 pounds.
It was cast from the metal of Great Tom (Ton),
a bell that once hung in a clock tower opposite

!Jt. P.T.;rs.]

A SIN(;ULAR CASE OF DIABLMRIR

^57

Westminster Hall. It was given away in 1698

by William III., and bought for St. Paul's for

thought he would take a walk into the City to
amuse his mind ; and havinc; strolled into St.

^^385 17s. Cd. It was re-cast in 17 16. 'I'he key- , Paul's Churchyard, he stojiped at the shop-window
note (tonic) or sound of this bell is A flat — perhaps of Carrington and Powles, and looked at the
A natural — of the old pitch. It is never tolled [ pictures, among which was one of the cathedral,
but at the death or funeral of any of the Royal I He had not been long tliere before a .short, grave-
Family, the Bishop of London, the Dean, or the looking, elderly gentleman, dressed in dark brown
Lord Mayor, should he die during his mayoralty. 1 clothes, came up and began to examine the prints,

It was not this bell, but the Westminster Great
Tom, which the sentinel on duty during the reign
of William HI. declared he heard strike thirteen
instead of twelve at midnight ; and the truth of
the fact was deposed to by several persons, and
the life of the poor soldier, sentenced to death for
having fallen asleep upon liis post, was thus saved.
The man's name was Hatfield. He died in 1770
in Aldersgate, aged 102 years.

Before the time of the present St. Paul's, and as

and, occasionally casting a glance at him, very
soon entered into conversation with him ; and,
praising the view of St. Paul's which was exhibited
at the window, told him many anecdotes of Sir
Christopher Wren, the architect, and asked him at
the same time if he had ever ascended to tlie top
of the dome. He replied in the negative. The
stranger then inquired if he had dined, and pro-
posed that they should go to an eating-house in
the neighbourhood, and said that after dinner he

long ago as the reign of Henry VII., there is on would accompany him up St. Paul's. " It was a
record a well-attested story of a young girl who, glorious afternoon for a view, and he was so
going to confess, was importuned by the monk 1 familiar with the place tliat he could point out

then on his turn there for the purpose of con-
fession in the building ; and quickly escaping from
him up the stairs of the great clock tower, raised
the clapper or hammer of the bell of the clock, just
as it had finished striking twelve, and, by means of
the roof, eluded her assailant and got away. On
accusing him, as soon as she reached her friends
and home, she called attention to the fact of the
clock having struck thirteen that time ; and on
those in the immediate neighbourhood of the
cathedral being asked if so unusual a thing had
been heard, they said it was so. This proved the
story, and the monk was degraded.

And here we must insert a curious story of a
monomaniac whose madness was associated with
St. Paul's. Dr. Pritchard, in an essay on " Som-
nambulism and Animal Magnetism," in the "Cyclo-
paedia of Medicine," gives the following remarkable
case of ecstasis : —

A gentleman about thirty-fi\'e years of age, of
active habits and good constitution, living in the
neighbourhood of London, had complained for
about five weeks of a slight headache. He was
feverish, inattentive to his occupation, and ■ n«glt

every object worthy of attention.'' The kindness
of the old gentleman's manner induced him to
comply with the invitation, and they went to a
tavern in some dark alley, the name of which he
did not know. They dined, and very soon left the
table and ascended to the ball, just below the
cross, which they entered alone. They had not
been there many minutes when, while he was
gazing on the extensive prospect, and delighted
with the splendid scene below him, the grave
gentleman pulled out from an inside coat-poeket
something resembling a compass, having round
the edges some curious figures. Then, having
muttered some unintelligible words, he placed it
in the centre of the ball. He felt a gieat trembling
and a sort of horror come over him, which was
increased by his companion asking him if he
should like to see any friend at a distance, and to
know what he was at that moment doing, for if so
the latter could show him any such person. It
happened that his father had been for a long
time in bad health, and for some weeks past he
had not visited him. A sudden thought came
ittt'.i'-his mind, so powerful that it overcame his

gent of his fomily. He had been cupped, and , terror, that he should like to see his fcthcr. He
taken some purgative medicine, when he was risited had no sooner expressed the wish than the exact

by Dr. Arnould, of Camberwell. By that gentle-
man's advice, he was sent to a private asylum, where

person of his father was immediately presented
to : his sight in the mirror, recliuins in his arm-

he remained about two years. His delusions very [ chair and taking his afternoon sleep. Not having

gradually subsided, and he was afterwartls restored
to his family. The account which he gave of him-
self was, almost verbatim, as follows : — One after-
noon in the month of May, feeling himself a
little ursetded, and not inclined to business, he

fully believed in the power of the stranger to
make good his oft'er, he became overwhelmed
with terror at the clearness and truth of the vision
presented to him, and he entreated his mysterious
companion that they might imuK'iliate'y descend,

2S8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's.

as he felt very ill. The request was complied
with, and on jiarting under the portico of the
northern entrance the stranger said to him, " Re-
member, you are the slave of the Man of the
Mirror ! " He returned in the evening to his
home, he does not know exactly at what hour ;

there is no concealment from him, for all places-
are alike open to him ; he sees u."; and he hears
us now.' I asked him where this being was v.lio
saw and heard us. He replied, in a voice of deep
agitation, ' Have I not told you that he lives in the
ball below the cross on the top of St. Paul's, and

THE SC.\FruLDIMj AND OBSER.\AT0R\ ON bT. PAUL b IN 1S48 (j« ptl^L 256).

felt himself unquiet, depressed, gloomy, apprehen-
sive, and haunted with thoughts of the stranger.
For the last three months he has been conscious
of the power of the latter over him. Dr. Amould
adds : — " I incjuired in what way his power was
exercised. He cast on me a look of suspicion,
mingltd with confidence, took my arm, and after
leading me through two or three rooms, and then
into the garden, exclaimed, ' It is of no use ;

that he only comes down to take a walk in the
churchyard and get his dinner at the house in the
dark alley ? Since that fatal interview with the
necromancer,' he continued, 'for such I believe
him to be, he is continually dragging me before
him on his mirror, and he not only sees me every
moment of the day, but he reads all my thoughts,
and Lhave a dreadful consciousness that no action
of my life is free from his inspection, and no place

£i Paul's)

THE "SLAVE OF THE MAN OF THE MIRROR."

239

'01

26o

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Pani's.

can afford me security from his power.' On my
replying that the darkness of the night would
afford him protection from these machinations, he
said, ' I know what you mean, but )'0U are quite
mistaken. I have only told you of the mirror ;
but in some part of the building which we passed
in coming away, he showed me what he called a
great bell, and I heard sounds which came from
it, and which went to it — sounds of laughter, and
of anger, and of pain. There was a dreadful con-
fusion of sounds, and as I listened, with wonder
and affright, he said, ' This is my organ of hearing ;
this great bell is in communication with all other
bells within the circle of hieroglyphics, by which
every word spoken by those under my command is
made audible to me.' Seeing me look surprised
at him, he said, ' I have not yet told you all, for he
practises his spells by hieroglyphics on walls and
houses, and wields his power, like a detestable
tyrant, as he is, over the minds of those whom he
has enchanted, and who are the objects of his con-
stant spite, within the circle of the hieroglyphics.'
I asked him what these hieroglyphics were, and
how he perceived them. He replied, ' Signs and
symbols which you, in your ignorance of their true
meaning, have taken for letters and words, and
read, as you have thought, " Day and Martin's and
Warren's blacking." ' ' Oh ! that is all nonsense ! '
' They are only the mysterious characters which he
traces to mark the boundary of his dominion, and
by which he prevents all escape from his tremendous
power. How have I toiled and laboured to get
beyond the limit of his influence ! Once I walked
for three days and three nights, till I fell down
under a wall, exhausted by fatigue, and dropped
asleep ; but on awakening I saw the dreadful signs
before mine eyes, and I felt myself as completely
under his infernal spells at the end as at the begin-
ning of my journey.' "

It is probable that this gentleman had actually
ascended to the top of St. Paul's, and that impres-
sions there received, being afterwards renewed in
his mind when in a state Of vivid excitement, in a
dream of ecstatic reverie, became so blended with
the creations of fancy as to form one mysterious
vision, in wliich the true and the imaginary were
afterwards inseparable. Such, at least, is the best
explanation of the phenomena which occurs to us.

In 1855 the fees for seeing St. Paul's completely
were 4s. 4d. each person. In 1847 the mere two-
pences paid to see the forty monuments produced
the four vergers the sum of ^£'430 3s. 8d. These
exorbitant fees originated in the '■ stairs-foot money "
started by Jennings, the carpenter, in 1707, as a fund
for the injured during the building of the cathedral.

The staff of the cathedral consists of the dean,
I the precentor, the chancellor, the treasurer, the five
archdeacons of London, Middlesex, Esse.x, Col-
chester, and St. Albans, thirty major canons or
prebendaries (four of whom are resident), twelve
minor canons, and six vicars-choral, besides the
choristers. One of the vicars-choral officiates as
organist, and three of the minor canons hold the
appointments of sub-dean, librarian, and succentor,
or under-precentor.

Three of the most celebrated men connected
i with St. Paul's in the last century have been Mil-
man, Sydney Smith, and Barham (tlie author of
"Ingoldsby Legends"). Smith and Barham both
died in 1845.

Of Sydney Smith's connection with St. Paul's
we have many interesting records. One of the
first things Lord Grey said on entering Downing
Street, to a relation who was with him, was, " Now
I shall be able to do something for Sydney Smith,"
and shortly after lie was appointed by the Premier
to a prebendal stall at St. Paul's, in exchange for
the one he held at Bristol.

Mr. Cockerel!, the architect, and superintendent
of St. Paul's Cathedral, in a letter printed in Lady
Holland's " Memoir," describes the gesta of the
canon residentiary ; how his e^rly communications
with himself (Mr. C.) and all the officers of the
chapter were extremely unpleasant ; but when the
canon had investigated the matter, and there had
been " a little collision," nothing could be more
candid and kind than his subsequent treatment.
He examined the prices of all the materials used
in the repairs of the cathedral — as Portland stone,
putty, and white lead ; every item was taxed, pa)'-
ments were examined, and nothing new could be
undertaken without his survey and personal super-
intendence. He surveyed the pinnacles and
heights of the sacred edifice ; and once, when it
was feared he might stick fast in a narrow opening
of the western towers, he declared that "if there
were six inches of space there would be room
enough for him." The insurance of the magni-
ficent cathedral, Mr. Cockerell tells us, engaged
his early attention ; St. Paul's was speedily and
eftcctually insured in some of the most substantial
offices in London. Not satisfied with this security,
he advised the introduction of the mains of the
New River into the lower parts of the fabric, and
cisterns and movable engines in the roof; and
quite justifiable was his joke, that " he would re-
produce the Deluge in our cathedral."

He had also the librar}- heated by a stove, so as
to be more comfortable to the studious ; and the
bindings of the books were repaired. Lastly, Mr.

St. Paul's.]

THE POETS ON ST. PAUL'S.

261

Smith materially assisted the progress of a suit in
Chancery, by the successful result of which a con-
siderable addition was made to the fabric fund.

It is very gratifying to read these circumstantial
records of the practical qualities of Mr. Sydney
Smith, as api)lied to the preservation of our magni-
ficent metropolitan cathedral.

Before we leave Mr. Smith we may record an
odd story of Lady B. calling the vergers " virgins."
She asked Mr. Smith, one day, if it was true that he
walked down St. Paul's with three virgins holding
silver pokers before him. He shook his head and
looked very gra\'e, and bade her come and see.
" Some enemy of the Church," he said, " some
Dissenter, had clearly been misleading her."

Let us recapitulate a few of the English poets
who have made special allusions to St. Paul's in
their writings. Uenhani says of the restoration of
St. Paul's, began by Charles L : — ■

" FiiL.t salutes tlie place,
Crowned with that sacred pile, so vast, so liiL;h,
That whoiher 'tis a part of earth or sky
Unceutaiii seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain or descending cloud.
I'.aul's, the late theme of such a muse, whose fliglit
Has brave'y reached and soared above thy height,
Now shalt thou stand, though swonl, or time, or lire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire ;
.Secure, while thee the best of poets sings,
Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.'.'

Byron, in the Tenth Canto of " Don Juan," treats
St. Paul's contemptuously — sneering, as was his
affectation, at everything, human or divine : —

"A mighly ma^s of brick, and smoke, and shipping.

Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping

In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts ; a wilderness of steeples peeping

On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy ;
A huge, dim cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head — and there is London Town !"

Among other English poets who have sung of
St. Paul's, we must not forget Tom Hood, with his
dflightfuUy absurd ode, written on the cross, and
full of most wise folly : —

" The man that pays his pence and goes
Up to thy lofty cross, .St. P.iul's,
Looks over London's naked nose,
Women and men ;
The world is all beneath his ken ;
He sits above the hall,
He seems on Mount Olympus' top.
Among the gods, by Jupiter ! and lets drop
His eyes from the empyreal clouds
On mortal crowds.

" .Seen fronr these skies.
How small those emmets in our eyes !

Some carry little sticks, and one
His eggs, to warm them in the sun ;
Dear, «'hat a liustlc
And bustle !
And there's my aunt ! I knou' her by licr waist,
.So long and tliin,
.\nd so pinch'd in.
Just in tile pismire taste.

" Oh, what are men ! Beings so smr.il
That, should I fall,
Upon their little heads, I must
Crush them by hundreds inti- ihist.

" And wliat is life and all its ages I
There's seven st.ages '.
Turnham Green ! Chelsea! Putney 1 Fulham!
Brentford and Kew I
And Tooling, too !
And, oh, what very little nags to [lulI 'em !
Vet each would seem a horse indeed.

If here at Paul's tiptop we'd got 'cm I
Although, like Cinderella's breed.

They're mice at bottom.
Then let me not desi)ise a horse.
Though he looks small from Paul's liigli cross ;
Since he would be, as near the sk)'.
Fourteen hands high.

" ^^'hat is this world with London in its lap?

Mogg's map.
The Thames that ebbs .and flows in its broad cliaimcl ?

A //(/)' kemiel !
The bridges stretching from its banks?

Stone planks.
Oh, me ! Hence could I read an admonition

To mad Ambition 1
But that he wouUl not listen to my call,
Though I should stand upon the cross, and ki'l !"

We can hardly close our account of St. Paul's
without referring to that most beautiful and touch-
ing of all London sights, the anniversary of the
charity schools on the first Thursday in June.
About 8,000 children are generally present, ranged
in a vast amphitheatre under the dome. Blake,
the true but unrecognised predecessor of Words-
worth, has written an exquisite litUe poem on the
scene, and well it deserves it. Such nosegays of
little rosy faces can be seen on no other day.
Very grand and overwhelming are the beadles of St
]\Lary Axe and St. Margaret Moses on this tremen-
dous morning, and no youn.g ensign ever bore his
colours prouder than do these good-natured dig-
nitaries their maces, staves, and ponderous badges.
In endless ranks pour in the children, clothed
in all sorts of quaint dresses. Boys in the knee-
breeches of Hogarth's school-days, bearing glit-
tering pewter badges on their coats ; girls in blue
and orange, with ([uaint little mob-caps white as
snow, and long white gloves covering all their little
arms. See, at a given signal of an extraordinary

263

OLD AND NFAV LOMDON.

[St. Paul's Churchyard.

fugleman, how they all rise ; at another signal how
they hustle down. Thea at last, when the " Old
Hundredth" begins, all the little voices unite as
the blending of many waters. Such fresh, hajipy
voices, singing with such innocent, heedful tender-
ness as would bring tears to the eyes of even stony-
hearted old Malthus, bring to the most irreligious
thoughts of Him wlio bade little children come to
Him, and would not have them repulsed.
Blake's poem begins —

" 'Tnas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clem.
Came children walking two and two, in red and blue and

green ;
Grey-headed beadles walked before, vith \\'ands as \ihite as

snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters

flow.

" Oh, what a multitude they seemed, those fiowcrs of

London town ;
Seated in companies they were, with radkince all their own ;

The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands.

" Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of

song.
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among ;
I!eneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor ;
Then cherish pity, lest you di!ve an angel from your door."

The anniversary Festival of the Sons of the Clergy,
in the middle of May, when the choirs of West-
minster and the Chapel Royal sing selections from
Handel and other great masters, is also a day not
easily to be forgotten, for St. Paul's is excellent for
sound, and the fine music rises like incense to the
dome, and lingers there as " loth to die," arousing
thoughts that, as ^V'ordsworth beautifully says, are in
themselves proofs of our immortality. It is on such
occasions we feel how great a genius reared St.
Paul's, and cry out with the poet —

" He thought not of a perir,hable home
Who thus could build."

CHAPTER XXII.
ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.

St. Paul's Churchyard and Literature— Queen Anne's Statue— E.xecution of a Jesuit in St. Paul's Churchyard — Miracle of the "Face in ttic
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 — I'.onnycastle — Kinnaird — Musical Associations of the Churchyard— Jeremiah .Clark and
his Works — Handel at Meares' Shop — Young the Viohn-maker-The "Castle" Concerts — An Old Advertisement— Wren at the "Goose
and Gridiron" — St Paul's School—Famous Pauhnes— Pepys visiting his Old School — Milton at St. Paul's.

The shape of St. Paul's Churchyard has been
compared to that of a bow and a string. The
south side is the bow, the north the string. The
booksellers oversowing from Fleet Street mustered
strong here, till the Fire scared them off to Little
Britain, from whence they regurgitated to the Row.
At the sign of the "White Greyhound" the first
editions of Shakespeare's " Venus and Adonis "
and " The Rape of Lucrece," the first-fruits of a
great harvest, were published by John Harrison.
At the "Flower de Luce" and the "Crown" ap-
peared the Merry JFhw oj Windsor; at the
" Green Dragon," in the same locality, the Merchant
of Venice; at the "Fox," Richard II.; aX the
" Angel," Richard III. ; at the " Gun," Titus An-
dronicns; and at the " Red Bull," that masterpiece.
King Lear. So that in this area near the Row the
great poet must have paced with his first proofs in
his doublet jjocket, wondering whether he should
ever rival Spenser, or become immortal, like
Chaucer. Here h.; must have come smilinsr over

Falstaft"'s perils, and here have walked with the
ripened certainty of greatness and of fame stirring
at his heart.

The ground-plot of the Cathedral is 2 acres 16
perches 70 feet. The western area of the church-
yard marks the site of St. Gregory's Church. On
the mean statue of Queen Anne a scurrilous epi-
gram was once written by some ribald Jacobite,
who spoke of the queen —

" With her face to the bramly-shop and her back to the
churcli."

The precinct wall of St. Paul's first ran Irom Ave
Maria Lane eastward along Paternoster Row to
the old Exchange, Cheapside, and then southwards
to Carter Lane, at the end of which it turned to
Ludgate Arcliway. In the reign of Edward II. the
Dean and Chapter, finding the precinct a resort of
thieves and courtesans, rebuilt and purified it.
Within, at the north-west corner, stood the bishop's
palace, beyond which, east'ivard, was Pardon Church-
yard and Cecket Chapel, rebuilt with a stately

St. Paul's Churchyard.) AN EXECUTION IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.

263

cloister in the reign of Henry V. On the walls of
this cloister, pulled down by the greedy Protector
Somerset (Edward XL), was painted one of those
grim Dances of Death whicli Holbein at last carried
to perfection. The cloister was full of monuments,
and above was a library. In an enclosure east
of this stood- the College of Minor Canons; and
at Canon Alley, east, was a burial chapel called
the Charnel, from whence Somerset sent cart-loads
of bones to Finsbury Fields. East of Canon Alley
stood Paul's Cross, where open-air sermons were
preached to the citizens, and often to the reigning
monarch. East of it rose St. Paul's School and
a belfrey to«er, in which hung the famous Jesus
bells, won at dice by Sir Giles Partridge from that
Ahab of England, Henry VIII. On the south side
stood the Dean and Chapter's garden, dormitory,
refectory, kitchen, slaughterhouse, and brewery.
These eventually yielded to a cloister, near which,
abutting on the cathedral wall, stood the chapter-
house and the Church of St. Gregory. West-
ward were tlie houses of the residentiaries ; and
the deanery, according to Milman, an excellent
authority, stood on its present site. The precinct
had six gates — the first and chief in Ludgate Street ;
the second in Paul's Alley, leading to Paternoster
Row; the third in Canon Alle)', leading to the
north door ; the fourth, a little gate leading to
Cheapside ; the fifth, the Augustine gate, leading
to Watling Street ; the sixth, on the south side, by
Paul's Chain. On the south tower of the west
front was the Lollard's Tower, a bishop's prison
for ecclesiastical offenders.

The 2,500 railings of the churchyard and the
seven ornamental gates, weighing altogether two
hundred tons, were cast in Kent, and cost 6d. a
pound. The whole cost ^11,202 os. 6d.

In 1606 St. Paul's Churchyard was the scene of
the execution of Father Garnet, one of the Gun-
powder Plot conspirators — the only executian, as
far as we know, that ever desecrated that spot.
It is very doubtful, after all, whether Garnet was j
cognizant that the plot was really to be carried
out, thougli he may have strongly suspected some !
dangerous and deadly conspiracy, and the Roman
Catholics were prepared to see miracles wrought
at his death.

On the 3rd day of May, 1606 (to condense Dr.
Abbott's account), Garnet was drawn upon a
hurdle, according to the usual practice, to his
place of execution. The Recorder of London,
the Dean of St. Paul's, and the Dean of Win-
chester were present, by command of the King — ■
the former in the King's name, and the two latter
in the name of God and Christ, to assist Garnet

withsucii ad\icc as suited the condition of a dying
man. As soon as he .'nad ascended the scaffold,
which was much elevated in order that tlie people
might behold the spectacle. Garnet saluted the
Recorder somewhat familiarly, who. told him lliat
" it was expected from him that he should pub-
licly deliver his real opinion respecting tlie con-
spiracy and treason ; tliat it was now. of no use
to dissemble, as all was clearly and manitestly
proved; but that if, in the true sjjirit of.rep.eiit-
ance, he was willing to satisfy the Christian woild
by declaring his hearty compunction, he might
freely state what he pleased." The deans theii
told him that they were present on that occasion
by authority, in order to suggest to him such
matters as might be useful for his soul ; that they
desired to do this without offence, and exhorted
him to prepare and settle himself for another
world, and to commence his reconciliaticm with
God by a sincere and saving repentance. To this
exhortation Garnet replied " that he had already
done so, and that he had before satisfied himself
in this respect." The clergymen then suggested
" that he would do well to declare his mind to the
people." Then Garnet said to those near him, " I
always disapproved of tumults and seditions against
the king, and if this crime of the powder treason
had been completed I should have abhorred it with
my whole soul and conscience." They then advised
him to declare as much to the people. " I am very
weak," said he, " and my voice fails me. If I
should speak to the people, I cannot make them
hear me ; it is impossible that they should hear
me." Then said Mr. Recorder, " Mr. Garnet, if
ycu will come with me, I will take care that they
shall hear you," and, going before him, led him
to the western end of the scattbld. He still hesi-
tated to address the people, but the Recorder
urged him to speak his mind freely, promising to
repeat his words aloud ts the multitude. Garnet
then addressed the crowd as follows :— " My good
fellow-citizens, — I am come hither, on the morrow
of the invention of the Holy Cross, to see an end
of all my pains and troubles in this world. I here
declare before you all that I consider the late
treason and conspiracy against the State to be criiel
and detestable ; and, for my part, all designs and
endeavours against the king were ever misliked by
me ; and if this attempt had been perfected, as it
was designed, I think it would have been altogether
damnable; and I jiray for all prosperity to the
king, the queen, and the royal family." Here he
paused, and the Recorder reminded him to ask
pardon of the King for that which he had attempted.
" I do so," said Garnet, " as far as I have .sinned

204

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's Churchyird.

against him — namely, in that I did not reveal that
whereof I had a general knowledge from Mr.
Catesby, but not otherwise." Then said the Dean
of Winchester, " Mr. Garnet, I pray you deal
clearly in the matter : you were certainly privy to
the whole business." " God forbid ! " said Garnet ;
'■ I never understood anything of the design of
blowing up the Parliament House." "Nay," re-
sponded the Dean of Winchester, " it is manifest
that all the particulars were known to you, and

lessing a sin, but by way of conference and
consultation ; and that Greenaway and Catesby
both came to confer with him upon that business,
and that as often as he saw Greenaway he would
ask him about tliat business because it troubled
him. " Most certainly," said Garnet ; " I did so
in order to prevent it, for I always misliked it."
Then said the Dean, " You only withheld your
approbation until the Pope had given his opinion."
" But I was well persuaded," said Garnet, " that the

THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUI.'s (sce page 256).

you have declared under your own hand that
Greenaway told you all the circumstances in Essex."
" That," said Garnet, " was in secret confession,
which I could by no means reveal." Then said
the Dean, " You have yourself, Mr. Garnet, almost
acknowledged that this was only a pretence, for
you have openly confessed that Greenaway told
you not in a confession,, but by way of a confes-
sion, and that he came of purpose to you with the
design of making a confession ; but you answered
that it was not necessary you should know the
full extent of his knowledge." The dean Turther
reminded him that he had affirmed under his own
hand that this was not told him by w.ay of con-

Pope would never approve the design." " Your
intention," said the Dean of Winchester, " was
clear from those two breves which you received
from Rome for the exclusion of the King."
" That," said Garnet, " was before the King came
in." " But if you knew nothing of the particulars
of the business," said the Dean, " why did you send
Baynham to inform the Pope ? for this also you
have confessed in your examinations." Garnet
replied, " I have already answered to all these
matters on my trial, and I acknowledge everything
that is contained in my written confessions."

Then, turning his discourse again to the people,
at the instance of the Recorder, he proceeded to

St. Paul's Churchyard]

THE "FACE IN THE STRAW."

265

the same eftect as before, declaring " that he wliolly
misUked that cruel and inhuman design, and that
he had never sanctioned or approved of any such
attempts against the King and State, and that this
project, if it had succeeded, would have been in his
mind most damnable."

Having thus spoken, he raised his hands, and
made the sign of the cross upon his forehead and

The " face in the straw " was a miracle said to
be performed at Garnet's death.

The original fabricator of the miracle of the straw
was one John Wilkinson, a young Roman Catholic,
who at the time of (}arnet's trial and execution
was about to pass over into France, to commence
his studies at the Jesuits' College at St. Omer's.
Some time after his arrival there, Wilkinson was

SpicaWiUi?-:foni.

^picojefx'dicit

"the face in the STR.^W." — FKOM ABBOT'S " ANTHOLOGIA," 1613 [see pa^e 266).

breast, saying, " I/i nomi/ie Fatris, Filii^ct Spiritus
Saudi ! Jesus Maria ! Maria, mater gratice !
Mater misericordice ! Tu me ab hoste protege, et hora
mortis siiscipe !" Then he said, " In manits tiias.
Do/nine, commendo spiritum meum, quia tu rcdemisti
me, Domine, Deus veritatis J" Then, again crossing
himself, he said, " Per crucis hoc signum fugiat
procul omne malignitm ! Infige cruccm tuain, Do)nine,
in corde mtv ;" and again, "Jesus Maria/ Maria,
mater gratice ! " In the midst of these prayers the
ladder was drawn away, and, by the express com-
mand of the King, he remained h.inging from the
gallows until he v»'as quite dead.
23

attacked by a dangerous disease, from which there
was no hope of his recovery ; and while in this state
he gave utterance to the story, which F.ndcemon-
Joannes relates in his own words, as follows : —
" The day before Father Garnet's execution my
mind was suddenly impressed (as by some external
impulse) with a strong desire to witness his death,
and bring home with me some relic of him. I had
at that time conceived so certain a persuasion that
my design would be gratified, that I did not for a
moment doubt that I should witness some imme-
diate testimony from God in favour of the innocence
of his saint ; though as often as the idea occurred

266

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paurs Churchyard.

to my mind, I endeavoured to drive it away, that I
might not vainly appear to tempt Providence by
looking for a miracle where it was not necessarily
to be expected. Early the next morning I betook
myself to the place of execution, and, arriving there
before any other person, stationed myself close to
the scaffold, though I was afterwards somewhat
forced from my position as the crowd increased."
Having then described the details of the execution,
he proceeds thus : — " Garnet's limbs having been
divided into four parts, and placed, together with
the head, in a basket, in order that they might be
exhibited, according to law, in some conspicuous
place, the crowd began to disperse. I then again
approached close to the scaffold, and stood between
the cart and place of execution ; and as I lingered
in that situation, still burning with the desire of bear-
ing away some relic, that miraculous ear of straw,
since so highly celebrated, came, I know not how,
into my hand. A considerable (juantity of dry
straw had been thrown with Ciarnet's head and
quarters into tlie basket, but whether this ear came
into my hand from the scaffold or from the basket I
cannot venture to affirm ; this only I can truly say,
that a straw of this kind was thrown towards me
before it had touched the ground. This straw I

afterwards delivered to Mrs. N , a matron of

singular Catholic piety, who inclosed it in a bottle,
which being rather shorter than the straw, it
became slightly bent. A few days afterwards Mrs.

N showed the straw in a bottle to a certain

noble person, her intimate acquaintance, who, look-
ing at it attentively, at length said, 'I can see

nothing in it but a man's face." Mrs. N

and myself being astonished at this unexpected
exclamation, again and again examined the ear
of the straw, and distinctly perceived in it a human
countenance, which others also, coming in as
casual spectators, or expressly called by us as wit-
nesses, likewise beheld at that time. This is, as
God knoweth, the true history of Father Garnet's
straw." The engraving upon the preceding page is
taken from Abbot's '-Anthologia," published in 1613,
in which a full account of the " miracle " is given.
At 65, St. Paul's Churchyard, north-west corner,
lived the worthy predecessor of Messrs. Grant and
Griffith, Goldsmith's friend and employer, Mr.
John Newbery, that good-natured man with the
red-pimpled face, who, as the philanthropic book-
seller, figures pleasantly in the " Vicar of Wake-
field;" always in haste to be gone, he was ever
on business of the utmost importance, and was
at that time actually compiling materials for the
history of one Thomas Trip. " The friend of
all mankind," Dr. Primrose calls him. "The

honestest man in the nation," as Goldsmith said
of him in a doggerel riddle which he wrote. New-
bery's nephew printed the " Vicar of \Vakefield "
for Goldsmith, and the elder Newbury published
the " Traveller," the corner-stone of Goldsmith's
fame. It was the elder Newbery who unearthed
the poet at his miserable lodgings in Green Arbour
Court, and employed him to write his " Citizens of
the World," at a guinea each, for his daily news-
paper, the Public Ledger (1760). The Newbery s
seem to have been worthy, prudent tradesmen,
constantly vexed and irritated at Goldsmiths ex-
travagance, carelessness, and ceaseless cry for
money ; and so it went on till the hare-brained,
delightful fellow died, when Francis Newbery wrote
a violent defence of the fever medicine, an excess
of which had killed Goldsmith.

The office of the Registrar of the High Court of
Admiralty occupied the site of the old cathedral
bakehouse. Paul's Chain is so called from a chain
tliat used to be drawn across the carriage-way of
the churchyard, to preserve silence during divine
service. The northern barrier of St. Paul's is of
wood. Opposite the Chain, in 1660 (the Restora-
tion), lived that king of writing and arithmetic
masters, the man whose name has grown into a
proverb — Edward Cocker — who wrote " The Pen's
Transcendancy," an extraordinary proof of true eye
and clever hand.

In the Chapter House of St. Paul's, which Mr.
Peter Cunningham not too severely calls "a
shabby, dingy-looking building," on the north side
of the churchyard, was performed the unjust cere-
mony of degrading Samuel Johnson, the chaplain
to William Lord Russell, the martyr of the party
of liberty. The divines present, in compassion,
and with a prescient eye for the future, purposely
omitted to strip off his cassock, which rendered
the ceremony imperfect, and afterwards saved the
worthy man his benefice.

St. Paul's Coffee House stood at the corner of
the archway of Doctors' Commons, on the site of
"Paul's Brew House" and the "Paul's Head"
tavern. Here, in 1721, the books of the great
collector. Dr. Rawlinson, were sold, " after dinner ;''
and they sold well.

Child's Coffee House, in St. Paul's Churchyard,
was a quiet place, much frequented by the clergy of
Queen Anne's reign, and bv proctors from Doctors'
Commons. Addison used to look in there, to
smoke a pipe and listen, behind his paper, to the
conversation. In the Spectator, No. 609, he smiles
at a country gentleman who mistook all persons in
scarves for doctors of divinity. This was at a time
when clergymen always wore their black gowns ill

St- Paul's Chuichyard.]

CITY CLUBS AND COTERIES.

267

public. "Only a scarf of the first niagnitiule," he
says, " entitles one to the appellation of ' doctor '
from the landlady and the boy at 'Child's.'"

"Child's" was the resort of Dr. Mead, and other
professional men of eminence. The Fellows of the
Ko)al Society came here. ^\'histon relates that
Sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Halley, and he were once at
" Child's," when Dr. Halley asked him (Whiston)
why he was not a member of the Royal Society ?
Whiston answered, " Because they durst not choose
a heretic." Upon which Dr. Halley said, if Sir
Hans Sloane would propose him, he (Dr. Halley)
would second it, which was done accordingly.

Garrick, who kept up his interest with different
coteries, carefully cultivated the City men, by
attending a club held at the "Queen's Arms"
tavern, in St. Paul's Churchyard. Here he used
to meet Mr. Sharpe, a surgeon ; Mr. Paterson, the
City Solicitor ; Mr. Draper, a bookseller, and Mr.
Clutterbuck, a mercer ; and these quiet cool men
were his standing council in theatrical affairs, and
his gauge of the city taste. They were none of
them drinkers, and in order to make a reckoning,
called only for French wine. Here Dr. Johnson
started a City club, and was particular the members
should not be " patriotic." Boswell, who went
with him to the " Queen's Arms " club, found the
members " very sensible, well-behaved men." Bras-
bridge, the silversmith of Fleet Street, who wrote his
memoirs, has described a sixpenny card dub held
here at a later date. Among the members was
that generous and hospitable man, Henry Baldwin,
who, under the auspices of Garrick, the elder
Cohnan, and Bonnell Thornton, started the Si.
James's Chronicle, the most jjopular evening paper
of the da)-.

" I belonged," says Brasbridge, " to a sixpenny
card club, at the ' Queen's Arms,' in St. Paul's
Church)-ard ; it consisted of about twenty mem-
bers, of whom I am the sole survivor. Among
them was Mr. Goodwin, of St. Paul's Churchyard,
a woollen dra]3er, whose constant salutation, when
he first came down-stairs in the morning, was to his
shop, in these words, ' Good morrow, Mr. Shop ;
you'll take care of me, Mr. Shop, and I'll take care
of you.' Another was Mr. Curtis, a respectable
stationer, who from very small beginnings left
his son ^90,000 in one line, besides an estate of
near ;^3oo a )ear."

" The ' Free and Easy under the Rose ' was
another society which I frequented. It was
founded sixty years ago, at the ' Queen's Arms,' in
St. Paul's Churchyard, and was afterwards removed
to the ' Horn' tavern. It was originally kept by
Bates, who was never so happy as when standing

behind a chair with a napkin under his arm ; but
arriving at the dignity of alderman, tucking in his
callipash and calipee himself, instead of handing it
round to the comi)any, soon did his business. My
excellent frientl Briskctt, the Marshal of the Higli
Coin-t of Admiralty, was president of this society
for many years, and I was constantly in attendance
as his vice. It consisted of some thousand mem-
bers, and I never heard of any one of them that
ever incurred any serious punishment. Our great
fault was sitting too late ; in this respect, according
to the principle of Franklin, that ' time is money,'
we were most unwary spendthrifts ; in other in-
stances, our conduct was orderly and correct."

Oire of the members in Brasbridge's time was
Mr. Hawkins, a worthy but ill-educated spatterdash
maker, of Chancery Lane, who daily murdered the
king's Englisli. He called an invalid an " indi-
vidual," and said our troojjs in America had been
" manured" to hardship. Another oddity was a
Mr. Darwin, a Radical, who one night brought
to the club-room a caricature of the head of
George III. in a basket; and whom Brasbridge
nearly frightened out of his wits by pretending to
send one of the waiters for the City Marshal.
Darwin was the great chum of Mr. Figgins, a wax-
chandler in the Poultry; and as they always entered
the room together, Brasbridge gave them the nick-
name of " Liver and Gizzard." Miss Boydell, when
her uncle was Lord Mayor, conferred sham knight-
hood on Figgins, with a tap of her fan, and he was
henceforward known as " Sir Benjamin."

The Churchyard jjublisher of Cowper's first
volume of poems, " Table Talk," and also of " The
Task," was a very worthy, liberal man — Joseph
Johnson, who also published the " Olney Hymns'''
for Newton, the scientific \\Titings of the per-
secuted Priestley, and the smooth, vapid verses of
Darwin. Johnson encouraged Fuseli to paint a
Milton Gallery, for an edition of the poet to be
edited by Cowper. Johnson was imprisoned nine
months in the King's Bench, for selling the political
writings of Gilbert Wakefield. He, however, bore
the oppression of the majority philosophically, and
rented the marshal's house, where he gave dinners
to his distinguished literary friends.

"Another set of my>ac<iuainlances," says Leigh
Hunt in his autobiography, " used to assemble on
Fridays at the hospitable table of Mr. Hunter, the
bookseller, in St. Paul's Churchyard. They were the
survivors of the literary party that were accustomed
to dine with his predecessor, Mr. Johnson. The
most regular were Fuseli and Bonnycast'e. Now
and then Godwin was present ; oftener Mr. Kin-
naird, the m.igistrate, a great lover of I lorace.

26C

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St Paul's Churchyard.

'• Fuseli was a small man, with energetic features
and a white head of hair. Our host's daughter,
then a little girl, used to call him the white-headed
lion. He combed his hair up from the forehead,
and as his whiskers were large his face was set in
a kind of hairy frame, which, in addition to the
fierceness of his look, really gave him an aspect
of that sort. Otherwise his features were rather
.sharp than round. He would have looked much
like an old military officer if his face, besides its
real energy, had not affected more. There was
the same defect in it as in his pictures. Con-
scious of not having all the strength he wished,
he endeavoured to make up for it by violence and
pretension. He carried this so far as to look
fiercer than usual when he sat for his picture. His
friend and engraver, Mr. Houghton, drew an ad-
mirable likeness of him in this state of dignified
extravagance. He is sitting back in his chair,
leaning on his hand, but looking ready to pounce
withal. His notion of repose w^as like that of
Pistol.

"A student reading in a garden is all over inten-
sity of muscle, and the quiet tea-table scene in
Cowper lie has turned into a preposterous con-
spiracy of huge men and women, all bent on
showing their thews and postures, with dresses as
fantastic as their minds. One gentleman, of the
existence of whose trousers you are not aware till
you see the terminating line at the ankle, is
sitting and looking grim on a sofa, with his hat on
and no waistcoat.

" Fuseli was lively and interesting in conversation,
but not without his usual faults of violence and
pretension. Nor was he always as decorous as an
old man ought to be, especially one whose turn
of mind is not of the lighter and more pleasurable
cast. The licences he took were coarse, and had
not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly
they went agreat deal beyond his friend Armstrong,
to whose account, I believe, Fuseli's passion for
swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be
a great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic
to swear like him. His friendship with Bonny-
castle had something childlike and agreeable in it.
They came and went away together for years, like
a couple of old schoolboys. They also like boys
rallied one another, and sometimes made a singular
display of it — Fuseli, at least, for it was he who was
the aggressor. '

" Bonnycastle was a good fellow. He was a
tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features '
and spectacles, and a deep internal \oice, with a
twang of rusticity 'in it ; and he goggled over his '
plate like a horse. I often thought that a bag of j

corn would have hung well on him. His laugh
was equine, and showed his teeth upwards at the
sides. Wordsworth, who notices similar mysterious
' manifestations on the part of donkeys, would have
thouglu it ominous. Bonnycastle was extremely
fond of quoting Shakespeare and telling stories,
and if the Edinburgh Ranew had just come out,
\ would have given us all the jokes in it. He had
once a hypochondriacal disorder of long dura-
tion, and he told us that he should never forget
the comfortable sensation given him one night
during this disorder by his knocking a landlord
that was insolent to him down the man's staircase.
On the strength of this piece of energy (having
first ascertained that the oftender was not killed)
he went to bed, and had a sleep of unusual sound-
ness.

" It was delightful one day to hear him speak with
complacency of a translation which had appeared
in Arabic, and which began by saying, on the
part of the translator, that it pleased God, for the
advancement of human knowledge, to raise us up
a Bonnycastle.

" Kinnaird, the magistrate, was a sanguine man,
under the middle height, with a fine lamping black
eye, lively to the last, and a body that 'had
increased, was increasing, and ought to have been
diminished,' which is by no means what he thought
of the prerogative. Next to his bottle, he was fond
of his Horace, and, in the intervals of business at
the police office, would enjoy both in his arm-chair.
Between the vulgar calls of this kind of magis-
tracy and the perusal of the urbane Horace there
must have been a quota of contradiction, which
the bottle, perhaps, was required to render quite
palatable."

Mr. Charles Knight's pleasant book, "Shadows
of the Old Booksellers," also reminds us of another
of the great Churchyard booksellers, John Riving-
ton and Sons, at the " Bible and Crown." They
published, in 1737, an early sermon of Whitefield's,
before he left the Church, and were booksellers to
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ;
and to this shop country clergymen invariably went
to buy their theology, or to publish their own
sermons. ■

In St. P.aul's Churchyard (says Sir John Hawkins,
in his " History of Music ") were formerly many
shops where music and musical instnmients were
sold, for which, at this time, no better reason can
be given than that the service at the Cathedral
drew together, twice a day, all the lovers of music
in London — not to mention that the choirmen were
wont to assemble there, and were met by their
friends and acquaintances.

St. Paul's Churchyard.) MUSICAL REMINISCENCES AROUND ST. PAUL'S.

269

Jeremiah Clark, a composer of sacred music,
who shot himself in his house in St. Paul's Church-
yard, was educated in the Royal Chapel, under Dr.
lUow, who entertained so great a friendship for him
as to resign in his tavour his place of Master of the
Children and Almoner of St. Paul's, Clark being
appointed his successor, in 1693, and .shortly after-
wards he became organist of the cathedral. "In
July, 1700," says Sir John Hawkins, "he and his
fellow pupils were appointed Gentlemen Extra-
ordinary of the Royal Chapel; and in 1704 they
were jointly admitted to the place of organist thereof,
in the room of Mr. Francis Piggot. Clark had the
misfortune to entertain a hopeless passion for a
very beautiful lady, in a station of life far above
him ; his despair of success threw him into a deep
melancholy ; in short, he grew weary of his life,
and on the first day of December, 1707, shot him-
self He was determined upon this method of put-
ting an end to his life by an event which, strange
as it may seem, is attested by the late Mr. Samuel
AV^eeley, one of the lay-\icars of St. Paul's, who was
■sery intimate with him, and had heard him relate
it. Being at the house of a friend in the country,
he took an abrupt resolution to return to London ;
this friend having observed in his behaviour marks
of great dejection, furnished him with a horse and
a servant. Riding along the road, a fit of melan-
clioly seized him, upon which he alighted, and
giving the servant his horse to hold, went into a
field, in a corner whereof was a pond, and also
trees, and began a debate with himself whether he
should then end his days by hanging or drowning.
Not being able to resolve on either, he thought
of making what he looked upon as chance the
umpire, and drew out of his pocket a piece of
money, and tossing it into the air, it came down
on its edge, and stuck in the clay. Though the
determination answered not his wish, it was far
from ambiguous, as it seemed to forbid both
methods of destruction, and would have given un-
speakable comfort to a mind less disordered than
his was. Being thus interrupted in his purpose,
he returned, and mounting his horse, rode on to
London, and in a short time after shot himself
He dwelt in a house in St. Paul's Churchyard,
situate on the place where the Chapter-house now
stands. Old Mr. Reading was passing by at the
instant the pistol went off, and entering the house,
found his friend in the agonies of death .

"The compositions of Clark are few. His
anthems are remarkably pathetic, at the same time
that they preserve the dignity and majesty of the
church style. The most celebrated of them rive
' I will love thee,' printed in the second book of |

the 'Harmonia Sacra;' 'Bow down thine ear,' and
' Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem.'

"The only works of Clark jjublished by himself
are lessons for the harjjsicliord and sundry songs,
which are to be found in the collections of that
day, particularly in the ' Pills to Purge Melancholy,'
but they are-there printed without the basses. He
also composed for D'Urfey's comedy of 'The Fond
Husband, or the Plotting Sisters,' that sweet ballad
air, 'The bonny grey-eyed Morn,' which Mr. Gay
has introduced into ' The Beggar's Opera,' and is
sung to the words, ' 'Tis woman tliat .seduces all
mankind.'"

" Mattheson, of Hamburg," says Hawkins, " had
sent over to England, in order to their being pub-
lished here, two collections of lessons for the harp-
sichord, and they were accordingly engraved on
copper, and printed for Richard Meares, in St.
Paul's Churchyard, and published in the year 17 14.
Handel was at this time in London, and in the
afternoon was used to frequent St. Paul's Church
for the sake of hearing the service, and of playing
on the organ after it was over; from whence he
and some of the gentlemen of the choir w-ould
frequently adjourn to the ' Queen's Arms ' tavern,
in St. Paul's Church}-ard, wliere was a harpsichord.
It happened one afternoon, when they were thus
met together, Mr. Weeley, a gentleman of the choir,
came in and informed them that Mr. Mattheson's
lessons were then to be had at Mr. Meares's shop ;
upon which Mr. Handel ordered them immediately
to be sent for, and upon their being brought, played
them all over witliout rising from the instrument."

"There dwelt," says Sir John Hawkins, "at the
west corner of London House Yard, in St. Paul's
Churchyard, at the sign of the ' Dolphin and
Crown,' one John Young, a maker of violins and
other musical instruments. This man had a son,
whose Christian name was Talbot, who had been
brought up with Greene in St. Paul's choir, and
had attained to great proficiency on the violin, as
Greene had on the harpsichord. The merits of tlie
two Youngs, father and son, are celebrated in the
following quibbling verses, which were set to music
in the form of a catch, printed in the pleasant
' I\Iusical Companion,' published in 1726 : —

" ' You scrapers th.it w.mt a good (uldle well .strung,
You must go to the ni.tn tliat is old while he's young ;
Uul if this same fidUIe you fain would play bold,
You must go to his son, who'll be young when lie's old.
There's old Young and young \'oung, botli men of renown,
Old sells and young plays the best fiddle in town.
Young and old live together, and may tliey live long,
Young to play an old fiddle, old to sell a new song.'

"This young man, Talbot Voung, together with

270

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[St. Paul's Churchyard.

H
O

a
X

St. Paul's Churchyard.)

THE "CASTLE" CONCERTS.

271

Greene and several persons, had weekly meetings
at his father's house, for practice of music. The
fame of this performance sjiread far and wide ; and
in a few winters the resort of gentlemen performers
was greater than the house would admit of; a
small subscription was set on foot, and they re-

" The 'Castle' concerts continuing to flourish for
many years, auditors as well as performers were
admitted subscribers, and tickets were delivered
out to the members in rotation for the admission
of ladies. 'J'heir fund enabling them, they hired
second-rate singers from the operas, and many

OLD ST. Paul's school (see page 272).

moved to the ' Queen's Head ' tavern, in Pater-
noster Row. Here they were joined by Mr. Wool-
aston and his friends, and also by a Mr. Franckville,
a fine performer on the viol de Gamba. And after
a few winters, being grown rich enough to hire
additional performers, they removed, in the year
1724, to the 'Castle,' in Paternoster Row, which
was adorned with a picture of Mr. Young, painted
by Vi'oolaston.

young persons of professions and trades that de-
pended upon a numerous acquaintance, were in-
duced by motives of interest to become members
of the ' Castle ' concert.

" Mr. Young continued to perform in this society
till the declining state of his health obliged him to
quit it; after which time Prospero Castrucci and
other eminent performers in succession continued
to lead the band. .Mmut tlie year 1744, at the

27^

OLt) AND NEW* LONDON.

[St. Paul's Churchyard.

instance of an alderman of London, now de-
servedly forgotten, the subscription was raised from
two guineas to five, for the purpose of performing
oratorios. From the ' Castle ' this society removed
to Haberdashers' Hall, where they continued for
fifteen or si.xteen years ; from thence they removed
to the ' King's Arms,' in Cornhill."

A curious old advertisement of i6Si relates to
St. Paul's Alley: — "Whereas the yearly meeting of
the name of Adam hath of late, through the defi-
ciency of the last stewards, been neglected, these
are to give notice to all gentlemen and others that
are of that name that at William .\dam's, com-
monly called the ' Northern Ale-house,' in St.
Paul's Alle\-, in St. Paul's Churchyard, there will be
a weekly meeting, every Monday night, of our .lame-
sakes, between the hours of six and eight of the
clock in the evening, in order to choose stewards
to revive our antient and annual feast." — Domestic
Jntdligciia, 1 6 S i .

During the building of St. Paul's, Wren was the
zealous Master of the St. Paul's Freemason's Lodge,
which assembled at the "Goose and Gridiron," one
of the most ancient lodges in London. He pre-
sided regularly at its meetings for upwards of
eighteen years. He presented the lodge with three
beautifully carved mahogany candlesticks, and the
trowel and mallet which he used in laying the first
stone of the great cathedral in 1675. In i58S
Wren was elected Grand Master of the order, and
he nominated his old fellow-workers at St. Paul's,
Gibber, the sculptor, and Strong, the master mason.
Grand Wardens. In Queen Anne's reign there
were 129 lodges — eighty-six in London, thirty-six
in provincial cities, and seven abroad. Many of
the oldest lodges in London are in the neighbour-
hood of St. Paul's.

"At the '.Apple Tree' Tavern,'' say Messrs.
Hotten and Larwood, in their history of " Inn and
Tavern Signs," " in Charles Street, Covent Garden,
in 1 7 16, four of the leading London Freemasons'
lodges, considering themselves neglected by Sir
Christopher Wren, met and chose a Grand Master,
pro tan., until they should be able to place a noble
brother at the head, which they did the year fol-
lowing, electing the Duke of Montague. Sir Chris-
topher had been chosen in 169S. The three lodges
that joined with the ' Apple Tree' lodge used to meet
respectively at the ' Goose and Gridiron,' St. Paul's
Churchyard ; the ' Crown,' Parker's Lane ; and at
the 'Rummer and Grapes' Tavern, Westminster.
The ' Goose and Gridiron' occurs at Woodhall,
Lincolnshire, and in a few other localities. It is
said to owe its origin to the following circum-
stances : — The 'Mitre' was a celebrated music-house

in London House Yard, at the north-west end of
St. Paul's. When it ceased to be a music-house,
the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its former
destiny, chose for his sign a goose striking the bars
of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the
' Swan and Harp,' a common sign for the early
music-houses. Such an origin does the Tatkr give ;
but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat
of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended
probably at the door of the ' Mitre' when it was a
music-house. These arms are a swan with his
wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter,
flory, argent. This double tressure might have
suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated passers-by.

" The celebrated ' Mitre,' near the west end of
St. Paul's, was the first music-house in London.
The name of the master was Robert Herbert, a/ias
Farges. Like many brother publicans, he was,
besides being a lover of music, also a collector of
natural curiosities, as appears by his ' Catalogue of
many natural rarities, collected with great Industrie,
cost, and thirty years' travel into foreign countries,
collected by Robert Herbert, alias Farges, gent.,
and sworn servant to his Majesty; to be seen at
the place called the Music-house, at the Mitre,
near the west end of S. Paul's Church, 1664.'
This collection, or, at least, a great part of it,
was bought by Sir Hans Sloane. It is conjectured
that the ' Mitre ' was situated in London House
Yard, at the north-west end of St. Paul's, on the
spot where afterwards stood the house known by
the sign of the 'Goose and Gridiron.'"

St. Paul's School, known to cathedral visitors
chiefly by that murky, barred-in, purgatorial play-
ground opposite the east end of Wren's great
edifice, is of considerable antiquity, for it was
founded in 15 12 by that zealous patron of learning,
and friend of Erasmus, Dean Colet. This liberal-
minded man was the eldest of twenty-two children,
all of whom he survived. His father was a City
mercer, who was twice Lord Mayor of London.
Colet became Dean of St. Paul's in 1505, and soon
afterwards (as Latimer tells us) narrowly escaped
burning for his opposition to image -worship.
Having no near relatives, Colet, in 1509, began to
found St. Paul's School, adapted to receive 153
jjoor boys (the number of fishes taken by Peter in
the miraculous draught). The building is said to
have cost ^4,500, and was endowed with lands in
Buckinghamshire estimated by Stow, in 1598, as
of the yearly value of ^120 or better, and now
worth ;^i 2,000, with a certainty of rising.

No children were to be admitted into the school

but sucli as could say their catechism, and read

1 and write competently. Each child was required

St. Paui-s Churchyard. J ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL AND FAMOUS PAULLNES.

373

to pay fourpence on his first admission to the
school, which sum was to be given to the " poor
scholar " v,ho swept the school and kept the seats
clean. The hours of study were to he from seven
till eleven in the morning, and from one to five
in the afternoon, with prayers in the morning, at
noon, and in the evening. It was expressly stipu-
lated that the pupils should never use tallow candles,
but only wax, and those " at the cost of their
friends." The most remarkable statute of the
Fchool is that by which the scholars were bound
on Christmas-day to attend at St. Paul's Church
and hear the child-bishop sermon, and after be at
the high mass, and each of them offer one penny
to the cliild-bishop. ^\'hen Dean Colet was asked
why he had left his foundation in trust to laymen
(the Mercers' Company), as tenants of his father,
rather than to an ecclesiastical foundation, he
answered, " that there .was no absolute certainty
in human affairs, but, for his part, he found less
corruption in such a body of citizens than in any
other order or degree of mankind."

Erasmus, after describing the foundation and
the school, which he calls "a magnificent structure,
to which were attached two dwelling-houses for
the masters," proceeds to say, " He divided the
school into four chambers. The first — namely, the
porch and entrance — in which the chaplain teaches,
where.no child is to be admitted who cannot read
and WTite ; the second apartment is for those who
are taught by the under-master; the third is for
the boys of the upper form, taught by the high
master. These two parts of the school are divided
by a curtain, to be drawn at will. Over the head-
master's chair is an image of the boy Jesus, a
beautiful work, in the gesture of teacliing, whom
all the scholars, going and departing, salute with
a hymn. There is a representation of God the
Father, also, saying, ' Hear ye him,' which words
were written at my suggestion."

" The last apartment is a little chapel for divine
service. Li the whole school there are no corners
or hiding-places ; neither a dining nor a sleeping
place. Each boy has his own place, one above
another. Every class or form contains si.xteen
boys, and he that is at the head of a class has a
little seat, by way of jjre-eminence."

Erasmus, who took a great interest in St. Paul's
School, drew uj) a grammar, and other elementary
books of value, for his friend Colet, who had for
one of his masters ^Villiam Lily, " the model of
grammarians." Colet's masters were always to be
married men.

The school thus described shared in the Great
Fire of 1666, and was rebuilt by the Mercers'

Company in 1670. This second structure was
superseded by liie jjresent edifice, designed and
erected by George Smith, Esq., the architect of the
Mercjrs' Company. It has the ad\-antagc of two
additional masters' houses, and a large cloister for
a playground underneath the school.

On occasions of the .sovereigns of England, or
other royal or distinguished persons, going in state
through the City, a balcony is erected in front of
this building, whence addres.ses from the school
are presented to the illustrious visitors by the head
boys. The origin of this right or custom of the
Paulines is not known, but it is of some antiquity.
Addresses were so presented to Charles V. and
Henry VHL, in 1522 ; to Queen P:hzabeth, 1558;
and to Queen Victoria, when the Royal E.xchange
was opened, in 1844. Her Majesty, however, pre-
ferred to receive the address at the next levee ; and
this precedent was followed when the multitudes of
London rushed to welcome the Prince of Wales
and Princess Alexandra, in 1863.

The ancient school-room was on a level with
the street, the modern one is built over the cloister.
It is a finely-proportioned apartment, and has
several new class-rooms adjoining, erected ujion a
plan iiroposed by Dr. Kynaston, the present head-
master. At the south end of this noble room,
above the master's chair, is a bust of the founder
by Roubiliac. Over the seat is inscribed, " In-
tendas animum studiis et rebus honestis," and over
the entrance to the room is the quaint and apjiro-
priate injunction found at Winchester and other
public schools — " Doce, disce, aut discede."

St. Paul's School has an excellent library imme-
diately adjoining tlie school-room, to which the
eighth class have access out of school-hours, the
six seniors occupying places in it in school-time.

In 1602 the masters' stipends were enlarged,
and the surplus money set apart for college exhi-
bitions. The head master receives ;f 900 a year, the
second master ;;^4oo. The education is entirely
gratuitous. The presentations to the school are in
the gift of the Master of the Mercers' Company,
which company has undoubtedly .much limited
Dean Colet's generous intentions. The school is
rich in prizes and exhibitions. The latest chro-
nicler of the Paulines says : —

" Few public schools can claim to have educated
more men who figure prominentl)- in English history
than St. Paul's School. Sir Edward North, founder
of the noble family of that name ; Sir A\'illiam
Paget, who from being the son of a serjeant-at-
mace became privy councillor to four successive
sovereigns, and acquired the title now held by his
descendant, the owner of Beaudesert ; and John

274

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(Paternoster Row.

Leland, the celebrated archiEologist ; William
Whitaker, one of the earliest and most prominent
chaplains of the Reformation ; William Camden,
antiquarian and herald ; the immortal John Milton ;
Samuel Pei>ys ; Robert Nelson, author of the ' Com-
panion to the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of
England ;' Dr. Benjamin Calamy ; Sir John Trevor,
Master of the Rolls and Speaker of the House of
Commons ; John, the great Duke of Marlborough ;
Halley, the great astronomer; the gallant but un-
fortunate I\Lajor Andrii ; Sir Philip Francis ; Sir
Charles Wetherell ; Sir Frederick Pollock, the late
Lord Chief Baron ; Lord Chancellor Truro ; and
the distinguished Greek Professor at Oxford, Ben-
jamin Jowett." I

Pepys seems to have been very fond of his old
school. In 1659, he goes on Apposition Day to
hear his brother John deliver his speech, which he |
had corrected ; and on another occasion, meeting
his old second master, Crumbun — a dogmatic old
pedagogue, as he calls him — at a bookseller's in
the Churchyard, he gives the school a fine copy
of Stephens' "Thesaurus." In 1661, going to the
Mercers' Hall in the Lord Admiral's coach, we find
him expressing pleasure at going in state to the
I)lace where as a boy he had himself humbly
pleaded for an exhibition to St. Paul's School. j

According to Dugdale, an ancient cathedral
school existed at St. Paul's. Bishop Balmeis
(Henry I.) bestowed on it " the house of Durandus,
near the Bell Tower ;" and no one could keep a
school in London without the licence of the master
of Paul's, e.\cept the masters of St. ALiry-le-Bow
and St. Martin's-le-Grand.

The old laws of Dean Colet, containing many
curious provisions and restrictions, among other
things forbad cock-fighting "and other pageantry"
in the school. It was ordered that the second
master and chaplain were to reside in Old Change.
There was a bust of good Dean Colet over the
head-master's throne. Strype, speaking of the
original dedication of the school to the child Jesus,
says, " but the saint robbed his Master of the title."
In early days there used to be great war between
the " Paul's pigeons," as they were called, and the
boys of St. Anthony's Free School, Threadneedle
Street, whom the Paulines nicknamed " Anthony's
pigs." The -Anthony's boys were great carriers oft"
of prizes for logic and grammar.

Of Milton's school-days Mr. Masson, in his
voluminous life of the poet, says, " Milton was at
St. Paul's, as far as we can calculate, from 1620,
when he passed his eleventh year, to 1624-5, ^^'h^'i
he had passed his sixteenth."

CHAPTER XXIII.

PATERNOSTER ROW.

Its Succes*;ions of Traders— The House of Longman — Goldsmith at Fault — Tarleton, Actor, Host, and Wit — Ordinaries around St. Paul's :
their Rules and Customs — The "Castle" — "Dolly's" — The "Chapter" and its Frequenters — Chatterton and Goldsmith — Dr. Buchan
and his Prescriptions — Dr. Gower — Dr. Fordyce — The " Wittinagemot " at the ''Chapter" — The "Printing Conger" — Airs. Turner, the
Poisoner — The Church of St. Michael *' ad Bladuni " — The Boy in Panier Alley.

P.A.TF.RNO.STER Row, that crowded defile north of
the Cathedral, lying between the old Grey Friars and
tiie Blackfiiars, was once entirely ecclesiastical in
its character, and, according to Stow, was so called
from the stationers and text-writers who dwelt i
there and sold religious and educational books,
alphabets, jiaternosters, aves, creeds, and graces.
It then became famous for its spurriers, and after-
wards for eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen ;
so that the coaches of the "quality' often blocked
up the whole street. After the fire these trades
mostly removed to Bedford Street, King Street, and
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In 1720 (says
Strype) there were stationers and booksellers who
came here in Queen Anne's reign from Little
Britain, and a good many tire-women, who sold '
commodes, top-knots, and otlier dressings for the !

female head. By degrees, however, learning ousted
vanity, chattering died into studious silence, and
the despots of literature ruled supreme. Many a
groan has gone up from authors in this gloomy
thoroughfare.

One only, and that the most ancient, of the
Paternoster Row book-firms, will our space permit
us to chronicle. The house of Longman is part
and parcel of the Row. The first Longman, born
in Bristol in 1699, was the son of a soap and sugar
merchant. Apprenticed in London, he purchased
{area 1724) the business of Mr. Taylor, the pub-
lisher of " Robinson Crusoe," for ^2,282 9s. 6d.,
and his first venture was the works of Boyle. This
patriarch died in 1755, and was succeeded by a
nephew, Thomas Longman, who ^''.'nturtd much
trade in America and '' the plantiiticns," He wag

. Paternoster Raw.]

THE IIOUSF, OF LOXGMAN.

275

• succeeded by his son, Mr. 1". L. Longman, a plain
man of the old citizen style, who took as partner
Mr. Owen Rees, a Bristol bookseller, a man of
industry and acumen.

Before the close of the eighteenth century the
house of Longman and Rees had become one of |
the largest in the City, both as publishers and
book-merchants. When there was talk of an
additional paper-duty, the ministers consulted, ac- [
cording to ^\■est, the new firm, and on their protest
desisted ; a reverse course, according to the same
authority, would have checked operations on the
part of that one firm alone of ^100,000. Before
the opening of the nineteenth century they had
become possessed of some new and valuable
copyrights — notably, the "Grammar" of Lindley
Murray, of New York. This was in 1799.

The " lake poets " pro\ed a valuable acquisition.
Wordsworth came first to them, then Coleridge,
and lastly Southey. In 1802 the ]-ongmans com-
menced the issue of Rees' "Cyclopaedia," recon-
structed from the old Chambers', and about the
same time the Annual Review, edited by Aikin,
which for the nine years of its existence Southey
and Taylor of Norwich mainly supported. The
catalogue of the firm for 1S03 is divided into no
less than twenty-two classes. Among their books
we note Paley's " Natural Theology," Sharon Tur-
ner's "Anglo-Saxon History," Adolphus's "History
of King George IIL," Pinkerton's " Geography,"
Fosbrooke's " British Monachi.sm," Cowper's
" Homer," Gifford's "Juvenal," Sotheby's "Oberon,"
and novels and romances not a few. At this time
Mr. Longman used to have Saturday evening re-
ceptions in Paternoster Row.

Sir \\'alter Scott's " Guy Mannering," " The
Monastery," and "The Abbot," were published
by Longmans. . " Lalla Rookh," by Tom Moore,
was published by them, and they gave ^^3,000
for it.

In 181 r Mr. Brown, who had entered the house
as an apprentice in 1792, and was the son of an
old ser\ant, became partner. Then came in Mr.
Orme, a faithful clerk of the house — for the house
recjuired several heads, the old book trade alone
being an important department. In 1S26, when
Constable of Edinburgh came down in the com-
mercial crash, and brought poor Sir Walter Scott
to the ground with him, the Longman firm suc-
ceeded to the Edinburgh Ra'ieiu, which is still
their propert}-. Mr. Green became a partner in
1824, and in 1856 Mr. Roberts was admitted.
In 1829 the firm ventured on Lardner's " Cyclo-
paedia," contributed to by Scott, Tom Moore,
Mackintosh, &c., and which ended in 1846 with the

133rd volume. In 1S60 .Mr. I'honias Longman
became a partner.

Thomas Norton Longman, says a writer in the
Critic, resided for many years at Mount (Jrove,
Hampstead, where lie entertained many wits and
scholars. He died there in 1842, leaving ^^200,000
l)ersonalty. In 1839 Mr. William Longman en-
tered the firm as a partner. " Longman, Green,
Longman, and Roberts ' became the style of
the great publishing house, the founder of which
commenced business one hundred and forty-four
years ago, at the house which became afterwards
No. 39, Paternoster Row.

In 1773, a year before Goldsmith's death, Dr.
Kenrick, a vulgar satirist of the day, wrote an
anonymous letter in an evening paper called The
London Packet, sneering at the poet's vanity, and
calling " The Traveller " a flimsy poem, denying
the " Deserted Village " genius, fancy, or fire, and
calling •' She Stoops to Conquer " the merest pan-
tomime. Goldsmith's Irish blood fired at an
allusion to Miss Horneck and his supposed rejection
by her. Supposing Evans, of Paternoster Row, to
be the editor of the Packet, Goldsmith resolved to
chastise him. Evans, a brutal fellow, who turned
his son out in the streets and separated from his
wife because she took her son's part, denied all
knowledge of the matter. As he turned his back
to look for the libel, Goldsmith struck him sharply
across the shoulders. Evans, a sturdy, hot U'elsh-
man, returned the blow with interest, and in the
scuffle a lamp overhead was broken and covered
the combatants with fis'n-oil. Dr. Kenrick then
stepped from an adjoining room, interposed between
the combatants, and sent poor Goldsmith home,
bruised and disfigured, in a coach. P^ans subse-
quently indicted Goldsmith for the assault, but the
affair was compromised by Goldsmith paying ^^50
towards a Welsh charity. The friend who accom-
panied Goldsmith to this chivalrous but unsuccess-
ful attack is said to have been CajJtain Horneck,
but it seems more probable that it was Captain
Higgins, an Irish friend mentioned in " The
Haunch of Venison."

Near the site of the present Dolly's Chop
House stood the " Castle," an ordinary kept by
Shakespeare's friend and fellow actor, Richard
Tarleton, the low comedian of Queen Elizabeth's
reign. It was this humorous, ugly actor who no
doubt suggested to the great manager many of
his jesters, fools, and simpletons, and we know
that the tag songs — such as that at the end of All's
Well that Ends Well, "When that I was a little
tiny boy " — were expressly written for Tarleton,
and were danced by that comedian to tlie tune

^^G

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Paternoster Row,

of a pipe and a tabor which he himself played.
The jjart which Tarleton had to play as host and
wit is well shown in his " Book of Jests :" —

"Tarleton kecjiing an ordinary in Paternoster
Row, and sitting with gentlemen to make them
merry, would ajijiroNe mustard standing before them
to have wit. ' How so ?' sales one. ' It is like a
witty scold meeting another scold, knowing that
scold will scold, begins to scold first. So,' says
he, ' the mustard being lickt up, and knowing
that you will bite it, begins to bite you first.' ' I'll
try that,' sales a gull
by, and the mustard
so tickled him that his
eyes watered. ' How
now ?' sales Tarleton ;
' does my jest savour?'
' I,' sales the gull, ' and
bite too.' 'If you had
had better wit,' sales
Tarleton, ' you would
have bit first ; so, then,
conclude with me, that
dumbe unfeeling mus-
tard hath more wit
tlian a talking, unfeel-
ing foole, as you are.'
Some were pleased,
and some were not ;
but all Tarleton's care
was taken, for his reso-
lution was ever, before
he talkt any jest, to
measure his opponent."

A modern antiquary
has with great care
culled from the "Gull's
Horn Book" and other
sources a sketch of the
sort of company that
might be met with at
such an ordinary. It was the custom for men
of foshion in the reign of Elizabeth and James
to pace in St. Paul's till dinner-time, and after
the ordinary again till the hour when the theatres
opened. The author of " Shakespeare's England "
says : —

" There were ordinaries of all ranks, the ial'h--
iThCik being the almost universal mode of dining
among those who were visitors to London during
the season, or term-time, as it was then called.
There was the twelvepenny ordinary, where you
might meet justices of the peace and young knights :
and the threepenny ordinary, which was frequented
by poor lieutenants and thrifty attorneys. At the

RICHARD TARLETON, THE
wood eiii^ai'ifig

one the rules of high society were maintained, and
the large silver salt-cellar indicated the rank of the
guests. At the other the diners were silent and
unsociable, or the conversation, if any, was so
full of 'amercements and feoffments' that a mere
countryman would have thought the people were
conjuring.

" If a gallant entered the ordinary at about half-
past eleven, or even a little earlier, he would find
the room full of fashion-mongers, waiting for the
meat to be served. There are men of all classes :

titled men, who live
cheap that they may
spend more at Court ;
stingy men, who want
to sa\e the charges of
house-keeping ; cour-
tiers, who come there
for society and news ;
adventurers, who have
no home ; Templars,
who dine there daily ;
and men about town,
who dine at whatever
place is nearest to their
hunger. Lords, citi-
zens, concealed Pa-
pists, spies, prodigal
'prentices, precisians,
aldermen, foreigners,
officers, and country
gentlemen, all are here.
Some have come on
foot, some on horse-
back, and some in
those new caroches the
poets laugh at."

"The well-bred cour-
tier, on entering the
room, saluted those of
his acquaintances who
were in winter gathered round the fire, in summer
round the window, first throwing his cloak to his
page and hanging ujj his hat and sword. The
parvenu would single out a friend, and walk up and
down uneasily with the scorn and carelessness of a
gentleman usher, laughing rudely and nervously, or
obtruding himself into groups of gentlemen gathered
round a wit or poet. Quarrelsome men pace about
fretfully, fingering their sword-hilts and maintaining
as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a corner,
pent up by a group of young swaggerer;, who are
disputing over a card at gleek. Vain men, not
caring whether it was Paul's, the Tennis Court, or
the play-house, published their clothes, and talked

ACTOR (copied from an old
) {.see page 275J.

Paternoster Row."]

A ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD ORDINARY.

277

as loud as they could, in order to appear at ease,
and laughed over the Water Poet's last epigram or
the last pamphlet of Marprelate. The soldiers
bragged of nothing but of tlicir emplo\-ment in
Ireland and the Low Countries — how they helped
Drake to burn St. Domingo, or grave Maurice
to hold out Breda. Tom Coryatt, or such weak-
pated travellers, would babble of the Rialto and
Prester John, and exhibit specimens of unicorns'
horns or palm-leaves from the river Nilus. The

implied that you had nearly finished dinner. The
more unabashable, rapid adventurer, though but
a beggarly captain, would often attack the cajjon
while his neighbour, the knight, was still encum-
bered with his stewed beef ; and when the justice of
the peace opposite, who has just pledged him in
sack, is knuckle-deep in the goose, he falls stoutly
on the long-billed game ; while at supper, if one
of the college of critics, our gallant praised the last
play or put his approving stamp upon the new poem.

dolly's coffee-house (,«■ fa^i 27S).

courtier talked of the fair lady who gave him the
glove which he wore in his hat as a favour ; the poet
of the last satire of Marston or Ben Jonson, or
volunteered to read a trifle thrown off of late by
' Faith, a learned gentleman, a very worthy friend,'
though if we were to enquire, this varlet poet might j
turn out, after all, to be the mere decoy duck of
the hostess, paid to draw gulls and fools thither.
The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his glove
or discussing at what apothecary's the best tobacco I
was to be bought. \

"The dishes seemed to have been served up at I
these hot luncheons or early dinners in much the
same order as at tlie present day — meat, poultry,
game, and jiastry. ' To be at your w(jodcocks ' |
24

" Primero and a 'pair' of cards followed the wine.
Here the practised player learnt to lose with endu-
rance, and neither to tear the cards nor crush tine
dice with his heel. Perhap; the jest may be true,
and that men sometimes played till they sold
even their beards to cram tennis-balls or stuff
cushions. The patron often paid for the wine or
disbursed for the whole dinner. Then the drawer
came round with his wooden knife, and scraped off
the crusts and crumbs, or cleared off the parings
of fruit and cheese into his basket. The torn
cards were thrown into the fire, the guests rose,
rapiers were re-hung, and belts buckled on. The
post news was heard, and the reckonings paid.
The French lackey and Irish footboy led out the

OLD AND NKW LONDON.

[Pateniostcr Rove

holibv liorses, a;i;l some rode off to the play, others
to tiic river-stairs lo take a pair of oars to the Surrey j
si(L'.''

The " Castle," where Tarletoii has so often j
talked of Shakespeare and his wit, perished in the
Great Fire ; but was afterwards rebuilt, and liere
"The Castle Soci.-ty of Music" gave th^-ir per-
formances," no d.jubt aided by many of the St.
Paul's Choir. Part of the old premises were sub-
sequently (says Mr. Timbs) the O.xford Bible Ware-
house, destroyed by fire in 1822, and since rebuilt.
" Dolly's Tavern," which stood near the " Castle,''
derived its namj from Dully, an old cook of the
establishment, whose portrait Gainsborough painted.
Bonnell Tliornton mentions the beefsteaks and gill
ale at "Dolly's." The coffee-room, with itsi^roject-
ing fire-places, is as old as Queen .\nne. The head
of that queen is painted on a window at " Dolly's,"
and the entrance in Queen's Head Passage is
christened from this painting.

The old taverns of London are to be found in
the strangest nooks and corners, hiding away be-
hind shops, or secreting themselves up alleys.
Unlike the Paris cafe, which delights in the free
sunshine of the boulevard, and displays its harm-
less revellers to the passers-by, the London tavern
aims at cosiness, quiet, and privacy. It partitions
and curtains -off its guests as if they were con-
spirators and the wine they drank was forbidden by
the law. Of such taverns the " Chapter" is a good
example.

The " Chapter Coffee House,'' at the corner of
Chapter House Court, was in the last century
famous for its punch, its pamphlets, and its news-
papers. As lawyers and authors frequented the
Fleet Street taverns, so booksellers haunted the
" Chapter." Bonnell Thornton, in the Connoisseur,
Jan., 1754, says: — "The conversation here natu-
rally turns upon the newest publications, but their
criticisms are somewhat singular, \\nren they say
a good book they do not mean to praise the style
or sentiment, but the quick and extensive sale of
it. That book is best which sells most."

Li 1770 Chatterton, in one of those apparently
hopeful letters he wrote home while in reality
his proud heart was breaking, says : — " I am quite
familiar at the 'Cliapier Coffee House,' and know
all the geniuses there." He desires a friend to
send him whatever he has published, to be left at
the " Chapter." So, again, writing from the King's
Bench, he says a gentleman whom he met at the
"Chapter "had promised to introduce him as a tra-
velling tutor to the young Duke of Northumber-
land ; " but, alas ! I spoke no tongue but my own."

Perhaps that very day Chatterto.i came, half

starved, and listened witli eajer cars to gr.;at
authors talking. Oliver Goldsmith dined there,
with Lloyd, that reckless friend of still more reck-
less Churchill, and some Grub Street cronies, and
had to ])ay for the lot, Lloyd having (juite for-
gotten the important fact that he was moneyless.
Goldsmith's favourite seat at the " Chapter" became
a, seat of honour, and was pointed, out to visitors.
Leather' tokens of the coffee-house are still in
existence.

Mrs. Gaskell has sketched the "Chapter'' in
1848, with its low heav)--beamed ceilings, wains-
coted rooms, and its broad, dark, shallow stair-
case. She describes it as formerly frequented by
university men, country clergymen, and country
booksellers, who, friendless in London, liked to liear
t'ae literary chat. Few persons slept there, and
in a long, low, dingy room up-stairs the periodical
meetings of the trade were held. " The high,
narrow windows looked into the gloomy Row."
Nothing of motion or of change could be seen in
the grim, dark houses opposite, so near and close,
although the whole width of the Row was between.
The mighty roar of London ran round like the
sound of an unseen ocean, yet every footfall on
the pavement below might be heard distinctly in
that unfrequented street.

The frequenters of the "Chapter Coffee House''
(1797 — 1805) have been carefully described by
Sir Richard Phillips. Alexander Steven.s, editor
of the " .\nnual Biography and Obituary," was
one of the choice spirits who met nightly in the
" Wittinagemot," as it was called, or the north-
east corner box in the coffee-room. The neigh-
bours, who dropped in directly the morning papers
arrived, and before they were dried by the waiter,
were called the Wet Paper Club, and another set
intercepted the wet evening papers. Dr. Buchan,
author of that murderous book, " Domestic Medi-
cine," which teaches a man how to kill himself
and family cheaply, generally acted as moderator.
He was a handsome, white-haired man, a Tory,
a good-humoured companion, and a boii vivant.
If any one began to complain, or appear hypo-
chondriacal, he used to say —

" Now let me prescribe for you, without a fee.
Here, John, bring a glass of punch for Mr. — ,
unless he likes brandy and water better. Now,
take that, sir, and I'll warrant }'ou'll soon be well.
You're a peg too low ; you want stimulus ; and if
one glass won't do, call for a second."

Dr. Gower, the urbane and able physician of
the Middlesex Hospital, was another frequent
visitor, as also that great eater and worker. Dr.
Fordyce, whose balance no potations could disturb.

Paternoster Row.]

EYF.NINGS AT THK CHAPTER COFFEE HOUSE.

279

Fordyce had fashionable practice, and brouglit
rare news and much sound information on general
subjects. He came to the "Chapter" from his
wine, stayed about an hour, and sipped a glass of
brandy and water. He then took another glass
at the " London Coffee House," and a third at the
"Oxford," then wound home to his house in Essex
Street, Strand. The three doctors seldom agreed
on medical subjects, and laughed loudly at each
other's theories. They all, however, agreed in
regarding the " Cha])ter '' punch as an infallil)le
and safe remedy for all ills.

The standing men in the box were Hammond
and Murray. Hammond, a Coventry manufac-
turer, had scarcely missed an evening at the
"Chapter" for forty-five years. His strictures on the
events of the day were thought severe but able,
and as a friend of liberty he had argued all through
the-times of Wilkes and the French and .\merican
wars. His Socratic arguments were vcy amusing.
Mr. Murray, the great referee of the Wittinagemot,
was a Scotch minister, who generally sat at the
"Chapter" reading papers from 9 a.m. to 9 ji.m.
He was known to have read straight through every
morning and evening paper published in London
for tliirty years. His memory was so good that he
was alwa\'s appealed to for dates and matters of
fiict, but his mind was not remarkable for general
lucidity. Other friends of Stevens's were Dr.
Birdmore, the Master of the Charterhouse, who
abounded in anecdote ; \\'alker, the rhetorician
and dictionary - maker, a most intelligent man,
with a fine enunciation , and Dr. Towers, a poli-
tical writer, who over his half-pint of Lisbon grew
sarcastic and lively. Also a grumbling man named
Dobson, who between asthmatic paroxysms vented
his spleen on all sides. Dobson was an author
and parado.x-monger, but so devoid of principle
that he was deserted by all his friends, and would
have died from want, if Dr. Garthshore had not
placed him as a patient in an empty fever hospital.
Robinson, " the king of booksellers," and his
sensible brother John were also frequenters of the
"Chapter," as well as Joseph Johnson, the friend
of Priestley, Paine, Cowper, and Fuseli, from
St. Paul's Churchyard. Phillips, the speculative
bookseller, then commencing his Monthly Magazine,
came to the "Chapter" to look out for recruits, and
with his pockets well lined with guineas to enlist
them. He used to describe all the odd characters
at this coftee-house, from the glutton in politics,
v/ho waited at daylight for the morning papers, to
the moping and disconsolate bachelor, who sat
till the fire was raked out by the sleepy waiter at
half-past twelve at night. These strange figures

succeeded each other regularly, like the figtires in
a magic lantern.

Alexander Chalmers, editor of many works,
enlivened the \\ittinageniot by many sallies of
wit and humour. He took great pains not to be
mistaken for a namesake of his, who, he used to
say, carried " the leaden mace." Other habitues
were the two Parrys, of the Courier and Jaeobitc
papers, and Captain Skinner, a man of elegant
manners, who represented England \\\ the absurd
procession of all nations, de\ised by that Cierman
revolutionary fanatic, Anacharsis Cloot;;, in I'aris
in 1793. Baker, an ex-Spitalfields manufacturer,
a great talker and eater, joined the coterie regu-
larly, till he shot himself at his lodgings in Kirby
Street. It was discovered that his only meal
in the day had been the nightly supper at the
" Chapter," at the fixed price of a shilling, with a
supplementary pint of jiorter. When the shilling
could no longer be found for the supper, he killed
himself.

Among other members of these pleasant coteries
were Lowndes, the electrician ; Dr. Busby, the
musician ; Cooke, the well-ljred writer of conversa-
tion ; and Macfarlane, the author of " Tiie History
of George 111., " wlio was eventually killed by a
blow from the pole of a coacii during an election
procession of Sir Francis Burdett at Brentford.
Another celebrity was a young man named ^Vilson,
called Langton, from his stories of the hant ton.
He ran up a score of jQi,Ot ^ind then disappeared,
to the vexation of Mrs. Brown, the landlady, who
would willingly have welcomed him, even though
he never paid, as a means of amusing and detaining
customers. Waithman, the Common Councilman,
was always clear-headed and agreeable. There
was also Mr. Paterson, a long-headed, s])eculative
North Briton, who had taught Pitt mathematics.
But such coteries are like empires ; they have
their rise and their fall. Dr. Buchan died ; some
pert young sparks offended the Nestor, Hammond,
who gave up the place, after forty-five years' attend-
ance, and before 1820 the "Chapter" grew silent
and dull.

The fourth edition of Dr. ^ell's "Antient and

Modern Geography,'' says NichoUs, was publislied
by an association of respectable booksellers, who
about the year 17 19 entered into an especial part-
nership, for the purpose of printing some expensive
works, and styled themselves " the Printing Conger."
The term "Conger" was supposed to have been
at first applied to them invidiously, alluding to the
conger eel, which is said to swallow the smaller
fry ; or it may ])ossibI_\' have been taken from eon-
gcrics. The " Conger" met at tiie " Chapter."

OT,n AND NEW LONDON.

[Paternoster Rnvf.

The " ChaiJter" closed as a coflfee-house in 1S54,
and was altered into a ta\ern.

One tragic memory, and one alone, as far as we
know, attaches to Paternoster Row. It was here,
in the reign of James I., that Mrs. Anne Turner
lived, at whose house the poisoning of Sir Thomas
Overbury was planned. It was here that Viscount
Rochester met the infamous Coimtess of Essex ;
and it was Overbury 's violent opposition to this
shameful intrigue that led to his death from arsenic
and diamond-diist, administered in the Tower by
Weston, a servant of .Mrs. Turner's, who received
_;^i8o for his trouble. Rochester and the Countess
■were disgraced, but their lives were spared. The
Earl of Northampton, an accomplice of the
countess, died before Overbury succumbed to his
three months of torture.

" Mrs. Turner," says Sir Simonds d'Ewes, had
" first brought ui) that vain and foolish use of
yellow starch, coming herself to her trial in a yellow
band and cutfs ; and therefore, when she was after-
twards executed at Tyburn, the hangman had his
band and cuffs of the same colour, which made
many after that day, of either sex, to forbear the
use of that coloured starch, till at last it grew gene-
rally to be detested and disused."

In a curious old print of West Chepe, date 1585,
in the vestry-room of St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, we
see .St. Michael's, on the north side of Paternoster
Row. It is a plain dull building, with a low
stjuare tower and pointed-headed windows. It was
chiefly remarkable as the burial-place of that inde-
fatigable anti(iuary, John Leland. This laborious
man, educated at St. Paul's School, was one of
the earliest Greek scholars in England, and one of
the deepest students of Welsh and Saxon. Henry
VIII. made him one of his chaplains, bestowed on
hini several benefices, and gave him a roving com-
mission to visit the ruins of England and Wales and
inspect the records of collegiate and cathedral
libraries. He spent six years in this search, and
collected a vast mass of material, then retired
to his house in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern
to note and arrange his treasures. His mind,
however, broke down under the load : he became
insane, and died in that dreadful darkness of the
soul, 1552. His great work, "The Itinerary of
Great Britain," was not published till after his
death. His large collections relating to London
antiijuities were, unfortunately for us, lost. The old
church of "St. Michael ad Bladiun,'' says Strype, "or
' at the Corn' (con-uptly called the ' Quern') was so
called because in place thereof was sometime a corn-
market, stretching up west to the shambles. It
secmeth that this church was first builded about

the reign of Edward III. Thomas Newton, first
parson there, was buried in the quire, in the year
' 1361, which was the 35th of Edward III. At the
east end of this church stood an old cross called
the Old Cross in AVest-cheap, which was taken
down in the 13th Richard II.; since the which time
the said parish church was also taken down, but
new builded and enlarged in the year 1430 ; the
8th Henry VI., William Eastfield, mayor, and the
commonalty, granting of the common soil of the
City three foot and a half in breadth on the north
part, and four foot in breadth towards the east, for
the inlarging thereof This church was repaired,
and with all things either for use or beauty, richly
supplied and furnished, at the sole cost and charge
of the jiarishioners, in 161 7. This church was
burnt down in the Great Fire, and remains unbuilt,
and laid into the street, but the conduit which was
formerly at the east end of the church still remains.
The parish is united to St. Vedast, Foster Lane.
At the east end of this churcli, in place of the old
cross, is now a water-conduit placed. William
P.astfield, maior, the 9th Henry VI., at the request
of divers common councels, granted it so to be.
Whereupon, in the 19th of the said Henry, 1,000
marks was granted by a common councel towards
the works of this conduit, and the reparation of
others. This is called the Little Conduit in West
Cheap, by Paul's Gate. At the west end of this
parish church is a small passage for people on foot,
thorow the same church ; and west from tlie same
church, some distance, is another passage out of
Paternoster Row, and is called (of such a sign)
Panyer Alley, w^hich cometh out into the north,
over against St. Martin's Lane.

' When you have .souglit the city vouml,
Yet still this is the hitjhest ground.
August 27, 16S8.'
This is writ upon a stone raised, about the middle
of this Panier Alley, having the figure of a panier,
with a boy sitting upon it, with a bunch of grapes,
as it seems to be, held between his naked foot
and hand, in token, perhaps, of plenty."

At the end of a somewhat long Latin epitaph
to Marcus Erington in this church occurred the
following lines: —

" Vit.a bonos. sed poena malos, a;tern.i capessit,
\^ita:- bonis, scd ptcna mails, per secula crescit.
His mors, liis vita, j>er|ietuatur ita,"

John Bankes, mercer and squire, who was interred
here, had a long epitaph, adorned with the following
verses : —

" Imbalmed in pious arts, wra])t in a shroud
Of white, innocuous charity, who vowed,
Having enough, the world should understand
No need of money might escape his hand ;

Daynard's Cnsllc. I

iSt. MiCiiAEL At) bLaDUM.

4Sl

Bankes here is laid asleejie — this place did breed him-

A precedent to all that shall sucoeed him.

Ivote both his life and inimitable end;

Not he th' unrighteous mammon made his friend ;

Exjiressing liy his talents' rich increase

Service that i^ain'd him praise and lasting ]ieace.

Mucli was to him committed, much he gave,

I'Int'ring his treasure there whence all shall have

Returne with use : what to the poore is ijiven

Claims a just promise of rewald in heaven.
I'.ven such a banUe J!aitkcs left behind at last,
Riches stor'd up, which age nor time can waste."
On ijart of tlie site of the church of thi.s pat-Lshj
after the fire of I.ondon in 1666, was erected a
conduit for supplj'ing the neiglihourliood with
water ; but the same being found Unnecessary, it
Was, with others, pulled down anno 1737.

CHAPTER XXIV.
BAVNARD'S CASTLE, DOCTORS' COMMONS, AND HKRALDS' COl.LEGi:.

baron Tit/uallcr and King luliii — The Uuties of llic Chief Uanncrer of London— An Uld-fasliioned Punishment for Treason— Shakespearian
Allusions to t3aynard's Castle— Doctors' Commons and its I-'ive Courts— The Court of l^robatc .Act, 1857— The Court of Arclies— The Will
Office — Business of the Court -Prerogative Court — r"aculty Office — Lord Stowcll, the Admiralty Judge - Stories of Him -His iMaiTia^e —
Sir Herbert Jeinier Fust — The Court " Risin;j " — Dr. Lushington — M.arriage Licenses — Old Wellcr and the *' Touters " — Doctors" Cunininus
at the Present Day.

We have already made passing mention of Baynard's
Castle, the grim fortress near Blackfriars Bridge,
immediately below .St. Paul's, where for several
centuries after the Conquest, Norman barons held
their state, and behind its stone ramparts main-
tained their petty sovereignty.

This castle took its name from Ralph Baynard,
one of those greedy and warlike Normans wlio
came over with the Conqueror, who bestowed on
him many marks of favour, among others the sub-
stantial gift of the barony of Little Dunmow, in
Essex. This chieftain built the castle, which de-
rived its name from him, and, dying in the reign
of Rufus, the castle descended to his grandson,
Henry Baynard, who in mi, however, forfeited it
to the Crown for taking part with Helias, Earl of
Mayne, who endeavoured to wrest his Norman
possessions from Henry I. The angry king be-
stowed the barony and castle of Baynard, with all
its honours, on Robert Fitzgerald, son of Gilbert,
Earl of Clare, his steward and cup-bearer. Robert's
son, Walter, adhered to William de Longchamp,
Bishop of Ely, against John, Earl of Moreton,
brother of Richard Cceur de Lion. He, however,
kept tight hold of the river-side castle, which duly
descended to Robert, his son, who in 12 13 be-
came castellan and standard-bearer of the city.
On this same banneret, in the midst of his
pride and prosperity, there fell a great sorrow.
The licentious tyrant, John, who spared none who
crossed his passions, fell in love with Matilda,
Fitz-Walter's fair daughter, and finding neither
father nor daughter compliant to his will, John
accused the castellan of abetting the discontented
barons, and attempted his arrest. But the river-

; side fortress was convenient for escape, and Fitz-
j 'Walter flew to France. Tradition says that in
1 2 14 King John invaded France, but that after
a time a truce was made between the two nations
I for five years. There was a river, or arm of
the sea, flowing between the French and English
tents, and across this flood an English knight,
hungry for a fight, called out to the soldiers of tlic
Fleur de Lis to come over and try a joust or two
with him. At once Robert Fitz-Walter, with his
visor down, ferried over alone with his barbed horse,
and mounted ready for the fray. At the first course
he struck John's knight so fiercely with his great
spear, that both man and steed came rolling in a
clashing heap to the grotind. Never was spear
better broken ; and when the squires had gathered
up their discomfited master, and the supposed
French knight had recrossed the ferry, King John,
who delighted in a well-ridden course, cried out,
with his usual oath, " By God's sooth, he were a
king indeed who had such a knight!" 'I'hen the
friends of the banished man seized their oppor-
tunity, and came running to the usurper, and knelt
down and said, " O king, he is your knight ; it was
Robert Fitz-Walter who ran that joust." Where-
upon John, who could be generous when he could
gain anything by it, sent the next day for the good
knight, and restored him to his favour, allowed
him to rebuild Baynard's Castle, which had been
demolished by royal order, and made iiim, more-
over, governor of the Castle of Hertford.

But F'itz-Walter could not forget the grave of
his daughter, still green at Dunmow (for Matilda,
indomitable in her chastity, had been ])oisoned by
a messenger of John's, who sprinkled a deadly

282

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fBaynard's C.ille.

powder over a poached egg — at least, so the legend
runs),, and soon placed hinisclf at the head of those
brave barons who the next year forced the tyrant
to sign ^L-^gna Charta at Kimnymede. He was
afterwards chosen general of the barons' army, to
keep John to his word, and styled " Marshal of
the Army of Clod and of the Church/' He then
(not having had knocks enough in England)
joined the Crusaders, and was present at the great
siege of Damietta. In
1 216 (the first year of
Henry HL) Fitz- Walter
again appears to the
front, watchful of Enghsh
liberty, for his Castle of
Hertford having been
delivered to Louis of
France, the dangerous
ally of the barons, he
required of the French
to leave the same,
" because the keeping
thereof did by ancient
right and title [lertain to
him." On which Louis,
says Stow, prematurely
showing his claws, re-
plied scornfully " that
Englishmen were not
worthy to have such
holds in keeping, be-
cause they did betray
their own lord ;" but
Louis not long after left
England rather sud-
denly, accelerated no
doubt by certain move-
ments of Fitz-Walter and
his brother barons.

Fitz-\\''alter dying, and
being buriedat Dunmow,
the scene of his joys and
soiTows, was succeeded

by his son Walter, who was summoned to Chester
in the forty-third year of Henry HL, to repel
the fierce and half-savage Welsh from the English
frontier. After Walter's death the barony of Bay-
nard was in the wardship of Henry HL during the
minority of Robert Fitz-Walter, who in 1303 claimed
his right as castellan and banner-be.nrer of the City
of London before John Blandon, or Blount, Mayor
of London. The old formularies on which Fitz-
Walter founded his claims are quoted by Stow
from an old record which is singularly quaint and
picturesque. The chief clauses run thus ; — |

iUi; FIGURE IiN r.V.MIiR ALLEY (.ttV/i/;-!- 2i^0).

" The said Robert and his heirs are and ought
to be cliief bannerets of London in fee, for the
chastiliary which he and his ancestors had by
Castle Ba)nard in the said city. Li time of war the
said Robert and his heirs ought to serve the city
in manner as followeth — that is, the said Robert
ought to come, he being the twen'ieth man of
arms, on horseback, covered with cloth or armour,
unto the great west door of St. Paul's, with his
banner displayed before
him, and when he is so
come, mounted and ap-
parelled, the mayor, widi
his aldermen and sheriffs
armed with their arms,
shall come out of the
said church with a
banner in his hand, all
on foot, which banner
shall be gules, the image
of St. Paul gold, the
face, hands, feet, and
sword of silver ; and as
soon as the earl seeth
the mayor come on foot
out of the church, bear-
ing such a banner, he
shall alight from his
horse and salute the
mayor, sa)'ing unto him,
'Sir mayor, I am come
to do my service which
I owe to the city.' And
the mayor and aldermen
shall repl)-, ' ^^'e give to
you as our banneret of
fee in this city the banner
of this city, to bear and
govern, to the honour of
this city to your power ; '
and the earl, taking the
banner in his hands,
shall go on foot out of
the gate ; and the mayor and his company following
to the door, shall bring a horse to the said Robert,
value twenty pounds, which horse shall be saddled
with a saddle of the arms of the said earl, and
shall be covered with sindals of the said arms.
Also, they shall present him a purse of twenty
pounds, delivering it to his chamberlain, for his
charges that day."

The record goes on to say that when Robert is
mounted on his ;^2o horse, banner in hand, he shall
require the mayor to appoint a Citv Marshal (we
have all seen him with his cocked hat and subdued

Eaynatd's Castle,

FItZ-WALtEk'S klGHTS.

2Si

commander-in-chief manner), " and the commons
shall then assemble under the banner of St. Paul,
Robert bearing the banner to Aldgate, and then
delivering it up to some fit person. And if the
army have to go out of the city, Robert shall
choose two sage persons out of every ward to keep
the city in the absence of the army." And these
guardians were to be chosen ,in the priory of the
Trinity, near Aldgate. And for every town or
castle which the Lord of London besieged, if the

of the mayor or sheriff, was to be tried in the
court of the .said Robert.

" If any, therefore, be taken in his sokemanry, he
must have his stocks and imprisomiicnt in his
soken, and he shall be brought before the mayor
and judgment given him, but it must not be pub-
lished till he come into the court of the said
earl, and in his liberty ; and if he have deserved
death by treason, he is to be tied to a post in the
Thames, at a good wharf, where boats are fastened,

THE CMURCII OF ST. 5IICir.\EI, AD BI.ADUM (.f<i-/,;^v- 2S0).

siege continued a whole year, the said Robert was
to receive for every siege, of the commonalty, one
hundred shillings and no more. These were
Robert Fitz-Walter's rights in times of war ; in
times of peace his rights were also clearly defined.
His sok or ward in the City began at a wall of St.
Paul's canonry, which led down by the brewhouse
of St. Paul's to the river Thames, and so to the
side of a wall, which was in the water coming
down from Fleet Pjridge. The ward went on by
London Wall, behind the house of the Black
Friars, to Ludgate, and it included all the parish of
St. Andrew. Any of his sokenien indicted at the
Guildhall of any offence not touching the body

two ebbings and two flowings of the water (!) And
if he be condemned for a common theft, he ought
to be led to the elms, and there suffer his judgment
as other thieves. And so the said earl hath
honour, that he holdeth a great franchise within the
citv, that the mayor must do hun right ; and when he
holdeth a great council, he ought to call the said
Robert, who should be sworn thereof, against all
people, saving the king and his heirs. And when
he Cometh to the hustings at Guildhall, the mayor
ought to rise against him, and sit down near him,
so long as he remaineth, all judgments being given
by his mouth, according to the records of the said
Guildhall ; and the waifcs that come while he

284

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Baynard's Castle.

stayelh, he ought to give them to the town baiHff,
or to whom he will, by the counsel of the mayor."

This old record seems to us especially quaint
and picturesque. The right of banner-bearer to
the City of London was eviilently a privilege not to
be deapised by even the proudest Norman baron,
however numerous were his men-at-arms, however
thick the forest of lances that followed at his back.
At the gates of many a refractory Essex or Hertford-
shire castle, no doubt, the Fit/:-Walters flaunted
that great banner, that was emblazoned with the
image of St. Paul, with golden face and siU'er feet ;
and the horse valued at ;^2o, and the pouch with
twenty golden pieces, must by no means have
lessened the zeal and pride of the City castellan as
he led on his trusty archers, or urged forward the
half-stripped, sinewy men, who toiled at the cata-
jKilt, or bent down the mighty springs of the
terrible mangonel. ALany a time through Aldgate
must the castellan Iiave passed with glittering
armour and flaunting plume, eager to earn his
hundred shillings by the siege of a rebellious town.

Then Robert was knighted by Edward I., and
tlie family continued in high honour and reputa-
tion through many troubles and public calamities.
In the reign of Henry VL, when the male branch
died out, Anne, the heiress, married into the Rat-
cliffe family, who revived the title of Fitz-Walter.

It is not known how this castle came to the
Crown, but ce-'ain it is that on its being consumed
by fire in 1428 (Henry VI.), it was rebuilt by Hum-
phrey, the good duke of Gloucester. On his
death it was made a royal residence by Henry
VI., and by him granted to the Duke of York,
his luckless rival, who lodged here with his
factious retainers during the lulls in the wars of
York and Lancaster. In the year 1460, the Earl
of March, lodging in Castle Baynard, was informed
that his army and the Earl of AVarwick had
declared that Henr)' VI. was no longer worthy to
reign, and had chosen him for their king. The
carl coquetted, as usurpers often do, with these
offers of the crown, declaring his insufficiency for
so great a charge, till yielding to the exhortations
of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
Exeter, he at last consented. On the next day he
went to St. Paul's in procession, to hear the Tc
Dcum, and was then conveyed in state to West-
minster, and there, in the Hall, invested with the
sceptre by the confessor.

At Baynard's Castle, too, that cruel usurper,
Richard III., practised the same arts as his pre-
decessor. Shakespeare, who lias darkened Richard
almost to caricature, has left him the greatest
wretch existing in fiction. At Baynard's Castle

our great poet makes Richard receive his accom-
plice Buckingham, who had come from the Guild-
hall with tile Lord Mayor and aldermen to ])ress
him to accept llie crown ; Richard is found by tiie
credulous citizens with a book of prayer in his
hand, standing between two bishoj)S. This man,
who was already planning the murder of Hastings
and the two princes in the Tower, aftected religious
scruples, and with well-feigned reluctance accejjted
'"the golden yoke of sovereignty."

Thus at Ba)-nard's Castle begins that darker part
of the Crookback's career, which led on by crime
after crime to the desperate struggle at Bosworth,
when, after slaying his rival's standard-bearer,
Richard was beaten down by swords and axes, and
his crown struck off into a hawthorn bush. The
defaced corpse of the usurper, stripped and gory,
was, as the old chroniclers tell us, thrown over a
horse and carried by a faitiifal herald to be buried
at Leicester. It is in vain tliat modern writers try
to prove that Richard was gentle and accomplished,
that this murder attributed to him was profitless
and impossible ; his name will still remain in
I history blackened and accursed by charges that
the great poet has turned into truth, and which,
I indeed, are difficult to refute. That Richard might
have become a great, and wise, and powerful king,
I is possible ; but that he hesitated to commit crimes
to clear his way to the throne, which had so long
been struggled for by the Houses of York and
Lancaster, truth forbids us for a moment to doubt.
He seems to have been one of those dark, wily
natures that do not trust even their most intimate
accomplices, and to ha\e worked in sucli darkness
that only the angels know wliat blows he struck, or
what murders he planned. One thing is certain,
that Henry, Clarence, Hastings, and the princes
died in terribly quick succession, and at most con-
venient moments.

Henry VIII. expended large sums in turning
Baynard's Castle from a fortress into a palace.
He frequently lodged there in burly majesty,
and entertained there the King of Castile, who
was driven to England by a tempest. The castle
then became the property of the Pembroke family,
and here, in July, 1553, the council was held in
which it was resolved to proclaim Marv Queen of
England, which was at once done at the Cheapside
Cross by sound of trumpet.

Queen Elizabeth, who delighted to honour her
special favourites, once supped at Baynard's Castle
with the earl, and afterwards went on the river to
show herself to her loyal subjfcts. It is iiarticu-
larly mentioned tliat the queen returnpf^ to her
palace at ten o'clock.

Poctors' Commorvs.]

DOCTORS' COMMONS.

=^ss

The Earls of Shrewsbury afterwards occupied the
castle, and resided there till it was burnt in the
Great Fire. On its site stand the Carron works
and the wharf of the Castle Baynard Copper Com-
pany.

Adjoining Baynard's Castle once stood a tower
built by King Edward II., and bestowed by him
on William de Ross, for a rose yearly, paid in
lieu of all other services. The tower was in later
times called " the Legates' Tower." Westward
of this stood Montiichet Castle, and eastward of
Baynard's Castle the Tower Royal and the '1 ower
of London, so that the Thames was well guarded
from Ludgate to the citadel. All round this
neighbourhood, in the Middle Ages, great families
clustered. There was Beaumont Inn, near Paul's
Wharf, which, on the attainder of Lord Bardolf,
Edward IV. bestowed on his favourite. Lord
Hastings, whose death Richard III. (as we have
seen) planned at his very door. It was after-
wards Huntingdon House. Near Trigg Stairs the
Abbot of Chertsey had a mansion, afterwards the
residence of Lord Sandys. West of Paul's Wharf
(Henry VI.) was Scroope's Inn, and near that a
house belonging to the Abbey of Fescamp, given
by Edward III. to Sir Thomas Burley. In Carter
Lane was the mansion of the Priors of Okeborne,
in Wiltshire, and not far from the present Puddle
Dock was the great mansion of the Lords of
Berkley, where, in the reign of Henry VI., the king-
making Earl of Warwick kept tremendous state,
with a thousand swords ready to fly out if he even
raised a finger.

And now, leaving barons, usurpers, and plotters,
we come to the Dean's Court archway of Doctors'
Commons, the portal guarded by ambiguous touters
for licences, men in white aprons, who look half
like confectioners, and half like disbanded water-
men. Here is the college of Doctors of Law,
provided for the ecclesiastical lawyers in the early
part of Queen Elizabeth's reign by Master Henry
Harvey, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Pre-
bendary of Ely, and Dean of the Arches ; accord-
ing to Sir George Howes, " a reverend, learned,
and good man." The house had been inhabited
by Lord Mountjoy, and Dr. Harvey obtained a
lease of it for one hundred years of the Dean and
Cliapter of St. Paul's, for the annual rent of five
marks. Before this the civilians and canonists had
lodged in a small inconvenient house in Paternoster
Row, afterwards the " Queen's Head Tavern."
Cardinal Wolsey, always magnificent in his schemes,
had planned a " fair college of stone " for the eccle-
siastical lawyers, the plan of which Sir Robert
Cotton possessed. In this college, in 1631, says

Buc, the Master of the Revels, lived in commons
with the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty,
being a doctor of civil law, the Dean of the
Arches, the Judges of the Court of Delegates, the
Vicar-General, and the Master or Custos of the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

Doctors' Commons, says Strype, " consists of five
courts — three appertaining to the see of Canterbury,
one to the see of London, and one to tlie Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralties." The functions
of these several courts he thus defines : —

"Here are the courts kept for the practice of civil
or ecclesiastical causes. Several ofiices are also
here kept; as the Registrary of the Archbisiiop
of Canterbury, and the Registrary of the Bishop
of London.

" The causes whereof the civil and ecclesiastical
law take cognisance are those that follow, as they
are enumerated in the ' Present State of Eng.
land:' — Blasphemy, apostacy from Christianity,
heresy, schism, ordinations, institutions of clerks to
benefices, celebration of Divine service, matrimony,
divorces, bastardy, tythes, oblations, obventions,
mortuaries, dilapidations, reparation of churches,
probate of wills, administrations, simony, incests,
fornications, adulteries, solicitation of chastity ;
pensions, procurations, commutation of penance,
right of pews, and other such like, reducible to
those matters.

" The courts belonging to the civil and eccle-
siastical laws are divers. '

" First, the Court of Arches, which is the highest
court belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It was a court formerly kept in Bow Church in
Cheapside ; and the church and tower thereof
being arched, the court was from thence called
The Arches, and so still is called. Hither are all
appeals directed in ecclesiastical matters within the
province of Canterbury. To this court belongs a
judge who is called The Dean of the Arches, so
styled because he hath a jurisdiction over a
deanery in London, consisting of thirteen parishes
exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishoji of
London. This court hath (besides this judge) a
registrar or examiner, an actuary, a beadle or crier,
and an apparitor ; besides advocates and pro-
curators or proctors. These, after they be once
admitted by warrant and commission directed from
the Archbishop, and by the Dean of the Arches,
may then (and not before) exercise as advocates
and proctors there, and in any other courts.

"Secondly, the Court of Audience. This was a
court likewise of the Archbishop's, which he used
to hold in his own liouse, where he received causes,
complaints, and appeals, and had learned civilians

286

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Doctors* Commons,

living with liini, that were auditors of the said
causes before the Archbishop gave sentence. This
court was kept in later times in St. Paul's. The
judge belonging to this court was stiled ^Causarum,
negotiorunique Cantu.aricn, auditor officialis.' It
had also other officers, as the other courts.

'• Thirdly, the next court for civil causes belonging
to the Archbishop is i\\^ rn-rogativcQo\\x\., wherein
wills and testaments are proved, and all administra-
tions taken, which belongs to the Archbishop by
his jirerogative, that is, by a special pre-eminence
that this see hath in certain causes above ordinary
bishops within his province ; this takes place where
the deceased hath goods to the value of ;^5 out of
the diocese, and being of the diocese of London,
to the value of ^lo. If any contention grow,
touching any such wills or administrations, the
causes are debated and decided in this court.

" Fourthly, the Court of Faculties and Dispensa-
tions, whereby a pri\ilege or special power is granted
to a person by favour and indulgence to do that
which by law otherwise he could not : as, to marry,
without banns first asked in the church three
several Sundays or holy days ; the son to succeed
his father in his benefice ; for one to have two or
more benefices incompatible ; for non-residence,
and in other such like cases.

" Fifthly, the Court of Admiralty, which was
erected in the reign of Edward III. This court
belongs to the Lord High Admiral of England, a
high officer that hath the government of the king's
navy, and the hearing of all causes relating to
merchants and mariners. He takes cognisance
of the death or mayhem of any man committed
in the great ships riding in great rivers, beneath
the bridges of the same next the sea. Also he
hath ]jo\ver to arrest ships in great streams for the
use of the king, or his wars. And in these things
this court is concerned.

" To these I will add the Court of Delegates ;
to which high court a])peals ilo lie from any of
the former courts. This is the highest court for
civil causes. It was established by an .^ct in the
25th Henry VIII., cap. 19, wherein it was enacted,
'That it should be lawful, for lack of justice at or
in any of the .Archbishop's courts, for the parties
grieved to appeal to the King's Majesty in his
Court of Chancery ; and that, upon any such
appeal, a commission under the Great Sea4 should
be directed to such persons as should be named by
the king's highness (like as in case of appeal from
the Admiralty Court), to determine such appeals,
and the cases concerning the same. And no further
appeals to be had or made from the said commis-
sioners for the same.' These commissioners are

appointed judges only for that turn ; and they are
commonly of the spiritualty, or bishops ; of the
common law, as judges of Westminster Hall ; as
well as those of the civil law. And these are
mixed one with another, according to the nature of
the cause.

" Lastly, sometimes a Commission of Ra'iao is
granted by the king under the Broad Seal, to
consider and judge again what was decreed in the
Court of Delegates. But this is but seldom, and
upon great, and such as shall be judged just,
causes by the Lord Keeper or High Chancellor.
.And this done purely by the king's prerogative,
since by the Act for Delegates no further appeals
were to be laid or made from those commissioners,
as was mentioned before."

The.\ct20& 21 Vict., cap. 77, called "The Court
of Probate Act, 1857,'' received the royal assent
on the 25th of August, 1857. This is the great
act which established the Court of Probate, and
abolished the jurisdiction of the courts ecclesiastical.

The following, says Mr. Forster, are some of the
benefits resulting from the reform of the Eccle-
siastical Courts : —

Tli.it reform has reduced the depositaries for wills in this
country from nearly 400 to 40.

It has brought complicated testamentary proceedings into
a system governed by one vigilant court.

It has relieved the jiublic anxiety respecting "the doom
of English wills " by pl.icing tliem in the custody of respon-
sible men.

It has throM'n open the courts of law to tlie entire legal
profession.

It has given the public the right to prove wills or obtain
letters of administration without professional assistance.

It hc^s given to literary men an interesting field for research.

It has provided that which ancient Rome is said to have
possessed, but which London did not possess — viz., a place of
deposit for the w ills of living persons.

It has extended the English favourite mode of trial — viz.,
trial by jury — by admitting jurors to try the validity of wills
and questions of divorce.

It has made divorce not a matter of wealth but of justice :
the wealthy and the poor alike now only require a clear case
ard " no collusion."

It has enabled the humblest wife to obtain a "protection
order " for her projjerty against an unprincipled husband.

It has afforded persons wanting to establish legitimacy, the
validity of marriages, and the right to be deemed natural
born subjects, the means of so doing.

Amongst its minor benefits it has enabled persons needing
copies of wills which- have been proved since January, 1S5S,
in any part of the country, to obtain them from the principal
I registry of the Court of Probate in Doctors' Commons.

Sir Cresswell Cresswell was appointed Judge of
the Probate Court at its commencement. He was
likewise the first Judge of the Divorce Court.

The College property — the freehold portion,
subject to a yearly rent-charge of ^105, and to an

Doctors' Commons.]

THE COURT OF ARCHES.

287

annual payment of 53. 4d., both payable to th ■ Dean
and Chapter of St. Paul's — was put up for sale by
auction, in one lot, on November 28, 1862. The
place has now been demolished, and the materials
have been sold, the site being reijuired in forming
the new thorouglifare from Earl Street, Blackfriars,
to the Mansion House; the roadway passes directly
through the College garden.

Chaucer, in his " Canterbury Tales," gives an
unfavourable picture of the old sompnour (or appa-
ritor to the Ecclesiastical Court) : —

" A sompnour was tlier with us in tli.it place,
Thad haddc a fire-red cherubinies face ;
For sauselleme he was, wilh even narwe.
As hole he was, and likerous as a sparwe,
AVitli scalled browes blake, and pilled berd ;
Of his visaije children were sore afeul.
Ther n'as quiksilver, litarge, ne brimston,
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of Tartre non,
Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite,
That him might helpen of his whclUes white,
Ne of the nobbes silting on his chckes.
Wei loved he garlike, onions, and lekes.
And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood.
Than wokl he speke, and crie as he were wood.
Antl when that he wel dronken had the win.
Than woUl he speken no word but Latin.
A fewe termes coude he, two or three.
That he had lerned out of some decree ;
No wonder is, he herd it all the day.
And eke ye knowen w-el, how that a jay
Can clepen watte, as well as can the pope.
But who so wolde in other thing him grope,
Tlian h.adde he spent all his philosophie.
Ay, Qiiestio ipuJ Juris wold he crie."

In 1585 there were but sixteen or seventeen
doctors ; in 1694 tliat swarm had increased to forty-
four. In 1595 there were but five proctors ; in 1694
there were forty-three. Yet even in Henry VIII. 's
time the proctors were complained of, for being so
numerous and clamorous that neither judges nor
advocates could be heard. Cranmer, to remedy
this evil, attempted to gradually reduce the number
to ten, which was petitioned against as insufficient
and tending to " delays and prolix suits."

" Doctors' Commons," says Defoe, " was a name
very well known in HolL-aid, Demnark, and Sweden,
because all ships that were taken during the last
",\ars, belonging to those nations, on suspicion of
trading with France;, \ .e brought to trial here ;
which occasioned that sarcastic saying abroad
that we have often heard in conversation, that
England was a fine country, but a man called
Doctors' Common? was a devil, for there was no
getting out of his clutches, let one's cause be
never so good, without paying a great deal of
money."

A writer in Knight's '' London "( 1S43) gives a

pleasant sketch of the Court of Arches in that year.
The Common Hall, where the Court of Arches,
the Prerogative Court, the Consistory Court, and
the Admiralty Court all held their sittings, was a
comfortable ]ilace, wiili dark polished wainscoting
reaching higli up the walls, while above hung the
richly emblazoned arms of learned doctors dead
and gone ; the fire burned cheerily in tlie central
stove. The dresses of the unengaged advocates
in scarlet and ermine, and of the proctors in
ermine and black, were picturesque. The opposing
advocates sat in high galleries, and the absence of
prisoner's dock and jury-box — nay, even of a
public — impressed the stranger with a sense of
agreeable novelty.

Apropos of the Court of Arches once held in liow
Church. " The Commissary Court of Surrey,"
says Mr. Jeafireson, in his " Book about the
Clergy," " still holds sittings in the Church of
St. vSaviour's, Southwark ; and any of my London
readers, who are at tlie small pains to visit that
noble church during a sitting of the Commissary's
Court, may ascertain for himself that, notwith-
standing our reverence for consecrated places, we
can still use them as chambers of justice. The
court, of course, is a spiritual court, but the great,
perhaps the greater, part of the business transacted
at its sittings is of an essentially secular kind."

The nature of the business in the Court of
Arches may be best shown by the brief summar)'
given in the report for three years — 1827, 1828, and
1829. There were 21 matrimonial cases; i of
defamation ; 4 of brawling ; 5 church-smiting ; i
church-rate ; i legacy , i titlies ; 4 correction.
Of these 17 were appeals from the courts, and 21
original suits.

The cases in the Court of Arches were often
very trivial. " There was a case," says Dr. Nicholls,
" in which the cause had originally conmienced
in the Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence
there had been an apjieal to the Court at Exeter,
thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates ;
after all, the issue having been sunply, which of
two persons had the right of hanging his hat on a
particular peg." The other is of a sadder cast,
and calculated to arouse a just indignation. Our
authority is Mr. T. W. Sweet (Report on Eccles.
Courts), who states : " In one instance, many
years since, a suit was instituted which I thouglit
produced a great deal of inconvenience and distress.
It was the case of a person of the name of Russell,
whose wife was supposed to have had her character
impugned at Yarmouth by a Mr. Bentham. He
had no remedy at law for the attack upon the
lady's character, and a suit for defamation was insti-

:B8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Doctors' Commons.

tuted in the Commons. It was supposed the salt lying entirely within the diocese where lie died,
would be attended with very little expense, but I jirobate or proof of the will is made, or adminis-

believe in the end it greatly contributed to ruin
the i)arty who instituted it ; I think he said his
proctor's bill would be ^700. It went through
several courts, and ultimately, I believe (according
to the decision or agreement), each party paid his

tration taken out, before the bishop or ordinary
of that diocese ; but if there were goods antl
chattels only to the amount of ;^5 (except in the
diocese of London, where the amount is ^10)
— in legal parlance, bona nolahilia — within any other

\11\LL11ICL, DUClUlb IJMMJSb

Own costs." It appears from the evidence subse-
quently given by the proctor, that he very humanely
declined pressing him for payment, and never
was paid ; and yet the case, through the continued
anxiety and loss of time incurred for six or seven
years (for the suit lasted that time), mainly con-
tributed, it appears, to the party's ruin.

As the la-7 once stood, says a writer in Knight's
"London," if a person died possessed of property

diocese, and which is generally the case, then the
jurisdiction lies in the Prerogative Court of the
Archbishop of the province — that is, either at York
or at Doctors' Commons ; the latter, we need hardly
say, being the Court of the Archbishop of Canter-
bury. The two Prerogative Courts therefore engross
the great proportion of the business of this kind
throug'i the country, for although the Ecclesiastical
Courts have no power over the bequests of or sue-

Doctors' Commons. 1

WILLS AND MARRIAGE LICENCES.

289

cession to unmixed real property, if such were left,
c.ises of that nature seldom or never occur. And, ;
as between the two provinces, not only is that of |
Canterbury much more importtint and extensive,
but since the introduction of the funding system, and
the extensive diffusion of such property, nearly all i
■wills of importance belonging even to the Province !
of York are also proved in Doctors' Commons, on
account of the rule of the Bank of England to

30,000. In the same year extracts were taken
from wills in 6,414 cases.

On the south side is the entry to tlie Pre-
rogative Court, ami at No. 10 the Faculty Dlfice.
They have no marriage licences at the Faculty
Office of an earlier date than October, 1632, and
up to 1 695- they are only imi)erfectly preserved.
There is a MS. index to the licences prior to j(>)5,
for which the charge for a search is 4s. Od. Since

ST. PAUL'S AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. [Ffffm yl^ffUi' T'.'ir;/, I503.)

acknowledge no probate of wills but from thence.
To this cause, amongst others, may be attributed
the striking fact that the business of this court
between the three years ending with 17S9, and the
three years ending with 1829, had been doubled.
Of the vast number of persons affected, or at
least interested in this business, we see not only
from the crowded rooms, but also from the state-
ment given in the report of the select committee
on the Admiralty and other Courts of Doctors'
Commons in 1833, where it appears that in one
year (1S29) the number of searches amounted to
25

1695 the licences have been regularly kept, and
the fee for searching is a shilling.

The great Admiralty judge of the early part of
this century was Dr. Johnson's friend. Lord Stowell,
the brother of Lord Eldon.

According to Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, Lord
Stowell's decisions during the war have since formed
a code of international law, almost universally recog-
nised. In one year alone (1806) he pronounced
2,206 decrees. Lord Stowell (then Dr. Scott) was
made Advocate-General in Doctors' Commons in
1788, and Vicar-General or official principal for the

20O

OLD AND NlvW LONDON.

[Doctors' Coinnior.'^

Archbishop of Canterbury. Soon after he became
^L1Ster of the Faculties, and in 1 79S was nominated
Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, the highest
dignity of the Doctors' Commons Courts. During
the great French war, it is said Dr. Scott some-
times received as much as j{^i,ooo a case for fees
and perquisites in a jiri/.e cause. He left at his
death personal property exceeding ^200,000. He
used to say that he admired above all other invest-
ments " the sweet simplicity of the Three per
Cents.," and when purchasing estate after estate,
observed "he liked plenty of elbow-room."

" It was,'' says Warton, " by visiting Sir Robert
Chambers, when a fellow of University, that
Johnson became acquainted with Lord Stowell ;
and wiien Chambers went to India, Lord Stowell,
as he expressed it to me, seemed to succeed to his
place in Johnson's friendship."

" Sir William Scott (Lord Stowell)," says Boswell,
"told me that when he complained of a headache
in the post-chaise, as they were travelling together
to Scotland, Johnson treated him in a rough manner
— ' At your age, sir, I had no headache.'

" Mr. Scott's amiable manners and attachment
to our Socrates," says Boswell in Edinburgh, " at
once united me to him. He told me that before
I came in the doctor" had unluckily had a bad
specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank
no fermented liquor. He asked to have his
lemonade made sweeter ; upon which the waiter,
with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar and
put it into it. The ''doctor, in indignation, threw
it out. Scott said he was afraid he wculd have
knocked the waiter dOwn."

Again Boswell says : — "We dined together with
Mr. Scott, now Sir William Scott, his Majesty's
Advocate-General, at his chambers in the Temple
— nobody else there. The company being so
small, Johnson was not in such high spirits as
he had been the preceding day, and for a con-
siderable time little was said. At last he burst
forth — ' Subordination is sadly broken down in
this age. No man, now, has the same authority
which his father had — except a gaoler. No master
has it over his servants ; it is diminished in our
colleges ; nay, in our grammar schools.' "

" Sir \Villiam Scott informs me that on the death
of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of
the University of Oxford, he said to Johnson, ' What
a pity it is, sir, that you did not follow the pro-
fession of the law ! You might have been Lord
Chancellor of Great Britain, and attained to the
dignity of the peerage ; and now that the title of
Lichfield, your native c-ity, is extinct, you might
have had it.' Johnson upon this seemed much

agitated, and in an angry tone exclaimed, 'Why
will you vex me'by suggesting this when it is loo
late ? '"

The strange marriage of Lord Stowell and the
Marcliioness of Sligo has been excellently described
by Mr. Jeafireson in his " Book of Lawyers.'

"On April 10, 1S13," says our author, " Uie
decorous Sir William Scott, and Louisa Catherine,
widow of John, Marquis of Sligo, and daughter of
Admiral Lord Howe, were united in the bonds of
holy wedlock, to the infinite amusement of the
world of llishion, and to the speedy humiliation of
the bridegroom. So incensed was Lord Lldon at
his brother's folly that he refused to appear at the
wedding ; and certainly the chancellor's displeasure
was not without reason, for the notorious absurdity
of the affair brcnight ridicule on the whole of the
Scott family connection. The happy couple met '
for the first time in the Old Bailey, when Sir A\'illiam
Scott and Lord EUenborough presided at the trial
of the marchioness's son, the young Marquis of
Sligo, who liad incurred the anger of the law by
luring into his yacht, in Mediterranean waters, two
of the king's seamen. Throughout the hearing of
that Muse cii'dm', the Marchioness sat in the fetid
court of the Old Bailey, in the hope that her
presence might rouse amongst the jury or in the
bench feelings favourable to her son. This hope
was disappointed. The verdict having been given
against the young peer, he was ordered to pay a
fine of ^,£^5,000. and undergo -four months' incar-
ceration in Newgate, and — worse than fine and
imprisonment — was compelled to listen to a
parental address, from Sir ^Villiam Scott, on the
duties and responsibilities of men of high station.
Either under the influence of sincere admiration
for the judge, or impelled by desire of vengeance
on the man who had jiresumed to lecture lier son
in a court of justice, the marchioness wrote a few
hasty words of thanks to Sir William Scott, for his
salutary exhortation to her boy. She even went so
far as to say that she wished the erring marquis
could always have so wise a counsellor at his side.
This communication was made upon a slip of paper,
which the writer sent to the judge by an usher of
the court. Sir William read the note as he sat on
the bench, and having looked towards the fair
scribe, he received from her a glance and a smile
that were fruitful of much misery to him. Within
four months the courteous Sir William Scott was
tied fast to a beautiful, shrill, voluble termagant, « ho
exercised marvellous ingenuity in rendering him
wretched and contemptible. Reared in a stately
school of old-world politeness, the unhappy man
was a model of decorum and urbanity. He took

Doctor:^' (Juinmous.J

GOOD STORIES OF A GOOD JUDGE.

291

reasonable prido in tlie perfection of his tone and
manner, and the ninrcliioness — whose niahce did
not lack cleverness — was never more happy than
when slie was gravely exi)ostulating with iiini, in
the presence of numerous auditors, on his lament-
able want of style and gentlemanlike bearing. It
is said that, like Coke and Holt under similar
circumstances. Sir AVilliam preferred the quietude
of his chambers to the society of an unruly wife,
and that in the cellar of his inn he sought com-
pensation for the indignities and sufferings whicli
he endured at home.'

"Sir William Scott," says Mr. Surtees, then "re-
moved from Doctors' Commons to his wife's house
in Grafton Street, and, c\er economical in his
domestic e-vpenses, brought with him his own door-
plate, and jilaced it under the i)re-e\isting plate of
I.ady Sligo, instead of getting a new door-plate for
them both. Immediately after the marriage, Mr.
Jekyll, so well known in the earliest part of this
century for his i)uns ami humour, happening to
observe the ])osition of these jjlates, condoled with
Sir AVilliam on having to ' knock under.' There
was too much truth in the joke for it to be inwardly
relished, and Sir William ordered the jjlates to be
transposed. A few weeks later Jekyll accompanied
liis friend S^ott as far as the door, when the latter
observed, 'You see I don't knock under now.'
'Not now,' was the answer received by the anti-
quated bridegroom ; '■ mno you knock up.'"

There is a good story current of Lord Stowell in
Newcastle, that, when advanced in age and rank,
he visited the school of his boyhood. An old
woman, whose business was to clean out and keep
the key of liie school-room, conducted him. She
knew the name and station of the personage whom
she accompanied. She naturally expected some
recompense — half-a-crown perhaps — perhaps, since
he was so great a man, five shillings. 13ut he
lingered over the books, and asked a thousand
questions about the fate of his old school-fellows ;
and as he talked her expectation rose — half-a-guinea
• — a guinea — nay, ])ossibly (since she had been so
long connected with the school in which the great
man took so deep an interest) some little annuity I
He wished her good-bye kindly, called her a good
woman, and slipped a piece of money into her
hand — it was a sixpence !

" Lord Stowell," says Mr. Surtees, " was a great
eater. As Lord Eldon had for his favourite dish
liver and bacon, so his brother had a favourite
quite as homely, with which his intimate friends,
when he dined with them, would trea!t him. It was
a rich pie, compounded of beef steaks and la} ers
oi oysters, Yet the feats which Lord Stowell per^

formed with the knife and fork were eciiiised by
those which he would afterwards ilisiilay witli the
bottle, and two bottles of port formed with him no
uncommon potation. By wine, however, he was
never, in advanced life at any rate, seen to be
affected. His mode of living suited and improved
his constitution, ami his strength long increased
with his years.

At the western end of Holborn there was a room
generally let for exhibitions. At the entrance Lord
Stowell presented himself, eager to see the " green
monster serpent," which had lately issued cards of
invitation to the public. As he was pulling out his
pvu-se to pay for his admission, a sharj) but honest
north-country lad, whose business it was to take the
money, recognised him as an old customer, and,
knowing his name, thus addressed him : " We can't
take your shilling, my lord ; 'tis t' old serpent,
which you have seen six times before, in other
colours ; but ye can go in and see her." He
entered, saved his money, andenjoyed his seventh
visit to the " real original old sea-sarpint.''

Of Lord Stowell it has been said by Lord
Brougham that " his vast superiority was apparent
when, as from an eminence, he was called to survey
the whole field of dispute, and to unravel the
variegated facts, disentangle the intricate mazes,
and array the conflicting reasons, which were calcu-
lated to distract or suspend men's judgment.''
And Brougham adds that " if ever the praise of
being luminous could be bestowed upon human
compositions, it was upon his."

It would be impossible with the space at our
command to give anything like a tithe of the good
stories of this celebrated judge. We must ])ass on
to other flimous men who have sat on the judicial
bench in Doctors' Commons.

Of Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, one of the great
ecclesiastical judges of modern tia.es, Mr. Jeaffreson
tells a good story : —

" In old Sir Herbert's later days it was no mere
pleasantry, or bold figure of sjieech, to say that
the court had risen, for he used to be lifted from
his chair and carried bodily from the chamber of
justice by two brawny footmen. Of course, as
soon as the judge was about to be elevated by his
bearers, the bar rose ; and, also as a matter of
course, the bar continued to stand until the strong
porters had conveyed their weighty and venerable
burden along the platform behind one of the rows
of advocates and out of sight. .As the trio worked
their laborious way»;ilong the platform, there seemcil
to be some danger that they might blunder anil fall
through one of the windows into the space behind
the court ; and at a time when Sir Herbert and

709

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Doctors' Cammonq,

Dr. were at open variance, that' waspish

advocate had, on one occasion, the bad taste to
keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with
cliaractcristic malevolence of expression say to the
footmen, ' Mind, my men, and take care of that
judge of yours ; or, by Jove, you'll pitch him out
of the window.' It is needless to say that this
brutal speech did not raise the speaker in the
opinion of the hearers."

Dr. Lushington, recently deceased, aged ninety-
one, is another ecclesiastical judge deserving notice.
He entered Parliament in 1807, and retired in
1 84 1. He began his political career when the
Portland Administration ( Perceval, Castlereagh, and
Canning) ruled, and was always a steadfast reformer
througli good and e\il report. He was one of the
counsel for Queen Caroline, and aided Brougham
and Denman in the popular triumph. He worked
hard against slavery and for Parliamentary reform,
and had not only heard many of Sir Robert Peel
and Lord John Russell's earliest speeches, but
also those of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli.
"Though it seemed," says the Dai/y JVacs, "a little
incongruous that questions of faith and ritual in the
Churcli, and those of seizures or accidents at sea,
should be adjudicated on by the same person, it
was always felt that his decisions were based on
ample knowledge of the law and diligent attention
to the special circumstances of the individual case.
As Dean of Arches he was called to pronounce
judgment in some of the most exciting eccle-
siastical suits of modern times. AMien the first
prosecutions were directed against the Ritualistic
innovators, as they were then called, of St. Barnabas,
both sides congratulated themselves that the judg-
ment would be given by so venerable and e.xperi-
enced a judge ; and perhaps the dissatisfaction of
both sides with the judgment proved its justice.
In the prosecution of the Rev. H. B. Wilson and
Dr. Rowland Williams, Dr. Lushington again pro-
nounced a judgment which, contrary to popular
expectation, was reversed on appeal by the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council."

But how can we leave Doctors' Commons
without remembering — as we see the touters for
licences, who look like half pie-men, half watermen —
Sam Weller's inimitable description of the trap
into which his father fell ?

"Paul's Church-yard, sir," says Sam to Jingle;
" a low archway on the carriage-side ; bookseller's
at one corner, hot-el on the other, and two porters
in the middle as touts for licences."

" Touts for licences ! " said tfie genUeman.

" Touts for licences," replied Sam. " Two coves
in white aprons, touches their hats when you walk

in — ' Licence, sir, licence ?' Queer sort them, and
their mas'rs, too, sir — Old Bailey proctors — and no
mistake."

" What do tiiey do ?" inquired the gentleman.
" Do ! Jew, sir ! That ain't the worst on't,
neither. They puts things into old gen'lm'n's
heads as they never dreamed of. . My fatlier, sir,
was a coachman, a widower he wos, and fat cnougii
for anything — uncommon fat, to be sure. His
missus dies, and leaves him four Inindred pound.
Down he goes to the Commons to see the lawyer,
j and draw the blunt — very smart — top-boots on^
nosegay in his button-hole — broad-brimmed tile —
I green shawl — quite the gen'lm'n. Goes lhrout;h
the archway, thinking how he should inwest the
money ; up comes the touter, touches his hat —
'Licence, sir, licence?' 'What's that?' says my
father. ' Licence, sir,' says he. ' What licence,'
says my father. ' Marriage licence,' says the
touter. ' Dash my weskit,' says my fatlier, ' I
never thought o' that.' ' I thinks you want one,
sir,' says the touter. My father pulls up and thinks
a bit. ' No, ' says he, ' damme, I'm too old, b'sides
I'm a" many sizes too large,' says he. ' Not a bit
on it, sir,' says the touter. 'Think not?' says my
father. ' I'm sure not,' says he ; ' we married a
gen'lm'n twice your size last Monday.' ' Did you,
though ?' said my father. ' To be sure we diil,' says
tlie touter, 'you're a b.abby to him — this way, sir — •
this way !' And sure enough my father walks arter
him, like a tame monkey behind a horgan, into a
little back office, vere a feller sat among dirty
papers, and tin boxes, making believe he was busy.
' Pray take a seat, vile I makes out the affidavit,
sir,' says the lawyer. ' Thankee, sir,' says my
father, and down he sat, and stared witli all his
eyes, and his mouth wide open, at the names on
the boxes. 'What's your name, sir?' says the
lawyer. ' Tony Weller,' says my fatlier. ' Parish ?'
says the lawyer. ' Belle Savage,' says my father ;
for he stopped there wen he drove up, and he
know'd nothing about parishes, //f didn't. ' And
what's the lady's name?' says the lawyer. My
father was struck all of a heap. ' Blessed if I know,'
says he. ' Not know !' says the lawyer. ' No more
nor you do,' says my father ; ' can't I put that in
arterwards ? ' ' Impossible ! ' says the lawyer.
' Wery well,' says my fatlier, after he'd thought a
moment, 'put down Mrs. Clarke.' ' What Clarke?'
says the law}'er, dipping his pen in the ink.
' Susan Clarke, Markis o' Granby, Doiking,' says
my father ; ' she'll have me if I ' ask, I dessay^-I
never said nothing to her ; but she'll have me, I
know.' The licence was made out, and she f/u/
have l:im, and what's more she's got him now ; and

Doctors' Commons-l

DOCTORS' COMMONS IN DECAY.

293

/never had an)- of tlic four hundred pound, worse
hick. Beg your pardon, sir," said Sam, -when he
had concluded, " but when I gets on this here
•grievance, I runs on like a new barrow with the
wheel greased.' '

Doctors' Commons is now a ruin. The spider
builds where the proctor once wove his sticky web.
The college, rebuilt after the Great Fire, is described
by Elmes as an old brick building in the Carolean
style, the interior consisting of two quadrangles once
occupied by the doctors, a hall for the hearing of
causes, a spacious library, a refectory, and other
useful apartments. In 1S67, when Doctors' Com-
mons was deserted by the proctors, a clever London
essayist sketched the ruins very graphically, at the
time when the Metrojjolitan Fire Brigaile occupied
the lawj-ers' deserted town ; —

'" A deserted justice-hall, with dirty mouldering
walls, broken doors and windows, shattered floor,
and crumbling ceiling. The dust and fog of long-
forgotten causes lowering everywhere, making the
small leaden-framed panes of glass opaque, the
dark wainscot grey, coating tlie dark rafters with
a heavy dingy fur, and lading the atmosphere with
a close unwholesome smell. Time and neglect
have made the once-white ceiling like a huge map,
in which black and swollen rivers and tangled
mountain ranges are struggling for pre-eminence.
Melancholy, decay, and desolation are on all sides.
The holy of holies, where the profime vulgar could
not tread, but which was sacred to the venerable
gowned figures who cozily took it in turns to
dispense justice and to plead, is now open to any
passer-by. Wlicre the public were permitted to
listen is bare and shabby as a well-plucked client.
The inner door of long-diseoloured baize flaps
listlessly on its hinges, and the true law-court little
entrance-box it half shuts in is a mere nest for
spiders. A large red shaft, with the word ' broken'
rudely scrawled on it in chalk, stands where the
judgment-seat was formerly; long rows of ugly
piping, like so many sliiny dirty serpents, occupy
the seats of honour round it; staring red vehicles,
mih odd brass fittings : buckets, helmets, axes, and
old uniforms fill up the remainder of the space.
A very few years ago this was the snuggest little
law-nest in the world ; now it is a hospital and
store-room for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. For
we are in Doctors' Commons, and lawyers them-
selves will be startled to learn that the old Arches
Court, the old Admiralty Court, the old Prerogative
Court, the old Consistory Court, the old harbour
for delegates, chancellors, vicars-general, commis-
saries, prothonotaries, cursitors, seal-keepers, scr-
jeants-at-niace, doctors, deans, apparitors, proctors,

and what not, is being applied to such useful pur-
l)Oses now. Let the reader leave the bustle of
St. Paul's Churchyard, and, turning under the arch-
way where a noble army of white-aproned touters
formerly stood, cross Knightrider Street and enter
the Commons. The square itself is a memorial of
the mutability of human affairs. Its big sombre
houses are closed. The well-known names of the
learned doctors who formerly practised in the
adjacent courts are still on the doors, but have, in
each instance, 'All letters and i)arcels to be ad-
dressed ' Belgravia, or to one of the western inns
of court, as their accompaniment. The one court
in which ecclesiastical, testamentary, and maritime
law wastried alternately, and which, as we have
seen, is now ending its days shabbily, but usefully
is through the further archway to the left. Here
the smack Henry and Betsy would bring its action
for salvage against the schooner Mary Jane ; here
a favoured gentleman was occasionally ' admitted a
proctor exercent by virtue of a rescript;' here, as
we learnt with awe, proceedings for divorce were
'carried on in pcenam,' and 'the learned judge,
without entering into the. facts, declared himself
quite satisfied with the evidence, and pronounced
for the separation;' and here the Dean of Pecu-
liars settled his differences with the eccentrics who,
I presume, were under his charge, and to whom
he owed his title."

Such are the changes that take place in our
Protean city ! Already we have seen a palace in
Blackfriars turn into a prison, and the old courts of
Fleet Street, once mansions of the rich and great,
now filled with struggling poor. The great syna-
gogue in the Old Jewry became a tavern ; the
palace of the Savoy a barracks. These changes it
is our special province to record, as to trace them
is eur peculiar function.

The Prerogative Will Office contains many last
wills and testaments of great interest. There is
a will written in short-hand, and one on a bed-post ;
but what are these to that of Shakspeare, three folio
sheets, and his signature to each sheet ? Why he left
only his best bed to his wife long puzzled the anti-
quaries, but has since been explained. There is
(or rather was, for it has now gone to Paris) the
will of Napoleon abusing "the oligarch" Wellington,
and leaving 10,000 francs to the French officer Can-
tello, who was accused of a desire to assassinate the
" Iron Duke," There are also the wills of Vandyke
the painter, who died close by ; Inigo Jones, Ben
Jonson's rival in the Court masques of James and
Charles ; Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Johnson, good old
Izaak Walton, and indeed almost everybody who
had property in the south.

294

OLD AND NEW LOMDON.

tHeralds' CollcgS.

heralds' college, (/■'lom an old Fritit.)

CHAPTER XXV.
HERALDS'-COLLEGE.

Eaily Homes of the Heralds— The Con^tilution of the Herald's College— Garter King at Arms — Clarencieux and r.'orroy— The PursU'vants —
I>iities and Privileges of Hjralds — Good, Uad, and Jovial Heralds — A Notable Norroy King at Arms— The Tragic End of Two fam i;s
Heialds — The College of Arms' Library.

Turning from the black dome of St. Pauls, and i
the mean archway of Dean's Court, into a region of
gorgeous blazonments, we come to that ([uiet and
grave house, like an old nobleman's, that stands
aside from the new street from the Embankment, i
like an aristocrat shrinking from a crowd. The
original Heralds' College,,. Cold Harbour House,
founded by Richard H., stood in Poultney Lane, j
but the heralds were turned out by Henry VH.,
who gave their mansion to Bishop Tunstal, whom
he had driven from Durham Place. The heralds
then retired to Ronceval Priory, at Charing Cross
(afterwards Northumberland Place). Queen Mary,
however, in 1555 gave Gilbert Dethick, Garter
King of Arms, and the other heralds and pur- j
suivants, their present college, formerly Derby

House, which had belonged to the first Earl of
Derby, who married Lady Margaret, Countess of
Richmond, mother to King Henry VH. The
grant specified that there the heralds might dwell
together, and " at meet times congregate, speak,
confer, and agree among themselves, for the good
government of the faculty."

The College of Arms, on the east side of St.
Cennet's Hill, was swept before the Great Fire of
1666; but all the records and books, e.xcept one or
two, were preserved. The estimate for the rebuilding
was only ^5,000, but the City being drained of
money, it was attempted to raise tlie mone}- by
subscription ; only ^700 was so raised, the rest
was paid from office fees, Sir William Dugdale
building the north-west corner at his own cl.a:"e,

HeoLls' Cullescl

AN HERALDIC COURT.

;o5

496

Ol.i) AND NEW LONDON.

iHerald^' College.

and Sir Henry St. George, Clarencieux, giving;^53o.
This handsome and dignified brick building, com-
pleted in 16S3, is ornamented with Ionic pilasters,
that support an angular pediment, and the " hollow-
arch of the gateway" was formerly considered a
curiosity. The central wainscoted hall is where
the Courts of Sessions were at one time held :
to the left is the library and search-room, round
the top of which runs a gallery ; on either side
are the apartments of the kings, heralds, and
pursuivants.

"This corporation," we are told, "consists of
thirteen members — viz., three kings at arms, si.\
heralds at arms, and four pursuivants at arms ; they
are nominated by the Earl Marslial of England, as
ministers suborilinate to him in the e.\ecution of
th'.-ir offices, and hold their places patent during their
good behaviour. They are thus distinguished : —

Kiit^s fit Anns.

Heralds.

Pursidvants.

Garter.

Somerset.

Rouge I)ragon.

Clarencieu:i.

Riclimoml.

Blue Mantle.

Norroy.

Lancaster.

Portcullis.

\Vind5or.

Rouge Croix.

Chester.

York.

" However ancient the offices of heralds may be,
we have hardly any memory of their titles or names
before Edward HI. In his reign military glory
and heraldry were in high esteem, and the patents
of the King of Arms at this day refer to the reign
of King Edward III. The king created the two
provincials, by the titles of Clarencieux and Norroy;
he instituted Windsor and Chester heralds, and
Blue .Mantle pursuivant, beside several others by
foreign titles. From this time we find the oflicers
of arms employed at home and abroad', both in
military and civil affairs : military, with our kings
and generals in the army, carrying defiances and
making truces, or attending tilts, tournaments, and
duels ; as civil officers, in negotiations, and attend-
ing our ambassadors in foreign Courts ; at home,
waiting upon the king at Court and Parliament,
and directing public ceremonies.

" In the fiftli year of King Henry V. armorial
bearings were jjut under regulations, and it was
declared that no persons should bear coat arms that
could not justify their right thereto by prescription
or grant ; and from this time they were communi-
cated to persons as insignia, gaiti/itia, and heredi-
tary marks of nobksse. About the same time, or
soon after, this victorious prince instituted the
office of Garter King of Arms ; and at a Chapter
of the Kings and Heralds, held at the siege of
Rouen in Normandy, on the 5th of January, 1420,
they formed themselves into a regular society,

with a common seal, receiving Garter as their
chief

" The ofhce of Garter King at Arnu was in-
stituted for the service" of the Most Noble Order
of the Garter; and, for the dignity of that order,
he was made sovereign within the office of arms,
over all the otlier officers, subject to the Crown of
England, by the name of Garter King at Arms of
England. By the constitution of his office he must
be a native of England, and a gentleman bearing
arms. To him belongs the correction of arms,
and all ensigns of arms, usurped or borne iinjiistl}',
and the power of granting' arms to deserving per-
sons, and sujiporters to the nobility and Knights
of the Bath. It is likewise his office to go next
before the sword in solemn processions, none inter-
posing except the marshal ; to administer the oath .
to all the officers of arms ; to have a habjt like
the registrar of the order, baron's service in the
Court, lodgings in Windsor Castle; to bear his
white rod, \i\\.\\ a banner of the ensigns of tiie
order thereon, before the sovereign ; also, when
any lord shall enter the Parliament chamber, to
assign him his place, according to his degree ; to
carry the ensigns of the order to foreign princes,
and to do, or procure to be done, what the
sovereign shall enjoin relating to the order, with
other duties incident to his office of principal
King of Arms. The other two kings are calleil
Provincial kings, who have particular provinces
assigned them, which together comprise tlie whole
kingdom of England — that of Clarencieux com-
prehending all from the river Trent southwards ;
that of Norroy, or North Roy, all from the river
Trent northward. These Kings at Arms are dis-
tinguished from each other by their respective
badges, which they may wear at all times, either
in a gold chain or a ribbon. Garters being blue,
and the Provincials purple.

"The si.x heralds take place according to
seniority in ofiice. They are created with the same
ceremonies as the kings, taking the oath of an
herald, and are invested with a tabard of the
Royal amis embroidered upon satin, not so rich
as the kings', but better than the ijursuivants',
with a silver collar of SS. ; they are esiiuires by
creation.

"The four pursuivants are also created by the
Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, when they take
their oath of a pursuivant, and are invested with a
tabard of the Royal arms upon damask. It is the
duty of the heralds and pursuivants to attend on
the public ceremonials, one of each class together
by a monthly rotation.

"These heralds are the kin'''s scrvant3 in ordi-

HcmlJ^' Cullc.T'-.T

DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES OF HERALDS.

297

nary, and therefore, in the vacancy of the office of
Earl Marshal, liave been sworn into their offices by
the Lord Chainberluin. .'I'heir meetings are termed
Chapters, whicli th:y hold the first Thursday in
every month, or oftener if necessary, ■\vhcrein all
matters are determined by a majority of voices,
eai.h king having two voices."

One of the earliect instances of the holding an
heraldic court was that in the time of Richard IL,
when the Scropes and Grosvenors had a dispute
about the right to bear certain arms. John of
Gaunt and Chaucer were witnesses on this occa-
sion; die latter, who had served fn France daring
the wars of Edward III., and had been taken
prisoner, deposing to seeing a certain cognizance
displayed during a certain period of the campaign.

