Qass 
 Book 
 
 
 

THE TOWN: 
 
 ITS MEMOBABLE CHARACTERS AND EVENTS. 
 
 By LEIGH HU 
 
 WITH FORTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATION 
 
 A NEW EDITION". 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDEK & CO., 15, WATEKLOO PLACE, 
 
 1872. 
 
$907 
 
 
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 ADVERTISEMENT, 
 
 In this- volume entitled "The Town," the reader will 
 find an account of London, partly topographical and 
 historical, but chiefly recalling the memories of remark- 
 able characters and events associated with its streets 
 between St. Paul's and St. James's ; being that part of 
 the great metropolis which may be said to have consti- 
 tuted " The Town " when that term was commonly 
 used to designate London. 
 
 The present edition comprises the entire contents, 
 unabridged, with the Illustrations. 
 

 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Different Impressions of London on different Passengers and Minds-* 
 Extendibility of its Interest to all — London before the Deluge! — Its 
 Origin according to the fabulous Writers and Poets — First historical 
 Mention of it — Its Names — British, Kornan, Saxon, and Norman 
 London — General Progress of the City and of Civilization — Kange 
 of the Metropolis as it existed in the Time of Shakspeare and Bacon 
 — Growth of the Streets and Suburbs during the later Keigns — 
 " Merry London " and "Merry England" — Curious Assertion re- 
 specting Trees in the City 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 The Roman Temple of Diana : the first Christian Church — Old St. 
 Paul's — Inigo Jones's Portico — Strange Usages of former Times — 
 Encroachments on the Fabric of the Cathedral — Paul's Walkers — 
 Dining with Duke Humphrey — Cacnolic Customs — The Boy-Bishop 
 The Children of the Revels — Strange Ceremony on the Festivals of 
 the Commemoration and Conversion of St. Paul — Ancient Tombs 
 in the Cathedral — Scene between John of Gaunt and the Anti- 
 Wicklifntes — Paul's Cross — The Folkmote — The Sermons — Jane 
 Shore — See-Saw of Popery and Protestantism — London House— 
 The Charnel— The Lollards' Tower— St. Paul's School— Desecra- 
 tion of the Cathedral during the Commonwealth — The present 
 Cathedral— Sir Christopher Wren— Statue of Queen Anne , 23 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD^ 
 
 The Church of St. Faith— Booksellers of the Churchyard— Mr. John- 
 son's — Mr. Newberry's — Children's Books — Clerical Names of 
 Streets near St. Paul's— Swift at the top of the Cathedral— Dr 
 Johnson at St. Paul's — Paternoster Eow — Panyer's Alley — 
 Stationers' Hall — Almanacks — Knight-Riders' Street — Armed 
 Assemblies of the Citizens — Doctor's Commons — The Heralds' 
 College— Coats of Arms — Ludgate— Story of Sir Stephen Forster 
 — Prison of Ludgate — Wyatt's Kebellion — The Belle Sauvage Inn 
 — Blackfriars — Shakspeare's Theatre — Accident at Blackfriars in 
 1623 — Printing House Square — The Times — Baynard's Castle — 
 Story of the Baron Fitzwalter — Richard HI. and Buckingham — 
 Diana's Chamber — The Royal Wardrobe — Marriages in the Eleet — 
 Fleet Ditch— The Dunciad 52 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FLEET STREET. 
 
 Burning of the Pope — St. Bride's Steeple — Milton — Illuminated Clock 
 — Melancholy End of Lovelace the Cavalier — Chatterton — Gene- 
 rosity of Hardham, of Snuff Celebrity — Theatre in Dorset Garden 
 — Richardson, his Habits and Character — Whitefriars, or Alsatia 
 — The Temple — Its Monuments, Garden, &c. — Eminent names con- 
 nected with it — Goldsmith dies there — Boswell's first Visit there to 
 Johnson — Johnson and Madame de Boufflers — Bernard Lintot — 
 Ben Jonson's Devil Tavern — Other Coffee-houses and Shops — 
 Goldsmith and Temple-bar — Shire Lane, Bickerstaff, and the 
 Deputation from the Country — The Kit-Kat Club — Mrs. Salmon — 
 Isaac Walton — Cowley — Chancery Lane, Lord Strafford, and Ben 
 Jonson — Serjeant's Inn — Clifford's Inn — The Rolls — Sir Joseph 
 Jekyll — Church of St. Dunstan in the West — Dryden's House in 
 Fetter Lane — Johnson, the Genius Loci of Fleet Street — His Way 
 of Life — His Residence in Gough Square, Johnson's Court, and 
 Bolt Court — Various Anecdotes of him connected with Fleet Street, 
 and with his favourite Tavern, the Mitre • ... 84 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE STRAND. 
 
 Ancient State of the Strand — Butcher Row — Death of Lee, the 
 dramatic Poet — Johnson at anEating-House — Essex Street — House 
 and History of the favourite Earl of Essex— Spenser's Visit there— 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 Essex, General of the Parliament — Essex Head Club — Devereux 
 Court — Grecian Coffee-House — Twining, the accomplished Scholar 
 — St. Clement Danes — Clement's Inn — Falstaff and Shallow — 
 Norfolk, Arundel, Surrey, and Howard Streets — Norfolk House — 
 Essex's Ring and the Countess of Nottingham — William Penn — 
 Birch — Dr. Brocklesby — Congreve, and his Will — Voltaire's Visit 
 to him — Mrs. Bracegirdle — Tragical End of Mountford the Player — 
 Ancient Cross — Maypole — New Church of St. Mary-le-Strand — Old 
 Somerset House — Henrietta Maria and her Erench Household — 
 Waller's Mishap at Somerset Stairs — New Somerset House — Royal 
 Society, Antiquarian Society, and Royal Academy — Death of 
 Dr. King — Exeter Street — Johnson's first Lodging in London — Art 
 of living in London — Catherine Street — Unfortunate Women — 
 Wimbledon House — Lyceum and Beef-steak Club — Exeter Change 
 — Bed and Baltimore — The Savoy — Anecdotes of the Duchess of 
 Albemarle — Beaufort Buildings — Lillie, the Perfumer — Aaron Hill 
 — Fielding — Southampton Street — Cecil and Salisbury Streets — 
 Durham House — Raleigh — Pennant on the Word Place or Palace — 
 New Exchange — Don Pantaleon Sa — The White Milliner — Adelphi 
 — Garrick and his Wife — Beauclerc — Society of Arts, and Mr. Barry 
 — Bedford Street — George, Villiers, and Buckingham Streets — York 
 House and Buildings — Squabble between the Spanish and French 
 Ambassadors — Hungerford Market — Craven Street — Franklin — 
 Northumberland House — Duplicity of Henry, Earl of Northampton 
 _ — Violence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury — Percy, Bishop of 
 Dromore — Pleasant mistake of Goldsmith . . . .131 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn — Ben Jonson's Bricklaying — Enactments against 
 Beards — Oliver Cromwell, More, Hale, and other eminent Students 
 of Lincoln's Inn — Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Square — Houses there 
 built by Inigo Jones — Pepys's Admiration of the Comforts of Mr. 
 Povey — Surgeons' College— Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe, and 
 Lord Sandwich — Execution of the patriotic Lord Russell, with an 
 Account of the Circumstances that led to and accompanied it, and 
 some Remarks on his Character — Affecting Passages from the 
 Letters of his Widow — Ludicrous Story connected with Newcastle 
 House 192 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Great Queen Street — Former fashionable Houses there — Lewis and 
 Miss Pope, the Comedians— Martin Folkes— Sir Godfrey Kneller 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 and his Vanity— Dr. Eadcliffe— Lord Herbert of Cherbury— 
 Nuisance of Whetstone Park— The Three Dukes and the Beadle — 
 Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II— Former Theatres 
 in Vere Street and Portugal Street— First appear ance of Actresses 
 — Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford — 
 Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage — Anecdotes of the 
 "Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the 
 Theatre in this Quarter — Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, 
 Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers — Eich — Joe Miller — Carey 
 Street and Mrs. Chapone — Clare Market — History, and Specimens, 
 of Orator Henley — Duke Street and Little Wild Street — Anecdotes 
 of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman 
 Printer . 225 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DRURY LANE, AND THE TWO THEATRES IN DRURY 
 LANE AND COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 Craven House — Donne and his vision — Lord Craven and the Queen 
 of Bohemia — Nell Gwynn — Drury Lane Theatre — Its antiquity* 
 different eras, and rebuildings — The principal theatre of Dryden, 
 Wycherley, Farquhar, Steele, Garrick, and Sheridan — Old Drury 
 in the time of Charles H. — A visit to it — Pepys and his theatrical 
 gossip, with notes — Hart and Mohun — Goodman — Nell Gwynn — 
 Dramatic taste of that age — Booth — Artificial tragedy — Wilks and 
 Cibber — Bullock and Penkethman — A Colonel enamoured of 
 Cibber's wig — Mrs. Oldfield — Her singular position in society — Not 
 the Flavia of the Tatler — Pope's account of her last words pro- 
 bably not true — Declamatory acting — Lively account of Garrick 
 and Quin by Mr. Cumberland — Improvement of stage costume — 
 King — Mrs. Pritchard — Mrs. Clive — Mrs. Woffmgton — Covent 
 Garden — Barry — Contradictory characters of him by Davies and 
 Churchill — Macklin — Woodward — Pantomime — English taste in 
 music — Cooke — Rise of actors and actresses in social rank — Im- 
 provement of the audience — Dr. Johnston at the theatre — Churchill 
 a great pit critic — His Rosciad — His picture of Mossop — Mrs. 
 Jordan and Mr. Suett — Early recollections of a play-goer. 257 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COVENT GARDEN CONTINUED AND LEICESTER SQUARE. 
 
 Bow Street once the Bond Street of London — Fashions at that time — 
 Infamous frolic of Sir Charles Sedley and others — Wycherly and 
 the Countess of Drogheda — Tonson the Bookseller — Fielding— 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 Kussell Street — Dryden beaten by hired ruffians in Rose Street — 
 His Presidency at Will's Coffee-House — Character of that Place — 
 Addison and Button's Coffee-House — Pope, Philips, and Garth — 
 Armstrong — BoswelTs introduction to Johnson — The Hummums — 
 Ghost Story there — Covent Garden — The Church — Car, Earl of 
 Somerset — Butler, Southern, Eastcourt, Sir Eobert Strange — 
 Macklin — Curious Dialogue with him when past a century — 
 Dr. Walcot — Covent Garden Market — Story of Lord Sandwich, 
 Hackman, and Miss Ray — Henrietta Street — Mrs. Clive — James 
 Street — Partridge, the almanack-maker — Mysterious lady — King 
 Street — Arne and his Eather — The four Indian Kings — 
 Southampton Row — Maiden Lane — Voltaire — Long Acre and its 
 Mug-Houses — Prior's resort there — Newport Street — St. Martin's 
 Lane, and Leicester Square— Sir Joshua Reynolds — Hogarth — Sir 
 Isaac Newton 306 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church — Statue of Charles I. 
 — Execution of Regicides — Ben Jonson — Wallingford House, now 
 the Admiralty — Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ; Sir Walter Scott's 
 Account of him — Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death — 
 Charles's Horse a Satirist — Locket's Ordinary — Sir George Etherege 
 — Prior and his Uncle's Tavern — Thomson — Spring Gardens — 
 Mrs. Centlivre — Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c, formerly 
 Hedge Lane— The Wits and the Bailiffs— Suffolk Street — Swift 
 and Miss Vanhomrigh — Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occa- 
 sioned — Scotland Yard — Pleasant Advertisement — Beau Eielding, 
 and his Eccentricities — Vanbrugh — Desperate Adventure of Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury 355 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 Regal Character of Whitehall — York Place — Personal and Moral 
 Character of Wolsey — Comparison of him with Ins Master, Henry 
 — His Pomp and Popularity — Humorous Account of his Flatterers 
 by Sir Thomas More — Importance of his Hat — Cavendish's Account 
 of his household State, his goings forth in Public, and his entertain - 
 
 " meats of the King 382 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Henry the Eighth — His Person and Character — Modern Qualifications 
 of it considered — Passages respecting him from Lingard, Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt, and others — His additions to Whitehall — A Retrospect at 
 Elizabeth — Court of James resumed — Its gross Habits — Letter of 
 Sir John Harrington respecting them — James's Drunkenness — 
 Testimonies of Welldon, Sully, and Koger Coke — Curious Omission 
 in the Invective of Churchill the Poet — Welldon's Portrait of 
 James — Buckingham, the Favourite — Prightful Story of Somerset 
 — Masques — Banqueting House — Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson — 
 Court of Charles the Pirst — Cromwell — Charles the Second— James 
 the Second 395 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 St. James's Park and its Associations — Unhealthiness of the Place 
 and Neighbourhood — Leper Hospital of St. James — Henry the 
 Eighth builds St. James's Palace and the Tilt-Yard — Original State 
 and Progressive Character of the Park — Charles the Pirst — Crom- 
 well — Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and Mistresses 
 The Mulberry Gardens — Swift, Prior, Bichardson, Beau Tibbs, 
 Soldiers, and Syllabubs — Character of the Park at present — St. 
 James's Palace during the Beigns of the Stuarts and two first 
 Georges — Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George of Den- 
 mark — Characters of Queen Anne and of George the Pirst and 
 Second — George the Pirst and his Carp — Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montague and the Sack of Wheat — Horace Walpole's Portrait of 
 George the Pirst — The Mistresses of that King and of his Son — 
 Mistake of Lord Chesterfield — Queen Caroline's Ladies in Wait- 
 ing — Miss Bellenden and the Guineas — George the Second's Rup- 
 ture with his Father and with his Son — Character of that Son — 
 Buckingham House — Sheffield and his Duchess — Character of 
 Queen Charlotte — Advantages of Queen Victoria over her Prede- 
 cessors . . . 9 Q * • • .431 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ENGRAVED BY C. THURSTON THOMPSON, FROM DRAWINGS BY 
 J. W. ARCHER AND C. T. THOMPSON. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 London from Southwark, before the Great Fire. From a 
 
 Print by Hollar (Frontispiece) 
 
 West Front of Old St. Paul's, with Inigo Jones's Portico . 26 
 " Paul's Cross and Preaching there" . . .51 
 
 Ludgate ....... 69 
 
 Baynard's Castle, from the River, 1640 . . . .78 
 
 Stone in Panyer Alley, marking the highest Ground in the City 83 
 Interior of the Round Part of the Temple Church, previous 
 
 to the recent Restorations . . . . 101 
 House in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, the last Residence of 
 
 Dr. Johnson, 1810 ...... 125 
 
 Old Somerset House, from the River . . . 167 
 
 The Savoy Palace, from the River .... 172 
 
 Inigo Jones's Water Gate, York Stairs . . . 183 
 
 Old Northumberland House, from the River. Temp. Charles I. 186 
 
 Exeter Change as it appeared just before it was pulled down 192 
 
 Newcastle House, N. W. corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1796 222 
 Old Palace of Whitehall, from the River. Tern. Charles I., 
 
 from a Print of the Period . . to face 225 
 Old Houses in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 
 1817 ....... 226 
 
 The Theatre in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1810 236 
 
Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 pacjs 
 
 Printing Press at which Franklin worked . . . 256 
 
 Craven House, Drury Lane, 1800 .... 258 
 Entrance Front of Old Drury Lane Theatre in Brydges 
 
 Street, erected by Garrick .... 266 
 
 Entrance to old Coven t Garden Theatre, 1794 . . 305 
 Inigo Jones's Church and Covent Garden. Temp. James II. 
 
 From a Print of the Period .... 325 
 House in St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, formerly the 
 
 Kesidence of Sir Isaac Newton, 1810 . . . 354 
 
 The Village of Charing. From Aggas's Map, 1578 . 356 
 Scotland Yard, as it appeared in 1750. From a Print alter 
 
 Paul Sandby ...... 374 
 
 Old Gate of Whitehall Palace, designed by Holbein. From 
 
 a Print by Hollar ..... 401 
 The Banqueting House, Whitehall . . . .419 
 
 St. James's Palace, 1650, from a Print by Hollar . . 435 
 
 The Initial Letters and Tail-pieces designed by J. W. Archer and 
 C. T. Thompson. (The Initial Letter to Chapter XII. represents 
 the Conduit at St. James's.) 
 
THE TOWN. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Different impressions of London on different passengers and minds — 
 Extendibility of its interest to all — London before the Deluge ! — 
 Its origin according to the fabulous writers and poets — First his- 
 torical mention of it — Its names — British, Roman, Saxon, and 
 Norman London — General progress of the city and of civilisation — 
 Range of the Metropolis as it existed in the time of Shakspeare and 
 Bacon — Growth of the streets and suburbs during the later reigns — ■ 
 " Merry London" and "Merry England"— Curious assertion respect- 
 ing tree3 in the city. 
 
 N one of those children's books which con- 
 tain reading fit for the manliest, and 
 which we have known to interest very 
 grave and even great men, there is a 
 pleasant chapter entitled Eyes and no 
 Eyes, or the Art of Seeing* The two 
 heroes of it come home successively from a 
 walk in the same road, one of them having 
 seen only a heath and a hill, and the meadows by the water- 
 side, and therefore having seen nothing ; the other expatiating 
 on his delightful ramble, because the heath presented him 
 with curious birds, and the hill with the remains of a camp, 
 and the meadows with reeds, and rats, and herons, and king- 
 fishers, and sea-shells, and a man catching eels, and a glorious 
 sunset. 
 
 In like manner people may walk through a crowded city, 
 and see nothing but the crowd. A man may go from Bond 
 Street to Blackwall, and unless he has the luck to witness an 
 accident, or get a knock from a porter's burden, may be con- 
 scious, when he has returned, of nothing but the names of 
 * See Evenings at Home, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs, Barbauld. 
 
2 DIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON. 
 
 those two places, and of the mud through which he has passed. 
 Nor is this to be attributed to dullness. He may, indeed, be 
 dull. The eyes of his understanding may be like bad 
 spectacles, which no brightening would enable to see much. 
 But he may be only inattentive. Circumstances may have 
 induced a want of curiosity, to which imagination itself shall 
 contribute, if it has not been taught to use its eyes. This is 
 particularly observable in childhood, when the love of novelty 
 is strongest. A boy at the Charter House, or Christ Hospital, 
 probably cares nothing for his neighbourhood, though stocked 
 with a great deal that might entertain him. He has been too 
 much accustomed to identify it with his schoolroom. We 
 remember the time ourselves when the only thought we had 
 in going through the metropolis was how to get out of it ; how 
 to arrive, with our -best speed, at the beautiful vista of home 
 and a pudding, which awaited us in the distance. And long 
 after this we saw nothing in London, but the book-shops 
 which have taught us better. 
 
 " I have often," says Boswell, with the inspiration of his great 
 London-loving friend upon him, " amused myself with thinking how- 
 different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow 
 minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular 
 pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it 
 merely as the seat of government in its different departments ; a 
 grazier as a vast market for cattle ; a mercantile man as a place where 
 a prodigious deal of business is done upon 'Change ; a dramatic 
 enthusiast as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments ; a man of 
 pleasure as an assemblage of taverns, &c. &c; but the intellectual 
 man is struck with it as comprehending the whole of human life in 
 all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible." 
 
 It does not follow that the other persons whom Boswell 
 speaks of are not, by nature, intelligent. The want of 
 curiosity, in some, may be owing even to their affections and 
 anxiety. They may think themselves bound to be occupied 
 solely in what they are about. They have not been taught 
 how to invigorate as well as to divert the mind, by taking a 
 reasonable interest in the varieties of this astonishing world, 
 of which the most artificial portions are still works of nature 
 as well as art, and evidences of the hand of Him that made 
 the soul and its endeavours. Boswell himself, with all his 
 friend's assistance, and that of the tavern to boot, probably 
 saw nothing in London of the times gone by — of all that rich 
 aggregate of the past, which is one of the great treasures of 
 knowledge ; and yet, by the same principle on which Boswell 
 admired Dr. Johnson, he might have delighted in calling to 
 
EXTENDIBILITY OF ITS INTEREST. 3 
 
 mind the metropolis of the wits of Queen Anne's time, and of 
 the poets of Elizabeth ; might have longed to sit over their 
 canary in Cornhill with Beaumont and Ben Jonson, and have 
 thought that Surrey Street and Shire Lane had their merits, as 
 well as the illustrious obscurity of Bolt Court. In Surrey 
 Street lived Congreve; and Shire Lane, though nobody would 
 think so to see it now, is eminent for the origin of the Kit- 
 Kat Club (a host of wits and statesmen,) and for the recrea- 
 tions of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., of Tatler celebrity, at his 
 contubernium, the Trumpet. 
 
 It may be said that the past is not in our possession ; that 
 we are sure only of what we can realise, and that the present 
 and future afford enough contemplation for any man. But 
 those who argue thus, argue against their better instinct. 
 We take an interest in all that we understand ; and in pro- 
 portion as we enlarge our knowledge, enlarge, ad infinitum, 
 the sphere of our sympathies. Tell the grazier, whom Boswell 
 mentions, of a great grazier who lived before him — of Bake- 
 well, who had an animal that produced him in one season 
 the sum of eight hundred guineas ; or Fowler, whose horned 
 cattle sold for a value equal to that of the fee-simple of his 
 farm; or Elwes, the miser, who, after spending thousands at 
 the gaming table, would haggle for a shilling at Smithfield ; 
 and he will be curious to hear as much as you have to relate. 
 Tell the mercantile man, in like manner, of G-resham, or 
 Crisp, or the foundation of the Charter House by a merchant, 
 and he will be equally attentive. And tell the man, par ex- 
 cellence, of anything that concerns humanity, and he will be 
 pleased to hear of Bakewell, or Crisp, or Boswell, or Bos- 
 well's ancestor. Bakewell himself was a man of this sort. 
 Boswell was proud of his ancestors, like most men that know 
 who they were, whether their ancestors were persons to be 
 proud of or not. The mere length of line flatters the brevity 
 of existence. We must take care how we are proud of those 
 who may not be fit to render us so ; but we may be allowed 
 to be anxious to live as long as we can, whether in 
 prospect or retrospect. Besides, the human mind, being a 
 thing infinitely greater than the circumstances which confine 
 and cabin it in its present mode of existence, seeks to extend 
 itself on all sides, past, present, and to come. If it puts on 
 wings angelical, and pitches itself into the grand obscurity 
 of the future, it runs back also on the more visible line of 
 the past. Even the present, which is the great business of 
 
4 LONDON BEFOEE THE DELUGE ! 
 
 life, is chiefly great, inasmuch as it regards the interests of 
 the many who are to come, and is built tip of the experiences 
 of those who have gone by. The past is the heir-loom of 
 the world. 
 
 Now in no shape is any part of this treasure more visible 
 to us, or more sticking, than in that cf a kTeat metropolis. 
 The present is nov/here so present: we Gee tie latest marks 
 of its hand. The past is nowhere so traceable: we discover, 
 step by step, the successive abodes of its generations. The 
 links that are wanting are supplied by history; nor perhaps 
 is there a single spot in London in which the past is not 
 visibly present to us, either in the shape of some old buildings 
 or at least in the names of the streets ; or in which the absence 
 of more tangible memorials may not be supplied by the anti- 
 quary. In some parts of it we may go back through the 
 whole English history, perhaps through the history of man, 
 as we shall see presently when we speak of St. Paul's Church- 
 3'ard, a place in which you may get the last new novel, and 
 find remains of the ancient Britons and of the sea. There, 
 also in the cathedral, lie painters, patriots, humanists, the 
 greatest warriors and some of the best men; and there, in 
 St. Paul's School, was educated England's epic poet, who 
 hoped that his native country would never forget her pri- 
 vilege of " teaching the nations how to live." Surely a man 
 is more of a man, and does more justice to the faculties of 
 which he is composed, whether for knowledge or entertain- 
 ment, who thinks of all these things in crossing St. Paul's 
 Churchyard, than if he saw nothing but the church itself, or 
 the clock, or confined his admiration to the abundance of 
 Brentford stages. 
 
 Milton, who began a history of England, very properly 
 touches upon the fabulous part of it ; not, as Dr. Johnson 
 thought (who did not take the trouble of reading the second 
 page), because he confounded it with the true, but, as he 
 himself states, for the benefit of those who would know how 
 to make use of it — the poets. In the same passage he alludes 
 to those traces of a deluge of which we have just spoken, and 
 to the enormous bones occasionally dug up, which, with the 
 natural inclination ot a poet, he was willing to look upon as 
 relics of a gigantic race of men. .Both of these evidences of 
 a remote period have been discovered in London earth, and 
 might be turned to grand account by a writer like himseiil 
 It is curious to see the grounds on which truth and fiction 
 
ITS ORIGIN ACCORDING TO FABULOUS WRITERS. 5 
 
 80 often meet, without knowing one another. The Oriental 
 writers have an account of a race of pre- Adamite kings, not 
 entirely human. It is supposed by some geologists, that there 
 was a period before the creation of man, when creatures vaster 
 than any now on dry land trampled the earth at will ; perhaps 
 had faculties no longer to be found in connection with brute 
 forms, and effaced, together with themselves, for a nobler 
 experiment. We may indulge our fancy with supposing that, 
 in those times, light itself, and the revolution of the seasons, 
 may not have been exactly what they are now ; that some 
 unknown monster, mammoth or behemoth, howled in the 
 twilight over the ocean solitude now called London ; or (not 
 to fancy him monstrous in nature as in form, for the hugest 
 creatures of the geologist appear to have been mild and grami- 
 nivorous), that the site of our metropolis was occupied with 
 the gigantic herd of some more gigantic spirit, all good of 
 their kind, but not capable of enough ultimate good to be 
 permitted to last. However, we only glance at these specu- 
 lative matters, and leave them. Neither shall we say any- 
 thing of the more modern elephant, who may have recreated 
 himself some thousands of years ago on the site of the Chapter 
 Coffee House ; or of the crocodile, who may have snapped at 
 some remote ancestor of a fishmonger in the valley of Dow- 
 gate. 
 
 By the fabulous writers, London was called Troynovant or 
 New Troy, and was said to have been founded by Brutus, 
 great-grandson of iEneas, from whom the country was called 
 Brutain, or Britain. 
 
 For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold, 
 
 And Troynovant was built of old Troye's ashes cold. 
 
 (This is one of Spenser's fine old lingering lines, in which he 
 seems to dwell on a fable till he believes it.) Brutus, having 
 the misfortune to kill his father, fled from his native country 
 into Greece, where he set free a multitude of Trojans, captives 
 to King Pandrasus, whose daughter he espoused. He left 
 Greece with a numerous flotilla, and came to an island called 
 Legrecia, where there was a temple of Diana. To Diana he 
 offered sacrifice, and prayed her to direct his course. The 
 prayer, and the goddess's reply, as told in Latin by Gildas, 
 have received a lustre from the hand of Milton. He gives 
 us the following translation of them in his historical frag- 
 ment: — 
 
FIRST HISTORICAL MENTION OF LONDON. 
 
 " Diva potens nemorum : " 
 
 " Goddess of Shades, and Huntress, who at will 
 Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep, 
 On thy third reign, the earth, look now ; and tell 
 What land, what seat of rest, thou bidst me seek ; 
 "What certain seat, where I may worship thee, 
 For aye, with temples to wed, and virgin quires." 
 
 "To whom, sleeping before the altar," says the poet, "Diana in a 
 vision that night, thus answered : — 
 
 " Brute, sub occasum solis : " 
 
 " Brutus, far to the west, in th' ocean wide, 
 Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, 
 Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old : 
 Now void, it fits thy people. Thither bend 
 Thy course : there shalt thou find a lasting seat ; 
 There to thy sons another Troy shall rise, 
 And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded reign 
 Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold."* 
 
 According to Spenser, Brutus did not find England cleared 
 of the giants. He had to conquer them. But we shall speak 
 of those personages when we come before their illustrious 
 representatives in Guildhall. 
 
 This fiction of Troynovant, or new Troy, appears to have 
 arisen from the word Trinobantes in Ceesar, a name given by 
 the historian to the inhabitants of a district which included 
 the London banks of the Thames. The oldest mention of the 
 metropolis is supposed to be found in that writer, under the 
 appellation of Civitas Trinobantwn, the city of the Trinobantes; 
 though some are of opinion that by civitas he only meant their 
 government or community. Be this as it may, a city of the 
 Britons, in Caesar's time, was nothing either for truth or 
 fiction to boast of, having been, as he describes it, a mere 
 spot hollowed out of the woods, and defended by a ditch and 
 a rampart. 
 
 We have no reason to believe that the first germ of London 
 was anything greater than this. Milton supposes that so many 
 traditions of old British kings could not have been handed 
 down without a foundation in truth ; and the classical origin 
 of London, though rejected by himself, was not only firmly 
 believed by people in general as late as the reign of Henry 
 the Sixth (to whom it was quoted in a public document), but 
 was maintained by professed antiquaries, — Leland among 
 them.")" It is probable enough that, before Caesar's time, the 
 
 * History of England, 4to. 1670, p. 11. 
 f We learn this from Selden's notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton, 
 
ITS NAMES. 7 
 
 affairs of the country may have been in a better situation 
 than he found them ; and it is possible that something may 
 have once stood on the site of London, which stood there no 
 longer. But this may be said of every other place on the 
 globe ; and as there is nothing authentic to show for it, we 
 must be content to take our ancestors as we find them. In 
 truth, nothing is known with certainty of the origin of London, 
 not even of its name. The first time we hear either of the 
 city or its apellation is in Tacitus, who calls it Londinium. 
 The following list, taken principally from Camden, comprises, 
 we believe, all the names by which it has been called. We 
 dwell somewhat on this point, because we conclude the reader 
 will be pleased to see by how many aliases his old acquaintance 
 has been known. 
 
 Troja Nova, Troynovant, or New Troy. 
 
 Tre-novant, or the New City, (a mixture of Latin and 
 Cornish). 
 
 Dian Belin, or the City of Diana. 
 
 Caer Ludd, or the City of Ludd. — These are the names 
 given by the fabulous writers, chiefly Welsh. 
 
 Londinium. — Tacitus, Ptolemy, Antoninus. 
 
 Lundinium. — Ammianus Marcellinus. 
 
 Longidinium. 
 
 Lindonium, (Aivdoviov). — Stephanus in his Dictionary. 
 
 Lundonia. — Bede. 
 
 Augusta. — The complimentary title granted to it under 
 Valentinian, as was customary with flourishing foreign estab- 
 lishments. 
 
 Lundenbyrig. 
 
 Lundenberig. 
 
 Lundenberk. 
 
 Lundenburg. 
 
 Lundenwic, or wye. 
 
 Lundenceastre (that is, London-castrum or camp). 
 
 Lundunes. 
 
 Lundene, or Lundenne. 
 
 Lundone. — Saxon names. Lundenceastre is Alfred the 
 Great's translation of the Lundonia of Bede. 
 
 Luddestun. 
 
 Ludstoune. — Saxon translations of the Caer Ludd of the 
 Welsh. 
 
 Londres. — French. 
 
 Londra. — Italian. Ths letter r in these words is curious. 
 
8 DERIVATION OF LONDON. 
 
 It seems to represent the berig or burgh of the Saxons ; quasi 
 Londrig, from Londonberig ; in which ease Londres would 
 mean London-borough. 
 
 The disputes upon the derivation of the word London have 
 been numerous. In the present day, the question seems to 
 be, whether it originated in Celtic British, that is, in Welsh, 
 and signified " a city on a lake," or in Belgic British (old 
 German), and meant " a city in a grove." The latest author 
 who has handled the subject inclines to the latter opinion.* 
 Mr. Pennant being a Celt, was for the " city on a lake," the 
 Thames in the early periods of British history having formed 
 a considerable expanse of water near the site of the present 
 metropolis. Llyn-Din is Lake-City, and Lun-Den Grove-City. 
 Erasmus, on the strength of those affinities between Greek and 
 Welsh, which can be found between most languages, fetched 
 the word from Lindus, a city of Ehodes ; Somner, the anti- 
 quary, derived it from Llawn, full, and Dyn, man, implying a 
 great concourse of people ; another antiquary, from Lugdus, 
 a Celtic prince ; Maitland from Lon, a plain, and Dun or 
 Don, a hill ; another, we know not who, referred to by the 
 same author, from a word signifying a ship and a hill j ; 
 Camden from Llong-Dinas, a City of Ships ; and Selden, 
 " seeing conjecture is free,"| was for deriving it from Llan- 
 Dien, or the temple of Diana, for reasons which will appear 
 presently. Pennant thinks that London might have been 
 called Lake- City first, and Ship-City afterwards. The opinion 
 of the editor of the Picture of London seems most plausible 
 — that Lun-Den, or Grove-City was the name, because it is 
 compounded of Belgic British, which, according to Caesar, 
 must have been the language of the district ; and he adds, 
 that the name is still common in Scandinavia. § It may be 
 argued, that London might have existed as a fortress on a lake 
 before the arrival of settlers from Belgium ; and that Grove- 
 City could not have been so distinguishing a characteristic of 
 the place as Lake-City, because wood was a great deal more 
 abundant than water. On the other hand, all the rivers at 
 that time were probably more or less given to overflowing. 
 