The system of heraldic visitations, when the
pedigrees of the local gentry were tested, and the
arms they bore approved or cancelled, originated
in the reign of Henry VIII. The monasteries,
with their tombs and tablets and brasses, and their
excellent libraries, had been the great repositories
of the provincial genealogies, more especially of the
abbeys' founders and benefactors. These records
were collected and used by the heralds, who thus
as it were preser\'ed and carried on the monastic
genealogical traditions. These visitations were of
great use to noble families in proving their pedi-
grees, and preventing disputes about property. The
visitations continued till 16S6 (James II.), but a
few returns, says Mr. Noble, were made as late as
1704. Why they ceased in the reign of William
of Orange is not known ; perhaps the respect for
feudal rank decreased as the new dynasty grew
more powerful. The result of the cessation of
these heraldic assizes, however, is that American
gentlemen, whose Puritan ancestors left England
during the persecutions of Cliarles II. , are now
unable to trace their descent, and the heraldic
gap can never be filled up.

Three instances only of the degradation of
knights are recorded in three centuries' records of
the Court of Honour. Tiie first was that of Sir
Andrew Barclay, in 1322 ; of Sir Ralph Grey, in
1464; and of Sir Francis Michell, in 1621, the
last knight being convicted of heinous ofiences and
misdemeanours. On this last occasion the Knights'
Marshals' men cut otif the offender's sword, took
off his spurs and flung them awa}', and broke his
sword over his head, at the same lime proclaiming
him "an infamous arrant knave."

The Earl Marshal's office — sometimes called the
Court of Honour— rtook cognizance of words sup-
posed to reflect upon the nobility. Sir Richard
Gren\llle was fined heavily for having said that

the Duice of Suffolk was a base lord ; ' and Sir
George Markhain in the enormous sum of ^10,000,
for saying, when he had horsewhipped the hunts-
man of Lord Darcy, that he would do the same to
his master if he tried to justify his insolence. In
1G22 the legality of the court was tried in the
Star Chamber by a contumacious herald, who
claimed arrears of fees, and to King James's de-
light the legality of the court was fully established.
In 1646 (Charles I.) Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord
Chancellor Clarendon) proposed doing away with
the court, vexatious causes multiplying, and very
arbitrary authority being exercised. He jiarticu-
larly cited a case of great oppression, in which a
rich citizen had been ruined in his estate and im-
prisoned, for merely calling an heraldic swan a
goose. After the Restoration, sa_\'s Mr. Planche,
in Knight's " London," the Duke of Norfolk,
hereditary Earl Marshal, hoping to reestablish
the court, employed Dr. Plott, the learned but
credulous historian of Staffordshire, to collect the
materials for a history of the court, whicii, haw-
ever, was never completed. The court, whicii had
ouUived its age, fell into desuetude, and the last
cause heard concerning the right of bearing arms
(Blount versus Blunt) was tried in the year 1720
(George I.). In the old arbitrary times the Earl
Marshal's men have been known to stop the car-
riage of a /<r;7r;///, and by force defirce his illegally
assumed arms.

Heralds' fees in the Middle Ages were very high.
At the coronation of Richard II. they received
^100, and 100 marks at that of the cjueen. On
royal birthdays and on great festivals they also
required largess. The natural result of this was
that, in the reign of Henry V., William Burgess,
Garter King of Arms, was able to entertain the
Emperor Sigismund in sumptuous state at his
house at Kentish Town.

The escutcheons on the south wall of the college
— one bearing the legs of Man, and the other the
eagle's claw of the House of Stanley — are not
ancient, and were merely put up to hcraldically
maiic the site of old Derby House.

In the Rev. Mark Noble's elaborate "History of
the College of Arms " we find some curious stories
of worthy and unworthy heralds. Among the evil
spirits was Sir William Dethick, Garter King at Arms,
who provoked Elizabeth by drawing out trea;on-
able emblazonments for the Duke of Norfolk, and
James I. by hinting doubts, as it is supposed, against
the right of the Stuarts to the crown. He was at
length displaced. He seems to have been an
arrogant, stormy, proud man, who used at jjublic
cereiponials to buflet the heralds and pursuivants

198

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Heralds' College.

who blundered or oftended him. He was buried at j contained many errors. In his visitations lie v.as
St. Paul's, in 1612, near the grave ol" Edward III.'s ' very severe in defacing fictitious arms.

herald, Sir Pain Roet, (Uiienne King at Arms,
and Chancers father-in-law. Another black sheej)

Francis Sandford, first Rouge Dragon Pursuivant,
and then Lancaster Herald (Charles 11., James H.),

was Cook, Chrencieux King at Arms in the reign j published an excellent "Genealogical History of

of Queen Elizabeth, who was accused of granting
arms to any one for a large fee, and of stealing
forty or fifty heraldic books from the college library.
There was also Ralph Erooke, York Herald
in the same reign, a malicious and ignorant man,
who attempted to confute some of Camden's
genealogies in tlie " Britannia." He broke ojjen
and stole some muniments from the office, and
finall)-, for two felonies, was burnt in the hand at
Newgate.

To such rascals we must oppose men of talent
and scholarship like the great Camden. This grave
and learned antiquary was the son of a painter in
the Old Bailey, and, as second master of West-
minster School, became known to the wisest and
most learned men of London, Ben Jonson
honouring him as a father, and Burleigh, Bacon,
and Lord Broke regarding him as a friend. His
" Britannia " is invaluable, and his " Annals of
Elizabeth " are full of the heroic and soaring spirit
of that great age. Camden's house, at Chislehurst,
was that in which the Emjieror Napoleon has
recently died.

Sir William Le Neve (Charles L), Clarencieux, was

England," and curious accounts of the funeral of
General Monk and the coronation of James H.
He was so attached to James that he resigned his
office at the Revolution, and died, true to the last,
old. poor, and neglected, somewhere in Bloomsbury,
in 1693.

Sif John Vanbrugh, the witty dramatist, for
building Castle' How-ard, was made Clarencieux
King of Arms, to die great indignation of the
heralds, whose pedantry he ridiculed. He after-
wards sold his place for ^2,000, avowing igno-
rance of his profession and his constant neglect
of his official duties.

In the same reign, to Peter Le Neve (Norroy)
we are indebted for the careful preservation of
the invaluable " Paxton Letters," of the reigns of
Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III., pur-
chased and afterwards published by Sir John
Fenn.

Another eminent herald was John Anstis, created
Garter in 17 18 (George I.), after being imprisoned
as a Jacobite. He wrote learned works on the
Orders of the Garter and the Bath, and left behinil
him valuable materials — his MS. for the " History

another most learned herald. Fle is said to have of the College of Arms," now preserved in the
read the king's proclamation at Edgehill with great ' library.

marks of fear. His estate was sequestered by the
Parliament, and he afterwards went mad from loyal
and private grief and vexation. In Charles II. 's

Francis Grose, that roundabout, jovial friend of
Burns, was Richmond Herald for many years, but
he resigned his appointment in 1763, to become

reign we find the famous antiquary, Elias Ashmole, j Adjutant and Paymaster of the Hampshire Militia.
Wind■^or Herald for several years. He was the ' Grose was the son of a Swiss jeweller, who had
son of a Lichfield saddler, and' was brought up as , settled in London. His "Views of Antiquities in
a chorister-boy. That impostor, Lilly, calls him the j England and Wales" helped to restore a taste for
"greatest virtuoso and curioso " that was ever Gothic art. He died in i79r.
known or read of in England ; for he excelled in ! Of Oldys, that eccentric antiquary, who was
music, botany, chemistry, heraldry, astrology, and j Norroy King at Arms in the reign of George II.
antiquities. His "History of the Order of the —the Duke of Norfolk havingappointed him from
Garter" formed no doubt part of his studies at the : the pleasure he felt at the perusal of his "Life of
College of Arms. . , Sir Walter Raleigh" — Grose gives an amusing

In the same reign as Ashmole, that great and account : —

laborious antiquary, Sir William Dugdale, was
Garter King of Arms. In early life he became
acquainted with Spelman, an antiquary as profound

" William Oldys, Norroy King at Arms," says
Grose, " autlior of the ' Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,'
and several others in the ' Biograiihia Britannica,'

as himself, and with the same media;val power of j was natural son of a Dr. Oldys, in the Commons,

who kept his mother very privately, and probably
very meanly, as when he dined at a tavern he
used to beg leave to send home part of the remains
of any fish or fowl for his ci?/, which cat was after-
wards found out to be Mr. Oldys' mother. His
parents dying when he was very young, he soon

work. He fought for King Charles in the Civil
Wars. His great work was the " M'onasticon Angli-
canum," three volumes folio, which disgusted the
Puritans and delighted the Catholics. His "His-
tory of Warwickshire " was considered a model of
county histories. His "Baronage of England"

Heralds' College.]

A NOTABLE NORROY KING AT ARMS.

299.

squandered away liis small patrimony, when he
became first an attendant in Lord Oxford's library
and afterwards librarian. lie was a little mean-
looking man, of a vulgar address, and, when I knew
him, rarely sober in the afternoon, never after
supper. His favourite liquor was porter, with a
glass of gin between each pot. Dr. Ducarrel told
me he used to stint Oldys to three pots of beer
whenever he visited him. Oldys seemed to have
little classical learning, and knew nothing of the
sciences ; but for index-reading, title-pages, and the
knowledge of scarce English books and editions,
he had no equal. This he had probably picked
up in Lord Oxford's service, after whose death he
was obliged to write for the booksellers for a
subsistence. Amongst many other publications,
chiefly in the biographical line, he wrote the ' Life
of Sir Walter Raleigh,' which got liim much repu-
tation. The Duke of Norfolk, in particular, was
so pleased with it that he resolved to provide
for him, and accordingly gave him the patent of
Norroy King at Arms, then vacant. The patronage
of that duke occasioned a suspicion of his being
•a Papist, though I really think without reason ;
this for a while retarded his appointment. It was
underhand propagated by the heralds, who were
vexed at having a stranger put in upon them. Jle
was a man of great good-nature, honour, and
integrity, particularly in his character as an his-
torian. Nothing, I firmly believe, would ever have'
biassed him to insert any fact in his writings he
did not believe, or to suppress any he did. Of
this delicacy he gave an instance at a time when
he was in great distress. After the publication of
his ' Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,' some booksellers,
thinking his name would sell a piece they were
publishing, ofiered him a considerable sum to
father it, which he refused with' the greatest indig-
nation. He was much addicted ta low company ;
most of his evenings he spent at the ' Bell ' in the
Old Bailey, a house within the liberties of the Fleet,
frequented by persons whom he jocularly called
rulers, from their being confined to the rules or
limits of that prison. From this house a watchman,
whom he kept regularly in pay, used to lead him
home before twelve o'clock, in order to save sixpence
paid to the porter of the Heralds' office, by all those
who came home after that time ; sometimes, and
not unfrequently, two were necessary. He could not
resist the temptation of liquor, even when he was
to officiate on solemn occasions ; for at the burial of
the Princess Caroline he was so intoxicated that he
could scarcely walk, but reeled about with a crown
' coronet' on a cushion, to the great scandal of his
brethren, His method of composing was somewhat

singular. He had a number of small parchment
bags inscribed with the names of the persons
whose lives he intended to write ; into these bags
he put every circumstance and anecdote he could
collect, and from thence drew up his history. By
his excesses he was kepi poor, so that he was
frequendy in distress ; and at his death, whicii
happened about five on Wednesday morning, April
15th, 1761, he left little more than was sulficicnt
to bury him. Dr. Taylor, the oculist, son of tlic
famous doctor of that name and profession, claimed
administration at the Commons, on account of his
being nullius filius — Anglice, a bastard. He was
buried the 19th following, in the north aisle of the
Church of St. Benet, Paul's Wharf, towards the
upper end of the aisle. He was about seventy-
two years old. Amongst his works is a prefixe to
Izaak Walton's 'Angler.'"

The following pretty anacreontic, on a fiy drink-
ing out of his cup of ale, which is doubtless well
known, is from the pen of Oldys : —

" Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drinlv willi me, and drinU as I ;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may ;
Life is short, and wears away.

" Both alike are mine and thine.
Hastening quick to tlieir decline ;
Tliinc's a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore ;
Threescore summers, when tliey're gone,
Will appear as short as one."

The Rev. Mark Noble comments upon Grose's "
text by saying that this story of the crown must be
incorrect, as the coronet at the funeral of a jirincess
is always carried by Clarencieux.and not by Norroy.

In 1794, two eminent heralds, Benjamin Pingo,
York Plerald, and John Charles Brooke, Somerset
Herald, were crushed to death in a crowd at the
side door of the Haymarket Theatre. Mr. Brooke
had died standing, and was found as if asleep, and
with colour still in his cheeks.

Edmund Lodge, Lancaster Herald, who died in
1S39, is chiefly known for his interesting series of
"Portraits of Illustrious British Personages," accom-
panied by excellent genealogical and biographical
memoirs.

During the Middle Ages heralds were employed
to bear letters, defiances, and treaties to foreign
princes and persons in authority ; to proclaim war,
and bear offers of marriage, S:c. ; and after battles
to catalogue the dead, and note their rank by the
heraldic bearings on their banners, shields, and
tabards. In later times they were allowed to correct
false crests, 'arms, and cognizances, and register noble

?00

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Heralds' College.

ck'scfiits in their archives. Tiiey conferred arms
on those who provetl themselves able to maintain
the state of a gentleman, they marshalled great or
rich men's funerals, arranged armorial bearings
for tombs and stained-glass windows, and laid
doun the laws of precedence at state ceremonials.
Arms, it appears from Mr. Planche, were sold
to the " new rich " as early as the reign of King
Henry VIIL, who wished to make a new race
of gentry, in order to lessen the power of the old
nobles. The fees varied then from £6 13s. Cd.

tocs-
in the old times the heralds' messengers were

able : — A book of emblazonment executed for
Prince Arthur, the brother of Henry VIH., who
died young, and whose widow Henry married ; the
Warwick Roll, a series of figures of all the Earls
of Warwick from the Conquest to the reign of
Richard HI., executed by Rouse, a celebrated
antiquary of Warwick, at the close of the fifteenth
century; and a tournament roll of Henry VHL, in
which that stalwart monarch is depicted in regal
state, with all the " pomp, pride, and circumstance
of glorious (mimic) war." In the gallery over the
library are to be seen the sword and dagger which
belonged to the unfortunate James of Scotland,

, •:• M A C'S T p s a a M I N c o ■::>

Q SFjQ-ROD'NroftTC sg-dvc v» ?.] )<;-!•(?

"- ^ ■■ ■'■■- ^--^ --^l •■

SWORD, DAG3ER, AND RING OF KING JAMES OF SCOTLAND. (rjvrivrr./ /;;///(• /.'cnr/i/j' Col/,-:;c )

called knights caligate. After seven years they
became knight-riders (our modern Queen's mes-
sengers) ; after seven years more they became pur-
suivants, and then heralds. In later times, says
Mr. Planche', the herald's honourable office was
transferred to nominees of the Tory nobility, dis-
carded valets, butlers, or sons of upper servants.
Mr. Canning, when Premier, very properly put a
stop to this system, and appointed to this post
none but young and intelligent men of manners
and education.

Among the many curious volumes of genealogy
in the library of the College of Arms— volumes
which have been the result of centuries of exploring
and patient study— the following are chiefly notice-

that chivalrous king who died fighting to the last
on the hill at Flodden. The sword-hilt has been
enamelled, and still shows traces of gilding which
has once been red-wet with the Southron's blood ;
and the dagger is a strong and serviceable weapon,
as no doubt many an English archer and billman
that day felt. The heralds also show the plain tur-
quoise ring which tradition says the French queen
sent James, begging him to ride a foray in England-
Copies of it have been made by the London
jewellers. These trophies are heirlooms of the
house of Howard, whose bend argent, to use the
words of Mr. Planche', received the honourable
augmentation of the Scottish lion, in testimony of
tl.e prowess displayed by the gallant soldier who-

Her.-iUs'Cole3e.]

TREASURES IN THE III-RAIT)-.' rnrT.Ef.E.

commanded the English forces on that memorable
occasion. Here is also to be seen a portrait of
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury (the great warrior), from
his tomb in Old St. Paul's ; a curious pedigree
of tiie Saxon kings from Adam, illustrated with
many beautiful drawings in iien and ink, about the

Eodge derived his well-known " Illustr;-.tions of
British History;" notes, &c., made by Glover, Vin-
cent, rhilpot, and Dugdale ; a volume in the hand-
writing of the venerable Camden (" Clarencieu.v ") ;
the collections of Sir Edu-ard ^Valke:•, Secretary at
AVar (temp. Charles I.).

LIN'ACRe's house. From a Pnnl in the " Cold-htadcd Civu-^' (sa- pti!;c- 30;).

period of Henry VHI., representing the Creation,
Adam and Eve in Paradise, the building of Babel,
the rebuilding of the Temple, &:c. &c. ; MSS., con-
sisting chiefly of heralds' visitations, records of
grants of arms and royal licences ; records of modern
pedigrees [i.e., since the discontinuance of the
visitations in 1687); a most valuable collection of
official funeral certificates ; a portion of the Arundel
MSS. ; the Shrewsbury or Cecil papers, from which
26

The Wardrobe, a house long belonging to the
Government, in the Blackfriars, was built by Sir
John Bcauchamp (died 1359), whose tomb in Old
St. Paul's was usually taken for the tomb of the good
Duke Humphrey. Beauchamp's executors sold it
to Edward HI., and it was subsequently converted
into the office of die Master of the Wardrobe, and
the repository for the royal clothes. When Stow
drew u;3 his "Survey," Sir John Fortcscue was

?02

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Heralds' Cullegc.

lodged in the hciisc as Master of the \Vardrobe.
What a royal ragfair this place must have been for
nimma-ing antiquaries, equal to twenty Madame
Tussaud's and all the ragged regiments of \\'est-
minster Abbey put together !

" There were also kept," says Fuller, " in this
place the ancient clothes of our English kings,
which they wore on great festivals; so that this
^^■ardrobe was in effect a library for antitiuaries,
therein to read the mode and fashion of garments
in all ages. These King James in the beginning
of his reign gave to the liarl of Dunbar, by whom
they were sold, re-sold, and re-re-re-sold at as many
liands almost as liriareus had, some gaining vast
estates thereby." (Fuller's "Worthies.")

We mentioned before that .Shakespeare in his
will left to his favourite daughter, Susann.ah, the
Warwickshire doctor's wife, a liouse near the ^Vard-
robe ; but the exact words of the document m.ay
be worth cjuoting : —

" I gyve, will, bequsath," says the poet, " and
devise unto my daughter, Susannah Hall, all that
messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances,
wlierein one John Robinson dwelleth, situat, lying,
and being in the Blackfriars in London, nere the
Wardrobe."

After the Great Fire the Wardrobe was removed,
first to the .Savoy, and afterwards to Buckingham
.Street, in the Strand. The last master was Ralph,
Duke of Montague, on whose death, in 1709,
the office, s.ays Cunningham, was, " I believe,
abolished."

Swan Alley, near riie Wardrobe, reminds us of
the Beauchamps, for flie swan was the cognizance
of the Beauchamp family, long distinguished resi-
dents in this part of London.

In the Council Register of the iSth of August,
■1618, there may be seen " A List of Buildings and
Foundations since 16 15." It is therein said that
Edward Alleyn, Esq., dwelling at Dulwich (the well-
known player and founder of Dulwich College), had
built six tenements of timber upon new founda-
tions, within two years past, in Sw.in Alley, near
the Wardrobe."

In Great Carter Lane stood the old Bell Inn,
whence, in 1598, Richard Quyney directs a letter
" To fcy loving good friend and countryman,
Mr. Wm. Shackespeare, deliver thees " — the only
letter addressed to Shakespeare known to exist.
The original was in the possession of Mr. R. B.
Wheeler, of Stratford-upon-.\von.

Stow mixes up the old houses near Doctors'

Commons with Ros.amond's Bower at Woodstock.

" Upon Paul's Wharf Hill," he says, " within a

great gate, next to the Doctors' Commons, were

many flxir tenements, which, in their leases made
from the Dean and Chapter, went by the name of
Camera Diamv — i.e., Diana's Chamber, so denomi-
nated from a spacious building that in the time of
Henry II. stood where they were. In this Camera,
an arched and vaulted structure, full of intricate
ways and windings, this Henry II. (as some time
he did at Woodstock) kept, or was supposed to
h.ive kept, that jewel of his heart. Fair Rosamond,
she whom there he called Rosamiindi, and here
by the name of Diana ; and from hence had this
house that title.

" For a long time there remained some evident
testifications of tedious turnings and windings, as
also of a passage underground from this house to
Castle Baynard ; whi'di was, no doubt, the king's
way from thence to his Camera Diana;, or the
chamloer of his brightest Diana."

St. Anne's, within the precinct of the Blackfriars,
was pulled down with the Friars Church by Sir
Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels ; but in
the reign of Queen Mary, he being forced to find a
church to the inhabitants, allowed them a lodging
chamber above a stair, which since that time, to
wit in the yeiir 1597, fell down, and was again, by
collection therefore made, new built and enlarged
in the same year.

The parish register records the burials of Isaac
Oliver, the miniature painter (1617), Dick Robinson,
the player (1647), Nat. Field, the poet and player
(1632-3), William Faithorh, the engraver (1691) ;
and there are the following interesting entries re-
lating to Vandyck, who lived and died in this
parish, leaving a sum of money in his will to its
poor : —

"Jasper Lanfranch, a Dutchman, from Sir Anthony
Vandikes, buried 14th February, 1638."

"Martin Ashent, Sir Anthony "V.andike's man,
buried 12th March, 1638."

" Justinia, daughter to Sir Anthony Vandyke
and his lady, baptised 9th December, 1C41."

The child was baptised on the very day her
illustrious father died.

A portion of the old burying-ground is still to be
seen in Church-entry, Ireland Yard.

" In this parish of St. Benet's, in Thames Street,"
says Stow, " stood Le Neve Inn, belonging formerly
to John de Mountague, Earl of Salisbury, and after
to Sir John Beauchamp, Kt., granted to Sir Thomas
Erpingham, Kt., of Erpingham in Norfolk, and
Warden of the Cinque Ports, Knight of the Garter.
By the south end of Adle Street, almost against
Puddle Wharf, there is one antient building of
stone and timber, builded by the Lords of Berkeley,
and therefore called Berkeley's Inn. This house is

Heralds' cciicso LINACRE'S HOUSE AND COLLEGE OF PHYSICL^NS.

303

now all in ruin, and letten out in several tenements ;
yet tlie arms of the Lord Berkeley remain in the
stone-work of an arched gate ; and is between a
chevron, crosses ten, three, three, and four."

Richard Beauchamp, Earl of ^^'ar\vick, was
lodged in this house, then called Berkeley's Inn,
in the parish of St. Andrew, in the rei^n of
Henry VL

St. Andrew's Wardrobe Cluircli is situated
upon rising ground, on the east side of Puddle-
Dock .Hill, in the ward of Castle Baynard. 'I'he
advowson of this churcli was anciently in the noble
family of Fitzwalter, to which it probably came by
virtue of the office of Constable of the Castle of
London (that is, Baynard's Castle). That it is
not of a modern foundation is evident by its
having had Robert Marsh for its rector, before the-
year 1322. This church was anciently denomi-
nated "St. Andrew juxta Baynard's Castle,'' from
its vicinity to that palace.

"Knightriiler Street was so called," says Stow,
"(as is supposed), of knights riding from thence
through the street west to Creed Lane, and so out
at Ludgate towards Smithfield, when they were
there to tourney, joust, or otherwise to show acti-
vities before the king and states of the realm."

Linacre's house in Knightrider Street was given
by him to the College of Physicians, and used
as their place of meeting till the early i)art of die
seventeenth century.

In his student days Linacre had been patronised
by Lorenzo de Medicis, and at Florence, under
Demetrius Chalcondylas, who had fled from Con-
stantinople when it was taken by the Turks, he
acquired a perfect knowledge of the Greek language.
He studied eloquence at Bologna, under Politian,
one of the most eloquent Latinists in Europe, and
while he was at Rome devoted himself to medicine
and the study of natural philosophy, under Her-
niolaus Barbaras. Linacre was the first English-
man who read Aristotle and Galen in the original
Greek. On his return to England, having taken
the degree of M.D. at O.xford, he gave lectures in
physic, and taught the Greek language in that
university. His reputation soon became so high
that King Henry "VII. called 'him to court, and
entrusted him with the care of the health and edu-
cation of his son. Prince Arthur. To show the
extent of his acquirements, we may mention that
he instructed Princess Katharine in the Italian lan-
guage, and that he published a work on mathe-
matics, which he dedicated to his pupil. Prince
Arthur.

His treatise on grammar was warmly praised by
Melancthon, This great doctor was successively

physician to Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
and the Princess Mary. He established lectures
on physic (says Dr. Macmichael, in his amusing
book, " The Gold-headed Cane "), and towards the
close of his life he founded the Royal College of
Physicians, holding the office of President for seven
years. Linacre was a friend of Lily, the granunarian,
and was consulted by Erasnnis. The College of
Physicians first met in 1518 at Linacre's house (now
called the Stone House), Knightrider Street, and
which still belongs to the society. Between the two
centre windows of the first floor are the arms of t*he
college, granted 1546 — a hand proper, vested argent,
issuing out of clouds, and feeling a pulse ; in base, a
pomegranate between five demi fleurs-de-lis bordtr-
ingthe edgeoftlie escutcheon. In front of the build-
ing was a library, and there were early donations of
books, globes, mathematical instruments, minerals,
&c. Dissections Were first permitted by Queen
Elizabeth, in 1564. As soon as tlie first lec-
tures were founded, in 15S3, a spacious anatomical
theatre was built adjoining Linacre's house, and
here the great Dr. Harvey gave his first course of
lectures; but about the time of the accession of
Charles I. the College removed to a house of the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, at the bottom
of Amen Corner, where they planted a botanical
garden and built an anatomical theatre. During
the civil wars the Parliament levied ;^s a week
on the College. Eventually sold by the Puritans,
the house and gardens were purchased by Dr.
Harvey and gl\en to the society. The great
Harvey built a museum and library at his own
expense, which were opened in 1653, and Harvey,
then nearly eighty, relinquished his office of Pro-
fessor of Anatomy and Surgery. The garden at this
time extended as far west as the Old Bailey, and
as I'ar south as St. Martin's Church. Harvey's gift
consisted of a convocation room and a library, to
which Selden contributed some Oriental rJS., Klias
Ashmole many valuable volumes, the Marquis of
Dorchester ;^ioo ; and Sir Theodore May erne,
physician to four 'Kings — viz., Henry IV. of France,
James I., Charles I., and Charles II. — left his
library. The old library was turned into a lecture
and reception room, for such visitors as Charles H.,
who in 1C65 attended here the anatomical pree-
lections of Dr. Ent, whom he knighted on the
occasion. This building was destroyed by the
Great Fire, from which only 1 1 2 folio books were
saved. The College never rebuilt it:; jjremises,
and on the site were erected the houses of three
residentiaries of St. Paul's. Shortly after a piece
of ground was purchased in AV'arwick Lane, and
the new building opened in 1674. A .similar rrant

304

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Che-ipsiJc.

to that of Linaci-e's was that of Dr. Lettsom, who • The view of Linacre's House, in Knightrider
in the year 1773 gave the liouse and lihrary in Street, which we give on page 301, is taken from a
Eolt Court, which is at the present moment occu- iirint in the '' Gold-headed Cane," an amusing worlc
j)ie(l by th"" Medical Society of London. , to which we have already referred.

CHAPTER XXVL

CHEAPSIDE— INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL.

Ancient Rfininiscencci of Clicapsidu— Stormy Days therein— The Westchepe M.arket— Something about the Pillory— The Cheapside Conduits—
The Goldsmiths' Monopol) — Cheapside Market— Gossip anent Cheapside by Sir. Pepys— A Saxon Rienzi—Anli-Free-Trade Riots in Cheap-
side — Arrest of the Rioters — A Royal Pardon — Jane Shore.

What a wealth and dignity there is about Cheap-
side; what restless life and energy ; with what
vigorous pulsation life beats to and fro in that great
commercial artery ! How pleasantly on a summer
morning that last of the ]\Iohicans, the green
plane-tree now deserted by the rooks, at the corner
of Wood Street, flutters its leaves ! How fast the
crowded omnibuses dash past with their loads of
young Greshams and future rulers of Lombard
Street 1 How grandly Low steeple bears itself,
rising proudly in the sunshine !" How the great
webs of gold chains sparkle in the jeweller's
windows ! How modern everything looks, and
yet only a short time since some workmen at a
foundation in Cheapside, twenty-five feet below
the surface, came upon traces of primeval inhabi-
tants in the shape of a deer's skull, with antlers,
and the skull of a wolf, struck down, perhaps, more

they give us facts uncoloured by the historian, and
highly suggestive glimpses of strange modes of life
in wild and picturesque eras of our civilisation.
Let us take the most striking scriaiim.

In 1273 the candle-makers seem to have taken
a fancy to Cheapside, where the horrible fumes
of that necessary but most offensive trade soon
excited the ire of the rich citizens, who at last
expelled seventeen of the craft from their sheds
in Chepe. In the third year of Edward II. it was
ordered and commanded on the king's behalf, that
"no man or woman should be so bold as hence-
forward to hold common market for merchandise
in Chepe, or any other highway within 'the City,
except Cornhill, after the hour of nones " (probably
about two p.m.); and the same year it was for-
bidden, under pain of imprisonment, to scour pots
in the roadway of Chepe, to the hindrance of folks

than a thousand years ago, by the bronze axe of 1 who were passing ; so that we may conclude that

some British savage. So the world rolls on: the
times change, and we change with them.

The engraving which we give on page 307 is from
one of the most ancient representations extant
of Cheapside. It shows the street decked out in
holiday attire for the procession of the wicked
old queen-mother, Marie de Medici, on her way
to visit her son-in-law, Charles I., and her wilful
daughter, Henrietta Maria.

in Edward II. 's London there was a good deal of
that out-door work that the traveller still sees in
the back streets of Continental towns.

Holocausts of spurious goods were not un-
common in Cheapside. In 13 11 (Edward II.) we
find that at the request of the hatters and haber-
dashers, search had been made for traders selling
" bad and cheating hats," that is, of false and dis-
honest workmanship, made of a mi.xture of wool

The City records, explored with such unflagging ' and flocks. The result was the seizure of forty grey

interest by Mr. Riley in his " Memorials of Lon-
don," furnish us with some interesting gleanings
relating to Cheapside. In the old letter books in
the Guildhall — the Black Book, Red Book, and
White Book — we see it in storm ahd calm, observe
the vigilant and jealous honesty of the guilds, and
become witnesses again to the bloody frays, cruel
punishments, and even the petty disputes of the
middle-age craftsmen, when Cheapside was one
glittering row of goldsmiths' shops, and the very
heart of the wealth of London. The records culled
so carefully by Mr. Riley are brief but pregnant;

and white hats, and fifteen black, which were pub-
licly burnt in the street of Chepe. What a burning
such a search would lead to in our less scrupulous
days ! ^^'hy, the pile would reach lialf way up
St. Paul's. Illegal nets had been burnt opposite
Friday Street in the previous reign. After the
hats came a burning of fish panniers defective in
measure; while in the reign of Edward III. some
false chopins (wine measures) were destroyed. This
was rough justice, but still the seizures seem to
have been far fewer than they would be in our
bonst.''ul cjjoch.

Clieapsidc.]

STORMY DAYS IN CHEA1\S1DE.

3°S

There vas a generous lavishness about the
royalty of the Jiliddle Ages, however great a fool
or scoundrel the monarch might be. Thus we
read that on the safe delivery of Queen Isabel
(wife of Edward II.), in 1312, of a son, afterwards
Edward III., the Conduit in Chepe, for one day,
ran with nothing but wine, for all those who chose
to drink there ; and at the cross, hard by the
church of St. Michael in West Chepe, there was
a pavilion extended in the middle of the street, in
which was set a tun of wine, for all passers-by to
drink of.

The mediaeval guilds, useful as they were in keep-
ing traders honest (Heaven knows, it needs super-
vision enough, now !), still gave rise to jealousies
and feuds. The sturdy craftsmen of those days,
inured to arms, flew to the sword as the quickest
arbitrator, and preferred clubs and bills to Chancery
courts and Common Pleas. The stones of Chepe
were often crimsoned witli the blood of these angry
disputants. Thus, in 1327 (Edward III.), the
saddlers and the joiners and bit-makers came to
blows. In May of that year armed parties of these
rival trades fought right and left in Cheapside and
Cripplegate. The whole city ran to the windows
in alarm, and several workmen were killed and
many mortally wounded, to the great scandal of
the City, and the peril of many quiet people.
The conflict at last became so serious that the
mayor; aldermen, and sheriffs had to interpose, and
the dispute had to be finally settled at a great
discussion of the three trades at the Guildhall, with
what result the record does not state.

In this same reign of Edward III. the e.xcessive
length of the tavern signs (" ale-stakes " as they
were then called) was complained of by persons
riding in Cheapside. All the taverners of the City
were therefore summoned to the Guildhall, and
warned that no sign or bush (hence the proverb,
" Good wine needs no bush ") should henceforward
extend over the king's highway beyond the length
of seven feet, under pain of a fine of forty pence
to the chamber of the Guildhall.

In 1340 (Edward III.) two more guilds fell to
quarrelling. This time it was the pelterers (furriers)
and fishmongers, who seem to have tanned each
other's hides with considerable zeal. It caaie at
last to this, that the portly mayor and sheriffs had
to venture out among the sword-blades, cudgels,
and whistling volleys of stones, but at first with
little avail, for the combatants were too hot. They
soon arrested some scaly and fluffy misdoers, it is
true ; but then came a wild rush, and the noisy mis-
doers were rescued ; and, most audacious of all,
one Thomas, son of John Hansard, fishmonger.

with sword drawn (terrible to relate), seized the
mayor by his august throat, and tried to lop him
on the neck ; and one brawny rascal, Joim le
Brewere, a porter, desperately wounded one of the
City Serjeants : so that here, as the fishmongers
would have observed, " there was a pretty kettle of
fish." For striking a mayor blood for blood was
the only expiation, and Thomas and John were at
once tried at the Guildhall, found guilty on their
own confession, and beheaded in Chepe ; upon
hearing which Edward III. wrote to the mayor,
and complimented him on his display of energy on
this occasion.

Chaucer speaks of the restless 'prentices of
Cheap (Edward HI.) : —

" A prcntis dwelled whilom in our cllee—
At every bridale would he sing and hoppe ;
He loved bet the taverne than the slioppe —
For wlien ther eny riding was in Chepe
Out of the shoppe thider wold he lepe,
And til that he had all the sight ysein,
And danced wel, he wu!d not come agcn."

{ThcCoJccs Tale.)

In the luxurious reign of Ricliard II. the guilds
were again vigilant, and set fire to a number of
caps that had been oiled with rank grease, and
that had been frilled by the feet and not by the
hand, "so being false and made to deceive the com-
monalty." In this same reign (1393), when the air
was growing dark with coming mischief, an ordi-
nance was passed, prohibiting secret huckstering
of stolen and bad goods by night " in the com.mon
hostels," instead of the two appointed markets held
every feast-day, by daylight only, in AVestchepe
and Cornhill. The Westchepe market was held
by day between St. Lawrence Lane and a house
called " the Cage," between the first and second
bell, and special provision was made that at these
markets no crowd should obstruct the shops ad-
jacent to the open-air market. To close the said
markets the " bedel of the ward" was to ring a
bell (probably, says Mr. Riley, the bell on the
Tun, at Cornhill) twice — first, an hour before
sunset, and another final one half an hour later.
Another civic edict relating to markets occurs in
1379 (Richard II.), when the stands for stalls at
the High Cross of Chepe were let by the mayor
and chaiTiberlain at 13s. 4d. each. At the same
time the stalls round the brokers' cross, at the north
door of St. Paul's (erected by the Earl of Glou-
cester in Henry III.'s reign) were let at los. and
6s. 8d. each. The stationers, or vendors in small
wares, on the taking down of the Cross in 1390,
probably retired to Paternoster Row.

The punishment of the pillory (either in Cheap-

3o6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[ChcapsiJc.

side or Cornhill, the " Letter Book" does not say
which) was freely used in the Middle Ages for
scandal-mongers, dishonest traders, and forgers ;
anJ very deterring the shameful exposure must
have been to even the most brazen offender. Thus,
in llicliard IL's reign, we find John le Strattone,
for obtaining thirteen marks by means of a forged
letter, was led through Chepe with trumpets and
pipes to the pillory on " Cornhalle" for one hour,
on two successive days.

For the sake of classification we may here
mention a few earlier inst inces of the same igno-
minious punishment. In 1372 (Edward IIL)
Nichol.is Mollere, a smith's servant, for spreading
a lying report that foreign merchants were to be
allowed the same rights as freemen of the City, was
set in the pillory for one hour, with a whetstone
hung round his neck. In the same heroic reign
Thomas Lanbye, a chapman, for selling rims of
base metal for cups, pretending them to be silver-
gilt, was put in the pillory for two hours ; while in
13S3 (Richard II.) we find Roger Clerk, of Wands-
worth, for pretending to cure a poor woman of
fever by a talisman wrapped in cloth of gold, was
ridden through the City to the music of trumpets
and pipes ; and the same year a cook in Bread
Street, for selling stale slices of cooked conger, was
put in the pillory for an hour, and the said fish
burned under his rascally nose.

Sometimes, however, the punishment awarded
to these civic offenders consisted in less disgrace-
ful iJcnance, as, for instance, in the year 1387
(Richard II.), a man named Highton, who had
assaulted a worshipful alderman, was sentenced to
lose his hand; but the man being a servant of
the king, was begged off by certain lords, on con-
dition of his walking through Chepe and Fleet
Street, carrying a lighted wax candle of three
pounds' weight to St. Dunstan's Church, where he
was to offer it on the altar.

In 1591, the year Elizabeth sent her rash but
brave young favourite, Essex, with 3,500 men, to j
help Henry IV. tp besiege Rouen, two fanatics '
named Coppinger and Ardington, the former calling
himself a prophet of mercy and the latter a prophet ]
of vengeance, proclaimed their mission in Cheap-
side, and were at once laid by the heels. But
the old public jnmishment still continued, for in
1600 (the year before the execution of Essex) we
read that " Mrs. Fowler's case was decided " by
sentencing that lady to be whipped in r.ridewell ;
while a Captain Hermes was sent to the pillory,
his brother was fined ^100 and imprisoned, and
Giscone, a soldier, was sentenced to ride to the
Cheapside pillory with his face 'to the horse's tail,

to be there branded in the face, and afterwards
imprisoned for life.

In 1578, when Elizabeth w.is coquetting with
Anjou antl the French marriage, we find in one of
those careful lists of the Papists of London kept by
her subtle councillors, a Mr. Loe, vintner, of the
" Mitre,' Cheapside, who married Dr. Boner's sister
(Bishop Bonner?). In 1587, the year before the
defeat of the Armada, and when Leicester's army
was still in Holland, doing little, and the very
month that Sir William Stanley and 13,000 Eng-
lishmen surrendered Deventer to the Prince of
Parma, «e find the Council writing to the Lord
Mayor about a nuitiny, requiring him " to see that
the soldiers levied in the City for service in the
Low Countries, who had mutinied against Captain
Sampson, be punished with some severe and extra-
ordinary correction. To be Uei to carts and
flogged through Cheapside to Tower Hill, then to
be set upon a pillory, and each to have one ear
cut off."

In the reign of James I. the same ignominious
and severe punishment continued, for in 161 1 one
Floyd (for we know not what offence) was fined
^5,000, sentenced to be whipped to the pillories
of Westminster and Cheapside, to be branded in
the face, and then imprisoned in Newgate.

To return to our historical sequence. In 13S8
(Richard II.) it was ordered that every person
selling fish taken east of London Bridge should
sell the same at the Cornhill market; while all
Thames fish caught west of the bridge was to be
sold near the conduit in Chepe, and nonhere
else, under pain of forfeiture of the fish.

The eleventh year of Richard II. brought a real
improvement to the growing city, for certain "sub-
stantial men of the ward of Farringdon Within "
were then allowed to build a new water-conduit
near the church of St. Michael le Quern, in West-
chepe, to be supplied by the great pipe opposite
St. Thomas of Accon, providing the great conduit
should not be injured ; and on this occasion the
Earl of Gloucester's brokers' cross at St. Paul's was
removed.

Early in the reign of Henry V. complaints were
made by the poor that the brewers, who rented
the fountains and chief uiiper pipe of the Cheapside
conduit, also drew from the smaller pipe below,
and the brewers were warned that for every future
offence they would be fined 6s: 8d. In the fourth
year of this chivalrous monarch a "hostiller" named
Benedict Wolman, under-marshal of the Marshalsea,
was condemned to death for a conspiracy to bring
a man named Thomas Ward, a/i<!s Trumpington,
from Scotland, to pass him off as Richard II.

Chraps'.dc]

PROCESSION OF MARIE DE MEDICI.

.'°7

•>3

3o8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tClicapsiJc

Wolman was drawn through Cornhill and Cheap-
side to the gallows at Tyburn, where he was
"hanged and beheaded."

Lydgate, that dull Suffolk monk, who followed
Chaucer, though at a great distance, has, in his
ballad of " Lackpenny," described Chepe in the
reign of Henry VI. The hero of the poem says —

" Then to tlic Clicpe I gan me drawn.

Where iiiiich people I saw for to stand ;
One offered nic velvet, silk, and lawn ;
Another he taketh me by the hand,
'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land.'
1 never was used to such things indeed,
And, wanting money, I might not speed."

In 1622 the traders of the Goldsmiths' Company
began to complain that alien traders were crcei)ing
into and alloying the special haunts of the trade.
Goldsmiths' Row and Lombard Street ; and that
1S3 foreign ' goldsmiths were selling counterfeit
jewels, engrossing the business and impoverishing
its members.

City improvements were carried with a high
hand in the reign of Charles L, who, determined to
clear Cheapside of all but goldsmiths, in order to
make the eastern approach to St. Paul's grander,
committed to the Fleet some of the alien traders
who refused to leave Cheapside. This unfortunate
monarch seems to have carried out even his smaller
measures in a despotic and unjustifiable manner, as
we see from an entry in the State Papers, October
2, 1634. It is a petition of William Bankes, a
Cheapside tavern-keeper, and deposes : —

" Petition of 'William Bankes to the king.
Not fully twelve months since, petitioner having
obtained a license under the Great Seal to draw
wine and vent it at his house in Cheapside, and
being scarce entered into his trade, it pleased
his Tilajesty, taking into consideration the great
disorders that gre\v by the numerous taverns within
London, to stop so growing an evil by a total
suppression of victuallers in Cheapside, &c., by
which petitioner is much decayed in his fortune.
Beseeches his Majesty to grant him (he not being of
the Company of Vintners in London, but authorised
merely by his Majesty) leave to victual and retail
meat, it being a thing much desired by noblemen
and gentlemen of the best rank and others (for
the which, if they please, they may also contract
beforehand, as the custom is in other countries),
r there being no other jjlace fit for them to cat in
the City."

The foolish determination to make Cheapside
more glittering and showy seeins again to have
struck the weak despot, and an order of the
Council (November 16) goes forth that — " Whereas

in Goldsmith's Row, in Cheapside and Lombard
Street, divers shops are held by persons of other
trades, whereby that uniform show which was an
ornament to those places and a lustre to the City
is now greatly diminished," all the shops in Gold-
smith's Row are to be occupied by none but
goldstniths ; and all the goldsmiths who keep shoi>s
in other parts of the City are to resort thither, or
to Lombard Street or Cheapside."

The next }'ear we find a tradesman who had been
expelled from Goldsmiths' Row praying bittedy to
be allowed a year longer, as he cannot find a
residence, the removal of houses in Cheapside,
Lombard Street, and St. Paul's Churchyard havirtg
rendered shops scarce.

In 1637 the king returns again to the charge,
and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim
by the following order of the Council : — " The
Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen
with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce
the king's command tliat all shops s-hould be shut
up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not
goldsmiths' shops." The Ceuncil "had learned
that there were still twenty-four houses and shops
that were not inhabited by goldsmiths, but in some
of them were one Grove and ^Vido\v Hill, sta-
tioners ; one Sanders, a drugster ; Medcalfe, a
cook ; Renatus Edwards, a girdler ; John Dover, a
milliner ; and Brown, a bandseller."

In 1664 we discover from a letter of the Dutch
ambassador. Van Gocli, to the States-General, that
a great fire in Cheapside, " the principal street of
the City," had burned six houses. In this reign
the Cheapside market seems to have given great
vexation to die Cheapside tradesmen. In 1665
there is a State Paper to this effect : —

" The inquest of Cheap, Cripplegatc, Cordwaincr,
Bread Street, and Farringdon Within wards, to the
Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of London.
In spite of orders to die contrarj', the abuses of
Cheapside Market continue, and the streets are so
pestered and encroaclied on that the passages are
blocked up and trade decays. Request redress
by fining those who allow stalls before their doors
except at market times, or by appointing special
persons to see to the matter, and disfranchise
those who disobey ; the oftenders are ' marvellous
obstinate and refractory to all good orders,' and
not to be dealt with by common law.'

Pepys, in his inimitable " Diary," gives us two
interesting glimpses ©f Cheapside — one of the
fermenting times immediately preceding the
Restoration, the other a few years later — showing
the effervescing spirit of the London 'prentices of
Charles II. 's time : —

Clie.npsiJe.]

AN INSURRECTION IN CHEAPSIDE.

309

" 1659. — Coi.;;;!g hor.io, heard that in Clieap-
gide there had been but a little before a gibbet set
up, and the picture of Iluson hung upon it in the
middle of the street. (John llewson, who liad been
a shoemaker, became a colonel in the I'arliament
arm}', and satin judgment on the king. He escaped
hanging by flight, and died in 1662 at Am;;terdam.)

" 1664. — So home, and in Cheapside, both
coming and going, it was full of apprentices, who
liave been here all this day, and have done violence,
I think, to the master of the boys that were put
in the pillory yesterday. Eut Lord ! to see how
the trained bands are raised upon this, the drums
beating everywhere as if an enemy were upon
them — so much is this city subject to be pat into
a disarray upon very small occasions. But it was
pleasant to hear the boys, and particularly one
very little one, that I demanded the business of.
lie told me that that had never been done in the
City since it was a city — two 'prentices put in the
pillory, and that it ought not to be so."

Cheapside has been the scene of two great riots,
which .were threatening enough to render them
historically important. The one was in the reign
of Richard I., the other in that of Henry VIII.
Tlie first of these, a violent protest against Norman
oppression, was no doubt fomented, if not origi-
nated, by the down-trodden Saxons. It began
thus : — On the return of Richard from his captivity
in Germany, and before his fiery retaliation on
France, a London citizen named William with the
Long Beard {aiias Fitzosbert, a deformed man, but
of great courage and zeal for the poor), sought
the king, and appealing to his better nature, laid
before him a detail of great oppressions and out-
rages wrought by the Mayor and rich aldermen
of the city, to burden the humbler citizens and
relieve themselves, especially at "the hoistings"
when any taxes or tollage were to be levied. Fitz-
osbert, encouraged at gaining the king's ear, and
hoping too much from the generous but rapacious
Norman soldier, grew bolder, openly defended the
causes of oppressed men, and thus drew round him
daily great crowds of the poor.

" Many gentlemen of honour," says Holinshed,
" sore hated him for his presumptions attempts to
the hindering of their purposes ; but he had such
comfort of the king that he little paused for their
malice, but kept on his intent, till the king, being
advertised of the assemblies which he made, com-
manded him to cease from such doings, that the
people might fall again to their sciences and occu-
pations, which they had for the most part left off
at tlie instigation of this William with the Long
peard, which he nourished of purpose, to seem

the more grave and manlike, and also,- as it were,
in despite of them which counterfeited the Normans
(that were for the most part shaven), and because
he would resemble the ancient usage of the English
nation. The king's coiiimandinent in rcslraint of
people's resort unto him v,as well kept ior a time,
but it was not long before they began to follow him
again as they had done before. Then he took
upon him to make unto them certain speeches.
By these and such persuasions and means as he
used, he had gotten two and fifty thousand persons
ready to have taken his i)art."

How far this English Rienzi intended to obtain
redress by force we cannot clearly discover ; but he
does not seem to have been a man who would
have stopped at anything to obtain justice for the
oppressed — and that the Normans were oppressors,
till they became real Englishmen, there can be no
doubt. The rich citizens and the Ncffman nobles,
who had clamped the City fast with fortresses, soon
barred out Longbeard from the king's cliamber.
The Archbishop of Canterbury especially, who ruled
the City, called together the rich citizens, excited
their fears, and with true priestly craft persuaded
them to give sure pledges that no outbreak should
take place, although he denied all belief in the
possibility of such an event. The citizens, over-
come by his oily and false words, willingly gave
their pledges, and were from that time in the arch-
bishop's power. The wily prelate then, finding the
great demagogue was still followed by dangerous
and threatening crowds, appointed two burgesses
and other spies to watch Fitzosbert, and, when it
was possible, to apprehend him.

These men at a convenient time set upon Fitz-
osbert, to bind and carry him off, but Longbeard
was a hero at heart and full of ready courage.
Snatching up an axe, he defended himself manfully,
slew one of the archbishop's emissaries, and flew
at once for sanctuary into the Church of St. Mary
Bow. Barring the doors and retreating to the
tower, he and some trusty friends turned it into
a small fortress, till at last his enemies, gathering
thicker round him and setting the steeple on fire,
forced Longbeard and a woman whom he loved,
and who had followed him there, into the open
street.

As the deserted demagogue was dragged forth
through the fire and smoke, still loth to yield, a
son of the burgess whom he had stricken dead ran
forward and stabbed him in the side. The wounded
man was quickly overpowered, for the citizens,
afraid to forfeit their pledges, did not come to his
aid as he had expected, and he was hurried to the
Tower, where the expectant archbishop sat ready

!I0

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(Cheapstdj.

to coiulonn liim. We can imagine what that
ilrum-licul trial would be like. Longbeard was at
once condemned, and wiih nine of his adherents,
scorched and smoking from the fire, was sen-

my Lord Maior and of all his brethren ;' and here-
with ho oiiered unto the said Doctor Standish a
bill containing this matter more at large. . . Dr.
Standish refused to have anything to do with the

tencod to be hung on a gibbet at the Smithfield , matter, and John Lincolne went to Dr. Lell,

]':ims. For all tliis, the fermentation did not soon ' chanon of the same Spittle, that was appointed

subside ; the people too late remembered how ' likewise to preach upon the Tuesday in Easter

Fitzosbert had pleaded for their rights, and braved

king, iirelate, and baron ; and they loudly exclaimed

against the archbishop for breaking sanctuary, and

putting to death a man who had only defended

himself against assassins, and was innocent of other

crimes. The love for the dead man, indeed, at

last rose to such a height that the rumour ran that

miracles were wrought by even touching the chains

by which he had been bound in the Tower. He

became for a time a saint to the poorer and more

suffering subjects of the Normans, and the place

where he was beheaded in Smithfield was visited

as a spot of special holiness.

But this riot of Longbeard's was but the threaten-
ing of a storm. A tempest longer and more terrible
broke over Cheapside on " Evil May Day," in the
reign of Henry VHI. Its origin was the jealousy
of the Lombards and other foreign money-lenders
and craftsmen entertained by the artisans and
'prentices of London. Its actual cause was the
seduction of a citizen's wife by a Lombard named
Francis de Bard, of Lombard Street. The loss of
the wife might have been borne, liut the wife took
with her, at the Italian's solicitation, a box of her
husband's jilate. The husband demanding first his
wife and then his plate, was flatly refused both.
The injured man tried the case at the Guildhall,
but was foiled by the intriguing foreigner, who then
had the incomparable rascality to arrest the jjoor
man for his wife's board.

"This abuse," says Holinshed, "was much hated ;
so that the same and manie other oppressions done
by the Lombards increased such a malice in the
lui^lishmen's hearts, that at the last it burst out.
For amongst others that sore grudged these matters
was a broker in London, called John Lincolne,
that busied himself so farre in the matter, that
about Palme Sundie, in the eighth yeare of the
King's reign, he came to one Doctor Henry
Standisii wfth these words : ' Sir, I understand that
you shall preach at the Sanctuarie, Spittle, on
Mondaie in Easter Weeke, and so it is, that Eng-
lishmen, both merchants and others, are undowne,
for strangers have more liberty in this land than
Englishmen, which is against all reason, and also

Weeke, whome he perswaded to read his said bill
in the pulpit."

This bill complained vehemently of the poverty
of London artificers, who were starving, while the
foreigners swarmed everywhere ; also that the Eng-
lish merchants were impoverished by foreigners,
who imported all silks, cloth of gold, wine, and
iron, so that people scarcely cared even to buy of
an Englishman. Moreo\'er, the writer declared that
foreigners had grown so numerous that, on a Sunday
in the previous T.ent, he had seen 600 strangers
shooting together at the popinjay. He also in-
sisted on the fact of the foreigners banding in
fraternities, and clubbing together so large a fund,
that they could overpower even the City of London.

Lincoln having won over Dr. Bell to read the
complaint, went round and told every one he kne\V
that shortly they would have news ; and excited
the 'prentices and artificers to expect some speedy
rising against the foreign merchants and workmen.
In due time the sermon was preached, and Dr. Bell
drew a strong picture of the riches and indolence of
the foreigners, and the struggling and poverty of
English craftsmen.

Tlie train was ready, and on such occasions the
devil is never far away with the spark. The Sun-
day after the sermon, Francis de Bard, the aforesaid
Lombard, and other foreign merchants, ha]ipencd
to be in the King's Gallery at Greenwich Palace,
and were laughing and boasting over Bard's in-
trigue with the citizen's wife. Sir Thomas ralracr,
to whom they spoke, said, " Sirs, you have too
much fiivour in England;" and one William Eoit, a
merchant, added, "Well, you Lombards, you rejoice
now ; but, by the masse, we will one day have a
fling at you, come when it will." And that saying
the other merchants affirmed. This tale was re^
ported about London.

The attack soon came. "On the sSth of April,
15 13," says Holinshed, "some young citizens picked
quarrels with the strangers, insulting them in various
ways, in the streets ; upon which certain of the said
citizens were sent to prison. Then suddenly rose
a secret rumour, and no one could tell how it
began, that on May-day next the City would rise

against tlie commonweal of the realm. I beseech j against the foreigners, and slay them ; insomuch
you, therefore, to declare this in your sermon, and j that several of the strangers fled from the City.

gge doing you ghall deserve great thanks of | This rpmour reached the King's Council, and'

CheniisiJe.]

ANTI-FREE-TRADE RIOTS IN CHEAPSIDE.

Cardinal Wolsey sent for the Mayor, to ask liini
what he knew of it; up an which the Mayor told
him tliat peace sliould be kept. The Cardinal
told him to take pains that it should be. The
Mayor came from the Cardinal's at four in the
afternoon of May-day eve, and in all haste sent
for Iiis brethren to the Guildhall ; yet it was almost
seven before they met. It was at last decided,
with the consent of the Cardinal, that instead of a
strong watch being set, which might irritate, all
citizens should be warned to keep their servants
within doors on the dreaded day. The Recorder
and Sir Thomas More, of the King's Privy Council,
came to the Guildhall, at a quarter to nine p.m.,
and desired the aldermen to send to every ward,
forbidding citizen's servants to go out from seven
p.m. that day to nine a.m. of the ne.\t day.

" After this command had been given," says the
chronicler, "in the evening, as Sir John Mundie
(ah alderman) came from his ward, and found two
young men in Chepe, playing at the bucklers, and
a great many others looking on (for the command
v/as then scarce known), he commanded them to
leave off; and when one of them asked why, he
would have had him to the counter. Then all the
young 'prentices resisted the alderman, taking the
young fellow from him, and crying ' 'Prentices and
; Clubs.' Then out of every door came clubs and
weapons. The alderman fled, and was in great
danger. Then more people arose out of every
quarter, and forth came serving men, watermen,
courtiers, and others ; so that by eleven o'clock
.there were in Chepe si.\ or seven hundred ; and
out of Paul's Churchyard came 300, which knew
not of the other. So out of all places they
gathered, and broke up the counters, and took out
the prisoners that the Mayor had committed for
hurting the strangers ; and went to Newgate, and
took out Studleie and Petit, committed thither for
that cause.

" The Mayor and Sheriff made proclamation,
but no heed was paid tD them. Herewith being
gathered in plumps, they ran through St. Nicholas'
shambles, and at St. Martin's Gate there met
with them Sir Thomas More, and others, desiring
them to goe to their lodgings ; and as they were
thus intreating, and had almost persuaded the
people to depart, they within St. Martin's threw out
stones, bats, and hot water, so that they hurt divers
honest persons that were there with Sir Thomas
More ; insomuch as at length one Nicholas Downes,
a sergeant of arms, being there with the said Sir
Thomas More, and sore hurt amongst others, cried
'Down with them!' and then all the misruled
persons ran to the doors and windows of the

houses round Saint Martni's, and spoiled all that
they found.

"After tliat they ran headlong into Cornhill,
and there likewise spoiled divers houses of tlic
French men tliat dwelled within the gale of Master
Newton's house, called Queene Gate. This Master
Newton was a Picard borne, and rei)uted to be a
great favourer of Frenchmen in their occupiengs
and trades, contrary to the laws of the Citie. If
the people had found him, they had surelie have
stricken off his head ; but wlien they found liim
not, the watermen and certain young preests tiiat
were there, fell to rifling, and some ran to Blanch-
apelton, and broke up the strangers' houses and
spoiled them. 'I'hus from ten or eleven of tiie
clock tliese riotous people continued their out-
rageous doings, till about three of the clock, at
what time they began to withdraw, and went to
their places of resort ; and by the way they were
taken by the Maior and the heads of the Citie, and
sent some of them to the Tower, some to Newgate,
some to the counters, to the number of 300.

"Manie fled, and speciallie the watermen and
preests and serving men, but the 'prentices were
j caught by the backs, and had to prison. In the
meantime, whilst tiie hottest of this ruffling lasted,
the Cardinall was advertised thereof by Sir Thomas
Parre ; whereon the Cardinall strengthened his
house with men and ordnance. Sir Thomas Parre
rode in all haste to Richmond, where the King lay,
and informed him of the matter; who inconti-
nentlie sent forth hastilie to London, to understand
the state of the Citie, and was truely advertised how
the riot had ceased, and manie of the raisdoers
apprehended. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir
Roger Cholmeleie (no great friend to the Citie), in
a frantike furie, during the time of this uprore, shot
off certaine pieces of ordinance against the Citie,
and though they did no great harm, yet he won
much evil will for his hastie doing, because men
thought he did it of malice, rather than of any
discretion.

" About five o'clock, the Earls of Shrewsbury
and Surrey, Thomas Dockerin, Lord of Saint John's
George Neville, Lord of Abergavenny, came to
London with such force as they could gather in
haste, and so did the Innes of Court. Then were
the prisoners examined, and the sermon of Dr.
Bell brought to remembrance, and he sent to the
Tower. Herewith was a Commission of Oyer and
Determiner, directed to the Duke of Norfolk and
other lords, to the Lord Mayor of London, and the
aldermen, and to all the justices of England, for
punishment of this insurrection. (The Citie thought
the Duke bare them a grudge for a lewd preest of

OLD AND NKW LONDON.

[Cheapside,

Cheapside.]

PUNISHMENT OF THE RIOTERS.

313

his that tlie yeare before was slaine in Chepe, inso-
much that lie then, in his fury, said, ' I pray God I
may once have the citizens in my power!' And
likewise the Duke thought that they bare him no
good will ; wherefore he came into the Citie with

prisoners were brought througli the street, tied in
ropes, some men, and some lads of thirteen years
of age. Among them were divers not of the City,
some priests, some husbandmen and labourers. The
whole number amounted unto two hundred, three

" ^^--4^^>gar ^ ^ S-^

CHEAPSIDE CROSS, AS IT AI'l'EAKED IN I547.

{SJiotving ^art of the Procession 0/ Edward VI. to his Coronation^ from a raintittg 0/ the Time,')

thirteen hundred men, in harnesse, to keepe the
oier and determiner.)

" At the time of the examination the streets were
filled with harnessed men, who spake very oppro-
brious words to the citizens, which the latter,
although two hundred to one, bore patiently. The
inquiry was held at the Jiouse of Sir John Fineux,
Lord Chief Justice of England, neare to St. Bride's,
in Fleet Street.

" When the lords were met at the Guildhall, the
27

score, and eighteen persons. Eventually, thirteen
were found guilty, and adjudged to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered. Eleven pairs of gallows
were set up in various places where the ofiences
had been committed, as at Aldgate, Blanch-
appleton, Gratious Street, Leaden Hall, and before
every Counter. One also at Newgate, St. Martin's,
at Aldersgate, and Bishopsgate. Then were the
prisoners that were judged brought to those places
of execution, and executed in the most rigorous

3'4

OT,D AND NEW LONDON.

rChcnpsidc.

manner in the presence of the Lord Eiiward
Howard, son to the Duke of Norfolke, a knight
marshal, who showed no mercio, but extreme crueltie
to the poore yonglings in their execution ; and
hkewise the dulie's servants spake many oppro-
brious words. On Thursday, May the 7th, was
Lincohie, Shirwin. and two brethren called Bets,
and diverse other persons, adjudged to die ; and
Lincolne said, ' My lords, I meant well, for if you
knew the mischiefo that is insued in this realme by
strangers, you would remedie it. And many times
I have complained, and then I was called a busie
fellow ; now, our Lord have mercie on me 1 '
They were laid on hurdels and drawne to the
Standard in Cheape, and first was John Lincolne
executed ; and as the others had the ropes about
their neckes, there came a commandment from the
king to respit the execution. Then the people
cried, ' God save the king I ' and so was the oier
and terminer deferred till another dale, and the
prisoners sent againe to ward. The armed men
departed out of London, and all things set in
quiet.

"On the nth of ]\Lay, the king being at Green-
wich, the Recorder of London and several aldermen
sought his presence to ask pardon for the late riot,
and to beg for mercy for the prisoners ; which
petition the king sternly refused, saying that although
it might be tliat the substantial citizens did not
actually take part in the riot, it was evident, from
their supineness in putting it down, that they
' winked at the matter.' ■

"On Thursday, the 22nd of May, the king, at-
tended by the cardinal and many great lords, sat
in person in judgment in Westminster Hall, the
mayor, aldermen, and all the chief men of the
City being present in their best livery. The
king commanded that all the prisoners should be
brought forth, so that in came the poore yonglings
and old false knaves, bound in ropes, all along
one after another in their shirts, and everie one a
halter about his necke, to the number of now foure
hundred men and eleven women ; and when all
were come before the king's presence, the cardinall
sore laid to the maior and commonaltie their negli-
gence ; and to the prisoners he declared that they
had deserved death for their offense. Then all
the prisoners together cried, ' Mercie, gratious lord,
mercie ! ' Herewith the lords altogither besought
his grace of mercie, at wjiose sute the king par-
doned them all. Then the cardinal gave unto
them a good e.xhortation, to the great gladnesse of
the hearers.

" Now when the generall pardon was pronounced
all the prisoners sliouted at once, and altogither

cast up their halters into the hall roofe, so that the
king might perceive they were none of the dis-
creetest sort. Here is to be noticed that di\-erse
offendors that were not taken, hearing that the
king was inclined to mercie, came well apparelled
to Westminster, and suddenlie stripped them into
their shirts with halters, and came in among the
l)risoners, willinglie to be partakers of the king's
pardon ; by which dooing it was well known that
one John Gelson, yeoman of the Crowne, was the
first that began to spoile, and exhorted others to
doe the same ; and because lie fled and was not
taken, he came in with a rope among the other
prisoners, and so had his pardon. This companie
I was after called the ' black-wagon.' Then were all
' the gallows widiin the Citie taken downe, and
many a good prayer said for the king."

Jane Shore, that beautiful but frail woman, who

I married a goldsmith in Lombard Street, and was

' the mistress of Edward IV., was the daughter of

a merchant in Cheapside. Dr.ayton describes het

minutely from a picture extant in Elizabedi's time,

but now lost.

" Her stature," says the poet, "was meane ; her
haire of a dark yellow ; her face round and fidl ;
her eye gray, delicate harmony being between each
part's proportion and each proportion's colour ;
her body fat, white, and smooth ; her countenance
cheerful, and like to her condition. The picture I
have seen of her was such as she rose out of her
bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich
mantle cast under one arme over her shoulder, and
sitting on a chair on which her naked arm did lie.
Shore, a young man of right goodly person, wealth,
and behaviour, abandoned her after the king !iad
made her his concubine. Richaid HL, causing
her to do open penance in St. Paul's Churchyard,
commaiuicd that no man should relieve her, which
the tyrant did not so much for his hatred to sinne,
but that, by making his brother's Hie odious, he
might cover his horrible treasons tiie more cun-
ningly."

An old ballad tjuaintly describes her supposed
death, following an entirely erroneous tradition : —

" My gowns, lieset with pearl and gold,
Were (urn'd to simple garments old ;
My chains and gems, and golden rings,
To filthy rags and loathsome things.

" Thus was I scorned of maid and wife,
For leading such a wicked life ;
Eolh sucking babes and children small.
Did make their pastime at my fall.

" I could not get one bit of bread,
Whereby my hunger might be fed,
Nor drink, but such as channels yield.
Or stinking ditches in the field-.

-Cheapside.]

PAGEANTS IN CHEAPSIDE.

315

" Thus weary of my life, at lengthe
I yicltleil up my \ital strengtli.
Within a ditch of loathsome seent,
Where carrion clogs did much frciiueiit ;

" The whieli luiw, since my dying daye,
Is Shoreditch call'd, as writers sayc ;*
Which is a witness of my sinnc,
For being concubine to a king."

Sir Thomas More, however, distinctly mentions
Jane Shore being alive in the reign of Henry VHI.,
and seems to iniiily that he had himself seen her.
"He(l\ichard HI.) caused," says More, "the Bishop
.of London to ptit her to an open penance, going
ibefure the cross in procession upon a Sunday, with
a taper in her hand ; in which she went in coun-
tenance antl face demure, so womanly, and albeit
she were out of all array save her kirtle only, yet
went she so fair and lovely, namely while the
wondering of the people cast a comely red in her
cheeks (of which she before had most miss), that
her great shame was her much praise among those
who were more amorous of Jier body than curious
of her soul ; and many good folk, also, who hated
her living, and were glad to see sin corrected,

yet pitied they more her ])enance than rejoiced
therein, when they considered that the Protector
procured it more of a corrupt intent than any
virtuous intention.

" Proper she was, and fair ; nothing in her body
that you would have changed, but if you would,
have wished her somewhat higher. Thus say they
who knew her in her youth ; albeit some who now
see her (for yet she liveth) deem her never to
have been well-visaged ; whose judgment seemetii
to me to be somewhat like as though men should
guess the beauty of one long departed by her scalp
taken out of the charnel-house. For now is she
old, lean, withered, and dried up — nothing left but
shrivelled skin and hard bone. And yet, being
even stich, whoso well advise her visage, might
guess and devine which parts, how filled, would
make it a fair face.

" Yet delighted men not so much in her beauty
as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit
had she, and could both read well and write, merry
in company, ready and quick of answer, neither
mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting with-
out displeasure, and not without disport."

CHAPTER XXVII.
CHEAPSIDK SHOWS AND PAGEANTS.

A Tournament in Cheapside — The Queen in Danger — 'I'he .Street in Holiday Attire — The Earliest Civic Show on record — The Water Processions —
A Lord M.iyor's Shuu- in Queen Ehzabeth's Reign — Gossip ;ibout Lord Mayors' Shows — Splendid Pageants — Royal Visitors at Lord
ALayor s Shows — A Grand Banquet in Guildhall -George III. and the Lord Mayor's Show — The Lord Mayor's State Coach — Tlie Men in
Armour— Sir Claudius Hunter and Elljston— Stow and the Midsummer Watch.

We do not hear much in the old chronicles of
tournaments and shivered spears in Cheapside,
but of gorgeous pageants much. On coronation
days, and days when our kings rode from the
Tower to Westminster, or from Castle liaynard
eastward, Cheapside blossomed at once with flags
and banners, rich tapestry hung from every window,
and the very gutters ran with wine, so loyal and
•generous were the citizens of those early days.
•Costume was bright and splendid in the Middle
Ages, and heraldry kept alive the habit of con-
trasting and mingling colours. Citizens were
wealthy, and, moreover, lavish of their wealth.

In these processions and pageants, Cheapside was
always the very centre of the show. There velvets
and silks trailed ; there jewels shone ; there spear-
heads an 1 a.'ce-heads glittered ; there breastplates
and steel caps gleamed; there proud horses fretted;

* But it had this name long before, being so called from
its being a cojjiinoii iewer (viilgarly called shore) pr drain.
^.See Stow.)

there bells clashed ; there the mob clamoured ;
there proud, warlike, and beautiful face , showed,
uncapped and unveiled, to the seething, jostling
people ; and there mayor and aldermen grew
hottest, bowed most, and puffed out with fullest
dignity.

In order to celebrate the birth of the heir of
England (the Black Prince, 1330), a great tourna-
ment was proclaimed in London. Philippa and all
the female nobility were invited to be present.
Thirteen knights were engaged on each side, and
the tournament was held in Cheapside, between
Wood Street and (Jueeii Street ; the highway was
covered with sand, to prevent the horses' feet from
slipping, anil a grand temporary wooden tower was
erected, for the acct)mniodation of the Queen and
her ladies. But scarcely had this fair company
entered the tower, when the scaflblding suddenly
gave way, and all present fell to the ground with
the Queen. Though no one was injured, all were
tep'ibly frightened, and great confusion enstied.

3i6

OLD AXD XKW LONDON.

rCheapside.

When the young king saw the peril of his wife, he
Hew into a tempest of rage, and vowed that the
careless carpenters who had constructed the build-
ing should instantly be put to death. \\'hether he
would thus far have stretched the prerogative of an
I'.nglish sovereign can ne>'er be known (says Miss
Strickland), for his angelic jiartner, scarcely re-
covered from the terror of her fall, threw herself
on her knees before the incensed king, and so
effectually pleaded for the pardon of the poor men,
that F.dward became pacified, and forgave them.

When the young princess, Anne of Bohemia, the
first wife of the royal prodigal, Richard II., entered
London, a castle with towers was erected at the
upper end of Cheapside. On the wooden battle-
ments stood fair maidens, who blew gold leaf
on the King, Queen, and retinue, so that the air
seemed filled with golden butterflies. This ])retty
device was much admired. The maidens also
threw showers of counterfeit gold coins before the
horses' feet of the royal cavalcade, while the two
sides of the tower ran fountains of red wine.

On the great occasion when this same Anne, who
had by this time supped full of troubles, and by
whose entreaties the proud, reckless young king,
who had, as it were, excommunicated the City and
now forgave it, came again into Chepe, red and
white wine poured in fountains from a tower oppo-
site the Great Conduit. The King and Queen were
served from golden cups, and at the same place
an angel flew down in a cloud, and presented costly
golden circlets to Richard and his young wife.

Two days before the opening of Parliament, in
1423, Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V.,
entered the city in a chair of state, with her child
sitting on her knee. When they arrived at the west
door of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Duke Protector
lifted the infant king from his chair and set him
on his feet, and, with the Duke of Exeter, led him
between them up the stairs going into the choir;
then, having knelt at the altar for a time, the child
was borne into the churchyard, there set upon a
fair courser, and so conveyed through Cheapside
to his own manor of Kennington.

Time went on, and the weak young king married
the fair amazon of France, the revengeful and
resolute Margaret of Anjou. At the marriage
pageant maidens acted, at the Cheapside conduit,
a play representing the five wise and five foolish
virgins. Years after, the corpse of the same king
passed along tlie same street ; but no huzzas, no
rejoicing now. It was on the day after the restora-
tion of Edward IV., when people dared not speak
above a breath of what might be happening in the
Tower, that the corpse of Henry \T. was borne

through Cheapside to St. Paul's, barefaced, on a bier,
so that all might see it, though it was surrounded
by more brown bills and glaives than torches.

By-and-by, after the fierce retribution of Bos-
worth, came the Tudors, culminating and ending
with Elizabeth.

As Elizabeth of York (Henry VIL's consort)
went from the Tower to \\'estminster to be
crowned, the citizens hung velvets and cloth of
gold from the windows in Chepe, and stationed
children, dressed like angels, to sing jiraises to the
Queen as she passed by. When the Queen's corpse
was conveyed from the Tower, where she died, in
Cheapside were stationed thirty-seven virgins, the
number corresponding with the Queen's age, all
dressed in white, wearing chaplets of white and
green, and bearing lighted tapers.

As Anne Boleyn, during her short felicity, pro-
ceeded from the Tower to Westminster, on the eve
of her coronation, the conduit of Cheapside ran,
at one end white wine, and at the other red. At
Cheapside Cross stood all the aldermen, from
amongst whom advanced Master \\'alter, the City
Recorder, who presented the Queen with a purse,
containing a thousand marks of gold, which she
very thankfully accepted, with many goodly words.
At the Little Conduit of Cheapside was a rich
pageant, full of melody and song, where Pallas,
Venus, and Juno gave the Queen an apple of gold,
divided into three compartments, typifying wisdom,
riches, and felicity.

^^'hen Queen Elizabeth, young, happy and regal,
jjroceeded through the City the day before her
coronation, as she passed through Cheapside, she
smiled ; and being asked the reason, she replied,
" Because I have just heard one say in the crowd,
' I remember old King Harry the Eighth.'" When
she came to the grand allegcry of Time and Truth,
at the Little Conduit, in Cheapside, .she asked,
who an old man was that sat witii his scythe and
hour-glass. She was told " Time." "Time?'' she
repeated ; " and Time has brought me here '."

In this pageant she spied that Truth held a
Bible, in English, ready for presentation to her ;
and she bade Sir John Perrot (the knight nearest
to her, who held vp her canopy, and a kinsman,
afterwards beheaded) to step forward and receive it
for her ; but she was informed such was not the
regular manner of presentation, for it was to be
let down into her chariot by a silken string. Slie
therefore told Sir John Perrot to stay ; and at the
proper crisis, some verses being recited by Truth,
the book descended," and the Queen received it in
both lier hands, kissed it, clasped it to her bosom,
aiid thanked the City for this present, esteemccj

CllC.lp_M jc ]

IIOLIIJAY BY LAND AND WATER.

317

above all others. She rjiomised to read it diligently,
to the great comfort of the bystander.s." All the
houses in Cheapside were dressed witii banners
and streamers, and the richest carpets, stuffs, and
cloth of gold tapestried the streets. At the upper
end of Chepe, the Recorder presented the Queen
from the City, with a handsome crimson satin purse
.containing a thousand marks in gold, which she
most graciously pocketed. There were trumpeters
at the Standard in Chepe, and the City waits stood
at the porch of St. Peter's, Cornhill. 'J"he City
companies stretched in rows from Fenchurch
Street to the Litde Conduit in Chepe, behind rails,
which were hung with cloth.

On an occasion when James I. and his wife visited
the City, at the Conduit, Cheapside, there was a
grand display of tapestry, gold cloth, and silks; and
before the structure "a handsome apprentice was
appointed, whose part it was to walk backwards
and forwards, as if outside a shop, in his flat cap
and usual dress, addressing the passengers with his
usual cry for custom of, ' ^\'hat d'ye lack, gentles ?
WJiat will you buy? silks, satins, or taff — taf —
fetas?' He then broke into premeditated verse : —

" 'But May, bolt! tongiic ! I stand at gidtly gaze !

Be dim, mine eyes ! Wliat gallant train are here,
That strilies minds mute, puts good wits in a maze V

Oil ! 'tis our King, royal King James, I say !
Pass on in ])eace, and happy be thy way ;
Live long on earth, and England's sceptre sway,' " &c.

Henrietta Maria, that pretty, wilful queen of
Charles I., accompanied by the Duke of Ikickiiig-
ham and Bassompierre, the French ambassador,
went to what the latter calls Shipside, to view tlie
Lord Mayor's procession. She also came to a
masquerade at the Temple, in the costume of a City
lady. Mistress Bassett, the great lace-woman of
Cheapside, went foremost of the Court party at the
Temple carnival, and led the Queen by tlie hand.

But wliat are royal processions to the Lord
]\Layor's Show?

The earliest civic show on record, writes Mr.
Fairholt, who made a specialty of this subject,
took place in 1236, on the passage of Henry HL
and Eleanor of Provence through the City to
A\'estminster. They were escorted by the mayor,
aldermen, and 360 moitnted citizens, apparelled in
robes of embroidered silk, and each carrying in
their hands a cup of gold or silver, in token of the
privilege claimed by the City for the lord mayor 1
to officiate as chief butler at the king's coronation. !
On the return of Edward L from the Holy Land
the citizens, in the wildness of their loyalty, threw,
it is said, handfuls of gold and silver out of window
to the crowd. It was on the return of the same

king from his Scotch victories that the earliest
known City pageant took place. Each guild had
its show. 'J'he Fishmongers had gilt salmon and
sturgeon, drawn by eight horses, and si.\-andforty
knights riding sea-horses, followed by St. ALignus
(it was St. I^Lagnus' day), with 1,000 horsemen.

Mr. Fairholt proved from papers still preserved
by the Grocers' Comjjany that water processions
took place at least nineteen years earlier than the
usual date (1453) set down for their commence-
ment. Sir John Norman is mentiomd by the
City poet as the first Lord !\Liyor that rowed to
AVestminster. He had silver oars, and so delighted
the London watermen that they wrote a ballad
about him, of which two lines only still exist —

" Row thy boat, Norman,
Row to thy lem.an. "

In the troublous reign of Henry VI. the Gold-
smiths made a si)ecial stand for their privileges on
Lord Mayors day. They comjjlained loudly tliat
they had always ridden with the mayor to ^^'est-
minster and back, and that on their return to Cliejie
they sit on horseback " above the Cross afore the
Goldsmiths' Row ; but that on the morrow of tlie
Apostles Simon and Jude, when they came to their
stations, they found the Butchers had forestalled
them, who would not budge for all the pravers of
the wardens of the Goldsmiths, and hence had
arisen great variance and strife." The two guilds
submitted to the Lord Mayor's arbitration, \\liere-
upon the Mayor ruled that the Goldsmiths should
retain possession of their ancient stand.

The first Lord Mayor's pageant described by the
old chroniclers is that when Anne Boleyn " came
from Greenwich to Westminster on Iter coronation
da)', and the Mayor went to serve her as chief
butler, according to ancient custom." Hall e.xpressl^
says that the water procession on that occasion re-
sembled that of Lord Mayor's Day. The Mayor's
barge, covered with red cloth (blue except at ro)'al
ceremonies), was garnished with goodly banners
and streamers, and the sides hung with emblazoned
targets. In the barge were " shalms, shagbu.slies,
and divers other instruments, which continually
made goodly hannony." Fifty barges, filled with
the various companies, followed, marshalled and
kept in order by three light wherries with officers.
Before the Mayor's barge came another barge,
full of Ordnance and containing a huge dragon
(emblematic of the Rouge Dragon in the Tudor
arms), which vomited wild fire ; and round about
it stood terrible monsters and savages, also vomit-
ing fire, discharging squibs, and making " hideous
noises." By the side of the ]\Iayor's barge was

3iS

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tCheapsidc.

the bachelors' barge, in wliich were trumpeters and
otlier nuKsicians. The decks of the Mayor's barge,
and the sail yards, and top-castles were hung with
Hags and rich cloth of gold and silver. .At the
head and stem were two great banners, with the
royal arms in beaten gold. The sides of tlie

and about the mount sat virgins, " singing and
playing sweetly." The Mayor's company, the
Haberdashers, came first, then the Mercers, then
the Grocers, and so on, the barges being garni.shed
with banners and hung with arras and rich carpets.
In 1566-7 the water procession was very costly,

THE LORD mayor's PROCESSION. {Fiolu /Io^<irlh's " huluslrioHS Appiait.ic") (Sa po^c 323.)

barge were hung with flags and banners of the
Haberdashers' and Merchant Adventurers' Com-
panies (the Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Peacock,
was a haberdasher). On the outside of the barge
shone three dozen illuminated royal escutcheons.
On the left hand of this barge came another boat,
in which was a pageant. A white falcon, crowned,
stood upon a mount, on a golden rock, environed
with white and red roses (Anne Boleyn's device),

and seven hundred pounds of gunpowder were
burned. This is the first show of which a detailed
account exists, and it is to be found recorded in
the books of the Ironmongers' Company.

A curious and exact description of a Lord
Mayor's procession in Elizabeth's reign, written
by William Smith, a London haberdasher in 1575,
is still extant. The day after Simon and Jude
the Mayor went by water to Westminster, attended

Ctieapside.)

PROCESSION OF ANNE BOLEYN IN CHEAPSIDE.

319

-SiO

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Clicapsidd."

by llie barges of all the companies, duly marshalled
and liung witli emblazoned shields. On their
return they landed at Paul's Wharf, wliere they
took horse, " and in great pomp jjassed through the
great street of the city called Cheapside." The
road was cleared by beadles and men dressed as
devils, and wild men, whose clubs discharged squibs.
First came two great standards, bearing the arms
of the City and of tlie Lord Mayor's company ;
then two drums, a llute, and an ensign of the City,
followed by seventy or eighty poor men, two by two,
in blue gowns with red 'sleeves, each one bearing
a pike and a target, witli the arms of the Lord
IMayor's company. These were succeeded by two
more banners, a set of hautboys playing ; after
these came w\'ftlers, or clearers of the way, in
velvet coats and gold cliains, and with white staves
in their hands. After the pageant itself paced six-
teen trumpeters, more wyfflers to clear the way,
and after them the bachelors — si.xty, eighty, or one
hundred — of the Lord Mayor's company, in long
gowns, with crimson satin hoods. Tiiese baclielors
were to wait on the Mayor. Then followed twelve
more trumpeters and the drums and flutes of
the City, an ensign of the Mayor's company, the
City waits in blue gowns, red sleeves, and silver
chains ; then the honourable livery, in long robes,
each with his hood, half black, half red, on his left
shoulder. After them came sheriffs' officers and
Mayor's officers, the common Serjeant, and the
chamberlain. Before the Mayor went tlie sword-
bearer in his cap of honour, the sword, in a sheath
set with pearls, in his right hand ; wliile on his left
came the common cryer, with the great gilt club
and a mace on his shoulder. The Mayor wore
a long scarlet gown, with black velvet hood and
rich gold collar about his neck ; and with him rode
that fallen dignitary, the ex-Mayor. Then followed
all the aldermen, in scarlet gowns and black velvet
tippets, those that had been mayors wearing gold
chains. The two sheriffs came last of all, in
scarlet gowns and gold chains. About one thou-
sand persons sat down to dinner at Guildhall — a
feast which cost the Mayor and the two sheriffs
;^4oo, whereof the Mayor disbursed ;£2oo. Im-
mediately after dinner they went to evening
prayer at St. Paul's, the poor men aforementioned
canying torches and targets. The dinner still
continues to be eaten, but the service at St. Paul's,
as inter.fering with digestion, was abandoned after
the Great Fire. In the evening forewell speeches
were made to the Lord Mayor by allegorical per-
sonages, and painted posts were set up at his door. I
One of the most gorgeous Lord Mayor's shows
was that of 1616 (James I.) devised by Anthony

Munday, one of the great band of Shakesperean
dramatists, wlio wrote plays in partnership witli
Drayton. The drawings for the pageant are still in
the possession of the Fishmongers' Company. The
new mayor was John Leman, a member of that
body (knighted during his mayoralty). The first
pageant represented a buss, or Dutch fishing-boat,
on wheels. The fishermen in it were busy drawing
up nets full of live fish and throwing them to the
people. On the mast and at the head of the boat
were the insignia of the company — St. Peter's keys
and two arms supporting a crown. The second
pageant was a gigantic crowned dolpiiin, ridden
by Arion. The third pageant was the king of the
Moors riding on a golden leopard, and scattering
gold and silver freely round him. Ke was attended
by six tributary kings in gilt armour on horseback,
each carrying a dart and gold and silver ingots.
This pageant was in honour of the Fishmongers'
brethren, the Goldsmiths. The fourth pageant was
the usual pictorial pun on the Lord Mayor's name
and crest. The car bore a large lemon-tree full of
golden fruit, with a pelican in her nest fjeding lier
young (proper). At the top of the tree sat five
children, representing the five senses. The boys
were dressed as women, each with her emblem —
Seeing, by an eagle ; Hearing, by a hart ; 'J'ouch,
by a spider ; Tasting, by an ape ; and Smelling, by
a dog. The fiftli pageant was Sir William Wal-
worth's bower, which was hung with the shields of
all lord mayors who had been Fishmongers. Upon
a tomb within the bower was laid the effigy in
knightly armour of Sir AVilliam, the slayer of Wat
Tvler. Five mounted knights attended the car,
and a mounted man-at-arms bore Wat Tyler's
head upon a dagger. In attendance were six
trumpeters and twenty-four halberdiers, arrayed in
light blue silk, emblazoned with the Fishmongers'
arms on the breast and ^^'alworth's on the back.
Then followed an angel with golden wings and
crown, riding on horseback, who, on the Lord
Ma}'or's approach, with a golden rod awoke Sir
^Villiam from his long sleep, and the two then
became speakers in the interlude.

The great central pageant w-as a triumphal car
drawn by two mermen and two mermaids. In the
highest place sat a guardian angel defending the
crown of Richard II., who sat just below her.
Under the king sat female personifications of the
royal virtues, Truth, Virtue, Honour, Temperance,
Fortitude, Zeal, Equity, Conscience, beating down
Treason and Mutiny, the two last being enacted
"by burly men." In a seat corresponding with the
king's sat Justice, and below her Authority', Lav.',
Vigilance, Peace, Plenty, and Discipline.

ChcnpMilc]

GOSSIP ABOUT LORD MAYORS' SHOWS.

Shirley, tlie dramatist (Charles I.) has described
the Show iu h.is " Conti-iilion for Honour and
]\.iches '' (1633). Clod, a sturdy countryman, c.\-
tLiiius, " I am plain Clod ; I care not a bean-
stalk for the best what lack yon on you all. No,
not the next day after Simon and Jude, when you
go a-feasting to A\'estminster with }i)ur galley-foist
and youf pot-guns, to the very terror of the paper
whales ; when you land in shoals, and make the
understanders in Cheapside wonder to see ships
swim on men's shoulders ; when the fencers
flourish and make the king's liege people fall
down and worship the de\ il and St. Dunstan ;
when your whifflers are hanged in chains, and
Hercules Club spits fire about the pageants, though
the poor children catch cold that shone like
painted cloth, and are only kept alive with sugar-
plums ; with whom, when the word is given, you
march to Guildhall, with every man his spoon in
his pocket, where you look upon the giants, and
feud like Saracens, till you have no stomach to go
to St. Paul's in the afternoon. I have seen your
processions, and lieard your lions and camels make
speeches, instead of grace before and after dinner.
1 have heard songs, too, or something like 'em ;
but the porters have had all the burden, who were
kept sober at the City charge two days before, to
keep time and tune with their feet ; for, brag
what you will of your charge, all your pomp lies
upon their back." In " Honoria and ■Memoria,"
1652, Shirley has again repeated this humorous
and graphic description of the land and water
pageants of the good citizens of the day ; he has,
however, abridged the general detail, and added
some degree of indelicacy to his satire. He alludes
to the wild men that cleared the way, and their
fireworks, in these words : " I am not afeard of
your green Robin Hoods, that fright with fiery club
your pitiful spectators, that take pains to be stifled,
and adore the wolves and camels of your com-
pany."

Pep)-s, always curious, always chatty, has, of
course, several notices of Lord Mayors' shows ; for
in;^tance : —

"Oct. 29th, 1660 (Restoration year).— I up
early, it being my Lord ]\Iayor's day (Sir Richard
Urowne), and neglecting my office, I went to the
^^'ardrobe, where I met my Lady Sandwich and all
the children ; and after drinking of some strange
and incomparably good clarett of Mr. Remball's,
he and Mr. Townsend did take us, and set the
young lords at one Mr. Nevill's, a draper in Paul's
Churchyard ; and my lady and my Lady Pickering
and I to one Mr. Isaacson's, a linendraper at the
•Key,' in Cheapside, where there was a company

of fine ladies, and we were very civilly treated, and
had a very good place to .see the pageants, which
were many, and I believe good for such kind of
things, but in themselves but poor and absurd.
The show being done, we got to Paul's with much
ado, and went on foot with my Lady Pickering lu
her lodging, which was a poor one in Blackfr\-ars,
where she liever invited me to go in at all, which
methought was very strange. Lady Davis is now
come to our next lodgings, and she locketl up the
lead's door from me, which jjuts me in great dis-
qtiiet.

" Oct. 29, 1663. — Up, it being Lord Mayor's Day
(Sir Anthony Bateman). This morning \\as brought
home my new vel\-et cloak — that is, lined with
velvet, a good cloth the outside — the first that ever
I had in my life, and I pray God it may not be too
soon that I liegin to wear it. I thought it better
to go without it because of the crowde, and so I
did not wear it. At noon I went to Guildhall,
and, meeting with Mr. Proby, Sir R. Ford's son,
and Lieutenant-Colonel Baron, a City commander,
we went up and down to see the tab-.es, where
under every salt there was a bill of fare, and at the
end of the table the persons proper for the table.
Many were the tables, but none in the hall but the
mayor's and the lords of the privy council that had
napkins or knives, which was very strange. AVe
went into the buttry, and there stayed and talked,
and then into the hall again, and there wine was
offered and they drunk, I only drinking some
hypocras, which do not break my vowe, it being,
to the best of my present judgment, only a mixed
compound drink, and not any wine. If I am mis-
taken, God forgive me ! But I do hope and think
I am not. By-and-by met widi Creed, and we
with the others went within the several courts, and
there saw the tables prepared for the ladies, and
judges, and bishops — all great signs of a great
dining to come. By-and-by, about one o'clock,
before the Lord Mayor come, came into the liall,
from the room where they were first led into, the
Chjincellor, Archbishopp before him, with the
Lords of the Council, and other bishopps, and
they to dinner. Anon comes the Lortl Mayor, who
went \\\) to the lords, and then to the other tables,
to bid Wellcome; and so all to dinner. I sat
near Proby, Baron, and Creed, at the merchant
strangers' table, where ten good dishes to a messe,
with plenty of wine of all sorts, of which I, drank
none ; but it was very unpleasing that we had no
napkins nor change of trenchers, and drunk out of
earthen pitchers and wooden dishes. It happened
that after the. lords had half dined, came the
French ambassador up to the lords' table, where

322

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Chcapsidc.

he was to have sat; he would not sit down nor
dine wilh the Lord ALiyor, wlio was not yet come,
nor have a tabic to himself, which was oftered,
but, in a discontent, went away again. After I had
dined, I and Creed rose and went up and down
the house, and up to the ladies' room, and there
stayed gazing upon them. Hut thougli there were
many and fine, both young and old, yet I could
not discern one handsome f;ice there, which was
very strange. I ex[)ected niusique, but there was
none, but only trumpets and drums, which dis-
])leased me. The dinner, it seems, is made by
tlie mayor and two sheriffs for the time being, tlie
Lord Mayor paying one half, and they the other ;
and the whole, Proby says, is reckoned to come
to about seven or eight hundred at most. Being
wearied witli looking at a company of ugly women.
Creed and I went away, and took coach, and
through Ciieapside, and there saw the pageants,
which were very silly. The Queene mends apace,
they say, but yet talks idle still."

In 1672 "London Triumphant, or the City in
Jollity and Splendour," was tiie title of Jordan's
pageant for Sir Robert Hanson, of the Grocers'
Company. The Mayor, just against Bow Church,
was saluted by three pageants ; on the two side
stages were placed two griffms (the supporters of
the Grocers' arms), upon \\hicli were seated two
negroes, Victory and Gladness attending ; wliilc
in the centre or principal stage behind reigned
Apollo, surrounded by Fame, Peace, Justice,
Aurora, Flora, and Ceres. The god addressed
the Mayor in a very high-flown strain of compli-
ment, sayings

" Willi Oriental eyes I come to see,
Aiul gr.itulate this great soleninitie.
It liath lieen often saiJ, so often done,
Tliat all men will woisliiij the rising sun.

( He rises )
Such are the blessings of his beams. But now
The risiiig sun, my lord, doth worship you."

( Apollo hmos politely to the Lord Mo yor. )

Next was displayed a wilderness, v.itli moors
planting and labouring, attended by three pipers
and several kitchen musicians that played upon
tongs, gridirons, keys, " and other such like con-
fused musick." Above all, upon a mound, sat ;
America, " a proper masculine woman, with a
tawny face," wlio delivered a lengthy speech, which j
concluded the exhibition for that day. I

In 1676 the pageant in Cheajjside, which digni-
fied Sir Tiiomas Davies' accession as Lord Mayor,
was " a Scythian chariot of triumph," in which !
sat a fierce Tamburlain, of terrible aspect and
moruse disposition, who was, however, very civil

and complimentary upon the present occasion.
He was attended by 1 )iscipline, bearing the king's
banner. Conduct that of the Mayor, Courage that
of the City, while Victory displayed the flag of the
Drapers' Company. The lions of the Drapers' arms
drew the car, led by " .Asian tajitive princes, in
royal robes and crowns of gold, and ridden by two
negro princes." The third pageant was "Fortune's
Bower," in which the goddess sat with Prosperity,
Gladness, Peace, Plenty, Honour, and Riches. A
lamb stood in front, on which rode a boy, " holding
the banner of the Virgin." 'I'he fourth pagiant
was a kind of " chase," full of sheplierds and others
preparing cloth, dancing, timibling, and curvetting,
being intended to represent confusion.

In the show of 1672 two giants, Gogmagog and
Corineus, fifteen feet high (whose ancestors were
probably destroyed in the Great Fire), appeared, in
two chariots, " merry, happy, and taking tobacco,
to the great admiration and delight of all the
spectators." Their predecessors are spoken of by
Marston, the dramatist. Stow, and Bishop Corbet.
In 1708 (says Mr. Fairholt) the present Guildhall
giants were carved by Richard Saunders. In 1837
Alderman Lucas exhibited two wickerwork copies
of Gog and Magog, fourteen feet high, tlieir faces
on a level with the fust-floor windows of Cheapside,
and these monstrosities delighted the crowd.

In 1701 (William III.) Sir William Gore, mercer,
being Lord Mayor, displayed at his pageant the
famous " maiden chariot ' of the Mercers' Com-
pany. It was drawn by nine white horses, ridden
by nine allegorical ])ersonages — four representing
the four quarters of the world, the other five the
retinue of Fame — and all sounding remorselessly
on silver trumpets. Fourteen pages, &c., attended
the horses, while twenty lictors in silver helmets and
forty attendants cleared a way for the procession.
The royal virgin in the chariot was attended by
Truth and Mercy, besides kettle-drummers and
trumpeters. The quaintest thing was thr.t at the
Cluildhall banijuet the virgin, surrounded by all her
ladies and pages, dined in state at a separate table.

The last Lord Mayor's pageant of the old school
was in 1702 (Queen Anne), when Sir Samuel Dash-
wood, vintner, entertained her Majesty at the
Guildhall. Poor Elkanah Settle (Pope's butt)
wrote the librdto, in hopes to revive a festival then
" almost dropping into oblivion." On his return
from '\\'estminster, the Mayor was met at the Llack-
friars Strdrs by St. Martin, patron of the Vintner.s,
in rich armour and riding a white steed. The
generous saint was attended by twenty dancing
satyrs, with tambourines ; ten halberdiers, witii
rustic music ; and ten Roman lictors. At St,

Chenpside.)

ROYAL VISITS 'lO LORD ]\L\YORS' SHO\VS.

323

Paul's Cluirchyard tlie saint made a stand, and,
drawing his sword, cut off halt" his crimson scarf, and
tjxve it to some beggars and cripples who impor-
tuned him for charity. The pageants were fanciful
enough, and poor Settle must have cudgelled his
dull brains well for it. The first was an Indian
galL'on crowded by Bacchanals wreathed with
vines. On the deck of the 'grape-hung vessel sat
liacchus himself, "properly drest.'' The second
pageant was the chariot of Ariadne, drawn by
panthers. Then came St. Martin, as a bishop in a
temple, and next followed " the Vintage,'' an eight-
arched structure, with termini of satyrs and orna-
mented with vines. Within was a bar, with a
beautiful person keeping it, with drawers (waiters),
and gentlemen sitting drinking round a tavern
table. On seeing the Lord JiLiyor, the bar-keeper
called to the drawers —

" Where are your eye.^ .inJ ears ?
.See there what honourable ;'(•«/ appears !
Augusta's great I'rstorian lord — but hoUI !
Give me a golilet of true Orient moulJ.
And with,"' tVc.

Li 1737, the first year of the reign of King
George IL, the king, cjueen, and royal family havmg
received a humble mvitation from the City to
dine at Guildhall, their Majesties, the Princess
Royal, and her Royal Highness the Princess
Carolina, came into Cheapside about three o'clock
in the afternoon, attended by the great officers of
the court and a numerous train of the nobility and
gentry in their coaches, the streets being lined
from Temple Bar by the.militia of London, and the
balconies adorned with tapestry. Their ALajesties
and the princesses. saw the Lord Mayor's procession
from a balcony near Bow Church. Hogarth has
introduced a later royal visitor — Frederick, Prince
of Wales — in a Cheapside balcony, hung with
tapestry, in his " Industrious and Idle Apprentices''
(plate xii.). A train-band man in the crowd is
firing off a musket to express his delight.

Sir Samuel Fludyer, Lord Mayor of London in
the year 1761, the year of the marriage of good
King George HI., appears to have done things
'with thoroughness. In a contemporary chronicle
we find a very sprightly narrative of Sir Samuel's
Lord Mayor's show, in which tlie king and queen,
with "the rest of the royal family," participated —
their Majesties, indeed, not getting home from the
Guildhall ball until two in the morning. Our
sight-seer \tas an early riser. He found the morning
foggy, as is common to this day in London about
the 9th of November, but soon the fog cleared
away, and the day was brilliantly fine — an excep-
tion, he notes, to what had already, in his time.

become proverbial that the Lord Mayor's day is
almost invariably a bad one. He took boat on
the Thames, that he might accompany tlie jjro-
cession of state barges on their way to Westminster.
He reports ''the silent highway" as being quite
covered with boats and gilded barges. The barge
of the Skinners' Company was distinguished by
the outlandish dresses of strange-spctted skins and
painted hides worn b)' the roweis. Thi; barge
belonging to the Stationers' Company, after having
passed through one of the narrow arches of West-
minster Bridge, and tacked about to do honour
to the Lcrd Major's landing, touched at Lambeth
and took on board, from the archbishop's palace, a
hamper of claret — the annual tribute of theology
to learning. The tipple must have been good,
for our chronicler tells us that it was ''con-
stantly reserved for the future regalement of the
master, wardens, and court of assistants, and not
sufi"ered to be shared by the common crew of
liverymen." He did not care to witness tlie
familiar ceremony of swearing in the Lord Mayor
in Westminster Hall, but made the best of his way
to the Temple Stairs, where it was the custom of
the Lord Mayor to land on the conclusion of the
aquatic portion of the pageant. There he found
some of tlie City companies already landed, and
drawn up in order in Temple Lane, between two
rows of the train-bands, " who kept excellent dis-
cipline." Other of the companies were wiser in
their generation ; they did not land jjrematurely to
cool their heels in Temple Lane, while the royal
[irocession was passing along the Strand, but re-
mained on board their barges regaling themselves
comfortably. The Lord Mayor encountered good
Samaritans in the shape of the master and benchers
of the Temple, who invited him to come on hhore
and lunch with them in the Temple Hall.

Every house from Temple Bar to Guildhall was
crowded from top to bottom, and nian\' had scaf-
foldings besides ; carpets and rich hangings were
hung out on tlie fronts all the way along ; and our
friend notes that the citizens were not mercenaiy,
but "generously accommodated their friends and
customers gratis, and entertained them in the most
elegant manner, so that though their shops were
shut, they might be said to have kept open
house."

The ro)-al procession, which set out from St.
James's Palace at noon, did not get to Cheapside
until near four, when in the short November day
it must have been getting dark. Our sight-seer,
as the royal family passed his window, counted
between twenty and thirty coaches-and-six belong-
ing to them and to their attendants, besides those

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

' [Cheapsi Je.

of the foreign ambassadors, officers of state, and
the principal nobility. There preceded their
Majesties the Diikc of Cumberland, Princess
Amelia, the Duke of York, in a new state coach ;
tlie Princes William Iknry and Frederic, the
Princess Dowager of AVales, and the Princesses
Augusta and Caroline in one coach, preceded by
twelve footmen with black caps, followed by guards
and a grand retinue. The king and (jueen were
in separate coaches, and had separate retinues.
Our friend in the window of the "Queen's Arms"
was in hick's way. From a booth at the eastern
end of the churchyard the children of Christ

and the balconies waved their hats, and the ladies
their handkerchiefs."

The Lord Mayor's state coach was drawn by six
beautiful iron-grey horses, gorgeously caparisoned,
and the comjianies made a grand apjiearance. Fven
a century ago, however, degeneracy had set in.
Our sight-seer complains that the Armourers' and
Braziers', the Skinners' and Fishmongers' Companies
v/ere the only companies that had anything like
the pageantry exhibited of old on the occasion.
The Armourers sported an archer riiling erect in
his car, having his bow in his left hand, and his
quiver and arrows hanging behind his left shoulder ;

FIGURES OI'' Gl«l AND M.\GOG SET UP IN GUILDHALL AFTKR TMIC FIUE.

Church Hospital paid their respects to their
Majesties, the senior scholar of the grammar school
reciting a lengthy and loyal address, after which
the boys chanted "God Save the King." At last
the royal family got to the house of Mr. Barclay,
the Quaker, from the balcony of which, hung with
crimson silk damask, they were to see, with what
daylight remained, the civic procession that pre-
sently followed ; but in the interval came Mr.
Pitt, in his chariot, accompanied by Earl Temple.
The great commoner was then in the zenith of his
popularity, and our sight-seer narrates how, "at
every step, the mob clung about every part of
the vehicle, hung upon the wheels, hugged his foot-
men, and even kissed his horses. 'J'here was an
universal huzza, and the gentlemen at the windows

also a man in complete armour. The Skinners
were distinguished by seven of their company being
dressed in fur, having their skins painted in the
form of Indian princes. The pageant of the Fish-
mongers consisted of a statue of St. Peter finely
gilt, a dolphin, two mermaids, and a couple of sea-
horses ; all which duly passed before Georgius
Rex as he leaned over the balcony with his
Charlotte by his side.

Our chronicler understood well the strategic
movements indispensable to the zealous sight-seer.
As soon as the Lord Mayor's procession had passed
him, he " posted along the back lanes, to avoid
the crowd," and got to the Guildhall in advance
of the Lord Mayor. He had procured a ticket for
the banquet through the interest of a friend, who

Cheapside.]

A ROYAL BANQUET.

325

^
«

«;

►J

H
Id

►J

326

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fChcnpsltle.

was one of the committee for managing tlie enter-
tainment, and also a " mazarine." It is ex-
l)lainc(l lliat this was a kind of nickname given
to the common councihncn, on account of their
wearing mazarine hkie silk gowns. He learned
that the doors of llie hall iiad been first opened at
nine in the morning for the admission of Ladies into
the galleries, who were the friends of the committee
men, and who got the best places ; and subse-
quently at twelve for the general reception of all
who had a right to come in. What a terrible spell
of waiting those fortunate unfortunates comprising
the earliest b.atch must have had ! The galleries
presented a very brilliant show, and among the
company below were all the officers of state, the
principal nobility, and the foreign ambassadors.
The Lord Mayor arrived at half-past .six, and the
sheriffs went straight to Mr. Barclay's to conduct
the ro\-al family to the hall. The passage from
the liall-gate to steps leading to the King's Bench
was lined by mazarines with candles in their hands,
by aldermen in their red gowns, and gentlemen
pensioners with their axes in their hands. At
the bottom of the steps stood the Lord Mayor
and the Lady ALiyoress, with the entertainment
committee, to receive the members of the royal
family as they arrived. The princes and princesses,
as they successively came in, waited in the body
of the hall until their Majesties' entrance. On their
arrival being announced, the Lord Mayor and the
Lady Mayoress, as the chronicler puts it, advanced
to the great door of the hall ; and at their Majesties"
entrance, the Lord Mayor presented the City
sword, which being returned, he carried before the
King, the Queen following, with the Lady Mayoress
behind her. " The music had struck up, but was
drowned in the acclamations of the company ;
in short, all was life and joy ; even the giants,
Gog and Magog, seemed to be almost animated."
Tlie King, at all evenffs, was more than almost
animated ; he volubly praised the splendour of
the scene, and was very gracious to the Lord
Mayor on the way to the council chamber, fol-
lowed by the royal family and the reception com-
mittee. This room readied, the Recorder deli-
vered the inevitable addresses, and the wives and
daughters of the aldermen were presented. These
ladies had the honour of being saluted by his
Majesty, and of kissing the Queen's hand, then
the sheriffs were knighted, as also was the brother
of the Lord Mayor.

After half an hour's stay in the council chamber,
the royal party returned into the hall, and were con-
ductcil to the upper end of it, called the hustings,
■where a table was provided for them, at wliich

tiiey sat by themselves. There had been, it seems,
a knotty little question of etiquette. The ladies-
in-waiting on the Queen had claimed the right
of custom to dine at the same table with her
Majesty, but this was disallowed ; so they dined
at the table of the Lady Mayoress in the King's
Bench. The royal table " was set off with a variety
of emblematic ornaments, beyond description
elegant." anil a superb canopy was placed over
their Majesties' heads at the upper end. For the
Lord Mayor, aldermen, and their ladies, there was
a table on the lower hustings. The privy coun-
cillors, ministers of state, and great nobles dined
at a table on the right of this ; the foreign
ministers at one on the left. For the mazarines
and the general company there were eight tables
laid out in the body of the hall, while the judges,
Serjeants, and other legal celebrities, dined in the
old council chamber, and the attendants of the
distinguished visitors were regaled in the Court of
Common Pleas.

George and his consort must have got up a fine
appetite between noon and nine o'clock, the hour
at which the dinner was served. The aldermen on
the committee acted as waiters at the royal table.
The Lord Mayor stood behind the King, " in
quality of chief buder, while the Lady Mayoress
waited on her JNLajesty " in the same capacity, but
soon after seats were taken they were graciously
sent to their seats. The dinner consisted of three
courses, besides the dessert, and the purveyors
were Messrs. Horton and Birch, the same house
which in the present day supplies most of the
civic banquets. The illustration which we give
on the previous page is from an old print of the
period representing this celebrated festival, and is
interesting not merely on account of the scene
which it depicts, but also as a view of Guildhall at
that period.

The bill of fare at the royal table on this occasion
is extant, and as it is worth a little study on the
part of modern epicures, we give it here at full
length for their benefit : —

riRST SERVICE.

Venison, turtle soups, fish of every sort, viz., doiys,
mullets, turbots, tench, soles, &c, nine dishes.

SECOND SERVICE.
A fine roast, ortolans, teals, quails, rufifs, knotts, pea-
chicks, snipes, partridges, pheasants, &c., nine dishes.

THIRD SERVICE.
Vegetables and made dishes, gi'een peas, green morelles,
green truffles, cardoons, artichokes, ducks' tongues, fat livers,
&c., eleven dishes.

FOURTH SERVICE.
Curious ornaments in pastry and makes, jellies, blomonges,
in variety of shapes, figures,, and colours, nine dishes.

Cheapside.)

FINE FOLKS AND QUAKER FOLKS.

327

In all, not including the dessert, there were
placed on the tabled four hundicd and fourteen
dishes, liot and colil. ^\■ine was varied and copious.
In the language of the chronicler, " champagne,
burgundy, and other valuable wines were to be had
everywhere, and nothing was so scarce as water.''
When the second course was being laitl on, the
toasts began. The common crier, standing before
the royal table, demanded silence, then ])roclaimed
aloud that their Majesties drank to the health
and iirosperity of the Lord Mayor, aldermen,
and common council of the City of London.
Then the common crier, in the name of the civic
dignitaries, gave the toast of health, long life, and
prosperity to their most gracious Majesties. After
dinner there was no tarrying over the wine-cup.
The royal party retired at once to the council
chamber, "where they had their tea.'' \\'hat
became of the lest of llie company is not men-
tioned, but clearly the Guildhall could have been
no place for them. That was summarily occupied
by an army of carpenters. The tables were struck
and carried out. The hustings, where the great
folks had dined, and the floor of which had been
covered with rich carpeting, was covered afresh,
and the whole hall rajiidly got ready for the ball,
with which the festivities were to conclude. On
the return of their majesties, and as soon as they
were seated under the canopy, the ball was opened
by the Duke of York and the Lady Mayoress. It
does not appear that the royal couple took the
floor, but " other minuets succeeded by the
younger l.iranches of the royal family with ladies
of distinction."

About midnight Georgius Rex, beginning pro-
bably to get sleepy «ith all this derangement of
his ordinarily methodical way of living, signified
his desire to take his departure ; but things are not
always possible e\'en when kings are in question.
Such was the hurry and confusion outside — at least
that is the reason assigned by the chronicler — that
there was great delay in fetching up the royal car-
riages to the CkiildhalV door. Our own impression
is that the coachmen were all drunk, not excepting
the state coachman himself Their Majesties waited
half an hour before their coach could be brought
up, and perhaps, after all the interchange of
civilities, went away in a tantrum at the end. It
is clear the Princess Dowager of Wales did, for she
waited some time in the temporary passage, " nor
could she be prevaileil on to retire into the hall."
There was no procession on the return from the
City. The royal people trundled home as they
best might, and according as their carriages came to
Ijand. But we are told that on the return journey.

past midnight as it was, the crowd in some places
was (juite as great as it had been in the daytime,
and that Mr. Pitt was vociferously cheered all the
way to his own door. The King and Queen did
not get home to St. James's till two o'clock in the
morning, and it is a confirmation of the suggestion
that the coachman must have been drunk, that in
turning under the gate one of the glasses of their
coach was broken by the roof of the sentry-box.
.A.S for the festive people left Ijehind in the Guild-
hall, they kept the ball up till three o'clock, and wc
are told that " the whole was concluded with the
utmost regularity and decorum." Indeed, Sir Samuel
Fludyer's Lord Mayor's day appears to have been a
triumphant success. His Majesty himself, we are
told, was pleased to declare " that to be elegantly
entertained he must come into the City." The
foreign ministers in general exjiressed their wonder,
and one of them politely said in French, that this
entertainment was only fit for one king to give to
another.

One of the Barclays has left a pleasant account
of this visit of George III. to the City to see
the Lord Mayor's Show : — " The Queen's clothes,"
says the lady, "which were as rich as gold, silver,
and silk could make them, was a suit from whicli
fell a train supported by a little page in scarlet
and silver. The lustre of her stomacher was incon-
ceivable. The King I think a very personable man.
All the princes followed the King's example in
complimenting each of us with a kiss. The Queen
was upstairs three times, and my little darling, with
Patty liarclay and Priscilla Bell, were introduced to
her. I was present, and not a little anxious, on
account of my girl, who kissed the Queen's hand
with so much grace, that I thought the Princess
Dowager would have smothered her with kisses.
Such a report of her was made to the King, that
Miss was sent for, and afforded him great amuse-
ment by saying, 'tliat she loved the king, though
she must not love fine tilings, and her grandpapa
would not allow her to make a curtsey." Her sweet
face made such an impression on the Duke of
York, that I rejoiced she was only fi\ e instead of
fifteen. \Vhen he first met her, he tried to jiersuade
Miss to let him introduce her to the (^ueen, but
she would by no means consent, till I informed her
he was a jirince, upon which her little female heart
relented, and she gave him her hand— a true cuji)-
of the sex. The King never sat down, nor did he
taste anything during the whole time. Her Majesty
drank tea, which was brought her on a silver waiter
by brother John, who delivered it to ihe lady in
waiting, and she presented it kneeling. The leave
they rook of us was such as we might expect froni

3-^

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

ICheapsIile,

our equals — full of apologies for our trouble for
their entertainment, wliich they were so anxious to
have exiiUiined, that the Queen came u[) to us as
we stood on one side of tlie door, and had every
word interpreted. My brothers had the honour of
assisting the Queen into her c:oach. Some of us
sat up to see tliem return, and the King antl Queen
took especial notice of us as they passed. The
King ordered twenty -four of his guard to be placed
opposite our door all night, lest any of the canopy
:;!iould be pulled down by the mob, in which " (the
canojjy, it is to l)e presumed) "there were loo yards
of silk damask.'"

'• From the nbo\e particulars we learn,'' says Dr.
Doran, •■that it was customary for our sovereigns
to do honour to industry long before the period of
the Great Lxhibition year, which is erroneously
r.upposed to be the ojiening of an era when a sort
of fraternisation took place between commerce and
the Crown. Under the old reign, too, the honour
took a homely, but not an undignified, and if still
a ceremonious, yet a hearty shape. It may be
questioned, if Royalty were to pa}' a \isit to the
family of the present Mr. IJarclay, whether the
monarch would celebrate the brief sojourn by
kissing all tlie daughters of ' Barclay and Perkins.'
He might do many things not half so pleasant."

The most important feature of -the modern
show, says Mr. Fairholt very trul)-, is the splen-
didly carved and gilt coach in which the Lord
Mayor rides; and the paintings that decorate it
may be considered as the relics of the ancient
pageants that gave us the living representatives of
the virtues and attributes of the chief magistrate
here delineated. Cipriani was the artist who exe-
cuted this series of jiaintings, in 1757 ; and they
e.xhibit upon the panel of the right door. Fame
I)rcsenting the Mayor to the genius of the City;
on the left door, the same genius, attended by
IJritamiia, who jioints with her spear to a shield,
inscri!)ed "Henry Fit2-.-\lwin," 1109." On each
siile of the doors are painted Truth, with her
mirror; Temperance, holding a bridle; Justice,
and Fortitude. The front panel exhibits F'aith
and Hope, pointing to St. Paul's ; the back panel
Charity, two female figures, typical of Plenty nnd
Riches, casting money and fruits into her lap-
while a wrecked sailor and sinking ship fill up the
background. By the kind permission of the Lord
Mayor we are enabled to give a representation of
the ponderous old vehicle, which is still the cent^-e
of attraction every gth of November.

The carved work of the coach is elaborate and
beautiful, consisting of Cupids supporting the City
.arms, &c. The roof was formerly ornar.-iented in

the centre with carved work, representing four
boys supporting baskets of fruit, &c. These were
damaged by coming into collision with an archway
leading into Blackwall Hall, about fifty years ago ;
some of the figures were knocked off", and the
group was entirely removed in consequence. This
splendid coach was paid for by a subscription of
^60 from each of the junior aldermen, and such
as had not passed the civic chair — its total cost
being ;^i,o65 3s. Subsequently each alderman,
when sworn into office, contributed that sum to
keej) it in repair ; for which purpose, also, each
Lord Mayor gave ;^ioo, which was allowed to him
in case the cost of the repairs during his mayoralty
rendered it recjuisite. This arrangement was not,
however, complied with for many years ; after
which the whole expense fell upon the Lord
Mayor, and in one year it exceeded ^^300. This
outlay being considered an unjust tax upon the
ma)-or for the time being, the amount over ^^ 100
was repaid to him, and the coach became the pro-
perty of the corporation, the expenses ever since
being paid by the Committee for General Purposes.
Even so early as twenty years after its construction
it was found necessary to repair the coach at an
expense of ,^{^335 ; and the average expense of the
repairs during seven years of the present century
is said to have been as much as ;!^iiS. Hone
justly observes, " All that remains of the Lord
Mayor's Show to remind the curiously-informed of
its ancient character, is the first part of the pro-
cession. These are the poor men of the company
to which the Lord Mayor belongs, habited in long
gowns and close caps of the company's colour,
bearing shields on their arms, but without javelins.
So many of these lead the show as there are years
in the Lord Mayor's age."

Of a later show " Aleph" gives a jjleasant account.
"I was about nine years old," he says, "when from
a window on Ludgate Hill I watched the ponderous
mayor's coach, grand and wide, with six footmen
standing on the footboard, rejoicing in bouquets
as big as their heads and canes four feet high,
dragged slowly up the hill by a team of be-ribboned
horses, which, as they snorted along, seemed to be
fully conscious of the precious freight in the rear.
Cinderella's carriage never could boast so goodly
a driver; his full face, of a dusky or purple red,
swelled out on each side like the breast of a jwuting
pigeon ; his three-cornered hat was almost hidden
by wide gold lace ; the flowers in his vest were full-
blown and jolly, like himself; his horsewhip covered
with blue ribbons, rising and falling at intervals
merely for form — such horses were not made to be
flogged. Coachce's box wa,s ratlicr a throne than 3.

CKeapside.J

THE LORD MAYOR'., AFKN IN AllMOCS..

;-')

scat. Then a dozen gorgeous walking footmen on
either liand ; grave niarshahiien, treading gingerly,
as if they had corns; and City officers in scarlet,
playing at soldiers, but looking anything but
soldierly; two trumpeters before and behind, blow-
ing an occasional blast. . . .

"How that old coach swayed to and fro, with
its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord
Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds — (or,
reader, it was Sir William Curtis ! . . .

" As the ark of copper, plate glass, and enamel
crept slowly up the incline, a luckless sweeper-boy
(in those days such dwarfed lads were forced to
climb chimneys) sidled up to one of the fore horses,
and sought to detach a pink bow from his mane.
The creature felt his honours diminishing, and
turned to snap at the blackee. The sweep
screamed, the horse neighed, the mob shouted,
and Sir William turned on his pivot cushion to
learn what the noise meant ; and thus we were
enabled to gaze on a Lord Mayor's face. Jn
sooth he was a goodly gentleman, burly, and
with three fingers' depth of flit on his portly person,
yet every feature evinced kindliness and benevo-
lence of no common order."

The men in armour were from time immemorial
important features in the show, and the subjects
of many a jest. Hogarth introduces them in one
of his series, " Industry and Idleness," and Piimli
has cast many a missile at those disconsO'late
warriors, who all but perished under their weight
of armour, degenerate race tliat we are !

The suits of burnished mail, though generally
understood to be kindly lent for the occasion by
the custodian of the Tower armoury, seem now
and then to have been borrowed from the play-
house, possibly for the reason that the imitation
accoutrements were more showy and superb than
the real.

This was at any rate the case (says Mr. Dutton
Cook) in 1812, v.-hen Sir Claudius Hunter was
Lord Mayor, and Mr. Elliston was manager of the
Surrey Theatre. A melodramatic play was in pre-
paration, and for this special object the manager
had provided, at some considerable outlay, two
magnificent suits of brass and steel armour of the
fourteenth ccnturv, expressly manufactured for him
by Mr. Marriott of Fleet Street. No expense had
been spared in rendering this harness as complete
and splendid as could be. Forthmth Sir Claudius
applied to Elliston for the loan of the nev/ armour
to enhance the glories of the civic pageant. The
reciuest was acceded to with the proviso tliat the
suit of steel could only be lent in the event of
the ensuing 9th of November proving free from

damp and fog.* No such condiiion, however, wa".
annexed to the loan of the brass armour ; and it
was understood that Mr. John Kcmble had kindly
imdertaken to furnish the hclmjts of the knights
with costly plumes, and personally to superintend
the arrangement of these decorations. Altogether,
it would seem riiat the ma\or stood much indebted
to the r.ianagcrs, who, willing to ol)ligc, yet felt that
their courtesy was deserving of some sort of jniblic
recognition. At least this was Elliston's view of
the matter, who read with cliagrin sundry news-
jjaper paragraphs, announcing that at the a])proach-
ing inauguration of Sir Claudius some of the roval
armour from the Tower would be exhibited, but
ignoring altogether tlie lo.in of the matchless suits
of steel and brass from th,' Surrey Theatre. The
manager was mortified ; he could be generous, Init
he knew the worth of an advertisement. He ex-
postulated with the future mayor. Sir Claudius
replied that he did- not desire to conceal the
transaction, but rather than it should go forth to the
world that so high a functionary as an alderman of
London had made a request to a theatri,-al manager,
he thought it ad\-isable to inform the public that
Mr. Elliston had offered the use of his jiroperty for
the procession of the 9th. This was hardly a
fair way of stating the case, but at length the
following paragrajjh, dr..iwn up by Elliston, was
agreed upon for publication in the newspapers: —
" We understand that Mr. Elliston has lent to tiie
Lord Mayor elect the two magnificent suits of
armour, one of steel and the other of brass, manu-
factured by Marriott of Fleet Street, and which
cost not less than ^600. These very curious
specimens of the revival of an art supposed to
have been lost will be displayed in the Lord
Mayor's procession, and afterwards in Cuiklhall,
with some of the royal armour in the Tower.'' It
would seem also, according to another authority,
that the wearers of the armour were members of
the Surrey comi)any.

On the 9th Elliston was absent from London,
but he received from one left in charge of his
interests a particular account of the proceedings of
the day : —

"The unhandsome conduct of llic Lord ;\Iayor
has occasioned me much trouble, and will give you
equal dis])leasure. In the first place, your ])ara-
graph never would have appeared at all had I not
interfered in the matter ; secondly, cropped-tailed
hacks had been procured without housings, so that
I was compelled to obtain two trumpeters' horses
from the Horse Guards, long-tailed animals, and
richly caparisoned ; thirdly, the. helmets wliich had
been delivered at Mr. Kemble's house were not

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tCheap^Je.

returned until twelve o'clock on the day of action, practicable to him. His comrade in lirass made
with three niiser.ible feathers in each, which ap- light of tliese objections, gladly took the proffered
peared to have been plucked from the draggle tail , cup into his gauntlcted hands, and " drank the
of a hunted cock ; this I also remedied by send- | red wine through the helmet barred," as though he
ing off at the last moment to the first j.lumassier : had been one of the famous knights of Branksome
for the hire of proper leathers, and llie helmets j Tower. It was soon apparent that the man in brass
were ultimately decorated with fourteen superb I was intoxicated. He became obstreperous ; he
plumes ; fourthly, the Lord Mayor's officer, who | began to reel and stumble, accoutred as lie was, to
rode in Henry V. armour, jealous of our stately j the hazard of his own bones and to the great
aspect, attempted to seize one of our horses, on ' dismay of l)ystanders. It was felt that his fall
which vour rider made as gallant a retort as ever ■ might entail disaster upon many. Attempts were
knight in armour could have done, and the assailer ! made to remove him, when he assumed a pugilistic
was" completely foiled." I attitude, and resolutely declined to quit the hall.

This was bad enough, but in addition to this Nor was it possible to enlist against him the ser-

OFLEMI'^'' ^^=^^

UIK LORD MAYORS CO.\CH.

the naiTator makes further revelation of the behind-
the-scenes secrets of a civic pageant sixty years
ago. On the arrival of the procession it was
found that no accommodation had been arranged
for " Mr. Eiliston's men," nor were any refresh-
ments proffered them. " For seven hours they
were kept within Guildhall, where they seem to
have been consi<lered as much removed from the
necessities of the flesh as Gog and Magog above
their heads." At length the compassion, or perhaps
the sense of humciur, of certain of the diners was
moved l)y tlie forlorn situation of the knights in
armour, and bumpers of wine were tendered them.
The man in steel discreetly declined this hospitable
offer, alleging that after so long a fast he feared
the wine would affect him injuriously. It was
whispered that his harness imprisoned him so com-
pletely that eating and drinking were alike im-

vices of his brother warrior. The man in steel
sided with the man in brass, and tlie two heroes
tlius formed a powerful coailtion, which was only
overcome at last by the onset of numbers. The
scene altogether was of a" most scandalous, if
comical, description. It was some time past mid-
night when Mr. Marriot. the armourer, arrived at
Guildliall, and at length succeeded in releasing the
two half-dead w.irriors from their coats of mail.

After all, these famous suits of armour never
returned to the wardrobe of the Surrey Theatre, or
gleamed upon its stage. From Guildhall they
were taken to Mr. Marriott's workshop. This, with
all its contents, was accidentally consumed by fire.
But the armourer's trade had taught him chivalry.
At his own expense, although he had lost some
three thousand pounds by the fire, he provided
Elliston with new suits of armour in lieu of those

Cheapside.]

THE MIDSUMMER WATCH.

331

that hail been destroyed. To his outlay the Lord
Mayor and the City authorities contributed — 1
nothinj; ! although but for the procession of the 9th
of November the armour iiad never been in peril.

The most splendid sight that ever glorified '
medieval Cheapside was the Midsummer Marching
^\'atch, a grand City display, the description of
which makes even the brown pages of old Stow
glow with light and colour, seeming to rouse in the j
old London chronicler recollections of his youth. |

Chamber of London. Besides the which lights,
every constable in London, in number more than
240, had his cresset ; the charge of every cresset
was in light two shillings four jjcnce ; and every
cresset had two men, one to bear or hold it, another
to bear a bag with light, and to serve it ; so that
the poor men pertaining to the cressets taking
wages, besides that e\ery one had a strawen hat,
with a badge painted, and his breakfast, amounted
in number to almost 2,000. The Marching Watch

lilt ii...\ioi.i no.N OF cHEAPSluii CKOSS. From an old Prhil. {

IIX)

" Besides the standing watches," says Stow, " all
in bright harness, in every ward and street in the
City and suburbs, there was also a Marching Watch,
that passed through the principal streets thereof;
to wit, from the Little Conduit, by Paul's Gate,
tlirough West Cheap by the Stocks, through Corn-
hill, by Leaden Hall, to Aldgate ; then back down
Fenchurch Street, by Grasse Church, about Grasse
Church Conduit, and up Grasse Church Street into
Cornhill, and through into West Cheap again, and
so broke tip. The whole way ordered for this
Marching Watch extended to 3,200 taylors' yards of
assize. For the furniture whereof, with lights, there
were appointed 700 cressets, 500 of them being
found by the Companies, the other 200 by the

contained in number about 2,000 men, part of
them being oli} soldiers, of skill to be ca])tains,
lieutenants, Serjeants, corijorals, &c. ; \\hifiiers,
drummers and fifes, standard and ensign bearers,
demilaunces on great horses, gunners with hand-
guns, or half hakes, archers in coats of white
fustian, signed on the breast and back with the
arms of the City, their bows bent in their hands,
with sheafs of arrows by their side ; pikemen, in
bright corslets, burganets, &c. ; halbards, the like ;
the billmen in Almain rivets and ajirons of mail,
in great number.

"This Midsummer Watch was thus accustomed
yearly, time out of mind, until the year 1539, the
31st of Henry VHL ; in which year, on the Sth of

ij-

OLl) AX I) NEW lOIstl:)0N.

[Chcapside,

Mav, .1 great muster was made by the citizens at
the M/f's End, all in bright harness, with coats of
white silk or cloth, and chains of gold, in three
great battels, to the number of 15,000; which
]);issed through London to ^\■estminster, and so
throu^^h the Sanctuary and round about the Park
of St. James, and returned home through Oldborn.

" King Henry, then considering the great charges
of the citizens for the furnitup; of this unusual
muster, forbad the Marching \\'atch provided for
at midsummer for that year; which being once
laid down, wa;; not raised again till the year
1548, the second of ]'",dward the Sixth, Sir John
Uresham then being Maior, who caused the
Marching AVatch, botli on the eve of Saint John
Baptist, and of Saint Peter the Apostle, to be
revived and set forth, in as comely order as it had
been accustomed.

'■In the months of June and July, on the vigil
of festival days, and on the same festival days in
the evenings, after the sun-setting, there were
usually made bonefires in the streets, every man
bcstowin-r >vooil cr libour towards them. The

wealthier sort, also, before their doors, near to the
said bonefires, would set out tables on the vigils,
furnished with sweet bread and good drink ; and
on the festival days, with meat and drink, plenti-
fully; whereunto they would invite their neighbours
and passengers also, to sit and be merry with them
in great familiarity, praising God for his benefits
bestowed on them. These were called Bonefires,
as well of good amity amongst neighbours, that
being before at controversie, were there by tliC
labours of others reconciled, and made of bitter
enemies loving friends ; as also for the virtue that
a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air.
On the vigil of Saint John Baptist, and on Saint
Peter and Paul, the apostles, every man's door
being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St.
John's wort, orpin, white lillies, and such-like,
garnished upon with beautiful flowers, had also
lamps of glass, with oyl burning in them all the
night. Some hung out branches of iron, curiously
wrought, containing hundreds of lamps, lighted at
once, which made a goodly show, namely, in New
Fish Street, Thames Street, &c."

CHAPTER XXVIII.
CUE APSIDE: CENTRAL.

Grim Chromclcs of ChcapsiJc—Chc.ipbidc Cross— Puriunical Intolerance— Tho Old London Conduits— Medieval Water-carriers— The Church ol
St. Jlary-le-Bow— " .Murder will out "—The " Sound of liow Bells "—Sir Christopher Wren's Bow Church— Remains of the Old Church -
The Seldam,— Interesting Houses in Cheapside and their Jleinories- Goldsmiths' Row— The " Nag's Head " and the Self-coiisccrated Bishops
—Keats' House— Saddler's Hall— A Prince Disguised— lil.ackmore, the Toet— .Alderman Boydell, the Printsellen- His Edition of Shakespeare
— " Puck'" — The Lottery— Death and Burial.

Thk Cheapside Standard, opposite Honey Lane,
was also a fountain, and was rebuilt in the reign
of Henrj' VI. In the year 1293 (Edward I.)
three men had tlieir right hands stricken off here
for rescuing a prisoner arrested by an officer of
the City. In Edward IH.'s reign two fishmongers,
for aiding a riot, were beheaded at the Standard.
Here also, in the reign of Richard H., Wat Tyler,
that unfortunate reformer, beheaded Richard Lions,
a rich merchant. When Henry IV. usurped the
throne, ver)' beneficially for the nation, it was at the
Standard in Chepe that he caused Richard II. 's
blank charters to be burned. In the reign of
Henry VI. Jack Cade (a man who seems to have
aimed at removing real evils) beheaded the Lord
Say, as readers of Shakespeare's historical plays
will remember; and in 1461 John Davy had his
offending hand cut off at the Standard for having
struck a man before the judges at Westminster.

Cheapside Cross, one of the nine cresses erecte-.i
by Edward I., that soldier king, to mark the resting-
places of the body of his beloved queen, Eleanor
of Castile, on its way from Lincoln to Westminster
Abbey, stood in the middle of the road facing Wood
Street. It was built in 1290 by Master Michael, a
mason, of Canterbury. From an old painting at
Cowdray, in Susse.x, representing the procession tjf
Edward VI. from the Tower to Westminster, an
engraving of which we have given on page 313, wo
gather that the cross was both stately and graceful.
It consisted of three octangular compartments, eacli
supported by eight slender columns. The base-
ment story was probably twenty feet high ; the
second, ten ; the third, six. In the first niche stood
the effigy of probably a contemporaneous pope ;
round the base of the second were four a])ostles,
each with a nimbus round his head ; and above
them sat the Virgin, with the intant Jesus in her

CheapsideO

THE CROSS AT CHEAPSIDE.

333

arms. The highest niche was occupied by four
standing figures, while crowning all rose a cross
surmounted by the emblematic do\c. The whole
was rich with highly-finished ornament.

Fox, the martyrologist, says the cross was erected
on what was then an open spot of Cheapside.
Some writers assert that a statue of Queen Eleanor
first stood on the spot, but this is very mucli
(lo\ibted. The cross was rebuilt in 1441, and com-
bined with a drinking-fountain. The work was a
long time about, as the full design was not carried
to completion till the first year of Henry VH. This
second erection was, in fact, a sort of a timber-shed
surrounding the old cross, and covered with gilded
lead. It was, we are told, re -gilt on the visit of
tlie Emperor Charles V. On the accession of
Edward ^T., that child of promise, the cross was
altered and beautified.

The generations came and went. The 'prentice
who h;.d played round the cross as a newly-girdled
lad sat again on its steps as a rich citizen, in
robes and chain. The shaven priest who stoijped
to mutter a prayer to the half-defoced Virgin in the
yotive niche gave place tj his successor in the
C.eneva gown, and still the cross stood, a memory
of death, that spares neither king nor subject.
But in Elizabeth's time, in their horror of image-
worship, the Puritans, foaming at the mouth at
every outward and visible sign of the old religion,
took great exception at the idolatrous cross of
Chepe. Violent protest was soon made. In the

again attacked, " her crown being plucked off, and
almost her liead, taking away her naked ciiild, and
stabbing her in the breast." Thus dishonoured the
cross was left till the next year, 1600, when it was
rebuilt, and the universities were consulted as to
whether the crucifix should be restored. They
all sanctioned it, with the exception of Dr. Abbot
(afterwards archbishop), but there was to be no
dove. In a sermon of the period the following
passage occurs : — " Oh ! this cross is one of the
jewels of the harlot of Rome, and is left and kept
here as a love-token, and gives them hope that
they shall enjoy it and us again.'' Yet the cross
remained undisturbed for several years. At this
period it was surrounded by a strong iron railing,
and decorated in the most inoffensive manner. It
consisted of only four stones. Superstitious images
were superseded by grave eftigies of apostles, kings,
and prelates. The crucifix only of the original
was retained. The cross itself was in bad taste,
being half Grecian, h.df Gothic ; the whole, archi-
tecturally, much inferior to the former fabric.

The uneasy zeal of the Puritanical sects soon
revived. On the night of January 24th, 1641, the
cross was again defaced, and a sort of literary con-
tention began. We have " The Resolution of those
Contemners that will no Crosses;" "Articles of
High Treason exliibited against Cheapside Cross ;"
"The Chimney-sweepers' Sad Complaint, and
Humble Petition to the City of London for erect-
ing a Neue Cross;'' "A Dialogue between the

night of June 21st, 1581, an attack was made 1 Cross in Chepe and Charing Cross." Of these
on the lower tier of images — i.e., the Resurrec-
tion, Virgin, Christ, and Edward the Confessor, all
which were miserably mutilated. The Virgin was
" robbed of her son, and the arms broken by which
she stayed him on her knees, her whole body
also haled by ropes and left ready to foil." The
Queen offered a reward, but the oftenders were not
discovered. In 1595 the effigy of the Virgin was
repaired, and afterwards " a newe sonne, mis-
shapen (as borne" out of time), all naked, was laid
in her arms ; the other images continuing broken
as before." Soon an attempt was made to pull
down the woodwork, and substitute a pyramid for
the crucifix ; the Virgin was superseded by the god-
dess Diana — "a woman (for the most part naked),
and water, conveyed from the Thames, filtering
from her naked breasts, but oftentimes dried up."
Elizabeth, always a trimmer in these matters, was
indignant at these fanatical doings ; and thinking
a plain cross, a symbol of the faith of our country,
ought not to give scandal, she ordered one to be
placed on the summit, and gilt. The Virgin also
was restored ; but twelve nights afterwards she was

here is a specunen —

Aihihaptist. O ! idol now,

iJowu must tliou !
, Brother Ball,
Be sure it sli.iU.
Brownist. llelpe ! Wren,

Or we are undone men.
I shall not fall.
To niin all.
Cheap Cross. I'm so crossed, I fear my utter destruction
is at hand.

C/iiu-mj^ Cross. Sister of Cheap, crosses are incitlcnt to
us all, and our children. But wh.it's the greatest cross that
hath befallen you ?

C//(VJ/ Cross. Nay, sister ; if my cross were fallen, I
should live at more heart's ease than I do.

Charing Cross. I believe it is the cross upon your head
that hath brought you into this trouble, is it not ?

These disputes were the precursors of its final
destruction. In May, 1643, the Parliament de-
puted Robert Harlow to the work, who went with
a troop of horse and two companies of foot, and
executed his orders most completely. The official
account says rejoicingly : —

"Oil the 2nd of May, 1643, the cross in Cheapside

334

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Chcapside.

was pulled down. At the fall of the top cross
drums beat, trumpets blew, and multitudes of caps
were thrown into the air, and a great shout of
people with joy. The 2nd of May, the almanack
s-iys, was the invention of the cross, and tlie same
day at night were the leaden popes burnt (they
were not popes, but eminent English prelates) in
the i)lace where it stood, with ringing of bells and
great acclamation, and no hurt at all done in these
actions."

The loth of the same month, the "Book of
Sports " (a collection of ordinances allowing games
on the .Sabbath, put forth by James 1.) was burnt
by the hangman, where the Cross used to stand,
and at the Exchange.

".\leph" gives us the title of a curious tract,
published the very day the Cross was destroyed: —
" I'he Downfall of Dagon ; or, the Taking Down
of Cheapside Crosse ; wherein is contained these
principles : i. The Crosse Sicke at Heart. 2. His
Death and Eunerall. 3. His Will, Legacies, In-
ventory, and Epitaph. 4. Why it was removed.
5. The Money it will bring. 6. Noteworthy, th:jt
it was cast down on that day when it was first
invented and set up."

It may be worth giving an extract or two : —
"I am called the 'Citie IdoU;' the Brownists spit
at me, and throw stones at me ; others hide their
eyes w'ith their fingers ; the Anabaptists wish me
knockt in pieces, as I am like to be this day ;
the sisters of the fraternity will not come near me,
but go about by Watling Street, and come in again
by Soaper Lane, to buy their provisions of the
market folks. ... I feele the pangs of death,
and shall never see the end of the merry month of
May ; my breath stops ; my life is gone ; I feel
myself a-dying downwards."

Here are some of the be(iuests : — "I give my
iron-work to those people which make good swords,
at Hounslow ; for I am all Spanish iron and Steele
to the back.

" I give my body and stones to those masons

I stood like .1 stock that was made of wood,
And yet the people would not say I was good ;
And if I tell them plaine, they're like to mee —
Like stone to all goodnesse. But now, reader, see
Me in the dust, for crosses must not stand,
There is too much cross tricks within the laud ;
And, having so done never any good,
I leave my prayse for to be understood ;
For many women, after this my losse.
Will remember me, and still will be crosse —
Crosse tricks, crosse ways, and crosse vanities,
Believe the Crosse speaks truth, for here he lyes.

" I was built of lead, iron, and stone. Some say
that divers of the crowns and sceptres are of silver,
besides the rich gold that I was gilded with, which
might have been filed and saved, yielding a good
value. Some have oflered four hundred, some
five himdred ; but they that bid most offer one
thousand for it. I am to be taken down this very
Tuesday ; and I prny, good reader, take notice by
the almanack, • for the sign falls just at this time,
to be in the feete, to showe that the crosse must
be laide equall with the grounde, for our feete to
tread on, and what day it was demolished ; that is,
on the day when crosses were first invented and
set up ; and so I leave the rest to your con-
sideration."

Howell, the letter writer, lamenting the demoli-
tion of so ancient and visible a monument, says
trumpets were blown all the while the crowbars and
picka.xes were working. Archbishop Laud in his
■" Diary" notes that on May ist the fana;tical mob
broke the stained-glass windows of his Lambeth
chapel, and tore up the steps of his communion
table.

" On Tuesday," this fanatic of another sort
writes, " the cross in Cheapside was taken down
to cleanse that great street of superstition." The
amiable Evelyn notes in his " Diary ' that he him-
self saw '• the furious and zelous people demolish
that stately crosse in Cheapside.' In July, 1645,
two years afterwards, and in the middle of the
Civil War, Whitelock (afterwards Oliver Cromwell's

... . . 11 1 ^ r 1 ,-, . I trinmiing minister) mentions a burning on the site

that cannot telle how to fr.ame the like agame, to ■ f.i r-v^ t

keepc by thetn for a patterne ; for in time there
will be more crosses in London than ever there
was yet.

" I give my ground whereon I stood to be a free
market-place.

"JASPER CROSSE, HIS EPITAm.

' I look for no praise when I am dead,
Fur, going the right way, I never did tread ;
I was harde as an alderman's doore.
That's shut and stony-hearted to the poore.
I never gave alms, nor did anything .
Was good, nor e'er said, God saye (lie King.

e cross of crucifixes, Popish pictures,
and books. Soon after the demolition of the cross
(says Howell) a high square stone rest was " popped
up in Cheapside, hard by the Standard," according
to the legacy of Russell, a good-hearted porter.
This " rest and be thankful " bore the following
simple distich : —

" God bless thee, porter, who great pains doth take ;
Rest here, and welcome, when thy back doth ache."

There are four views of the old Cheapside cross
extant — one at Cowdray, one at the Pepysian library,
Cambridge. A third, engraYe4 by Wilkinson,

Chcapside.]

THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-BOW.

335

represents the procession of Mary de Medicis, on
her way through Cheapside ; and another, wliich
we give on page 331, shows the demoHtiou of the
cross.

The old London conduits were pleasant gather-
ing places for 'prentices, serving-men, and servant
girls — open-air parliaments of chatter, scandal,
love-making, and trade talk. Here all day repaired
the professional water-carriers, rough, sturdy fellows
— like Ben Jonson's Cob — who were hired to supiily
the houses of the rich goldsmiths of Chepe, and
who, before Sir Hugh Middleton brought the New

Roman temple, but of that there is no jjroof what-
ever. 'J'he first Bow Church seems, however, to
have been one of the earliest churches built by
the conquerors of Harold ; and here, no doubt, the
sullen Saxons came to sneer at the masse chanted
with a French accent. The first church was racked
by storm and fire, was for a time turned into a
fortress, was afterwards the scene of a muriler, and
last of all became one of our earliest ecclesiastical
courts. Stow, usually very clear and unconfused,
rather contradicts himself for once about the
origin of the name of the church — " St. Mary de

River to London, were indispensable to the citizen's I Arcubus or Bow." In one place he says it was so

very existence.

The Great Conduit of Cheapside stood in the
middle of the east end of the street near its junction
witli the Poultry, while the Little Conduit was at
the west end, facing Foster Lane and Old Change.
Stow, that indefatigable stitcher together of old
history, describes the larger conduit curtly as
bringing sweet water " by pipes of lead under-
ground from 'lyburn (Paddington) for the service
of the City.'' It was castellated with stone and
cisterned in lead about the year 12S5 (Edward I.),
and again new built and enlarged by Thomas
Ham, a sheriff in 1479 (Edward IV.). Ned Ward
(1700), in his lively ribald way describes Cheapside
conduit (he does not say which) palisaded with
chimney-sweepers' brooms and surrounded by
sweeps, probably waiting to be hired, so that " a
countryman, seeing so many black attendants
waiting at a stone hovel, took it to be one of Old
Nick's tenements."

In tlie reign of Edward III. the supply of water
for the City seems to have been derived chiefly from
the river, the local conduits being probably insufifi-
cient. The carters, called " water-leders '' (24th
Edward III.), were ordered by the City to charge
three-halfpence for taking a cart from Dowgate or
Castle Baynard to Chepe, and five farthings if
they stopped short of Chepe, while a sand-cart from
Aldgate to Chepe Conduit was to charge three-
pence.

The Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, the sound of
whose mellow bells is supposed to be so dear to
cockney ears, is the glory and crown of modern
Cheapside. The music it casts forth into the
troubled London air has a special magic of its
owiT, and has a power to waken memories of
the past. This chcf-d' ceuvre of Sir Christopher
^\ ren. whose steeple — as graceful as it is stately —
rises like a lighthouse above the roar and josde of
the human deluge below, stands on an ecclesiastical
site of great antiquity. Tlie old tradition is that
here, as at St. Paul's and Westminster, was a

called because it was the first London church built
on arches ; and elsewhere, when out of sight of this
assertion, he says that it took its name from certain
stone arches supporting a lantern on the top of the
tower. The first is more probably the true deriva-
tion, for St. Paul's could also boast its .Saxon
crypt. Bow Church is first mentioned in the reign
of William the Conqueror, and it was probably
built at that period.

There seems to have been nothing to specially
disturb the fair building and its ministering priests
till 1090 (William Rufus), when, in a tremendous
storm that sent the monks to their knees, and
shook the very saints from their niches over portal
and arch, the roof of Bow Church was, by one
great wrench of the wind, lifted oft", and wafted
down like a mere dead leaf into the street. It does
not say much for the state of the highway that four
of the huge rafters, twenty-six feet long, were driven
(so the chroniclers say) twenty-two feet into the
ground.

In 1270 part of the steeple fell, and caused the
death of several persons ; so that the work of
mediaeval builders does not seem to have been
always irreproachable.

It was in 1284 (Edward I.) that blood was shed,
and the right of sanctuary violated, in Bow Church.
One Duckett, a goldsmith, having in that warlike
age wounded in some fray a person named Ralph
Crepin, took refuge in this church, and slept in the
steeple. While there, certain friends of Crepin
entered during the night, and violating the sanc-
tuary, first slew Duckett, and then so placed the
body as to induce the belief that he had committed
suicide. A verdict to this effect was accordingly
returned at the inquisition, and the body was in-
terred with the customary indignities. 'I'he real cir-
cumstances, however, being afterwards discovered,
through the evidence of a boy, who, it appears, was
with Duckett in his voluntary confinement, and had
hid himself during the struggle, the murderers,
among whom was a woman, were apprehended and

?•? J

Ol.n AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

executed. After this occurrence the church was I the revival of an old and favourite usage. The
interdicted for a time, and the doors and windows rhymes are-
stopped with brambles. " ^^-^^' "f "'-^ .»""■ '"=''• " '"' ''"^ >;f |°"' '°^'^^^/ „
-n,e first we hear of the nightly ringing of Bow !-■■ 'hv '--"<■■ -='"S. '"v '--ad .hall have knockes.
bell at nine o'clock— a reminiscence, probably, of , To thi3 the clerk replies—

OLD MAP OK THE WARD OF CHEAP — ABOUT I75O,

the tyrannical Norman curfew, or signal for ex-
tinguishing the lights at eight p.m.- — is in 1315
(Edward II.). It was the go-to-bed bell of those
early days ; and two old couplets still exist, supposed
to be the complaint of the sleepy 'prentices of
Chepe and the obsequious reply of the Bow Church
clerk. In the reign of Henry VI. the steeple was
completed, and th; ringing of the bell was, perhaps.

" Children of Chepe, hold you all still,
For you shall have Bow bell rung at your will."

In 1315 (Edward II.) William Copeland, church-
warden of Bow, gave a new bell to the church, or
had the old one re-cast.