 * Picture of London, 1824, p. 3. 
 
 f These etymologies are to be found in Maitland's History and 
 Survey of London. Fol. 1756. Vol. i. Book i. 
 
 $ In the notes to Drayton's Polyolbion, Song viii. 
 
 § There is a Lunden in Sweden, mentioned by Maitland, vol. i. ubi 
 sup. It is tbe capital of the province of Schonen. Another town of 
 the name is in Danish Holstein. 
 
BRITISH LONDON. 9 
 
 Grove-City might have been the final name, though Lake- 
 City was the first ; and the propensity to name places from 
 trees, is still evident in our numerous Woot-tons, or Wood- 
 towns, Wood-fords, Woodlands, &c. But of all disputes, those 
 upon etymology appear the most hopeless. Perhaps the word 
 itself was not originally what we take it to be. Who would 
 suspect the word wig to come from peruke ; jour from dies ; 
 uncle from avus ; or that Kensington should have been cor- 
 rupted by the despairing organs of a foreigner, into Inhim- 
 thorpf* 
 
 Whether London commenced with a spot cleared out in the 
 woods by settlers from Holland, (Gallic Belgium,) as conjec- 
 ture might imply from Csesar, or whether the germ of it arose 
 with the aboriginal inhabitants, we may conclude safely 
 enough with Pennant, that it existed in some shape or other 
 in Caesar's time. *■-■■ 
 
 " It stood," says he, " in such a situation as the Britains would 
 select, according to the rule they established. An immense forest 
 originally extended to the river side, and even as late as the reign of 
 Henry II. covered the northern neighbourhood of the city, and was 
 filled with various species of beasts of chase. It was defended natu- 
 rally by fosses, one formed by the creek which ran along Fleet Ditch ; 
 the other, afterwards known by that of Walbrook. The south side 
 was guarded by the Thames ; the north they might think sufficiently 
 protected by the adjacent forest." f 
 
 - In this place, then, seated on their hill, (probably that on 
 which St. Paul's Cathedral stands, as it is the highest in 1/ 
 London,) and gradually exchanging their burrows in the 
 ground for huts of wicker and clay, we are to picture to our- 
 selves our metropolitan ancestors, half-naked, rude in their 
 manners, ignorant, violent, vindictive, subject to all the half- 
 reasoning impulses — their bodies tattooed like South Sea 
 Islanders — but brave, hospitable, patriotic, anxious for 
 esteem — in short, like other semi -barbarians, exhibiting 
 energies which they did not yet know how turn to account, 
 but possessing, like all human beings, the germs of the noblest 
 
 * " We have one word," says Dr. Pegge, " which has not a single 
 letter of its original, for of the French peruke, we got periwig, now 
 abbreviated to wig. Earwig comes from eruca, as Dr. Wallis observes, 
 Anonymiana, p. 56. The French word jour (day) comes from dies, 
 through diurnus, diurno, giorno; so giornale, journal. Uncle is from 
 avus, through avunculus. For Inhimthorpe, and other impossibilities, 
 see Cosmo the Third's Travels through England, in the reign of 
 Charles II." 
 
 f Pennant's London, third edition, 4to., p. 3. 
 
10 BKITISH LONDON. 
 
 capabilities. The accounts given of them by Caesar and other 
 ancient writers appear to be inconsistent, perhaps because we 
 do not enough consider the inconsistencies of our own man- 
 ners. According to their statements, the Britons had found 
 out the art of making chariots of war, and yet had not learnt 
 how to convert grain into flour, or to make a solid substance 
 of milk. They rode, as it were, in their coaches, and yet had 
 i/not arrived at the dignity of oread and cheese. Probably 
 their chariots were magnified both in number and construc- 
 tion. The scythes which modern fancy has turned into 
 proper haymaking sabres, and which some antiquaries have 
 found so convenient for cutting through " a woody country''' 
 (a strange way of keeping them sharp), may have been 
 nothing but spikes. We know not so easily what to say to 
 the bread and cheese, except that in more knowing times 
 people are not always found very ready to improve upon old 
 habits, even with reasons staring them in the face ; though, 
 on the other hand, lest habits should be thought older than 
 they are, and reformers be too impatient, it is worth while to 
 consider, not how long, but how short, a period has elapsed 
 (considering what a little thing a few centuries are in the 
 progress of time) since in the very spot where a Briton sat 
 half-naked and savage, unpossessed of a loaf or a piece of 
 cheese, are to be found gathered together all the luxuries of 
 the globe. Fancy the soul of an ancient Briton visiting his 
 old ground in St. Paul's Churchyard, and hardly staring more 
 at the church and houses, than at the bread in the baker's 
 window, and the magic leaves in that of the bookseller. In 
 one respect, an ancient City-Briton differed toto ccelo with a 
 modern. He would not eat goose! He had a superstition 
 against it. 
 
 London, in Cassar's time, was most probably a City of 
 Ships ; that is to say it traded with Gaul, and had a number 
 of boats on its marshy river. Caesar's pretence for invading 
 England, was, that it was too good a provider for Gaul, and 
 rendered his conquest of that country difficult. But it is 
 doubtful whether he ever beheld or even alludes to the infant 
 metropolis. His countrymen are supposed to have first taken 
 possession of it about a hundred years afterwards, in the reign 
 of Claudius. They had heard of a pearl-fishery, says Gibbon. 
 At all events they found oysters ; for Sandwich (Kutupium) 
 became famous with them for that luxury. 
 
 It is not our design, in this Introduction, to give anything 
 
ROMAN RELICS. 1.1 
 
 more than a sketch of the rise and growth of the metropolis ; 
 we shall leave the rest to be gathered as we proceed. Our 
 intention is to go through London, quarter by quarter, and to 
 notice the memorials as they arise ; a plan, which, compared 
 with others (at least if we are to judge of the effect which it 
 has had on ourselves), seems to possess something of the 
 superiority of sight over hearsay. When we read of events 
 in their ordinary train, we pitch ourselves with difficulty into 
 the scenes of action — sometimes wholly omit to do so ; and 
 there is a want of life and presence in them accordingly. 
 When we are placed in the scenes themselves, and told to 
 look about us — such and such a thing having happened in 
 that house — this street being one in which another famous 
 adventure took place, and that old mansion having been the 
 dwelling of wit or beauty, we find ourselves comparatively at 
 home, and enjoy the probability and the spectacle twice as 
 much. We feel (especially if we are personally conversant 
 with the spot) as if Shakspeare and Milton, Pope, Gay, and 
 Arbuthnot, the club at the Mermaid, and the beauties at the 
 court of White-Hall, were our next-door neighbours. 
 
 We shall take the reader, then, as speedily as possible 
 among the quarters alluded to, and trouble him very little 
 beforehand with dry abstracts and chronologies, or with races 
 of men almost as uninteresting. The most patriotic reader 
 of our history feels that he cares very little for his ancestors 
 the Britons ; of whom almost all he knows is, that they painted 
 their skins, and made war in chariots. Nor do the Romans 
 in England interest us more. They are men in helmets and 
 short skirts, who have left us no memorial but a road or two, 
 
 l/ and an iron name. That is all that we know of them, and 
 we care accordingly. Perhaps the Saxons, after having 
 destroyed the Roman architecture as much as possible, and 
 repented of it, took their own from what had survived. The 
 greatest relic of Caesar's countrymen in the metropolis was 
 the piece of wall which ran lately south of Moorfields, in a 
 street still designated as London Wall. The Eomans had a 
 vast material genius, not so intellectual as that of the Greeks, 
 nor so calculated to move the world ultimately, but highly 
 fitted to prepare the way for better impressions, by showing 
 
 v what the hand could perform ; and as they built their wall 
 in thoir usual giant style of solidity, it remained a long while 
 to testify their magnificence. Small relics of it are yet to be 
 seen in Little Bridge Street, behind Ludgate Hill; on the 
 
12 BRITISH, ROMAN, SAXON, AND NORMAN LONDON. 
 
 north of Bull-and-Mouth Street, between that street and St. 
 Botolph's Churchyard ; and on the south side of the Church- 
 yard of Cripplegate. There was another in the garden of 
 Stationer's Hall, but it has been blocked up. 
 
 Ancient British London was a mere space in the woods, 
 open towards the river, and presenting circular cottages on 
 the hill and slope, and a few boats on the water. As it 
 increased, the cottages grew more numerous, and commerce 
 increased the number of sails. 
 
 Eoman London was British London, interspersed with the 
 better dwellings of the conquerors, and surrounded by a wall. 
 It extended from Ludgate to the Tower, and from the river to 
 the back of Cheapside. 
 
 Saxon London was Roman London, despoiled, but retaining 
 the wall, and ultimately growing civilized with Christianity, 
 and richer in commerce. The first humble cathedral church 
 then arose, where the present one now stands. 
 
 Norman London was Saxon and Roman London, greatly 
 improved, thickened with many houses, adorned with palaces 
 of princes and princely bishops, sounding Avith minstrelsy, 
 and glittering with the gorgeous pastimes of knighthood. 
 This was its state through the Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet 
 reigns. The friar then walked the streets in his cowl (Chaucer 
 is said to have beaten one in Fleet Street), and the knights 
 rode with trumpets in gaudy colours to their tournaments in 
 Smithfield. 
 
 In the time of Edward the First, houses were still built of 
 wood, and roofed with straw, sometimes even with reeds, 
 which gave rise to numerous fires. The fires brought the 
 brooks in request; and an importance which has since been 
 swallowed up in the advancement of science, was then given 
 to the River of Wells (Bagnigge, Sadler's, and Clerkenwell), 
 to the Old Bourne (the origin of the name of Holborn,) to 
 the little river Fleet, the Wall-brook, and the brook Lang- 
 bourne, which last still gives its name to a ward. The 
 conduits, which were large leaden cisterns, twenty in number, 
 were under the special care of the lord mayor and aldermen, 
 who, after visiting them on horseback on the eighteenth of 
 September, " hunted a hare before dinner, and a fox after it, 
 in the Fields near St. Giles's."* Hours, and after-dinner 
 pursuits, must have altered marvellously since those days, 
 and the body of aldermen with them. 
 
 * Picture of London, p. 12 
 
GENERAL PROGRESS OE THE CITY. 13 
 
 It was not till the reign of Henry the Fifth, that the city 
 was lighted at night. The illumination was with lanterns, 
 slung over the street with wisps of rope or hay. Under 
 Edward the Fourth we first hear of brick houses ; and in 
 Henry the Eighth's time of pavement in the middle of the 
 streets. The general aspect of London then experienced a 
 remarkable change, in consequence of the dissolution of 
 religious houses ; the city, from the great number of them, 
 having hitherto had the appearance "of a monastic, rather 
 than a commercial metropolis."* The monk then ceased to 
 walk, and the gallant London apprentice became more riotous. 
 London, however, was still in a wretched condition, compared 
 with what it is now. The streets, which had been impassable 
 from mud, were often rendered so with filth and offal; and 
 its homeliest wants being neglected, and the houses almost 
 meeting at top, with heavy signs lumbering and filling up the 
 inferior spaces, the metropolis was subject to plagues as well 
 as fires. Nor was the interior of the houses better regarded. 
 The people seemed to cultivate the plague. " The floors," 
 says Erasmus, " are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, 
 which are occasionally renewed ; but underneath lies unmo- 
 lested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments of fish, 
 &c , &c, and everything that is nasty." f The modern 
 Englishman piques himself on his cleanliness, but he should 
 do it modestly, considering what his ancestors could do ; and 
 he should do it not half so much as he does, considering what 
 he still leaves undone. It is the disgrace of the city of 
 London irr particular, that it still continues to be uncleanly, 
 except in externals, and even to resist the efforts of the 
 benevolent to purify it. But time and circumstance ultimately 
 force people to improve. It was plague and fire that first 
 taught the Londoners to build their city better. We hope 
 the authorities will reflect upon this ; and not wait for cholera 
 to complete the lesson. 
 
 Erasmus wrote in the time of Henry the Eighth, when the 
 civil wars had terminated in a voluptuous security, and when 
 the pride of the court and nobility was at its height. Knight- 
 hood was becoming rather a show than a substance ; and the 
 changes in religion, the dissolution of the monasteries, and 
 
 * Picture of London, p. 14. For a larger account of this and other 
 matters briefly touched upon in the present introduction, see Brayley's 
 London and Middlesex, vol. i. The spirit of them, however, will 
 appear in our work, together with particulars hitherto unnoticed, 
 
 f Id. p. 13. 
 
14 RANGE OF THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 above all, the permission to read the Bible, set men thinking, 
 and identified history in future with the progress of the general 
 mind. Opinion, accidentally set free by a tyrant, was never to 
 be put down, though tyranny tried never so hard. Poetry 
 revived in the person of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; and, 
 by a maturity natural to the first unsophisticated efforts of 
 imagination, it came to its height in the next age with Shaks- 
 peare. The monasteries being dissolved, London was become 
 / entirely the commercial city it has remained ever since, though 
 it still abounded with noblemen's mansions, and did so till a 
 much later period. There were some in the time of Charles 
 the Second. The manners of the citizens under Henry the 
 Eighth were still rude and riotous, but cheerful ; and manly 
 exercises were much cultivated. Henry was so pleased with 
 one of the city archers, that he mock-heroically created him 
 Duke of Shoreditch ; upon which there arose a whole suburb 
 peerage of Marquisses of Hogsdon and Islington, Pancras, &c. 
 
 In Elizabeth's time the London houses were still mostly of 
 wood. We see remains of them in the Strand and Fleet Street, 
 and in various parts of the city. They are like houses built 
 of cards, one story projecting over the other; but unless there 
 is something in the art of building, which may in future dis- 
 pense with solidity, the modern houses will hardly be as lasting. 
 People in the old ones could at least dance and make merry. 
 Builders in former times did not spare their materials, nor 
 introduce clauses in their leases against a jig. We fancy 
 Elizabeth hearing of a builder who should introduce such a 
 proviso against the health and merriment of her buxom sub- 
 jects, and sending to him, with a good round oath, to take a 
 little less care of his purse, and more of his own neck. 
 
 In this age, ever worthy of honour and gratitude, the illus- 
 trious Bacon set free the hands of knowledge, which Aristotle 
 had chained up, and put into them the touchstone of experi- 
 ment, the mighty mover of the ages to come. This was the 
 great age, also, of English poetry and the drama. Former 
 manners and opinions now began to be seen only on the 
 stage ; intellect silently gave a man a rank in society he 
 never enjoyed before; and nobles and men of letters mixed 
 together in clubs. People now also began to speculate on 
 government, as well as religion ; and the first evidences of 
 that unsatisfied argumentative spirit appeared, which pro- 
 duced the downfall of the succeeding dynasty, and ultimately 
 the Revolution, and all that we now enjoy. 
 
IN THE TIME OF SHAKSPEARE AND BACON. 15 
 
 The governments of Elizabeth and James, fearing that the 
 greater the concourse the worse would be the consequences of 
 sickness, and secretly apprehensive, no doubt, of the growth 
 of large and intellectual bodies of men near their head- 
 quarters, did all in their power to confine the metropolis to 
 its then limits, but in vain. Despotism itself, even in its 
 mildest shape, cannot prevail against the spirit of an age ; and 
 Bacon was at that minute foreseeing the knowledge that was 
 to quicken, increase, and elevate human intercourse, by means 
 of the growth of commerce. Houses and streets grew then 
 as they do now, not so quickly indeed, but equally to the 
 astonishment of their inhabitants ; and the latter had reason 
 to congratulate themselves on a pavement to walk upon ; a 
 luxury for which a lively Parisian, not half a century ago, is 
 said to have gone down on his knees, when he came into 
 England, thanking God that there was a country " in which 
 some regard was shown to foot passengers." In Charles the 
 First's reign the suburbs of Westminster and Spitalfields 
 were greatly enlarged, and the foundation of Covent Garden 
 was commenced, as it now stands. Symptoms of a future 
 neighbourhood appeared also in Leicester Fields, though the 
 place continued to be what the name imports, as late as the 
 beginning of the last century. The progress of building 
 received a check from the Civil Wars, but only to revive 
 with new spirit ; and the great Fire — which was a great 
 blessing — swallowed up at once both the deformity and the 
 disease of old times, by widening the streets, and putting an 
 end to the liability to pestilence. London has not had a 
 "plague" since, unless it be indigestion ; which, however, is 
 the great disease of modern sedentary times, and will never be 
 got rid of, till we grow mental enough to have more respect 
 for our bodies. 
 
 Towards the end of the reign of Charles the Second the 
 metropolis began to increase in the direction of Holborn; 
 Hatton Garden, Brook, and Greville Streets were built ; and 
 Ormond Street ran towards the fields. In this and the 
 following reigns the mansion-houses of the nobility on the 
 river side began to give way to the private houses and 
 streets, still retaining the name of the Strand. Pall Mall 
 and St. James's increased also ; and Soho Square, on its first 
 building, received the name of the Duke of Monmouth. But 
 particulars of that nature will be better noticed in the body 
 of our work. The nobility, gentry, and the wits, were now 
 
16 GROWTH DURING THE LATER REIGNS. 
 
 mixed up together. City taverns were still frequented by 
 them; and city marriages began to be sought after, to mend 
 the fortunes of the debauched cavaliers. Elizabeth's suc- 
 cessor, James, was the first king who entered into anything 
 like domestic familiarity with the monied men of the city. 
 Charles the Second took "t'other bottle" with them (see the 
 Spectator) ; and Lord Rochester played the buffoon on Tower 
 Hill, as a quack doctor. 
 
 The streets about St. Martin's-in-the-fields and St. Giles's- 
 in-the-fields, those of Clerkenwell, the neighbourhood of Old 
 Street and Shoreditch, Marlborough Street, Soho, &c, succes- 
 sively arose in the time of Queen Anne, as well as a good 
 portion of Holborn, beginning from Brook Street and in- 
 cluding the neighbourhood of Bedford Street and Red Lion 
 Square. St. Paul's, too, was completed as it now stands. 
 This, and the succeeding times of the Hanover succession, 
 were the times of Whig and Tory, of the principal wit-poets, 
 of writers upon domestic manners, and of what may be called 
 an ambition of good sense and reason, — " sense " being the 
 favourite term in books, as " wit " had been in the age of 
 Charles. Clubs were multiplied ad infinitum by the more 
 harmless civil wars between Whig and Tory ; and ale and 
 beer brought the middle classes together, as wine did the rich. 
 Mug-house clubs abounded in Long Acre, Cheapside, &c. ; 
 " where gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen used to meet in 
 a great room, seldom under a hundred," if we are to believe 
 the Journey through England, in the year 1724. 
 
 At the commencement of the last century the village of 
 St. Mary-le-bone was almost a mile distant from any part of 
 London ; the nearest street being Old Bond Street, which 
 scarcely extended to the present Clifford Street. Soon after 
 the accession of George the First, New Bond Street arose, 
 with others in the immediate neighbourhood, and the 
 houses in Berkeley Square and its vicinity. Hanover Square 
 and Cavendish Square were open fields in the year 1716. 
 They were built about the beginning of the reign of George 
 the Second, at which time the houses arose on the north 
 side of Oxford Street, which then first took the name. The 
 neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, and Oxford Market, 
 Holies Street, Margaret Street, Vere Street, &c, are of the 
 same date ; and the grounds for Harley, Wigmore, and 
 Mortimer Streets were laid out ; the village and church of 
 Mary-le-bone being still separated from them all by fields. 
 
GROWTH OF THE SUBURBS. 17 
 
 At the same period the legislature ordered the erection of the 
 three parishes of St. George's Bloomsbury, St. Anne's Lime- 
 house, and St. Paul's Deptford, London having, at that time, 
 extended further in the last quarter than any other, by reason 
 of the trade on the river. 
 
 So late, nevertheless, as this period, Fleet Ditch was a 
 sluggish, foul stream, open as far as Holborn Bridge, and admit- 
 ting small vessels for trade, coal barges, &c. It had become 
 such a nuisance, that it was now arched over, and the late Fleet 
 Market soon appeared on the covering. About the year 1737, 
 the west end of the town was improved by the addition of 
 Grosvenor Square and its neighbourhood. 
 
 The increase of the metropolis on all sides was in propor- 
 tion to the length of the reign of George the Third. The 
 space between Mary-le-bone was filled in ; Southwark became 
 a mass of houses united with Westminster ; and new towns 
 rather than suburbs, appeared in all quarters ; some with the 
 names of towns, as Camden and Somers Town ; to which 
 have been added, since the death of that prince, Portland 
 Town ; a good half of Paddington, now joined with Kilburn ; 
 a world of new streets between Paddington and Notting Hill ; 
 Notting Hill itself including Shepherd's Bush ; another new 
 world of streets, called Belgravia, between Knightsbridge and 
 Pimlico ; others out by Peckham and Camberwell, including 
 Clapham and Norwood ; and others again on the east, reach- 
 ing as far as the skirts of Epping Forest ! Indeed, every 
 village which was in the immediate and even the remote 
 neighbourhood of London, and was quite distinct from one 
 another at the beginning of the reign of George the Third, 
 is now almost, if not quite, joined with it, including Highgate 
 and Hampstead themselves on the north, Norwood on the 
 south, Turnham Green and Parson's Green on the west, and 
 Laytonstone on the east. The whole of this enormous mass 
 of houses now presents us, more or less, in all quarters, with 
 handsome streets, and even with squares ; and the two sides 
 of the river are united by a series of noble bridges. New 
 churches also have risen in every direction ; and though the 
 architecture is none of the best, they contribute to a general 
 air of neatness and freshness, which the increase of education 
 and politeness promises to keep up. There is an old prophecy 
 that Hampstead is to be in the middle of London ; a pheno- 
 menon that London would really seem inclined to bring about. 
 But a metropolis must stop somewhere ; and the very causes 
 
 c 
 
18 OMNIPOTENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 of its growth (we mean the facilities of carriage, &c.) will 
 ultimately, perhaps sooner than is looked for, prevent it. 
 ^Railways now allow numbers to reside at a distance, who a 
 few years ago would have remained in London. 
 
 Ancient British London is conjectured to have been about 
 a mile long, and half a mile wide. Modern London occupies 
 an area of above eighteen square miles ; and all this space, 
 deducting not quite two miles for the river, is filled up with 
 houses and public buildings, with a population of perhaps 
 two million of souls, and with riches from all parts of the 
 globe. In this respect London may justly be said to be the 
 " metropolis of the world ;" though Paris has the advance of 
 it in some others. 
 
 During the reign of George the Third, the whole mind of 
 Europe was shaken up more vehemently than ever by the 
 French Eevolution ; and, as the consequence is after such 
 tempestuous innovations, men began to look about them, to 
 see what had stood the test of it, and how they might improve 
 their condition still farther. After a great many disputes, 
 natural on all sides, and a singular proof of the omnipotence 
 of public opinion over the most extraordinary military power, 
 it may be safely asserted, that the essence of that opinion, or 
 the intellectual part of it is secretly acknowledged as the 
 great regulator of society, even by those who appear to regu- 
 late it themselves ; and who never show their sense to more 
 advantage, than when they lead where they must have 
 followed. This is the most remarkable era, perhaps, in the 
 history of mankind ; and experiment, and promise, are of a 
 piece with it. Everybody is now more or less educated ; the 
 extension of the graces of life does away with sordidness, and 
 teaches people that men do not live by "bread alone;" there 
 is a reading public, let the jealousies of secluded scholarship 
 say what they will ; the mighty hands which Bacon set free 
 are in full action ; the Press reports and assists them, and 
 utters a thousand voices daily, not to be put an end to by 
 anything short of a convulsion of the globe. Time and 
 space themselves are comparatively annihilated by the inven- 
 tions of the steam-carriage and the electric telegraph. The 
 corn-laws have gone, opening still wider the prospects of 
 mankind ; and improvements may be looked for in society, so 
 much to the benefit of all classes, that the most reasonable 
 observer will decline stating the amount of his expectations, 
 lest they should be thought as extravagant, as old times 
 
"MERRY LONDON," AND " MERRY ENGLAND." 19 
 
 would have thought the telegraph just mentioned, or the 
 publication of those thousands of volumes a day called News- 
 papers.* 
 
 A word or two more on health, and our modes of living. 
 London was once called " Merry London," the metropolis of 
 " Merry England." The word did not imply exclusively 
 what it does now. Chaucer talks of the " merry organ at 
 the mass." But it appears to have had a signification still 
 more desirable — to have meant the best condition in which 
 anything could be found, with cheerfulness for the result. 
 Gallant soldiers were "merry men." Favourable weather 
 was " merry." And London was " merry," because its in- 
 habitants were not only rich, but healthy and robust. They 
 had sports infinite, up to the time of the Commonwealth — 
 races and wrestlings, archery, quoits, tennis, foot-ball, hurl- 
 ing, &c. Their May-day was worthy of the burst of the 
 season ; not a man was left behind out of the fields, if he 
 could help it; their apprentices piqued themselves on their 
 stout arms, and not on their milliners' faces ; their nobility 
 shook off the gout in tilts and tournaments ; their Christmas 
 closed the year with a joviality which brought the very trees 
 in-doors to crown their cups with, and which promised 
 admirably for the year that was to come. In everything 
 they did, there was a reference to Nature and her works, as 
 if nothing should make them forget her ; and a gallant re- 
 cognition of the duties of health and strength, as the foundation 
 of their very right to be fathers. 
 
 We are aware of the drawbacks that accompanied this 
 physical wisdom ; of the comparative ignorance of the people, 
 and the abuses they suffered accordingly; of slaveries, and 
 star-chambers; of plagues, fires, and civil wars; of the burnings 
 in Smithneld; of the murderings of wretched old women, 
 supposed to be witches ; and of other domestic superstitions, 
 of which we are, perhaps, now-a-days unable to calculate 
 the mischief. Surely we desire to see no more of them ; and 
 we are heartily willing that the same progress of thought 
 which has swept them away, should have done us a dis- 
 service meanwhile^ which more thinking shall put an end to. 
 
 * Since this paragraph was written, the -wonderful events have 
 taken place in Prance, which have so agitated the whole of Europe, 
 and which promise to open a new epoch in human history. May all 
 benefit from them, as we believe all may, without real injury to any 
 one! 
 
 C2 
 
20 "MERRY LONDON," AND "MERRY ENGLAND." 
 
 Far are we from desiring to go back. But we would hasten 
 the time when reflection shall recover the good for us, with- 
 out bringing back the evil. And this surely it may. This 
 it must — for real knowledge could not make its progress with- 
 out it. The labour would not end in the reward. It has 
 been supposed, that the poorer orders cannot have their 
 enjoyments again — cannot have their old Christmas, for 
 example, unless the rich supply them with the means of en- 
 joyment, and so renew their charter of dependence. But this 
 is to suppose that times are not changing in other respects, 
 and that knowledge is not spreading. Riches and poverty 
 themselves are modified by the progress of society; means 
 are increased, however, to their apparent detriment at first, 
 among the poor; and the knowledge of enjoyment becomes 
 no longer confined to the rich, any more than the enjoyment 
 of knowledge. Men may surely learn how to stouten their 
 legs, as well as to improve their stockings. Now of all plea- 
 sures, those are the cheapest which are bought of nature — 
 such as air and exercise, and manly sports ; and though we 
 allow that the poor, in order to relish them, must be free from 
 the melancholier states of poverty, it is desirable meanwhile that 
 the dispensers of knowledge should assist in hastening more 
 cheerful times by preparing for them, and that all classes should 
 be told how much the cultivation of their bodily health increases 
 the ability, both of rich and poor, to get out of their troubles. 
 You may steep a gipsey in trouble, and he shall issue out of it 
 laughing. It would not be easy to do this with an epicurean, or 
 a fund-holder, or with one of the parish poor ; but neither need 
 any one despair; for neither can the might of mechanical inven- 
 tions, nor the greater might of opinion, be put down, whether in 
 their first awful issuing forth, or in their final beneficence. 
 And he that shall keep this oftenest in his mind, and be 
 among the first to prepare for their enjoyment, by adminis- 
 tering what helps he can to the encouragement of manly 
 exercises among us, will assist in reviving the good old 
 epithets of "merry England," and " merry London," in a sense 
 they never have had yet. The progress of society has put an 
 end to the melancholy absurdity of inquisitions, and star- 
 chambers, and civil wars. The ground, therefore, is more 
 clear for us to make England merrier in all respects than she 
 was before. These things, we are aware, must result from 
 other changes ; but the changes themselves are in the reason- 
 able and inevitable course of events. 
 
TREES IN THE CITY. 21 
 
 As a link of a very pleasing description between old times 
 and new not unconnected with what we have been speaking 
 of, we shall conclude our introduction by observing, that 
 there is scarcely a street in the city of London, perhaps not 
 one, nor many out of the pale of it, from some part of which 
 the passenger may not discern a tree. Most persons to whom 
 this has been mentioned have doubted the accuracy of our 
 information, nor do we profess hitherto to have ascertained it ; 
 though since we heard the assertion, we have made a point of 
 endeavouring to do so whenever we could, and have not been 
 disappointed. The mention of the circumstance generally 
 creates a laughing astonishment, and a cry of " impossible ! " 
 Two persons, who successively heard of it the other day, not 
 only thought it incredible as a general fact, but doubted 
 whether half a dozen streets could be found with a twig in 
 them ; and they triumphantly instanced " Cheapside," as a 
 place in which it was "out of the question." Yet in Cheap- 
 side is an actual, visible, and even ostentatiously visible tree, to 
 all who have eyes to look about them. It stands at the corner 
 of Wood Street, and occupies the space of a house. There 
 was a solitary one the other day in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
 which has now got a multitude of young companions. A 
 little child was shown us a few years back, who was said 
 never to have beheld a tree but that single one in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard. Whenever a tree was mentioned, she thought 
 it was that and no other. She had no conception even of the 
 remote tree in Cheapside ! This appears incredible ; but 
 there would seem to be no bounds, either to imagination or to 
 the want of it. We were told the other day, on good autho- 
 rity, of a man who had resided six-and -thirty years in the 
 square of St. Peter's at Rome, and then for the first time went 
 inside the Cathedral. 
 
 There is a little garden in Watling Street ! It lies com- 
 pletely open to the eye, being divided from the footway by a 
 railing only. 
 
 In the body of our work will be found notices of other trees 
 and green spots, that surprise the observer in the thick of the 
 noise and smoke. Many of them are in churchyards. Others 
 have disappeared during the progress of building. Many 
 courts and passages are named from trees that once stood in 
 them, as Vine and Elm Court, Fig-tree Court, Green-arbour 
 Court, &c. It is not surprising that garden-houses, as they 
 were called, should have formely aboimded in Holborn, in 
 
22 CULTIVATION OF FLOWERS. 
 
 Bunhill Row, and other (at that time) suburban places. We 
 notice the fact, in order to observe how fond the poets were 
 of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to 
 have made a point of having one. The only London residence 
 of Chapman which is known, was in Old Street Road ; doubt- 
 less at that time a rural suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 house, on the Surrey side of the Thames (for they lived as 
 well as wrote together), most probably had a garden: and 
 Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of 
 the mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even 
 y a flower, put in a window in the streets of a great city (and 
 the London citizens, to their credit, are fond of flowers,) 
 affects the eye something in the same way as the hand-organs, 
 which bring unexpected music to the ear. They refresh the 
 common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy 
 discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which 
 are associated with the remembrance of all that is young and 
 innocent. They seem also to present to us a portion of the 
 tranquillity we think we are labouring for, and the desire of 
 which is felt as an earnest that we shall realise it somewhere, 
 either in this world or in the next. Above all, they render 
 us more cheerful for the performance of present duties ; and 
 the smallest seed of this kind, dropt into the heart of man, is 
 worth more, and may terminate in better fruits, than anybody 
 but a great poet could tell us. 
 
23 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ST. PAUL'S, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 The Roman Temple of Diana — The first Christian Church — Old St. 
 Paul's — Inigo Jones's Portico — Strange Usages of Former Times — 
 Encroachments on the Fabric of the Cathedral — Paul's Walkers — 
 Dining with Duke Humphrey — Catholic Customs — The Boy-Bishop 
 ■ — The Children of the Eevels — Strange Ceremony on the Festivals 
 of the Commemoration and Conversion of St. Paul — Ancient Tombs 
 in the Cathedral — Scene between John of Gaunt and the Anti- 
 Wickliffites — Paul's Cross — The Folkmote — The Sermons — Jane 
 Shore — See-saw of Popery and Protestantism — London House — 
 The Charnel — The Lollards' Tower — St. Paul's School— Desecration 
 of the Cathedral during the Commonwealth — The present Cathedral 
 — Sir Christopher Wren — Statue of Queen Anne. 
 
 S St. Paul's Churchyard is probably the 
 oldest ground built upon in London, we 
 begin our perambulations in that quarter. 
 The cross which formerly stood north of 
 the cathedral, and of which Stowe could 
 not tell the antiquity, is supposed by 
 some to have originated in one of those 
 sacred stones which the Druids made 
 use of in worship ; but at least it is more than probable that 
 here was a burial-ground of the ancient Britons; because 
 when Sir Christopher Wren dug for a foundation to his 
 cathedral, he discovered abundance of ivory and wooden pins, 
 apparently of box, which are supposed to have fastened their 
 winding sheets. The graves, of the Saxons lay above them, 
 lined with chalk-stones, or consisting of stones hollowed out : 
 and in the same row with the pins, but deeper, lay Roman 
 horns, lamps, lachrymatories, and all the elegancies of classic 
 sculpture. Sir Christoper dug till he came to sand, and sea- 
 shells, and to the London clay, which has since become 
 famous in geology ; so that the single history of St. Paul's 
 Churchyard carries us back to the remotest periods of 
 tradition ; and we commence our book in the proper style of 
 the old Chroniclers, who were not content, unless they began 
 with the history of the world. 
 
 The Romans were thought to have built a Temple to Diana 
 on the site of the modern cathedral, by reason of a number of 
 relics of horned animals reported to have been dug up there. 
 
24 THE ROMAN TEMPLE OF DIANA. 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren asserts that there was no ground for 
 the supposition. There was a similar story of a temple of 
 Apollo at Westminster, built on the site cf the present abbey, 
 end said to have been destroyed by an earthquake. " Earth- 
 quakes," observed Sir Christopher, " break not stones to 
 pieces ; nor would the Picts be at that pains ; but I imagine 
 that the monks, finding the Londoners pretending to a Temple 
 of Diana, where now St. Paul's stands (horns of stags and 
 tusks of boars having been dug up in former times, and it is 
 said also in later years), would not be behindhand in antiquity ; 
 but I must assert, that having changed all the foundations of 
 old St. Paul's, and upon that occasion rummaged all the 
 ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find some 
 footsteps of such a temple, 1 could not discover any, and 
 therefore can give no more credit to Diana than to Apollo."* 
 
 Woodward, on the other hand, insisted on the Temple of 
 Diana. He asserted, that a variety of the relics alluded to, 
 in his own possession, were actually dug up on the spot, 
 together with sacrificing vessels sculptured with beasts of 
 chase, and with figures of Diana. In digging between the 
 Deanery and Blackfriars a small brass figure of the goddess 
 had also been found. f 
 
 Woodward was an enthusiast, eager to find what he fancied. 
 Wren was willing to find also, but with cooler eyes. It is at 
 the same time worth observing, that though Sir Christopher 
 appears to have rejected the Pagan story with reason, he 
 could not find it in his heart to refuse credit to the gratuitous 
 traditions of old writers in favour of a Christian church 
 " planted here by the Apostles themselves. "J He calls the 
 traditions " authentic testimony." 
 
 It is barely possible that the relics mentioned by Woodward 
 might have been all dug up by the time Sir Christopher set 
 about his inquiry ; but let them have been what they might, 
 they would have proved nothing in favour of a Roman Temple, 
 because the Romans never buried under their temples ; neither 
 did their legions remain long enough in this country to see the 
 character of the place altered. It was sufficiently remarkable, 
 that proofs had been discovered even of their burying there at 
 all; for, at Rome, none but very extraordinary persons were 
 suffered to be buried within the walls ; and the Roman ceme- 
 
 * Parentalia, p. 290, quoted in the work next mentioned, 
 f Brayley's Loudon and Middlesex, vol. i. p. 87. 
 % Parentalia, p. 27. 
 
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 25 
 
 teries in England are proved to have been without them. It 
 can only be accounted for on the supposition that, as no great 
 men are so great as the great men of colonies, the Prefects and 
 their officers at London decreed themselves an honour, which 
 was to be attained at Rome by nothing short of the merits of 
 a Fabricius or a Publicola. 
 
 The first authentic account of the existence of a Christian 
 church on this spot is that of Bede, who attributes the erec- 
 tion of it to King Ethelbert, about the year 610, soon after 
 his conversion by St. Augustine. The building, which was 
 probably of wood, was burned down in 961, but was restored 
 the same year — a proof that, notwithstanding the lofty terms 
 in which it is spoken of by the old historian, it could not 
 have been of any great extent. This second church lasted 
 till the time of William the Conqueror, when it, too, was 
 destroyed by a conflagration, which burned the greater part 
 of the city. Bishop Maurice, who had just been appointed to 
 the see, now resolved to rebuild the cathedral on a much 
 grander scale than before, at his own expense. To assist him 
 in accomplishing this object, the King granted him the stones 
 of an old castle, called the Palatine Tower, which stood at the 
 mouth of the Fleet River, and which had been reduced to ruins 
 in the same conflagration. The Bishop's design was looked 
 upon as so vast, that "men at that time," says Stowe, "judged 
 it wold never have bin finished ; it was then so wonderfull for 
 length and breadth."* This was in the year 1087 ; and the 
 people had some reason for their astonishment, for the building 
 was not completed till the year 1240, in the reign of Henry 
 the Third. Some even extend the date to 1315, which is two 
 hundred and twenty-eight years after its foundation; but this 
 was owing rather to repairs and additions than to anj'thing 
 wanting in the original edifice. The cathedral thus patched, 
 altered, and added to, over and over again, with different 
 orders and no orders of architecture, and partially burned, 
 oftener than once, remained till the Great Fire of London, 
 when it was luckily rendered incapable of further deformity, 
 and gave way to the present. 
 
 It was, indeed, a singular structure, and used for singular 
 purposes. 
 
 '* The exterior of the building," says an intelligent writer, himself 
 an architect, " presented a curious medley of the architectural style of 
 
 * Survey of London, p. 262. First edition. 
 
26 
 
 OLD ST. PAUL S. 
 
 different ages. At the western front Inigo Jones had erected a portico 
 of the Corinthian order ; thus diplaying a singular example of that 
 bigotry of taste, which, only admitting one mode of beauty, is insensible 
 to the superior claims of congruity. This portico, however, singly 
 considered, was a grand and beautiful composition, and not inferior to 
 any thing of the kind which modern times have produced : fourteen 
 columns, each rising to the lofty height of forty-six feet, were so dis- 
 posed, that eight, with two pilasters placed in front, and three on each 
 flank, formed a square (oblong) peristyle, and supported an entabla- 
 ture and balustrade, which was crowned with statues of kings, prede- 
 cessors of Charles the First, who claimed the honour of this fabric. 
 Had the whole front been accommodated to Eoman architecture, it 
 might h?*ve deserved praise as a detached composition ; but though 
 cased with rustic work, and decorated with regular cornices, the 
 pediment retained the original Gothic character in its equilateral pro- 
 portions, and it was flanked by barbarous obelisks and ill-designed 
 turrets. 
 
 " The whole of the exterior body of the church had been cased and 
 reformed in a similar manner, through which every detail of antiquity 
 was obliterated, and the general forms and proportions only left. The 
 buttresses were converted into regular piers, and a complete cornice 
 crowned the whole : of the windows, some were barely ornamented 
 apertures, whilst others were decorated in a heavy Italian manner, 
 with architrave dressings, brackets, and cherubic heads. The tran* 
 
VERSES ON ITS RENOVATION. 27 
 
 septs presented fronts of the same incongruous style as the western 
 elevation, and without any of its beauties." * 
 
 In its original state, however, old St. Paul's must have been 
 an imposing building. Its extent at least was very great. 
 The entire mass measured 690 feet in length, by 130 in 
 breadth, and it was surmounted by a spire 520 feet high. The 
 spire was of timber. It bore upon its summit not only a ball 
 and cross, but a large gilded eagle, which served as a weather- 
 cock. But the church having been nearly burned to the 
 ground in June, 1561, owing to the carelessness of a plumber 
 who left a pan of coals burning near some wood-work while 
 he went to dinner, it was hastily restored without the lofty 
 spire ; so that in Hollar's engraving, given by Dugdale, of the 
 building as it appeared in 1656, it stands curtailed of this 
 ornament. Only the square tower, from which the spire sprang 
 up, remains. " The old cathedral," says Mr. Malcolm, on the 
 authority of a note with which he was furnished by the Eev. 
 Mr. Watts, of Sion College, " did not stand in the same direc- 
 tion with the new, the latter inclining rather to the south- 
 west and north-east ; and the west front of the Old Church 
 came much farther towards Ludgate than the present."")* 
 
 It is of the Cathedral, as thus renovated, that Sir John 
 Denham speaks in the following passage of his Cooper's Hill : — 
 " That sacred pile, so vast, so high, 
 That whether it 's a part of earth or sky, 
 Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud 
 Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud ; 
 Paul's, the late name of such a muse whose flight 
 Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height ; 
 Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire, 
 Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire, 
 Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings, 
 Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.'* 
 
 " The best of poets " is his brother courtier "Waller, who 
 had some time before written his verses " Upon his Majesty's 
 repairing of St. Paul's," in which he compares King Charles, 
 for his regeneration of the Cathedral, to Amphion and other 
 " antique minstrels," who were said to have achieved archi- 
 tectural feats by the power of music, and who, he says, 
 " Sure were Charles-like kings, 
 Cities their lutes, and subjects' hearts their strings ; 
 On which with so divine a hand they strook, 
 Consent of motion from their breath they took." 
 
 * Fine Arts of the English School, quoted in Brayley, vol. ii. p. 217, 
 f Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 134, 
 
28 STRANGE USAGE 
 
 Jones's first labour, the removal of the various foreign 
 encumbrances that had so long oppressed and deformed the 
 venerable edifice, Waller commemorates by a pair of references 
 to St. Paul's history, not unhappily applied : he says the whole 
 nation had combined with his Majesty 
 
 " to grace 
 The Gentiles' great Apostle, and deface 
 Those state-obscuring sheds, that like a chain 
 Seem'd to confine and fetter him again ; 
 "Which the glad Saint shakes off at his command, 
 As once the viper from his sacred hand." 
 
 Denham's prediction did no credit to the prophetic reputa- 
 tion of poetry. Of the fabric which was to be unassailable 
 by zeal or fire the poet himself lived to see the ruin, begun 
 by the one and completed by the other ; and he himself, 
 curiously enough, a short time before his death, was engaged 
 as the King's surveyor-general in (nominally at least) pre- 
 siding over the erection of the new Cathedral — the successor 
 of the " sacred pile," of which he had thus sung the immor- 
 tality. 
 
 When Jones began the repairs and additions of which his 
 portico formed a part, in 1633, the rubbish that was removed 
 was carried, Mr. Malcolm informs us, to Clerkenwell fields, 
 where, he suggests, " some curious fragments of antiquity may 
 still remain."* The very beauty of this portico, surmounted 
 with its strange pediment and figures, and dragging at its back 
 that heap of deformity, completed the monstrous look of the 
 whole building, like a human countenance backed by some 
 horned lump. But this was nothing to the moral deformities 
 of the interior. Old St. Paul's, throughout almost the whole 
 period of its existence, at least from the reign of Henry the 
 Third, was a thoroughfare, and a " den of thieves." The 
 thoroughfare was occasioned probably by the great circuit 
 which people had been compelled to make by the extent of 
 the wall of the old churchyard — a circumference a great deal 
 larger than it is at present. There is a principle of familiarity 
 in the Catholic worship which, while it excites the devotional 
 tenderness of more refined believers, is apt to produce the 
 consequence, though not the feelings, of contempt among the 
 vulgar. Fear hinders contempt ; but when license is mixed 
 with it, and the fear is not in action, the liberties taken are 
 apt to be in proportion. We have seen, in a Catholic chapel 
 * Londinium Bedivivum. iii., p. 81, 
 
OF FORMER TIMES. 29 
 
 in London, a milk-maid come into the passage, dash down her 
 pails, and having crossed herself, and applied the holy water 
 with reverence, depart with the same air with which she came 
 in. The next thing to setting down the pails, under the cir- 
 cumstances above mentioned, would have been to creep with 
 them through the church. Porters and loiterers would follow; 
 and by degrees the place of worship would become a place of 
 lounging and marketing, and intrigue, and all sorts of dis- 
 order. In the reign of Edward the Third, the King complains 
 to the Bishop that the " eating-room of the canons " had 
 " become the office and work-place of artisans, and the resort 
 of shameless women." The complaint turned out to be of no 
 avail ; nor had the mandate of the Bishop a better result in the 
 time of Eichard the Third, though it was accompanied with 
 the penalty of excommunication. An Act was passed to as 
 little purpose in the reign of Philip and Mary ; and in the 
 time of Elizabeth the new opinions in religion seem to have 
 left the place fairly in possession of its chaos, as if in derision 
 of the old. The toleration of the abuse thus became a matter 
 of habit and indifference; and a young theologian, afterwards 
 one of the witty prelates of Charles the Second (Bishop Earle), 
 did not scruple to make it the subject of what we should now 
 call a "pleasant article." 
 
 " It must appear strange," says a note in Brayley's London and 
 Middlesex (vol. ii. p. 219), "to those who are acquainted with the 
 decent order and propriety of regulation now observed in our cathe- 
 dral churches, and other places of divine worship, that ever such an 
 extended catalogue of improper customs and disgusting usages as 
 are noticed in various works, should have been formerly admitted to 
 be practised in St. Paul's church, and more especially that they should 
 have been so long habitually exercised as to be defended on the plea 
 of prescription. 
 
 " These nuisances had become so great, that in the time of Philip 
 and Mary the Common Council found it necessary to pass an act, 
 subjecting all future offenders to pains and penalties. From that act, 
 the church seems to have been not only made a common passage-way 
 for all — beer, bread, fish, flesh, fardels of stuffs, &c, but also for 
 mules, horses, and other beasts. This statute, however, must have 
 proved only a temporary restraint (excepting, probably, as to the 
 leading of animals through the church); for in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 we learn from Londinium Redivivum (vol. hi. p. 71), that idlers and 
 drunkards were indulged in lying and sleeping on the benches at the 
 choir door ; and that other usages, too nauseous for description, were 
 also frequent." 
 
 Among the curious notices relating to the irreverent prac- 
 tices pursued in this church in the time of Elizabeth, collected 
 
SO ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CATHEDRAL. 
 
 by Mr. Malcolm from the manuscript presentments on visita- 
 tions preserved at St. Paul's, are the following : — 
 
 "In the upper quier wher the comon [communion] table dothe 
 stande, there is much unreverente people, walking with their hatts on 
 their heddes, comonly all the service tyme, no man reproving them 
 for yt." 
 
 " Yt is a greate disorder in the churche, that porters, butchers, and 
 water-bearers, and who not, be suffered (in special tyme of service) 
 to carrye and recarrye whatsoever, no man withstandinge them, or 
 gainsaying them," &c. 
 
 " The notices of encroachments on St. Paul's, in the same reign, are 
 equally curious. The chantry and other chapels were completely 
 diverted from their ancient purposes ; some were used as receptacles 
 for stores and lumber ; another was a school, another a glazier's shop ; 
 and the windows of all were, in general, broken. Part of the vaults 
 beneath the church was occupied by a carpenter, the remainder was 
 held by the bishop, the dean and chapter, and the minor canons. 
 One vault, thought to have been used for a burial-place, was con- 
 verted into a wine-cellar, and a way had been cut into it through the 
 wall of the building itself. (This practice of converting church 
 vaults into wine-cellars, it may be remarked, is not yet worn out. 
 Some of the vaults of Winchester Cathedral are now, or were lately, 
 used for that purpose.) The shrowds and cloisters under the convo- 
 cation house, ' where not long since the sermons in foul weather were 
 wont to be preached,' were made ' a common lay-stall for boardes, 
 trunks, and chests, being lett oute unto trunk-makers, where, by 
 meanes of their daily knocking and noyse, the church is greatly dis- 
 turbed.' More than twenty houses also had been built against the 
 outer walls of the cathedral ; and part of the very foundations was 
 cut away to make offices. One of those houses had literally a closet 
 dug in the wall ; from another was a way through a window into a 
 wareroom in the steeple ; a third, partly formed by St. Paul's, was 
 lately used as a play-house ; and the owner of the fourth baked his 
 bread and pies in an oven excavated within a buttress."* 
 
 The middle of St. Paul's was also the Bond Street of that 
 period, and remained so till the time of the Commonwealth. 
 The loungers were called Paul's Walkers. 
 
 " The young gallants from the inns of court, the western and the 
 northern parts of the metropolis, and those that had spirit enough," 
 says our author, " to detach themselves from the counting-houses in 
 the east, used to meet at the central point, St. Paul's ; and from this 
 circumstance obtained the appellations of Paul's Walkers, as we now 
 aay, Bond-street Loungers. However strange it may seem, tradition 
 says that the great Lord Bacon used in his youth to cry, Eastward ho I 
 and was literally a Paul's Walker." f 
 
 Lord Bacon had a taste for display, which was afterwards 
 exhibited in a magnificent manner, worthy of the grandeur 
 of his philosophy ; but this, when he was young, might 
 
 * Londinium Redivivum. vol. iii., pp. 71, 73. 
 f Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807. 
 
DIKING WITH DUKE HUMPHREY. 3t 
 
 probably enough have been vented in the shape of an exube- 
 rance, which did not yet know what to do with itself. Who 
 would think that the late Mr. Fox ever wore red-heeled shoes, 
 and was a " buck about town ?" 
 
 But to conclude with these curious passages : — 
 " The Walkers in Paul's," continues our author, " during this and 
 the following reigns, were composed of a motley assemblage of the 
 gay, the vain, the dissolute, the idle, the knavish, and the lewd ; and 
 various notices of this fashionable resort may be found in the old plays 
 and other writings of the time. Ben Jonson, in his Every man out of 
 his Humour, has given a series of scenes in the interior of St. Paul's, 
 and an assemblage of a great variety of characters ; in the course of 
 which the curious piece of information occurs, that it was common to 
 affix bills, in the form of advertisements, upon the columns in the 
 aisles of the church, in a similar manner to what is now done in the 
 Koyal Exchange : those bills he ridicules in two affected specimens, 
 the satire of which is admirable. Shakspeare also makes Falstaff say, 
 in speaking of Bardolph, 'I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a 
 horse in Smithfield : if I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were 
 mann'd, hors'd, and wiv'd.' " 
 
 To complete these urbanities, the church was the resort of 
 pickpockets. Bishop Corbet, a poetical wit of the time of 
 Charles the First, sums up its character, as the " walke 
 " Where all our Brittaine sinners sweare and talk." * 
 
 Only one reformation had taken place in it since the com- 
 plaint made by Edward the Third : no woman, at the time of 
 Earle's writing, was to be found there ; at least not in the 
 crowd. " The visitants," he says, " are all men without 
 exception." | A commonwealth writer insinuates otherwise ; 
 but the visitation was not public. The practice of " walking 
 and talking" in St. Paul's appears to have revived under 
 James the Second, probably in connection with Catholic 
 wishes ; for therewas an Act of William and Mary, by which 
 transgressors forfeited twenty pounds for every offence; and, 
 what is remarkable, the Bishop threatened to enforce this Act 
 so late as the year 1725 ; " the custom," says Mr. Malcolm, 
 " had become so very prevalent." J 
 
 A proverb of " dining with Duke Humphrey," has sur- 
 vived to the present day, owing to a supposed tomb of 
 Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, which was popular 
 with the poorer frequenters of the place. They had a custom 
 of strewing herbs before it, and sprinkling it with water. 
 
 * Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5. 
 •f Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant. 
 
 % Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the 
 Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 281. 
 
32 CATHOLIC CUSTOMS. 
 
 The tomb, according to Stow, was not Humphrey's, but that 
 of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the house of Warwick. Men 
 who strolled about for want of a dinner, were familiar enough 
 with this tomb ; and were therefore said to dine with Duke 
 Humphrey. 
 
 While some of the extraordinary operations above-men- 
 tioned were going on (the intriguing, picking of pockets, &c), 
 the sermon was very likely proceeding. It is but fair, how- 
 ever, to conclude, that in the Catholic times, during the 
 elevation of the host, there was a show of respect. We have 
 heard a gentleman say, who visited Spain in his childhood, 
 that he remembered being at the theatre during a fandango, 
 when a loud voice cried out " Dios" (God); and all the 
 people in the house, including the dancers, fell on their knees. 
 A profound silence ensued. After a pause of a few seconds, 
 the people rose, and the fandango went on as before. The 
 little boy could not think what had happened, but was told 
 that the host had gone by. The Deity (for so it was thought) 
 had been sent for to trie house of a sick man; and it was to 
 honour him in passing, that the theatre had gone down on 
 their knees. Catholics reform as well as other people, with 
 the growth of knowledge, especially when restrictions no 
 longer make their prejudices appear a matter of duty. We 
 know not how it is in Spain at this moment, with regard to 
 the devout interval of the fandango ; but we know what 
 would be thought of it by thousands of the offspring of those 
 who witnessed it on this occasion ; and certainly in no 
 Catholic church now-a-days can be seen the abominations of 
 old St. Paul's. 
 
 The passenger who now goes by the cathedral, and asso- 
 ciates the idea of the inside with that of respectful silence 
 and the simplicity of Protestant worship, little thinks what a 
 noise has been in that spot, and what gorgeous processions 
 have issued out of it. 
 
 Old St. Paul's was famous for the splendour of its shrine, 
 and for its priestly wealth. The list of its copes, vestments, 
 jewels, gold and silver cups, candlesticks, &c, occupies 
 thirteen folio pages of the Monasticon. The side aisles were 
 filled with chapels to different saints and the Virgin ; that is 
 to say, with nooks partitioned off one from another, and 
 enriched with separate altars ; and it is calculated, that, 
 taking the whole establishment, there could hardly be fewer 
 than two hundred priests. On certain holidays, this sacred 
 
the BOY-Bisnor. 33 
 
 multitude, in their richest copes, together with the lord mayor, 
 aldermen, and city companies, and all the other parish priests 
 of London, who carried a rich silver cross for every church, 
 issued forth from the cathedral door in procession, singing a 
 hymn, and so went through Cheapside and Cornhill to Leaden - 
 hall, and back again. The last of these spectacles was for 
 the peace of Guisnes, in 1546 ; shortly after which Henry the 
 Eighth swept into his treasury the whole glories of Catholic 
 worship — copes, crosses, jewels, church-plate, &c. — himself 
 being the most bloated enormity that had ever misused them. 
 
 Among other retainers to the establishment, Henry sup- 
 pressed a singular little personage, entitled the Boy-Bishop. 
 The Boy-Bishop (JEpiscopus Puerorum) was a chorister annu- 
 ally -elected by his fellows to imitate the state and attire of a 
 bishop, which he assumed on St. Nicholas's clay, the sixth of 
 December, and retained till that of the Innocents, December 
 the twenty-eighth. 
 
 " This was done," says Brayley, " in commemoration of St. Nicholas, 
 who, according to the Romish Church, was so piously fashioned, that 
 even when a babe in his cradle he would fast both on Wednesdays and 
 Fridays, and at those times was ' well pleased' to suck but once a-day. 
 However ridiculous it may now seem, the Boy-Bishop is stated to have 
 possessed episcopal authority during the above term ; and the other 
 children were his prebendaries. He was not permitted to celebrate 
 mass, but he had full liberty to preach ; and however puerile his dis- 
 course; might have been, we find they were regarded with so much 
 attention, that the learned Dean Colet, in his statutes for St. Paul's 
 school, expressly ordained that the scholars shall, on ' every Childermas 
 daye, come to Paule's Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's sermon, 
 and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the 
 Chylde Bishop ; and with them the maisters and surveyors of the 
 scole.' Probably," continues Mr. Brayley, " these orations, though 
 affectedly childish, were composed by the more aged members of the 
 church. If the Boy-Bishop died within the time of his prelacy, he was 
 interred in pontificalibus, with the same ceremonies as the real 
 diocesan ; and the tomb of a child-bishop in Salisbury Cathedral may 
 be referred to as an instance of such interment." * 
 
 " From a printed church-book," says Mr. Hone, " containing the 
 service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of 
 Innocents'-day, the Boy-Bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their 
 copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn pro- 
 cession, chanting and singing versicles, as they walked into the 
 choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went 
 foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy-Bishop with his priests in 
 the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the 
 children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the upper- 
 most ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, 
 
 * London and Middlesex, vol. ii., p. 229. 
 
S4 
 
 and the petit-canons the tapers, according to the ruhrick. Afterwards 
 he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which 
 he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests 
 all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers 
 and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy-Bishop 
 repeated salutations, prayers, and yersicles ; and in conclusion gave 
 his henediction to the people, the chorus answering Deo Gratias." * 
 
 The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of 
 words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. 
 Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. 
 Nicholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy among the 
 doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of 
 a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by 
 Dean Colet was in honour of " the child Jesus." There was 
 a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, 
 perhaps, a revival, as far as scholarship was concerned. The 
 boys in the older school were not only taught singing but 
 acting, and for a long period were the most popular per- 
 formers of stage-plays. In the time of Eichard the Second, 
 these Boy-Actors petitioned the King to prohibit certain 
 ignorant and "inexpert people from presenting the History 
 of the Old Testament." They began with sacred plays, but 
 afterwards acted profane ; so that St. Paul's singing-school 
 was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well 
 as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common 
 wherever there were choir-boys ; and it doubtless originated, 
 partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at 
 which they assisted, and partly in the delight which the more 
 scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of 
 Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of 
 Terence, still kept up at Westminster school, is supposed by 
 Warton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of Westminster 
 Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth, (who took 
 great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as 
 actors, though not so much so at those of St. Paul's. A set 
 of them were incorporated under the title of Children of the 
 Ivevels, among whom are to be found names that have since 
 become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare — Field, 
 Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, 
 and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It 
 appears that children with good voices were sometimes kid- 
 napped for a supply. | Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred 
 
 * Ancient Mysteries described, &c, 1823, p. 195. 
 f Purveyed is the word of Mr. Chalmers; who says, however, that he 
 icnows not on what principle the right of " purveying such children * 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS. 35 
 
 Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus 
 pressed into the service ; and a relic of the custom is supposed 
 to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, 
 which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. 
 The exercise of the right of might over children, and by 
 people who wanted singers — an effeminate press-gang — would 
 seem an intolerable nuisance ; but the children were probably 
 glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to 
 sing and play before a court. 
 
 Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile 
 actors : 
 
 Weep with me, all you that read 
 
 This little story; 
 And know, for whom a tear you shed, 
 Death's self is sorry. 
 
 'Twas a child that so did thrive 
 
 In grace and feature, 
 As heaven and nature seemed to strive 
 
 Which owned the creature. 
 
 Years he numbered, scarce thirteen, 
 
 When fates turned cruel; 
 Yet three filled zodiacs had he been 
 
 The stage's jewel; 
 
 And did act (what now we moan) 
 
 Old men so duly, 
 As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one, 
 
 He played so truly. 
 
 Till, by error of his fate, 
 
 They all consented; 
 But viewing him since (alas! too late) 
 
 They have repented ; 
 
 And have sought (to give new birth) 
 
 In baths to steep him! 
 But being so much too good for earth, 
 
 Heaven vows to keep him. 
 
 This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men. It 
 is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes 
 afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston, 
 when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in 
 his female dress after the play. This custom of males 
 appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the 
 frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus 
 
 was justified, " except by the maxim that the king had a right to the 
 services of all his subjects." See Johnson and Steeven's Shakspeare, 
 Prolegomena, vol. ii., p. 516. 
 
 D 2 
 
66 FESTIVALS OF THE COMMEMORATION, &C. 
 
 presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the 
 gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days ; who, 
 besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a 
 wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a 
 boy on the stage to pretend to be himself. 
 
 One of the strangest of the old ceremonies, in which the 
 clergy of the cathedral used to figure, was that which was 
 performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Com* 
 memoration and on that of the Conversion of St. Paul. On 
 the former of these festivals, a fat doe, and on the latter, a fat 
 buck, was presented to the Church by the family of Baud, in 
 consideration of some land which they held of the Dean and 
 Chapter at West Lee in Essex. The original agreement 
 made with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was, that he 
 himself should attend in person with the animals ; but some 
 years afterwards it was arranged that the presentation should 
 be made by a servant, accompanied by a deputation of part 
 of the family. The priests, however, continued to perform 
 their part in the show. When the deer was brought to the 
 foot of the steps leading to the choir, the reverend brethren 
 appeared in a body to receive it, dressed in their full 
 pontifical robes, and having their heads decorated with 
 garlands of flowers. From thence they accompanied it as 
 the servant led it forward to the high altar, where having 
 been solemnly offered and slain, it was divided among the 
 residentiaries. The horns were then fastened to the top of a 
 spear, and carried in procession by the whole company 
 around the inside of the church, a noisy concert of horns 
 regulating their march. This ridiculous exhibition, which 
 looks like a parody on the pagan ceremonies of their pre- 
 decessors the priests of Diana, was continued by the cathedral 
 clergy down to the time of Elizabeth. 
 
 The modern passenger through St. Paul's Churchyard has 
 not only the last home of Nelson and others to venerate, as 
 he goes by. In the ground of the old church were buried, 
 and here, therefore, remains whatever dust may survive them, 
 the gallant Sir Philip Sydney (the beau ideal of the age of 
 Elizabeth), and Vandyke, who immortalised the youth and 
 beauty of the court of Charles the First. One of Elizabeth's 
 great statesmen also lay there — Walsingham — who died so 
 poor, that he was buried by stealth, to prevent his body from 
 being arrested. Another, Sir Christopher Hatton, who is 
 supposed to have danced himself into the office of her 
 
SIR CHKISTOPHER HATTON'S EPITAPH. 37 
 
 Majesty's Chancellor,* had a tomb which his contemporaries 
 thought too magnificent, and which was accused of " shoulder- 
 ing" the altar. There was an absurd epitaph upon it, by 
 which he would seem to have been a dandy to the last. 
 
 Stay and behold the mirror of a dead man's house, 
 
 Whose lively person would have made thee stay and wonder. 
 