In 1512 (Henry VIII.) the upper part of the
steeple was repaired, and tlie lanthorn and the
stone arches forming the open coronet of the tower

Cheapstde. ]

ST. MARY-LE-BOW.

337

were finished with Caen stone. It was then pro-
posed to glaze the five corner lanthorns and the
top lanthorn, and light them up with torches or
cressets at night, to serve as beacons for travellers
on the northern roads to London; but the idea
was never carried out.

By the Great Fire of 1666, the old church was
destroyed ; and in 1671 the present edifice was com-
menced by Sir C. Wren. After it was erected the
parish was united to two others, Allhallows, Honey
Lane, and St. Pancras,
Soper Lane. As the
right of presentation
to the latter of them
is also vested in the
Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and that of the
former in the Grocers'
Company, the Arch-
bishop nominates
twice consecutively,
and the Grocers' Com-
pany once. We learn
from the " Parentalia,"
that the former church
had been mean and
low. On digging out
the ground, a founda-
tion was discovered
sufficiently firm for
the intended fabric,
which, on further exa-
mination, the account
states, appeared to be
the walls and pave-
ment of a temple, or
church, of Roman
workmanship, entirely
buried under the level
of the present street.

In reality, however (unless other remains were found
below those since seen, which is not probable), this
was nothing more than the crypt of the ancient
Norman church, and it may still be examined in the
vaults of the present building ; for, as the account
informs us, upon these walls was commenced the
new church. The former building stood about
forty feet backwards from Cheapside ; and in order
to bring the new steeple forward to the line of the
street, the site of a house not yet rebuilt was pur-
chased, and on it the excavations were commenced
for the foundation of the tower. Here a Roman
causeway was found, supposed to be the once
northern boundary of the colony. The church was
completed (chiefly at the expense of subscribers)
29

THE SEAL OF BOW CHURCH.
iS^c'/a^V 338.)

in 16S0. A certain Dame Dyonis Williamson, of
Hale's Hall, in the county of Norfolk, gave ;^2,ooo
towards the rebuilding. Of the monuments in the
church, that to the memory of lit. Newton, Bishop
of Bristol, and twenty-five years rector of Bow
Church, is the most noticeable. In 1S20 the spire
was repaired by George Gwilt, architect, and the
upper part of it taken down and rebuilt. There
used to be a large building, called the Crown-sild,
or shed, on the north side of the old church (now

the site of houses in
Cheajiside), which was
erected by Edward
III., as a place from
which the Royal
Family might view
tournaments and other
entertainments there-
after occurring in
Cheapside. Originally
the King had nothing
but a temporary
wooden shed for the
purpose, but this fall-
ing down, as already
described (page 316),
led to the erection of
the Crown-sild.

" Without the north
side of this church
of St. Mary Bow,"
says Stow, " towards
West Chepe, standeth
one fair building of
stone, called in record
Seldam, a shed which
greatly darkeneth the
said church ; for by
means thereof all the
windows and doors
up. King Edward
be made, and to be

on that side are stopped
caused this sild or shed to
strongly built of stone, for himself, the queen, and
other estates to stand in, there to behold the
joustings and other shows at their pleasure. And
this house for a long time after served for that use
— viz., in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. ;
but in the year 14 10 Henry IV. confirmed the said
shed or building to Stephen Spilman, William
Marchfield, and John Whateley, mercers, by the
name of one New Seldam, shed, or building,
with shops, cellars, and edifices whatsoever apper-
taining, called Crownside or Tamersilde, situate in
the Mercery in West Chepe, and in the parish of
St. Mary de Arcubus, ia London, &c. Notwith-

338

OLD AND NKW LU.M^UN.

iClisapsidc.

standing which grr.nt the kings of England and
otlicr great estates, as well ot" foreign countries
repairing to this realm, as inhabitants of the saniv,
have usually repaired to this place, therein to
behold the sliows of this city passing through
West Chepe— viz., the great watches accustomed
in the night, on tlu even of St. John the llaptist
and St. Peter at Midsummer, the example where: )f
were over long to recite, wherefore let it sntlicc
briefly to touch one. In the year 1510, on St.
John's even at night, King Henry VII L came to
this place, then called the King's Head in Chepe,
in the livery of a yeoman of the guard, with a
halbert on his shoulder, and there beholding tiie
watch, dejiarted jirivily when the watch was done,
and was not known to any but whom it pleased
him ; but on St. Peter's night next following he and
the queen came royally riding to the said place,
and there with their nobles beheld the watch of the
citv, and returned in the morning.'

The Builder, of 1845, gives a full account of the
discovery of architectural remains beneatli some
houses in Bow Churchyard : —

" They are," says tlie Builder, " of a inuch later
date than the celebrated Norman crypt at present
existing under the church. Beneath the house
No. 5 is a square vaulted chamber, twelve feet by
seven feet three inches high, with a slightly pointed
arch of ribbed masonry, similar to some of those
of the Old London Bridge. There had been in
the centre of the floor an excavation, which might
have been formerly used as a bath, but which was
now arched over and converted into a cesspool.
Proceeding towards Cheapside, there appears to be
a continuation of the vaulting beneath the houses
Nos. 4 and 3. The arch of the vault here is plain
and more pointed. The masonry appears, from an
aperture near to the warehouse above, to be of
considerable thickness. This crypt or vault is
seven feet in height, from the floor to the crown of
the arch, and is nine fe.'t in vv-idth, and eighteen
feet long. Beneath the house No. 4 is an outer
vault. The entrance to both these vaults is by a
depressed Tudor arch, with plain spandrils, six feet
high, the thickness of the walls about four feet. In
the thickness of the eastern wall of one of the
vaults are cut triangular-headed niches, similar to
those in which, in ancient ecclesiastical edifices, the
basins containing the holy water, and sometimes
lamps, were placed. These vaultings appear ori-
ginally to have extended to Cheapside; for beneath
a house there, in a direct line with these buildings
and close to the street, is a massive stone wall.
The arches of this crypt are of the low pointed
form, which came into use in the sixteenth century.

There are no records of any monastery having
existed on this spot, and it is difiicult to conjecture
v.hat the building originally was. Mr. Chaffers
diougiit it might be the remains of the Croaui-sild,
or shed, wliere our sovereigns resorted to viev,- the
joustings, shows, and great marching matches on
the eves of great festivals."

The ancient silver parish seal of St. Mary-le-
Bow, of which we give an engraving on page
337, representing the tower of the church as it
existed before the Great Fire of 1666, is still in
existence. It represents the old coronetted tower
with great exactitude.

The first recorded rector of Bow Church was
William D. Cilecester (1287, Edward I.), and the
earliest known monument in the church was in
memory of Sir John Coventry, Lord Mayor in
1425 (Henry VL). The advowson of St. Mary-le-
Bow belongs to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
is the chief of his thirteen peiuliars, or insulated
livings.

Lovers of figures may like to know that the
height of Bow steeple is 221 feet Si inches. The
church altogether cost £l,2,i>?> 8s. 7d.

It was in Bow parish, Maitland thinks, that John
Hare, the rich mercer, lived, at ;the sign of the
"Crown,'' in the reign of Henry ^TII. He was a
Sufiblk man, made a large fortune, and left a con-
siderable sum in charity — to jjoor, prisoners, to the
hospitals, the lazar-houses, and the alms-men of
Whittington College — and thirty-five heavy gold
mourning rings to special friends.

Edward IV., the same day he was proclaimed,
dined at the palace at Paul's (that is, Baynard's
Castle, near St. Paul's), in the City, and continued
there till his army was ready to march in pursuit
of King Henry ; during which stay in the City he
caused Walter Walker, an eminent grocer in Cheap-
side, to be apprehended and tried for a few harmless
words innocently spoken by him — viz., that he
would make his son heir to the Crown, inoffensively
meaning his own house, which had the crown for
its sign ; for which imaginary crime he was be-
headed in Smithfield, on the eighth day of this
king's reign. This " Crown '' was probably Hare's
house.

The house No. loS, Cheapside, opposite Bov/
Church, was rebuilt after the Great Fire upon the
sites of three ancient houses, called respectively
the " Black Bull," leased to Daniel Waldo ; the
" Cardinalle Hat," leased to Ann Stephens ; and
the " Black Boy," leased to William Carpenter, by
the Mercers' Company. In the library of the City
of London there are INISS. from the Survej^s of
Wills, &c., after the Fire of London, giving a

Cheapside. 1

THE "NAG'S HEAD" SCANDAL.

339

description of the property, as well as the names
of the respective owners. It was subsequently
leased to David Barclay, linendraper ; and has been
visited by six reigning sovereigns, from Charles II.
to Cieorge III., on civic festivities, and for wit-
nessing the Lord Mayor's show. In this house
Sir Edward Waldo was knighted by Charles II.,
and the Lord Mayor, in 17 14, was created a baronet
by George I. When the house was taken down
in 1 86 1, the fine old oak-panelled dining-room,
with its elaborate carvings, was purchased entire,
and removed to AV'ales. The purchaser has
written an interesting description (privately jirinted)
of the panelling, the royal visits, the Barclay
family, and other interesting matters.

In 186 1 there was sold, says Mr. Tinibs, amongst
the old materials of No. loS, the "fine old oak-
j)anelling of a large dining-room, with chimney-
piece and cornice to correspond, elaborately carved
in fruit and foliage, in capital preservation, 750
fee superficial." These panels v.-ere purchased
by Mr. Morris Charles Jones, of Gunrog, near
Welshpool, in North Wales, for ^72 los. 3d.,
including commission and expenses of removal,
being about is. 8d. per foot superficial. It has
been conveyed from Cheapside to Gunrog. This
room was the principal apartment of the house of
Sir Edward Waldo, and stated, in a pamplilet by
Mr. Jones, "to have been visited by six reigning
sovereigns, from Charles II. to George III., on
the occasion of civic festivities and for the purpose
of witne.ssing the Lord Mayor's show." (See Mr.
Jones's pamphlet, jirivately printed, 1864.) A con-
temporary (the Biiihlcr) doubts whether this carving
can be the work of Gibbons ; " if so, it is a rare
treasure, cheaply gained. But, except in St. Paul's,
a Crown and ecclesiastical structure, be it remem-
bered, not a corporate one, there is not a single
example of Gibbons' art to be seen in the City of
London proper."

Goldsmiths' Row, in Cheapside, between Old
Change and Bucklersbury, was originally built by
Thomas Wood, goldsmith and sherifif, in 1491
(Henry VIL). Stow, speaking of it, says: " It is
a most beautiful frame of houses and shops, con-
sisting of tenne faire dwellings, uniformly builded
foure stories high, beautified towards the street with
the Goldsmiths' arms, and likeness of Woodmen, in
memcrie of his name, riding on monstrous beasts,
all richly painted and gilt." Maitland assures us
•' it was beautiful to behold the glorious appearance
of goldsmith's shops, in the south row of Cheap-
side, which reached from the Old Change to Buck-
lersbur)', exclusive of four shops,"

The sign in stone of a nag's head upon the front

of the old house. No. 39, indicates, it is supposed,
the tavern at the corner of Eriday Street, where,
according to Roman Catholic scandal, the Pro-
testant bishops, on Eli/abetli's accession, conse-
crated each other in a very irregular manner.

Pennant thus relates the scandalous story : — " It
was pretended by the adversaries of our religion,
that a certain number of ecclesiastics, in their hurry
to take possession of the vacant sees, assembled
here, where they were to undergo the ceremony
from Anthony Kitchen, alias Dunstan, Bishoj) of
Llandaff, a sort of occasional conformist, who had
taken the oaths of sujiremacy to Queen Elizabeth.
Bonner, Bishop of London, then confined in prison,
hearing of it, sent his chaplain to Kitchen, threaten-
ing him with excommunication in case he pro-
ceeded. The prelate, therefore, refused to perform
the ceremony ; on which, say the Roman Catholics,
Parker and the other candidates, rather than defer
jjossession of their dioceses, determined to con-
secrate one another, which, says the story, they
did without any sort of scruple, and Story began
with Parker, who instantly rose Archbishoj) of
Canterbury. The simple refutation of thi:; lying
story may be read in Strype's ' Life of Archbishop
Parker.' " The " Nag's Head Tavern " is shown
in La Serre's print, " Entre'e de la Reyne Mere
du Roy," 1638, of which we gave a copy on
page 307 of this work.

" The confirmation," says Strype, "was performed
three days after the Queen's letters commissional
above-said ; that is, on the 9th day of December,
in the Church of St. Mary de Arcubus {i.e. Mary-
le-Bow, in Clieapside), regularly, and according to
the usual custom ; and tlien after this manner : —
First, John Incent, public notary, appeared per-
sonally, and presented to the Right Reverend the
Commissaries, appointed by the Queen, her said
letters to them directed in that behalf; humbly
praying them to take upon them the execution of
the said letters, and to proceed according to the
contents thereof, in the said business of confirma-
tion. And the said notary public publicly read
the Queen's commissional letters. Then, out of
the reverence and honour those bishops jiresent
(who were Barlow, Story, Coverdale, and the
suffragan of Bedford), bore to her Majesty, they
took upon them the commission, and accordingly
resolved to proceed according to the form, jiower,
and effect of the said letters. Next, the. notary
e.xhibited his proxy for the Dean and Chapter of
the Metropolitan Church, and made himself a party
for them ; and, in the procuratorial name of the
said Dean and Chapter, presented the venerable Mr.
Nicolas Bullingham, LL.D., and placed him before

540

OLD AXD NEW LONDON.

[Chcapsidc.

the said commissioners ; who then exhibited his
l)roxv for the said elect of Canterbury, and made
liimself a party for him. Then the .said notary
exhibited the original citatory mandate, together
with the certificate on the back side, concerning
the execution of the same ; and then required all
and singular persons cited, to be publicly called.
And conseiiiK-ntly a threefold iiroclamation was
made, of all and singular opposers, at the door
of the parcc'iial church aforesaid; and so as is
customary in these cases.

'• Then, at the desire of the said notary to go on
in this business of confirmation, they, the commis-
sioners, decreed so to do. as was more fully con-
tained in a schedule read by liishop Barlow, with
the consent of his colleagues. It is too long to
relate distinctly every formal proceeding in this
business ; only it may be necessary to add some
few of the most material passages.

"Then followed the deposition of witnesses con-
cerning the life and actions, learning and abilities
of the said elect ; his freedom, his legitimacy, his
])riesthood, and such like. One of the witnesses
was John Baker, of thirty-nine years old, gent., who
is said to sojourn for the present with the venerable
Dr. Parker, antl to be born in the parish of St.
Clement's, in Norwich. He, among other things,
witnessed, ' That the same reverend father was and
is a i^rudent man, commended for his knowledge of
sacred Scripture, and for his life and manners.
That he was a freeman, and born in lawful matri-
mony ; that he was in lawful age, and in priest's
orders, and a faithful subject to the Queen;' and
the said Baker, in giving the reason of his know-
ledge in this behalf, said, ' That he w\as the natural
brother of the Lord Elect, and that they w^ere born
fx uiiis parentihus ' (or rather, surely, e.x wia parente,
i.e., of one mother). William Tolwyn, M.A., aged
seventy years, and rector of St. Anthony, London,
was another witness, who had known the said
elect thirty years, and knew his mother, and that
he was still very well acquainted with him, and
of his certain knowledge could testify all above
said.

" The notary exhibited the process of the election
by the Dean and Chapter ; which the commissioners
did take a diligent view of, and at last, in the con-
clusion of this affair, the commissioners decreed
the said most reverend lord elected and presently
confirmed, should receive his consecration ; and
committed to him the care, rule, and administra-
tion, both of the temporals and spirituals of the
said archbishopric ; and decreed him to be inducted
into the real, actual, and corporal possession of the
same archbishopric,

" After many years the old story is ventured
again into the world, in a book printed at Douay,
anno 1654, wherein they thus tell their tale. 'I
know they (i.e., the Protestants) have tried many
ways, and feigned an old record (meaning tlic
authentic register of Archbishop Parker) to prove
their ordination from Catholic bishops. But it
was false, as I have received from two certain
i witnesses. The former of them was Dr. Darby-
shire, then Dean of St. Paul's (canon there, perhaps,
but never dean), and nephew to Dr. Boner, Bishop
of Landon ; who almost sixty years since lived at
Meux Port, then a holy, religious man (a Jesuit),
very aged, but perfect in sense and memory, who,
speaking what he knew, affirmed to myself and
another with me, that like good fellows they made
themselves bishops at an inn, because they could get no
true bishops to consecrate them. My other witness
was a gentleman of honour, worth, and credit,
dead not many years since, whose father, a chief
judge of this kingdom, visiting Archbishop Heath,
saw a letter, sent from Bishop Boner out of
the Marshalsea, by one of his chaplains, to the
archbishop, read, while they sat at dinner together ;
wherein he merrily related the manner how these
new bishops (because he had dissuaded Ogelthorp,
Bishop of Carlisle, from doing it in his diocese)
ordained one another at an inn, where they met
together. And while others laughed at this new
manner of consecrating bishops, the archbishop
himself, gravely, and not without tears, expressed
his grief to see such a ragged comjiany of men
come poor out of foreign parts, and appointed to
succeed the old clergy.'

" \\'hich forgery, when once invented, was so
acceptable to the Romanists, that it was most
confidently repeated again in an English book,
printed at Ant\\'erp, 165 8, permissione superiornm,
being a second edition, licensed by Gulielmo
Bolognimo, where the author sets down his story
in these words : — ' 'Phe heretics who «ere named
to succeed in the other bishops' sees, could not
prevail with Llandaff (whom he calls a little before
an old simple man) to consecrate them at the " Nag's
Head," in Cheapside, where they appointed to
meet him. And therefore they made use of Stor)',
who was never ordained bishop, though he bore
the name in King Edward's reign. Kneeling
before him, he laid the Bible upon their heads or
shoulders, and bid them rise up and preach the
word of God sincerely. ' This is,' added he. ' so
evident a truth, that for the space of fifty years no
Protestant durst contradict it. ' "

" The form adopted at the confirmation of Arch-
bishop Parker,'' Ea\s Dr. Pusey in a letter dated

Cneapbidc]

A tOfct A>Jt) A PRINCE IN CliEAPStt)£.

54t

1865, quoted by Mr. 'I'imbs, "was carefully framed
on the old form used in the contirmations by
Archbishop Chichele (which was the point for
which I examined the registers in the Lambeth
librar)'). The words used in the consecration of
the bishops confirmed by Chichele do not occur
in the registers. The words used by the conse-
crators of Parker, ' Accipe Spiritum sanctum,' were
read in the later pontificals, as in that of Exeter,
Lacy's (Maskell's ' Monumenta Ritualia,' iii. 258).
Roman Catholic writers admit tliat only is essen-
tial to consecration which the English service-book
retained — prayer during the service, which should
have reference to the office of bishop, and the
imposition of hands. And, in fact, Cardinal Pole
engaged to retain in their orders those who had
been so ordained under Edward VI., and his act
■was confirmed by Paul IV." (Sanders, De Schism.
Aiii^l., 1. iii. 350.)

The house No. 73, Cheapside, shown in our
illustration on page 343, was erected, from the
design of Sir Christopher Wren, for Sir William
Turner, Knight, who served the ofiice of Lord
ilayor in the year 166S-9, and here he kept his
mayoral t_\-.

At the "Queen's Arms Tavern," No. 71, Cheap- '
side, the poet Keats once lived. The second floor
of the house which stretches over the passage
leading to this tavern' was his lodging. Here,
says Cunningham, he wrote his magnificent sonnet
on Cliapman's " Homer," and all the poems in his
first little volume. Keats, the son of a livery-
stable keeper in Moorfields, was born in 1795, and
died of consumption at Rome iii 1S21. He pub-
lished his "Entiyraion" (the inspiration suggested
from Lempriere alone) in 1818. We annex the
glorious sonnet written within sound of Bow
bells :—

U.\ KHtST LOOKING INTO CHAPM.VN's "HOMER."
" Mucli have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ;

Round many western islands have I been,
Wliich baids, in fealty to Apollo, hold,
eft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne ;

Yet did I never breatlie its pure serene
Till I heaid Chapman speak out loud and bold ;
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Davien."

Behnes' poor bald statue of Sir Robert Peel, in
the Paternoster Row end of Cheapside, was un-
covered July 2ist, 1855. The Builder at the time
justly lamented that so much good metal was

wasted. The statue is without thought — the liead
is set on the neck awkwardly, the jiedestal is sense-
less, and the two double lanijis at the side are
mean and i)altr)-.

Saddlers' Hall is close to Foster Lane, Cheapside.
"Near unto this lane," says Strype, "but in Cheap-
siile, is Saddlers' Hall — a pretty good buikling,
seated at the upper end of a handsome allc}', near
to which is Half Moon Alley, which is but smallj
at the upper end of which is a tavern, which gives
a passage into Foster Lane, and another into
Cutter Lane."

"This appears," says Maitland, "to be a fraternity
of great antiquity, by a convention agreed upon
between them and the Dean and Chajiter of St.
Martin's-le-Grand', about the reign of Richard 1.,
at which time I imagine it to have been an Adul-
terine Guild, seeing it was only incorporated by
letters patent of Edward I., by the appellation of
' The AVardens, or Keepers and Commonalty of
the Mystery or Art of Sadlers, London.' This
company is governed by a prime and three other
wardens, and eighteen assistants, with a li\ery of
seventy members, whose fine of admission is ten
pounds."' At the entrance is an ornamental door-
case, and an iron gate, and it is a very complete
building for the use of such a company. It is
adorned with fret-work and ;vainscot, and the Com-
pany's arms are carved in stone over the gate next
the street."

In 1736, Prince Frederick of ^^'ales, that hope-
less creature, being desirous of seeing the Lord
Mayor's show privately, visited the City in dis-
guise. At that ti'ne it Avas the custom for several
of the City companies, particularly for those \':\\o
had no barges, to have stands erected in the
streets through which the Lord Mayor passed on
his return from Westminster, in which the freemen
of companies were accustomed to assemble. It
happened that his Royal Highness was discovered
by some of the Saddlers' Company, in consequence
of which he was invited to their stand, which
invitation he accepted, and the parties were so well
pleased with each other that his Royal Highness
was soon after chosen Master of the Compaii)-, a
compliment which he also accepted. The City on
that occasion formed a resolution to compliment
his Royal Highness with the freedom of London,
pursuant to which the Court of Lord Mayor and
Aldermen attended the prince, 011 the 17th of

• I regret that, relying upon authorities which are not corrected up
to the present date, I was led into some errors in my accotuit of the
Stationers' Company ou pp. 229— l'3^; of this worh. The table of
planetary influences has been for several years discontinued in Mowre s
Almanack : and the Comp.iiiv- are not entitled to receive for themselves
any copies of new books — V.'. 1".

344

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Chcapslda.

December with the said ftcedom, of which the ' of the Saddlers, in the time of the Right Honourable
fullowinj: is a copy :- Sir John Thompson, Knight, Lord Mayor, and

"The most high, most potent, and tnost illus- | John Bosworth, Esq., Chamberlam of the said
trious Prince Frederick Lewis, Prince of Great | City." In his " Industry and Idleness," Hogarth
liritain, Electoral Prince of Brunswick-Lunenburg, | shows us the prince and princess on the balcony
Prince' of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of I of Saddler's Hall.

BOW CUURCH, CHEAPSIDK. (From a virui iahin about 1750.)

Rothsay, Duke of Edinburgh, Marquis of the Isle
of Ely, Earl of Eltham, Earl of Chester, Viscount
Launceston, Baron of Renfrew, Baron of Snowdon,
Lord of the Isles, Steward of Scotland, Knight of
the most noble Order of the Garter, and one of his
Majesty's most honourable Privy Council, of his
mere grace and princely favour, did the most
august City of London the honour to accept the
freedom thereof, and was admitted of the Company

That dull poet, worthy Sir Richard Blackmore,
whom Locke and Addison praised and Dryden
ridiculed, lived either at Saddlers' Hall or just
opposite. It was on this weariful Tupper of his
day that Garth wrote these verses : —

" Unwieldy peiLint, let thy awkward muse,
With censures praise, with llatteries abuse.
To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art ;
Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart.

Cheapsidc. ]

A CHEAPSIDE ART PATRON.

Then be advisVl, and scribble not agen ;
'I'hoii'rt fashioned for a Had, and not a pen.

If B I's immortal wit thou wouldst descry,

Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry.

Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong ;

Thy poems and thy patients live not long."

343

verses in his carriage, as he drove to visit his
patients, a feat to which Dryden alhides wlicn lie
talks of Blackmorc writing to the "nimbhng of his
carriage wheels."

At No. 90, Cheapside lived Alderman Boydcli,

NO. 73, cilliAPSlDE (s,r page 341). {From ati d!J Fitw.)
And some other satirical verses on Sir Richard ■ engraver and printseller, a man who in his time

began :

" 'Twas kindly done of the good-natured cits.

To place before thy door a brace of tits."

Blackmore, who had been brought up as an attor-

did more for English art than all the English
monarchs from the Conquest downwards. He w^as
apprenticed, when more than twenty years old,
to Mr. Tomson, engraver, and soon felt a desire
ney's clerk and schoolmaster, WTOte most of his [ to popularise and extend the art. His first funds

OLD AND NEW LONDObJ.

^ . Ill II A [Ml I IM M.w ijV-Zi^ J.-'v^'i.t . .Lheapside,

hTderived from thllalc of a book of 152 Innnblo ' sidcrably more than I liad given for any copper-
prints cn.'raved by himself. With the profits he plate. However, serious as the sum was I bade
!vas enabfed to pay the best engravers hberally, to 1 liim get to work, and he proceeded with all cheer-
„,ake copies of the works of our best masters. 1 fulness, for as he went on I advanced him money ;

"The alderman assured me," savs "Rainy Day i and though he lost no time, I found that he had

publishing, he | received nearly ih^ whole amount before he had
half finished his task. I frequently called upon
him, and found him struggling with serious dilii-
culties, with his wife and family, in an upper
lodging in Green's Court, Castle Street, Leicester
Square, for there he lived before he went into
Green Street. However, I encouraged him by
allowing him to diaw on me to the extent of
twenty-five pounds more ; and at length that sum
was paid, and I was unavoidably under the neces-
sity of saying, " Mr. Woollett, I find we have
made too close a bargain with each other. \'ou
have exerted yourself, and I fear I have gone
beyond my strength, or, indeed, what I ought to
have risked, as we neither of us can be aware of
the success of the speculation. However, I am
determined, whatever the event may be, to enable
you to finish it to your wish — at least, to allow
you to work upon it as long as another twenty-
five pounds can extend, but there we must posi-
tively stop." The plate was finished; and, after
taking very few proofs, I published the print at
five shillings, and it succeeded so much beyond
my expectations, that I immediately employed Mr.
Woollett upon another engraving, from another
picture by 'Wilson ; and I am now thoroughl)- con-
vinced that had I continued publishing subjects of
this description, my fortune would have been in-
creased tenfold.' "

"In the year 1786," says Knowles, in his " Life
of Fuseli," " Mr. Alderman Boydell, at the sug-
gestion of Mr. George Nicol, began to form his
splendid collection of modern historical pictures,
the subjects being from Shakespeare's plays, and
which was called ' The Shakespeare Gallery.' This
liberal and well-timed speculation gave great energy
to this branch of the art, as well as employment to
many of our best artists and engravers, and among
the former to Fuseli, who executed eight large and
one small picture for the galler)'. The following
were the subjects : 'Prospero,' ' Miranda,' 'Caliban,'
and ' Ariel,' from the Tempest ; ' Titania in raptures
with Bottom, who wears the ass's head, attendant
fairies, &c. ;' 'Titania awaking, discovers Oberon
at her side, Puck is removing the ass's head from
Bottom ' {Midsummer Night's Dream) ; ' Henry V.
with the Conspirators' {King Henry V.); 'Lear

Smith," " that when he commenced j)
etched small plates of landscapes, which he pro-
duced in plates of six, and sold for sixpence ; and
that as there were very few print-shops at that
time in London, he prevailed upon the sellers of
children's toys to allow his little books to be put in
their windows. These shops he regularly visited
every Saturday, to see if any had been sold, and
to leave more. His most successful shop was the
sign of the ' Cricket Bat,' in Duke's Court, St.
Martin's Lane, where he found he had sold as
many as came to five shillings and sixpence. Witli
this success he was so pleased, that, wishing to
invite the shopkeeper to continue in his interest,
lie laid out the money in a silver pencil-case ;
which article, after he had related the above anec-
dote, he took out of his pocket and assured me he
never would part with. He then favoured me with
the following history of WooUett's plate of the
' Niobe,' and, as it is interesting, I shall endeavour
to relate it in Mr. Boydell's own words : —

" ' When I got a litrie forward in the world,'
said the venerable alderman, ' I took a whole shop,
for at my commencement I kept only ,half a one.
In the course of one year I imported numerous
iniiiressions of Vernet's celebrated " Storm," so
admirably engraved by Lerpiniere, for which I was
obliged to pay in hard cash, as the French took
none of our prints in return. Upon Mr. Wool-
lett's expressing himself highly delighted with the
"Storm," I was induced, knowing his ability as an
engraver, to ask him if he thought he could pro-
duce a print of the same size which I could sen^d
over, so that in future I could avoid payment in
money, and prove to the French nation that an
Fnglishman could produce a print of equal merit ;
upon which he immediately declared that he should
like much to try.

" ' At this time the jjrincipal conversation among
artists was ujjon Mr. Wilson's grand picture of
" Niobe," which had just arrived from Rome. I
therefore immediately applied to his Royal High-
ness the Duke of Gloucester, its owner, and pro-
cured permission for Woollett to engrave it. But
before he ventured upon the task, I requested to
know what idea he had as to the expense, and after
some consideration, he said he thought he could
engrave it for one hundred guinea* This sum, dismissing Cordelia from h.is Court' {King Lear) ;
small as it may now aj^pear, was to me,' observed
the alderman, ' an unheard-of price, being con-

' Ghost of Hamlet's Father ' {Hamlet) ; ' Falstaft"
and Doll ' {King Henry IV., Seauitf Fart) ; ' Mac-

Clieapsidc]

iMR. ALDERMAN BOYDRLL.

34S

betli meeting the \Vitche.s on the Heath' {Macbeth) ;
' Robin (Joodfellow ' {Mulsiiniwcr Ni[^hl's J^nwii).
'I'his gallery gave the public an opportunity of
judging of Fuseli's versatile powers.

" The stately majesty of the ' Ghost of Hamlet's
Father' contrasted with the expressive energy of
his son, and tlie sublimity brought about by the
light, shadow, and general tone, strike the inind
with awe. In tlie picture of 'Lear' is admirably
portrayed the stubborn rashness of the flitl)cr, the
fihal piety of the discarded daughter, and the
wiciced determination of Regan and Goneril. The
fairy scenes in Midsiimiucr Night's Dream am.use
the fanc)', and show the vast inventive powers of
the painter ; and ' Falstaft" with Doll ' is exquisitely
ludicrous.

" The example set by Boydell was a stimulus to
other speculators of a similar nature, and within a
few years appeared the Macklin and Woodmason
galleries ; and it may be said with great truth that
Fuseli's pictures were among the most striking, if
not the best, in either collection.''

"a.d. 1787,'' says Northcote, in his "Life of
Reynolds," "when Alderman Boydell projected the
scheme of his magnificent edition of the plays of
Shakespeare, accompanied with large prints from
pictures to be executed by English painters, it was
deemed to be absolutely necessary that something
of Sir Joshua's painting should be procured to grace
the collection; but, unexpectedly, Sir Joshua ap-
peared to be rather shy in the business, as if he
thought it degrading himself to paint for a print-
seller, and he would not at first consent to be
employed in the work. George Stevens, the editor
of Shakespeare, now undertook to persuade him to
comply, and, taking a bank-bill of five hundred
pounds in his hand, he had an interview with Sir
Joshua, when, using all his eloquence in argument,
he, in the meantime, slipped the bank-bill into his
hand ; he then soon found that his mode of reasoning
was not to be resisted, and a jjicture was promised.
Sir Joshua immediately commenced his studies,
and no less than three paintings were exhibited at
the Shakspeare -Gallery, or at least taken from that
poet, the only ones, as has been very correctly said,
which Sir Joshua ever executed for his illustration,
with the exception of a head of ' King Lear ' (done
indeed in 17S3), and now in possession of the Mar-
chioness of Thomond, and a portrait of the Hon.
Mrs. Tollemache, in the character of ' Miranda,' in
The Tempest, in which ' Prospero ' and ' Caliban ' are
introduced.

" One of these paintings for the Gallery was
' Puck,' or ' Robin Goodfellow,' as it has been
called, which, in point of expression and animation,

is imparalleled, and one of tlie happiest efforts of Sir
Joshua's pencil, though it has been said by some
cold critics not to be perfectly characteristic of the
merry wanderer of Shakespeare. ' ALacbeth,' with
the witches and the caldron, was anotlier, and for
this last Mr. Boydell [laid him 1,000 guineas ; but
who is now the possessor of it I know not.

"'Puck-' was painted in 17S9. Walpole depreciates
it as ' an ugly little imp (but wltli some cliaracter)
sitting on a mushroom half as big as a mile-stone.'
Mr. Nicholls.of the British Institution, related to .Mr.
Cotton that the alderman and his grandfather were
with Sir Joshua when painting the death of Cardinal
Beaufort. Boydell was much taken with the portrait
of a naked child, and wished it could be brought
into the Shakspeare. Sir Joshua said it was painted
from a little child he found sitting on his steps in
Leicester Square. Nlcholls' grandfather then said,
'Well, Mr. Alderman, it cai very easily come into
the Shakspeare if Sir Josljua will kindly place him
upon a mushroom, give him fawn's ears, and make
a Puck of him.' Sir Joshua liked the notion, and
painted the picture accordingly.

"The morning of the day on which Sir Joshua's
' Puck ' was to be sold. Lord Farnborough and
Davies, the painter, breaklasted with Mr. Rogers,
apd went to the sale together. When the picture
was put up there was a general clapping of hands,
and yet it was knocked down to Mr. Rogers for
105 guineas. As he walked home from the sale,
a man carried ' Puck ' before him, and so well was
the picture known that more than one person,
j as they were goi'ng along the street, called out,
'There it is!' At Mr. Rogers' sale, in 1S56, it
was purchased by Earl Fitzwilliam for 9S0 guineas.
The grown-up person of the sitter for ' Puck ' was
in Messrs. Christie and Manson's room during
the sale, and stood next to Lord Fitzwilliam, who
is also a survivor of the sitters to Sir Joshua.
The merry boy, whom Sir Joshua found upon liis
door-step, subsequently became a jjorter at l^lHot's
brewery, in Pimlico.'

In 1804, Alderman Boydell applied through his
friend, Sir John ,W. Anderson, to the House of
Commons, for leave to dispose of Ills paintings and
drawings by lottery. In his petition he described
himself, with modesty and pathos, as an old man of
eighty-five, anxious to free himself from debts which
now oppressed him, although he, with his brethren,,
had expended upwards of ^^350, 000 in promoting
the fine arts. Sixty years before he had begun to
benefit engi-aving by establishing a school of English
engravers. At that time the whole print commerce
of England consisted in importing a few foreign
prints (chlelly French) " to supply the cabinet:; ef

346

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

the curious.' In time he effected a total change in
this branch of commerce, " very few prints being now
imported, while the foreign market is principally
supplied with [irints from England." By degrees,
the large sums received from tlic Continent for
English ])lates encouraged him to attempt also an
English school of jjictorial painting, the want of
such a school having been long a source of opjjro-
brium among foreign writers on England. The
Shakespeare (lallery was sufficient to convince the
world that English genius only needed encourage-
ment to obtain a facility, versatility, and independ-
ence of thought unknown to the Italian, Flemish, or
French schools. That Ciallery he had long hoped to
have left to a generous public, but the recent Van-
dalic revolution in France had cut up his revenue
by the roots, Flanders, Hollantl, and Germany being
his chief marts. At the same time he acknowledged
he had not been provident, his natural enthusiasm
for promoting the fine arts ha\ing led him after each
success to i\y at once to some new artist with the
whole gains of his former undertaking. He had too
late seen his error, having increased his stock of
copper-plates to such a heap that all the print-sellers
in Europe (especially in these unfavourable times)
could not purchase them. He therefore prayed for
permission to create a lottery, the House having
the assurance of the even tenor of a long life " that
it would be fairly and honourably conducted."
The worthy man obtained leave for his lottery, !

and died December ii, a few days after the last
tickets were sold. He was buried with civic state
in the Church of St. Olave, Jewry, the Lord Mayor,
aldermen, and several artists attending. Boydcll
was very generous and charitable. He gave
jiictures to adorn the City Council Chamber, the
Court Room of the Stationers' Company, and the
dining-room of the Sessions House. He was also
a generous benefactor to the Humane Society and
the Literary Fund, and was for many years the
President of both Societies. The Shakespeare
Gallery finally fell by lottery to Mr. Tassie, the
well-known medallist, who thrived to a good old
age upon the profits of poor Boydell's too generous
expenditure. This enterjjrising man was elected
Alderman of Cheap A\'ard in 1782, Sheriff in
1785, and Lord Mayor in 1790. His death was
occasioned by a cold, caught at the Old Bailey
Sessions. His nephew, Josiah Boydell, engraved
for him for forty years.

It was the regular custom of Mr. Alderman
Boydell (says " Rainy Day " Smith), who was a
very early riser, to repair at five o'clock imme-
diately to the pump in Ironmonger Lane. There,
after placing his wig upon the ball at the top,
he used to sluice his head with its water. This
well known and highly respected character was
one of the last men who wore a three-cornered
hat, commonly called the " Eghara, Staines, and
Windsor.''

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES— SOUTH.

The King-s Evcl,ange--Friday Street and the Poet Chaucer-The Wednesday Club in Friday Street-William Paterson, Fender of the Dank of
tngland-Hmv Lasy u .s to Redeem the National Debt-St. Matthew's and St. Margaret Moses-Bread Street and the Bakers' Shops-
BntX?'Th"f >"'.".' Fratern.tyof St^Austin's-St. Mildred's, Bread Stree.-The Mi.re Tavern-A Priestly I.ael-M.lton's
W^lI": A%, T r I :'" ^aletgh -d .he Mermaid Club-Thom.as Coryatt, the Traveller-Bo>v Lane-Queen Street-
Soper. Lane-A .Mercer Kmght-St. Bennet Sherehog-Epitaphs in the Church of St. Thomas Apostle-A Charitable Merchant

Old Change was formerly the old Exchange,
so called from the King's Exchange, says Stow,
there kept, which was for the receipt of bullion to
he coined.

The King's Exchange was in Old Exchange, now
■Old 'Change, Cheapside. " It was here," says Tite,
"that one of those ancient officers, known as the
King's Exchanger, was placed, whose duty it was
to attend to the supply of the mints with bullion,
to distribute the new coinage, and to regulate the
exchange of foreign coin. Of these officers there
were anciently three— two in London, at the Tower
and Old Exchange, and one in the city of Cc^tU^r-

bury. Subsequently another was appointed, with
an establishment in Lombard Street, the ancient
rendezvous of the merchants ; and it appears not
improbable that Queen Elizabeth's intention was
to have removed this functionary to what was
pre-eminently designated by her ' The Royal Ex-
change,' and hence the reason for the change of
the name of this edifice by Elizabeth."

"In the reign of Henry VII.," says Francis, in
his "History of the Bank of England," "the Royal
prerogative forbade English coins to be exported,
and the Royal Exchange was alone entitled to give
native money for foreign gqin or buUioii, During

C!ic.'.''s!.'e.

CHAUCER'S EVIiJK.N-Cr:

347

the reign of Henry VHI. the coin grew so debased
as to be diflicult to exchange, and the (ioldsmiths
quietly superseded the royal officer. In 1627
Charles I., ever on the watch for power, re-esta-
blished the ofrice, and in a pamphlet written by his
orders, asserted that ' the jjrerogative had always
been a llower of the Crown, and that the Gold-
smiths had left off their proper trade and turned
exchangers of plate and foreign coins for our
English coins, although they had no right' Charles
entrusted the office of ' changer, exchanger, and
ante-changer ' to Henry Rich, first Earl of Holland,
who soon deserted his cause for that of the Parlia-
ment. The office has not since been re-established."

No. 36, Old 'Change was formerly ih; '"'riiree
!Morrice Dancers" public-house, v.ith the three
figures sculptured on a stone as the sign and an
ornament (temp. James I.). The house was taken
down about 1801. There is an etching of this very
characteristic sign on stone. (Timbs.)

The celebrated poet and enthusiast, Lord Her-
bert of Cherbury, lived, in the reign of James I., in
a '• house among gardens, near the old Exchange."
At the beginning of the last centur\', the place was
chieHy inhabited by American merchants ; at this
time it is principally inhabited by calico printers
and Manchester warehousemen.

" Friday Street was so called," says Stow, " of
fishmongers dwelling there, and serving Friday's
Market." In the roll of the Scrope and Grosvenor
heraldic controversy (Edward III.) the poet Chaucer
is recorded as giving the folhjwing evidence con-
nected with this street : —

"Geffray Chaucere, Esqueer, of the age of forty
years, and moreover armed twenty-seven years^ for
the side of Sir Richartl Lescrop, sworn and ex-
amined, being asked if the arms, azyure, a bend or,
belonged or ought to pertain to the said Sir Richard
by right and heritage, said, Yes ; for he saw him so
armed in Frannce, before the town of Fetters, and
Sir Henry Lescrop armed in the same arms with a
white label and with banner ; and the said Sir
Richard armed in the entire arms azyure a bend or,
and so during the whole expedition until the said
Geaffray was t.aken. Leing asked how he knew
that the said arms belonged to the said Sir Richard,
said that he liad heard old knights and esquires
say that they had had continual possession of the
said arms ; and that he had ceen them displayed
on banners, glass paintings, and vestments, and
commonly called the arms of Scrope. Being asked
whether he had ever heard of any interruption or
challenge made by Sir Robert Grosvemor or his
ancestors, said No ; but that he was once in Friday
Strejt, London, and 'v.alking up the street he ob-

' served a new sign hanging out with these arms
thereoii, and en(iuired what inn that was tiiat had
hung out these arms of Scrope ? And one answered
I him, saying, ' They are not hung out, Sir, for the
j arms of Scrope, nor painted there for those arms,
but they are painted and put there by a Knight of
tlie county of Chester, called Sir Robert Grosvemor.'
And that was the first time he ever heard speak of
Sir Robert Grosvemor or his ancestors, or of any
one bearing the name of Grosvemor." This is
really almost the only authentic scrap we possess
of the facts of Chaucer's life.

The " White Horse," a tavern in Friday Street,
makes a conspicuous figure in the " Merry Con-
ceited Jests of George Peele," tlie poet and play-
writer of Elizabeth's reign.

At the Wednesday Club in Friday Street, William
Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, and
originator of the unfortunate Darien scheme, held
his real or imaginary Wednesday club meetings,
in which were discussed proposals for the union of
F'ngland and Scotland, and the redemption of
the National Debt. This remarkable financier was
born at Lochnabar, in Dumfriesshire, in 164S, and
died in 17 19. The following extracts from Pater-
son's probably imaginary conversations are of
interest : —

" And thus," says Paterson, " supposing the
people of Scotland to be in number one million,
and that as matters now stand their industry yields
them only about five pounds per annum per^head,
as reckoned one with another, or five millions yearly
in the whole, at this rate these five millions will by
the union not only be advanced to six, but' put
in a way of further improvement ; and allowing
;^ioo,ooo per annum were on this foot to be paid
in additional taxes, yet there would still remain a
yearly sum of about _;^9oo,ooo towards subsisting
the people more comfortably, and making i)ro-
vision against times of scarcity, and other accidents,
to which, I understand, that country is very much
exposed (1706)."

"And I remember complaints of this kind were
very loud in the days of King Charles II.," said
^Ix. Brooks, " particularly that, though in his time
the public taxes and impositions upon the people
were doubled or trebled to what they formerly were,
he nevertheless run at least a million in debt."

" If men were uneasy with public taxes and debts
in the time of King Charies II.," said Mr. Ma\-,
" because then doubled or trebled to what they had
formerly been, how much more may they be so
now, when taxed at least three times more, and the
public debts increased from about one million, as
you say they tlien were, to fifty millions or up-

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

348

wards?. . . . and yet France is in away of being j pay seems to have sprung up with Sir Nathaniel
entirely out of debt in a year or two." ! Gould, in 1725, when it was opposed.

"At this rate," said Mr. May, " Great Britain may ' St. Matthew's was situate on the west side of
possibly be (luite out of debt in four or five years, ' Friday Street. The patronage of it was in the
or less. But tliougli it seems wc have been at least Abbot and Convent of Westminster. This church,
as hasty in running into debt as those m France, being destroyed by the Fire of London, in 1666,

THE DOOR OF S.'.DDLER's HALL (w /il^V 34I).

yet would I by no means advise us to run so hastily
out ; slower measures will be juster, and conse-
quently better and surer."

Mr. Pitt's celebrated measure was based upon
an opinion that money could be borrowed with
advantage to pay the national debt. Paterson pro-
posed to redeem it out of a surplus revenue,
administered so skilfully as to lower the interest in
the money market. The notion of borrouins: to

was handsomely rebuilt, and the parish of St. Peter,
Cheap, thereunto added by Act of Parliament. The
following epitaph (1583) was in this church: —
" Antliony Cage entombed here doth rest,

Whose wisdome still prevail'd the Commonweale ;

A man with God's good gifts so greatly blest,

That few or none his doings may impale,

A man unto the widow and the poore,

A comfort, and a succour evermore.

Three wives he had of credit and of fame ;

Cheapsidc]

OLD MEMORIES OF BREAD STREET.

349

Tlie first of them, Elizabeth that hi'jht,

Wlio buried liere, brought to this Cii^f, by name,

Seventecne young plants, to give his table light."

".\t St. Margaret Moyses,'' says Stow, "was btiried
Mr. Bliss (or Briss), a Skinner, one of the masters
of tlie hospital. There attended all the masters
of the hospital, with green staves in tlicir hands,
and all the Company in their liveries, with twenty
clerks singing before. The sermon was preached
by Mr. Jewel, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury ; and
therein he plainly affirmed there was no purgatory.
Thence the Company retired to his house to dinner.
This burial was an. 1559, Jan. 30.

records, that in the year 1302, which was the 30th
of Edward I., the bakers of London were bound
to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the
market here ; and that they should have four hall
motes in the year, at four several terms, to determine
of enormities belonging to the said company. Breail
Street is now wholly inhabited by rich merchants,
and divers fair inns he there, for good reteipt
of carriers and other travellers to the City. It
appears in the will of Edward Stafford, Earl of
Wylshire, dated the 22nd of March, 1498, and
14 Henry VIL, that he lived in a house in Bread
Street, in London, which belonged to the family of

MILTON S HOUSE.

MILTON'S BURIAL-PLACE.

The following epitaph (1569) is worth pre-
serving : —

" Heati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur." — Apoc. 14.
" To William Dane, that sometime was
An ironmonger ; where each degree
He worthily (with praise) did passe.
By Wisdom, Truth, ami Heed, was he
Advanc'd an Alderman to be ;
Then Sheriffe ; that he, with justice prcst,
And cost, performed with the best.
In almes frank, of conscience cleare ;
In grace with prince, to people glad ;
His vertuous wife, his faithful peere,
Margaret, this monument hath made ;
Meaning (through God) that as shee had
With him (in house) long lived well ;
Even so in Tombes Blisse to dwell."

" Bread Street," says Stow, " is so called of bread
there in old times then sold ; for it appeareth by
30

Stafford, Duke of Bucks afterwards ; he bequeathed
all the staff in that house to the Lord of Bucking-
ham, for he died without issue."

The parish church of" St. Augustine, in Watheling
Street" was destroyed by the Great Fire, but re-
built in 16S2. Stow informs us that here was a
fraternity founded a.d. 13S7, called the Fraternity
of St. Austin's, in Watling Street, and other good
people dwelling in the City. " They were, on the
eve of St. Austin's, to meet at the said church,
in the morning at high mass, and every brother
to offer a penny. And after that to be ready, al
mangier ou al ra-ele; i.e., to eat or to ra'el, accord-
ing to the ordinance of the master and wardens of
the fraternity. They set up in the honour of God
and St. Austin, one branch of si.x tapers in the
said church, before the image of St. Austin; and

35°

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

ICIltap^id<.^

aho two torches, with the \vhich, if any of the said

fraternity were comnicndod to God, he might be

carried to the earth. They were to meet at the

vault at Paul's (perhaps St. Faith's), and to go ' is (luaint

thence to the Church of St. Austin's, and the]

])riests and the clerks said PAm/'o and i?//4v, and

in nutins, a mass c f requiem at the high altar."

" Thi-re is a flat stone," says Stow, " in the south
aisle of the churcli. It is laid over an Armenian
merchant, of which foreign merchants there be
divers that lodge and harbour in the Old Change
in this parish."

St. Mildred's, in Bread Street, was repaired in
162S. '-At the upper end of the chancel," says
Strype, "is a fine window, full of cost and beauty,
which being divided into five parts, carries in the
first of them a very artful and curious represen-
tation of the Spaniard's Great Arma'do, and die
battle in 1588 ; in the second, the monument of
Queen Elizabeth ; . in the third, thp Gunpowder
Plot ; in the fourth, the lamentable time of infec-
tion, 1C25 ; and in the fifth and last, the view and
lively portraiture of that worthy gentleman, Captain
Nicolas Crispe, at whose sole cost (among other)

books in their hands, from Paul's, through Cheap,

Cornhill/" &c.

Among the epitaphs the following, given by Stow,

" To the s.-icred msmory of that worthy ami faithfuU minister
of Christ, Master Richard Stoclce ; who after 32 yecrcs spent
in the ministry, wherein by his learned labours, joined wiih
wisedome, and a mo^t holy life, God's glory was much
advanced, his Church edified, piety increased, and the true
honour of a pastor's life maintained ; deceased April 20, 1626.
Some of his loving parishioners have consecrated this monu-
ment of their never-dying love, Jan. 2S, 162S.
" Thy lifelesse Tranlce
(O Reverend StocUe),
Like Aaron's rod

Sprouts out againe ;
And after two

Full winters past,
Yields Blossomes

And ripe fruit amaine.
For why, this work of piety,

Performed by some of thy Flocke,
To thy dead corps and sacred urne,
Is but the fruit of this old Stockc.''
The father of Milton, the poet, was ,1 scrivener
in Bread Street, living at the sign of " The Spread
Eagle," the armorial ensign of his family. The first

figures of his vertuous wife and children, with the
arms belonging to them." This church, burnt down
in the Great Fire, was rebuilt again.

St. Mildred was a Saxon lady, and daughter of
Merwaldus, a West-Mercian prince, and brother to
Penda, King of the Mercians, who, despising the
pomps and v.anities of this world, retired to a con-
vent at Hale, in France, whence, returning to
England, accompanied by seventy virgins, she was
consecrated abbess of a new monastery in the Isle
ofThanet, by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury,
where she died abbess, n;i;io 676.

On the east side of Bread Street is the church
of AUhallows. " On the south side of the chancel,
in a little part of this church, called T/ie Sa/tei^'s
Cliapel^' says Strype, " is a very fair window,
with the portraiture or figure of him that gave it,
very curiously wrought upon it. This church,
ruined in the Great Fire, is built up again with-
out any pillars, but very decent, and is a lightsome
church."

" In the 22nd of Henry VIII., the 17th of August,
two priests of this church fell at variance, that the
one drew blood of the other, wherefore the same
church was suspended, and no service sung or
said therein for the space of one month after; the
priests were committed to prison, and the 15th of
October, being enjoined penance, they went at the
head of a general procession, bare-footed and
bare-legged, before tlie children, with beads and

this beautiful piece of work was erected, as also the 1 turning on the left hand, as you enter from Cheap-
side, was called " Black Spread Eagle Court," and
not unlikely from the family ensign of the poet's
father. Milton was born in this street (December
9, 160S), and baptised in the adjoining cliurch of
AUhallows, Bread Street, where the register of his
baptism is still preserved. Of the house in which
he resided in later life, and the churchyard of St.
Giles, Cripplegate, where he was buried, we give a
view on page 349. Aubrey tells us that the house
and chamber in which the poet was born were often
visited by foreigners, even in the poet's lifetime.
Their visits must have taken place before the fire,
for the house was destroyed in the Great Fire, and
" Paradise Lost " was published after it. Spread
Eagle Court is at the present time a warehouse-
yard, says Mr. David Masson. The position of
a scrivener was something between a notary and a
law stationer.

There was a City prison formerly in Bread Street.
" On the west side of Bread Street," says Stow,
"amongst divers fair and large houses for merchants,
and fair inns for passengers, had they one prison-
house pertaining to the sheriflfs of London, called
the Compter, in Bread Street ; but in 1555 the
prisoners were removed from thence to one other
new Compter in Wood Street, provided by the
City's purchase, and built for that purpose."

The " Mermaid " Tavern, in Chcapside, about
the site of which there has been endless contro-
versy, stood in Bread Street, with side entrances, as

Chcapside ]

THE "MERMAID CLUB."

351

Mr. BLim has shown, with admirable clearness, in
Friday Street and Bread Street ; hence the disputes
of antiquaries.

Mr. Burn, in his book on " Tokens," says, " The
site of the ' Mermaid ' is clearly defined, from the
circumstance of \V. R., a haberdasher of small
wares, 'twi.xt Wood Street and Milk Street, adopt-
ing the sign, 'Over against the Mermaid Tavern
in Cheapside.'" The tavern was destroyed in the
Great Fire.

Here Sir Walter Raleigh is, by one of the tradi-
tions, said to have instituted "The Mermaid Club."
Gifford, in his edition of " Ben Jonson," has thus
described the club: — "About this time (1603)
Jonson probably began to acquire that turn for
conviviality for which he was afterwards noted. Sir
Walter Raleigh, previously to his unfortunate
engagement with the wretched Cobham and others,
had instituted a meeting of iea/tx csp>its at the
' Mermaid,' a celebrated tavern in Friday Street.
Of this club, which combined more talent and
genius than ever met together before or since, our
author was a member, and here for many years he
regularly repaired, with Shakespeare, Beaumont,
Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne,
and many others, whose names, even at this distant
period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and
respect." But this is doubted. A writer in the
Atliemmm, Sept. 16, 1865, states : — "The origin
of the common tale of Raleigh founding the ' Mer-
maid Club,' of which Shakespeare is said to have
been a member, has not been traced. Is it older
than Gifford?" Again: — " Gifford's apparent in-
vention of the ' Mermaid Club.' Prove to us that
Raleigh founded tlie ' Mermaid Club,' that the
wits attended it under his presidency, and you will
have made a real contribution to our knowledge of
Shakespeare's time, even if you fail to show that
our poet was a member of that club." The tradi-
tion, it is thought, must be added to the long list
of Shakespearian doubts.

But we nevertheless have a noble record left
of the wit combats here in the celebrated epistle
of Beaumont to Jonson : —

" Methinks tlie little wit I iiad is lost
.Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the ' Mermaid ?' Heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, ,
And had resolvetl to live a fuol the rest
Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past — wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty ; though but ilownright fouls, more wise."

" Many," ^ays Fuller, " were the wit combats
betwi.xt him (Shakespeare) and ]5en Jonson, which
two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an
English mai)-of-war. Master . Jonson (like the
former) was built far higher in learning, solid, but
slow in his performances ; Shakespeare, with the
English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in
sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage
of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and
invention."

These combats, one is willing to think, although
without any evidence at all, took place at the
" Mermaid " on such evenings as Beaumont so
glowingly describes. But all we really know is
that Beaumont and Ben Jonson met at the " Mer-
maid," and Shakespeare might, have been of the
company. Fuller, Mr. Charles Knight reminds us,
was only eight years old when Shakespeare died.

John Rastell, the btother-in-law of Sir Thomas
More, was a printer, living at the sign of the " Mer-
maid," in Cheapside. "The Pasty me of the People "
(folio, 1529) is described as " breuly copyled and
empryntyd in Chepesyde, at the sygne of tlie
' Mearemayd,' next to Pollys (Paul's) Gate." Stow
also mentions this tavern : — " They " (Coppinger
and Arthington, false prophets), says the historian,
" had purposed to liave gone with the like cry and
])roclamation, through other the chiefe parts of the
Citie; but the presse was so great, as that they
were forced togoe into a taverne in Cheape, at the
sign of the 'Mermayd,' the rather because a gentle-
man of his acquaintance jjlucked at Coppinger,
whilst he was in the cart, and blamed him for his
demeanour and speeches."

There was also a " Mermaid " in Cornhill.

In Bow Lane resided Thomas Coryat, an ec-
centric traveller of the reign of James 1,, and a
butt of Ben Jonson and his brother wits. In i6cS
Coryat took a journey on foot through France,
Italy, Germany, &c., which lasted five months,
during which he had travelled 1,975 niiles, more
than half upon one pair of shoes, which were
only once mended, and on his return were hung
up in the Church of Odcombe, in Somersetshire.
He published his travels under this title, "Crudities
hastily gobbled up in Five Months' Travels in
France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts
of High Germany, and the Netherlands, 161 1,"
4to ; reprinted in 1776, 3 vols., Svo. 'I'his woi.k
was ushered into the world by an " Odcombian
banquet," consisting of near si.xty copies of verses,
made by the best poets of that time, which, if
they did not make Coryat pass with the world

3S2

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

for a man of great parts and learning, contributed
not a little to tlie sale of his book. Among these
jjoets were lien Jonson, Sir John Harrington, Inigo
Jones (the architect). Chapman, Donne, Drayton,
and others.

Parsons, an excellent comedian, also resided in
Bow Lane.

" A greater artist," says Dr. Doran, in " Her
Majesty's Servants," " than Baddeley left the stage
soon after him, in 1795, after three-and-thirty years
of service, namely, I'arsons, the original ' Crabtree '
and '.Sir Fretful Plagiary," Sir Christopher Curry,'
' Snarl ' to l^dwin's ' Sheepface,' and ' Lope Torry,'

in The Mountaineers His forte lay

in old men, his pictures of whom, in all their
characteristics, passions, infirmities, cunning, or
imbecility, was perfect. When ' Sir Sampson Le-
gand ' sa)-s to ' Foresight,' ' Look up, old star-
gazer ! Now is he poring on the ground for a
crooked pin, or an old horse-nail with the head
towards him !'" we are told tliere could not be a
finer illustration of tlie character which Congreve
meant to represent than Parsons showed at the time
in liis face and attitude.

In Queen Street, on the south side of Cheapside,
stood Ringed Hall, the house of the Earls of
Cornwall, given by them, in Edward HI.'s time, to
the Abbot of Beaulieu, near Oxford. Henry VHL
gave it to Morgan Philip, aiias Wolfe. Near it was
" Ipres Inn," built by William of Ipres, in King
Stephen's time, which continued in the same fomily
in 1377.

Stow says of Soper Lane, now Queen Street :
— "Soper Lane, w^hich laie took that name, not
of soap-making, as some have supposed, but of
AUeyne le Sopar, in the ninth of Edward II."

" In this Soper's Lane,'' Strype informs us, " the
pepperers anciently dwelt — wealthy tradesmen, who
dealt in spices and drugs. Two of this trade were
divers times mayors in the reign of Henry III.,
viz., Andrew Boclierel, and John de Gisorcio or
Gisors. In the reign of King Edward II., anno
I3i5> tl'ey came to be governed by rules and
orders, which are extant in one of the books of the
chamber under this title, ' Ordinatio Pipcrarum
de Soper's Lane.' " Sir Baptist Hicks, Viscount
Campden, of the time of James I., whose name is
preserved in Hicks's Hall, and Campden Hill,
Kensington, was a rich mercer, at the sign of the
" White Bear," at Soper Lane end, in Cheapside.
Strype says that " Sir Baptist was one of the first
citizens that, after knighthood, kept their shops,
and, being charged with it by some of the alder-
men, he gave this answer, first— 'That his servants
kept the shop, though he had a regard to the special

credit thereof; and that he did not live altogether
upon the interest, as most of the aldermen did,
laying aside their trade after knighthood.' "

The parish church of St. Syth, or Bennet Shere-
hog, or Shrog, " seemeth," says Stow, " to take
that name from one Benedict Shorne, some time a
citizen, and stock-fish monger, of London, a new
builder, repairer, or benefltctor thereof, in the reign
of Edward II. ; so that Shorne is but corrupt])-
called Shrog, and more correctly Shorehog, or (as
nov>-) Sherehog." The following curious epitaph
is preserved by Stow : —

" Mere lietli buried the body of Ann, the wife of John
Farrar, gentleman, and merchant adventurer of this cit)',
dauglUtr of William .Shepheard, of Great Rowlright, in the
county of Oxenford, Esqve. She departed this life the
twelfth day of July, An. Dom. 1613, being then about the
age of twenty-one yeeres.

'' Here was a bud,

l-!eginning for her May ;
Before her flower,

Deatli took her hence away.
But for what cause ?

That friends might joy the more ;
^^'llere there hope is,

She flourisheth now before.
She is not lost,

But in those joyes remaine,
Where friends may see,

And joy in her againe."

'■ In the Church of St. Pancras, Soper Lane, there
do lie the remains," says Stow, " of Robert Packin-
ton, merchant, slain «ith a gun, as he was going
to morrow mass from his house in Cheape to St.
Thomas of Aeons, in the year 1536. The murderer
was never discovered, but by his own confession,
made when he came to the gallows at Banbuiy
to be hanged for felony."

The following epitaph is also worth giving : — ■

" Here lies a Mary, mirror of her sex.
For all that best their souls or bodies decks.
Faith, form, or fame, the miracle of youth ;
For zeal and knowledge of the sacred truth.
For frequent reading of the Holy Writ,
For fervent ]irayer, and for practice fit.
For meditation full of use and art ;
For humbleness in haliit and in heart.
For pious, prudent, peaceful, praiseftil life ;
For all the duties of a Christian wife ;
For patient bearing seven dead-bearing throws ;
For one alive, \vhich yet dead with her goes ;
From Travers, her dear spouse, her father, Hayes,
Lord niaior, more honoured in her virtuous praise."

" The Church of St. Thomas Apostle stood
where now the cemetery is," says- Maitland, " in
Queen Street. It was of great antiquity, as is
manifest by the state thereof in the year 1 181. The
parish is united to the Church of St. Mary Alder-
mary. There were five epitaphs in Greek and Latin.

Che.npside.

GOLDSMITHS' HALL.

353

to ' Katherine Killigrew.' The best is by Andrew
Melvin."

" 01 monuments of antiquity there were none left
undefliced, except some arms in the windows, wiiich
were supposed to be the armsof Jolin Barnes, mercer,
Maior of London in the year 137 1, a great builder
thereof. A benefactor thereof was Sir William
Littlesbury, alias Horn (for King Edward IV. so
named him), because he was most excellent in a
horn. He was a Salter and merchant of the staple,
mayor of London in 14S7, and was buried in the
church, having appointed, by his testament, the
bells to be changed for four new ones of good tune
and sound ; but that was not performed. He

gave five hundred marks towards repairing of high-
ways between London and Cambridge. His dwel-
ling-house, with a garden and appurtenances in the
said parish, he devised to be sold, and bestowed in
charitable actions. His house, called tlie ' Cleorgc,'
in Bred Street, he gave to the salters ; they to fmd
a priest in the .said church, to have six pounds
thirteen and fourpence the year. To every preacher
at St. Paul's Cross, and at the Spittle, he left four-
pence for ever ; to the prisoners of Newgate, Lud-
gate, from rotation to King's Bench, in victuals, ten
shillings at Christmas, and ten shillings at Easter
for ever," which legacies, however, it appears, were
not performed.

CHAPTER XXX.
CHEArSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH.

Goldsmiths' H.ill— Its Early Daj-s— Tailot^ and Goldsmiths at Loggerheads— The Goldsmiths' Company's Charters and Records— Their Great
Annu.-il Feast — They receive Queen Margaret of Anjoil in State — A Curious Trial of Skill— Civic and State Duties — The GukUmith-. lireak
up the Image of their Patron Saint— The Goldsmiths* Company's Assays — The Ancient Goldsmiths' Feasts— The Goldsmiths at Work —
Cloldsmiths' Hall at the Present Day — The Portraits— St. Leonard's Church — St. Vedast — Discovery of a Stone Cuthn— Coachmakcrs' Hall.

In Foster Lane, the first turning out of Cheapside paved ; the front being ornamented with stone
northwards, our first visit must be paid to the corners, wrought in rustic, and a large arched
Hall of the Goldsmiths, one of the richest, most entrance, which exhibited a high iiediment, sup-
ancient, and most practical of all the great City i ported on Doric columns, and open at the top,

companies. |

Tiie original site of Goldsmiths' Hall belonged, i
in the reign of Edward II., to Sir Nicholas de
Segrave, a Leicestershire knigijt, brother of Gilbert
de Segrave, Bishop of London. The date of the |
Goldsmiths' first building is uncertain, but it is first
mentioned in their records in 1366 (Edward III.).
The second hall is supposed to have been built by
Sir Dru Barentyn, in 1407 (Henry IV.). The
Livery Hall had a bay window on the side next
to Huggin Lane ; the roof was surmounted with
a lantern and vane ; the reredos in the screen
was surmounted by a silver-gilt statue of St.
Dunstan ; and the Flemish tapestry represented
the story of the patron saint of goldsmiths. Stow,
writing in 1598, expresses doubt at the story that
Bartholomew Read, goldsmith and mayor in 1502,
gave a feast there to more than 100 persons, as the
hall was too small for that purpose.

From 1 64 1 till the Restoration, Goldsmiths' Hall
served as the Exchequer of the Commonwealth.

to give room for a shield of the Company's arms.
The livery, or common hall, which was on the east
side of the court, was a spacious and lofty apart-
ment, paved with black and white marble, and
very elegantly fitted up. The wainscoting was
very handsome, and the ceiling and its appendages
richly stuccoed — an enormous flower adorning the
centre, and the City and Goldsmiths' arms, with
various'decorations, appearing in its other compart-
ments. A richly-carved screen, with composite
pillars, pilasters, &c. ; a balustrade, with vases, ter-
minating in branches for lights (between which
displayed the banners and flags used on public
occasions) ; and a beaufet of considerable size,
with white and gold ornaments, formed part of the
embellishments of this spleadid room."

"The balustrade of the staircase was elegantly
carved, and the walls exhibited numerous reliefs of
scrolls, flowers, and instruments of music. The
court-room was another richly-wainscoted apart-
ment, and the ceiling very grand, though, perhaps

All the money obtained from the sequestration of , somewhat overloaded with embellishments. The

Royalists' estates was here stored, and then dis-
bursed for State purposes. The following is a
description of the earlier hall : —

" The buildings," says Herbert, " were of a fine
red brick, and surrounded a small square court,

chimney-piece was of statuary marble, and very
sumptuous.'-

The guild of Goldsmiths is of extreme antiquity,
having been fined in 11 So (Henry II.) as atkilterine,
that is, established or carried on without the king's

354

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Gheapside.

special licence ; for in any matter where fines could
be extorted, the Norman kings took a paternal
interest in the doings of their patient subjects. In
1267 (Henry IH.) the goldsmiths seem to have
been infected with the pugnacious spirit of the age ;
for wc come upon bands of goldsmitiis nnd tailors
fighting in London streets, from some guild jealousy ;

The goldsmiths were incorporated into a perma-
nent company in the prodigal reign of Richard 11.,
and they no doubt drove a good business with
that thriftless young Absalom, who, it is said
wore golden bells on his sleeves and baldric, l-'or
ten marks — not a very tremendous consideration,
though it was, no doubt, all he could get — Richard's

P^jpr. ^'-^f^^^WA/s^^jri

->T ^ :

'^'%.

j-irr-r r-nnr -ni-inpntinnni

/ tt

4>i

L "Tin. J^L-^^''J'U'V"'V^

INTERIOR OF GOLD3MnH'3 HALL.

and 500 snippers of cloth meeting, by appointment,
500 hammerers of metal, and having a comfort-
able and steady fight. In the latter case many
were killed en both sides, and the sheriff at last
had to interpose with the City's posse comitatiis and
with bows, swords, and spears. The ringleaders
were finally apprehended, and thirteen of them con-
demned and executed. In 1278 (Edward I.) many
spurious goldsmiths were arrested for frauds in
trade, three Englishmen were hung, and more than
a dozen unfortunate Jews.

grandfather, that warlike and chivalrous monarch,
Edward III., had already incorporated the Com-
pany, and given " the Mystery " of Goldsmiths
the privilege of purchasing in mortmain an estate
of ^20 per annum, for the support of old and sick
members ; for these early guilds were benefit clubs
as well as social companies, and jealous privileged
monopolists ; and Edward's grant gave the cor-
poration the right to inspect, try, and regulate all
gold and silver wares in any part of Engl.-no, with
the power to punish all offenders detected in

Chcapsidcl

THE GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY.

355

OLD AND NiiW LONDON.

[Chcaps'ide

J5^

working adulterated gold and silver. Edward, in
all, granted four charters to the ^\■orshipful Com-
]).iny.

Henry I\'., Henry V., and Ivhvanl W. both
granted antl contirmcd the liberties of the Company.
The lioldsmitlis' records commence 5th Edward
Hi., and furnish much curious information. In
this reign all who were of Goldsmiths' Hall were
reijuired to have shojjs in Chepe, and to sell no
silver or gold vessels except in Chepe or in the
King's E.\change. The first charter complains loudly
of counterfeit metal, of folse bracelets, lockets,
rings, and jewels, made and exported ; and also of
vessels of tin made and subtly silvered over.

The Company began humbly enough, and in
their first year of incorporation (1335) fourteen
apprentices only were bound, the fees for admission
being :s., and the pensions given to twelve per-
sons come to only ^1 i6s. In 1343 the number
of apprentices in the year rose to seventy-four ; and
in 1344 there were payments for licensing foreign
workmen and non-freemen.

During the Middle Ages these City companies
were verj- attentive to religious observances, and the
Wardens' accounts show constant entries referring
to such ceremonies. Their great annual feast was
on St. Dunstan's Day (St. Dunstan being the patron
saint of goldsmiths), and the books of expenses
show the cost of masses sung for the Company by
the chaplain, payments for ringing the bells at St.
Paul's, for drinking obits at the Company's stan-
dard at St. Paul's, for lights kept burning at St.
James's Hospital, and for chantries maintained at
the churches of St. John Zachary (the Goldsmiths'
parish church), St. Peter-le-Chepe, St. Matthew,
Friday Street, St. Vedast, Foster Lane, and others.

About the reign of Henry VI. the records grow
more interesting, and reflect more strongly the
social life of the times they note. In 1443 we
find the Company received a special letter from
Henry VI., desiring them, as a craft which had
at all times " notably acquitted themselves," more
especially at the king's return from his coronation

in Paris, to meet his queen, Margaret of Anjou, on ' four men, by royal order, to the king's army. They
her arrival, in company with the Mayor, aldermen, were to be "honest, comely, and well-harnessed per-
and the other London crafts. On this occasion the ! sons— four of them bowmen, and twelve billmen.
goldsmiths wore "bawderykes of gold, short jagged ' They were arrayed in blue and red (after my Lord
scadet hoods," and each past Warden or renter I Norfolk's fashion), hats and hose red and blue, and
had his follower clothed in white, with a black j with doublets of white fustian." This same year, the
hood and black felt hat. In this reign John Chest, ! greedy despot Henry having discovered some slight
a goldsmith of Chepe, for slanderous words against I inaccuracy in the assay, contri\-ed to extort from
the Compiny, was condemned to come to Gold- ' the poor abject goldsmiths a mighty fine of 3,000
smuhs' Hall, and on his knees ask all the Company ; marks. The year this F/nglish Ahab died, the
forgiveness for what he had myssayde ; and was Goldsmiths resolved, in compliment to the Refor-
also forbidden to wear the livery of the Company I mation, to break up the image of their patron saint.

for a whole montli. Later still, in this reign, a
goldsmith named German Lyas, for selling a tablet
of adulteratetl gold, was compelled to give to tlie
fraternity a gilt cup, weighing twenty-four ounces,
and to implore pardon on his knees. In 1458
(Henry VI.), a goldsmitli was fined for giving a
false return of broken gold to a servant of the
Earl of Wiltshire, who had brought it to be sold.

In the fourth year of King Edward IV. a very
curious trial of skill between the jealous Englisli
goklsmiths and their foreign rivals took place
at the "Pope's Head "tavern (now Pope's Head
Alley), Cornhill. The contending craftsmen had
to engrave four puncheons of stee\ (the breadth of
a penny sterling) with cat's heads and naked figures
in high relief and low relief; Oliver Davy, the
Englishman, won, and White Johnson, the Alicant
goldsmith, lost his wager of a crown and a dinner
to the Company. In this reign there were 137
native goldsmiths in London, and 41 foreigners —
total, 178. The foreigners lived chiefly in West-
minster, Southwark, St. Clement's Lane, Abchurch
Lane, Brick Lane, and Bearbinder Lane.

In 1511 (Henry VIII.) the Company agreed to
send twelve men to attend the City Night-watch,
on the vigils of St. John Baptist, and St. Peter and
Paul. The men were to be cleanly harnessed, to
carry bows and arrows, and to be arrayed in jackets
of white, with the Citj' arms. In 1540 the Com-
pany sent six of their body to fetch in the new
Queen, Anne of Cleves, "the Flemish mare," as
her disappointed bridegroom called her. The six
goldsmiths must have looked very gallant in their
black velvet coats, gold chains, and velvet caps
with brooches of gold ; and their servants in plain
russet coats. Sir Martin Bowes was the great
goldsmith in this reign ; he is the man whom Stow
accused, when Lord Mayor, of rooting up all the
gravestones and monuments in the Grey Friars,
and selling them for ;i^So. He left almshouses at
Woolwich, and two houses in Lombard Street, to
the Company.

In 1546 (same reign) the Company sent twenty-

Cheapside.1

THE GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY.

557

and also a great standing cu[) with an image of tlie
same saint iiijon tlie top. Among tiie Company's
plate there still exists a goodly cup- given by Sir
Martin Bowes, and which is said to be the same
from which Queen Elizabeth drank at her coro-
nation.

The government of the Company has been seen
to have been vested in an alderman in tlie reign
of Henry II., and in four wardens as early as
28 Edward I. The wardens were divided, at a
later jieriod, into a prime warden (always an alder-
man of London), a second warden, and two renter
Avardens. The clerk, under the name of " clerk-
comptroller," is not mentioned till 1494; but a
similar ofiiccr must have been established much
earlier. Four auditors and two jjortcrs are named
in the reign of Henry VI. The assayer, or as he
is now called, assay warden (to whom were after-
wards joined two assistants), is peculiar to the
Goldsmith' .

The Company's assay of the coin, or trial of the
pix, a curious proceeding of great solemnity, now
takes place every year. '' It is,'' says Herbert, in
his '■ City Companies," "an investigation or inquiry
into the purity and weight of the money coined,
before the Lords of the Council, and is aided by
the professional knowledge of a jury of the Gold-
smiths' Company ; and in a writ directed to the
barons for that purpose (9 and 10 Edwafd I.) is
spoken of as a well-known custom.

" The \\'ardens of the Goldsmiths' Company are
summoned by precept from the Lord Chancellor to
form a jury, of which their assay master is always
one. This jury are sworn, receive a charge from
the Lord Chancellor ; then retire into the Court-
room of the Duchy of Lancaster, where the pix (a
small box, from the ancient name of which this
cerjmony is denominated), and which contains the
coins to be examined, is delivered to them by the
officers of the Mint. The indenture or authority
unJer which the Mint Master has acted being
read, the pix is opened, and the coins to be assayed
being taken out, are inclosed in paper parcels, each
under the seals of the Wardens, Master, and Comp-
trollers. From every 1 5 lbs. of silver, which are
technically called 'journies,' two pieces at the
least are taken at hazard for this trial ; and each
parcel being opened, and the contents being found
correct with the indorsement, the coins are mixed
together in wooden bowls, and afterwards weighed.
From the whole of these moneys so mingled, the
jury take a certain number of each species of coin,
to the amount of i lb. weight, for the assay by fire ;
and the indented trial pieces of gold and silver, of
the dates specified in the indenture, being pro-

duced by the pro[)cr officer, a sufficient quantity is
cut from either of them for the purpose of com-
paring witli it the pounil weight of gold or silver
by the usual methods of assay. The perfection or
imperfection of these are certified by the jury, who
deliver their \erdict in writing to the Lord Chan-
cellor, to be deposited amongst the papers of the
Privy Council. If found accurate, the Mint Master
receives his certificate, or, as it i« called, i/iiieliis"
(a legal word used by .Shakes[)eare in Hamlet's great
soliloquy). " The assaying of the precious metals,
anciently called the ' touch,' with the marking or
stamping, and the proving of the coin, at what
is called the ' trial of the pix,' were privileges
conferred on the Goldsmiths' Company by the
statute 28 Edward I. They had for the former'
purpose an assay office more than 500 years ago,
which is mentioned in their books. Their still re-
taining the same jjrivilege makes the part of Gold-
smiths' Hall, where this business is carried on, a
busy scene during the hours of assaying. In the
old statute all manner of vessels of gold and silver
are expected to be of good and true alloy, namely,
'gold of a certain toiic/i,' and silver of the sterling
alloy ; and no vessel is to depart out of the hands
of the v.-orkman until it is assayed by the workers
of the Goldsmiths' craft.

" The Hali mark shows where manufactured, as
the Leopard's head for London. £>uty mark is the
head of the Sovereign, showing the duty is paid.
Date mark is a letter of the alphabet, which varies
every year ; thus, the Goldsmiths' Company have
used, from 17 16 to 1755, Roman capital letters ;
1756 to 1775, small Roman letters ; 1776 to 1795,
old English letters ; 1796 to 18 15, Roman capital
letters, from A to U, omitting J ; 18 16 to 1835
small Roman letters a to u, omitting j ; from 1836,
old English letters. There are two qualities of
gold and silver. The inferior is mostly in use. The
qualhy marks for silver are Britannia, or the head
of the reigning monarch ; for gold, the lion passant,
22 or 18, which denotes that fine gold is 24-carat;
18 only 75 per cent, gold; sometimes rings are
marked 22. The maniifactiirct^s mark is the initials
of the maker.

" The Company are allowed i per cent., and the
fees for stamping are paid into the Inland Revenue
Office. At Goldsmiths' Hall, in the years 185010
J 863 inclusive, there were assayed and marked 85
22-carat watch-cases, 316,347 iS-carat, 493 15-
carat, 1550 12-carat, 448 9-carat, making a total
of 318,923 cases, weighing 467,250 ounces 6 dwts.
18 grains. The Goldsmiths' Company ajjpend
a note to this return, stating that they have no
I knowledge of the value of the cases assayed,

358

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

except of the intrinsic value, as indicated by the
wcii^ht and ciuaHty of the gokl i;iven in the return.
'I'lie silver watch-cases assa} ed at the same esta-
blishment in the fourteen years, 1,139,704, the total
weight being 2,302,192 ounces 19 dwts. In the
year 1S57 the largest number of cases were assayed
out of the fourteen, 'l^he precise number in that
year was 106,860, this being more than 10,000
above any year in the period named. In a subse-
([uent year the number was only 77,608. A similar
note with regard to value 'is appended to the
return of silver cases as to the gold." There has
been a complaint lately that the inferior jewellery
is often tampered with after receiving the Hall
mark.

An old book, probably Elizabethan, the " Touch-
stone for Goldsmith's Wares," observes, " That
goldsmiths in the City and liberties, as to their par-
ticular trade, are under the Goldsmiths' Company's
control, whether members or not, and ought to be of
iheir own company, though, from mistake or design,
many of them are free of others. For the wardens,
being by their charters and the statutes appointed to
survey, assay, and mark the silver-work, are to be
chosen from members, such choice must sometimes
fall upon them that are either of other trades, or
not skilled in their curious art of making assays of
gold and silver, and consequently unable to make
a true report of the goodness thereof ; or else
the necessary attendance thereon is too great a
burden for the wardens. Therefore they (tlie war-
dens) have appointed an assay master, called by
them their deputy warden, allowing him a consider-
able yearly salary, and who takes an oath for the
due performance of his office. They have large
steel puncheons and marks of different sizes, with
the leopard's-head, crowned ; the lion, and a certain
letter, which letter they change alphabetically every
year, in order to know the year any particular work
was assayed or marked, as well as the markers.
'I'liese marks," he adds, "are every year new
made, for the use of fresh wardens ; and although
the assaying is referred to the assay master, yet the
touch-uiarih-ns look to the striking of the marks."
To acquaint the public the better with this business
of the assay, the writer of the " Touchstone " has
prefi.xed a frontispiece to his work, intended to
represent the interior of an assay office (we should
suppose that of the old Goldsmiths' Hall), and
makes reference by numbers to the various objects
shown— as, i. The refining furnace; 2. The test,
with silver refining in it ; 3. The fining bellows ;
4. The man blowing or working them ; 5. The
test-mould ; 6. A wind-hole to melt silver in, with
bellows ; 7. A pair of organ bellows ; 8. A man

melting, or boiling, or nealing silver at them ; 9. A
block, with a large anvil placed thereon; 10. Three
men forging plate ; 11. The fining and other gold-
smith's tools; 12. The assay furnace; 13. 'i'he
assay master making assays ; 1 4. This man putting
the assays into the fire; 15. The warden marking
the plate on the anvil; 16. His officer holding his
plate for the marks; and 17. Three goldsmiths'
small workers at work. In the office are stated to
be a sworn weigher to weigh and make entry of
all silver-work brought in, and who re-weighs it to
the owners when worked, reserving the ancient
allowance for so doing, which is 4 grains out of
every i lb. marked, for a re-assay yearly of all the
silver works they have passed the preceding year.
There are also, he .says, a table, or tables, in columns,
one whereof is of hardened lead, and the other of
vellum or parchment (the lead columns having the
worker's initials struck in them, and the other the
owner's names) ; and the seeing that these marks are
right, and plainly impressed on the gold and silver
work, is one of the warden's peculiar duties. The
manner of marking the assay is thus : — The assay
master puts a small quantity of the silver upon
trial in the fire, and then, taking it out again, he,
with his exact scales tliat will turn with the weight
of the hundredth part of a grain, computes and re-
ports the goodness or badness of the gold and
silver.

The allowance of four grains to the pound,
Malcolm states to have been continued till after
1735 ; for gold watch-cases, from one to four, one
shilling ; and all above, threepence each ; and in
proportion for other articles of the same metal.
" The assay office," he adds, " seems, however,
to have been a losing concern with the Company,
their receipts for six years, to 1725, being ^1,615
13s. II id., and the payments, ;^2,o74 3s. 8d."

The ancient goldsmiths seem to have wisely
blended pleasure with profit, and to have feasted
right royally : one of their dinner bills runs thus : —

EXPENSES OF ST. DUNSTAN'S FE.\ST.
1473 (12 Edxoard IV.).

To eight minstrels in manner accustomed 2

Ten bonnets for ditto o

Their dinner o

Two hogsheads of wine 2

One barrel of Muscadell o

Red wine, 1 7 qrts. and 3 galls o

Four barrels of good ale o

Tw o ditto of 2dy half-penny o

In spice liread - o

In other bread o

In comfits and spice (36 articles) 5 17

Poultry, including 12 capons at 8d 2 16

I'igeonsat 1 Jd., and 12 more geese, at 7d. f^acl

'.>

I [

ClieapsiJe.]

THE GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY'S PAGEANTS.

359

AVith " butchery," " fishmonger)'," and " miscel-
laneous articles," the total amount of the feast was
^26 17s. 7d.

A supper bill which occurs in the nth of
Henry VHI. only amounts to ^^5 iSs. 6d., and it
enumerates the following among the provisions: —
Bread, two bushels of meal, a kilderkin and a firkin
of good ale, 12 capons, four dozen of chickens,
four dishes of Surrey (sotterey) butter, 1 1 lbs. of
suet, six marrow bones, a quarter of a sheep, 50
eggs, six dishes of sweet butter, 60 oranges, goose-
berries, strawberries, 56 lbs. of cherries, 17 lbs. 10 oz.
of sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and mace, saffi'on,
rice flour, " raisins, currants," dates, white salt, bay
salt, red vinegar, white vinegar, verjuice, the hire of
pewter vessels, and various other articles.

In City pageants the Goldsmiths always held a
conspicuous place. The following is an account
of their pageant in jovial Lord Mayor Vyner's
time (Charles II.) : —

" First pageant. A large triumphal chariot of
gold, richly set with divers inestimable and various
coloured jewels, of dazzling splendour, adorned
with sundry curious figures, fictitious stories, and
delightful landscapes ; one ascent of seats up to a
throne, whereon a person of majestic aspect sitteth,
the representer of Justice, hieroglyphically attired,
in a long red robe, and on it a golden mantle
fringed with silver ; on her head a long dishevelled
hair of flaxen colour, curiously curled, on which is
a coronet of silver ; in her left hand she advanceth
a touchstone (the tryer of Iruth and discoverer of
Falselwod) ; in her right hand she holdeth uj) a
golden balance, with silver scales, equi-ponderent,
to weigh justly and impartially ; her arms depen-
dent on the heads of two kopards, which emblema-
tically intimate cviirage and constancy. This chariot
is drawn by two golden unicorns, in excellent
carving work, with equal magnitude, to the left ;
on whose backs are mounted two raven-black
negroes, attired according to the dress of India ;
on their heads, wreaths of divers coloured feathers ;
in their right hands they hold golden cups ; in their
left iiands, two displayed banners, the one of tiie
king's, the other of the Company's arms, all which
represent the crest and the supporters of the ancient,
famous, and worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

" Trade pageant. On a very large pageant is
a very rich seat of state, containing the representer
of the Patron to the Goldsmiths' Company, Saint
Dunstan, attired in a dress properly expressing his
prelatical dignity, in a robe of fine white lawn, over
which he weareth a cope or vest of costly bright
cloth of gold, down to the ground ; on his reverend
grey head, a golden mitre, set with topaz, ruby.

' emerald, amethyst, and sapjihire. In his left hand
he holdeth a golden crozier, and in his right hand
he useth a pair of goldsmith's tongs. Beneath these
steps of ascension to his chair, in ojjposition to St.
Dunstan, is properly painted a goldsmith's forge
and furnace, with fire and gold in it, a workman
blowing with the bellows. On his right and left
hand, there is a large press of gold and silver i)!ate,
representing a shop of trade ; and further in front,
are several artificers at work on anvils with ham-
mers, beating out plate fit for the forgery and forma-
tion of several vessels' in gold and silver. There
are likewise in the shop several wedges or ingots
of gold and silver, and a step below St. Dunstan
sitteth an assay-master, with his glass frame and
balance, for trial of gold and silver, according to the
standard. In anofher place there is also disgrossing,
drawing, and flatting of gold and silver wire. There
are also finers melting, smelting, fining, and parting
gold and silver, both by fire and water ; and in a
march before thisorfery, are divers miners in canvas
breeches, red waistcoats, and red caps, bearing
spades, pickaxes, twibills, and crows, for to sink
shafts, and make adits. The Devil, also, appear-
ing to St. Dunstan, is catched by the nose- at a
proper tju, which is given in his speech. When the
speecli is spoken, the great anvil is set forth, with
a silversmith holding on it a plate of massive silver,
and three other workmen at work, keeping excel-
lent time in their orderly strokes ujion the anvil."

The Goldsmiths in the Middle Ages seem to
have been fond of dress. In a great procession of
the London crafts to meet Richard II. 's fair young
queen, Anne of Bohemia, all the mysteries of the
City wore red and black liveries. The Goldsmiths
had on the red of their dresses bars of silver-work
and silver trefoils, and each of the seven score
Goldsmiths, on the black part, wore fine knots of
gold and silk, and on their worshipful heads red
hats, powdered with silver trefoils. In Edward IV. 's
reign, the Company's taste changed. The Livery-
men wore violet and scarlet gowns like the CJold-
smiths' sworn friends, the Fishmongers ; while,
under Henry VII., they wore violet gowns and
black hoods. In Henry VIII. 's reign the hoods
of the mutable Company went back again to violet
and scarlet.

In 1456 (Henry VI.) the London citizens seem
to have been rather severe with their appren-
tices ; for we find William Hede, a goldsmith,
accusing his apprentice of beating his mistress.
The apjjrentice was brought to the kitchen of
the Goldsmith's Hall, and there stripped naked,
and beaten by his master till blood came. This
punishment was inflicted in the presence of several

360

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

people. The apprentice then asked his master's
forgiveness on his icnees.

The Goldsmiths' searches for bad and defective
work were arbitrary enough, and made with great
formality. "The wardens," say the ordinances,
" every ijuarter, on e, or oftener, if need be, shall

also dressed, following. Their mode of proceeding
is given in the following account, entitled "The
Manner and Order for Searches at Bartholomew
Fayre and Our Ladye Fayre " (Henry VIII.) : —

" M''. The Bedell for the time beyng shall
walke uppon Seynt Bartbyllmewes Eve all alonge

EXTERIOR OF GOLDSMITHS' IIAI.L.

search in London, Southwark, and Westminster, that
all the goldsmiths there dwelling work true gold
and silver, according to the Act of Parliament,
and shall also make due search for their weights."

The. manner of making this search, as elsewhere
detailed, seems to have resembled that of our
modern inquest, or annoyance juries; the Com-
pany's beadle, in full costume and with his insignia
of office, marching first; the wardens, in livery,
with their hoods ; the Company's clerk, two renter
wardens, tWQ brokers, porters, and other attendants,

Chepe, for to see what plaate ys in eu'y mannys
deske and gyrdyll. And so the sayd wardeyns for
to goo into I-umberd Streate, or into other places
there, where yt shall please iheym. And also the
clerk of the Fellyshyppe shall wayt uppon the seyd
wardeyns for to ^\ryte eu'y p'cell of sylu' stuffe
then distrayned by the sayd wardeyns.

"Also the sayd wardeyns been accustomed to
goo into Barth'u Fayre, uppon the evyn or daye,
at theyr pleasure, in theyre lyuerey gownes and
hoodys, as they will apjioint, and two of the livery,

Chcapside."!

GOLDSMITHS' SPLENDOURS.

361

directed) to the king, and the other to the wardens
breaking and making the seizure.

The present Goklsmiths' Hall was the design of
Philip Hardwick, R.A. (1832-5), and boasts itself

ancient men, with them ; the renters, the clerk, and

the bedell, in their livery, with them ; and the

brokers to wait upon my masters the wardens, to

see every hardware men show, for deceitful things,

beads, gawds of b;ads, and other stuff; and then j the most magnificent of the City halls. The old hall

they to drink when they have done, where they

please.

"Also the said wardens be accustomed at our
Lady day, the Nativity, to walk and see the fair at
Southwark, in like maimer with their company, as
is aforesaid, and to search there likewise."

Another order enjoins
the two second wardens
" to ride into Stourbrydge
fair, with what officers they
liked, and do the same."

Amongst other charges
against the trade at this
date, it is said " that dayly
divers straungers and
other gantils " complained
' and found themselves
aggrieved, that they came
to the shops of goldsmiths
within the City of London,
and without the City, and
to their booths and fairs,
markets, and other places,
and there bought of them
()/// plate new refreshed in
gilding and burnishing; it
appearing to all " such
straungers and other gen-
tils " that such old plate,
so by them bought, was
new, sufficient, and able ;
whereby all such were de-
ceived, to the grete " dys-
slaunder and jeopardy of
allthe seyd crafte of gold-

smythis."

In consequence of these complaints, it was

ordained (15 Henry VII.) by all the said fellow-
ship, that no goldsmith, within or without the City,

should thenceforth put to sale such description of

plate, in any of the places mentioned, without it

had the mark of the " Lybardishede crowned."
, All plate put to sale contrary to these orders the

wardens were empowered to break. They also had

the power, at their discretion, to fine offenders for

this and any other frauds in manufacturing. If any

goldsmith attempted to prevent the wardens from

breaking bad work, they could seize such work,

and declare it forfeited, according to the Act of

Parliament, appropriating the one half (as thereby
3X

had been taken down in 1829, and the new hall was
built without trenching on the funds set apart for
charity. The style is Italian, of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The building is 180 feet
in front and 100 feet deej). The west or chief
faij;ade has si.\ attached Corinthian columns, the
whole height of the front
supjjorting a rich Corin-
thian entablature and bold
cornice ; and the other
three fronts are adorned
with pilasters, which also
terminate the angles.
Some of the blocks in the
column shafts weigh from
ten to twelve tons each.
The windows of the prin-
cipal story, the echinus
moulding of which is
handsome, have bold and
enriched pediments, and
the centre windows are
honoured by massive bal-
ustrade balconies. In the
centre, above the first
floor, are the Company's
arms, festal emblems, rich
garlands, and trophies.
The entrance door is a
rich specimen of cast
work. Altogether, though
rather jammed up behind
the Post-office, this build-
ing is worthy of the power-
ful and wealthy company
whomakeit theirdomicile.
The modern Renaissance style, it must be allowed,
though less picturesque than the C.othic, is lighter,
more stately, and more adapted for certain pur-
poses.

The hall and staircise are much admired, and
are not without grandeur. They were in 187 1
entirely lined with costly marbles of different sorts
and colours, and the result is very splendid. The
staircase branches right and left, and ascends to a
domed gallery. Leaving that respectable Cerberus
dozy but watchful in his bee-hive chair in the vesti-
bule, we ascend the steps. On the square pedestals
which ornament the balustrade of the first flight
of stairs stand four graceful marble statuettes of

ALTAR OF DIANA (see page 362).

363

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

CCheap&Ue.

the seasons, by Nixon. Spring is looking at a
bird's-nest ; Summer, wreathed with flowers, leads
a lamb ; Autumn carries sheaves of corn ; and
Winter presses his robe close a;]ainst the wind.
Uetween the double scagliola coliunns of the gal-
lery are a group of statues ; the bust of the sailor
king, William IV., by Oicintrey, is in a niciie above.
A door on tiie top of the staircase opens to the
Livery hall ; the room for the Court of Assist-
ants is on the right of the northernmost corridor.
The great banqueting-hall, 80 by 40 feet, and
35 feet high, has a range of Corinthian columns on
either side. The fi\e lofty, arched windows are
filled with the armorial bearings of eminent gold-
smiths of past times ; and at the north end is a
spacious alcove for the display of jjlate, which is
lighted from above. On the side of the room is a
large mirror, witli busts of George IIL and his worthy
son, George IV. Between the columns are portraits
of Queen Adelaide, by Sir Martin Archer Shee,
and William IV. and Queen Victoria, by the Court
painter. Sir George Hayter. The court-room has an
elaborate stucco ceiling, with a glass chandelier,
which tinkles when the scarlet mail-carts rush off
one after anotjier. In this room, beneath glass, is
preserved tlie interesting little altar of Diana, found
in digging the foundations of the new hall. Though
greatly corroded, it has been of fine workmanship,
and the outlines are full of grace. There are also
some pictures of great merit and interest. First
among them is Janssen's fine portrait of Sir Hugh
Myddleton. He is dressed in black, and rests his
hand upon a shell. This great benefactor of Lon-
don left a sliare in his water-works to the Gold-
smiths' Company, which is now worth more
than ;^i,ooo a year. Another portrait is that of
Hit Thomas Vyner, that jovial Lord Mayor, who
dragged Charles II. back for a second bottle. A
third is a portrait (after Holbein) of Sir Martin
Bowes, Lord Mayor in 1545 (Henry VIII.) ;
and there is also a large picture (attributed to
Giulio Romano, the only painter Shakespeare
mentions in his plays). In the foreground is St.
Dunstan, in rich robes and crozier in hand, while
behind, the saint takes the Devil by the nose,
much to the approval of flocks of angels above.
The great white marble mantelpiece came from
Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos ; and
the two large terminal busts are attributed to Rou-
bihac. The sumptuous drawing-room, adorned with
crimson satin, white and gold, has immense mirrors,
and a stucco ceiling, wrought with fruit, flowers,
birds, and animals, with coats of arms blazoned on
the four corners. The court dining-room displays on
the marble chimney-piece two boys holding a wreath

encircling the portrait of Richard II., by whom
the Goldsmiths were first incorporated. In the
livery tea-room is a conversation piece, by Hudson
(Reynolds' master), containing jjortraits of six Lord
Mayors, all Goldsmiths. Tlie Company's plate, as
one might suppose, is very magnificent, and com-
prises a chandelier of chased gold, weighing 1,000
ounces ; two superb old gold plates, having on
them the arms of France quartered witli those of
lingland ; and, last of all, there is the gold cup
(attributed to Cellini) out of which Queen Eliza-
beth is said to have drank at lier coronation, and
which was bequeathed to the Compa.iy by Sir
Martin Bowes. At the Great Exhibition of 1851
this spirited Company awarded _;^i,ooo to the best
artist in gold and silver plate, and at the same
time resolved to spend ;^S,ooo on plate of British
manufacture.

From the Report of the Charity Commissioners
it appears that the Goldsmiths' charitable funds,
exclusive of gifts by Sir Martin Bowes, aijiount to
^2,013 per annum.

Foster Lane was in old times chiefly inhabited
by working goldsmiths.

" Dark Entry, Foster Lane," says Strype, " gives
a passage into St. Martin's-le-Grand. On the north
side of this entry was seated the parish church of
St. Leonard, Foster Lane, which being consumed
in the Fire of London, is not rebuilt, but the
parish united to Christ Church ; and the place
where it stood is inclosed w^ithin a wall, and
serveth as a burial-place for the inhabitants of the
parish."

On the west side of Foster Lane stood the small
parish church of St. Leonard's. This church, says
Stow, was repaired and enlarged about the year
1 63 1. A very fair window at the upper end of
the chancel (1533) cost ^^500.

In this church were some curious monumental
inscriptions. One of them, to the memory, of
Robert Trappis, goldsmith, bearing the date i5.:6,
contained this epitaph : —

" When the bels be merrily rung,
And the masse devoutly sung,
An<l the meate merrily eaten,
Then shall Robert Trappis, his wife and
children be forgotten."

On a stone, at the entering into the choir, was
inscribed in Latin, " Under this marble rests the'
body of Humfred Barret, son of John Barret,
gentleman, who died a.d. 1501." On a fair stone,
in the chancel, nameless, was written : —

" Live to Uve.

".\1I flesh is grass, and needs must fade
To earth againj whereof 'irtrts nldtle;"

Clieapsuic]

ST. VEDAST AND COACHMAKERS' HALL.

363

St. Vedast, otherwise St. Foster, was a French
saint, Bishop of Arras and Cambray in the reign
of Clovis, who, according to the Rev. Alhan
Butler, performed many miracles on the blind
and lame. Alaric had a great veneration for this
saint.

In I S3 1, some v.orkmen digging a drain dis-
covered, ten or twelve feet below the level of
Cheapside, and opposite No. 17, a curious stone
coffin, now preserved in a vault, under a small
brick grave, on the north side of St. Vedast's ;
whether Roman or Anglo-Saxon, it consists of a
block of freestone, seven feet long and fifteen
inches thick, hollowed out to receive a body, with
a deeper cavity for the head and slioulders. When
found, it contained a skeleton, and was covered
with a flat stone. Several other stone coffins were
found at the same time.

The interior of St. Foster is a melancholy in-
stance of Louis Quatorze ornamentation. The
church ill divided by a range of Tuscan columns,
and the ceiling is enriched with dusty wreaths
of stucco flowers and fruit. The altar-piece con-
sists of four Corinthian columns, carved in oak,
and garnished with cherubim, palm-branches, &c.
Li the centre, above the entablature, is a group
of well-executed winged figures, and beneath is a
sculptured pelican. In 1838 Mr. Godwin spoke
highly of the transparent blinds of this church,
painted with various Scrijjtural subjects, as a sub-
stitute for stained glass.

" St. Vedast Church, in Foster Lane," says Mait-
land, " is on the east side, in the Ward of Farring-
don Within, dedicated to St. Vedast, Bishop of
Arras, in the province of Artois. The first time
I find it mentioned in history is, that Walter de
London was presented thereto in 1508. The
patronage of the church was anciently in the
Prior and Convent of Canterbury, till the year 1 the bill was passed, a jjctition was framed for its
1352, when, coming to the archbishop of that see, ! repeal; and here, in this very hall (May 29,
it has been in him and his successors ever since ; 1780), the following resolution was proposed and
and is one of the thirteen peculiars in this city carried : —

belonging to that archiepiscopal city. This church " That the whole body of the Protestant Associa-
was not entirely destroyed by the fire in 1666, but tion do attend in St. George's Fields, on Friday
nothing left standing but the walls ; the crazy next, at ten of the clock in the morning, to ac-

Thc year of gras one thousand fyf Imndryd and fyf.
The xii. ilny of July ; no hinijcr was my .sp.ise,

It plcsyM then my Lord to call mo to his Grasc ;
Now yo tliat are livini;, and .see this picture,

I'ray for nie liere, wliyle ye Iiave tynie and spase.
That God of his goodncs wold me assure,

In his cvcrl.istin;; mansion to have a plase.
Obiit Anno 1505. "

"Here lyeth interred the body of Christopher Wase, I.ate
citizen and goldsmi til of London, ai;cd 60 yeeres, and dyed
the 22nd September, 1605; who ha.l to wife Anne, the
daughter of William Trcttyman, and had by lier three sons
and tlirec daughters.

" Reader, stay, and thou .shalt Unow
What he is, that here doth sleepe ;
Lodged amiiUt the Stones below,

Stones that oft are .seen to weepe.
Gentle was his IJirth and Breed,

His carriage gentle, much contenting;
His word accorded with his Deed,

Sweete his nature, soone relenting.
Fiom above he seem'd protected,

Lather dead before his liirlh.
An orphane only, but neglected.

Vet his Branches spread on Earth,
Larth that must his Bones containe,

Sleeping, till Christ's Trumi)e shall wake tlieni,
Joyning them to Soule .agaiiie.
And to BUsse eternal take them.
It is not this rude and little Heap of Stones,
Can hold the Fame, although 't containes the Bones ;
Light be the Earth, and halloweil for thy sake,
Resting in I'eace, I'eace tliat thou so oft did>t make."

Coachmakers' Hall, Noble Street, Foster Lane
originally built by the Scriveners' Cotnpany, was
afterwards sold to the Coachmakers. Here the "Pro-
testant Association" held its meetings, and here
originated the dreadful riots of the year 17S0. The
Protestant Association was formed in February,
1778, in consequence of a bill brought into the
House of Commons to repeal certain penalties and
liabilities imposed upon Roman Catholics. When

steeple continued standing till the year 1694, when
it was taken down and beautifully rebuilt at the
charge of the united parishes. To this parish that
of St. Michael Quern is united."

Among the odd monumental inscriptions in this
;hurch are the following : —

"Lord, of thy infinite grace and Pitlce
Have mercy on me Agnes, somtym the wyf

Of William Milborne, Chamberlain of this citte,
^Yhich toke my passage fro this wretcheil lyf.

company Lord George Gordon to the House of
Commons, on the delivery of the Protestant peti-
tion." His lordship, who was present on this
occasion, remarked that " if less than 20,000 of
his fellow-citizens attended him on that day, he
would not present their petition."

Upwards of 50,000 "true Protestants" promptly
answered the summons of the Association, and the
Gordon riots commenced, to the six days' terror
of the metropolis.

^C.l

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

rVVooil Street.

CHAPTER XXXL
CHEAPSIDE TRIIiL'TARIES, NORTH :-\YOOD STREET.

Wood Slnrel— ricis-ant Memories— St. Peter's in Chepe— St. Michael's .ind St. iiary Staining— St. Alban's, Wood Street— Some Quaint Epitaplis—
Wood Street Compter and the Hapless Prisoners therein— Wood Street Painful, Wood Street Cheerfnl— Thom.aB Kipley— J'he Anabaptist
Rising— A Remarkable Wine Cooper- St. John Zachary md St. Anne-in-theWillows— Haberdashers' Hall— Something abont the Mercers.

Wood Street runs from Cheapside to London
^\■all. Stow has two conjectures as' to its name —
fifbt, that it was so called because the houses in it
were built all of wood, contrary to Richard L's
edict that London houses should be built of stone,
to prevent fire ; secondly, that it was called after
one Thomas ^\■ood, sheritf in 1491 (Henry VH.),
who dwelt in this street, was a benefactor to St.
Peter in Chepe, and built " the beautiful row of
houses over against Wood Street end."

At Cheapside Cross, which stood at the corner
of Wood Street, all royal proclamations used to be
read, even long after the cross was removed.
Thus, in 1666, we find Charles H.'s declaration of
war against Louis XIV. proclaimed by the officers
at arms, Serjeants at arms, trumpeters, &c., at
\\'hitehall Gate, Temple Bar, the end of Chancery
Lane, Wood Street, Cheapside, and the Royal
Exchange. Huggin's Lane, in this street, derives
its name, as Stow tells us, from a London citizen
who dwelt here in the reign of Edward L, and was
called Hugan in the Lane.

That pleasant tree at the left-hand corner of Wood
Street, which has cheered many a weary business
man with memories of the fresh green fields far away,
was for long the residence of rooks, who built there.
In 1845 two fresh nests were built, and one is still
visible; but the sable birds deserted their noisy
to\\'n residence several years ago. Probably, as the
north of London was more built over, and such
feeding-grounds as Belsize Park turned to brick and
mortar, the birds found the fatigue of going miles
in search of food for their young unbearable, and
so migrated. Leigh Hunt, in one of his agreeable
books, remarks that there are few districts in
London where you will not find a tree. "A
cliild was shown us," says Leigh Hunt, " who was
said never to have beheld a tree but one in St.
Paul's Churchyard (now gone). Whenever a tree
■vvas mentioned, it was this one ; she had no con-
ception of any other, not even of the remote tree
m Cheapside." This famous tree marks the site of
St. Peter in Chepe, a church destroyed by the
Great Fire. The terms of the lease of the low
houses at the west-end corner are said to forbid the
erection of another storey or the removal of the tree.
Whether this restriction arose from a love of the
tree, as we should like to think, we cannot say.

St. Peter's in Chepe is a rectory (says Stow),
"the church whereof stood at the south-west corner
of Wood Street, in the ward of Farringdon Within,
but of what antiquity I know not, other than that
Thomas de Winton was rector thereof in 1324."

The patronage of this church was anciently in
the Abbot and Convent of St. Albans, with whom
it continued till the suppression of their monastery,
when Henry VIII., in the year 1546, granted the
same to the Earl of Southampton. It afterwards
belonged to the Duke of Montague. This church
being destroyed in the fire and not rebuilt, the
parish is united to the Church of St. Matthew,
Friday Street. " In the year 1401," says Maitland,
"licence was granted to the inhabitants of this
parish to erect a shed or shop before their church in
Cheapside. On the site of this building, anciently
called the ' Long Shop,' are now erected four
shops, with rooms over them."

AVordsworth has immortalised Wood Street by
his plaintive little ballad — •

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.

" At the comer of Wood Street, when dayhght appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and lias heard
In the silence of morning tlie song of the bird.

" ' Tis a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? she s:;;s
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ;
L'right volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

" Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down whicli she so often has tripped witli her pail ;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

" She looks, and her heart is in heaven ; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade ;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.''

Perhaps some summer morning the poet, passing
down Cheapside, saw the plane-tree at the corner
wave its branches to him as a friend waves a hand,
and at that sight there passed through his mind an
imagination of some poor Cumberland servant-girl
toiling in London, and regretting her far-off home
among the pleasant hills.

St. Michael's, Wood Street, is a rectory situated
on the west side of Wood Street, in the ward of
Cripplegate Within. John de Eppewell was rector

Wood Street.]

ST. MICHAEL'S AND ST. MARY STAINING.

:^^5

thereof before the year 132S. "The patronage was
anciently in the Abbot and Convent of St. Albans,
in whom it continued till the suppression of their
monastery, when, coming to the Cro\\n, it was,
with the appurtenances, in the year 1544, sold by
Henry VIII. to ^Villian■l Barwell, who, in the year
1588, conveyed the same to John Marsh and
others, in trust for the parish, in which it still
continues." Being destroyed in the Great Fire, it
was rebuilt, in 1675, ^nm the designs of Sir
Christopher Wren. At the east end four Ionic
pillars support an entablature and pediment, and
the three circular-headed windows are well propor-
tioned. The south side faces Huggin Lane, but
the tower and .spire are of no interest. The interior
of the church is a large parallelogram, with an orna-
mented carved ceiling. In 183 1 the church was
repaired and the tower thrown open. The altar-
piece represents Moses and Aaron. The vestry-
books date from the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and contain, among others, memoranda of
parochial rejoicings, such as — "1629. Nov. 9. Paid
for ringing and a bonfire, 4s."

The Church of St. Mary Staining being destroyed
in the Great Fire, the parish was annexed to that
of St. Michael's. The following is the most curious
of the monumental inscriptions : —

" John Casey, of this parish, whose dwelling was
In the north-corner house as to Lad Lane you pass ;
For better knowledge, the name it liath now
Is called and known by the name of the Plow ;
CXit of that house yearly did geeve
Twenty shillings to the poore, their neede to relecve;
Which money the tenant must yearlie pay
To the parish and churchwardens on .St. Thomas' Day.
The heire of that house, Thomas Bowrman by name,
Hath since, by his deed, confirmed the same ;
Whose love to the poore doth hereby appear,
And after his death shall live many a ycare.
Therefore in your life do good while yee may,
That when meagre death shall take yee away ;
You may live like form'd as Casey and Bowrman —
For he that doth well shall never be a poore man."

Here was also a monument to Queen Elizabeth,
with this inscription, found in many other London
churches : — ■

" Here lyes her type, who was of late

The jirop of Belgia, stay of France,
Spaine's foile, Faith's shield, and queen of .Stale,

Of arms, of learning, fate and chance.
In brief, of women ne'er was seen
So great a prince, so good a queen.

" Sith Vertue her immortal made,

Death, envying all that cannot dye.
Her earthly parts did so inv.ade

As in it wrackt self-majesty.
But so her spirits inspired her parts,
That she still lives in loval hearts."

There was buried here (but without nny outward
monument) the herd of James, the fourth King of
Scots, slain at ]''lodden Field. After the battle, the
body of the said king being found, was closed in
lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and
so to the monastery of Shene, in Surrey, where it
remained for a time. '• ISut since the dissolution of
that house," .says Stow, " in the reign of Edward \'I.,
Henry Gray, Duke of Surfolk, lodged and kept
house there. I have been shown the said body, so
lapped in lead. The head and body were thrown
into a Avaste room, amongst the old timber, lead,
and other rubble ; since which time workmen
there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head;
and Launcelot Young, master glazier to Queen
Elizabeth, feeling a sweet savour to come from
thence, and seeing the same dried from moisture,
and yet the form remaining with the hair of the
head and beard red, brought it to London, to his
house in Wood Street, where for a time he kept it
for the sweetness, but in the end caused the sexton
of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken
out of their charnel.'

"The parish church of St. Michael, in A\'ood
Street, is a proper thing," says Strype, " and lately
well repaired ; John lue, parson of this church,
John Forster, goldsmith, and Peter I'lkelden, taylor,
gave two messuages and shops, in tlie same parish
and street, and in Ladle Lane, to the reparation of
the church, the i6th of Richard II. In the year
1627 the parishioners made a new door to this
church into Wood Street, where till then it had
only one door, standing in Huggiri Lane."

St. Mary Staining, in Wood Street, destroyed
by the Great Fire, stood on the north side of Oat
Lane, in tlie Ward of Aldersgate Within. "The
additional epithet of staining'' says Maitland, " is
as uncertain as the time of the foundation ; some
imagining it to be derived from the painters' stainers,
who probably lived near it; and others from its being
built with stone, to distinguish it from those in the
City that were built with wood. The advowson of
the rectory anciently belonged to the Prioress and
Convent of Clerkenwell, in whom it continued till
their suppression by Henry VIII., when it came to
the Crown. The parish, as previously observed,
is now united to St. Michael's, Wood Street. That
this church is not of a modern foundation, is mani-
fest from John de Lukenore's being rector thereof
before the year 1328.

St. Alban's, Wood Street, in the time of Paul,
the fourteenth Alibot of St. .Mban's, belonged to
the Verulam monastery, but in 1077 the abbot
exchanged the right of presentation to this church
for the patronage of one belonging to the Abbet of

366

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Wood Street.

Westminster. Matthew Paris says that this Wood
Street Church was the chapel of King Ofta, the
foivuler of St. Alban's Abbey, who hati a ])alace
near it. Stow says it was of great anticiuity, and
that Roman bricks were visible licre and tlicre
among the stones. Maitland thinks it probable
tluit it was one of the first churches built by Alfred
in London after he had driven out the Danes.
The right of presentation to the church was

says Seymour, " is the name, by which it was first
dedicated to St. Alban, the first martyr of Eng-
land. Another character of the antiquity of it is
to be seen in the manner of the turning of the
arches to the windows, and the heads of the pillars.
A third note appears in the Roman bricks, here'
and there inlaid amongst the stones of the building.
Very probable it is that this church is, at least, of
as ancient a standing as King Adelstnne, the Saxon,

^ i Mi ..|iiiii M iifiii 1 ' W^ ii M, ii» M .nm'' ^ ' ^i ^ i * *' W w l rff ft ;r^>t' . J!!'t;ii N rii iTW

WOOD STREET COMPTER. Fiont a Vic-.J piiblishid in \-()l. (.SVv /o^r 36S. )

originally possessed by the master, brethren, and
sisters of St. James's Leper Hospital (site of St.
James's Palace), and after the death of Henry VL
it was vested in the Provost and Fellows of Eton
College. In the reign of Charles H. the parish
was united to that of St. Olave, Silver Street, and
the right of presentation is now exercised alter-
nately by Eton College and the Dean and Chapter
of St. Paul's. The style of the interior of the
churcli is late pointed. The windows appear
older than the rest of the building. The ceiling in
the nave exhibits bold groining, and the general
effect is not unpleasing.

" One note of the great antiquity of this church,"

who, as tradition says, had his house at the east
end of this church. This king's house, having
a door also into Adel Street, in this parish, gave
name, as 'tis thought, to the said Adel Street,
which, in all evidences, to this day is written King
Adel Street One great square tower of this king's
house seemed, in Stow's time, to be then remaining,
and to be seen at the north corner of Love Lane,
as you come from Aldermanbury, which tower was
of the very same stone and manner of building
with St. Alban's Church."

About the commencement of the seventeenth
century St. Alban's, being in a state of great
decay, was surveyed by Sir Henry Spiller and Inigo

Wood Street. )

ST. ALBAN'S, WOOD STREET.

.•?67

Jones, and in accordance with their advice, appa-
rently, in 1632 it was pulled down, and rebuilt
anno 1634; but, perishing in the flames of 1666,
it was re-erected as it now appears, and finished
in the year 16SS, from Wren's design.

To be his comfort everywhere
Now joyfull Alice is gone.

And for these three (Icparled soules,
Cione up to joyfull blisse,

Th' .ilmitjlity |)r.iise be ijiven to God,
To whom the glory is."

THE TREE AT TItE CORXER OF WOOD STREET.

In the old church were the following epitaphs :-

" Of William Wilson, Joane his wife,

And Alice, their daughter deare,
These lines were left to give report

These three lye buried here ;
And Alice was Henry Decon's wife,

Which Henry lives on earth,
And is the Serjeant Plummer

To Queen Elizaheth.
With whom this Alice left issue here.

His virtuous daughter Joan,

Over the grave of Anne, the wife of Laurence
Gibson, gentleman, were the following verses, which
are wortli mentioning here ; —

" .MENTIS VIS .MAGX.l.

" What ! is she dead ?

Doth he survive ?
No ; both arc deaj,

And both alive.
She lives, hee's dead,

By love, thougli grieving,

368

OLt) AND NEW LONDON.

[Wood Street

In liini, for her,

Vet dead, yet living ;
Both (Icail and living.

Then what is gone t
One half of l)Oth,

Not any one.
One mind, one faith.

One hope, one grave,
In life, in death, •

They had and still tlicy have."

The pulpit (says Seymour) is finely carved with
an enrichment, in imitation of fruit and leaves ;
and the sound-board is a hexagon, having round it
a fine cornice, adorned with cherubims and other
embellishments, and the inside is neatly finniered.
The altar-piece is very ornamental, consisting of
four columns, fluted with their bases, pedestals,
entablature, and open pediment of the Corinthian
order ; and over each column, upon acroters, is
a lamp with a gilded taper. Between the inner
columns are the Ten Commandments, done in gold
letters upon black. Between the two, northward,
is the Lord's Prayer, and the two southward the
Creed, done in gold upon blue. Over the com-
mandments is a Glory between two cherubims,
and above the cornice the king's arms, with the
supporters, helmet, and crest, richly carved, under
a triangular pediment ; and on the north and south
side of the above described ornaments are two
large cartouches, all of which parts are carved in
fine wainscot. The church is well paved with oak,
and here are two large brass branches and a marble
'font, having enrichments of cherubims, &c.

In a curious brass frame, attached to a tall
stem, opposite the pulpit is an hour-glass, by
which the preacher could measure his sermon and
test his listeners' patience. The hour-glass at St.
Dunstan's, Fleet Street, was taken down in 1723,
and two heads for the parish staves made out of
the silver.

Wood Street Compter (says Cunningham) was first
established in 1555, when, on the Feast of St.
Michael the Archangel in that year, the prisoners
were removed from the Old Compter in Bread Street
to the New Compter in Wood Street, Cheapside.
This compter was burnt down in the Great Fire,
but w-as rebuilt in 1670. It stood on the east
side of the street, and was removed to Giltspur
Street in 1791. There were two compters in
London— the compter in ^^'ood Street, under the
control of one of the sheriffs, and the compter in
the Poultr)', under the superintendence of the
other. Under each sheriff was a secondary, a
clerk of tlie papers, four clerk sitters, eighteen
serjeants-at-mace (each serjeant having his yeomen).
a master keeper, and two turnke3s. The Serjeants

wore blue and coloured cloth gowns, and the words
of arrest were, "Sir, we arrest you in the King's
Majesty's name, and we charge you to obey us."
There were three sides — the master's side, the
dearest of all ; the knights' ward, a little cheaper ;
and the Hole, the cheapest of all. The register of
entries was called the Black Book. Garnish was
demanded at every step, and the Wood Street
Compter was hung with the story of the prodigal
son.

When the Wood Street counter gate was opened,
the prisoner's name was enrolled in the black book,
and he was asked if he was for the master's side,
the Knight's ward, or the Hole. At every fresh
door a fee was demanded, the stranger's hat or cloak
being detained if he refused to pay the exfortion,
which, in prison language, was called " garnish."
The first question to a new prisoner was, whether
he was in by arrest or command ; and there was
generally some knavish attorney in a threadbare
black suit, who, for forty shillings, would offer to
move for a habeas corpus, and have him out
presently, much to the amusement of the villanous-
looking men who filled the room, some smoking
and some drinking. At dinner a vintner's boy,
who was in waiting, filled a bowl full of claret,
and compelled the new prisoner to drink to all
the society ; and the turnkeys, who were dining
in another room, then demanded another tester
for a quart of wine to quaff to the new comer's
health.

At the end of a week, when the prisoner's purse
grew thin, he was generally compelled to pass over
to the knight's side, and live in a humbler and
more restricted manner. Here a fresh garnish of
eighteen pence was demanded, and if this was
refused, he was compelled to sleep over the drain ;
or, if he chose, to sit up, to drink and smoke in
the cellar with vile companions till the keepers
ordered every man to his bed.

Fennor, an actor in 161 7 (James I.), wrote a
curious pamphlet on the abuses of this compter.
" For what extreme extortion," says the angry wTiter,
" is it when a gentleman is brought in by the watch
for .some misdemeanour committed, that he must
pay at least an angell before he be discharged; hee
must pay twelvepence for turning the key at the
master-side dore two shillings to the chamberleine,
twelvepence for his garnish for wine, tenpence for
his dinner^ whether he stay or no, and when he
comes to be discharged at the booke, it will cost
at least three shilHngs and sixpence more, besides
sixpence for the booke-keeper's paines, and six-
pence for the porter. ... And if a gentleman
stay there but one night, he must pay for his

Wood Street.]

THE "FRATERNITY OF ST. NICHOLAS."

369

garnish sixteene pence, besides a groate for his

lodging, and so much for his sheetes. . . When I
a gentleman is upon his discharge, and hath'givcn
satisfaction for his executions, they must have fees I
for irons, three halfepence in the pounil, liesides the
other fees, so that if a man were in for a thousand
or fifteene hundred pound execution, they will if a
man is so madde have so many three halfepence.

" This little Hole is as a little citty in a com-
nlonwealth, for as in a citty there are all kinds of
officers, trades, and vocations, so there is in this
place, as we may make a pretty resemblance
between them. In steede of a Lord Maior, we
have a master steward to over-see and correct all
misdemeanours as shall arise. . . . And lastly,
as in a citty there is all kinds of trades, so is there
heere, for heere you shall see a cobler sitting
mending olde showes, and singing as merrily as if
hee were under a stall abroad ; not farre from him
you shall see a taylor sit crosse-legged (like a witch)
on his cushion, theatning the ruine of our fellow
prisoner, the .-Egyptian vermine ; in another place
you may behold a saddler empannelling all his
wits together how to patch this Scotchpadde
handsomely, or mend the old gentlewoman's
crooper that was almost burst in pieces. You
may have a phisition here, that for a bottle of sack
will undertake to give you as good a medicine for
melanchoUy as any doctor will for five pounds.
Besides, if you desire to bee remouved before a
judge, you shall have a tinker-like attorney not farre
distant from you, that in stopping up one hole in
a broken cause, will make twenty before hee hath
made an end, and at last will leave you in prison as
bar3 of money as he himself is of honesty. Heere
is your cholericke cooke that will dresse our meate,
when wee can get any, as well as any greasie scul-
lion in Fleet Lane or Pye Corner."

At 25, Silver Street, Wood Street, is the hall of
one of the smaller City companies — the Parish
Clerks of London, Westminster, Borough of South-
wark, and fifteen out parishes, with their master
wardens and fellows. This company was incor-
porated as early as Henry III. (1233), by the name
of the Fraternity of St. Nicholas, an ominous name,
for "St. Nicholas's clerk'' was a jocose iiom dc guerre
for highwaymen. The first hall of the fraternity stood
in Bishopsgate Street, the second in Broad Lane, in
Vintry ^\'ard. The fraternity was re-incorporated
by James I. in 16 11, and confirmed by Charles I.
in 1636. The hall contains a few portraits, and in
a painted glass window, David playing on the harp,
St. Cecilia at the organ, (ic. The parish clerks
were the actors in the old miracle plays, the parish
clerks of our churches dating only from the com-

mencement of the Reformation. The " Bills of
Mortality " were commenced by tha Parish Clerks'
Company in 1592, who about 1625 were licensed
by the Star Chamber to keep a printing-press in
their hall for printing the bills, valuable for tlieir
warning of the existence or progress of the plague.
The " Weekly Bill " of the Parish Clerks has, how-
ever, been superseded by the "Tables of Mortality in
the Metropolis," issued weekly from the Registrar-
General's Office, at Somerset House, since July
ist, 1837. The Parish Clerks' Company neither
confer the freedom of the City, nor the hereditary
freedom.

There is a large gold refinery in Wood Street,
through whose doors three tons of gold a day have
been known to pass. Australian gold is here cast
into ingots, value ^800 each. This gold is one carat
and three quarters above the standard, and when the
first two bars of Australian gold were sent to the
Bank of England they were sent back, as their won-
derful purity excited suspicion. For refining, the
gold is boiled fifteen minutes, poured oft' into
hand moulds 18 pounds troy weight, strewn wiili
ivory black, and then left to cool. You see Iiere
the stalwart men wedging apart great bars of silver
for the melting pots. The silver is purified in
a blast-furnace, and mi.xed with nitric acid in pla-
tinum crucibles, that cost from £,100 to ;^i,ooo
apiece. The bars of gold are stamped with a
trade-mark, and pieces are cut off each ingot to
be sent to the assayer for his report.

" I read in divers records," says Stow, " of a house
in Wood Street then called ' Black Hall ; ' but no
man at this day can tell thereof In the time of
King Richard II., Sir Henry Percy, the son and
heir of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had
a house in ' Wodstreate,' in London (whether
this Black Hall or no, it is hard to trace), wherein
he treated King Richard, the Duke of Lancaster,
the Duke of York, the Earl Marshal, and his father,
the Earl of Northumberland, with others, at
supper."

The " Rose," in Wood Street, was a sponging-
house, .well known to the rakehells and spend-
thrifts of Charles II. 's time. " I have been too
lately under their (the bailiffs') clutches," says Tom
Brown, "to desire any more dealings with them,
and I cannot come within a furlong of the ' Rose '
sponging-house without five or si.x yellow-boys in my
pocket to cast out those devils there, who would
otherwise infallibly take possession of me."

The " Mitre," an old tavern in Wood Street, was
kept in Charles II. 's time by William Proctor, who
died insolvent in 1665. " iSth Sept., 16C0," Pepys
says, "to the 'Miter Taverne,' in ^Vood Street (a

37°

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Wood Street.

house of the greatest note in London). Here some
of us fell to lianilycap, a sport that I never knew
before." And again, "31st July, 1665. Proctor,
the vintner, ot the ' Miter,' in Wood Street, and
his son, are dead this morning of the plague ; he
having laid out abundance of money there, and
was the greatest vintner for some time in London
for great entertainments."

In early life Tliomas Ripley, afterwards a cele-
brated architect, kept a carpenter's shop and coffee
house in Wood Street. Marrying a servant of Sir
Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of George L,
this lucky pushing man soon
obtained work from tlie Crown
and a seat at the Board of
Works, and supplanted that
great genius who built St.
Paul's, to the infinite disgrace
of the age. Rii)lcy built the
Admiralty, and Houghton
Hall, Norfolk, for his early
patron, ^Valpole, and died
rich in 1758.

Wood Street is associated
with that last extraordinary
outburst of the Civil War
flmaticism — the Anabaptist
rising in January, 1661.

On Sunday, January 6,
1661, we read in " Somers'
Tracts," " these monsters
assembled at their meeting-
house, in Coleman Street,
where they armed themselves,
and sallying thence, came to
St. Paul's in the dusk of
the evening, and there, after
ordering their small party, placed sentinels, one of
whom killed a person accidentally passing by, be-
cause he said he was for God and King Charles
when challenged by him. This giving the alarm,
and some parties of trained bands charging them,
and being repulsed, they marched to Bishopsgate,
thence to Cripplegate and Aldersgate, where, going
out, in spite of the constables and watch, they de-
clared for King Jesus. Proceeding to Beech Lane,
they killed a headborough, who would have opposed
them. It was observed that all they shot, though
never so slightly wounded, died. Then they hasted
away to Cane A\'ood, where they lurked, resolved
to make another eftbrt upon the City, but were
drove thence, and routed by a party of horse and
foot, sent for that purpose, about thirty being taken
and brought before General Monk, who committed
them to the Gate House.

^Mm

rUI.riT ITOUR-GTASS (,w/rr^^ 368).

" Nevertheless, the others who had escaped out
of the wood returned to London, not doubting
of success in their enterprise ; Venner, a wine-
cooper by trade, and their head, affirming, he was
assured that no weapons employed against them
would prosper, nor a hair of their head be touched;
which their coming off at first so well made them
wilUng to believe. These fellows had taken the
opportunity of the king's being gone to Ports-
mouth, having before made a disposition for drawing
to them of other desperate rebels, by publishing a
declaration called, ' A Door of Hope Opened,'
full of abominable slanders
against the whole royal family.
" On Wednesday morning,
January 9, after the watches
and guards were dismissed,
they resumed their first enter-
prise. The first appearance
was in Threadneedle Street,
where they alarmed the trained
bands upon duty that day,
and drove back a party sent
after them, to their main
guard, which then marched in
a body towards them. The
Fifth Monarchists retired into
Bishopsgate Street, where some
of them took into an ale-
house, known by the sign of
'The Helmet,' where, after a
sharp dispute, two were killed,
and as many taken, the same
number of the trained bands
being killed and wounded.
The ne.xt sight of them (for
they vanished and appeared
again on a sudden), was at College Hill, which
way they went into Cheapside, and so into Wood
Street, Venner leading them, with a morrion on his
head and a halbert in his hand. Here was the
main and hottest action, for they fought stoutly
with the Trained Bands, and received a charge
from the Life Guards, whom they obliged to give
way, until, being overpowered, and Venner knocked
down and wounded and shot, Tufney and Crag,
two others of their chief teachers, being killed by
him, they began to give ground, and soon after
dispersed, flying outright and taking several ways.
The greatest part of them went down ^^'ood Street
to Cripplegate, firing in the rear at the Yellow
Trained Bands, then in close pursuit of them. Ten
of them took into the 'Blue Anchor' ale-house,
near the postern, which house they maintained until
Lieutenant-Colonel Cox, with his company, secured

Wood Street.']

ST. JOHN ZACHARY— ST. ANNE IN THE WILT-OWS.

37T

all the avenues to it. In the meantime, some of the
aforesaid Yellow Trained Bands got upon the tiles
of the ne.xt house, which they threw off, and fired
in upon tlie rebels who were in the upper room,
and even tlien refused quarter. At the same time,
another file of musketeers got ui* the stairs, and
having shot down the door, entered upon them.
Six of them were killed before, another wounded,
and one, refusing quarter, was knocked down, and
afterwards shot. The others being asked why
they had not begged quarter before, answered they
durst not, for fear their own fellows should shoot
them.''

The upshot of this insane revolt of a handful of
men was that twenty-two king's men were killed,
and twenty-two of the fanatics, proving the fighting
to have been hard. Twenty were taken, and nine
or ten hung, drawn, and quartered. Venner,
the leader, who was wounded severely, and some
others, were drawn on sledges, tlieir quarters were
set on the four gates, and their heads stuck on
poles on London Bridge. Two more were hung
at the west end of St. Paul's, two at the Ro)al
Exchange, two at the Bull and INIouth, two in
Beech Lane, one at Bishopsgate, and another, cap-
tured later, was hung at Tyburn, and his head set
on a pole in Whitechapel.

The texts these Fifth Monarchy men chiefly
relied on were these : — " He shall use liis people,
in his hand as his battle-axe and weapon of war,
for the bringing in the kingdoms of this world into
subjection to Him." A i'ew Scriptures (and but
a few) as to this, Isa. xli. 14th verse ; but more
especially the 15 th and i6th verses. The prophet,
speaking of Jacob, saith : " Behold, I will make
thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having
teeth ; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat
them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff; thou
shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them
away," &c.

" Maiden I^ane," says Stow, '• formerly Engine
Lane, is a good, handsome, well-built, and in-
habited street. The east end falleth into Wood
Street. At the north-east corner, over against
Goldsmiths' Hall, stood the parish church of St.
John Zachary, which since the dreadful fire is not
rebuilt, but the parish united unto St. Ann's, Alders-
gate, the ground on which it stood, enclosed within
a wall, serving as a burial-place for the parish."

The old Goldsmiths' Church of St. John Zachary,
Maidsn Lane, destroyed in the Great Fire, and not
rebuilt, stood at the north-west corner of Maiden
Iiane, in the Ward of Alder.sgate ; the parish is
annexed to that of St. Anne. Among other
epitaphs in this cliurch, Stow gives the following ; —

" Here lietU llie body of John .SuUon, cilizen, goklsmitli,
and alderman of London ; who died 6th July, 1450. This
brave and worthy alderinan was killed in the cicfence of the
City, in the bloody noctiupal battle on London Bridge,
against the infamous Jack Cade, and his army of Kentish
rebels."

" Here lieth William Brekesp_>rc, of London, some time
merchant,
tloldsmilh and alderman, the Comnionwele altcndant,
With Margaryt his Dawter, lale wyff of .Suttoon,
And Thomas, hur Sonn, yet livyn undyr Goddy's luitioon.
The tenth of July he m.ade his tr-ansmigration.
She disissyd in the yer of Grase of Chryst's Incarnation,
A Thowsand Four hundryd Threescor anrl oon.
God assoyl their .Sowls whose Bodys lye undyr this .Stoon."

This church was rated to pay a certain annual
sum to the canons of St. Paul's, about the year
ii8r, at whicli time it was denominated St. John
Baptist's, as appears from a grant thereof from the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's to one Zachary,
whose name it probably received to distinguish
it from one of the same name in ^\'albrook.

St. Anne in the Willows was a church destro}'ed
by the Great Fire, rebuilt by Wren, and united
to the parish of St. John Zachary. " It is so
called," says Stow, " some say of willows growing
thereabouts ; but now there is no such void place
for willows to grow, more than the church-yard,
wherein grow some high ash-trees."

" This church, standing," says Strype, " in the
church-yard, is planted before with liine-trees that
flourish there. So that as it was formerly called
St. Anne-in-the-Willows, it may now be called St.
Aime-in-the-Limes."

St. Anne can be traced back as far as 133:;.
The patronage was anciently in the Dean and
Canons of St. Martin's-le-Grand, in whose gift
it continued till Henry VII. annexed that Col-
legiate Church, with its appendages, to the Abbey
of Westminster. In 1553 Queen Mary gave it to
the Bishop of London and his successors. One
of the monuments here bears the following in-
scription : —

"Peter Heiwood, younger son of Peter Heiwood, one of
the counsellors of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John
Muddeford, Kt. and Bart., great-grandson to Peter Hei- ^
wood, of Heywood, in County Palatine of Lancaster, who
apprehended Guy Faux with his dark lanthorn, and for his
zealous prosecution of Papists, as Justice of the Peace, was
stabbed in Westminster Hall by John James, a Dominican
Friar, An. Dom. 1640. Obiit, Xovr. 2, 1701.
" Reader, if not a Papist bred,
Upon such ashes gently tred."

The site of Haberdashers' Hall, in Maiden
Lane, opposite Goldsmiths' Hall, was bequeathed
to the Company by William Baker, a London
haberdasher, in 1478 (Edward IV.). In the old
hall, destroyed by the Great Fire, the Parliament

372

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Wood Street.

Commissioners held their meetings during the
Commonwealth, and many a stern decree of con-
fiscation was there grimly signed. In this hall
there arc some good portraits. The Haberdashers'
Company liave many livings and exhibitions in
their gift ; and almhoiises at Hoxton, Monmouth,
Newland (Ciloucestershire), and Newport (Shrop-

one being hurrers, cappers, or haberdashers of hats ;
the other, haberdashers of ribands, laces, and small
wares only. The latter were also called milliners,
from their selling such merchandise as brooches,
agglets, spurs, capes, glasses, and pins. " In the
early part of Elizabeth's reign," says Herbert, " up-
wards of ;^6o,ooo annually was ]\iid to foreign

INTEklOR (JF ST. MICHAEL'S, WOOD STREET (j<V/i?j,V 365).

shire; schools in Bunhill Row, Monmouth, and
Newport ; and they lend sums of ^50 or p^ioo
to struggling young men of their own trade.

The liaberdashers were originally a branch of
the mercers, dealing like them in merceries or
small wares. Lydgate, in his ballad, describes the
mercers' and haberdashers' stalls as side by side in
the mercery in Chepe. In the reign of Henry VI.,
when first incorporated, they divided ' into two
fraternities, St. Catherine and St. Nicholas. The

merchants for pins alone, but before her death
pins were made in England, and in the reign of
James I. the pinmakers obtained a charter."

In the reign of Henry VII. the two societies
united. Queen Elizabeth granted them their arms :
Barry nebule of six, argent and azure on a bend
gujes, a lion passant gardant ; crest or, a helmet
and torse, two arms supporting a laurel proper and
issuing out of a cloud argent. Supporters, two
Indian goats argent, attired and hoofed orj motto,

Wood Street.)

HABERDASHERS' HALT,.

573

"Serve nnd Obey." Waiiland describes tliL-ir hums, tooth-picks, fans, pomanders, silk, and silver

annual expenditure in charity as ^3,500. The buttons.

number of the Company consists of one master, ^ The Haberdashers were incorporated by a Charter

four wardens, forty-five assistants, 360 livery, and , of Queen Elizabeth in 1578. The Court books

a large company of freemen. This Company is the ; extend to the time of Charles I. only. Their

eighth in order of the chief twelve City Companies. I charters e.\ist in good preservation. ]n their

INTERIOR OF HABERD.^SHERS' HALL.

In the reign of Edward VI. there were not more
than a dozen milliner's shops in all London, but in
1580 the dealers in foreign luxuries had so increased
as to alarm the frugal and the philosophic. These
dealers sold French and Spanish gloves, French
cloth and frieze, Flemish kersies, daggers, swords,
knives, Spanish girdles, painted cruises, dials,
tablets, cards, balls, glasses, fine earthen pots, salt-
cellars, spoons, tin dishes, puppets, pennons, ink-
32

chronicle:? we have only a faw points to notice.
In 1466 they sent two of their members to attend
the coronation of Elizabeth, queen of P^dward l\'.,
and they also were represented at the coronation
of the detestable Richard III. Like the other
Companies, the Haberdashers were much oppressed
during the time of Charles I. and the Common-
wealth, during which they lost nearly ;^5o,ooo.
The Company's original bye-laws having been

374

OLD AXD NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside.

burnt in the Great Fire, a new code was drawn
up, which in 1675 was sanctioned by Lord Chan-
cellor Finch, Sir Matthew Hale, and Sir Francis
North.

The diniiig-hall is a lofty and spacious room.
About ten years since it was nuuli injured by
fire, but has been since restored and handsomely
decorated. Over the screen at the lower end is
a music gallery, and the hall is lighted from above
by six sun-burners. Among the portraits in the
edifice are whole lengths of William Adams, Escp,
founder of the grammar .school and almshouses at
Xew|)ort, in Shropshire ; Jerome Knapp, Esq., a
former Master of the Company , and Micajah
Perry, Esq., Lord Mayor in 1739; a half-length
of George Whitmore, Esq., Lord Mayor in i63r ;
Sir Hugh Hammersley, Knight, Lord Mayor in
1627: Mr. Thomas Aldersey, merchant, of ]5an-

the booking office and head-quarters of coaches to
the North.

Love Lane was so named from the wantor.a
who once infested it. The Cross Keys Lin derived
its name from the bygone Church of St. Peter
before mentioned. As there are traditions of .Sa.\on
kings once dwelling in P'oster Lane, so in Gutter
Lane we find traditions of some I )anish celebrities.
"Gutter Lane," says Stow, that patriarch ®f London
topograjjhy, " was so called by Guthurun, some
time owner thereof In a manuscript chronicle of
London, written in the reign of Edward IV.. and
edited by Sir N. H. Nicolas, it is called "Goster
Lane.'

Brewers' Hall, No. 1 9, Addle Street, Wood Street,
Cheapside, is a modern edifice, and contains, among
other pictures, a portrait of Dame Alice Owen,
who narrowly escaped death from an archer's stray

bury, in Cheshire, who, in 1594, vested a consider- i arrow while walking in Islington fields, in gratitude
able estate in this Company for charitable uses ; [ for which she founded an hospital. In the hall
Mr. William Jones, merchant adventurer, who be- { window is some old painted glass. The Brewers
queathed ^"iS.ooo for benevolent purposes; and | were incorporated in- 1438. The quarterage in this
Robert Aske, the worthy founder of the Haber- 1 Company is paid on the quantity of inalt consumed

dashers' Hospital at Hoxton.

Gresham Street, that intersects Wood Street,
was formerly called Lad or Ladle Lane, and
part of it Maiden Lane, from a shop sign of the
Virgin. It is written Lad Lane in a chronicle
of Edward R'.'s time, published by Sir Harris
Nicolas, page 98. The "Swan with Two Necks,"
in Lad Lane, was for a century and more, till
railivays ruined stage and mail coach travelling.

by its members. In 1S51 a liandsome school-
house was built for the Company, in Trinity Stjuare,
Tower Hill.

In 1422 \\'hittington laid an information before
his successor in the mayoralt\', Robert Childe,
against the Brewers' Company, for selling ifetir ah;
when they were convicted in the penalty of ^20 ;
and the masters were ordered to be kept in prison
in the chamberlain's custody until they paid it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CHEAP.SIDE TRIBUTARIE.S, NORTH (conliinicd).

Milk .Street— Sir Thomas More— The City of London .School— St. Mary Magdalen— Honey Lane— .\11 H.allows' Church— Lawrence Lane and
S-. Lawrence Church— Ironinonger Lane and Mercers' Hall— The Mercers' Ccmpanj — Early Life .\ssurance Companies— The Mercers'
Company in Trouble- Mercers' Chapel— St. Thomas Aeon— The Mercers' School— Restoration of the Carvings in Mercers' Hall— The
Clorics of the Mercers' Company — Ironmonger Lane.

In Milk Street was the milk-market of Mediaeval
London. That good and wise man. Sir Thomas
More, was born in this street. " The brightest
man," says Fuller, with his usual quaint playful-
ness, " that ever shone in that via ladca." More,
born in 1480, was the son of a judge of the
King's Bench, and was educated at St. Anthony's
School, in Threadneedle Street. He was afterwards
placed in the family of Archbishop Morton, till he
went to Oxford. After two years he became a bar-
rister, at Lincoln, entered Padiament, and opposed
Henry VII. to his own danger. After serving
as law reader at New Inn, he soon became an

eminent lawyer. He then wrote his " Utopia,"
acquired the friendship of Erasmus, and soon after
became a favourite of Henry VII I., helping the
despot in his treatise against Luther. On Wolsey's
disgrace. More became chancellor, and one of the
wisest and most impartial England has ever known.
Determined not to sanction the king's divorce,
More resigned his chancellorship, and, refusing to
attend Anne Boleyn's coronation, he was attainted
for treason. The tyrant, now furious, soon hurried
him to the scaffold, and he was executed on Tower
Hill in 1535.

This pious, wise, and consistent man is described

Cheapside.]

THE CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL.

375

as having dark chestnut hair, thin beard, and grey
eyes. He walked with his right shoulder raised,
and was negligent in his dress, ^^'hen in the Tower,
More is said to have foreseen the fate of Anne
]5oleyn, wliom his daughter Margaret had found
filling the court with dancing and sporting.

"Alas, Meg," said the ex-chancellor, " it pitieth
me to remember to what misery poor soul she
will shortly come. These dances of hers will
prove such dances that she will sport our heads
oft" like foot-balls ; but it will not be long ere her
head will dance the like dance."

It is to be lamented that with all his wisdom,
More was a bigot. He burnt one Frith for deny-
ing the corporeal jjresence ; had James Bainton, a
gentleman of the Temple, whipped in his presence
for heretical opinons ; went to the Tower to see him
on the rack, and then hurried him to Smithfield.
" Verily," said Luther, " he was a very notable
tyrant, and plagued and tormented innocent Chris-
tians like an executioner."

The City of London School, Milk Street, was
established in 1837, for the sons of respectable per-
sons engaged in professional, commercial, or trading
pursuits ; and partly founded on an income of
;^9oo a year, derived from certain tenements be-
queathed by John Carpenter, town-clerk of London,
in the reign of Henry V., "for the finding and
bringing up of four poor men's children, with meat,
drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the uni-
versities, &c., until they be preferred, and then
others in their places for ever." This was the same
John Carpenter who " caused, with great expense, to
be curiously painted upon a board, about the north
cloister of Paul's, a monument of Death, leading
all estates, with the speecJies of Death, and answers
of every state." The school year is divided into
three terms — Easter to July ; August to Christmas ;
January to Easter ; and the charge for each pupil
is jT.z 5s. a term. The printed form of application
for admission may be had of the secretary, and must
be filled up by the parent or guardian, and signed
by a member of the Corporation of London. The
general course of instruction includes the English,
French, German, Latin, and Greek languages,
writing, arithmetic, mathematics, book-keeping,
geography, and history. Besides eight free
scholarships on the foundation, equivalent to
;^35 per annum each, and available as exhi-
bitions to the Universities, there are the following
exhibitions belonging to the school : — The "Times"
Scholarship, value ;^3o per annum ; three Beaufoy
Scholarships, the Solomons Scholarship, and the
Travers Scholarship, ^50 per annum each ; the
Tegg Scholarship, nearly ;^2o per annum ; and

several other valuable prizes. The first stone of
the school was laid by Lord Brougham, October
2ist, 1835. The architect of the building was .Mr.
J. B. Bunning, of (niildford Street, Russell S<iuare,
and the entire cost, including fittings and furniture,
was nearly ;^2o,ooo. It is about 75 feet wide in
front, ne.xt Milk Street, and is about 160 feet long ;
it contains eleven class-rooms of various dimensions,
a sijacious theatre for lectures, &c„ a library, com-
mittee-room, with a commodious residence in the
front for the head master and his family. The
lectures, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, on di-
vinity, astronomy, music, geometry, law, physics, and
rhetoric, which upon the demolition of Gresham
College had been delivered at the Royal Excliange
from the year 1773, were after the destruction of
that. building by fire, in January, 1838, read in the
theatre of the City of London School until 1843;
they were delivered each day during the four Law
Terms, and the public in general were entitled
to free admission.

In Milk Street stood the small parish church %i
St. Mary Magdalen, destroyed in the Great Fire.
It was repaired and beautified at the charge of the
parish in 1 6 1 9. All the chancel window was built
at the proper cost of Mr. Benjamin Henshaw,
Merchant Taylor, and one of the City captains.

This church was burnt down in the Great F'ire,
and was not rebuilt. One amusing epitaph has
been preserved : —

" Here lietii the nonv of Sir William .Stone, Knt.
" As the E.irth the
Earth doth cover,
So under this stone

Lyes another ;
Sir Willi.iin Stone,

Who long deceased,
Ere the world's love

Him released ;
So much it loved him.

For they say,
He answered Death

Before his day ;
But, 'tis not so ;

For he was sought
Of One that both him

Made and bought.
He remain'd

The Great Lord's Tieasurjr,
Who called for him

At his pleasure,
And receiveil him.

Yet be it said,
Earth grieved that Heaven
So soon was paid.

" Here likewise lyes

Inhumed in one bed,
Dear Barbar.i,
The well-beluvcd wife

376

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapside,

Of this remembered Knight ;

Whose smils arc fled
Krrun this dinuire vale

To cvcrlastinij life,
Where in) move change,

Nor no more separation,
Sliall make them tlye

Krom their lilest haliiiatinn.

Gra-sse of levilie.

Span in lirevity,

I-'Iower's felicity,

Fire of misery.

Wind's stability,

Is mortality.'

" Honey Lane," says good old Stow, " is so called
not of sweetness thereof, being very narrow and small
and dark, but rather of often washing and sweeping
to keep it clean." AN'ith all due respect to Stow,
we suspect that tlie lane did not derive its name
from any superlative cleanliness, but more probably
from honey being sold here in the times before sugar
became common and honey alone was used by
cooks for sweetening.

On the site of All Hallows' Church, destroyed
in the Great Fire, a market was afterwards esta-
blished.

" There be no monuments,'' says Stow, " in this
church worth the noting ; I find that Jolm Nor-
man, Maior, 1453, was buried there. He gave to
the drapers his tenements on the north side of the
said church ; they to allow for the beam light and
lamp 13s. 4d. yearly, from this lane to the Standard.

" This church hath the misfortune to have no be-
quests to church or poor, nor to any publick use.

"There was a parsonage house before the Great
Fire, but now the ground on which it stood is swal-
lowed up by the market. The jjarish of St. IVLary-
le-Bow (to which it is miited) hath received all
the money paid for the site of the ground of the
said parsonage."

All Hallows' Church was repaired and beautified
at the cost of the parishioners in 1625.

Lawrence Lane derives its name from the church
of St. Lawrence, at its north end. "Antiquities," says
Stow, " in this lane I find none other than among
many fair houses. There is one large inn for re-
ceipt of travellers, called ' Blossoms Inn,' but cor-
ruptly ' Bosoms Inn,' and hath for a sign ' St. Law-
rence, the Deacon,' in a border of blossoms or
flowers." This was one of the great City inns set
apart for Charles V.'s suite, when he came over to
visit Henry VIIL in 1522. At the sign of "St.
Lawrence Bosoms " twenty beds and stabling for
sixty horses were ordered.

The curious old tract about Bankes and his
trained horse was written under the assumed names

of '• lohn Dando, the wier-drawer of Hadley. and
Harrie Rtuit, head ostler of Besomes Inne,' whic:h
is probably the same place.

St. Lawrence Church is situate on the north side
of Cateaton Street, " and is denominated," .says
Maitland, " from its dedication to Lawrence, a
Spanish saint, born at Huesca, in the kingdom of
Arragon ; who, after having undergone the most
grievous tortures, in the persecution under Valerian,
the emperor, was cruelly broiled alive upon a grid-
iron, with a slow fire, till he died, for his strict ad-
herence to Christianity ; and the additional epithet
of Jewry, from its situation among the Jews, was
conferred upon it, to distinguish it from the church
of St. Lawrence Pulteney, now demolished.

" This church, which was anciently a rector)-,
being given by Hugo de Wickenbroke to Baliol
College in O.xford, anno 1294, the rectory ceased;
wherefore Richard, Bishop of London, converted the
same into a vicarage ; the advowson whereof still
continues in the same college. This church sharing
the common fate in 1666, it has since been beauti-
fully rebuilt, and the parish of St. Mary Magdalen,
Milk Street, thereunto annexed." The famous Sir
Richard Gresham lies buried here, with the follow-
ing inscription on his tomb : —

"Here lyeth the great Sir Richard Gresham, Knight, some
time Lord Maior of London ; and Audrey, Kis first wife, liy
whom he had issue, .Sir John Gresham and Sir Thomas
Gresham, ICnights, William and Margaret ; which Sir Richard '
deceasetl the 20th d.iy of Februaiy, .\n. Domini 1548, and
the third yeere of King Edward the .Sixth his Reigiie. and
Audrey deceased the 28th day of December, An. Dom. 1522. "

There is also this epitaph : —

" Lo here the Lady Margaret North,

In tombe and earth do lye ;
or husbands four the faithfuU spou-.e.

Whose fame shall ne\er dye.
One Andrew Franncis was the first,

The second Robert higlit,
.Surnamed Chartsey, Alderman ;

Sir David Brooke, a knight.
Was tliird. But he that passed all.

And was in number fourth,
And for his virtue made a Lord,

Was called Sir Eihvard North.
These altogether do I wish

A joyful rising d.iy ;
That of the Lord and of his Christ,
All honour they may say.

Ohiit 2 die Junii, An. Dom. 1575."

In Ironmonger Lane, inhabited by ironmongers
temp. Edward I., is Mercers' Hall, an interesting
building.

The Mercers, though not formally incorporated
till the 17th of Richard II. (1393), are traced back
by Herbert as early as 11 72. Sogii afterwards

Chcapsidc]

THE MERCEkS' COMPANY.

3?f

they are niGntioned x.i patron;; of one of the great
London charities. In i:;i4, Robert Spencer, a
mercer, was mayor. In 1296 the mercers joined
tlie company of merchant ad\enturers in esta-
bhshing in Edward I.'s reign, a ■woollen manufac-
ture in England, with a liranch at Antwerj). In
Edward II. 's reign they are mentioned as "the
Fraternity of Mercers," and in 1406 (Henry I.) they
are styled in a charter, " Brothers of .St. Thomas
h, Ikcket."

Mercers were at first general dealers in all small
wares, including wigs, haberdashery, and even spices
and drugs. The)' attended fairs and markets, and
even sat on the ground to sell their wares — in fact,
were little more than high-class pedlers. The poet
Gower talks of " the depression of such mercerie. '
In late times the silk trade formed the main feature
of their business ; the greater use of silk beginning
about 1573.

The mercers' first station, in Henry I I.'s reign,
was in that part of Cheap on the north side where
Mercers' Hall now stands, but they removed soon
afterwards higher up on the south side. The part
of Cheapside between Bow Church and Friday
•Street became known as the Mercery. Here, in
front of a large meadow called the " Crownsild,"
they held their little stalls or standings from Soper's
I-ane and the Standard. There were no houses
as yet in this part of Cheapside. In 132 1 William
Elsgup, a mercer, founded an hospital within Crip-
plegate, for 100 poor blind men, and became prior
of his own institution.

In 1351 (Edward III.), the Mercers grew jealous
of the Lombard merchants, and on Midsummer Day
three mercers were sent to the Tower for attack-
ing two Lombards in the Old Jewry. The mercers
in this reign sold woollen tlothes, but not silks.
In 137 1, John Barnes, mercer, mayor, gave a chest
with three locks, with 1,000 marks therein, to
be lent to younger mercers, upon sufficient pawn
and for the use thereof. The grateful recipients were
merely to say " De Profundis," a Pater Noster, and
no more. This beijuest seems to have started
among the Mercers the kindly practice of assisting
the young and struggling members of this Company.

In the reign of Henry VI. the mercers had
become great dealers in silks and velvets, and had
resigned to the haberdashers the sale of small articles
of dress. It is not known whether the mercers
bought their silks from the Lombards, or the Lon-
don silk-vromen, or whether they imported them
themselves, since many of the members of the Com-
pany were merchants.

Twenty years after the murder of Becket, the
murdered man's sister, who had married Thomas

Fitz Theobald de Hellcs, built a chapel and hospital
of Augustine Friars close to Ironmonger Lane,
Cheapside. The hospital was built on the site of
the house where l>e<kct was born. He v.'as the son
of Gilbert Becket, citizen, mercer an.l portreve of
London, who was said to have been a Crusader, and
to have married a fair Saracen, who had released
him from prison, and who followed him to London,
knowing only the one English word " Gilbert." The
hospital, which was called "St. Thomas of Aeon,"
from Becket's mother having been born at Acre,
the ancient Ptolemais, was given to the Mercers'
P'raternity by De Hilles and his wife, and Henry
III. gave the master and twelve brothers all the
land between Sl Olave's and Ironmonger Lane,
which had belonged to two rich Jews, to enlarge
their ground. In Henry V.'s reign that illustrious
mercer Whittington, by his wealth and charity, re-
flected great lustre on the Mercers' Company, who
at his death were left trustees of the college and
alnishouses founded by the immortal Richard on
College Hill. The Company still jireserve the
original ordinance of this charity with a curious
picture of Whittington's death, and of the first
three wardens, Coventry, Grove, and Carijenter.

In 1 41 4, Thomas Falconer, mercer and mayor,
lent Henry V., towards his French wars, ten marks
upon jewels.

In 1 5 13, Joan Bradbury, widow of Thomas Brad-
bury, late Lord Mayor of London, left the Conduit
Mead (now New Bond Street), to the Mercers'
Company for cliaritable uses. In pursuance of the
King's grant on this occasion, the Bishop of Norwich
and others granted the Mercers' Company 29 acres
.of land in Marylebone, 1 20 acres in Westminster,
and St. Giles, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, of
the annual value of ^13 6s. 8d., and in part satisfac-
tion of the said ^20 a year. The Company still
possess eight acres and a half of this old gift,
forming the north side of Long Acre and the ad-
jacent streets, one of which bears the name of the
Company. Mercer Street was described in a par-
liamentary survey in 1650 to have long gardens
reaching down to Cock and Pye Ditch, and the
site of Seven Dials. In 1544 the three Greshams
(at the time the twehe Companies were appealed
to) lent Henry VIII. upon mortgaged lands ^1,673
6s. 8d. In 1561, the wardens of the Mercers' Com-
pany were summoned before the Queen's Council
for selling their velvets, satins, and damasks so dear,
as English coin was no longer base, and the old
excuse for the former high charges was gone. The
Mercers prudently bowed before the storm, jiromised
reform, and begged her Majesty's Council to look
after tlie Grocers. At this time the chief vendors of

31^

OLD AND NRW LONDON.

rChcapsidc .

Italian silks lived inCheapside, St. Laurence Jewry,
and Old Jewry.

During the civil wars both King and Parliament
bore heavily on the Mercers. In 1640 Charles I.
half forced from them a loan of ^3,030, and in
164; the Parliament borrowed ;^6,soo, and arms
from the Company's armoury, value<l at ^.^88. They
afterwards gave further arms, valued at ^7 1 1 3s. 4d.,
and advanced as a second loan ^^3,200. The result
now became visible. In 1698, hoping to clear off

whom the insurance was effected, .should be at the
rate of ^30 for every jQioo of subscription. It
was stipulated that subscribers must be in good
and perfect health at the time of subscription. It
was decided that all married men of the age of
thirty years or under, might subscribe any sum from
_;^5o to ^1,000; that all married men, not exceeding
si.xty years of age, might subscribe any sum not less
than ^50, and not exceeding ^£^300. The Com-
pany's jirospectus further stipulates ' that no jjcrson

THE "bWAN WMU TWu NECKS," LAD LANE (jk /i/^v 374).

their debts, the Mercers' Company engaged in a
ruinous insurance scheme, suggested by Dr. Asshe-
fon, a Kentish rector. It was proposed to grant
annuitiLis of ;^3o per cent, to clergymen's widows
according to certain sums paid by their husbands.

" Pledging the rents of their large landed estates
as security for the fulfilment of their contracts with
usurers, the Mercers entered on business as life
assurance agents. Limiting the entire amount of
subscription to ^100,000, they decided that no
person over sixty years of age should become a
subscriber ; that no subscriber should subscribe
less than;^5o — i.e., should purchase a smaller con-
tmgent annuity than one of ^15 ; that the annuity j
:o every subscriber's widow, or other person for |

that goes to sea, nor soldier that goes to the wars,
shall be admitted to subscribe to have the benefit
of this proposal, in regard of the casualties and
accidents that they are more particularly liable to.'
Moreover, it was provided that ' in case it should
hajipen that any man who had subscribed should
voluntarily make away with himself, or by any act
of his occasion his own death, either by duelling,
or committing any crime whereby he should be
sentenced to be put to death by justice ; in any or
either of these cases his widow should receive no
annuity, but u])on delivering up the Company's
bond, should have the subscription money paid
to her.'

" The Mercers' operations soon gave rise to more

Clici^bide. i

THE MERCERS' COMPANY IN TROUBLE.

yr)

business-like companies, specially created to secure
the public agiinst some of the calamitous con-
sequences of derith. In 1706, the Amicable Life
Assurance Ofiice — usually, though, as the reader

were fixed too high, and the Company had to sink
to 18 per cent., and even this proved an insufncient
reduction. In 1745 they were compelled to sto]).
and, after several ineffectual struggles, to petition

has seen, incorrectly, termed the First Life Insur- | Parliament.

CITY OK LONDON SCHOOL.

ance Office — -was established in imitation of the
Mercers' Office. Two years later, the Second
Society of Assurance, for the support of widows
and orphans, was opened in Dublin, which, like the
Amicable, introduced numerous improvements upon
Dr. Assheton's scheme, and was a Joint-Stock Life
Assurance Society, identical in its principles with,
and similar in most of its details to, the modern
insurance companies, of which there were as many
as one hundred and sixty in the year 1859."

Large sums were subscribed, but the annuities

The petition showed that the Mercers were
indebted more than ;^ioo,ooo. The annuities
then out amounted to ^7,620 per annum, and the
subscriptions for future amounts reached ;^io,ooo
a year ; while to answer these claims their present
income only amounted to ^£^4,100 per annum.
The Company was therefore empowered by Act of
Parliament, 4 George III., to issue new bonds and
pay them oft' by a lottery, drawn in their own hall.
This plan had the eflect of completely retrieving
their afi'airs, and restoring them again to prosperity.

38o

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Chcapsidc.

Strypc rpcr.l;.; of the mercers' shops situated on
the south side of Chcaiwitle as having been turned
from mere sheds into handsome buildings four or
five storej's high.

Mercers' Hall and Chapel ha\o a history of
their own. On the rough suppression of monastic
institutions, Henry MH., gorged with plunder,
granted to the Mercers' Company for ;£')6<) 1 7s. 6d.
tiie church of the college of St. Thomas Aeon,
the parsonage of St. Mary Colechvirch, and sundry
]iremises in tlie jiarishes of St. Paul, Old Jewry,
St. Stephen, Walbrook, St. Martin, Ironmonger
Lane, and St. Stephen, Coleman Street. Imme-
diately behind the great doors of the hospital and j
Mercers' Hall stood the hospital church of St.
'I'liomas, and at the back ^\•ere court-yards, cloisters, j
ar.d gardens in a great wide enclosure east and ',
west of Ironmonger Lane and the Old Jewi)-.

Si. Thomas's Church was a large structure, pro- j

babl)- rich in monuments, though many of the

illustrious mercers were buried in Bow Church, St. I

I'ancras, Soper Lane, St. Antholin's, Watling Street, i

and St. Benet Sherehog. The church was bought

chiefly by Sir Richard Cjresham's influence, and Stow '

tells us '' it is now called Mercers' Chappell, and ;

therein is kept a free grammar school as of old time

had been accustomed." The original Mercers' i

I
Chapel was a chapel toward the street in front of

the " great old chapel of St. Thomas," and over it i
was Mercers' Hall. Aggas"s i)lan of London (circa '
1560) shows it was a little above the Great Conduit
of Cheapside. The small chapel was built by Sir
John Allen, mercer and mayor (1521), and he was
buried there ; but the Mercers removed this tomb
into the hospital church, and divided the chapel
into shops. Grey, the founder of the hospital, was
apprenticed to a bookseller who occupied one of
these shops, and after the Fire of London he him-
self carried on the same trade in a shop which was
built on the same site. Before the suppression,
the Mercers only occupied a shop of the present
front, the modern Mercers' Chapel standing, says
Herbert, exactly on the site of part of the hosjiital
church. i

The old hospital gate, which forms the present !
hospital entrance, had an image of St. Thomas Ti
Becket, but tliis was pulled down by Elizabethan
fanatics. The interior of the chapel remains im-
altered. Tliere is a large ambulatory before it sup-
l-;orted by columns, and a stone staircase leads to
the hall and court-rooms. Tlie ambulatory con-
tains the recumbent figure of Richard Fishborne,
Mercer, dressed in a fur gown and rulif. He was
a great benefactor to the Company, and died in
1C23 (James I.).

TiLmy eminent citizens were buried in St.
Thomas's, though most of the monuments had
been defliced even in Stow's time. Among them
were ten Mercer mayors and sheriffs, ten grocers
(l)robably from Bucklersbury, their special locality).
Sir Edward Shaw, goldsmith to Richard III.,
two Earls of Ormond, and Stephen Cavendish,
draper and mayor (1362), whose descendants were
ancestors of the ducal families of Cavendish and
Devonshire.

William Downer, of London, gent., by his last
will, dated 26th June, 1484, gave orders for his
body to be buried within the church of St. Thomas
Aeon's, of London, in these terms : — " .So tliat ever)-
year, yearly for evermore, in their foresaid churche,
at such time of the year as it shal happen me to
d)-, observe and keep an c/y/c, or an anni\ersary
for my sowl, the sowles of my seyd w}fe, the sowles
of my fader and moder, and al Christian sowles,
with placebo and dirige on the even, and mass of
requiem on the morrow following solemnly by note
for evermore.''

Previous to the suppression, Henry VIII. hatl
permitted the Hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon,
which wanted room, to throw a gallery across Old
Jewry into a garden which the master had pm-
chased, adjoining the Grocers' Hall, and in which
Sir Robert Clayton afterwards built a house, of
which we shall have to speak in its jjlace. The
gallery was to have two windows, and in the
winter a light was ordered to be burned there for
the comfort of passers-by. In 1536, Henry VIII.
and his queen, Jane Seymour, stood in the Mercers'
Hall, then newly built, and saw the " marching
watch of the City" most bravely set out by its
founder, Sir John Allen, mercer and mayor, and
one of the Privy Coimcil.

In the reign of James I., Mercers' Chajiel became
a fashionable place of resort ; gallants and ladies
crowded there to hear the sermons of the learned
Italian Archbishop of Spalatro, in Dalmatia, one of
the few prize converts to Protestantism. In 161 7
we look in and find among his auditors the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the
Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and Lords Zouch
and Compton. The chapel continued for many
years to be used for Italian sermons preached to
English merchants who had resided abroad, and
who partly defrayed the expense. The Mercers'
School was first held in the iospital and then re-
moved to the mercery.

The present chapel front in Cheapside is the
central part alone of thv front built after the Great
Fire. Correspondent houses, five storeys high,
formerly gave breadth and effect to the whole mass.

Clicnpside.]

THE ;\IERCERS' SCHOOL,

38r

Old views represent shops on each side with un-
sashed windows. Tlie first floors have stone
balconies, and over the central window of each
room is the bust of a crowned virgin. It has a
large doorcase, enriched with two genii above, in
the act of mantling the \'irgin's head, the Company's
cognomen displayed upon the keystone of the arch.
Above is a cornice, with brackets, sustaining a small
gallery, from which, on each side, arise Doric
pilasters, supporting an entablature of the same
order ; between the intercolumns and the central
window are the figures of Faith and Hope, in
niches, between whom, in a third niche of the en-
tablature, is Charity, sitting with her three children.
The upper storey iias circular windows and other
enrichments.

The entrance most used is in Ironmonger Lane,
where is a small court, with offices, apparently the
site of the ancient cloister, and which leads to the
principal building. The hall itself is elevated as
anciently, and supported by Doric columns, the
space below being open one side and forming an j
e-xtensive piazza, at the extremity whereof is the j
chapel, which is neatly planned, wainscoted, and ■
paved with black and v.liite marble. A high flight ;
of stairs leads from the piazza to the hall, which is i
a very lofty apartment, handsomely wainscoted !
and ornamented with Doric pilasters, and various
carvings in compartments.

In the hall, besides the transaction of the Com-
pany's business, the Gresham committees are held,
which consist of four aldermeji, including the Lord i
Mayor pro tempore, and eight of the Cit)- corpora- .
tion, with whom are associated a select number \
of the assistants of the Mercers. In this hall also i
the British Fishery Society, and other corporate 1
bodies, were formerly accustomed to hold their
meetings.

The chief portraits in the hall are tho.se of Sir
Thomas Gresham (original), a fanciful portrait of
Sir Richard Whitlington, a likeness of Count
Tekeli (the hero of the old opera), Count Paning-
ton ; Dean Colet (the illustrious friend of Erasmus,
and the founder of St. Paul's school) ; Thomas
Papillon, Master of the Company in 169S, who
left ;^i,ooo to the Company, to relieve any of
his family that ever came to want ; and Rowland
Wynne, Master of the Company in 1675. Wynne
gave ;!^4oo towards the repairmg of the hall after
the Great Fire.

In Strype's time (1720), the Mercers' Company
gave away ;^3,ooo a year in charity. In 1745 the
Comipany's money legacies amounted to ^21,699
55. gd., out of which the Company paid annually
^573 17s. 4d. In 1832, the lapsed legacies of

the Company became the subject of a Chancery
suit ; tlie result was that money is now lent to
li\'erymen or freemen of the Company requiring
assistance in sums of ^100, and not exceeding
;^5oo, for a term, without interest, but only upon
approved security.

The present Mercers' School, which is but lately
finished, is a very elegant stone structure, adjoining
St. Michael's Church, College Hill, on the site of
Whittington's Almshouses, which had been removed
to Highgate to make room for it.

The school scholarship is in the gift of the
Mercers' Company, and it must not be forgotten
that Caxton, the first great English printer, was a
member of this livery.

Subsequently to the Great Fire, says Herbert,
there was some discussion with Parliament on re-
building the Mercers' School on the former site of
St. Mary Colechurch. That site, however, was
ultimately rejected, and by the Rebuilding Act, 22
Charles II. (1670), it was expressly provided that
there should be a plot of ground, on the western
side of the Old Jewry, " set apart for the :Mercers'
School." Persons who remember the building,
says Herbert, describe it whilst here as an old-
fashioned house for the masters' residence, with
projecting upper storeys, a low, spacious building
by the side of it for the schoolroom, and an area
behind it for a playground, the whole being situate
on the west side of the Old Jewry, about forty yards
from Cheapside.

The great value of ground on the above spot, and
a desire to widen, as at present, the entrance to the
Old Jewry, occasioned the temporary removal of
the Mercers' School, in 1787, to No. 13, Budge
1 Row, about thirty yards from Dowgate Hill (a
\ house of the Company's, which was afterwards
j burnt down). In 1S04 it was again temporarily
I removed to No. 20, Red Lion Court, Watling
I Street ; and from thence, in 1S08, to its present
situation on College Hill. The latter premises
j were hired by the Company, at the rent of ;£'i2o,
and the average expense of the school was
;^677 IS. id. The salary of the master is ;!^2oo,
and ^50 gratuity, with a house to live in, rent and
taxes free. AVriting, arithmetic, and merchant's ac-
counts were added to the Greek and Latin classics,
in 1S04; and a writing-master was engaged, who
has a salary of ^120, and a gratuity of ;^"'20, but
no house. There are two exhibitions belonging to
the school.

\\"\\\\ the Mercers' Hospital, in the Middle Ages,
many curious old City customs were connected.
The customary devotions of the new Lord Mayor, at
St. Thomas of Aeon Ch'jrch, in the Catholic times,

3S^

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cheapsldc.

identify themselves in point of locality with the
Mercers' Company, and are to be ranked amongst
tlsat Company's obser\-ances. StryiJC has described
these, from an ancient MS. he met with on tlie
subject. The new Lord j\Layor, it states, '•after
dinner" on his inauguration day (the ceremony
would Iiave suited much better heforc dinner in'
modern days), "was wont to go from his house to
the Church of St. Thomas of Aeon, those of his
livery going before him ; and the aldecmen in like
manner being there met together, they came to the
Church of St. Paul, whither, when they were come,
namely, in the middle place between the body of
the church, between two little doors, they were
wont to pray for the soul of the Bishop of London.
William Norman, who was a great benefactor to
the City, in obtaining the confinnation of their
liberties from William the Conqueror, a priest
saying the office Dc Profundis (called a dirge) ;
and from thence they passed to the churchyard,
where Thomas a Becket's parents were buried, and
there, near their tomb, they said also, for all the
faithful deceased, Dc Profundis again. The City
procession thence returned through Cheapside
Market, sometimes with wax candles burning (if it
was late), to the said Church SanctE Thoma;, and
there the mayor and aldermen offered single pence,
which being done, every one went to his home."

On all saints' days, and various other festivals,
the mayor with his family attended at this same
Church of St. Thomas, and the aldennen also,
and those that were " of the livery of the mayor,
with tlie honest men of the mysteries," in their
several habits, or suits, from which they went to
St. Paul's to hear vespers. On the Feast of
Innocents they heard vespers at St. Thomas's, and
on the morrow mass and vespers.

The ]MercGrs' election cup, says Timbs, of early
sixteenth century work, was silver-gilt, decorated
with fret-work and female busts ; the feet, flasks ;
and on the cover is the popular legend of an
unicorn yielding its horn to a maiden. Tlie whole
is enamelled with coats of arms, and these lines —

"To elect the Master of the Mercerie hillier am I sent,
And by .Sir Thomas Leigli for the same intent."

The Company also possess a silver-gilt wagon
and tun, covered with arabesques and enamels, of
sixteenth century work. The hall was originally
decorated with carvings ; the main stem of deal,
the fruit, flowers, &c., of lime, pear, and beech.
These becoming worm-eaten, were long since re-
moved from the panelling and put aside ; but they
have been restored by Mr. Henry Crace, who thus
describes the process : —

" The carving is of the same colour as when
taken down. I merely washed it, and with a
gimlet bored a number of holes in the back, and
into every projecting piece of fruit and leaves on
the foce, and placing the whole in a long trough,
fifteen inches deep, I covered it with a solution
prepared in the following manner : — I took sixteen
gallons of linseed oil, with 2 lbs. of litharge, finely
ground, i lb. of camphor, and 2 lbs. of red lead,
which I boiled for six hours, keeping it stirred,
that every ingredient might be perfectly incor-
porated. I then dissolved 6 lbs. of bees'-wax in a
gallon of .spirits of turpentine, and mi.xed the whole,
while warm, thoroughl)- together.

" In this soUition the carving remained for twenty-
four hours. Wien taken out, I kept the face
downwards, that the oil might soak down to the
face of the carving ; and on cutting some of the
wood nearly nine inches deep, I found it had
soaked through, for not any of the dust was blown
out, as I considered it a valuable medium to form
a substance for the future support of the wood.
This has been accomplished, and, as the dust
becai^ie saturated with the oil, it increased in bulk,
and rendered the carving perfectly solid."

The Company is now governed by a master, three
wardens, and a court of thirty-one or more assist-
ants. The livery fine is 53s. 4d. The Mercers'
Company, though not by any means the most
ancient of the leading City companies, takes pre-
cedence of all. Such anomalous institutions are the
City companies, that, curious to relate, the present
body hardly includes one mercer among them. In
Henry VIII.'s reign the Company (freemen, house-
holders, and livery) amounted to fifty-three persons;
in 1701 it had almost quadrupled. Strype (1754)
only enumerates fifty-two mayors who had been
mercers, from 12 14 to 1701 ; this is below the
mark. Halkins over-estimates the mercer mayors
as ninety-eight up to 170S. Few monarchs have
been mercers, yet Richard II. was a free brother,
and Queen Elizabeth a free sister.

Half our modern nobility have sprung from the
trades they now despise. Many of the great
mercers became the founders of noble houses ; for
instance — Sir John Coventry (1425), ancestor of the
present Earl of Coventry ; Sir Geoffrey Bullen,
grandfather of Queen Elizabeth ; Sir William HoUis,
ancestor of the Earls of Clare. From Sir Richard
Dormer (1542) sprang the Lords Dormer; from
Sir Thomas Baldry (1523) the Lords Kensington
(Rich) ; from Sir Thomas Seymour (1527) the Dukes
of Somerset ; from Sir Baptist Hicks, the great
mercer of James I., who built Hicks' Hall, on
Clerkenwell Green, sprang the Viscounts Camden ;

CuMdh^n.I

I.ONnON'S HOTF.I. DF. VILLE.

from Sir Rowland Hill, ihe Lords Hill ; from James
Butler (Henry H.) the Karls of Ormond ; from Sir
Geoffrey Fielding, Privy Councillor to Henry H.
and Richard I., the Earls of Denbigh.

The costume of the Mercers became J'lxcd about
the reign of Charles I. The master and wardens
led the civic processions, " faced in furs,' with
tile lords ; the livery followed in gowns faced with ,
satins, the livery of all other Companies wearing :
facin,^s of fringe.

" In Ironmonger Lane,'' sa}-s Stow, giving lis a I

glimpse of old London, "is the small parish church
of St. Martin, called Pomary, upon what occasion
certainly I know not ; but it is supposed to be of
apples growing where now houses are lately builded,
for myself have seen the large void ])laces there."
The church was repaired in the year 1629. Mr.
St.odder left 40s. for a sermon to be preached on
St. James's Day by an unbeneficed minister, in
commemoration of the deliverance in the year 158S
(.\rmada) ; and 50s. more to the use of the poor of
the same parish, to be paid by the Ironmongers.

C H A P T E R X X X 1 1 1 .

GUILDH.\LL.

The Original Guildhall — A fearful Civic Spectacle — fhe Value nf Land increased by t-he Great Fire-*GuildIwlI as it was and is — The Statues over
the South Porch — Dance's Disfigurements — The Renovation in 1864— The Crj'pt — Ooc and Magog — Shopkeepers in Guildhall — The
Cenotaphs in Guildhall — The Court of Aldermen- -The City Courts- -The Chamberlain's Office --Pictures in the Guildhall — Sir Roljert Porter
— The Common Council Room — Pictures and -Statues— Guildhall Chapel— 'I'he New Library and Ivluseum — .Some Rare IJooks— Historical
Events in Guildhall — Chaucer in Trouble — liuckingham at Guildhall— .\nne Askew's Trial and Death— Surrey — Throckmorton — Garnet —
-A Grand P.anquet.

Thi: Ciuildhall — the mean-looking Hotel de Ville
of London — was originally (says .Stow) situated
more to the east side of Aldermanbury, to which it
g.ave name. Richard de Reynere, a sheriff in the
reign of Richard I. (1189), gave to the church of
St. Mary, at Osney, near O.xford, certain ground
rents in Aldermanbury, as appears by an entry
in the Register of the Court of Hustings of the
(Juildhall. In Stow's time the Aldermanbury hall
had been turned into a carpenter's yard.

The present Guildhall (which the meanest
Flemish city would despise) was "builded new,"
whatever that might imply, according to our
venerable guide, in 141 1 (12th of Henry IV.), by
'I'homas Knoles, the mayor, and his brethren the
aldermen, and " from a little cottage it grew into a
great house." The e.xpenses were defrayed by
benevolences from the City Companies, and ten
years' fees, fines, and amercements. Henry V. :
granted the City free passages for four boats and
four carts, to bring lime, ragstone, and freestone
for the works. In the first year of Henry VI., '
when the citizens were every day growing richer j
and more powerful, the illustrious Whittington's |
executors gave ;^35 to pave the Great Hall with ;
Purbeck stone. They also blazofted some of the
windows of the hall, and the Mayor's Court, with !
Whittington's escutcheons. [

A few years afterwards one of the porches, the
Mayor's Chamber, and the Council Chamber were
built. In 1 50 1 (Henry VII.), Sir John Shaw, mayor,

knighted on Bosworth Field, built the kitcliens, since
which time the City feasts, before that held at Mc-i-
chant Taylors' and Grocers' Hall, were annually held
here. In 1505, Sir Nicholas Alwin, mayor in
1499, left ^'73 6s. 8d. to purchase tapestry for
"gaudy" days at the Guildhall. In 1614 a new
Council Chamber, with a second room over it. was
erected, at an outlay of ^1,740.

In the Great Fire, when all the roofs and out-
buildings were destroyed, an eye-witness describes
Guildhall itself still standing firm, probably because
it was framed with solid oak.

Mr. Vincent, a minister, in his " Goil's Terrible
Voice in the City,'' printed in the year 1667, says :
" And amongst other things that night, the sight
of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood*
the whole body of it together in view for several
hours together, after the fire had taken it, without
flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid
cake), like a bright shining coal, as if it had been
a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished
brass.''

Pepys has some curious notes about the new
Guildhall.

".Sir Richard Ford," he says, " tells me, speaking of
the new street '" — the present King Street — " that is
to be made from Guildhall down to Cheapside, that
the ground is already, most of it, bought ; and tells
me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece of
ground lying in the very middle of the street that
must be ; which, when tlie street is cut out of it,

3S4

there will remain ground enough of each side to
build a house to front the street. ' He demanded
seven hundred pounds for the ground, and to be
excused paying anything for the melioration of the
rest of his ground that he was to keep. The Court
consented to give him ^700, only not to abate him
the consideration, which the man tlenicd ; but told
them, and so they agreed, that he would excuse the
City the ^^700, that he migiit have the benefit of
•he melioration without paying anytliing for it. So

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Guildhall.

1829, were divided into eight portions by projecting
clusters of columns. Above the dados were two
windows of the meanest and most debased Gothic.
Several of the large windows were blocked up
with tasteless monuments. The blockings of the
friezes were sculptured ; large guideron shields were
blazoned with tlie arms of the principal City com-
panies. The old mediaeval open timber-work roof
had been swallowed up by the Great Fire, and in lieu
of it tliere was a poor attic storey, and a flat panelled

I J:^ill^KM- "^^^

iMMM

~ ji * ^3 w»tfj*v7r"LT.-*: t ' ' .„ ' ."u ' ^iu r Tiiftm^.

mercers' ciiapei,, as rebuilt after the fire. {Fiviii an Old Print.) (Sec png,; 381.)

much some will get by having the City burned.
Ground, by this means, that was not fourpence a
foot afore, will now, when houses are built, be worth
fifteen shillings a foot."

In the ." Calendar of State Papers '' (Charles IL,
February, 1667), we find notice that " the Committee
of the Common Council of London for making the
new street called King Street, between Guildhall
and Cheapside, will sit twice a week at Guildhall,
to treat with persons concerned ; enquiry to be
made by jury, according to the Act for Rebuilding
the City, of the value of land of such persons as
refuse to appear."

The Gre.at Hall is 153 feet long, 50 feet broad,
and about 55 feet high. The interior sides, in

ceiling, by some attributed to Wren. At each end
of the hall was a large pointed window ; the east
one blazoned with the royal arms, and the stars
and jewels of the English orders of knighthood ;
the west with the City arms and supporters. At
the east end of the hall (the ancient dais) was a
raised enclosed platform, for holding the Court of
Hustings and taking the poll at elections, and other
purposes. The panelled wainscoting (in the old
churchwarden taste) was separated into compart-
ments by fluted Corinthian pilasters. Over these
was a range of ancient canopied niches in carved
stone, vulgarly imitated by modern work on the
west side. Our old friends Gog and Magog, before
Dance's iiiiprovri'ii'iits, stood on brackets adjoining

Ginldhnll.l

THE GUILDHALL STATUES.

38s

a balcony over the entrance to the interior courts, j
and were removed to brackets on each side the
great west wintlnw.

Stow describes the statues over the great soutli
porch of King Henry \'I.'s time as bearing tlie
following emblems : the tables of the Command-
ments, a whip, a sword, and a jiot. By their ancient
hal)its and the coronets on their heads, he i)resumed
them to be the statues of benefactors of London.
The statue of our Saviour had disappeared, but the

Stow, in relation to the Guildhall statues, and
to the general demolition of "images " that occurred
in his time, states, " these verses following " were
made about 1560, by William l'".l(lcrton, an attorney
in the Sheriff's Court at Cuildhall : —

" Though most llie Images be pullcil ilowiio,
And none be thought remain in 'rowni',
I am sure there be in Lonchm yet
Seven image?, such, and in such a \ihcc
As few or none I think will hit,

Tiir I PMT ( 1 ( t n nii\i r ( / 7, ^'•C)

two bearded figures remaining, he conjectured,
were good Bishop William and the Conqueror him-
self Four lesser figures, two on each side the
jjorch, seemed to be noble and pious ladies, one
of them probably the Empress INLaud, another
the good Queen Philippa, who once interceded for
the City. These figures were taken down during
Dance's injudicious alterations in 1789. They lay
neglected in a cellar until Alderman Boydell ob-
tained leave of the Corporation to give them to
Banks, the sculptor, who had taste enough to appre-
ciate the simple earnestness of the Gothic work. At
his death they were given again to the City. These
figures were removed from the old screen in 1865,
and were not replaced in the new one.
33

^'et every day they show tlieir face ;

And thousands see them every yeaie,

Kut few, I tliinke, can tell me where ;

Where y,:tii.! Christ aloft doth stand,

Law and I.carnin;^ on either hand,

Discipline in the Devil's necke.

And hard by her are three direct ;

There Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance stand ;

Where find ye the like in .all this Land?"

The true renovation of this great Cily hall com-
menced in the year 1S64, when Mr. Horace Jones,
the architect to the City of London, was entrusted
with the erection of an open oak roof, with a
central louvre and tapering metal spire. The new
roof is as nearly as possible framed to resemjjle the
roof destroyed in the Great Fire. Many southern

386

OI,n AM) NEW LONDON.

[Guildhall.

windows liavc been re-opened, and la)'er after layer
of plaster and cement scraped from the internal
arcliitectural ornamentation. The southern win-
tlows have been fitted with stained glass, de-
signed by Mr. F. Halliday, the subjects bcing^the
grant of the Charter, coining money, the death of
\\\\i Tyler, a royal tournament, &c. The new roof
is of oak, with rather a higli pitch, lighted by sixteen
dormers, eight on each side. The height from the
pavement to the under-side of the ridge is 89 feet,
tiie total length is 152 feet ; and there are eight bays
and seven principals. The roof, which does great
credit to Mr. Jones, is double-lined oak and deal,
slated. The hall is lighted by sixteen gaseliers.
A screen, with dais or hustings at the east end, is
of carved oak. There is a minstrels' gallery and
a new stone floor with coloured bands.

The fine cr)'pt under the Guildhall was, till its
restoration in the year 1851, a mere receptacle for
the planks, benches, and tresdes used at the City
banquets.

" This crypt is by far the finest and most exten-
sive undercroft remaining in London, and is a true
portion of the ancient hall (erected in 141 1) which
escaped the Great Fire of 1666. It extends half
the length beneath the Guildhall, from east to
west, and is divided nearly equally by a wall, having
an ancient pointed door. The crypt is divided
into aisles by clustered columns, from which spring
the stone-ribbed groins of the vaulting, composed
p.irtly of chalk and stone, the principal inter-
sections being covered with carved bosses of flowers,
heads, and shields. The north and south aisles
had formerly muUioned windows, long walled up.
At the eastern end is a fine Early English arched
entrance, in fair preservation ; and in the south-
eastern angle is an octangular recess, which for-
medy was ceiled by an elegantly groined roof,
height thirteen feet. Tlie vaulting, with four centred
arches, is very striking, and is probably some of
tlie earliest of the sort, which seems peculiar to this
country. Though called the Tudor arch, the time
of its introduction was Lancastrian (see M'eale's
'London,' p. 159). In 1851 the stone-work was
rubbed down and cleaned, and the clustered shafts
and capitals were repaired ; and on the visit of
Queen Victoria to Guildhall, July 9, 185 1, a ban-
quet was served to her Majesty and suite in this
crypt, which was characteristically decorated for
the occasion. Opposite the north entrance is a
large antique bowl of Egyptian red granite, which
was presented to the Corporation by Major Cook-
son, in 1802, as a memorial of the British achieve-
ments in Egypt." (Timbs.)

" There was something very picturesque,'' says

Brayley, " in the old Guildhall entrance. On each
side of the flight of steps was an octangular
turreted gallery, balustraded, having an office in
each, appropriated to the hall-keeper ; these galleries
assumed the appearance of arbours, from being
eacli surrounded by six palm-trees in iron-work, the
foliage of which gave support to a large balcony,
having in front a clock (with three dials) elabo-
rately ornamented, and underneath a representa-
tion of the sun, resplendent with gilding ; the
clock-frame was of oak. At the angles were the
cardinal virtues, and on the top a curious figure of
Time, with a young child in his arms. On brackets
to the right and left of the balcony were the
gigantic figures of Gog and Magog, as before-men-
tioned, giving, by their vast size and singular
costume, an unique character to the whole. At
the sides of the steps, under the hall-keeper's office,
were two dark cells, or cages, in which unruly
apprentices were occasionally confined, by order of
the City Chamberlain ; these were called ' Little
Ease,' from not being of sufficient height for a big
boy to stand upright in them."

The Gog and Magog, those honest giants of
Guildhall who have looked down on many a good
dinner with imperturbable self-denial, have been the
unconscious occasion of much inkshed. Who did
they represent, and were they really carried about in
Lord Mayor's Shows, was discussed by many gene-
rations of angry antiquaries. In Strype's time,
when there were pictures of Queen Anne, King
William and his consort Mary, at the east end of
the hall, the two pantomime giants of renown
stood by the steps going uj) to the Mayor's Court.
The one holding a poleaxe with a spiked ball,
Strype considered, represented a Briton ; the other,
with a halbert, he opined to be a Saxon. Both of
them wore garlands. What was denied to great
and learned was disclosed to the jjoor and simple.
Hone, the bookseller, or one of his writers, came
into possession of a little guide-book sold to visitors
to the Guildhall in 1741 ; this set Mr. Fairholt, a
most diligent antiquary, on the right track, and he
soon settled the matter for ever. Gog and Magog
were really Corineus and Gogmagog. The former,
a companion of Brutus the Trojan, killed, as the
story goes, Gog-magog, the aboriginal giant.

Our sketch of City pageants has already shown
that two hundred years ago giants named Cori-
neus and Gogmagog (which ought to have put
our antiquaries earlier on the right scent) formed
part of the procession. In 1672 Thomas Jordan,
the City poet, in his own account of the cere-
monial, especially mentions two giants fifteen
feet high, in two several chariots, "talking and

Guildhall.]

THE GUILDHALL GIANTS AND MONUMENTS.

387

taking tobacco as tiiey ride along," to the great
admiration and deligiit of the spectators. " At tlie
conclusion of the show," says the writer, " they
are to be set up in Guildhall, where they may be
daily seen all the year, and, I hope, never to be
demolished by such dismal violence (the Great Fire)
as happened to their predecessors." These giants
of Jordan's, being built of wickerwork and paste-
board, at last fell to decay. In 1706 two new and
more solid giants of wood were carved for the
City by Richard Saunders, a captain in the trained
band, and a carver, in King Street, Cheapside. In
1-337, Alderman Lucas being mayor, copies of
■ iihese giants walked in the show, turning their
great painted heads and goggling eyes, to the
delight of the spectators. The Guildhall giants,
as Mr. Faiiholt has shown, with his usual honest
industry, are mentioned by many of our early poets,
dramatists, and writers, as Shirley, facetious Bishop
Corbet, George ^Vither, and Ned Ward. In Hone's
time City children visiting Guildhall used to be
told that every day when the giants heard the clock
strike twelve they came down to dinner. Mr.
Fairholt, in his "Gog and Magog" (1859), has
shown by man)' examples how j^rofessional giants
(protectors or destroyers of lives) are still common
in the annual festivals of half the great towns of
Flanders and of France.

In the middle of the last century, says Mr. Fair-
holt, in his " Gog and Magog," tlie Guildhall was
occupied by shopkeepers, after the feshion of our
bazaars ; and one Thomas Boreman, bookseller,
" neai ihe Giants, in Guildhall," published, in 1741,
two veiy small volumes of their "gigantick history,"
in which he tells us that as Corineus and Gogmagog
were two brave giants, who nicely valued their
honour, and exerted their whole strength and force
in defence of their liberty and country, so the City
of London, by placing these their representatives
in their Guildhall, emblematically declare that they
will, like mighty giants, defend the honour of their
country and liberties of this their city, which excels
all others as much as those huge giants exceed in
stature the common bulk of mankind.

The author of this little volume then gives his
version of the tale of the encounter, "wherein the
giants were all destroyed, save Goemagog, the
hugest among them, who, being in height twelve
cubits, was reserved alive, that Corineus might try
his strength with him in single combat. Corineus
desired nothing more than such a match ; but the
old giant, in a wrestle, caught him aloft and broke
three of his ribs. Upon this, Corineus, being des-
perately enraged, collected all his strength, heaved
up Goemagog by main force, and bearing him on

his shoulders to the next high rock, liirew liim
headlong, all shattered, into the sea, and left his
name on the cliff, which has ever since been called
Lan-Goemagog, that is to say, the Giant's Leap.
Thus perished Goemagog, commonly called CJog-
magog, the last of the giants."

The early popularity of this tale is testified by
its occurrence in the curious history of the Fitz-
Warines, composed, in the thirteenth century, in
Anglo-Norman, no doubt by a writer who resided
on the Welsh border, and who, in describing a
visit paid by William the Conqueror there, speaks
of that sovereign asking the history of a burnt and
ruined town, and an old Briton thus giving it him :
— " None inhabited these parts except very foul
people, great giants, whose king was called Goe-
magog. These heard of tlie arrival of Brutus, and
went out to encounter him, and at last all the
giants were killed except Goemagog."

Dance's entrance to the courts was made exactly
opposite the grand south entrance. Four large
tasteless cenotaphs, more fit for the Pantheon of
London, St. Paul's, than for anywhere else, are
erected in Guildhall — to the north, those of Beck-
ford, tlie Earl of Clarendon, and Nelson ; on the
south, that of William Pitt.

The monument to Beckford, the bold opposer
of the arbitrary measures of a mistaken court and
a misguided Parliament, is by Moore, a sculptor
who lived in Berners Street. It represents the
alderman in the act of delivering the celelirated
speech which is engraved on the pedestal, and
which, as Horace Walpole (who delighted in the
mischief) says, made the king uncertain whether to
sit still and silent, or to pick up his robes and
hurry into his private room. At tlie angles of the
pedestal are two female figures. Liberty and Com-
merce, mourning for the alderman.

The monument of the Earl of Chatham, by
Bacon (executed in 1782 for 3,000 guineas), is of
a higher style than Beckford's, and, like its com-
panion, it is a period of political excitement turned
into stone. It it were the custom to delay the
erection of statues to eminent men twenty years
after their death, how many would ever be erected?
The usual cold allegory, in this instance, is atoned
for by some dignity of mind. The great earl (a
Roman senator, of course), his left hand on a helm,
is placing his right hand afiectionately on the
plump shoulders of Commerce, who, as a blushing
young debutante, is being presented to him by the
City of London, who wears a mural crown, pro-
bably because London has no walls. In the
foreground is the si ulptor's everlasting Britannia,
seated on her small but serviceable steed, the lion,

388

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

LGuildhMlL

and receiving into her capacious lap the contents
of a cornucopia of Plenty, jjoiired into it by four
children, who represent the four quarters of the
world. The inscription was written by ]5urke.

Nelson's fame is very imperfectly honouretl by a
pile of allegory, erected in iSii by the entirely
forgotten Mr. James Smith, for ;^4,442 7s- 4d.
This deplorable mass of stone consists of a huge
figure of Neptune looking at Britannia, who is
mournfully contemplating a very small profile relief
of the departed hero, on a small dusty medallion
about the size of a maid-servant's locket. To
crown all this tame stuff there are some flags and
troi)hies, and a pyramid, on which the City of
London (female figure) is writing the words " Nile,
Copenhagen, Trafalgar.'' With admirable taste the
sculptor, who knew what his female figures were,
has turned the City of London with her back to
the spectator. .\t the base of this absurd monu-
ment two sailors watch over a bas-relief of the
batde of Trafalgar, which certainly no one of taste
would steal. The inscription is from the florid
pen of Sheridan.

Facing his father, the gouty old Roman of the
true rock, stands William Pitt, lean, arrogant, and
with the nose " on which he dangled the Oppo-
sition" sufficiently prominent. It was the work of
J. G. Bubb, and was erected in 1812, at a cost of
^4,078 17s. 3d.; and a pretty mi.xture of the Greek
Pantheon and the English House of Commons it is !
Eitt stands on a rock, dressed as Chancellor of
the Exchequer ; below him are .\pollo and Mercury,
to represent Eloquence and Learning ; and a
woman on a dolphin, who stands for — what does
our reader think ? — National Energy. In the fore-
ground is what guide-books call '• a majestic figure "
of Britannia, ca'lmly holding a hot thunderbolt and
a cold trident, and riding side-saddle on a sea-horse.
The inscription is by Canning. The statue of
Wellington, by Bell, cost ^^4,966 los.

The Court of .\ldermen is a richly-gilded room
with a stucco ceiling, painted with allegorical figures
of the hereditary virtues of the City of London —
Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude —
by that over-rated painter, Hogarth's father-in-law.
Sir James Thornhill, who was presented by the
Corporation with a gold cup, value ;^225 7s. In
the cornices are emblazoned the arms of all the
mayors since 1780 (the year of the Gordon riots).
Each alderman's chair bears his name and arms.

The apartment, says a wTiter in Knight's "Lon-
don," as its name tells us, is used for the sittings
of the Court of Aldermen, who, in judicial matters,
form the bench of magistrates for the City, and
in their more directly corporate capacity try the

\alidity of ward elections, and claims to freedom;
who admit and swear brokers, superintend prisons,
order prosecutions, and perform a variety of other
analogous duties ; a descent, certainly, from the high
position of the ancient " ealdormen," or superior
Saxon nobility, from whom they derive their name
and partly their functions. They were called
"barons'' down to the time of Henry I., if, as is
probable, the latter term in the charter of that king
refers to the aldermen. A striking proof of the
high rank and importance of the individuals so
designated is to be found in the circumstance that
the ^\•ards of London of which they were aldermen
were, in some cases at least, their own heritable
property, and as such bought and sold and trans-
ferred under particular circumstances. Thus, the
aldermanry of a ward was purchased, in 1279, by
William Far)-ngdon, who gave it his own name, and
in whose family it remained upwards of eighty
years ; and in another case the Knighten Guild
having given the lands and soke of what is now
called Portsoken AVard to Trinity Priory, the prior
became, in consequence, alderman, and so the
matter remained in Stow's time, who beheld the
prior of his day riding in procession with the mayor
and aldermen, only distinguished from them by
wearing a purple instead of a scarlet gown.

Each of the twenty-six wards into which the City
is divided elects one alderman, with the exception of
Cripplegate ^Vithin and Cripplegate Without, which
together send but one ; add to them an alderman
for Southwark, or, as it is sometimes called, Bridge
Ward Without, and we have the entire number of
twenty-six, including the mayor. They are elected
for life at ward-motes, by such houseliolders as
are at the same time freemen, and paying not less
than thirty shillings to the local taxes. The fine
for the rejection of the office is ^500. Generally
speaking, the aldermen consist of those persons
who, as common councilmen, have won the good
opinion of their fellows, and who are presumed to
be fitted for the higher oflices.

Talking of the ancient aldermen, Kemble, in
his learned work, " The Saxons in England,"
says: — "The new constitution introduced by
Cnut reduced the ealdorman to a subordinate
position. Over several counties was now placed
one eorl, or earl, in the northern sense a jarl,
with power analogous to that of the Frankish
dukes. The word ealdorman itself was used by
the Danes to denote a class — gentle indeed, but
very inferior to the princely officers who had
previously borne that title. It is under Cnut, and
the following Danish kings, that we gradually lose
siglit of the old ealdormen. The king rules by his

Guildhall.]

THE CITY LAW-COURTS AND CITY CHAMRERI.AIX.

389

carls and his huscarlas, and the ealdormen vanisli
from the counties. From this time the king's
writs are directed to the earl, the bishop, and the
sheriff of the county, but in no one of them does
the title of the eaklorman any longer occur ; while
those sent to the towns are directed to the bishop
and the portgerefa, or prefect of the city. Gradually
the old title ceases altogether, except in the cities,
vhere it denotes an inferior judicature, much as
it does among ourselves at the present day."

"The courts for the City'' in Stow's time were : —
" I. The Court of Common Council. 2. The Court
of the Lord Maior, and his brethren the Aldermen.
3. The Court of Hustings. 4. The Court of
Orphans. 5. The Court of the Sheriffs. 6. The
Court of the Wardmote. 7. The Court of Hall-
mote. 8. The Court of Requests, commonly called
the Court of Conscience. 9. The Chamberlain's
Court for Apprentices, and making them free."

In the Court of Exchequer, formerly the Court of
King's Bench (where the Mayor's Court is still
held), Stow describes one of the windows put up
by Whittington's executors, as containing a blazon
of the mayor, seated, in parti-coloured habit, and
with hii hood on. At the back of the judge's seat
there used to be paintings of Prudence, Justice,
Religion, and Fortitude. Here there is a large
picture, by Alaux, of Paris, presented by Louis
Philippe, representing his reception of an address
from the City, on his visit to England, in 1844.
This part of the Guildhall treasures also contains
several portraits of George IH. and Queen Char-
lotte, by Reynolds' rival, Ramsay (son of Allan
Ramsay the poet), and William III. and Queen
Mar)', by "Van der "Yaart. There is a pair of
classical subjects — Minerva, by Westall, and Apollo
washing his locks in the Castalian Fountains, by
Gavin Hamilton.

"The greater portion of the judicial business of
the Corporation is carried on here ; that business, as
a whole, comprising in its civil jurisdiction, first, the
Court of Hustings, the Supreme Court of Record
in London, and which is frequently resorted to in
outlawry, and other cases where an expeditious
judgment is desired; secondly, the Lord Mayor's
Court, which has cognisance of all i)ersonal and
mixed actions at common law, which is a court of
equity, and also a criminal court in inatters per-
taining to the customs of London ; and, thirdly,
the Sheriffs' Court, which has a common law juris-
diction only. We may add that the jurisdiction of
both courts is confined to the City and liberties, or,
in other words, to those portions of incorporated
London known respectively, in corporate language,
as Within the walls and Without. The criminal

jurisdiction includes the London Sessions, held
generally eight limes a year, with the Recorder as
the acting judge, for the trial of felonies, &c. ; the
Southwark Sessions, held in Southwark four times
a year ; and the eight Courts of Conservancy of the
River.'

Passing into the Chamberlain's Office, wc lind a
portrait df Mr. Thomas Tomkins, by Reynolds;
and if it be asketl who is Mr. Thomas Tomkins,
we have only to sa)', in the words of the inscription
on another great man, " Look around !'' All these
beautifully written and emblazoned duplicates of
the honorary freedoms and thanks \oted by the
City, some sixty or more, we believe, in number,
are the sole production of him who, we regret to
sa)', is the late Mr. Thomas Tomkins. The duties
of the Chamberlain are numerous ; among them
the most worthy of mention, perhaps, are the ad-
mission, on oath, of freemen (till of late years
averaging in number one thousand a year) ; the
determining quarrels between masters and appren-
tices (Hogarth's prints of the " Idle and Industrious
Apprentice '' are the first things you see within the
door) ; and, lastly, the treasurership, in which de-
partment various sums of money pass througli his
hands. In 1832, the latest year for which we have
any authenticated statement, the corporate receipts,
derived chiefly from rents, dues, and market tolls,
amounted to ;!^i6o,i93 iis. 8d., and the expen-
diture to somewhat more. Near the door numerous
written papers attract the eye — the useful daily
memoranda of the multifarious business eternally
going on, and which, in addition to the matters
already incidentally referred to, point out one of
the modes in which that business is accomjilished
— the committees. We read of appointments for
the Committee of the Royal Exchange — of Sewers
— of Corn, Coal, and Finance — of Navigation — of
Police, and so on. (Knight's " London,'' 1843.)

In other rooms of the Guildhall are the fol-
lowing interesting pictures : — Opie's " Murder of
James I. of Scotland;" Reynolds' portrait of the
great Lord Camden ; two studies of a " Tiger,'' and
a " Lioness and her Young," by Northcote ; the
"Battle of Towton," by Boydell ; "Conjugal Af-
fection," by Smirke ; and portraits of Sir Robert
Clayton, Sir Matthew Hale, and Alderman ^Vaith-
man. These pictures are curious as marking various
progressive periods of English art.

A large folding-screen, painted, it is said, by
Copley, represents the Lord Mayor Bctkford
delivering the City sword to George III., at Temple
Bar ; interesting for its portraits, and record of the
costume of the period ; presented by Alderman
Salomons to the City in 1850. Here once hung a

390

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

IGuilcBial!.

large picture of the battle of Agincourt, painted by
Sir Robert Kcr Porter, when nineteen years of age,
assisted by the late Mr. Mulr.ady, and presented
to tiie City in iSoS.

The Connnon Council room (says Brayley)
is a compact and wcU-proponiuncd apartment,

however, was executed at the expense of the Cor-
poration, by J. S. Copley, R.A., in honour of the
gallant defence of Gibraltar by General Elliot,
afterwards Lord Heathfield; it measures twenty-five
feet in width, and about twenty in height, and
represents the destruction of the lloating batteries

THE COl RT or ALDLKMI.N, GUILDlIAI.l.. (6i<,/(7^t ,

appropriately fitted up for the assembly of the Court
of Common Council, which consists of the Lord
Mayor, twenty aldermen, and 236 deputies from
the City wards; the middle part is formed into a
square by four Tuscan arches, sustaining a cupola,
by which the light is admitted. Here is a splendid ■
collection of paintings, and some statuary : for the !
former the City is chiefly indebted to the munifi- 1
cence of the late Mr. Alderman Jolni Bojdell, who
was Lord Mayor in 1791. The principal p'cture,

before tlie above fortress on the 13th of September,
17S2. The principal figures, which are as large as
life, are portraits of the governor and officers of
the garrison. It cost the City ;^i,543. Here
also are four pictures, by Paton, representing other
events in that celebrated siege ; and two by Dodd,
of the engagement in the West Indies between
Admirals Rodney and De Grasse in 17S2.

Against the south wnll r.re ]iovtraits of Lord
Healhfieldj after Sir Jo.ihua Reynoldsj the Marquis

Guildhall.,'

THE COMMON COUNCIL ROOM.

39'

302

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Guildhall

Cornwallis, by Copley; Admiral Lord Viscount
Hood, by Abbott ; and Mr. Alderman Boydell, by
Sir William Beechey ; also, a large picture of the
'• Murder of David Kizzio," by Opie. On the north
wall is " Sir \\illiam ^Val\vorth killing Wat T)ler,"
by Northcote ; and the following portraits : viz.,
Admiral Lorii Rodney, after Monnoyer ; Admiral
l'.arl Howe, copied by G. Kirkland ; Admiral
Lord Duncan, by Hoppner ; Admirals the Earl
of St. Vincent and Lord Viscount Nelson, by Sir
William Beechey ; and David Binder, Esq., by
Opie. The subjects of three other pictures are
more strictly municipal — namely, the Ceremony of
.Vdministcring the Civic Oath to Mr. Alderman
N'ewnham as Lord Mayor, on the Hustings at
C.uildhall, November 8th, 1782 (this was painted
by Miller, and includes upwards of 140 portraits
of the aldermen, &c.) ; the Lord Mayor's Show
on the water, November the 9th (the vessels by
Baton, the figures by Wheatley) ; and the Royal
Entertainment in Guildhall on the i4tli of June,
1814, by William Daniell, R.A.

Widiin an elevated niche of dark-coloured marble,
at the upper end of the room, is a fine statue, in
white marble, by Chantrey, of George HL, which
was e.xecuted at the cost to the City of ^3,089
9s. sd. He is represented in his royal robes, with
his right hand extended, as in the act of answering
an address, the scroll of which he is holding in the
left hand. At the western angles of the chamber
are busts, in white marble, of Admiral Lord Vis-
count Nelson, by Mrs. Damer ; and the Duke of
Wellington, by Turnerelli.

The members of the Council (says Knight) are
elected by the same class as the aldermen, but in very
varying and — in comparison with the size and im-
portance of the wards — inconsequential numbers.
Bassishaw and Lime Street ^Vards have the smallest
representation — four members — and those of Far-
ringdon ^\"ithin and Without the largest — nameh-,
sixteen and seventeen. The entire number of the
Council is 240. Their meetings are held under the
presidency of the Lord ALayor ; and the aldermen
have also the right of being present. The other
chief officers of the municipality, as the Recorder,
Cliamberlain, Judges of the Sheriffs' Courts, Com-
mon Serjeant, the four City Pleaders, Town Clerk,
&c., also attend.

The chapel at the east end of the Guildhall,
pulled down in 1822, once called London College,
and dedicated to " our Lady Mary Magdalen and All
Saints," was built, says Stow, about the year 1 299.
It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry VI., who allowed
the guild of St. Nicholas for two chaplains to be
kept in the said chapel. In Stow's time the chapel

contained seven deiaced marble tombs, and many
flat stones covering rich drapers, fishmongers, cus-
toses of the chapel, chaplains, and attorneys of the
Lord Mayor's Court. In Strype's time the Mayors
attended the weekly services, and services at their
elections and feasts. The chapel and lands had
been bought of Edward VI. for ^4.56 13s. 4d.
Upon the front of the chapel were stone figures of
Edward VI., Elizabeth with a phuenix, and Charles I.
treading on a globe. On the south side of the
chapel was "a fair and large library," originally
built by the executors of Richard Whittington and
William Bur)'. After the Protector Somerset had
borrowed {i.e., stolen) the books, the library in
Strype's time became a storehouse for cloth.

The New Library and Museunr (says Mr.
Overall, the librarian), which lies at the east end of
the Guildhall, occupies the site of some old and
dilapidated houses formerly fronting Basinghall
Street, and extending back to the Guildhall. The
total frontage of the new buildings to this street is
150 feet, and the depth upwards of 100 feet. The
structure consists mainly of two rooms, or halls,
placed one over the other, with reading, committee,
and muniment rooms surrounding them. Of these
two halls the museum occupies the lower site, the
floor being level with the ancient crypt of the
Guildhall, with which it will directly communicate,
and is consequently somewhat below the present
level of Basinghall Street. This room, divided into
naves and aisles, is 83 feet long and 64 feet wide,
and has a clear height of 26 feet. The large fire-
proof muniment rooms on this floor, entered from
the museum, are intended to hold the valuable
archives of the City.

The library above the museum is a hall 100 feet
in length, 65 feet wide, and 50 feet in height,
divided, like the museum, into naves and aisles,
the latter being fitted up with handsome oak book-
cases, forming twelve bays, into which the furni-
ture can be moved when the nave is required on
state occasions as -a reception-hall — one of the
principal features in the whole design of this
building being its adaptability to both the purpose
of a librarj- and a series of reception-rooms when
required. The hall is exceedingly light, the
clerestory over the arcade of the nave, with the
large windows at the north and south ends of
the room, together with those in the aisles, trans-
mitting a flood of light to every corner of tlie
room. The oak roof— the arched ribs of which are
supported by the arms of the twelve great City Com-
panies, with the addition of those of the Leather-
sellers and Broderers, and also the Royal and City
arms — has its several timbers richly moulded, and

Guildhall. 1

THE NEW CITY LIBRARY.

393

its spandrils tilled in with trarery, and contains
three large loiures for lighting the roof, and
thorouglily ventilating the hall. The aisle roofs,
the timbers of which are also richly wrought, have
lou\res over each bay, and the liall at night may be
lighted by means of sun-burners suspended from
each of these louvres, together with those in the
nave. Each of the spandrils of the arcade has, next
the nave, a sculptured head, representing History,
Poetry, Printing, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting,
Philosophy, l^aw, Medicine, Music, Astronomy,
Geography, Natural Histojry, and Botany ; the
several personages chosen to illustrate these sub-
jects being Stow and Camden, Shakespeare and
Milton, (uittenberg and Caxton, William of Wyke-
ham and AVren, Michael Angelo and Flaxman,
Holbein and Hogarth, Bacon and Locke, Coke
and Blackstone. Harvey and Sydenham, Purcell
and Handel, (Jalileo and Newton, Columbus and
Raleigh, Linnceus and Cuvier. Ray and Cerard.
There are three fireplaces in this room. The one
at the north end, executed in D'Aubigny stone, is
very elaborate in detail, the frieze consisting of a
panel of painted tiles, executed by Messrs. Gibbs
and Moore,.and the subject an architectonic design
of a procession of the arts and sciences, with the
City of London in the middle.

Among the choicest books are the following : —
"Liber Custumarum," ist to the 17th Henry II.
(1154-1171). Edited by Mr. Riley.— " Liber de
Antiquis Legibus,'' ist Richard I., 1188. Treats of
old laws of London. Translated by Riley. — " Liber
Dunthorn,"so called from the writer, who was Town-
clerk of London. Contains transcripts of Charters
from William the Conqueror to 3rd Edward IV. —
"Liber Ordinationum," 9th Edward III., 1225, to
Henry VII. Contains the early statutes of the
realm, the ancient customs and ordinances of the
City of London. .\t folio 154 are entered in-
structions to the citizens of London as to their
conduct before the Justices Itinerant at the Tower.
— "LiberHorn"(by Andrew Horn). Contains tran-
scripts of charters, statutes, &c. — The celebrated
" Liber Albus." — " Liber Fleetwood." Names of
all the courts of law within the realm ; the arms of
the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, &c., for 1576; the
liberties, customs, and charters of the Cinque Ports;
the Queen's Prerogative in the Salt Shores ; the
liberties of St. Martin's-le-Grand.

A series of letter books. These books commence
about 140 yearsbefore the "Journals of the Common
Council," and about 220 years before the " Reper-
tories of the Court of Aldermen ;'' they contain
almost the only records of those courts prior to
the commencement of such journals and repertories.

" Journals of the Proceedings of the Common

Couixcil, from 1416 to the present time." — '■ Reper-
tories containing the Proceedings of the Court of
Aldermen from 1495 to the present time." — " Re-
membrancia." A collection of correspondence,
&c., between tlie sovereigns, various eminent states-
men, the Lord Mayors and the Courts of Aldermen
and Common Council, on matters relating to the
government of the City and country at large. " Fire
Decrees. Decrees made by virtue of an Act for
erecting a judicature for determination of differences
touching houses burnt or demolished by reason of
the late fire which happened in London."

Of the many historical events that have taken
place in the Guildhall, we will now recapitulate a
few. Chaucer was connected with one of the most
tumultuous scenes in the Guildhall of Richard II. 's
time. In 1382 the City, worn out with the king's
tyranny and exactions, selected J ohn of Northampton
mayor in place of the king's favourite, Sir Nicholas
Brember. A tumult arose when Brember endea-
voured to hinder tlie election, whicli ended with a
body of troops under Sir Robert Knolles interposing
and installing the king's nominee. John of North-
ampton was at once packed off to Corfe Castle,
and Chaucer fled to the Continent. He returned
to London in 1386, and was elected member for
Kent. But the king had not forgotten his conduct
at the CUiildhall, and he was at once deprived of
the ComptroUership of the Customs in the Port of
London, and sent to the Tower. Here he petitioned
the go\'ernment.

Having alluded to the delicious hours he was
wont to spend enjoying the blissful seasons, and
contrasted them with his penance in the dark
prison, cut off from friendship and acquaintances,
"forsaken of all that any word dare speak'' for
him, he continues : " Although I had little in
respect (comparison) among others great and
worthy, yet had I a fair parcel, as methought
for the time, in furthering of my sustenance ; and
had riches sufficient to waive need ; and had dignity
to be reverenced in worsliip ; power methought
that I had to keej) from mine enemies ; and
meseemed to shine in glory of renown. Every
one of those joys is turned into his contrary ; for
riches, now have I poverty ; for dignity, now am
I imprisoned ; instead of power, wretchedness I
suffer ; and for glory of renown, I am now despised
and fully hated." Chaucer was set free in 13S9,
having, it is said, though we hope unjustly, pur-
chased freedom by dishonourable disclosures as to
his former associates.

It was at the Guildhall, a few weeks after the
death of Edward IV., and while the princes were

394

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Guildhall.

in the Tower, that the Duke of Buckingham, " the
deep revolving witty Buckingham," Richard's ac-
coni])hce, convened a meeting of citizens in order to
l)rej)are the way for Richard's mounting the throne.
Shakespeare, closely following Hall and Sir Thomas
More, thus sketches the scene : —
Bud. » » • * *

Withal, I (lid infer your lineaments,

Ileins; the right idea of your father,

Koth in your form and nobleness of mind :

Laid open all your victories in .Scotland,

Vour discipline in war, wisdom in peace,

\i.n\T bounty, virtue, fair humility ;

Indee<l, left •lolliinc; fitting for your purpose

Untoi:ch'd, or slightly handled, in discourse ;

And, when my oratory drew toward end,

1 bade tliem that did love tlieir country's good

Cry, ''('lod save Richard, England's royal king !"

G!o. And did they so ?

liuct. No, so God help me, they spake not a word ;
liut, like dumb statvies or breathing stones.
Stared each on other, and look'd deadly pale.
Which when I saw I reprehended them.
And ask'd the mayor what meant this wilful silence ?
His answer was, the peo[)le were not us'd
To be spoke to but by the recorder.
Then he was urg'd to tell my tale again —
" Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferr'd ;"
iUu nothing spoke in warrant from himself.
WliL-n he had done, some followers of mine own
At lower end o' the hall, hurl'd up their caps.
And some ten voices cried, "God save King Richard !"
And thus I took the vantage of those i^w —
*' Thanks, gentle citizens and friends," quoth I ;
"This general applause and cheerful shout.
Argues your wisdom, and your love to Richard :''
And even here brake off, and came away.

Anne Askew, tried at the Guildhall in Henry
Vni.'s reign, was the daughter of Sir William
Askew, a Lincolnshire gentleman, and had been
married to a Papist, who had turned her out of
doors on her becoming a Protestant. On coming
to London to sue for a separation, this lady had
been favourably received by the queen and the
court ladies, to whom she had denounced tran-
substantiation, and distributed tracts. Bishop
Bonner soon had her in his clutches, and she was
cruelly put to the rack in order to induce her to
betray the court ladies who had helped her in
prison. She pleaded that her servant had only
begged money for her from tlie City apprentices.

" On my being brought to trial at Guildhall," she
says, in her own words, " they said to me tliere that
I was a heretic, and condemned by the law, if I
would stand in mine opinion. I an.swered, that I
was no heretic, neither yet deserved I any death
by the law of God. But as concerning the faith
which I uttered and wrote to the council, I would
not deny it, because I knew it true. Then would

they needs know if I would deny the sacrament to
be Christ's body and blood. I said, ' Yea ; for the
same Son of God who was born of the Virgin Mar}-
is now glorious in heaven, and will come again
from thence at the latter day. And as for that ye
call your (iod, it is a piece of bread. For more
proof thereof, mark it when you list ; if it lie in the
box three months it will be mouldy, and so turn
to nothing that is good, ^\'hereupon I am per-
suaded that it cannot be God.'

" After that they wilfed me to have a priest, at
which I smiled. Then tjiey asked me if it were
not good. I said I would confess my faults unto
God, for I was sure he would hear me with favour.
And so I was condemned. And this was the
ground of my sentence : my belief, which I wrote
to the council, that the sacramental bread was left
us to be received with thanksgiving in remem-
brance of Christ's death, the only remedy of our
souls' recovery, and tiiat thereby we also receive
the whole benefits and fruits of his most glorious
passion. Then would they know whether the bread
in the box were God or no. I said, ' God is a
Spirit, and will be worshipped in spirit and truth.'
Then they demanded, ' Will you i)lainly deny Christ
to be in the sacrament ? ' I answered, ' That
I believe faithfully the eternal Son of God not
to dwell there;' in witness whereof I recited
Daniel iii.. Acts vii. and .xvii., and ]\Latthew xxiv.,
concluding thus : ' I neither wish death nor yet
fear his might ; God have the prais(i thereof, witii
thanks.' "

Anne .'\skew was burnt at Smithfield with three
other martyrs, July i6, 1546. Bonner, the Chan-
cellor Wriothesley, and many nobles were present
on state seats near St. Bartholomew's gate, and
their only anxiety was lest the gunpowder hung in
bags at the martyrs' necks should injure them when
it exploded. Shaxton, the ex-Bishop of Salisbury,
who had saved his life by apostacy, preached a
sermon to the martyrs before the flames were put
to the fagots.

In 1546 (towards the close of the life of
Henry VHL), the Earl of Surrey was tried for
treason at the Guildhall. He was accused of
aiming at dethroning the king, and getting the
young prince into his hands; also for adding the
arms of Edward the Confessor to his escutcheon.
The earl, persecuted by the Se)'mours, says Lord
Herbert, " was of a deep understanding, sharp
wit, and deep courage, defended himself many
ways — sometimes denying their accusations as
false, and together weakening the credit of his
adversaries ; sometimes interpreting the words he
said in a far other sense than that in wliich they

Guiklhall-l

THF, TRIAT, OF SIR NICHOLAS THROCKMORTON.

395

were represented." Nevertheless, the king had
vowed the destruction of the family, and the earl,
found guilty, was beheaded on Tower Hill, January
19, 1547. He had in vain ottered to fight his
accuser, Sir Richard Southwell, in his shirt. The
order for the execution of the duke, liis father,
arrived at the Tower the very night King Henry
died, and so the duke escaped.

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, another (luildhall
sufferer, was the son of a Papist who had refused
to take the oath of supremacy, and had been im-
prisoned in the Tower by Henry VHI. Nicholas,
his son, a Protestant, appointed sewer to the burly
tyrant, had fought by the king's side in France.
During the reign of Edward VI. Throckmorton
distinguished himself at the battle of Pinkie, and
was knighted by the young king, who made him
under-treasurer of the Mint. At Edward's death
Throckmorton sent Mary's goldsmith to inform
her of her accession. Though no doubt firmly
attached to the Princess Elizabeth, Throckmorton
took no public part in the Wyatt rebellion ; yet, si.\
days after his friend Wyatt's execution, Throck-
morton was tried for conspiracy to kill the queen.

The trial itself is so interesting as a specimen of
intellectual energy, that we subjoin a scene or
two : — ■

Serjeant Stamford : Methinks those Ihiiigs which others
have confessed, together with your own confession, will weigh
shrewdly. But wh.it have you to say as to the rising in
Kent, and Wyatt's attempt .against the Queen'.s royal person
in her palace ?

Chief fustiee Bromley : Why do you not read to him
Wyatt's accusation, which makes him a sharer in his trea-
sons?

Sir R. Soiith'tvell : Wyatt has grievously accused you, and
in many things which have been confirmed by others.

Sir N. Tliroekmortoii : Whatever Wyatt said of me, in
hopes to save his life, he unsaid it at his death ; for, since I
came into the hall, I heard one s.iy, whom I do not know,
that Wyatt on the scaffold cleared not only the Lady Eliza-
beth and the Earl of Devonshire, but also all the gentlemen
in the Tower, saying none of them knew anything of his
commotion, of which number I take myself to be one.

Sir M Hare: Nevertheless, he said that all he had written
and confessed before the Council was true.

Sir N. Throckmorton : Nay, sir, by your patience, Wyatt
did not say so ; that was Master Doctor's addition.

Sir la. Sont/rwell : It seems you have good intelligence.

Sir N. Throckmorton : Almighty God provided this re-
velation for me this very day, since I came hither ; for I have
been in close prison for eight and fifty days, where I could
hear nothing but w hat the birds told me who flew over my
head.

Serjeant Stamford told him the judges did not
sit there to make disputations, but to declare
the law ; and one of those judges (Hare) having
confirmed the observation, by telling Throckmorton
he had heard both the law and the reason, if he

could but understand it, he cried out passionatel)- :
" O merciful God ! O eternal Father ! who seest
all things, what manner of proceedings are these ?
To what purpose was the Statute of Repeal made in
the last Parliament, where I heard some of you
here present, and several others of the Queer's
learned counsel, grievously inveigh against the
cruel and bloody laws of Henry "VIII., and some
laws made in the late King's time? Some termed
them Draco's laws, which were written in blood ;
others said they were more intolerable than any
laws made by Dionysius or any other tyrant. In
a word, as many men, so many bitter names antl
terms those laws. . . . Let us now but look
with impartial eyes, and consider thoroughly with
ourselves, whedier, as you, the judges, handle the
statute of Edward HI. with your equity and con-
structions, we are not now in a much worse con-
dition than when we were yoked with those cruel
laws. Those laws, grievous and captious as they
were, yet had the very jiroperty of laws, according
to St. Paul's description, for they admonished us,
and discovered our sins plainly to us, and when a
man is warned he is half amied ; but these laws, as
they are handled, are very baits to catch us, and
only prepared for that purpose. They are no laws
at all, for at first sight they assure us that we are
delivered from our old bondage, and li\e in more
security ; but when it pleases the higher powers
to call any man's life and sayings in question,
then there are such constructions, interpretations,
and extensions reserved to the judges and their
equity, that the party tried, as I am now, will find
himself in a much worse case than when those
cruel laws were in force. But I require you, honest
men, who are to try my life, to consider these
things. It is clear these judges arc inclined rather
to the times than to the truth, for their judgments
are repugnant to the law, reptignant to their own
principles, and repugnant to the opinions of their
godly and learned predecessors."

We rejoice to say that, in spite of all the efforts
of his enemies, this gentleman escaped the scaftbld,
and lived to enjoy happier times.

Lastly, we come to one of the Gunpowder Plot
conspirators ; not one of the most guilty, yet un-
doubtedly cognisant of the mischief brewing.

On the 28th of March, 1606, (Garnet, the
Superior of the English Jesuits (whose cruel execti-
tion in St. Paul's Churchyard we have already de-
scribed), was tried at the Guildhall, and found
guilty of having taken part in organising the Gun-
powder Plot. He was found concealed at Hendlip,
the mansion of a Roman Catholic gentleman, near
Worcester.

396

Ol.n AND NEW LONDON.

[Mayors of London.

THE NEW LiURAKV, GUILDHALL (see page 392).

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON.

The First Mayor of London— Portrait of him-Presentation to the King— An Outspoken Mayer— Sir N. Farindon-Sir William Walworlh-Onsin
of the prefix " Lord"— Sir Richard Whittington and his Liberality- Institutions founded by him— Sir Simon Eyre and his T.-iblc— A
^fusical Lord Mayor— Henry VIIL and Gresham- Loyalty of the Lord Mayor and Citizens to Queen Mary— Ofbjrne's Leap into the
Thames— Sir W. Craven— Brass Crosby— His Committal to the Tower — A Victory for the Citizens.

The modern Lord Mayor is supposed to have
had a prototype in the Roman prefect and the
Saxon portgrave. Tlie Lord Mayor is only "Lord"
and "Right Honourable" by courtesy, and not
• from his dignity as a Privy Councillor on the
demise or abdication of a sovereign.

In 11S9, Richard I. elected Henry Fitz Ailwyn,
a draper of London, to be first mayor of London,
and he served twenty-four years. He is supposed
to have been a descendant of A)'Iwyn Child, who
founded the priory at Bermondsey in 1082. He
was buried, according to Str)-pe, at St. Mar)-

M.iyors of LondtJi "]

THE I.ORD MAYORS ANi:) THE CROWN.

397

Bothaw, Walbrook, a church destroyed in the Great
Fire ; but according to Stow, in the Holy Trinity
Priory, Aldgate. There is a doubtful half-length
oil-portrait or jianel of the venerable Fitz Alwyn
o/er the master's chair in Drapers' Hall, but it has
no historical value. But the first formal mayor was

the London mayors. F'or instance, in 1240, Gerard
Bat, chosen a second time, wont to \\'oodstock
Palace to be presented to King Henry HI., who
refused to appoint him till he (the king) came to
London. '

Henry HL, indeed, seems to have been chroni

siK RiCHARn wriiTTiN'OTOx. (fii'in ail old Portrait.^

Richard Renger (1223), King John granting the
right of choosing a mayor to the citizens, provided
he was first presented to the king or his justice for
approval. Henry HL afterwards allowed the pre-
sentation to take place in the king's absence before
the Barons of the E.xchequer at Westminster, to
prevent expense and delay, as the citizens could
not be expected to search for the king all over
England and France.

The presentation to the king, even when he was
in England, long remained a great vexation with

cally troubled by the London mayors, for in 1264,
on the mayor and aldermen doing fealty to the
king in St. Paul's, the mayor, with blunt honesty,
dared to say to the weak monarch, " My lord, so
long as you unto us will be a good lord and king,
we will be faithful and duteous unto %ou.''

These were bold words in a reign when the head-
ing block was always kept reatly near a throne.
In 1265, the same monarch seized and imprisoned
the mayor and chief aldermen for fortifying the
City in favour of the barons, and for four years the

39^

OLD AND. xru- roxnoN.

rMayor<i of London.

tvrannicnl king appointed custodcs. The City
again recovered its liberties and retained them
till 1285 (Edward I.), when Sir (Iregory Rokesley
retusing to go out of the City to ajipear before the
king's justices at the Tower, the mayoralty was again
suspended and custodes appointed till the year
1298, wiun Henry Wallein was elected ni;i\or.
Edward II. also held a tight hand on the mayoralty
till he appointed the great goldsmith, Sir Nicholas
Earindon, mayor " as long as it pleased him."
Farindon gave the title to Farringdon 'Ward, which
had been in his family eighty-two years, the con-
sideration being twenty marks as a fine, and one
clove or a slip of gillyflower at the feast of Easter.
He was a warden of the Goldsmiths, and was
buried at St. Peter-le-Chepe, a church that before
the Great Fire stood where the plane-tree now
waves at the corner of Wood Street. He left
money for a light to burn before our Lady the
\'irgin in St. Peter-le-Chepe for ever.

The mayoralty of Andrew Aubrey, Grocer (1339),
was rather warlike ; for the mayor and two of his
officers being assaulted in a tumult, two of the
ringleaders were beheaded at once in Chepe. In
1356, Henry Picard, mayor of London, was an
honouretl man, for he had the glory of feasting
Edward III. of England, the Black Prince, John
King of Austria, the King of Cyprus, and David of
Scotland, and afterwards opened his hall to all
comers at cards and dice, his wife inviting the
court ladies.

Sir William ^\'ahvorth, a fishmonger, who was
mayor in 1374 (Edward III.) and 1380 (Richard
11.), was that-prompt and choleric man who some-
what basely slew the Kentish rebel, Wat Tyler,
when he was invited to a parley by the young king.
It was long supposed that the dagger in the City
arms was added in commemoration of this foul
blow, but Stow has clearly shown that it was in-
tended to represent the sword of St. Paul, the
patron saint of the Corporation of London. The
manor of Walworth belonged to the family of
this mayor, who was buried in the Church of St.
INIichael, Crooked Lane, the parish where he had
resided. Some antiquaries, says Mr. Timbs, think
;he prefix of "Lord" is traceable to 1378 (ist
Richard II.), when there was a general assessment
for a war subsidy. The question was where was
the mayor to come. " Have him among the earls,"
was the suggestion ; so the right worshipful had to
P^y £4, about ;£ioo of our present money.

And now we come to a mayor greater even in
City story and legend than even AVal worth himself,
even the renowned Richard Whittington, the hero
of our nursery days. He was the son of a Glouces-

tershire knight, who had fallen into poverty. The
industrious son. born in 1350 (Edward 111.), on
coming to London, was apprenticed to Hugh Fitz-
warren, a mercer. Disgusted with the drudgery, he
ran away ; but while resting by a stone cross at the
foot of Highgate Hill, he is said to have heard in tlie
sound of Bow Bells the voice of his good angel,
"Turn again, M'hittington, thrice Lord Mayor of
London." What a charm there is still in the old
story ! As for the cat that made his fortune by
catching all the mice in Barbary, we fear we must
throw him overboard, even though Stow tells a
tnie story of a man and a cat that greatly resembles
that told of Whittington. Whittington married his
master's daughter, and became a wealth)' merchant.
He supplied the wedding trousseau of the Princess
Blanche, eldest daughter of Henry IV., when she
married the son of the King of the Romans, and
also the pearls and cloth of gold for the marriage
of the Princess Philipjxi. He became the court
banker, and lent large sums of money to our lavish
monarchs, especially to the chivalrous Henry \.
for carrying on the siege of Harfieur, a siege
celebrated by Shakespeare. It is said that in
his last mayoralty King Henry ^". and Queen
Catherine dined with him in the Cit\', when Whit-
tington caused a fire to be lighted of precious
woods, mixed with cinnamon and other spices ;
and then taking all the bonds given him b}- the
king for money lent, amounting to no less than
;^6o,ooo, he threw them into the fire and bumt
them, thereby freeing his sovereign from his debts.
The king, astonished at such a proceeding, ex-
claimed, "Surely, never had king such a subject:"
to which Whittington, with court gallantry, replied,
"Surely, sire, never had subject such a king."

Whittington was really four times mayor — twice
in Richard II. 's reign, once in that of Henry IV.,
and once in that of Henry V. As a ma\or Whit-
tington was popular, and his justice and patriotism
became proverbial. He vigorously opposed the
admission of foreigners into the freedom of the
City, and he fined the Brewers' Company ;^20 for
selling bad ale and forestalling the market. His
generosity was like a well-spring ; and being child-
less, he spent his life in deeds of charity and
generosity. He erected conduits at Cripplegate
and Billingsgate ; he founded a library at the Grey
Friars' Monastery in Newgate Street (now Christ's
Hospital) ; he procured the completion of the
" Liber Albus," a book of City customs ; and he
gave largely towards the Guildhall library. He
paved the Guildhall, restored the hospital of St.
Bartholomew, and by his will left money to rebuild
Newgate, and erect almshouses on Coilcce Hill

Mayors of London.)

CELEBRATED LORD MAYORS.

399

(now removed to Highgnte) He died in 1427
(Henr)' VL). Nor should we forget that Wliit-
tington was also a great arcliitect, and enlarged
the nave of Westminster Abbey for his knightly
master, Henr)' V. This large-minded and muni-
ficent man resided in a grand mansion in Hart
Street, up a gateway a few doors from Mark Lane.
A very curious old house in Sweedon's Passage,
Grub Street, with an external winding staircase,
used to be pointed out as Whittington's ; and the
splendid old mansion in Hart Street, Crutched
Friars, pulled down in 1861, and replaced by offices
and warehouses, was said to have cats'-heads for
knockers, and cats'-heads (whose eyes seemed
always turned on you) carved in the ceilings. The
doorways, and the brackets of the long lines of
projecting Tudor windows, were beautifully carved
with grotesque figures.

In 1418 (Henry V.) Sir William de Sevenoke
was mayor. This rich merchant had risen to the
.top of the tree by cleverness and diligence equal
to that of Whittington, but we hear less of his
charity. He was a foundling, brought up by
charitable persons, and apprenticed to a grocer.
He was knighted by Henry VL, and represented
the City in Parliament. Dying in 1432, he was
buried at St. ISLartin's, Ludgate.

In 1426 (Henry VI.) Sir John Rainewell,. mayor,
with a praiseworthy disgust at all dishonesty in
trade, detecting Lombard merchants adulterating
their wines, ordered 150 butts to be stove in and
swilled down the kennels. How he might wash
down London now with cheap sherry !

In 1445 (Henry VI. ), Sir Simon Eyre. This
very worthy mayor left 3,000 marks to the Com-
pany of Drapers, for prayers to be read to the
market people by a priest in the chapel at Guild-
hall.

It is related that when it was proposed to P'yre
at Guildhall that he should stand for sheriff, he
would fain have excused himself, as he did not
think his income was sufficient ; but he was soon
silenced by one of the aldermen observing " that
no citizen could be more capable than the man
who had openly asserted that he broke his fast
every day on a table for which he would not take
a thousand pounds." This assertion excited the
curiosity of the then Lord Mayor and all present,
in consequence of which his lordship and two of the t
aldermen, having invited themselves, accomiJanied
him home to dinner. On their arrival Mr. Eyre
desired his wife to " prepare the little table, and
set some refreshment before the guests." This
she would fain have refused, but finding he would
take no excuse, she seated herself on a low stool.

and, spreading a damask napkin over her lap, with
a venison pasty thereon, Simon exclaimed to the
astonished mayor and his brethren, " Behold
the table which I would not take a tliousand
pounds for '. " Soon after this Sir Simon was
chosen Lord Mayor, on which occasion, remem-
bering his former promise " at the conduit,' he,
on the following Shrove Tuesday, gave a pancake
feast to all the 'prentices in London ; on which
occasion they went in procession to the Mansion
House, where they met with a cordial reception
from Sir .Simon and his lady, who did the honours
of the table on this memorable day, allowing their
guests to want for neither ale nor wine.

In 1453 Sir John Norman was the first mayor
who rowed to AVestminster. The ma}ors liatl
hitherto generally accompanied the presentation
show on horseback. The Thames watermen, de-
lighted with the innovation so profitable to them,
wrote a song in praise of Norman, two lines of which
are quoted by Fabyan in his "Chronicles;" and
Dr. Rimbault, an eminent musical antiquary, thinks
he has found the original tune in John Hilton's
"Catch That, Catch Can" (1658).

The deeds of Sir Stephen Forster, Fishmonger,
and mayor 1454 (Henry VI. ), who by his will
left money to rebuild Newgate, we have men-
tioned elsewhere (p. 224). Sir Godfrey Boleine,
Lord Mayor, 1457 (Henry VL), was grandfather
to Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, the grandfather of
Queen Elizabeth. He was a mercer in the Old
Jewry, and left by his will ^1,000 to the poor
householders of London, and ^^"2,000 to the poor
householders in Norfolk (his native county), be-
sides large legacies to the London prisons, lazar-
houses, and hospitals. Such were the citizens,
from whom half our aristocracy has sprung. Sir
Godfrey Fielding, a mercer in Milk Street, Lord
Mayor in 1452 (Henry VI. ), was the ancestor of
the Earls of Denbigh, and a ]irivy c ouncillor of
the king.

In Edward R'.'s reign, when the Lancastrians,
under the bastard Falconbridge, stormed the City
in two places, but were eventually bravely repulsed
by the citizens, F.dward, in gralitutle, knighted
the mayor, Sir John Stockton, and twelve of the
aldermen. In 1479 (t'l"^ ^'i™'^ reign) Bartho-
lomew James (Draper) had Sherifl' Bayfield fined
^"50 (about ;^''i,ooo of our money) for kneeling
too close to him while at prayers in St. Paul's, and
for reviling him when complained of. There was a
pestilence raging at the time, and the mayor was
afraid of contagion, 'i'lie money went, we presume,
to build ten City conduits, then much wanted. The
Lord Mayor in 1462, Sir Thomas Coke (Draper),

400

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Mayors of London.

ancestor of Lord Bacon, Earl Fitzwilliam, the I Guildhall ; and the same hospitable mayor built
Marquis of Salisbury, and ^Mscount Cranbourne. the Guildhall kitchen at his own expense.
being a Lancastrian, suffered much from the rapa- Henry VIIL's mayors were worshipful men, and
cious tyranny of Edward IV. The very year he was men of renown. To Walworth and Whittington
made Knight of the Bath, Coke was sent to the was now to be added the illustrious name of

Bread Street Compter, afterwards to the Bench,
and illegally fined ^^S.ooo to the king and ;^8oo
to the queen. Two aldermen also had their goods

Gresham. Sir Richard Greshani, who was mayor
in the year 1537, was the father of the illustrious
founder of the Royal Exchange. He was of a

seized, and were fined 4,000 marks. In 1473 this Norfolk family, and with his three brothers carried
greedy king sent to Sir William Hampton, Lord I on trade as mercers. He became a Gentleman
Mayor, to extort benevolences, or subsidies. The Usher Extraordinary to Henry VIII., and at the
mayor gave ^30, the aldermen twenty marks, the tearing to pieces of the monasteries by that
poorer persons ^10 each. In 1481, King Edward monarch, he obtained, by judicious courtliness, no

sent the mayor, William Herriot (Draper), for the
good lie had done to trade, two harts, six bucks,
and a tun of wine, for a banquet to the lady
mayoress and the aldermen's wi\es at Drapers' Hall.
At Richard III.'s coronation (14S3), the Lord

less than fi\e successive grants of Church lands.
He advocated the construction of an Exchange,
encouraged freedom of trade, and is said to ha^'e
invented bills of exchange. In 1525 he was
nearly expelled the Common Council for trying, at

Mayor, Sir Richard Shaw, attended as cup-bearer j \\'olsey's instigation, to obtain a benevolence from
with great pomp, and the mayor's claim to this the citizens. It is greatly to Gresham's credit

honour was formally allowed and put on record.
Shaw was a goldsmitli, and supplied the usurper
with most of his plate. Sir \Valter Horn, Lord
Mayor in 1487, had been knighted on Bosworth
field by Henry VII., for whom he fought against
the " ravening Richard." This mayor's real name
was Littlesbury (we are told), but Edward IV. had
nicknamed him Horn, from his peculiar skill on
that instrument. The year Henry VII. landed at
Milford Haven two London mayors died. In
1486 (Henry ML), Sir Henry Colet, father of good
Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's School, was
mayor.

Colet chose John Percival (Merchant Taylor), his
can-er, sheriff, by drinking to him in a cup of wine,
according to custom, and Perceval forthwith sat
down at the mayor's table. Percival was after-
wards ma\or in 1 498. Henry VII. was remorse-
less in squeezing money out of the City by ever)-
sort of expedient. Lie fined Alderman Capel
^2,700 ; he made the City buy a confirmation
of their charter for ^5,000; in 1500 he threw
Thomas Knesworth, who had been mayor the
year before, and his sheriff, into the Marshalsea,
and fined them ^1,400; and the year after, he
imprisoned Sir Lawrence Aylnier, mayor in the
previous year, and extorted money from him. He
again amerced .\lderman Cape! (ancestor of the
Earis of Essex) ^2,000, and on his bold resistance,
threw him into the Tower for life. In 1490
(Heniy VII.) John Matthew earned the distinction
of being the first, but probably not the last,
bachelor Lord Mayor ; and a cheerless mayoralty
it must have been. In 1502 Sir John Shaw held

the Lord Mayor's feast for the first time in the \ Orridge), the aldermen, and forty of the

that he helped 'W'olsey after his fall, and Henry,
wlio with all his faults was magnanimous, liked
Gresham none the worse for that. In the interest-
ing " Paxton Letters " (Henry VI.), there are
eleven letters of one of Gresham's Norfolk an-
cestors, dated from London, and the seal a grass-
hopper, .Sir Richard Gresham died 1548 (Edward
VI.), at Bethnal Green, and was buried in the
church of St. Lawrence Jewry. Gresham's daughter
married an ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, and the
Duke of Buckingham and Lord Braybrooke are said
to be descendants of his brother John, so much has
good City blood enriched our proud Norman
aristocrac}-, and so often has the full City purse
gone to fill again the exhausted treasury of the
old knighthood. In 1545, Sir Martin Bowes (Gold-
smith) ^\■as mayor, and lent Henry VIII. , whose
purse was a cullender, the sum of ^^300. Sir
Alartin was butler at E'lizabeth's coronation, and
left the Goldsmiths' Company his gold fee cup, out
of which the Queen drank. In our history of the
Goldsmiths' Company we have mentioned his
portrait in Goldsmiths' Hall. Alderman A\'illiam
Fitzwilliam, in this reign, also nobly stood by his
patron, ^\'olsey, after his fall ; for which the King,
saying he had too few such servants, knighted him
and made him a Privy Councillor. When he died,
in the year 1542, he was Knight of the Garter,
Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster. He left ;^ioo to dower
poor maidens, and his best " standing cup " to his
brethren, the Merchant Taylors. In 1536 the King
invited the Lord Mayor, Sir Raphe ^\■arren (an
ancestor of Cromwell and Hampden, savs Mr,

l)rin-

Mayors of london.l

GENEROUS LORD MAYORS.

40 1

cipal citizens, to the ehrisieniii-; of the Princess
Elizabeth, at Greemvich ; and at the ceremony tlie
scarlet gowns and gold chains made a gallant show.

In Edward VI. 's reign, the Greshams again
came to the front. In 1547, Sir John Gresham,
brother of the Sir Richard before mentioned, ob-
tained from Henry VIII. the hospital of St. Mary
Bethlehem as an asylum for lunatics.

In this reign the City Corporation lands (as
being given by Papists for superstitious uses) were
all claimed for the King's use, to the amount of
;^i,ooo per annum. The London Corporation,
unable to resist this tyranny, had to retrieve them
at the rate of twenty years' purchase. Sir Andrew
Judd (Skinner), mayor in 1550, was ancestor of
Lord Teynham, Viscount Strangford, Chief Baron
Smyth e, &c. Among the bequests in his will
were " the sandhills at the back side of Holborn,"
then let for a few ])ounds a year, now worth nearly
_;£,'2o,ooo per annum. In 1553, Sir Thomas White
(Merchant Taylor) kept the citizens loyal to Queen
Mary during Wj-att's rebellion, the brave Queen
coming to Guildhall and personally re-assuring the
citizens. White was the son of a poor clothier ;
at the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a
London tailor, who left hnn ^100 to begin the
world with, and by thrift and industry he rose to
wealth. He was the generous founder of St. John's
College, Oxford. According to Webster, the poet,
he had been directed in a dream to found a college
upon a spot where he should find two bodies of an
elm springing from one root. Discovering no such
tree at Cambridge, he ^^•ent to Oxford, and finding
a likely tree in Gloucester Hall garden, began at
once to enlarge and widen that college ; but soon
after he found the real tree of his dream, outside
the north gate of Oxford, and on that spot he
founded St. John's College.

In the reign of Elizabeth, many great-hearted
citizens served the office of ma\or. Again we
shall see how little even the best monarchs of these
days understood the word " libert)-," and how the
constant attacks upon their purses taught the
London citizens to aiipreciate and to defend their
rights. In 1559, Sir William Hewet (Clothworker)
was mayor, whose income is estimated at _;^6,ooo
per annum. Hewet lived on London Bridge, and
one day a nurse playing with his little daughter
Anne, at one of the broad lattice windows over-
looking the Thames, by accident let the child fall.
A young apprentice, named Osborne, seeing the
accident, leaped from a window into the fierce
current below the arches, and saved the infant.
Years after, many great courtiers, including the
Earl of Shrewsbur}', came courting foir Mistress

Anne, the rich citizen's heire-ss. Sir William, her
father, said to one and all, " No ; Osborne saved
her, and Osbome shall have her." .\nd so Osborne
did, and became a rich citizen and Lord Mayor in
1583. He is the direct ancestor of the first Duke
of Leeds. There is .. ]jortrait of the brave ajipren-
tice at Kiveton House, in Yorksiiire. He dwelt in
Philpot Lane, in his father-in-law's house, and was
buried at .St. Dionis Backchurch, Fenchurch Street.

In 1563 Lord Mayor Lodge got into a temble
scrape with Queen Elizabeth, who brooked no oi)po-
sition, just or unjust. One of the Queen's insolent
purveyors, to msult the mayor, seized twelve capons
out of twenty-four destined for the mayor's table.
The indignant mayor took six of the twelve fowls,
called the purveyor a scurvy knave, and threatened
him with the biggest p.-'.ir of irons in Newgate.
In spite of the intercession of Lord Robert Dudley
(Leicester) and Secretary Cecil, Lodge was fined
and compelled to resign his gown. Lodge ^/as
the father of the poet, and engaged in the negro
trade. Lodge's successor, Sir Thomas Ramsay,
died childless, and his widow left large .sums to
Christs Hospital and other charities, and ^^1,200
to each of five City Companies ; also sums for the
relief of poor maimed soldiers, poor Cambridge
scholars, and for poor maids' marriages.

Sir Rowland Hej-ward (Clothworker), ma}or in
1570. He was an ancestor of the Marquis of
Bath, and the father of sixteen children, all of whom
are displayed on his monument in St. Alphege,
London Wall.

Sir Wolstou Dixie, 1585 (Skinner) was the
first mayor whose pageant was jiublished. It forms
the first chapter of tlie many volumes relating to
pageants collected by tliat eminent anti(iuar}', the
late Mr. Faiiholt, and bequeathed by him to the
Society of Antiquaries. Dixie assisted in build-
ing Peterhouse College, Cambridge. In 1594, Sir
John Spencer (Clodiworker) — " ricii Spencer,'' as he
was called — ke])t his mayoralty at Crosby Place,
Bishopsgate. His only daughter married Lord
Compton, who, tradition says, smuggled her away
from her father's house in a large flap-topped
baker's basket. A curious letter from this impe-
rious lady is extant, in which she only requests an
annuity of ^2,200, a like sum for her privy purse,
;^io,ooo for jewels, her debts to be paid, horses,
coach, and female attendants, and closes liy pray-
ing her husband, when he becomes an earl, to allow
her _;^i,ooo more with double attendance. These
young citizen ladies were somewhat exacting. From
this lady's husband the Mar(_|uis of Northamptdn is
descended. .\t the funeral of " rich Spencer, ' 1,000
persons followed in mourning cloaks and gowns.

40 s

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Mayors of London.

He died worth, Mr. Timbs calculates, above
;^Soo,ooo in tlie year of his mayoralty. 'I'liere
was a famine in England in his time, and at his
persuasion the City Companies bought corn abroad,
and stored it in the I'.ridge House for tlie poor.
In 1609, Sir Thomas Campbell (Ironmonger),

Craven took horse and galloped westward till he
reached a lonely farmhouse on the Berkshire downs,
and there built Ashdown House. The local legend
is that four a\enues led to the house from the four
points of the compass, and that in each of the four
walls there was a window-, so that if the ])lague got

Vv1i:ttingto;j'3 Ai.;.:L;iiiir3r3, college iull (-r.* /tj/ 39S).

mayor, the City show was revived by the king's
order. In 161 1, Sir William Craven (Draper) was
mayor. As a poor Yorkshire boy from Wharfe-
dale, he came up to London in a carrier's cart to
seek his fortune. He was the father of that brave
soldier of Gustavus Adolphus who is supposed
to have privately married the widowed Queen of
Bohemia, James I.'s daughter. There is a tradition
tiuit during an outbreak of the plague in London,

in at one side it might go out at the other. In
161 2, .Sir John Swinnerton (Merchant Taylor),
mayor, entertained the Count Palatine, who had
come over to marry King James's daughter. The
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London,
and many earls and barons were present. The Lord
Mayor and his brethren presented the Palsgrave
with a large basin and ewer, weighing 234 ounces,
and two great gilt loving pots. The bridegroom

Mayors of Lnndon.]

A LORD MAYOR'S GIFT

OSBORNE'S LEAP {see fnge ^z:].

404

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[M:iyors of London.

ek-ct gained great ])opularity by saluting the Lady
^Liyoress and her train. The pageant was written
by the poet Dekker. In this reign King James,
colonising Ulster with Protestants, granted the pro-
vince with Londonderry and Coleraine to the Cor-
]ioration, the twelve great and old Companies taking
many of tlie best. In 1613, Sir Thomas Middleton
(Goldsmith), Basinghall Street, brother of Sir Hugh
Middieton, went in state to see the water enter the
New River Head at Islington, to the sound of drums
and trumpets and the roar of guns. In 16 18, Sir
Sebastian Harve)- (Ironmonger) was mayor : during
his show Sir Walter Raleigh was executed, the time
being specially chosen to draw away the sympa-
thisers " from beholding,'' as Aubrey .says, " the
tragedy of the gallantest worthy that England
ever bred."

In 1641 Sir Richard Gurney (Clothworker), and a
sturdy Royalist, entertained that promise-breaking '
king, Charles I., at the Guildhall. The entertain-
ment consisted of 500 dishes. Gurney's master, a
silk mercer in Cheapside, left him his shop and I
;^6,ooo. The Parliament ejected him from the
niayoralt)- and sent him to the Tower, where he
lingered for seven years till he died, rather than |
pay a tine of ,^5,000, for refusing to publish an
Act for the abolition of royalty. He was president
of Christ's Hospital. His successor, Sir Isaac 1
Pennington (Fishmonger), was one of the king's
judges, who died in the Tower ; Sir Thomas Atkins
(Mercer), mayor in 1645, sat on the trial of
Charles I.; Sir Thomas Adams (Draper), mayor in
1646, was also sent to the Tower for refusing to
publish the Abolition of Royalty Act. He founded
an Arabic lecture at Cambridge, and a grammar-
school at Wem, in .Shropshire. Sir John Gayer
(Fishmonger), mayor in 1647, was committed , to
the Tower in 1648 as a Royalist, as also was Sir
Abraham Reynardson, mayor in 1649. Sir Thomas
Foot (Grocer), mayor in 1650, was knighted by
Cromwell ; two of his daughters married knights,
and two baronets. Earl Onslow is one of his
descendants. Sir Christopher Packe (Draper),
mayor in 1654, became a member of Cromwell's
House of Lords as Lord Packe, and from him
Sir Dennis Packe, the Peninsula general, was de-
scended.

Sir Robert Ticliborne (Skinner), mayor in 1656,
sat on the trial of Cliarles I., and signed the death
warrant. Sir Richard Chiverton (Skinner), mayor in
1657, was the first Cornish mayor of London. He
was knighted both by Cromwell and by Charles II.,
which says something for his political dexterity.
Sir John Iieton (Clothworker), mayor in 1658, was
broUicr of General Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law.

- The period of the Commonwealth did not
furnish many mayors worth recording here. In
1644, the year of Marston Moor, the City gave a
splendid entertainment to both Houses of Parlia-
ment, the Earls of Essex, Warwick, and Man-
chester, the Scotch Commissioners, Cromwell, and
the principal officers of the army. They heard a
sermon at Christ Church, Newgate Street, and went
on foot to Guildhall. The Lord Mayor and alder-
men led the procession, and as they passed throiigli
Cheapside, some Popish pictures, crucifixes, and
relics were burnt on a scaftbld. The object of the
banquet was to prevent a letter of the king's being
read in the Common Hall. On January 7th the
Lord Mayor gave a banquet to the House of
Commons, Cromwell, and the chief oflficers, to
commemorate the rout of the dangerous Levellers.
In 1653, the year Cromwell was chosen Lord Pro-
tector, he dined at the Guildhall, and knighted the
mayor, John F'owke (Haberdasher).

The reign of Charles II. and the Royalist
reaction brought more tyranny and more trouble to
the City. The king tried to be as despotic as his
father, and resolvetl to break the Whig lo^'e of
freedom that prevailed among the citizens. Loyal
as some of the citizens seem to have been.
King Charles scarcely deserved much favour at their
hands. A more reckless tyrant to the City had
never sat on the English throne. Because they
refused a loan of _;^i 00,000 on bad securit)'', the
king imprisoned twenty of the principal citizens,
and required the City to fit out 100 ships. F"or a
trifling riot in the City (a mere pretext), the mayor
and aldermen were amerced in the sum of ^6,000.
F'or the pretended mismanagement of their Irish
estates, the City was condemned to the loss of their
Irish possessions and fined ^50,000. Four alder-
men were imprisoned for not disclosing the names
of friends who refused to advance money to the
king ; and, finally, to the contempt of all con-
stitutional law, the citizens were forbidden to peti-
tion the king for the redress of grievances. Did
such a king deserve mercy at the hands of the
subjects he had oppressed, and time after time
spurned and deceived?

In 1661, the year after the Restoration, Sir John
Frederick (Grocer), mayor, revived the old customs
of Bartholomew's Fair. The first day there was
a wrestling match in Moorfields, the mayor and
aldermen being present ; the second day, archery,
after the usual proclamation and challenges through
the City ; the third day, a hunt. Tlie Fair people
considered the three days a great hindrance and
loss to them. Pepys, the delightful chronicler of
these times, went to this Lord Mayor's dinner.

Mayors of London.]

A RRAVK LORD MAYOR.

40s

where he found " most excellent venison ; but it
made me ahnost sick, not daring to drink wine."

Amidst the foctions and the vulgar citizens of
this reign, Sir John Lawrence (Grocer), mayor in
1664, stands out a burning and a shining light.
When tlie dreadful plague was mowing down the
terrified people of London in great swathes, this
lirave man, instead of flying quietly, remained at
his house in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, enforcing
wise regulations for the sufferers, and, what is more,
himself seeing them executed. He sujjported during
this calamity 40,000 discharged servants. In 1666
(the Great Fire) the mayor, Sir Thomas Blud-
worth (Vintner), whose daughter married Judge
Jeffries, is described by Pepys as quite losing his
head during the great catastrophe, and running
about exclaiming, " Lord, what can I do ?" and hold-
ing his head in an exhausted and helpless way.

In 1 67 1 Sir George Waterman (mayor, son of a
Southwark vintner) entertained Charles II. at his
inaugural dinner. In the pageant on this occasion,
there was a forest, with animals, wood nymphs, iSrc,
and in front two negroes riding on panthers. Near
Milk Street end was a platform, on which Jacob
Hall, the great rope-dancer of the day, and his
company danced and tumbled. There is a mention
of Hall, perhaps on this occasion, in the " State
Poems :" —

" When Jacob Hall on his high vope shows tricks,
The dragon flutters, the Loid Mayor's horse kicks ;
The Cheapside crowds and pageants scarcely know
Which nio^t t' admire — Hall, hobby-horse, or Bow."

Ill 1674 Sir Robert Vyner (Goldsmidi) was
m.i}or, and Charles II., who was frequently enter-
tained by the City, dined with him. "The wine
passed too freely, the guests growing noisy, and the
mayor too fomiliar, the king," says a correspon-
dent of Steele's {S/>eciator, 462), " with a hint to the
company to disregard ceremonial, stole off to his
coach, which was waiting in Guildhall Yard. Btit
the mayor, grown bold with wine, pursued the
' merry monarch,' and, catching him by the hand,
cried out, with a vehement oath, ' Sir, you shall
stay and take t'other bottle.' The ' merry monarch '
looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with
a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the
time, and do now) repeated the line of the old
song, ' He that is drunk is as great as a king,'
and immediately turned back and complied with
his host's request."

Sir Robert Clayton (Draper), mayor in 1679, was
one of the most eminent citizens in Charles II. 's
reign. The friend of Algernon Sidney and Lord
William Russell, he sat in seven Parliaments as
representative of the City ; was more than thirty

years alderman of Cheap Ward, and ultimately
father of the City ; the mover of the celebrated Ex-
clusion Bill (seconded by Lord William Russell) ;
and eminent alike as a patriot, a statesman, and
a citizen. He projected the Mathematical School
at Christ's Hospital, built additions there, helped
to rebuild the house, and left the sum of ^2,300
towards its funds. He was a director of the Bank
of England, and governor of the Irish Society. He
was mayor during the pretended Popish Plot, and
was afterwards marked out for death by King
James, but saved by the intercession (of all men
in the world !) of Jeft'ries. This "prince of citizens,"
as Evelyn calls him, had been apprenticed to a
scrivener. He lived in great splendour in Old
Jewry, where Charles and the Duke of York supped
with him during his mayoralty. There is a portrait
of him, worthy of Kneller, in Drapers' Hall, and
another, A\ith car\-ed wood frame by Gibbons, in
the Guildhall Library.

In 1681, when the reaction came and the Court
party triumphed, gaining a verdict of ;fioo,ooo
against Alderman Pilkington (Skinner), sheriff, for
slandering the Duke of York, Sir Patience Ward
(Merchant Taylor), mayor in 1680, was sentenced
to the ignominy of the pillory. In 1682 (Sir William
Pritchard, Merchant Taylor, mayor), Dudley North,
brother of Lord Keeper North, was one of the
sheriffs chosen by the Court party to pack juries.
He was celebrated for liis splendid house in Basing-
hall Street, and Macaulay tells us " that, in the days
of judicial butchery, carts loaded with the legs and
arms of quartered ^\■higs were, to the great dis-
composure of his lady, 'driven to liis door for
orders.' "

In 1688 Sir John Shorter (Goldsmith), appointed
mayor by James II., fnet his death in a singular
manner. He was on his way to open Bartholomew
Fair, by reading the proclamation at the entrance
to Cloth Fair, Smithfield. It was the custom for
the mayors to call by tlie way on the Keeper of
Newgate, and there partake on horseback of a
" cool tankard " of wine, spiced with nutmeg anfl
sweetened with sugar. In receiving the tankard
Sir John let the lid flop down, his horse started,
he was thrown violently, and died the next da\-.
This custom ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir
Matthew AVood, 1 8 1 7. Sir John was maternal grand-
ftither of Horace Walpole. Sir John Houblon
(Grocer), mayor in 1695 (William III.), is supposed
by Mr. Orridge to have been a brother of Abraham
Houblon, first Governor of the Bank of England,
and Lord of the Admiralty, and great-grandfother
of the late Viscount Palmerston. Sir Humphrey
Edwin (Skinner), mayor in 1697, enraged the Tories

4o6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[.Mayors of Londoa

by omitting the show on religious grounds, and
riding to a conventicle with all the insignia of otiice,
an event ridiculed by Swift in his "Tale of a Tub,"
and rinkethman in his comedy of Lm'c without
JiitcTiSt (1699), where he talks of 'Miiy lord mayor
going to Pinmakers' Hall, to hear a snivelling and
sejjaratist divine divide and subdivide into the two-
and-thirty points of the compass.'' In 1700 the
Mayor was Sir Thomas Abney (Fishmonger), one
of the first Directors of the Bank of England, best
known as a pious and consistent man, who for
thirty-six years kept Dr. Watts, as his guest and
friend, in his mansion at Stok'e Newington. " No
business or festivity," remarks Mr. Timbs, "was
allowed to interrupt Sir Thomas's religious obser-
vances. The very day he became Lord Mayor
he withdrew from the Cluildliall after supper,
read prayers at home, and then returned to his
guests."

In 1702, Sir Samuel Dashwood (Vintner) enter-
tained Queen Anne at the Guildliall, and his was
the last pageant ever publicly performed, one for
the show of 1708 being stopped by the death of
Prince George of Denmark the day before. " The
show," says Mr. J. G. Nicholls, "cost ^737 2s.,
jwor Settle receiving ;!^io for his crambo verses."
A daughter of this Dashwood became the wife of
the fifth Lord Brooke, and an ancestor of the
present Earl of Warwick. Sir John Parsons, mayor
in 1704, was a remarkable person; for he gave
up his official fees towards the payment of the City
debts. It was remarked of Sir Samuel Gerrard,
mayor in 17 10, that three of his name and family
were Lord Mayors in three queens' reigns — Mar)',
Elizabeth, and Anne. Sir Gilbert Heathcote
(mayor in 17 11), ancestor of Lord Aveland and
\'isc(iunt Donne, was the last mayor who rode
in his procession on horseback ; for after this
time, the mayors, abandoning the noble career
of horsemanship, retired into their gilt gingerbread
coach.

Sir William Humphreys, mayor in 17 15 (George
I.), was father of the City, and alderman of Cheap
for twenty-six years. Of his Lady Mayoress an old
story is told relative to the custom of the sovereign
kissing the Lady Mayoress upon visiting Guildhall.
Queen Anne broke down this observance ; but
upon the accession of George I., on his first visit to
the City, from his known character for gallantry, it
was expected that once again a Lady Mayoress
was to be kissed by the king on the steps of the
Guildhall. But he had no feeling of admiration
for English beauty. " It was only," says a witer
in the Athcnnum, "after repeated assurance that
saluting a lady, on her appointment to a con-

fidential post near some persons of the Royal
Family, was the sealing, as it were, of her appoint-
ment, that he expressed his readiness to kiss Lady
Cowper on her nomination as lady of the bed-
chamber to the Princess of Wales. At his first
appearance at Guildhall, the admirer of Madame
Kielmansegge respected the new observance esta-
blished by Queen Anne; yet poor Lady Humphreys,
the mayoress, hoped, at all events, to receive the
usual tribute from royalty from the lips of the
Princess of Wales. But that strong-minded woman,
Caroline Dorothea Wilhelmina, steadily looked
away from the mayor's consort. She would not
do what Queen Anne had not thought worth the
doing ; and Lady Humphreys, we are sorry to say,
stood upon her unstable rights, and displayed a
considerable amount of bad temper and worse
behaviour. She wore a train of black velvet, then
considered one of the privileges of City roj-alt)',
and being wronged of one, she reso]ved to make
the best of that which she possessed — bawling, as
ladies, mayoresses, and women generally should
never do — bawling to her page to hold up her train,
and sweeping away therewith before the presence
of the amused princess herself The incident
altogether seems to have been too mucli for the
good but irate lady's nerves ; and unable or
unwilling, when dinner was announced, to carry
her stupendous bouquet, emblem of joy and wel-
come, she flung it to a second page who attended
on her state, with a scream of ' Boy, take my
bucket r In her view of things, the sun had set
on the glory of ma)'oralty for ever.

" The king was as much ama/.ed as the princess
had been amused ; and a well-inspired wag of the
Court whispered an assurance which increased his
perplexity. It was to the effect that the angry
lady was only a mock Lady Ma)'oress. whom the
unmarried Mayor had hired for the occasion,
borrowing her for that day onh'. The assurance
was credited for a time, till persons more discreet
than the wag convinced the Court party that Lady
Humphreys was really no counterfeit. She was no
beauty either ; and the same party, when they with-
drew from the festive scene, were all of one. mind,
that she must needs be what she seemed, for if the
Lord Mayor had been under the necessity of
borrowing, he would have borrowed altogether
another sort of woman." This is one of the earliest
stories connecting the City with an idea of vulgarit)'
and purse pride. The stories commenced with the
Court Tories, when the City began to resist Court
oppression.

A leap now takes us on in the City chronicles.
In 1727 (the year George I. died), tlie Royal

407

Mayors of Tonaon.i LORD ^FAYOR KECKFORD'S FAMOUS SPEECH.

Family, the Mini;.try, besides nobles and foreign i cloth, to tlie prejudice of the East India Corn-
ministers, were entertained by Sir Edward liecher, j jiany. Sir Samuel was tiie ground landlord of
mayor (Draper). George II. ordered the sum of j Fludyer Street, Westminster, cleared away for the
^r.ooo to he paitl to the slieriffs for the relief of; new Foreign Office.

insolvent debtors. The feast cost ;^4.S90. In
1733 (George II.), John Barber — Swift, Pope, and
Bolingbroke's friend — tlie Jacobite printer who
defeated a scheme of a general excise, was mayor.
B.irber erected the monument to Butler^ the poet,
in ^^'estminster Abbe\-, who, by the way, had
written a very sarcastic " Character of an Alder-
man." Barber's epitaph on the poet's monument
is in high-flown Latin, wiiirh drew from Samuel
Wesley these lines : —

" While Butler, needy wretch ! was yet alive, .
No generous patron wouUI a dinner give.
See him, \vhen starved to deith, and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet's fate is here in emblem shown —
He asked for bread, and he received a stone."

In 1739 (G'-'orge II.) Sir Micajali Perry (Haber-
dasher) laid tiie first stone of the Mansion House.
Sir Samuel Pennant (mayor in 1750), kinsman of
the London historian, died of gaol fever, caught
at Newgate, and which at the same time carried off
an alderman, two judges, and some disregarded
commonalty. The great bell of St. Paul's tolled
on the death of the Lord Mayor, according to
custom. Sir Christopher Gascoigne (1753), an
ancestor of the present \'iscount Cranbourne, was
the first Lord Ahiyor who resided at the Mansion
House.

In that memorable year (1761) when Sir Samuel
Fludyer was elected, King George III. and Queen
Charlotte (the young couple newly crowned) came
to the City to see the Lord Mayor's Show from
Mr. Barclay's window, as we have already described
ill our account of Cheapside ; and the ancient
pageant was so far revived that the Fishmongers
ventured on a St. Peter, a dolphin, and two
mermaids, and the Skinners on Indian princes
dressed in furs. Sir Samuel Fludyer was a Cloth
Hall factor, and the City's scandalous chronicle
says that he originally came up to London attend-
ing clothier's pack-horses, from the west country ;
his second wife was granddaughter of a noble-
man, and niece of the Earl of Cardigan. His
sons married into the Montagu and Westmore-
land families, and his descendants are connected
with the Earls Onslow and Brownlow ; and he
was very kind to young Romilly, his kinsman
(afterwards the excellent Sir Samuel). The "City
Biography" says Fludyer died from vexation at a
reprimand given him by the Lord Chancellor, for
having carried on a contraband trade in scarlet

In 1762 and again in 1769 that bold citi/cn,
\\'illiam Beckford, a friend of the great Cliailiam,
was Lord - Mayor. He was descended from a
Maidenhead tailor, one of whose sons made a "for-
tune in Jamaica. At Westminster School he had
acquired the friendship of Lord Mansfield and a
rich earl. Beckford united in himself the follow-
ing apparently incongruous characters. He was
an enormously rich Jamaica planter, a merchant, a
member of Parliament, a militia officer, a provin-
cial magistrate, a London alderman, a man of
pleasure, a man of taste, an orator, and a country
gentleman. He opposed Government on all occa-
sions, especially in bringing over Hessian troops,
and in carrying on a German war. His great dictum
was that under the House of Hanover English-
men for the first time had been able to be free,
and for the first time had determined to be free.
He presented to the king a remonstrance against
a false return made at the Middlesex election.
The king expressed dissatisfaction at the remon-
strance, but Beckford presented another, and to
the astonishment of the Court, added the follow-
ing impromptu speech : —

"Permit me, sire, to observe," are said to have
been the concluding remarks of the insolent citizen,
"that whoever has already dared, or shall hereafter
endeavour by false insinuations and suggestions to
alienate your Majesty's affections from your loyal
subjects in general, and from the City of London
in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in,
and regard for, your people, is an enemy to your
Majesty's person and family, a violator of the public
peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as
it was established at the Glorious and Necessary
Revolution." At these words the king's counte-
nance was observed to flusli with anger. He still,
however, presented a dignified silence : and accord-
ingly the citizens, after having been yjermitted to
kiss the king's hand, were forced to return dissatis-
fied from the presence-chamber.

This speech, which won Lord Chatham's " ad-
miration, thanks, and affection," and was inscribed
on tlie pedestal of Beckford's statue erected in
Guildhall, has been the subject of bitter disputes.
Isaac Reed boldly asserts every word was written
by Home Tooke, and that Home Tooke himself
said so. Gififord, with his usual headlong par-
tisanship, says the same ; but there is every reason
to suppose that the words are those uttered by
Beckford witli but one slight alteration. Beckford

4oS

OLD AXl") NEW LONDON.

|M.-.yors nf London.

(lieil, a sliort time after making this speech, of a
fever, caught by riding from London to Fonthill,
his WiUshire estate. His son, the novehst and
vohiptuary, had a long minority, and succeeded
at last to a milHon ready money and ;^i 00,000
a year, only to end life a solitary, despised,
exiled man. One of his daugliters marrieii the
Duke of Hamilton.

The Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor
in 1768, was a brother of the Earl of Oxford. He

fell, unfortunately, with considerable force, against
the front glass of Mr. Sheriff Harley's chariot, which
it shattered to pieces. This gave the first alarm ;
the slierift's retired into the Mansion House, and a
man was taken up and brought tliere for examina-
tion, as a person concerned in the riot. The man
appeared to be a mere idle spectator ; but the Lord
Mayor informed the court that, in order to try the
temper of the mob, he had ordered one of his own
servants to be dressed in the clothes of the supposed

iS^^^^rf^

A LORD .MAVIOR A.NU HIS I.AUV (MIDDLE Oi" SliV EN llihM H L1..MUKV;. l-i\,i,t ,.,, l.,,( I,i..l.

turned wine-merchant, and married the daughter
of his father's steward, according to the scandalous
chronicles in the " City Biography." He is said,
in jjartnership with Mr. Drummond, to have made
;^6oo,ooo by taking a Government contract to
pay the English army in America with foreign
gold. He was for many years " the flither of
the City."

Harley first rendered himself famous in the City
by seizing the boot and petticoat which the mob
were burning opposite the Mansion House, in de-
rision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager, at
the time the sheriffs were burning the celebrated
North Briton. The mob were throwing the papers
about as matter of diversion, and one of the bundles !

offender, and conveyed to tlie Poultry Compter, so
that if a rescue should be effected, the jirisoner
would still be in custody, and the real disposition
of the people discovered. However, everything
was peaceable, and the course of justice was not
interrupted, nor did any insult accompany the com-
mitment ; whereupon the prisoner was discharged.
What followed, in the actual burning of the seditious
paper, the Lord Mayor declared (according to the
best information), arose from circumstances equally
foreign to any illegal or violent designs. For these
reasons his lordship concluded by declaring that,
with the greatest respect for the sherifirs. and a firm
belief that they would have done their duty in
spite of any danger, he should put a negative upon

Mayors of London.]

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

409

giving the thanks of the City upon a matter that
was not sufficient!)' important for a public and
solemn acknowledgment, which ought only to follow
the most eminent exertions of duty.

In 1770 Brass Crosby (mayor) signalised him-
self by a patriotic resistance to Court oppression,
and the arbitrary proceedings of the House of
Commons. He was a Sunderland solicitor, who
had married his employer's widow, and settled in
London. He married in all three wives, and is
said to have received ^200,000 by tlie three.
Shortly after Crosby's election, the House of
Commons issued warrants against the printers of
the Middlesex Journal and the Gazetteer, for pre-
suming to give reports of the debates ; but on

the House, declaring that effacing a record was
j an act of the greatest despotism ; and Junius, in
j Letter 44, wrote : " By mere violence, and without
the shadow of right, they have expunged the
record of a judicial proceeding." Soon after this
j act, OH the motion of Welbore Ellis, the mayor was
committed to the Tower. The people were furious ;
Lord North lost his cocked hat, and even Fox had
his clothes torn ; and the mob obtaining a rope,
but for Crosby's entreatie.s, would have hung the
Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. The question was simply
whether the House had the right to dcs])Otically
arrest and imprison, and to supersede trial by
jury. On the 8th of May the session terminated,
and the Lord Mayor was released. The City

WILKES ON HIS TRIAL. (From a Contemporary Print.)

being brought before Alderman Wilkes, he dis-
charged them. The House then proceeded against
the printer of the FA<ening Post, but Crosby dis-
charged him, and committed t!ie messenger of the
House for assault and false imprisonment. Not
long after, Crosby appeared at the bar of the
House, and defended what he had done ; pleading
strongly that by an Act of William and Mary no
warrant could be executed in the City but by its
ministers. Wilkes also had received an order to
attend at the bar of the House, but refused to
comply with it, on the ground that no notice had
been taken in the order of his being a member.
Tiie next day the Lord Mayor's clerk attended
with the Book of Recognisances, and Lord North
having carried a motion that the recognisance
be erased, the clerk was compelled to cancel it.
Most of the Opposition indignantly rose and left
8S

was illuminated at night, and there were great
rejoicings. 'I'he victory was finally won. The
great end of the contest," says Mr. Orridge, " w.ns
obtained. From that day to the present the
House of Commons has never ventured to assail the
liberty of the press, or to prevent the publication
of the Parliamentary debates."

At his inauguration dinner in Guildhall, there
was a superabundance of good things ; notwith-
standing which, a great number of young fellows,
after the dinner was over, being heated with liquor,
got upon the hustings, and broke all the bottles and
glasses within their reach. At this time the Court
and Ministry were out of favour in the City ; and
till the year 1776, when Halifax took as the legend
of his mayoralty " Justice is the ornament and pro-
tection of liberty," no member of the Covernment
received an invitation to dine at Guildhall.

410

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Mayors of London,

CHAP 1' !•: R X X X V.

THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON (foii/iinicJ).

Ji.lin U'ilkcs: hU Birth and PareWdge— The A'^rM Briton— Due\ wiih Martin— His Expulsion— Personal Appearance— Anecdotes of Wilkes—
A RiaMjn for makinfi a Speech— Wilkes and the King— The Lord Mayor at the Gordon Riots—" Soap-suds" versus " Bar"— Sir William
Curtis and his Kilt A Gambling Lonl Mayor— Sir WiUiant Staines, Bricklayer and Lord Mayor — " Patty-pan" Birch— Sir Matthew Wood
— Waithnian-Sir Peter Laurie and the " Uregs of the People "—Recent Lord Mayors.

17S2, and eight years afterwards the resohitions
against him were erased from the 'Journals of the
House. He died in 1797,'at his house in Gros-
venor Square. Wilkes' sallow face, sardonic squint,
and projecting jaw, are familiar to us from Hogarth's
terrible caricature. He generally wore the dress of
a colonel of tire militia — scarlet and buff, with a
cocked hat and rosette, bag wig, and military boots,
and O'Keefe describes seeing him walking in from
his house at Kensington Gore, disdaining all oti'ers
of a coach. Dr. Franklin, when in England, de-
scribes the mob stopping carriages, and compelling
their inmates to shout " Wilkes and liberty ! " For
the first fifteen miles out of London on the AVin-
chcster road, he says, and on nearly every door or
window-shutter, " No. 45 " was chalked. By many
Tory writers Wilkes is considered latterly to have
turned his coat, but he seems to us to have been
perfectly consistent to the end. He was always
a Whig with aristocratic tastes. When oppression
ceased he ceased to protes^. Most men grow more
Conservative as their minds weaken, but Wilkes
was always resolute for liberty.

A few anecdotes of Wilkes are necessary for
seasoning to our chapter.

Home Tooke having challenged Wilkes, who
was then sheriff of London and Middlese.'c, received
the following laconic reply : " Sir, I do not think
it my business to cut the throat of every desperado
that may be tired of his life ; but as I am at present
High Sheriff of the City of London, it may shortly
happen that I shall have an opportunity of attending
you in my civil capacity, in which case I will answer
•for it that _>■(?« s/ia// have no ground to complain of
my endeavours to serve you." This is one of the
bitterest retorts ever uttered. Wilkes's notoriety
led to his head being painted as a public-house
sign, which, however, did not invariably rai.se the
original in estimation. An old lady, in passing a
public-house distinguished as above, her companion
called her attention to the sign. "Ah!" replied
she, '• \\'ilkes swings everywhere but where he
ought." Wilkes's squint was proverbial; yet even
this natural obliquity he turned to humorous
account. When Wilkes cliallenged Lord Towns-
hend, he said, " Your lordship is one of the hand-
somest men in tlie kingdom, and I iiiii oiic if the
ughest. Yet, give me but half an hour's start, dnd I

Lv 1774 that clever rascal, John Wilkes, ascended
the civic throne. We shall so often meet this un-
scrupulous demagogue about London, that we will
not dwell upon him liere at much length. Wilkes
was born in Clerkenwell, 1727. His fother, Israel
Wilkes, was a rich distiller (as his father and
grandfather had been), who kept a coach and si.v,
and whose house was a resort of persons of rank,
merchants, and men of letters. Young Wilkes grew
up a man of pleasure, squandered his wife's fortune
in gambling and other fashionable vices, and
became a notorious member of the Hell Fire
Club at Medmenham Abbey. He now eagerly
strove for place, asking Mr. Pitt to find him a post
in the Board of Trade, or to send him as am-
bassador to Constantinople. Finding his etiforts use-
less, he boldly avowed his intention of becoming
notorious by assailing Government. In 1763, in his
scurrilous paper, the North Britain, he violently
abused the Princess Dowager and her favourite Lord
Bute, who were supposed to influence the young
king, and in the celebrated No. 45 he accused the
ministers of putting a lie in the king's mouth. The
Government illegally arresting him by an arbitrary
"general warrant," he was committed to the
Tower, and at once became the martyr of the
people and the idol of the City. Released by
Chief-Justice Pratt, he was next proceeded against
for an obscene poem, the " Essay on Woman." He
fought a duel with Samuel Martin, a brother M.P.,
who had insulted him, and was expelled the House
in 1764. He then went to France in the height of
his popularity, having just obtained a verdict in his
favour upon the tjuestion of the warrant. On his
return to England, he daringly stood for the repre-
sentation of London, and was elected for Middlesex.
Riots took place, a man was shot by the soldiers,
and Wilkes was committed to the King's Bench
prison. After a long contest with the Commons,
Wilkes was expelled the House, and being re-elected
for Middlesex, the election was declared void.

Eventually Wilkes became Chamberlain of the
City, lectured refractory apprentices like a father,
and tamed down to an ordinary man of the world,
still shameless, ribald, irreli'^ious, but, as Gibbon
says, "a good companion with inexhaustible spirits,
infinite wit and huiiimir, and a great deal of know-
ledge." He quietly took his seat for Middlesex in

Mayors of London.]

ANECDOTES OF ALDERMAN WILKES.

411

will enter the lists against you with any woman you
choose to name."

Once, when tlie house seemed resolved not to
hear him, and a friend urged him to desist —
" Speak," he said, " I must, for my speech has
been in print for the newspapers this half-hour.''
Fortunately for him, he was gifted with a cool-
ness and effrontery which were only equalled by
his intrepidity, all tliree of which qualities con-
stantly served his turn in the hour of need. As
an instance of his audacity, it may be stated that
on one occasion he and another person put forth,
from a private room in a tavern, a proclamation com-
mencing — " We, the people of England," &c., and
concluding — " By order of the meeting." Another
amusing instance of his effrontery occurred on the
hustings at Brentford, when he and Colonel Lut-
trell were standing there together as rival candi-
dates for the representation of Middlesex in Parlia-
ment. Looking down with great apparent apathy
on the sea of human beings, consisting chiefly
of his own votaries and friends, which stretched
beneath him — " I wonder," he whispered to his
opponent, "whether among that crowd the fools or
the knaves predominate? ' "I will tell them what
you .say," replied the astonished Luttrell, "and thus
put an end to you." Perceiving that Wilkes treated
the threat with the most perfect indifference —
" Surely," he added, " you don't mean to say you
could stand here one hour after I did so ? " " Why
not?'' replied Wilkes; " it is iw/ who would not
be alive one instant after." " How so ? ' inquired
Luttrell. " Because," said Wilkes, " I should merely
affirm that it was a fabrication, and tliey would de-
stroy you in the twiiTkling of an eye."

During his latter days Wilkes not only became
a courtier, but was a frequent attendant at the
levees of George III. On one of these occasions
the King happened to inquire after his old friend
" Sergeant Glynn," who had been Wilkes's counsel
during his former setlitious proceedings. '■'My
friend, sir!" replied A\'ilkes;"he is no friend of
mine ; he was a Wilkite, sir, which I never was."

He once dined with George IV. when Prince
of Wales, when overhearing the Prince speak in
rather disparaging language of his father, with whom
he was then notoriously on bad terms, he seized an
opportunity of proposing the health of the K-ing.
"Why, AVilkes, " said the Prince, " how long is it
since you became so loyal ? " " Ever since, sir,"
was the reply, "I had the honour of becoming
acquainted with your Royal Highness."

Alderman Sawbridge (Framework Knitter), mayor
in 1775, on his return from a state visit to Kew
with all his retinue, was stopped and stripped by a

single highwayman. The sword-bearer did not
even attempt to hew down the robber.

In 17S0, Alderman Kennet (Vintner) was mayor
during the Gordon riots. He had been a waiter
and then a wine merchant, was a coarse and
ignorant man, and displayed great incompetence
during the week the rioters literally held London.
When he was summoned to the House, to be
e.xamined about the riots, one of the members
observed, "If you ring the bell, Kennet will come
in, of course." On being asked why he did not
at the outset send for \\\it posse aunitatu,, he replied
he did not know where the fellow lived, or else he
would. One evening at the Alderman's Club, he
was sitting at whist, next Mr. Alderman Pugh, a
soap-boiler. " Ring the bell. Soap-suds," said
Kennet. " Ring it yourself, Bar," rei)lied Pugh ;
" you have been twice as much used to it as I
have." Tliere is no di.sgrace in having been a
soap-boiler or a wine merchant ; the true disgrace
is to be ashamed of having carried on an honest
business.

Alderman Clarke (Joiner), mayor in 17S4, suc-
ceeded Wilkes as Chamberlain in 179S, and died
aged ninety two, in iSji. This City patriarch was,
when a mere boy, introduced to Dr. Johnson by that
insufferable man, Sir John Hawkins. He met
Dr. Percy, Goldsmith, and Hawkesworth, with the
Polyphemus of letters, at the " Mitre." He was a
member of the F.ssex Head Club. " \\'hen he
was sheriff' in 1777," says Mr. Timbs, "he took Dr.
Johnson to a judges' dinner at the Old Bailey, the
judges being Blackstone and Eyre." The portrait
of Chamberlain Clarke, in the Court of Common
Council in Guildhall, is by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
and cost one hundred guineas. There is also a
bust of Mr. Clarke, by Sievier, at the Guildhall,
which was paid for by a subscription of the City
officers.

Alderman Boydell, mayor in 1790, we have de-
scribed fully elsewhere. He presided over Cheap
\\'anl for twenty-three years. Nearly opposite his
house, 90, Cheapside, is No. 73, which, before
the present Mansion House was built, was used
occasionally as the Lord Mayor's residence.

Sir James Saunderson (Draper), from whoie
curious book of official expenses we quote in our
chapter on the Mansion House, was mayor in
1792. It was this mayor who sent a ])Osse of
officers to disperse a radical meeting held at that
" caldron of sedition," Founders' Hall, and among
the persons expelled was a young orator named
Waithman, afterwards himself a mayor.

1795-6 was made ])leasant to the Londoners
by the abounding hospitality of Sir William Curtio,

412

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Mnynri of London.

and made Edinburgh
pultlic. 'J'lic wits

a |)ortly baronet, who, while he delighted in a
liberal feast and a cheerful glass, evidently thought j
ther.j of small value unless shared by his friends, j
Many years afterwards, during the reign of George j
IV., whose good graces he had secured, he went
to Scotland with the king,
merry by wearing a kilt in
laughed at his costume, complete even to the little
dagger in the stocking, but told him he had for-
gotten one important thing — the spoon.

Ill 1797, Sir Benjamin Haniet was fined ^1,000
for refusing to serve as mayor.

1799. Alderman Combe, mayor, the brewer,
whom some saucy citizens nicknamed " Mash-tub."
But lie loved gay company. Among the members
at Brookes's who indulged in high play was Combe,
who is said to have made as much money in this
way as he did by brewing. One evening, whilst
he filled the office of Lord Mayor, he was busy
at a fiiU hazard table at Brookes's, where the wit
and dice-box circulated together with great glee,
and where Beau Brunimel was one of the party.
" Come, i\Lisli-tub,'' .said Brunimel, who was the
casta; " what do you set T' " 'I'wenty-five guineas,"
answeretl the alderman. " Well, then," returned
the beau, " have at the mare's pony " (twenty-five
guineas). The beau continued to throw until he
drove home the brewer's twelve ponies running, and
then getting up and making him a low bow whilst
pocketing the cash, he said, " Thank you, alder-
man ; for the future I shall never drink any porter
but yours." " I wish, sir," replied the brewer,
" that every other blackguard in London would
tell me the same." Combe was succeeded in the
mayoralty by Sir William Staines. They were both
smokers, and were seen one night at the Mansion
House lighting their pipes at the same taper;
which reminds us of the two kings of Brentford
smelling at one nosegay. (Timbs.)

1800. Sir William Staines, mayor. He began
life as a bricklayer's labourer, and by persevering
steadily in the pursuit of one object, accumulated
a large fortune, and rose to the state coach and the
Mansion House. He was Alderman of Cripple-
gate Ward, where his memory is much respected.
In Jacob's Well Passage, in 1786, he built nine
houses for the reception of his aged and indigent
friends. They are erected on both sides of the
court, with nothing to distinguish them from the
other dwelling-houses, and without ostentatious
display of stone or other inscription to denote the
poverty of the inhabitants. The early tenants
were aged workmen, tradesmen, &c., several of
whom Staines had personally esteemed as his neigh-
bours. One, a peruke-maker, had shaved the worthy

alderman during forty years. Staines also built
Barbican Chapel, and rebuilt the " Jacob's Well "
l)ublic-house, noted for dramatic represcntiaions.
The alderman was an illiterate man, and was a sort
of butt amongst his brethren. At one of the Old
Bailey dinners, after a sumptuous repast of turtle
and venison. Sir William was er^ting a great quantity
of butter with his cheese. " Why, brother," said
Wilkes, "you lay it on with a innvcl!" A son
of Sir William Staines, who worked at his father's
business (a builder), fell from a lofty ladder, and
was killed ; when the father, on being fetched to
the spot, broke through the crowd, exclaiming,
"See that the poor fellow's watch is safe 1" His
manners may be judged from the following anec-
dote. At a City feast, when sherift" sitting by
General Tarleton, he thus addressed him, " Eat
away at the pines, General ; for we must pay, eat
or not eat."

In 1806, Sir James Shaw (Scrivener), afterwards
Chamberlain, was a native of Kilmarnock, wliere a
marble statue of him has been erected. He was of
the humblest birth, but amassed a fortune as a
merchant, and sat in three parliaments for the City.
He was extremely charitable, and was one of the
first to assist the children of Burns. At one of his
mayoralty dinners, seven sons of George III. were
guests.

Sir William Doniville (Stationer), mayor in 1814,
gave the great Guildhall banquet to the Prince
Regent and the Allied Sovereigns during the short
and fallacious peace before Waterloo. The dinner
was served on plate valued at ^200,000, and the
entire entertainment cost nearly ^25,000. The
mayor was made baronet for this.

In 1815 reigned Alderman Birch, the celebrated
Cornhill confectioner. The business at No. 15,
Cornhill was established by Mr. Horton, in the
reign of George I. Samuel Birch, born in 1787,
was for many years a member of the Common
Council, a City orator, an Alderman of the Ward of
Candlewick, a poet, a dramatic writer, and Colonel
of the City Militia. His pastry was, after all, the
best thing he did, though he laid the first stone of
the London Institution, and wrote the inscrip-
tion to Chantrey's statue of George III., now in
the Council Chamber, Guildhall. '' Mr. Pattypan "
was Birch's nickname.

Theodore Hook, or some clever versifier of the
day, wrote an amusing skit on the vain, fussy, good-
natured Jack-of-all-trades, beginning —

" Munsieur grown tired of fricassee.
Resolved Old Enyl.nnd now to sec.
The country where their roasted beef
And puddinijs large pass all belief,"

Mayors of London ]

LORD ATAVDRS t'OETtt'AL AND I'Ol ttlCAL:

413

■\Vlicicvcr this inquisitive foreigner goes lie laid
Monsieur liirch —

" GiiiMliall al lL-nj,'th in siyht appears,
An orator is liaileil with cheers.
' Zat orator, vat is liees name ? '
' Birch the ]iastry-cook— the very same.' "

He meets liim again as militia colonel, [loet,
&c. &c., till he returns to France believing Birch
Emperor of London.

Lirch possessed considerable literary taste, and
wrote poems and musical dramas, of which " The
Adopted Child " remained a stock piece to our own
time. The alderman tised annually to send, as a
present, a Tweli'th-cake to the Mansion House.
The upper portion of the house in Cornhill has
been rebuilt, but die ground-floor remains intact,
a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of
the last century ; and here are preserved two door-
plates, inscribed " Birch, successor to Mr. Horton,''
which are 140 years old. Alderman Birch died in
1840, having been succeeded in the business in
Cornhill in 1836, by Ring and Brymer.

In 1816-17, we come to a mayor of great
notoriety, Sir Matthew Wood, a druggist in Falcon
Square. He was a Devonshire man, who began life
as a druggist's traveller, and distinguished himself by
his exertions for poor persecuted Queen Caroline.
He served as Lord Mayor two successive years,
and represented the City in nine parliaments. His
baronetcy was the first title conferred by Queen
Victoria, in 1837, as a reward for his political
exertions. As a namesake of " Jemmy Wood,"
the miser banker of Gloucester, he received a
princely legacy. The Vice-Chancellor Page Wood
(r>ord Hatherley) was the mayor's second son.

The following sonnet was contributed by Charles
and Mary Lamb to Thelwall's newspaper. The
Champion. Lamb's extreme opinions, as here
enunciated, were merely assumed to please his
friend Thelwall, but there seems a genuine tone in
his abuse of Canning. Perhaps it datctl from the
time when the " player's son" had ridiculed Southey
and Coleridge: —

.Sonnet to Matthew Wood, Esq., Alderman
AND M.P.
" Hold on thy course uncheck'd, lieroic Wood !
Regardless what the player's son may prate,
St. Stephen's fool, the zany of debate —
Who nothinij tjenerous ever understood.
London's twice jira'tor 1 scorn the fool-born jest,
The stage's scimi, and refuse of the jilayers —
Stale tojiics against magistrates and mayors —
City and country both thy worth attest.
Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit,
More fit to soothe the supcrlicial ear
Of drunken I'itt, and that pickpocket Tecr,

When at their sottish orgies they diil sit,

Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein,

Till England and the nations reeled with jiain."

In 1818-19 Alderman John Atkins was libsl'
at the Mansion House. In early life lit" had beert
a Customs' tide-waiter, and was not remai-kable fol"
polished manners; but he was a shrewd and worthy
man, filling the seat of justice with impartiality)
and dispensing the hospitality of the City with ail
open hand.

In 1821 John Thomas Thorpe (Draper), mayof,
officiated as chief butler at the coronation feast of
CeorgelV. He and twelve assistants ))rcsented the
king wine in a golden cup, which the king returned
as the cupbearer's fees. Being, however, a violent
partisan of Queen Caroline, he was not created a
baronet.

In 1823 we come to another tletermined re-
former. Alderman \\'aithman, whom we have already
noticed in the chapter on Fleet Street. As a jioor
lad, he was adopted by his uncle, a Bath linendrajjer.
He began to appear as a politician in 1794. When
sheriff in 1821, in quelling a tumult at Knights-
bridge, he was in danger from a Life-guardsman's
carbine, and at the funeral of (^tieen Caroline, a
carbine bullet passed througii his carriage in Hyde
Park. Many of his resolutions in the Common
Council were, says Mr. Timbs, written by Sir
Richard Phillips, the bookseller.

Alderman Garratt (Goldsmith), mayor in 1825,

laid the first stone of London Bridge, accompanied

by the Duke of York. At the banquet at the

Mansion House, 360 guests were entertained in

i the Egyptian Hall, and nearly 200 of the Artillery

j Company in the saloon. The Monument was

] illuminated the same night.

j In 1830, Alderman Key, mayor, roused great
indignation in the City, by frightening William IV.,
and preventing his coming to the Guildiiall dinner.
! The show and inauguration dinner were in conse-
' qtience omitted. In 1831 Key was again mayor,
and on the opening of London Bridge was created
a baronet.