 * # # # 
 
 When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars ; 
 -And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing; 
 Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and passing comely; 
 And God did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling. 
 Nature commends her workmanship to Fortune's charge, 
 Fortune presents him to the court and queen, 
 Queen Eliz. (0 God's dear handmayd) his most miracle. 
 Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen ; 
 This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd, 
 Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time; 
 First trained him in the stately band of pensioners ; 
 
 * * * * 
 
 And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard. 
 Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast 
 Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells, 
 And so, Vice- Chamberlain, where foreign princes eyes 
 Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels. 
 He then aspires, says the writer, to " the highest subject's 
 seat," and becomes 
 
 Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:) 
 Robe, Collar, Garter, dead figures of great honour, 
 Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence, 
 The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar. 
 This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other, f 
 The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are 
 only to be equalled by a passage in an epitaph we have met 
 with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her 
 husband says: — 
 
 " Her graces and her qualities were such 
 That she might have married a bishop or a judge; 
 But so extreme was her condescension and humility, 
 That she married me, a poor doctor of divinity; 
 By which heroic deed, she stands confest, 
 Of all other women, the phoenix of her sex." 
 Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, 
 because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him which 
 he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of 
 
 * " His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green, 
 His high-crown'd hat, and satin doublet, 
 Mov'd the stout heart of England's queen, 
 Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it." — Ghat. 
 
 f Maitland's History of London, vol. ii., p. 1170, 
 
38 FLETCHER, BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time ; which gives 
 one an equal notion of the Queen's power, and the servility of 
 those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the 
 great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, 
 and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that 
 did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the 
 execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her 
 head was held up by the executioner, " So perish all Queen 
 Elizabeth's enemies ! " He was then Dean of Peterborough. 
 The Queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marry- 
 ing a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it 
 is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to 
 have hastened his end — a catastrophe worthy of a mean 
 courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a 
 quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the 
 tobacco giving him the coup de grace.* 
 
 Dr. Donne, the head of the metaphysical poets, so well 
 criticised by Johnson, was Dean of St. Paul's, and had. a 
 grave here, of which he has left an extraordinary memorial. 
 It is a wooden image of himself, made to his order, and repre- 
 senting him as he was to appear in his shroud. This, for 
 some time before he died, he kept by his bed-side in an open 
 coffin, thus endeavouring to reconcile an uneasy imagination 
 to the fate he could not avoid. It is still preserved in the 
 vaults under the church, and is to be seen with the other 
 curiosities of the cathedral. We will not do a great man such 
 a disservice as to dig him up for a spectacle. A man should 
 be judged of at the time when he is most himself, and not when 
 he is about to consign his weak body to its elements. 
 
 Of the events that have taken place connected with St. 
 Paul's, one of the most curious was a scene that passed in the 
 old cathedral between John of Gaunt and the Anti-Wick- 
 liffites. It made him very unpopular at the time. Probably, 
 if he had died just after.it, his coffin would have been torn to 
 pieces ; but subsequently he had a magnificent tomb in the 
 church, on which hung his crest and cap of state, together 
 with his lance and target. Perhaps the merits of the friend 
 of Wickliff and Chaucer are now as much overvalued. The 
 scene is taken as follows, by Mr. Brayley, out of Fox's Acts 
 and Monuments. 
 
 * The Bishop's second wife was a Lady Baker, who is said, by 
 Mr. Brayley, to have been young as well as beautiful, and probably dicl 
 not add to the prelate's repose, 
 
STRANGE SCENE IN ST. PAULS. 6\) 
 
 u One of the most remarkable occurrences that ever took place 
 within the old cathedral was the attempt made, in 1376, by the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, under the command 
 of Pope Gregory the Eleventh, to compel Wickliff, the father of the 
 English Reformation, to subscribe to the condemnation of some of his 
 own tenets, which had been recently promulgated in the eight articles 
 that have been termed the Lollards' Creed. The Pope had ordered 
 the above prelates to apprehend and examine Wickliff; but they 
 thought it most expedient to summon him to St. Paul's, as he was 
 openly protected by the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; 
 and that nobleman accompanied him to the examination, together 
 with the Lord Percy, Marshall of England. The proceedings were 
 soon interrupted by a dispute as to whether Wickliff should sit or 
 stand ; and the following curious dialogue arose on the Lord Percy 
 desiring him to be seated : — 
 
 " Bishop of London. — ' If I could have guessed, Lord Percy, that 
 you would have played the master here, I would have prevented your 
 coming.' 
 
 " Duke of Lancaster. — ' Yes, he shall play the master here for all 
 you.' 
 
 " Lord Percy. — ' Wickliff, sit down! You have need of a seat, for 
 you have many things to say.' 
 
 " Bishop of London. — f It is unreasonable that a clergyman, cited 
 before his ordinary, should sit during his answer. He shall stand!' 
 
 " Duke of Lancaster. — ' My Lord Percy, you are in the right! And 
 for you, my Lord Bishop, you are grown so proud and arrogant, I will 
 take care to humble your pride ; and not only yours, my lord, but 
 that of all the prelates in England. Thou dependest upon the credit 
 of thy relations; but so far from being able to help thee, they shall 
 have enough to do to support themselves.' 
 
 " Bishop of London. — ' I place no confidence in my relations, but in 
 God alone, who will give me the boldness to speak the truth.' 
 
 " Duke of Lancaster {speaking softly to L\ord Percy). — ' Rather than 
 take this at the Bishop's hands, I will drag him by the hair of the 
 head out of the court ! '"* 
 
 Old St. Paul's was much larger than now, and the church- 
 yard was of proportionate dimensions. The wall by which it 
 was bounded ran along by the present streets of Ave Maria 
 Lane, Paternoster Row, Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed 
 Lane ; and therefore included a large space and many buildings 
 which are not now considered to be within the precincts of the 
 cathedral. This spacious area had grass inside, and contained 
 a variety of appendages to the establishment. One of these 
 was the cross which we have alluded to at the beginning of 
 this chapter, and of which Stow did not know the antiquity. 
 It was called Paul's Cross, and stood on the north side of the 
 church, a little to the east of the entrance of Cannon Alley. 
 It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the space to the east 
 
 * London and Middlesex, vol, ii., p. 231. 
 
40 THE FOLKMOTE. 
 
 of it that the citizens were wont anciently to assemble in 
 Folkmote, or general convention — not only to elect their 
 magistrates and to deliberate on public affairs, but also, as it 
 would appear, to try offenders and award punishments. We 
 read of meetings of the Folkmote in the thirteenth century ; 
 but the custom was discontinued, as the increasing number 
 of the inhabitants, and the mixture of strangers, were found 
 to lead to confusion and tumult. In after times the cross 
 appears to have been used chiefly for proclamations, and other 
 public proceedings, civil as well as ecclesiastical; such as the 
 swearing of the citizens to allegiance, the emission of papal 
 bulls, the exposing of penitents, &c, " and for the defaming 
 of those," says Pennant, " who had incurred the displeasure of 
 crowned heads." A pulpit was attached to it, it was not 
 known when, in which sermons were preached, called Paul's 
 Cross Sermons, a name by which they continued to be known 
 when they ceased in the open air. Many benefactors con- 
 tributed to support these sermons. In Stow's time the pulpit 
 was an hexagonal piece of wood, " covered with lead, elevated 
 upon a flight of stone steps, and surmounted by a large cross." 
 During rainy weather the poorer part of the audience retreated 
 to a covered place, called the shrowds, which are supposed to 
 have abutted on the church wall. The rest, including the 
 lord mayor and aldermen, most probably had shelter at all 
 times ; and the King and his train (for they attended also) had 
 covered galleries.* Popular preachers were invited to hold 
 forth in this pulpit, but the Bishop was the inviter. In the 
 
 * The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out- 
 of-door sermons better than their posterity could ; yet, as times grew 
 less hardy, they began to have consequences which Bishop Latimer 
 attributed to another cause. " The citizens of Raim," said he, in a 
 sermon preached in Lincolnshire, in the year 1552, "had their burying- 
 place without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do 
 marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place 
 without, for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the 
 city, especially at such a time when there be great sickness, and many 
 die together. I think, verily, that many a man taketh his death in 
 Paul's Churchyard, and this 1 speak of experience; for I myself, when 
 I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt 
 such an ill savoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it 
 a great while after; and I think no less, but it is the occasion of great 
 sickness and disease." — Brayley, vol. ii., p. 315. After all, the Bishop 
 may have been right in attributing the sickness to the cemetery. We 
 have seen frightful probabilities of the same kind in our own time j 
 and nothing can be more sensible than what he says of burial-grounds 
 in cities. 
 
THE SERMONS. 41 
 
 reign of James the First, the lord mayor and aldermen ordered, 
 that every one who should preach there, " considering the 
 journies some of them might take from the universities, or else- 
 where, should at his pleasure be freely entertained for five days' 
 space, with sweet and convenient lodging, fire, candle, and all 
 other necessaries, viz., from Thursday before their day of 
 preaching, to Thursday morning following." * " This good 
 custom," says Maitland, " continued for some time. And the 
 Bishop of London, or his chaplain, when he sent to any one 
 to preach, did actually signify the place where he might 
 repair at his coming up, and be entertained freely." In earlier 
 times a kind of inn seems to have been kept for the entertain- 
 ment of the preachers at Paul's Cross, which went by the 
 name of the Shunamites 1 House. 
 
 " Before the cross," says Pennant, " was brought, divested of all 
 splendour, Jane Shore, the charitable, the merry concubine of Edward 
 the Fourth, and, after his death, of his favourite, the unfortunate Lord 
 Hastings. After the loss of her protectors, she fell a victim to the 
 malice of crooked-backed Richard. He was disappointed (by her 
 excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating 
 with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak 
 side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the 
 severity of the church: she was carried to the Bishop's palace, clothed 
 in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted 
 to the cathedral and the cross, before which she made a confession of 
 her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with 
 the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations of a youthful 
 monarch, the handsomest man of his time. On his death she was 
 reduced to necessity, scorned by the world, and cast off by her hus- 
 band, with whom she was paired in her childish years, and forced to 
 fling herself into the arms of Hastings." 
 
 "In her penance she went," says Holinshed, " in countenance and 
 pace demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie, save 
 her kertle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the 
 wondering of the people cast a comlie rud in her cheeks (of which she 
 before had most misse), that hir great shame wan hir much praise 
 among those that were more amorous of hir bodie, than curious of hir 
 soule. And manie good folks that hated her living (and glad were to 
 see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance, than rejoiced 
 therein, when they considered that the Protector procured it more of 
 a corrupt intent than any virtuous affection." 
 
 "Rowe," continues Pennant, " has flung this part of her sad story 
 into the following poetical dress ; but it is far from possessing the 
 moving simplicity of the old historian."! 
 
 * Maitland, vol. ii, p. 949. 
 
 f The reader, perhaps, will agree with us in thinking, that the last 
 three lines of this poetry are unworthy of the rest, and put Jane io a 
 theatrical attitude which she would pot have effected, 
 
42 JANE SHOKE. 
 
 Submissive, sad, and lonely was her look; 
 A burning taper in her hand she bore; 
 And on her shoulders, carelessly confused, 
 With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung; 
 Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread; 
 Feeble she seemed, and sorely smit with pain ; 
 While, barefoot as she trod the flinty pavement, 
 Her footsteps all along were marked with blood. 
 Yet silent still she passed, and unrepining; 
 Her streaming eyes bent ever on the earth, 
 Except when, in some bitter pang of sorrow, 
 To heaven she seemed, in fervent zeal, to raise, 
 And beg that mercy man denied her here. 
 u , The poet has adopted the fable of her being denied all sustenance, 
 and of her perishing with hunger, but that was not a fact. She lived 
 to a great age, but in great distress and miserable poverty ; deserted 
 even by those to whom she had, during prosperity, done the most 
 essential services. She dragged a wretched life even to the time of 
 Sir Thomas More, who introduces her story in his Life of Richard the 
 Third. The beauty of her person is spoken of in high terms; 'Proper 
 she was, and faire; nothing in her body that you would have changed, 
 but if you would have wished her somewhat higher. Thus sai they 
 that knew hir in hir youth. Albeit, some that now see hir, for she 
 yet liveth, deem hir never to have been well visaged. Now is she old, 
 leane, withered, and dried up : nothing left but shrivelled skin and 
 hard bone ; and yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, 
 might gesse and devise, winch parts how filled, would make it a faire 
 face.'"* 
 
 To these pictures, which are all drawn with spirit, may be 
 added a portrait in the notes to Drayton's Heroical Epistles, 
 referring to the one by Sir Thomas More. 
 
 " Her stature," says the comment, " was mean ; her hair of a dark 
 yellow, her face round and full, her eye grey, delicate harmony being 
 betwixt each part's proportion, and each proportion's colour ; her 
 body fat, white, and smooth ; her countenance cheerful, and like to 
 her condition. That picture which 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 her arm, over her shoulder, and sitting in a chair 
 on which her naked arm did lie. What her father's name was, or 
 where she was born, is not certainly known; but Shore, a young man 
 of right goodly person, wealth, and behaviour, abandoned her bed, after 
 the King had made her his concubine."f 
 
 Richard, in the extreme consciousness of his being in the 
 wrong, made a sad bungling business of his first attempts on 
 the throne. The penance of Jane Shore was followed by 
 Dr. Shawe's sermon at the same cross, in which the servile 
 preacher attempted to bastardise the children of Edward, and 
 to recommend the " legitimate" Eichard, as the express image 
 
 * Some account of London, third edition, p. 394, 
 f Chalmers's British Poets, vol. iv., p. 91. 
 
SEE-SAW OF POPERY AND PROTESTANTISM. 43 
 
 of his father. Richard made his appearance, only to witness 
 the sullen silence of the spectators ; and the doctor, arguing 
 more weakness than wickedness, took to his house, and soon 
 after died.* 
 
 In the reign of the Tudors, Paul's Cross was the scene of 
 a very remarkable series of contradictions. The government, 
 under Henry the Eighth, preached for and against the same 
 doctrines in religion. Mary furiously attempted to revive 
 them ; and they were finally denounced by Elizabeth. 
 Wolsey began, in 1521, with fulminating, by command of the 
 Pope, against "one Martin Eleutherius" (Luther). The 
 denouncement was made by Fisher (afterwards beheaded for 
 denying the King's supremacy) ; but Wolsey sate by, in his 
 usual state, censed and canopied, with the pope's ambassador 
 on one side of him, and the emperor's on the other. During 
 the sermon a collection of Luther's books was burnt in the 
 churchyard ; " which ended, my Lord Cardinal went home 
 to dinner with all the other prelates." f About ten years 
 afterwards the preachers at Paul's Cross received an order 
 from the King to " teach and declare to the people, that 
 neither the pope, nor any of his predecessors, were anything 
 more than the simple Bishops of Eome." On the accession of 
 Mary, the discourses were ordered to veer directly round, 
 which produoed two attempts to assassinate the preachers in 
 sermon-time ; and the moment Elizabeth came to the throne, 
 the divines began recommending the very opposite tenets, and 
 the pope was finally rejected. At this Cross Elizabeth after- 
 wards attended to hear a thanksgiving sermon for the defeat 
 of the Invincible Armada ; on which occasion a coach was 
 first seen in England — the one she came in. The last sermon 
 attended there by the sovereign was during the reign of her 
 successor ; but discourses continued to be delivered up to the 
 time of the Civil Wars, when, after being turned to account 
 by the Puritans for about a year, the pulpit was demolished 
 
 * "After which, once ended/' says Stow, "the preacher gat him 
 home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of 
 sight like an owle; and when he once asked one that had been his 
 olde friende, what the people talked of him, all were it that his own 
 conscience well shewed him that they talked no good, yet when the 
 other answered him, that there was in every man's mouth spoken of 
 him much shame, it so strake him to the hart, that in a few daies 
 alter, he withered, and consumed away." — Bray ley, vol. i., p. 312. 
 
 f From a MS. in the British Museum, quoted by Brayley, vol, ii., 
 p. 312, 
 
44 THE CHARNEL. 
 
 by order of Parliament. The " willing instrument" of the 
 overthrow was Pennington, the lord-mayor. The inhabitants 
 who look out of their windows now-a-days on the northern 
 side of St. Paul's may thus have a succession of pictures 
 before their mind's eye, as curious and inconsistent as those 
 of a dream — princes, queens, lord-mayors, and aldermen, 
 
 A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings, 
 Jane's penance, Richard's chagrin, Wolsey's exaltation, clergy- 
 men preaching for and against the pope ; a coach coming 
 as a wonder, where coaches now throng at every one's service ; 
 and finally, a puritanical lord-mayor, who " blasphemed 
 custard," laying the axe to the tree, and cutting down the 
 pulpit and all its works. 
 
 The next appendage to the old church, in point of import- 
 ance, was the Bishop's or London House, the name of which 
 survives in that of London House Yard. This, with other 
 buildings, perished in the Great Fire ; and on the site of it 
 were built the houses now standing between the yard just 
 mentioned and the present Chapter House. The latter was 
 built by Wren. The old one stood on the other side of the 
 cathedral, where the modern deanery is to be found, only 
 more eastward. The bishop's house was often used for the 
 reception of princes. Edward the Third and his queen were 
 entertained there after a great tournament in Smithfield ; and 
 there poor little Edward the Fifth was lodged, previously to 
 his appointed coronation. To the east of the bishop's house, 
 stretching towards Cheapside, was a chapel, erected by the 
 father of Thomas Becket, called Pardon- Church -Haugh, 
 which was surrounded by a cloister, presenting a painting of 
 the Dance of Death on the walls, a subject rendered famous 
 by Holbein.* 
 
 Another chapel called the Charnel, a proper neighbour to 
 this fresco, stood at the back of the two buildings just men- 
 tioned. It received its name from the quantity of human 
 bones collected from St. Paul's Churchyard, and deposited in 
 a vault beneath. The Charnel was taken down by the 
 
 * A Dance of Death (for the subject was often repeated) is a pro- 
 cession of the various ranks of life, from the pope to the peasant, each 
 led by a skeleton for his partner. Holbein enlarged it by the addi- 
 tion of a series of visits privately paid by Death to the individuals. 
 The figurantes, in his work, by no means go down the dance " with 
 an air of despondency," The human beings are unconscious of their 
 partners (which is fine); and the Deaths are as jolly as skeletons well 
 can be. 
 
THE LOLLARDS' TOWER. 45 
 
 Protector Somerset about 1549, and the stones were employed 
 in the building of the new palace of Somerset House. On 
 this occasion it is stated that more than a thousand cart-loads 
 of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields where they formed 
 a large mount, on which three windmills were erected. From 
 these Windmill Street in that neighbourhood derives its 
 name. The ground on which the chapel stood was afterwards 
 built over with dwellings and warehouses, having sheds before 
 them for the use of stationers. Immediately to the north of 
 St. Paul's School, and towards the spot where the churchyard 
 looks into Cheapside, was a campanile, or bell-house ; that is 
 to say, a belfry, forming a distinct building from the cathedral, 
 such as it is accustomed to be in Italy. It was by the ring- 
 ing of this bell that the people were anciently called together 
 to the general assemblage, called the Folkmote. The cam- 
 panile was very high, and was won at dice from King Henry 
 the Eighth by Sir Miles Partridge, who took it down and sold 
 the materials. On the side of the cathedral directly the 
 reverse of this (the south-west), and forming a part of the 
 great pile of building, was the parish church of St. Gregory, 
 over which was the Lollards' Tower, or prison, infamous, 
 like its namesake at Lambeth, for the ill-treatment of 
 heretics. 
 
 " This," says Brayley, on the authority of Fox's Martyrology, 
 "was the scene of at least one 'foul and midnight murder,' perpe- 
 trated in 1514, on a respectable citizen, named Richard Hunne, by 
 Dr. Horsey, chancellor of the diocese, with the assistance of a bell- 
 ringer, and afterwards defended by the Bishop Fitz-James and the 
 whole body of prelates, who protected the murderers from punish- 
 ment, lest the clergy should become amenable to civil jurisdiction. 
 Though the villains, through this interference, escaped without cor- 
 poral suffering, the King ordered them to pay 1,500/. to the children 
 of the deceased, in restitution of what he himself styles the ' cruel 
 murder.' " * 
 
 The clergy, with almost incredible audacity, afterwards 
 commenced a process against the dead body of Hunne for 
 heresy ; and, having obtained its condemnation, they actually 
 burned it in Smithfield. The Lollards' Tower continued to 
 be used as a prison for heretics for some time after the Refor- 
 mation. Stow tells us that he recollected one Peter Burchet, a 
 gentleman of the Middle Temple, being committed to this 
 prison, on suspicion of holding certain erroneous opinions, in 
 1573. This, however, is, we believe, the last case of the 
 kind that is recorded. 
 
 * Brayley, toL h\, p. 320. 
 
46 st. Paul's school. 
 
 It remains to say a word of St. Paul's School, founded, as 
 we have already mentioned, by Dean Colet, and destined to 
 become the most illustrious of all the buildings on the spot, 
 in giving education to Milton. We have dwelt more upon 
 the localities of St. Paul's Churchyard than it is our intention 
 to do on others. The dignity of the birth-place of the metro- 
 polis beguiled us ; and the events recorded to have taken 
 place in it are of real interest. Milton was not the only 
 person of celebrity educated at this school. Bentley, his 
 critic, was probably induced by the like circumstance to turn 
 his unfortunate attention to the poet's epic in after life, and 
 make those gratuitous massacres of the text, which give a 
 profound scholar the air of the most presumptuous of cox- 
 combs. Here also Camden received part of his education ; 
 and here were brought up, Leland, his brother antiquary, the 
 Gales (Charles, Koger, and Samuel), all celebrated anti- 
 quaries; Sir Anthony Denny, the only man who had the 
 courage and honesty to tell Henry the Eighth that he was 
 dying; Halley, the astronomer; Bishop Cumberland, the great 
 grandfather of the dramatist; Pepys, who has lately obtained 
 so curious a celebrity, as an annalist of the court of Charles 
 the Second ; and last, not least, one in whom a learned educa- 
 tion would be as little looked for as in Pepys, if we are to 
 trust the stories of the times, to wit, John Duke of Marl- 
 borough. Barnes was laughed at for dedicating his Anacreon 
 to the duke, as one to whom Greek was unheard of ; and it 
 has been related as a slur on the great general (though 
 assuredly it is not so), that having alluded on some occasion 
 to a passage in history, and being asked where he found it, 
 he confessed that his authority was the only historian he was 
 acquainted with, namely, William Shakspeare. 
 
 Less is known of Milton during the time he passed at 
 St. Paul's School, than of any other period of his life. It is 
 ascertained, however, that he cultivated the writing of Greek 
 verses, and was a great favourite with the usher, afterwards 
 master, Alexander Gill, himself a Latin poet of celebrity. At 
 the back of the old church was an enormous rose- window, 
 which we may imagine the young poet to have contemplated 
 with delight, in his fondness for ornaments of that cast ; and 
 ihe whole building was calculated to impress a mind, more 
 disposed, at that time of life, to admire as a poet, than to 
 quarrel as a critic or a sectary. Gill, unluckily for himself, 
 was not so catholic. Some say he was suspended from his 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATHEDRAL. 47 
 
 mastership for severity ; a quality which he must have carried 
 to a great pitch, for that age to find fault with it ; but from 
 an answer written by Ben Johnson to a fragment of a satire of 
 Gill's, it is more likely he got into trouble for libels against 
 the court. Aubrey says, that the old doctor, his father, was 
 once obliged to go on his knees to get the young doctor par- 
 doned, and that the offence consisted in his having written a 
 letter, in which he designated King James and his son, as the 
 " old foole and the young one." There are letters written in 
 early life from Milton to Gill, full of regard and esteem ; nor 
 is it likely that the regard was diminished by Gill's petulance 
 against the Court. In one of the letters, it is pleasant to hear 
 the poet saying, " Farewell, and on Tuesday next expect me 
 in London, among the booksellers." * 
 
 The parliamentary soldiers annoyed the inhabitants of the 
 churchyard, by playing at nine-pins at unseasonable hours — 
 a strange misdemeanour for that " church militant." They 
 hastened also the destruction of the cathedral. Some scaffold- 
 ing, set up for repairs, had been given them for arrears of 
 pay. They dug pits in the body of the church to saw the 
 timber in ; and they removed the scaffolding with so little 
 caution, that great part of the vaulting fell in, and lay a heap 
 of ruins. The east end only, and a part of the choir con- 
 tinued to be used for public worship, a brick wall being raised 
 to separate this portion from the rest of the building, and the 
 congregation entering and getting out through one of the 
 north windows. Another part of the church was converted 
 into barracks and stables for the dragoons. As for Inigo 
 Jones's lofty and beautiful portico, it was turned into " shops," 
 says Maitland, " for milliners and others, with rooms over 
 them for the convenience of lodging ; at the erection of which 
 the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being 
 obliged to make way for the ends of beams, which penetrated 
 their centres." j" The statues on the top were thrown down 
 and broken to pieces. 
 
 We have noticed the lucky necessity for a new church, 
 occasioned by the Great Fire. An attempt was at first made 
 
 * See Todd's Milton, vol. vii. ; Aubrey's Letters and Lives ; and 
 Ben Jonson's Poems. Gill's specimen of a satire is very bad, and the 
 great laureate's answer is not much better. The first couplet of the 
 latter, however, is to the purpose : — 
 
 " Shall the prosperity of a pardon still 
 Secure thy railing rhymes, infamous Gill?" 
 f History of London, vol. ii., p. 1106. 
 
48 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 
 
 to repair the old building — the work, as we have already 
 mentioned, being committed to the charge of Sir John Den- 
 ham (the poet), his Majesty's surveyor-general. But it was 
 eventually found necessary to commence a new edifice from 
 the foundation. Sir Christopher Wren, who accomplished 
 this task, had been before employed in superintending the 
 repairs, and was appointed head surveyor of the works in 
 1669, on the demise of Denham. Unfortunately, he had 
 great and ungenerous trouble given him in the erection of the 
 new structure ; and, after all, he did not build it as he wished. 
 His taste was not understood, either by court or clergy ; he 
 was envied (and towards the close of his life Ousted) by inferior 
 workmen ; was forced to make use of two orders instead of 
 one, that is to say, to divide the sides and front into two 
 separate elevations, instead of running them up and dignifying 
 them with pillars of the whole height; and during the whole 
 work, which occupied a great many years, and took up a con- 
 siderable and anxious portion of his time, not unattended 
 with personal hazard, all the pay which he was then, or ever 
 to expect, was a pittance of two hundred a-year. A moiety 
 of this driblet was for some time actually suspended, till the 
 building should be finished ; and for the arrears of it he was 
 forced to petition the government of Queen Anne, and then 
 only obtained them under circumstances of the most unhand- 
 some del.iy. Wren, however, was a philosopher and a patriot ; 
 and if he underwent the mortification attendent on philoso- 
 phers and patriots, for offending the self-love of the shallow, 
 he knew how to act up to the spirit of those venerable names, 
 in the interior of a mind as elevated and well-composed 
 as his own architecture. Some pangs he felt, because he was 
 a man of humanity, and could not disdain his fellow-creatures ; 
 but he was more troubled for the losses of the art than his 
 own. He is is said actually to have shed tears when com- 
 pelled to deform his cathedral with the side aisles — some say 
 in compliance with the will of the Duke of York, afterwards 
 James the Second, who anticipated the use of them for the 
 restoration of the old Catholic chapels. Money he despised, 
 except for the demands of his family, consenting to receive a 
 hundred a-year for rebuilding such of the city churches (a 
 considerable number) as were destroyed by the fire ! And 
 when finally ousted from his office of surveyor-general, he 
 said with the ancient sage, "Well, I must philosophise a little 
 sooner than I intended." (Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius 
 
HIS MONUMENT, 49 
 
 philosophari). The Duchess of Marlborough, in resisting the 
 claims of one of her Blenheim surveyors, said, " that Sir C. 
 "Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three times 
 a-week to the top of St. Paul's, at a great hazard, for 200Z. a- 
 year." But, as a writer of his life has remarked, she was 
 perhaps "little capable of drawing any nice distinction 
 between the feelings of the hired surveyor of Blenheim, and 
 those of our architect, in the contemplation of the rising of 
 the fabric which his vast genius was calling into existence: 
 her notions led her to estimate the matter by the simple 
 process of the rule of three direct ; and on this principle she 
 had good reason to complain of the surveyor." * The same 
 writer tells us, that Wren's principal enjoyment during the 
 remainder of his life, consisted in his being " carried once a 
 year to see his great work ; " " the beginning and completion 
 of which," observes Walpole, " was an event which, one could 
 not wonder, left such an impression of content on the mind of 
 the good old man, that it seemed to recall a memory almost 
 deadened to every other use." The epitaph upon him by his 
 son, which Mr. Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars' bridge, 
 caused to be rescued from the vaults underneath the church, 
 where it was ludicrously inapplicable, and placed in gold 
 letters over the choir, has a real sublimity in it, though 
 defaced by one of those plays upon words, which were the 
 taste of the times in the architect's youth, and which his 
 family perhaps had learnt to admire. 
 
 Subtus conditur 
 Hujus ecclesise et urbis conditor 
 
 Ch. Wren, 
 Qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, 
 Non sibi sed bono publico. 
 Lector, si monumentum requiris, 
 Circumspice. 
 
 We cannot preserve the pun in English, unless, perhaps, 
 by some such rendering as, " Here found a grave the founder 
 of this church ;" or " Underneath is founded the tomb," &c. 
 The rest is admirable : 
 
 "Who lived to the age of upwards of ninety years, 
 Not for himself, but for the public good. 
 Reader, if thou seekest his monument, 
 Look around." ^ 
 
 The reader does look around, and the whole interior of the 
 
 * Life of Sir Christoper Wren, in the Library of Useful Know- 
 ledge, No. 24, p. 27. 
 
 E 
 
50 IRREVERENT REMARKS ON 
 
 cathedral, which is finer than the outside, seems like a 
 magnificent vault over his single bod}'. The effect is very 
 grand, especially if the organ is playing. A similar one, as 
 far as the music is concerned, is observable when we con- 
 template the statues of Nelson and others. The grand repose 
 of the church, in the first instance, gives them a mortal 
 dignity, which the organ seems to waken up and revive, as if 
 in the midst of the 
 
 " Pomp and threatening harmony,"* 
 
 their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless 
 eyeballs. Johnson s ponderous figure looks down upon us 
 with something of sourness in the expression; and in the 
 presence of Howard we feel as if pomp itself were in atten- 
 dance on humanity. It is a pity that the sculpture of the 
 monuments in general is not worthy of these emotions, and 
 tends to undo them. 
 
 A poor statue of Queen Anne, in whose reign the church 
 was finished, stands in the middle of the front area, with the 
 figures of Britain, France, Ireland, and America, round the 
 base. Garth, who was a Whig, and angry with the councils 
 which had dismissed his hero Marlborough, wrote some bitter 
 lines upon it, which must have had double effect, coming from 
 so good-natured a man. 
 
 Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame, 
 Known by the Gentiles' great apostle's name, 
 With grace divine great Anna's seen to rise, 
 An awful form that glads a nation's eyes: 
 Beneath her feet four mighty realms appear, 
 And with due reverence pay their homage there. 
 Britain and Ireland seem to own her grace, 
 And e'en wild India wears a smiling face. 
 But France alone with downcast eyes is seen, 
 The sad attendant on so good a queen. 
 Ungrateful country! to forget so soon 
 All that great Anna for thy sake has done, 
 When sworn the kind defender of thy cause, 
 Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws, 
 For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword, 
 For thee she broke her gen'ral — and her word: 
 For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told, 
 And learn'd to speak like oracles of old : 
 For thee, for thee alone, what could she more ? 
 She lost the honour she had gain'd before; 
 Lost all the trophies which her arms had won, 
 (Such Caesar never knew, nor Philip's son ;) 
 
 * Wordsworth, 
 
THE STATUE OF QUEEN ANNE. 51 
 
 Eesign'd the glories of a ten years' reign, 
 
 And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain : 
 
 For thee in annals she's content to shine, 
 
 Like other monarchs of the Stuart line. 
 
 Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coarser 
 wits of the day, in reference to the position of her Majesty, 
 with her back to the church and her face to a brandy shop, 
 which was then kept in that part of the churchyard. The 
 calumny was worthy of the coarseness. Anne, who was not 
 a very clever woman, had a difficult task to perform; and 
 though we differ with her politics, we cannot, even at this 
 distance of time, help expressing our disgust at personalities 
 like these, especially against a female. 
 
 £ 2 
 
52 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 The Church of St. Eaith — Booksellers of the Churchyard — Mr. John- 
 son's — Mr. Newberry's — Children's Books — Clerical Names of 
 Streets near St. Paul's — Swift at the top of the Cathedral — Dr. 
 Johnson at St. Paul's — Paternoster Kow — Panyer's Alley — 
 Stationers' Hall — Almanacks — Knight-Riders' Street — Armed 
 Assemblies of the Citizens — Doctor's Commons — The Heralds' 
 College— Coats of Arms — Ludgate— Story of Sir Stephen Forster 
 
 Prison of Ludgate — Wyatt's Rebellion — The Belle Sauvage Inn 
 
 Blackfriars — Shakspeare's Theatre — Accident at Blackfriars in 
 
 1623 — Printing House Square — The Times— Baynard's Castle — 
 Story of the Baron Fitzwalter — Richard III. and Buckingham — 
 Diana's Chamber — The Royal Wardrobe — Marriages in the Eleet — 
 Fleet Ditch— The Dunciad. 
 