Sir Peter Laurie, in 1832-3, though certainly
possessing a decided opinion on most political
questions, which he steadily, and no doubt honestly
carried out, frequently incurretl criticism on account
of his extreme views, and a passion for "jnitting
down " what he imagined social griev.inces. He
lived to a green old age. In manners open,
ea.sy, and unassuming ; in disposition, friendly
and liberal ; kind as a master, and unaffectedly
hospit.able as a host, he gained, as he deserved,
" troops of friends,'' dying lamented and honoured,
as he had lived, respected and beloved. (Aleph.)

4t4

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Maynrs of London.

When Sir Peter Kiurie, as Lord Mayor of London,
entertained the judges and leaders of the bar, he
exclaimed to his guests, in an after-dinner oration : —

"See before you the examples of myself, the
chief magistrate of this great empire, and the Chief
Justice of England sitting at my right hand ; both
now in the highest offices of the state, and both
sprung from the very dregs of the people !"

Although Lord Tcnterden possessed too much
natural dignity and truthfulness to blush for his

Mr. Hogg in the business, became Alderman of
the Ward of Farringdon Within, and served as
sheriff and mayor, the cost of which exceeded the
fees and allowances by the sum of ^10,000. He
lived upon the same spot sixty years, and died in
his eighty-fourth year. He was a man of active
benevolence, and reminded one of the pious Lord
Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney. He composed some
prayers for his own use, which were subsequently
printed for private distribution. (Timbs.)

BIKCll's SIIOI', CORMin.T, (.((■<■/(;;'<• 4I2).

humble origin, he winced at hearing his excellent
mother and her worthy husband, the Canterbury
wig-maker, thus described as belonging to "the
very dregs of the people."

1837. Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the ac-
cession of her Majesty, was born at Chevening, in
Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander
Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster Row, for ^'lo
a year wages. He slept under the shop-counter
for the security of the premises. He was reported
by his master to be " too slow " for the situation.
Mr. Hogg, however, thought him " a bidable boy,"
and he remained. This incident shows upon what
apparently trifling circumstances sometimes a man's
future prospects depend. Mr. Kelly succeeded

Sir John Cowan (Wax Chandler), mayor in 1S38,
was created a baronet after having entertained the
Queen at his mayoralty dinner.

1839. Sir Chapman Marshall, mayor. He re-
ceived knighthood when sheriff, in 1S31 ; and at
a public dinner of the friends and supporters of
the Metropolitan Charity Schools, he addressed
the company as follows ; — " My Lord Mayor and
gentlemen, — I want words to express the emotions
of my heart. You see before you a humble in-
dividual who has been educated at a parochial
school. I came to London in 1803, without a
shilling, without a friend. I have not had the
benefit of a classical education ; but this I will say,
my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you witness

Mayors of Lohdon.]

T.ORD ^rAYOR KF.T,T,Y.

4'S

4i6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[ths Pouiiry.

in me what may be done by the earnest application
of honest industry ; and 1 trust that my example
may induce others to aspire, by the same means,
to the distinguished situation which I have now
the honour to fill." Self-made men are too fond
of such glorilications, and forget how much wealth
depends on good fortune and opportunity.

1839. Alderman Wilson, mayor, signalised his
year of office by giving, in the Iilgyptian Hall, a
banquet to 1 1 7 connections of the \Vilson family
being above the age of nine years. At this family
festival, the usu.al civic state and ceremonial were
maintained, the sword and mace borne, &c. ; hut
after the loving cup had been passed round, the
attendants were dismissed, in order that the free
f.imily intercourse might not be restricted during
the remainder of the evening. A large number of
the ^\"ilson family, including the alderman himself,
have grown rich in the silk trade. (Timbs.)

In 1S42, Sir John Pirie, mayor, the Royal Ex-
change was commenced. Baronetcy received on
the christening of the Prince of Wales. At his
inauguration dinner at Guildhall, Sir John said :
" I little thought, forty years ago, when I came to
London a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed,
that I should ever arrive at so great a distinction."
In his mayoralty show, Pirie, being a shipowner,
added to the procession a model of a large East
Indiaman, fully rigged and manned, and drawn in
a car by six horses. (Aleph.)

Alderman Farncomb (Tallow-chandler), mayor
in 1849, was one of the great promoters of the
Great Exhibition of 1851, that Fair of all Nations
which was to bring about universal peace, and
wrap the globe in English cotton. He gave a
grand banquet at the Mansion House to Prince
Albert and a host of provincial mayors ; and
Prince Albert explained his views about his hobby
in his usual calm and sensible way.

In 1850 Sir John Musgrove (Clothworker), at

the suggestion of Mr. G. Godwin, arranged a show
on more than usually a.'sthetic princijiles. There
was Peace with her olive-branch, the four quarters
of the world, with camels, deer, elephants, negroes,
beehives, a .ship in full sail, an allegorical car,
drawn by six horses, with Britannia on a throne
and Happiness at her feet ; and great was the
delight of the mob at the gratuitous splendour.

Alderman Salomons (1855) was the first Jewish
Lord Mayor — a laudable proof of the increased
toleration of our age. This mayor proved a liberal
and active magistrate, who repressed the mis-
(hievous and unmeaning Guy Fawkes rejoicings,
and through the exertions of the City Solicitor,
persuaded the Common Council to at last erase
the absurd inscription on the Monument, which
attributed the Fire of London to a Roman Catholic
conspiracy.

Alderman Rose, mayor in 1862 (Spectacle-
maker), an active encourager of the useful and
manly volunteer movement, had the honour of
entertaining the Prince of Wales and his beautiful
Danish bride at a Guildhall banquet, soon after
their marriage. The festivities (including ^10,000
for a diamond necklace) cost the Corporation some
^60,000. The alderman was knighted in 1867.
He was (says Mr. Timbs) Alderman of Queenhithe,
living in the same row where three mayors of our
time have resided.

Alderman Lawrence, mayor in 1863-4. His
father and brother were both aldermen, and all
three were in turns Sheriff of London and Middle-
sex. Alderman Phillips (Spectacle-maker), mayor
in 1865, was the second Jewish Lord Mayor, and
the first Jew admitted into the municipality of
London. This gentleman, of Prussian descent,
had the honour of entertaining, at the Mansion
House, the Prince of Wales and the King and
Queen of the Belgians, and was knighted at the
close of his mayoralty.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE rOULTRY.

The E.irly H.nc of the London Poulterers-Its Mysterious Desertion-Noteworthy Sites in the Poultrj-— The Eirthpbce of Tom Hood, Senior—
A Pretty (^)u:irrel .it the Rose Tavern— .\ LostlySigr-board- The Three Cr.ines— The Home of the Dillvs- Jnhnsimian.i-.St. Mildred's
Church. Poultry— (Ju.iint Epitaphs-The Poultry Compter-.i^ttack on Dr. Lamb, the Conjurer— Dekker. the Dramatist— Ned Ward's
Description of the Compter-Granville Sharp and the Slave Trade-Important Decision in favour of the Slave— Boyiie—Dunton.

The busy street extending between Cheapside and (anciently called Scalding House, or Scalding Wike).
CornhiU is described by Stow (Queen Elizabeth) as ' The pluckers and scorchers of the feathered fowl
the special quarter, almost up to his time, of 1 occupied the shops between the Stocks' Market
the London poulterers, who sent their fowls and (now the Mansion House) and the Great Conduit.
feathered game to be prepared in Scalding Alley Just before Stow's time the poulterers seem to

Th= Poultry.]

A SWEET POET AND A PLEASANT TAVERN'.

417

have taken win^' in a unanimous covey, and settled
down, for reasons now unknown to us, and not
very material to any one, in Gracious ((iracechurch)
Street, and the end of St. Nicholas flesh shambles
(now Newgate Market). Poultry was not worth its
weight in .silver then.

The chief points of interest in the street (past
and .present) are. the Compter Prison, Grocers'
Hall, Old Jewry, and several shops with memorable
associations. Lubbock's Banking House, for in-
stance, is leased of the Goldsmiths' Company,
being part of Sir Martin Bowes' bequest to the
Company in Elizabeth's time. Sir Martin Bowes
we have already mentioned in our chapter on the
Goldsmiths' Company. I

The name of one of our greatest English wits is
indissolubly connected with the neighbourhood of
the Poultry. It falls like a cracker, with merry bang
and sparkle, among tlie graver histories with which
this great street is associated. Tom Hood was the
son of a Scotch bookseller in the Poultry. The
firm was " Vernor and Hood." " Mr. Hood,'' says
Mrs. Broderip, " was one of the ' Associated Book-
sellers,' who selected valuable old books for re-
-printing,. with great success. Messrs. Vernor and
Hood, when they moved to 31, Poultry, took into
partnership Mr. C. Sharpe. The firm of Messrs.
Vernor and Hood published ' The Beauties of
England and Wales,' 'The Mirror,' Bloomfield's
poems, and those of Henry Kirke White." At this
house in the Poultry, as far as we can trace, in
the year 1799, was born his second son, Thomas.
After the sudden death of the father, the widow
and her childreri were left rather slenderly provided
for. " My father, the only remaining son, preferred
the drudgery of an engraver's desk to encroaching
ujjon the small family store. He was articled to
his uncle, Mr. Sands, and subsequently was trans-
ferred to one of the Le Keux. He was a most ]
devoted and excellent son to his mother, and
the last days of her widowhood and decline
were soothed by his tender care and aftection.
An opening that offered more congenial employ-
ment presented itself at last, when he was about
the age of twenty-one. By the death of Mr. John [
Scott, the editor of the ' London ' Magazine,' [
who was killed in a duel, that periodical passed
into other hands, and became the property of my
father's friends, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. The
new proprietors soon sent for him, and he became
9, sort of sub-editor to the magazine." Of this
period of his life he says himself: —

" Time was when I sat upon a lofty stool.
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen,
Pegan each morning, at the stroke of ten,

To write to Bell and Co.'s commercial scliwol,

In Warneford Court, a shady nook and cool,

The favourite retreat of mcvchant men.

Vet would my (|uill turn va^'ranl, even then,

And lake stray dips in the C'aslalian pool ;

Now double entry — now a lloHcry trope —

Mingling pociic honey with trade wax ;

IJlogg llrothers — Milton — (Jroie and Prescott — I'op2,

Bristles and Hogg — (ilynn, .Mills, and Halifax —

Rogers and '1 owgood — hemp — the Hard of Hope —

liariila — Byron — tallow — Bums .ind llax."

The "King's Head" Tavern (No. 25) was kept
at the Restoration by William King, a staunch
ca\alicr. It is said that the landlord's wife hap-
pened to be on the point of labour on the day
of the king's entry into London. She was ex-
tremely anxious to see the returning monarch, and
the king, being told of her inclination, drew up at
the door of the tavern in his good-natured way,
and saluted her.

The King's Head Tavern, which stood at the
western extremity of the Stocks' Market, was not at
first known by the sign of the '' King's Head,'' but
the "Rose." Machin, in his diary, Jan. 5, 1560,
thus mentions it : — " A gentleman arrested for debt :
Master Cobham, with divers gentlemen and serving
men, took him from the officers, and carried him to
the Rose Tavern, where so great a fray, both the
sheriffs were fain to come, and from the Rose
Tavern took all the gentlemen and their servants,
and carried them to the Compter." The house was
distinguished by the device of a large, well-painted
rose, erected over a doorway, which was the only
indication in the street of such an establishment.
Ned Ward, that coarse observer, in the " London
Spy," 1709, describes the " Rose, " anciently the
" Rose and Crown, " as famous for good wdie.
" There was no parting," he says, " without a glass ;
so we went into the Rose Tavern in the Poultry,
where the wine, according to its merit, had justly
gained a reputation ; and there, in a snug room,
warmed with brush and faggot, over a (juart of
good claret, we laughed over our night's adventure.
The tavern door was flanked by two columns
twisted with vines carved in wood, which supported
a small square gallery over the portico, surrounded
by handsome ironwork. On the front of this
gallery was erected the sign. It consisted of a
central compartment containing the Rose, behind
which the artist had introduced a tall silver cup,
called " a standing bowl," with ilrinking glasses.
Beneath the painting was this inscriiJtion ; —

"Tnisis
The Rosk Tavern,
Kept by
William King,

Citizen and Vintner,

4i8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Poultry.

This TaveiDc's like its sign— a lustie Rose,
A sight of joy that sweetness doth enclose ;
The (laintie Flow're well pictur'd here is secne.
But for its rarest sweets— come, searche within !"

About llic time that King altered his sign we
find the authorities of St. Peter-uponCornhill deter-
mining -'I'hat the King's Arms, in painted glass,
should be refreshed, and forthwith be set up (in
one of their church windows) by the churchwarden
at the iKiri.sh charges ; with whatsoever he giveth
to the glazier as a gratuity."

The sign appears to have been a costly work, since
there was the fragment of a leaf of an old account-
book found when the ruins of the house were
cleared after the CIreat Fire, on which were written
these entries :— " P''. to Hoggestreete, the Duche
paynter, for y" picture of a Rose, w"' a Standing-
bowle and glasses, for a signe, xx //., besides diners
and drinkings ; also for a large table of walnut-tree,
for a frame, and for iron-worke and hanging the
picture, \- //. " The artist who is referred to in this
memorandum could be no other than Samuel Van
Hoogstraten, a painter of the middle of the seven-
teenth century, whose works in England are very
rare. He was one of the many excellent artists of
the period, who, as ^\'alpole contemptuously says,
" painted still life, oranges and lemons, plate,
damask curtains, cloth of gold, and that medley
of familiar objects that strike the ignorant vulgar."
At a subsequent date the landlord wrote under
the sign —

" Gallants, rejoice ! Tliis flow're is now full-ljlowne !
'Tis a Rose-Noble better'd by a crowne ;
All you who love the emblem and the signe,
Enter, and prove our loyaltie and wine."

The tavern was rebuilt after the Great Fire, and
flourished many years. It was long a depot in the
metropolis for turtle ; and in the quadrangle of the
tavern might be seen scores of turtle, large and
lively, in huge tanks of water ; or laid upward on
the stone floor, ready for their destination. The
tavern was also noted for large dinners of the City
Companies and other public bodies. The house
was refitted in 1852, but has since been pulled
down. (Timbs.)

Another noted Poultry Tavern was the " Three
Cranes,'' destroyed in the Great Fire, but rebuilt and
noticed in 1698, in one of the many paper con-
troversies of that day. A fulminating pamphlet,
cntided " Ecclesia et Factio : a Dialogue between
Bow Church Steeple and the Excliange Grass-
hopper,' elicited "An Answer to the Dragon and
Grasshopper ; in a Dialogue between an Old
Monkey and a Young Weasel, at the Three Cranes
Tavern, in the Poultry."

No. 22 was the house of Johnson's friends,
Edward and Charles Dilly, the booksellers. Here,
in the year 1773, Boswell and Johnson dined with
I the Dillys, Goldsmith, Langton, and the Rev.
Mr. Topl.uly. The conversation was of excellent
quality, and Boswell devotes many pages to it.
1 They discussed the emigration and nidification of
j birds, on which subjects Goldsmith seems to have
I been deeply interested ; the bread-fruit of Otaheite,
which Johnson, who had never tasted it, considered
I surpassed by a slice of the loaf before him ; tolera-
tion, and the early martyrs. On this last subject,
Dr. Mayo, " the literary anvil," as he was called,
because he bore Johnson's hardest blows without
flinching, held out boldly for unlimited toleration ;
Johnson for Baxter's principle of only " tolerating
all things that are tolerable," which is no toleration
at all. Goldsmith, unable to get a word in, and
overpowered by the voice of the great Polyphemus,
gresv at last vexed, and said petulantly to Johnson,
who he thought had interrupted poor Toplady, " Sir,
the gentleman has heard you patiently for an hour ;■
pray allow us now to hear him." Johnson replied,
sternly, "Sir, I was not interrupting the gentleman;
I was only gi\ing him a signal proof of my atten-
tion. Sir, you are impertinent. '

Johnson, Boswell, and Langton presendy ad-
journed to the club, where they found Burke,
Garrick, and Goldsmith, the latter still brooding
over his sharp reprimand at Dilly's. Johnson,
magnanimous as a lion, at once said aside to
Boswell, "Fll make Goldsmith forgive me." Then
calling to the poet, in a loud voice he said, " Dr.
Goldsmith, something passed to-day where you and
I dined ; I ask your pardon."

Goldsmith, touched with this, replied, " It must
be much from )'ou, sir, that I take ill " — became
himself, "and rattled away as usual." Would
Goldy have rattled away so had he known what
Johnson, Boswell, and Langton had said about him
as they walked up Cheapside ? Langton had ob-
served that the ]joet was not like Addison, who,
content with his fame as a writer, did not attempt
a share in conversation , to which Boswell added,
that Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his
cabinet, but, not content with that, was always
pulling out his purse. " Yes, sir," struck in
Johnson, " and that is often an empty purse."

In 1776 we iind Boswell skilfully decoying his
great idol to dinner at the Dillys to meet the
notorious "Jack Wilkes." To Boswell's horror,
when he went to letch Johnson, he found him
covered with dust, and buft"eting some books, having
forgotten all about the dinner party. A little
coaxing, however, soon won him over; Johnsoa

The Poultry.]

THE DEMAGOGUE. AND "THE BEAR."

419

roared out, "Frank, a clean shirt!" and was soon
packed into a hackney coach. On discovering " a
certain gentleman in lace," and he Wilkes the
demagogue, Jolinson was at first somewhat dis-
concerted, but soon recovered himself, anil behaved
like a man of the workl. \\'ilkes qui<kly won the
great man.

They soon set to work discussing I'oote's wit,
and Johnson confessed that, though resolved not to
be pleased, he had once at a dinner-party been
obliged to lay down his knife and fork, throw
himself back in his chair, and fairly laugh it out —
"The dog was so comical, sir: he was irresistible."
Wilkes and Johnson then fell to bantering the
Scotch; Burke complimented Boswell on his suc-
cessful stroke of diplomacy in bringing Johnson
and Wilkes together.

Mr. AVilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson,
and behaved to him with so much attention and
politeness, that he gained upon him insensibly.
No man ate more heartily than Joinison, or loved
better what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes
was very assiduous in helping him to some fine
veal. " Pray give me leave, sir — it is better there
— a little of the brown — some fat, sir — a little of
the stuffing — some gravy — let me have the pleasure
of giving you some butter — allow me to recommend
a squeeze of this orange ; or the lemon, perhaps,
may have more zest." "Sir — sir, I am obliged to
you, sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his
head to him with a look for some time of " surly
virtue," but, in a short while, of complacency.

But the most memorable evening recorded at
Dilly's was April 15, 1778, when Johnson and
Boswell dined there, and met Miss Seward, the
Lichfield poetess, and Mrs. Knowles, a clever
Quaker lady, who for once overcame the giant of
Bolt Court in argument. Before dinner Johnson
took up a book, and read it ravenously. " He
knows how to read it better," said Mrs. Knowles to
Boswell, " than any one. He gets at the substance
of a book directly. He tears out the heart of it."
At dinner Johnson told Dilly that, if he wrote a
book on cookery, it should be based on philo-
sophical principles. " Women," he said, contemp-
tuously, " can spin, but they cannot make a good
book of cookery."

They then fell to talking of a ghost that had
appeared at Newcastle, and had recommended
some person to apply to an attorney. Johnson
thought the Wesle\s had not taken pains enough
in collecting evidence, at which Miss Seward
smiled. Tliis vexed the superstitious sage of Fleet
Street, and he said, with solemn vehemence. " Ves,
ma'am, this is a question which, after five thousand

years, is yet undecided; a question, whetlier in
theology or. philosophy, one of the most important
that can come before the hiunan understanding."

Johnson, who durmg the evening had been very
thunderous at intervals, breaking out against the
Americans, describing them as " rascals, robbers,
and pirates," and declaring he would destroy ihem
;ill — as Boswell says, " He roared out a tremen-
dous volley which one might fancy could be heard
across the Atlantic," iSrc. — grew very angry at Mrs.
Knowles for noticing his unkindness to Miss Jane
Barry, a recent convert to Quakerism.

" We remained," says Boswell, writing with
awe, like a man wlio has survived an earthquake,
" together till it was very late. Notwitlistanding
occasional explosions of violence, we were all
delighted upon the whole widi Johnson. 1 com-
pared him at the time to a warm \\"est Indian
climate, where you have a briglit sun, quick vege-
tation, luxurious foliage, luscious fruits, but wiiere
the same heat sometimes produces thunder, light-
ning, and earthquakes in a terrible degree."

St. Mildred's Church, Poultry, is a rectory situate
at the corner of Scalding Alley. John de Asswell
was collated thereto in the year 1325. To this
church anciently belonged the chapel of Corpus
Christi and St. Mary, at the end of Conyhoop Lane,
or Grocers' Alley, in the Poultry. The jiatronajie
of this church was in the prior and canons of St.
Mary Overie's in Southwark till tlieir suppression.
This church was consumed in the Great Fire, anno
1666, and then rebuilt, the parish of St. Mary Cole
being thereunto annexed. Among the monu-
mental inscriptions in this church, Maitland gives
the following on the well-known Thomas Tusser,
of Elizabeth's reign, who wrote a quaint poem on
a fiirmer's life and duties : —

'■ Here Thom.is Tusser, clad in e.irth, doth lie.
That some time made tlie points of hiisbandrie.
By him then leariie thou maist, here learne we must,
■When all is done we sleep and turn to dust.
And yet through Clirist to heaven we hope to goe,
Who reads his bookes sliall find liis faith was so.

Among the curious epitaphs in St. Mildred's,
Stow mentions the following, which is wouh
quoting here : —

"llKKE i.iiis r.iMtiED Thomas Ikkn,
" In llodnct and London
(loil blessed my life,
Till forty and si.\e yeerci,

Willi children .and wife ;
Anrl flod will raise me

Up to life againe,
Therefore have I thought
My death no paine."

Skinner.

420

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Poultry

A fair nionunicnt of Queen Elizabeth had on
the sides the following verses inscribed : —

"If prayers ov tears

Of sulijects had prevailed,
To save a princesse

Thruuyli the world esteemed ;
Then Atrojios

Netherlands' Reliefe ;
Heaven's gem, earth's joy.

World's wonder. Nature's chief.
P.ritaine's blessing, England's splendour,
Religion's Nurse, the Faith's Defender."

The Poultry Compter, on the site of the present
Grocers' Alley, was one of the old sherift"'s prisons

JOHN WILKES. (From all Anihcntic Portrait.)

In cutting here had fail'd,
And liad not cut her thread,

But been redeem'd ;
But pale-faced Death ;

And cruel churlish Fate,
To prince and people

Brings the latest dale.
Yet spight of Death and Fate,

Fame will display
Her gracious virtues

Through the world for aye,
Spain's Rod, Rome's Ruine,

pulled down in 1S17, replaced soon after by a
chapel. Stow mentions the prison as four houses
west from the parish of St. Mildred, and describes
it as having been " there kept and continued time
out of mind, for I have not read the original
hereof." " It was the only prison," says Mr. Peter
Cunningham, " with a ward set apart for Jews
(ijiobably from its vicinity to Old Jewry), and it
was the only prison in London left unattacked by
Lord George Gordon's blue cockaded rioters ia

The Poultry]

THE POULTRY COMPTER.

421

1780." Tliis may have arisen from secret instruc-
tions of Lord tleorge, who had sympathies for tlie
Jews, and eventually became one himself. Middle-
ton, 1607 (James L), speaks ill of it in his pl;'y of

that Dr. Lamb, the conjurer, died, after being
nearly torn to jjieces by the mob. He was a
creature of the Duke of Buckingham, and iiad
been accused of bewitching Lord Windsor. On

the Phivnix, for prisons at that time were ])laces the iSth of June Lamb was insulted in the City
of cruelty and extortion, and schools of villainy. , by a few boys, who soon after being increased

THE roULTRY COMPTER. (From an OLi riint.)

The great playwright makes his " first officer " say,
" We have been scholars, 1 can tell you — we could
not have been knaves so soon else ; for as in that
notable city called London, stand two most famous
universities, Poultry and Wood St., where some are
of twenty years standing, and have took all their
degrees, from the m.aster's side, down to the
mistress's side, so in like manner," &c.

It was at this prison, in the reign of Charles I.,
38

by the acceding multitude, they surrounded liim
with bitter invectives, which obliged him to seek
refuge in a tavern in the Old Jewry ; but the tumult
continuing to increase, the vintner, for his own
safety, judged it proper to turn him out of tlie
house, whereupon the mob renewed their exclama-
tions against him, with the ap|)ellations of "wizard,''
"conjuror," and "devil." But at last, perceiving
the approach of a guard, sent by the Lord Mayor

422

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Poultry.

to liis rescue, they fell upon and beat the doctor in
such a cruel and barbarous manner, that he was by
the said guard taken up for dead, and carried to
the Compter, where he soon after expired. " But
the author of a treatise, entitled ' Tlie Forfeiture of
the City Charters,"' says Maitland, "gives a different
account of this affai.-, and, fixing the scene of this
tragedy on the 14th of July, writes, that as the
doctor passed through Cheapside, he was attacked
as above mentioned, which forced him to seek a
retreat down Wood Street, and that he was there
screened from the fury of the mob in a house, till
they had broken all the windows, and forced the
door ; and then, no help coming to the relief of the
doctor, the housekeeper was obliged to deliver him
up to save the spoiling of his goods.

" When the rabble had got him into their Iiands,
some took him by the legs, and others by the
arms, and so dragging him along the streets, cried^
'Lamb, Lamb, the conjuror, the conjuror!' every
one kicking and striking him that were nearest.

"Whilst this tumult lasted, and the City was in an
uproar, the news of what had passed came to the
king's ear, who immediately ordered his guards to
make ready, and. taking some of the chief nobility,
he came in person to appease the tumult. In St.
Paul's Churchyard he met the inhuman villains
dragging the doctor along ; and after the knight-
marshal had proclaimed silence, who was but ill
obeyed, the king, like a good prince, mildly
exhorted and persuaded them to keep his peace,
and deliver up the doctor to be tried according to
law ; and that if his offence, which they charged
him with, should api^ear, he should be punished
accordingly ; commanding them to disperse and
depart every man to his own home. But the
insolent varlets answered, that they had judged
him already ; and thereupon pulled him limb from
limb; or, at least, so dislocated his joints, that
he instantly died."

This took place just before the Duke of Bucking-
ham's assassination by Felton, in 1628. The king,
very much enraged at the treatment of Lamb, and
the non-discovery of the real offenders, extorted a
fine of jf 6,000 from the abashed City.

Dekker, the dramatist, was thrown into this
prison. This poet of the great Elizabethan race
was one of Ben Jonson's great rivals. He thus rails
at Shakespeare's special friend, who had made " a
supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and
hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a
good face upon it. Thou hast forgot how thou
ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the
highway ; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get
service among the mimics," &C.

Dekker thus delineates Ben : — " That same
Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan ; it
looks for all the world like a rotten russet apple,
when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of
cinnamon water next my heart, for me to hear him
speak ; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and
rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate — to see
his face make faces, when he reads his songs and
sonnets."

Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of
his favourite, Horace's — " You staring Leviathan !
Look on the sweet visage of Horace ; look, jxir-
boil'd face, look — has he not his face punchtfull
of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan?"

Ben Jonson's manner in a play-house is thus
sketched by Dekker : — " Not to hang himself, even
if he thought any man could write plays as well as
himself; not to bombast out a new play with the
old linings of jests stolen from the Temple's revels ;
not to sit in a gallery where your comedies have
entered their actions, and there make vile and bad
faces at every line, to make men have an eye to
you, and to make players afraid ; not to venture
on the stage when your play is ended, and exchange
courtesies and compliments with gallants, to make
all the house rise and cry — 'That's Horace ! That's
he that pens and purges humours !' "

But, notwithstanding all his bitterness, Dekker
could speak generously of the old poet ; for he
thus sums up Ben Jonson's merits in the following
lines : —

" Good Horace ! No! My clieeks do blush for thine,
As often as tliou spealiest so ; where one true
And nobly virtuous spirit for thy best part
Loves tliee, I wisli one, ten ; even from my lieart !
I mal<e account, I put up as deep sliare
In any good man's love, which thy worth earns.
As thou tliyself ; we envy not to see
Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy.
No, here the gall lies ; — we, that know what stuff
Thy veiy heart is made of, know tlie stalk
On which thy learning grows, and can give life
To tliy one dying baseness ; yet must we
Dance anticks on your paper.
But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould,
I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold."

Charles Lamb, speaking of Dekker's share in
Massinger's Virgin Martyr, highly eulogises the
impecunious poet. " This play," says Lamb,
" has some beauties of so very high an order, that
with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think
he had poetical enthusiasm capable of risin'j up to
them. His associate, Dekker, who wrote Oid
Fortuiiatiis, had poetry enough for anything. The
very impurities which obtrude themselves among
the sweet pictures of this pJay, like Satan among
the sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a

The Poultry!

SLAVES CANNOT BREATHE IN ENGLAND."

423

raciness, and a glow in them, whicli are beyond
Massinger. They are to the religion of the rest
what Caliban is to Miranda."

Ned ^\■a^l, in his coarse but clc\er " London
Spy," gives us a most distasteful jiicture of the
Compter in 1698-1700. " When we first entered,"
says Ward, " this ai)artment, under the title of the
King's Ward, the mi.xture of scents that arose
from muitdiingus, tobacco, foul feet, dirty shirts,
stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcases, poisoned
our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a
tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room.
The ill-looking vermin, with long, rusty beards,
swaddled up in rags, and their heads — some covered
with thrum-caps, and others thrust into the to])s of
old stockings. Some quitted their play tliey were
before engaged in, and came hovering round us,
like so man)' cannibals, with such devouring
countenances, as if a man had been but a morsel
with 'em, all crying out, ' Garnish, garnish,' as a
rabble in an insurrection crying, ' Liberty, liberty !'
We were forced to submit to the doctrine of non-
resistance, and comply with their demands, wliich
extended to the sum of two shillings eacii."

The Poultry Compter has a special historical
interest, from the fact of its being connected with
the early struggles of our philanthropists against
the slave-trade. It was here that several of the
slaves released by Granville Sharp's noble exer-
tions were confined. This excellent man, and
true aggressive Christian, was grandson of an
Archbishop of York, and son of a learned North-
umberland rector. Though brought up to the
bar, he never practised, and resigned a place in
the Ordnance Office because he could not con-
scientiously approve of the American War. He
lived a bachelor life in the Temple, doing good
continually. Sharp opposed the impressment of
sailors and the system of duelling ; encouraged
the distribution of the Bible, and advocated parlia-
mentary reform. But it was as an enemy to slavery,
and the first practical opposer of its injustice and
its cruelties, that Granville Sharp earned a foremost
place in the great bede-roll of our English philan-
thropists. Mr. Sharp's first interference in behalf
of persecuted slaves was in 1765.

In the year 1765, says Clarkson, in his work on
slavery, a Mr. David Lisle had brought over from
Barbadoes Jonathan Strong, an African slave, as his
servant. He used the latter in a barbarous manner
at his lodgings, in Wapping, but particularly by
beating him over the head with a pistol, which
occasioned his head to swell. When the swelling
went down a disorder fell into his eyes, which
threatened the loss of them. To this a fever and

ague succeeded ; and he was affected with a lame-
ness in both his legs.

Jonathan Strong having been brought into this
deplorable condition, anil being therefore who'.ly
useless, was left by his master to go whither he
pleased. Lie applietl, atcordingly, to Mr. William
Sharp, the surgeon, for his ailvice, as to one who
gave up a portion of his time to the healing of the
diseases of the ])oor. It was here that Mr. Gran-
ville Sharp, the brother of the former, saw him.
Suffice it to say that in process of time he was
cured. During this time Mr. Granville Sliarp,
pitying his hard case, su[)plied. him with money,
and afterwards got him a situation in the family of
Mr. Brown, an apothecary, to carry out medicines.

In this new situation, when Strong had become
healthy and robust in his appearance, his master
happened to see him. The latter immediately
formed the design of possessing him again. Ac-
cordingly, when he had found out his residence,
he procured John Ross, keeper of the Poultry
Compter, and William Miller, an officer under the
Lord Mayor, to kidnap him. This was done by
sending for him to a public-house in Fcncliurch
Street, and then seizing him. By these he was
conveyed, without any warrant, to the Poultry
Compter, where he was sold by his master to John
Kerr for ^30. Mr. Sharp, immediately upon this,
waited upon Sir Robert Kite, the then Lord Mayor,
and entreated him to send for Strong and to hear
his case. A day was accordingly appointed, Mr.
Sharp attended, also William M'Bean, a notary
public, and David Laird, captain of the ship
Thames, which was to ha\e con\-eyed Strong to
Jamaica, in behalf of the purchaser, John Kerr.
A long conversation ensued, in which the opinion
of York and Talbot was quoted. Mr. Sharp made
his observations. Certain lawyers who were present
seemed to be staggered at the case, but inclined
rather to re-commit the prisoner. The Lord Mayor,
however, discharged Strong, as he had been taken
up ^\'ithout a warrant.

As soon as this detemiination was made known,
the parties began to move ofl". Captain Laird,
however, who kept close to Strong, laid hold of him
before he had quitted the room, and said aloud,
" Then now I seize him as my slave." LTpon this
Mr. Sharp put liis hand upon Laird's shoulder, and
pronounced these words, " I charge you, in the
name of the king, with an assault upon the person
of Jonathan Strong, and all these are my witnesses."
Laird was greatly intimidated by this charge, made
in the presence of the Lord Mayor and others,
and fearing a prosecution, let his prisoner go,
leaving him to be conveyed away bv Mr. Sharp.

424

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Poultry.

I5ut the great turning case was that of James
Somerset, in 1772. James Somerset, an African
slave, had been brought to England by his master,
Charles Stewart, in November, 1769. Somerset, in
process of time, left him. Stewart took an oppor-
tunity of seizing him, and IkuI him conveyed on
board the Ann and Mary, Captain Knowles, to be
carried out of the kingdom and sold as a slave in
Jamaica. The question raised was, " Whether a
slave, by coming into England, became free?"

In order that time might be given for ascer-
taining the law fully on this head, the case was
argued at three different sittings — first, in January,
1772; secondly, in February, 1772; and thirdly,
in May, 1772. And that no decision otherwise
than what the law warranted might be given, the
opinion of the judges was taken upon the pleadings.
The great and glorious issue of the trial was,
" That as soon as erer any slave set his foot upon
English territory he became free."

Tlius ended the great case of Somerset, which,
l.aving been determined after so deliberate an in-
vestigation of the law, can never be reversed while
the British Constitution remains. The eloquence
displayed in it by those who were engaged on the
side of liberty was perhaps never exceeded on any
occasion ; and the names of the counsellors, Davy,
(Jlynn, Hargrave, Mansfield, and Alleyne, ought
always to be remembered with gratitude by the
friends of this great cause.

It was after this verdict that Cowper wrote the
following beautiful lines : —

" Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if tlieir lungs
Imbibe our air, tliat moment they are free ;
They toucli our country, and their sliackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread on, then,
And let it circulate through eveiy vein
Of all your empire, that wliere Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too."

It was in this Compter that Boyse, a true type of
the Grub Street poet of Dr. Johnson's time, spent
many of the latter days of his life. In the year
1740 Boyse was reduced to the lowest state of
poverty, having no clothes left in v.-hich he could
ajjpear abroad ; and what bare subsistence he
procured was by writing occasional poems for the
magazines. Of the disposition of his apparel Mr.
Nichols received from Dr. Johnson, who knew him
well, the following account. He used to pawn
what he had of this sort, and it was no sooner
redeemed by his friends, than pawned again. On
one occasion Dr. Johnson collected a sum of money*

•"The sum," said Johnson, " was collected by sixpences,
at a time when to me sixpence was a serioiis consideration." '

for this purpose, and in two days the clothes were
jMwned again. In this state Boyse remained in
bed with no other covering than a blanket with two
holes, through which he passed his arms when he
sat lip to write. The author of his life in Cibber
adds, that when his distresses were so pressing as
to induce him to dispose of his shirt, he used to cut
some white paper in slips, which he tied round his
wrists, and in the same manner supplied his neck.
In this plight he frequently appeared abroad, while
his other apparel was scarcely suflTicient for the
purposes of decency.

In the month of May, 1749, Boyse died in
obscure lodgings near Shoe Lane. An - old
ac(juaintance of his endeavoured to collect motley
to defray the e.xpenses of his funeral, so that the
scandal of being buried by the parish might be
avoided. But his endeavours were in vani, far
the persons he had selected had been so otten
troubled with applications during the life of this
unhappy man, that they refused to contribute any-
thing towards his funeral.

Of Boyse's best poems "The Deity" contains
some vigorous lines, of which the following are a
favourable specimen : —

" Transcendent pow'r ! sole arbiter of fate !
How great thy glory ! and thy bliss how great.
To view from thy exalted throne above
(Eternal source of light, and life, and love !)
Unnumbered creatures draw their smiling birth,
To bless the heav'ns or beautify the earth ;
Wliile systems roll, obedient to thy view,
And worlds rejoice — which Newton never knew !

Below, thro' Jiflirent foniis does matter range,
And life subsists from elemental change,
Liquids condensing shapes terrestrial wear.
Earth mounts in fire, and fire dissolves in air ;
While we, inquiring phantoms of a day,
Inconstant as the shadows we survey .'
With them along Time's rapid current pass,
And haste to mingle with the parent mass ;
But thou, Eternal Lord of life divine !
In youth immortal shalt for ever shine !
No change shall darken thy exalted name.
From everlasting ages still the same !"

Dunton, the eccentric bookseller of William III.'s
reign, resided in the Poultry in the year 16SS.
"The humour of rambling," he says in his auto-
biography, " was now pretty well oft" with me, and
my thoughts began to fix rather upon business.
The shop I took, with the sign of the Black Raven,
stood opposite to the Poultry Counter, where I
traded ten years, as all other men must expect, with
a variety of successes and disappointments. My
shop was opened just upon the Revolution, and;
as I remember, the same day the Prince of Orange
came \o London,"

Old .)e«-y.]

JEWS IN Till", OLD JEWRY.

42S

CHAPTER XXXVII.
OLD JEWRY.

TIi'J OU Jewry — Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford — Had Times for the Iiraclitcs— Jews* Alms— A Kin;; in Debt— Uachc! \vccpin3
for her Children — Jewish Converts— Wholesale Expulsion of the Ciiusen People frn;n Ivngland— The Rich House of a Rich Citizen— The
London Institution, formerly Ih the Old Jewr>- — Porsoniana — Noneonforniists in the Old Je.vry — Samuel Chandler, Uicliard Price, and
James Foster — The Grocers' Gompanj — Their Sufferings under the Commnnwealth— Almost ISankrupt — Again they Flourish — The Grocery'
Hall Garden — Fairfax and the Grocers — A Rich and Generous Grocer— A \V:trIike Grocer — Walbrook — Uncklersbury.

TiiF, Old Jewry was the Ghetto of mediaeval
London. The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, in his
interesting " History of the Jews in Great Britain,"
has clearly shown that Jews resided in England
during the Saxon times, by an edict published by
Elgbright, Archbishop of York, a.d. 470, forbidding
Christians to attend the Jewish feasts. It appears
the Jews sometimes left lands to the abbeys; and
in the laws of Edward tlie Confessor we find them
especially mentioned as under the king's guard and
protection.

The Conijueror invited over many Jews from
Rouen, who settled themselves chiefly in London,
Stamford, and Oxford. In London the Jews had
two colonies — one in Old Jewry, near King Offa's
old palace ; and one in the liberties of the Tower.
Rufus, in his cynical wa}-, marked his hatred of the
monks by summoning a convocation, where English
bishops met Jewish rabbis, and held a religious con-
troversy, Rufus swearing by St. Luke's face that if
the rabbis had the best of it, he would turn Jew at
once. In this reign the Jews were so powerful at
Oxford that they let three halls — Lombard Hall,
Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall — to students ; and
their rabbis instructed even Christian students in
their synagogue. Jews took care of vacant bene-
fices for the king. In the reign of Henry I. the
Jews began to make proselytes, and monks were
sent to several towns to preach against them.
Halcyon times ! With the reign of Stephen, how-
ever, began the storms, and, with the clergy, the
usurper persecuted the Jews, exacting a fine of
;^2,ooo from those of London alone for a pre-
tended manslaughter. The absurd story of tlie
Jews murdering young children, to anoint Israel-
ites or to raise devils with their blood, originated
in this reign.

Henry II. was equally ruthless, though he did
grant Jews cemeteries outside the towns. Up till
this time the London Jews had only been allowed
to bury in " the Jews' garden," in the parish of
St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In spite of frequent fines
and banishments, their historian owns that alto-
gether they throve in this reign, and their phy-
sicians were held in high repute. With Richard I.,

chivalrous to all else, began the real miseries of the
English Jews. Even on the day of his coronation
there was a massacre of the Jews, and many of
their houses were burnt. Two thousand Jews were
murdered at York, and at L}nn and Stamford they
were also plundered. On his return from Palestine
Richard established a tribunal for Jews. In the
early part of John's rjig.i he treated the money-
lenders, whom he wanted to use, with considera-
tion. He granted them a charter, and allowed
them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also
allowed them to try all their own causes which
did not concern pleas of the Crown ; and all this
justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks,
for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose.
In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and
imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not
readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity
was to compel some Jews to torture and put to
death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had
assisted the barons. Can we wonder that it is still
a proverb among the English Jews, " Thank God
that there Avas only one King John ? "

The regent of the early part of the reign of
Henry III. protected the Jews, and exempted them
from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts,
but they were compelled to wear on their breasts
two white tablets of linen or parchment, two
inches broad and four inches long ; and twenty-
four burgesses were chosen in every town where
they resided, to protect them from the insults of
pilgrims ; for the clergy still treated them as ex-
communicated infidels. But even this lull was
short — persecution soon again broke out. In the
14th of Henry III. the Crown seized a third part
of all their movables, and their new synagogue in
the Old Jewry was granted to the brothers of St.
Anthony of Vienna, and turned into a church. In
the 17th of Henry III. the Jews were again taxed
to the amount of 18,000 silver marks. At the
same time the king erected an institution in New
Street (Chancery Lane) for Jewish converts, as an
atonement for his father's cruelty to the persecuted
exiles. Four Jews of Norwich having been dragged
at horses' tails and hung, on a pretended charge of

426

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Old Jewry,

circumcising a Cliristian boy, led to new perse-
cution, and tlie Jews were driven out of Newcastle
and Soulliampton ; while H) defray the exiiensc of
entertaining the Queen's foreign uncles 20,000
marks were exacted from the suffering race. In
the 19th year of his reign Henry, driven hard for
money, extorted from the rich Jews 10,000 more

New Street were called in to read the Hebrew
letters, and the canons of St. Paul's took the
child's body, which was supposed to have wrought
miracles, and buried it with great ceremony not
far from their great altar. In order to defray the
expenses of his brother Richaal's marriage the
poor J.'ws of London were heavily mulcted, and

RICHARD I'uusuN. (/•'loll! an Auihciitic I'oitiait.)

marks, and several were burned alive for plotting
to destroy London by fire. The more absurd the
accusation the more eagerly it was belif.ved by a
superstitious and frightened rabble. In 1244,
Matthew of Paris says, the corpse of a child was
(ound buried in London, on whose arms and legs
were traced Hebrew inscriptions. It was supposed
that the Jews had crucified this child, in ridicule of
the crucifixion of Christ. The converted Jews of

Aaron of York, a man of boundless wealth, was
forced to pay 4,000 marks of silver and 400 of
gold. Defaulters were transported to Ireland, a
punishment especially dreaded by the Jews. A
tax called Jews' alms was also sternly enforced ;
and we find Lucretia, widow of David, an O.xford
Jew, actually compelled to pay ^2,590 towards
the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. It was
about this time that Abraham, a Jew^ of Berk-

Old Jewry.]

PERSECUTIONS OF THE JEWS.

427

hampstead, strangled his wife, wlio liad refused to bounds of truth. I am deceived on every hand ;
help him to defile and deface an image of the I am a maimed and abridged kin;; — yea, now only
Virgin, and was thrown into a dungeon of the half a king. There is a necessity for nie to have

Tower ; but the murderer escaped, by a present of
7,000 marks to the king. Tormented by the
king's incessant e.xactions, the Jews at last im-
plored leave to quit England before their very

monej', gotten from what place soever, anil from
whomsoever."

The king, on Richard's promise to obl.iiii him
money, sold him the right which he held over the

SIR R. Clayton's hoi'se, OARnF.N front. {From an Old Print.)

skins were taken from them. The king broke into
a fit of almost ludicrous rage. He had been
tender of their welfare, he said to his brother
Richard. " Is it to be marvelled at," he cried,
"that I covet money? It is a horrible thing to
imagine the debts wherein I am held bound. By
the head of God, they amount to the sum of two
hundred thousand marks ; and if I should say
three hundred thousand, I should not exceed the

Jews. Soon after tliis, eighty-six of the richest
Jews of London were hung, on a charge of having
crucified a Christian ciiild at Lincoln, and twenty-
three others were thrown into the Tower. Truly Old
Jewry must have often heard the voice of Rachel
weeping for her children. Their persecutors never
grew weary. In a great riot, encouraged by the
barons, the great bell of St. Paul's tolled out, 500
Jews were killed in London, and the synagogue

42&

OLD AND NEW LONDOfJ.

[Olct JeWfy.

burnt, thf leader of the mob, John Fitz-John, a
baron, running Rabbi Abraliani, the richest Jew-
in London, through with his sword. On the defeat
of the king's party at the battle of Lewes, the
London mob accusing the Jews of aiding the
king, plundered their houses, and all the Lsraelites
would have perished, had they not taken refuge in
the Tower. By royal edict the Christians were
forbidden to buy flesh of a Jew, and no Jew
was allowed to employ Christian nurses, bakers,
brewers, or cooks. Towards the close of Henry's
life the synagogue in Old Jewry was again taken
from the Jews, and given to the Friars Penitent,
whose chapel stood hard by, and who complained
of the noise of the Jewish congregation; but the
king permitted another synagogue to be built in
a more suitable place. Henry then ordered the
Jews to pay up all arrears of tallages within four
months, and half of the sum in seventeen days.
The Tower of London was naturally soon full of
grey-bearded Jewish debtors.

No wonder, with all these persecutions, that the
Chancery Lane house of converts began soon to
fill. " On one of the rolls of this reign," says Mr.
Margoliouth, probably quoting Prynne's famous
diatribe against the Jews, " about 500 names of
Jewish converts are registered." From the 50th
year of Henry HL to the 2nd of Edward I., the
Crown, says Coke, extorted from the English Jews
no less than ;i£'4 20,000 15s. 4d. !

Edward L was more merciful. In a statute,
however, which was passed in his third year, he
forbade Jews practising usury, required them to
wear badges of yellow taflfety, as a distinguishing
mark of their nationality, and demanded from each
of tlieni threepence every Easter. Then began the
]>lunder. The king wanted money to build Car-
narvon and Conway castles, to be held as fortresses
against the ^Velsh, whom he had just recently con-
quered and treated with great cruelty, and the Jews
were robbed accordingly. It was not difiicult in
those days to find an e.xcuse for extortion if the
royal exchequer was empty. In the 7 th year of
Edward no less than 294 Jews were put to death
forchpping money, and all they possessed seized by
the king. In his 17th year all the Jews in England
were imprisoned in one night, as Selden proves by
an old Hebrew inscription found at Winchester,
and not released till they had paid ^20,000 of
silver for a ransom. At last, in the year 1290,
came the Jews' final expulsion from England, when
15,000 or 16,000 of these tormented exiles left
our shores, not to return till Cromwell set the first
great example of toleration. Edward allowed the
Jews to take with them part of their money and

movables, but seized their houses and other posses-
sions. All their outstanding mortgages were for-
feited to the Crown, and ships w-ere to be provided
for their conveyance to such places within reason-
able distance as they might choose. In spite of
this, however, many, through the treachery of the
sailors, were left behind in England, and were all
put to death with great cruelty.

" Whole rolls full of patents relative to Jewish
estates," says Mr. Margoliouth, "are still to be
seen at the Tower, which estates, together with
their rent in fee, permissions, and mortgages, were
all seized by the king." Old Jewry, and Jewin
Street, Aldersgate, where their burial-ground was,
still preserve a dim memory of their residence
among us. There used to be a tradition m England
that the Jews buried much of their treasure here,
in hopes of a speedy return to the land where
tliey had suffered so much, yet where they had
thriven. In spite of the edict of banishment a few
converted Jews continued to reside in England,
and after the Reformation some unconverted Jews
ventured to return. Rodrigo Lopez, a physician
of Queen Elizabeth's, for instance, was a Jew. He
was tortured to death for being accused of designing
to poison the Queen.

No. 8, Old Jewry was the house of Sir Robert
Clayton, Lord Mayor in the time of Charles II.
It was a fine; brick mansion, and one of the
grandest houses in the street. It is mentioned by
Evelyn in the following terms : — " 26th September,
1672. — I carried with me to dinner my Lord H.
Howard (now to be made Earl of Norwich and
Earl Marshal of England) to Sir Robert Clayton's,
now Sheriff of London, at his own house, where we
had a great feast ; it is built, indeed, for a great
magistrate, at excessive cost. The cedar dining-
room is painted with the history of the Giants' war,
incomparably done by Mr. Streeter, but the figures
are too near the eye." We give on the previous
page a view of the garden front of this house,
taken from an old print. Sir Robert built the
house to keep his shrievalty, which he did with
great magnificence. It was for some years the re-
sidence of Mr. Samuel Sharp, an eminent surveyor.

In the year 1805 was established, by a proprietary
in the City, the London Institution, " for the ad-
vancement of literature and the difiusion of useful
knowledge." This institution was temporarily
located in Sir Robert Clayton's famous old house.
Upon the first committee of the institution were
Mr. R. Angerstein and Mr. Richard Sharp. Porson,
the famous Greek scholar and editor of Euripides,
was thought an eligible man to be its principal
librarian. He was accordingly appointed to the

Old Jewry.]

PORSONIANA.

429

office by a unanimous resolution of the governors ;
and Mr. Sharp had the gratification of announcing
to the Professor his appointment. His friends
rejoiced. Professor Young, of Glasgow, writing
to Burney about this time, says : — " Of Devil
Dick you say nothing. I see by the newspapers
they have given him a post. A handsome salary,
I hope, a suite of chambers, coal and candle,
&c. Porter and cyder, I trust, are among the
et cceleras." His salary was jQ^qq a year, with
a suite of rooms. Still, Porson was not just the
man for a librarian ; for no one could use books
more roughly. He had no affectation about books,
nor, indeed, affectation of any sort. The late Mr.
■William Upcott, who urged the publication of
Evelyn's diary at Wootton, was fellow-secretary
with Porson. The institution removed to King's
Arms Yard, Coleman Street, in 1S12, and thence
in 1819 to the present handsome mansion, erected
from the classic design of Mr. W. Brooks, on the
north side of Moorfields, now Finsbury Circus.

The library is " one of the most useful and
accessible in Great Britain ; " and Mr. '\\'atson
found in a few of the books Porson's handwriting,
consisting of critical remarks and notes. In a
copy of the Aldine " Herodotus," he has marked
the chapters in the margin in Arabic numerals
" with such nicety and regularity," says his bio-
grapher, " that the eye of the reader, unless upon
the closest examination, takes them for print."

Lord Byron remembered Porson at Cambridge ;
in the hall where he himself dined, at the Vice-
Chancellor's table, and Porson at the Dean's, he
always appeared sober in his demeanour, nor was
he guilty, as far as his lordship knew, of any
excess or outrage in public ; but in an evening,
with a party of undergraduates, he would, in fits of
intoxication, get into violent disputes with the
young men, and arrogantly revile them for not
knowing what he thought they might be expected
to know. He once went away in disgust, because
none of them knew the name of " the Cobbler of
Messina." In this condition Byron had seen him
at the rooms of William Bankes, the Nubian dis-
coverer, \\here he would pour forth whole pages of
various languages, and distinguish himself especially
by his copious floods of Greek.

Lord Byron further tells us that he had seen
Sheridan " drunk, with all the world ; his intoxi-
cation was that of Bacchus, but Porson's that
of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky,
abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most
bestial, so far as the few times that I saw him
went, which were only at William Bankes's rooms.
He was tolerated in this state among the young

men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman
inspired, and bear with him. He used to write, or
rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could
hiccup Greek like a Helot ; and certainly Sparta
never shocked her children with a grosser exhi-
bition than this man's intoxication."

The library of the institution appears, liowever,
to have derived little advantage from Porson's
supervision of it, beyond the few criticisms which
were found in his handwriting in some of the
volumes. Owing to his very irregular habits, the
great scholar proved but an inefficient librarian ;
he was irregular in attendance, and was fre-
quently brought home at midnight drunk. The
directors had determined to dismiss him, and said
they only knew him as their librarian from seeing
his name attached to receipts of salary. Indeed,
he was already breaking up, and his stupendous
memory had begun to fail. On the 19th of
September, 1S06, he left the Old Jewry to call
on his brother-in-law, Perry, in the Strand, and at
the corner of Northumberland Street was struck
down by a fit of apoplexy. He was carried over
to the St. Martin's Lane workhouse, and there
slowly recovered consciousness. Mr. Savage, the
under-Iibrarian, seeing an advertisement in the
British Press, describing a person picked up,
having Greek memoranda in his pocket, went to
the workhouse and brought Porson home in a
hackney coach ; he talked about the fire which the
night before had destroyed Covent Garden Theatre,
and as they rounded St. Paul's, remarked upon the
ill treatment Wren had received. On reaching the
Old Jewry, and after he had breakfasted, Dr. Adam
Clarke called and had a conversation with Porson
about a stone with a Greek inscription, brought
from Ephesus ; he also discussed a Mosaic pa\ement
recently found in Palestrini, and quoted two lines
from the Greek Anthologia. Dr. Adam Clarke
particularly noticed that he gave the Greek rapidly,
but the English with painful slowness, as if the
Greek came more naturally. Then, apparently
fancying himself under restraint, he walked out,
and went into the African or Cole's coffee-house
in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill ; there he would
have fallen had he not caught hold of one of the
brass rods of the boxes. Some wine and some
jelly dissolved in brandy and water considerably
roused him, but he could hardly speak, and the
waiter took him back to the Institution in a coach.
He expired exactly as the clock struck twelve, on
the night of Sunday, September 25, 180S. He was
buried in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, and eulogies of his talent, written in (ireek
and Latin verse, were affixed to liis pall — an okl

430

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Old Jewry.

custom not discontinued till 1822. His books
fetched ;^2,ooo, and those witli manuscript notes
were bought by Trinity College. It was said of
Porson that he drank everything he could lay his
hands upon, even to embrocation and spirits of
wine intended for the lamp. Rogers describes him
going back into the dining-room after the people
had gone, and drinking all that was left in the
glasses. He once undertook to learn by heart, in
a week, a copy of the Morning Chronicle, and he
boasted he could repeat " Roderick Random " from
beginning to end.

Mr. Luard describes Porson as being, in per-
sonal appearance, tall ; his head very fine, with an
expansive forehead, over which he plastered his
brown hair ; he had a long, Roman nose (it ought
to have been Greek), and his eyes were remarkably
keen and penetrating. In general he was very
careless as to his dress, especially when alone in
his chamber, or when reading hard ; but " when
in his gala costume, a smart blue coat, white vest,
black satin nether garments, and silk stockings,
with a shirt ruftled at the wrists, he looked quite
the gentleman."

The street where, in 1261, many Jews were
massacred, and where again, in 1264, 500 Jews
were slain, was much aft'ected by Nonconformists.
There was a Baptist chapel here in the Puritan
times ; and in Queen Anne's reign the Presby-
terians built a sjucious church, in iMeeting House
Court, in 1701. It is described as occupying
an area of 2,600 square feet, and being lit with
six bow wuidows. The society, says Mr. Pike,
had been formed forty years before, by the son
of the excellent Calamy, the persecuted vicar of
Aldermanbury, who is said to have died from grief
at the Fire of London. John Shower was one
of the most celebrated ministers of the Old Jewry
Chapel. He wrote a protest against the Occasional
Conformity Bill, to which Swift (under the name of
his friend Harley) penned a bitter reply. He died
in 1715. From 1691 to 1708 the assistant lecturer
was Timothy Rogers, son of an ejected Cumber-
land mini.>,ter, of whom an interesting story is told.
Sir Richard Cradock, a High Church justice, had
arrested Mr. Rogers and all his flock, and was
about to send tliem to prison, when the justice's
granddaughter, a wilful child of seven, pitying the
old preacher, threatened to drown herself if the
poor people were punished. The preacher blessed
her, and they i)arted. Years after this child, being
in London, dreamed of a certain chapel, preacher,
and te.xt, and the ne.\t day, going to the Old
Jewry, saw Mr. Shower, and recognised him as the
preacher of her dream. The lady afterwards told

this to Mr. Rogers' son, when the lad turned
Dissenter. Like many other of the early Non-
conformist preachers, Rogers seems to have been
a hypochondriac, who looked upon himself as " a
broken vessel, a dead man out of mind," and
eventually gave up his profession. Shower's suc-
cessor, Simon Browne, wrote a volume of " Hymns,"
compiled a lexicon, and wrote a " Defence of the
Christian Revelation," in reply to \Voolston and
other Freethinkers. Browne was also a victim to
delusions, believing that God, in his displeasure, had
withdrawn his soul from his body. This state of
mind is said by some to have arisen from a nervous
shock Browne had once received in finding a
highwayman with whom he had grapjjled dead in
his grasp. He believed his mind entirely gone,
and his head to resemble a parrot's. At times his
thoughts turned to self-destruction. He therefore
abandoned his pulpit, and retired to Shepton
Mallet to study. His " Defence " is dedicated to
Queen Caroline as from " a thing."

Samuel Chandler, a celebrated author and divine,
and a friend of Butler and Seeker, and Bowyer the
printer, was for forty years another Old Jewry
worthy. He lectured against Popery with great
success at Salters' Hall, and held a public dispute
with a Romish priest at the " Pope's Head," Corn-
hill. In a funeral sermon on George II., Chandler
drew absurd parallels between him and David,
which the Grub Street writers made the most of.
Chandler's deformed sister Mary, a milliner at
Bath, wrote verses which Pope commended.

In 1744 Richard Price, afterwards chaplain at
Stoke Newington, held the lectureship at the Old
Jewry. Price's lecture on " Civil Liberty," apropos
of the American war, gained him Franklin's and
Priestley's friendship ; as his first ethical work
had already won Hume's. Burke denounced him
as a traitor ; while the Corporation of London
presented him with the freedom of the City in a
gold box, the Congress offered him posts of honour,
and the Premier of 1782 would have been glad to
have liad him as a secretary. The last pastor at
the Old Jewry Chapel was Abraham Rees. This
indefatigable man enlarged Harris's " Lexicon
Technicum," improved by Ephraim Chambers, into
the " Encyclopaedia " of forty-five quarto volumes,
a book now thought redundant and ill-arranged,
and the philological parts defective. In iSoJ
the Old Jewry congregation removed to Jewin
Street.

Dr. James Foster, a Dissenting minister eulo-
gised by Pope, carried on the Sunday evening
lecture in Old Jewry for more than twenty years ;
it was began in 17 28. The clergy, wits, and free-

Old Jewry.]

THE GROCERS' COMPANY.

431

tliinkcrs crowded widi equal anxiety to hear him of
whom Pope wrote —

" Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten metropolitans in picacliiiiij well."

And Pope's friend, Lord Bohngbroke, an avowed

the Company of Grocers" (1689), was used to ex-
press a trader engros (wholesale). As early as 1373,
the first complement of twenty-one members of this

guild was raised to 124; and in 1583, sixteen grocers
were aldermen. In 1347, Nicholas Chaucer, a rela-

"Deist, commended Foster for the false aphorism tion of the poet, was admitted as a grocer ; and in

— "Where mystery begins religion ends." Dr.
Foster attended Lord Kilmarnock before his exe-

13S3, John Churchman (Richard IL) obtained for
the Grocers the great privilege of the custody, with

cution. He wrote in defence of Christianity in the City, of the " King's Beam," in Woolwharf, for
reply to Tindal, the Freethinker, and died in 1753. j weighing wool in the port of London, thci first step
He says in one of his works : — " I value those who to a London Custom House. The Beam was after-
are of different professions from me, more than ^ wards removed to Bucklersbury. Henry VIII. took
those who agree with me in sentiment, if they are away the keepership of the great Beam from the City,
more serious, sober, and charitable." This t\- j but afterwards restored it. The Corporation still
cellent man was the son of a Northamptonshire have their weights at the Weigh House, Little East-
clergyman, who turned Dissenter and became a cheap, and the porters there are the tackle porters,

fuller at Exeter.

At Grocers' Hall we stop to sketch the history
of an ancient company.

The Grocers of London were originally called
Pepperers, pepper being the chief staple of their
trade. The earlier Grocers were Italians, Genoese,
Florentine or Venetian merchants, then supplying
all the west of Christendom with Indian and
Arabian spices and drugs, and Italian silks, wines,
and fruits. The Pepperers are first mentioned as a
fraternity among the amerced guilds of Henry II.,
but had probably clubbed together at an earlier
period. They are mentioned ni a petition to Par-
liament as Grocers, says Mr. Herbert, in 1361
(Edward III.), and they themselves adopted the,
at first, opprobrious name in 1376, and some years
later were incorporated by charter. They then re-
moved from Soper's Lane (now Queen Street) to
Bucklersbury, and waxed rich and powerful.

The Grocers met at five several places pre-
vious to building a hall ; first at the town house
of the Abbots of Bury, St. Mary Axe ; in 1347
they moved to the house of the Abbot of St.
Edmund; in 134S to the Rynged Hall, near Gar-
lick-hytl'.e ; and afterwards to the hotel of the
Abbot of St. Cross. In 13S3 they flitted to the
Cornet's Tower, in Bucklersbury, a place which
Edward III. had used for his money exchange.
In 141 1 they purchased of Lord Fitzwalter the
chapel of the Fratres du Sac (Brothers of the
Sack) in Old Jewry, which had originally been a
Jewish synagogue ; and having, some years after-
wards, purchased Lord Fitzwalter's house adjoin-
ing the chapel, began to build a hall, which was
opened in 1428. The Friars' old chapel con-
tained a buttery, pantry, cellar, parlour, kitchen,
turret, clerk's house, a garden, and a set of alms-
houses in the front yard was added. The word

so called to distinguish them from the ticket porters.
In 1450, the Grocers obtained the important right
of sharing the office of garbeller of spices with the
City. The garbeller had the right to enter any
shop or warehouse to view and search for drugs,
and to garble and cleanse them. The office gra-
dually fell into desuetude, and is last mentioned in
the Company's books in July, 1687, when the City
garbeller paid a fine of ^50, and 20s. per annum,
for leave to hold his office for life. The Grocers
seem to have at one time dealt in whale-oil and wool.
During the Civil War the Grocers suffered, like
all their brother companies. In 1645, the Parlia-
nierjt exacted ;£^5o per week from them towards
the support of troops, ;£6 for City defences, and
^8 for wounded soldiers. The Company had soon
to sell ;^i,ooo worth of plate. A further demand
for arms, and a sym of ^4,500 for the defence of
the City, drove them to sell all the rest of tlieir
jilate, except the value of ^^300. In 1645, the
watchful Committee of Safety, sitting at Haber-
dashers' Hall, finding the Company indebted ^^500
to one Richard Greenough, a Cavalier delinquent,
compelled them to pay that sum.

No wonder, then, that the Grocers shouted at
the Restoration, spent ^^540 on the coronation
pageant, and provided sixty riders at Charles's
noisy entrance into London. The same year, Sir
John Frederick, being chosen Mayor, and not
being, as rule required, a member of one of the
twelve Great Companies, left the Barber Chirur-
geons, and joined the Grocers, who welcomed him
with a great pageant. In 1664, the Grocers took
a zealous part with their friends and allies, the
Druggists, against the College of Physicians, who
were trying to obtain a bill granting them power of
search, seizure, fine, and imprisonment. The Plague
vear no election feast was held. The Great Fire

'grocer," says Ravenhill, in his "Short Account of| followed, and not only greatly damaged Grocers'

432

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Old Jewry.

Hall, but also consumed the whole of their house
|(roi)erty, exccptini; a few small tenements in Grub
Street. 'I'hey found it necessary to try and raise
;^20,ooo to pay their debts, to sell their melted
plate, and to add ninety-four members to the livery.
Only succeeding,', amid the general distress, in raising
j(^(>,ooo, the Company -was almost bankrupt, their
hall being seized, and attachments laid on their
rent. 15y a great effort, however, they wore round,
called more freemen on the livery, and added in

Canning, &c. Of Grocer Mayors, Strype notes
sixty-four between 1231 and 17 10 alone.

The garden of the Hall must have been a pleasant
place in the old times, as it is now. It is mentioned
in 1427 as having vines spreading up before the
parlour windows. It had also an arbour; and in
1433 it was generously thrown open to the citizens
generally, who had ijetitioned for this privilege.
It contained hedge-rows and a bowling alley, with
an ancient tower of stone or brick, called " the

EXTERIOR OF GROCERS' HALL.

two months eighty-one new members to the Court
of Assistants ; so that before the Revolution of
1688 they had restored their hall and mowed down
most of their rents. Indeed, one of their most
brilliant epochs was in 1689, when William III.
accepted the office of their sovereign master.

Some writers credit the Grocers' Company with
the enrolment of five kings, several princes, eight
dukes, three earls, and twenty lords. Of these five
kings, Mr. Herbert could, however, only trace
Charles II. and William HI. Their list of
honorary members is one emblazoned with many
great names, including Sir Philip Sidney (at whose
funeral they assisted), Pitt, Lord Chief Justice
Tenterden, the Marquis of Cornwallis, George

j Turret," at the north-west corner, which had pro-
bably formed part of Lord Fitzwalter's mansion.
The garden remained unchanged till the new hall
was built in 1798, when it was much curtailed, and
in 1802 it was nearly cut in half by the enlargement
of Princes Street. For ground which had cost the
Grocers, in 1433, only ^^31 17s. 8d., they received
from the Bank of England more than ^20,000.

The Hall was often lent for dinners, funerals,
county feasts, and weddings ; and in 1564 the gen-
tlemen of Gray's Inn dined there with the gentle-
men of the Middle Temple. This system breeding
abuses, was limited in 1610.

In the time of the Commonwealth, Grocers' Hall
was the jilace of meeting for Parliamentary Com-

Old Jewry.]

GROCERS' FEASTS DURING THE COMMONWEALTH.

433

mittees. Among other subjects there discussed,
we find the selection of able ministers to regulate
Church government, and providing moneys for the
army; and in 1641 the Grand Committee of Safety
held its sittings in this Hall.

In 164S the Grocers had to petition General

trumpet — a feast, indeed, of Christians and chief-
tains, whereas others were rather of Chretiens and
cormorants." The surplus food was sunt to the
London prisons, and ^"40 distributed to the [wor.
The Aldermen and Council afterwards wont to
General Fairfa.x at his house in Queen Street, and,

INTERIOR OK GROCERS' HALL.

Fairfax not to quarter his troops in the hall
of a charitable Company like theirs. In 1649 a
grand entertainment was given by the Grocers to
Cromwell and Fairfax. After hearing two sermons
at Christ's Church, preached by Mr. Goodwin and
Ur. Owen, Cromwell, his officers, the Speaker, and
the judges, dined together. "No drinking of
healths," says a Puritan paper of the time, "nor
other uncivill concomitants formerly of such great
meetings, nor any other music than the drum and
87

in the name of the City, presented him with a large
basin and ewer of beaten gold ; while to Cromwell
they sent a great present of plate, value ^300, and
i 200 pieces of gold. They afterwards gave a still
grander feast to Cromwell in his more glorious
time, and one at the Restoration to General Monk.
On the latter feast they expended ^215, and en-
rolled " honest George " a brother of the Company.
The Grocers' Hall might never have been rebuilt
after the Great Fire, so crippled was the Company,

434

but for the munificence of Sir John Culler, a rich
Grocer, wliom Pope (not al\va)'s regardful of truth)
has bitterly satirised.

Sir John rebuilt the parlour and dining-room in
1668-9, and was rewarded by "a strong vote of
thanks," and by his statue and picture being placed
in the Hall as eternal records of the Company's
esteem and gratitude. Two years later Grocers'
Hall was granted to the parishioners of St. Mildred
as a chapel till their own church could be rebuilt.
The garden turret, used as a record office, was fitted
up for the clerk's residence, and a meeting place
for the court ; and, " for better order, decorum,
and gravity," pipes and pots were forbidden in the
court-room during the meetings.

At Grocers' Hall, "to my great surprise," says
vivacious Pennant, " I met again with Sir John
Cutler, Grocer, in marble and on canvas. In the
first he is represented standing, in a flowing wig,
waved rather than curled, a laced cravat, and a
furred gown, witk the folds not ungraceful ; in all,
except where the dress is inimical to the sculptor's
art, it may be called a good performance. By his
portrait we may learn that this worthy wore a black
wig, and was a good-looking man. He was created
a baronet, November 12th, 1660; so that he cer-
tainly had some claim of gratitude with the restored
monarch. He died in 1693. His kinsman and
executor, Edmund Boulton, Esq., expended ^7,666
on his funeral expenses. He served as Master of
the Company in 1652 and 1653, in 16S8, and again
a fourth time."

In 1 68 1 the Hall was renovated at an expense
0^ £5°°y by Sir John Moore, so as to make it fit
for the residence of the Lord Mayor. Moore kept
his mayoralty here, paying a rent of ;£2oo. It
contmued to be used by the Lord Mayors till 1735,
when tlie Company, now grown rich, withdrew their
permission. In 1694 it was let to the Bank of
England, who held their court there till the Bank
was built in 1734. The Company's present hall
was built in 1802, and repaired in 1827, since
which the whole has been restored, the statue of Sir
John Cutler moved from its neglected post in the
garden, and the arms of the most illustrious Grocers
of antiquity set up.

The Grocers' charities are numerous ; they give
away annually ;^3oo among the poor of the Com-
pany, and they have had ^^4,670 left them to lend
to poor members of the commmiity. Before 1770,
Boyle says, the Company gave away about ^700
a year.

Among the bravest of the Grocers, we must
mention Sir John Philpot, Mayor, 137S, who fitted
out a fleet that captured John Mercer, a Scotch

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

rO!d Jewry,

freebooter, and took fifteen Spanish shi|)S. He
afterwards transported an English army to Brittany
in his own ships, and released more than 1,000 of
our victualling vessels. John Churchman, sheriff in
1385, was the founder of the Custom House. Sir
Thomas Knolles, mayor in 1399 and • 1410, re-
built St. Antholin's, Watling Street. Sir Robert
Chichele (a relation of Archbishop Chichele),
mayor in 1411-12, gave the ground for rebuilding
the church of St. Stephen, W'albrook, which his de-
scendant. Sir Thomas (Mayor and Grocer), helped
to rebuild after the Great Fire. Sir William
Sevenoke was founder of the school and college at
Sevenoaks, Kent. Sir John Welles (mayor in 143 1),
built the Standard in Chepe, helped to build the
Guildhall Chapel, built the south aisle of St. An-
tholin's, and repaired the miry way leading to
Westminster (the Strand). Sir Stephen Brown,
mayor, 1438, imported cargoes of rye from Dantzic,
during a great dearth, and as Fuller quaintly says,
"first showed Londoners the way to the barn door."
Sir John Crosby (Grocer and Sheriff" in 1483), lived
in great splendour at Crosby House, in Bishops-
gate Street ; he gave great sums for civic purposes,
and repaired London Wall, London Bridge, and
Bishopsgate. Sir Henry Keble (mayor, 1510) was
six times Master of the Grocers' Company : he left
bequests to the Company, and gave ^^1,000 to
rebuild St. Antholin's, Budge Row. Lawrence
Sherift', ^^'arden 1561, \vas founder of the great
school at Rugby.

" The rivulet or running water," says Maitland,
" denominated Walbrook, ran through the middle
of the city above ground, till about the middle of
the fourteenth century, when it was arched over,
since which time it has served as a common sewer,
wherein, at the depth of sixteen feet, under St.
Mildred's Church steeple, runs a great and rapid
stream. At the south-east corner of Grocers' Alley,
in the Poultry, stood a beautiful chapel, called
Corpus Christi and Sancta Maria, which ^\•as
founded in the reign of Edward III. by a pious
man, for a master and brethren, for whose support
he endowed the same with lands, to the amount of
twenty pounds per annum."

"It hath been a common speech," says Stow
(Elizabeth), "that when Walbrook did lie open,
barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed
up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since
been called //u- Old Barge. Also, on the north
side of this street, directly over against the said
Bucklersbury, was one antient strong tower of
stone, at which tower King Edward III., in the
eighteenth of his reign, by the name of the King's
House, called Cornets Toivcr, in London, did

The Mansion House.]

BUCKLERSBURY IN OLDEN TIMES.

435

appoint to be his exchange of money there to be
kept. In the twenty-ninth he granted it to Frydus
Guynisane and Lindus Bardoile, merchants of Lon- |
don for jQ2o the year ; and in the thirty-second of '
his reign, he gave it to his college, or Free Chapel ,
of St. Stephen, at Westminster, by the name of
his tower, called Cornettes-Tower, at Bucklesbury,
in London. This tower of late years was taken
down by one Buckle, a grocer, meaning, in place
thereof, to have set up and builded a goodly frame
of timber ; but the said Buckle greedily labouring
to pull down the old tower, a piece thereof fell
upon him, which so bruised him, that his life was
thereby shortened ; and another, that married liis
widow, set up the new prepared frame of timber,
and finished the work.

"This whole street, called Bucklesbury, on both
sides, throughout, is possessed by grocers, and
apothecaries toward the west end thereof. On the
south side breaketh out some other short lane,
called in records Pcncritch Street. It reacheth but
to St. Syth's Lane, and St. Syth's Church is the
farthest part thereof, for by the west end of the
said church beginneth Needlers Lane."

" I have heard," says Pennant, " that Bucklers-
bury was, in the reign of King William, noted for
the great resort oi ladies of fashion, to purchase tea,
fans, and other Indian goods. King William, in
some of his letters, appears to be angry with his
queen for visiting these - shops, which, it would
seem, by the following lines of Prior, were some-
times perverted to places of intrigue, for, speaking
of Hans Carvel's wife, the poet says : —

" 'The first of all the Town was told,
Where newest Indian tilings were sold ;
So in a morning, without boddice,
Slipt sometimes out to Mrs. Thody's,
To cheapen tea, or buy a skreen ;
What else could so much virtue mean ? ' "

In the time of Queen Elizabeth this street was

inhabited by chemists, druggists, and apothecaries.
Moufiet, in his treatise on foods, calls on tiiem to
decide whether sweet smells correct pestilent air ;
and adds, that Bucklersbury being replete with
physic, drugs, and spicery, and being perftimed
in the time of the plague with the pounding
of spices, melting of gum, and making perfumes,
escaped that great plague, whereof sucli mul-
titudes died, that scarce any house was left un-
visited.

Shakespeare mentions Bucklersbury in his Mcny
irhvs of Windsor, written at Queen Elizabeth's
request. He makes FalstafT say to Mrs. Ford —

"What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee,
tliere's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot
cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these
lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men's ap-
parel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time ; I cannot ;
but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservedst it."
(Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii., sc. 3.)

The apothecaries' street is also mentioned in
Westward Ho ! that dangerous play that brought
Ben Jonson into trouble : — ■

" Mrs. Tenterhook. Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me
two ounces of preserved melons ; look there be no tobacco
taken in the shop when he weighs it."

And Ben Johnson, in a self-asserting poem to his
bookseller, says : —

"Nor have my title leaf on post or walls,
Or in cleft sticks ailvanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man,
Who scarce can spell th' hard names, whose knight
If without these vile arts it will not sell, [less can.

Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well."

That good old Norwich physician. Sir Thomas
Browne, also alludes to the herbalists' street in his
wonderful " Religio Medico : " — " I know," says
he, " most of the plants of my country, and of
those about me, yet methinks I do not know so
many as when I did but know a lumdretl, and had
scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside."

CHAPTER XXXVIIL

TME MANSION HOUSE.

The Palace of the Lord Mayor— The oW Stocks' Market— A Notable Statue of Charles II.— The Mansion House described— The Egj-ptJan Hall-
Works of Art in the Mansion House— The Election of the Lord Mayor— Lord Mayor's Day— The Duties of a Lord Mayor- Days of the
Year on which the Lord Mayor holds High State— The Patronage of the Lord Mayor— His Powers— The Lieutenancy of the City of London
—The Conservancy of the Thames and Medway— The Lord Mayor's Advisers— 1 he Jhansion House Household and Expenditure— Theodore
Hook— Lord Mayor Scropps— The Lord Mayor's Insignia— The State Barge— The Maria ll'aaj.

The Lord Mayors in old times often dwelt in the
neighbourhood of the Old Jewry; but in 1739 Lord
Mayor Peny laid the first stone of the present dull
and stately Mansion House, and Sir Crisp Gascoigne,

1753) was the first Lord Mayor that resided in it.
The architect. Dance, selected the Greek style for
the City palace.

The present palace of the Lonl Mayor stands on

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

43*^

the site of the old Stocks' Market, built for the sale
of fish and flesh by Henry \Valis, mayor in the
loth vear of the reign of Edward L Before this
time a pair of stocks had stood there, and they
gave their name to the new market house. Walis
had designed this market to help to maintain
London Bridge, and the bridge keeper had for a
long time power to grant leases for the market
siiops. In 13 1 2-13, John de Gisors, mayor, gave
a congregation of honest men of the commonalty
the power of letting the Stocks' Market shops. In
the reign of Edward II. the Stocks let for ^{^46
13s. 4d. a year, and was one of the five privileged
markets of London. It was rebuilt in the reign
of Henry IV., and in the year 1543 there were
here twenty-five fishmongers and eighteen butchers.
In the reign of Henry VIII. a stone conduit was
erected. The market-place was about 230 feet
long and 108 feet broad, and on the east side
were rows of trees " very pleasant to the inhabi-
tants." On the north side were twenty-two covered
fruit stalls, at the south-west corner butchers' stalls,
and the rest of the place was taken up by gardeners
who sold fruit, roots, herbs and flowers. It is said
that that rich scented flower, the stock, derived its
name from being sold in this market.

" Up farther north," says Strype, " is the Stocks'
Market. As to the present state of which it is con-
verted to a quite contrary use ; for instead of fish
and flesh sold there before the Fire, are now sold
fruits, roots and herbs ; for which it is very con-
siderable and much resorted unto, being of note
for having the choicest in their kind of all sorts,
surpassing all other markets in London." "All
these things have we at London," says Shadwell,
in his "Bury Fair," 16S9 ; "the produce of the
best corn-fields at Greenhithe ; hay, straw, and
cattle at Smithfield, with horses too. Where is such
a garden in Europe as the Stocks' Market ? where
such a river as the Thames ? such ponds and
decoys as in Leadenhall market for your fish and
fowl?"

" .^t the north end of the market place," says
Strype, admiringly, "by a water conduit pipe, is
erected a nobly great statue of King Charles II. on
horseback, trampling on slaves, standing on a
pedestal with dolphins cut in niches, all of free-
stone, and encompassed with handsome iron grates.
This statue was made and erected at the sole
charge of Sir Robert Viner, alderman, knight and
baronet, an honourable, worthy, and generous ma-
gistrate of this City."

This statue of Charles had a droll origin. It
was originally intended for a statue of John
Sobieski, the Polish king who saved Vienna from

[The MnnsiOTi House.

the Turks. In the first year of the Restoration,
the enthusiastic Viner purchased the unfinished
statue abroad. Sobieski's stern head was removed
by Latham, the head of Charles substituted, and
the turbaned Turk, on whom Sobieski trampled,
became a defeated Cromwell.

"Could Robin Viner have foreseen

The glorious triumphs of his master.
The Wood-Church statue gold had been,

Which now is made of alabaster ;
But wise men think, had it been wood,
'Twere for a bankrupt king too good.

"Those that the fabric well consider.
Do of it diversely discourse ;
Some pass their censure of tlie rider,

Others their jiidgment of tlie horse ;
Most say the steed's a goodly thing,
But all agree 'tis a lewd king."
(T!u' History of hisipids ; a Lampoon, 1676, by the Lord
Rochester. )

The statue was set up May 29, 1672, and on
that day the Stocks' Market ran with claret. The
Stocks' Market was removed in 1737 to Farringdon
Street, and was then called Fleet Market. The
Sobieski statue was taken down and presented by
the City in 1779 to Robert Viner, Esq., a descen-
dant of the convivial mayor who pulled Charles II.
back "to take t'other bottle."

" This Mansion House," says Dodsley's " Guide
to London," "is very substantially built of Portland
stone, and has a portico of six lofty fluted colurnns,
of the Corinthian order, in the front; the same
order 'being continued in pilasters both under the
pediment, and on each side. The basement storey
is very massive and built in rustic. In the centre
of this storey is the door which leads to the kitchens,
cellars, and other oflices ; and on each side rises a
fligii'. of steps of very considerable extent, leading
up to the portico, in the midst of which is the door
which leads to the apartments and offices where
business is transacted. The stone balustrade of
the stairs is continued along the front of the
portico, and the columns, which are wrought in the
proportions of Palladio, support a large angular
pediment, adorned with a very noble piece in bas-
relief, representing the dignity and opulence of the
City of London, by Mr. Taylor."

The lady crowned with turrets represents London.
She is trampling on Envy, who lies struggling on
her back. London's left arm rests on a shield,
and in her right she holds a wand which mightily
resembles a )'ard measure. On her right side
stands a Cupid, holding the cap of Liberty over his
shoulder at the end of a staff". A litde furtlier lolls
the river Thames, who is emptying a large vase,
and near him is an anchor and cable. On London's

The Mansion House.]

THE BEAUTIES OF THE MANSION HOUSE.

437

left is Plenty, kneeling and pouring out fruit from
a cornucopia, and behind Plenty are two naked
boys with bales of goods, as emblems of Com-
merce. The complaint is that the principal figures
are too large, and crowd the rest, who, compelled
to grow smaller and smaller, seem sheltering from
the rain.

Beneath the portico are two series of windows,
and above these there used to be an attic storey
for the servants, generally known as " the Mayor's
Nest,'' with square windows, crowned with a balus-
trade. It is now removed.

The Mansion House is an oblong, has an area
in the middle, and at the farthest end of it is
situated the grand and lofty Egyptian Hall (so
called from some Egyptian details that have now
disappeared). This noble banquet-room was de-
signed by the Earl of Burlington, and was intended
to resemble an Egyptian chamber described by
Vitruvius. It has two side-screens of lofty columns
supporting a vaulted roof, and is lit by a large west
window. It can dine 400 guests. In the side
walls are the niches, filled with sculptured groups
or figures, some of the best of them by Foley.
" To make it regular in rank," says the author of
"London and its Environs" (1761), "the archi-
tect has raised a similar building on the front,
which is the upper part of a dancing-gallery. This
rather hurts than adorns the face of the building."
Near the end, at each side, is a window of extra-
ordinary height, placed between complex Corinthian
pilasters, and extending to the top of the attic
storey. In former times the sides of the Mansion
House were darkened by the houses that crowded
it, and the front required an area before it. It has
been seriously proposed lately to take the Poultry
front of the Mansion House away, and place it
west, facing Queen Victoria Street. In'a London
Guide of 1820 the state bed at the Mansion House,
which cost three thousand guineas, is spoken of
with awe and wonder.

There are, says Timbs, other dining-rooms, as
the Venetian Parlour, Wilkes's Parlour, &c. The
drawing-room and ball-room are superbly decorated ;
above the latter is the Justice-room (constructed in
1849), where the Lord Mayor sits daily. In a
contiguous apartment was the state bed. There is
a fine gallery of portraits and other pictures. The
kitchen is a large hall, provided with ranges, each
of them large enough to roast an entire ox. The
vessels for boiling vegetables are not pots, but
tanks. The stewing range is a long, broad iron
pavement laid down over a series of furnaces. The
spits are huge cages formed of iron bars, and
turned by machinery.

At the close of the Exhibition of 1851, the Cor-
poration of London, with a view to encourage art,
voted ^10,000 to be expended in statuary for the
Egyptian Hall. Among the leading works we may
mention "Alastor" and " Hermione," by Mr. J.
Durham; " Egeria " and "The Elder Brodier,"
in " Comus," by Mr. J. H. Foley ; Cliauccr's
"Griselda," by Mr. Calder Marshall; "The
Morning Star," by Mr. G. H. Bailey ; and " Tlie
Faithful Shepherdess," by Mr. Lucas Durrant. In
the saloon is the " Caractacus " of Foley, and the
" Sardanapalus " of Mr. Weekes.

The duties of a Lord Mayor have been elaborately
and carefully condensed by the late Mr. Fairholt,
who had made City ceremonies the study of half
his life.

"None," says our authority, "can serve the office
of Lord Mayor unless he be an alderman of
London, who must previously have served the
office of sheriff, though it is not necessary that a
sheriff should be an alderman. The sheriffs are
elected by the livery of London, the only reciuisite
for the office being, that he is a freeman and livery-
man of the City, and that he possesses property
sufficient to serve the office of sheriff creditably, in
all its ancient splendour and hospitality, to do
which generally involves an expenditure of about
_;^3,ooo. There are fees averaging from ^500 to
^600 belonging to the office, but these are given
to the under-sheriff by all respectable and honour-
able men, as it is considered very disreputable for
the sheriff to take any of them.

" The Lord Mayor has the privilege, on any day
between the 14th of April and the 14th of June, of
nominating any one or more persons (not exceeding
nine in the whole) to be submitted to the Livery
on Midsummer Day, for them to elect the two
sheriffs for the year ensuing. This is generally
done at a public dinner, when the Lord Mayor
proposes the healths of such persons as he intends
to nominate for sheriffs. It is generally done as a
compliment, and considered as an honour ; but in
those cases where the parties have an objection to
serve, it sometimes gives offence, as, upon the
Lord Mayor declaring in the Court of Aldermen the
names of those he proposes, the mace-bearer im-
mediately waits upon them, and gives them formal
notice ; when, if they do not intend to serve, they
are excused, upon paying, at the next Court of
Aldermen, four hundred guineas ; but if they allow
their names to remain on the list until elected by
the livery, the fine is ;^i,ooo.

" The Lord Mayor is elected by the Livery of
London, in Common Hall assembled (Guildhall), on
Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, previous

4?8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Mansion House.

to which election the Lord ^^ayor and Corporation
attend church in state ; and on their return, the
names of all the aldermen who liave not served the
office of Lord Mayor are submitted in rotation by
the Recorder, and the show of hands taken upon
each ; when the sheriffs declare which two names
have tiie largest show of hands, and these two are
returned to the Court of Aldermen, who elect one
to be the Lord ^Llyor for the year ensuing. (The
office is compulsory to an alderman, but he is ex-

forth, the chain put round his neck, and he returns
thanks to the livery for the honour they have con-
fer-ed upon him. He is now styled the ' Riglit
Honourable the Lord Mayor elect,' and takes rank
ne.xt to the Lord Mayor, who takes him home in
the state carriage to the Mansion House, to dine
with the aldermen. This being his first ride in the
state coach, a fee of a guinea is presented to the
coachman, and half-a-guinea to the postilion ; the
City trumpeters who attend also receive a gratuity.

THE MANSION HOUSE KITCHEN.

cused upon the payment of ;^i,ooo.) The one
selected is generally the one next in rotation, unless
he has not paid twenty shillings in the pound, of
there is any blot in his private character, for it does
not follow that an alderman having served the
office of sheriff must necessarily become Lord
Mayor; the selection rests first with the livery,
and afterwards with the Court of Aldermen ; and
in case of bankruptcv, or compounding with his
creditors, an alderman is passed over, and even a
junior put in his place, until he has paid twenty
shillings in the pound to all his creditors. The
selection being made from the nominees, the Lord
Mayor and aldermen return to the livery, and the
Recorder declares upon whom the choice of the
aldermen has fallen, when he is publicly called

The attention of the Lord Mayor elect is now
entirely directed to the establishment of his house-
hold, and he is beset by applications of all sorts,
and tradesmen of every grade and kind, until he
has filled up his appointments, which must be done
by the 8th of November, when he is publicly in-
stalled in his office in the Guildhnll.

"The election of mayor is subject to the appro-
bation of the Crown, which is communicated by the
Lord Chancellor to the Lord RLayor elect, at an
audience in the presence of the Recorder, who
presents him to the Lord Chancellor for the pur-
pose of receiving Her ALxjesty's pleasure and ap-
probation of the man of the City's choice. This
ceremony is generally gone through on the first
day of Michaelmas term, previous to receiving the

TKe Mansion House. ]

THE LORt) MAYOR ELECT.

439

THE MANSION HOUSE IN 175°'

N 1750. (From a Print puhlnhc.l for Stows " Suru-yr)

440

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[the M;

ansion House.

judges. 'I'lie Lord Mayor elect is attended to the
Chancellor's private residence by the aldermen,
siierifts, under-siierifts, the sword-bearers, and all
the City officers. In the evening he gives his first
state diiwer, in robes and full-dressed.

" On the Sth of November the Lord Mayor elect
is sworn into office publicly in Guildhall, having
previously breakfasted with the Lord Mayor at
the Mansion House; they are attended at this
ceremony, as well as at the breakfast, by the
members and officers of the Court of tlie Livery
Company to which they respectively belong, in
their gowns. After the swearing in at Guildhall,
when the ]\Liyor publicly takes the oaths, accepts
the sword, the mace, the sceptre, and the City purse,
lie proceeds with the late Mayor to the Mansion
House, and they conjointly give what is called the
' farewell dinner ; ' the Lord Mayor elect proceed-
ing to his own private residence in the evening, a
few days being allowed for the removal of the late
Lord Mayor.

" The next day, being what is popularly known as
' Lord ALayor's day,' and which is observed as a
close holiday in the City, the shops are closed,
as are also the streets in all the principal thorough-
fares, except for the carriages engaged in the pro-
cession. He used formerly to go to Westminster
Hall by water, in the state barge, attended by the
state barges of the City Companies, but now by
land, and is again sworn in, in the Court of Exche-
(juer, to uphold and support the Crown, and make
a due return of all fines and fees passing through
his office during the year. He returns in the
same state to Guildhall about thiee o'clock in the
afternoon (having left the Mansion House about
twelve o'clock), where, in conjunction with the
Sheriffs, he gives a most splendid banquet to the
Royal Family, the Judges, Ministers of State,
Ambassadors, or such of them as will accept his
invitation, the Corporation, and such distinguished
foreigners as may be visiting in the country. At
this banquet the King and Queen attend the first
year after their coronation ; it is given at the ex-
pense of the City, and it generally costs from eight
to ten thousand pounds ; but when the City enter-
tained the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.,
and the allied Sovereigns in 1814, it cost twenty
thousand pounds. On all otlier Lord Mayor's days
the expense is borne by the Lord Mayor and the
Sheriffs, the former paying half, and the latter one-
fourth each ; the Mayor's half generally averaging
from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds.

" The next morning the new Lord Mayor enters
upon the duties of his office. From ten to twelve
he is engaged in giving audience to various appli-

cations ; at twelve he enters the justice-room,
where he is often detained vmtil four in the after-
noon, and this is his daily employment. His
lordship holds his first Court of Aldermen previous
to any other court, to which he goes in full state ;
the same week he holds his first Court of Common
Council, also in state. He attends the first sessions
of the Central Criminal Court at Justice Hall, in
the Old Bailey ; being the Chief Commissioner, he
takes precedence of all the judges, and sits in a
chair in the centre of the Bench, the sword-
bearer placing the sword of justice behind it; this
seat is never occupied in the absence of the Lord
Mayor, except by an alderman who has passed the
chair. The Court is opened at ten o'clock on Mon-
day ; the judges come on Wednesday ; the Lord
Mayor takes the chair for an hour, and then retires
till five o'clock, when he entertains the judges at
dinner in the Court-house, which is expected to be
done every day during the sitting of the Court,
which takes place every month, and lasts about
eight days ; the Lord Mayor and the sheritfs
dividing the expenses of the table between them.

" Plough Monday is the next grand day, when the
Lord Mayor receives the inquest of every ward in
the City, who make a presentment of the election
of all ward officers in the City, who are elected on
St. Thomas's Day, December 21st, and also of
any nuisances or, grievances of which the citizens
may have to complain, which are referred to the
Court of Aldermen, who sit in judgment on these
matters on the next Court day. In former times,
on the first Sunday in Epiphany, the Lord j\Li}or,
Aldermen, and Corporation, went in state to the
Church of St. Lawrence, Guildhall, and there re-
ceived the sacrament, but this custom has of late
years been omitted.

" If any public fast is ordered by the King, the
Lord Mayor and Corporation attend St. Paul's
Cathedral in their black robes ; and if a thanks-
giving, they appear in scarlet. If an address is to
be presented to the throne, the whole Corporation
go in state, the Lord Mayor wearing his gold gown.
(Of these gowns only a certain number are allowed,
by Act of Parliament, to public officers as a costly
badge of distinction ; the Lord Chancellor and the
Master of the Rolls are among the privileged per-
sons.) On Easter Monday and Tuesday the Lord
Mayor attends Christ Church (of which he is a
member), on wliich occasion the whole of the blue-
coat boys, nurses, and beadles, master, clerk, and
other officers, walk in procession. The President,
freemen, and other officers of the Royal Hospital
attend the church to hear the sermon, and a state-
ment of the income and expenditure of each of the

The Mansion House ] DUTIES AND POWERS OF THE LORD MAYOR.

441

hospitals, over which the Mayor has jurisdiction, is
read from the pulpit. A public dinner is given at
Christ's Hospital on the Monday evening, and a
similar one at St. Bartholomew's on the Tuesday.
On the Monday evening the Lord Mayor gives the
grandest dinner of the year in the Egyptian Hall,
at the Mansion House, to 400 persons, at which
some of the Royal Family often attend, a ball taking
place in the evening. The next day, before going to
church, the Lord Mayor gives a purse of fifty
guineas, in sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns,
to the boys of Christ's Hospital, who pass before
him through the Mansion House, each receiving a
piece of silver (fresh from the Mint), two plum
buns, and a glass of wine. On the first Sunday
in term the Lord Mayor and Corporation receive
the judges at St. Paul's, and hear a sermon from
the Lord Mayor's chaplain, after which his lord-
ship entertains the party at dinner, either on that
da^ or any othei, according to Ms own feeling of
the propriety of Sunday dinners.

" In the month of May, when the festival of the
Sons of the Clergy is generally held in St. Paul's,
the Lord Mayor attends, after ■\vhich the party dine
at Merchant Taylors' Hall. Some of the Royal
Family generally attend ; always the archbishop
and a great body of the clergy. In the same month,
the Lord Mayor attends St. Paul's in state, to hear
a sermon preached before the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel, at which all the bishops
and archbishops attend, with others of the clergy ;
after which the Lord Mayor gives them a grand
dinner ; and on another day in the same month,
the Archbishop of Canterbury gives a similar state
dinner to the Lord Mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and
the bishops, at Lambeth Palace." In June the
Lord Mayor used to attend the anniversary of the
Charity Schools in St. Pr.ul's in state, and in the
evening to preside at the public dinner, but this
has of late been discontinued.

" On Midsummer Day, the Lord Mayor holds a
common hall for the election of sheriffs for the
ensuing year ; and on the 3rd of September, the
Lord Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs used to go in
state to proclaim Bartholomew Fair, now a thing of
the past. They called at the gaol of Newgate on
their way, and the governor brought out a cup of
wine, from which the Lord Mayor drank.

" On St. Matthias' Day (21st September) the Lord
Mayor attends Christ's Hospital, to hear a sermon,
when a little Latin oration is made by the two senior
scholars, who afterwards carry round a glove, and
collect money enough to pay their first year's ex-
penses at college. Then the beadles of the various
hospitals of which the Lord Mayor is governor |

deliver up their staves of office, which are returned
if no fault is to be attributed to them ; and this is
done to denote the Mayor's right to remove them
at his will, or upon just cause assigned, although
elected by their respective governors."

On the 28th of September, the Lord Mayor swears
in the sherifls at Guildhall, a public breakfast having
been first given by them at the hall of the Company
to which the senior sheriff belongs. On the 30th
of September, the Lord Mayor proceeds with the
sherifts to Westminster, in state; and the sherifls
are again sworn into office before the Barons of the
Exchequer. The senior alderman below the chair
(the next in rotation for Lord Mayor) cuts some
sticks, delivers six horse-shoes, and counts sixty-one
hob-nails, as suit and service for some lands held
by the City under the Crown. The Barons are then
invited to the banquet given by the sheriffs on their
return to the City, at which the Lord Mayor pre-
sides in state.

"The patronage of the Lord Mayor consists in
the appointment of a chaplain, who receives a full
set of canonicals, lives and boards in the Mansion
House, has a suite of rooms and a servant at com-
mand, rides in the state carriage, and attends the
Lord Mayor whenever required. He is presented
to the King at the first levoe, and receives a purse
of fifty guineas from the Court of Aldermen, and a
like sum from the Court of Common Council, for
the sermons he preaches before the Corporation
and the judges at St. Paul's the first Sundays in
term. The next appointment the Lord Mayor has
at his disposal is the Clerk of the Cocket Office,
whom he pays out of his own purse. If a harbour
master, of whom there are four, dies during the
year, the Lord Mayor appoints his successor.
The salary is ^400 a year, and is paid by the
Chamberlain. He also appoints the water-bailiff's
assistants, if any vacancy occurs. He presents a
boy to Christ's Hospital, in addition to the one he
is entitled to present as an aldennan ; and he has
a presentation of an annuity of ;;^ 21 los. 5d., under
will, to thirteen pensioners, provided a vacancy
occurs during his year of office. ^£4 is given to a
poor soldier, and the same sum to a poor sailor.

" The powers of the Lord Mayor over the City,
although abridged, like the sovereign power over
the State, are still much more extensive than is
generally supposed. The rights and privileges of
the chief magistrate of the City and its corporation
are nearly allied to those of the constitution of the
State. The Lord Mayor has the badges of royalty
attached to his office — the sceptre, the swords of
justice and mercy, and the mace. The gold chain,
one of the most ancient honorary distinctions, and

44*

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Mansion HousCi

which ma) be traced from the Eastern manner of
conferriig dignity, is worn by him, among othL-r
honorary ba<lge.s ; and, having passed through the
office of Lord Mayor, the alderman continues to
wear it (hiring his hfe. He controls the City purse,
the Chamberlain delivering it into his hands, to-
gether with the sceptre, on the day he is sworn into
office. He has the right of precedence in the City
before all the Royal Family, which right was disputed
by the I'rince of Wales, in St. Paul's Cathedral,
during the mayoralty of Sir James Shaw, but main-
tained by him, and approved and confirmed by the
King (Ge( rje III.). The gates of the City are in
his custody, and it is usual to close the only one
now remaining, Temple Bar, on the approach of
the sovereign when on a visit to the City, who
knocks and formally requests admission, the Mayor
attending in person to grant it, and receive the visit
of royalt)' ; antl upon [jroclaiming war or peace, he
also i^roceeds in state to Temple Bar, to admit the
heralds. Soldiers cannot march through the City,
in any large numbers, without the Mayor's per-
mission, first obtained by the Commander-in-chief.

" The Lieutenancy of the City of London is in
commission. The Lord Mayor, being the Chief
Commissioner, issues a new commission, whenever
he pleases, by application to the Lord Chancellor,
through the Secretary of State. He names in the
commission all the aldermen and deputies of the
City of London, the directors of the Bank, the
memliers for the City, and such of his immediate
friends and relations as he pleases. The conunis-
sion, being under the (Ireat Seal, gives all the parties
• named therein the right to be styled esquires, and
the name once in the commission remains, unless
removed for any valid reason.

"The Lord Mayor enjoys the right of private
audience with the Crown ; and when an audience
is wished for, it is usual to make the request through
the Remembrancer, but not necessary. When
Alderman Wilson was Lord Ma\-or, he used to
apply by letter to the Lord Chamberlain. In
attending levees or drawing-rooms, the Lord Mayor
has the privilege of the e////re, and, in consideration
of the important duties he has to perform in the
City, and to save his time, he is allowed to drive
direct into the Ambassadors' Court at St. James's,
without going round by Constitution Hill. He is
summoned as a Privy Councillor on the death of
the King ; and the Tower pass-word is sent to him
regularly, signed by the sovereign.

" He has the uncontrolled conser\-ancy of the river
Thames and the waters of the Medway, from Lon-
don Bridge to Rochester down the river, and from
London Bridge to O.xford up the river. He holds

Courts of Conservancy whenever he sees it neces-
sary, and summons juries in Kent, from London
anil Middlesex, who are compelled to go on the
river in boats to view and make presentments, hi
the mayoralty of Alderman ^\'ilson, these courts
were held in the state barge, on the water, at the
spot with which the inrjuiry was connected, for the
convenience of the witnesses attending from the
villages near. It is usual for him to visit Oxford
once in fourteen, and Rochester once in seven
years.*

"Alderman Wilson, in 1S39, was the last Lord
Mayor (says Fairholt, whose book was publislied
in 1843) who visited the western boundary; and
he, at the request of the Court of Aldermen,
made Windsor the principal seat of the festivities,
going no farther than Cliefden, and visiting Magna
Charta island on his return. Alderman Pirie was
the last who visited the eastern boundary, the
whole party staying two da}'s at Rochester. The
Lord Mayor is privileged by the City to go these
journeys every }'ear, should he see any necessity
for it; but the expense is so great (about ;!£'i,ooo)
that it is only performed at these distant periods,
although Alderman Wilson visited the western
boundary in the thirteenth, and Alderman Pirie in
the fifth year. A similar short view is taken as far
as Twickenham yearly, in the month of July, at a
cost of about ^150, when the Lord Mayor is
attended by the aldermen, the sheriffs, and their
ladies, with the same show and attendance as on
the more infrequent visits. His lordship has also
a committee to assist in the duties of his office,
who have a shallop of their own, and take a view
up and down the river, as far as they like to go,
once or twice a month during summer, at an ex-
pense of some hundreds per annum.

" The Lord Mayor may be said to have a veto
upon the proceedings ot the Courts both of Alder-
men and Common Council, as well as upon the
Court of Livery in Common Hall assembled, neither
of these courts being able to meet unless convened
by him ; and he can at any time dissolve the court
by removing the sword and mace from the table,
and declaring the business at an end ; but this
is considered an ungracious display of power \\-hen
exercised.

" The Lord Mayor may call upon the Recorder
for his advice whenever he may stand in need of it,
as well as for that of the Common Serjeant, the four
City pleaders, and the City solicitor, from whom

* A new Act for the conservancy of the Thames came
into operation on September 30th, 1857, the result of a
compromise between the City and the Government, after a,
long law-suit between the Crown and City authorities.

M:ms!on House.] MANSION HOUSE HOUSEHOI,D AND EXPENDITURE.

443

he orders prosecutions at the City expense when-
ever he thinks the pubhc good requires it. The
salary of the Recorder is ^^2,500 per annum,
besides fees ; the Common Serjeant ;^i,ooo, with
an income from other sources of ^843 per annum.
The sohcitor is supposed to make ^S,ooo per
annimi.

" The Lord Mayor resides in the Mansion
House, the first stone of which was laid the 25th of
October, 1739. This house, with the furniture, cost
_;^7o,985 13s. 2d., the principal part of which was
paid from the fines received from persons who
wished to be excused from serving the office of
sheriff. About ;^9,ooo was paid out of the City's
income. The plate cost ^11,531 i6s. 3d., which
has been very considerably added to since by the
Lord ]\rayors for the time being, averaging about
;^5oo per annum.

"Attached to the household is —

The chaplain, at a salary of . . 97 10 o

The swordbearer .... 500 o o

The macebearer. .... 5°° ° °

Waler-bailiff 300 o o

City marshal 550 o o

Marshal's man . . . . 200 o o

Clerk of the Cocket Ofliui . . . 80 o o

Gate porter 660

Seven trumpeters . . . . 29 9 o

" These sums, added to the allowance to the
■ Lord Mayor, and the ground-rent and taxes of the
Mansion House (amounting to about £6g2 12s. 6d.
per annum), and other expenses, it is expected,
cost the City about ;£'i9,038 i6s. lod. per annum.
There are also four attorneys of the Mayor's court,
who formerly boarded, at the Mansion House, but
are now allowed £^0^^ per annum in lieu of the
table. The plate-buder and the housekeeper have
each ;^5 5s. per annum as a compliment from the
City, and in addition to their wages, paid by the
Lord Mayor (^45 per annum to the housekeeper,
and ;£i 5s. per week to the plate-butler). The
marshal's clothing costs ^44 i6s. per annum, and
that of the marshal's man ^13 9s. 6d.
" There is also —

A yeoman of the chamber, at . . 270 o o

Three Serjeants of ditto,* each . . 2S0 o o

Master of the ceremonies . . . 40 o o

Serjeant of the channel . . . 1S4 10 o

Yeoman of the channel . . . 25 o o

Two yeomen of tlie waterside, each . 350 o o

Deputy water-baili(T .... 350 o o

Water-bailifT's first young man . . 300 o o

The common liunt's young man . . 350 o o

Water-bailiff's second young man . 300 o o

Swordbearer's young man . . . 350 o o

• These functionaries carve the baroBS of beef at the banquet on
Lurd Mayor's Day.

" These smns and others, added to the previous
amount, make an annual amount of expense
connected with the office of Lord Mayor of
;^25.°34 7s. id.

" Most of the last-named officers walk before the
I^ord Mayor, dressed in black silk gowns, on all
state occasions (one acting as his lordshii)'s train-
bearer), and dine with the household at a table
provided at about 15s. a head, exclusive of wine,
which they are allowed without restraint. In the
mayoralty of Alderman Atkins, some dispute having
arisen with some of the household respecting their
tables, the City abolished the daily table, giving
each of the officers a sum of money instead,
deducting ^1,000 a year fror.^ the Lord Mayor's
allowance, and requiring him only to provide the
swordbearer's table on state days."

The estimate made for the expenditure at the
Mansion House by the committee of the Corpo-
ration, is founded upon the average of many year.s,
but in such mayoralties as Curtis, Pirie, and
Wilson, far more must have been spent. It is
said that only one Lord Mayor ever saved any-
thing out of his salary.

'■ .Sir James Sauntlerson, Mayor in 1792-3, left
behind him a minute account of the expenses of his
year of office, for the edification of his successors.
The document is lengthy, but we shall select a
few of the more striking items. Paid — Butcher for
twelve months, ;!^78i los. lod. ; one item in this
account is for meat given to the prisoners at Lud-
gate, at a cost of j£68 los. 8d. The wines are, of
course, expensive. 1792 — Paid, late Lord Mayor's
stock, ^57 7s. I id.; hock, 35 dozen, j^82 14s. od. ;
champagne, 40 ditto, at 43s., ^85 19s. 9(1.; claret,
154 ditto, at 34s. lod. per dozen, ^268 12s. 7d. ;
Burgundy, 30 ditto, ^76 5s. od. , port, 8 pipes,
400 dozen, ^£416 4s. od. ; draught ditto, for Lord
Mayor's day, ^49 4s. od. ; ditto, ditto, for Easter
Monday, ^28 4s. 3d. — ^493 12s. 3d.; Madeira,
32 dozen, ;^S9 i6s. 4d. ; sherry, 61 dozen,
;£'67 IS. od. ; Lisbon, one hogshead, at 34s. per
dozen, ^^62 12s. od. ; bottles to make good, broke
and stole, ^97 13s. 6d. , arrack, ^£'8 8s. od. ;
brandy, 25 gallons, ^18 iis. od. ; rum, 6i ditto,
^3 19s. 6d. Total, ^1,309 I2S. lod."

" These items of costume are curious : — Lady
Mayoress, November 30. — A hoop, ^2 i6s. od. ,
point ruffles, ^12 12s. od. , treble blond ditto,
jCy 7s. od. ; a fan, ^3 3s. od. ; a cap and lappets,
j{^7 7s. od. ; a cloak and sundries, ^26 17s. od. ;
hair ornaments, ^^34 os. od. ; a cap, ^^7 i8s. od. ;
sundries?, ^37 9s. id. 1793, Jan. 26. — A silk,
for 9th Nov., 3}, LHiineas jier yard, ^41 6s. od. ;
a petticoat (Madame Beauvais), ^35 3s. 6d. ; a

444

gold chain, £si iSS- od. ; silver silk, £i:i os. od.;
clouded satin, ^5 los. od. ; a petticoat for Easter,
£2C) IS. od. ; millinery, for ditto, £2^ 17s. 6d. ;
hair-dressing, ^13 2S. 3d. July 6th.— .\ petticoat,
£(, iGs. 8d. ; millinery, £^ 8s. 8d. ; mantua-
maker, in full, £11 14s. 6d. ; milliner, in full,

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(The Mansion House.

tion, £0 OS. od.' Thus, to dress a Lord Mayor
costs ^309 2S. od. ; but her Ladyship cannot be
duly arrayed at a less cost than ^416 2S. od. To
dress the servants cost ^724 5s. 6d."

Then comes a grand simiming-up. " Dr. The
whole state of the account, ^i 2, i 73 4s. 3d." Then

INTERIOR OF THE E0Y1'TI,\N HALL.

£\2 6s. 6d. Total, ^416 2s. od. The Lord
Mayor's dress : — Two wigs, £() 9s. od. ; a velvet
suit, ^54 8s. od. ; other clothes, ^£'117 13s. 4d. ;
hats and hose, £() 6s. 6d. ; a scarlet robe,
^14 8s. 6d. ; a violet ditto, ^12 is. 6d. ; a gold
chain, ^^63 cs. od. ; steel buckles, £1 5s. od. ;
a steel sword, £(> 16s. 6d. ; hair-dressing,
^£■16 i6s. iid. — ^309 2S. 3d. On the page
opposite to that containing this record, under the
head of ' Ditto Returned,' we read ' Per Valua-

follow the receipts per contra ; — " At Chamberlain's
Oftice,^3,572 8s. 4d.; Cocket Office, ^'892 5s. i id.;
Bridge House, ^60 ; City Ganger, ^1^250 ; free-
doms, ;^i7S; fees on affidavits, ;^2i i6s. 8d. ;
seals, ;^67 4s. gd. ; licences, £iz 15s.; sheriff's
fees, ;^i3 6s. 8d. ; corn fees, ^^15 13s.; venison
warr.ants, ^^14 4s. ; attorneys. Mayor's Court,
^26 7s. 9d. ; City Remembrancer, ;^i2 12s. ; in
lieu of baskets, £^ 7s. ; vote of Common Council,
;^ioo; sale of horses and carriages, £a^'^ <

The Mansion House!

A CARICATURE OF CITY LIFE.

44S

wine (overplus) removed from Mansion House, I
£^<)8 i8s. 7d. Total received, ^£6,117 9s. Sd.
Cost of mayoralty, as such, and independent of all
private expenses, ^6,055 14s. jd."

That clever but unscrupulous tuft-hunter and
smart parvenu, Theodore Hook, who talked of
Bloomsbury as if it was semi-barbarous, antl of
citizens (whose wine he drank, and whose hospi-
tality he so often shared) as if they could only eat
venison and swallow turtle soup, has left a sketch

elegance, he snaps oft" the cut-steel hilt of his sword,
by accidentally bumping the whole weight of his
body right — or rather, wrong — directly uiion the
top of it.

" Through fog and glory," says Theodore Hook,
"Scropps reached Blackfriars Bridge, took water,
and in the barge tasted none of the collation, for
all he heard, saw, and swallowed was ' Lord Mayor
and ' your lordship,' f.ir sweeter than nectar. At
the presentation at Westminster, he saw two of the

THE "MARIA WuoD." {Sif /d^Y ^^J.)

of the short-lived dignity of a mayor, which exactly
represents the absurd caricature of City life that
then pleased his West-end readers, half of whom
had derived their original wealth from the till.
Scropps, the new Lord Mayor, cannot sleep all
night for his greatness ; the wind down the chimney
sounds like the shouts of the people ; the cocks
crowing in the morn at the back of the house he
takes for trumpets sounding his approach ; and the
ordinary incidental noises in the family he fancies
the pop-guns at Stangate announcing his disembar-
cation at Westminster. Then come his droll mis-
haps : when he enters the state coach, and throws
himself back upon his broad seat, with all ima-
ginable dignity, in the midst of all his ease and
38

judges, whom he remembered on the circuit, when
he trembled at the sight of tliem, believing them to
be some extraordinary creatures, upon whom all
the hair and fur grew naturally.

"Then the Lady Mayoress. There she was —
Sally Scropps (her maiden name was Snob). 'There
was my own Sally, with a plume of feathers that
half filled the coach, and Jenny and Maria and
young Sally, all with their backs to mv horses,
which were pawing with mud, and snorting and
smoking like steam-engines, with nostrils like safety-
valves, and four of my footmen behind the coach,
like bees in a swarm.' "

Perhaps the most effective portion of the paper
is the rmerse of the picture. My lord and lady

446

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Mnnsion House.

and their family hml just got settled in the Mansion
House, and enjoying their dignity, when the 9th
of November came again — the consummation of
Scropps' downfall. Again did they go in state to
Guildhall ; again were they toasted and addressed ;
a^ain wcie they handed in and led out, flirted with
Cabinet ministers, and danced with ambassadors ;
and at two o'clock in the morning dro\e home
from the scene of gaiety to the okl residence in
Budge Row. " Never in the world did pickled
herrings or tuq^entine smell so powerfully as on
that night when we re-entered the house. . . .
The ])assage looked so narrow ; the drawing-room
looked so small ; the staircase seemed so dark ;
our apartments appeared so low. In the morning
we assembled at breakfiist. A note lay upon the
table, addressed ' Mrs. Scropps, Budge Row.'
The girls, one after the other, took it up, read the
superscription, and laid it down again. A visitor
was announced — a neighbour and kind friend, a
man of wealth and importance. What were his
first words ? They were the first I had heard from
a stranger since my job. ' How are you, Scropps ?
Done up, eh?'

" Scropps ! No obsequiousness, no deference,
no respect. No ' My lord, I hope your lordship
passed an agreeable night. And how is her lady-
ship, and her amiable daughters?' No, not a bit
of it ! ' How's Mrs. S. and the ga/s ?' This was
quite natural, all as it had been. But how unlike
what it was only the day before ! The very
servants — who, when amidst the strapping, stall-fed,
gold-laced lackeys of the Mansion House, and
transferred, with the chairs and tables, from one
Lord iVLiyor to another, dared not speak, nor look,
nor say their lives were their own — strutted about
the house, and banged the doors, and spoke of their
missis as if she had been an old apple-woman.

" So much for domestic miseries. I went out.
I was shoved about in Cheapside in the most
remorseless manner. My right eye had a narrow
escape of being poked out by the tray of a brawny
butcher's boy, who, when I civilly remonstrated,
turned round and said, ' \'y, I say, who are jw/, I
wonder? Why are you so partiklar about your
hysight V I felt an involuntary shudder. ' To-day,'
thought I, ' I am John Ebenezer Scropps. Two
days ago I was Lord Mayor !'"

" Our Lord Mayor," says Cobbett, in his sensible
way, " and his golden coach, and his gold-covered
footmen and coachmen, and his golden chain, and
his chaplain, and his great sword of state, please
the people, and particularly the women and girls ;
and when they are pleased, the men and boys are
pleased. And many a young fellow has been more

industrious and attentive from his hope of one day
riding in that golden coach."

'• On ordinary state occasions," says " Aleph," in
the Cit\ Press, " the Lord Mayor wears a massive
black silk robe, richly embroidered, aud his collar
and jewel ; in the civic courts, a violet silk robe,
furred and bordered with black velvet. The wear
of the various robes was fixed by a regulation dated
1562. The present authority for the costumes is a
printed pamphlet (by order of the Court of Common
Council), dated 1789.

"The jewelled collar (date 1534)," says Mr.
Timbs, " is of pure gold, composed of a series of
links, each formed of a letter S, a united York and
Lancaster (or Henry VH.) rose, and a massive
knot. The ends of the chain are joined by the
portcullis, from the points of which, suspended by
a ring of diamonds, hangs the jewel. The entire
collar contains twenty-eight SS, fourteen roses,
thirteen knots, and measures sixty-four inches.
The jewel contains in the centre the City arms, cut
in cameo of a delicate blue, on an olive ground.
Surrounding this is a garter of bright blue, edged
with white and gold, bearing the City motto,
' Domine, dirige nos,' in gold letters. The whole
is encircled with a costly border of gold SS, alter-
nating with rosettes of diamonds, set in silver.
The jewel is suspended from the collar by a
portcullis, but when worn without the collar, is
hung by a broad blue ribbon. The investiture
is by a massive gold chain, and. when the Lord
Mayor is re-elected, by two chains."

Edward HL, by his charter (dated 1534), grants
the mayors of the City of London "gold, or
silver, or silvered '' maces, to be carried before
them. The present mace, of silver-gilt, is fi\-e feet
three inches long, and bears on the lower part
" ^^^ R." it is surmounted with a ro\-al crown
and the imperial arms ; and the handle and staff
are richly' chased.

There are four swords belonging to the City
of London. The " Pearl " sword, presented by
Queen Elizabeth when she opened the first Royal
Exchange, in 1571, and so named from its being
richly set with pearls. This sword is carried
before the Lord Mayor on all occasions of re-
joicing and festivity. The " Sword of State," borne
before the Lord Mayor as an emblem of his autho-
rity. The " Black " sword, used on fast days, in
Lent, and at the death of any of the royal family.
And the fourth is that placed before the Lord
Mayor's chair at the Central Criminal Court.

The Corporate seal is circulat". The' second seal,
made in the mayoralty of Sit u'llliani IVnlworth,

381, is much defaced.

Saxon London.]

LONDON IN THE SAXON TIMES.

447

" The ' gondola,' known as the ' Lord Mayor's
State Barge,' " says "Alc[)h,'' "was built in 1S07, at
a cost of jC2,5T9. Built of English oak, 85 feet
long by 13 feet 8 inches broad, she was at all
times at liberty to pass through all the locks, and
even go up the Thames as far as Oxford. She
had eighteen oars and all other fittings complete,
and was profusely gilt. But when the Conser-
vancy Act took force, and the Corjjoration had no
longer need of her, she was sold at her moorings
at Messrs. Searle's, Surrey side of Westminster
Bridge, on Thursday, April 5th, tS6o, by Messrs.
PuUen and Son, of Cripplegate. The first bid was
_;^20, and she was ultimately knocked down for
^"105. Where she is or how she has fared we know
not. The other barge is that famous one known to
all City personages and all civic pleasure parties.
It was built during tlie mayoralty of Sir Matthew
Wood, in 1S16, and received its name of Maria

Wtyoil from the eldest and pet daughter of that
'twice Lord Mayor.' It cost ^3,300, and was
built by Messrs. Field and White, in consequence
of the old barge Crosby (built during the mayoralty
of Brass Crosby, 1771) beuig found past repairing.
Maria Um/ measures 140 feet long by 19 feet
wide, and draws only 2 feet 6 inclies of water.
I'he grand saloon, 56 feet long, is cajiable of dining
140 persons. In 185 1 she cost ^^1,000 repairing.
Like her sister, this splendid civic barge was sold
at the Auction-mart, facing the Bank of England,
by Messrs. Pullen and Son, on Tuesday, May 31,
1859. The sale commenced at ;^ioo, ne.xt ^200,
;^2 2o, and thence regular bids, till finally it got to
;^40o, when Mr. Alderman Humphrey bid ^410,
and got the prize. Though no longer civic pro-
perty, it is yet, I believe, in the hands of tliose
who allow it to be made the scene of many a day
of festivity."

CHAPTER XXXIX.
SAXON LONDON.

A Glance at Saxon London— The Three Component Parts of Saxon London — The First Saxon Bridge over the Thames— Edward the Confessor at

Westminster— City Residences of the Saxon Kings — Political Position of London in Early Times— The first recorded Great Fire of London

— The Early Commercial Dignity of London— The Kings of Norway and Denmark besiege London in vain — A Grc:ii Crmo/ held in London

-Edmund Ironside elected King by the Londoners-Canute besieges them, and is driven ofl"— The Seamen of London— Its Citizens as

Electors of Kings.

Our materials for sketching Saxon London are ' in winter sledging over the ice-pools of Finsbury.
singularly scanty ; yet some faint picture of it we j Not for mere theatrical pageant do they carry
may perhaps hope to convey. | those heavy axes and tough spears. Those bossed

Our readers must, therefore, divest their minds 1 targets are not for festival show ; those buft'jackets,
entirely of all remembrance of that great ocean of I covered with metal scales, have been tested before
houses that has now spread like an inundation now by Norsemen's ponderous swords and the

from the banks of the winding Thames, surging
over the wooded ridges that rise northward, and
widening out from Whitechapel eastward to Ken-
sington westward. They must rather recall to
their minds some small German town, belted in
with a sturdy wall, raised not for ornament, but
defence, with corner turrets for archers, and
pierced with loops whence the bowmen may drive
their arrows at the straining workers of the cata-
pult and mangonels (those Roman war-engines we
used against the cruel Danes), and with stone-
capped places of shelter along the watchmen's
platforms, where the sentinels may shelter them-
selves during the cold and storm, when tired of
peering over the battlements and looking for the
crafty enemy Essex-wards or Surrey way. No toy
battlements of modern villa or tea-garden are those
over which the rough-bearded men, in hoods and
leather coats, lean in the summer, watching the
citizens disporting themselves in the Moorfields, or

hatchets of the fierce Jutlanders.

In such castle rooms as antiquaries now visit,
the Saxon earls and eldermen quaffed their ale,
and drank " wassail " to King Egbert or Elthelwolf
In such dungeons as we now see with a shudder
at the Tower, Saxon traitors and Danish prisoners
once peaked and pined.

We must imagine Saxon London as liaving three
component parts — fortresses, convents, and huts.
The girdle of wall, while it restricted space, would
give a feeling of safety and snugness which in our
great modern city — which is really a conglomera-
tion, a sort of pudding-stone, of many towns and
villages grown together into one shapeless mass —
the citizen can never again experience. The streets
would in some degree resemble those of Moscow,
where, behind fortress, palace, and church, you come
upon rows of mere wooden sheds, scarcely better
than the log huts of the peasants, or the sombre
felt tents of the Turcoman, There would be large

448

OLD AND NEW LOTSIDON.

[Saxon London,

vacant spaces, as in St. Petersburg ; and the
suburbs woukl rapidly open beyond the walls
into wild woodland and pasture, fen, moor, and
common. A few dozen tishermen's boats from
Kent and Norfolk would be moored by the Tower,
if, indeed, any Saxon fort had ever replaced the
somewhat hypothetical Roman fortress of tradi-
tion ; and lower down some hundred or so cum-
brous Dutch, French, and German vessels would
represent our trade with the almost unknown con-
tinent whence we drew wine and furs and the
few luxuries of those hardy and thrifty days.

lu the narrow streets, the fortress, convent, and
hut would be e.xactly represented by the chieftain
and his bearded retinue of spearmen, the priest
with his train of acolytes, and the herd of half-
savage churls who plodded along with rough carts
laden with timber from the Essex forests, or driving
herds of swine from the glades of Epping. The
churls we picture as grim but hearty folk, stolid,
])ugnacious, yet honest and promise-keeping, over-
inclined to strong ale, and not disinclined for a
brawl ; men who had fought with Danes and
wolves, and who were ready to fight them again.
The shops must have been mere stalls, and much
of the trade itinerant. There would be, no doubt,
rudimentary market-places about Cheapside (Chepe
is the Saxon word for market) ; and the lines of
some of our chief streets, no doubt, still follow the
curves of the original Saxon roads.

The date of the first Saxon bridge over the
Thames is extremely uncertain, as our chapter on
London Bridge will show ; but it is almost as certain
as history can be that, soon after the Dane Olaf's
invasion of P^ngland (994) in Ethelred's reign, with
390 piratical ships, when he plundered Staines
and Sandwich, a rough wooden bridge was built,
which crossed the Tliames from St. Botolph's wharf
to the Surrey shore. We must imagine it a clumsy
rickety structure, raised on piles with rough-hewn
timber planks, and with drawbridges that lifted to
allow Saxon vessels to pass. There was certainly
a bridge as early as 1006, probably built to stop
the passage of the Danish pirate boats. Indeed,
Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian, tells us
that when the Danes invaded England in 1008,
in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (ominous
name !), they entrenched themselves in Southwark,
and held the fortified bridge, which had pent-
houses, bulwarks, and shelter-turrets. Ethelred's
ally, Olaf, however, determined to drive the Danes
from the bridge, adopted a daring expedient to
accomplish this object, and, fastening his ships to
the piles of the bridge, from which the Danes
W?re raining down stones and b?anis, dragged it

to pieces, ui)on which, on very fair provocation,
Ottar, a Norse bard, broke forth into the following
eulogy of King Olaf, the patron .-saint of Tooley
Street : —

" And thou hast overthrown their bridge, O
thou storm of the sons of Odin, skilful and fore-
most in the battle, defender of the earth, and
restorer of the exiled Ethelred I It was tluring the
fight which the mighty King fought with the men
of England, when King Olaf, the son of Odin,
valiantly attacked the bridge at London. Bra\ ely
did the swords of the Volsces defend it ; but
through the trench which the sea-kings guarded
thou earnest, and the plain of Southwark was
crowded with thy tents."

It may seem as strange to us, at this distance of
time, to find London Bridge ennobled in a Norse
epic, as to find a Sir Something de Birmingham
figuring among the bravest knights of Froissart's
record ; but there the Norse song stands on record,
and therein we get a stormy picture of the Thames
in the Saxon epoch.

It is supposed that the Saxon kings dwelt in a
palace on the site of the Baynard's Castle of the
Middle Ages, which stood at the river-side just west
of St. Paul's, although there is little proof of the
fact. But we get on the sure ground of truth when
we find Edward the Confessor, one of the most
powerful of the Saxon kings, dwelling in saintly
splendour at Westminster, beside the abbey dedi-
cated by his predecessors to St. Peter. The com-
bination of the palace and the monastery was suit-
able to such a friend of the monks, and to one
who saw strange visions, and claimed to be the
favoured of Heaven. But beyond and on all sides
of the Saxon palace everywhere would be fields
—St. James's Park (fields), Hyde Park (fields).
Regent's Park (fields), and long woods stretching
northward from the present St. John's A\'ood to the
uplands of Epping.

As to the City residences of the Saxon kings,
we have little on record ; but there is indeed a
tradition that in Wood Street, Cheapside, King
Athelstane once resided ; and that one of the
doors of his house opened into Addle Street,
Aldermanbury [addk, from the German word edd,
noble). But Stow does not mention the tradition,
which rests, we fear, on slender evidence.

■\\l-iether the Bread Street, Milk Street, and
Cornhill markets date from the Saxon times is
uncertain. It is not unlikely that they do, yet the
earliest mention of them in London chtonicles is
found several centuries later.

We must be therefore content to search for allu-
sions to London's growth and wealth in Saxon

^axon London ]

LONDON TEN CENTURIES AGO.

449

history, and there the allusions are frequent, clear,
and interesting.

In the earlier time London fluctuated, according
to one of the best authorities on Saxon history,
between an independent mercantile commonwealth
and a dependency of the Mercian kings. The
Norsemen occasionally plundered and held it as a
point d'appui for their pirate galleys. Its real epoch
of greatness, however ancient its advantage as
a port, commences with its re-conquest by Alfred
the Great in 886. Henceforward, says that most
reliable writer on this period, Mr. Freeman, we
find it one of the firmest strongholds of English
freedom, and one of the most efficient bulwarks of
the realm. Tliere the English character developed
the highest civilisation of the country, and there the
rich and independent citizens laid the foundations
of future liberty.

In 896 the Danes are said to have gone up the
Lea, and made a strong work twenty miles above
Lundenburgh. This description, says Earle, would
be particularly appropriate, if Lundenburgh occu-
pied the site of the Tower. Also one then sees the
reason why they should go up the Lea — viz., because
their old passage up the Thames was at that time
intercepted.

" London," says Earle, in his valuable Sa.xon
Chronicles, " was a flourishing and opulent city, the
chief emporium of commerce in the island, and the
residence of foreign merchants. Properly it was
more an Angle city, the chief city of the Anglian
nation of Mercia ; but the Danes had settled there
in great numbers, and had numerous captives that
they had taken in the late wars. Thus the Danish
population had a preponderance over the Anglian
free population, and the latter were glad to see
Alfred come and restore the balance in their favour.
It was of the greatest importance to Alfred to
secure this city, not only as the capital of Mercia
(caput regni Mcrdoritm, Malmesbury), but as the
means of doing what Mercia had not done — viz., of
making it a barrier to the passage of pirate ships
inland. Accordingly, in the year 886, Alfred //rfwAv/
the garrison of London {i.e., not as a town is garri-
soned in our day, with men dressed in uniform and
lodged in barracks, but) with a military colony of
men to whom land was given for their maintenance,
and who would live in and about a fortified position
under a commanding officer. It apjjcars to me not
■mpossible that this may have been the first military
occupation of Tower Hill, but this is a question
for the local antiquary."

In 9S2 (Ethelred II.), London, still a mere
cluster of wooden and wattled houses, was almost
entirely destroyed by a fire. The new city was, no

doubt, rebuilt in a more luxurious manner. " Lon-
don in 993," says Mr. Freeman, in a very admirable
passage, " fills much the same place in England
that Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. •
The two cities, in their several lands, were the two
great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of
the country, the special objects of attack on the
part of the invaders, and the special defence of the
country against them. Each was, as it were, marked
out by great public services to become the capital
of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national
capital only because its local count gradually grew
into a national king. London, amidst all changes,
within and without, has always ])reserved more or
less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris
was merely a military bulwark, the dwelling-place
of a ducal or a royal sovereign. London, no less
important as a military post, had also a greatness
which rested on a surer foundation. London, like
a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties
which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic
and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British
name still remains unchanged by the Teutonic
conquerors. Before our first introduction to Lon-
don as an English city, she had cast away her
Roman and imperial title ; she was no longer
Augusta; she had again assumed her ancient name,
and through all changes she had adhered to her
ancient character. The commercial fame of Lon-
don dates from the early days of Roman dominion.
The English conquest may have caused a temporary
interruption, but it was only temporary. As early
as the days of j-Ethelberht the commerce of Lon-
don was again renowned. ^^Ifred had rescued the
city from the Dane ; he had built a citadel for her
defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be
first the dwelling-place of kings, and then the scene
of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the
laws of ^thelstan, none are more remarkable than
those which deal with the internal affairs of London,
and with the regulation of her earliest commercial
corporations. Her institutes speak of a commerce
spread over all the lands which bordered on the
Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of
Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Liitiich. filled her
markets with their wares, and enriched the civic
coffers with their toils. Thither, too, came the men
of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant
day, to form a considerable element among her own
citizens ; and, worthy and favoured above all, came
the seafaring men of the old Saxon brother-land,
the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the north,
which was in days to come to knit together London
and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to
dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Saxon London.

450

by whom London was now threatened. The de- } with an attempt to burn the town, was defeated,
niaiul lor toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom , with great slaughter of the besiegers ; and the two
the English legi.slation distinguished as the ;w« of \ kings sailed away the same day in wrath and

the Emperor.

In 994, Olaf king of Norway, and Sweyn king of
Denmark, summoning their robber chieftains from
their fir-woods, liorils, and mountains, sailed up the

sorrow.

During the year 998 a great " gemot " was held
at London. Whether any measures were taken to
resist the Danes does not appear ; but the priests

"torn

i;koad street

. ( 1 i\ t __— -^ I_ J';

I I'CULlKr , ir^^^.--.--j

o r-

/"''^'::

1 r-.

nRO.\D STREET AND COKNHILL WARDS. {From a Map of \-jya.)

Thames in ninety-four war vessels, eager to jilunder
the wealthy London of the Saxons. The brave
burghers, trained to handle spear and sword, beat
back, however, the hungry foemen from their walls
— the rampart that tough Roman hands had reared,
and the strong tower which Alfred had seen arise
on the eastern bank of the river.

But it was not only to such worldly bulwarks
that the defenders of London trusted. On that
day, says the chronicler, the Mother of God, "of
her raild-heartedness," rescued the Christian city
from its foes. An assault on the wall, coupled

were busy, and Wulfsige, Bishop of the Dorsfetas,
took measures to substitute monks for canons in
his cathedral church at Sherborne ; and the king
restored to the church of Rochester the lands of
which he had robbed it in his youth.

Li 1009 the Danes made several vain attempts
on London.

In 1013 Sweyn, the Dane, marched upon the

much-tormented city of shii)s ; but the hardy

citizens were again ready with bow and spear.

Whether the bridge still existed then or not is un-

i certain ; as many of the Danes are said to have

Saxon London.]

THE DANES IN LONDOtSt.

451

45^

OT,r) AND NP.W LONDON.

tSaxon London.

perished in vainly seeking for tlie fords. The
assaults were as unsuccessful as those of Sweyn and
Olaf, nineteen years before, for King Ethehed's
right hand was Thorkill, a trusty Dane. " For the
fourtli time in this reign," says Mr. Freeman, " the
invaders were beaten back from the great merchant
city. Years after l.ondon yielded to Sweyn ; then
again, in Ethelred's last days, it resisted bravely its
enemies ; till at last Ethelred, weary of Dane and
Saxon, died, and was buried in St. Paul's. The
two great factions of Danes and Saxons had now
to choose a king.

Canute the Dane was chosen as king at South-
ampton ; but the Londoners were so rich, free, and
powerful that they held a rival ganot, and with
one voice elected the Saxon atheling Edmund
Ironside, who was crowned by Archbishop Lyfing
within the city, and very probably at St. Paul's.
Canute, enraged at the Londoners, at once sailed
for London with his army, and, halting at Green-
wich, planned the immediate siege of the rebellious
city. The great obstacle to his advance was the
fortified bridge that had so often hindered the
Danes. Canute, with prompt energy, instantly had
a great canal dug on the southern bank, so that
his ships might turn the flank of the bridge ; and,
having overcome this great difficulty, he dug
another trench round the northern and western
sides of the city. London was now circum-
vallated, and cut off from all supply of corn and
cattle ; but the citizen's hearts were staunch, and,
baffling every attempt of Canute to sap or escalade,
the Dane soon raised the siege. In the meantime,
Edmund Ironside was not forgetful of the city
that had chosen him as king. After three battles,
he compelled the Danes to raise their second
siege. In a fourth battle, which took place at
Brentford, the Danes were again defeated, though
not without considerable losses on the side of
the victors, many of the Saxons being drowned
in trying to ford the river after their flying
enemies. Edmund then returned to Wessex to
gather fresh troops, and in his absence Canute for
the third time laid siege to London. Again the
city held out against every attack, and
God,'' as the pious chroniclers say,
city."

After the division of England between Edmund
and Canute had been accomplished, the London
citizens made peace with the Danes, and the latter
were allowed to winter as friends in the uncon-
quered city ; but soon after the partition Edmund
Ironside died in London, and thus Canute became
the sole king of England.

On the succession of Harold I. (Canute's natural

" Almighty
' saved the

son), says Mr. Freeman, we find a new element,
the " lithsmen," the seamen of London. " The
great city still retained her voice in the election of
kings ; but that voice would almost seem to have
been transferred to a new class among the popu-
lation. We hear now not of the citizens, but of
the sea-faring men. Every invasion, every foreign
settlement of any kind within the kingdom too,
in every age, added a new element to the popula-
tion of London. As a Norman colony settled in
London later in the century, so a Danish colony
settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubt-
less with great exaggeration, that London had
now almost become a Danish city (William of
Malmesbury, ii. i88) ; but it is, at all events,
quite certain the Danish element in the city was
numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly
helped to swell the cry which was raised in favour
of Harold."

It seems doubtful how far the London citizens
in the Saxon times could claim the right to elect
kings. The latest and best historian of this period
seems to think that the Londoners had no special
privileges in the gemot ; but, of course, when the
gemot was held in London, the citizens, intelligent
and united, had a powerful voice in the decision.
Hence it arose that the citizens both of London
and Winchester (which had been an old seat of
the Saxon kings) "seem," says Mr. Freeman, "to
be mentioned as electors of kings as late as the
accession of Stephen. (See William of Malmes-
bury, "Hist. Nov.," i. II.) Even as late as the
year 1461, Edward Ea 1 of March was elected
king by a tumultuous assembly of the citizens of
London ; " and again, at a later period, we find the
citizens foremost in the revolution which jjlaced
Richard III. on the throne in 1483. These are
plainly vestiges of the right which the citizens had
more regularly exercised in the elections of Edmund
Ironside and of Harold the son of Cnut.

The city of London, there can be no doubt,
soon emancipated itself from the jurisdiction of earls
like Leofwin, who ruled over the home counties.
It acquired, by its own secret power, an unwritten
charter of its own, its influence being always im-
portant in the wars between kings and their rivals,
or kings and their too-powerful nobles. " The
king's writs for homage," says a great authority,
" in the Saxon times, were addressed to the bishop,
the portreeve or portreeves, to the burgh thanes,
and sometimes to the whole people."

Thus it may clearly be seen, even from tlie
scanty materials we are able to collect, that I ,ondon,
as far back as the Saxon times, was destined to
achieve greatness, political and Gommercial.

Bank of England.]

OUR FIRST LONDON BANKERS.

453

CHAPTER XL.
THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

The Jews and tb« Lombards— The Goldsmiths the first London Bankers- William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England— Difficult Parturition
of the liank Bill — Whi^ Principles of the Bank of England — The Great 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 — ^Effccts of the Sacheverell Riots— The South Sea Company -The Cost of a Nlw Charter — Forged Bank Notes
— I'he Foundation of the " 'I'hree per Cent. Consols" — Anecdotes relating to the Bank of England and Bank Notes — Description uf the
Building— Statue of William III.— Bank Clearing House — Dividend Day at the Bank.

The English Jews, that eminently commercial race,
were, as ^\'e ha\e shown in our chapter on Olil
Jewry, our first bankers and usurers. To them,
in immediate succession, followed the enteri)rising
Lombards, a term including the merchants and
goldsmiths of Genoa, Florence, and Venice.
Utterly blind to all sense of true liberty and
justice, tlie strong-handed king seems to have
resolved to stjueeze and crush them, as he had
squeezed and crushed their unfortunate prede-
cessors. They were rich and they were strangers
— that was enough for a king who wanted money
badl)'. At one fell swoop Edward seized the
Lombards' property and estates. Their debtors
naturally approved of the king's summary measure.
But the Lombards grew and flourished, hke the
tramjjled camomile, and in the fifteenth century
advanced a loan to the state on the security of the
Customs. The Steelyard merchants also advanced
loans to our kings, and were always found to be
available for national emergencies, and so were the
Merchants of the Staple, the Mercers' Company,
the Merchant Adventurers, and the traders of
Flanders.

Up to a late period in the reign of Charles L the
London merchants seem to have deposited their
surplus cash in the Mint, the business of which was
carried on in the Tower. But when Charles L,
in an agony of impecuniosity, seized like a robber
the ^200,000 there deposited, calling it a loan,
the London goldsmiths, who ever since 1386 had
been always more or less bankers, now monopo-
lised the whole banking business. Some merchants,
distrustful of the goldsmiths in these stormy times,
entrusted their money to their clerks and appren-
tice.s, who too often cried, " Boot, saddle and
horse, and away ! " and at once started with their
spoil to join Rupert and his pillaging Cavaliers.
About 1645 the citizens returned almost entirely to
the goldsmiths, who now gave interest for money
placed in their care, bought coins, and sold plate.
The Company was not particular. The Parlia-
ment, out of plate and old coin, had coined gold,
and seven millions of half-crowns. The goldsmiths
culled out the heavier pieces, melted them down,

and exported them. The merchants' clerks, to
whom their masters' ready cash was still sometimes
entrusted, actually had frequently the brazen impu-
dence to lend money to the goldsmiths, at four-
pence per cent, per diem ; so that the merchants
were often actually lent their own money, and had
to pay for the use of it. The goldsmiths also
began now to receive rent and allow interest for it.
They gave receipts for the sums they received, and
these receipts were to all intents and purposes
marketable as bank-notes.

Crown rich by these means, the goldsmiths were
often able to help Cromwell with money in ad\-ance
on the revenues, a patriotic act for which we may
be sure they took good care not to suffer, ^^'hen
the great national disgrace occurred — the Dutch
sailed up the Medway and burned some of our
ships — there was a run upon the goldsmiths, but
they stood firm, and met all demands. The in-
famous seizure by Charles IL of ;^i, 300,000,
deposited by the London goldsmiths in the Fix-
chequer, all but ruined these too confiding men,
but clamour and pressure compelled the royal
embezzler to at last pay six per cent, on the
sum appropriated. In the last year of ^^'illiam's
reign, interest was granted on the whole sum at
three per cent., and the debt still remains undis-
charged. At last a Bank of England, which had
been talked about and wished for by commercial
men ever since the year 1678, was actually started,
and came into operation.

That great financial genius, 'William Paterson,
the founder of the Bank of England, was born in
1658, of a good family, at Lochnaber, in Dum-
friesshire. He is supposed, in early life, to have
preached among the persecuted Covenanters. He
lived a good deal in Holland, and is believed to
have been a wealthy merchant in New Providence
(the Bahamas), and seems to have .shared in Sir
\Villiam Phipps' successful undertaking of raising
a Spanish galleon with ^300,000 worth of sunken
treasure. It is absurdly stated that he was at one
time a buccaneer, and so gained a knowledge of
Darien and the ports of the Spanish main. That
he knew and obtained information from Captains

454

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

Sharpe. Dampier, Wafer, and Sir Heniy Morgan
(the taker of Panama), is probable. He worked
zealously for the Restoration of i6SS, and he was
the founder of the Darien scheme. He advocated
the union of Scotland, and the establishment of a
Board of Trade.

The project of a Bank of England seems to
have been often discussed during the Common-
wealth, and was seriously proposed at the meeting
of tho First Council of Trade at Mercers' Hall
after the Restoration. Paterson has himself de-
scribed the first starting of the Bank, in his " Pro-
ceedings at the Imaginary Wednesday's Club," 17 17.
The first proposition of a Bank of England was
made in July, 1691, when the Government had
contracted ^3,000,000 of debt in three years, and
the Ministers even stooped, hat in hand, to borrow
;^ioo,ooo or ^200,000 at a time of the Common
Council of London, on the first payment of the
land-tax, and all payable with the year, the common
councillors going round and soliciting from house
to house. The first project was badly received, as
people expected an immediate peace, and disliked
a scheme which had come from Holland — " they
had too many Dutch things already.'' They also
doubted the stability of William's Government. The
money, at this time, was terribly debased, and the
national debt increasing yearly. The ministers
preferred ready money by annuities for ninety-nine
years, and by a lottery. At last they ventured to
try the Bank, on the express condition that if a
moiety, ^1,200,000, was not collected by August,
1699, there should be no Bank, and the whole
;^i, 200,000 should be struck in halves for the
managers to dispose of at their pleasure. So great
was the opposition, that the very night before, some
City men wagered deeply that one-third of the
^1,200,000 would never be subscribed. Never-
theless, the next day ^346,000, with a fourth
paid in at once, was subscribed, and the remainder
in a few days after. The whole subscription was
completed in ten days, and paid into the Ex-
chequer in rather more than ten weeks. Paterson
expressly tells us that the Bank Act would have
been quashed in the Privy Council but for Queen
Mary, who, following the wish of her husband,
expressed firmly in a letter from Flanders, pressed
the commission forward, after a six hours' sitting.

The Bank Bill, timidly brought forward, pur-
ported only to impose a new duty on tonnage, for
the benefit of such loyal persons as should advance
money towards carrying on the war. The plan
was for the Government to borrow ;^i, 200,000,
at the modest interest of eight per cent. To en-
courage capitalists, the subscribers were to be

incorporated by the name of the Governor and
Company of the Bank of England. Both Tories
and \\1iigs broke into a fury at the scheme. The
goldsmiths and pawnbrokers, says Macaulay, set
up a howl of rage. The Tories declared that
banks were republican institutions ; the "^N'higs pre-
dicted ruin and despotism. The whole wealth of
the nation would be in the hands of the " Tonnage
Bank," and the Bank would be in tlie hands of
the Sovereign. It was worse than the Star Chamber,
worse than Oliver's 50,000 soldiers. The power
of the purse would be transferred from the House
of Commons to the Governor and Directors of the
new Company. Bending to this last objection, a
clause was inserted, inhibiting the Bank from ad-
vancing money to the House without authority
from Parliament. Every infraction of this rule was
to be punished by a forfeiture of three times the
sum advanced, without the king having power to
remit the penalty. Charles Montague, an able
man, afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, carried
the bill through the House ; and Michael Godfrey
(the brother of the celebrated Sir Edmundbury
Godfrey, supposed to have been murdered by the
Papists), an upright merchant and a zealous ^Vhig,
propitiated the City. In the Lords (ah\'ays the
more prejudiced and conservative body than the
Commons) the bill met with great opposition.
Some noblemen imagined that the Bank was in-
tended to exalt the moneyed interest and debase
the landed interest ; and others imagined the bill
was intended to enrich usurers, who would prefer
banking their money to lending it on morlgage.
" Something was said," says Macaulay, " about the
danger of setting up a gigantic corporation, which
might soon give laws to the King and the three
estates of the realm." Eventually the Lords, afraid
to leave the King without money, passed the bill.
During several generations the Bank of England
was empliatically a Whig bod)'. Tlie Stuarts would
at once have repudiated the debt, and the Bank
of England, knowing that their return implied ruin,
remained loyal to William, Anne, and George.
" It is hardly too much to say," writes Macaulay,
" that during many years the weight of the Bank,
which was constantly in the scale of the ^\'higs,
almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church,
which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories."
" Seventeen years after the passing of the Tonnage
Bill," says the same eminent writer, to show the
reliance of the Whigs on the Bank of England,
" Addison, in one of his most ingenious and
graceful little allegories, described the situation of
the great company through which the innnense
wealth of London was constantly circulating. He

Bank of England.]

EARLY DIFFICULTIES OF THE BANK.

455

saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall,
the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settle-
ment full in her view. Her touch turned every-
thing to gold. Behina her seat bags filled with
coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right
and on her left the floor was hidden by ijyramids
of guineas. On a sudden the door flics open,
the Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in
the other a sword, which he shakes at the Act
of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down
fainting ; the spell by which she has turned all
things around her into treasure is broken ; the
money-bags shrink like pricked bladders ; the piles
of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags, or
fagots of wooden tallies."

In 1696 (very soon after its birth) the Bank
e.xperienccd a crisis. There was a want of money
in England. The clipped silver had been called
in, and the new money was not ready. Even rich
people were living on credit, and issued promis-
sory notes. The stock of the Bank of England
had gone rapidly down from no to 83. The
goldsmiths, who detested the corporation that had
broken in on their system of private banking, now
tried to destroy the new company. They plotted,
and on the same day they crowded to Grocers'
Hall, where the Bank was located from 1694 to
1734, and insisted on immediate payment — one
goldsmith alone demanding ^^30,000. The direc-
tors paid all their honest creditors, but refused
to cash the goldsmiths' notes, and left them their
remedy in Westminster Hall. The goldsmiths
triumphed in scurrilous pasquinades entitled, " The
Last Will and Testament," " The Epitaph," " The
Inquest on the Bank of England." The directors,
finding it impossible to procure silver enough to pay
every claim, had recourse to an expedient. They
made a call of 20 per cent, on the proprietors, and
thus raised a sum enabling them to pay every
applicant 15 per cent, in milled money on what
was due to him, and they returned him his note,
after making a minute upon it that part had been
paid. A few notes thus marked, says Macaulay,
are still preserved among the archives of the Bank,
as memorials of that terrible year. The alterna-
tions were frightful. I'he discount, at one time
6 per cent., was presently 24. A ^10 note, taken
for more than £^() in the morning, was before night
worth less than £,'&.

Paterson attributes this danger of the Bank to
bad and partial payments, the giving and allowing
exorbitant interest, high premiums and discounts,
contracting dear and bad bargains; the general
debasing and corrupting of coin, antl such like, by
which means things were brought to such a pass

that even S per cent, interest on the land-tax,
although payable within the year, would not answer.
Guineas, he says, on a sudden rose to 30s. per
piece, or more ; all currency of other mone)' was
stopped, hardly any had wherewith to jxiy ; public
securities sank to about a moiety of their original
values, and buyers were hard to be found even at
those prices. No man knew what he was worth ;
the course of trade and correspondence almost uni-
versally stopped ; the poorer sort of people were
plunged into irrepressible distress, and as it were
left perishing, whilst even the richer had hardly
wherewith to go to market for obtaining the
common conveniences of life.

The King, in Flanders, was in great want of
money. The Land Bank coidd not do much.
The Bank, at last, generously oflered to advance
;^20o,ooo in gold and silver to meet the King's
necessities. Sir Isaac Newton, the new Master of
the Mint, hastened on the re-coinage. Several of
the ministers, immediately after the Bank meeting
(over which Sir John Houblon presided), purchased
stock, as a proof of their gratitude to the body
which had rendered so great a service to the State.

The diminution of the old hammered money
continued to increase, and public credit began to
be put to a stand. The opposers of Paterson
wished to alter the denomination of the money,
so that 9d. of silver should pass for is., bat at
last agreed to let sterling silver pass at 5s. 2d. an
ounce, being the equivalent of the milled money.
The loss of the re-coinage to the nation was
about ;^3, 000,000. Paterson, who was one of the
first Directors of the Bank of England, upon a
qualification of j[^2,ooo stock, disagreed with his
colleagues on the question of the Bank's legiti-
mate operations, and sold out in 1695. In 1701,
Paterson says, after the peace of Ryswick, he had
an audience of King ^Villiam, and drew his at-
tention to the importance of three great measures
— the union with Scotland, the seizing the prin-
cipal Spanish ports in the ^\'est Indies, and the
holding a commission of inquiry into the conduct
of those who had mismanaged the King's aftairs
during his absence in Flanders. Paterson died in
1 7 19, on the eve of the fatal South Sea Bubble.

When the notes of the Bank were at 20 jier
cent, discount, the Government (says Francis) em-
powered the corporation to add ^"1,001,171 los. to
their original stock, and public faith was restored
by four-fifths of the subscriptions being received in
tallies and orders, and one-fifth in bank-notes at
their full value, although bot'li were at a heavy dis-
count in the market.

The past services of the Bank were not for-

45<5

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

gotten. The Ministry resolved that it should be
fiiiarged by new subscriptions; that provision
should be made for p.iying the principal of the
t.illics subscribed in the Bunk ; that S per cent.
should be allowed on all such tallies, to meet
wliich a duty on salt was imposed; that the charter
should be prolonged to August, 1710; that before
the beginning of the new subscriptions the old
capital should be made up to each member 100
per cent. ; and what might exceed that value

The charter was at the same time extended to
1 7 10, and not even then to lie withdrawn, unless
Government paid the full debt. Forgery of the
Company's seal, notes, or bills was made felony
without benefit of clergy. Sir Gilbert Heathcote,
one of the Bank Directors, gained _;£^6o,ooo by
this scheme. The Bank is said to have offered
the King at this time the loan of a million without
interest for twenty-one years, if the Government
would extend the charter for that time. Bank

THE OLD BANK, LOOKING FROM THE MANSION HOUSE. (From a Frinl of I^IQ.)

should be divided among the new members ; that
the Bank might circulate additional notes to the
amount subscribed, provided they were payable on
demand, and in default they were to be paid by
the E.xchequer out of the first money due to the
Bank; that no other bank should be allowed by
Act of Parliament during the continuance of the
Bank of England ; that it should be exempt from
all tax or imposition ; and that no contract made
for any Bank stock to be bought or sold should
be valid unless registered in the Bank books,
and transferred within fourteen days. It was also
enacted that not above two-thirds of the directors
should be re-elected in the succeeding year. These
vigorous measures were thoroughly successful.

stock, given to the proprietors in exchange for
tallies at 50 per cent, discount, rose to 112. The
Bank had lowered the interest of money. As early
as 1697 it had proposed to have branch Banks in
every city and market town of England.

In 1 700-1 704, the conquests of Louis XIV.
alarmed England, and shook the credit of the
Bank. In the latter year the Bank Directors were
once more obliged to issue sealed bills bearing
interest for a large sum, in order to keep up their
credit. In 1707 the fears of an invasion threatened
by the Pretender brought down stocks 14 or 15
per cent. The goldsmiths then gathered up Bank
bills, and tried to press the Directors. Hoare and
Child both joined in the attack, and the latter pre-

Bank of England.]

THE BANK OF ENGLAND IN TROUBLE.

457

tended to refuse the hills of the Bank. The loyal
Whigs, however, instead' of withdrawing their de-
posits, helped it with all their available cash. The
Dukes of Marlborough, Newcastle, and Somerset,
with others of the nobility, hurried to the Bank
with their coaches brimming with heavy bags ot
long hoarded guineas. A private individual, who

In 1708 the charter was extended to 1732.
This concession was again vehemently opposed
by the enemies of the Bank. Nathaniel Tench,
who wrote a reply for the directors, proved that
the Bank had never bought land, or monopolised
any other commodity, and had, on the contrary,
increased and encouraged trade. He asserted that

OLD PATCH. {See pag:e 459, )

had but ^500, carried it to the Bank ; and on the
story being told to the Queen, she sent him ^100,
with an obligation on the Treasury to repay the
whole ;i£^5oo. Lord Godolphin, seeing the crisis,
astutely persuaded Queen Anne to allow the Bank
for six months an interest of 6 per cent, on their
sealed bills. This, and a call of 20 per cent, on the
proprietors, saved the credit of the Bank.
39

they had never influenced an elector, and had been
the chief cause of lowering the interest of money,
even in war time. The Government wishing to
circulate Exchequer bills, the Bank raised their
capital by new subscriptions to ;^5, 000,000. The
new. subscriptions were raised in a few hours, and
nearly one million more could have been obtained
on the same day.

45S

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fCank of England.

During the absurd Tory riots of 1709 the Bank
v.-as in considerable danger. A vain, mischievous
High Church clerp^yman named Sacheverell had
been fooUshly prosecuted for attacking the Whig
Government, and calling tlie Lord Treasurer Go-
doli)hin " Volpone" (a character in a celebrated play
written by Ben Jonson). A guard of butchers
escorteil the firebrand to his trial at Westminster
Hall, at which Queen Anne was present. Riots
then broke out, and the High Church mob sacked
several Dissenting chapels, burning the pews and
pulpits in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, and else-
where, and even threatened to use a Dissenting
preacher as a holocaust. The rioters at last
threatened the Bank. The Queen at once sent
her guards, horse and foot, to the City, and left
herself unprotected. "Am I to preach or fight?"
was the first question of Captain Horsey, who led
the cavalry. But the question needed no answer,
for the rioters at once dispersed.

In 1 7 13 the Bank charter was renewed until
17.12. The great catastrophe of the South Sea
Bubble in 1720, which we shall sketch fully in
another chapter, did not injure the Bank. The
directors generously tried to save the fallen com-
pany, but (as might have been expected) utterly
failed. With prudence, perhaps, gained from this
national cataclysm, the Bank, in 1722, commenced
keeping a reserve — the "rest" — that rock on
which unshakable credit has ever since been
proudly built. In 1728 no notes were issued by
the Bank for less than ^£'20, and as part of the
note only was printed the clerk's pen supplied the
remainder.

In 1742, when the charter was renewed till
1762, the loan of ^i,0oo,ooo, without interest, was
required by the Government for the favour. By
the act of renewal forging bank-notes, &c., was
declared punishable with death.

The Bank was at this time a small and modest
building, surrounded by houses, and almost in-
visible to passers by. There was a church called
Christopher le Stocks, afterwards pulled down for
fear it should ever be occupied by rioters, and
three t.averns, too, on the south side, in Bartholo-
mew Lane, just where the chief entrance now is,
and about fifteen or twenty private buildings. A
few years later ^■isitors used to be shown in the
bullion oftice the original bank chest, no larger
than a seamen's, and the original shelves and cases
for the books of business, to show the e.\traor-
dinary rapidity with which the institution had
struck root and borne fruit.

In 1746, the capital on which the Bank stock
proprietors divided amounted to ;^'io,78o,ooo. It

had been more than octupled in litde more tha:i
half a century. The year 1752 is remarkable a.;
that in which the foundation of the present " Three
per Cent. Consols " was laid. " The stock," says
Francis, " was thus termed from the balance ot
some annuities granted by George I. being con-
solidated into one fand with a Three per Cent.
stock formed in 1731."

In 1759 bank-notes of a smaller value than £,20
were first circulated. In 1764 the Bank charter
was renewed on a gift of ;^i 10,000, and an ad-
vance of one million for E.xchequer bills for two
years, at 3 per cent, interest. It was at the same
time made felony without benefit of clergy to forge
powers of attorney for receiving dividends, trans-
ferring or selling stock. The Government, which
had won twelve millions before the Seven Years'
War, annihilated the navy of France, and wrested
India from the French sway, was glad to recruit its
treasury by so profitable a. bargain with the Bank.
In 1773 an Act was passed making it punishable
with death to copy the water-mark of the bank-
note paper. By an Act of 1775 notes of a less
amount than twenty shillings were prohibited, and
two years afterwards the amount was limited to £,<^.

During the formidable riots of 1780 the Bank was
in considerable danger. In one night there rose the
flames of six-and-thirty fires. The Catholic chapels
and the tallow-chandlers' shops Avere universally
destroyed ; Newgate was sacked and burned.
The mob, half thieves, at last decided to march
upon the Bank, but precautions had been taken
there. The courts and roof of the building were
defended by armed clerks and volunteers, and
there were soldiers ready outside. The old pewter
inkstands had been melted into bullets. The
rioters made two rushes ; the first was checked by
a volley from the .soldiers ; at the second, which
was less violent, Wilkes rushed out, and with his
own hand dragged in some of the ringleaders.
Leaving several killed and many wounded, the dis-
comfited mob at last retired.

In 1781, the Bank charter having nearly ex.
pired, Lord North proposed a renewal for twenty-
five years, the terms being a loan of nvo millions
for three years, at 3 per cent., to pay off the navy
debt. In 1783 the notes and bills of the Bank
were exempted from the operation of the Stamp
Act, on consideration of an annual payment of
^12,000. The Government allowance of ;^5 6 2 tos.
per million for managing the National Debt v.'ar;
reduced at this time to ^450. Five years later
our debt was calculated at 242 millions, which,
taken in ^10 notes, would weigh, it was curiously
calculated, 47,265 lbs.

Bank of England.]

ABRAHAM NEWLAND.

459

It was about 1784 that the first attempts at
forgery on a tremendous scale were discovered by
the Bank. A rogue of genius, generally known,
from his favourite disguise, as " Old Patch," by a
long series of forgeries secured a sum of more than
;^200,ooo. He was the son of an old clothes'
man in Monmouth Street ; and had been a lottery-
office keeper, stockbroker, and gambler. At one
time he was a partner with Foote, tlie celebrated
comedian, in a brewery. He made his own ink,
manufactured his own paper, and with a private
press worked off his own notes. His mistress
was his only confidante. His disguises were nu-
merous and perfect. His servants or boys, hired
from the street, always presented the forged notes.
When seized and thrown into prison, Old Patch
hung himself in his cell.

During the wars with France Pitt was always
soliciting the help of the Bank. In 1796, great
alarm was felt at the diminution of gold, and Tom
Paine wrote a pamphlet to prove that the Bank
cellars could not hold more than a million of specie,
while there were sixty millions of bank-notes in
circulation. It was, however, proved that the
specie amounted to about three millions, and the
circulation to only nine or ten. Early in fjcfO,
when the specie sank to ^^1,272,000, the Bank
suspended cash payments, and notes under ^5
were issued, and dollars prepared for circulation.
The Bank Restriction Act was soon after passed,
discontinuing cash payments till the conclusion of
the war. For the renewal of the charter in 1 800,
the Bank proposed to lend three millions for si.x
years, without interest, a right being reserved to
them of claiming repayment at any time before
the expiration of six years, if Consols should be at
or above 80 per cent. In 1802, Mr. Addington
said in the House of Commons that since 1797 the
forgeries of bank-notes had so alarmingly increased
as to require seventy additional clerks merely to
detect them, and that every year no less than thirty
or forty persons had been executed for forgery.

In 1807, the celebrated chief cashier of the
Piank, .Vbraham Newland, the hero of Dibdin's
well-known song —

" .Sham Abraliam you may,
Tut you mustn't sliam Abraliam Newlantl,"

retired from his duties, obtained a pension, and
the came year died. His property amounted to
_j{^2oo,ooo, besides ^1,000 a year landed estate.
He had made large sums by loans during the war,
a certain amount of which were always reserved
for the cashier's office. It is supposed the faithful
old Bank servant had lent large sums to the
Goldsmiths, the great stockbrokers, the contractors

for many of these loans, as he left them ;^5oo
each to buy mourning-rings. ■

The ]5ullion Committee of 1S09 was moved for
by Mr. Horner to ascertain if tlie rise in the jjrice
of gold did not arise from the over-issue of notes.
There was a growing feeling that bank-notes did
not represent the specified amount of gold, and the
committee recommended a speedy return to cash
payments. In Parliament Mr. Fuller, that butt
of the House, proposed if the guinea was really
worth 24s., to raise it at once to that price.
Guineas at this time were exported to France in
large numbers by smugglers in boats made espe-
cially for the purpose. The Bank, which had
before issued dollars, now circulated silver tokens
for 5s. 6d., 3s., and is. 6d.

Peel's currency bill of 1819 secured a gradual
return of cash payments, and the old metallic
standard was restored. It was Peel's gieat principle
that a national bank should always be prepared
to pay specie for its notes on demand, a principle
he afterwards worked out in the Bank Charter.
The same year a new plan was devised to prevent
bank-notes being forged. The Committee's report
says : — " A number of squares will appear in
c'hequer-work upon the note, filled with hair lines
in elliptic curves of various degrees of eccentricity,
the squares to be alternately of red and black
lines ; the perfect mathematical coincidence of the
extremity of the lines of different colours on the
sides of the squares will be effected by machinery
of singular fidelity. But even with the use of this
machinery a person who has not the key to the
proper disposition would make millions of experi-
ments to no purpose. Other obstacles to imitation
will also be presented in the structure of the note ;
but this is the one principally relied upon. It is
plain that any failure in the imitation will be made
manifest to the observation of the most careless,
and the most skilful merchants who have seen the
operation declare that the note cannot be imitated.
The remarkable machine works with three cylinders,
and the impression is made by small convex cylin-
drical plates."

In 1 82 1 the real re-commencement of specie
payments took place. In 1822 Turner, a Bank
clerk, stole ;^io,ooo by altering the transfer book.
The rascal, however, was too clever for the Bank,
and escaped. In 1822 Mr. Pascoe Grenfell put
the profits of the Bank at twenty-five millions, in
twenty-five years, after seven per cent, was dividf^'l.

By Fauntleroy's (the banker) forgeries in 1 8 ' 1 .
the Bank lost ^360,000, and the interest alone,
which was regularly paid, had amounted to ^9,00.
or ^10,000 a year. Fauntleroy's bank wa;; in

460

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

Berners Street. He had forged powers of attorney
to enable him to sell out stock. An^epicure and
a voluptuary, he had lived in extraonlinary luxury.
Ill a private ilesk was found a list of his forgeries,
ending with these words : " The Bank first began
to refuse our acceptances, thereby destroying the
cretlit of our house. The Bank shall smart for it."
After Fauntleroy was hung at Newgate there were
obscure rumours in the City that he had been saved
by a silver tube being placed in his throat, and that
he had escaped to Paris.

Having given a summary of the history of the
Bank of England, we now propose to select a series
of anecdotes, arranged by dates, which will convey a
fuller and more detailed notionof the romance and
the vicissitudes of banking life.

The Bank was first established (says Francis)
in Mercers' Hall, and afterwards in Grocers' Hall,
since razed for the erection of a more stately struc-
ture. Here, in one room, with almost primitive sim-
plicity, were gathered all who performed the duties
of the establishment. " I looked into the great
hall where the Bank is kept," says the graceful
essayist of the day, " and was not a little pleased
to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with
all the other members of that wealthy corporation,
ranged in their several stations according to the
parts they hold in that just and regular economy."

Mr. Michael Godfrey, to whose exertions, with
those of William Paterson, may be traced the suc-
cessful establishment of the Bank, met with a
.somewhat singular fate, on the 17th of July, 1695.
At that time the transmission of specie was difficult
and full of hazard, and Mr. Godfrey left his peaceful
avocations to visit Namur, then vigorously besieged
by the English monarch. The deputy-governor,
willing to flatter the King, anxious to forward his
mission, or possibly imagining the vicinity of the
Sovereign to be the safest place he could choose,
ventured into the trenches. "As you are no ad-
venturer in the trade of war, Mr. Godfrey," said
William, " I think you should not expose yourself
to the hazard of it." " Not being more exposed
than your Majesty," was the courtly reply, "should
I be excusable if I showed more concern ? " " Yes,"
returned William ; " I am in my duty, and therefore
have a more reasonable claim to preservation." A
cannon-ball at this moment answered the " reason-
able claim to preservation" by killing Mr. Godfrey ;
and it requires no great stretch of imagination to
fancy a saturnine smile passing over the countenance
of the monarch, as he beheld the fate of the citizen
who paid so heavy a penalty for playing the courtier
in the trenches of Namur.

On the 31st of August, 1731, a scene was pre-

sented which strongly marks the infatuation and
ignorance of lottery adventurers, The tickets for
the State lottery were delivered out to the sub-
scribers at the Bank of England ; when the crowd
becoming so great as to obstruct the clerks, they
told them, " We deliver blanks to-day, but to-
morrow we shall deliver the prizes ; " upon which
man}-, who were by no means for blanks, retired,
and by this bold stratagem the clerks obtained
room to proceed in their business. In this lottery,
we read, " Her M,ajesty presented his Roy.al High-
ness the Duke with ten tickets."

In 1738 the roads were so infested by highway-
men, and mails were so frequently stopped by the
gentlemen in the black masks, that the post-master
made a representation to the Bank upon the subject,
and the directors in consecpience advertised an issue
of bills payable at " seven days' sight," that, in case
of the mail being robbed, the proprietor of stolen
bills might have time to give notice.

The effect of the arrival, in 1745, of Charles
Edward at Derby, upon the National Bank, was
alarming indeed. Its interests were involved in
those of the State, and the creditors flocked in
crowds to obtain payment for their notes. The.
directors, unprepared for such a casualty, had
recourse to a justifiable stratagem ; and it was only
by this that they escaped bankruptcy. Payment
was not refused, but the corporation retained its
specie, by employing agents to enter with notes,
who, to gain time, were paid in sixpences ; anil as
those who came first were entitled to priority of
payment, the agents went out at one door with the
specie they had received, and brought it back by
another, so that the bonCx-fide holders of notes could
never get near enough to present them. " By this
artifice," says our authority, somewhat (piaintly, " the
Bank preserved its credit, and literally faced its
creditors."

An extraordinary affair happened about the year
1740. One of the directors, a very rich man, had
occasion for ^30,000, which he was to pay as the
price of an estate he had just bought. To facili-
tate the matter, he carried the sum with him to
the Bank, and obtained for it a bank-note. On
his return home he was suddenly called out upon
particular business ; he threw the note carelessly
on the chimney, but when he came back a few
minutes afterwards to lock it up, it was not to be
found. No one had entered the room ; he could
not, therefore, suspect any person. At last, after
much ineffectual search, he was persuaded that it
h,id fallen from the chimney into the fire. The
director went to acquaint his colleagues with the
misfortune that had happened to him ; and as he

Bank of F.h-Iot'I.I

FATAL BANK NOTES.

461

was known to be a perfectly honourable man. he
was readily believed. It was only about twenty-
four hours from tlie time that he had deposited
the money; they thought, therefore, that it would
be hard to refuse his request for a second bill.
He received it upon giving an obligation to restore
the first bill, if it should ever be found, or to pay
the money himself, if it should be presented by
any stranger. About thirty years afterwards (the
director having been long dead, and his heirs in
possession of his fortune) an unknown person pre-
sented the lost bill at the Bank, and demanded
payment. It was in vain that they mentioned to
this person the transaction by which that bill was
annulled ; he would not listen to it. He niaintained
that it came to him from abroad, and insisted upon
immediate payment. The note was payable to
bearer, and the ^30,000 were paid him. The
heirs of the director would not listen to any de-
mands of restitution, and the Bank was obliged to
sustain the loss. It was discovered afterwards
that an architect having purchased the director's
house, and taken it down, in order to build another
upon the same spot, had found the note in a
crevice of the chimney, and made his discovery
an engine for robbing the Bank.

In the early part of last century, the practice of
bankers was to deliver in exchange for money
deposited a receipt, which might be circulated like
a modern cheque. Bank-notes were then at a
discount ; and the Bank of England, jealous of
Childs' reputation, secretly collected the receipts
of their rivals, determined, when they had procured
a very large number, suddenly to demand money
for them, hoping that Childs' would not be able to
meet their liabilities. Fortunately for the latter,
they got scent of this plot ; and in great alarm
applied to the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough,
who gave them a single cheque of ^700,000 en
their opponents. Thus armed, Childs' waited the
arrival of the enemy. It was arranged that this
business should be transacted by one of the part-
ners, and that a confidential clerk, on a given
signal, should proceed with all speed to the Bank
to get the cheque cashed. At last a clerk from
the Bank of England appeared, with a full bag, and
demanded money for a large number of receipts.
The partner was called, who desired him to present
them singly. The signal was given ; the cou-
fidential clerk hurried on his mission ; the partner
was very deliberate in his movements, and long
before he had taken an account of all the receipts,
his emissary returned with ;^7 00,000 ; and the
whole amount of ;i/^5oo,ooo or ;^6oo,ooo was
paid by Childs' in Bank of England notes. In

addition to the triumph of this manoeuvre, Childs'
must have made a large sum, from Bank jiaper
being at a considerable discount.

The day on which a forged note was first
presented at the Bank of iMigland fiirms a remark-
able era in its history ; and to Richard William
Vaughan, a Stafford linendraper, belongs the
melancholy celebrity of having led the van in this
new phase of crime, in the year 1758. The records
of his life do not show want, beggary, or starvation
urging him, but a simple desire to seem greater
than he was. By one of the artists employed —
and there were several engaged on difterent parts of
the notes — the discoveiy was made, 'i'he criminal
had filled up to the number of twenty, and
deposited them in the hands of a young lady, to
whom he was attached, as a proof of his wealth.
There is no calculating how much longer Bank
notes might have been free from imitation, had
this man not shown with what ease they might be
counterfeited. (Francis.)

The circulation of ^i notes led to much
forgery, and to a melancholy waste of human life.
Considering the advances made in the mechanical
arts, small notes were rough, and e\^en rude in
their execution. Easily imitated, they were also
easily circulated, and from 1797 the executions
for forgery augmented to an extent which bore no
proportion to any other class of crime. During
six years prior to their issue there was but one
capital conviction ; during the four following years
eighty-five occurred. The great increase produced
inquir}', which resulted in an Act " For the better
prevention of the forgery of the notes and bills of
exchange of persons carrying on the business of
banker."

In the year 1758 a judgment was given by
the Lord Chief Justice in connection with some
notes which were stolen from one of the mails.
The robber, after stopping the coach and taking
out all the money contained in the letters, went
boldly to a Mr. Miller, at the Hatfield post-oflice,
who unhesitatingly exchanged one of them. Here
he ordered a post-chaise, with four horses, and
at several stages passed off the remainder. '^I'hey
were, however, stopped at the Bank, and an action
was brought by the possessor to recover the money.
The question was an important one, and it was
decided by the law authorities, " that any person
paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note,
payable to bearer, in a fair course of business, has
an undoubted right to recover the money of the
Bank." The action was maintained upon the plea
that the figure 11, denoting the date, had been
converted by the robber to a 4.

462

OT.n AND NEW LONDON.

I r.nnl; of KnKlarni.

A new crime was discovered in 1767. The
notice of the clerks at the P.ank liad been attracted
by the habit of William Ciicst, a teller, of picking
new from old guineas without assigning any reason.
An indefinite suspicion— increased by the know-
ledge that an ingot of gold had been seen in
Guest's possession— arose, and although he asserted
that it came from Holland, it was very unlike the
regular bars of gold, and had a large quantity of
copper at the back. Attention being thus drawn

was the greatest improvement he had ever seen, is
said to be yet in the Mint.

In 1772 an action interesting to the public was
brought against the Bank. It appeared from the
evidence that some stock stood in the joint names
of a man and his wife ; and by the rules of the
corporation the signatures of both were required
before it could be transferred. To this the husband
objected, and claimed the right of selling without
his wife's signature or consent. The Court of

THE BANK r.VRLOUR, E.XTERIOR VIEW.

to the behaviour of Guest, he was observed to
hand one Richard Still some guineas, which he
took from a private drawer, and placed with the
others on the table. Still was immediately
followed, and on the examination of his money
tliree of the guineas in his possession were deficient
in weight. An inquiry was immediately instituted.
Forty of the guineas in the charge of Guest looked
fresher than the others upon the edges, and weighed
mucli less than the legitimate amount. On search-
ing his house some gold filings were found, with
instruments calculated to produce artificial edges.
Proofs soon multiplied, and the prisoner was found
guilty. The instrument with which he had effected
his fraud, of v.hich one of the witnesses asserted it

King's Bench decided in favour of the plaintiff,
with full costs of suit, Lord Mansfield believing
that " it was highly cruel and oppressive to withhold
from the husband his right of transferring."

On the loth of June, 1772, Neale and Co., ban-
kers, in Threadneedle Street, stopped payment ;
other failures resulted in consequence, and through-
out the City there was a general consternation. The
timely interposition of the Bank, and the generous
assistance of the merchants, prevented many of the
expected stoppages, and trade appeared restored
to its former security. It was, however, only an
appearance ; for on Monday, the 22nd of the same
month, may be read, in a contemporary authority,
a description of the prevailing agitation, v.hich

Bank of England.]

FRAUDS ON THK BANK

4<J.?

464

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

forcibly reminds us of a few )'cars ago. " It is
beyond tlie power of words to describe the general
consternation of tlie metropolis at this instant. No
event for fifty >ears has been remembered to give
so fatal a blow to trade and public credit. A
iniiversal bankruptcy was expected; the stoppage of
almost every banker's house in London was looked
for ; the whole city was in an uproar ; many of the
first families were in tears. Tliis melancholy scene
began with a rumour that one of the greatest
bankers in London had stopped, which afterwards
j)roved true. A report at the same time was pro-
pagated that an immediate stoiipage of the greatest
liank of all must take place, flappily this proved
groundless ; the principal merchants assembled,
and means were concocted to rc\-ive trade and
preserve the national credit."

The desire of the directors to discover the makers
of forged notes produced a considerable amount of
anxiety to one whose name is indelibly associated
with r.ritish art. George Morland — a name rarely
mentioned but with feelings of pity and regret —
had, in his eagerness to avoid incarceration for
debt, retired to an obscure hiding-place in the
suburbs of ]>ondon. " On one occasion," says Allan
Cunningham, " he hid himself in Hackney, where
his anxious loo"ks and secluded manner of life in-
duced some of his charitable neighbours to believe
him a maker of forged notes. The directors of
the Bank dispatched two of their most dexterous
emissaries to hiquire, reconnoitre, search and seize.
The men aiTived, and began to draw lines of cir-
cumvallation round the painter's retreat. He was
not, ho\ve\-r3 to be surprised: mistaking those
agents of evil mien for bailiffs, he escaped from
behind as they approached in front, fled into
Hoxton, and never halted till he had hid himself in
London. Nothing was found to justify suspicion ;
and when Mrs. Morland, who was his companion
in this retreat, told them who her husband was, and
showed them some unfinished pictures, they made
such a report at the Bank, that the directors pre-
sented him with a couple of Bank notes of ^"20
each, by way of compensation for the alarm they
had given him."

The proclamation of peace in 1783, says Francis,
was indirectly an expense to the Bank, although
hailed with enthusiasm by the populace. The war
with America had assumed an aspect which, with
all thinking men, crushed every hope of conquest.
It was therefore amid a general shout of joy that on
2*Ionday, the ist of October, 1783, the ceremonial
took place. A vast multitude attended, and the
people were delighted with the suspension of war.
The concourse was so great that Temple Bar was

opened with difficult)-, and the Lord Mayor's
coachman was kept one hour before lie was able
to turn his vehicle. The Bank only had reason to
regret, or at least not to syriipathise so freely with
the public joy. During the hurry attendant on the
proclamation at the Royal Exchange, when it may
be supposed the sound of the music and the noise
of the trumpet occupied the attention of the clerk
more than was beneficial for the interests of his
employers, fourteen notes of ^50 each were pre-
sented at the office and cash paid for them. The
next day they were found to be forged.

In 17S3 Mathison's celebrated forgeries were
committed. John Mathison was a man of great
mechanical capacity, who, becoming acquainted
with an engraver, unhappily acquired that art
which ultimately proved his ruin. A yet more
dangerous ([ualification was liis of imitating signa-
tures with remarkable accuracy. Tempted b)- the
hope of sudden wealth, his first forgeries were the
notes of the Darlington Bank. This fraud was
soon discovered, and a reward being oflered, with
a description of his person, he escaped to Scotland.
There, scorning to let his talents lie idle, he
counterfeited the notes of the Royal Bank of
Edinburgh, amused himself by negotiating them
during a pleasure excursion through the country,
and reached London, supported by his imitative
talent. Here a fine sphere opened for his genius,
which was so active, that in twelve days he had
bought the copper, engraved it, fabricated notes,
forged the water-mark, printed and negotiated
several. When he had a sufficient number, he
travelled from one end of the kingdom to the
other, disposing of them. Having been in the
habit of procuring notes from the Bank (the more
accurately to copy them), he chanced to be there
when a clerk from the Excise Office paid in 7,000
guineas, one of which was scrupled. Mathison,
from a distance, said it was a good one ; " then,"
said the Bank clerk, on the trial, " I recollected
him." The frequent visits of Mathison, who was
very incautious, together with other circumstances,
created some suspicion that he might be connected
with those notes, which, since his first appearance,
had been presented at the Bank. On another
occasion, when Mathison -was there, a forged note
of his own was presented, and the teller, half in
jest and half in earnest, charged Maxwell, the
name by \\hich he was known, with some know-
ledge of the forgeries. Further suspicion was ex-
cited, and directions were given to detain him at
some future period. The following day the teller
was informed that "his friend Maxwell," as he
was styled ironically, was in Cornhill. The clerk

Bank of Englaiul. )

FORGERY OF BANK-NOTES.

465

instantly went, and under pretence of having paid
Matliison a guinea too much on a previous occa-
sion, and of losing his situation if the mistake wore
not rectified in the books, induced him to return
witli him to the hall ; from which [ilace he was
taken before the directors, and afterwards to Sir
John Fielding. 'I'o all the inquiries he replied,
" He had a reason for declining to answer. He
was a citizen of the world, and knew not how he
had come into it, or how he should go out of it."
Being detained during a consultation with the
Bank solicitor, he suddenly lifted up the sanh and
jumped out of the window. On being taken and
asked his motive, if innocent, he said, "It was his
humour."

In the progress of the inquiry, the Darlington
paper, containing his description, was read to hin;,
when he turned pale, burst into tears, and saying
he was a dead man, added, " Now I will confess
all." He was, indeed, found guilty only on his
own acknowledgment, which stated he could ac-
complish the whole of a note in one day. It was
asserted at the time, that, had it not been for his
confession, he could not have been convicted.
He oft'ered to explain the secret of his discovery
of the method of imitating the water-mark, on the
condition that the corporation would spare his life ;
but liis proposal was rejected, and he subsequently
paid the full ])enalty of his crime.

The conviction that some check was necessary
grew more and more peremptory as the evils of
the system were exposed. In fourteen years from
the first issue of small notes, the number of con-
victions had been centupled. In the first ten
years of the present century, ^101,061 were re-
fused payment, on the plea of forgery. In the two
years preceding the appointment of the commis-
sion directed by Government to inquire into the
facts connected with forging notes, nearly ^60,000
were presented, being an increase of 300 per cent.
In 1797, the entire cost of prosecutions for for-
geries was ;^i,5oo, and in the last three months
of I Si 8 it was near _;/^2o,ooo. Sir Samuel Romilly
said that " pardons were sometimes found neces-
sary ; but few were granted except under circum-
stances of peculiar qualification and mitigation.
He believed the sense and feeling of the people
of P^ngland were against the punishment of death
for forgery. It was clear the severity of the punish-
ment had not prevented the crimes."

The first instance of fraud, to a great amount,
was perpetrated by one of the confidential servants
of tlie corporation. In the year 1803, Mr. Bish, a
member of the Stock E.vchange, was apjjlied to by
Mr. R.obert Astlett, cashier of the Bank of England,

to disiDose of some F^xcheciuer bills. When they
were delivered into Mr. Bish's hands, he was
greatly astonished to find not only that these bills
had been previously in his possession, but that
they had been also delivered to the Bank. Sur-
prised at this, he immediately o.iened a communi-
cation with the directors, which led to the discovery
of the fraud and the apprehension of Robert Astlett.
By the evidence produced on the trial, it appeared
that the prisoner had been placed in charge of all
the Exchequer bills brought into the Bank, and when
a certain number were collected, it was his iluty to
arrange them in bundles, ami ileliver them to the
directors in the parlour, where they were counted
and a receipt given to the cashier. This practice
had been strictly adhered to ; but the jjrisoner,
from his acquaintance with business, had induced
the directors to believe that he had handed them
bills to the amount of 7^700,000, when they were
only in possession of _;^5oo,ooo. So completely
had he deceived these gentlemen, that two of the
body vouched by their signatures for the delivery
of the larger amount.

He was tried for the felonious embezzlement of
three bills of exchange of ^^ 1,000 each. He
escaped hanging, but remained a miserable prisoner
in Newgate for many years.

In 1808 Vincent Alessi, a native of one of the
Italian States, went to Binningham, to choose some
manufactures likely to return a sufficient jjrofit in
Spain. Amongst others he sought a brass-founder,
who showed him that which he required, and then
drew his attention to "another article," which lie
said he could sell cheaper than any other person in
the trade. Mr. Alessi declined purchasing this, as
it appeared to be a forged bank-note ; upon ^^■hich
he was shown some dollars, as fitter for the Spanish
market. These also were declined, though it is
not much to the credit of the Italian that he did
not at once denounce the dishonesty of the Bir-
minghanr brass-founder. It would seem, however,
from what followed, that Mr. Alessi was not quite
unprepared, as, in the evening, he was called on by
one John Nicholls, and after some conversation,
he agreed to take a certain quantity of notes, of
diflerent values, which were to be paid for at the
rate of six shillings in the pound.

Alessi thought this a very profitable business,
while it lasted, as he could always procure as many
as he liked, by wrinng for so many dozen candle-
sticks, calling them Nos. 5, 2, or i, according to
the amount of the note required. The vigilance of
tlie English police, however, was too much even
for the subtlety of an Italian ; he was taken by
them, and allowed to turn king's evidence, it being

466

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Hank of England.

tliouylit very tlcsirablc to discover ihc mainifactory
whence tlic notes cm.anateil.

In December John NichoUs received a letter
from .Mcssi, stating that he was going to America ;
that lie wanted to sec Nicholls in London; that he
retjuired twenty dozen candlesticks, No. 5 ; twenty-
four dozen, No. i ; and four dozen, No. 2. Mr.
Nicholls, unsuspicious of his correspondent's cap-
tivity, and consequent frailty, came forthwith to
town, to fulfil so imi)ortant an order. Here an
interview was planned, within hearing of the police
officers. Nicholls came with the forged notes.
Alessi counted up the whole sum he was to pay,
at six shillings in the ])ound, saying, " Well, Mr.
Nicholls, you will take all my money from me."
"Never mind, sir," was the reply; "it will all be
returned in the way of business." Alessi then re-
marketl that it was cold, and put on his hat. This
was the signal for the officers. To the dealer's
surprise and indignation, he found himself en-
trapped with the counterfeit notes in his possession,
to the precise amount in number and value that
had been ordered in 'the letter.

A curious scene look place in May, 1 8 1 8, at the
Bank. On the 26th of that month, a notice had
been posted, stating that books would be opened
on the 31st of May, and two following days, for
receiving subscriptions to the amount of ^7,000,000
from persons desirous of funding Exchequer bills.
It was generally thought that the whole of the
sum would be immediately subscribed, and great
anxiety was shown to obtain an early admission
to the office of the chief cashier. Ten o'clock
is the usual time for public business ; but at
' two in the morning many persons were assembled
outside the building, where they remained for
several hours, their numbers gradually augmenting.
The opening of the outer door was the signal for a
general rush, and the crowd, for it now deser\ed
that name, next established themselves in the pas-
sage leading to the chief cashier's office, where
they had to wait another hour or two, to cool their
collective imi)atience. When the time arrived, a
furtlier contest arose, and they strove lustily for an
entrance. The struggle for preference was tre-
mendous ; and the door separating them from tlie
chief oishier's room, and which is of a most sub-
stantial size, was forced off its hinges. By far the
greater part of those who made this effijrt failed,
the whole ^7,000,000 being subscribed by the first
ten persons who gained admission.

In 1S20 a very extraordinary appeal was made
to the French tribunals by a man named J. Costel,
who was a merchant of Hamburg, while the free
city was in the hands of the French, He accused

the general commanding there of employing hiir
to get .^^5,000 worth of English bank-notes changed,
which proved to be forged, and he was, in conse-
quence of this discovery, obliged to fly from Ham-
burg. He also said that Savarj', Duke of Ro\igo,
and Desnouettes, were the fabricators, and tli;;t
they emi)loyed persons to pass them into Fmgland,
one of whom was seized by the London police,
and hanged. Mr. Doubleday asserts that some
one had caused a large quantity of French assig-
nats to be forged at Birmingham, with the view of
depreciating the credit of the French Republic.

Merch.ants and bankers now began to declare that
they would rather lose their entire fortunes than
pour forth the life which it was not theirs to give.
A general feeling pervaded the whole interest, that
it would be better to peril a great wrong than
to suffer an unavailing remorse. One petition
against the penalty of death was presented, which
bore three names only ; but those were an honour-
able proof of the prevalent feeling. The name of
Nathan Meyer Rothschild was the first, " through
whose hands," said Mr. Smith, on presenting the
petition, " more bills pass than through those of
any twenty firms in London." The second was
that of Overend, Gurney, and Co., through whom
thirty millions passed the preceding year ; and the
third was that of Mr. Sanderson, ranking among
the first in the same profession, and a member of
the Legislature.

A principal clerk of one of our bankers having
robbed his employer of Bank of England notes to
the amount of ;!£'2o,ooo, made his escape to
Holland. L^nable to present them himself, he
sold them to a Jew. The price which he received
does not appear ; but there is no doubt that, under
the circumstances, a good bargain was made by
the purchaser. In the meantime e^"ery plan was
exhausted to give publicity to the loss. The
numbers of the notes were advertised in the news-
papers, with a request that they might be refused,
and for about six months no information was
received of the lost property. At the end of tliat
period the Jew appeared with the whole of his
spoil, and demanded paymen/, which was at once
refused on the plea that the bills had been stolen,
and that payment had been stopped.

The owner insisted upon gold, and the Bank
persisted in refusing. But the Jew was an energetic
man, and was aware of the credit of the corpora-
tion. He was known to be possessed of immense
wealth, and he went deliberately to the Flxchange,
where, to the assembled merchants of London, in
the presence of her citizens, he related publicly
that the Bank had refused to honour their own

Bank of England,]

NOTES ON BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES.

467

bills for ^20,000; that their credit was gone, [ two notes for ^i 00,000 each, and two for ^50,000,
their affairs in confusion ; and that they had j were once engraved and issued. A butcher who
stopped payment. The Exchange wore every had amassed an immense fortune in the war time,
appearance of alarm ; the Hebrew showed the notes ! went one day with one of these ^50,000 notes to
to corroborate his assertion. He declared that | a private bank, asking the loan of ;i^S,ooo, and
they had been remitted to him from Holland, and j wishing to deposit the big note as security in the
as his transactions were known to be extensive,
there appeared every reason to credit his statement.
He then avowed his intention of advertising this

refusal of the Bank, and the citizens thought there
must be some truth in his bold announcement.
Information reached the directors, who grew
anxious, and a messenger was sent to inform the
holder that he might receive cash in exchange for
his notes.

In 1S43 the light sovereigns were called in.
The total amount of light coin received from the
nth of June to the 28th of July was .1^4,285,837,
and 2-2d. was the loss on each, taking an average
of 35,000. The large sum of ,^1,400, in ^'i
notes, was paid into the Bank this year. They
had probably been the hoard of some eccentric
person, who evinced his attachment to the obsolete
paper at the expense of his interest. A tew years
afterwards a J^^^o note came in which had been
outstanding for about a century and a quarter,
and the loss of interest on which amounted to some
thousands.

And now a few anecdotes about bank-notes.
An eccentric gentleman in Portland Street, says
Mr. Grant, in his "Great Metropolis,'' framed and
exliibited for five years in one of his sitting-rooms
a Bank post bill for ^30,000. The fifth year he
died, and down came the picture double quick,
and was cashed by his heirs. Some years ago, at
a nobleman's house near the Pari:, a dispute arose
about a certain text, and a dean present denying
there was any such text at all, a Bible was called
for. A dusty old Bible was jjroduced, which had
never been removed from its shelf since the noble-
man's mother had died some years before. ^Vhen
it was opened a mark was found in it, which,
on e.xamination, turned out to be a Bank post bill
for ^40,000. It might, it strikes us, have been
placed th=re as a reproof to the son, who perhaps
did not consult his Bible as often as his mother
could have wished. The author of " The American
in England'' describes, in 1835, one of the servants
of the Bank putting into his hand Bank post bills,
which, before being cancelled by having the signa-
tures torn off, had represented the sum of five
millions sterling. The whole made a parcel tha.t
could with ease be put into the waistcoat poclcec.

The largest amount of a bank-note in current
circulation in 1S27 was ^1,000. It is said that

banker's hands, saying that he had kept it for
years. The ^5,000 were at once handed over,
but the banker hinted at the same time to the
butcher the folly of hoarding such a sum and losing
the interest " Werry true, sir," replied the butcher,
"but I likes tlie look on't so wery well that I keeps
t'other one of the same kind at home."

As the Bank of England pays an annual average
sum of ^-{^70,000 to the Stamp Office for their
notes, while other banks pay a certain sum on '
every note as stamped, the Bank of luigland
never re-issues its notes, but destroys them on
return. A visitor to the Bank was one day
shown a heap of cinders, which was the ashes of
^^40,000,000 of notes recently burned. The letters
could here and there be seen. It looked like a
piece of laminated iar\a, and was about three
inches long and two inches broad, weighing pro-
bably from ten to twelve ounces.

The losses of the Bank are considerable. In
1820 nc fewer than 352 persons were convicted,
at a great expense, of forging small notes. In
1832 the yearly losses of the Bank from forgeries
on the public funds were upwards of ^40,000.

It is said that in the large room of the Bank
a quarter of a million sovereigns will sometimes
change hands in the course of the day. The
entire amount of money turned over on an average
in the day has been estimated as low as ^2,000,000,
and as high as ^^2, 500, 000. At a rough guess,
the number of persons who receive dividends on
the first day of every half year exceeds 100,000,
and the sum paid away has been estimated at
^^500,000.

The number of clerks in the Bank of England
was computed, in 1837, at 900 ; the engravers and
bank-note printers at thirty-eight. The salaries
vary from ^700 per annum to ;^7S, and the
amount paid 10 the servants of the entire establish-
ment, about 1,000, upwards of ^200,000. Some
years ago the proprietors met four times a year.
Three directors sat daily in the Bank parlour. On
Wednesday a Court of Directors sat to decide on
London applications for discount, and on Tiiiusdays
the whole court met to consider all notes exceed-
ing ;^2,ooo. The directors, twenty-four, exclusive
of the Governor and Deputy-Governor, decide by
majority all matters of importance.

The Bank of England (says Dodsley's excellent

OLD AND NKW LONDON,

tli.\nk of r-nsl"'""-!-

-n^l wcll-v.-ritten "Guide to London," 1761) is a | which is in this last building, is 79 feet ni len-ih
noble edifice situated at the east of St. Chris- { and 40 in breadth ; it is wainscoted about G lect
tonhcr's Church, near the west end of Thread- high, has a fine fretwork ceiling, and is adorned
needle Street. The front next the street is about | with a statue of King William IIL, which stand:;
So feet in length, and is of the Ionic order, raised ' in a niche at the upper end, on the pedestal cf

THE CHURCH OF i 1'. liKNtl ll.\K.

on a rustic basement, and is of a good style.
Through this you pass into the court-yard, in which
is the hall. This is one of the Corinthian order,
and in the middle is a pediment. The top of the
building is adorned with a balustrade and hand-
some vases, and in the face of the above pediment
is engraved in relievo the Company's seal, Bri-
tannia sitting with her shield and spear, and at her
feet a cornucopia pouring out fruit. The hall

which is the following inscription in Latin — in
English, thus : —

" For restoring efficiency to the Laws,

Authority to the Courts of Justice,

Dignity to the Parliament,

To all his subjects their Religion and Liberties,

And confirming them to Posterity,

By the succession of the Illustrious House of Hanover

To the British Throne :

To the best of Princes, William the Third,

Rink uT Kiigiaiid 1

THK PARISH CHURCH OF ST. CHRISTOPHER.

4^,9

Koiiiuler of the Hank,

This CuT|ioration, from a suiise of.GratiUule,

Has erected tliis Statue,

And dedicated it to liis memory,

In the Year of our Lord MDCCXXXIV.,

And the first year of this Building."

Furtlier backward is another (ii-iadranyle, with an
arcade on the east and west sides of it ; and on
the north side is the accountant's ollice, wliich is
60 feet loner and 28 feet broad. Over this, and the

being copied from tlie 'I'dnplc of Mars tlic Aven^'»-r,
at Rome.

On the death of Sir John Soane, in 1837, Mr.
Cockerell was chosen to succeed him in his im-
portant position. The style of this gentleman, in
the office he designed for the jxayment of dividend
warrants, now employed as the private drawing-
office, is very different to the erections of his pre-
decessor. The taste which produced the elabo-
rate and exquisite ornaments in this room is in

COIRT OF THE IlA.NK

Other sides of the quadrangle, are liandsome anart-
ments, with a fine staircase adorned with fretwork;
and under are large vaults, that have strong walls
and iron gates, for the preservation of the cash.
The back entrance from Bartholomew Lane is by
a grand gateway, which opens into a commodious
and spacious courtyard for coaches or wagons, that
frequently come loaded with gold and silver bullion ;
and in the room fronting the gate the transfer-office
is kept.

The entablature rests on fluted Corinthian
columns, supporting statues, which indicate the four
quarters of the globe. The intercolumniations are
ornamented by allegories representing the Thaines
and the Ganges, executed by Thomas Banks,
Academician, the roses on the vaulting of the arch
40

,\ND {see /«iV 470).

Strong contrast to the severe simplicity of the v/orks
of Sir John Soane.

Stow, speaking of St. Christopher's, the old
church removed when the Bank was built, says,
" Towards the Stokes Market is the parish church
of St. Christopher, but re-edified of new ; for
Richard Shore, one of the shcriffes, 1506, gave
money towards the building of the steeple."

Richard at Lane was collated to this living in
the year 1368. " Having seen and observed the
said parish church of St. Christopher, with all the
grave-stones and monuments therein, and finding
a faire tombe of touch, wherein lyeth the body of
Robert Thome, Merchant Taylor and a batciielor,
buried, having given by his testament in charity
4.445 pounds to pious uses ; then lool.ing for

470

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

some such memory, as might adorne and beautifie
the name of anotlier famous batchelor, Mr. John
Kendricke ; and found none, but only his hatch-
ments and banners." ^Lany of the Houblons were
buried in this church.

"The court-room of the Bank," says Francis, "is
a noble apartment, by Sir Robert Taylor, of the
Composite order, about 60 feet long and 31 feet
6 inches wide, with large Venetian windows on
the south, overlooking that which was formerly the
churchyard of St. Christopher. The north side is
remarkable for three exquisite chimney-pieces of
statuary marble, the centre being the most mag-
nificent. The east and west are distinguished by
columns detached from the walls, supporting beau-
tiful arches, which again support a ceiling rich with
ornament. The west leads by folding doors to
an elegant octagonal committee -room, with a fine
marble chimne}--piece. The Governor's room is
square, with various paintings, one of which is a
portrait of William III. in armour, an intersected
ceiling, and semi-circular windows. This chimney-
piece is also of statuary marble ; and on the wall
is a fine painting, by Marlow, of the Bank, Bank
Buildings, Cornhill, and Royal Exchange. An
ante-room contains portraits of Mr. Abraham New-
land and another of the old cashiers, taken as a
testimony of the appreciation of the directors. In
the waiting-room are two busts, by Nollekens, of
Charles James Fox and William Pitt. The original
Rotunda, by Sir Robert Taylor, was roofed in with
timber; but when a survey was made, in 1794, it
was found advisable to take it down ; and in the
ensuing year the present Rotunda was built, under
the superintendence of Sir John Soane. It measures
57 feet in diameter and about the same in height
to the lower part of the lantern. It is formed of
incombustible materials, as are all the offices erected
under the care of Sir John Soane. For many
years this place was a scene of constant confusion,
caused by the presence of the stockbrokers and
jobbers. In 1838 this annoyance was abolished,
the occupants were ejected from the Rotunda, and
the space employed in cashing the dividend-warrants
of the fundholders. The offices appropriated to the
management of the various stocks are all close to
or branch out from the Rotunda. The dividends
are paid in two rooms devoted to that purpose,
and the transfers are kept separate. They are
arranged in books, under the various letters of the
alphabet, containing the names of the proprietors
and the particulars of their property. Some of
the stock-offices were originally constructed by
Sir Robert Taylor, but it has been found necessary
to make great alterations, and most of them are de-

signed from some classical model ; thus the Three
per Cent. Consol office, which, however, was built
by Sir John Soane, is taken from the ancient
Roman baths, and is 89 feet 9 inches in length
and 50 feet in breadth. The chief cashier's office,
an elegant and spacious ajiartment, is built after
the style of the Temple of the Sun and Moon at
Rome, and measiires 45 feet by 30.

" The fine court which leads into Lothbury pre-
sents a magnificent display of Greek and Roman
architecture. The buildings on the east and west
sides are nearly hidden by open screens of stone,
consisting of a lofty entablature, surmounted by
vases, and resting on columns of the Corinthian
order, the bases of which rest on a double flight of
steps. This part of the edifice was copied from the
beautiful temple of the Sybils, near Tivoli. A noble
arch, after the model of the triumphal arch of Con-
stantine, at Rome, forms the entrance into the
bullion yard."

The old Clearing House of 182 1 is thus de-
scribed : — " In a large room is a table, with as
numerous drawers as there are City bankers, with
the name of each banker on his drawer, having an
aperture to introduce the cheque upon him, whereof
he retains the key.

"A clerk going with a charge of ^99,000, per-
haps, upon all the other bankers, puts the cheques
through their respective apertures into their drawers
at three o'clock. He returns at four, unlocks his
own drawer, and finds the others have collectively
put into his drawer drafts upon him to the amount,
say, of ;^ioo,ooo; consequently he has ;^i,ooo,
the difference, to pay. He searches for another,
who has a larger balance to receive, and gives him
a memorandum for this ^i,coo; he, for another;
so that it settles with two, who frequently, with a
very few thousands in bank-notes, settle millions
bought and sold daily in London, without the im-
mense repetition of receipts and payments that
would otherwise ensue, or the immense increase of
circulating medium that would be otherwise neces-
sary."

The illustration on page 475 represents the ap-
pearance of the present Clearing House. The
business done at this establishment daily is enor-
mous, amounting to something like ;^i 50,000,000
each day.

" All the sovereigns," says Mr. Wills, " returned
from the banking-houses are consigned to a secluded
cellar ; and, when you enter it, you will possibly
fancy yourself on the premises of a clock-maker
who works by steam. Your attention is speedily
concentrated on a small brass box, not'larger than
an eight-day pendule, the works of which are im-

Bank of England.]

BANK NOTES AND BANK DIVIDENDS.

471

pelled by steam. This is a self-acting weighing
machine, which, with unerring precision, tells which
sovereigns are of standard weight, and which are
light, and of its own accord separates the one from
the other. Imagine a long trough or spout — half
a tube that has been split into two sections — of
such a semi-circumference as holds sovereigns edge-
ways, and of sufficient length to allow of two hun-
dred of them to rest in that position one against
another. The trough thus charged is fi.xed slopingly
upon the machine, over a little table, as big as the
plate of an ordinary sovereign-balance. The coin
nearest to the Lilliputian platform drops upon it,
being pushed forward by the weight of those behind.
Its own weight presses the table down ; but how
far down ? Upon that hangs the whole merit and
discriminating power of the machine. At the back
and on each side of this small table, two little
hammers move by steam backwards and forwards
at different elevations. If the sovereign be full
weight, down sinks the table too low for the higher
hammer to hit it, but the lower one strikes the edge,
and off the sovereign tumbles into a receiver to the
left. The table pops up again, receiving, perhaps,
a light sovereign, and the higher hammer, having
always first strike, knocks it into a receiver to the
right, time enough to escape its colleague, which,
when it comes forward, has nothing to hit, and
returns, to allow the table to be elevated again.
In this way the reputation of thirty-three sovereigns
is established or destroyed every minute. The light
weights are taken to a clipping machine, slit at the
rate of two hundred a minute, weighed in a lump,
the balance of deficiency charged to the banker
from whom they were received, and sent to the
Mint to be re-coined. Those which have passed
muster are re-issued to the public. The inventor
of this beautiful little detector was Mr. Cotton, a
former Governor. The comparatively few sove-
reigns brought in by the general public are weighed
in ordinary scales by the tellers."

The Bank water-mark — or, more properly, the
wire-mark — is obtained by twisting wires to the
desired form or design, and sticking them on the
face of the mould ; therefore the design is above the
level face of the mould by the thickness of the wires
it is composed of. Hence the pulp, in settling down
on the mould, must of necessity be thinner on the
wire design than on the other parts of the sheet.
When the water has run oft" through the sieve-like
face of the mould, the new-born sheet of paper is
"couched," the mould gently but firmly pressed
upon a blanket, to which the spongy sheet clings.
Sizing is a subsequent process, and, when dry, the
water-mark is plainly discernible, being, of course,

transparent where the substance is thinnest. The
paper is then dried, and made uj) into reams of
500 sheets each, ready for press. The water-mark
in the notes of the Bank of England is secured to
that establishment by virtue of a special Act of
Parliament. It is scarcely necessary to infonn
the reader that imitation of anything whatever con-
nected with a bank-note is an extremely unsafe
experiment .

This curious sort of paper is unique. There is
nothing like it in the world of sheets. Tested by
the toucli, it gives out a crisp, crackling, shaqj
music, which resounds from no otiier quires. To
the eye it shows a colour belonging neither to blue-
wove, nor yellow-wove, nor cream-laid, but a white,
like no other white, either in paper and pulp. The
three rough fringy edges are called the "deckelled''
edges, being the natural boundary of the pulp when
first moulded ; the fourth is left smooth by the
knife, which eventually cuts the tv\'o notes in twain.
This paper is so thin that, when printed, there is
much difficulty in making erasures ; yet it is so
strong, that "a water-leaf" (a leaf before the appli-
cation of size) will support thirty-six pounds, and,
with the addition of one grain of size, will hold
half a hundredweight, without tearing. Yet the
quantity of fibre of which it consists is no more than
eighteen grains and a half

Dividend day at the Bank has been admirably
described, in the wittiest manner, by a modern
essayist \\\ Household Words: — "Another public
creditor," says the writer, " appears in the shape
of a drover, with a goad, who has run in to
present his claim during his short visit from
Essex. Near him are a lime-coloured labourer,
from some wharf at Bankside, and a painter who
has left his scaffolding in tiie neighbourhood during
his dinner hour. Next come several widows — some
florid, stout, and 30ung ; some lean, yellow, and
careworn, followed by a gay-looking lady, in a
showy dress, who may have obtained her share of
the national debt in another way. An old man,
attired in a stained, rusty, black suit, crawls in,
supported by a long staff", like a weary pilgrim
who has at last reached the golden Mecca. Those
who are drawing money from the accumulation of
their hard industry, or their patient self-denial, can ^
be distinguished at a glance from those who are
receiving the proceeds of unexpected and unearned
legacies. The first have a faded, anxious, almost
disappointed look, while the second are sprightly,
laughing, and observant of their companions.

" Towards the hour of noon, on the first day of
the quarterly payment, the crowd of national credi-
tors becomes more dense, and is mixed up with sub-

472

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Bank of England.

stantial capiulists in high check neckties, double-
breasted waistcoats, curly-rimmed hats, narrow
trousers, and round-toed boots. Parties of thin,
limp, damp-smelling women, come in with mouldy
umbrellas and long, chimney-cowl-shaped bonnets,
made of greasy black silk, or threadbare black
velvet — the worn-out foshions of a past generation.
Some go about their business in confidential pairs ;
some in company with a trusted maid-servant as
fossilised as themselves ; some under the guidance

the Rotunda, where there are two high-backed
leathern chairs, behind the shelter of which, with
a needle and thread, they stitch the money into
some secret part of their antiquated garments. The
two private detective officers on duty generally
watch these careful proceedings with amusement
and interest, and are looked upon by the old fund-
holders and annuitants as highly dangerous and
suspicious characters."

Among the curiosities shown to visitors are the

"JONATHAN'S." From a J! Old Sketch.

of eager, ancient-looking girl-children; while some
stand alone in corners, auspicious of help or obser-
vation. One national creditor is unwilling, not
only that the visitors shall know what amount her
country owes her, but also what particular funds
she holds as security. She stands carelessly in the
centre of the Warrant Oflice, privately scanning the
letters and figures nailed all round the walls, which
direct the applicant at what desk to apply ; her
long tunnel of a bonnet, while it conceals her face,
moves with the guarded action of her head, like
the tube of a telescope when the astronomer is
searching for a lost planet. Some of these timid
female creditors, when their litrte claim has been
satisfied (for ;^i,ooo in the Consols only pro-
duces £,■] los. a quarter^, retire to an archway in

Bank parlour, the counting-room, and the printing-
room; the albums containing original ^i,ooo
notes, signed by various illustrious persons ; and
the Bank-note library, now containing ninety mil-
lion notes that have been cancelled during the last
seven years. There is one note for a million ster-
ling, and a note for ^25 that had been out in
years.

In the early part of the century, when " the
Green Man," " the Lady in Black," and other oddi-
ties notorious for some peculiarity of dress, were
well known in the City, the " White Lady of
Threadneedle Street " • was a daily visitor to the
Bank of England. She was, it is said, the sister
of a poor young clerk who had forged the signa-
ture to a transfer-warrant, and who was hung in

Stock Exchange.]

CHANGE ALLEY.

4?:?

1809. She had been a needle-worker for an amiy
contractor, and hved with her brother and an old
aunt in Windmill Street, Finsbury. Her mind be-
came affected at her brother's disgraceful death,
and every day after, at noon, she used to cross the
Rotunda to the pay-counter. Her one unvarying

question was, " Is my brother, Mr. Frederick, here
to-day?" The invariable answer was, " No, miss,
not to-day." She seldom remained above five
minutes, and her last words always were, " Give
my love to him when he returns. I will call to-
morrow."

CHAPTER XLL
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

The Kingdom of Change Alley — A William III. Router — Stock Exchange Tricks — Bulls and B:ars— Thomas Guy, the Hospital Founder— Sir
John Barnard, tl*.e "Great Commoner" — Sampson Gideon, the famous Jew Broker — Alexander Kordycc — A cruel Quaker Criticism — Stock-
brokers and Longevity — The Stock Exchange in 1795 — The Money Articles in the London Papers— The Case of Benjamin Walsh, M, F. —
The De Berenger Conspiracy — Lord Cochrane unjustly accused — "Ticket Pocketing" — System of Business at the Stock Exchange —
" Popgun John " — Nathan Rothschild— Secrecy of his Operations— Rothschild outdone by Stratagem — Grotesque Sketch of Rothschild —
Abraham Goldsmid — Vicissitudes of the Stock Exchange — The Spanish Panic of 1835 — The Railway Mania — Ricardo's Golden Rides — A
Clerical Intruder in Capel Court — Amusements of Stockbrokers — Laws of the Stock Exchange -The Pigeon Express— The " Alley Man " —
Purchase of Stock — Emiitent Members of the -Stock Exchange.

The Royal Exchange, in the reign of William HL,
being found vexatiously thronged, the money-
dealers, in 1698, betook themselves to Change Alley,
then an unappropriated area. A writer of the
period says : — " The centre of jobbing is in the
kingdom of 'Change Alley. You may go over its
limits in about a minute and a half. Stepping out
of Jonathan's into the Alley, you turn your face full
south ; moving on a few paces, and then turning to
the east, you advance to Garraway's ; from thence,
going out at the other door, you go on, still east,
into Birchin Lane ; and then, halting at the Sword-
blade Bank, you immediately face to the north,
enter Cornhill^ visit two or three petty provinces
there on your way to the west ; and thus, having
boxed your compass, and sailed round the stock-
jobbing globe, you turn into Jonathan's again."

Sir Henry Furnese, a Bank director, was the
Renter of those times. He paid for constant
despatches from Holland, Flanders, France, and
Germany. His early intelligence of every battle,
and especially of the fall of Namur, swelled his
profits amazingly. King ^Villiam gave him a
diamond ring as a reward for early information ;
yet he condescended to fabricate news, and his
plans for influencing the funds were probably the
types of similar modem tricks. If Furnese wished
to buy, his brokers looked gloomy ; and, the alarm
spread, completed their bargains. In this manner
prices were lowered four or five per cent, in a few
hours. The Jew Medina, we are assured, granted
Marlborough an annuity of ^6,000 for permission
to attend his campaigns, and amply repaid himself
by the use of the early intelligence he obtained.

When, in 1715, says " Aleph," the Pretender
landed in Scotland, after the dispersion of his forces,
a carriage and six was seen in the road near Perth,

apparently destined for London. Letters reached
the metropolis announcing the capture of the dis-
I comfited Stuart ; the funds rose, and a large profit
j was realised by the trick. Stock-jobbers must have
been highly prosperous at that period, as a Quaker,
named Quare, a watchmaker of celebrity, who had
made a large fortune by money speculations, had
for his guests at his daughter's wedding-feast the
famous Duchess of Marlborough and the Princess
of Wales, who attended with 300 quality visitors.

During the struggle between the old and new
East India Companies, boroughs were sold openly
in the Alley to their respective partisans ; and in
1720 Parliamentary seats came to market there as
commonly as lottery tickets. Towards the close of
Anne's reign, a well-dressed horseman rode furiously
down the Queen's Road, loudly proclaiming her
Majesty's demise. The hoax answered, the funds
falling with ominous alacrity ; but i t was observed,
that while the Christian jobbers kept aloof. Sir
Manasseh Lopez and the Hebrew brokers bought
readily at the reduced rate.

The following extracts from Gibber's play of The
Refusal; or, the Ladies' Philosophy, produced in
1720, show the antiquity of the terms "bull" and
" bear." This comedy abounds in allusions to the
doings in 'Change Alley, and one of the characters,
Sir Gilbert Wrangle, is a South Sea director : —

Granger (to Willing, 'who has been boasting of his gain) ;
And all this out of 'Change Alley ?

IVilling: Every shilling, sir; all out of stocks, puts, bulls,
shams, bears and bubbles.

And again : —

There (in the Alley) you'll see a duke dangling after a
director ; here a peer and a 'prentice haggling for an eighth ;
there a Jew and a parson making up difiVrenccs; there a
young woman of quality buying bears of a Quaker; and there
an old one selliuL' refusals to a lieutenant of grenadiers.

474

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Stock Exchange.

The following is from an old paper, dated July
15th- 1773: "Yesterday the brokers and others
at 'Nert- Jonathan's' came to a resolution, that
instead of its being called 'New Jonathan's,' it
should be called ' The Stock E.xchange,' which is
to be wrote over the door. The brokers then

to excellent account, and soon led him to a far
more profitable tratttc in those tickets with which,
from the time of Charles IL, our seamen were re-
munerated. They were paid in paper, not readily
convertible, and were forced to part with their
wages at any discount which it pleased the money-

CAPEL COURT.

collected sixpence each, and christened the House
with punch."

One of the great stockbrokers of Queen Anne's
reign was Thomas Guy, tlie founder of one of the
noblest hospitals in the world, who died in 1724.
He was the son of a lighterman, and for many
years stood behind a counter and sold books.
Acquiring a small amount of ready cash, he was
tempted to employ it in Chanc:e .\llev : it turned

lenders to fix. Guy made large purciiases in these
tickets at an immense reduction, and by such not
very creditable means, with some windfalls during
the South Sea agitation, he realised a fortune of
^500,000. Half a million was then almost a
fabulous sum, and it was constantly increasing,
owing to his penurious habits. He died at the
age of eighty-one, leaving by will ;^240,ooo to the
hospital which bears his name. His body lay in

Stock Exchange.)

STOCK EXCHANGE CELEBRITIES.

47 S

state at Mercers' Chapel, and was interred in the
asylum he raised, where, ten years after his death,
a statue was erected to his memory.

Sir John Barnard, a great opponent of stock-
brokers, proposed, in 1737, to reduce the interest
on the National Debt from four to three per cent.,
the public being at liberty to recei\e their principal

monly denominated the "great commoner." Of
the stock-jobbers he always sjjoke widi supreme
contempt ; in return, they hated him most cordially.
On the money market it was not unusual to hear
the merchants inquire, " What does Sir John say
to this? A\'hat is Sir John's opinion?" He re-
fused the ])ost of Chancellor uf the l'l\che(|uer in

THE CLKARING HOUSE.

in full if they preferred. This anticipation of a
modern financial change was not adopted. At this
period, ^10,000,000 were held by foreigners in
British funds. In 1750, the reduction from four
to three per cent, interest on the funded debt was
etifecttvl, and though much clamour followed, no
reasonable ground for complaint was alleged, as
the measure was very cautiously carried out. .Sir
J ohn Barnard, the Peel of a bygone age, was com-

1746, and from the moment his statue was set up
in Gresham's ?"xchange he would never enter the
building, but carried on his monetary aflairs out-
side. The Barnard blood still warms the veins of
some of our wealthiest commercial magnates, sine j
his son married the daughter of a capitahst, known in
the City as " the great banker. Sir John Hankey.''

Sampson Gideon, the famous Jew broker, died
in 1763. Some of his shrewd sayings are pre-

476

OLD AND NFAV LONDON.

[Stock E.\change.

served. Take a specimen : " Never grant a life
annuity to an old woman ; they wither, but they
never die." If the proposed annuitant coughed,
Ciideon called out, " Ay, ay, you may cough, but
it shan't save you six months' purchase ! " In one
of his dealings with Snow, a banker alluded to by
Dean Swift, Snow lent Gideon ;^2o,ooo. The
" Forty-five " followed, and the banker forwarded
a whining epistle to him speaking of stoppage,
bankruptcy, and concluding the letter with a pas-
sionate request for his money. Gideon procured
2i,ooo bank-notes, rolled them round a phial of
hartshorn, and thus mockingly repaid the loan.
Gideons fortune was made by the advance of the
rebels towards London. Stocks fell awfully, but
hastening to "Jonathan's," he bought all in the
market, spending all his cash, and pledging his
name for more. The Pretender retreated, and the
sagacious Hebrew became a millionaire. Mr.
Gideon had a sovereign contempt for fine clothes ;
an essayist of the day \\Tites, " Neither Guy nor
Gideon ever regarded dress." He educated his
children in the Christian faith; "but," said he,
" I'm too old to change." " Gideon is dead," says
one of his biograpliers, "worth more than the whole
land of Canaan. He has left the reversion of all
his milk and honey — after his son and daughter,
and their children — to the Duke of Devonshire,
without insisting on his assuming his name, or being
circumcised ! " His views must have been liberal,
for he left a legacy of ;^2,ooo to the Sons of the
Clerg)', and of ^i,ooo to the London Hospital.
He also gave ^i,ooo to the synagogue, on con-
dition of having his remains interred in the Jewish
burying-place.

In 1772, the occurrence of some Scotch failures
led to a Change-Alley panic, and the downfall of
Alexander Fordyce, who, for years, had been the
most thriving jobber in London. He was a hosier
in Aberdeen, but came to London to improve
his fortunes. The money game was in his favour.
He was soon able to purchase a large estate. He
built a church at his private cost, and spent
thousands in trying to obtain a seat in Parliament.
IVIarrying a lady of title, on whom he made a
liberal settlement, he bought several Scotch laird-
ships, endowed an hospital, and founded several
charities. But the lease of his property was short.
His speculations suddenly grew desperate ; hope-
less niin ensued ; and a great number of capitalists
were involved in his fall. The consternation was
extreme, nor can we wonder, since his bills, to the
amount of ^4,000,000, were in circulation. He
earnestly sought, but in vain, for pecuniary aid.
The Bank refused it, and when he applied for help

to a wealthy Quaker, " Friend Fordyce," was the
answer, " I have known many men ruined by two
dice, but I will not be ruined, by Four-dice^

In 1785, a stockbroker, named Atkinson, pro-
bably from the " North Countree," speculated enor-
mously, but skilfully, we must suppose, for he
realised a fortime of ^500,000 His habits were
eccentric. At a friend's dinner party he abruptly
turned to a lady who occupied the next chair,
saying, " If you, madam, will entrust me with
_;^i,ooo for three years, I will employ it advan-
tageously." The speaker was well known, and his
offer accepted ; and at the end of the three years,
to the very day, Atkinson called on the lady with
;,^io,ooo, to which, by his adroit management, her
deposit had increased.

In general (says "Aleph," in the City Press), a
stock-jobber's pursuits tend to shorten life ; violent
excitement, and the constant alternation of hope
and fear, wear out the brain, and soon lead to
disease or death. Yet instances of great longevity
occur in this class : John Rive, after many active
years in the Alley, retired to the Continent, and
died at the age of 118.

The author of "The Bank Mirror" (circa 1795)
gives a graphic description of the Stock Ex-
change of that period. " The scene opens," he
says, "about twelve, with the call of the prices
of stock, the shouting out of names, the recital
of news, &c., much in the following manner: —
'A mail come in — What news? what news? —
Steady, steady — Consols for to-morrow — Here,
Consols ! — You old Timber-toe, have you got any
scrip } — Private advices from — A wicked old peer
in disguise sold — What do you do ? — Here, Consols !
Consols ! — Letters from — A great house has stopt —
Payment of the Five per Cents commences — Across
the Rhine — The Austrians routed — The French
pursuing ! — Four per Cents for the opening ! — Four
per Cents — Sir Sydney Smith exchanged for — Short
Annuities — Shorts ! Shorts ! Shorts ! — A messenger
extraordinary sent to — Gibraltar fortifying against —
A Spanish fleet seen in — Reduced Annuities for to-
morrow — I'm a seller of — Lame ducks waddUng —
Under a cloud hanging over — The Cape of Good
Hope retaken by — Lottery tickets I — Here, tickets !
tickets ! tickets ! —The Archduke Charles of Austria
fled into — India Stock 1 — Clear the way, there,
Moses ! — Reduced Annuities for money ! — I'm a
buyer — Reduced ! Reduced ! {Rattles spring!)
>Vhat a d — d noise you make there with the rattles !
— Five per Cents ! — I'm a seller i^Five per Cents !
Five per Cents ! — The Frencli in full march for —
The Pope on his knees — following the direction of
his native meekness into— Consols ! Consols ! —

Stoclc Exchange.]

STOCK-EXCHANGE ANECDOTES.

477

Smoke the old girl in silk shoes there ! Madam,
ilo you want a broker? — Four per Cents — The Dutch
fleet skulked into — Short Annuities 1 — -The P'rench
army retreating ! — The Austrians pursuing ! — Con-
sols ! Consols ! Bravo ! — Who's afraid ? — Up they
go ! up they go ! — ' De Empress de Russia dead !'
— You lie, Mordecai ! I'll stuff your mouth with
pork, you dog ! — Long Annuities ! Long Annuities !
Knock that fellow's hat off, there ! — He'll waddle,
to-morrow — Here, Long Annuities ! Short Annui-
ties ! — Longs and Shorts ! — The Prince of Condtf
fled ! — Consols 1 — The French bombarding Frank-
fort ! — Reduced Annuities — Down they go ! down
they go I^You, Levi, you're a thief, and I'm a
gentleman — Step to Garraway's, and bid Isaacs
come here — Bank Stock ! — Consols ! — Give me thy
hand, Solomon !— Didst thou not hear the guns
fire ? — Noble news ! great news ! — Here, Consols !
St. Lucia taken! — St. Vincent taken! — French
fleets blocked up ! English fleets triumphant !
Bravo ! Up we go ! up, up, up ! — Imperial An-
nuities ! Imperial ! Imperial ! — Get out of my
sunshine, Moses, you d — d little Israelite ! —
Consols ! Consols ! &c.' . . . The noise of
the screech-owl, the howling of the wolf, the bark-
ing of the mastiff, the grunting of the hog, the
braying of the ass, the nocturnal wooing of the cat,
the hissing of the snake, the croaking of toads,
frogs, and grasshoppers — all these in unison could
not be more hideous than the noise which these
beings make in the Stock Exchange. And as
several of them get into the Bank, the beadles are
provided with rattles, which they occasionally spring,
to drown their noise and give the fair purchaser or
seller room and opportunity to transact their busi-
ness ; for that part of the Rotunda to which the
avenue from Bartholomew Lane leads is often so
crowded with them that people cannot enter."

About 1799, the shares of this old Stock E.\.-
change having fallen into few hands, they boldly
attempted, instead of a sixpenny diurnal admission
to every person presenting himself at the bar, to
make it a close subscription-room of ten guineas
per annum for each member, and thereby to shut
out all petty or irregular traffickers, to increase the
revenues of this their monopolised market. A
violent democracy revolted at this imposition and
invasion of the rights, privileges, and immunities of
a public market for the public stock. They pro-
posed to raise 263 shares of ^50 each, creating a
fund of ;^ 1 3, 1 50 wherewith to build a new, unin-
fluenced, unaristocraticised, free, open market.
Those shares were never, as in the old conventicle,
to condense into a few hands, for fear of a dread
aristocracy returning. Mendoza's boxing-room, the

debating-forum up Capel Court, and buildings con^
tiguous with the freehold site, were purchased, and
the foundation-stone was laid for this temple, to be,
when completed, consecrated to free, open traffic.

In 1805 Ambrose Charles, a Bank clerk, pub-
licly charged the Earl of Moira, a cabinet minister,
with using oflicial intelligence to aid him in specu-
lating in the funds. The Premier was compelled
to investigate the charge, but no truthful evidence
could be adduced, and the falsehood of his alle-
gations was made apparent.

Mark Sprat, a remarkable speculator, died in 1808.
He came to London with small means, but getting
an introduction to the Stock Exchange, was wonder-
fully successful. In 1799 he contracted for the
Lottery ; and in 1800 and the three following years
he was foremost among those who contracted for the
loans. During Lord Melville's trial, he was asked
whether he did not act as banker for members of
both houses. " I never do business with privi-
leged persons !" was his reply, which might have
referred to the following fact : — A broker came
to Sprat in great distress. He had acted largely
for a principal who, the prices going against him,
refused to make ui) his losses. " Who was the
scoundrel ?" "A nobleman of immense property."
Sprat volunteered to go with him to his dishonest
debtor. The great man coolly answered, it was
not convenient to pay. The broker declared that
unless the account was settled by a fixed hour next
day, his lordship would be posted as a defaulter.
Long before the time appointed the matter was
arranged, and Sprat's friend rescued from ruin.

The history of the money articles in the London
papers is thus given by the author of " The City."
In 1809 and 18 10 (says the writer), the papers
had commenced regularly to publish the prices of
Consols and the other securities then in the market,
but the list was merely furnished by a stockbroker,
who was allowed, as a privilege for his services, to
append his name and address, thereby receiving
the advantages of an advertisement without haxing
to pay for it. A further improvement was eiifected
by inserting small paragraphs, giving an outline of
e\ents occurring in relation to City matters, but
these occupied no acknowledged position, and
only existed as ordinary intelligence. However,
from 18 10 up to 181 7, considerable changes took
place in the arrangements of the several daily
journals ; and a new era almost commenced in City
life with the numerous companies started on the
joint-stock principle at the more advanced period,
and then it was that this department appears to
have received serious attention from the heads of
the leading journals,

47S

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Stock Exchange.

The description of matter comprised in City
articles has not been known in its present form
more than fifty jears. There seems a douljt
whether they first originated with the Times or the
HeraU. Opinion is b)- some parties given in
favour of the last-mentioned paper. Whichever
establishment may be entitled to the praise for
commencing so useful a compendium of City news,
one thing appears very certain — viz., that no sooner
was it adopted by the one paper, than the other
followed closely in the line chalked out. The
regular City article appears only to have had exist-
ence since 1824-25, when the first effect of that
over-speculating period was felt in the insolvency
of public companies, and the breakage of banks.
Contributions of this description had been made
and published, as already noticed, in separate para-
graphs throughout the papers as early as 1811 and
1812 ; but these took no very prominent position
till the more important period of the close of the
war, and the declaration of peace with Europe.

In 1811, the case of Benjamin Walsh, M.P., a
member of the Stock Exchange, occasioned a pro-
digious sensation. Sir Thomas Plomer employed
him as his broker, and, buying an estate, found it
necessary to sell stock. \\'alsh advised him not to
sell directly, as the funds were rising ; the deeds
were not prepared, and the advice was accepted.
Soon after, Walsh said the time to sell was come,
for the funds would quickly fall. The money
being realised, A\'alsli recommended the purchase
of exchequer bills as a good investment. Till the
cash was wanted. Sir Thomas gave a cheque for
;^2 2,000 to Walsh, who undertook to lodge the
notes at Gosling's. In the evening he brought an
acknowledgment for ^6,000, promising to make
up the amount next day. Sir Thomas called at his
bankers, and found that a cheque for ;^i 6,000 had
been sent, but too late for presentation, and in the
morning the cheque was refused. In fact, Walsh
had disposed of the whole ; giving ^^ 1,000 to his
broker, purchasing ^i 1,000 of American stock, and
buying ^5,000 worth of Portuguese doubloons.
He was tried and declared guilty ; but certain legal
difficulties were interposed ; the judges gave a
favourable decision ; he was released from New-
gate, and formally expelled from the House of
Commons. Such crimes seem almost incredible,
for such culprits can have no chance of escape ;
as, even when the verdict of a jury is favourable,
their character and position must be absolutely and
hopelessly lost.

In these comparatively steady-going times, the
funds often remain for months with little or no
variation ; but during the last years of the French

war, a difference of eight or even ten per cent, might
happen in an hour, and scripholders might realise
eighteen or twenty per cent, by the change in the
loans they so eagerly sought. From what a fearful
load of ever-increasing expenditure the nation was
relieved by the peace resulting from the battle of
Waterloo, may be judged from the fact that the
decrease of Government charges was at once de-
clared to exceed ;^2, 000,000 per month.

One of the most extraordinary Stock Exchange
conspiracies ever devised was that carried out by
De Berenger and Cochrane Johnstone in 18 14. It
was a time when Bonaparte's military operations
against the allies had depressed the funds, and
great national anxiety prevailed. The conspiracy
was dramatically carried out. On the 21st of
February, 1824, about one a.m., a violent knocking
was heard at the door of the " Ship Inn," then the
principal hotel of Dover. On the door being
opened, a person in richly embroidered scarlet
uniform, wet with spray, announced himself as
Lieutenant-Colonel De Bourg, aide-de-camp of
Lord Cathcart. He had a star and silver medals
on his breast, and wore a dark fur tra-s'elling cap,
banded with gold. ' He said he had been brought
over by a French vessel from Calais, the master of
which, afraid of touching at Dover, had landed him
about two miles oft", along the coast. He was the
bearer of important news — the allies had gained
a great victory and had entered Paris. Bonaparte
had been overtaken by a detachment of Sachen's
Cossacks, who had slain and cut him into a
thousand pieces. General Platoff had saved Paris
from being reduced to ashes. The white cockade
was worn e\erywhere, and an immediate peace
was now certain. He immediately ordered out a
post-chaise and four, but first wrote the news to
Admiral Foley, the port-admiral at Deal. The
letter reached the admiral about four a.m., but the
morning proving foggy, the telegraph would not
work. Oft" dashed De Bourg (really De Berenger,
an adventurer, afterwards a livery-stable keeper),
throwing napoleons to the post-boys every time he
changed horses. At Bexley Heath, finding the
telegraph could not have worked, he moderated
his pace and spread the news of the Cossacks
fighting for Napoleon's body. At the Marsh Gate,
Lambeth, he entered a hackney coach, telling the
post-boys to spread the news on their return. By
a little after ten, the rumours reached the Stock
Exchange, and the funds rose ; but on its being
found that the Lord Mayor had had no intelli-
gence, they soon went down again.

In the meantime other artful confederates were
at work. The same day, about an hour before

Stock Exchange.''

SOME MYSTERIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

479

daylight, two men, dressed as foreigners, landed
from a six-oar galley, and called on a gentleman of
Northfleet, and handed him a letter from an old
friend, begging him to take the bearers to London,
as they had great public news to communicate ;
they were accordingly taken. About twelve or
one the same afternoon, three persons (two of
whom were dressed as French officers) drove
slowly over London Bridge in a post-chaise, the
horses of which were bedecked with laurel. The
officers scattered billets to the crowd, announcing
the death of Napoleon and the fall of Paris.
They then paraded through Cheapside and Fleet
Street, passed over Blackfriars Bridge, drove rapidly
to the Marsh Gate, Lambeth, got out, changed their
cocked hats for round ones, and disappeared as
De Bourg had done.

The funds once more rose, and long bargains
were made ; but still some doubt was felt by the
less sanguine, as the ministers as yet denied all
knowledge of the news. Hour after hour passed
by, and the certainty of the falsity of the news
gradually developed itself. "To these scenes of
joy," says a witness, " and of greedy e.xpectations
of gain, succeeded, in a few hours, disappointment
and shame at having been gulled, the clenching of
fists, the grinding of teeth, the tearing of hair, all
the outward and visible signs of those inward
commotions of disappointed avarice in some, con-
sciousness of ruin in others, and in all boiling
revenge." A committee was appointed by the
Stock Exchange to track out the conspiracy, as
on the two days before Consols and Omnium, to
the amount of ^826,000, had been purchased by
persons implicated. Because one of the gang had
for a blind called on the celebrated Lord Coch-
rane, and because a relation of his engaged in the
affair had purchased Consols for him, that he might
unconsciously benefit by the fraud, the Tories,
eager to destroy a bitter political enemy, con-
centrated all their rage on as high-minded, pure,
and chivalrous a man as ever trod a frigate's deck.
He was tried June 21, 1817, at the Court of
Queen's Bench, fined ^1,000, and sentenced
ignominiously to stand one hour in the pillory.
This latter part of his sentence the Government
was, however, afraid to carry out, as Sir Francis
Burdett had declared that if it was done, he would
stand beside his friend on the scaffold of shame.
To crown all, Cochrane's political enemies had him
stripped of his knighthood, and the escutcheon of
his order disgracefully kicked down the steps of
the chapel in Westminster Abbey. For some
years this true successor of Nelson remained a
branded exile, devoting his courage to the cause

of universal liberty, lost to the country which
he loved so much. In his old age tardy justice
restored to him his unsoiled coronet, and finally
awarded him a grave among her heroes.

The ticket pocketing of 1821 is thus described
by the author of " An Expose of the Mysteries of
the Stock Exchange : "— " Of all the tricks," he
says, "practised against Goldschmidt, the ticket
pocketing scheme was, perhaps, the most iniquitous :
it was to prevent the buying in on a settling day the
balance of the account, and to defeat the consequent
rise, thereby making the real bear a fictitious bull
account. To give the reader a conception of this,
and of the practices as well as the interior of the
Stock Exchange, the following attempted delinea-
tion is submitted : — The doors open before ten, and
at the minute of ten the spirit-stirring rattle grates
to action. Consols are, suppose, 69 to 6gJ — that
is, buyers at the lower and sellers at the higher
price. Trifling nianojuvres and puffing up till
twelve, as neither party wish the Government
broker to buy under the highest price ; the sinking-
fund purchaser being the point of diurnal altitude,
as the period before a loan is the annually de-
pressed point of price, when the Stock Exchange
have the orbit of these revolutions under their own
control.

" At twelve the broker mounts the rostrum and
opens : ' Gentlemen, I am a buyer of ^60,000
Consols for Government, at 69.' ' At ^th, sir,' the
jobbers resound ; ' ten thousand of me — five of
me — two of me,' holding up as many fingers.
Nathan, Goldschmidt's agent, says, ' You may
have them all of me at your own bidding, 69.'
In ten minutes this commission is earned from the
public, and this state sinking-fund joint stock
jobbed. Nathan is hustled, his hat and wig thrown
upon the commissioner's sounding-board, and he
must stand bare-headed until the porter can bring
a ladder to get it down. Out squalls a ticket-
carrier, 'Done at J;' again, 'At |, all a-going;'
and the contractors must go, too; they have served
the commissioners at 69, when the market was full
one-eighth. All must come to market before next
omnium payment ; they cannot keep it up (yet this
operation might have suited the positions of the
market). Nathan cries out, ' Where done at |th's ?'
'Here — there, there, there!' Mr. Doubleface,
going out at the door, meets Mr. Ambush, a
brother bear, with a wink, 'Sir, they are fths, I
believe, sellers ; you may have ;o 2,000 thereat, and
;^io,ooo at fths.' This is called fiddling: it is
allowable to jobbers thus to bring the turn to -r'jth,
or a 32nd, but not to brokers, as thereby the public
would not be fleeced Jth, to the house benefit.

4So

OLD AND .NEW LONOi'N'.

[Stock Kxclian:;c.

' Sir, I would not take tlicm at ', th,' replies Mr.
Ambush. ' Oft'ered at 4'ths and gths,' bawls out an
urchin scout, holding up his face to tiie ceiling,
that by the re-echo his spot may not be dis-
covered."

The system of business at the Stock Exchange
is thus described by an accomiilished writer on the
subject : " Bargains are made in the presence of a
third person. The terms are simply entered in a
pocket-book, but are checked the next day ; and
the jobber's clerk (also a member of the house)
pays or receives the money, and sees that the
securities are correct. There are but three or four
dealers in Exchequer bills. Most members of the
Stock Exchange keep their money in convertible
securities, so that it can be changed from hand to
hand almost at a moment's notice. The brokers
execute the orders of bankers, merchants, and
private individuals : and the jobbers are the \)eT-
sons witii whom they deal. \\'hen the broker
appears in the market, he is at once surrounded
by eager jobbers. One of the cries of the Stock
Exchange is, ' Borrow money ? borrow money?' —
a singular cry to general apprehension, but it of '
course implies that the credit of the borrower
must be first-rate, or his security of the most j
satisfactory nature, and that it is not the principal '
who goes into the market, bu' only the principal's
broker. 'Have you money to lend to-day?' is a
startling ([uestion often asked with perfect fip//-
chalaitce in the Stock Exchange. If the answer
is 'Yes,' the borrower says, 'I want ;£ 10,000
or ;^2o,ooo.' — 'At what security?' is the vital
question that soon follows.

"Another mode of doing business is to conceal ;
the object of the borrower or lender, who asks,
' Uliat are Exchequer?' The answer may be, |
• Forty and fort)-t\vo.' That is, the party addressed |
will buy ^1,000 at 40 shillings, and sell ^'1,000
at 42 shillings. The jobbers cluster round the
broker, who perhaps says, ' 1 must ha\e a price
in ^S,ooo.' If it suits them, they will say, ' Five
with me,' ' Five with me,' ' Five with me,' making '
fifteen; or they will say, 'Ten with me;' and
it is the broker's business to get these parties '
pledged to buy of him at 40, or to sell to him at
42, they not knowing whether he "s a buyer or
a seller. The broker then declares his purpose,
saying, for example, ' Gentlemen, I sell to you
;,£^2o,ooo at 40 ;' and the sum is then appor-
tioned among them. If the money were wanted
only for a month, and the Exchequer market
remained the same during the time, the buyer
would have to give 42 in the market for what
he sold at 40. being the difference between the

buying and the selling price, besides which he
would have to jiay the broker ts. ]ier cent, com-
mission on the sale, and is. per cent, on the pur-
chase, again on the bills, which would make
altogether 4s. per cent. If the object of the broker
be to buy Consols, the jobber offers to buy his
^10,000 at 96, or to sell him that amount at
96J, \\ithout being at all aware w-hich he is
engaging himself to do. The same person may
not know on any particular day w-hether he will
be a borrower or a lender. If he has sold stock,
and has not re-purchased about one or two o'clock
in the day, he would be a lender of money ; but if
he has bought stock, and not sold, he would be a
borrower. Immense sums are lent on condition
of being recalled on the short notice of a few-
hours.''

The uninitiated wonder that any man should
borrow ;£|^i 0,000 or ^20,000 for a day, or at most
a fortnight, when it is liable to be called for at
the shortest notice. The directors of a railway
company, instead of locking up their money, send
the ^12,000 or ;^i 4,000 a week to a broker, to
be lent on jirojaer securities. Persons who pay
large duties to Government at fixed periods, lend
the sums for a week or two. A person intending
to lay out his capital in mortgage or real property,
lends out the sum till he meets with a suitable
offer. The great bankers lend their surplus cash
on the Stock Exchange. A jobber, at the close of
the day, will lend his money at i per cent., rather
than not employ it at all. The extraordinary
fluctuations in the rate of interest even in a single
day are a great temptation to the money-lender
to resort to the Stock Exchange. " Instances
have occurred," says our authority, " when in the
morning everybody has been anxious to lend
money at 4 per cent., when about two o'clock
money has become so scarce that it could with
difficulty be borrowed at 10 per cent. If the
price of Consols be low, persons who are desirous
of raising money will give a high rate of interest
rather than sell stock."

The famous Pop-gun Plot was generally supposed
to have been a Stock Exchange trick. A writer
on stockbroising says : " The Pop-gun Plot, in
Palace Yard, on a memorable occasion of the
King going to the Parliament House, was never
understood or traced home. It is said to have
originated in a Stock Exchange hoax. ' Popgun
Johii ' was at the time a low republican in the
Stock Exchange, and had a house in or near
Palace Yard, from which a missile had been pro-
jected. He subsequently grew rich.''

The journals of that day described the hot

Pio.jk F.xcliaiigcl

TIIK POP-r.i:X PLOT.

481

pursuit by the myrmidons being cooled by a well-
got-up story tlmt tlie fugitive suspected had been
unfortunately drowned ; and in proof, a hat picked
up by a waterman at the Nore was brought wet to
the pohce office, and proved to have belonged to

account ; if sufficient to trip up the contractors,
the better.

While the dupes of the Cato Street conspiracy
were dant^ling before the "debtor's door," the sur-
viving adept of the former plot, from his \illa not

THE PRESENT STOCK EXCHANGE.

the person pursued. The plotter disappeared after
this "drowning" for some months, while the hush-
money and sinister manoeuvres were baffling the
pursuers. Afterwards, the affair dying away, he
reappeared, resuscitated, in the Stock Exchange,
making very little secret of this extraordinary aftair,
and would relate it in ordinary conversation on the
Stock Exchange benches, as a philosophical experi-
ment, not intended to endanger tlie king's life,
but certainly planned to frighten the public, so
as to effect a fall, and realise a profitable bear
41

ten miles from London, was mounting his carriage
to drive to the Stock Exchange, to operate upon
the effect this example might produce in the public
mind, and, consequently, reahsing his now large
portion of funded property.

" If there are any members now of that standing
in the Stock Exchange, they must remember how
artlessly the tale of this philosophical experiment
used to be told by the contriver of it in a year or
two afterwards, in reliance upon Stock Exchange
men's honour and confidence.

4S2

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Stock Exchange.

In the year 1798, Nathan, the third son of Meyer
Ansclm Rothschild, of Frankfort, intimated to his
father that lie would go to l'".ngland, and there com-
mence business. The father knew the intrepidity
of Nathan, and had great confidence in his financial
skill : he interposed, therefore, no difficulties. The
plan was proposed on Tuesday, and on Thursday
it was put into execution.

Nathan was entrusted with ^20,000, and though
perfectly ignorant of the English language, he com-
menced a most gigantic career, so that in a brief
period the above sum increased to the amount of
^60,000. Manchester was his starting-point. He
took a comprehensive survey of its products, and
observed that by proper management a treble
harvest might be reaped from them. He secured
the three profitable trades in his grasp— viz., the
raw material, the dyeing, and the manufacturing —
and was consequently able to sell goods cheaper
than any one else. His profits were immense, and
Manchester soon became too little for his specula-
tive mind. Nevertheless, he Would not have left
it were it not a private pique against one of his
co-religionists, which originated by the dishonour-
ing of a bill which w^as made payable to him, dis-
gusted him with the Manchester community. In
1800, therefore, he quitted Manchester for the
metropolis. With giant strides he progressed in
his prosperity. The confused and insecure state
of the Continent added to his fortune, and con-
tributed to his fame.

The Prince of Hesse Cassel, in flying from the
approach of the republican armies, desired, as he
passed through Frankfort, to store a vast amount
of wealth, in such a manner as might leave him a
chance of recovery after the storm had passed by.
He sought out Meyer Anselm Rothschild, and con-
fided all his worldly possessions to the keeping of
the Hebrew banker. Meyer Anselm, either from
fear of loss or hope of gain, sent the money to
his son Nathan, setded in London, and the latter
thus alluded to this circumstance : " The Prince of
Hesse Cassel gave my father his money ; there
was no time to be lost; he sent it to me. I had
;^6oo,ooo arrive by post unexpectedly ; and I
put it to so good use, that the prince made me a
present of all his wine and linen."

"When the late Mr. Rothschild was alive, if
business," says the author of " The City," " ever
became flat and unprofitable in the Stock Exchange,
the brokers and jobbers generally complained, and
threw the blame upon this leviathan of the money
market. Whatever was wrong, was alwa)s alleged
to be the effects of Mr. Rothschild's operations,
and, according to the views of these parties, he

was either bolstering up, or unnecessarily depress-
ing i)rices for his own object. An anecdote is
related of this great speculator, that hearing on one
occasion that a broker had given very strong ex-
pression to his feelings in the open market on this
subject, dealing out the most deadly anathemas
against the Jews, and consigning them to the most
horrible torments, he sent the broker, through the
medium of another party, an order to sell ;^6oo,ooo
Consols, saying, 'As he always so abuses me, they
will never suspect he is bearing the market on
my account.' Mr. Rothschild employed several
brokers to do his business, and hence there was no
ascertaining what in reality was the tendency of
his operations. While perchance one broker was
buying a certain quantity of stock on the order of
his principal in the market, another at the same
moment would be instructed to sell ; so that it was
only in the breast of the principal to know the
probable result. It is said that J\Irs. Rothschild
tried her hand in speculating, and endeavoured by
all her influence to get at the secret of her
husband's dealings. She, however, failed, and
was therefore not very successful in her ventures.
Long before Mr. Rothschild's death, it was pro-
phesied by many of the brokers that, when the
event occurred, the public would be less alarmed
at the influence of the firm, and come forward
more boldly to engage in stock business. They
have, notwithstanding, been very much mistaken."

The chronicler of the "Stock Exchange" says :
" One cause of Rothschild's success, was the secrecy
with which he shrouded all his transactions, and
the tortuous policy with which he misled those the
most who watched him the keenest. If he pos-
sessed news calculated to make the funds rise, he
would commission the broker who acted on his
behalf to sell half a million. The shoal of men
who usually follow the movements of others, sold
with him. The news soon passed through Capel
Court that Rothschild was bearing the market,
and the funds fell. Men looked doubtingly at
one another ; a general panic spread ; bad news
was looked for ; and these united agencies sunk
the price two or three per cent. This was the
result expected; other brokers, not usually em-
ployed by him, bought all they could at the
reduced rate. By the time this was accomplished
the good news had arrived ; the pressure ceased,
the funds arose instantly, and Mr. Rothschild
reaped his reward."

It sometimes happened that notwithstanding
Rothschild's profound secrecy, he was overcome
by stratagem. The following circumstance, which
was related to Mr. Margoliouth by a person who

Stock rx>:linii;ip ]

ROTHSCHTLn OVERREACHED.

4S3

knew Rothschild well, will illustrate the above
stateiaeiU. When the Hebrew financier lived at
Stamford Hill, there resided opiiosite to him another
very wealthy tlealer in the Stock Exchange, Lucas
by name. The latter returning home one night
at a late hour from a convivial party, observed a
carriage and four standing before Rothschild's gate,
upon wliich lie ordered his own carriage out of
the wa)', and commanded his coachman to await
in readiness his return. Lucas went stealthily and
watched, unobserved, the movements at Rothschild's
gate. He did not lie long in ambush before he
heard some one leaving the Hebrew millionaire's
mansion, and going towards the carriage. He saw
Rothschild, accompanied by two muffled figures,
stej) into the carriage, and heard the word of com-
mand, " To the City." He followed Rothschild's
carriage very closely, but when he reached the top
of the street in which Rothschild's office was
situated, Lucas ordered liis carriage to stop, from
which he stepped out, and proceeded, reeling to
and fro through the street, feigning to be mortally
drunk. He made his way in the same mood as
far as Rothschild's oftice, and sans cercmonic opened
the door, to the great consternation and terror of
the housekeeper, uttering sundry ejaculations in
the broken accents of Bacchus' votaries. Heed-
less of the affrighted housekeeper's remonstrances,
he opened Rothschild's private office, in the same
staggering attitude, and fell down flat on the floor.

Rothschild and his friends became very much
alarmed. Efforts were made to restore and remove
the would-be drunkard, but Lucas was too good an
actor, and was therefore in such a fit as to be unable
to be moved hither or thither. " Should a physician
be sent for?" asked Rothschild. But the house-
keeper threw some cold water into Lucas's face,
and the patient began to breathe a little more natu-
rally, and fell into a sound snoring sleep. He was
covered over, and Rothschild and the strangers pro-
ceeded unsuspectingly to business. The strangers
brought the good intelligence that the affairs in
Spain were all right, respecting which the members
of the Exchange were, for a few days previous, very
apprehensive, and the funds were therefore in a
rapidly sinking condition. The good news could
not, however, in the common course of despatch,
be publicly known for another day. Rothschild
therefore planned to order his brokers to buy up,
cautiously, all the stock that should be in tlie
market by twelve o'clock the following day. He
sent for his principal broker thus early, in order to
entrust him with the important instruction.

The broker was rather tardier than Rothschild's
patience could brook ; he therefore determined to

go himself. As soon as Rothschild was gone,
Lucas began to recover, and by degrees was able
to get up, though distracted, as he said, "with a
violent headache,'' and insisted, in spite of the
housekeeper's expostulations, upon going home.
But Lucas went to his broker, and instnicted him
to buy up all the stock he could get by ten o'clock
the followmg morning. About eleven o'clock Lucas
met Rothschild, and intjuired satirically how he,
Rothschild, was oft' for stock. Lucas won the day,
and Rothschild is said never to have forgiven " the
base, dishonest, and nefarious stratagem."

Yet, with all his hoardings, says Mr. Margoliouth,
Rothschild was by no means a happy man. Dan-
gers and assassinations seemed to haunt his ima-
gination by day and by night, and not without
grounds. Many a time, as he himself said, just
before he sat down to dinner, a note would be put
into his hand, running thus : — " If you do not send
me immediately the sum of five hundred pounds, I
will blow your brains out." He aftected to despise
such threats ; they, nevertheless, exercised a direful
effect upon the millionaire. He loaded his pistols
every night before he went to bed, and put them
beside him. He did not think himself more secure
in his country house than he did in his bed. One
day, while busily engaged in his golden occupation,
two foreign gentlemen were announced aS desirous
to see Baron Rothschild /// propria persona. The
strangers had not the foresight to have the letters
of introduction in readiness. They stood, therefore,
before the Baron in the ludicrous attitude of having
their eyes fixed upon the Hebrew Crcesus, and with
their hands rummaging in large European coat-
pockets. The fervid and excited imagination of
the Baron conjured up a multitudinous array of
conspiracies. Fancy eclipsed his reason, and, in a
fit of excitement, he seized a huge ledger, which he
aimed and hurled at the mustachioed strangers,
calling out, at the same time, for additional physical
force. The astonished Italians, however, were not
long, after that, in finding the important documents
they looked for, which explained all. The Baron
begged the strangers' pardon for the unintentional
insult, and was heard to articulate to himself, " Poor
unhappy me 1 a victim to nervousness and fancy's
terrors I and all because of my money !"

Rothschild's mode of doing business when en-
gaging in large transactions (says Mr. Grant) was
this. Supposing he possessed exclusively, which
he often did, a day or two before it could be gene-
rally known, intelligence of some event, which had
occurred in any part of the Continent, sufficiently
important to cause a rise in the French funds, and
through them on the English funds, he would em-

484

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Stock Exchange.

power the brokers he usually employed to sell out
stock, say to the amount of ^500,000. The news
spread in a moment that Rothschild was selling
out, and a general alarm followed. Every one
apprehended that he had received intelligence from
some foreign part of some important event whicli
would produce a fall in prices. As might, under
such circumstances, be expected, all became sellers
at once. This, of necessity, caused the funds, to
use Stock Exchange phraseology, " to tumble down
at a fearful rate." Next day, when they had fallen,
perhaps, one or two per cent, he would make
purchases, say to the amount of ^1,500,000, taking
<;are, however, to employ a number of brokers
whom he was not in the habit of employing, and
commissioning each to purchase to a certain extent,
and.giving all of them strict orders to preserve
secrecy in the matter. Each of the persons so
employed was, by this means, ignorant of the com-
mission given to the others. Had it been known
the purchases were made by him, there would have
been as great and sudden a rise in the prices as
there had been in the fall, so that he could not
purchase to the intended extent on such advan-
tageous terms. On the third day, perhaps, the
intelligence which had been expected by the jobbers
to be unfavourable anived, and, instead of being so,
turned out to be highly favourable. Prices instan-
taneously rise again, and possibly they may get
one and a-half or even t\vo per cent, higher than
they were when he sold out his ^500,000. He
now sells out, at the advanced price, the entire
^^{^i, 500,000 he had purchased at the reduced prices.
The gains by such extensive transactions, when so
skilfully managed, will be at once seen to be
enormous. By the supposed transaction, assuming
the rise to be two per cent., the gain would be
_;£'35,ooo. But this is not the greatest gain which
the late leviathian of modern capitalists made by
such transactions. He, on more than one occa-
sion, made upwards of ^100,000 on one account.
But though no person during the last twelve or
fifteen years of Rothschild's hfe (says Grant) was
ever able, for any length of time, to compete with
him in the money market, he on several occasions
was, in single transactions, outwitted by the superior
tactics of others. The gentleman to whom I allude
was then and is now the head of one of the largest
private banking establishments in town. Abraham
Montefiore, Rothschild's brother-in-law, was the
principal broker to the great capitalist, and in that
capacity was commissioned by the latter to nego-
tiate with Mr. a loan of ^^i, 500,000. The

security offered by Rothschild was a proportionate
.amount of stock in Consols, which were at that

time 84. This stock was, of course, to be trans-
ferred to the name of the party advancing the
money, Rothschild's object being to raise the jirice
of Consols by carrying so large a quantity out of the
market. The money was lent, and the conditions
of the loan were these — that the interest on the
sum advanced should be at the rate of 4^ per
cent., and that if the price of Consols should chance

to go down to 74, Mr. should have the right

of claiming the stock at 70. The Jew, no doubt,
laughed at what he conceived his own commercial

dexterity in the transaction ; but, ere long, he had
abundant reason to laugh on the wrong side of his
mouth; for, no sooner was the stock poured into the
hand of the banker, than the latter sold it, along
with an immensely large sum which had been pre-
viously standing in his name, amounting altogether
to litde short of ^^3,000,000. But even this was

not all. Mr. also held powers of attorney

from several of the leading Scotch and English
banks, as well as from various private individuals,
who had large property in the funds, to sell stock
on their account. On these powers of attorney he
acted, and at the same time advised his friends to
follow his example. They at once did so, and the
consequence was that the aggregate amount of
stock sold by himself and his friends conjointly
exceeded ^10,000,000. So unusual an extent of
sales, all effected in the shortest possible time,
necessarily drove down the prices. In an incre-
dibly short time they fell to 74; immediately on

which, Mr. claimed of Rothschild his stock

at 70. The Jew could not refuse: it was in the
bond. This climax being reached, the banker
bought in again all the stock he had previously
sold out, and advised his friends to re-purchase
also. They did so ; and the result was, that in a
few weeks Consols reached 84 again, their original
price, and from that to 86. Rothschild's losses
were very great by this transaction ; but they were
by no means equal to the banker's gains, which
could not have been less than ;^3oo,ooo or
^400,000.

The following grotesque sketch of the great
Rothschild is from the pen of a clever anonymous
writer: — "The thing before you," says the author
quoted, "stands cold, motionless, and apparently
speculationless, as the pillar of salt into which
the avaricious spouse of the patriarch was turned ;
and while you start with wonder at what it can
be or mean, you pursue the association, and think
upon the fire and brimstone that were rained
down. It is a human being of no very Apollo-
like form or face : short, squat, with its shoulders
drawn up to its ears, and its hands delved into itg

Stock Exchange.]

A SUCCESSFUL SPECULATION.

485

breeches'-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture
of brick-dust and saffron ; and the texture seems
that of the skin of a dead frog. There is a rigidity
and tension in tlie features, too, wliich would make
you fancy, if you did not see that that were not
the fact, that some one from behind was pinching
it with a pair of hot tongs, and that it were either
afraid or asliamed to tell. Eyes are usually de-
nominated the windows of the soul ; but here you
would conclude that the windows are false ones, or
that there is no soul to look out at them. There
comes not one pencil of light from the interior,
neither is there one scintillation of that which
comes from without reflected in any direction.
The whole puts you in mind of ' a skin to let ;'
and you wonder why it stands upright without at
least something within. By-and-by another figure
comes up to it. It then steps two paces aside, and
the most inquisitive glance that ever you saw, and
a glance more inquisitive than you would ever have
thought of, is drawn out of the erewhile fixed and
leaden eye, as if one were drawing a sword from
a scabbard. The visiting figure, which has the
appearance of coming by accident, and not by
design, stops but a second or two, in the course
of which looks are exchanged which, though you
cannot translate, you feel must be of most impor-
tant meaning. After these, the eyes are sheathed
up again, and the figure resumes its stony posture.
During the morning numbers of visitors come, all
of whom meet with a similar reception, and vanish
in a similar manner ; and last of all the figure
itself vanishes, leaving you utterly at a loss as to
what can be its nature and functions."

Abraham Goldsmid, a liberal and honourable
man, who almost rivalled Rothschild as a specu-
lator, was ruined at last by a conspiracy. Goldsmid,
in conjunction with a banking establishment, had
taken a large Government loan. The leaguers
contri'-ed to produce from the collectors and
receivers of the re\'enue so large an amount of
floating securities — Exchequer Bills and India
Bonds — that the omnium fell to 18 discount.
The result was Goldsmid's failure, and eventually
his suicide. The conspirators purchased omnium
when at its greatest discount, and on the following
day it went up to 3 premium, being then a profit
of about ;^2,ooo,ooo.

Goldsmid seems to have been a kind-hearted
man, not so wholly absorbed in speculation and
self as some of the more greedy and vulgar
members of the Stock Exchange. One day Mr.
Goldsmid observed his favourite waiter at the City
of London Tavern very melancholy and abstracted.
On being pressed, John confessed that he had just

been arrested for a debt of ^55, and that he was
thinking over the misery of his wife and five
children. Goldsmid instantly drew out his cheque-
book, and wrote a cheque for ^100, the sight of
wliich gladdened poor John's heart and brought
tears into his eyes. On one occasion, after a
carriage accident in Somersetshire, Goldsmid was
carried to the house of a poor curate, and there
attended for a fortnight with unremitting kindness.
Six weeks after the millionaire's departure a letter
came from Goldsmid to the curate, saying that,
having contracted for a large Government loan, he
(the writer) had put down the curate's name for
;,£^2o,ooo omnium. The poor curate, supposing
some great outlay was expected from him for this
share in the loan, wrote back to say that he had
not _j{^2o,ooo, or even ;!^2o, in the world. By the
next post came a letter enclosing the curate ;^ 1,5 00,
the profit on selling out the ^20,000 omnium, the
premium having risen since the curate's name had
been put down.

The vicissitudes of the Stock Exchange arc like
those of the gambling-table. A story is related
specially illustrative of the rapid fortunes made in
the old war-time, when the funds ran up and down
every time Napoleon mounted his horse. Mr. E.,
afterwards proprietor of one of the largest estates
in the county of Middlesex, had lost a fortune on
the Stock Exchange, and had, in due course, been
ruthlessly gibbeted on the cruel black board. In a
frenzy, as he passed London Bridge, contemplating
suicide, F. threw the last shilling he had in the
world over the parapet into the water. Just at
that moment some one seized him by the hand.
It was a French ensign. He was full of a great
battle that had been fought (Waterloo), which had
just annihilated Bonaparte, and would restore the
Bourbons. The French ambassador had told him
only an hour before. A gleam of hope, turning the
black board white, arose before the miserable man.
He hurried off to a firm on the Stock Exchange,
and offered most important news on condition that
he should receive half of whatever profits they
might realise by the operation. He told them of
Waterloo. They rushed into the market, and
purchased Consols to a large amount. In the
meantime ¥., sharpened by misfortune, instantly
proceeded to another firm, and made a second
offer, whicli was also accepted. There were two
partners, and the keenest of them whispered the
other not to let F. out of his sight, while he sent
brokers to purchase Consols. He might tell some
one else. launch was then brought in, and the key
turned on them. Presently the partner returned,
red and seething, from the Stock Exchange. Most

486

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Stock Exchange.

unaccountably Consols had gone up 3 per cent.,
and he was afraid to purchase. But F. urged the
importance of the victory, and declared the funds
would soon rise 10 or 12 percent. The partners,
persuaded, made immense purchases. The day
tlie news of Waterloo arrived the funds rose 15
per cent., the greatest rise they were ever known
to experience ; and F.'s share of tlie profits from
the t\vo houses in one day exceeded ^100,000.
He returned next day to the Stock Exchange, and
soon amassed a large fortune ; he then wisely pur-
chased an estate, and left the funds alone for ever.
Some terrible failures occurred in the Stock Ex-
change during the Spanish panic of 1835. A few
facts connected with this disastrous time will serve
excellently to illustrate the effects of such reactions
among the speculators in stocks. A decline of 20
or 30 per cent, in the Peninsular securities within a
week or ten days ruined many of the members.
They, like card houses in a puff of wind, brought
down others ; so that in one short month the greater
part of the Stock Exchange had fallen into diffi-
culties. The failure of principals out of doors, who
had large differences to pay, caused much of this
trouble to the brokers. Men with limited means
had plunged into what they considered a certain
speculation, and when pay-day arrived and the
account was against them, they were obliged to
confess their inability to scrape together the required
funds. For instance, at the time Zumalacarregui
was expected to die, a principal, a person who
could not command more than ^i. 000, " stood,"
as tlie Stock Exchange phrase runs, to make a " pot
of money " by the event. He speculated heavily,
and had the Spanish partisan general good-naturedly
died during the account, the commercial gambler
would have certainly netted nearly ^40,000. The
general, however, obstinately delayed his death till
the next week, and by that time the speculator was
ruined, and all he had sold. l\Liny of the dishonest
speculators whose names figured on the black board
in 1835 had been " bulls " of Spanish stock. When
the market gave way and prices fell, the principals
attempted to put off the evil day, says a wTiter of
the period, by "canying over instead of closing
their accounts." The weather, however, grew only
the more stormy, and at last, when payment could
no longer be evaded, they coolly turned round, and
wth brazen faces refused, although some of them
were able to adjust the balances which their luckless
brokers exhibited agamst them. Now a broker is
obliged either to make good his principal's losses
from his own pocket, or be declared a defaulter
and expelled the Stock Exchange. This rule often
presses heavily, says an authority on the subject, on

honest but not over-opulent brokers, who transact
business for other persons, and become liable if
they turn out either insolvent or rogues. Brokers
are in most cases careful in the choice of principals
if they speculate largely, and often adopt the pru-
dent and very justifiable plan of having a certain
amount of stock deposited in their " strong box ''
as security before any important business is under-
taken. Every principal who dabbles in rickety
stock without a certain reserve as a security is set
down by most men as little better than a swindler.

During the rumours of war which prevailed in
October, 1840, shortly before the fall of the Thiers
administration in France, the fluctuations in Consols
were as much as 4 per cent. The result was great
ruin to si)eculators. The speculators for the rise —
the " bulls," in fact — of ;;£^4oo,ooo Consols sustained
a loss of from ^10,000 to ;^i 5,000, for which
more than one broker found it necessary, for sus-
taining his credit, to pay.

The railway mania produced many changes in
the Stock Exchange. The share market, which
previously had been occupied by only four or five
brokers and a number of small jobbers, now became
a focus of vast business. Certain brokers, it is said,
made ^3,000 or ;^4,ooo a day by their business.
One fortunate man outside the house, ^\•ho held
largely of Churnett Valley scrip before the sanction
of the Board of Trade was procured, sold at the
best price directly the announcement was made, and
netted by that coup j[^2i,ooo. The " Alley men "
wrote letters for shares, and when the allotments
were obtained made some los. on each share.
Some of these " dabblers " are known to have made
only fifty farthings of fifty shares of a railway now
the first in the kingdom. The sellers of letters
used to meet in the Royal Exchange before business
hours, till the beadle had at last to drive them away
to make room for the merchants. There is a story
told of an " Alley man " during the mania con-
triving to sell some rotten shares by bowing to Sir
Isaac Goldsmid in the presence of his victim. Sir
Isaac returned the bow, and the victim at once
believed in the respectability of the gay deceiver.

With the single exception of Mr. David Ricardo,
the celebrated political economist, says Mr. Grant,
there are few names of any literary distinction
connected with the Stock Exchange. Mr. Ricardo
is said to have amassed his immense fortune by a
scrupulous attention to his own golden rules : —
' ' Never refuse an option when you can get it ;
Cut short your losses ;
Let your profits nin on."

By the second rule, which, like the rest, is strictly
technical, Mr. Ricardo meant that jnirchasers of

Stock Exchange.]

RiCARDO'S RULES.

487

)X CIIAXt'.E. {From an Old Print, about 1800. The Figures by Ro'Jilandson ; Aixhitectiire by Kash.)

OLD AND NEW LONDOISf.

[Stock Exchange.

Stock ought to re-sell immediately prices fell. By
the third he meant that when a person held stock
and prices were rising, he ought not to sell until
prices had reached their highest, and were beginning
to fall.

Gentlemen of the Stock Exchange are rough
with intruders. A few years since, says a writer
in the Ci/y Press, an excellent clergyman of my
acquaintance, who had not quite mastered the
Christian philosophy of turning the right cheek to
those who smote the left, had business in the City,
and being anxious to see his broker, strayed into
the Stock Exchange, in utter ignorance of the great
liberty he was committing. Instantly known as
an interloper, he was surrounded and hustled by
some dozen of the members. "What did he
want?" " How dared he to intrude there?"

" I wish to speak with a member, Mr. A ,

and was not aware it was against the rules to enter
the building."

"Then we'll make you aware for the future,"
said a coarse but iron-fisted jobber, prepared to
suit the action to the word.

My friend disengaged himself as far as possible,
and speaking in a calm but authoritative tone,
said, " Sirs, I am quite sure you do not mean
to insult, in my person, a minister of the Church
of England ; but take notice, the first man who
dares to molest me shall feel the weight of my
fist, which is not a light one. Stand by, and let
me leave this inhospitable place." They did stand
by, and he rushed into the street without sustain-
ing any actual violence.

Practical joking, says an habit iic, relieves the ex-
citement of this feverish gambling. The stock-
brokers indulge in practical jokes which would be
hardly excusable in a schoolboy. No member can
wear a new hat in the arena of bulls and bears
without being tormented, and his chapeau irre-
coverably spoiled. A new coat cannot be worn
without peril ; it is almost certain to be ticketed
" Moses and Son — dear at i8s. 6d." The pounce-
box is a formidable missile, and frequently nearly
blinds the unwary. As P. passes K.'s desk, the latter
slily extends his foot in order to trip him up ; and
when K. rises from his stool, he finds his coat-tail
pinned to the cushion, and is likely to lose a
portion of it before he is extricated. Yet these
men are capable of extreme liberality. Some
years ago knocking off hats and chalking one
another's backs was a favourite amusement on the
Stock Exchange, as a vent for surplus excitement,
and on the 5th of November a cart-load of crackers
was let ofi" during the day, to the destruction of
corits. The cry when a stranger is detected is

" Fourteen hundred," and the usual test question
is, " Will you purchase any new Navy Five per
Cents., sir?" The moment after a rough hand
drives the novice's hat over his nose, and he is
spun from one to another; his co.-.t-tails are often
torn off, and he is then jostled into the street.
There have been cases, however, w-here the jobbers
have caught a Tartar, who, after half-strangling one
and knocking down two or three more, has ftiirly
fought his way out, pretty well unscathed, all but
his hat.

The amount of business done at the Stock
Exchange in a day is enormous. In a few hours
property, including time bargains, to the amount
of ;^io,ooo,ooo, has changed hands. Rothschild
is known in one day to have made purchases to
the extent of ;^4,ooo,ooo. This great speculator
never appeared on the Stock Exchange himself, and
on special occasions he always employed a new
set of brokers to buy or sell. The boldest attempt
ever made to overthrow the power of Rothschild
in the money market was that made by a Mr. H.
He was the son of a wealthy country banker, with
money-stock in his own name, though it was really
his father's, to the extent of ;^5o,ooo. He began
by buying, as openly as possible, and selling out
again to a very large amount in a very short period
of time. About this time Consols were as high as
96 or 97, and there were signs of a coming panic.
Mr. H. determined to depress the market, and
carry on war against Rothschild, the leader of
the "bulls." He now struck out a bol-d game.
He bought ;^20o,ooo in Consols at 96, and at
once offered any part of ^100,000 at 94, and at
once found purchasers. He then offered more at
93, 92, and eventually as low as 90. The next
day he brought them down to 74 ; a run on the
Bank of England began, which almost exhausted it
of its specie. He then purchased to a large extent,
so that when the reaction took place, the daring
adventurer found his gains had exceeded _;^ 100,000.
Two years after he had another " operation," but
Rotnschild, guessing hrs plan, laid a trap, into
which he fell, and the day after his name was up
on the black board. It was then discovered that
the original ^50,000 money-stock had been in
reality his father's. A deputation from the com-
mittee waited upon Mr. H. immediately after his
failure, and quietly suggested to him an immediate
sale of his furniture and tlie mortgage of an annuity
settled on his wife. He, furious at this, rang the
bell for his footman, and ordered him to show the
deputation down stairs. He swore at the treat-
ment that he had received, and said, "As for
you, you vagabond, ' My son Jack' (the nickname

Stock Exchange.]

LAWS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

489

of the spokesman), who has liad the audacity to
make me such a proposal, if you don't hurry down
stairs I'll pitch you out of window."

Nicknames are of frequent occurrence on the
Stock Exchange. " My son Jack" we have just
mentioned. Another was known as " The Lady's
Broker," in consequence of being employed in an
unfortunate speculation by a lady who had ven-
tured without the knowledge of her husband.
The husband refused to pay a farthing, and the
broker, to save himself from the black board,
divulged the name of the lady who was unable
to meet her obligations.

It is a fact not generally known, says a writer on
the subject, that by one of the regulations of the
Stock Exchange, any person purchasing stock in
the funds, or any of the public companies, has a
right to demand of the seller as many transfers as
there are even thousand pounds in the amount
bought. Suppose, for instance, that any person
were to purchase ^10,000 stock, then, instead of
having the whole made over to him by one ticket
of transfer, he has a right to demand, if he so
pleases, ten separate transfers from the party or
parties of whom he purchased.

The descriptions of English stock which are
least generally understood are scrip and omnium.
Scrip means the receipt for any instalment or in-
stalments which may have been paid on any given
amount which has been purchased on any Govern-
ment loan. This receipt, or scrip, is marketable,
the party purchasing it, either at a premium or
discount, as the case chances to be, becoming of
course bound to pay up the remainder of the
instalments, on pain of forfeiting the money he has
given for it. Omnium means the various kinds
of stock in which a loan is absorbed, or, to make
the thing still more intelligible, a person purchasing
a certain quantity of omnium, purchases given
proportions of the various descriptions of Govern-
ment securities.

Bargains made one day are always checked
the following day, by the parties themselves or
their clerks. This is done by calling over their
respective books one against another. In most
transactions what is called an option is given, by
mutual consent, to each party. This is often of
great importance to the speculator. It is said that
the business at the Stock Exchange is illegal, since
an unrepealed Act of Parliament exists which
directs all buying and selling of Bank securities
shall take place in the Rotunda of the Bank.

There are about 1,700 members of the Stock
Exchange, who pay twelve guineas a year each.
The election of members is always by ballot,

and every applicant must be recommended by
three persons, who have been members of the
house for at least two years. Each recommender
must engage to pay the sum of ^£'500 to the
candidate's creditors in case any such candidate
should become a defaulter, either in the Stock
Exchange. or the Foreign Stock market, within two
years from the date of his admission. A foreigner
must have been resident in the United Kingdom
for five years previous, unless he is recommended
by five members of the Stock Exchange, each of
whom becomes security for ^300. The candidate
must not enter into partnership with any of his
recommenders for two years after his admission,
unless additional security be provided, and one
partner cannot recommend another. Bill and dis-
count brokers are excluded from the Stock Ex-
change, says the same writer, and no applicant's
wife can be engaged in any sort of business. No
applicant who has been a bankrupt is eligible until
two years after he has obtained his certificate, or
fulfilled the conditions of his deed of composition,
or unless he has paid 6s. 8d. in the pound. No
one who has been twice bankrupt is eligible unless
on the same very improbable condition.

If a member makes any bargains before or
after the regular business hours — ten to four — the
bargain is not recognised by the committee. No
bonds can be returned as imperfect after three days'
detention. If a member comes to private terms
with his creditors, he is put upon the black board
of the Exchange as a defaulter, and expelled. A
further failure can be condoned for, after six
months' exile, provided the member pays at least
one-third of any loss that may have occurred on
his speculations. For dishonourable conduct the
committee can also chalk up a member's name.

It is said that a member of the Stock Exchange
who fails and gives up his last farthing to his
creditors is never thought as Avell of as the man
who takes care to keep a reserve, in order to step
back again into business. For instance, a stock-
broker once lost on one account ;!£^i 0,000, and paid
the whole without a murmur. Being, however,
what is called on the Stock Exchange " a little
man," he never again recovered his credit, it being
suspected that his back was irretrievably broken.

But a still more striking and very interesting
illustration of the estimation in which sterling inte-
grity is held among a large proportion of the mem-
bers was afforded (says Mr. Grant) in the case of
the late Mr. L. A. de la Chaumette. a gentleman
of foreign extraction. He had previously been in
the Manchester trade, but had been unfortimate.
Being a man much respected, and extensively

49°

OT.D AND NEW LONDON.

[St >(■!; Exchange.

known, his friends advised him to go on the
Stock Exchange. He adopted their ad\ice, and
became a member. He at once established an
excellent business as a broker. Not only did he
make large sums, in the shape of commissions on
the transactions in which he was employed by
others, but one of the largest mercantile houses in
London, having the highest possible opinion of his
judgment and integrity, entrusted him witli the sole
disposal of an immense sum of money belonging
to the French refugees, which was in their hands
at the time. He contrived to employ this money
so advantageously, both to his constituents and
himself, that he acquired a handsome fortune.
Before he had been a member three years, he in-
vited his creditors to dine with him on a particular
day at the London Tavern, but concealed from
them the particular object he had in \iew in so
doing. On entering the room, they severally found
their own names on the different plates, which were
reversed, and on turning them up, each found a
cheque for the amount due to him, with interest.
The entire sum which Mr. L. A. de la Chaumette
paid away on this occasion, and in this manner,
was upwards of ^30,000. Next day, he went into
the house as usual, and such was the feeling enter-
tained of his conduct, that many members refused
to do a bargain with him to the extent of a single
thousand. They looked on his payment of the
claims of his former creditors as a foolish affair,
and fancied that he might have exhausted his
resources, never dreaming that, even if he had, a
man of such honourable feeling and upright prin-
ciple was worthy of credit to any amount. He
eventually died worth upwards of ^500,000.

The locality of the Stock Exchange (says the
author of " The Great Babylon," probably the Rev.
Dr. Croly)' is well chosen, being at a point where
intelligence from the Bank of England, the Royal
Exchange, and the different coffee-houses where
private letters from abroad are received, may be
obtained in a few minutes, and thus " news from
all nations " may be very speedily manufactured
with an air of authenticity. One wide portal gapes
toward the Bank, in Bartholomew Lane ; and there
is a sally-port into Threadneedle Street, for those
who do not wish to be seen entering or emerging
the other way. From the dull and dingy aspect
of these approaches, which, it seems, cannot be
whitened, one could form no guess at the mighty
deeds of the place ; and when the hourly quotations
of the price of stocks are the same, the place is
silent, and only a few individuals, with faces which
grin but cannot smile, are seen crawling in and out,
or standing yawning in th? court, with their hands

in their breeches' pockets. If, however, the quota-
tions fluctuate, and the Royal Exchange, where
most of the leading men of the money market
lounge, be full of bustling and rumours, and espe-
cially if characters, with eyes like basilisks, and
faces lined and surfaced like an asparagus bed ere
the plants come up, be ever and anon darting in at
the north door of the Royal Exchange, bounding
toward the chief priests of Mammon, like pith balls
to the conductor of an electric machine, and, when
they have "got their charge," bounding away again,
then you may be sure that the Stock Exchange is
worth seeing, if it could be seen with comfort, or
even with safety. At those times, however, a
stranger might as well jump into a den of lions, or
throw himself into the midst of a herd of famishing
wolves.

Among the various plans adopted for securing
early intelligence for Stock Exchange purposes
before the invention of the telegraph, none proved
more successful than that of "pigeon expresses."
Till about the beginning of the century the ordinar)'
courier brought the news from the Continent ; and it
was only the Rothschilds, and one or two other im-
portant firms, that " ran " intelligence, in anticipation
of the regular French mail. However, many years
ago, the project was conceived of establishing a com-
munication between London and Paris by means of
pigeons, and in the course of two years it was in
complete operation. The training of the birds took
considerable time before they could be relied on ;
and the relays and organisation required to perfect
the scheme not only involved a vast expenditure of
time, but also of money. Li the first place, to
make the communication of use on both sides of
the Channel, it was necessary to get two distinct
establishments for the flight of the pigeons — one in
I£ngland and another in France. It was then neces-
sary that persons in whom reliance could be placed
should be stationed in the two capitals, to be in
readiness to receive or dispatch the birds that
might bring or carry the intelligence, and make it
available for the parties interested. Hence it
became almost evident that one speculator, without
he was a very wealthy man, could not hope to sup-
port a pigeon " express." The consequence was,
that, the project being mooted, two or three of the
speculators, including brokers of the house, them-
selves joined, and worked it for their own benefit.
Through this medium several of the dealers rapidly
made large sums of money ; but the trade be-
came less profitable, because the success of the
first operators induced others to follow the example
of establisV.ing this sjiecies of communication.
The cost of keeping a " pigeon express " has

Stoclt Exchange.]

"PIGEON MEN."

491

been estimated at ^600 or ^700 a year ; but
whether this amount was magnified, with the view of
deterring others from venturing into the speculation,
is a question which never seems to have been pro-
perly explained. It is stated that the daily papers
availed themselves of the news brought by these
" expresses ;" but, in consideration of allowing the
speculators to read the despatches first, the pro-
prietors, it is said, bore but a minimum propor-
tion of the expense. The birds generally used were
of the Antwerp breed, strong in the wing, and fully
feathered. The months in which they were chiefly
worked were the latter end of May, June, July,
August, and the beginning of September; and,
though the news might not be always of importance,
a communication was generally kept up daily be-
tween London and Paris in this manner.

In 1837-3S-39, and 1840, a great deal of money
was made by the " pigeon men," as the speculators
supposed to have possession of such intelligence
were familiarly termed ; and their appearance in the
market was always indicative of a rise or fall,
according to the tendency of their operations.
Having the first chance of buying or selling, they,
of course, had the market for a while in their own
hands ; but as time progressed, and it was found
that the papers, by their " second editions," would
communicate the news, the general brokers refused
to do business till the papers reached the City.
The pigeons bringing the news occasionally got shot
on their passage ; but, as a flock of some eight or a
dozen were usually started at a time, miscarriage
was not of frequent occurrence. At the time of the
death of Mr. Rothschild, one was caught at Brighton,
having been disabled by a gun-shot wound, and
beneath the shoulder-feathers of the left wing was
discovered a small note, with the words " II est
mort,' followed by a number of hieroglyphics.
Each pigeon had a method of communication en-
tirely their own ; and the conductors, if they fancied
the key to it was in another person's power, imme-
diately varied it. A case of this description occurred
worth noting. The parties interested in the scheme
fancied that, however soon they received intelli-
gence, there were others in the market who were
quite equal with them. In order to arrive at the
real state of affairs, the chief proprietor consented,
at the advice of a friend, to pay ;^io for the early
perusal of a supposed rival's "pigeon express."
The " express " came to hand, he read it, and was
not a little surprised to find that he was in reality
paying for the perusal of his own news ! The truth
soon came out. Somebody had bribed the keepers
of his pigeons, who were thus not only making a
profit by the sale of hii intelligence, but also on the

speculations they in consequence conducted. The
defect was soon remedied by changing the style of
characters employed, and all went right as before.

When a defalcation takes place in the Stock
Exchange (says a City writer of 1845), the course
pursued is as follows : — At the commencement of
the " setthng day," should a broker or jobber — ■
the one tlirough the default of his principals, and
the other in consequence of unsuccessful sjjecula-
tions — find a heavy balance on the wrong side of
his accounts, which he is unfortunately unable to
settle, and should an attempt to get the assistance
from friends prove unavailing, he must fail. Ex-
cluded from the house, the scene of his past labours
and speculations, he dispatches a .short but un-
important communication to the committee of the
Stock Exchange. The other members of the
institution being all assembled in the market,
busied in arranging and settling their accounts,
some of them, interested parties, become nervous

and fidgety at the non-appearance of Mr.

(the defaulter in question). The doubt is soon
explained, for the porter stationed at the door
suddenly gives three loud and distinctly repeated

knocks with a mallet, and announces that Mr.

presents his respects to the house, and regrets to
state that he is unable to comply with his " bar-
gains " — Anglid, to fulfil his engagements.

Visit Bartholomew Lane at any time of the year,
says a City writer, and you will be sure to find
several people of shabby exterior holding converse
at the entrance of Capel Court, or on the steps of
the auction mart. These are the '-'Alley men." You
will see one, perhaps, take from his pocket a good-
sized parcel of dirty-backed letters, all arranged, and
tied round with string or red tape, which he sorts
with as much care and attention as if they were
bank-notes. That parcel is his stock-in-trade. Per-
haps those letters may contain the allotment of
shares, in various companies, to an amount, if the
capital subscribed was paid, of many hundreds of
thousands of pounds.

To describe fairly the "Alley man," we must
take him from the first of his career. He is
generally some broken-down clerk or tradesman,
who, having lost every prospect of life, chooses
this description of business as a dertiier ressort.
First started in his calling, he associates with the
loiterers at the Stock Exchange, where, by mixing
with them, and perhaps making the acquaintance
through the introduction of Sir John Barleycorn,
at the tap of a tavern, he is initiated by degrees
into the secrets of the business, and, perhaps,
before long, becomes as great an adept :n the
sale or purchase of letters as the oldest man on

401

()[]) AXn NEW LONDON.

rStock Exchange.

the walk. W'iieii he has acquired the necessary
information respecting dealing, he can commence
letter-writing for shares. This is effected at the ex-
pense of a penny only for postage, pen and ink
being always attainable, either in the tavern-parlour
or coffee-house he frequents. W'iien a new company
comes out, and is advertised, he immediately calls
for a form of application, fills it up, and dispatches
it, witii the moderate request to be allotted one
hundred or two huiulrcd shares, the amount of call

will suppose the price to be 80^, that is, ^80 2s. 6d.
sterling for ^100 stock. I'pon my asking the
price of the Four per Cents., the answer probably
is, "Buyers at an eighth, and sellers at a quarter;"
that is, the jobbers who either buy or sell will
have the turn, or ^. Now if I leave the purchase
to a broker, he probably gives, without the least
hesitation, 8o|, because he may have a friendly
turn to make to his brother broker, for a similar
act of kindness the preceding day. Well, but I do

INNER COURT OF THE FIRST ROVAL EXCHA.NGt. (.i'« /fljy 495).

or share being quite immaterial to him, as he never
intends to pay upon or keep them, his only aim
being to increase his available stock of letters, so
that he can make a " deal," and pocket the profit,
should they have a price among the fratemit}'.

The purchase of stock is thus described by an
habiluc. " Suppose I went," he says, "to buy ^loo
stock in the Four per Cents. I soon know whether
the funds are better, or worse, or steady ; for this
is the language of the place. If they are better,
they are on the rise from the preceding day ; if
7i'orse, they are lower than on that day ; if steady,
they have not fluctuated at all, or very little. To
render the matter as intelligible as possible, we

not leave the purchase to a broker ; I manage it
myself. I direct my broker to buy me ^^loo
stock at 8o|. He takes my name, profession,
and place of residence ; he then makes a purchase,
and the seller of the stock transfers it to me, my
heirs, assigns, &c., and makes his signature. On
the same leaf of the same book in which the
transfer is made to me, there is a form of accept-
ance of the stock transferred to me, and to which
I also put my signature ; the clerk then witnesses
the receipt, and the whole business is done. The
seller of the stock gives me the receipt, with his
signature to it, which I may keep till I receive a
dividend, when it is no longer any use. The

Stock Exchange.]

STOCK-EXCHANGE CELEBRITIES.

493

pa}'ment of the dividend is an acknowledgment of
my right to the stock ; and therefore the receipt
then becomes useless."

The usual commission charged by a broker is
one-eighth (2s. 6d.) per cent, upon the stock sold or
purchased ; although of late years the charge has
often been reduced fifty per cent., especially in
speculators' charges, a reduction ascribed to the

The Stock I'^xchange has numbered amongst its
subscribers some valuable members of society,
including David Ricardo and several of his descen-
dants, Francis Baily the astronomer, and many
others, down to Charles Stokes, F.R.S., not long
ago deceased. Horace Smith and the author of the
" Last of the Plantagenets " — himself in his pros-
perity a munificent patron of literature — also for a

SIR THOMAS GRESIIAM.

influx into the market of a body of brokers who
will "do business" almost for nothing, provided
they can procure customers. The broker deals with
the " jobbers," a class of members, or "middle-men,"
who remain stationary in the stock market, ready
to act upon the orders received from brokers.

There is, moreover, a fund subscribed by the
members for their decayed associates, the invested
capital of which, exclusive of annual contributions,
amounts to upwards of ^30,000.
42

long time enlivened its precincts. The writer of
the successful play of " The Templar," and other
elegant productions, was one of the body.

The managers, in 1S54, expended about ^6,000
in securing additional space for the Stock Exchange
prior to the commencement of the works, and the
contract was taken at ^10,400, some subsequent
alterations respecting ventilation having caused the
amoiint to be already exceeded.

The fabric belongs to a private company, con-

494

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

FRoyal Exchange.

sisting of 400 shareholders, and the shares were
originally of ;^5o each, but are now of uncertain
amount, the last addition being a call of ^^25 per
share, made for the construction of the new edifice.
The affairs of this company are conducted under
a cumbersome and restrictive deed of settlement,
by nine " managers," elected for life by the share-
holders, no election taking place till there are four
vacancies. The members or subscribers, however,
entirely conduct their own affairs by a committee
of thirty of their own body. Neither members
nor committee are elected for more than one
year.

The number of members at present exceeds 1,700.
The subscription is paid to the " managers," who
liquidate all expenses, and adopt alterations in
the building, upon the representations of the com-
mittee of the members, or even on the application

of the subscribers. Of the 400 shares mentioned
above, the whole, with scarcely an exception, are
held by the members themselves. No one person
is allowed to hold, directly or indirectly, more than
four.

The present building stands in the centre of the
block of buildings fronting Bartholomew Lane,
Threadneedle Street, Old Broad Street, and Throg-
morton Street. The principal entrance is from Bar-
tholomew Lane through Capel Court. There are
also three entrances from Throgmorton Street, and
one from Threadneedle Street. The area of the
new house is about 75 square yards, and it would
contain 1,100 or 1,200 members. There are, how-
ever, seldom more than half that number present.
The site is very irregular, and has enforced some
peculiar construction in covering it, into which
iron enters largely.

CHAPTER XIJI.

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE.

The Greshnms— Important Ncgoti.ition?— Building of the Old Exchange-Queen Elizabeth visits it— Its Milliners' Shops— A Resort for Idlers-
Access of Nuisances — I he various Walks in the Exchange— Shakespeare's Visits to it— Precautions against Fire -Lady Greshain and the
Council — The " Eye of London " — Contemporary AUubions — The Royal Exchange during the Plague and the Great Fire — Wren's Design
for .1 New Royal Exchange— The Plan which was ultimately accepted— Addison and Steele upon the Exchange — The Shops of the Second
Exchange.

gifts of church lands. Sir Richard died at Bethna\
Green, 154S-9. He was buried in the church of
St. Lawrence Jewry. Thomas Gresham was sent
to Gonville College, Cambridge, and apprenticed
probably before that to his uncle Sir John, a Levant
merchant, for eight years. In 1543 we find the
young merchant applying to Margaret, Regent of
the Low Countries, for leave to export gunpowder
to England for King Henry, who was then pre-
paring for his attack on France, and the siege of
Boulogne. In 1554 Gresham married the daughter
of a Suffolk gendeman, and the widow of a London
mercer. By her he had several children, none of
whom, however, reached maturity.

It was in 1551 6r 1552 that Gresham's real
fortune commenced, by his appointment as king's
merchant factor, or . agent, at Antwerp, to raise
private loans from German and Low Country mer-
chants to meet the royal necessities, and to keep
the privy council informed in the local news. The
wise factor borrowed in his own name, and soon
raised the exchange from i6s. Flemish for the pound
sterling to 22s., at which rate he discharged all the
king's debts, and made money plentiful. He says,
in a letter to the Duke of Northumberland, that

In the year 1563 Sir Thomas Gresham, a munifi-
cent merchant of Lombard Street, who traded
largely with Antwerp, carrying out a scheme of his
father, offered the City to erect a Bourse at his
own expense, if they would provide a suitable
plot of ground ; the great merchant's local pride
having been hurt at seeing Antwerp provided with
a stately Exchange, and London without one.

A short sketch of the Gresham family is here
necessary, to enable us to understand the ante-
cedents of this great benefactor of London. The
family derived its name from Gresham, a little
village in Norfolk; and one of the early Greshams
appears to have been clerk to Sir William Paston,
a judge. The family afterwards removed to Holt,
near the sea. John Gresham married an heiress,
by whom he had four sons, William, Thomas,
Richard, and John. Thomas became Chancellor of
Lichfield, the other three brothers turned merchants,
and two of them were knighted by Henry VIII.
Sir Richard, the father of Sir Thomas Gresham,
was an eminent London merchant, elected Lord
Mayor in 1537. Being a trusty foreign agent of
Henry VII., and a friend of Cromwell and
Wolsey, he received from the king five several

Royal Exc!i:ingc.l

THE GRESHAMS.

495

he hoped in one year to save England ^20,000.
It being forbidden to export further from Antwerp,
Gresham had to resort to various stratagems, and
in 1553 (Queen Mary) we find him writing to the
Privy Council, proposing to send ;£^2oo (in heavy
Spanish rials), in bags of pepper, four at a time,
and the English ambassador at Brussels was to
bring over with him ^20,000 or ^30,000, but he
afterwards changed his mind, and sent the money
packed up in bales with suits of armour and ;^3,ooo
in each, rewarding the searcher at Gravelines with
new year presents of black velvet and black cloth.
About the time of the Queen's marriage to Philip
Gresham went to Spain, to start from Puerto Real
fifty cases, each containing 22,000 Spanish ducats.
All the time Gresham resided at Antwerp, carrying
out these sagacious and important negociations, he
was rewarded with the paltry remuneration of ^^i
a day, of which we often find him seriously com-
plaining. It was in Antwerp, that vast centre of
commerce, that Gresham must have gained that
great knowledge of business by which he after-
wards enriched himself Antwerp exported to
England at this time, says Mr. Burgon, in his ex-
cellent life of Gresham, almost every article of
luxury required by English people.

Later in Queen Mary's reign Gresham was fre-
quently displaced by rivals. He made trips to Eng-
land, sharing largely in the dealings of the Mercers'
Company, of which he was a member, and shipping
vast quantities of cloth to sell to the Italian mer-
chants at Antwerp, in exchange for silks. A few
years later the Mercers are described as sending
forth, twice a year, a fleet of 50 or 60 ships, laden
with cloth, for the Low Countries. Gresham is
mentioned, in 1555, as presenting Queen Mary, as
a new year's gift, with " a bolt of fine Holland,"
receiving in return a gilt jug, weighing i6i ounces.
That the Queen considered Gresham a faithful and
useful servant there can be no doubt, for she gave
him, at different times, a priory, a rectory, and
several manors and advowsons.

Gresham, like a prudent courtier, seems to have
been one of the first persons of celebrity who
visited Queen Elizabeth on her accession. She
gave the wise merchant her hand to kiss, and told
him that she would always keep one ear ready to
hear him ; " which," says Gresham, " made me a
young man again, and caused me to enter on my
present charge with heart and courage."

The young Queen also promised him on her
faith that if he served her as well as he had done
her brother Edward, and Queen Mary, her sister,
she would give him as much land as ever they
both had, This gracious promise Gresham re-

minded the Queen of years after, when he had to
complain to his friend Cecil that the Marquis of
Winchester had tried to injure him with the Queen.

Gresham soon resumed his visits to l-'landers, to
procure money, and send over powder, armour,
and weapons. He was present at the funeral of
Charles V., seems to have foreseen the coming
troubles in the Low Countries, and commented on
the rash courage of Count Egmont.

The death of Gresham's only son Richard, in
the year 1564, was the cause, Mr. Burgon thinks, of
Gresham's determining to devote his money to the
benefit of his fellow-citizens. Lombard Street had
long become too small for the business of London.
Men of business were exposed there to all weathers,
and had to crowd into small shops, or jostle under
the pent-houses. As early as 1534 or 1535 the
citizens had deliberated in common council on the
necessity of a new place of resort, and Leadenhall
Street had been proposed. In the year 1565 certain
houses in Cornhill, in the ward of Broad Street,
and three alleys — Swan Alley, Cornhill ; New Alley,
Cornhill, near St. Bartholomew's Lane ; and St.
Christopher's Alley, comprising in all fourscore
householders — were purchased for £;i,^]^,^ 6s. 6d.,
and the materials sold for ^1^47 8. The amount
was subscribed for in small sums by about 750
citizens, the Ironmongers' Company giving ;^75.
The first brick was laid by Sir Thomas, June 7,
1566. A Flemish architect superintended the
sawing of the timber, at Gresham's estate at Rings-
hall, near Ipswich, and on Battisford Tye (common)
traces of the old sawpits can still be seen. The
slates were bought at Dort, the wainscoting and
glass at Amsterdam, and other materials in Flanders.
The building, pushed on too fast for final solidity,
was slated in by November, 1567, and shortly after
finished. The Bourse, when erected, was thought
to resemble that of Antwerp, but there is also
reason to believe that Gresham's architect closely
followed the Bourse of Venice.