 E remember, in our boyhood, a romantic 
 story of a church that stood under St. 
 Paul's. We conceived of it, as of a real 
 good - sized church actually standing 
 under the other; but how it came there 
 nobody could imagine. It was some 
 ghostly edification of providence, not 
 lightly to be inquired into ; but as its 
 name was St. Faith's, we conjectured that the mystery had 
 something to do with religious belief. The mysteries of art 
 do not remain with us for life, like those of Nature. Our 
 phenomenon amounted to this : 
 
 "The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, "was originally a 
 distinct building, standing near the east end of St. Paul's; but when 
 the old cathedral was enlarged, between the years 1256 and 1312, it 
 was taken doAvn, and an extensive part of the vaults was appropriated 
 to the use oi the parishioners of St. Faith's, in lieu of the demolished 
 fabric. This was afterwards called the church of St. Faith in the 
 Crypts (Ecclesia Sanctce Fidei in Cryptis) and, according to a repre- 
 sentation made to the Dean and Chapter, in the year 1735, it measured 
 180 feet in length, and 80 in breath. After the fire of London, the 
 parish of St. Faith was joined to that of St. Augustine ; and on the 
 rebuilding of the cathedral, a portion of the churchyard belonging to 
 the former was taken to enlarge the avenue round the east end of 
 St. Paul's, and the remainder was inclosed within the cathedral 
 railing." * 
 
 The parishioners of St. Faith have still liberty to bury 
 their dead in certain parts of the churchyard and the Crypts. 
 * Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303. 
 
MR. JOHNSON. — MR. NEWBERRY. 53 
 
 Other portions of the latter have been used #s storehouses 
 for wine, stationery, &c. The stationers and booksellers of 
 London, during the fire, thought they had secured a great 
 quantity of their stock in this place ; but on the air being 
 admitted when they went to take them out, the goods had 
 been so heated by the conflagration of the church overhead, 
 that they took fire at last, and the whole property was 
 destroyed. Clarendon says it amounted to the value of two 
 hundred thousand pounds.* 
 
 One of the houses on the site of the old episcopal mansion, 
 now converted into premises occupied by Mr. Hitchcock the 
 linendraper, was Mr. Johnson's the bookseller — a man who 
 deserves mention for his liberality to Cowper, and for the 
 remarkable circumstance of his never having seen the poet, 
 though his intercourse with him was long and cordial. Mr. 
 Johnson was in conection with a circle of men of letters, 
 some of whom were in the habit of dining with him once a 
 week, and who comprised the leading polite writers of the 
 generation — Cowper, Darwin, Hayley, Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld, Godwin, &c. Fuseli must not be ommitted, who was 
 at least as good a writer as a painter. Here Bonnycastle 
 hung his long face over his plate, as glad to escape from 
 arithmetic into his jokes and his social dinner as a great 
 boy ; and here Wordsworth, and we believe Coleridge, 
 published their earliest performances. At all events they 
 both visited at the house. 
 
 But the most illustrious of all booksellers in our boyish 
 days, not for his great names, not for his dinners, not for 
 his riches that we know of, nor for any other full-grown 
 celebrity, but for certain little penny books, radiant with gold 
 and rich with bad pictures, was Mr. Newberry, the famous 
 children's bookseller, "at the corner of St. Paul's church- 
 yard," next Ludgate Street. The house is still occupied by 
 a successor, and children may have books there as formerly 
 ■ — but not the same. The gilding, we confess, we regret: 
 gold, somehow, never looked so well as in adorning litera- 
 ture. The pictures also — may we own that we preferred the 
 uncouth coats, the staring blotted eyes, and round piece s of 
 rope for hats, of our very badly drawn contemporaries, to all 
 the proprieties of modern embellishment ? We own the 
 superiority of the latter, and would have it proceed and 
 prosper; but a boy of our own time was much, though hie 
 * In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827. 
 
54 children's books. 
 
 coat looked like his grandfather's. The engravings probably 
 were of that date. Enormous, however, is the improvement 
 upon the morals of these little books; and there we give 
 them up, and with unmitigated delight. The good little boy, 
 the hero of the infant literature in those days, stood, it must 
 be acknowledged, the chance of being a very selfish man. 
 His virtue consisted in being different from some other little 
 boy, perhaps his brother; and his rewaid was having a fine 
 coach to ride in, and being a King Pepin. JSTow-a-days, 
 since the world has had a great moral earthquake that set it 
 thinking, the little boy promises to be much more of a 
 man ; thinks of others, as well as works for himself; and 
 looks for his reward to a character for good sense and benefi- 
 cence. In no respect is the progress of the age more visible, or 
 more importantly so, than in this apparently trifling matter. 
 The most bigoted opponents of a rational education are obliged 
 to adopt a portion of its spirit, in order to retain a hold which 
 their own teaching must accordingly undo : and if the times 
 were not full of hopes in other respects, we should point to 
 this evidence of their advancement, and be content with it. 
 
 One of the most pernicious mistakes of the old children's 
 books, was the inculcation of a spirit of revenge and cruelty 
 in the tragic examples which were intended to deter their 
 readers from idleness and disobedience. One, if he did not 
 behave himself, was to be shipwrecked, and eaten by lions; 
 another to become a criminal, who was not to be taught 
 better, but rendered a mere wicked contrast to the luckier 
 virtue; and, above all, none were to be poor but the vicious, 
 and none to ride in their coaches but little Sir Charles 
 Grandisons, and all-perfect Sheriffs. "We need not say how 
 contrary this was to the real spirit of Christianity, which, at 
 the same time, they so much insisted on. The perplexity in 
 after life, when reading of poor philosophers and rich vicious 
 men, was in proportion; or rather virtue and mere worldly 
 success became confounded. In the present day, the profi- 
 tableness of good conduct is still inculcated, but in a sounder 
 spirit. Charity makes the proper allowance for all ; and none 
 are excluded from the hope of being wiser and happier. Men, 
 in short are not taught to love and labour for themselves alone 
 or for their little dark corners of egotism ; but to take the 
 world along with them into a brighter sky of improvement ; 
 and to discern the want of success in success itself, if not 
 accompanied by a liberal knowledge. 
 
CLERICAL NAMES OF STREETS. 53 
 
 The Seven Champions of Christendom, Valentine and Orson, 
 and other books of the fictitious class, which have survived 
 their more rational brethren (as the latter thought them- 
 selves), are of a much better order, and, indeed, survive by a 
 natural instinct in society to that effect. With many absurd- 
 ities, they have a general tone of manly and social virtue, 
 ■which may be safely left to itself. The absurdities wear out 
 and the good remains. Nobody in these times will think 
 of meeting giants and dragons; of giving blows that con- 
 found an army, or tearing the hearts out of two lions on each 
 side of him, as easily as if he were dipping his hands into a 
 lottery. But there are still giants and wild beasts to en- 
 counter, of another sort, the conquest of which requires the 
 old enthusiasm and disinterestedness ; arms and war are to be 
 checked in their career, and have been so, by that new might 
 of opinion to which every body may contribute much in his 
 single voice ; and wild men, or those who would become so, 
 are tamed, by education and brotherly kindness, into orna- 
 ments of civil life. 
 
 The neighbourhood of St. Paul's retains a variety of appel- 
 lations indicative of its former connection with the church. 
 There is Creed Lane, Ave-Maria Lane, Sermon Lane*, 
 Canon Alley, Pater-Noster Eow, Holiday Court, Amen 
 Corner, &c. Members of the Cathedral establishment still 
 have abodes in some of these places, particularly in Amen 
 Corner, which is enclosed with gates, and appropriated to the 
 houses of prebendaries and canons. Close to Sermon Lane is 
 Do -little Lane; a vicinity which must have furnished jokes 
 to the Puritans. Addle Street is an ungrateful corruption of 
 Athelstan Street, so called from one of the most respectable of 
 the Saxon kings, who had a palace in it. 
 
 We have omitted to notice a curious passage in Swift, in 
 which he abuses himself for going to the top of St. Paul's. 
 " To-day," says he, writing to Stella, " I was all about St. 
 Paul's, and up at the top like a fool, with Sir Andrew 
 Fountain, and two more; and spent seven shillings for my 
 dinner, like a puppy." " This," adds the doctor, " is the 
 
 * Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that 
 Sermon Lane is a corruption of Sheremoniers Lane, that is, the lane of 
 the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was 
 to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in 
 this lane for melting silver, called the Blackloft — and the Mint was in 
 the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. 
 See Maitland, ii., 880 (edit, of 175G.) 
 
*6 DR. JOHNSON AT ST. PAULAS. 
 
 second time he has served me so : but I will never do it 
 again, though all mankind should persuade me — unconsidering 
 puppies ! " * The being forced by richer people than one's 
 self to spend money at a tavern might reasonably be lamented; 
 but from the top of St. Paul's Swift beheld a spectacle, which 
 surely was not unworthy of his attention ; perhaps it affected 
 him too much. The author of Gulliver might have taken 
 from it his notions of little bustling humankind. 
 
 Dr. Johnson frequently attended public worship in St. Paul's. 
 Very different must his look have been, in turning into 
 the chancel, from the threatening and trampling aspect they 
 have given him in his statue. We do not quarrel with his 
 aspect ; there is a great deal of character in it. But the con- 
 trast, considering the place, .is curious. A little before his 
 death, when bodily decay made him less patient than ever of 
 contradiction, he instituted a club at the Queen's Arms, in 
 St. Paul's Churchyard. "He -told Mr. Hook," says Bos well, 
 " That he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to 
 collect one; but, said he, don't let them be patriots." f (This 
 was an allusion to the friends of his acquaintance Wilkes.) 
 Boswell accompanied him one day to the club, and found the 
 members " very sensible well-behaved men : " that is to say 
 Hook had collected a body of decent listeners. This, how- 
 ever, is melancholy. In the next chapter we shall see Johnson 
 in all his glory. 
 
 St. Paul's Churchyard appears as if it were only a great 
 commercial thoroughfare ; but if all the clergy could be seen 
 at once, who have abodes in the neighbourhood, they would 
 be found to constitute a numerous body. If to the sable 
 coats of these gentlemen be added those of the practisers of 
 the civil law, who were formerly allied to them, and who live 
 in Doctors' Commons, the churchyard increases the clerkly 
 part of its aspect. It resumes, to the imagination, some- 
 thing of the learned and collegiate look it had of old. Pater- 
 noster Row is said to have been so called on account of 
 the number of Stationers or Text-writers that dwelt there, 
 who dealt much in religious books, and sold horn-books, or 
 ABC's, with the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, Creed, Graces, 
 &c. And so of the other places above-named. But it is more 
 likely that this particular street (as indeed we are told) was 
 
 * Letters to Stella, in the duodecimo edition of his works, 1775. 
 Letter vi., p. 43. 
 
 f Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv., p. 93. 
 
PATERNOSTER ROW. 57 
 
 named from the rosary or paternoster-makers ; for so they 
 were called, as appears by a record of " one Robert Nikke, a 
 paternoster-maker and citizen, in the reign of Henry the 
 Fourth." 
 
 It is curious to reflect what a change has taken place in 
 this celebrated book-street, since nothing was sold there but 
 rosaries. It is but rarely the word Paternoster-Row strikes 
 us as having a reference to the Latin Prayer. We think of 
 booksellers' shops, and of all the learning and knowledge they 
 have sent forth. The books of Luther, which Henry the 
 Eighth burnt in the neighbouring churchyard, were turned 
 into millions of volumes, partly by reason of that burning. 
 
 Paternoster-Row, however, has not been exclusively in 
 possession of the booksellers, since it lost its original tenants, 
 the rosary-makers. Indeed it would appear to have been 
 only in comparatively recent times that the booksellers fixed 
 themselves there. They had for a long while been established 
 in St. Paul's Churchyard, but scarcely in the Row, till after 
 the commencement of the last century. 
 
 "This street," says Maitland, writing in 1720, "before the fire o 
 London, was taken up by eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen; 
 and their shops were so resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in 
 their coaches, that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was 
 no passage for foot passengers. But since the said fire, those eminent 
 tradesmen have settled themselves in several other parts; especially 
 in Ludgate Street, and in Bedford Street, Henrietta Street, and King 
 Street, Covent Garden. And the inhabitants in this street are now a 
 mixture of tradespeople, such as tire-women, or milliners, for the sale 
 of top-knots, and the like dressings for the females." 
 
 In a subsequent edition of his history, published in 1755, 
 it is added, " There are now many shops of mercers, silkmen, 
 eminent printers, booksellers, and publishers."* The most 
 easterly of the narrow and partly covered passages between 
 Newgate Street and Paternoster Row is that called Panyer's 
 Alley, remarkable for a stone built into the wall of one of the 
 houses on the east side, supporting the figures of a pannier 
 or wicker basket, surmounted by a boy, and exhibiting the 
 following inscription : — 
 
 " When you have sought the city round, 
 Yet still this is the highest ground." 
 
 "We cannot say if absolute faith is to be put in this assevera- 
 tion ; but it is possible. It has been said that the top of 
 St. Paul's is on a level with that of Hampstead. 
 * History of London, vol. ii., p. 925. 
 
58 stationers' hall. 
 
 We look back a moment between Paternoster Row and the 
 churchyard, to observe, that the only memorial remaining of 
 the residence of the Bishop of London is a tablet in London- 
 House Yard, let into the wall of the public house called the 
 Goose and Gridiron. The Goose and Gridiron is said by 
 tradition to have been what was called in the last century a 
 " music house ;" that is to say, a place of entertainment with 
 music. When it ceased to be musical, a landlord, in ridicule 
 of its former pretensions, chose for his sign " a goose stroking 
 the bars of a gridiron with his foot," and called it the Swan 
 and Harp.* 
 
 Between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street, at the end of a 
 passage from Ave-Maria Lane, " stood a great house of stone 
 and wood, belonging in old time to. John, Duke of Bretagne, 
 and Earl of Richmond, cotemporary with Edward II. and III. 
 After him it was possessed by the Earls of Pembroke, in the 
 time of Richard II. and Henry IV., and was called Pembroke's 
 Inn, near Ludgate. It then fell into the possession of the 
 title of Abergavenny, and was called Burgavenny House, 
 under which circumstances it remained in the time of Elizabeth. 
 To finish the anti-climax," says Pennant, "it was finally 
 possessed by the Company of Stationers, who rebuilt it of 
 wood, and made it their Hall. It was destroyed by the Great 
 Fire, and was succeeded by the present plain building." f Of 
 the once-powerful possessors of the old mansion nothing now 
 is remembered, or cared for; but in the interior of the 
 modern building are to be seen, looking almost as if they 
 were alive, and as if we knew them personally, the immortal 
 faces of Steele and Richardson, Prior in his cap, and Dr. 
 Hoadley, a liberal bishop. There is also Mrs. Richardson, 
 the wife of the novelist, looking as prim and particular as if 
 she had been just chucked under the chin ; and Robert 
 Nelson, Esq., supposed author of the Whole Duty of Man, 
 and prototype of Sir Charles Grandison, as regular and 
 passionless in his face as if he had been made only to wear 
 his wig. The same is not to be said of the face of Steele, 
 with his black eyes and social aspect ; and still less of 
 Richardson, who, instead of being the smooth, satisfied-looking 
 personage he is represented in some engravings of him (which 
 makes his heartrending romance appear unaccountable and 
 
 * The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and critical 
 6vo. 1797. Vol. iv., p. 20G. 
 f Pennant's London, p. 377. 
 
PORTRAITS IN STATIONERS* HALL. 59 
 
 cruel), has a face as uneasy as can well be conceived — flushed 
 and shattered with emotion. We recognise the sensitive, 
 enduring man, such as he really was — a heap of bad nerves. 
 It is worth anybody's while to go to Stationers' Hall, on pur- 
 pose to see these portraits. They are not of the first order as 
 portraits, but evident likenesses. Hoadley looks at once jovial 
 and decided, like a good-natured controversialist. Prior is 
 not so pleasant as in his prints ; his nose is a little aquiline, 
 instead of turned up ; and his features, though delicate, not 
 so liberal. But if he has not the best look of his poetry, he 
 has the worst. He seems as if he had been sitting up all 
 night ; his eyelids droop : and his whole face is used with 
 rakery. 
 
 It is impossible to see Prior and Steele together, without 
 regretting that they quarrelled : but as they did quarrel, it 
 was fit that Prior should be in the wrong. From a Whig he 
 had become a Tory, and showed that his change was not 
 quite what it ought to have been, by avoiding the men with 
 whom he had associated, and writing contemptuously of his 
 fellow wits. All the men of letters, whose portraits are in 
 this hall, were, doubtless, intimate with the premises, and 
 partakers of Stationers' dinners. Richardson was Master of 
 the Company. Morphew, a bookseller in the neighbourhood, 
 was one of the publishers of the Tatler; and concerts as well 
 as festive dinners used to take place in the great room, of both 
 of which entertainments Steele was fond. It was here, if we 
 mistake not, that one of the inferior officers of the Company, 
 a humourist on sufferance, came in, one day, on his knees, at an 
 anniversary dinner when Bishop Hoadley was present, in order 
 to drink to the " Glorious Memory." * The company, Steele 
 included, were pretty far gone ; Hoadley had remained as long 
 as he well could; and the genuflector was drunk. Steele, 
 seeing the Bishop a little disconcerted, whispered him, " Do 
 laugh, my lord ; pray laugh: — 'tis humanity to laugh." The 
 good-natured prelate acquiesced. Next day, Steele sent him 
 a penitential letter, with the following couplet : — 
 
 Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
 
 All faults he pardons, though he none commits. 
 
 The most illustrious musical performance that ever took 
 place in the hall was that of Dryden's Ode. A society for the 
 annual commemoration of St. Cecilia, the patroness of music, 
 
 * Of William IIL 
 
60 dryden's odes. 
 
 was instituted iu the year 1680, not without an eye perhaps 
 to the religious opinions of the heir presumptive who was 
 shortly to ascend the throne as James the Second. An ode 
 was written every year for the occasion, and set to music by 
 some eminent composer ; and the performance of it was fol- 
 lowed by a grand dinner. In 1687, Dryden contributed his 
 first ode, entitled, "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day," in 
 which there are finer things than in any part of the other, 
 though as a whole it is not so striking. Ten years after- 
 wards it was followed by "Alexander's Feast," the dinner, 
 perhaps, being a part of the inspiration. Poor Jeremiah 
 Clarke, who shot himself for love, was the composer. * This 
 is the ode with the composition of which Bolingbroke is said 
 to have found Dryden in a state of emotion one morning, the 
 whole night having been passed, agitante deo, under the fever 
 of inspiration. 
 
 From Stationers' Hall once issued all the almanacks that 
 were published, with all the trash and superstition they kept 
 alive. Francis Moore is still among their " living dead men." 
 Francis must now be a posthumous old gentleman, of at least 
 one hundred and fifty years of age. The first blunder the 
 writers of these books committed, in their cunning, was the 
 having to do with the state of the weather ; their next was to 
 think that the grandmothers of the last century were as 
 immortal as their title-pages, and that nobody was getting 
 wiser than themselves. The mysterious solemnity of their 
 hieroglyphics, bringing heaven and earth together, like a 
 vision in the Apocalypse, was imposing to the nurse and the 
 child ; and the bashfulness of their bodily sympathies no less 
 attractive. We remember the astonishment of a worthy 
 seaman, some years ago, at the claim which they put into 
 
 * The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was 
 tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxication of 
 Dryden's feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been 
 styled the musical Otway of his time. He was organist at St. Paul's, 
 and shot himself at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. John 
 Reading, organist of St. Dunstan's, who was intimately acquainted 
 with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon 
 entering the house ''found his friend and fellow-student in the agonies 
 of death." Another friend ol his, one of the lay vicars of the cathe- 
 dral, relates of him, that a few weeks before the catastrophe, Clarke 
 had alighted from his horse in a sequestered spot in the country, 
 where there Avas a pond surrounded by trees, and not knowing whether 
 to hang or drown himself, tossed up a piece of money to see which. 
 The money stuck in the earth edgeways. Of this new chance for 
 life, poor Clarke, we see, was unable to avail himself. 
 
DOCTORS' COMMONS, 61 
 
 the mouth of the sign Virgo. The monopoly is now gone ; 
 aiinanacks have been forced into improvement by emulation ; 
 and the Stationers (naturally enough at the moment) are 
 angry about it. This fit of ill humour will pass ; and a body 
 of men, interested by their very trade in the progress of 
 liberal knowledge, will by and by join the laugh at the ten- 
 derness they evinced in behalf of old wives' fables. It is 
 observable, that their friend Bickerstaff (Steele's assumed name 
 in the Tatler) was the first to begin the joke against them. 
 
 Knight-Riders' Street (Great and Little), on the south side 
 of St. Paul's Churchyard, is said to have been named from 
 the processions of Knights from the Tower to their place of 
 tournament in Smithfield. It must have been a round-about 
 way. Probably the name originated in nothing more than a 
 sign, or from some reference to the Heralds' College in the 
 neighbourhood. The open space, we may here notice, around 
 the western extremity of the Cathedral, was anciently used by 
 the citizens for assembling together " to make shew of their 
 arms," or to hold what was called among the Scotch "a 
 weapon shaw." A complaint was made by the Lord Mayor 
 and the Ward, in the reign of Edward I., against the Dean 
 and Chapter for having inclosed this ground, which they in- 
 sisted was " the soil and lay-fee of our lord the King," by a 
 mud wall, and covered part of it with buildings.* The houses 
 immediately to the west of Creed Lane and Ave-Maria Lane 
 probably occupy part of the space in question. 
 
 Behind Great Knight-Riders' Street is Doctors' Commons, 
 so called from the Doctors of Civil Law who dined together 
 four days in each term. The Court of Admiralty is also 
 there. The Admiralty judge is preceded by an officer with 
 a silver oar. There is something pleasing in the parade of a 
 civil officer, thus announced by a symbol representing the 
 regulation of the most turbulent of elements. 
 
 The civil and ecclesiastical lawyers, who connect the law 
 with the church, had formerly much more to do than they 
 have at present. The proctors (or attorneys) are said to have 
 been so numerous and so noisy in the time of Henry VII., 
 that the judge sometimes could not be heard for them. They 
 thrust themselves into causes without the parties' consent, and 
 shouldered the advocates out of their business. The diminu- 
 tion of their body was owing to Cranmer. Doctors' Commons 
 are of painful celebrity in the annals of domestic trouble, 
 * See Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949, 
 
62 THE heralds' college. 
 
 We have hardly perhaps among us a remnant of greater 
 barbarism than " an action for damages,"* whether considered 
 with a vieAv to recompense or prevention. Doctors' Commons 
 bind as well as set loose. " Hence originates," says the 
 facetious Mr. Malcolm, "the awful scrap of parchment, bear- 
 ing the talismanic mark of John Cantuar (the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury), which constitutes thousands of Benedicts the 
 happiest or most miserable of married men: in short, it is the 
 grand lottery of life, in which, fortunately, there are far more 
 prizes than blanks." "j* The community ought to be thankful 
 to Mr. Malcolm for this last piece of information, as there is 
 a splenetic notion among them to the contrary. 
 
 A history deeply interesting to human nature might be 
 drawn up from the documents preserved in this place; for 
 besides cases of personal infidelity, here are to be found others 
 of infidelity religious, of blasphemy, simony, &c, together 
 with romantic questions relative to kindred and succession ; 
 and here are deposited those last specimens of human strength 
 or weakness — last wills and testaments, together with cases in 
 ■which they have been contested. It was these records that 
 furnished us with accounts of the latest days of Milton ; and 
 that set the readers of -Shakspeare speculating why he should 
 make no mention of his wife, except to leave her his " second 
 best bed;" — a question most unexpectedly as well as happily 
 cleared up by Mr. Charles Knight, who shows that the bequest 
 was to the lady's honour. Of the practisers in the civil courts, 
 we can call to mind nothing more worthy of recollection than 
 the strange name of one of them, " Sir Julius Caesar," and 
 the ruinous volatility of poor Dr. King, the Tory wit, who is 
 conjectured to have been the only civilian that ever went to 
 reside in Ireland, " after having experienced the emoluments 
 of a settlement in Doctors' Commons." The doctor unfor- 
 tunately practised too much with the bottle, which hindered 
 him from adhering long to anything. 
 
 Behind Little Knight-Eiders' Street, to the east of Doctors' 
 Commons, is the Heralds' College. A gorgeous idea of colours 
 falls on the mind in passing it, as from a cathedral window, 
 
 " And shielded scutcheons blush with blood of queens and kings." 
 
 Keats. 
 
 * Since this was written, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical 
 Court in Doctors' Commons on matters of divorce has been transferred 
 to a new " Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes," sitting at 
 "Westminster. 
 
 f Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 473. 
 
HERALDIC ATTIRE. 63 
 
 The passenger, if he is a reader conversant with old times, 
 thinks of bannered halls, of processions of chivalry, and of the 
 fields of Cressy and Poictiers, with their vizored knights, 
 distinguished by their coats and crests ; for a coat of arms is 
 nothing but a representation of the knight himself, from whom 
 the bearer is descended. The shield supposes his body ; there is 
 the helmet for his head, with the crest upon it ; the flourish is 
 his mantle ; and he stands upon the ground of his motto, or 
 moral pretension. The supporters, if he is noble, or of a 
 particular class of knighthood, are thought to be the pages 
 that waited upon him, designated by the fantastic dresses of 
 bear, lion, &c, which they sometimes wore. Heraldry is full 
 of colour and imagery, and attracts the fancy like a " book of 
 pictures." The Kings at Arms are romantic personages, 
 really crowned, and have as mystic appellations as the kings 
 of an old tale — Garter, Clarencieux, and Norroy. Norroy is 
 King of the North, and Clarencieux (a title of Norman origin) 
 of the South. The heralds, Lancaster, Somerset, &c, have 
 simpler names,, indicative of the counties over which they 
 preside ; but are only less gorgeously dressed than the kings, 
 in emblazonment and satin ; and then there are the four 
 pursuivants, Eonge Croix, Eouge Dragon, Portcullis, and 
 Blue Mantle, with hues as lively, and appellations as quaint, 
 as the attendants on a fairy court. For gorgeousness of 
 attire, mysteriousness of origin, and in fact for similarity of 
 origin (a knave being a squire), a knave of cards is not unlike 
 a herald. A story is told of an Irish King at Arms,* who, 
 waiting upon the Bishop of Killaloe to summon him to Par- 
 liament, and being dressed, as the ceremony required, in his 
 heraldic attire, so mystified the bishop's servant with his 
 appearance, that not knowing what to make of it, and carry- 
 ing off but a confused notion of his title, he announced him 
 thus : " My lord, here is the King of Trumps." 
 
 Mr. Pennant says, that the Heralds' College " is a foundation 
 of great antiquity, in which the records are kept of all the old 
 blood in the kingdom." But this is a mistake. Heralds, 
 indeed, are of great antiquity, in the sense of messengers of 
 peace and war ; but in the modern sense, they are no older 
 than the reign of Edward III., and were not incorporated 
 before that of the usurper Eichard. The house which they 
 formerly occupied was a mansion of the Earls of Derby. It 
 
 * On the authority of Langton, Johnson's friend. See Memoirs, 
 Anecdotes, &c., by Letitia Matilda Hawkins, vol. i., p. 293. 
 
64 COATS OF ARMS, 
 
 was burnt in the Great Fire, and succeeded by the present 
 building, part of which was raised at the expense of some of 
 their officers. As to their keeping records of " all the old 
 blood in the kingdom," they may keep them, or not, as they 
 have the luck to find them ; but the blood was old, before 
 they had anything to do with it. Men bore arms and crests 
 when there were no officers to register them. This, as a 
 writer in the Censura Literaria observes, justly diminishes the 
 pretension they set up, that no arms are of authority which 
 have not been registered among their archives. 
 
 "If this doctrine," says he, " were just, the consequence would be, 
 that arms of comparatively modern invention are of better authority 
 than those which a man and his ancestors have borne from times 
 before the existence of the College of Arms, and for time immemorial, 
 supported by the evidence of ancient seals, funeral monuments, and 
 other authentic documents. Surely this is grossly absurd ; and the 
 more absurd, if we consider that the heralds seem originally not to 
 have been instituted for the manufacturing of armorial ensigns, but 
 for the recording those ensigns which had been borne by men of 
 honourable lineage, and which might, therefore, be borne by their 
 posterity. Perhaps it would not be too much to presume, that it will 
 be found on inquiry, that there are no grants of arms by the English 
 Heralds of any very high antiquity ; and that the most ancient which 
 can be produced, either in the original or in well-authenticated copies, 
 are of a date when the general use of seals of arms, circumscribed 
 with the names and titles of the bearers, was wearing away."* 
 
 We learn from the same writer, that the value of 'a 
 painted shield of parchment" is fifty pounds. Of the spirit 
 in which these things have been done, the reader may judge 
 from a letter written by an applicant to one of the most 
 respectable names in the college list. His object was to get the 
 illegitimate coat of a female friend changed to one by which 
 it was to appear she was not illegitimate. He offers five 
 pounds for it ; and adds, that there is another friend of his, 
 *' an alderman's son, in Chester, whose great-grandfather was 
 baseborn, whom I have bine treating with severall tymes 
 about the alteration of his coat, telling him for 10 11 and not 
 under, it may be accomplished ; five he is willing to give, but 
 not above ; if you please to accept of that sume, you may 
 writt me a line or two. I desire that you will send the scroll 
 down again, as soon as you can."! 
 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. iii., p. 254. 
 
 •f Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, by 
 Hamper. Lond. 1827. Our memorandum has omitted the page. 
 The letter was written to Dugdale by Randall Holme, a brother 
 herald. 
 
COATS OF ARMS, 65 
 
 The truth, is, that, except as far as their records go, and 
 as they can be turned to account in questions of kindred and 
 inheritance, the heralds are of no importance in modern times. 
 Nor have they anything to do with the spirit and first prin- 
 ciples of the devices, of which they assume the direction. 
 We think this is worth notice, because heraldry itself, or at 
 least the discussion of coats of arms, of which most people 
 are observed to be fonder than they choose to confess, might 
 be reconciled to the progress of knowledge, or made, at any 
 rate, the ground of a pleasing and not ungraceful novelty. 
 To a coat of arms no man, literally speaking, has pretensions, 
 who is not the representative of somebody that bore arms 
 in the old English wars ; but when the necessity for military 
 virtue decreased, arms gave way to the gown ; and shields had 
 honourable, but fantastic augmentations, for the peaceful 
 triumphs of lawyers and statesmen. Meanwhile commerce 
 was on the increase, and there came up a new power in the 
 shape of pounds, shillings, and pence, which was to be repre- 
 sented also by its coat of arms ; how absurdly, need not be 
 added ; though the individuals who got their lions and their 
 shields behind the counter, were often excellent men, who 
 might have cut as great a figure in battle as the best, had 
 they lived in other times. At length, not to have a military 
 coat was to be no gentleman ; and then the heralds fairly sold 
 achievements at so much the head. They received their fees, 
 put on their spectacles, turned over their books like astro- 
 logers, and found that you were deserving of a bear's paw, or 
 might clap three puppies on your coach. " Congreve," says 
 Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, " gave me a Tatler he 
 had written out, as blind as he is, for little Harrison. 'Tis 
 about a scoundrel that was grown rich, and went and bought 
 a coat of arms at the heralds', and a set of ancestors at Fleet 
 Ditch." And this is the case at present. Numbers of per- 
 sons do not, however, stand on this ceremony with the heralds. 
 Many are content to receive their exploits, at half-a-guinea 
 the set, from pretenders who undertake to " procure arms ;" 
 and many more assume the arms nearest to their name and 
 family, or invent them at once ; naturally enough concluding, 
 that they might as well achieve their own glories, as buy them 
 of an old gentleman or a pedlar. 
 