The new Bourse, Flemish in character, was a
long four-storeyed building, with a high double
balcony. A bell-tower, crowned by a huge grass-
hopper, stood on one side of the chief entrance.
The bell in this tower summoned merchants to the
spot at twelve o'clock at noon and six o'clock in
the evening. A lofty Corinthian column, crested
with a grasshopper, apparently stood outside the
north entrance, overlooking the quadrangle. The
brick building was afterwards stuccoed over, to
imitate stone. Each corner of the building, and
the peak of every dormer window, was crowned by
a grasshopper. \Vithin Gresham's Bourse were
piazzas for wet weather, and the covered walks

496

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange.

were adorned with statues of English kings. A
statue of Gresham stood near the north end of the
western piazza. At the Great Fire of 1666 this
statue alone remained there uninjured, as Pepys
and Evelyn particularly record. The piazzas were
supported by marble pillars, and above were 100
small shops. The \-aults dug below, for mer-
chandise, proved dark and damp, and were com-
paratively valueless. Hentzner, a German traveller
who visited England in the year 1598, particularly
mentions the stateliness of the building, the assem-
blage of different nations, and the quantities of
merchandise.

Many of the shops in the Bourse remained unlet

on January 23, 1570, Queen Elizabeth came from
Somerset House through Fleet Street past the north
side of the Bourse to Sir Thomas Gresham's house
in Bishopsgate Street, and there dined. After the
banquet she entered the Bourse on the south side,
viewed every part ; especially she caused the build-
ing, by herald's trumpet, to be proclaimed ' the
Royal Exchange,' so to be called from henceforth,
and not otherwise."

Such was the vulgar opinion of Gresham's wealth,
that Thomas Heywood, in his old play. If You
k)!07u not Mi\ You know Nobody, makes Gresham
cnish an invaluable pearl into the wine-cup in
whicli he drinks his queen's health — ■

SOI DDDPDDD 0DDDD[7z^m

asQD?

KIVEK. THAMES

wren's plan for rebuilding LONDON. [Sei page y>i.)

till Queen Elizabeth's visit, in 1570, which gave
them a lustre that tended to make the new building
fashionable. Gresham, anxious to have the Bourse
worthy of such a visitor, went round twice in one
day to all the shopkeepers in " the upper pawn,"
and offered them all the shops they would furnish
and light up with wax rent free for a whole year.
The result of this liberality was that in two years
Gresham was able to raise the rent from 40s. a
year to four marks, and a short time after to
;^4 los. The milliners' shops at the Bourse, in
Gresham's time, sold mousetraps, birdcages, shoe-
ing-horns, lanthorns, and Jews' trumps. There
were also sellers of armour, apothecaries, book-
sellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers ; but the shops
soon grew richer and more fashionable, so that in
1631 the editor of Stow says, "Unto which place,

" Here fifteen hundred pounds at one clap goes.
Instead of sugar, Gresham drinks the pearl
Unto his queen and mistress. Pledge it, lords !"

The new Exchange, like the nave of St. Paul's,
soon became a resort for idlers. In the L:quest
Book of Cornhill Ward, 1574 (says Mr. Burgon),
there is a presentment against the Exchange, because
on Sundays and holidays great numbers of boys,
children, and " young rogues," meet there, and shout
and holloa, so that honest citizens cannot quietly
walk there for their recreation, and the parishioners
of St. Bartholomew could not hear the sermon. In
1590 we find certain women prosecuted for selling
apples and oranges at the Exchange gate in Corn-
hill, and "amusing themselves in cursing and swear-
ing, to the great annoyance and grief of the inhabi-
tants and passers-by." In 1592 a tavern-keeper,

Royal Exchange.]

Ran of the exchangE;

497

who had vaults under the Exchange, was fined for
allowing tippling, and for broiling herrings, sprats,
and bacon, to the vexation of worshipful merchants
resorting to the Exchange. In 1602 we find that
oranges and lemons were allowed to be sold at the
gates and passages of the Exchange. In 1622
complaint was made of the rat-catchers, and sellers
of dogs, birds, plants, &c., who hung about the
south gate of the Bourse, especially at exchange

p.m. in summer, and nine p.m. in winter. Bishop
Hall, in his Satires (1598), sketching the idlers of
his day, describes " Tattelius, the new-come tra-
veller, with his disguised coat and new-ringed ear
[Shakespeare wore earrings], tramping the Bourse's
marble twice a day."

And Hayman, in his "Quodlibet "(1628), has the
following 'epigram on a "loafer" of the day, whom
he dubs " Sir Pierce Penniless," from Naish's clever

NoivTH.

Tlireadncedle Street.

East Country

Irish

Walk.

Clnlliiers'

Silknien's

Walk,

Walk.

c >

2;-

Scotch
Walk.

Dutch and
Jewellers' Wulk.

Hamburg Snlters'

Walk. Walk.

Grocers and

Druggists'

Walk.

■^ rt

Barbadoes

Walk.

Vireinia

Jamaica

Walk.

Canary Walk,

E.2.

Brokers, &c,.

Italian

of Stocks

Walk.

ilk.

French

Walk.

Spanish

Jeu's'

Walk.

Valk.

Cornhill.

Sol:TH.

PLAN OF THE E.XCHANGE IN 1837.

time. It was also seriously complained of that
the bear-wards, Shakespeare's noisy neighbours in
Southwark, before special bull or bear baitings,
used to parade before the Exchange, generally in
business hours, antl there make proclamation of
their entertainments, which caused tumult, and
drew together mobs. It was usual on these occa-
sions to have a monkey riding on the bear's back,
and several discordant minstrels fiddling, to give
additional publicity to the coming festival.

No person frequenting the Bourse was allowed
to wear any weapon, and in 1579 it was ordered
that no one should walk in the Exchansfe after ten

pamphlet, and ranks with the moneyless loungers
of St. Paul's :—

"Though little coin thy purseless pockets line,
Yet with great company thou'rt taken up ;
For often with Duke Hiirtifray tliou dosl dine,
And often with Sir Thomas Giesham sup."

Here, too, above all, the monarch of English
poetry must have often paced, watcliing the Anto-
nios and Shylocks of his day, the anxious wistful
faces of the debtors or the embarrassed, and the
greedy anger of the creditors. In the Bourse he
may first have thought over to himself the beautiful
lines in the " Merchant of Venice " (act i.), where

498

OLD AND NEW LONDOI^.

(lloya'. Exchnngd.

he so wonderfully epitomises the vicissitudes of

merchant's life : —

" My wind, cooling my broth.
Would blow me to an a^nie, when I thought
What harm a wind too great niiijht do at sea.
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run.
But I should think of shallows and of flats.
And sec my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,
Vailing her high top lower than her rilis,
To kiss her tmrial. Shoulil I go to church.
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks ?
Which, touching but my gentle vessel's side,
Would scatter all her spices on the stream ;
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks ;

In Gresham's Exchange great precautions were
taken against tire. Feather-makers and others were
forbidden to keep pans of fire in their shops. Some
care was also taken to maintain honesty among the
shopkeepers, for they were forbidden to use blinds
to their windows, which might obscure the shops,
or throw false lights on the articles vended.

On the sudden death of Sir Thomas Gresham,
in 1579, it was found that he had left, in accord-
ance with his promise, the Royal Exchange jointly
to the City of London and the Mercers' Company
after the decease of his wife. Lady Gresham
appears not to have been as generous, single-

TlIE FIRbl RLi\L LXlUVNIjE

And, in a word, but even now worth this,
And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
To think on this ; and shall I lack the thought,
That such a thing, bechanced, would make me sad?"

Gresham seems to have died before the Exchange
was thoroughly furnished, for in 1610 (James 1.)
Mr. Nicholas Leete, Ironrnonger, preferred a petition
to the Court of Aldermen, lugubriously setting forth
that thirty pictures of English kings and queens
had been intended to have been placed in the
Exchange rooms, and praying that a fine, in future,
should be put on every citizen, when elected an
alderman, to furnish a portrait of some king or
•lueen at an expense of not exceeding one huntlred
nobles. The pictures were " to be graven on wood,
covered with lead, and then gilded and paynted in
oil cullors."

minded, and large-hearted as her husband. She
contested the will, and was always repining at the
thought of the property passing away from her at
death. She received ^751 7s. per annum from
tjie rent of the Exchange, but tried hard to be
allowed to grant leases for twenty-one years, or
three lives, keeping the fines to herself; and this
was pronounced by the Council as utterly against
both her husband's will and the 23rd Elizabeth,
to which she had been privy. She complained
querulously that the City did not act well. The
City then began to complain with more justice
of Lady Gresham's parsimony. The Bourse, badly
and hastily built, began to fall out of repair,
gratings by the south door gave way in 1582, and
the clock was always out of order. Considering
Ladj' Gresham had been left .;^2,388 a year, these

Royal ExchangS. 1

LADY GRESHAM'S PARSIMONY.

Soo

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fftoyal Exchange.

neglects were unwortliy of Iilt, but tluy never-
theless coiuinued till her death, in 1596. As the
same lady contributed ;^ioo in 1588 for the
defence of the country against the Armada, let us
hope that she was influenced not so much by her
own love of money as the importunities of some
relatives of her first husband's family.

"The Eye of London," as Stow affectionately
calls the first Royal Exchange, rapidly became a
vast bazaar, where fashionable ladies went to shop,
and sometimes to meet their lovers.

Contemporary allusions to Gresham's Exchange
are innumerable in old writers. Donald Lupton,
in a little work called " London and the Country
Carbonadoed and Quartered into Severall Charac-
ters," published in 1632, says of the Exchange: —
" Here are usually more coaches attendant than
at church doors. The merchants should keep their
wives from visiting the upper rooms too often, lest
they tire their purses by attiring themselves. . . .
There's many gentlewomen come hither that, to
help their faces and complexion, break their hus-
bands' backs ; wlio play foul in the country with
their land, to be fair and play false in the city.''

" I do not look upon the structure of this Ex-
change to be comparable to that of Sir Thomas
Gresham in our City of London," says Evelyn,
writing from Amsterdam in 1641 ; "yet in one
respect it exceeds — that ships of considerable
burthen ride at the very key contiguous to it." He
writes from Paris in the same strain : " I went to
the E.xchange ; the late addition to the buildings is
very noble ; but the gallerys, where they sell their
pretty merchandize, are nothing so stately as ours in
London, no more than tlie place is where they walk
below, being only a low vault." Even the asso-
ciations which the Rialto must have awakened
failed to seduce him from his allegiance to the
City of London. He writes from Venice, in June,
1645: "I went to their Exchange — a place like
ours, frequented by merchants, but nothing so mag-
nificent."

During the Civil War the Exchange statue of
Charles I. was thrown down, on the 30th of May,
1648, and the premature inscription, "Exit tyran-
norum ultimus," put up in its place, which of course
was removed immediately after the Restoration,
when a new statue was ordered. The Acts for
converting the Monarchy into a Commonwealth
were burnt at the Royal Exchange, May 28, 1661,
by the hands of the common hangman.

Samuel Rolle, a clergyman who wrote on the
Great Fire, has left the following account of this
edifice as it appeared in his day : — " How full of
riches,' he exclaims, " was that Roval Exchansre !

Rich men in the midst of it, rich goods both above
and beneath ! There men walked upon the top of
a wealthy mine, considering what Eastern treasures,
costly spices, and such-like things were laid up in
the bowels (I mean the cellars) of that place. As
for the tipper part of it, was it not the great store-
house whence the nobility and gentry of England
were furnished with most of those costly things
wherewith they did adorn either their closets or
themselves ? Here, if anywhere, might a man have
seen the glory of the world in a moment. What
artificial thing could entertain the senses, the
fantasies of men, that was not there to be had ?
Such was the delight that many gallants took in
that magazine of all curious varieties, that they
could almost have dwelt there (going from shop to
shop like bee from flower to flower), if they had
but had a fountain of money that could not have
been drawn dry. I doubt not but a Mohamedan
(who never expects other than sensual delights)
would gladly have availed himself of that place,
and the treasures of it, for his heaven, and have
thouglit there was none like it."

In 1665, during the Plague, great fires were made
at the north and south entrances of the Exchange,
to purify the air. The stoppage of public business
was so complete that grass grew within the area of
the Royal Exchange. The strange desertion thus
indicated is mentioned in Pepys' " Notes." Having
visited the Exchange, where he had not been for a
good while, the writer exclaims : " How sad a sight
it is to see the streets empty of people, and very
few upon the 'Change, jealous of every door that
one sees shut up, lest it should be the Plague, and
about us two shops in three, if not more, generally
shut up."

At the Great Fire the King and the Duke of
York, aftenvards James II., attended to give
directions for arresting the calamity. They could
think of nothing calculated to be so effectual as
blowing up or pulling down houses that stood in
its expected way. Such precautions were used in
Cornhill ; but in the confusion that prevailed, the
timbers which they had contained were not removed,
and when the flames reached them, " they," says
■yincent, who wrote a sermon on the Fire, " quickly
cross the way, and so they lick the whole street up
as they go ; they mount up to the top of the
highest houses ; they descend down to the bottom
of the lowest vaults and cellars, and march along
on both sides of the way with such a roaring noise
as never was heard in the City of London : no
stately building so great as to resist their fury ;
the Royal F2xchange itself, the glory of the mer-
chants, is now invaded with much violence.

Royal Exchange]

THE SECOND ROYAL EXCHANGE.

501

When the fire was entered, how quickly did it run
around the galleries, filling them with flames ; then
descending the stairs, compasseth the walks, giving
forth flaming vollies, and filling the court with
sheets of fire. By and by the kings fell all down
upon their faces, and the greater part of the stone
building after them (the founder's statue alone
remaining), with such a noise as was dreadful and
astonishing."

In Wren's great scheme for rebuilding London,
he proposed to make the Royal Exchange the
centre nave of London, from whence the great
sixty-feet wide streets should radiate like spokes in
a huge wheel. The Exchange was to stand free,
in the middle of a great piazza, and was to have
double porticoes, as the Forum at Rome had.
Evelyn wished the new building to be at Queen-
hithe, to be nearer the water-side, but eventually
both his and Wren's plan fell through, and Mr.
Jerman, one of the City surveyors, undertook the
design for the new Bourse.

For the east end of the new building the City re-
quired to purchase 700 or 800 fresh superficial feet
of ground from a Mr. Sweeting, and 1,400 more for
a passage. It was afterwards found that the City
only required 627 feet, and the improvement of
the property would benefit Mr. Sweeting, who,
however, resolutely demanded ;^i,ooo. The re-
fractory, greedy Sweeting declared that his tenants
paid him ^^246 a year, and in fines _;^62o; and
that if the new street cut near St. Benet Fink
Church, another ;^i, 000 would not satisfy him for
his damage. It is supposed that he eventually
took ;^7oo for the 783 feet 4 inches of ground,
and for an area 25 feet long by 12 wide.

Jerman's design for the new building being com-
pleted, and the royal approbation of it obtained,
together with permission to extend the south-west
angle of the new Exchange into the street, the
building (of which the need was severely felt) was
iramedia^tely proceeded with ; and the foundation
was laid on the 6th of May, 1667. On the 23rd of
October, Charles II. laid the base of the colunm
on the west side of the north entrance ; after which
he was plentifully regaled "with a chine of beef,
grand dish of fowle, gammons of bacon, dried
tongues, anchovies, caviare, &c., and plenty of
several sorts of wine. He gave twenty pounds in
gold to the workmen. The entertainment was in
a shed, built and adorned on purpose, upon the
Scotch AValk." Pepys has given some account of
this interesting ceremony in his Diary, where we
read, " Sir W. Pen and I back to London, and
there saw the King with his kettle-drums and
trumpets, going to the Exchange, which, the gates

being shut, I could not got in to see. So, with
Sir W. Pen to Captain Cockes, and thence again
tou-ards Westminster ; but, in my way, stopped at
the Exchange, and got in, the King bemg nearly
gone, and there find the bottom of the first pillar
laid. And here was a shed set up, and hung with
tapestry, and a canopy of state, and some good
victuals, and wine for the King, who, it seems,
did it."

James IL, then Duke of York, laid the first
stone of the eastern column on the 31st of October.
He was regaled in the same manner as the King
had been; and on tlie iSth of November following,
Prince Rupert laid the first stone of tlie east side
of the south entrance, and was entertained by the
City and company in the same place." (Vie/i;
"Journals of the House of Commons.")

The ground-plan of Jerman's Exchange, we read
in Britton and Pugin's " Public Buildings," pre-
sented nearly a regular quadrangle, including a
spacious open court with porticoes round it, and
also on the north and south sides of the building.
The front towards Cornhill was 210 feet in extent.
The central part was composed of a lofty archwa}',
opening from the middle intercolumniation of four
Corinthian three-quarter columns, supporting a
bold entablature, over the centre of which were
the royal arms, and on the east side a balustrade,
&c., surmounted by statues emblematical of the
four quarters of the globe. Within the lateral
intercolumniations, over the lesser entrance to the
arcade, were niches, containing the statues of
Charles I. and II., in Roman habits, by Bushnell.
The tower, which rose from the centre of the
portico, consisted of three storeys. In front of the
lower storey was a niche, containing a statue of Sir
Thomas Gresham ; and over the cornice, facing
each of the cardinal points, a bust of Queen
Elizabeth; at the angles were colossal griffins,
bearing shields of the City arms. \Vithin the
second storey, which was of an octagonal fomi with
trusses at the angles, was an excellent clock with
four dials ; there were also four wind-dials. The
upper storey (which contained the bell) was circulaf,
with eight Corinthian columns supporting an en-
tablature, surmounted by a dome, on which was a
lofty vane of gilt brass, shaped like a grasshopper,
the crest of the Gresham family. The attic over
the columns, in a line with the basement of the
tower, was sculptured with two alto-relievos, in
panels, one representing Queen Elizabeth, with
attendant figures and heralds, proclaiming the
original building, and the other Britannia, seated
amidst the emblems of commerce, accompanied
by the polite arts, manufactures, and agriculture.

502

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange.

The height from tiie basement line to the top of
the dome was 12S feet 6 inches.

Within the quadrangle there was a. spacious
area, measuring 144 feet by ri; feet, surrounded
by a wide arcade, which, as well as the area itself,
was, for the general accommodation, arranged into
several distinct parts, called " walks," where foreign
and domestic merchants, and other persons en-
gaged in commercial pursuits, daily met. The
area was paved with real Turkey stones, of a small
size, the gift, as tradition reports, of a merchant
who traded to that country.

In the centre, on a pedestal, surrounded by an
iron railing, was a statue of Charles IL, in a
Roman habit, by Spiller. At the intersections of
the groining was a large ornamented shield, dis-
playing either the City arms, the arms of the
Mercers' Company, viz., a maiden's head, crowned,
with dishevelled hair ; or those of Gresham, viz.,
a chrevron, ermine, between three mullets.

On the centre of each cross-rib, also in alternate
succession, was a maiden's head, a grasshopper,
and a dragon. The piazza was formed by a series
of semi-circular arches, springing from columns.
In the spandrils were tablets surrounded by
festoons, scrolls, and other enrichments. In the
wall of the back of the arcade were twenty-eight
niches, only two of which were occupied by
statues, viz., that toward the north-west, in which
was Sir Thomas Gresham, by Cibber ; and that
toward the south-west, in which was Sir John
Barnard, whose figure was placed here, whilst iye
was yet living, at the expense of his fellow-citizens,
"in testimony of his merits as a merchant, a
magistrate, and a faithful representative of the City
in Parliament."

Over the arches of the portico of the piazza were
twenty-five large niches with enrichments, in which
were the statues of our sovereigns. Many of these
statues were formerly gilt, but the whole were
latterly of a plain stone colour. Walpole says that
the major part were sculptured by Cibber.

We append a few allusions to the second 'Change
in Addison's works, and elsewhere.

In 16S3, the following idle verses appeared,
forming part of Robin Conscience's " Progress
through Court, City, and Country:" —

" Now I being thus abused below.
Did wallv up-stairs, where on a row.
Brave shops of ware did make a shew

Most sumptious.

"The gallant girls that there sold knacks,
Which ladies and brave women lacks,
When tliey did see me, they did wax

In cliolcr.

" Quoth they, We ne'er knew Conscience yet.
And, if he comes our gains to get.
We'll banish him ; he'll here not get

One scholar."

" There is no place in the town," says that
rambling philosopher, Addison, " which I so much
love to frequent as the Royal E.\change. It gives
me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure
gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see
so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners
consulting together upon the private business of
mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of
emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I
look upon High 'Change to be a great council in
which all considerable nations have their repre-
sentatives. Factors in the trading world are what
ambassadors are in the politic world ; they nego-
ciate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good
correspondence between those wealthy societies of
men that are divided from one another "uy seas and
oceans, or live on the different extremities of a
continent. I have often been pleased to hear dis-
putes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and
an alderman of London ; or to see a subject of the
great Mogul entering into a league with one of the
Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in
mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as
they are distinguished by their difterent walks and
difterent languages. Sometimes I am jostled
among a body of Armenians ; sometimes I am
lost in a crowd of Jews ; and sometimes make one
in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or
Frenchman at dift'erent times ; or rather, fancy
myself like the old philosopher, who, upon being
asked what countryman he was, replied that he
w'as a citizen of the world."

" When I have been upon the 'Change " (such
are the concluding words of the paper), " I have
often fancied one of our old kings standing in person
where he is represented in effigy, and looking down
upon the wealthy concourse of people with which
that place is every day filled. In this case, how
would he be surprised to hear all the languages of
Europe spoken in this little spot of his former
dominions, and to see so many private men, who
in his time would have been the vassals of some
powerful baron, negotiating, like princes, for greater
sums of money than were formerly to be met with
in the royal treasury ! Trade, without enlarging
the British territories, has given us a kind of addi-
tional empire. It has multiplied the number of
the rich, made our landed estates infinitely more
valuable than they were formerly, and added to
them an accession of other estates as valuable as
the land themselves." (Spectator, No. 69.)

Rovai Exchange] ROYAL EXCHANGE ATTRACTIONS AND NUISANCES.

503

It appears, from one of Steele's contributions to
the Spectator, that so late as the year 1712 the
shops continued to present undiminished attraction.
They were then 160 in number, and, letting at ^20
or ;^30 each, formed, in all, a yearly rent of
;^4,ooo : so, at least, it is stated on a print
publislied in 1712, of which a copy may be seen in
Mr. Crowle's "Pennant." Steele, in describing the
adventures of a day, relates that, in the course of
his rambles, he went to divert himself on 'Change.
" It was not the least of my satisfaction in my
survey," says he, "to go up-stairs and pass the
shops of agreeable females ; to observe so many
pretty hands busy in the folding of ribbons, and
the utmost eagerness of agreeable faces in the sale
of patches, pins, and wires, on each side of the
counters, was an amusement in whidi I could
longer have indulged myself, had not the dear
creatures called to me, to ask what I wanted."

"On evening 'Change,"says Steele, "the mumpers,
the halt, the blind, and the lame ; your vendors of
trash, apples, plums ; your ragamuffins, rake-shames,
and wenches — have jostled the greater number of
honourable merchants, substantial tradesmen, and
knowing masters of ships, out of that place. So
that, what with the din of squallings, oaths, and
cries of beggars, men of the greatest consequence
in our City absent themselves from the Royal
Exchange."

The cost of the second Exchange to the City
and Mercers' Company is estimated by Strype at
^80,000, but Mr. Burgon calculates it at only
^69,979 IIS. The shops in the Exchange, leading
to a loss, were forsaken about 1739, and eventually
done away with some time after by the unwise Act
of 1768, which enabled the City authorities to pull
down Gresham College. From time to time fre-
quent repairs were made in Jerman's building.
Those effected between the years 1819 and 1824
cost ^34,390. This sum included the cost of a
handsome gate tower and cupola, erected in 1821,

from the design of George Smith, Esq., surveyor
to the Mercers' Company, in lieu of Jerman's
dilapidated wooden tower.

The clock of the second Exchange, set up by-
Edward Stanton, under the direction of Dr. Hooke,
had chimes with four bells, playing six, and latterly
seven tunes. The sound and tunable bells were
bought for ;^6 5s. per cwt. The balconies from
the inner pawn into the quadrangle cost about
;!^3oo. The signs over the shops were not hung,
but were over the ^oors.

Caius Gabriel Cibber, the celebrated Danish
sculptor, was appointed carver of the royal statues
of the piazza, but Giblions executed the statue of
Charles II. for the quadrangle. Bushnell, the mad
sculptor of the fantastic statues on Temple Bar,
carved statues for the Cornhill front, as we have
before mentioned. The statue of Gresham in the
arcade was by Cibber; George III., in the piazza,
was sculptured by Wilton ; George I. and II. were
by Rysbrach.

The old clock had four dials, and chimed four
times daily. The chimes played at three, six,
nine, and twelve o'clock — on Sunday, "The 104th
Psalm ;" Monday, " God save the King ;" Tuesday,
" The Waterloo March ;" Wednesday, " There's
nae Luck aboot the Hoose;" Thursday, "See the
Conquering Hero comes ;" Friday, " Life let us
cherish ;" Saturday, " Foot Guards' March."

The outside shops of tlie second Exchange were
lottery offices, newspaper offices, watchmakers,
notaries, stock-brokers, &c. The shops in the
galleries were superseded by the Royal Exchange
Assurance Offices, Lloyd's Coffee-house, the Mer-
chant Seamen's Offices, the Gresham Lecture
Room, and the Lord Mayor's Court Office. " The
latter," says Timbs, " was a row of offices, divided
by glazed partitions, the name of each attorney
being inscribed in large capitals upon a projecting
board. The vaults were let to bankers, and to the
East India Company for the stowage of pepper."

CHAPTER XLIIL

The Second Exchange on Fire— Chimes Extraordinary— Incidents of the Fire— Sale of Salvage-Designs for the New Buildins-Details of the
Present ExclranRe— The Ambulatory, or Merchants' Walk— Royal Exchange Assurance Company— " Lloyd's"— Origin of "Lloyd's "—
Marine Assurance— Benevolent Contributions of "Lloyd's"— A "Good "and "Bad" Book.

The second Exchange was destroyed by fire on the
loth of January, 1838. The flames, which broke
out probably from an over-heated stove in Lloyd's
Coffee-house, were first seen by two of the Bank

watchmen about half-past ten. The gates had to
be forced before entrance could be effected, and
then the hose of the fire-engine was found to be
frozen and unworkable. About one o'clock tlie

504

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange.

fire reached the new tower. Tlie hells diimed
" Life let us cherish," " God save the Queen," and
one of the last tunes heard, appropriately enough,
was " There's nae Luck aboot the Hoose." The
eight bells finally fell, cni.shing in the roof of the

of Gresham was entirely destroyed. In the ruins
of the Lord Mayor's Court Office the great City
Seal, and two bags, each containing ^200 in gold,
were found uninjured. The flames were clearly
seen at Windsor (twenty-four miles from London),

THE PRESENT ROYAL E.XCHANGE.

entrance arch. The east side of Sweeting's Alley
was destroyed, and all the royal statues but that
of Charles H. perished. One of Lloyd's safes,
containing bank-notes for ^^2, 500, was discovered
after the fire, with the notes reduced to a cinder,
but the numbers still traceable. A bag of twenty
sovereigns, thrown from a window, burst, and
some of the mob benefited by the gold. The statue

and at Roydon Mount, near Epping (eighteen
miles). Troops from the Tower kept Cornhill
clear, and assisted the sufferers to remove their
property. If the wind had been from the south,
the Bank and St. Bartholomew's Church would also
have perished.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1S3S, giving
power to purchase and remove all the buildings

Royal Exchange.]

THE NEW ROYAL EXCHANGE.

505

(called Bank Buildings) west of the Exchange, and
also the old buildings to the eastward, nearly as
far as Finch Lane. The Treasury at first claimed
the direction of the whole building, but eventually
gave way, retaining only a veto on the design. The
cost of the building was, from the first, limited to
_;^i 50,000, to be raised on the cre<lit of the London
Bridge Fund. Thirty designs were sent in by the
rival architects, and e.\hibited in Mercers' Hall,
but none could be decided upon ; and so the judges
themselves had to compete. Eventually the com-

(])erhaps the fountain of a grand Roman court-yard),
were lound heaps of rubbish, coins of cojiper, yellow
brass, silver, and silver-plated brass, of Augustus,
Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, &c.,
Henry IV. of England, Elizabeth, &c., and stores
of Flemish, German, Prussian, Danish, and Dutch
money. They also discovered fragments of Roman
stucco, painted shards of delicate Samian ware, an
amphora and terracotta lamps (seventeen feet
below the surface), gla.ss, bricks and tiles, jars, urn.s,
vases, and potters' stamps. In the Corporation

ULACKWELL HALL IN l8l2,

petition lay between Mr. Tite and Mr. Cockerell,
and the former was appointed by the Conunittee.
Mr. Tite was a classical man, and the result was a
fuasI-Greek, Roman, and Composite building. Mr.
Tite at once resolved to design the new building
with simple and unbroken lines, like the Paris
Bourse, and, as much as possible, to take the Pan-
theon at Rome as his guide. The portico was to
be at the west end, the tower at the east. The
first Exchange had been built on piles ; the foun-
dations of the third cost ^8, 124. In excavating for
it, the workmen came on what had evidently been
the very centre of Roman London. In a gravel-
pit, which afterwards seemed to have been a pond
43

Museum at the Guildhall, where Mr. Tite deposited
these interesting relics, are also fine wood tablets,
and styles (for writing on wax) of iron, brass, bone,
and wood. There are also in the same collection,
from the same source, artificers' tocls and leather-
work, soldiers' sandals and shoes, and a series of
horns, shells, bones, and vegetable remains. Tes-
selated pavements have been found in Threadneedle
Street, and other spots near the Exchange.

The cost of enlarging the site of the Exchange,
including improvements, and the widening of Corn-
hill, Freeman's Court, and Broad Street, the removal
of the French Protestant Church, and demolition
of St. Benet Fink, Bank Buildings, and Sweeting's

5o6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange.

Alley, was, according to the City Chamberlain's
return of 1851, ^:2;i,s'}S i.s. lod. The cost of
the building was ^'150,000.

The portico, one of the finest of its kind, is ninety-
six feet wide, and seventy-four feet high. That of
bt. Martin's Church is only sixty-four wide, and the
Post Office seventy-si.x. The whole building was
rapidly completed. The foundation-stone was laid
by Prince Albert, January 17th, 1842, John Pirie,
Esq., being Lord ^Layor. A huge red -striped
pavilion had been raised for the ceremonial, and the
Duke of Wellington and all the members of the
Peel Cabinet were present. A bottle full of gold,
silver, and copper coins was placed in a hollow
of the huge stone, and the following inscription
(in Latin), written by the Bishop of London, and
engraved on a zinc plate : —

Sir Thomas Gresham, Knight,

Erected at his own charge

A Building and Colonnade

For the convenience of those Persons

Who, in this renowned Mart,

Might carry on the Commerce of the World ;

Adding thereto, tor the relief of Indigence,

And for the advancement of Literature and Science,

An Almshouse and a College of Lecturers ;

The City of London aiding him ;

Queen Klizabeth favouring the design.

And, when the work was complete,

Opening it in person, with a solemn Procession.

Having been reduced to ashes,

Together with almost the entire City,

By a calamitous and widely-spreading Conflagration,

They were Rebuilt in a more splendid form

By the City of London

And the ancient Company of Mercers,

King Charles the Second commencing the building

On the 23rd October, A.D. 1667 ;

And when they had been again destroyed by Fire,

On the lOlh January, a.d. 1838,

The same Bodies, undertaking the work,

Determined to restore them, at their own cost,

On an enlarged and more ornamental Plan,

The munificence of Parliament providing the means

Of extending the Site,

And of widening the Ajjproaches and Crooked Streets

In every direction,

In order that there might at length arise,

L'nder the auspices of Queen Victoria,

Built a third time from the ground,

An Exchange

Worthy of this great Nation and City,

And suited to the vastness of a Commerce

Extended to the circumference

Of the habitable Globe.

His Royal Highness

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,

Consort of Her Sacred Majesty,

Laid the First Stone

On the 17th January, 1842,

In the Mayoralty of the Right Hon. John Pirie.

Architect, William Tite, F.R.S.

May God our Preserver

Ward off destruction

From this Building,

And from the whole City.

At the sale of the salvage, the porter's large
hand-bell, rung daily before closing the 'Change
(with the handle burnt), fetched ;^3 3s. ; City
griffins, ^30 and ^35 the pair; busts of Queen
Elizabeth, ;^io 155. and ;^i8 the pair; figures of
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ;^iio; the
statue of Anne, ^10 5s. ; George IL, ^9 5s. ;
George IIL and Elizabeth, ;^ii 15s. each ;
Charles IL, ^g ; and the sixteen other royal
statues similar sums. The copper-gilt grasshopper
vane was reserved.

The present Royal Exchange was opened by
Queen Victoria on October 28, 1844. The pro-
cession walked round the ambulatory, the Queen
especially admiring Lang's (of Munich) encaustic
paintings, and proceeded to Lloyd's Reading-room,
which was fitted up as a throne-room. Prince
Albert, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel,
Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Sale, and other cele-
brities, were present. There the City address was
read. After a sumptuous dejeuner in ihe Under-
writers' room, the Queen went to the quadrangle,
and there repeated the formula, " It is my royal will
and pleasure that this building be hereafter called
'The Royal Exchange.' The mayor, the Right
Hon. William Magnay, was aftenvards made a
baronet, in commeinoration of the da)\

A curious fact connected with the second
Exchange should not be omitted. On the i6th
of September, 1787, a deserted child was found
on the stone steps of the Royal Exchange that led
from Cornhill to Lloyd's Coffee-house. The then
churchwarden, Mr. Samuel Birch, the well-known
confectioner, had the child taken care of and
respectably brought up. He was named Gresham,
and christened Michael, after the patron saint of
the parish in which he was found. The lad grew
up shrewd and industrious, eventually became rich,
and established the celebrated Gresham Hotel in
Sackville Street, Dublin. About 1836 he sold the
hotel for ^30,000, and retired to his estate, Raheny
Park, near Dublin. He was a most liberal and
benevolent man, and took an especial interest in
the Irish orphan societies.

The tower at the east end of the Exchange is
177 feet to the top of the vane. The inner area
of the building is 170 feet by 112, of which iii
feet by 53 are open to the sky.

The south front is one unbroken line of pilasters,
with rusticated arches on the ground floor for shops
and entrances, the three middle spaces being

Royal Exchange.]

ROYAL EXCHANGE DETAILS.

507

simple recesses. Over these are richly-decorated
windows, and above the cornice there are a balus-
trade and attic. On the north side the centre
projects, and tlie pilasters are fewer. 'I'iie arches
on the ground lloor are rusticated, and there are
two niches. In one of them stands a statue of
Sir Hugh Myddelton, wiio brought the New River
to London in 16 14; and another of Sir Richard
Whittington, by Carew. Whittington was, it must
be remembered, a Mercer, and the E.xchange is
specially connected with the Mercers' Company.

On the east front of the tower is a niche where
a statue of Gresham, by Behnes, keeps watch and
ward. l"he vane is Gresham's former grasshopper,
saved from the fire. It is eleven feet long. The
various parts of the Exchange are divided by party
walls and brick arches of such great strength as to
be almost fire-proof — a compartment system which
confines any fire that should break out into a small
and restricted area.

West of the Exchange stands Ciiantrey's bronze
equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington. It
was Chantrey's last work ; and he died before it
was completed. The sculptor received ^9,000
for this figure ; and tlie French cannon from which
it was cast, and valued at ^^1,500, were given by
Government for the purpose. The inauguration
took place on the anniversary of the battle of
Waterloo, 1844, the King of Saxony being present.

On the frieze of the portico is inscribed, " Anno
XIII. Elizabeths R. Conditvm ; Anno VIII.
Victoria R. RESTAVRATViM." Over the central
doorway are the royal arms, by Carew. The key-
stone has the merchant's mark of Gresham, and
the key-stones of the side arches the arms of the
merchant adventurers of his day, and the staple of
Calais. North and south of the portico, and in
the attic, are the City sword and mace, with the
date of Queen Elizabeth's reign and 1844, and in
the lower panels mantles bearing the initials of
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria respectively.
The imperial crown is twelve inches in relief, and
seven feet high. The tympanum of the pediment
of the [jortico is filled with sculpture, by Richard
Westmacott, R.A., consisting of seventeen figures
carved in limestone, nearly all entire and detached.
The centre figure, ten feet high, is Commerce,
with her mural crown, upon two dolphins and a
shell. She holds the charter of the Exchange. On
her right is a group of tiiree British merchants —
as Lord Mayor, Alderman, and Common Council-
man — a Hindoo, a Mohammedan, a Greek bearing
a jar, and a Turkish merchant. On the left are
two British merchants and a Persian, a Chinese, a
Levant sailor, a negro, a British sailor, and a

supercargo. The opposite angles are filled with
anchors, jars, packages, (S;c. Upon the pedestal
of Commerce is this inscription, selected by Prince
Albert: "The Earth is the Lord's, and the
FULNESS THEREOF." — Psalm xxiv. I. The ascent
to the portico is by thirteen granite step.s. It
was discussed at the time whether a figure of
(Iresham himself should not have been substituteil
for that of Commerce ; but perhaps the abstract
figure is more suitable for a composition which is,
after all, essentially allegorical.

The clock, constructed by Dent, with the
assistance of the Astronomer Royal, is true to a
second of time, and has a compensation pendulum.
The chimes consist of a set of fifteen bells, by
Mears, and cost ^500, the largest being also the
hour-bell of the clock. In the chime-work, by
Dent, there are two hammers to several of the
bells, so as to play rapid passages ; and three and
five hammers strike difterent bells simultaneously.
All irregularity of force is avoided by driving the
chime-barrel through wheels and pinions. There
are no wheels between the weight that pulls
and the hammer to be raised. The lifts on the
chime-barrel are all epicycloidal curves ; and there
are 6,000 holes pierced upon the barrel for the
lifts, so as to allow the tunes to be varied. The
present airs are " God save the Queen," " The
Roast Beef of Old England," " Rule Britannia,"
and the 104th Psalm. The bells, in substance,
form, dimensions, &c., are from the Bow bells'
patterns ; still, they are thought to be too large
for the tower. The chime-work is stated to be the
first instance in England of producing harmony in
bells.

The interior of the Exchange is an open court-
yard, resembling the cortilc of Italian palaces. It
was almost unanimously decided by the London
merchants (in spite of the caprices of our charming
climate) to have no covering overhead, a decision
probably long ago regretted. The ground floor
consists of Doric columns and rusticated arches.
Above these runs a series of Ionic columns, with
arches and windows surmounted by a highly-orna-
mented pierced parapet. The keystones of the
arches of the upper storey are decorated with the
arms of all the jsrincipal nations of the world, in
the order determined by the Congress of Vienna.
In the centre of the eastern side are the arms of
England.

I'he ambulatory, or Merchants' Walk, is spacious
and well sheltered. The arching is divided by
beams and panelling, highly painted and decorated
in encaustic. In the centre of each panel, on the
four sides, the arms of the nations are repeated,

;o8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchang«.

emblazoned ia their proper colours ; and in the
four angles are the arms of Edward the Confessor,
who granted the lirst and most important charter
to the City, Edward III., in whose reign London
first grew powerful and wealthy. Queen Elizabeth,
who opened the first Exchange, and Charles IE,
in whose reign the second was built. In the
soutli-east angle is a statue of Queen Elizabeth,
by Watson, and in the south-west a marble statue
of Ciiarles IL, which formerly stood in the centre
of the second Exchange, and which escaped the
last fire unscathed.

In eight small circular panels of the ambulatory
are emblazoned the arms of the three mayors
(Pirie, Humphrey, and Magnay), and of the three
masters of the Mercers' Company in whose years
of office the Exchange was erected. The arms
of the chairman of the Gresham Committee, Mr.
R. L. Jones, and of the architect, Mr. Tite,
complete the heraldic illustrations. The York-
shire pavement of the ambulatory is panelled and
bordered with black stone, and squares of red
granite at the intersections. The open area is
paved with 'the traditional " Turkey stones," from
the old Exchange, which are arranged in Roman
patterns, with squares of red Aberdeen granite at
the intersections.

On the side-wall panels are the names of the
walks, inscribed upon chocolate tablets. In each
of the larger compartments are the arms of the
"walk," corresponding with the merchants'. As
you enter the colonnade by the west are the arms
of the British Empire, with those of Austria on
the right, and Bavaria on the reverse side ; then,
in rotation, are the arms of Belgium, France,
Hanover, Holland, Prussia, Sardinia, the Two
Sicilies, Sweden and Norway, the United States
of America, the initials of the Sultan of Turkey,
Spain, Saxony, Russia, Portugal, Hanseatic Towns,
Greece, and Denmark. On a marble panel in the
Merchants' Area are inscribed the dates of the
building and opening of the three Exchanges.

" Here are the same old-favoured spots, changed
though they be in appearance," says the author
of the "City" (1845); "and notwithstanding we
have lost the great Rothschild, Jeremiah Harman,
Daniel Hardcastle, the younger Rothschilds occupy
a pillar on the south side of the Exchange, much
in the same place as their father ; and the Barings,
the Bateses, the Salomons, the Doxats, the Durrants,
the Crawshays, the Curries, and the A\'ilsons, and
other influential merchants, still come and go as in
olden days. Many sea-captains and brokers still
go on 'Change ; but the ' walks ' are disregarded.
The hour at High 'Change is from 3.30 to 4.30

p.m., the two great days being Tuesday and
Friday for foreign exchanges."

A City writer of 1842 has sketched the chiet
celebrities of the Exchange of an earlier date.
Mr. Salomon, with his old clothes-man attire, his
close-cut grey beard, and his crutch-stick, toddling
towards his offices in Shooter's Court, Throgmorton
Street ; Jemmy Wilkinson, with his old-fashioned
manner, and his long-tailed blue coat with gilt
buttons.

On the south and east sides of the Exchange are
the arms of Gresham, the City, and the Mercers'
Company, for heraldry has not even yet died out.
Over the three centre arches of the north front
are the three following mottoes : — Gresham's (in
old French), " Fortun — h my ;" the City, " Domine
dirigenos;" the Mercers', " Honor Deo."

Surely old heraldry was more religious than
modem trade, for the shoddy maker, or the owner
of overladen vessels, could hardly inscribe their
vessels or their wares with the motto " Honor
Deo;" nor could the director of a bubble com-
pany with strict propriety head the columns of
his ledger with the solemn words, " Domine dirige
nos." But these are cynical thoughts, for no doubt
trade ranks as many generous, honourable, and
pious people among its followers as any other
profession ; and we have surely every reason to
hope that the moral standard is still rising, and
that " the honour of an Englishman " will for ever
remain a proverb in the East.

The whole of the west end of the Exchange is
taken up by the offices and board-rooms of the
Royal Exchange Assurance Company, first organ-
ised in 17 1 7, at meetings in Mercers' Hall. It
was an amalgamation of two separate plans. The
petition for the royal sanction made, it seems, but
slow way through the Council and the Attorney-
General's department, for the South Sea Bubble
mania was raging, and many of the Ministers,
including the Attorney-General himself (and who
was indeed afterwards prosecuted), had shares in
the great bubble scheme, and wished as far as
possible to secure for it the exclusive attention of
the company. The petitioners, therefore (under
high legal authority), at once commenced business
under the temporary title of the Mining, Royal
Mineral, and Batteries Works, and in three-quarters
of a year insured property to the amount of nearly
two millions sterling. After the lapse of two
years, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, eager for
the money to be paid for the charter, and a select
committee having made a rigid inquiry into the
project, and the cash lodged at the Bank to meet
losses, recommended the grant to the House of

Royal Exchange.]

" LLOYD'S."

509

Commons. The .\ct of the 6tli (ieorge I., cap. 18,
authorised the king to grant a charter, which was
accordingly done, June 22nd, 1720. The "London
Assurance," which is also lodged in the E.xchange,
obtained its charter at the same time. Each of
these comjianies paid ^£^300, 000 to the Exchequer.
They were both allowed to assure on ships at sea,
and going to sea, and to lend money on bottomry ;
and each was to have " perpetual succession " and a
common seal. To prevent a monopoly, however,
no person holding stock in either of the companies
was allowed to purchase stock in the other. In
1721, the "Royal Exchange Assurance" obtained
another charter for assurances on lives, and also of
houses and goods from fire. In consecjuence of
the depression of the times, the company was
released from the payment of ;^i 50,000 of the
;^3oo,ooo originally demanded by Government.

At the close of the last, and commencement of
the present century, the monopolies of the two com-
panies in marine assurance were sharply assailed.
Their enemies at last, however, agreed to an armis-
tice, on their surrendering their special privileges,
which (in spite of Earl Grey's exertions) were at
last annulled, and any joint-stock company can
now effect marine assurances. The loss of the
monopoly did not, however, injure either excellent
body of underwriters.

" Lloyd's," at the east end of the north side of
the Royal Exchange, contains some magnificent
apartments, and the steps of the staircase leading
to them are of Craigleath stone, fourteen feet wide.
The subscribers' room (for underwriting) is 100
feet long, by 48 feet wide, and runs from north
to south, on the east side of the Merchants' Quad-
rangle. This noble chamber has a library attached
to it, with a gallery round for maps and charts,
which many a shipowner, sick at heart, with fears
for his rich argosy, has conned and traced. The
captains' room, the board-room, and the clerks'
offices, occupy the eastern end ; and along the
north front is the great commercial room, 80 feet
long, a sort of club-room for strangers and foreign
merchants visiting London. The rooms are lit
from the ceilings, and also from windows opening
into the quadrangle. They are all highly decorated,
well warmed and ventilated, and worthy, as Mr.
Effingham Wilson, in his book on the Exchange,
justly observes, of a great commercial city like
London.

The system of marine assurance seems to have
been of great antiquity, and probably began with
the Italian merchants in Lombard Street. The
first mention of marine insurance in England, says
an excellent author, Mr. Burgon, in his " Life of

Gresham," is in a letter from the Protector Somerset
to the Lord Admiral, in 1548 (Edwartl VI,), still
preserved. Gresham, writing from Antwerp to Sir
Thcmas Parry, in May, 1560 (Elizabctli), speaks
of armour, ordered by Queen Elizabeth, bought
by him at Antwerp, and sent by him to Hamburg
for shipment (though only about twelve shijjs a
year came from thence to London). He had also
adventured at his own risk, one thousand pounds'
w-orth in a ship which, as he says, " I have caused
to be assured upon the Burse at Antwerp."

The following preamble to the Statute, 43rd
Elizabeth, proves that marine assurance was even
then an old institution in England : —

" Whereas it has been, time out of mind, an
usage among merchants, both of this realm and of
foreign nations, when they make any great adven-
tures (specially to remote parts), to give some
considerable money to other persons (which com-
monly are no small number) to have from them
assurance made of their goods, merchandize, ships,
and things adventured, or some part thereof, at
such rates, and in such sorts as the parties assurers
and the parties assured can agree, which course of
dealing is commonly termed a policy of assurance,
by means of which it cometh to pass upon the
loss or perishing of any ship, there foUoweth not
the undoing of any man, but the loss lighteth
rather easily upon many, than heavy upon few ;
and rather upon them that adventure not, than
upon them that adventure ; whereby all merchants,
specially the younger sort, are allowed to venture
more willingly and more freely."

In 1622, Malynes, in his " Lex Mercatoria," says
that all policies of insurance at Antwerp, and other
places in the Low Countries, then and formerly
always made, mention that it should be in all things
concerning the said assurances, as it was accus-
tomed to be done in Lombard Street, London.

In 1627 (Charles I.), the marine assurers had
rooms in the Royal Exchange, as appears by a law
passed in that year, "for the sole making and
registering of all manners of assurances, intima-
tions, and renunciations made upon any ship or
ships, goods or merchandise in the Royal Ex-
change, or any other place within the City of
London;" and the Rev. Samuel Rolle, in his
" ex. Discourses on the Fire of London," mentions
an assurance oflice in the Royal Exchange, " which
undertook for those ships and goods that were
hazarded at sea, either by boistrous winds, or
dangerous enemies, yet could not .secure itself,
when sin, like Samson, took hold of the i)illars of
it, and went about to pull it down."

After the Eire of London the underwriter.; met

OLD ANn NKW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange,

in a room near Cornhill ; and from tlience they
removed to a cotTee-house in Lombard Street, kept
by a person named Lloyd, where intelligence of
vessels was collected and made public. In a
copy of Lloyd's List, No. 996, still extant, dated
Friday, June 7th, 1745, and tiuoted by Mr. lifting-
ham Wilson, it is stated : " This List, which was
formerly published once a week, will now continue
to be published every Tuesday and Friday, with
the addition of the Stocks, course of Exchange, &c.
Subscriptions are taken in at three shillings per

1740. — Mr. Baker, master of Lloyd's Coffee-house,
in Lombard Street, waited on Sir Robert Walpole
with the news of Admiral Vernon's taking Porto-
bello. This was the first account received thereof,
and, proving true, Sir Robert was pleased to order
him a handsome present." (^Gentleman's Magazine,
March, 1740.)

The author of "The City " (1S45) says : "^'le
affairs of Lloyd's are now managed by a committee
of underwriters, who have a secretary and five or
six clerks, besides a number of writers to attend

INTERIOR OF LLOYD'S.

f|uartcr, at the l)ar of Lloyd's coftee-house in Lom-
bard Street." Lloyd's List must therefore have
begun about 1726.

In the Tatler of December 26th, 17 10, is the
following : — " This coffee-house being provided with
a pulpit, for the benefit of such auctions that are
frequently made in this place, it is our custom,
upon the first coming in of the news, to order a
youth, who officiates as the Kidney of the coffee-
house, to get into the ]nilpit, and read every paper,
with a loud and distinct voice, while the whole
audience are sipping their respective liquors."

The following note is curious : — " 1 1 th March,

upon the rooms. The rooms, three in number, are
called respectively the Subscribers' Room, the Mer-
chants' Room, and the Captains' Room, each of
which is frequented by various classes of persons
connected with shipping and mercantile life. Since
the opening of the Merchants' Room, which event
took place when business was re-commenced at the
Royal Exchange, at the beginning of this year, an
increase has occurred in the number of visitors, and
in which numbers the subscribers to Lloyd's are
estimated at 1,600 individuals.

" Taking the three rooms in the order they stand,
under the rules and regulations of the establishment,

Royal Exchange.] UNDERWRITERS AND INSURANCE BROKERS.

Sii

S'*

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Royal Exchange;

we sliall first describe the business and appearance
of the Subscribers' Room. ML>mbcrs to the Sub-
scribers' Room, if they follow the business of under-
writer or insurance broker, pa)- an entrance fee of
twenty-five guineas, and an annual subscription of
four guineas. If a person is a subscriber only,
witliout ])ractising the craft of underwriting, the
payment is limited to the annual subscription fee
of four guineas. The Subscribers' Room numbers
about i,ooo or i,ioo members, the great majority
of whom follow the business of underwriters and
insurance brokers. The most scrupulous attention
is paid to the admission of members, and the ballot
is put into requisition to determine all matters
brought before the committee, or the meeting of tiie
house.

"The Underwriters' Room, as at present existing,
is a fine spacious room, having seats to accommo-
date tiie subscribers and their friends, with drawers
and boxes for their books, and an abundant supply
of blotting and plain paper, and pens and ink.
The underwriters usually fix their seats in one
place, and, like the brokers on the Stock Exchange,
have their particular as well as casual customers.

" ' Lloyd's Books,' " which are two enormous
ledger-looking volumes, elevated on desks at the
right and left of the entrance to the room, give the
jjrincipal arrivals, extracted from the lists so received
at the chief outposts, English and foreign, and of
all losses by wreck or fire, or other accidents at sea,
written in a fine Roman hand, sufficiently legible
that 'he who runs may read.' Losses or accidents,
which, in the technicality of the room, are denomi-
nated ' double lines,' are almost the first read by
the subscribers, who get to the books as fast as
possible, immediately the doors are opened for
business.

" All these rooms are thrown open to the public
as the 'Change clock strikes ten, when there is an
immediate rush to all parts of the establishment,
the object of many of the subscribers being to seize
their favourite newspaper, and of others to ascertain
the fate of their speculation, as revealed in the
double lines before mentioned."

Not only has Lloyd's — a mere body of
merchants — without Government interference or
patronage, done much to give stability to our com-
merce, but it has distinguished itself at critical
times by the most princely generosity and bene-
volence. In the great French war, when we were
pushed so hard by the genius of Napoleon, which
we had unwisely provoked, Lloyd's opened a sub-
scription for the relief of soldiers' widows and
orphans, and commenced an appeal to the general
public by the gift of ^20,000 Three per Cent.

Consols. In three months only the sum subscribed
at Lloyd's amounted to more than ;^7 0,000. In
1S09 they gave ^5,000 more, and in 1813
;^i 0,000. This was the commencement of the
Patriotic Fund, placed under three trustees. Sir
Francis Baring, Bart, John Julius Angerstein, Esq.,
and Thomson Bonar, Esq., and the subscriptions
soon amounted to more than ;^7oo,ooo. In other
charities Lloyd's were equally munificent. They
gave ^5,000 to the London Hospital, for the
admission of London merchant-seamen; ^1,000
for suftering inhabitants of Russia, in 1S13 ; ;^i,ooo
for the relief of the North American Militia (1813);
;^io,ooo to the Waterloo subscription of 1815 ;
;^2,ooo for the establishment of lifeboats on the
English coast. They also instituted rewards for
those brave men who save, or attempt to save, life
from shipwTeck, and to those who do not require
money a medal is given. This medal was executed
by W. Wyon, Esq., R.A. The subject of the
obverse is the sea-nymph Leucothea appearing to
Ulysses on the raft; the moment of the subject
chosen is found in the following lines : — ■

" This heavenly scarf l^eneatli thy bosom bind.
And live ; give all thy tenors to the wind."

The reverse is from a medal of the time of
Augustus — a crown of fretted oak -leaves, the
reward given by the Romans to him who saved the
life of a citizen; and the motto, " Ob cives servatos."
By the system upon which business is conducted
in Lloyd's, information is given to the insurers and
the insured ; there are registers of almost every
ship which floats upon the ocean, the places where
they were built, the materials and description of
timber used in their construction, their age, state
of repair, and general character. An index is kept,
showing the voyages in which they have been and
are engaged, so that merchants may know the
vessel in which they entrust their property, and
assurers may ascertain the nature and value of the
risk they undertake. Agents are appointed for
Lloyd's in almost every seaport in the globe, who
send information of arrivals, casualties, and other
matters interesting to merchants, shipowners, and
underwriters, which information is published daily
in Lloyd's List, and transmitted to all parts of the
world. The collection of charts and maps is one of
the most correct and comprehensive in the world.
The Lords of the Admiralty presented Lloyd's with
copies of all the charts made from actual surveys,
and the East India Company was equally generous.
The King of Prussia presented Lloyd's with copies
of the charts of die Baltic, all made from surveys,
and printed by the Prussian Government. Masters

Loth bury.]

LOTHBURY AND ITS NEIGHBOURIIOOn.

5'3

of all ships, and of whatever nation, frequenting the
port of London, have access to this collection.

Before the last fire at the Exchange there was,
on the stairs leading to Lloyd's, a monument to
Captain Lydekker, the great benefactor to the
London Seamen's Hospital. This worthy man
was a shipowner engaged in the South Sea trade,
and some of his sick sailors having been kindly
treated in the " Dreadnought" hospital ship, in
1830, he gave a donation of p^ioo to the Society.
On his death, in 1S33, '""^ ^^^^ ^o"' ships and their
stores, and the residue of his estate, after the pay-
ment of certain legacies. The legacy amounted
to ^48,434 i6s. I id. in the Three per Cents., and
_p£^io,2 95 IIS. 4d. in cash was eventually received.
The monument being destroyed by the fire in
1838, a new monument, by Mr. Sanders, sculptor,
was executed for the entrance to Lloyd's rooms.

The remark of "a good book" or " a bad book"
among the subscribers to Lloyd's is a sure index to
the prospects of the day, the one being indicative
of premium to be received, the other of losses to
be paid. The life of the underwriter, like the
stock speculator, is one of great anxiety, the events
of the day often raising his expectations to the
highest, or depressing them to the lowest pitch ;

and years arc often spent in the hope for acquisi-
tion of that which he never obtains. Among the
old stagers of the room there is often strong
antipathy expressed against the insurance of certain
ships, but we never recollect its being carried out
to such an extent as in the case of one vessel.
She was a steady trader, named after one of the
most venerable members of the room, and it was
a most curious coincidence that he invariably
refused to "write her" for "a single line."' Often
he was joked upon the subject, and pressed "to
do a litde" for his namesake, but he as frequently
denied, shaking his head in a doubtful manner.
One morning the subscribers were reading the
" double lines," or the losses, and among them
was the total WTCck of this identical ship.

There seems to have been a regret on the first
opening of the Exchange for the coziness and quiet
comfort of the old building. Old frequenters
missed the firm oak benches in the old ambulatoria,
the walls covered with placards of ships about to
sail, the amusing advertisements and lists of the
sworn brokers of London, and could not acquire a
rapid friendship for the encaustic flowers and gay
colours of the new design. They missed the old
sonorous bell, and the names of the old walks.

CHAPTER XLHL
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BANK:— LOTHBURY.

Lothbury— Its Former Inhabitants — St. Margaret's Church — Tokenhoiise Yard — Origin of the Name — Farthings and Tokens— Silver Halfpence
and Pennies — Queen Anne's Farthings— Sir William Petty — Defoe's Account of the Plague in Tokenhouse Yard.

Of Lothbury, a street on the north side of the
Bank of England, Stow says : " The Street of Loth-
berie, Lathberie, or Loadberie (for by all those
names have I read it), took the name as it seemeth
of icric', or i:ourf, of old time there kept, but by
whom is grown out of memory. This street is
possessed for the most part by founders that cast
candlesticks, chafing dishes, spice mortars, and
such-like copper or laton works, and do afterwards
turn them with the foot and not with the wheel, to
make them smooth and bright with turning and
scratching (as some do term it), making a loath-
some noise to the by-passers that have not been
used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully
called Lothberie."

" Lothbury," says Hutton (Queen Anne), " was
in Stow's time much inhabited by founders, but
now by merchants and warehouse-keepers, though
it is not without such-like trades as he mentions."

Ben Jonson brings in an allusion to once noisy

Lothbury in the "Alchemist." In this play Sir
Epicure Mammon says : —

This night I'll change

All that is metal in my house to gold ;

Ami early in the morning will I send

To all the plumbers and the pewterers,

And buy their tin and lead up ; and to Lothbury

For all the copper.

Surfy, What, and turn tliat too ? [Cornwall,

Mammon. Yes, and I'll puichase Devonshire and

And make them perfect Indies.

And again in his mask of " The Gipsies Meta-
morphosed " —

Bless the sovereign and his seeing.

♦ * * ■*

From a fiddle out of tune.
As the cuckoo is in June,
From the candlesticks of Lotlibury
And the loud pure wives of Banbury.

Stow says of St. INIargaret's, Lothbury : " I find
it called the Chappel of St. Margaret's de Loth-
berie, in the reign of Edward II., when in the 15th

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Lothbury.

of that king's reign, license was granted to found
a chauntry there. There be monuments in this
church of Reginald Coleman, son to Robert Cole-
man, buried there 1383. This said Robert Cole-
man may be supposed the first builder or owner of
Coleman Street; and that St. Stephen's Church,
there builded in Coleman Street, was but a chappel
belonging to the parish church of St. Olave, in the
Jewry/' In niches on either side of the altar-piece
are two flat figures, cut out of wood, and painted
to represent Moses and Aaron. These were origi-
nally in the Church of St. Christopher le Stocks,
but when that church was pulled down to make
way for the west end of the Bank of England, and
the parish was united by Act of Parliament to that
of St. Margaret, Lothbury (in 1781), they were re-
moved to the place they now occupy. At the west
end of the church is a metal bust inscribed to
Petrus le Maire, 1631; this originally stood in St.
Christopher's, and was brought here after the fire.

This church, which is a rectory, seated over
the ancient course of Walbrook, on the north side
of Lothbury, in the Ward of Coleman Street (says
Maitland), owes its name to its being dedicated
to St. Margaret, a virgin saint of Antioch, who
suffered in the reign of Decius.

Maitland also gives the following epitaph on Sir
John Leigh, 1564 : —

" No wealth, no praise, no bright renowne, no skill.
No force, no fame, no prince's love, no toyle,
Though forraine lands by travel search you will,
No faithful service of thy country soile,
Can life prolong one minute of an houre ;
But Deatli at length will execute his power.
For Sir John Leigh, to sundry countries knowne,
A worthy knight, well of his prince esteemed,
By seeing much to great experience growne.
Though safe on seas, though sure on land he seemed.
Yet lure he lyes, too soone by Death opprest ;
His fame yet lives, his soule in Heaven hath rest."

The bowl of the font (attributed to Grinling
Gibbons) is sculptured with representations of Adam
and Eve in Paradise, the return of the dove to the
ark, Christ baptised by St. John, and Philip bap-
tising the eunuch.

In the reign of Henry VIII. a conduit (of which
no trace now exists) was erected in Lothbury. It
was supplied with water from the spring of Dame
Anne's, the " Clear," mentioned by Ben Jonson in
his " Bartholomew Fair."

Tokenhouse Yard, leading out of Lothbury,
derived its name from an old house which was
once the office for the delivery of farthing pocket-
pieces, or -tokens, issued for several centuries by
many London tradesmen. Copper coinage, with
very few exceptions, was unauthorised in England

till 1672. Edward VI. coined silver farthings,
but Queen Elizabeth conceived a great prejudice
to copper coins, from the spurious " black money,"
or copper coins washed with silver, which had got
into circulation. The silver halfpenny, though
inconveniently small, continued down to the time
of the Commonwealth. In the time of Elizabeth,
besides the Nuremberg tokens which are often
found in Elizabethan ruins, many provincial cities
issued tokens for provincial circulation, which were
ultimately called in. In London no less than
3,000 persons, tradesmen and others, issued tokens,
for which the issuer and his friends gave current
coin on delivery. In 1594 the Government struck
a small copper coin, " the pledge of a halfpenny,"
about the size of a silver twopence, but Queen
Elizabeth could never be prevailed upon to sanction
the issue. Sir Robert Cotton, writing in 1607
(James L), on how the kings of England have sup-
ported and repaired their estates, says there were
then 3,000 London tradesmen who cast annually
each about ^5 worth of lead tokens, their store
amounting to some ^15,000. London having then
about 800,000 inhabitants, this amounted to about
2d. a person ; and he urged the King to restrain
tradesmen from issuing these tokens. In con-
sequence of this representation, James, in 16 13^
issued royal farthing tokens (two sceptres in saltier
and a crown on one side, and a harp on the other)^
so that if the English took a dislike to them they
might be ordered to pass in Ireland. They were
not made a legal tender, and had but a narrow
circulation. In 1635 Charles I. struck more of
these, and in 1636 granted a patent for the coinage
of farthings to Henry Lord Maltravers and Sir
Francis Crane. During the Civil War tradesmen
again issued heaps of tokens, the want of copjier
money being greatly felt. Charles II. had half-
pence and farthings struck at the Tower in 1670,
and two years afterwards they were made a legal
tender, by proclamation ; they were of pure Swedish
copper. In 16S5 there was a coinage of tin far-
things, with a copper centre, and the inscription,
" Niimmoriim famulus." The following year half-
pence of the same description were issued, and the
use of copper was not resumed till 1693, when all
the tin money was called in. Speaking of the
supposed mythical Queen Anne's farthing, Mr.
Pinkerton says: — "All the farthings of the fol-
lowing reign of Anne are trial pieces, since that of
17 1 2, her last year. They are of most e.xquisite
workmanship, exceeding most copper coins of
ancient or modern times, and will do honour to
the engraver, Mr. Croker, to the end of time. The
one whose reverse is Peace in a car, Fax missa fer

Throgviorton Street.]

THROGMORTON STREET.

SIS

orhem, is the most esteemed ; and next to it the
Britannia under a portal ; the other farthings are
not so vakiable." We possess a comiilete series
of silver pennies, from the reign of Egbert to the
present day (with the exception of the reigns of
Richard and John, the former coining in France, :
the latter in Ireland).

I'okenhouse Yard was built m the reign of
Charles L, on the site of a house and garden of i
the Earl of Arundel (removed to the Strand), by
Sir William Petty, an early writer on political
economy, and a lineal ancestor of the present
Marquis of Lansdowne. This extraordinary genius,
the son of a Hampshire clothier, was one of the
earliest members of the Royal Society. He studied
anatomy with Hobbes in Paris, wrote numerous
philosophical works, suggested improvements for
the nav)', and, in fact, explored almost every path
of science. Aubrey says that, being challenged
by Sir Hierom Sankey, one of Cromwell's knights.
Petty being short-sighted, chose for place a dark
cellar, and for weapons a big carpenter's axe.
Petty's house was destroyed in the Fire of London.
John Grant, says Peter Cunningham, also had pro-
perty in Tokenhouse Yard. It was for Grant that
Petty is said to have compiled the bills of mortality
which bear his name.

Defoe, who, however, was only three years old
when the Plague broke out, has laid one of the
most terrible scenes in his " History of the Plague"
in Tokenhouse Yard. " In my walks," he says, " I
had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as particu-
larly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible
shrieks and screeching of women, who in their
agonies would throw open their chamber windows,

and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. Passing
through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden
a casement violently oi)cncd just over my head,
I and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and
j then cried, ' Oh ! death, death, death ! " in a most
j inimitable tone, which struck me with horror, and
a chilliness in my very blood. There was nobody
to be seeir in the whole street, neither did any other
window open, for people had no curiosity now in
any case, nor could anybody help one another.
Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage,
there was a more terrible cry than that, though it
was not so directed out at the window ; but the
whole flimily was in a terrible fright, and I could
hear women and children run screaming about the
rooms like distracted ; when a garret window opened,
and somebody from a window on the other side the
alley called and asked, 'What is the matter?'
upon which, from the first window it was answered,
'Ay, ay, quite dead and cold!' This person was
a merchant, and a deputy-alderman, and very rich.
But this is but one. It is scarce credible what
dreadful cases happened in particular families every
day. People in the rage of the distemper, or in
the torment of their swellings, which was, indeed,
intolerable, running out of their own government,
raving and distracted, oftentimes laid violent hands
upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their
windows, shooting themselves, &c. ; mothers mur-
dering their own children in their lunacy; some
dying of mere grief, as a passion ; some of mere
fright and surprise, without any infection at all ;
others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions,
some into despair and lunacy, others into melan-
choly madness."

CHAPTER XLIV,

THROGMORTON STREET.— THE DRAPERS' COMPANY.

Halls of the Drapers' Company— Throgmorton Street and its many Fair Houses— Drapers and Wool llerchants— The Drapers in Olden Times—
Milborne's Charily— Dress 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 Drapers' Hall— Arms of the Drapers'
Company.

THROGMORTON STREET is at the north-east comer
of the Bank of England, and was so called after
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, who is said to have
been poisoned by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Queen
Elizabeth's favourite. There is a monument to his
memory in the Church of St. Catherine Cree.

The Drapers' first Hall, according to Herbert,
was in Cornhill ; the second was in Throgmorton

Street, to which they came in 1541 (Henry VIII.),
on the beheading of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, its
previous owner ; and the present structure was re-
erected on its site, after the Great Fire of London.
Stow, describing the Augustine Friars' Church,
says there have been built at its west end " many
feyre houses, namely, in Throgmorton Streete :"
and among the rest, " one very large and spacious,"

Si6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Throcmorton Street.

builded, he says, " in place of olde and small tene-
ments, by Thomas Cromwell, minister of the King's
jewell-hoiise, after th.it Maistcr of the Rolls, then
Lord Cromwell, Knight, Lord Privie Scale, Vicker-
Generall, Earle of Essex, High Chamberlain of
England, &c. ;" .and he then tells the following
story respecting it : —

"This house being finished, and having some
reasonable plot of groiuKl left for a g.arden, hee
caused the pales of the gardens adjoining to the
north parte thereof, on a sodaine, to bee taken

Yjs. viij''- the yeare, for that halfe which was left
I'luis much of mine owne knowledge have I
thought goode to note, that the sodaine rising of
some men causeth them to forget themselves."
("Survaie of London," 159S.)

The Comp.iny was incorporated in 1439 (Henry
VL), but it also possesses a charter granted them
by Edward HL, that they might regulate the sale
of cloths according to the st.atute. Drapers were
originally makers, not merely, as now, dealers in
cloth. (Herbert.) The country drapers were called

INTERIOR OF LiKAi i.R:, ilALL.

down, twenty-two foote to be measured forth right
into the north of every man's ground, a line there
to be drawne, a trench to be cast, a foundation
laid, and a high bricke wall to be builded. My
father had a garden there, and an house standing
close to his south pale ; this house they loosed
from the ground, and bore upon rollers into my
father's garden, twenty-two foot, ere my father
heard thereof. No warning was given him, nor
other ansvvere, when hee spoke to the surveyors of
that worke, but that their mayster, Sir Thomas,
commanded them so to doe ; no man durst go
to argue the matter, but each man lost his land,
and my father payde his whole rent, whiche was

clothiers ; the wool-merchants, staplers. The Bri-
tons and Saxons were both, according to the best
authorities, familiar with the art of cloth-making ;
but the greater part of English wool, from the
earliest times, seems to have been sent to the
•Netherlands, and from thence returned in the shape
of fine cloth, since we find King Ethelred, as early
as 967, exacting from the Easterling merchants of
the Steel Yard, in Thames Street, tolls of cloth,
which were paid at Billingsgate.

The width of woollen cloth is prescribed in
IVLagna Charta. There was a weavers' guild in the
reign of Henry L, and the drapers are mentioned
soon after as flourishing in all the large provincial

Throgmorton Street.]

THE BOOKS OF THE DRAPERS' CO^^'A^■Y.

517

cities. It is supposed that the cloths sold by such
drapers were red, green, and scarlet clotlis, made
in Flanders. In the ne.\t reign English cloths,
made of Spanish wool, are spoken of. Drapers
are recorded in the reign of Henry II. as paying
fines to the king for permission to sell dyed
cloths. In the same reign, English clotlis made
of Spanish wool are mentioned. In the reign
of Edward I., the cloth of Candlewick Street
(Cannon Street) was famous. The guild paid the
king two marks of gold e\ery year at the feast of
Miciiaelmas.

the London drapers at first opposing the right of
the country clothiers to sell in gross.

The drapers for a long time lingered al)out
Cornhill, where they had first settled, living in
Birchin Lane, and spreading as far as the Stocks'
Market ; but in the reign of Henry VI. the
drapers had all removed to Cannon Street, where
we find them tempting Lydgate's " London Lick-
penny " with their wares. In this reign arms were
granted to the Company, and the grant is still
preserved in the British Museum.

The books of the Company commence in the

DRAPERS HALL GARDEN'.

But Edward III., jealous of the Netherlands,
set to work to establish the English cloth manufac-
ture. He forbade the exportation of English wool,
and invited over seventy Walloon weaver families,
who settled in Cannon Street. The Flemings had
their meeting-place in St. Lawrence Poultney church-
yard, and the Brabanters in the churchyard of St.
Mary Somerset. In 1361 the king removed the
wool staple from Calais to Westminster and nine
English towns. In 1378 Richard II. again changed
the wool staple from Westminster to Staples' Inn,
Holborn ; and in 1397 a weekly cloth-market was
established at Blackwell Hall, Basinghall Street ;
44

reign of Edward IV., and are full of curious details
relating to dress, observances, government, and
trade. Edward IV., it must be remembered, in
1479, when he had invited the mayor and aider-
men to a great hunt at Waltham Forest, not to
forget the City ladies, sent them two harts, six
bucks, and a tun of wine, with which noble pre-
sent the lady mayoress (wife of Sir Bartholomew-
James, Draper) entertained the aldermen's wives at
Drapers' Hall, St. Swithin's Lane, Cannon Street.
The chief extracts from the Drapers' records made
by Herbert are the following : —

In 1476 forty of the Company rode to meet

5i8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Throgmorton Street.

Edward IV. on his return from France, at a cost of
^20. In 1483 they sent six persons to welcome
the iinh:qipy Edward V., whom the Dukes of
Gloucester and Buckingham, preparatory to his
murder, had brought to London ; and in the
following November, the Company dispatched
twenty-two of the livery, in many-coloured coats,
to attend the coronation procession of Edward's
wicked hunchback uncle, Richard III. Presently
they mustered 200 men, on the rising of the
Kentish rebels ; and again, in Finsbury Fields, at
'■the coming of the Northern men." They paid
9s. for boat hire to Westminster, to attend the
funeral of Queen Anne (Richard's queen).

In Henry VII. 's reign, we find the Drapers
again boating to Westminster, to present their bill
for the reformation of cloth-making. The barge
seems to ha\e been well supplied with ribs of
beef, wine, and pippins. We find the ubiquitous
Company at many other ceremonies of this reign,
such as the coronation of the queen, &c.

In 1 49 1 the Merchant Taylors came to a con-
ference at Drapers' Hall, about some disputes in the
cloth trade, and were hospitably entertained with
bread and wine. In the great riots at the Steel
Yard, when the London 'prentices tried to sack the
Flemish warehouses, the Drapers helped to guard
the depot, with weapons, cressets, and banners.
They probably also mustered for the king at
Blackheath against the Cornish insurgents. We
meet them again at the procession that welcomed
Princess Katherine of Spain, who married Prince
Arthur ; then, in the Lady Chapel at St. Paul's,
listening to Prince Arthur's requiem ; and, again,
bearing twelve enormous torches of wa.\ at the
burial of Henry VII., the prince's father.

In 15 14 (Henry VIII.) Sir William Capell left
the Drapers' Company houses in various parts of
London, on condition of certain prayers being
read for his soul, and certain doles being given.
In 1521 the Company, sorely against its will, was
compelled by the arbitrary king to help fit out five
ships of discovery for Sebastian Cabot, whose
father had discovered Newfoundland. They called
it " a sore adventure to jeopard siiips with men
and goods unto the said island, upon the singular
trust of one man, called, as they understood,
Sebastian." But Wolsey and the King would have
no nay, and the Company had to comply. The
same year. Sir John Brugge, Mayor and Draper,
being invited to the Serjeants' Feast at Ely House,
Holborn, the masters of the Drapers and seven
other crafts attended in their best livery gowns and
hoods ; the Mayor presiding at the high board, the
Master of the Rolls at the second, the Master of

the Drapers at the third. Another entry in the
same year records a sum of ^^22 15s. spent on
thirty-two yards of crimson satin, given as a
present to win the good graces of " my Lord
Cardinal," the proud Wolsey, and also twenty
marks given him, " as a pleasure," to obtain for
the Company more power in the management of
the Blackwell Hall trade.

In 1527 great disputes arose between the Drapers
and the Crutched Friars. Sir John Milborne, who
was several times master of the Company, and
mayor in 1521, had built thirteen almshouses,
near the friars' church, for thirteen old men, who
were daily at his tomb to say prayers for his soul.
There was also to be an anniversary obit. The
Drapers' complaint was that the religious services
were neglected, and that the friars had encroached
on the ground of Milborne's charity. Henry VIII.
afterwards gave Crutched Friars to Sir Thomas
Wyat, the poetical friend of the Eari of Surrey,
who built a mansion there, which was afterwards
Lumley House. At the dissolution of monasteries,
the Company paid ;^i,402 6s. for their chantries
and obits.

The dress or livery of the Company seems to
have varied more than that of any other — from
violet, crimson, murrey, blue, blue and crimson, to
brown, puce. In the reign of James I. a uniform
garb was finally adopted. The observances of the
Company at elections, funerals, obits, and pageants
were quaint, friendly, and clubable enough. Every
year, at Lady Day, the whole body of the fellow-
ship in new livery went to Bow Church (afterwards
to St. Michael's, Cornhill), there heard the Lady
Mass, and offered each a silver penny on the
altar. At evensong they again attended, and heard
dirges chanted for deceased members. On the
following day they came and heard the Mass of
Requiem, and off"ered another silver penny. On
the day of the feast they walked two and two
in livery to the dining-place, each member paying
three shillings the year that no clothes were
supplied, and two shillings only when they were.
The year's quarterage was sevenpence. In 1522
the election dinner consisted of fowls, swans,
geese, pike, half a buck, pasties, conies, pigeons,
tarts, pears, and filberts. The guests all washed
after dinner, standing. At the side-tables ale and
claret were served in wooden cups ; but at the
high table they gave pots and wooden cups for ale
and wine, but for red wine and hippocras gilt cups.
After being served with wafers and spiced \\ine,
the masters went among the guests and gathered
the quarterage. The old master then rose and
went into the parlour, with a garland on his head

Throgmorton Street.]

THE DRAPERS AT A FUNERAL.

519

and his ciij)bearer before liim, and, going straight to
the upper end of the high hoard, witliout minstrels,
chose the new master, and then sat down. Then
the masters went into the parlour, and took their
garlands and four cupbearers, and crossed the great
parlour till they came to the upper end of the
high board ; and there the chief warden delivered
his garland to the warilen he chose, and the three
other wardens did likewise, jjrofiering the garlands
to divers persons, and at last delivering them
to the real persons selected. After this all the
company rose and greeted the new master and
wardens, and the dessert began. At some of these
great feasts some 230 people sat down. The
lady members and guests sometimes dined with
the brothers, and sometimes in sejiarate rooms.
At the Midsummer dinner, or dinners, of 1515,
six bucks seem to have been eaten, Ijesides three
boars, a barrelled sturgeon, twenty-four dozen
quails ; three hogsheads of wine, twenty-one gal-
lons of muscadel, and thirteen and a half barrels
of ale. It was usual at these generous banquets
to have players and minstrels.

The funerals of the Company generally ended
with a dinner, at which the chaplains and a chosen
few of the Company feasted. Tlie Company's pall
was always used ; and on one occasion, in 15 18, we
find a silver spoon given to each of the six bearers.
Spiced bread, bread and cheese, fruit, and ale were
also partaken of at these obits, sometimes at the
church, sometimes at a neighbouring tavern. At
the funeral of Sir Roger Achilley, Lord Mayor in
15 13, there seem to have been twenty-four torch-
bearers. The pews were apparently hung with
black, and children holding torches stood by the
hearse. The Company maintained two priests at
St. Michael's, Cornhill. The funeral of Sir William
Roche, ALiyor in 1523, was singularly splendid.
First came two branches of white wax, borne
before the priests and clerks, who jMced in
surplices, singing as they paced. Then followed a
standartl, blazoned with the dead man's crest — a
red deer's head, with gilt horns, and gold and
green wings. Next followed mourners, and after
them the herald, with the dead man's coat armour,
checkered silver and azure. Then followed the
corpse, attended by clerks and the livery. After
the corpse came the son, the chief mourner, and
two other couples of mourners. The sword-bearer
and Lord Mayor, in state, walked next ; then
the aldermen, sherifis, and the Drapery livery,
followed by all the ladies, gentlewomen, and
aldernren's wives. After the dirge, they all went
to the dead man's house, and partook of spiced
bread and comfits, with ale and beer. The next

day the mourners had a collection at the church.
Then the chief mourners presented the target,
sword, helmet, and banners to the priests, and a
collection was made for the poor. I'Jirectly after
the sacrament, the mourners went to Mrs. Roche's
house, and dined, the livery dining at the Drapers'
Hall, the deceased having left ;£G 1 5s. 4d. for that
purpose. The record concludes thus : " And my
Lady Roche, of her gentylness, sent them moreover
four gallons of French wine, and also a box of
wafers, and a pottell of ipocras. For whose soul
let us pray, and all Christian souls. Amen." The
Company maintained ])riests, altars, and lights at
St. ALxry A\'oolnoth's, St. Michael's, Cornliill, St.
Thomas of Aeon, Austin Friars, and the Priory
of St. Bartholomew.

The Drapers' ordinances are of great interest.
Every apprentice, on being enrolled, jiaid fees,
which went to a fund called " spoon silver." The
mode of correcting these wayward lads was some-
times singular. Thus we find one Needswell in
the parlour, on court day, flogged by two tall
men, disguised in canvas frocks, hoods, and
vizors, twopennyworth of birchen rods being ex-
pended on his moral improvement. The Drapers
had a special ordinance, in the reign of Henry IV.,
to visit the fairs of Westminster, St. Bartholomew,
Spitalfields, and Southwark, to make a trade search,
and to measure doubtful goods by the " Drapers'
ell," a standard said to have been granted them
by King Edward III. Bread, wine, and pears
seem to have been the frugal entertainment of the
searchers.

Decayed brothers were always pensioned ; thus
we find, in 1526, Sir Laurence Aylmer, who had
actually been mayor in 1507, applying for alms, and
relieved, we regret to state, somewhat grudgingly.
In 1834 Mr. Lawford, clerk of the Company, stated
to the Commissioners of Municipal Inquiry that
there were then sixty poor freemen on the charity
roll, who received ^^lo a year each. The master
and wardens also gave from the Company's bounty
quarterly sums of money to about fifty or sixty
other poor persons. In cases where members of
the court fell into decay, they received pensions
during the court's pleasure. One person of high
repute, then recently deceased, had received the
sum of ^200 per annum, and on this occasion
the City had given him back his sherifil's fine.
The attendance fee given to members of the court
was two guineas.

From 1 53 1 to 17 14, Strype reckons fifty- three
Draper mayors. Eight of these were the heads of
noble families, forty-three were knights or baronets,
fifteen represented the City in Parliament, seven

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

fThrogmorton Street.

were founders of churches and public institu-
tions. The Earls of Rith and Essex, the Barons
AVotton, and the Dukes of Chandos are among the
noble families which derive their descent from
members of this illustrious Company. That great
citizen, Henry Fitz-Alwin, the son of Leofstan,
Goldsmith, and provost of London, was a Draper,
and held the office of nia}or for twenty-four
successive years.

In the Drapers' Lord Mayors' shows the barges
seem to have been covered with blue or red cloth.
The trumpeters wore crimson hats ; and the
banners, jiennons, and streamers were fringed
with silk, and "beaten with gold." The favourite
pageants were those of the Assumption and St.
Ursula. The Drapers' procession on the mayoralty
of one of their members, Sir Robert Clayton, is
thus described by Jordan in his "London In-
dustre :'' —

' ' In proper /laliils, orderly arrayed.

The movements of the mornini^ an' displayed.
Selected citizens i' th' morning all,
At seven a clock, do meet at Drapers' Hall.
The master, wardens, and assistimts joyn
For the first rank, in their gowns fac'd with Foyn.
The second order do, in merry moods,
March in gowns fac'd with Budge and liveiy hoods.
In gowns and scarlet hoods thirdly appears
A youthful number of Foyn's Batchellors ;
Forty Budge Batchellors the triumph crowns.
Gravely attir'd in scarlet hoods and gowns.

Gentlemen Ushers which white staves do hold
Sixty, in velvet coats and chains of gold.
Next, thirty more in plush and buff there are,
That several colours wear, and banners bear.

The Serjeant Tnnnpet thirty-six more brings
(Twenty the Duke of York's, sixteen the King's).
The Serjeant wears two scarfs, whose colours be
One the Lord Mayor's, t'other's the Company.
The King's Dram Major, follow'd by four more
Of the King's drums and fifes, make London roar."

" What gives the festivities of this Company an
unique zest," says Herbert, " however, is the visitors
at them, and which included a now extinct race.
We here suddenly find ourselves in company with
abbots, priors, and other heads of monastic esta-
blishments, and become so familiarised with the
abbot of Tower Hill, the prior of St. Mary Ovary,
Christ Church, St. Bartholomew's, the provincial
and the prior of ' Freres Austyn's,' the master of
St. Thomas Aeon's and St. Laurence Pulteney, and
others of the metropolitan conventual clergy, most
of whom we find amongst their constant yearly
visitors, that we almost fancy ourselves living in
their times, and of their acquaintance."

The last public procession of the Drapers' Com-
pany was in 1 76 1, when the master wardens and
court of assistants walked in rank to hear a sermon

at St. Peter's, Cornhill ; a number of them each
carried a pair of shoes, stockings, and a suit of
clothes, the annual legacy to the poor of this
Company.

The Drapers possess seven original charters, all
of them with the Great Seal attached, finely written,
and in excellent preservation. These charters com-
prise those of Edward I., Henry VL, Edward IV.,
Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, and two of James I.
The latter is the acting charter of the company.
In 4 James I., the company is entitled " The
Master and Wardens and Brothers and Sisters of
the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
of the Mystery of Drapers of the City of London."
In Maitland's time (1756), the Company devoted
_;^4,ooo a year to charitable uses.

CROMWELL'S HOUSE, FROM AGGAS's MAP.
{.Token from Herbert's *' City Companies.*')

Aggas's drawing represents Cromwell House
almost windowless, on the street side, and with
three small embattled turrets ; and there was a
footway through the garden of ^^'inchester House,
which forms the present passage (says Herbert)
from the east end of Throgmorton Street, through
Austin Friars to Great Winchester Street. The
Great Fire stopped northwards at Drapers' Hall.
The renter warden lost ;^446 of the Company's
money, but the Company's plate was buried safely
in a sewer in the garden. Till the hall could
be rebuilt. Sir Robert Clayton lent the Drapers a
large room in Austin Friars. The hall was rebuilt
by Jarman, who built the second Exchange and
Fishmongers' Hall. The hall had a ^•ery narrow
escape (says Herbert) in 1774 from a fire, which

Throgmorton Street. ^

THE GLORIES OF iDRAPERS' IIALL.

S2t

broke out in the vaults beneath the hall (let out as
a store-cellar), and destroyed a considerable part
of the building, together with a number of houses
on the west side of Austin Friars.

The present Drapers' Hall is Mr. Jarman's
structure, but altered, and partly rebuilt after the
fire in 1774, and partly rebuilt again in 1870. It
principally consists of a spacious quadrangle, sur-
rounded by a fine piazza or ambulatory of arches,
supported by columns. The (juiet old garden
greatly improves the hall, which, from this appen-
dage, and its own elegance, might be readily
supposed the mansion of a person of high rank.

The present Throgmorton .Street front of the
building is of stone and marble, and was built
by Mr. Herbert Williams, \\ho also erected the
splendid new hall, removing the old gallery, adding
a marble staircase fit for an emperor's palace, and
new facing the court-room, the ceiling of which
was at the same time raised. Marble pillars,
stained glass windows, carved marble mantel-
pieces, gilt panelled ceilings — everything that is
rich and tasteful — the architect lias used with
lavish profusion.

The buildings of the former interior were of fine
red brick, but the front and entrance, in Throg-
morton Street, was of a yellow brick ; both interior
and exterior were highly enriched with stone orna-
ments. Over the gateway was a large sculpture of
the Drapers' arms, a cornice and frieze, the latter
displaying lions' heads, rams' heads, &:c., in small
circles, and various other architectural decora-
tions.

The old hall, properly so called, occupied the
eastern side of the quadrangle, the ascent to it
being by a noble stone staircase, covered, and
highly embellished by stucco-work, gilding, &c.
The stately screen of this magnificent apartment
was curiously decorated with carved pillars, pilas-
ters, arches, iS:c. The ceiling was divided into
numerous compartments, chiefly circular, display-
ing, in the centre. Phaeton in his car, and round
him the signs of the zodiac, and various other
enrichments. In the wainscoting was a neat recess,
with shelves, whereon the Company's plate, which,
both for quality and workmanship, is of great value,
was displayed at their feasts. Above the screen, at
the end op|50site the master's chair, hung a portrait
of Lord Nelson, by Sir William Beechey, for which
the Company paid four hundred guineas, together
with the portrait of Fitz-Alwin, the great Draper,
already mentioned. " In denominating this portrait
curious," says Herbert, " we give as high praise as
can be afforded it. Oil-painting was totally unknown
to England in Fitz-Alwin's time j the style of dress,

and its execution as a work of art, are also too
modern."

In the gallery, between the old hall and the
livery-room, were full-length portraits of the Eng-
lish sovereigns, from William III. to George III.,
together with a full-length portrait of George IV.,
by Lawrence, and the celebrated picture of Mary
Queen of Scots, and her son, James I., by Zucchero.
The portrait of the latter king is a fine specimen of
the master, and is said to have cost the Company
between ;^6oo and ^^700. " It has a fault, how-
ever," says Herbert, '' observable in other portraits
of this monarch, that of the likeness being flattered.
If it was not uncourteous so to say, we should call
it George IV. with the face of the Prince of \\'ales.
Respecting the portrait of Mary and her son, there
has been much discussion. Its genuineness has
been doubted, from the circumstance of James
having been only a twelvemonth old when this
picture is thought to have been painted, and his
being here represented of the age of four or five ;
but the anachronism might have arisen from the
whole being a composition of the artist, executed,
not from the life, but from other authorities fur-
nished to him." It was cleaned and copied by
Spiridione Roma, for Boydell's print, who took
off a mask of dirt from it, and is certainly a very
interesting picture. There is another tradition of
this picture : that Sir Anthony Babington, confi-
dential secretary to Queen Mary, had her portrait,
which he deposited, for safety, either at Merchant
Taylors' Hall or Drapers' Hall, and that it had
never come back to Sir Anthony or his family. It
has been insinuated that Sir William Boreman,
clerk to the Board of Green Cloth in the reign of
Charles II., purloined this picture from one of the
royal palaces. Some absurdly suggest that it is the
portrait of Lady Dulcibella Boreman, the wife of
Sir William. There is a tradition that this valuable
picture was thrown o\er the wall into Drapers'
Garden during the Great Fire, and never reclaimed.

The old court-room adjoined the hall, and formed
the north side of the quadrangle. It was wains-
coted, and elegantly fitted up, like the last. Tlie
fire-place was very handsome, and had over the
centre a small oblong compartment in white marble,
with a representation of the Comi)any receiving
their charter. The ceiling was stuccoed, somewhat
similarly to the hall, with various subjects allusive
to the Drapers' trade and to the lieraldic bearings
of the Company. Both the (dining) hall and this
apartment were rebuilt after the fire in 1774.

The old gallery led to the ladies' chamber and
livery-room. In the former, balls, &c., were occa-
sionally held. This was also a very elegant room.

5^-

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

■ [Bartholomew Lane.

The livery-room was a fine lofty apartment, and next
in size to the hall. Here were portraits of Sir Joseph
Sheldon, Lord Mayor, 1677, by Gerard Soest, and
a threequartcr length of Sir Robert Clayton, by
Kneller, 1680, seated in a chaii- — a great benefactor
to Christ's Hospital, and to that of St. Thomas, in
Southwark ; and two benefactors — Sir William Bore-
man, an officer of the Board of Green Cloth in the
reigns of Charles L and Charles H., who endowed
a free school at Greenwich ; and Henry Dixon, of
Enfield, who left land in that parish for apprenticing
boys of the same parish, and giving a sum to such
as were bound to freemen of London at the end of
their apprenticeship. Here was also a fine portrait
of Mr. Smith, late clerk of the Company (three-
quarters) ; a smaller jwrtrait of Thomas Bagshaw,
who died in 1794, having been beadle to the Com-
pany forty years, and who for his long and faithful
services has been thus honoured. The windows
of the livery-room overlook the private garden,
in the midst of v\hich is a small basin of water,
W'ith a fountain and statue. The large garden,
which adjoins this, is constantly open to the
public, from morning till night, excepting Saturdays,
Sundays, and the Company's festival days. This
is a pleasant and extensive plot of ground, neatly
laid out with gravelled walks, a grass-plot, flowering
shrubs, lime-trees, pavilions, &c. Beneath what
was formerly the ladies' chamber is the record-room,

which is constructed of stone and iron, and made
fire-proof, for the more effectually securing of the
Company's archives, books, plate, and other valuable
and important documents.

Howell, in his " Letters," has the following
anecdote about Drapers' Hall. " When I went,"
he says, " to bind my brother Ned apprentice, in
Drapers' Hall, casting my eyes upon the chimney-
piece of the great room, I spyed a picture of
an ancient gentleman, and underneath, ' Thomas
Howell ;' I asked the clerk about him, and he
told me that he had been a Spanish merchant in
Henry "VTH.'s time, and coming home rich, and
dying a bachelor, he gave that hall to the Company
of Drapers, with other things, so that he is ac-
counted one of the chiefest benefactors. I told
the clerk that one of the sons of Thomas Howell
came now thither to be bound ; he answered that,
if he be a right Howell, he may have, when he is
free, three hundred 'pounds to help to set him up,
and pay no interest for five years. It mny be,
hereafter, we will make use of this."

The Drapers' list of livery states their modern
arms to be thus emblazoned, viz. — Azure, three
clouds radiated /n^cr, each adorned with a triple
crown or. Supporters — two lions or, pelletted.
Crest — on a \vreath, a ram couchant or, armed
sabks, on a mount vert. Motto — " Unto God only
be honour and glory."

CHAPTER XLV.

B.^RTHOLOMEW LANE AND LOMBARD STREET.

George Robins — His Sale or the Lease of the Olympic — St. Bartholomew's Church — The Lomlards and Lombard .Street — William de la Pole—
Gresham— I'he Post Offic-i, Lombard Street — Ale.vander Pope's Father in Plough Court — Lombard Street Ttibutaries — St. Mary WooInoJt
— St. Clement's — Dr. ijeujamin Stone— Discovery of Roman Remains — Si. Mary .^bchurclu

B.\RTH0L0MEW L.ANE is associated with the memory
of Mr. George Robins, one of the most elo(|uent
auctioneers who ever wielded an ivory hammer.
The Auction Mart stood opposite the Rotunda of
the Bank. It is said that Robins w-as once offered
;^2,ooo and all his expenses to go and dispose
of a valuable property in New York. His annual
income was guessed at ^12,000. It is said tliat
half the landed property in England had passed
under his hammer. Robins, with incomparable
powers of blarney and soft sawder, wrote poetical
and alluring advertisements (attributed by some
to eminent literary men), which were irresistibly
attractive. His notice of the sale of the twenty-
seven years' lease of the Olympic, at the death of
Mr. Scott, in 1840, was a marvel of adroitness : —

' Mr. Georije Robins is desired to nnnounce
To the Public, and more especially to the
Theatrical World, that he is authorised to sell
By Public Auction, at the Marl,
On Thursday next, the twentieth of June, at twelve,
The Olympic Theatre, which for so many years
Pcssessed a kindly feeling with the Public,
And has, for many seasons past, assumed
An luiparalleled altltuile iu theatricals, since
It was fortunately demised to Matlame Vestris ;
Who, albeit, not content to move at the slow latc
Of bygone time, gave to it a spirit and a
Consequence, that the march of improvement
And her own consummate taste and judgment
Had conceived. To crown her laudable efforts
With unquestionable success, she has caused
To be coiupleted (with the exception of St. James's)
The most spi.F.Nnir) t.ittlk Thf..\tre in Eukopf. ;
Has given to the entertainments a new life :

Bartholomew Lane.]

SALE OF THE LEASE OF THE OLYMPIC.

i"^i

Has infused so much of lier own special tact,

That it now claims to be one of the most

Famed of the Metropolitan Theatres. Intleed,

It is a fact tliat will always remain on reconl,

That amid the vicissitudes of all other theatrical

Establishments, witli Madame at its head, success has

Never been equivocal for a moment, and the

made it as clear as any proposition in Euclid that
Madame Vestris could not possibly succeed in
Covent Garden ; that, in fact, she could succeed
in no other house than the Olympic ; and that con-
sequently the purcliaser was (iiiite sure of her as a
tenant as lonL' as he chose to let the theatre to her.

pope's house, plough court, lomuard stkeet.

Recei|)ts have for years ]5ast averaged nearly
As much as the patent theatres. The boxes are
In such high re]nite, that double the present low
Rental is available by this means alone. Madame
Vestris has a lease for three more seasons at only one
Thousand pounds a year," &c.
The sale itself is thus described by Mr. Grant,
who writes as if he had been present :^" Mr.
Robins," says Grant, " had exhausted the English
language in commendation of that theatre ; he

He proved to demonstration that the theatre would
always fill, no matter who should be the lessee ;
and that consequently it would prove a perfect
mine of wealth to the lucky gentleman who was
sufficiently alive to his own interests to become
the purchaser. By means of such representations,
made in a way and with an ingenuity peculiar to
himself, Mr. Robins had got the biddings up from
the starting sum, which was ;!^3,ooo, to ^3,400.

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Lombard Street.

There, however, the aspirants to the property came
to what Mr. Robins called a dead stop. For at
least three or four minutes he put his ingenuity to
the rack in lavishing encomiums on the property,
without his zeal and eloquence being rewarded by
a single new bidding. It was at this extremity —
and he never resorts to the expedient until the
bidders have reached what they themselves at the
time conceive to be the highest point — it was at
this crisis of the Olympic, Mr. Robins, causing the
hammer to descend in the manner I have de-
scribed, and accompan)ing the slow and solemn

movement with a ' Going — going — go ,' that the

then highest bidder exclaimed, 'The theatre is
mine!' and at which Mr. Robins, apostrophising
him in his own bland and fascinating manner, re-
marked, ' I don't wonder, my friend, that your
anxiety to possess the property at such a price
should anticipate my decision ; but,' looking round
the audience and smiling, as if he congratulated
them on the circumstance, ' it is still in the market,
gentlemen : you have still an opportunity of making
your fortunes without risk or trouble.' The bidding
that instant recommenced, and proceeded more
briskly than ever. It eventually reached ;^5,85o,
at which sum the theatre was ' knocked down.' "

St. Bartholomew's behind the Exchange was
built in 1438. Stow gives the following strange
epitaph, date 1615 : — -

Here lyes a Margarita that most excell'd
(Her father Wyts, her mother Lichterveld,
Rematcht with Metkerl:e) of remarke for birth,
But much more gentle for her genuine worth ;
Wyts (rarest) Jewell (so her name bespeakes)
In pious, prudent, peaceful, praise-full life,
Fitting a Sara and a Sacred's wife,
Such as Saravia and (her second) Hill,
AVhose joy of life, Death in her desth did kilL

Quam pie obiit, Puerpera, Die 29, Junii,
Anno Salutis 1615. yEtatis 39.

From my sad cradle to my sable chest,
Poore Pilgrim, I did find few niontlis of rest.
In Flanders, Holland, Zeland, England, all.
To Parents, troubles, and to me di_d fall.
These made me ]iious, patient, modest, wise ;
And, though well borne, to shun the gallants' guise ;
But now I rest my soule, where rest is found,
My body here, in a small piece of ground,
And from my Hill, that hill I have ascended,
From whence (for me) my .Saviour once descended.

Margarita, a Jewell.
I. like a Jewell, tost by sea to land.
Am bought by him, who weares me on his hand.

Margarita, Margareta.
One night, t\\'o dreames

Made two propheticals.
Thine of thy coffin,

Mine of thy funerals.

If women all were like to thee,

We men for wives should happy be.

The first stone of the Gresham Club House,
No. I, King William Street, corner of St. Swithin's
Lane, was laid in 1S44, the event being celebrated
by a dinner at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate
Street, the Lord Mayor, Sir William Magnay, in
the chair. The club was at first under the presi-
dency of John Abel Smith, Esq., M.P. The
building was erected from the design of Mr.
Henry Flower, architect.

After the expulsion of the Jews, the Lombards
(or merchants of Genoa, Lucca, Florence, and
Venice) succeeded them as the money-lenders and
bankers of England. About the middle of the
thirteenth century these Italians established them-
selves in Lombard Street, remitting money to Italy
by bills of exchange, and transmitting to the Pope
and Italian prelates their fees, and the incomes of
their English benefices. Mr. Burgon has shown
that to these industrious strangers we owe many
of our commercial terms, such, for instance, as
debtor, creditor, cash, usance, bank, bankrupt,
journal, diary, ditto, and even our ;Q s. d., \\hich
originally stood for libri, soldi, and dcnari. In the
early part of the fifteenth century we find these
swarthy merchants advancing loans to the State,
and having the customs mortgaged to them by way
of security. Pardons and holy wafers were also
sold in this street before the Reformation.

One of the celebrated dwellers in mediseval
Lombard Street was William de la Pole, father of
Michael, Earl of Suffolk. He was king's merchant
or factor to Edward III., and in 1338, at Antwerp,
lent that warlike and extravagant monarch a sum
equivalent to ^400,000 of our current money.
He received several munificent grants of Crown
land, and was created chief baron of the ex-
chequer and a knight banneret. He is always
styled in public instruments " dilectus mercator
et valectus noster." His son Michael, who died
at the siege of Harfleur in 1415, succeeded to his
father's public duties and his house in Loinbard
Street, near Birchin Lane. Michael's son fell at
Agincourt. The last De la Pole was beheaded
during the wars of the Roses.

About the date 1559, when Gresham was
honoured by being sent as English ambassador
to the court of the Duchess of Parma, he resided
in Lombard Street. His shop (about the present
No. 18) was distinguished by his fathers crest
— viz., a grasshopper. The original sign was seen
by Pennant ; and Mr. Burgon assures us that it
continued in existence as late as 1795, being re-
moved or stolen on the erection of the present

Lombard Street.]

GRESHAM AND THE EXCHANGE.

52?

building. Gresham was not only a mercer and
merchant adventurer, but a banker — a term which
in those days of lo or 12 per cent, interest meant
also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener,
a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion " (Ikirgon).
After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have
thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left
it to his apprentice, and remo\ed to Bishopsgate,
where he built Gresham House. It was a vulgar
tradition of Elizabeth's time, according to Lodge,
that Gresham was a foundling, and that an old
woman who found him was attracted to the spot
by the increased chirping of the grasshoppers.
This story was invented, no doubt, to account for
his crest.

During the first two years of Gresham's acting
as the king's factor, he posted from Antwerp no
fewer than forty times. Between the ist of Marcii,
1552, and the 27th of July his payments amounted
to ^106,301 4s. 4d. ; his travelling expenses for
riding in and out eight times, ;^io2 los., including
a supper and a banquet to the Schetz and the
Fuggers, the great banks with whom he had to
transact business, jQ^d being equal, Mr. Burgon
calculates, to ;^25o of the present value of money.
The last-named feast must have been one of great
magnificence, as the guests appear to have been
not more than twenty. On such occasions Gresham
deemed it policy to " make as good chere as he
could."

He was living in Lombard Street, no doubt, at
that eventful day when, being at the house of Mr.
John Byvers, alderman, he promised tliat " within
one month after the founding of the Burse he
would make over the whole of the profits, in equal
moities, to the City and the Mercers' Company, in
case he should die childless ;" and "for the sewer
jierformance of the premysses, the said .Sir Thomas,
in the presens of the persons afore named, did give
his house to Sir William Garrard, and drank a
carouse to Thomas Rowe." This mirthful affair
was considered of so much importance as to be
entered on the books of the Corporation, solemnly
commencing with the words, " Be it remembered,
that the ixth day of February, in Anno Domini
iSC-S," &c.

Gresham's wealth was made chiefly by trade
with Antwerp. " The exports from Antwerp," says
Burgon, " at that time consisted of jewels and
precious stones, bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks,
cloth of gold and silver, gold and silver thread,
camblets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton,
cummin, galls, linen, serges, tapestry, madder,
liops in great quantities, glass, salt-fish, small wares
(or, as tl-.ey were then called, merceries^, made of

metal and other materials, to a considerable
amount ; arms, ammunition, and household furni-
ture. From England Antwerp imported immense
([uantities of fine and coarse woollen goods, as
canvas, frieze, &c., the finest wool, excellent saftron
in small (juantities, a great quantity of lead and
tin, sheep and rabbit-skins, together with other
kinds of peltry and leather ; beer, cheese, and
other provisions in great (piantities, also Malmsey
wines, which the P^nglish at that time obtained
from Candia. Clotli was, however, by far the
most important article of traffic between the two
countries. 'J"he annual importation into .Antwerp
about the year 1568, including every description of
cloth, was estimated at more than 200,000 pieces,
amounting in value to upwards of 4,000,000 escus
d'or, or about ^1,200,000 sterling."

In the reign of Charles II. we find the "Grass-
hopper" in Lombard Street the sign of another
wealthy goldsmith. Sir Charles Dimcombe, the
founder of the Feversham family, and the pur-
chaser of Helmsley, in Yorkshire, the princely
seat of George Villiers, second Duke of Buck-
ingham L

" Helnisley, once proud Buckingham'.s delight,
Yields to .1 scrivener .ind a City knight."

Here also resided Sir Robert Viner, the Lord
Mayor of London in 1675, and apparently an
especial fiivourite with Charles II.

The Post Office, Lombard Street, formerly the
General Post Office, was originally built by " the
great banquer," Sir Robert Viner, on the site of a
noted tavern destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.
Here Sir Robert kept his mayoralty in 1675.
Strype describes it as a very large and curious
dwelling, with a handsome paved court, and
behind it "a yard for stabling and coaches." The
St. Martin's-le-Grand Cieneral Post Office Mas not
opened till 1829.

" I have," says " Aleph," in the City Press, " a
vivid recollection of Lombard Street in 1S05.
More than half a century has rolled away since
then, yet there, sharply and clearly defined, before
the eye of memory, stand the phantom shadows of
the past. I walked through the street a kw weeks
ago. It is changed in many particulars ; yet
enough remains to identify it with the tortuous,
dark vista of lofty houses which I remember so
well. Then there were no pretentious, stucco-faced
banks or offices ; the whole wall-surface was of
smoke-blacked brick ; its colour seemed to imitate
the mud in the road, and as coach, or wagon, or
mail-cart toiled or rattled along, the basement
storeys were bespattered freely from the gutters.

52t

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Lombard Street.

The glories of gas were yet to be. After three
. o'clock p.m. miserable oil lamps tried to enliven
the foggy street with their 'ineffectual light,'
while through dingy, greenish s(iuares of glass you
might observe tall tallow candles dimly disclosing
the mysteries of bank or counting-house. Passen-
gers needed to walk with extreme caution ; if you
o .^

lingered on the pavement, woe to your corns ; it

you sought to cross the road, you liad to beware of
the flying postmen or the letter-bag e.xpress. As
six o'clock drew near, every court, alley, and blind
thoroughfare in the neighbourhood echoed to the
incessant din of letter-bells. Men, women, and
children were hurrying to the chief office, while
the fiery -red battalion of postmen, as they neared
the same point, were apparently well pleased to
balk the diligence of the public, anxious to spare
their coppers. The mother post-office for the
LTnited Kingdom and the Colonies was' then in
Lombard Street, and folks thought it was a model
establishment. Such armies of clerks, such sacks
of letters, and countless consignments of news-
papers ! How could those hard-worked officials
ever get through their work ? The entrance,
barring paint and stucco, remains exactly as it was
fifty years ago. A\'hat crowds used to besiege it !
What a strange confusion of news-boys ! The
struggling public, with late letters ; the bustling red-
coats, with their leather bags, a scene of anxious
life and interest seldom exceeded. And now
the 1-tter-boxes are all closed; you weary your
knuckles in vain against the sliding door in the
wall. No response. Every hand within is fully
occupied in letter-sorting for the mails ; they must
be freighted in less than half an hour. Yet, on
payment of a shilling for each, letters were received
till ten minutes to eight, and not unfrequently a
post-chaise, with the horses in a positive lather,
tore into the street, just in time to forward some
important despatch. Hark ! The horn 1 the horn !
The mail-guards are the soloists, and very pleasant
music they discourse ; not a few of them are first-
rate performers. A long train of gaily got-up
coaches, remarkable for their light weight, horsed
by splendid-looking animals, impatient at the curb,
and eager to commence their journey of ten miles
(at least) an hour ; stout ' gents,' in heavy coats,
buttoned to the throat, esconce themselves in ' re-
served seats.' Commercial men contest the right
of a seat with the guard or coachman ; some careful
mother helps her jjale, timid daugliter up the steps ;
while a fat old lady already occupies two-thirds of
the seat — what will be done? Bags of epistles
innumerable stuff the boots ; formidable bales of
the daily journals are trampled small by the guard's

heels. The clock will strike in less than five
minutes ; the clamour deepens, the hubbub seems
increasing ; but ere the last sixty seconds expire, a
sharp winding of warning bugles begins. Coachee
flourishes his whip, greys and chestnuts prepare for
a run, the reins move, but very gently, there is a
parting crack from the whipcord, and the brilliant
cavalcade is gone — exeunt omiics ! Lombard Street
is a different place now, far more imposing, though
still narrow and dark ; the clean-swept roadway is
paved with wood, cabs pass noiselessly — a cajjital
thing, only take care you are not run over. Most
of the banks and assurance offices have been con-
verted into stone."

In Plough Court (No. i), Lombard Street, Pope's
father carried on the business of a linen merchant.
" He was an honest merchant, and dealt in
Hollands wholesale," as his widow informed Mr.
Spence. His son claimed for him the honour
of being sprung from gentle blood. When that
gallant baron. Lord Hervey, vice-chaniberlain in
the court of George H., and his ally. Lady Mary
Wortley Montague, disgraced themselves by in-
diting the verses containing this couplet — •

" \Vliilst none thy crabbed numbers can endure,
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure ;"

Pope indignantly repelled the accusation as to his
descent.

"I am sorry (he said) to be obliged to such
a presumption as to name my family in the same
leaf with your lordship's ; but my father had the
honour in one instance to resemble you, for he
was a younger brother. He did not indeed think
it a happiness to bury his elder brother, thougli
he had one, who wanted some of those good
qualities which yours possessed. How sincerely
glad should I be to pay to that young nobleman's
memory the debt I owed to his friendship, whose
early death deprived your family of as muclr wit
and honour as he left behind him in any branch
of it. But as to my father, I could assure you,
my lord, that he was no mechanic (neither a hatter,
nor, which might please your lordship yet better,
a cobbler), but, in truth, of a very tolerable famil\-,
and my mother of an ancient one, as well born and
educated as that lady whom your lordship made
use of to educate your own children, whose merit,
beauty, and vivacity (if transmitted to your pos-
terity) will be a better present than even the noble
blood they derive from you. A mother, on whom
I was never obliged so far to reflect as to say, she
spoiled me ; and a father, who never found himself
obliged to say of me, that he disapproved my
conduct, Li a word, my lord, I think it enough,

Lombard Street.]

ST. MARY WOOLNCrni.

527

that my parents, such as they were, never cost me
a blush ; and that their son, such as he is, never
cost them a tear."

The house of Pope's father was afterwards
occupied by the well-known chemists, Allen, Han-
bury, and Barry, a descendant of which firm still
occupies it. Mr. William Allen was the son of
a Quaker silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. He
became chemical lecturer at Guy's Hospital, and an
eminent experimentalist — discovering, among other
things, the proportion of carbon in carbonic acid,
and proving that the diamond was pure carbon.
He was mainly instrumental in founding the Phar-
maceutical Society, and distinguished himself by
his zeal against slavery, and iiis interest in all
benevolent objects. He died in 1843, at Lind-
field, in Sussex, where he had founded agricultural
schools of a thoroughly practical kind.

The church of St. Edmund King and Martyr
(and St. Nicholas Aeons), on the north side of
Lombard Street, stands on the site of the old
Grass Market. The only remarkable monument is
that of Dr. Jeremiah Mills, who died in 1784, and
had been President of the Society of Antiquaries
many years. The local authorities have, with great
good sense, written the duplex name of this church
in clear letters over the chief entrance.

The date of the first building of St. Mary Wool-
notli of the Nativity, in Lombard Street, seems to
be very doubtful ; nor does Stow help us to the
origin of the name. By some antiquaries it has
been suggested that the church was so called from
being beneath or nigh to the wool staple. Mr.
Gwilt suggests that it may have been called
" Wool-nough," in order to distinguish it from the
other church of St. Mary, where the wool-beam
actually stood.

The first rector mentioned by Newcourt was
John de Norton, presented previous to 1368. Sir
Martin Bowes had the presentation of this church
given him by Henry V., it having anciently be-
longed to the convent of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate.
From the Bowes's the presentation passed to the
Goldsmiths' Company. Sir Martin Bowes was
buried here, and so were many of the Houblons,
a great mercantile family, on one of whom Pepys
wrote an epitaph. Munday particularly mentions
that the wills of several benefactors of St. Mary's
were carefully preserved and exhibited in the
church. Strype also mentions a monument to
Sir William Phipps, that lucky speculator who, in
1687, extracted ;^30o,ooo from the wreck of a
Spanish plate-vessel off the Bahama bank. Simon
E>re, the old founder of LeadenhaH Market, was
buried in this church in 1549.

Sir Hugh Brice, goldsmith and mayor, governor
of the Mint in the reign of Henry VH., built or
rebuilt part of the churcli, and raised a steejiie.
The church was almost totally destroyed in the
Great Fire, and repaired by Wren. Sir Robert
Viner, the famous goldsmith, contributed largely
towards the rebuilding, "a memorial whereof," says
Strype, " are the vines that adorn and spread about
that part of the church that fronts his house and
the street ; insomuch, that the church was used
to be called Sir Robert Viner's church." Wren's
repairs having proved ineffectual, the church was
rebuilt in 1727. The workmen, twenty feet under
the ruins of the steeple, discovered bones, tusks,
Roman coins, and a vast number of broken Roman
pottery. It is generally thought by antiquaries that
a temple dedicated to Concord once stood here.
Hawksmoor, the architect of St. Mary Woolnoth,
was born the year of the Great Fire, and died
in 1736. He acted as Wren's deputy during the
erection of the Hospitals at Chelsea and Green-
wich, and also in the building of most of the
City churches. The princi]jal works of his own
design are Christ Church, Spitalfields, St. Anne's,
Limehouse, and St. George's, Bloomsbury. Mr.
J. Godwin, an excellent authority, calls St. Mary
Woolnoth " one of the most striking and original,
although not the most beautiful, churches in the
metropolis."

On the north side of the communion-table is
a plain tablet in memory of that excellent man,
the Rev. John Newton, who was curate of Olney,
Bucks, for sixteen years, and rector of the united
parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary AV'ool-
church twenty-eight years. He died on the 21st
of December, 1807, aged eighty-two years, and was
buried in a vault in this church.

On the stone is the following inscription, full
of Christian humility : — •

"John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a
servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, ])ar-
doned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long
laboured to destroy."

Newton's father was master of a merchant-ship,
and Newton's youth was spent in prosecuting the
African slave-trade, a career of which he afterwards
bitterly repented. He is best known as the writer
(in conjunction with the poet Cowper) of the
" Olney Hymns."

The exterior of this church is praised by com-
petent authorities for its boldness and originality,
though some critic says that the details are pon-
derous enough for a fortress or a prison. The
elongated tower, from the arrangement of th^

5^8

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Lombard Street.

small chimney-like turrets at the top, has the ap-
pearance of being two towers united. Dallaway
calls it an imitation of St. Sulpice, at Paris ; but
milortunately Servandoni built St. Sulpice some
time after St. I.Iiry Woolnoth was completed. Mr.

The parish seem to have been pleased with A\'ren's
exertions in rebuilding, for in their register books
for 1685 there is the following item: — " Tc one-
third of a hogshead of wine, given to Si» Chris-
topher Wren, ^4 2s."

ST. MARY WOOLNOTH.

Godwin seems to think Hawksmoor followed \'an-
bnigh's maimer in the heaviness of his design.

St. Clement's Church, Clement's Lane, Lombard
Street, sometimes called St. Clement's, Eastcheap, I
is noted by Newcourt as existing as early as 1309. [
The rectory belonged to Westminster Abbey, but
was given by Queen J^Liry to the Bishop of London
and his successors for ever. After the Great Fire,
when the church was destroyed, the parish of St.
Martin Orgar was united to that of St. Clement's.

One of the rectors of St. Clement's, Dr. Ben-
jamin Stone, who had been presented to the living
by Bishop Juxon, being deemed too Popish by
Cromwell, was imprisoned for some time at Crosby
Hall. From thence he was sent to Plymouth,
where, after paying a fine of ^60, he obtained his
liberty. On the restoration of Charles IL, Stone
recovered his benefice, but died five years after.
In this church Bishop Pearson, then rector, de-
livered his celebrated sermons on the Creed, which

Lombard Street.]

THE REMAINS OF A ROMAN ROAD.

529

he afterwards turned into his excellent Exposition,
a text-book of English divinity, which he dedicated
" to the right worshipful and well-beloved, the
parishioners of St. Clement's, Eastcheap."

The interior is a parallelogram, with the addition

erected at the cost of the parishioners, commemo-
rative of the Rev. Thomas Green, curate twenty-
seven years, who died in 1734; the Rev. lohn
Earrer, rector (1820) ; and the Rev. W. Valentine
Ireson, who was lecturer of the united parishes

of a south aisle, introduced in order to disguise the | thirty years, anil died in 1822.

INTERIOR OF MERCHANT TAVLORS' HALL.

intrusion of the tower, which stands at the south-
west angle of the building. The ceiling is divided
into panels, the centre one being a large oval band
of fruit and flowers.

The pulpit and desk, as well as the large
sounding-board above them, are very elaborately
carved ; and a marble font standing in the south
aisle has an oak cover of curious design. Among
many mural tablets are three which have been
45

In digging a new sewer in Lombard Street a
few years ago (says Pennant, writing in 1790),
the remains of a Roman road were disco\ered,
with numbers of coins, and several antique curio-
sities, some of great elegance. The beds through
which the workmen sunk were four. The first con-
sisted of factitious earth, about thirteen feet six
inches thick, all accumulated since the desertion of
the ancient street ; the second of brick, two feet

53°

OLD A\M) NKW LONDON.

(I^omhard Street.

thick, the ruins of the buildings ; the tliinl of ashes,
only three inches ; the fourth of Roman jjavement,
both common and tessellated, over which the coins
and otlier antiquities were discovered. Beneath
that was the original soil. The predominant
articles were eartlicnware, and several were orna-
mented m tlie most elegant manner. A vase of
red earth had on its surface a representation of a
fight of men, some on horseback, others on foot ;
or perhaps a show of gladiators, as they all fought
in pairs, and many of them naked. The combatants
were armed with falchions and small round shields,
in the manner of the Thracians, the most esteemed
of the gladiators. Some liad spears, and others a
kind of mace. A beautiful running foliage encom-
passed the bottom of this vessel. On the fragment
of another were several figures. Among them
appears Pan with his pedum . or crook ; and near
to him one of the lasc'n<i Satyri, both in beautiful
skipping attitudes. On the same piece are two
tripods ; round each is a serpent regularly twisted,
and bringing its head over a bowl which fills tiie
top. These seem (by the serpent) to have been
dedicated to Apollo, who, as well as his son .(5^scu-
lapius, presided over medicine. On the top of one
of the tripods stands a man in full armour. Might
not this vessel have been votive, made by order of
a soldier restored to heaUh by favour of the god,
and to his active powers and enjoyment of rural
jileasures, typified under the form of Pan and his
nimble attendants ? A plant extends along part
of another compartment, possibly allusive to their
medical virtues ; and, to show that Bacchus was
not forgotten, beneath lies a thyrsus with a double
head.

On another bowl was a free pattern of foliage.
On others, or fragments, were objects of the chase,
such as hares, part of a deer, and a boar, witli
human figures, dogs, and horses ; all these pieces
prettily ornamented. There were, besides, some
beads, made of earthenware, of the same form as
those called the ovum a/iguiiium, and, by the A\'elsh,
g/ain naidr ; and numbers of coins in gold, siher,
and brass, of Claudius, Nero, Galba, and other
emperors down to Constantine.

St. Mary Abchurch was destroyed by the Great
Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in i6S6. Maitland
says, " And as to this additional appellation of Ab,
or Up-church, I am at as great a loss in respect to
its meaning, as I am to the time when the church
was at first founded; but, as it appears to have
ancienrty stood on an eminence, probably that
epithet was conferred upon it in regard to the
church of St. Lawrence Pulteney, situate below."

Stow gives one record of St. Mary Abchurch,

which we feel a pleasure in chronicling : — " This
dame Helen Branch, buried here, widow of Sir
John Branch, Knt., Lord Mayor of London, an.
1580, gave ^50 to be lent to young men of the
Company of Drapers, from four years to four years,
fi)r ever, ^50. Which lady gave also to poor
maids' marriages, £,\o. To the poor of Abchurcli,
;^io. To the poor prisoners in and about Lon-
don, j[^2o. Besides, for twenty-six gowns to poor
men and women, ^^26. And many otlier worthy
legacies to the Universities."

The pulpit and sounding-board are of oak, and
the font has a cover of the same material, jjresenting
carved figures of the four Evangelists within niches.
On the south side of the church is an elaborate
monument of marble, part of which is gilt, con-
sisting of twisted columns supporting a circular
pediment, drapery, cherubim, &c., to Mr. Edward
Sherwood, who died January 5th, i6go; and near
it is a second, in memory of Sir Patience Ward,
Knt, Alderman, and Lord Mayor of I^ondon in
1681. He died on the loth of July, 1696. The
east end of the church is in Abchurch Lane, and
the south side fiices an open paved space, divided
from the lane by posts. This was formerly en-
closed as a burial-ground, but was thrown open
for the convenience of the neighbourhood.

The present church was completed from the
designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1686. Li the
interior it is nearly square, being about sixty-five
feet long, and sixty feet wide. The walls are plain,
having windows in the south side and at the east
end to light the church. The area of the church is
covered by a large and handsome cupola, supported
on a modillion cornice, and adorned with paintings
wliich «'ere executed by Sir James Thornhill ; and
in the lower part of this also are introduced other
lights. "The altar-piece," says Mr. G. Godwin,
"presents four Corinthian columns, with entabla-
ture and pediment, grained to imitate oak, and has
a carved figure of a pelican over the centre com-
l)artment. It is further adorned by a number of
carved festoons of fruit and flowers, which are so
exquisitely executed, that if they were a hundred
miles distant, we will venture to say they would
have many admiring visitants from London. These
carvings, by Grinling Gibbons, were originally
painted after nature by Sir James. Tiiey were
afterwards covered with white paint, and at this
time they are, in common with the rest of the
screen, of the colour of oak. Fortunatel}-, however,
these proceedings, which must have tended to fill
up the more delicately carved parts, and to destroy
the original sharpness of the lines, have not mate^
rially injured their general effect."

Threadneedle Street 1

THE MERCHANT TAYLORS' COMPANY.

531

CHAPTER XLVI.
THRKADNKKDLE STREET.

The Centre of Roman Londo

Benet Fink— The Monks of St. Anthony— The Mcraharit Tayloni— Stow, Antiquary and Tailor— A Mag-
nilicent Roll— The Good Deeds of the Merchant Taylors— The Did and the Modern Merchant Taylors' Hall— " Concordia par\-a: res
crescunt "—Henry \'ll. enrolled as a Member of the Taylors' Company-A Cavalcade of Archers— The Hall of Commerce in Threadneedle
Street— .-i Painful Reminiscence— The lialtic Coffeehouse— St. Anthony's School— The North and S.iuth American Coffeehouse— The South
Sea House— History of the South Sea Bubble- 13uhble Companivs of the Pertod— Singular Infatuation of the Public— Bursting of the
Bubble— Parliamentary Inquiry into the Company's Affairs— Punishment of the Chief Delinquents— Restoration of Public Credit— The
Poets during the E.\citenient — Charles Lamb's Reverie.

In Threadneedle Street we stand in the centre of
Roman London. In 1805 a tesselated pavement,
now in the British Museum, was found at Lothbury.
The ExL-hanye stands, as we have already men-
tioned, on a mine of Roman remains. In 1840-41
tesselated pavements were found, about twelve or
fourteen feet deep, beneath the old French Pro-
testant Church, with coins of Agrippa, Claudius,
Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, and the Constantines,
together with fragments of frescoes, and much char-
coal and charred barley. These pavements are
also preserved in the British Museum. In 1854,
in excavating the site of the church of St. Benet
Fink, there was found a large deposit of Roman
debris, consisting of Roman tiles, glass, and frag-
ments of black, pale, and red Saniian pottery.

The church of St. Benet Fink, of which a repre-
sentation is given at page 468, was so called from
one Robert Finck, or Finch, who built a previous
church on the same site (destroyed by the Fire of
1666). It was completed by Sir Christopher Wren,
in 1673, at the expense of ^4,130, but was taken
down in 1844. The tower was square, surmounted
by a cupola of four sides, with a small turret on the
top. There was a large recessed doorway on the
north side, of very good design.

The arrangement of the body of the church was
very peculiar, we may say unique ; and although
far from beautiful, afforded a striking instance of
Wren's wonderful skill. The plan of the church
was a decagon, within which six composite columns
in the centre supported six semi-circular vaults.
Wren's power of arranging a plan to suit the site
was shown in numerous buildings, but in none
more forcibly than in this small church.

" St. Benedict's," says Maitland, " is vulgarly
Bennet Fink. Though this church is at present a
donative, it was anciently a rectory, in the gift of
the noble family of Nevil, who probably conferred
the name upon the neighbouring hospital of St.
Anthony."

Newcourt, who lived near St. Benet Fink, says
the monks of the Order of St. Anthony hard by
were so importunate in their reijuests for alms tliat
they woald threaten those who refused them with
" St. Anthony's fire ;" and that timid people were

in the habit of presenting them with fat pigs, in
order to retain their good-will. Their pigs thus
became numerous, and, as they were allowed to
roam about for food, led to the proverb, " He will
follow you like a St. Anthony's pig." Stow accounts
for the number of these pigs in another way, by
saying that when pigs were seized in the markets
by the City officers, as ill-fed or unwholesome, the
monks took possession of them, and tying a bell
about their neck, allowed them to stroll about on
the dunghills, until they became fit for food, when
they were claimed for the convent.

The Merchant Taylors, whose hall is very appro-
priately situated in Threadneedle Street, had their
first licence as " Linen Armourers " granted by
Edward I. Their first master, Henry de Ryall, was
called their " pilgrim," as one that travelled for the
whole company, and their wardens " purveyors of
dress." Their first charter is dated i Pklward III.
Richard II. confirmed his grandfather's grants.
.From Henry I"V. they obtained a confirmatory
charter by the name of the " Master and '\^'ardens
of the Fraternity of St. John the Baptist of
London." Henry VI. gave them the right of
search and correction of abuses. The society
was incorporated in the reign of Edward IV.,
who gave them arms; and Henry VII., being a
member of the Compan)', for their greater honour
transformed them from Tailors and Linen Ar-
mourers to Merchant Taylors, giving them their
present acting charter, which afterwards received
the confirmation and iiispcxiiiiKS of fi\e sox'ereigns
—Henry VIII., Edward VI., Philip and Mary,
Elizabeth, and James I.

There is no doubt (says Herbert) that Merchant
Taylors were originally lw>iA fide cutters-out and
makers-up of clothes, or dealers in and importers
of cloth, having tenter-grounds in Moorfields.
The ancient London tailors made both men's and
women's apparel, also soldiers' quilted surcoats, the
padded lining of armour, and probably the trappings
of war-horses. In the 27th year of Edward HI.
the Taylors contributed ^20 towards the French
wars, and in 1377 they sent six members to
the Common Council, a number equalling (says
Herbert) the largest guilds, and they were reckoned

OLD AND NEW LONDON,

[Thrcadncedle Street.

the seventh company in precedence. In 1483 we
find the Merchant Taylors and Skinners disputing
for precedence. The Lord ALnyor decided they
should take precedence alternately ; and, further,
most wisely and worshipfully decreed that each
Company should dine in the other's hall twice a
year, on the vigil of Corpus Christi and the feast of
St. John Baptist — a laudable custom, which soon
restored concord. In 1571 there is a precept from
the Mayor ordering that ten men of this Company
and ten men of the Vintners' should ward each of
the City gates every tenth day. In 1579 the Com-
jjany was reciuired to ])rovide and train 200 men
for arms. In 1586 tlie master and wardens are
threatened by the Mayor for not making the pro-
vision of gunpowder required of all the London
companies. In 158S the Company had to furnish
thirty-five armed men, as its ([uola for the Queen's
service against the dreaded Spanish .\rmada.

In 1592 an interesting entry records Stow (a
tailor and member of the Company) presenting
his famous " Annals " to the house, and receiving
in consequence an annuity of _£^ per annum,
eventually raised to .;^io. The Company after-
wards restored John Stow's monument in the
Church of St. Andrew Undershaft. Speed, also a
tailor and member of the Company, on the same
principle, seems to have presented the society with
valuable maps, for which, in 1600, curtains were
])rovicled. In 1594 the Company subscribed _£$o
towards a pest-house, the plague then raging in the
City, and the same year contributed .;£2 96 los.
towards six ships and a pinnace fitted out for her
Majesty's service.

In 1603 the Company contributed ^234 towards
the ;^2,5oo required from the London companies
to welcome James I. and his Danish queen to
England. Six triumphal arches were erected
between Fencliurch Street and Temple Bar, that
in Fleet Street being ninety feet high and fifty
broad. Decker and Ben Jonson furnished the
speeches and songs for this pageant. June 7,
1607, was one of the grandest days the Company
has ever known ; for James I. and his son, Prince
Henry, dined with the ]\Ierchant Taylors. It had
been at first proposed to train some boys of Mer-
chant T.aylors' School to welcome the king, but Ben
Jonson was finally invited to write an entertain-
ment. The king and prince dined separately. The
master presented the king with a purse of ,^100.
" Richard Langley shewed him a role, wherein was
registered the names of seaven kinges, one queene,
.^eventeene princes and dukes, two dutchesses, one
archbishoppe, one and thirtie earles, five countesses,
one viscount, fourteene byshoppes, sixtie and sixe

barons, two ladies, seaven abbots, seaven priors,
and one bub-prior, omitting a great number of
knights, esquires, iS:c., who had been free of that
companie." The jjrince was then made a free-
man, and put on the garland. There were twehe
lutes (six in one window and six in another).

" In the ayr betweene them " (or swung up
abo\-e their heads) " was a gallant shippe trium-
jihant, wherein was three menne like saylers, being
eminent for voyce and skill, who in their scverall
songes were assisted and seconded by the cunning
lutanists. There was also in the hall the musique
of the cittie, and in the upper chamber the children
of His Majestie's Chappell sang grace at the King's
table j and also whilst the King sate at dinner
John Bull, Doctor of Musique, one of the organists
of His Majestie's Chapell Royall, being in a
cittizen's cap and gowne, cappe and hood (/.c,
as a hveryman), played most excellent melodie
uppon a small payre of organ es, placed there for
that purpose onely."'

The king seems at this time to have scarcely
recovered the alarm of the Gunpowder Plot ; for
the entries in the Company's books show that
there was great searching of rooms and inspection
of walls, " to prevent villanie and danger to His
Majestie." The cost of this feast was more than
_;^i,ooo. The king's chamber was made by
cuttinsr a hole in the wall of the hall, and buildin.';
a small room behind it.

In 1607 (James I.), before a Company's dinner,
the names of the livery were called, and notice
taken of the absent. Then prayer was said, every
one kneeling, after which the names of benefactors
and their " charitable and godly devices " were
read, also the ordinances, and the orders for the
grammar-school in St. Laurence Pountney. Then
followed the dinner, to which were invited the
assistants and the ladies, and old masters' wives
and wardens' wives, the preacher, the schoolmaster,
the wardens' substitut'es, and the humble almsmen
of the livery. Sometimes, as in 1645, the whole
livery was invited.

The kindness and charity of the Company are
strongly shown in an entry of May 23, 1610, when
John Churchman, a past master, received a pension
of ,£^20 per annum. With true consideration, they ,
allowed him to wear his bedesman's gown without
a badge, and did not require him to appear in the
hall with the other pensioners. All that was re-
quired was that he should attend Divine service
and pray for the prosperity of the Company, and
share his house with Roger Silverw-ood, clerk of
the Bachellors' Company. Gifts to the Company
seem to have been numerous. Thus we ha'^'e

TKreadneedle Street.]

ROYAL TAYLORS.

S33

(1604) Richard Dove's gift of twenty gilt spoons,
marked with a dove; (1605) a basin and ewer,
vakie ^59 I2S., gift of Thomas Medlicott; (1614)
a standing cup, value 100 marks, from Murphy
Corbett ; same )'ear, seven pictures for the parlour,
from Mr. John \'ernon.

In 1640 the Civil War was brewing, and the
Mayor ordered the Company to provide (in their
garden) forty barrels of powder and 300 hundred-
weight of metal and bullets. They had at this
time in their armoury forty muskets and rests, forty
muskets and headpieces, twelve round muskets,
forty corselets with headpieces, seventy pikes, 1 23
swords, and twenty-three halberts. The same year
they lent ^5,000 towards the maintenance of the
king's northern army. In the procession on the
return of Charles I. from Scotland, the Merchant
Taylors seem to have taken a very conspicuous
part. Thirty-four of the gravest, tallest, and most
comely of the Company, apparelled in velvet plush
or satin, with chains of gold, each with a footman
with two stafif-torches, met the Lord Mayor and
aldermen outside the City wall, near Moorfields,
and accompanied them to Guildhall, and afterwards
escorted the king from Guildhall to his palace.
The footmen wore ribands of the colour of the
Company, and pendants with the Company's coat-
of-arms. The Company's standing extended 252
feet. There stood the livery in their best gowns
and hoods, with their banners and streamers.
"Eight handsome, tall, and able men" attended
the king at dinner. This was the last honour
shown the faithless king by the citizens of
London.

The ne.xt entries are about arms, pjowder, and
fire-engines, the defacing superstitious pictures, and
the setting up the arms of the Commonwealth.
In 1654 the Company was so impoverished by the
frequent forced loans, that they had been obliged
to sell part of their rental (^iSo per annum) ; yet
at the same date the generous Comjiany seem to
have given the poet Ogilvy ^13 6s. 8d., he having
presented them with bound copies of his transla-
tions of Virgil and ^•'-sop into English metre. In
1664 the boys of Merchant Taylors' School acted
in the Company's hall Beaumont and Fletcher's
comedy of Lot'ds Pilgrimage.

In 1679 the Duke of York, as Captain-general
of the Artillery, was entertained by the artillerymen
at Merchant Taylors' Hall. It was supposed that
the banquet was given to test the duke's popularity
and to discomfit the Protestants and exclusionists.
After a sermon at Bow Church, the artillerymen
(128) mustered at dinner. Many zealous Protes-
tants, rather than dine with a Popish duke, tore

up their tickets or gave them to porters and
mechanics ; and as the duke returned along Cheap-
side, the people shouted, " No Pope, no Pope !
No Papist, no Papist !"

In 1696 the Company ordered a portrait of Mr.
Vernon, one of tlieir benefactors, to be hung up
in St. Michael's Church, Cornliill. In 1702 they
let their hall and rooms to the East India Com-
l)any for a meeting ; and in 1 7 2 1 they let a room
to the South Sea Company for the same jjurpose.
In 1768, when the Lord Mayor visited the King
of Denmark, the Company's committee decided,
" there should be no breakfast at the hall, nor pipes
nor lobacco in the barge as usual, on Lord Mayor's
Day." Mr. Herbert thinks that this is the last
instance of a Lord Mayor sending a precept to a
City company, though this is by no means certain.
In 1 7 78, Mr. Clarkson, an assistant, for having
given the Company the picture, still extant, of
Henry VII. delivering his charter to the Merchant
Taylors, was presented witli a silver waiter, value

For the searching and measuring cloth, the
Company kept a " silver yard," that weighed thirty-
six ounces, and was graven with the Company's
arms. With this measure they attended Bartholo-
mew Fair yearly, and an annual dinner took place
on the occasion. The livery hoods seem finally, in
1568, to have setded down to scarlet and puce, the
gowns to blue. The Merchant Taylors' Company,
though not the first in City precedence, ranks more
royal and noble personages amongst its members
than any other company. At King James's visit,
before mentioned, no fewer than twenty-two earls
and lords, besides knights, esquires, and loreign am-
bassadors, were enrolled. Before 1708, the Com-
pany had granted the freedom to ten kings, three
princes, twenty-seven bishops, twenty-six dukes,
forty-seven earls, and sixteen lord mayors. The
Company is specially proud of three illustrious
members — Sir John Hawkwood, a great leader of
Italian Condottieri, who fought for the Dukes of
Milan, and was buried with honour in the Duomo
at Florence ; Sir Ralph P.lackwell, the supposed
founder of I!lackwell Hall, and one of Hawk-
wood's companions at arms ; and Sir William Fitz-
william, Lord High Admiral to Henry VIII., and
Earl of Southampton. He left to the Merchant
Taylors his best standing cup, " in friendly remem-
brance of him for ever." They also boast of
Sir William Craven, ancestor of the Earls of
Craven, who came up to London a poor York-
shire lad, and was bound apprentice to a drajier.
His eldest son fought for Gustavus Adolphus, and
is supposed to have secretly married the unfortu-

534

OLD AND NEW LONDON;

fThrcadncedte St,rcet.

natc Queen of Bohemia, wlioni he had so faithfully

served.

The hall in Threadncedle Street originally be-
longed to a worshipful gentleman named Edmund
Crepin. The Company moved there in 1331
(Edward III.) from the old hall, which was behind
the " Red Lion," in Basing Lane, Cheapside, an
executor of the Outwich family leaving them the

arched gate of entrance, and is lighted in front
by nine lari'c windows, exclusive of three smaller
attic windows, and at the east end by seven. The
roof is lofty and pointed, and is surmounted by a
louvre or lantern, with a vane. The almshouses
form a small range of cottage-like buildings, and are
situate between the hall and a second large building,
which adjoins the church, and bears some resem-

I'hrcadneedle Street

A. Mnnument ; Edward Ed\v.irds. iSio.
L. Ancient Canopied Monument ; " Pem-

berton." no d.ite.
C. Monument : Cniickshank, 1826.

EUis,

GRQUN'D PLAN OF THE MODERN CHURCH OF ST. M.\RTI\ OUTWICH.
{From a measured Drawing by Mr. IV, C. Smtt/i, 1873.)

M. XcTV Ancient EffisT of Founder, St.

Martin de Otebwich.
N. Reading Desk.

D. Monuments : bimpson, 1849

1838.

E. Monument : Ellis, 1855.

F. Monument : Simpson, 1837.

G. Monument: Rose, iSst.
H. Monuments ; Atkinson, 1847 ;

1838.
J. Monument : Richard Stapler.
K. Monument : Teesdale, 1804.
L, L. Stairs to Gallery above

Ellis,

<). Pulpit.

P. Ahar.

Q. Font.

R. Vestrj-.

advowson of St. Martin Outwich, and seventeen
shops. The Company built seven almshouses near
the hall in the reign of Henry IV. The original
mansion of Crepin probably at this time gave way
to a new hall, and to which now, for the first time,
were attached the almshouses mentioned. Both
these piles of building are shown in the ancient
plan of St. Martin Outwich, preserved in the
church vestry, and which was taken by William
Goodman in 1599. The hall, as there drawn, is
a high building, consisting of a ground floor and
three upper storeys. It has a central pointed-

blance to an additional hall or chapel. It appears
to rise alternately from one to two storeys high.

In 1620 the hall was wainscoted instead of
whitewashed ; and in 1 646 it was paved with red
tile, rushes or earthen floors having " been found
inconvenient, and oftentimes noisome." At the
Great Fire the Company's plate was melted into
a lump of two hundred pounds' weight.

In the reign of Edward VI., when there was an
inquiry into property devoted to superstitious uses,
the Company had been ma-ntaining twenty-three
chantry priests.

Threadnecdle Street.!

THE MERCHANT TAYLORS' HALL.

S35

S30

OT,D AND NEW LONDON.

n'lire.iclnecdle Street

The modern Merchant Taylors' Hall (says Her-
bert) is a spacious but irregular edifice of brick.
The front exhibits an arched portal, consisting of
anarchcil pediment, sujiported on columns of the
Composite order, with an ornamental niche above ;
in the pediment are the Company's arms. The hall
itself is a spacious and handsome apartment, having
at the lower end a stately screen of the Corinthian
order, anil in the upper part a very large mahogany
table thirty feet long. The sides of the hall have
numerous emblazoned shields of masters' arms, and
behind tlie master's seat are inscribed in golden
letters the names of the diftercnt sovereigns, dukes,
earls, lords spiritual and temporal, &c., who have
been free of this community. In the drawing-room
are full-length portraits of King William and Queen
Mary, and other so\-ereigns ; and in the court and
other rooms are half-lengths of Henry VHI. and
Charles II., of tolerable execution, besides various
otiier portraits, amongst which are those of Sir
Thomas White, Lord Mayor in 1553, the estim-
able founder of St. John's College, Cambridge,
and Sir Thomas Rowe, Lord Mayor in 1568,
and Mr. Clarkson's picture of Henry VII. jire-
senting the Company with their incorporation
charter. In this painting the king is represented
seated on his throne, and delivering the charter
to the Master, Wardens, and Court of Assistants
of the Company. His attendants are Archbishop
Warham, the Chancellor, and Fo.x, Bishop of Win-
chester, Lord Privy Seal, on his right hand ; and
on his left, Robert Willoughby, Lord Broke, then
Lord Steward of the Household. In niches are
shown tlie statues of Edward III. and John of
Gaunt, the king's ancestors. In the foreground
the clerk of the Company is exhibiting the roll
with the names of the kings. Sec, who were free of
this Company. In the background are represented
the banners of the Company and of the City of
London. The Yeomen of the Guard, at the en-
trance of the palace, close the view. On the stair-
case are likewise pictures of tiie following Lord
Mayors, Merchant Taylors :^Sir ^Villiam Turner,
1669; Sir P. -Ward, i68i ; Sir William Pritchard,
1683 ; and Sir John Salter, 1741.

The interior of the " New Hall, or Taylors' Inne,"
was adorned with costly tapestry, or arras, repre-
senting the history of St. John the Baptist. It had
a screen, supporting a silver image of that saint in
a tabernacle, or, according to an entry of 15 12,
"an ymage of St. John gilt, in a tabernacle gilt."
The hall windows were painted witli armorial bear-
mgs; the floor was regularly strewed with clean
rushes; from the ceiling hung silk flags and
streamers ; and the hall itself was furnished, when

needful, with tables on tressels, covered on feast
days with splendid table linen, and glittering with
plate.

The Merchant Taylors have for their armorial
ensigns — Argent, a tent royal between two par-
liament robes ; gules, lined ermine, on a chief
azure, a lion of England. Crest — a Holy Lamb, in
glory proper. Supporters — two camels, or. Motto
— "Concordia parvas res crescunt."

The stained glass windows of the old St. Martin
Outwich, as engraven in Wilkinson's history of that
church, contain a representation of the original
arms, granted by Clarencieux in 1480. They differ
from the present (granted in 1586), the latter having
a lion instead of the Holy Lamb (which is in the
body of the first arms), and which latter is now
their crest.

One of the most splendid sights at this hall in
the earlier times would have been (says Herbert),
of course, when the Company received the high
honour of enrolling King Henry VII. amongst
their members ; and subsequently to which, " he
sat openly among tliem in a gown of crimson
velvet on his shoulders," says Strype, " d la mode
de Londres, upon their solemn feast day, in the
hall of the said Company."

From Merchant Taylors' Hall began the famous
cavalcade of the archers, under their leader, as
Duke of Shoreditch, in 1530, consisting of 3,000
archers, sumptuously apparelled, 942 wliereof wore
cliains of gold about their necks. This splendid
company was guarded by whifilers and billmen, to
the number of 4,000, besides pages and footmen,
who marched through Broad Street (the residence
of the duke their captain). They continued their
march through Moorfields, by Finsbury, to Smith-
field, where, after having performed their several
evolutions, they shot at the target for glory.

The Hall of Commerce, existing some years ago
in Threadneedle Street, was begun in 1830 by Mr.
Edward Moxhay, a speculative biscuit-baker, on the
site of the old French church. Mr. Moxhay had
been a shoemaker, but he suddenly started as a
rival to the celebrated Leman, in Gracechurch
Street. He was an amateur architect of talent, and
it was said at the time, probably unjustly, tliat the
building originated in Moxhay's vexation at the
Gresham committee rejecting his design for a new
Royal Exchange. He opened his great com-
mercial news-room two )'ears before the Exchange
was finished, and while merchants ^\•ere fretting at
the delay, intending to make the liall a mercantile
centre, to the annihilation of Lloyd's, tlie Baltic,
Garraway's, the Jerusalem, and the North and South
American Coftee-houses. ^70,000 were laid out.

Threadneedle Street.]

ST. ANTHONY'S SCROOT.

537

There was a grand bas-relief on the front by Mr.
Watson, a young sculptor of promise, and there
was an inaugurating banquet. The annual sub-
scription of ;^5 5s. soon dwindled to ;£i los. 6d.
There was a reading-room, and a room where
commission agents could exhibit their samples.
^\'ool sales were held there, and there was an
auction for railway shares. There were also rooms
for meetings of creditors and jjrivate arbitrations,
and rooms for the deposit of deeds.

A describer of Threadneedle Street in 1S45
particularly mentions amongst the few beggars the
Creole flower-girls, the decayed ticket-porters, and
crip])les on go-carts who haunted the neighbour-
hood, a poor, shriyelled old woman, who sold fruit
on a stall at a corner of one of the courts. She
was the wife of Daniel Good, the murderer.

The Baltic Cotfee House, in Threadneedle Street,
used to be the rendezvous of tallow, oil, hemp,
and seed merchants ; indeed, of all merchants and
brokers connected with the Russian trade. There
was a time when there was as much gambling in
tallow as in Consols, but the breaking down of
the Russian monopoly by the increased introduc-
tion of South American and Australian tallow has
done away with this. Mr. Richard Thornton and
Mr. Jeremiah Harman were the two monarchs of
the Russian trade forty years ago. The public sale-
room was in the upper part of the house. The
Baltic was superintended by a committee of
management.