 Now arms were not originally given ; they were assumed* 
 Men in battle, when armies fought pell-mell, and bodily 
 prowess was more in request than it is now, wished to have 
 
 F 
 
66 COATS OF ARMS. 
 
 their persons distinguished ; and accordingly they put a de- 
 vice en their shield, or some towering symbol on their 
 helmet. This at once served to mark out the bearer, and to 
 express the particular sentiment or alliance upon which he 
 was to be understood as priding himself. The real spirit of 
 heraldry consisted, therefore, and must always consist, in dis- 
 tinguishing one person from another, and in expressing his 
 individual sentiments ; and as the adoption of some device is 
 both an elegant exercise of the fancy, and acts as a kind of 
 memento to the conscience, tending to keep us to what we 
 profess, people who have no certain arms of their own, or who 
 do not care for them if they have, might not ungracefully or 
 even uselessly entertain themselves with doing, in their 
 own persons, what the old assumers of arms did in theirs; 
 that is to say, invent their own distinctions. The emblazon- 
 ment might amuse their fancies, and be put in books, or else- 
 where, like other coats of arms ; and a little difference in 
 the mode of it could easily set aside the interference of the 
 heralds. People might thus express their views in life, or 
 their particular tastes and opinions ; and the " science of 
 heraldry," which has been so much laughed at, not always 
 "with justice, be made to accord with the progress of know- 
 ledge — or, at all events, with the entertaining part of it. 
 
 As to coats of arms really ancient, or connected with old 
 virtue, or with modern, we have already shown that we 
 are far from pretending to despise anything which indulges 
 the natural desire of mortality to extend or to elevate its 
 sense of existence. We have no respect for shields of no 
 meaning, or for bearers of better shields that disgrace them ; 
 but we do not profess to look without interest on very old 
 shields, if only for the sake of their antiquity, much less 
 when they are associated with names, 
 
 Familiar in our mouths as household words. 
 The lions and stags, &c, of the Howards and Herberts, of the 
 Cavendishes, Russells, and Spencers, affect us more than those 
 of Cuvier himself, especially when we recollect they were 
 borne by great writers as well as warriors, men who advanced 
 not only themselves but their species in dignity. The most 
 interesting coats of arms, next to those which unite antiquity 
 with ability (that is to say, duration backward with duration 
 and utility in prospect), are such as become ennobled by 
 genius, or present us with some pleasing device. Such is 
 the spear of Shakspeare, whose ancestors are thought to have 
 
COATS OF ARMS. 67 
 
 won it m Bosworth field ; * the spread eagle of Milton — a 
 proper epic device : the flower given to Linnzeus for a device 
 when he was ennobled ; the philosophical motto of the great 
 Bacon, Mediocria firma (Mediocre things firm — the Golden 
 Mean) ; the modest, yet self-respecting one, first used, we 
 believe, by Sir Philip Sydney, Vix ea nostra voco (I scarcely 
 call these things one's own) ; and those other mottoes, taken 
 from favourite classics, which argue more taste than anti- 
 quity. We are not sorry, however, for mere antiquity's sake, 
 to recognise the ship of the Campbells ; the crowned heart (a 
 beautiful device) of Douglas ; and even the checquers of the 
 unfortunate family of the Stuarts. They tell us of names 
 and connections, and call to mind striking events in history. 
 Indeed, all ancient names naturally become associated with 
 history and poetry. The most interesting coat in Scottish 
 heraldry, if we are to believe tradition, is that of Hay, Earl 
 of Errol ; whose ancestors, a couple of peasants, with their 
 father, rallied an army of their countrymen in a narrow pass, 
 and led them back victoriously against the Danes. Two 
 peasants are the supporters of the shield. But unques- 
 tionably the most interesting sight in the whole circle of 
 heraldry, British or foreign, if we consider the rational popu- 
 larity of its origin, and the immense advance it records in 
 the progress of what is truly noble, is that of the plain 
 English motto assumed by Lord Erskine, Trial by Jury. 
 The devices of the Nelsons and Wellingtons, illustrious as 
 they are, are nothing to this ; for the world might relapse 
 into barbarism, as it has formerly done, notwithstanding the 
 exploits of the greatest warriors ; but words like these are 
 trophies of the experience of ages, and the world could not 
 pass them, and go back again, for very shame. It is the 
 fashion now-a-days to have painted windows ; and a very 
 beautiful fashion it is, and extremely worthy of encourage- 
 ment in this climate, where the general absence of colours 
 renders it desirable that they should be collected wherever 
 they can, so as to increase a feeling of cheerfulness and 
 warmth. When the sun strikes through a painted window, 
 
 * Another opinion, however, is that the spear had been given to 
 one of his ancestors as having been a magistrate of some description. 
 This supposition seems to be supported by the grant of arms to John 
 Shakspeare in 1599, which has been printed by Mr. Malcolm. But 
 Shakspeares in Warwickshire are as plentiful as blackberries, and 
 perhaps the name originated in the stout arms of a whole tribe of 
 goldiers. 
 
 F3 
 
6£ COATS OP ARMS. 
 
 it seems as if Heaven itself were recommending to us the 
 brilliance with which it has painted its flowers and its skies. 
 It is a pity we have no devices invented for themselves by 
 the great men of past times, otherwise what an illustrious 
 window would they make ! We should like to have pre- 
 sented the reader with such of the escutcheons above men- 
 tioned as have been created or modified in some respect by 
 their ennoblers ; and to have shown him how different the old 
 parts now appear, with which the individuals had nothing to 
 do, compared with those of their own achievement, or adop- 
 tion, even when nothing better than a motto. Sir Philip's 
 motto almost rejects his coat.* If all persons, ambitious of 
 good conduct and opinions, were to adopt our suggestion, and 
 assume a device of their own, windows of this kind might 
 abound among friends ; and many of them would become as 
 interesting to posterity, as such "coats of arms" would, above 
 all others, deserve to be. 
 
 The most eminent names in the Heralds' College are 
 Camden, the great antiquary ; Dugdale (whose merits, how- 
 ever, are questionable) ; King, a writer on political arith- 
 metic ; and Vanbrugh, the comic writer, who wore a tabard 
 for a short time, as Clarencieux. Gibbon had an ancestor, a 
 herald, who took great interest in the profession. He had 
 another progenitor, who, about the reign of James the First, 
 changed the scallop shells of the historian's coat " into three 
 ogresses or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising 
 three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an 
 unjust lawsuit." f A good account of heraldry, its anti- 
 quities and its freaks, is a desideratum, and would make a 
 very amusing book. 
 
 We move westward from St. Paul's, because, though the 
 metropolis abounds with interest in every part of it, yet the 
 course this way is the most generally known; and readers 
 may choose to hear of the most popular thoroughfares first. 
 
 * Vix ea nostra voco — (as above translated). The effect is stronger 
 if the whole passage is called to mind. It is Ovid; 
 
 Nam genus, et proavos, et quas non fecinms ipsi, 
 Vix ea nostra voco. — Metamor. lib. 13. v. 140. 
 Tor birth, and rank, and what our own good powers 
 Have earned us not, I scarcely call them ours. 
 Ovid, himself a man of birth, puts this sentiment in the mouth of 
 Ulysses, a king. But then he was a king whose talents were above 
 His royalty. 
 f Life of Gibbon, in the Autobiography, vol. i. 
 
LUDGATE. 
 
 69 
 
 The origin of the word Ludgate is not known. The old 
 opinion respecting King Lud has been rejected, and Borne 
 think it is the same as word as Flud or Fludgate, meaning 
 the Gate on the Fleet, Floet, or Flood, F being dropt, as in 
 leer for Fleer, Lloyd for Floyd or Fluyd, &c. It may be so ; 
 but it is not easy to see, in that case, why Fleet Street should 
 not have been called Lud Street. Perhaps the old tradition 
 is right, and some ancient Lud, or Lloyd, was the builder of 
 an "old original" gate, whether king or not. Its successor 
 (which formerly crossed the street by St. Martin's church), 
 was no older than the reign of King John. It was rebuilt in 
 1586, and finally removed in 1760. Pennant says, he re- 
 membered it "a wretched prison for debtors." The old 
 chroniclers tell us a romantic story of a lord-mayor, Sir 
 
 Stephen Forster, who enlarged this prison, and added a chapel 
 to it. He had been confined in it himself, and, begging at 
 the grate, was asked by a rich widow what sum would pur- 
 chase his liberty. He said, twenty pounds. She paid it, took 
 him into her service, and afterwards became his wife. One 
 of our old dramatists (Rowley), in laying a scene in this 
 prison, has made use of the name of Stephen Forster in a 
 
70 STORY OF STEPHEN FORSTER, 
 
 different manner ; and probably his story bad a foundation in 
 truth. According to him, Stephen, who had been a profligate 
 fellow, was relieved by the son of his brother, with whom he 
 was at variance. Stephen afterwards becomes rich in his 
 turn, and seeing his brother become poor and thrust into the 
 same prison, forbids his nephew Eobert, whom he had adopted 
 on that condition, to relieve his father. The nephew disobeys, 
 and has the misfortune to incur the hatred of both uncle and 
 parent, for his connection with either party, but ultimately 
 finds his virtue acknowledged. The following scene is one of 
 those in which these old writers, in their honest confidence 
 in nature, go direct to the heart. The reader will see the 
 style of begging in those days. Robert Forster, who has been 
 cursed by his father, comes to Ludgate, and stands concealed 
 outside the prison, while his father appears above at the grate, 
 " a box hanging down." 
 
 Forster. Bread, bread, one penny to buy a loaf of bread, for the 
 tender mercy. 
 
 Rob. O me ! my shame! I know that voice full well; 
 I '11 help thy wants, although thou curse me still. 
 
 [He stands where he is unseen by his father. 
 
 Fors. Bread, bread, some Christian man send back 
 Your charity to a number of poor prisoners. 
 
 One penny for the tender mercy — [Robert puts in money. 
 
 The hand of Heaven reward you, gentle sir ! 
 Never may you want, never feel misery; 
 Let blessings in unnumbered measure grow, 
 And fall upon your head, where'er you go. 
 
 Rob. Oh, happy comfort! curses to the ground 
 First struck me; now with blessings I am crowned. 
 
 Fors. Bread, bread, for the tender mercy; one penny for a loaf of 
 bread. 
 
 Rob. I'll buy more blessings: take thou all my store: 
 I '11 keep no coin and see my father poor. 
 
 Fors. Good angels guard you, sir; my prayers shall be, 
 That Heaven may bless you for this charity. 
 
 Rob. If he knew me sure he would not say so: 
 5Tet I have comfort, if by any means 
 I get a blessing from my father's hands.* 
 
 The prison of Ludgate was anciently considered to be not 
 so much a place of confinement as a place of refuge, into 
 which debtors threw themselves to escape from their creditors 
 — " a keep, not so much of the wicked as of the wretched" — 
 (" non sceleratorum career, sed miserorum custodia"), as it is 
 expressed in a Latin speech which was addressed by the 
 inmates to King Philip of Spain, when he passed through 
 * Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, p. 147. 
 
LUDGATE PRISON. — WYATT's REBELLION. 71 
 
 the city, in 1554, and which the celebrated Eoger Ascham 
 was employed to compose. As it does not appear, however, 
 that the persons who took up their abode here were allowed 
 to come out again until they had discharged their debts, the 
 distinction attempted to be drawn seems to be a somewhat 
 shadowy one. A writer, nevertheless, quoted by Maitland, 
 who in 1659 published a description of the house in which 
 he had himself been for a long time a resident, expresses 
 great indignation against the authorities for having " basely 
 and injuriously caused to be taken down" the old inscription, 
 affixed by Sir Stephen Forster, of Free Water and Lodging, 
 " and set up another over the outward street door with only 
 these words engraven: This is the Prison of Ludgate."* 
 The prison of Ludgate stood on the south side of the street, 
 and extended back till it almost joined a portion of the old 
 London Wall, which ran nearly parallel to Ludgate Hill. 
 About the year 1764 this wall is described as being eight 
 feet and a half thick, f Bits of it (as before noticed) still 
 remain in this neighbourhood. 
 
 At this gate a stop was put to the insurrection of Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt against Queen Mary, at the time when her 
 marriage with Philip was in contemplation. Sir Thomas was 
 son of the poet who had been a friend of the Earl of Surrey, 
 and a warm partisan of Anne Bullen. He led his forces up 
 the Strand and Fleet Street in no very hopeful condition, after 
 suffering a loss in his rear; and on arriving at Ludgate, found 
 it shut against him, and strongly manned. The disappoint- 
 ment is said to have affected him so strongly, that he threw 
 himself on a bench opposite the Bell-Savage Inn, and mourned 
 the rashness of his hopes. He retired, only to find his retreat 
 cut off at Temple Bar ; and being summoned by a herald to 
 submit, requested it might be to a gentleman ; upon which 
 his sword was received by a person of his own rank. He 
 was beheaded. It is worth observing, that Mary, alarmed at 
 this insurrection, had pretended, in a speech at Guildhall, that 
 she would give up the marriage, provided it were seriously 
 and properly objected to: she only called upon the citizens to 
 stand by her against rebels. When the rebels, however, were 
 put down, the marriage, though notoriously unpopular, was 
 concluded. 
 
 The Bell-Savage is an inn of old standing. The name is 
 
 * Maitland, vol. i., p. 28. 
 
 f Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum,*iv., p. 367. 
 
72 THE BELLE-SAUVAGE INN. 
 
 now learnedly written over the front — Belle Sauvage. The 
 old sign was a bell with a savage by it. Stow derived the 
 name from Isabella Savage, who had given the house to the 
 company of Cutlers ; and most likely this was its origin ; but 
 as the inn was formerly one of those in which plays were 
 acted, and as the players had dealings with romance, and 
 sign painters varied their hieroglyphics according to the 
 whim of the moment, Pennant might have reasonably found 
 one derivation in the Spectator, without objecting to the other. 
 A sight of the passage to which he refers will leave the imme- 
 diate derivation beyond all doubt. " As for the Bell-Savage," 
 says Addison (for the paper is his), " which is the sign of a 
 Savage Man standing by a Bell, I was formerly very much 
 puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the 
 reading of an old romance translated out of the French ; 
 which gives an account of a very beautiful woman who was 
 in a wilderness, and is called in the French la belle Sauvage; 
 and is everywhere translated by our countrymen the Bell- 
 Savage." * This was one of the inns at which the famous 
 Tarlton used to perform. London has a modern look to the 
 inhabitants ; but persons who come from the country find as 
 odd and remote-looking things in it as the Londoners do in 
 York or Chester ; and among these are a variety of old inns, 
 with corridors running round the yard. They are well 
 worth a glance from anybody who has a respect for old 
 times. The play used to be got up in the yard, and the 
 richer part of the spectators occupied " the galleries."! 
 
 * Spectator, vol. 1, No. 28. 
 
 f Malone, in his Historical Account of the English Stage, has an 
 ingenious parallel between these inn-theatres and the construction 
 of the modern ones. "Many of our ancient dramatick pieces," he 
 observes, " were performed in the yards of carriers' inns, in which, in 
 the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comedians, who then 
 first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional stage. 
 The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be preserved in our 
 modern theatre. The galleries in both are ranged over each other on 
 three sides of the building. The small rooms under the lowest of 
 these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it is observable, that 
 these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent period 
 expressly for dramatick exhibitions, still retained their old name, and 
 were frequently called rooms by our ancient writers. The yard bears 
 a sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We may 
 suppose the stage to have been raised in this arena, on the fourth side, 
 with its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for 
 admission was taken. Thus in fine weather, a play-house, not incom- 
 modious, might have been formed." Heed's Edition of Johnson's and 
 Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 73. 
 
ludGate hill. 73 
 
 The wall in which Lud-gate stood was the occasion of the 
 hill's having two names, which is still the case, the upper part, 
 between the Bell-Savage and St. Paul's Churchyard, being 
 called Ludgate Street, and only the rest Ludgate Hill. This 
 latter portion went anciently by the name of Bowyers' Row, 
 no doubt from its being principally inhabited by persons of 
 that trade. On Ludgate Hill lived the cobbler whom Steele 
 mentions as a curious instance of pride.* He had a wooden 
 figure of a beau, who stood before him in a bending posture, 
 humbly presenting him with his awl, or bristle, or whatever 
 else his employer chose to put in his hand, after the manner 
 of an obsequious servant. Steele seems to have thought the 
 man mad ; otherwise the conceit would have been an agreeable 
 one. Ludgate Street, as if to keep up and augment the " 
 didactic reputation of the neighbourhood, was not long since 
 the head-quarters of the Society for the Diffusion of Know- 
 ledge, at least as far as regarded their publications. And, 
 curiously enough, the house was next door to old " New- 
 berry's." 
 
 Between Ludgate Hill and the Thames, in the district more 
 properly retaining the name, was the monastery of the Black 
 Friars, an order of Dominicans, in which parliaments were 
 sometimes held. The Emperor Charles V. was lodged in it 
 when he visited Henry VIII. , in 1522 ; and in a hall of the 
 same building, seven years after, the cause was tried between 
 Henry and his queen, Catherine. Shakspeare has given us 
 the opening scene. In Elizabeth's time, the desecrated tene- 
 ments and neighbourhood of Blackfriars became the resort of 
 the world of fashion — a court end of the city ; and close at 
 hand, on the site retaining the name of Play-house Yard, was 
 the famous Theatre in Blackfriars, where Shakspeare's, Ben 
 Jonson's, and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were performed, 
 and where many of them came out. It was what they called at 
 that time a " private" theatre, the peculiarity of which is not 
 exactly understood. All that is known of it is, that it was 
 smaller than the public ones ; but it was open to public admis- 
 sion. Perhaps a private theatre meant a theatre more select 
 than the others, and frequented by politer company ; for such, 
 at any rate, the present one appears to have been. It is con- 
 jectured also to have been a winter theatre, and its perform- 
 ances took place by candlelight. The gallants and ladies of 
 the courts of Elizabeth and James took their dinner at noon, 
 "*Tatler, No. 127. 
 
74 ACCIDENT AT BLACKFRIARS IN 1623. 
 
 and after riding or lute-playing till evening, went to their 
 snug little theatre in the neighbourhood, to laugh or weep 
 over the divine fancies of Shakspeare. Shakspeare himself 
 must often have been on the spot ; a certainty which an in- 
 tellectual inhabtiant will be glad to possess. The theatre, at 
 one time, was partly his property. 
 
 A part of the monastery of the Blackfriars was, in 1623, 
 the scene of a frightful accident, which made a great noise at 
 the time. Mr. Malcolm has enumerated several of the publi- 
 cations recording it ; and from these it appears that on Sunday, 
 the 5th of November in that year, a congregation of about 
 three hundred individuals had assembled in a small gallery 
 over the gateway of the lodgings of the French Ambassador 
 in this building, in order to hear a sermon from a Jesuit, 
 named Father Drury, who enjoyed considerable reputation as 
 a preacher. Under the floor of the chamber where they were 
 assembled was an empty apartment, and under that another, 
 making together a height of twenty-two feet from the ground ; 
 and the floor itself, as it afterwards turned out, was mainly 
 supported by a single beam, which in the centre was not more 
 than three inches thick. The people had been in their seats 
 for about half-an-hour, when this beam suddenly gave way, 
 and the whole of them were instantly precipitated, mixed 
 with the timber, plaster, and rubbish of the floors, into the 
 vacant depth below. Drury, and another priest, named Red- 
 gate, were both killed, as were also a Lady Webbe, and the 
 daughter of a Lady Blackstone, together with, it is supposed, 
 between ninety and a hundred persons. Many more were 
 seriously injured. " Several people," says Mr. Malcolm, 
 " escaped in a very extraordinary manner, particularly Mrs. 
 Lucy Penruddock, who was pieserved by a chair falling 
 hollow over her ; and a young man, who lay on the floor, 
 overwhelmed by people and rubbish, yet untouched by them, 
 through the resting of fragments on each other, and thus 
 leaving a space round him. In this horrible situation he had 
 the presence of mind to force his way through a piece of the 
 ceiling, and he shortly after had the indescribable happiness 
 of assisting in the liberation of others."* There were many 
 persons, it would appear, foolish and wicked enough to repre- 
 sent this calamity as a token of the displeasure of heaven 
 against the Roman Catholic faith. The pamphlets noticed 
 by Mr. Malcolm are some of those that were published by 
 * Londinium Redirivum, ii., 375, 
 
PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE. 75 
 
 the parties in a violent controversy which raged for some 
 time on the subject. The , day on which this accident hap- 
 pened was long remembered under the name of the Fatal 
 Vespers ; and the circumstance that it was the anniversary 
 of the Gunpowder Plot was not forgotten by the judgment- 
 mongers. Most of the bodies of those who were killed on this 
 occasion were buried without either the ceremony of a funeral 
 service, or the decency of a coffin or winding-sheet, in two 
 large pits or trenches, dug, the one in the court before, and 
 the other in the garden behind the house, in which the acci- 
 dent had taken place. 
 
 Printing-house Square, close to Playhouse-yard, marks out 
 the site of the ancient King's Printing-House, whence bibles, 
 prayer-books, and proclamations were issued. It was rebuilt 
 in the middle of the last century, and became, according to 
 Maitland, " the completest printing-house in the world." The 
 king's printer now lives elsewhere ; but in the same spot is a 
 house, which may be called the world's printing-house, seeing 
 the enormous multitude of newspapers which the mighty 
 giant of steam daily throws forth out of his iron lap, full of 
 interest to all quarters of the globe. We need not say that 
 we allude to the Times newspaper. There is knowing, in this 
 and other instances, what bounds to put to human expecta- 
 tion, when mechanical and intellectual force are thus joined 
 in a common object. 
 
 On the other side of the way, in Bridge Street, stood, and 
 stands now, though hidden by the new houses, and much 
 altered, the former palace of Bridewell, now known as a house 
 of industry and correction. In ancient times the King used 
 frequently to reside here ; and when such was the case, the 
 courts of law sometimes attended him. The building, having 
 fallen into decay, was restored about the year 1522, by 
 Henry VIII. ; and here the attendants of the Emperor 
 Charles V. were lodged while the emperor himself occupied 
 the Blackfriars, a communication being formed between the 
 two palaces by a gallery carried over the Fleet Ditch, and 
 through the old city wall. Both Henry and Catherine, also, 
 were lodged here, while the cause between them was proceed- 
 ing at Blackfriars. In 1553 Edward VI. granted the palace, 
 on the solicitation of Bishop Ridley, for the purposes to which 
 it has been since applied ; an act of benevolence which was 
 recorded, with more precision than elegance, in the following 
 
76 BRIDEWELL— CASTLE BATNARD. 
 
 lines under a portrait of his majesty, that used to hang near 
 the pulpit in the old chapel : — 
 
 " This Edward of fair memory the sixth. 
 In whom with greatness, goodness was commixt, 
 Gave this Bridewell, a Palace in old times, 
 For a chastising house of vagrant crimes." 
 
 Bridewell having been burnt down in the Great Fire was 
 rebuilt immediately after that calamity, and it has since been 
 frequently repaired, and partially renovated. Henry the 
 Eighth (" sturdy rogue !") would have been a fit personage 
 to lodge in it still, though under somewhat different circum- 
 stances. 
 
 One of the steep and gloomy descents from Thames Street 
 still preserves the name of Castle Street ; and immediately to 
 the west of this stood in ancient times, on the banks of the 
 river, a large building called Baynard's Castle. Baynard, by 
 whom it was originally erected in the eleventh century, was 
 one of the Conqueror's Norman followers. His descendant, 
 William Baynard, however, soon after the commencement of 
 the next century, forfeited his inheritance to the crown, by 
 which it was bestowed upon the family of Clare. The repre- 
 sentative of this family, and the possessor of Baynard's Castle, 
 in the reign of King John, was the Baron Robert Fitzwalter, 
 a portion of whose history, as related by some of our old 
 chioniclers, gives an interest to the spot. Among the beauties 
 of the time, one of the fairest was Matilda, the daughter of 
 Fitzwalter. The licentious monarch, who may have seen her 
 at some high festival held in this very castle, was smitten, 
 after his fashion, by her charms ; but his suit was rejected with 
 indignation, both by herself and her father. His "love" now 
 turned into hatred and thirst of revenge ; he soon after 
 resorted to open force, and having first driven Fitzwalter to 
 seek refuge in France, easily got the unhappy girl into his 
 custody, and, if we are to believe the story, despatched her by 
 poison. He at the same time ordered Castle Baynard to be 
 demolished. The next year the armies of the English and 
 French Kings lay encamped during a truce on the opposite 
 sides of a river in France, when an English knight, impatient, 
 as it would seem, of the bloodless inactivity that prevailed, 
 thought fit to challenge any one of the enemy who chose to 
 come forth and break a lance with him. It was not long 
 before a champion appeared making his way across the water, 
 ■ 
 
STORY OF THE BARON FITZWALTER. ^r 77 
 
 who, unattended as he was, had no sooner reached the land, 
 than he mounted a horse and rode up to meet his challenger. 
 The duel took place in the sight of King John and his troops, 
 but it did not last long ; for both the English knight and his 
 horse were thrown to the ground by the first thrust of his 
 antagonist's spear, which was also broken to shivers in the 
 shock. " By God's troth," exclaimed John, as he beheld this 
 heroic exploit, " he were a king indeed who had such a knight." 
 The words were caught by some of the bystanders, who had 
 observed more narrowly than the monarch the figure of the 
 unknown victor, and who suspected him to be no other than 
 their old acquaintance, the Baron Fitzwalter. It was, in fact, 
 no other. The next day, the praise which the King had 
 bestowed upon his prowess being reported to him, he returned 
 to the English camp, and throwing himself at the feet of his 
 sovereign, was re- admitted to favour, and restored to all his 
 former possessions and honours. We may observe, however, 
 that this narrative is scarcely detailed with sufficient precision 
 to entitle it to be received as a piece of authentic history, and 
 that especially it does not seem to be very easy to reconcile 
 some parts of it, as commonly given, with the ascertained 
 dates and course of the events of King John's reign. This 
 Robert Fitzwalter is placed by Matthew Paris at the head of 
 his list of the Barons, who, in 1215, came armed in a body to 
 the King, at the Temple, and made those demands which led 
 to the concession of the Great Charter at Bunnymede. Indeed, 
 in the short military contest which preceded the King's sub- 
 mission, Fitzwalter was appointed by his brother barons the 
 commander-in-chief of their forces, and dignified in that 
 capacity with the title of Marshal of the Army of God and of 
 Holy Church. On his return to England, he is said to have 
 rebuilt or repaired his castle in London which the King had 
 thrown down, and the edifice continued for a long time to be 
 the principal fortress within the city. The family of Fitz- 
 walter, in consequence of their possession of Baynard's Castle, 
 held the office of Chastilians and Bannerets, or Banner-bearers 
 of London ; and the reader who is curious upon such matters 
 may consult Stow, or those who have copied him, for an 
 account of the rights, services, and ceremonial customs apper- 
 taining to that dignity. The punishment of a person found 
 guilty of treason within the banneret's jurisdiction is worth 
 noticing : he was to be tied to a post in the Thames, at one of 
 the wharfs, and left there for two ebbings and two flowings of 
 
78 
 
 RICHARD HI. AND BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 the tide. After this, there was certainly little chance of his 
 committing more treason. 
 
 It is not known how Baynard's Castle, and the privileges 
 belonging to the lordship, got out of the hands of this family ; 
 but in 1428, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, the building, 
 having been burned down, is stated to have been restored by 
 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. After the duke's death it 
 came once more into the possession of the crown ; and here it 
 was that the great council assembled in the beginning of 
 March, ]461, which proclaimed the Earl of March King, by 
 the title of Edward IV. It was here also, twenty-two years 
 after, that the solemn farce was enacted in which Eichard III. 
 assumed the royal dignity on the invitation of Buckingham, 
 and in obedience to the pretended wishes of the citizens. 
 
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 Shakspeare has given this scene with an exact conformity, in 
 all the matters of fact, to the narratives of the old chroniclers ; 
 the crafty Protector, it will be remembered, being made to 
 present himself in the gallery above, supported by a bishop 
 on each side, while Buckingham, the lord mayor, the alder- 
 men, and the citizens, occupy the court of the castle below. 
 Baynard's Castle was once more rebuilt in 1487, by Henry VII., 
 with a view to its answering better the purpose of a royal 
 palace ; and the King occasionally lodged there. Some time 
 after this we find the place in possession of the Earls of 
 Pembroke, who made it their common residence ; and it was 
 here that the Earl of that name, on the 19th of July, 1553, 
 about a fortnight after the death of Edward VI., assembled 
 
diana's chamber. 79 
 
 the council of the nobility and clergy, at which the determin- 
 ation was taken, on the motion of Lord Arundel, to abandon 
 the cause of Lady Jane Grey, and to proclaim Queen Mary, 
 which, accordingly, was instantly done ia different parts of 
 the city. This is supposed to have been the building which 
 was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. It is represented 
 in an old print of London as a square pile' surrounding a 
 court, and surmounted with numerous towers. A large gate- 
 way in the middle of the south side led to the river by a 
 bridge of two arches and stairs. This ancient fortress was 
 never rebuilt after the fire ; and its site has been since 
 occupied by wharfs, timber-yards, workshops, and common 
 dwelling-houses. The ward, however, in which it was situated, 
 and which embraces also St. Paul's Churchyard, and nearly 
 all the localities we have as yet noticed, still retains the name 
 of the Ward of Baynard's Castle. 
 
 Upon Paul's Wharf Hill, to the north-east of Baynard's 
 Castle, were a number of houses within a great gate, which 
 are said by Maitland to have been designated, in the leases 
 granted by the dean and chapter, as the Camera Diana, or 
 Diana's Chamber, and to have been so denominated from a 
 spacious building in the form of a labyrinth, constructed here 
 by Henry II. for the concealment of the fair Eosamond 
 Clifford. We need scarcely say that this tradition has all the 
 air of a fable. The author we have just named, however, 
 assures us that " for a long time there remained some evident 
 testifications of tedious turnings and windings, as also of a 
 passage under ground from his house to Castle Baynard ; 
 which was no doubt the King's way from thence to the 
 Camera Diana" * or the chamber of his " brightest Diana." 
 What the testifications may in question really have amounted to, 
 we cannot pretend to say ; but Diana, not being a family name, 
 as in the case of another royal favourite, Diana of Poitiers, 
 seems a strange one to have been given to the lady already 
 christened by so poetical an appellation as Eosamond, and so 
 diffeient in her reputation from the chaste goddess. We 
 should, for our parts, rather suppose that the dean and chapter 
 had been moved to call the place Diana's chamber by some 
 tradition, or a conceit of their own, connecting it with the 
 temple of that goddess, said to have formerly stood on the site 
 of the neighbouring cathedral ; or if the name was really a 
 very ancient one, and in popular use, it may perhaps be taken 
 * History of London, ii., 880. 
 
80 ___. THE ROYAL WARDROBE. 
 
 as lending some slight confirmation to the notion of the actual 
 existence of that heathen edifice, and may " help," as Iago 
 phrases it, "to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate 
 thinly." Diana's Chamber, however, may have been so called 
 from its being hung with painted tapestry, representing some 
 story of the goddess. Inigo Jones, by the way, is said by 
 Lord Orford to be buried in the church of St. Bennet, Paul's 
 Wharf, which stands immediately to the south of the spot 
 where we now are, at the corner formed by the meeting of 
 Thames Street and St. Bennet's Hill. 
 
 Another building which formerly existed in this neighbour- 
 hood was the Eoyal Wardrobe. It occupied the site of the 
 present Wardrobe Court, immediately to the north of the 
 church of St. Andrew's and gave to the parish the name of 
 St. Andrew's Wardrobe, by which it is still known. This 
 building was erected about the middle of the fourteenth 
 century, by Sir John Beau champ, Knight of the Garter, a 
 son of Guido, Earl of Warwick, by whose heirs it was sold to 
 Edward III. Mr. Malcolm has printed some extracts from 
 the Manuscript Account Book, since preserved in the Har- 
 leian collection, of a keeper of this Wardrobe, from the 
 middle of April to Michaelmas 1481, (towards the close of 
 the reign of Edward IV.), which are interesting and valuable 
 as memorials, both of the prices and of the fashions of that 
 time. During the period, of less than six months, over which 
 the accounts extend, the sum of 1,174/. 5s. 2c?. appears to 
 have been received by the keeper, for the use of his office. Of 
 this the most considerable portion seems to have been expended 
 in the purchase of velvet and silks from Montpellier. The 
 velvets cost from 8s. to 16s. per yard; black cloths of gold, 
 40s. ; what is called velvet upon velvet, the same ; damask, 
 8s. ; satins, 6s. 10s. and 12s., camlets, 30s. a-piece ; and 
 sarcenets for 4s. to 4s. 2c?. Feather beds, with bolsters, " for 
 our sovereign lord the King," are charged 16s 8c?. each. A 
 pair of shoes, of Spanish leather, double soled, and not lined, 
 cost Is. 4c?. ; a pair of black leather boots, 6s. 8c?. ; hats Is. 
 a-piece; and ostrich feathers, each 10s. The keeper's salary 
 appears to have been 100?. per annum — that of his clerk Is. 
 a-day; and the wages of the tailors 6d. a-day each. The 
 King sometimes lodged at the Wardrobe ; on one of which 
 occasions the washings of the sheets which had been used is 
 charged at the rate of 3c?. a pair. Candles cost lc?. a pound. 
 All the money disbursed by the keeper of the wardrobe, how- 
 
MARRIAGES IN THE FLEET. 81 
 
 fever, was Hot expended in decorating the persons of his 
 Majesty and the royal household. Among other items we find 
 20s. paid to Piers Bauduyn (or Peter Baldwin, as we should 
 now call him), stationer, " for binding, gilding, and dressing 
 of a book called Titus Livius ; " for performing the same offices 
 to a Bible, a Froisard, a Holy Trinity, and the Government 
 of Kings and Princes, 16s. each; for three small French books, 
 6s. 8d. ; for the Fortress of Faith, and Josephus 3s. Ad. ; and 
 for what is designated " the Bible Historical," 20s. So that 
 in those days, we see the binding a book was conceived to be a 
 putting of it into breeches, and the artist employed for that 
 purpose looked upon as a sort of literary tailor. 
 