That famous free school of the City, St. An-
tliony's, stood in Threadneedle "Street, where the
French church afterwards stood, and where the
Bank of London now stands. It was originally
a Jewish synagogue, granted by Henry V. to the
brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienna. A hos-
pital was afterwards built there for a master, two
priests, a schoolmaster, and twelve poor men. The
Free School seems to have been built in the reign
of Henry VI., who gave five presentations to Eton
and five Oxford scholarships, at the rate of ten
francs a week each, to the institution. Henry VIII.,
that arch spoliator, annexed the school to the
collegiate church of St. George's, Windsor. The
proctors of St.- Anthony's used to wander about
London collecting " the benevolence of charitable
persons towards the building." The school had
great credit in Elizabeth's reign, and was a rival of
St. Paul's. That inimitable coxcomb, Laneham,
in his description of the great visit of Queen Eliza-
beth to the Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle,
157S' ^ book which Sir Walter Scott has largely
availed himself of, says — •" Yee mervail perchance,"
gaith he, "to see me so bookish, l^et me tel you

in few words. I went to school, forsooth, both at
Polle's and also at St. Antonie's ; (was) in the fifth
forme, past Esop's Fables, readd Terence, Vos isthax
iiitro aiifcrtc ; and began with my Virgil, Tityrc tu
patuhc. I could say my rules, could construe and
])ars with the best of them," iSjc.

In Elizabeth's reign " the .Vnthony's pigs," as
the " Paul's pigeons " used to call the Threadneedle
boys, used to have an ann\ial breaking-up day jjro-
cession, with streamers, flags, and beating drums,
from Mile End to Austin Friars. The French or
Walloon church established here by Edward VI.
seems, in 1652, to have been the scene of constant
wrangling among the pastors, as to whether their
disputes about celebrating holidays should be settled
by " collotiuies" of the foreign churches in London,
or the French churches of all England. At this
school were educated the great Sir Thomas More,
and that excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, the
zealous Whitgift (the friend of Beza, the Reformer),
whose only fault seems to have been his perse-
cutions of the Genevese clergy whom Elizabeth
disliked.

Next in importance to Lloyd's for the general
information aftbrded to the public, was certainly the
North and South American Coftee House (formerly
situated in Threadneedle Street), fronting the
thoroughfare leading to the entrance of the Royal
Exchange. This establishment was the complete
centre for American intelligence. There was in
this, as in the whole of the leading City coffee-
houses, a subscription room devoted to the use of
merchants and others frequenting the house, who,
by paying an annual sum, had the right of attend-
ance to read the general news of tl>e day, and
make reference to the several files of papers, which
were from every quarter of the globe. It was here
also that first information could be obtained of the
arrival and departure of the fleet of steamers,
packets, and masters engaged in the commerce of
America, whether in relation to the minor ports of
Montreal and Quebec, or the larger ones of Boston,
Halifax, and New York. The room the subscribers
occupied had a separate entrance to that which
was common to the frequenters of the eating and
drinking part of the house, and was most comfortably
and neatly kept, being well, and in some degree
elegantly furnished. The heads of the chief
American and Continental firms were on the sub-
scription list ; and the representatives of Baring's,
Rothschild's, and the other large establishments
celebrated for their wealth and extensive mercan-
tile operations, attended the rooms as regularly as
'Change, to see and hear what was going on, and
gossip over points of bu.siness.

538

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Tlireadneedle Street.

At the north-east extremity of Threadneedle
Street is the once laniuiis South Sea House. The
back, formerly the Exci.se Office, afterwards the
South Sea Company's office, thence called the Old
South Sea House, was consumed by fire in 1826. The
building in Threadneedle Street, in which the Com-
pany's affairs were formerly transacted, is a magnifi-
cent structure of brick and stone, about a quadrangle,
supported by stone pillars of the Tuscan order,
which form a fine piazza. The front looks into
Threadneedle Street, the walls being well built and
of great thickness. The several offices were ad-
mirably disposed ; the great hall for sales, ^e
dining-room, galleries, and chambers were equally
beautiful and convenient. Under these were capa-
cious arched vaults, to guard wliat was valuable
from the chances of fire.

The South Sea Company was originated by
Swift's friend, Harley, Earl of Oxford, in the year
1 7 1 1 . The new Tory Government was less popular
than the Whig one it had displaced, and public
credit had fallen. Harley wishing to provide for
the discharge of ten millions of the floating debt,
guaranteed six per cent, to a company who agreed
to take it on themselves. The ;jf^6oo,ooo due for
the annual interest was raised by duties on wines,
silks, tobacco, &c. ; and the monopoly of the trade
to the South Seas granted to the ambitious new
Company, which was incorporated by Act of
Parliament.

To the enthusiastic Company the gold of Mexico
and the silver of Peru seemed now obtainable by
the ship-load. It was reported that Spain was
willing to open four ports in Chili and Peru. The
negotiations, however, with Philip V. of Spain led
to little. The Company obtained only the privilege
of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves
for thirty years, and sending an annual vessel to
trade; but even of this vessel the Spanish king
was to have one-fourth of the profits, and a tax of
five per cent, on the residue. The first vessel did
not sail till 17 17, and the year after a rupture with
Spain closed the trade.

In 1717, the King alluding to his wish to reduce
the National Debt, the South Sea Company at once
petitioned Parliament Hn rivalry with the Bank)
that their capital stock might be increased from ten
millions to twelve, and offered to accept five, instead
of six per cent, upon the whole amount. Their
proposals were accepted.

The success of Law's Mississippi scheme, in
1720, roused the South Sea directory to emulation.
They proposed to liquidate the public debt by
reducing the various funds into one. January 22,
1720, a committee met on the subject. The South

Sea Company offered to melt every kind of stock
into a single security. The debt amounted to
^30,981,712 at five per cent, for seven years, and
afterwards at four per cent, for which they would
pay ;^3, 500,000. The Government approved of
the scheme, but the Bank of England opposed
it, and oflered ^5,000,000 for the privilege. The
South Sea shareholders were not to be outdone,
and idtimately increased their terms to ^7,500,000.
In the end they remained the sole bidders ;
though some idea prevailed of sharing the advantage
between the two companies, till Sir John Blunt
exclaimed, " No, sirs, we'll never divide the child 1"
The preference thus given excited a positive frenzy
in town and country. On the 2nd of June their
stock rose to 890 ; it quickly reached 1,000, and
several of the principal managers were dubbed
baronets for their " great services." Mysterious
rumours of vast treasures to be acquired in the
South Seas got abroad, and 50 per cent, was
boldly promised.

" The scheme," says Smollett, "was first projected
by Sir John Blount, who had been bred a scrivener,
and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility,
and boldness requisite for such an undertaking.
He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislabie, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Secretary of
State. He answered every objection, and the
project was adopted."

Sir Robert Walpole alone opposed the bill in the
House, and with clear-sighted sense (though the
stock had risen from 130 to 300 in one day) de-
nounced " the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing,
and the general infatuation, which must," he said,
" end in general ruin." Rumours of free trade
with Spain pushed the shares up to 400, and the
bill passed the Commons by a majority of 172
against 55. In the other House, 17 peers were
against it, and 83 for it. Then the madness fairly
began. Stars and garters mingled with squabbling
Jews, and gi'eat ladies pa«aied their jewels in order
to gamble in the Alley. The shares sinking a little,
they were revived by lying rumours that CJibraltar
and Port Mahon were going to be exchanged for
Peruvian sea-ports, so that the Company would be
allowed to send out whole fleets of ships.

Government, at last alarmed, began too late to
act. On July 18 the King published a proclama-
tion denouncing eighteen petitions for letters patent
and eighty-six bubble companies, of which the fol-
lowing are samples : —

For sinking pits anil smelting lead ore in Dei'1)yshire.
For making glass bottles and other glass.
For a wheel for perpetual motion. Capit.al /'i,ooo,ooo,
For improving of gardens.

Threadneedle Street.]

THE SOUTH SEA INFATUATION.

539

For insuring and increasing cliiltlren's fortinies.

For entering and loading goods at the Ciislnm House;
and for negotiating business for merchants.

For carrying on a woollen manufacture in the North of
England.

For impnrling walnut-trees from Virginia. Capital
^2,000,000.

For making Manchester stuffs of thread ami cotton.

For making Joppa and Castile soap.

For improving Ihe wrought iron and steel manufactures of
this kingdom. Capital ^4,000,000.

For dealing in lace, Hollands, cambrics, lawns, &c.
Capital ^2,000,000,

For trading in and improving certain commodities of the
produce of this kingdom, t\;c. Capital ^^3, 000,000.

For supplying tlie London markets with cattle.

For making looking-glasses, coach-glasses, &c. Capital

;^2,OOO,0O0.

For taking up ballast.

For buying anil fitting out ships to suppress pirates.

For the importation of limber from Wales. Capital
;,;^2,ooo,ooo.

F"or rock-salt.

For the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleal>le, fine
met.al.

One of the most famous bubbles was " Puckle's
jNIachine Company," for discharging round and
square cannon-balls and bullets, and making a
total revolution in the art of war. " But the
most absurd and preposterous of all," says Charles
Mackay, in his " History of the Delusion," " and
which showed more coinpletely than any other the
utter madness of the people, was one started by
an unknown adventurer, entitled, ' A Company for
carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but
nobody to knmo what it is.' Were not the fact
stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be
itnpossible to believe that any person could have
been duped by such a project. The man of genius
who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon
public credulity merely stated in his prospectus
that the required capital was ^500,000, in 5,000
shares of ^^loo each, deposit ^2 per share. Each
subscriber paying his deposit would be entitled to
;^ioo per annum per share. How this immense
profit was to be obtained he did not condescend to
inform them at the titme, but promised that in a
month full particulars should be duly announced,
and a call inade for the remaining ^()S of the
subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this
great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds
of people beset his door ; and when he shut up at
three o'clock he found that no less than 1,000 shares
had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid.
He was thus in five hours the winner of ^^2,000.
He was philosopher enough to be contented with
his venture, and set off the same evening for the
Continent. He was never heard of again."

Another fraud that was very successful was tliat

of the "Globe Permits," as they were called. They
were nothing more tlian siiuare pieces of playing
cards, on which was the impression of a seal, in
wa.\, bearing the sign of the " Glolje Tavern," in
the neigltbourhood of Exchange Alley, with tlie
inscrijition of " Sail-cloth Permits." The po.ssessors
enjoyed no other advantage from them than per-
mission to subst-ribe at some future lime to a new
sail-cloth manufactory, jsrojected by one who was
then known to be a man of fortune, but who was
afterwards involved in the peculation and punish-
ment of the -South Sea directors. These permits
sold for as much as sixty guineas in the Alley.

During the infatuation (says Smollett), luxury,
vice, and profligacy increased to a shocking degree ;
the adventurers, intoxicated by their imaginar}'
wealth, pampered themselves with the rarest dainties
and the most costly wines. They purchased the
most suinptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel,
though with no taste or discernment. Their
criminal passions were indulged to a scandalous
excess, and their discourse evinced the most dis-
gusting pride, insolence, and ostentation. They
affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even
to set Heaven at defiance.

A journalist of the time writes : " Our South
Sea equipages increase daily ; the City ladies buy
South Sea jewels, hire South Sea maids, take new
country South .Sea houses ; the gaitiemen set up
South Sea coaches, and buy South Sea estates.
They neither examine the situation, the nature or
quality of the soil, or price of the purchase, only the
annual rent and title ; for the rest, they take all by
the lump, and pay forty or fifty years' purchase !"

By the end of May, the whole stock liad risen
to 550. It then, in four days, made a tremendous
leap, and rose to S90. It was now thought im-
possible that it could rise higher, and many prudent
persons sold out to make sure of their spoil.
Many of these were noblemen about to accompany
the king to Hanover. The buyers were so few on
June 3rd, that stock fell at once, like a plummet,
from 890 to 640. The directors ordering their
agents to still buy, confidence was restored, and
the stock rose to 750. By August, the stock cul-
minated at 1,000 per cent., or, as Dr. Mackay
observes, " the bubble was then ftiU blown."

The reaction soon commenced. Many govern-
ment annuitants cotnplained of the directors' par-
tiality in making out the subscription lists. It was
soon reported that Sir John Blunt, the chairman,
and several directors liad sold out. The stock fell
all through August, and on September 2nd was
quoted at 700 only. Things grew alarming. The
directors, to restore confidence, summoned a meet-

540

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Thrcadneedle Street.

ing of the corporation at Merchant Taylors' Hall, i
Cheapside was blocked by the crowd. Mr. Secre-
tary Craggs urged the necessity ot union ; and Mr.
Hungerford said the Company had done more
for the nation than Crown, pulpit, and bench.
It had enriched the whole nation. The Duke
of Portland gravely expressed his wonder that any
one could be dissatisfied. But the public were not
to be gulled ; that same evening the stock fell to j
640, and the next day to 540. It soon got so
low as 400. The ebb tide was running last.
" Thousands of families," wrote Mr. Broderick to !

Craggs' face, said " there were other men in high
station who were no less guilty than the directors."
Mr. Craggs, rising in wrath, declared he was ready
to give satisfaction to any one in the House, or
out of it, and this unparliamentary language he
had afterwards to explain away. Ultimately a
second committee was appointed, with jjower to
send for persons, papers, and records. The direc-
tors were ordered to lay before the house a full
account of all their proceedings, and were fur-
bidden to leave the kingdom for a twelvemonth.
Mr. Walpole laid before a committee of the

THE OLD SOUTH SEA HOUSE (jtv /rtoj' 53S). From a Pyint of the Piriod.

Lord Chancellor Middleton, " will be reduced to
beggary. The consternation is inexpressible, the
rage beyond description." The Bank was pressed
to circulate the South Sea bonds, but as the panic
increased they fought off Several goldsmiths and
bankers fled. The Sword Blade Company, the
chief cashiers of the South Sea Company, stopped
payment. King George returned in haste from
Hanover, and Parliament was summoned to meet
in December.

In the first debate the enemies of the South Sea
Company were most violent. Lord Molesworth
said he should be satisfied to see the contrivers of
the scheme tied in sacks and thrown into the
Thames. Honest Shippen, whom even '\\'alpole
could not bribe, looking fiercely in Mr. Secretary

whole house his scheme for the restoration of
public credit, which was, in substance, to ingraft
nine millions of South Sea stock into the Bank of
England, and the same sum into the East India
Company, upon certain conditions. The plan was
favourably received by the House. After some few
objections it was ordered that proposals should be
received from the two great corporations. They
were both unwilling to lend their aid, and the
plan met with a warm but fruitless opposition at
the general courts summoned for the purpose of
deliberating upon it. They, however, ultimately
agreed upon the terms on which they would consent
to circulate the South Sea bonds ; and their report
being presented to the committee, a bill was then
brought in, under the superintendence of Mr.

Threadneedlc Slrcel 1

THE BURSTING OF THE BUBBLE.

541

Walpole, and safely carried through both Houses
of Parliament.

In the House of Lords, Lord Stanhope said that
every farthing possessed by the criminals, whether
directors or not, ought to be confiscated, to make
good the public losses.

The wrath of the House of Commons soon fell
quick and terrible as lightning on two members of
the Ministry, Craggs, and Mr. Aislabie, Chancellor
of the Exchequer. It was ordered, on the 21st of
January, that all South Sea brokers should lay

the Commons ordered the doors of the House to
be locked, and the keys laid on the table.

General Ross, one of the members of the Select
Committee, then informed the House that there
had been already discovered a jilot of the deepest
villany and fraud that Hell had ever contrived
to ruin a nation. Four directors, members of the
House — i.e., Sir Robert Chaiilin, Sir Theodore
Janssen, Mr. Sawbridge, and Mr. F. Eyles — were
expelled the House, and taken into the custody of
the Serjeant-at-.\rms. Sir John Blunt, another

-;#'^"

iiypiiiMiiM

k. ''■ ♦

\""v'^"''^'^,i''^7"^^)y^^'" "'*'"*•'''>

LONDON STONE. (&"/(7^i? 544. )

before the House a full account of all stock bought
or sold by them to any officers of the Treasury or
Exchequer since Michaelmas, J 7 19. Aislabie in-
stantly resigned his office, and absented himself
from Parliament, and five of the South Sea direc-
tors (including Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the
historian) were ordered into tlie custody of the
Black Rod.

The next excitement was the flight of Knight,

the treasurer of the Company, with all his books

and implicating documents, and a reward of ^2,000

was offered for his apprehension. The same night

director, was also taken into custody. This man,
mentioned by Pope in his " Epistle to Lord
Batiiurst," had been a scrivener, f.imed for his
religious observances and his horror of avarice.
He was examined at the bar of the House of Lords,
but refused to criminate himself The Duke of
Wharton, vexed at this prudent silence of the
criminal, accused Earl Stanhope of encouraging this
taciturnity of the witness. The Earl became so
excited in his return speech, that it brought on an
apoplectic fit, of which he died the next day, to
the great grief of his royal master, George I. The

54 =

OT.D AND NEW LONDON.

[Threadncedle Street.

Committee of Secrecy stated that in some of the
books produced before them, false and fictitious
entries had been made ; in others there were
entries of money, with blanks for the names of the
stockholders. There were frequent erasures and
alterations, and in some of the books leaves had
been torn out. They also found that some books
of great importance had been destroyed altogether,
and that some had been taken away or secreted.
They discovered, moreover, that before the South
Sea Act was passed there was an entry in the
Company's books of the sum of ^^i, 259, 325 upon
account of stock stated to have been sold to the
amount of ^574,500. This stock was all fictitious,
and had been disposed of with a view to promote
the passing of the bill. It was noted as sold on
various days, and at various prices, from 150 to
325 per cent.

Being surprised to see so large an amount
disposed of, at a time when the Company were
not empowered to increase their capital, the com-
mittee determined to investigate most carefully
the whole transaction. The governor, sub-governor,
and several directors were brought before them and
examined rigidly. They found that at the time
these entries were made the Company were not in
possession of such a quantity of stock, having in
their own right only a small quantity, not exceeding
^30,000 at the utmost. They further discovered
th.it this amount of stock was to be esteemed as
taken or holden by the Company for the benefit
of the pretended purchasers, although no mutual
agreement was made for its delivery or acceptance
at any certain time. No money was paid down,
nor any deposit or security whatever given to the
Company by the supposed purchasers ; so that if
the stock had fallen, as might have been expected
had the act not passed, they would have sustained
no loss. If, on the contrary, the price of stock
advanced (as it actually did by the success of the
scheme), the difterence by the advanced price was
to be made good by them. Accordingly, after the
passing of the act, tlie account of stock was made
up and adjusted with Mr. Knight, and the pre-
tended purchasers were paid the difterence out of
the Company's cash. This fictitious stock, which
had chiefly been at the disposal of Sir John Blunt,
Mr. Gibbon, and Mr. Knight, was distributed
among several members of the Covernment and
their connections, by way of bribe, to facilitate the
passing of the bill. To the Earl of Sunderland was
assigned ^^50,000 of this stock ; to the Duchess
of Kendal, ^10,000; to the Countess of Platen,
^10,000; to her two nieces, ^10,000; to Mr.
Secretary Craggs, ^jo.goo ,; to Mr, Charles Stan-

hope (one of the Secretaries of the Treasury),
j{^io,ooo; to the Sword Blade Company, ^50,000.
It also appeared that Mr. Stanhope had received
the enormous sum of _;^2 50,000, as the difference
in the price of some stock, through the hands of
Turner, Caswall, and Co., but that his name had
been partly erased from their books, and altered to
Stangape.

The punishment fell heavy on the chief offenders,
who, after all, had only shared in the general lust
for gold. Mr. Charles Stanhope, a great gainer,
managed to escape by the influence of the Chester-
field family, and the mob threatened vengeance.
Aislabie, who had made some ^800,000, was ex-
pelled the House, sent to the Tower, and compelled
to devote his estate to the relief of the suft'erers.
Sir George Caswall was expelled the House, and
ordered to refund ^250,000. The day he went to
the Tower, the mob lit bonfires and danced round
them for joy. When by a general whip of the \\'higs
the Earl of Sunderland was acquitted, the mob
grew menacing again. That same day the elder
Craggs died of apoplexy. The report was that he
had poisoned himself, but excitement and the death
of a son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, were
the real causes. His enormous fortune of a million
and a half was scattered among the sufferers.
Eventually the directors were fined ^^ .',01 4,000,
each man being allowed a small modicum of his
fortune. Sir John Blunt was only allowed ^5,000
out of his fortune of ^183,000; Sir John Fellows
was allowed ;^io,ooo out of ;£'243,ooo ; Sir Theo-
dore Janssen, ^50,000 out of ^243,000 ; Sir John
Lambert, ^5,000 out of ^72,000. One director,
named Gregsley, was treated with especial severity,
because he was reported to have once declared he
would feed his carriage-horses off gold ; another,
because years before he had been mixed up with
some harmless but unsuccessful speculation. Ac-
cording to Gibbon the historian, it was the Tory
directors wlio were strip'-.ed the most uhmerci-
fully.

" The next consideration of the Legislature," says
Charles Mackay, "after the punishment of the
directors, was to restore public credit. The scheme
of Walpole had been found insufficient, and had
fallen into disrepute. A computation was made of
the whole capital stock of the South Sea Company
at the end of the year 1720. It was found to
amount 10^^37,800,000, of which the stock allotted
to all the proprietors only reached ;^24, 500,000.
The remainder of ^13,300,000 belonged to the
Company in their corporate capacity, and was the
profit they had m.ide by the national ilelusion.
Upwards of ^8,000,000 of this was taken from

Threadncedlc Street. "J

ANECDOTES OF THE BUBBLE.

543

the Company, and divided among tlie proprietors
and subscribers generally, making a dividend of
about j£.3:i 6s. 8d. per cent. This was a great
relief. It was further ordered that such persons as
had borrowed money from the South Sea Company
upon stock actually transferred and pledged, at the
time of borrowing, to or for the use of the Com-
pany, should be free from all demands upon pay-
ment of ten per cent, of the sums so borrowed.
They had lent about ^11,000,000 in this manner,
at a time when prices were unnaturally raised ; and
they now received back ^1,100, 00c, when prices
had sunk to their ordinary level."

A volume (says another writer) might be collected
of anecdotes connected with this fatal speculation.
A tradesman at Eath, who had invested his only
remaining fortune in this stock, finding it had
fallen from 1,000 to 900, left Bath with an inten-
tion to sell out ; on his arrival in London it had
fallen to 250. He thought the price too low,
sanguinely hoped that it would re-ascend, still de-
ferred his purpose, and lost his all.

The Duke of Chandos had embarked ^^300,000
in this project ; the Duke of Newcastle strongly
advised his selling the whole, or at least a part,
with as little delay as possible ; but this salutary
advice he delayed to take, confidently anticipating
the gain of at least half a million, and through re-
jecting his friend's counsel, he lost the whole. Some
were, however, more fortunate. The guardians of
Sir Gregory Page Turner, then a minor, had pur-
chased stock for him very low, and sold it out
when it had reached its maximum, to the amount
of _;^2oo,ooo. With this large sum Sir Gregory
built a fine mansion at Blackheath, and pur-
chased 300 acres of land for a park. Two maiden
sisters, whose stock had accumulated to ;^9o,ooo,
sold out when the South Sea stock was at 790.
The broker whom they employed advised them
to re-invest in navy bills, which were at the time at
a discount of twenty-five per cent.'; they took his
advice, and two years afterwards received their
money at par.

Even the poets did not escape. Gay (.says Dr.
Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets ") had a
present from young Craggs of some South Sea
stock, and once supposed himself to be the master
of ^20,000. His friends, especially Arbuthnot,
persuaded him to sell his share, but he dreamed of
dignity and splendour, and could not bear to ob-
struct his own fortune. He was then importuned
to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a
year for life, "which,' said Fenton, ''will make
you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton
every day." This counsel was rejected ; the profit

and principal were both lost, and Cay sunk so low
under the calamity that his life for a time became
in danger.

Pope, alwa)-s eager for money, was also dabbling
in the scheme, but it is uncertain whether he made
money or lost by it. Lady Mary Wortley Montague
was a loser. When Sir Isaac Newton was asked
when the "bubble would break, he said, with all his
calculations he had never learned to calculate the
madness of the i)eople.

Prior declared, " I am lost in the South Sea.
The roaring of the waves and the madness of the
people are justly put together. It is all wilder
than St. Anthony's dream, and the bagatelle is
more solid than anything that has been endea-
voured here this year."

In the full heat of it, the Duchess of Ormond
wrote to Swift : " The king adopts the South Sea,
and calls it his beloved child ; though perhaps,
you may say, if he loves it no better than his son,
it may not be saying much ; but he loves it as
much as he cloves the Duchess of Kendal, and
that is saying a good deal. I wish it may thrive,
for some of my friends are deep in it. I wish
you were too."

Swift, cold and stern, escaped the madness, and
even denounced in the following verses the insanity
that had seized the times : —

" There is a gfiilf where thousands fell,
Here all the bold adventiiiers came ;
A narrow sound, though deep as hell —
Change Alley is the dreadful name.

" Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down ;
Each paddling in his leaky boat.
And here they fish for gold and drown,

" Now buried in the depths below.
Now mounted up to heaven again,
They reel and stagger to and fro.

At their wit's end, like drunken men."

Budgell, Pope's barking enemy, destroyed him-
self after his losses in this South Sea scheme, and a
well-known man of the day called " 'l"om of Ten
Thousand " lost his reason.

Charles Lamb, in his " Elia," has described the
South Sea House in his own delightful way.
" Reader," says the poet clerk, " in thy passage
from the Bank^where thou hast been receiving
thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a
lean annuitant like myself) — to the ' Flower Pot,'
to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or
some other shy surburban retreat northedy — didst
thou never observe a melancholy-looking, hand-
some brick and stone edifice, to the left, where
Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? I

544

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cannon Street,

dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent
portals, ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view
a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few
or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a desolation
something like Ealcliitha's.* This was once a
house of trade — a centre of busy interests. The
throng of merchants was here— the cjuick pulse of
gain — and here some forms of business are still
kept up, though the soul has long since fled. Here
are still to be seen stately porticoes ; imposing stair-
cases ; oflices roomy as the state apartments in
palaces— deserted, or thinly peopled with a few
straggling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of
court and committee rooms, with venerable faces
of beadles, door-keepers ; directors seated in form
on solemn days (to i)roclaim a dead dividend), at
long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany,
with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting
massy silver inkstands, long since dry ; the oaken
wainscots hung with ])ictures of deceased governors
and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first
monarchs of the Erunswick dynasty; huge charts,
which subsequent discoveries have antiquated ;
dusty majis of Mexico, dim as dreams ; and sound-
ings of the Bay of Panama '. The long passages

hung with buckets, appended, in idle row to walls,
whose substance might defy any, short of the last
conflagration ; with vast ranges of cellarage under
all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight once lay, ' an
unsunned heap,' for Mammon to have solaced his
solitary heart withal — long since dissipated, or
scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of
that famous Bubble.

" Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence
and destitution are ujjon thy walls, proud house,
for a memorial ! Situated as thou art in the very
heart of stirring and living commerce, amid the
fret and fever of siieculation — with the Bank, and
the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in
the hey-day of present prosperity, with their im-
portant faces, as it were, insulting thee, their />cWf
mighbour out of business — to the idle and merely
contemplative — to such as me. Old House ! there is
a charm in thy quiet, a cessation, a coolness from
business, an indolence almost cloistral, which is
delightfid ! ^^'ith what rex'erence have I paced thy
great bare rooms and courts at eventide ! 'J'hey
spake of the past ; the shade of some dead ac-
countant, with visionary pen in ear, ^^■ould flit by
me, stiff" as in life."

CHAPTER XLVHL
CANNON STREET

London Stone and Jack Cade Southwark Bridge — Old City Churches — The Salter^' Company's Hall, and the Baiters' Company's History —
Oxford House— Salters' Banquets— Saltcrs' Hall Chapel— A Mysterious Murder in Caiuion Street— St. I\Iartiu Orgar — King William's
Statue — Cannon Street Station.

Cannon Street was originally called Candlewick
Street, from the candle -makers who lived there.
It afterwards became a resort of drapers.

London Stone, the old Roman milliariinn, or
milestone, is now a mere rounded boulder, set in
a stone case built into the outer southern wall of
the church of St. Swithin, Cannon Street. Camden,
in his " Britannia," says — " The stone called Lon-
don Stone, from its situation in the centre of the
longest diameter of the City, I take to have been
a miliary, like that in the Forum at Rome, from
whence all the distances were measured."

Camden's opinion, that from this stone the
Roman roads radiated, and that by it the distances
were reckoned, seems now generally received.
Stow, who thinks that there was some legend of
the early Christians connected with it, says : — " On
the south side of this high street (Candlewick or

" I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were
desolate." (Osiian. )

Cannon Street), near unto the channel, is pitched
upriglit a great stone, called London Stone, fixed .
in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron,
and otherwise so strongly set, that if carts do run
against it through negligence, the wheels be broken
and the stone itself unshaken. The cause why this
stone was set there, the time when, or other memory
is none."

Strype describes it in his day as already set in its
case. " This stone, before the Fire of London, was
much worn away, and, as it were, but a stumii
remaining. But it is now, for the preservation of
it, cased over with a new stone, handsomely wrought,
cut hollow underneath, so as the old stone may be
seen, the new one being over it, to shelter and
defend the old venerable one."

It stood formerly on the south side of Cannon
Street, but was removed to the north, December
13th, 1 742. In 1 79S it was again removed, as an ob-
struction, and, but for tlie praiseworthy interposition

Cannon Street.)

SOUTHWARK BRIDGE.

54S

of a local antiquary, Mr. 'riionias Maiden, a printer
in Sherborne Lane, it would have been destroyed.

This most interesting relic of Roman London is
that very stone which the arch -rebel Jack Cade
struck with his bloody sword when lie liad stormed
London Bridge, and " Now is Mortimer lord of this
city " were the words he uttered too confidently as
he gave the blow. Shakespeare, who jierhaps wrote
from tradition, makes him strike London Stone
with his staff : —

" Ctu/c. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here,
sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that tlie
conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign.
And now henceforward it shall be traason for any that calls
me Lord Mortimer." — S/uiirs/i-an; Second Part of Ilony VI.,
act iv., sc. 6.

Dryden, too, mentions this stone in a very fine
passage of his Fable of the " Cock and the Fox :" —

"The bees in arms
Drive headlong from the waxen cells in swarms.
Jack Straw at London Stone, with all his rout,
Struck not the city with so loud a shout."

Of the old denizens of this neighbourhood in
Henry VIIL's days. Stow gives a very ^picturesqu e
sketch in the following passage, where he says : —
" The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now
liveth, hath been noted within these forty years to
have ridden into this city, and so to his house by
London Stone, with eighty gentlemen in a livery of
Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their
necks, before hiin, and one hundred tall yeomen in
the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all
having his cognizance of the blue boar embroidered
on their left shoulder."

A turning from Cannon Street leads us to
Southwark Bridge. The cost of this bridge was
computed at ^300,000, and the annual revenue
was estimated at;^90,ooo. Blackfriars Bridge tolls
amounted to a large annual sum ; and it was
supposed Southwark might fairly claim about a
third of it. Great stress also was laid on the
improvements that would ensue in the miserable
streets about Bankside and along the road to the
King's Bench. We need scarcely remind our
readers that the bridge never answered, and was
almost disused till the tolls were removed and it
was thrown open to general traffic.

"Southwark Bridge," says Mr. Timbs, "designed
by John Rennie, F.R.S., was Iniilt by a public
company, and cost about ^800,000. It consists of
three cast-iron arches ; the centre 240 feet span,
and the two side arches 210 feet each, about forty-
two feet above the highest spring-tides ; the ribs
forming, as it were, a series of hollow masses, or
voussoirs, similar to those of stone, a ])rinciple new
in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and very

successful. The whole of the segmental pieces and
the braces are kept in their places by dovetailed
sockets and long cast-iron wedges, so that bolts are
unnecessary, although they were used dtiring the
construction of the bridge to kecj) the ])ieces in
their places until the wedges had been dri\ en. The
spandrels are similarly connected, and upon them
rests the roadway, of solid plates of cast iron, joined
by iron cement. The piers .and abutments are of
stone, founded upon timber platforms resting upon
piles driven below the bed of the river. The
masonry is tied throughout by vertical and hori-
zontal bond-stones, so that the whole rests as one
mass in the best position to resist the horizontal
thrust. The first stone was laid by Admiral Lord
Keith, May 23rd, 1815, the bill for erecting the
bridge h.aving been passed M.ay i6th, 181 1. The
iron-work (weight 5,700 tons) had been so well put
together by the Walkers of Rotherham, the founders,
and the masonry by the contr.actors, JoUiffe and
Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely
any sinking was discernible in the arches. From
experiments made to ascertain the expansion and
contraction between the extreme range of winter
and summer teniperatiire, it was found that the arch
rose in the summer about one inch to one and a
half inch. The works were commenced in 18 13,
and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March
24th, 1 81 9, as the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral
tolled midnight. Towards the middle of the western
side of the bridge used to be a descent from the
pavement to a steam-boat pier. '

Mr. Charles Dickens, in one of the chapters of
his " Uncommercial Traveller," has sketclied, in
his most exquisite manner, just such old City
churches as we have in Cannon Street and its
turnings. The dusty oblivion into whicli they
are sinking, their past glory, their mouldy old
tombs — everything he paints with the correctness
of Teniers and the finish of Gerard Dow.

" There is," he says, " a pale heap of books in
the corner of my pew, and while the organ, which
is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such ftsliion that I
can hear more of the rusty working of the sto])s
than of any music, I look at the books, which are
mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They
belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family. And
who were they? Jane Comfort must ha\e married
young Dowgate, and come into the fcimily that way.
Voung Dowgate was courting Jane Comfort when
he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the pre-
sentation in the fly-leaf If J.ane were fond of
young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the
book here? I'erh.aps at the rickety altar, and
before the damp Commandments, slie, Comfort,

546

OLD AXn XF.W LONDON.

[Cannon Street.

had taken liim, Dowgate, in a flusli of youthful | is ! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do
hope and joy ; and perhaps it h ul not turned out , we cough and .sneeze dead citizens, all through the
in the long run as great a success as was expected. ' service, but dead citizens have got into the very
" The opening of the service recalls my wantler- bellows of the organ, and half-choked the same.
ing thoughts. I then find to my astonishment We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens
that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon

THE FOURTH SALTERS' H.\LL. {Sci- /ii7^i- 548.)

of invisible snuli u]) my nose, into my eyes, and
down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough.
The clerk sneezes : the clerg>'man winks ; the
unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably
wmks) ; all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough.
The snuff seems to be made of the decay of mat-
ting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something
else. Is the something else the decay of dead
citizens in the vaults below ? As sure as death it

the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board
over the clergyman's head, and when a gust of air
comes, tumble down upon him.

*****
" In the churches about Mark Lane there was
a dry whiff of wheat ; and I accidentally struck
an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock
in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower
Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a

Cannon Street ]

OLD CITY CHURCHES.

547

subtle flavour of wine ; sometimes of tea. One
church, near Mincnig La-ne, smelt Hke a druggist's
drawer. Behind the Monument, the service liad a
flavour of damaged oranges, which, a httle further
down the river, tenijiered into herrings, and gradually
toned into a cosmopolitan blast of tish. In one

on my memory as distinct and ([uaint as any it has
that way received. In all those dusty registers
that the worms are eating, there is not a line but
made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their
day. Still and dry now, still and dry ! And the
i old tree at the window, with no room for its

CORDWAINERS' HALL. {Sir /ir^r ^^O )

church, the exact counterpart of the church in
the ' Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being
married to the horrible old lady, there was no
speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a
perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent
warehouse.

" The dark vestries and registries into which I
have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards
that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions

branches, has seen them ail out. So with the
tomb of the old master of the old company, on
which it drips. His son restored it and tlied, his
daughter restored it and die<_l, an<l then he had
been remembered long enough, and the tree took
possession of him, and his name cracked out."

The Salters, who have anchored in Cannon
Street, have had at least four halls before the
present one. The first was in Bread Street, to be

548

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tCir

1 f^treet.

ncnr their kinsmen, the Fishmongers, in the old
Jish market of London, Knighlrider Street. It is
noticed, app-irently, as a new building, in the will
of Thomas Heamond, Salter, 1451, who devised to
" Henry Bell and Robert Rissett, wardens of the
fraternity and gild of the Salters, of the body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Church of
All Saints, of Kread Street, London, and to the
brothers and sisters of the same fraternity and gild,
and their successors for ever, the land and ground
where there was then lately erected a hall called
Salters' Hall, and si.x mansions by him then newly
erected upon the same ground, in Bread Street, in
the parish of All Saints." The last named were
the Company's almshouses.

This hall was destroyed by fire in 1533. The
second hall, in Bread Street, had an almshouse
adjoining, as Stow tells us, " for poore decayed
brethren." It was destroyed by fire in 1598. This
hall was afterwards used by Parliamentary com-
mittees. There the means of raising new regiments
was discussed, and there, in 1654, the judges for
a time sat. The third hall (and these records
furnish interesting facts to the London topographer)
was a mansion of the prior of Tortington (Susse.x),
near the east end of St. Swithin's Church, London
Stone. The Salters purchased it, in 1641, of
Captain George Smith, and it was then called
Oxford House, or Oxford Place. It had been the
residence of Maister Stapylton, a wealthy alderman.
The house is a marked one in history, as at the
back of it, according to Stow, resided those bad
guiding ministers of the miser king Henry VII.,
Empson and Dudley, who, having cut a door into
Oxford House garden, used to meet there, like the
two usurers in Quintin Matsys' picture, and suggest
war taxes to each other under the leafy limes of the
old garden. Sir Ambrose Nicholas and Sir John
Hart, both Salters, kept their mayoralties here.

The fourth hall, built after the Great Fire had
made clear work of Oxford House, was a small
brick building, the entrance opening within an
arcade of three arches springing from square
fluted pillars. A large garden adjoined it, and
next that was the Salters' Hall Meeting House.
The parlour was handsome, and there were a few
original portraits. This hall, the clerk's house, with
another at the gate of St. Swithin's Lane, were pulled
down and sold in 1S21. The present hall was de-
signed by Mr. Henry Carr, and completed in 1827.

As a chartered company tliere is no record of , ' "^- ''^t^s
the Salters before the 37th year of Edward III., i '''^- comfit-i .
when liberties were granted them. In the soth of | "■•'""''""'''■^'1 '^KS^
Ed\\ard HI. they sent members to the common ,;;;„„ „^„,^,,^^.,,.i^.
council. Richard II. granted them a livery, but j 2 dishcs'of butter

they were first incorporated in 1558 by Elizabeth.
Henry VIII. had granted them arms, and Eliza-
beth a crest and sujiporters. The arms are : —
Chevron azure and gules, three covered salts, or,
springing salt proper. On a helmet and torse,
issuing out of a cloud argent, a sinister arm proper,
holding a salt as the former. Supporters, two
otters argent platte'e, gorged with ducal coronets,
thereto a chain affixed and reflected, or ; motto,
" Sal sapit Omnia." " A Short Account of the
Salters' Company," printed for private distribution,
rejects the otters as supporters, in favour of ounces
or small leopards, which latter, it states, have been
adopted by the assistants, in the arms put up in
their new hall ; and it gives the following, " fur-
nished by a London antiquary," as the Salters' real
supporters : — Two ounces sable besante, gorged
with crowns and chased gold. The Salters claim
to have received eight charters.

The Romans worked salt-pits in England, and
saltworks are frequently mentioned in Domesday
Book. Rock or fossil salt, says Herbert, was
never worked in England till 1670, when it was
discovered in Cheshire. The enormous use of salt
fish in the Catholic households of the Middle Ages
brought wealth to the Salters.

In a pageant of 1591, written by the poet Peele,
one clad like a sea -nymph presented the Salter
mayor (Webb) with a rigged and manned pinnace,
as he took barge to go to M'estminster.

In the Drapers' pageant of 1684, when each of
the twelve companies were represented by alle-
gorical figures, the Salters were figured by Salina in
a sky-coloured robe and coronation mantle, and
crowned with white and yellow roses. Among the
citizens nominated by the common council to
attend the mayor as chief butler, at the coronation
of Richard III., occurs the name of a Salter.

The following bill of fare for fifty people of the

Company of Salters, a. D. 1506, is still preserved : —

s. d.

36 chickens

1 swan and 4 geese
9 rabbits

2 nimi's of beef t.iils
6 quails .
2 ounces of pepper .

2 ounces of cloves
and mace .

I J ounces of saffron

3 lb. sugar
2 lb. raisins

6
o

4
6

S
4
4

2i
4

4 breasts of veal

Bacon

Quarter of a load of
coals .

Faggots .

3i gallons of Cas-
coyne wine .

I bottle muscadina .

Cherries and tarts .

Salt

Verjuice and vine-
gar .

Paid the cook .

Perfume

lh bushels of meal .

Water .

Garnishing the vessels

Cannon Street.]

MYSTERIOUS MURUER IN CANNON' STREET.

549

In the Company's books (says Herbert) is a
receipt " For to make a raoost choyce Paaste of
Gamys to be eten at y" Feste of Chrystemasse "
(lytli Richard II., a.d. 1394). A pie so made
by the Company's cook in 1836 was found ex-
cellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and
capon ; two partridges, two jiigeons, and two
rabbits ; all boned and put into paste in the shape
of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton
kidneys, forced meats, and egg balls, seasoning,
spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled up
with gravy made from the various bones.

The original congregation of Salters' Hall Chapel
assembled at Buckingham House, College Hill.
The first minister was Richard Ma)0, who died in
1695. He was so eloquent, that it is said even
the windows were crowded when he jjreached.
He was one of the seceders of 1662. Nathaniel
Taylor, who died in 1702, was latterly so infirm
that he used to crawl into the pulpit upon his
knees. " He was a man," says Matthew Henry,
"of gi'eat wit, worth, and courage;" and Dod-
dridge compared Iiis writings to those of South for
wit and strength. Tong succeeded Taylor at
Salters' Hall in 1702. He wrote the notes on the
Hebrews and Revelations for Mattkew Henry's
" Commentary," and left memoirs of Henry, and
of Shower, of the Old Jewry. The writer of his
funeral sermon called him "the prince of preachers."
In 1 7 19 Arianism began to jjrevail at Salters'
Hall, where a synod on the subject was at last
held. The meetings ended by the non-subscribers
calling out, " You that are against persecution
come up stairs:" and Thomas Bradbury, of New
Court, the leader of the orthodox, replying, " You
that are for declaring your faith in the doctrine
of the Trinity stay below." The subscribers
proved to be fifty-three; the "scandalous majority,"
fifty-seven. During this controversy Arianism
became the subject of coftee-house talk. John
Newman,, who died in 1741, was buried at Bunhill
Fields, Dr. Doddridge delivering a funeral oration
over his grave. Francis Spillsbury, another Salters'
Hall minister, worked there for twenty years with
John Barker, who resigned in 1762. Hugh Farmer,
another of this brotherhood, was Doddridge's first
inipil at the Northampton College. He wrote an
exposition on demonology and miracles, which
aroused controversy. His manuscripts were de-
stroyed at his death, according to the strict direc-
tions of his will.

^\■hen the Presbyterians forsook Salters' Hall,
some people came there who called the hall " the
Areopagus," and themselves the Christian Evidence
Society. After their bankruptcy in 1827, the

Ba-i)tists re-opened the hall. The congregation has
now removed to a northern suburb, and their
chapel bears the old name, " so closely linked wiiii
our old City history, and its Nonconformist asso-
ciations."

In April, 1S66, a mysterious murder took ])lace
in Cannon Street. The victim, a widow, named
Sarah Millson, was housekeeper on the i)remises
of Messrs. Bevington, leather-sellers. About nine
o'clock in the evening, when sitting by the fire
in company with another servant, the street bell
was heard to ring, on which Millson went down
to the door, remarking to her neighbour that she
knew who it was. She did not return, althougii
for an hour this did not excite any suspicion, as
she was in the habit of holding conversations at
the street door. A little after ten o'clock, the
other woman — Elizabeth Lowes — went down, and
found Millson dead at the bottom of the stairs,
the blood still flowing profusely from a number
of deep wounds in the head. Her shoes had been
taken oft" and were lying on a table in tlie hall, and
as there was no blood on them it was presumed
this was done before the murder. The house-
keeper's keys were also found on the stairs.
Opening the door to procure assistance, Lowes
observed a woman on the doorstep, screening her-
self apparently from the rain, which was falling
heavily at the time. She moved oft" as soon as the
door was opened, saying, in answer to the re(iuest
for assistance, "Oh ! dear, no; I can't come in!"
The gas over the door had been lighted as usual
at eight o'clock, but was now out, although not
turned oft" at the meter. The evidence taken by
the coroner showed that the instrument of murder
had probably been a small crowbar used to wrench
open packing-cases ; one was found near the bod)-,
unstained with blood, and another was missing
from the premises. The murderer has ne\-er been
discovered.

St. Martin Orgar, a church near Cannon Street,
was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt.
It had been used, says Strype, by the French Pro-
testants, who had a French minister, efjiscopally
ordained. There was a monument here to Sir
Allen Cotton, Knight, and Alderman of London,
some time Lord Mayor, with this epitaph —

" Wlicn he left E.irlh rich bounty dy'J,
Mikl couitcsie ^'nve phice to priilc ;
Soft Mercie l» briL,'lit Justice said,
O sister, we are both betray'U.
White Innocence lay on the ground,
l!y Truth, and wept at cither's wound.

" Those sons of Levi did lament,
Their lamps went out, tlicir oyl was spent,

550

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cannon Street Tributarie?.

Heaven liatli his soul, and only we

Spin out our lives in misery.

So Death thou n>is-.est of tliy emls.

And kilVt not him, but kil'.^t his friends."

A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the
erection of a churcli for tiie French Protestants in
the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire,
the parishioners offered reasons to the Parliament
against it ; declaring that they were not against
erecting a cliurch, but only against erecting it in the
jflace mentioned in the Bill ; since by the Act for
rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St.
.\[artin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a
wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the
parish.

The tame statue of that honest but commonplace
monarch, William IV., at the end of King William
Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr. Nixon.
It cost upwards of ^2,000, of which ;^r,6oo was
voted by the Common Council of London. It is
fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twenty

tons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site
of the famous " Boar's Head " tavern.

The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Rail-
way, September, 1S66, provided a communication
with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through
it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The
bridge across the Thames approaching the station
has five lines of rails ; the curves branching east
and west to Ciiaring Cross and London Bridge
have three lines, and in the station there are nine
lines of rails and five spacious platforms, one of
them having a double carriage road for exit and
entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the
Cajinon Street station extends from one side of
the bridge to the other, and has a range of over
eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and
green for safety and going out. The hotel at
Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, is
after the design by Mr. Barry. Arrangements
were made for the reception of about 20,000,000
passengers yearly.

CHAPTER XLIX.
CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP.

Budge Row— Cord wainers' H.ill— St. Swithin's Chvucli— Founders' Hall— The Oldest Street in London— Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob—
The Queen's Wardrobe — St, Antholin's Church — "St. Antlin's bell" — The London Fire Brigade — Captain Shaw's Statistics — St. Mary
Aldermar> — A Quaint Epitaph— Crooked Lane— An Early "Gun Accident" — St. Michael's and Sir William Walworth's Epitaph— ( ierard's
Hall and its History— The Early Closing Movement — St. i\Iary 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 Head " — I'he Weigh-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers — Reynolds, Clayton, Eiuney.

BfDGE Row derived its name from the sellers of
budge (lamb-skin) fur that dwelt there. The word ,
is used by Milton in his " Lycidas," where he \
sneers at the "budge-skin" doctors.

Cordwainers' Hall, No. 7, Cannon Street, is the
third of the same Company's halls on this site, j
and was built in 1788 by Sylvanus Hall. The
stone front, by .\dani, has a sculptured medal-
lion of a country girl spinning with a distaft", em-
blematic of the name of the lane, and of the thread
used by cordwainers or shoemakers. In the pedi-
ment are their arms. In the hall are portraits of
King William and Queen Mary ; and here is a
sepulchral urn and tablet, by Nollekens, to John
Came, a munificent benefactor to the Company.

The Cordwainers were originally incorporated by
Henry IV., in 1410, as the "Cordwainers and
Cobblers," the latter term signifying dealers in
shoes and shoemakers. In the reign of Richard II.,
" every cordwainer that shod any man or woman
on Sunday was to pay thirty shillings." Among the
Company's plate is a piece for which Camden, the 1

antiquarv, left ^16. Their charities include Came's
bequest for blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and
clergymen's widows, ;^i,ooo yearly; and in 1662
the " Bell Inn," at Edmonton, Avas bequeathed for
poor freemen of the Company.

The church in Cannon Street dedicated to St.
Swithin, and in which London Stone is now en-
cased, is of a very early date, as the name of the
rector in 1331 is still recorded. Sir John Hind,
Lord Mayor in 1391 and 1404, rebuilt both church
and steeple. After tlie Fire of London, the jjarish
of St. JNIary Bothaw was united to that of St.
Swithin. St. Swithin's was rebuilt by Wren after
the Great Fire. The Salters' Company formerly
had the right of presentation to this church, but
sold it. The form of the interior is irregular and
awkward, in consequence of the tower intruding on
the north-west corner. The ceiling, an octagonal
cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. In
1839 Mr. Godwin describes an immense sounding-
board over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved
oak, guarded b)- two wooden figures of Moses and

Cannon Street Tributaries.]

THE TOWER ROYAL

551

Aaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen \\^inmill,
twenty-four years parish clerk ; and a tablet com-
memorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two
wives, with the following distich : —

" Life makes llie soul clepeiulent on tlie'iliist ;

Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres."

The angles at the top of the mean square tower
are bevelled off to allow of a short octagonal spire
and an octagonal balustrade.

The following epitajihs are quoted by Strype : —

JOH.N R1IGICRS, DIED 1576.
" Like thee I was sometime.

But now am turned to dust ;
As thou at length, O earth and slime,

Returiie to aJies must.
Of the Company of Clothworkers

A brother I became ;
A long time in the Livery

I lived of the same.
Then Death tliat deadly stroke did give,

Which now my joys doth frame.
In Christ I dyed, by Christ to live ;

John Rogers was my name.
My loving wife and children two

My place behind supply ;
God grant them living so to doe,

That tliey in him may dye. "

George Bolles, Lord Mayor of London, died 1632.

" He possessed Earth as he might Heaven possesse ;
Wise to doe right, but never to oppresse.
His charity was better felt than knowne.
For when he gave there was no trumpet blowne.
What more can be comprized in oaie man's fame.
To crown a soule, and leave a living name?"

Founders' Hall, now in St. Swithin's Lane, was
formerly at Founders' Court, Lotlibury. The
Founders' Company, incorporated in 16 14, had
the power of testing all brass weights and brass
and copper wares within the City and three miles
round. The old Founders' Hall was noted for
its political meetings, and was in 1792 nicknamed
" The Cauldron of Sedition." Here Waithman
made his first political speech, and, with his fellow-
orators, was put to flight by constables, sent by the
Lord Mayor, Sir James Sanderson, to disperse the
meeting.

Watling Street, now laid open by the new street
leading to the Mansion House, is probably the
oldest street in London. It is part of the old
Roman military road that, following an old British
forest-track, led from London to Dover, and from
Dover to South Wales. The name, according to
Leland, is from the Saxon athding — a noble street.
At the north-west end of it is the church of St.
Augustine, anciently styled Ecdesia Saiicti Aiigiis-
tiiii ad Portam, from its \icinity to the south-east

gate of St. I'aul's Cathedral. 'I'his church was
described on page 349.

Tower Royal, Watling Street, preserves the
memory of one of those strange old palatial forts
that were not unfrequent in medixval London —
half fortresses, half dwelling-houses ; half courting,
half distrusting tlie City. " It was of old time the
king's house," says Stow, solemnly, " but was after-
wards called the Queen's ^\■ardrobe. By whom
the same was first built, or of what antiquity con-
tinued, I have not read, more than that in the
reign of Edward I. it was the tenement of Simon
Beaumes." In the reign of Edv.-ard III. it was
called " the Royal, in the jjarish of St. Michael
Paternoster;" and in the 43rd year of his reign he
gave the inn, in value j^2o a year, to the college
of St. Stephen, at AVestminster.

In the \\'at Tyler rebellion, Richard II. 's mother
and her ladies took refuge there, when the rebels
had broken into the Tower and terrified the royal
lady by piercing her bed with their swords.

" King Richard," says Stow, " having in Smith-
field overcome and disperseil the rebels, he, his
lords, and all his company entered the City of
London with great joy, and went to the lady
princess his mother, who was then lodged in the
Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where
she had remained three days and two nights, right
sore abashed. But when she saw the king her son
she was greatly rejoiced, and said, ' Ah ! son, what
great sorrow have I suffered for you this day ! '
The king answered and said, ' Certainly, madam, I
know it well ; but now rejoyce, and thank God,
for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and
the realm of England, which I had near-hand
lost' "

Richard II. was lodging at the Tower Royal at
a later date, when the " King of Armony," as Stow
quaintly calls the King of Armenia, had been
driven out of his dominions by the " Tartarians ; "
and the lavish young king bestowed on him ;^ 1,000
a year, in pity for a banished monarch, little think-
ing how soon he, discrowned and dethroned, would
be vainly looking round the prison walls for one
look of sympathy.

This "great house," belonging anciently to the
kings of England, was afterwards inhabited by the
first Duke of Norfolk, to whom it had been granted
by Richard III., the master he served at Bos-
worth. Stiype finds an entry of the gift in an old
ledger-book of King Richard's, wherein the Tower
Royal is described as " Le Tower," in the parish
of St. Thomas Apostle, not of St. Michael, as Stow
has it. The house afterwards sank into povertv,
becaine a stable for " all th? king's horses," ana in

SS:

Sic

Stow's time was divided into poor tenements
transit gloria iiniitdi.

The ciuirch of St. Antliolin, in Watling Street,
is the only old clnirt-h in London dedicated to that
monkish saint. The date of its foimdation is un-
known, Init it must be of great antiiiuity, as it is

OLD AND NEW LONDON

[Cannon Street Tiibuta ie>.

And for he sliould not lye alone,

Here lyetli with him his good wife Joan.

Tiiey «ere together sixty year.

And niiittccM children they liad in feere," &c.

The epitaph of Simon Street, grocer, is also
badly written enough to be anuising : —

ST. antholin's church, watling street.

mentioned by Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's
at the end of the twelfth century. The church
was rebuilt, about the year 1399, by Sir Thomas
Knowles, Mayor of London, who was buried here,
and whose odd epitaph Stow notes down : —

" Here lyelh graven under this stone
Thomas Knowles, both flesh and bone.
Grocer and alderman, years forty,
Sheriff and twice maioi, tndy ;

" .Such as I am, sucli shall you be ;
Grocer of London, sometime w as I,
The king's weigher, more than years twenty
Simon Street called, in my place,
And good fellowship fain wonld trace ;
Therefore in heaven everlasting life,
Jesu send me, and Agnes my wife," &c.

St. Antholin's perished in the Great Fire, and the
present church was completed by \\'ren, in the
year 1082, at the expense of about ^5,700. Aftei

Cannon Street Tributaries ]

PURITAN FERVOUR.

the fire the jiarish of St. John Baptist, ^\'atling
Street, was annexed to tliat of St. AnthoHn, the
latter paying five-eigliths towards the repairs of
the church, the former the remaining three-eighths.
The interior of the church is peculiar, being covered
with an o\-al-sliai)ed dome, which is supported on
eight columns, wliich stand on high plinths. The
carpentry of the roof, says Mr. Godwin, displays
constructive knowledge. The exterior of the
building, says the same authority, is of pleasing
proportions, and shows great powers of invention.
As an apology for adding a Gothic spire to a quasi-

553

made a point of attending these early prayers.
Lilly, the astrologer, went to these lectures when
a young man ; and Scott makes Mike Lambourne,
in " Kenilworth," refer to them. Nor have they
been overlooked by our early dramatists. Ran-
dolph, Davenant, and others make frequent allu-
sions in their plays to the Puritanical fervour of
this parish. The tongue of Middleton's " roaring
girl " was " heard further in a still morning than
St. Antlin's bell."

In the heart of the City, and not far from
London Stone, was a house which used to be in-

THE CRYPT OF GERARD'S n.\LL (s^e page 556).

Grecian church, Wren has, oddly enough, crowned
the spire with a small Composite ca])ital, which [
looks like the top of a pencil-case. Above this ,
is the vane. The steeple rises to the height of
1^4 feet.

The church was rebuilt by John Tate, a mercer,
in 1 5 13; and Strype menuons the erection in
1623 of a rich and beautiful gallery with fifty-two I
comjiartments, filled with the coats-of-arnis of i
kings and nobles, ending with the blazon of the '
Elector Palatine. A new morning prayer and
lecture was established here by clergymen inclined
to Puritanical principles in 1599. The bells began
to ring at five in the morning, and were considered
Pharisaical and intolerable by all High Churchmen
in the neighbourhood. The extreme Geneva party

habited by the Lord Mayor or one of the sherifts,
situated so near to the Chunh of St. Antholin
that there was a way out of it into a gallerj' of
the church. The commissioners from the Chun h
of Scotland to King Charles were lodged here in
1640. At St. Antholin's preached the chaplains
of the commission, with Alexander Henderson at
their head ; " and curiosity, faction, and humour
brought so great a conflux and resort, that from the
first appearance of day in the morning, on every
Sunday, to the shutting in of the light, the church
was never empty."

Dugdale also mentions the church. " Now for
an essay," he says, " of those whom, under colour
of preaching the Gospel, in sundry parts of the
realm, they set up a morning lecture at St. Antho-

554

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cannou Street Tributaries.

line's Church in London ; where (as probationers
for that purpose) they first made tryal of their
abilities, whicii place was the grand nursery whence
most of the seditious preachers were after sent
abroad throughout all England to poyson the
people with their anti-monarchical principles."

In Watling Street is the chief station of the
London Fire Brigade. The Metropolitan Board
of Works has consolidated and reorganised, under
Captain Shaw, the whole system of the Fire Brigade
into one homogeneous municipal institution. The
insurance companies contribute about ;^io,ooo
per annum towards its maintenance, the Treasury
;^io,ooo, and a Metropolitan rate of one halfpenny
in the pound raises an additional sum of ^^30,000,
making about ^£^50,000 in all. Under the old
.system there were seventeen fire-stations, guarding
an area of about ten square miles, out of no
which comprise the Metropolitan district. At the
commencement of 186S there were forty-three
stations in an area of about no square miles.
From Captain Shaw's report, presented January i,

1873, it appears that during the year 1872 there i when Henry rai^nVd who was the seventh of that redoubted
had been three deaths in the brigade, 236 cases
of ordinary illness, and 100 injuries, making a total
of 336 cases. The strength of the brigade was
as follows :^5o fire-engine stations, 106 fire-escape
stations, 4 floating stations, 52 telegraph lines,
84 miles of telegraph lines, 3 floating steam fire-
engines, 8 large land steam fire-engines, 1 7 small
ditto, 72 other fire-engines, 125 fire-escapes, 396
firemen. The number of watches kept up through-
out the metropolis is 98 by day, and 175 by
night, making a total of 273 in every twenty-four
hours. The remaining men, except those sick,
injured, or on leave, are available for general work
at fires.

walls is a tablet to the memory of that celebrated
surgeon of St. Bartholomew's for forty-two years,
Percival Pott, Esq., F.R.S., who died in 1788.
Pott, according to a memoir written by Sir James
Cask, succeeded to a good deal of the business
of Sir Caesar Hawkins. Pott seems to have enter-
tained a righteous horror of amputations.

'J'he following carious epitaph is worth pre-
serving : —

" Heere is fixt the epitaph of Sir Henry Kebyll, Knight,
Who was sometime of London Maior, a famous worthy wight,
Which did this Aklermarie Churcli erect and set upriglit.

Thogh death preuaile with mortal wights, and hasten every

day,
Yet vertue ouerlies the grave, her fame doth not decay ;
As memories doe shew reuiu'd of one that was aHue,
Who, being de.ad, of vertuous fame none should seek to de-

priue ;
Wliich so in Hue deseru'd renowne, for facts of his to see.
That may encourage otlier now of lil^e good minde to be.
Sir Henry Keeble, Knight, Lord Maior of London, here he

sate,
Of Grocers' wortiiy Companie the chiefest in his slate,
Which in this city grew to wealth, and unto worship came,

name.
But he to honor did atchieu the second golden yeere
Of Henry's raigne, so called the 8, and made his fact appeere
WHien he this Aldeniiary Church gan build witli great expence,
Twice 30 yeeres agou no doubt, counting tlie time from hence.
Which work begun the yere of Christ, well known of Cliristian

men,
One thousand and fine hundred, just, if you will add but ten.
But, lo ! when man purposeth most, God doth ilispose tlie

best;
And so, before this work was done, God cald this knight to

rest.
This church, then, not yet fully built, he died about the yeere.
When III May day first took his name, which is down fixed

here,

Whose works became a sepulchre to shroud him in that case,

God took his soule, but corps of his was laid about this place ;

If Stow IS correct, St. Mar)'"s Aldermar)-, Watling i who, when he dyed, of this his work so mindful still he'was,

Street, was originally called Aldermary because it That he bequeath'd one thousand povmds to haue it brought to

was older than St. Mary's Bow, and, indeed, any

other church in London dedicated to the Virgin ;
but this is improbable. The first known rector of
Aldermary was presented before the year 1 288. In
1703 two of the turrets were blown down. In 1S55
a building, supposed to be the crypt of the old
church, fifty feet long and ten feet wide, and with
five arches, was discovered under some houses in
Watling Street. In the chancel is a beautifully
sculptured tablet by Bacon, with this peculiarity,
that it bears no inscription. Stirely the celebrated
" Miserriinus " itself could hardly speak so strongly
of humility or despair. Or can it have been, says
a cynic, a monument ordered by a widow, who
married again before she liad time to write the
epitaph to the "dear departed?'' On one of the

passe,
The execution of whose gift, or where the fiiult should be,
The work, as yet unfinished, shall shew you all for me ;
Which church stands there, if any please to finish up tlie same,
As he hath well begun, no doubt, and to his endless fame,
They slrall not onley well bestow then' talent in this life,
But after death, when bones be rot, their fame shall be most

rife.
With tliankful praise and good report of our parocliians here,
Whicli have of right Sir Henries fame afresli renewed this

yeere.
God move the minds of wealthy men their works so to bestow
As he hath done, that, though they dye, their vertuous fame

may flow."

This quaint appeal seems to have had its eftect,
for in 1626 a Mr. William Rodoway left ;:{J^2oo for
the rebuilding the steeple ; and the same year Mr.
Richard Pierson bequeathed 200 marks on the

Cannon Slrset Trilmtnries ]

CROOKED LANE.

555

express condition that the new spire should re-
semble the old one of Keeble's. The old benefactor
of St. Mary's was not very well treated, for no
monument was erected to him till 1534, when his
son-in-law, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, laid a
stone reverently over him. But in the troubles
following the Reformation the monument was cast
down, and Sir ^\'illiam Laxton (Lord ALiyor in
1534) buried in place of Keeble. The church was
destroyed in the Great Fire, but soon rebuilt by
Henry Rogers, Esq., who gave ^5,000 for the pur-
pose. An able paper in the records of tlie London
and Middlesex Archceological Society states that
" the tower is evidently of the date of Kebyll's work,
as shown by the old four-centre-headed door leading
from the tower into the staircase turret, and also
by the Caen stone of which this part of the turret
is built, which has indications of fire upon its sur-

his tenement and tavern in the highway, at the
corner of Keirion Lane. Richard Chawcer was
buried here in 134S. After the Lire, the jiarishes
of St. Mary Aldermary and St. Thomas the Apostle
were united ; and as the advowson of the latter
belonged to the cathedral church of St. Paul's, the
presentati.on is now made alternately by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and by the Dean and Chapter
of St. Paul's."

" Crooked Lane," says Cunningham, " was so
called of the crooked windings thereof" Part of
the lane was taken down to make the approach to
new London Bridge. It was long famous for its
bird-cages and fishing-tackle shops. We find in an
old Elizabethan letter —

" At my last attendance on your l()rdshi|) at
Hansworth, I was so bold to promise your lordship
to send you a much more convenient house for

face. The upper portion of the tower was rebuilt your lordship's fine bird to live in than that she was

in 171 1 ; the intermediate portion is, I think, the
work of 1632 ; and if that is admitted, it is curious
as an example of construction at that period in an
older style than that prevalent and in fashion at
the time. The semi-Elizabethan character of the
detail of the strings and ornamentation seems to
confirm this conclusion, as they are just such as
might be looked for in a Gothic work in the time
of Charles I. Li dealing with the restoration of
tlie church. Wren must have not only followed the
style of the burned edifice, but in part employed
the old material. The church is of ample dimen-
sions, being a hundred feet long and sixty-three feet
broad, and consists of a nave and side aisles. 'I'he
ceiling is very singular, being an imitation of fan
tracery executed in plaster. The detail of this is
most elaborate, but the design is odd, and, being
an imitation of stone construction, the effect is very
unsatisfactory. It is probable that the old roof
was of wood, and entirely destroyed in the Eire ;
consequently no record of it remained as a guide in
the rebuilding, as was the case with the clustered
pillars, which are good and correct in form, and
only mongrel in their details. In some of the fur-
niture of the church, such as the jnilpit and the
carving of the pews, the Gothic style is not followed ;
and in these, as in the other parts where the great
master's genius is left imshackled, we perceive the
exquisite taste that guided him, even to the minutest
details, in his own peculiar style. The sword-holder
in this church is a favourable example of tlie careful
thought which he bestowed upon his decoration.
. . . The sword-holder is almost universally found
in the City churches. . . . Amongst the gifts to
this church is one by Richard Chawcer (supposed by
Stowe to be father of the great GeoftVey), who gave I

in when I was there, which l)y this bearer I trust I
have performed. It is of the best sort of building
in Crooked Lane, strong and well-jiroportioned,
wholesomely provided for her seat anil diet, and
with good provision, by the wires below, to keep
her feet cleanly." (Thomas Markham to Thomas,
Earl of Shrewsbury, Feb. 17th, 1589.)

" The most ancient house in this lane," says Stow,
" is called the Leaden Porch, and belonged some
time to Sir John Merston, Knight, the ist Edward
I\^ It is now called the Swan in Crooked Lane,
possessed of strangers, and selling of Rhenish wine."

"In the year 1560, July 5th,'' says Stow, " there
came certain men into Crooked Lane to buy a gun
or two, and shooting off a piece it burst in pieces,
went through the house, and spoiled about five
houses more ; and of that goodly church adjoining,
it threw down a great part on one side, and left
never a glass window whole. And by it eight men
and one maid were slain, and divers hurt."

In St. Michael's Church, Crooked Lane, now
pulled down. Sir William Wahvoith was buried. In
the year in which he killed Wat Tyler (says Stow),
" the said Sir William Walworth founded in the said
parish church of St. Michael, a college, for a master
and nine priests or chaplains, and deceasing 1385,
was there buried in the north chapel, by the quire ;
but this monument being amongst others (by bad
people) defaced in the reign of Edward Yl., was
again since renewed by the Fishmongers. This
second monument, after the profane demolishing
of the first, was set up in June, 1562, with his
effigies in alabaster, in armour richly gilt, by tlie
Fishmongers, at the cost of William Parvis, fish-
monger, who dwelt at the ' Castle,' in New Fish
Street," The epitajih ran thus :—

5S6

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cannon Street Trlbiitr.ries.

" Here umler lylli a ni;ui of fame,
William Wahvoitli callyd by name.
Fislunonijer lie was in lyft'timc licie,
Anil twise Lord Maior, as in bookes appere ;
AVho with courage stout and manly myijlit
Slew Jack Straw in Kinj; Richard's sVLjlit.
For wliich act done and trew content,
The kyny made hym knight incontinent.
And gave hym amies, as liere you see,
To declare his fact and chivalric.
He left this lytT the yere of our Clod,
'I'hirtecn hondred fourscore and three odd."

Gerard's Hall, Basing Lane, Bread Street (re-
moved for improvements in 1S52), and latterly an
hotel, \vas rebuilt, after the Great Fire, on the
site of the house of Sir John Gisors (Pepperer),
Mayor in 1145 (Henry HL). The son of the
Mayor was Mayor and Constable of the Tower in
131 1 (Edward H.). This second Gisors seems to
have got into trouble from boldly and honestly
standing up for the liberties of the citizens, and his
troubles began after this manner.

In the troublesome reign of Edward IL it was
ordained by Parliament that every city and town
in England, according to its ability, should raise
and maintain a certain number of soldiers against
the Scots, who at that time, by their great depre-
dations, had laid waste all the north of England
as far as York and Lancaster. The quota of
London to that e.xpedition being 200 men, it was
fi\e times the number that was sent by any other
city or town in the kingdom. To meet this
retiuisition the Mayor in council levied a rate
on the city, the raisnig of which was the occasion
of continual broils between the magistrates and
freemen, which ended in the Jury of Aldermanbury
m.aking a presentation before the Justices Itinerant
and the Lord Treasurer sitting in the Tower of
London, to this effect : — " That the commonalty
of London is, and ought to be, common, and that
the citizens are not bound to be taxed without the
special command of the king, or without their
common consent ; that the ALiyor of the City, and
the custodes in their time, after the common
redemption made and paid for the City of London,
have come, and by their own authority, without
the King's command and Commons' consent, did
tax the said City according to their own wills, once
and more, and distrained for those taxes, sparing
the rich, and oppressing the poor middle sort ;
not i)ermitting that the arrearages due from the
rich be levied, to the disinheriting of the King
and the destruction of the City, nor can the Com-
mons know what becomes of the monies levied
of sucli taxes."

They also complained that the said ALiyor and

aldermen had taken upon them to turn out of
the Common Council men at their jileasure ; and
that the Mayor and superiors of the City had
deposed ^\'alter Henry from acting in the Common
Council, because he would not permit the rich to
levy tollages ui)on the poor, till they themselves
had paid their arrears of former tollages ; upon
which Sir John Gisors, some time Lord Mayor, and
divers of the princiixil citizens, were summoned to
attend the said justices, and personally to answer
to the accus;itions laid against them ; but, being
conscious of guilt, they lied from justice, screening
themselves under the difficulty of the time.

How long Sir John Gisors remained absent from
London does not appear ; but probably on the
dethronement of Edward 11. and accession of
Edward HL, he might join the prevailing party
and return to his mansion, without any dread of
molestation from the power of ministers and
fiivourites of the late reign, who were at this period
held in universal detestation. Sir John Gisors
died, and was buried in Our Lady's Chapel, Christ
Church, Faringdon Within (Christ's Hospital).

Later in that century the house became the resi-
dence of Sir Henry Picard, Vintner and Lord
Mayor, who entertained here, with great splendour,
no less distinguished personages than his sovereign,
Edward HL, John King of France, the King of
Cyprus, David King of Scotland, Edward the Black
Prince, and a large assemblage of the nobility.
"And after," says Stow, "the said Henry Picard
kept his hall against all comers whosoever that were
willing to play at dice and hazard. In like manner,
the Lady Margaret his wife did also keep her
chamber to the same effect." Vt'e are told that on
this occasion " the King of Cyprus, playing with
Sir Henry Picard in his hall, did win of him fifty
marks ; but Picard, being very skilled in that art,
altering his hand, did after win of the same king
the same fifty marks, and fifty marks more ; which
when the same king began to take in ill part,
although he dissembled the same, Sir Henry said
unto him, ' My lord and king, be not aggrieved ;
I court not your gold, but your jjlay ; for I have
not bid you hither that you might grieve ; ' and
giving him his money again, plentifully bestowed of
his own amongst the retinue. Besides, he ga\e
many rich gifts to the king, and other nobles and
knights which dined with him, to the great glory of
the citizens of London in those da)s."

Gerard Hall contained one of the finest Norman
crypts to be found in all London. It was not an
ecclesiastical crypt, but the great vaulted warehouse
of a Norman merchant's house, and it is especially
mentioned by Stow,

Cannon Street Tributaries.]

GERARD'S HALL.

557

"On the south side 'of Basing Lane,"' says Stow,
"is one great house of old time, built upon- arched
vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought
from Caen, in Normandy. The same is now a
common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly
and corruptly called Gerrarde's Hall, of a giant
said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of
this house some time stood a large fir-pole, which
reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one
of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the
wars to run withal. There stood also a ladder of
the same length, which (as they say) served to
ascend to the top of the staff. Of later years this
hall is altered in building, and divers rooms are
made in it ; notwithstanding the pole is removed
to one corner of the room, and the ladder hangs
broken upon a wall in the yard. The hostelar of
that house said to me, ' the pole lacketh half a
foot of forty in length.' I measured the compass
thereof, and found it fifteen inches. Reasons of the
pole could the master of the hostrey give none ;
but bade me read the great chronicles, for there
he had heard of it. I will now note what myself
hath observed concerning that house. I read that
John Gisors, Mayor of London in 1245, was owTier
thereof, and that Sir John Gisors, Constable of the
Tower 1 3 1 1 , and divers others of that name and
family, since that time owned it. So it appeareth
that this Gisors Hall of late time, by corruption,
hath been called Gerrarde's Hall for Gisors' Hall.
The pole in the hall might be used of old times (as
then the custom was in every parish) to be set up
in the summer as a maypole. The ladder served
for the decking of the maypole and roof of the
hall." The works of Wilkinson and J. T. Smith
contain a careful view of the interior of this crypt.
There used to be outside the hotel a quaint gigantic
figure of seventeenth century workmanship.

In 1844 Mr. James Smith, the originator of
early closing (then living at W. Y. Ball and Co.'s,

in AValbrook Ward, destroyed in the Great Fire,
and not rebuilt. It occujjied part of the site
of the Mansion House, and derived its name
from a beam for weighing wool that was kejit there
till the reign of Richard II., when customs began
to be Uken at the Wool Ke)', in Lower Thames
Street. Some of the bequests to this church, as
mentioned by Stow, are very characteristic. Klyu
Fuller : " P'arthcrmorc, I will that niyn executor
shal kepe yerely, during the said yeres, about the
tyme of my departure, an Obit — that is to say,
Dirige o\er e\en, and masse on the morrow, for
my sowl, Mr. Kneysworth's sowl, my lady sowl,
and al Christen sowls." One George Wyngar, by
his will, dated Sejjtember 13, 1521, ordered to
be buried in the church of Woolchurch, " besyde
the Stocks, in London, under a stone lying at my
Lady A\'yngar's pew dore, at the stepi)e comyng u])
to the chapiiel. Ikiii. I bequeath to pore maids'
manages ^"13 6s. 8d ; to every ])ore householder
of this my parish, 4d. a pece to the sum of 40s.
Item. I bequeath to the high altar of S. Nicolas
Chapel ^10 for an altar-cloth of velvet, with my
name brotheryd thereupon, with a Wyng, and G
and A and R closyd in a knot. Also, I wold
that a subdeacon of whyte damask be made to the
hyghe altar, with my name brotheryd, to syng in,
on our Lady dales, in the honour of God and our
Lady, to the value of seven marks." The following
epitaph is also worth preserving: — ■

" In Sevenoke, into the world my mother brought mc ;
Ha«l<len House, in Kent, with .nrmes ever hnnour'il me ;
Westminster Hall (thirty-six yeeres .after) knew me.
Then seeking Heaven, Heaven from the world toukc nie ;
Whilome alive, Thomas .Scot men called me ;
Now laid in grave oblivion covereth mc."

In 1850, among the ruins of a Roman edifice, at
eleven feet depth, was found in Nicholas Lane,
near Cannon Street, a large slab, inscribed " Num.
C.ES. Prov. Briia." {Niinii/ii Qcsiiris Frmincia

Wood Street), learning that the warehouses in Britaiiiiia). In 1S52 tesselated pavement, .Samian

ware, earthen urns and lamp, and other Roman
vessels w-ere found from twelve to twenty feet deep
near Basing Lane, New Cannon Street.

According to Dugdale, Kudo, Steward of the
Household to King Henry I. (i 100— 1 135), gave
the Church of St. Stephen, which stood on the
west side of Walbrook, to the Monastery of St.
John at Colchester. In the reign of Henry VI.
Robert Chicheley, Mayor of London, gave a pietc
of ground on the east side of Walbrook, for a new
church, 125 feet long and 67 feet broad. It was
in this church, in Queen Mary's time, that Dr.
Feckenham, her confessor and the fanatical Dean
of St. Paul's, used to preach the doctrines of the

Manchester were closed at one p.m. on Saturday,
determined to ascertain if a similar system could
not be introduced into the metropolis. He invited
a few friends to meet him at the Gerard's Hall.
Mr. F. Bennock, of Wood Street, was appointed
chairman, and a canvass was commenced, but it was
feared that, as certain steam-packets left London
on Saturday afternoon, the proposed arrangement
might prevent the proper dis[)atch of merchandise,
so it was suggested that the warehouses should
be closed " all the year round " eight months at
six o'clock, and four months at eight o'clock. This
arrangement was acceded to.

St. Mary Woolchurch was an old parish chtuxh

558

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[Cannon Street Tributaries.

old faith. The church was destroyed in the Great
I'ire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1672-9. The fol-
lowing is one of the old epitaijhs here :—

" This life hatli on eartli no certain while,
Kxamplc l>y John, M.ary, ami Oliver Stile,
Who un ler this stone lye buried in the ilusi,
.Vnil piitteth you in memory that dye all must."

The parish of St. Stephen is now united to tliat
of St. Hennet Sherehog (Pancras Lane), the church
of whith was destroyed in the Fire. The cupola
of St. Stephen's is supposed by some writers to have
been a rehearsal for the dome of St. Paul's. " The

area formed by the rt)lumns and their entablature
and the cujjola which covers it. The columns are
raised on plin-ths. The spandrels of the arches
bearing the cu|)ola present panels containing shields
and foliage of unmeaning form. The pila.sters at
the chancel end and the brackets on the side wall
are also condemned. The windows in the clerestory
are mean ; the enrichments of the meagre entabla-
ture clumsy. The fine cupola is divided into panels
ornamented with palm-branches and roses, and is
terminated at the apex by a circular lantern-light.
The walls of the church are plain, and disfigured,"

OLU blGN Ul- IIIE

liuAk's lll.Alj'

interior," says Mr. floduin, '-is certainly more
worthy of admiration in rcsjject of its general
arrangement, which disjjlays great skill, than of
the details, which are in many respects fluilty.
The body of the church, which is nearly a paral-
lelogram, is divided into five unequal aisles (the
centre being the largest) by four rows of Corin-
thian columns, within one intercolumniation from
the east end. Two columns from each of the two
centre rows are omitted, and the area thus formed
is covered by an enriched cupola, supported on
light arches, which rise from the entablature of the
columns. By the distribution of the columns and
their entablature, an elegant cruciform arrangement
is given to this jiart of the church. But this is
marred in some degree," says the writer, "by the
want of connection wliicli c\i; ts between the square

says Mr. Godwin, "by the introduction of those
disagreeable oval openings for light so often usetl
by \\'ren."

The jjicture, by West, of the death of St. Stephen
is considered by some persons a work of high
character, though to us AV'est seems always the
tamest and most insipid of painters. The exterior
of the building is dowdily plain, except the upper
part of the stetple, which slightly, says Mr. Godwin,
"resembles that of St. James's, Garlick Hythe.
The apjjroach to the body of the church is by a
flight of sixteen steps, in an enclosed porch in
AN'albrook quite distinct from the tower and main
building." Mr. Gwilt seems to have considered
this church a (•/irf-if\vitvrc of M'ren's, and says :
" Had its materials and volume been as durable
and extensive as those of St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir

Cannon Street Tributaries!

ST. STEPHEN'S, WALBROOK.

EXTERIOR OF ST. STEPHEN'S, W-iiLBROOK, IN 1 7 JO.

S6o

OLt) as:d new Lo^n)o^^

[Eastchcap.

Christopher Wren had consiimniated a much more
ctiicieni monument to his well-earned fame than
that fabric atfords." Compared with any other
church of nearly the same magnitude, Italy cannot
exhibit its equal ; elsewhere its rival is not to be
found. Of those worthy of notice, the Zitelle, at
Venice (by Palladio), is the nearest approximation
in regard to size ; but it ranks far below our church
in point of composition, and still lower in point of
effect.

" The interior of St. Stephen's," says Mr. Timbs,
" is one of Wren's finest works, with its exquisitely
])roportioned Corinthian columns, and great central
dome of timber and lead, resting upon a circle of
light arches springing from column to column.
Its enriched Composite cornice, the shields of the
spandrels, and the palm-branches and rosettes of
the dome-cotters are very beautiful ; and as you
enter from the dark vestibule, a halo of dazzling
light flashes upon the eye through the central
aperture of the cupola. The elliptical openings
for light in the side walls are, however, very objec-
tionable. The fittings are of oak ; and the altar-
screen, organ-case, and gallery have some good
carvings, among which are prominent the arms of
the Grocers' Company, the patrons of the living,
and who gave the handsome wainscoting. The
enriched pulpit, its festoons of fiuit and flowers,
and canopied sounding-board, with angels bearing
w-reaths, are much admired. The church was
cleaned and repaired in 1S50, when West's splendid
painting of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, pre-
sented in 1779 by the then rector. Dr. Wilson, was
removed from over the altar and placed on the
north wall of the church ; and the window which
the picture had blocked up was then reopened."
The oldest monument in the church is that of John
Lilburne (died 1678). Sir John Vanbrugh, the
wit and architect, is buried here in the family vault.
During the repairs, in 1850, it is stated that 4,000
cofiins were found beneath the church, and were
covered with brickwork and concrete to prevent
the escape of noxious effluvia. The exterior of
the church is plain ; the tower and spire, 12S feet
high, is at the termination of Charlotte Row. Dr.
Croly, the poet, was for many years rector of St.
Stephen's.

Eastcheap is mentioned as a street of cooks'
shops by Lydgate, a monk, who flourished in the
reigns of Henry V. and VI., in his "London
Lackpenny : " —

" Then I hyetl me into Estchepe,

One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye ;
Pewter pots they clattered on a heape,
There was harpe, i)ype, and m)TistreIsye."

Stow especially says that in Henry IV. 's time
there were no taverns in Eastcheap. He tells the
following story of how Prince Hal's two roystering
brothers were here beaten by the watch. This
slight hint perhaps led Shakespeare to select this
street for the scene of the prince's revels.

" This Eastcheap,'' says Stow, '■ is now a flesh-
market of butchers, there dwelling on both sides of
the street ; it had some time also cooks mixed
among the butchers, and such other as sold victuals
ready dressed of all sorts. For of old time, such
as were disposed to be merry, met not to dine
and sup in taverns (for they dressed not meats to
be sold), but to the cooks, where they called for
meat what them liked.

"In tlie year 1410, the nth of Henry IV.,
upon the even of St. John Baptist, the king's
sons, Thomas and John, being in Eastcheap at
supper (or rather at breakfast, for it was after the
watch was broken up, betwixt two and three of the
clock after midnight), a great debate happened
between their men and other of the court, which
lasted one hour, even till the maior and sheriffs,
with other citizens, appeased the same ; for the which
afterwards the said maior, aldermen, and sheriffs
were sent for to answer before the king, his sons and
divers lords being highly moved against the City.
At which time M'illiam Gascoigne, chief justice,
required the maior and aldermen, for the citizens,
to put them in the king's grace. Whereunto they
answered they had not offended, but (according to
the law) had done their best in stinting debate and
maintaining of the peace ; upon which answer the
king remitted all his ire and dismissed them."

The " Boar's Head," Eastcheap, stood on the
north side of Eastcheap, between Small Alley and
St. Michael's Lane, the back windows looking out
on the churchyard of St. Michael, Crooked Lane,
which was removed with the inn, rebuilt after the
Great Fire, in 183T, for the improvement of new
London Bridge.

In the reign of Richard II. William Warder
gave the tenement called the "Boar's Head,'' in
Eastcheap, to a college of priests, founded by Sir
William Walworth, for the adjoining church of
St. Michael, Crooked Lane. In Maitland's time
the inn was labelled, " This is the chief tavern in
London.''

Upon a house (says Mr. GodAvin) on the south
side of Eastcheap, previous to recent alterations,
there was a representation of a boar's head, to
indicate the site of the tavern ; but'there is reason
to believe that this was incorrectly placed, inso-
much as by the books of St. Clement's parish it
appears to have been situated on the north side.

Enstclicap.]

THI', "BOAR'S IIKAD," EASTCHEAP.

S<5i

It sec-ms by a deed of trust wliich still remains,
that the tavern belonged to this parish, and in the
books about the year 1 7 1 o appears this entry :
" Ordered that the churelnvardens doe pay to the
Kev. Mr. I'ulleyn ^20 for four years, due to him
at Lady Da)- next, for one moyetee of the ground-
rent of a house formerly called the ' Boar's Head,'
Eastcheap, near the ' George ' alehouse." Again,
too, we find : "August 13, 17 14. An agreement was
entered into with AViUiani Usborne, to grant him a
lease for forty-six )ears, .from the expiration of the
then lease, of a brick messuage or tenement on the
north side of Great Eastclieap, commonly known by
the name of ' the Lamb and Perriwig,' in the occu-
])ation of Joseph Lock, barber, and which was
formerly known as the sign of the ' Boar's Head.' "

On the remowil of a mound of rubbish at
Whitechapel, brought there after a great fire, a
carved boxwood bas-relief boar's head was found,
set in a circular frame formed by two boars' tusks,
mounted and united with silver. An inscription to
the following effect was pricked at the back : —
" William Brooke, Landlord of the Bore's Hedde,
Estchepe, 1566." This object, formerly in the
possession of Mr. Stamford, the celebrated pub-
lisher, was sold at Christie and Manson's, on
January 27, 1855, and was bought by Mr. Halli-
well. The ancient sign, carved in stone, with the
initials L T., and the date 1668, is now preserved
in the City of I^ondon Library, Guildhall.

Li 1834 Mr. Kempe exhibited to the Society of
Antiquaries a carved oak figure of Sir John Falstaft",
in the costume of the sixteenth centur)'. This
figure had supported an ornamental bracket over
one side of the door of the last " Boar's Head," a
figure of Prince Henry sustaining tlie other. This
figure of Falstaff was the property of a brazer
whose ancestors had lived in the same shop in
Great Eastcheap ever since the Fire. He remem-
bered" the last great Shakesperian dinner at the
" Boar's Head," about 1 784, when Wilberforce and
Pitt were both present ; and though there were
many wits at table, Pitt, he said, was pronounced
the most pleasant and amusing of the guests.
There is another " Boar's Head " in Southwark, and
one in Old Fish Street.

"In the month of May, 1718,'' says Mr. Hotten,
in his " History of Sign-boards," " one James
Austin, ' inventor of the Persian ink-])0wder,' de-
siring to give his customers a substantial proof of
his gratitude, invited them to the ' Boar's Head '
to jiartake of an immense plum pudding — this
pudding weighed 1,000 pounds — a baked pudding
of one foot square, and the best piece of an ox
roasted. .The principal dish was put in the copper

on Monday, May 1 2, at the 'Red Lion Inn," by
the -Mint, in Southwark, anil had to boil fourteen
days. From there it was to be brought to the
' Swan Tavern,' in Fish Street Hill, accom-
panietl by a band of music, playing ' What lumps
of pudding my mother gave me ! ' One of the
instruments was a drum in proportion to the
pudding,'being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4
feet in diameter, which was drawn by 'a device
fixed on six asses.' Finally, the monstrous pudding
was to be divided in St. George's Fields ; but
apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony
of the Londoners. The escort was routed, the
l)udding taken and devoured, and the whole cere-
mony brought to an end before Mr. Austin had a
chance to regale his customers.' Puddings seem-
to have been the forte of this Austin. Twelve or
thirteen years before this last pudding he had baked
one, for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near
Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan,
and that in a sack of lime. It was taken up after
about two hours and a half, and eaten with great
relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat
overdone. The bet was for more than ;£ioo.

In the burial-ground of St. Michael's Church,,
hard by, rested all that was mortal of one of the
waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in I'urbeik
stone, had the following epitaph : —

" Herelielh the boclye of Robert Preston, late drawer at the
'Boar's He.ad Tavern,' Great Eastcheap, who departed this
life Marcli 16, Anno Domini 1730, aged twenty-seven years.

" Baccluis, to give tlie toping world surprise,
I'roduc'd one sober son, and here he lies.
Tlio' nurs'd among full hogsheads, he defy'J
The charm of wine, and every vice Ijesidc,
O reader, if to justice thou'rt inclined.
Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind.
He drew good wine, took care to fdl his ]>ots,
Had siuulry virtues tliat outweighetl his fauts (j/r).
You that on ISacchus have the like dependence,
rr.ay copy Kob in measure .and attendance,"

Goldsmith visited the " Boar's Head," and has
left a delightful essay upon his day-dreams there,
totally forgetting that the original inn had jjerished
in the Great Fire. " The character of FalstatT,"
says the poet, " even with all his faults, gives mc
more consolation than the most studied efforts of
wisdom. I here behold an agreeable old fellow
forgetting age, and showing mc the way to be young
at sixty-five. Surely I am well able to be as merry,
thougii not so comical as he. Is it not in my jiower
to have, though not so much wit, at least as much
vivacity ? Age, care, wisdom, reflection, be gone !
I give you to the winds. Let's have t'other bottle.
Here's to the memory of Shakespeare, Falstaff, and
all the merry men of Eastcheap !

56^

OLD AND NEW LONDDV.

fEastcheap.

" Such were the reflections which naturally arose
while I sat at the ' Boar's Head Tavern,' still kept
at Eastcheap. Here, by a ])leasant fire, in the
very room where old Sir Jolm Falstaft" cracked
his jokes, in the ver}' chair which was sometimes
honoured by I'rince Henry, and sometimes i>ol-
luted by his immortal merry companions, I sat and
ruminated on the follies of youth, wished to be
young again, but was resolved to make the best of
life whilst it lasted, and now and then compared
])ast and present times together. I considered
myself as the only living representative of the old
knight, and transported my imagination back to the
times when the Prince and he gave life to tlie revel.
The room also conspired to throw my reflections
back into anticjuity. The oak floor, the Gothic
windows, and the ponderous chimney-piece had
long withstood the tooth of time. The watchman
had gone twelve. My companions had all stolen
oft", and none now remained with me but the land-
lord. From him I could have wished to know the
history of a tavern that had such a long succession
of customers. I could not hel]) thinking that an
account of this kind would be a pleasing contrast
of the manners of different ages. But my landlord
could give me no information. He continued to
doze and sot, and tell a tedious story, as most other
landlords usually do, and, though he said nothing,
yet was never silent. One good joke followed
another good joke ; and the best joke of all was
generally begun towards the end of a botde. I
found at last, however, his wine and his conversa-
tion operate by degrees. He insensibly began to
alter his appearance. His cravat seemed quilted
into a ruff, and his breeches swelled out into a
farthingale. I now fancied him changing sexes ;
and as my eyes began to close in slumber, I
imagined my fat landlord actually converted into
as fat a landlady. However, sleep made but few
changes in my situation. The tavern, the apart-
ment, and the table continued as before. Nothing
suffered mutation but my host, who was fairly
altered into a gentlewoman, whom I knew to be
Dame Quickly, mistress of this tavern in the days
of Sir John ; and the liquor we were drinking
seemed converted into sack and sugar.

" ' My dear Mrs. Quickly,' cried I (for I knew
her perfectly well at first sight), ' I am heartily
glad to see you. How have you left Falstaff,
Pistol, and the rest of our friends below stairs ?
— brave and hearty, I hope ?' "

Years after that amiable American writer, ^\'ash-
ington Irving, followed in Goldsmith's steps, and
came to Eastclieap, in 1818, to search for Falstaff
relics ; and at the " Masous' Arms," 12, Miles Lane,

he was shown a tobacco-bo.x and a sacramental
cup from St. Michael's Church, which the poetical
enthusiast mistook for a tavern goblet.

" I was presented," he says, " with a japanned
iron tobacco-bo.\, of gigantic size, out of which, I
was told, the vestry smoked at their stated meetings
from time immemorial, and which was never suffered
to be profaned by vulgar hands, or used on common
occasions. I received it with becoming reverence ;
but what was my delight on beholding on its cover
the identical painting of which I was in quest !
There was displayed the outside of the ' Boar's
Head Tavern;' and before the door was to be
seen the whole convivial group at table, in full
revel, pictured with that wonderful fidelity and
force with which the portraits of renowned genera'.3
and commodores are illustrated on tobacco-boxes,
for the benefit of posterity. Lest, however, there
should be any mistake, the cunning limner had
warily inscribed the names of Prince Hal and
Falstaff" on the bottom of their chairs.

" On the inside of the cover was an inscription,
nearly obliterated, recording that the box was the
gift of Sir Richard Gore, for the use of the vestrj-
meetings at the Boar's Head Tavern, and that it
was ' repaired and beautified by his successor, Mr.
John Packard, 1767.' Such is a faithful description
of this august and venerable relic ; and I question
whether the learned Scriblerius contemplated his
Roman shield, or the Knights of the Round Table
the long-sought Saint-greal, with more exultation.

" The great importance attached to this memento
of ancient revelry (the cup) by modern church-
wardens at first puzzled me ; but there is nothing
sharpens the apprehension so much as antiquarian
research ; for I immediately jjcrceived that this
could be no other than the identical 'parcel-gilt
goblet' on which Falstaft"made his loving but faith-
less vow to Dame Quickly ; and which would, of
course, be treasured up with care among the regalia
of her domains, as a testimony of that solemn
contract.

" ' Tlinu (Udst swear to me upon a p.irccl-gilt goblet, sitting
ill my Dol]il;iii clianiber, at the loiiiul taljle, Ijy a sea-coal
fire, on Weilnesday in Whitsiin-weel<, when tlie prince broke
tliy head for likening his father to a singing-man of Windsor ;
thou didst swear to me then, as I was wasliing thy wound,
to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife. Canst iliou
deny it?' (Ffciiiy 71'., part ii.)

" . . . For my part, I love to give myself up
to the illusions of poetrj-. A hero of fiction, that
never existed, is just as valuable to me as a hero of
history that existed a thousand years since ; and, if
I may be excused such an insensibility to the com-
mon ties of human nature, I would not give up fat
Jack for half the great men of ancient chronicles.

Eastchcap.]

FALSTAFF AND PRINCE HAL.

563

What have the lieroes of yore done for nie or men
like me ? They have conquered countries of which
I do not enjoy an acre ; or tliey have gained laurels
of whicli I do not inherit a leaf; or they have fur-
nished examples of hare-brained prowess, which I
have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to
follow. But old Jack Falstaft"! — kind Jack Fal-
staff! — sweet Jack Falstaft"!^ has enlarged the
boimdaries of human enjoyment ; he has added
vast regions of wit and good humour, in which
the poorest man may revel ; and has becjueathed
a never-failing inheritance of jolly laughter, to
make mankind merrier and better to the latest
posterity."

The very name of the " Boar's Head," E^astcheap,
recalls a thousand Shakespearian recollections ; for
here Falstaff came panting from Gadshill ; here he
snored behind the arras while Prince Harry laughed
over his unconscionable tavern bill ; and here, too,
took place that wonderful scene where Falstaff and
the prince alternately passed judgment on each
other's follies, Falstaff acting the prince's father,
and Prince Henry retorts by taking up the same
part. As this is one of the finest efforts of Shake-
speare's comic genius, a short quotation from it, on
the spot where the same was supposed to take
pl.rce, will not be out of place.

"Fill. Harry, I do not only marvel where tliou spentlest
thy time, but also how thou art accompanied ; for thougli the
camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet
youth, the more it is wasted the more it wears. Tliat thou
art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own
opinion ; Lut chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, and a
foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If
then thou be son to me, here lies the point ; — why, being son
to me, art thou so pointed at V Shall the blessed sun of
heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries ? a question
not to be asked. Shall a son of England prove a thief, and
take purses ? a question to be asked. There is a tiling,
Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to
many in onr land by the name of pitch. This pitch, as
ancient writers do report, doth defde : so doth the company
thou keepest ; for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in
drink, but in tears ; not in pleasure, but in passion ; not in
words only, but in woes also ; — and yet there is a virtuous
man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know
not his name.

"P. Hen. What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?

' ' Fill. A good portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent ; of a
cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage ;
and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by 'r Lady, inclining
to three score. And, now I remember me, his name is
Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth
me ; for, Henry, I see virtue in his looks. If, then, the tree
may be known by the fruit, as the fiuit by the tree, then,
perenqitorily I speak it, there is virtue in tliat Falstaff. Him
keep with ; the rest banish.

"P. Hen. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth
ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from

gr.ice. There is a devil hauiUs thcc, in the likeness of a fat
old man ; a tun of man is thy companion. Wliy dost thou
converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting hutch of
beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard
of sack, that stufl'ed clo.ik-bag of guts, that roaslcil Manning-
tree ox with the putiding in his belly, that reverend \ice, that
grey inicpiity, that father rutiian, that vanity hi years ? Wherein
is he good, but to taste sack and drink it T Wlierehi neat
and cleanly, but to carve a ca|)on and eat it ''. Wherein
cunning, but in his craft t Wherein crafty, but in villany ?
Wherein villanous, but in all things! Wherein wcjrlhy, but
in nothing ?

" Fal. Ihit to say I know more harm in Iiim than in myself
were to say more than I know. That he is old (the more tlie
pity !), his while hairs do witness it ; but that he is (saving
your reverence) a whore-master, that I utterly deny. If sack
and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked ! If to be old and
merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned.
If to be fat be to be hated, then riiaraoh'.s lean kine are to be
loved. No, my good lord ! IJanish Peto, banish liardolph,
banish Poins ; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack talstalT,
true Jack Falstaft', valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more
valiant, being, as he is, old J.ack Falstaff — banish not him
thy Harry's company; banish not him thy Harry's company !
Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world ! "

" In Love Lane," says worthy Strype, " on
the north-west corner, entering into Little East-
cheap, is the Weigh-house, built on the ground
where the church of St. Andrew Hubbard stood
before the fire of 1666. Which said A\'eigh-house
was before in Cornhill. Li this house are weighed
merchandizes brought from beyond seas to the
king's beam, to which doth belong a master, and
under him four master porters, with labouring
porters under them. They have carts antl horses
to fetch the goods from the merchants' warehouses
to the beam, and to carry them back. The house
belongeth to the Company of Grocers, in whose
gift the several porters', &c., places are. But of
late years little is done in this office, as wanting a
compulsi\e power to constrain the merchants to
have their goods weighed, they alleging it to be an
unnecessary trouble and charge."

In former times it was the usual practice for
merchandise brought to London by foreign mer-
chants to be weighed at the king's beam in the
presence of sworn officials. The fees varied from
2d. to 3s. a draught ; while for a bag of hops the
uniform charge was 6d.

The Presbyterian Chapel in the Weigh-house
was founded by Samuel Slater and Tiiomas Kentish,
two divines driven by the Act of I'nilormity from
St. Katherine's in the Tower. The first-named
minister, Slater, has distinguished himself by his
devotion during tlie dreadful plague which visited
London in 1625 (Charles I.). Kentish, of whom
Calamy entertained a high opinion, had been ])er-
secuted by the Government. Knowle, another

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

564

minister of this chapel, had fled to New England
to escape Laud's cat-like gripe. Li Cromwell's
time he had been lecturer at Bristol Cathedral,
and had there greatl\- exasperated the Quakers.
Knowles and Kentish are said to ha\e been so
zealous as sometimes to preach till they fainted.
In Thomas Reniolds's time a new chapel was built
at the King's Wtigh-house. Reynolds, a friend of
the celebrated Howe, had studied at Geneva and
at Utrecht. He died in 1727, declaring that,
though he had hitherto dreaded death, he was

fEastcheap.

with Sir H. 'I'relawney, a young Cornish haronet,
who became a Dissenting minister, and eventually
joined the " Rational party." An interesting anec-
dote is told of Trelawney's marriage in 1 7 7 S. For
his bride he took a beautiful girl, wlio, ai)parently
without her lover's knowledge, annulled a prior
engagement, in order to please her parents by
securing for herself a more splendid station. The
spectacle was a gay one when, after their honey-
moon. Sir Harry and his wife returned to his seat
at Looe, to be welcomed home by his friend Clayton

THK WEIGH-HOUSE CHAPEL (s{

rising to heaven on a bed of roses. After the cele-
brated quarrel between the subscribers and non-sub-
scribers, a controversy took place about psalmody,
which the Weigh-house ministers stoutly defended.
Samuel Wilton, another minister of Weigh-house
Chapel, was a pupil of Dr. Kippis, and an apologist
for the War of Independence. John Clayton,
chosen for this chapel in 1779, was the son of a
Lancashire cotton-bleacher, and was converted by
Romaine, and patronised "by the excellent Countess
of Huntingdon ; he used to relate how he had
been pelted with rotten eggs when preaching in the
open air near Christchurch. While itinerating for
Lady Huntingdon, Clayton became acquainted

and the servants of the establishment. The young
baronet proceeded to open a number of letters, and
during the perusal of one in particular his counte-
nance changed, betokening some shock sustained
by his nervous system. Evening wore into night,
but he would neither eat nor converse. At length
he confessed to Clayton that he had received an
affecting e.\postulation from his wife's former lover,
who had written, while ignorant of the marriage,
calling on Trelawney as a gentleman to withdraw
his claims on the lady's affections. This affair is
supposed to have influenced Sir Harry more or less
till the end of his days, although his married lite
continued to flow on happily.

The Monumcr.t.]

WREN'S DESIGN FOR THE MONUMENT.

565

Clayton was ordained at the Weigh House [ favoured man I ever saw or ever heard of." He
Chapel in 177S; the church, with one exception, j died in 1843. Clayton's successor, the eloquent
unanimously voted for him — the one exception, a | Thomas Binney, was pastor of Weigh House Cliapel
lady, afterwards became the new minister's wife, for more than forty years. So ends the chronicle of
Of Clayton Robert Hall said, " He was the most , the Weigh House worthies.

MILES COVERDALE [sCC fn^C 574).

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 Great Fire cf London— On the Top of the Monument by Night— The Source of the Fire— A Terrible Description- Miles Coverd,ile-St.
Magnus, London Bridge.

The Monument, a fluted Doric column, raised to
commemorate the Great Fire of London, was de-
signed by Wren, who, as usual, was thwarted in
his original intentions. It stands 202 feet from
the site of the baker's house in Pudding Lane
where the fire first broke out. Wren's son, in his
" Parentalia," thus describes the difficulties which
his father met with in carrying out his design, gays
48

Wren, junior ; " In the jjlace of the brass urn on the
top (which is not artfully performed, and was set
up contrary to his opinion) was originally intended
a colossal statue in brass gilt of King Charles II.,
as founder of the new City, in the manner of the
Roman pillars, which terminated with the statues
of their Ctesars ; or else a figure erect of a woman
crown'ii witli turrets, holding a sword and cap of

566

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Monument.

maintenance, with otlier ensigns of the City's
grandeur and re-erection. The altitude from the
pavement is 202 feet ; the diameter of the shaft (or
body) of tlie cohunn is 1 5 feet ; the ground bounded
by the plinth or lowest part of tlie pedestal is 28
feet square, and the pedestal in height is 40 feet.
^\■ithin is a large staircase of black marble, con-
taining 345 steps lol inches broad and 6 inches
risers. Over the capital is an iron balcony encom-
passing a cippus, or meta, 32 feet high, supporting
a blazing urn of brass gilt. Prior to this the sur-
veyor (as it appears by an original drawing) had
made a design of a pillar of somewhat less pro-
portion — viz., 14 feet in diameter, and after a
peculiar device ; for as the Romans expressed by
relievo on the pedestals and round the shafts of
their columns the history of such actions and in-
cidents as were intended to be thereby commemo-
rated, so this monument of the conflagration and
resurrection of the City of London was represented
by a pillar in flames. The flames, blazing from the
loopholes of the shaft (which were to give light to
the stairs within), were figured in brass-work gilt ;
and on the top was a phoeni.x rising from her ashes,
of brass gilt likewise."

The following are, or rather were, the inscriptions
on the four sides of the Monument : —

SOUTH SIDE.
" Charles the Second, son of Charles the Martyr, King
of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the
Faith, a most generous prince, commiserating the deplorable
state of things, whilst the ruins were yet smoking, provided
for the comfort of his citizens and the ornament of his city,
remitted their taxes, and referred the petitions of the magis-
trates .and inhabitants to the Parliament, who immediately
passed an Act that public works should be restored to greater
beauty with public money, to be raised by an imposition on
coals ; that churches, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul, should
be rebuilt from their foundations, with all magnificence ; that
bridges, gates, and prisons should be new made, the sewers
cleansed, the streets made straight and regular, such as were
steep levelled, and those too narrow made wider ; markets
and shambles removed to separate places. They also enacted
that every house should be built with party-walls, and all in
front raised of equal height, and those walls all of square
stone or brick, and that no man should delay building beyond
the space of seven years. Moreover, care was taken by law
to prevent all suits about their bounds. Also anniversary
prayers were enjoined ; and to perpetuate the memory hereof
to posterity, they caused this column to be erected. The
work was carried on with diligence, and London is restored,
but whether -with greater speed or beauty may be made a
question. At three years' time the world saw that finished
which was supposed to be the business of an .age."

NORTH SIDE.
" In the year of Christ 1666, the second day of September,
eastward from hence, at the distance of two hundred and two
feet (the height of this column), about midnight, a most ter-
rible fire broke out, which, driven on by a high wind, not
only wasted the adjacent parts, but also places very remote,

with incredible noise and fury. It consumed eighty-nine
churches, the City gates, Guildhall, many public structures,
hospitals, schools, libraries, a vast number of stately edifices,
thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling-houses, four hundred
streets. Of the six-and-twenty wards it utterly destroyed
fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt. The
ruins of the City were four hundred and thirty-six acres, from
the Tower by the Thames side to the Temple Church, and
from the north-east along the City wall to Holbom Bridge.
To the estates and fortunes of the citizens it was merciless,
but to their lives very favourable, that it might in all things
resemble the last conflagration of the world. The destruc-
tion was sudden, for in a small space of time the City was
seen most flourishing, and reduced to nothing. Three days
after, when this fatal fire had baffled all human counsels and
endeavours in the opinion of all, it stopped as it were by a
command from Heaven, and was on every side extinguished."

EAST SIDE.
" This pillar was begun,
Sir Richard Ford, Knight, being Lord Mayor of London,
In the year 1 671,
Carried on
In the Mayoralties of
Sir George Waterman, Kt.
Sir Robert Hanson, Kt.
Sir William Hooker, Kt. ^ Lord Mayors,
Sir Robert Viner, Kt.
Sir Joseph Sheldon, Kt.

And finished.
Sir Thomas Davies being Lord Mayor, in the year 1677."

WEST SIDE.

"This pillar was set up in perpetual remembrance of the
most dreadful burning of this Protestant city, begun and
carried on by the treachery and malice of the Popish faction,
in the beginning of iieptembcr, in the year of our Lord
MDCLXVL, in order to the effecting their horrid plot for
the extirpating the Protestant religion and English liberties,
and to introduce Popery and slavery."

"The basis of the monument," says Strype, "on
that side toward the street, hath a representation of
the destruction of the City by the Fire, and the
restitution of it, by several curiously engraven figures
in full proportion. First is the figure of a woman
representing London, sitting on ruins, in a most
disconsolate posture, her head hanging down, and
her hair all loose about her ; the sword lying by
her, and her left hand carefully laid upon it. A
second figure is Time, with his wings and bald
head, coming behind her and gently lifting her up.
Another female figure on the side of her, laying her
hand upon her, and with a sceptre winged in her
other hand, directing her to look upwards, for it
points up to two beautiful goddesses sitting in the
clouds, one leaning upon a cornucopia, denoting
Plenty, the other having a palm-branch in her
left hand, signifying Victor)-, or Triumph. L'n-
derneath this figure of London in the midst of the
ruins is a dragon with his paw upon the shield of
a red cross, London's arms. Over her head is the
description of houses burning, and flames breaking

The Monument.]

THE MONUMENT'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

5G7

out through the windows. Behind her are citizens
looking on, and some Hfting up their hands.

" Opposite against these figures is a pavement
of stone raised, with three or four steps, on which
appears King Charles 11., in Roman habit, with a
truncheon in his right hand and a laurel about his
head, coming towards the woman in the foresaid
despairing posture, and giving orders to three
others to descend the steps towards her. The
first hath wings on her head, and in her hand some-
thing resembling a harp. Then another figure of
one going down the steps following her, resembling
Architecture, showing a scheme or model for build-
ing of the City, held in the right hand, and the
left holding a square and compasses. Behind these
two stanils another figure, more obscure, holding up
an hat, denoting Liberty. Next behind the king
is the Duke of York, holding a garland, ready to
crown the rising City, and a sword lifted up in the
other hand to defend her. Behind this a third
figure, with an earl's coronet on his head. A fourth
figure behind all, holding a lion with a bridle in his
mouth. Over these figures is represented an house
in building, and a labourer going up a ladder with
an hodd upon his back. Lastly, underneath the
stone pavement whereon the king stands is a good
figure of Envy jjceping forth, gnawing a heart."

The bas-relief on the pediment of the Monument
was car\'ed by a Danish sculptor, Caius Gabriel
Cibber, the father of the celebrated comedian and
comedy writer Colley Cibber; the four dragons
at the four angles are by Edward Pierce. The
Latin inscriptions were written by Dr. Gale, Dean
of York, and the whole structure was erected in six
years, for the sum of ^13,700. The paragraphs
denouncing Popish incendiaries were not written
by Gale, but were added in 1681, during the mad-
ness of the Popish plot. They were obliterated by
James II., but cut again deeper than before in the
reign of William III., and finally erased in 1831,
to the great credit of the Common Council.

Wren at first intended to have had flames of
gilt brass coming out of every loop-hole of the
Monument, and on the top a phoenix rising from
the flames, also in brass gilt. He eventually
abandoned this idea, partly on account of the ex-
pense, and also because the spread wings of the
phoenix would present too much resistance to the
wind. Moreover, the fabulous bird at that height
would not have been understood. Charles II.
preferred a gilt ball, and the present vase of flames
was then decided on. Defoe compares the Monu-
ment to a lighted candle.

The Monument is loftier than the jjillars of
Trajan and Antoninus, at Rome, or that of Theo-

dosius at Constantinoijle ; and it is not only the
loftiest, but also the finest isolated column in the
world.

It was at first used by the members of tlie Royal
Society for astronomical purjioses, but was aban-
doned on account of its vibration being too great
for the nicety required in their observations. Hence
the report that the Monument is unsafe, which has
been revived in our time ; " but," says Elwes, " its
scientific construction may bid defiance to the
attacks of all but earthquakes for centuries to
come."

A large print of the Monument represents the
statue of Charles placed, for comparative eftect,
beside a sectional view of the ape.x, as constructed.
^^'ren's autograph report on the designs for the
summit were added to the MSS. in the British
Museum in 1852. A model, scale one-eighth of an
inch to the foot, of the scaftblding used in building
the Monument is preserved. It formerly belonged
to Sir William Chambers, and was presented by
Heathcote Russell, C.E., to the late Sir Isambard
Brunei, who left it to his son, Mr. I. K. Brunei.
The ladders were of the rude construction of
Wren's time — two uprights, with treads or rounds
nailed on the face.

On June 15, 1825, the Monument was illumi-
nated with jiortable gas, in commemoration of
laying the first stone of New London Bridge. A
lamp was placed at each of the loop-holes of
the column, to give the idea of its being wreathed
with flame ; whilst two other series were placed on
the edges of the galleiy, to which the public were
admitted during the evening.

Certain spots in London have become popular
with suicides, yet apparently without any special
reason, except that even suicides are vain and like
to die with eclat. Waterloo Bridge is chosen for
its privacy ; the Monument used to be chosen,
we presume, for its height and quietude. Five
persons have destroyed themselves by leajis from
the Monument. The first of these unhappy crea-
tures was William Green, a weaver, in 1750. On
June 25 this man, wearing a green apron, the sign
of his craft, came to the Monument door, and left
his watch with the doorkeeper. A few minutes
after he was heard to fall. Eigliteen guineas were
found in his pocket. The next man who fell from
the Monument was Thomas Craddoek, a baker.
He was not a suicide ; but, in reaching over to see
an eagle which was hung in a cage from the bars,
he overbalanced himself, and was killed. The next
victim was Lyon Levi, a Jew diamond merchant in
embarrassed circumstances, who destroyed himself
on the iSth of January, iSio. The third suicide

568

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Monument.

(September ii, 1839) was a young woman named
Margaret Meyer. This poor girl was the daughter
of a baker in Hemming's Row, St. ^lartin's-in-
the-Fields. Her mother was dead, her father
bed-ridden, and there being a large family, it had
become necessary for her to go out to service,
which preyed upon her mind. The October fol-
lowing, a boy named Hawes, who had been that
morning discharged by his master, a surgeon,
threw himself from the same place. He was of
unsound mind, and his father had killed himself.
The last suicide was in August, 1842, when a
servant-girl from Hoxton, named Jane Cooper,
while the watchman had his head turned, nimbly
climbed over the iron railing, tucked her clothes
tight between her knees, and dived head- fore-
most downwards. In her fall she struck the
griffin on the right side of the base of the Monu-
ment, and, rebounding into the road, cleared a
cart in the fall. The cause of this act was not
discovered. Suicides being now fashionable here,
the City of London (not a moment too soon)
caged in the top of the Monument in the present
ugly way.

The Rev. Samuel Rolle, waiting of the Great Fire
in 1667, says — " If London its self be not the doleful
monument of its own destruction, by always lying
in ashes (which God forbid it should), it is provided
for by Act of Parliament, that after its restauration,
a pillar, either of brass or stone, should be erected,
in perpetual memory of its late most dismall confla-
gration."

" Where the fire began, there, or as near as may
be to that place, must the pillar be erected (if ever
there be any such). If we commemorate the places
where our miseries began, surely the causes whence
they sprang (the meritorious causes, or sins, are
those I now intend) should be thought of much
more. If such a Lane burnt London, sin first burnt
that Lane ; causa, causa est causa causatio ; ajflictioii
springs not ottt of the dust; not but that it may
spring thence immediately (as if the dust of the
earth should be turned into lice), but primarily and
originally it springs up elsewhere.

"As for the inscription that ought to be upon
that pillar (whether of brass or stone), I must leave
it to their piety and prudence, to whom the wisdom
of the Padiament hath left it ; only three things I
both wish and hope concerning it. The first is,
that it may be very humble, giving God the glory
of his righteous judgments, and taking to ourselves
the shame of our great demerits. Secondly, that
the confession which shall be there engraven may
be as impartial as the judgement itself was ; not
charging the guilt for which that fire came upon a

few only, but acknowledging that all have sinned,
as all have been punished. Far be it from any man
to say that his sins did not help to burn London,
that cannot say also (and who that is I know not)
that neither he nor any of his either is, or are ever
like to be, anything the worse for that dreadful fire.
Lastly, whereas some of the same religion with
those that did hatch the Powder-Plot are, and have
been, vehemently suspected to have been the incen-
diaries, by whose means London was burned, I
earnestly desire that if time and further discovery
be able to acquit them from any such guilt, that
pillar may record their innocency, and may make
themselves as an iron pillar or brazen wall (as I
may allude to Jer. i. 18) against all the accusations
of those that suspect them ; but if, in deed and in
truth, that fire either came or was carried on and
continued by their treachery, that the inscription of
the pillar may consigne over their names to per-
petual hatred and infamy."

" Then was God to his people as a shadow from
the heat of the rage of their enemies, as a wall of
fire for their protection ; but this pillar calls that
time to remembrance, in which God co^•ered himself,
as with a cloud, that the prayers of Londoners
should not passe unto him, and came forth, not as
a conserving, but as a consuming fire, not for, but
against, poor London."

Roger North, in his Life of Sir Dudley, men-
tions the Monument when still in its first bloom.
" He (Sir Dudley North)," he says, " took pleasure
in surveying the Monument, and comparing it with
mosque-towers, and what of that kind he had seen
abroad. We mounted up to the top, and one after
another crept up the hollow iron frame that carries
the copper head and flames above. We went out
at a rising plate of iron that hinged, and there
found convenient irons to hold by. We made use
of them, and raised our bodies entirely above the
flames, having only our legs to the knees within ;
and there we stood till we were satisfied with the
prospect from thence. I cannot describe how hard
it was to persuade ourselves we stood safe, so likely
did our weight seem to throw down the whole
fabric."

Addison takes care to show his Tory fox-
hunter the famed Monument. " We repaired,"
sa}s the amiable essayist, " to the Monument,
where my fellow-traveller (the Tor)' fox-hunter),
being a well-breathed man, mounted the ascent
with much speed and activity. I was forced to
halt so often in this particular march, that, upon
my joining him on the top of the pillar, I found
he had counted all the steeples and towers which
were discernible from this advantageous situation.

The Monument.]

A NIGHT 6M THE MONUMEiSTT.

569

and was endeavouring to compute the number of
acres they stood on. ^Ve were both of us very
well pleased with this part of the prospect ; but I
found he cast an evil eye upon several warehouses
and other buildings, which looked like barns, and
seemed capable of receiving great multitudes of
people. His lieart misgave him that these were so
many meeting-houses ; but, ujjon communicating
his suspicions to me, I soon made him easy in that
particular. We then turned our eyes upon the
river, which gave me an occasion to inspire liim
with some favourable thoughts of trade and mer-
chandise, that had filled the Thames with such
crowds of ships, and covered the shore with such
swarms of people. We descended very leisurely,
my friend being careful to count the steps, which
he registered in a blank leaf of his new almanack.
Upon our coming to the bottom, observing an
English inscription upon the basis, he read it over
.several times, and told me he could scarce believe
his own eyes, for he had often heard from an old
attorney who lived near him in the country that it
was the Presbyterians who burnt down the City,
' whereas,' says he, ' the pillar positively affirms,
in so many words, that the burning of this antient
city was begun and carried on by the treachery
and malice of the Popish faction, in order to the
carrying on their horrid plot for extirpating the
Protestant religion and old English liberty, and
introducing Popery and slavery.' This account,
which he looked upon to be more authentic than
if it had been in print, I found, made a very great
impression upon him."

Ned Ward is very severe on the Monument.
"As you say, this edifice," he says, "as well as
some others, was projected as a memorandum of
the Fire, or an ornament to the City, but gave
those corrupted magistrates that had the power
in their hands the opportunity of putting two thou-
sand pounds into their own pockets, whilst they paid
one towards the building. I must confess, all I think
can be spoke in praise of it is, 'tis a monument to
the Cilys shame, the orphan's grief, the Protestant's
pride, and the Papist's scandal ; and only serves as
a high-croivned hat, to cover the head of the old
fellow that shores it.''

Pope, as a Catholic, looked with horror on the
Monument, and wrote bitterly of it —

" Where London's Column, pointing at the skies.
Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies,
There dwelt a citizen of sober fame,
A plain good man, and Balaam was his name."

" At the end of Littleton's Dictionary," says
Southey, " is an inscription for the Monument,
wherein this very learned scholar projjoses a name

for it worthy, for its length, of a Sanscrit legend.
It is a word which extends through seven degrees
of longitude, being designed to commemorate the
names of the seven Lord Mayors of London under
whose respective mayoralties the Momnnent was
begun, continued, and completed :—

" ' Quam non ima aliqiia ac simplici voce, uli islam
quond.im Duilianam;
Sed, ut vero earn nomine indigites, vocabulo construe-

tiliter Heptastico,
Fordo — WArERMANNO — Hansono — IIookero —

ViNERO — S1IEI.DONO— DaVISIANAM
Appellare opportcbit. '

"Well might Adam Littleton call this an hep-
tastic vocable, rather than a word." (Southe)',
"Omniana.")

Mr. John Hollingshead, an admirable modern
essayist, in a chapter in " Under Bow Bells," en-
titled "A Night on the Monument,'' has given a
most powerful sketch of night, moonlight, and day-
break from the top of the Monument. " The
puppet men," he says, " now hurry to and fro,
lighting up the jKippet shops, which cast a warm,
rich glow upon the pavement. A cross of dotted
lamps springs into light, the four arms of which
are the four great thoroughfares from the City.
Red lines of fire come out behind black, solid,
sullen masses of building ; and spires of churches
stand out in strong, dark relief at the side of busy
streets. Up in the housetops, under green-shaded
lamps, you may see the puppet clerks turning
quickly over the clean, white, fluttering pages of
puppet day-books and ledgers ; and from east to
west you see the long, silent river, glistening here
and there with patches of reddish light, even
through the looped steeple of the Church of St.
Magnus the Martyr. Then, in a white circle of
light round the City, dart out little nebulous
clusters of houses, some of them high up in the
air, mingling, in appearance, with the stars of
heaven ; some with one lami?, some with two or
more ; some yellow, and some red ; and some
looking like bunches of fiery grapes in the con-
gress of twinkling suburbs. Then the bridges
throw up their arched lines of lamps, like the
illuminated garden-walks at Cremorne. . . .

" The moon has now increased in power, and,
acting on the mist, brings out the surrounding
churches one by one. There they stand in the
soft light, a noble army of temples thickly sprin-
kled amongst the money-changers. Any taste may
be suited in structural design. There are high
churches, low churches ; flat churches ; broad
churches, narrow churches ; square, round, and
jjointed churches ; churches with towers like

S70

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Monument.

cubical slabs sunk deeply in between the roofs of
houses ; towers like toothjMcks, like three-pronged
forks, like pepper-casters, like factory chimneys,
like limekilns, like a sailor's trousers hung up to
dry, like bottles of fish-sauce, and like St. Paul's —
a balloon turned topsy-turvy. There they stand.

out of the land, and the bridges come up out of
the water. The bustle of commerce, and the roar
of the great human ocean — which has never been
altogether silent — revive. The distant turrets of
the Tower, and the long line of shipping on the
river, become visible. Clear smoke still flows over

a.-f-^ ^-g-

l-'.^"

wren's original design for the summit oe the monument (sec pa ^c 565).

like giant spectral watchmen guarding the silent
city, whose beating heart still murmurs in its sleep.
At the hour of midnight they proclaim, with iron
tongue, the advent of a New Year, mingling a song
of joy with a wail for the departed. . . .

" The dark grey churches and houses spring
into existence one by one. The streets come up

the housetops, softening their outlines, and turning
them into a forest of frosted trees.

" Above all this is a long black mountain-ridge
of cloud, tipped with glittering gold; be3'ond float
deep orange and light yellow ridges, bathed in a
faint purple sea. Through the black ridge struggles
a full, rich, purple sun, the lower half of his disc

The Klonumeiit.l

A NIGHT ON THE MONUMENT.

571

THE MOXU

MENT AND THE CIILTsCII OF ST. MAGNUS, AI^OUT iSoo. (From a„ Old Via.:)

S72

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

[The Monument.

tinted with grey. Gradually, like blood-red wine
running into a round bottle, the purple overcomes
the grey ; and at the same time the black cloud
divides the face of the .sun into two sections, like
the visor of a harlequin."

In 1732 a sailor is recorded to have slid down a
rope froHi the gallery to the "Three Tuns" tavern,
Gracechurch Street ; as did also, ne.xt day, a water-
man's boy. In the Times newspaper of August 22,
1S27, there appeared the following hoaxing adver-
tisement : " Incredible as it may appear, a person
will attend at the Monument, and will, for die sum
of ^2,500, undertake to jump clear off the said
Monument ; and in coming down will drink some
beer and eat a cake, act some trades, shorten and
make sail, and bring ship safe to anchor. As soon
as the sum stated is collected, the performance will
take place ; and if not performed, the money sub-
scribed to be returned to the subscribers."

The Great Fire of 1666 broke out at the shop
of one Farryner, the king's baker, 25, Pudding
Lane. The following inscription was placed by
some zealous Protestants over the house, when
rebuilt : — " Here, by the permission of Heaven,
Hell broke loose upon this Protestant city, from
the malicious hearts of barbarous priests, by the
hand of their agent, Hubert, who confessed and
on the ruins of this place declared the fact for
which he was hanged — viz., that here begun that
dreadful fire which is described on and perpetuated
by the neighbouring pillar, erected anno 1681, in
the mayoralty of Sir Patience Ward, Kt."

This celebrated inscription (says Cunningham),
set up pursuant to an order of the Court of Com-
mon Council, June 17th, 1681, was removed in
the reign of James II., replaced in the reign of
William III., and finally taken down, "on account
of the stoppage of passengers to read it." Entick,
who made additions to Maitland in 1756, speaks
of it as " lately taken aw^ay."

The Fire was for a long time attributed to
Hubert, a crazed French Papist of five or six and
twenty years of age, the son of a watchmaker at
Rouen, in Normandy. He was seized in Essex,
confessed he had begun the fire, and persisting in
his confession to his death, was hanged, upon no
other evidence than that of his own confession.
He stated in his examination that he had been
" suborned at Paris to this action," and that there
were three more combined to do the same thing.
They asked him if he knew the place where he
had first put fire. He answered that he "knew
it very well, and would show it to anybody." He
was then ordered to be blindfolded and carried to
several places of the City, that he might point

out the house. They first led him to a place at
some distance from it, opened his eyes, and asked
him if that was it, to which he answered, " No, it
was lower, nearer to the Thames." " The house
and all which were near it," says Clarendon, " were
so covered and buried in ruins, that the owners
themselves, without some infallible mark, could
very hardly ha\'e said where their own houses had
stood ; but this man led them directly to the place,
described how it stood, the shape of the little yard,
the fashion of the doors and windows, and where
he first put the fire, and all this with such exact-
ness, that they who had dwelt long near it could
not so perfectly have described all particulars."
Tillotson told Burnet that Howell, the then re-
corder of London, accompanied Hubert on this
occasion, " was with him, and had much discourse
with him ; and that he concluded it was impossible
it could be a melancholy dream." This, however,
was not the opinion of the judges who tried him.
"Neither the judges," says Clarendon, "nor any
present at the trial, did believe him guilty, but that
he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life,
and chose to part with it this way."

A few notes about the Great Fire will here be
interesting. Pepys gives a graphic account of its
horrors. In one place he wTites — " Everybody
endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging
into the river, or bringing them into lighters that
lay off ; poor people staying in their houses as long
as till the very fire touched them, and then running
into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs
by the waterside to another. And, among other
things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to
leave their houses, but hovered about the windows
and balconys till they burned their wings and fell
down. Having staid, and in an hour's time seen
the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight,
endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their
goods and leave all to the fire."

But by far the most vivid conception of the Fire
is to be found in a religious book ^vritten by the
Rev. Samuel Vincent, who expresses the feelings of
the moment with a singular force. Says the wTiter :
"It was the 2nd of September, 1666, that the
anger of the Lord was kindled against London,
and the fire began. It began in a baker's house
in Pudding Lane, by Fish Street Hill ; and now
the Lord is making London like a fiery oven in the
time of his anger (Psalm x.xi. 9), and in his wrath
doth devour and swallow up our habitations. It
was in the depth and dead of the night, when
most doors and senses were lockt up in the City,
that the fire doth break forth and appear aoroad,
and like a mighty giant refresht with wine doth

The Monument.]

MILES CO VERB ALE.

573

awake and arm itself, (luickly gathers strength,
when it had made havoc of some houses, ruslieth
down the hill towards the bridge, crosseth Thames
Street, invadeth Magnus Church at the bridge foot,
and, though that church were so great, yet it was
not a sufficient barricade against this concjueror ;
but having scaled and taken this fort, it shooteth
flames with so much the greater advantage into all
places round about, and a great building of houses
upon the bridge is quickly thrown to the ground.
Then the conqueror, being stayed in his course at
the bridge, marcheth back towards the City again,
and runs along with great noise and violence
tlirough Thames Street westward, where, having
such combustible matter in its teeth, and such a
fierce wind upon its back, it prevails with little re-
sistance, unto the astonishment of the beholders.

" My business is not to speak of the hand of
man, which was made use of in the beginning and
carrying on of this fire. The beginning of the
tfire at such a time, when there had been so mucli
hot weather, which had dried the houses and made
them mare fit for fuel ; the beginning of it in such
a place, where there were so many timber houses,
and the shops filled with so much combustible
matter ; and the beginning of it just when the wind
did blow so fiercely upon that corner towards the
rest of the City, w-hich then was like tinder to the
spark ; this doth smell of a Popish design, hatcht
in the same place where the Gunpowder Plot was
contrived, only that this was more successful.

" Then, then the City did shake indeed, and the
inhabitants flew away in great amazement from tlieir
houses, lest the flame should devour them. Rattle,
rattle, rattle, was the noise which the fire struck
upon the ear round about, as if there had been a
thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones ;
and if you opened your eye to the opening of the
streets where the fire was come, you might see in
some places whole streets at once in flames, that
issued forth as if they had been so many great
forges from the opposite windows, which, folding
together, were united into one great flame through-
out the whole street ; and then you might see the
houses tumble, tumble, tumble, from one end of
the street to the other, with a great crash, leaving
the foundations open to the view of the heavens."

The original Church of St. Magnus, London
Bridge, was of great antiquity ; for we learn that
in 1302 Hugh Pourt, sheriff" of London, and his
wife Margaret, founded a charity here ; and the
first rector mentioned by Newcourt is Robert de
St. Albano, who resigned his living in 1323. It
stood almost at the foot of Old London Bridge ;
and the incumbent of the chapel on the bridge

paid an annual sum to the rector of St. Magnus
for the diminution of the fees which the chajiel
might draw away. Three Lord Mayors are known
to have been buried in St. Magnus' ; and here, in
the chapel of St. Mary, was interred Henry Yevele,
a freemason to Edward 111., Richard II., and
Henry IV. This Yevele had assisted to erect
the bust of Richard II. at Westminster Abbey
between the years 1395-97, and also assisted
in restoring Westminster Hall. He founded a
charity in this church, and died in 1401. In old
times the patronage of St. Magnus' was exercised
alternately by the Abbots of A\'estminster and Ber-
mondsey ; but after the dissolution it fell to the
Crown, and Queen Mary, in 1553, bestowed it on
the Bishop of London. In Arnold's "Chronicles"
(end of the fifteenth century) the church is noted
as much neglected, and the services insufficiently
performed. The ordinary remarks that di\'ers of
the priests and clerks spent the time of IMvine
service in taverns and ale-houses, and in fishing
and "other trifles.''

The church was destroyed at an early period of
the Great Fire. It was rebuilt by Wren in 1676.
The parish was then united with that of St. Mar-
garet, New Fish Street Hill ; and at a later period
St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, has also been an-
nexed. On the top of the square tower, which
is terminated with an open parapet, 'Wren has
introduced an octagon lantern of very simple and
pleasing design, crowned by a cupola and short
spire. We must here, once for all, remark on the
fertility of invention displayed by Wren in varying
constantly the form of his steeples.

The interior of the church is divided into a nave
and side aisles by Doric columns, that support an
entablature from which rises the camerated ceiling.
"The general proportions of the church," says
Mr. Godwin, " are pleasing ; but the columns are
too slight, the space between them too wide, and
the result is a disagreeable feeling of insecurity."
The altar-piece, adorned with the figure of a pelican
feeding her young, is richly carved and gilded.
The large organ, built by Jordan in 17 12, was pre-
sented by Sir Charles Duncomb, who gave the clock
in remembrance of having himself, when a boy,
been detained on this spot, ignorant of the time.

Stow gives a curious account of a religious
service attached to this church. The following
deed is still extant : — ■

"That Rauf Capelyn du BailifT, Will. Double, fish-
monger, Roger Lowher, chancellor, Henry lioscworth,
vintner, Steven Lucas, stock fishmonger, .ind otlicr of the
belter of the jiarish of St. Magnus', near the Bridge of
London, of their groat devotion, and to the honour ol God

!;74

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

(The Momimcnt.

nnd tlie glorious ^[other our Lady Mary the Virgin, began
and caused to be made a chauntry, to sing an antliem of our
Lady, called Sihv A'li'iiia, every evening ;; and thereupon
ordained five burning wax liglits at the time of the said
antliem, in the honour and reverence of the five principal
joys of our Lady aforesaid, and fur exciting the people to
devotion at such an hour, the more to merit ■ to their souls.
And thereupon many otlier good people of the same parish,
seeing the great lionesty of the said service and devotion,
profr>.-red to be aiders and partners to support the said lights
and tlie said anlhem to be continually sung, paying to every
person every week an halfpenny ; and so that hereafter, with
the gilt that the people shall give to the sustentation of the
said light and anthem, there shall be to find a chaplain
singing in the said church for all tlie benefactors of the said
light and anlhem."

Miles Covenlale, tlie great reformer, was a
rector of St. Magnus'. Coverdale was in early
life an Augustinian monk, btit being converted
to Protestantisin, he exerted his best faculties and
influence in defending the cause. In August, 1551,
he was advanced to the see of E.veter, and availed
himself of that station to preach frequently in
the cathedral and in other churches of E.veter.
Thomas Lord Cromwell patronised him ; and
Queen Catherine Parr appointed him her almoner.
At the funeral of that ill-fated lady he preached a
sermon at Sudeley Castle. \\'hen Mary came to
the throne, she soon exerted her authority in tyran-
nically ejecting and persecuting this amiable and
learned jirelate. By an Act of Council (1554-55)
he was allowed to " passe towards Denmarche
with two servants, his bagges and baggage," where
he remained till the death of the queen. On
returning home, he declined to be reinstated in
his see, but repeatedly preached at Paul's Cross,
and, from conscientious scruples, continued to live
in obscurity and indigence till 1563, when he was
presented to the rectory of St. Magnus', London
Bridge, which he resigned in two years. Dying
in the year 1568, at the age of eighty-one, he was
interred in this church.

Coverdale's labours in Bible translation are
worth notice. In 1532 Coverdale appears to have
been abroad assisting Tyndale in his translation of
the Bible; and in 1535 his own folio translation of
the Bible (printed, it is supposed, at Zurich), with
a dedication to Henry VIII., was published. This
was the first English Bible allowed by royal
authority, and the first translation of the whole
Bible printed in our langtiage. The Psalms in it
are those we now use in the Book of Common
Prayer. About 153S Coverdale went to Paris to
su]jerlntend a new edition of the Bible iirinting in
Paris by permission of Francis I. The Inquisition,
however, seized nearly all the 2,500 copies (only a
few books escaping), and committed them to the

flames. The resetted copies enabled Grafton and
Whitchurch, in 1539, to print what is called
Cranmer's, or the Great Bible, which Coverdale
collated with the Hebrew. This great Bible
scholar was tlirown into prison by Queen I\Iary,
and on his release went to (Jeneva, where he
assisted in producing the Geneva translation of
the Bible, which was completed in 1560. Cover-
dale, like Wicklilife, was a Yorkshireman.

Against the east wall, on the south side of the
communion-table, is a handsome Gothic panel of
statuary marble, on a black slab, with a repre-
sentation of an open Bible above it, and thus
inscribed : —

" To the memory of Miles Coverdale, who, convinced
that the pure Word of God ought to be the sole rule of our
faith and guide of our practice, laboured earnestly for its
diffusion ; and with the view of affording the means of
reading and hearing in their own tongue the wonderful
works of God not only to his own country, but to the
nations that sit in darkness, and to every creature where-
soever the English language might be spoken, he spent
many years of his life in preparing a translation of the
Scriptures. On the 4th of October, 1535, the first complete
printed English version of 77/t' BiMi' was published under
his direction. The parishioners of St. Magnus the Martyr,
desirous of acknowledging the mercy of God, and calling to
mind that Miles Coverdale was once rector of their parish,
erected this monument to his memory, a.d. 1837.

" ' IIow beautiful are the feet of them that preach the
gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.' —
Isaiah Hi. 7."

In the vestry-room, whicli is now at the south-
west corner of the church, there is a ciuious
drawing of the interior of Old Fishmongers' Hall
on the occasion of the presentation of a pair of
colours to the Military Association of Bridge
Ward by Mrs. Hibbert. Many of the figures are
portraits. There is also a painting of Old London
Bridge, and a clever portrait of the late Mr. R.
Hazard, who was attached to the church as sexton,
clerk, and ward beadle for nearly fifty years.

The church was much injured in 1760 by a fire
which broke out in an adjoining oil-shop. The
roof was destro}ed, and the vestry-room entirely
consumed. The repairs cost ^1,200. The vestry-
room was scarcely completed before it had to be
taken down, with part of the church, in order to
make a passage-way under the steeple to the old
bridge, the road having been found dangerously
narrow. It was proposed to cut an archway out of
the two side walls of the tower to form a thorough-
fare ; and \.hen the buildings were reinoved, it was
discovered that Wren, foreseeing the probability
of such a want arising, had arranged everything
to their hands, and that the alteration was effected
witli the utmost ease.

Chaucftr's London.]

FIGURES IN OLD LONDON STREETS.

575

CHAPTER LI.

ClIAUCKH'S LONDON.

London Deni/cns in the Reigns of KJwanl III. and Kijharrl II.— Tlie Kniglu— The Young Bachelor— The Yeoman — The Priniess — The Monk
who goes a Hunting — The iMeichant — The Poor Clcrk-The Franklin — The Shipinan — The Poor Parson.

The London of Chaucer's time (the reigns of
Edward III. and Richard II.) was a scattered
town, spotted as thick with gardens as a common
meadow is with daisies. HoycIs stood cheek by
jowl with stately monasteries, and the fortified
mansions in the narrow City lanes were surrounded
by citizens' stalls and shops. \Vestminster Palace,
out in the suburbs among fields and marshes, was
joined to the City walls by that long straggling
street of bishops' and nobles' palaces, called the
Strand. The Tower and the Savoy were still royal
residences. In all the West-end beyond Charing
Cross, and in all the north of London beyond
Clerkenwell and Holborn, cows and horses grazed,
milkmaids sang, and ploughmen whistled. There
was danger in St. John's AVood and Tyburn Fields,
and robbers on Hampstead Heath. The heron
could be found in Marylebone pastures, and moor-
hens in the brooks round Paddington. Priestly
processions were to be seen in Cheapside, where
the great cumbrous signs, blazoned with all known
and many unknown animals, hung above the open
stalls, where the staid merchants and saucy 'pren-
tices shouted the praises of their goods. The
countless church-bells rang ceaselessly, to summon
the pious to prayers. Among the street crowds
the monks and men-at-arms were numerous, and
were conspicuous by their robes and by their
armour.

With the manners and customs of those simple
times our readers will now be pretty well familiar,
for we have already written of the knights and
priests of that age, and have described their good
and evil doings. We have set down their ejjitaphs,
detailed the history of their City companies, their
mayors, aldermen, and turbulent citizens. We have
shown their buildings, and spoken of their revolts
against injustice. Yet, after all. Time has destroyed
many pieces of that old puzzle, and who can dive
into oblivion and recover them ? The long rows of
gable ends, the abbey archways, the old guild rooms,
the knightly chambers, no magic can restore to us
in perfect combination. While certain spots can
be etched with exactitude by the pen, on vast
tracts no image rises. A dimmed and imperfect
picture it remains, we must confess, even to the
most vivid imagination. How the small details of
City life worked in those days we shall never know.
We may reproduce Edward IIL's London on th§

stage, or in poems ; but, after all, antl at the best, it
will be conjecture.

But of many of those people who paced in
Watling Street, or who rode up Cornhill, we have
imperisliable ])iclures, true to the life, and rich-
coloured as Titian's, by Chaucer, in those " Can-
terbury Tales" he is supposed to have written
about 1385 (Richard II.), in advanced life, and in
his peaceful retirement at Woodstock. The pil-
grims he paints in his immortal bundle of tales are
no ideal creatures, but such real llesh and blood as
Shakespeare drew and Hogarth engra\cd. He
drew the people of his age as genius most delights
to do ; and the fame he gained arose chiefly from
the fidelity of the figures with which he filled his
wonderful portrait-gallery.

We, therefore, in Chaucer's knight, are intro-
duced to just such old warriors as might any day
in the reign of Edward III., be met in Bow Lane
or Friday Street, riding to pay his devoirs to some
noble of Thames Street, to solicit a regiment, or
to claim redress for a wrong by force of arms. The
great bell of Bow may have struck the hour of noon
as the man who rode into Pagan Alexandria, under
the banner of the Christian King of Cyprus, and
who had broken a spear against the Moors at the
siege of Granada, rides by on his strong but not
showy charger. He wears, you see, a fustian gipon,
which is stained with the rust of his armour. There
is no plume in his helmet, no gold upon his belt,
for he is just come from Anatolia, where he has
smitten off many a turbaned head, and to-morrow
will start to thank God for his safe return at the
shrine of St. Thomas in Kent. In sooth it needs
only a glance at him to see that he is " a very
perfect gentle knight," meek as a maid, and trusty
as his own sword.

That trusty young bachelor who rides so gaily
by the old knight's side, and who regards him with
love and reverence, is his son, a brave young knight
of twenty years of age, as we guess. He has borne
him well in Flanders, Artois, and Picardy, and has
watered many a French vineyard with French
blood. See how smart he is in his short gown and
long wide sleeves. He can joust, and dance, and
sing, and write love verses, with any one between
here and Paris. The citizens' daughters devour
him with their eyes as lie rides under their case-
ments

576

OLD AND NEW LONDON.

tChaucer'5 London.

There rides behind this worthy pair a stout
yeoman, such as you can see a dozen of every
morning, in tliis reign, in ten minutes' walk down
Cheapside, for tiie nobles' houses in the City swarm
with such retainers— sturdy, brown-faced country
fellows, quick of quarrel, and not disposed to bear
gibes. He wears a coat and hood of Lincoln
green, and has a sword, dagger, horn, and buckler
by his side. The sheaf of arrows at his girdle have
peacock-feathers. Ten to one but that fellow let
fly many a shaft at Cressy and Poictiers, for he is
fond of saying, over his ale-bowl, that he carries
"ten Frenchmen's lives under his belt."

']"he prioress Chaucer sketches so daintily might
have been seen any day ambling through Bishops-
gate from her country nunnery, on her way to shrine
or altar, or on a visit to some noble patroness to
v.hom she is akin. "By St. Eloy!" she cries to
her mule, "if thou stumble again I will chide
thee I" and she says it in the French of Stratford
at Bow. Her wimple is trimly plaited, and how
fashionable is her cloak 1 She wears twisted round
her arm a pair of coral beads, and from tliem hangs
a gold ornament with the unecclesiastical motto of
" .•\mor vincit omnia." Behind her rides a nun and
three priests, and by the side of her mule run the
little greyhounds whom she feeds, and on whom
she doats.

The rich monk that loved hunting was a cha-
racter that any monastery of Cliaucer's London
could furnish. Go early in the morning to Alders-
gate or Cripplegate, and you will be sure to find
such a one riding out with his greyliounds and
falcon. His dress is rich, for he does not sneer
at worldly pleasures. His sleeves are trimmed
with fur, and the pin that fastens his hood is a
gold love-knot. His brown palfrey is fat, like its
master, who does not despise a roast Thames
swan for dinner, and whose face shines with good
humour and good living. It is such men as these
that Wyclifte's followers deride, and point the
finger at ; but they forget that the Church uses
strong arguments with perverse adversaries.

To find Chaucer's merchant you need not go
further than a few yards from Milk Street. There
you will see him at any stall, grave, and with
forked beard ; on his h.eid a Flemish beaver hat,
and his boots "full fetishly" clasped. He talks
much of profits and exchanges, and the necessity
of guarding the sea from the French between
Middleburgh and the Essex ports.

Chaucer's poor lean Oxford clerk you will find
in Paul's, peering about the tombs, as if looking
for a benefice. All his riches, worthy man ! are
come twenty books at his bed's head, and he is

talking philosoi^hy to a fellow-student lean and
thin as himself, to the profound contempt of that
stiff serjeant-at-law who is waiting for clients near
the font, on which his fees are paid.

Any procession day in the age of Edward you
can meet, in Westminster Abbey, near the royal
shrines and tombs, Chaucer's franklin, or country
gentleman, with his red face and white beard. His
dagger hangs by his silk purse, and his girdle is
as white as milk, for our friend has been a sheriff
and knight of the shire, and is known all Bucking-
hamshire over for his open house and well-co\ered
board. Aye, and many a fat partridge he has in
his pen, and many a fat pike in his fish-pond.

Chaucer's shipman we shall be certain to discover
near Billingsgate. He is from Dartmouth, and
wears a short coat, and a knife hanging from his
neck. A hardy good fellow he is, and shrewd, and
his beard has shaken in many a tempest. Bless
you ! the captain of the Magdalen knows all the
havens from Gothland to Cape Finlsterre, aye, and
every creek in Brittany and Spain ; and many a
draught of Bordeaux wine he has tapped at night
from his cargo.

Nor must we forget that favourite pilgrim of
Chaucer — the poor parson of a town, who is also
a learned clerk, and who is by many suppo.sed to
strongly resemble Wyclifte himself, whom Chaucer's
patron, John of Gaunt, protects at the hazard of
his life. He is no proud Pharisee, like the fat
abbot who has just gone past the church door;,
but benign and wondrous diligent, and in adversity
full patient. Rather than be cursed for the tithe
he takes, he gives to the poor of his very sub-
sistence. Come rain, come thunder, staff in hand,
he visits the farthest end of his parish ; he has no
spiced conscience —

" For Chri.^te's love, and his apostles twelve.
He taught, but first he follmied it himselve."

You will find him, be sure, on his knees on the cold
floor, before some humble City altar, heedless of
all but prayer, or at the lazar-house on his knees,
beside some poor leper, and pointing through the
shadow of death to the shining gables of the New
Jerusalem.

Such were the tenants of Chaucer's London.
On these types at least we may dwell with cer-
taint)'. As for the proud nobles and the tough-
skulled knights, we must look for them in the pages
of Froissart. Of the age of Edward III. at least
our patriarchal poet has shown us soine vivid
glimpses, and imagination finds pleasure in tracing
home his pilgrims to their houses in St. Bartholo-
mew's and Budge Row, the Blackfriars monaster)-,
and the palace on the Thames shore.

3 1158 00236 6309

DA
677

T39ar