 How impossible it would now be in a neighbourhood like 
 this, for such nuisances to exist, as a fetid public ditch, and 
 scouts of degraded clergymen asking people to " walk in and 
 be married ! " Yet such was the case a century ago. At the 
 bottom of Ludgate Hill the little river Fleet formerly ran, and 
 was rendered navigable. Adjoining the site of Fleet Market is 
 Sea-coal Lane, so called from the barges that landed coal there ; 
 and Turnagain Lane, at the bottom of which the unadvised pas- 
 senger found himself compelled by the water to retrace his steps. 
 The water gradually got clogged and foul; and the channel 
 was built over and made a street, as we have noticed in our 
 introduction. But even in the time we speak of, this had not 
 been entirely done. The ditch was open from Fleet Market 
 to the river, occupying the site of the modern Bridge Street ; 
 and in the market, before the door of the Fleet prison, 
 men plied in behalf of a clergyman, literally inviting people to 
 walk in and be married They performed the ceremony inside 
 the prison, to sailors and others, for what they could get. It 
 was the most squalid of Gretnas, bearding the decency and 
 common-sense of a whole metropolis. The parties retired to a 
 gin shop to treat the clergyman; and there, and in similar 
 nouses, the register was kept of the marriages. Not far from 
 where the Fleet stood is Newgate; so that the victims had 
 their succession of nooses prepared, in case, as no doubt it 
 often happened, one tie should be followed by the other. 
 Pennant speaks of this nuisance from personal knowledge. 
 
 " In walking along the streets in my youth," he tells us, " on the 
 side next this prison, I have often been tempted by the question, ' Sir, 
 will you be pleased to walk in and be married? Along this most lawless 
 space was frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand con- 
 joined, with Marriages performed within, written beneath. A dirty 
 fellow invited you in. The parson was seen walking before his shop ; a 
 
 Q 
 
82 THE DUNCIAD. 
 
 squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid night-gown, with a 
 fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of 
 tobacco. Our great chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, put these demons to 
 flight, and saved thousands from the misery and disgrace which would 
 be entailed by these extemporary thoughtless unions." 
 
 This extraordinary disgrace to the city, which arose most 
 likely from the permission to marry prisoners, and one great 
 secret of which was the advantage taken of it by wretched 
 women to get rid of their debts, was maintained by a collusion 
 between the warden of the Fleet and the disreputable clergy- 
 men he became acquainted with. " To such an extent," says 
 Malcolm, "were the proceedings carried, that twenty and 
 thirty couple were joined in one day, at from ten to twenty 
 shillings each ; " and " between the 19th Oct., 1704, and the 
 12th Feb., 1705, 2,954 marriages were celebrated (by evi- 
 dence), besides others known to have been omitted. To these 
 neither licence nor certificate of banns were required, and 
 they concealed, by private marks, the names of those who 
 chose to pay them for it." The neighbourhood at length 
 complained ; and the abuse was put an end to by the Marriage 
 Act, to which it gave rise. 
 
 Ludgate and Fleet ditch figure among the scenes of the 
 Dunciad. It is near Bridewell, on the site of the modern 
 Bridge Street, that the venal and scurrilous heroes of that 
 poem emulate one another, at the call of Dulness, in seeing 
 who can plunge deepest into the mud and dirt. 
 
 " This labour past, by Bridewell all descend, 
 (As morning prayer and flagellation end *), 
 To where Fleet ditch, with disemboguing streams, 
 Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames ; 
 The king of dykes ! than whom no sluice of mud 
 With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 
 Here strip, my children ! here at once leap in ; 
 Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin ; 
 And who the most in love of dirt excel, 
 And dark dexterity of groping well." f 
 
 This part of the games being over, 
 
 " Through Lud's famed gates, along the well-known Fleet, 
 Rolls the black troop and overshades the street ; 
 Till showers of sermons, characters, essays, 
 In circling fences whiten all the ways : 
 So clouds replenished from some bog below, 
 Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow." 
 
 * The whipping of the criminals in Bridewell took place after the 
 church service. 
 
 f Dunciad, book ii., v. 269. 
 
BOOKSELLERS SHOPS. 
 
 83 
 
 The "well-known Fleet" is the prison just mentioned, the 
 side of which appears to have been visible at that time in 
 Ludgate Hill, and where it was a joke (too often founded in 
 truth) to suppose authors incarcerated. 
 
 " Pew sons of Phoebus in the courts we meet ; 
 But fifty sons of Phoebus in the Fleet," 
 
 says a prologue of Sheridan's. The Fleet having " rules," 
 like the King's Bench, authors were found in the neighbour- 
 hood also. Arthur Murphy, provoked by the attacks of 
 Churchill and Lloyd, describes them as among the poor 
 hacks, 
 
 " On Ludgate Hill who bloody murders write, 
 Or pass in Fleet Street supperless the night." 
 
 Booksellers' shops were then common as now in Fleet Street 
 and the Strand, in Paternoster Row, and St. Paul's Church- 
 yard. This is pleasant to think of; for change is not desirable 
 without improvement. One feels gratified, where difference 
 is not demanded of us, in being able to have the same associa- 
 tion of ideas with such men as Pope and Dryden, even if it 
 be upon no higher ground than the quantity of books in 
 Paternoster Row, or the circumstance that Ludgate Hill still 
 leads into Fleet Street. 
 
 THE STONE IN PANTER ALLEY. 
 
 02 
 
84 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FLEET STREET. 
 
 Burning of the Pope— St. Bride's Steeple— Milton— Illuminated Clock 
 — Melancholy End of Lovelace the Cavalier — Chatterton — Gene- 
 rosity of Hardham, of Snuff Celebrity — Theatre in Dorset Garden 
 — Richardson, his Habits and Character — Whitefriars, or Alsatia 
 — The Temple — Its Monuments, Garden, &c. — Eminent names con- 
 nected with it — Goldsmith dies there — Boswell's first Visit there to 
 Johnson — Johnson and Madame de Boufflers — Bernard Lintot — 
 Ben Jonson's Devil Tavern — Other Coffee-houses and Shops — 
 Goldsmith and Temple-bar — Shire Lane, Bickerstaff, and the 
 Deputation from the Country — The Kit-Kat Club — Mrs. Salmon — 
 Isaac Walton— Cowley — Chancery Lane, Lord Strafford, and Ben 
 Jonson — Serjeant's Inn — Clifford's Inn — The Rolls — Sir Joseph 
 Jekyll — Church of St. Dunstan in the West — Dryden's House in 
 Eetter Lane — Johnson, the Genius Loci of Eleet Street — His Way 
 of Life — His Residence in Gough Square, Johnson's Court, and 
 Bolt Court — Various Anecdotes of him connected with Eleet Street, 
 and with his favourite Tavern, the Mitre. 
 
 E are now in Fleet Street, and pleasant 
 memories thicken upon us. To the left 
 is the renowned realm of Alsatia, the 
 Temple, the Mitre, and the abode of 
 Richardson ; to the right divers abodes 
 of Johnson ; Chancery Lane, with 
 Cowley's birth-place at the corner ; 
 Fetter Lane, where Dryden once lived ; 
 and Shire or Sheer Lane, immortal for the Tatler. 
 
 Fleet Street was, for a good period, perhaps for a longer 
 one than can now be ascertained, the great place for shows 
 and spectacles. Wild beasts, monsters, and other marvels, 
 used to be exhibited there, as the wax- work was lately ; and 
 here took place the famous ceremony of burning the Pope, 
 with its long procession, and bigoted anti-bigotries. How- 
 over, the lesser bigotry was useful, at that time, in keeping 
 out the greater. Roger North has left us a lively account of 
 one of these processions, in his Examen. It took place towards 
 the close of the reign of Charles the Second, when just fears 
 were entertained of his successor's design to bring in Popery. 
 The day of the ceremony was the birth-day of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, the 17th March. 
 
 "When we had posted ourselves," says North, "at windows 
 expecting the play to begin " (he had taken his stand in the Green 
 
BURNING OF THE POPE. 85 
 
 Dragon Tavern), " it was very dark ; but we could perceive the 
 street to fill, and the hum of the crowd grew louder and louder ; and 
 at length, with help of some lights below, we could discern, not only up- 
 wards towards the bar, where the squib-war was maintained, but down- 
 wards towards Eleet Bridge ; the whole street was crowded with people, 
 which made that which followed seem very strange ; for about eight 
 at night we heard a din from below, which came up the street, con- 
 tinually increasing till we could perceive a motion ; and that was a 
 row of stout fellows, that came, shouldered together, cross the street, 
 from wall Jo wall on each side. How the people melted away, I can- 
 not tell ; but it was plain those fellows made clear board, as if they 
 had swept the street for what was to come after. They went along 
 like a wave; and it was wonderful to see how the crowd, made way : 
 I suppose the good people were willing to give obedience to lawful 
 authority. Behind this wave (which, as all the rest, had many lights 
 attending), there was a vacancy, but it filled apace, till another like 
 wave came up ; and so four or five of these waves passed, one after 
 another ; and then we discerned more numerous lights, and throats 
 were opened with hoarse and tremendous noise ; and with that 
 advanced a pageant, borne along above the heads of the crowd, and 
 upon it sat an huge Pope, in pontificalibus, in his chair, with a season- 
 able attendance for state : but his premier minister, that shared most 
 of his ear, was II Signior Diavolo, a nimble little fellow, in a proper 
 dress, that had a strange dexterity in climbing and winding about the 
 chair, from one of the Pope's ears to the other. 
 
 " The next pageant was a parcel of Jesuits ; and after that (for 
 there was always a decent space between them) came another, with 
 some ordinary persons with halters, as I took it, about their necks ; 
 and one with a stenterophonic tube, sounded 'Abhorrers! Abhorrers!' 
 most infernally ; and, lastly, came one, with a single person upon it, 
 which some said was the phamphleteer, Sir Roger L'Estrange, some 
 the King of Prance, some the Duke of York ; but, certainly, it was 
 a very complaisant, civil gentleman, like the former, that was doing 
 what everybody pleased to have him ; and, taking all in good part 
 went on his way to the fire." 
 
 The description concludes with a brief mention of burning 
 the effigies, which, on these occasions, appear to have been of 
 pasteboard.* 
 
 One of the great flgurers in this ceremony was the doleful 
 image of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a magistrate, supposed to 
 have been killed by the Papists during the question of the plot. 
 Dryden has a fine contemptuous couplet upon it, in one of his 
 prologues ; — 
 
 " Sir Edmondbury first in woful wise, 
 Leads up the show, and milks their maudlin eyes?* 
 
 "We will begin with the left side, as we are there already; 
 
 * See Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372. "Abhorrers " 
 were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed " abhor- 
 rence" of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital one 
 to sound through a trumpet, 
 
86 ST. bride's steeple, 
 
 and first let us express our thanks for the neat opening by 
 / which St. Bride's church has been rendered an ornament to 
 this populous thoroughfare. The steeple is one of the most 
 beautiful of Wren's productions, though diminished, in con- 
 sequence of its having been found to be too severely tried by 
 the wind. But a ray now comes out of this opening as we 
 pass the street, better even than that of the illuminated clock 
 at night time ; for there, in a lodging in the churchyard, lived 
 Milton, at the time that he undertook the education of his 
 sister's children. He was then young and unmarried. He is 
 said to have rendered his young scholars, in the course of a 
 year, able to read Latin at sight, though they were but nine 
 or ten years of age. As to the clock, which serves to remind 
 the jovial that they ought to be at home, we are loth to object 
 to anything useful ; and in fact we admit its pretensions ; and 
 yet as there is a time for all things, there would seem to be a 
 time for time itself ; and we doubt whether those who do not 
 care to ascertain the hour beforehand, will derive much benefit 
 from this glaring piece of advice. 
 
 "At the west end of St. Bride's Church," according to 
 Wood, was buried Eichard Lovelace, Esq., one of the most 
 elegant of the cavaliers of Charles the First, and author of the 
 exquisite ballad beginning — 
 
 " When Love with unconfined wings 
 Hovers within my gates, 
 And my divine Althea brings 
 To whisper at my grates. 
 
 " When I lie tangled in her hair, 
 And fetter'd in her eye, 
 The birds that wanton in the air, 
 Know no such liberty. 
 * # # * 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage, 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 That for an hermitage." 
 
 This accomplished man, who is said by Wood to have been 
 in his youth " the most amiable and beautiful person that eye 
 ever beheld," and who was lamented by Charles Cotton as an 
 epitome of manly virtue, died at a poor lodging in Gun- 
 powder Alley, near Shoe Lane, an object of charity.* He 
 
 * Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre ; 
 and adds, " Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c, had made a collection for him, and 
 
RICHARD LOVELACE. 87 
 
 had been imprisoned by the Parliament and lived during his 
 imprisonment beyond his income. Wood thinks that he did 
 so in order to support the royal cause, and out of generosity 
 to deserving men, and to his brothers. He then went into the 
 service of the French King, returned to England after being 
 wounded, and was again committed to prison, where he re- 
 mained till the King's death, when he was set at liberty. 
 " Having then," says his biographer, " consumed all his 
 estate, he grew very melancholy (which brought him at 
 length into a consumption), became very poor in body and 
 purse, and 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," &c* 
 " Geo. Petty, haberdasher in Fleet Street," says Aubrey, 
 " carried 20 shillings to him every Monday Morning from 
 
 Sir Manny, and Charles Cotton, Esq., for months: 
 
 but was never repaid." As if it was their intention he should 
 be ! Poor Cotton, in the excess of his relish of life, lived 
 himself to be in want ; perhaps wanted the ten shillings that 
 he sent. The mistress of Lovelace is reported to have married 
 another man, supposing him to have died of his wounds in 
 France. Perhaps this helped to make him careless of his 
 fortune : but it is probable that his habits were naturally 
 showy and expensive. Aubrey says he was proud. He was 
 accounted a sort of minor Sir Philip Sydney. We speak the 
 more of him, not only on account of his poetry (which, for 
 the most part, displays much fancy, injured by want of select- 
 ness), but because his connection with the neighbourhood, 
 probably suggested to Richardson the name of his hero in 
 Clarissa. Grandison is another cavalier name in the history 
 of those times. It was the title of the Duchess of Cleveland's 
 father. Eichardson himself was buried in St. Bride's. He 
 was laid, according to his wish, with his first wife, in the 
 middle aisle, near the pulpit. Where he lived, we shall see 
 presently. 
 
 Not far from Gunpowder Alley, in the burying-ground of 
 the workhouse in Shoe Lane, lies a greater and more unfortu- 
 nate name than Lovelace — Chatterton. But we shall say more 
 
 given him money." But Aubrey's authority is not valid against 
 Wood's. He is to he read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we 
 may pretty safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony. 
 f Wood's Athense Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145. 
 
88 HARDHAM. 
 
 of hirn when we come to Brook Street, Holborn. We have 
 been perplexed to decide, whether to say all we have got to 
 say upon anybody, when we come to the first place with 
 which he is connected, or divide our memorials of him ac- 
 cording to the several places. Circumstances will guide us ; 
 but upon the whole it seems best to let the places themselves 
 decide. If the spot is rendered particularly interesting by the 
 division, we may act accordingly, as in the present instance. 
 If not, all the anecdotes may be given at once. 
 
 On the same side of the way as Shoe Lane, but nearer Fleet 
 Market, was Hardham's, a celebrated snuff-shop, the founder 
 of which deserves mention for a very delicate generosity. He 
 was numberer at Drury Lane Theatre, that is to say, the 
 person who counted the number of people in the house, from 
 a hole over the top of the stage ; a practice now discontinued. 
 Whether this employment led him to number snuffs, as well 
 as men, we cannot say, but he was the first who gave them 
 their distinctions that way. Lovers of 
 
 " The pungent grains of titillating dust" 
 are indebted to him for the famous compound entitled " 37." 
 " Being passionately fond of theatrical entertainments, he was 
 seldom," says his biographer, " without embryo Richards and 
 Hotspurs strutting and bellowing in his dining-room, or in the 
 parlour behind his shop. The latter of these apartments was 
 adorned with heads of most of the persons celebrated for 
 dramatic excellence ; and to these he frequently referred in 
 the course of his instructions." 
 
 "There is one circumstance, however, in his private character," 
 . continues our authority, " which deserves a more honourable rescue 
 from oblivion. His charity was extensive in an uncommon degree, 
 and was conveyed to many of its objects in the most delicate manner. 
 On account of his known integrity (for he once failed in business, 
 more creditably than he could have made a fortume by it,) he was 
 often entrusted with the care of paying little annual stipends to un- 
 fortunate women, and others who were in equal want of relief ; and 
 he has been known, with a generosity almost unexampled, to continue 
 these annuities, long after the sources of them had been stopped by 
 the deaths or caprices of the persons who at first supplied them. At 
 the same time he persuaded the receivers that their money was 
 remitted to them as usual, through its former channel. Indeed his 
 purse was never shut even to those who were casually recommended 
 by his common acquaintance."* 
 
 This admirable man died in 1772; and by his will be- 
 
 * Baker's Biographia Dramatica. Reed's edition, 178?, vol. i.. 
 P, 207. 
 
RICHARDSON, 89 
 
 queathed the interest of 20,000Z. to a female acquaintance, 
 and at her decease the principal, &c, to the poor of his native 
 city, Chichester. 
 
 Returning over the way we come to Dorset Street and 
 Salisbury Court, names originating in a palace of the Bishop 
 of Salisbury, which he parted with to the Sackvilles. 
 Clarendon lived in it a short time after the Restoration. At 
 the bottom of Salisbury Court, facing the river, was the 
 celebrated play-house, one of the earliest in which theatrical 
 entertainments were resumed at that period. The first men- 
 tion we find of it is in the following curious memorandum in 
 the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the 
 revels to King Charles I. " I committed Cromes, a broker in 
 Longe Lane, the 16th of Febru., 1634, to the Marsalsey, for 
 lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the 
 players in Salisbury Court, to present a Flamen, a priest of 
 the heathens. Upon his petition of submission, and acknow- 
 ledgment of his fault, I released him, the 17 Febru., 1634."* 
 
 It is not certain, however, whether the old theatre in Salis- 
 bury Court, and that in Dorset Garden, were one and the 
 same ; though they are conjectured to have been so. The 
 names of both places seem to have been indiscriminately 
 applied. Be this as it may, the house became famous under 
 the Davenants for the introduction of operas and of a more 
 splendid exhibition of scenery ; but in consequence of the 
 growth of theatres in the more western parts of the town, it 
 was occasionally quitted by the proprietors, and about the 
 beginning of the last century abandoned. This theatre was 
 the last to which people went in boats. 
 
 In a house, "in the centre of Salisbury Square or Salis- 
 bury Court, as it was then called," Richardson spent the 
 greater part of his town life, and wrote his earliest work, 
 Pamela. Probably a good part of all his works were com- 
 posed there, as well as at Fulham, for the pen was never out 
 of his hand. He removed from this house in 1755, after he 
 had written all his works ; and taking eight old tenements in 
 the same quarter, pulled them down, and built a large and 
 commodious range of warehouses and printing offices. " The 
 dwelling-house," says Mrs. Barbauld, " was neither so large 
 nor so airy as the one he quitted, and therefore the reader 
 will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to 
 
 * Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol. iii., 
 p. 287. 
 
y\) RICHARDSON, 
 
 have been, in accusing His wife of perverseness in not liking 
 the new habitation as well as the old."* This was the second 
 Mrs. Richardson. He calls her in other places his " worthy- 
 hearted wife ; " but complains that she used to get her way 
 by seeming to submit, and then returning to the point, when 
 his heat of objection was over. She was a formal woman. 
 His own manners were strict and formal with regard to his 
 family, probably because he had formed his notions of life 
 from old books, and also because he did not well know how to 
 begin to do otherwise (for he was naturally bashful), and so 
 the habit continued through life. His daughters addressed 
 him in their letters by the title of " Honoured Sir," and are 
 always designating themselves as " ever dutiful." Sedentary 
 living, eternal writing, and perhaps that indulgence in the 
 table, w r hich, however moderate, affects a sedentary man 
 twenty times as much as an active one, conspired to hurt his 
 temper (for we may see by his picture that he grew fat, and 
 his philosophy w r as in no respect as profound as he thought 
 it) ; but he was a most kind-hearted generous man ; kept his 
 pocket full of plums for children, like another Mr. Burchell ; 
 gave a great deal of money away in charity, very handsomely 
 too ; and was so fond of inviting friends to stay with him, that 
 when they were ill, he and his family must needs have them 
 to be nursed. Several actually died at his house at Fulham, 
 as at an hospital for sick friends. 
 
 It is a fact not generally known (none of his biographers 
 seem to have known of it) that Richardson was the son of a 
 joiner, received what education he had (which was very 
 little, and did not go beyond English), at Christ's Hospital, f 
 It may be wondered how he could come no better taught from 
 a school which had sent forth so many good scholars ; but in 
 his time, and indeed till very lately, that foundation was 
 divided into several schools, none of w T hich partook of the 
 }essons of the others ; and Richardson, agreeably to his 
 father's intention of bringing him up to trade, was most 
 probably confined to the writing-school, where all that was 
 taught was writing and arithmetic. It was most likely here 
 that he intimated his future career, first by writing a letter, 
 at eleven years of age, to a censorious woman of fifty, who 
 
 * Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c, by Anna Letitia 
 Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97. 
 
 f Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, 
 iu his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 579. 
 
THE NOVELIST. 91 
 
 pretended a zeal for religion ; and afterwards, at thirteen, by- 
 composing love-letters to their sweethearts for three young 
 women in the neighbourhood, who made him their confidant. 
 To these and others he also used to read books, their mothers 
 being of the party ; and they encouraged him to make 
 remarks ; which is exactly the sort of life he led with 
 Mrs. Chapone, Miss Fielding, and others, when in the height 
 of his celebrity. " One of the young women," he informs 
 us, "highly gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of 
 everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, 
 1 1 cannot tell you what to write, but (her heart on her lips) 
 you cannot write too kindly ;' all her fear was only that she 
 should incur a slight for her kindness." This passage, with 
 its pretty breathless parenthesis, is in the style of his books. 
 If the writers among his female coterie in after-life owed 
 their inspiration to him, he only returned to them what they 
 had done for himself. Women seem to have been always 
 about him, both in town and country ; which made Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld say, very agreeably, that he " lived in a kind of flower- 
 garden of ladies." This has been grudged him, and thought 
 effeminate ; but we must make allowance for early circum- 
 stances, and recollect what the garden produced for us. 
 Richardson did not pretend to be able to do without female 
 society. Perhaps, however, they did not quiet his sensibility 
 so much as they charmed it. We think, in his Correspond- 
 ence, a tendency is observable to indulge in fancies, not 
 always so paternal as they agree to call them; though doubt- 
 less all was said in honour, and the ladies never found reason 
 to diminish their reverence. A great deal has been said of 
 his vanity and the weakness of it. Vain he undoubtedly 
 was, and vanity is no strength ; but it is worth bearing in 
 mind, that a man is often saved from vanity, not because he 
 is stronger than another, but because he is less amiable, and 
 did not begin, as Richardson did, with being a favourite so 
 early. Few men are surrounded, as he was, from his very 
 childhood, with females ; and few people think so well of 
 their species or with so much reason. In all probability too, 
 he was handsome when young, which is another excuse for 
 him. His vanity is more easily excused than his genius 
 accounted for considering the way in which he lived. The 
 tone of Lovelace's manners and language, which has created 
 so much surprise in an author who was a city printer, and 
 passed his life among a few friends between Fleet Street and 
 
92 RICHARDSON, 
 
 a suburb, was caught, probably, not merely from Cibber, but 
 from the famous profligate Duke of Wharton, with whom he 
 became acquainted in the course of his business. But the 
 unwearied vivacity with which he has supported it is won- 
 derful. His pathos is more easily accounted for by his 
 nerves, which for many years were in a constant state of ex- 
 citement, particularly towards the close of his life ; which ter- 
 minated in 1761, at the age of seventy-two, with the death most 
 common to sedentary men of letters, a stroke of apoplexy.* 
 He was latterly unable to lift a glass of wine to his mouth 
 without assistance. 
 
 At Fulham and Parson's Green (at which latter place he 
 lived for the last five or six years), Eichardson used to sit 
 with his guests about him, in a parlour or summer-house, 
 reading, or communicating his manuscripts as he wrote them. 
 The ladies made their remarks ; and alterations or vindica- 
 tions ensued. His characters, agreeably to what we feel when 
 we read of them (for we know them all as intimately as if we 
 occupied a room in their house), interested his acquaintances 
 so far that they sympathised with them as if they were real; 
 and it is well known that one of his correspondents, Lady 
 Bradshaigh, implored him to reform Lovelace, in order " to 
 save a soul." In Salisbury Court, Eichardson, of course, had 
 the same visitors about him; but the "flower-garden" is not 
 talked of so much there as at Fulham. In the evening the 
 ladies read and worked by themselves, and Eichardson retired 
 to his study ; a most pernicious habit for a man of his bad 
 nerves. He should have written early in the morning, taken 
 good exercise in the day, and amused himself in the evening. 
 When he walked in town it was in the park, where he 
 describes himself (to a fair correspondent who wished to have 
 an interview with him, and who recognised him from the 
 description) as " short, rather plump, about five feet five 
 
 * " Apoplexy cramm'd intemperance knocks 
 
 Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox;" — 
 says Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence. It was the death which 
 the good-natured, indolent poet probably expected for himself, and 
 which he would have had, if a cold and fever had not interfered ; for 
 there is an apoplexy of the head alone, as well as of the whole body; 
 and men of letters who either exercise little, or work overmuch, seem 
 almost sure to die of it, or of palsy; which is a disease analogous. 1% 
 is the last stroke, given in the kind resentment of nature, to the brains 
 which should have known better than bring themselves to such a pass. 
 In the biography of Italian literati, " Mori' d' apoplessia"— (he die4 
 of apoplexy)— is a common verdict, 
 
THE NOVELIST. 93 
 
 inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, the other a 
 cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat, 
 that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when 
 attacked by sudden tremors or dizziness, of a light brown 
 complexion, teeth not yet failing." "What follows," ob- 
 serves Mrs. Barbauld, "is very descriptive of the struggle in 
 his character, between innate bashfulness and a turn for 
 observation:" — "Looking directly forwards, as passengers 
 would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand 
 of him, without moving his short neck ; a regular even pace, 
 stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it ; a grey 
 eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head, by 
 chance lively, very lively if he sees any he loves ; if he 
 approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed first on her face, but 
 on her feet, and rears it up by degrees, seeming to set her 
 down as so and so."* 
 
 Latterly Richardson attended little to business. He used 
 even to give his orders to his workmen in writing ; a practice 
 which Sir John Hawkins is inclined to attribute to stateliness 
 and bad temper, but for which Mrs. Barbauld finds a better 
 reason in his bad nerves. His principal foreman also was 
 deaf, as the knight himself acknowledges. Richardson en- 
 couraged his men to be industrious, sometimes by putting 
 half-a-crown among the types as a prize to him who came 
 first in the morning, at others by sending fruit for the same 
 purpose from the country. Agreeably to his natural bash- 
 fulness, he was apt to be reserved with strangers. Sir John 
 Hawkins tells us, that he once happened to get into the 
 Fulham stage when Richardson was in it (most likely he got 
 in on purpose) ; and he endeavoured to bring the novelist into 
 conversation, but could not succeed, and was vexed at it. 
 But Sir John was one of that numerous class of persons who, 
 for reasons better known to others than to themselves, 
 
 " Deemen gladly to the badder end," 
 
 as the old poet says ; and Richardson probably knew this 
 pragmatical person, and did not want his acquaintance. 
 
 Johnson was among the visitors of Richardson in Salisbury 
 Court. He confessed to Boswell, that although he had never 
 much sought after anybody, Richardson was an exception. 
 He had so much respect for him, that he took part with him 
 in a preposterous undervaluing of Fielding, whom he described 
 
 * Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 177. 
 
94 RICHARDSON, 
 
 in the comparison as a mere writer of manners, and sometimes 
 as hardly any writer at all. And yet he tcld Boswell that he 
 had read his Amelia through "without stopping:" and ac- 
 cording to Mrs. Piozzi she was his favourite heroine. In the 
 comparison of Eichardson with Fielding, he was in the habit 
 of opposing the nature of one to the manners of the other; 
 but Fielding's manners are only superadded to his nature, 
 not opposed to it, which makes all the difference. As to 
 Eichardson, he was so far gone upon this point, in a mixture 
 of pique and want of sympathy, that he said, if he had not 
 known who Fielding was, "he should have taken him for an 
 ostler." Fielding, it is true, must have vexed him greatly by 
 detecting the pettiness in the character of Pamela. Eichardson, 
 as a romancer, did not like to have the truth forced upon him, 
 and thus was inclined to see nothing but vulgarity in the 
 novelist. This must have been unpleasant to the Misses 
 Fielding, the sisters, who were among the most intimate of 
 Richardson's friends. Another of our author's visitors was 
 Hogarth. It must not be forgotten that Eichardson was kind 
 to Johnson in money matters ; and to use Mrs. Barbauld's 
 phrase, had once " the honour" to be bail for him. 
 
 We conclude our notice, which, on the subject of so original 
 a man, has naturally beguiled us into some length, with an 
 interesting account of his manners and way of life, communi- 
 cated by one of his female friends to Mrs. Barbauld. " My 
 first recollection of him," says she, " was in his house in the 
 ceatre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court as it was then 
 called ; and of being admitted as a playful child into his study, 
 where I have often seen Dr. Young and others ; and where I 
 was generally caressed and rewarded with biscuits or bonbons 
 of some kind or other ; and sometimes with books, for which 
 he, and some more of my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, 
 even at that early age, which has adhered to me all my long 
 life, and continues to be the solace of many a painful hour. I 
 recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, for we lived 
 nearly opposite, late in the evening to supper ; when, as he 
 would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and nerves 
 would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly 
 and domestic chat. I even then used to creep to his knee and 
 hang upon his words, for my whole family doated on him; 
 and once, I recollect that at one of these evening visits, pro- 
 bably about the year 1753, 1 was standing by his knee when 
 my mother's maid came to summon me to bed ; upon which, 
 
THE NOVELIST. 95 
 
 being unwilling to part from him and manifesting some reluct- 
 ance, He begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer; 
 and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be 
 wanted to wait at supper (for, in those days of friendly inter- 
 course and real hospitality, a decent maid-servant was th» 
 only attendant at his own and many creditable tables, where, 
 nevertheless, much company was received), Mr. Richardson 
 said, 1 1 am sure Miss P. is now so much a woman, that she 
 does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will conduct 
 herself with so much propriety, and put out her own candle 
 so carefully, that she may henceforward be indulged with 
 remaining with us till supper is served.' This hint and the 
 confidence it implied, had such a good effect upon me that I 
 believe I never required the attendance of a servant afterwards 
 while my mother lived ; and by such sort of ingenious and 
 gentle devices did he use to encourage and draw in young 
 people to do what was right. I also well remember the happy 
 days I passed at his house at North End ; sometimes with my 
 mother, but often for weeks without her, domesticated as one 
 of his own children. He used to pass the greatest part of the 
 week in town ; but when he came down, he used to like to 
 have his family flock around him, when we all first asked and 
 received his blessing, together with some small boon from his 
 paternal kindness and attention, for he seldom met us empty- 
 handed, and was by nature most generous and liberal. 
 
 " The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity that prevailed in 
 his family were of infinite use to train the mind to good habits and to 
 depend upon its own resources. It has been one of the means which, 
 under the blessing of God, has enabled me to dispense with the 
 enjoyment of what the world calls pleasures, such as are found in 
 crowds, and actually to relish and prefer the calm delights of retire- 
 ment and books. As soon as Mrs. Richardson arose, the beautiful 
 Psalms in Smith's Devotions were read responsively in the nursery, 
 by herself and daughters standing in a circle: only the two eldest 
 were allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened 
 to be in the house, for they were seldom without. x After breakfast, 
 we younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms and Lessons for the 
 day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports, or to 
 walk in the garden, which I was allowed to do at pleasure; for, when 
 my father hesitated upon granting that privilege for fear I should 
 help myself to the fruit, Mrs. Richardson said, ' No, I have so much 
 confidence in her, that, if she is put upon honour, I am certain that 
 she will not touch so much as a gooseberry/ A confidence I dare 
 safely aver that I never forfeited, and which has given me the power 
 of walking in any garden ever since, without the smallest desire to 
 touch any fruit, and taught me a lesson upon the restraint of appetite, 
 Which has been useful to me all my life. We all dined at one table, 
 
96 MCHARDSOtf. 
 
 &n& generally drank tea and spent the evening in Mrs, Richardsos'a 
 parlour, where the practice was for one of the young ladies to read 
 while the rest sat with mute attention round a large table, and 
 employed themselves in some kind of needle-work. Mr. Richardson 
 generally retired to his study, unless there was particular company. 
 
 "These are trifling and childish anecdotes, and savour, perhaps 
 you may think too much of egotism. They certainly can be of no 
 further use to you than as they mark the extreme benevolence, 
 condescension, and kindness of this exalted genius, towards young 
 people; for, in general society, I know he has been accused as being 
 of few words and of a particularly reserved turn. He was, however, 
 all his lifetime the patron and protector of the female sex. Miss M. 
 (afterwards Lady G.) passed many years in his family. She was the 
 bosom friend and contemporary of my mother ; and was so much 
 considered as enfant de famille in Mr. Richardson's house, that her 
 portrait is introduced into a family piece. 
 
 "He had many protegees; — a Miss Rosine, from Portugal, was 
 consigned to his care ; but of her, being then at school, I never saw 
 much. Most of the ladies that resided much at his house acquired 
 a certain degree of fastidiousness and delicate refinement, which, 
 though amiable in itself, rather disqualified them from appearing in 
 general society to the advantage that might have been expected, and 
 rendered an intercourse with the world uneasy to themselves, giving 
 a peculiar air of shyness and reserve to their whole address; of which 
 habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has been thought 
 by some a little to obscure those really valuable qualifications and 
 talents they undoubtedly possessed. Yet this was supposed to be 
 owing more to Mrs. Richardson than to him; who, though a truly 
 good woman, had high and Harlowean notions of parental authority, 
 and kept the ladies in such order, and at such a distance, that he often 
 lamented, as I have been told by my mother, that they were not more 
 open and conversable with him. 
 
 "Besides those I have already named, I well remember a Mrs. 
 Donellan, a venerable old lady, with sharp piercing eyes; Miss 
 Mulso, &c, &c; Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Thomas 
 Robinson (Lord Grantham), &c, &c, who were frequent visitors at 
 his house in town and country. The ladies I have named were often 
 staying at North End, at the period of his highest glory and reputa- 
 tion ; and in their company and conversation his genius was matured. 
 His benevolence was unbounded, as his manner of diffusing it was 
 delicate and refined."* 
 
 Richardson was buried in the nave of St. Bride's Church ; 
 and a stone was placed over his remains, merely recording 
 his name, the year of his death, and his age. In this church 
 were also interred Wynken de Worde, the famous printer ; 
 the bowels of Sackville the poet, whom we shall presently 
 have occasion to mention again ; and Sir Richard Baker, the 
 author of the well-known book of English Chronicles. De 
 Worde resided in Fleet Street. 
 
 Between Water Lane and the Temple, and leading out of 
 * Correspondence, &c, by Mrs. Barbauld, vol. i., p. 183. 
 
WHITEFRIARS. 07 
 
 Fleet Street by a street formerly called Whitefriars, which 
 has been rebuilt, and christened Bouverie Street, is one of 
 these precincts which long retained the immunities derived 
 from their being conventual sanctuaries, and which naturally 
 enough became as profane as they had been religious. The 
 one before us originated in a monastery of White Friars, an 
 order of Carmelites, which formerly stood in Water Lane, and 
 it acquired an infamous celebrity under the slang title of 
 Alsatia. The claims, however, which the inhabitants set up 
 to protect debtors from arrest, seem to have originated in a 
 charter granted to them by James I., in 1608. For some 
 time after the Reformation and the demolition of the old 
 monastery, Whitefriars was not only a sufficiently orderly 
 district, but one of the most fashionable parts of the city. 
 Among others of the gentry, for instance, who had houses 
 here at this period, was Sir John Cheke, King Edward VI.'s 
 tutor, and afterwards Secretary of State. The reader of our 
 great modern novelist has been made almost as well acquainted 
 with the place in its subsequent state of degradation and law- 
 lessness, as if he had walked through it when its bullies were 
 in full blow. The rags of their Dulcineas hang out to dry, as 
 if you saw them in a Dutch picture ; and the passages are 
 redolent of beer and tobacco. The sanctuary of Whitefriars 
 is now extremely shrunk in its dimensions ; and the inhabi- 
 tants retain but a shadow of their privileges. The nuisance, 
 however, existed as late as the time of William III., who put 
 an end to it; and the neighbourhood is still of more than 
 doubtful virtue. One alley, dignified by the title of Lombard 
 Street, is of an infamy of such long standing, that it is said to 
 have begun its evil courses long before the privilege of sanc- 
 tuary existed, and to have maintained them up to the present 
 moment. The Carmelites complained of it, and the neigh- 
 bours complain still. In the Dramatis Personse to Shadwell's 
 play called the Squire of Alsatia, we have a set of characters 
 so described as to bring us, one would think, sufficiently 
 acquainted with the leading gentry of the neighbourhood; 
 such as — 
 
 " Cheatley. A rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of 
 White-fryers, but there inveigles young heirs in tail, and helps them 
 to goods and money upon great disadvantages ; is bound for them, 
 and shares for them till he undoes them. A lewd, impudent, 
 debauch'd fellow, very expert in the cant about the town. 
 
 " Shamwell. Cousin to the Belfonds; an heir, who being ruined by 
 Cheatley, is made a decoy-duck for others r not daring to stir out of 
 
 H 
 
98 WHITEFRIAES. 
 
 Alsatia, where he lives: is bound with Cheatley for heirs, and lives 
 upon 'em a dissolute, debauched life. 
 
 " Capt. Haekman. A block-head bully of Alsatia; a cowardly, 
 impudent, blustering felloAV; formerly a sergeant in Elanders, run 
 from his colours, retreated into White-fryers for a very small debt, 
 where by the Alsatians he is dubbed a Captain, marries one that lets 
 lodgings, sells cherry brandy, &c. 
 
 *' Scrapeall. A hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, 
 precise fellow, pretending to great piety, a godly knave, who joins 
 with Cheatley, and supplies young heirs with goods and money." 
 
 But Sir Walter, besides painting the place itself as if he 
 had lived in it (vide Fortunes of Nigel r vo\. ii.), puts these 
 people in action, with a spirit bej^ond anything that Shadwell 
 could have done, even though the dramatist had a bit of the 
 Alsatian in himself — at least as far as drinking could go, and 
 a flood of gross conversation. 
 
 Infamous, however, as this precinct was, there were some 
 good houses in it, and some respectable inhabitants. The first 
 Lord Sackville lived there ; another inhabitant was Ogilby, 
 who was a decent man, though a bad poet, and taught dancing; 
 and Shirley another. It appears also to have been a resort of 
 fencing-masters, which probably helped to bring worse com- 
 pany. They themselves, indeed, were in no good repute. 
 One of them, a man of the name of Turner, living in White- 
 friars, gave rise to a singular instance of revenge recorded in 
 the State Trials. Lord Sanquire, a Scotch nobleman, in the 
 time of James L, playing with Turner at foils, and making 
 too great a show of his wish to put down a master of the art 
 (probably with the insolence common to the nobility of that 
 period), was pressed upon so hard by the man, that he received 
 a thrust which put out one of his eyes. " This mischief," says 
 Wilson, " was much regretted by Turner ; and the baron, 
 being conscious to himself that he meant his adversary no 
 good, took the accident w r ith as much patience as men that 
 lose one eye by their own default use to do for the preserva- 
 tion of the other." " Some time after," continues this writer, 
 " being in the court of the late great Henry of France, and 
 the King (courteous to strangers), entertaining discourse with 
 him, asked him, 'How he lost his eye:' he (cloathing his 
 answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told him ' It 
 was done with a sword.' The King replies, l Doth the man 
 live?' and that question gave an end to the discourse, but 
 was the beginner of a strange confusion in his working fancy, 
 which neither time nor distance could compose, carrying it in 
 
WHITEFEIARS. 99 
 
 his breast some years after, till he came into England, where 
 he hired two of his countrymen, Gray and Carliel, men of low 
 and mercenary spirits, to murther him, which they did with 
 a case of pistols in his house in Whitefriars many years 
 after."* For many years — read five — enough, however, to 
 make such a piece of revenge extraordinary. Gray and 
 Carliel were among his followers. Gray, however, did not 
 assist in the murder. His mind misgave him ; and Carliel 
 got another accomplice, named Irweng. M These two, about 
 seven o'clock in the evening (to proceed in the words of 
 Coke's report), came to a house in the Friars, which Turner 
 used to frequent, as he came to his school, which was near 
 that place, and finding Turner there, they saluted one another ; 
 and Turner, with one of his friends, sat at the door asking 
 them to drink ; but Carliel and Irweng, turning about to cock 
 the pistol, came back immediately, and Carliel, drawing it 
 from under his coat, discharged it upon Turner, and gave 
 him a mortal wound near the ieft pap ; so that Turner, after 
 having said these words, ' Lord, have mercy upon me ! I am 
 killed,' immediately fell down.. Whereupon Carliel and 
 Irweng fled, Carliel to the town, Irweng towards the river ; 
 but mistaking his way, and entering into a court where they 
 sold wood, which was no thoroughfare, he was taken. Carliel 
 likewise fled, and so did also the Baron of Sanchar. The 
 ordinary officers of justice did their utmost, but could not 
 take them ; for, in fact, as appeared afterwards, Carliel fled 
 into Scotland, and Gray towards the sea, thinking to go to 
 Sweden, and Sanchar hid himself in England." | 
 
 James, who had shown such favour to the Scotch as to 
 make the English jealous, and who also hated an ill-natured 
 action, when it was not to do good to any of his favourites, 
 thought himself bound to issue a promise of reward for the 
 arrest of Sanquire and the others. It was successful ; and all 
 three were hung, Carliel and Irweng in Fleet Street, opposite 
 the great gate of Whitefriars (the entrance of the present 
 Bouverie Street), and Sanquire in Palace Yard, before West- 
 minster Hall. He made a singular defence, very good and 
 penitent, and yet remarkably illustrative of the cheap rate at 
 which plebeian blood was held in those times ; and no doubt 
 his death was a great surprise to him. The people, not yet 
 
 * Life and Reign of King James I., quoted in Howell's State Trials, 
 vol. ii., p. 745. 
 
 f State Trials, ut supra, p. 762, 
 
 JI2 
 
100 the temple: 
 
 enlightened on these points, took his demeanour in such good 
 part, that they expressed great pity for him, till they per- 
 ceived that he died a Catholic ! 
 
 This and other pretended sanctuaries were at length put 
 down by an Act of Parliament passed about the beginning of 
 the last century. It is curious that the once lawless domain 
 of Alsatia should have had the law itself for its neighbour; 
 but Sir Walter has shown us, that they had more sympathies 
 than might be expected. It was a local realisation of the old 
 proverb of extremes meeting. We now step out of this old 
 chaos into its quieter vicinity, which, however, was not always 
 as quiet as it is now. The Temple, as its name imports, was 
 once the seat of the Knights Templars, an order at once 
 priestly and military, originating in the crusades, and whose 
 business it was to defend the Temple at Jerusalem. How 
 they degenerated, and what sort of voavs they were in the 
 habit of making, instead of those of chastity and humility, 
 the modern reader need not be told, after the masterly pic- 
 tures of them in the writer from whom we have just taken 
 another set of ruffians. The Templars were dissolved in the 
 reign of Edward II., and their house occupied by successive 
 nobles, till it came into the possession of the law, in whose 
 hands it was confirmed "for ever" by James I. We need not 
 enter into the origin of its division into two parts, the Inner 
 and Middle Temple. Suffice to say, that the word Middle, 
 which implies a third Temple, refers to an outer one, or third 
 portion of the old buildings, which does not appear to have been 
 ever occupied by laAvyers, but came into possession of the 
 celebrated Essex family, whose name is retained in the street 
 where it was situated, on the other side of Temple Bar. 
 There is nothing remaining of the ancient buildings but the 
 church built in 1185, which is a curiosity justly admired, 
 particularly for its effigies of knights, some of whose cross 
 legs indicate that they had either been to the Holy Land, or 
 have been supposed to or vowed to go thither. One of the 
 band is acertained to have been Geoffrey de Magnavile, Earl 
 of Essex, who was killed at Benwell in Cambridgeshire, in 
 1148. Among the others are supposed to be the Marshals, 
 first, second, and third Earls of Pembroke, who all died in 
 the early part of the thirteenth century. But even these have 
 not been identified upon any satisfactory grounds ; and with 
 regard to some of the rest, not so much as a probable conjee? 
 tare has been offered, 
 
ITS MONUMENTS. 
 
 101 
 
 As it is an opinion still prevailing, that these cross-legged 
 knights are Knights Templars, we have copied below the 
 
 TOMBS OF KNIGHTS IN TEMPLE CHURCH. 
 
 most complete information respecting them which we have 
 hitherto met with. And the passage is otherwise curious.* 
 
 * " It is an opinion which universally prevails with regard to those 
 cross-legged monuments," says Dr. Nash, "that they were all erected 
 to the memory of Knights Templars. Now to me it is very evident 
 that not one of them belonged to that order; but, as Mr. Habingdon, 
 in describing this at Alve church, hath justly expressed it, to Knights 
 of the Holy Voyage. For the order of Knights Templars followed 
 the rule of the Canons regular of St. Austin, and, as such, were under 
 a vow of celibacy. Now there is scarcely one of these monuments 
 which is certainly known for whom it is erected; but it is as certain, 
 that the person it represented was a married man. The Knights 
 Templars always wore a white habit, with a red cross on the left 
 •boulder. I believe, not a single instance can be produced of either 
 
102 the temple: 
 
 The two Temples, or law colleges, occupy a large space of 
 ground between Whitefriars and Essex Street ; Fleet Street 
 bounding them on the north, and the river on the south. 
 They compose an irregular mass of good substantial houses, 
 in lanes and open places, the houses being divided into 
 chambers, or floors for separate occupants, some of which are 
 let to persons not in the profession. The garden about forty 
 years ago was enlarged, and a muddy tract under it, on the 
 side of the Thames, converted into a pleasant walk. This 
 garden is still not very large, but it deserves its name both 
 for trees and flowers. There is a descent into it after the 
 Italian fashion, from a court with a fountain in it, surrounded 
 with trees, through which the view of the old walls and 
 buttresses of the Middle Temple Hall is much admired. But 
 a poet's hand has touched the garden, and made it bloom 
 with roses above the real. It is the scene in Shakspeare, of 
 the origin of the factions of York and Lancaster. 
 
 the mantle or cross being carved on any of these monuments, which 
 surely would not have been omitted, as by it they were distinguished 
 from all other orders, had these been really designed to represent 
 Knights Templars. Lastly, this order was not confined to England 
 only, but dispersed itself all over Europe : yet it will be very difficult 
 to find one cross-legged monument anywhere out of England; whereas 
 they would have abounded in Erance, Italy, and elsewhere, had it 
 been a fashion peculiar to that famous order. But though, for these 
 reasons, I cannot allow the cross-legged monuments to have been for 
 Knights Templars, yet they had some relation to them, being the 
 memorials of those zealous devotees, who had either been in Palestine, 
 personally engaged in what was called the Holy War, or had laid 
 themselves under a vow to go thither, though perhaps they were pre- 
 vented from it by death. Some few, indeed, might possibly be erected 
 to the memory of persons who had made pilgrimages there merely 
 out of private devotion. Among the latter, probably, was that of the 
 lady of the family of Mepham, of Mepham in Yorkshire, to whose 
 memory a cross-legged monument was placed in a chapel adjoining 
 to the one collegiate church of Howden, in Yorkshire, and is at this 
 day remaining, together with that of her husband on the same tomb. 
 As this religious madness lasted no longer than the reign of Henry III. 
 (the tenth and last crusade being published in the year 1268), and 
 the whole order of Knights Templars was dissolved by Edward H., 
 military expeditions to the Holy Land, as well as devout pilgrimages 
 there, had their period by the year 1312; consequently none of those 
 cross-legged monuments areof a later date than the reign of Edward II., 
 or beginning of Edward III., nor of an earlier than that of King 
 Stephen, when these expeditions first took place in this kingdom." — 
 History and Antiquities of Worcestershire, fol. vol. i., p. 31. Since 
 Dr. Nash wrote, however, it has been denied that even the cross legs 
 had any thing to do with crusades. 
 
EMINENT NAMES CONNECTED WITH IT. 103 
 
 PLANTAGENET. 
 
 " Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loth to speak, 
 In dumb significence proclaim your thoughts j 
 Let him that is a true born gentleman, 
 And stands upon the honour of his birth, 
 If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, 
 From off this brier pluck a white rose with me. 
 
 SOMERSET. 
 
 Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, 
 But dare maintain the party of the truth, 
 Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. 
 
 WARWICK. 
 
 I love no colours ; and, without all colour 
 
 Of base insinuating flattery, 
 
 I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet. 
 
 SUFFOLK. 
 
 I pluck this red rose with young Somerset ; 
 And say withal I think he held the right." 
 
 There were formerly rooks in the Temple trees, a colony 
 brought by Sir Edward Northey, a well-known lawyer in 
 Queen Anne's time, from his grounds at Epsom. It was a 
 pleasant thought, supposing that the colonists had no objec- 
 tion. The rook is a grave legal bird, both in his coat and 
 habits; living in communities, yet to himself; and strongly 
 addicted to discussions of meum and tuum. The neighbour- 
 hood, however, appears to have been too much for him ; for, 
 upon inquiring on the spot, we were told that there had been 
 no rooks for many years. 
 
 The oldest mention of the Temple as a place for lawyers 
 has been commonly said to be found in a passage of Chaucer, 
 who is reported to have been of the Temple himself. It 
 is in his character of the Manciple, or Steward, whom he 
 pleasantly pits against his learned employers, as outwitting 
 even themselves : 
 
 "A gentle manciple was there of a temple, 
 Of which achatours (purchasers) mighten take ensample, 
 For to ben wise in buying of vitaille. 
 For whether that be paid, or took by taille, 
 Algate he waited so in his achate, 
 That he was ay before in good estate; 
 Now is not that of God a full fair grace, 
 That such a lewed (ignorant) mannes wit shall pass 
 The wisdom of a heap of learned men ? " * 
 
 * Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because 
 where we could we have modernised the spellings which is a justice 
 
104 ffiE TEMPLE i 
 
 Spenser, in liis epic way, not disdaining to bring the home 
 liest images into his verse, for the sake of the truth in them, 
 speaks of — 
 
 " those bricky towers 
 
 The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride, 
 
 Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers ; 
 
 There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide, 
 
 Till they decayed through pride."* 
 
 The " studious lawyers," in their towers by the water side, 
 present a quiet picture. Yet in those times, it seems, they 
 were apt to break into overt actions of vivacity, a little 
 excessive, and such as the habit of restraint, inclines people 
 to-, before they have arrived at years of discretion. In 
 Henry VIII.'s time the gentlemen of the Temple were addicted 
 to " shove and slip-groats,""|" which became forbidden them 
 under a penalty ; and in the age in which Spenser wrote, so 
 many encounters had taken place, of a dangerous description, 
 that Templars were prohibited from carrying any other 
 weapon into the hall (the dining room), " than a dagger or 
 knife," — " as if," says Mr. Malcolm, " those were not more 
 than sufficient to accomplish unpremeditated deaths"! We 
 are to suppose, however, that gentlemen would not kill each 
 other, except with swords. The dagger, or carving knive, 
 which it was customary to carry about the person in those 
 days, was for the mutton. § 
 
 A better mode of recreating and giving vent to their 
 
 to this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass 
 it over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his 
 beating the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends 
 upon the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had 
 seen a Temple record to that effect. 
 
 * Prothalamion. 
 
 f " Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports 
 occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called 
 Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and 
 only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms." — Strutfs Sports 
 and Pastimes of the People of England, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It is 
 played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand 
 from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it. 
 
 J Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290. 
 
 § Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the 
 King's Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was 
 the gravity of those days !) " bastinadoed" a man at dinner in the 
 Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved 
 it, for Davies had a fine nature ; and he went back again by favour 
 of the excellent Lord Ellesmere. 
 
MASQUES AND PAGEANTS. 105 
 
 animal spirits, was the custom prevalent among the lawyers 
 at that period of presenting masques and pageants. They 
 were great players, with a scholarly taste for classical subjects ; 
 and the gravest of them did not disdain to cater in this way 
 for the amusement of their fellows, sometimes for that of 
 crowned heads. The name of Bacon is to be found among 
 the " getters up" of a show at Gray's Inn, for the entertain- 
 ment of the sovereign; and that of Hyde, on a similar 
 occasion, in the reign of Charles I. 
 
 A masque has come down to us written by William Browne, 
 a disciple of Spenser, expressly for the society of which he 
 was a member, and entitled the Inner Temple Masque. It is 
 upon the story of Circe and Ulysses, and is worthy of the 
 school of poetry out of which he came. Beaumont wrote 
 another, called the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's 
 Inn. A strong union has always existed between the law 
 and the belles-lettres, highly creditable to the former, or 
 rather naturally to be expected from the mode in which 
 lawyers begin their education, and the diversity of knowledge 
 which no men are more in the way of acquiring afterwards. 
 Blackstone need not have written his farewell to the Muses. 
 If he had been destined to be a poet, he could not have taken 
 his leave ; and, as an accomplished lawyer, he was always 
 within the pale of the Uteres humaniores. The greatest prac- 
 tical lawyers, such as Coke and Plowdon, may not have 
 been the most literary, but those who have understood the 
 law in the greatest and best spirit have ; and the former, 
 great as they may be, are yet but as servants and secretaries 
 to the rest. They know where to find, but the others know 
 best how to apply. Bacon, Clarendon, Selden, Somers, 
 Cowper, Mansfield, where all men of letters. So are the 
 Broughams and Campbells of the present day. Pope says, 
 that Mansfield would have been another Ovid. This may be 
 doubted ; but nobody should doubt that the better he under- 
 stood a poet, the fitter he was for universality of judgment. 
 The greatest lawyer is the greatest legislator. 
 
 The " pert Templar," of whom we hear so much between 
 the reigns of the Stuarts and the late King, came up with the 
 growth of literature and the coffee-houses. Every body then 
 began to write or to criticise ; and young men, brought up in 
 the mooting of points, and in the confidence of public speak- 
 ing, naturally pressed among the foremost. Besides, a 
 variety of wits had issued from the Temple in the reign 01 
 
106 the temple; 
 
 Charles and his brother, and their successors in lodging took 
 themselves for their heirs in genius. The coffee-houses by 
 this time had become cheap places to talk in. They were 
 the regular morning lounge and evening resource ; and every 
 lad who had dipped his finger and thumb into Dryden's 
 snuff-box, thought himself qualified to dictate for life. In 
 Pope's time these pretensions came to be angrily rejected, 
 partly, perhaps, because none of the reigning wits, with the 
 exception of Congreve, had had a Temple education. 
 
 " Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came, 
 The same their talents, and their tastes the same ; 
 Each prompt to query, answer, and debate, 
 And smit with love of poetry and prate." * 
 
 "We could quote many other passages to the same purpose, 
 but we shall come to one presently which will suffice for all, 
 and exhibit the young Templar of those days in all the glory 
 of his impertinence. At present the Templars make no more 
 pretensions than other well-educated men. Many of them 
 are still connected with the literature of the day, but in the 
 best manner and with the soundest views ; and if there is no 
 pretension to wit, there is the thing itself. It would be end- 
 less to name all the celebrated lawyers who have had to do 
 with the Temple. Besides, we shall have to notice the most 
 eminent of them in other places, where they passed a greater 
 portion of their lives. We shall therefore confine ourselves 
 to the mention of such as have lived in it without being 
 lawyers, or thrown a grace over it in connection with wit and 
 literature. 
 
 Chaucer, as we have just observed, is thought, upon slight 
 evidence, to have been of the Temple. We know not who ' 
 the Mr. Buckley was, that says he saw his name in the 
 record; and the name, if there, might have been that of 
 some other Chaucer. The name is said to be not unfrequent 
 in records under the Norman dynasty. We are told by 
 Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speght's edition of the 
 poet's works (published a few years ago from the manuscript 
 by Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer and Gower), 
 that "it is most certain to be gathered by circumstances of 
 records that the lawyers were not in the Temple until towards 
 the latter part of the reign of King Edward III., at which 
 time Chaucer was a grave man, holden in great credit, and 
 employed in embassy." " So that methinketh," adds the 
 * Dunciad, book ii. 
 
EMINENT NAMES CONNECTED WITH IT. 107 
 
 writer, "he should not be of that house; and yet, if he then 
 were, I should judge it strange that he should violate the 
 rules of peace and gravity in those years." 
 
 The first English tragedy of any merit, Gorbuduc, was 
 written in the Temple by Thomas Norton and Thomas 
 / Sackville, afterwards the celebrated statesman, and founder of 
 the title of Dorset. He was author of a noble performance, 
 the Induction for the Mirrour of Magistrates, in which there 
 is a foretaste of the allegorical gusto of Spenser. Ealeigh was 
 of the Temple ; Selden, who died in Whitefriars ; Lord 
 Clarendon ; Beaumont ; two other of our old dramatists, Ford 
 and Marston (the latter of whom was lecturer of the Middle 
 Temple) ; Wycherly, whom it is said the Duchess of Cleve- 
 land used to visit, in the habit of a milliner ; Congreve, Eowe, 
 Fielding, Burke, and Cowper. Goldsmith was not of the 
 Temple, but he had chambers in it, died there, and was buried 
 in the Temple Church. He resided, first on the Library 
 Staircase, afterwards in King's Bench Walk, and finally at 
 No. 2, Brick Court, where he had a first floor elegantly 
 furnished. It was in one of the former lodgings that, being 
 visited by Dr. Johnson, and expressing something like a shame- 
 faced hope that he should soon be in lodgings better furnished, 
 " Johnson," says Boswell, " at the same time checked him, and 
 paid him a handsome compliment, implying that a man of 
 talent should be above attention to such distinctions. ' Nay, 
 sir, never mind that : Nil te quo2siveris extra." 1 * (It is only 
 yourself that need be looked for). He died in Brick Court. 
 It is said that when he was on his deathbed, the landing- 
 place was filled with inquirers, not of the most mentionable 
 description, who lamented him heartily, for he was lavish of 
 his money as he went along Fleet Street. We are told by 
 one of the writers of the life prefixed to his works (probably 
 Bishop Percy, who contributed the greater part of it), that 
 11 he was generous in the extreme, and so strongly affected by 
 compassion, that he has been known at midnight to abandon his 
 rest in order to procure relief and an asylum for a poor dying 
 object who was left destitute in the streets." This, surely, 
 ought to be praise to no man, however benevolent : but it is, 
 in the present state of society. However, the offices of the 
 good Samaritan are now reckoned among the things that may 
 be practised as well as preached, without diminution of a 
 man's reputation for common-sense ; and this is a great step. 
 
 * Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p. 27. 
 
108 GOLDSMITH — BOSWELL's fflRST VISIT* 
 
 We will here mention, that Goldsmith had another residence 
 in Fleet Street. He wrote his Vicar of Wakefield in Wine 
 Office Court. Of the curious circumstances under which this 
 delightful novel was sold, various inaccurate accounts have 
 been given. The following is Boswell's account, taken from 
 Dr. Johnson's own mouth :— 
 
 " I received one morning," said Johnson, " a message from poor 
 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 accord- 
 ingly went to him as soon as I was dressed, and found that his land- 
 lady 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 
 a bottle 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 merit ; told the landlady I should soon return, and 
 having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought 
 Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating 
 his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." * 
 
 Johnson himself lived for some time in the Temple. It was 
 there that he was first visited by his biographer, who took 
 rooms in Farrars Buildings in order to be near him. His 
 appearance and manners on this occasion, especially as our 
 readers are now of the party, are too characteristic to be 
 omitted. " His chambers," says Boswell, " were on the first 
 floor of No. 1, Middle Temple Lane — and I entered them with 
 an impression given me by the Rev. Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, 
 who had been introduced to him not long before, and described 
 his having ' found the giant in his den,' an expression which, 
 when I came to be pretty well acquainted with Johnson, I 
 repeated to him, and he was diverted at this picturesque 
 account of himself. . . . 
 
 " He received me very courteously ; but it must be confessed that 
 his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were sufficiently 
 uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty ; he had on a 
 little shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head ; 
 his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose ; his black 
 worsted stockings ill-drawn up ; and he had a pair of unbuckled 
 shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were 
 forgotten the moment he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I 
 do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I 
 also rose ; but he said to me, " Nay, don't go.' — ' Sir/ said I, ' I am 
 afraid that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit 
 and hear you.' He seemed pleased with this compliment which I 
 
 * Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398. 
 
JOHNSON AND MADAME DE BOUFFLERS. 109 
 
 sincerely paid him, and answered, ' Sir, I am obliged to any man who 
 visits me.' "* (He meant that it relieved his melancholy.) 
 
 It was in a dress of this sort, and without his hat, that he 
 was seen rushing one day after two of the highest-bred visitors 
 conceivable, in order to hand one of them to her coach. 
 These were his friend Beauclerc, of the St. Albans family, 
 and Madame de Boufflers, mother (if we mistake not) of the 
 Chevalier de Boufflers, the celebrated French wit. Her re- 
 report, when she got home, must have been overwhelming ; 
 but she was clever and amiable, like her son, and is said to 
 have appreciated the talents of the great uncouth. Beauclerc, 
 however, must repeat the story : — 
 
 " When Madame de Boufflers," says he, " was first in England, she 
 was desirous to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his 
 chambers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his conver- 
 sation for some time. When our visit was over, she and I left him,, 
 and were got into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once I heard a 
 noise like thunder. This was occasioned by Johnson, who, it seems, 
 on a little recollection, had 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 hurry- 
 ing down the stairs in violent agitation. He overtook us before we 
 reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame 
 de Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her to the coach. His 
 dress was a rusty-brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of 
 slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the 
 sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. A 
 considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little 
 struck by his singular appearance." f 
 
 It was in the Inner Temple Lane one night, being seized 
 with a fit of merriment at something that touched his fancy, 
 not without the astonishment of his companions, who could 
 not see the joke, that Johnson went roaring all the way to the 
 Temple-gate ; where, being arrived, he burst into such a 
 convulsive laugh, says Boswell, that in order to support him- 
 self he " laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot- 
 pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the silence of 
 the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to 
 Fleet-ditch. This most ludicrous exhibition," continues his 
 follower, " of the awful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson, 
 happened well to counteract the feelings of sadness which I 
 used to experience when parting from him for a considerable 
 time. I accompanied him to his door, where he gave me his 
 blessing." J 
 
 * Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378. 
 f Ibid, vol. ii., p. 421. 
 £ Ibid, vol. ii., p. 271. 
 
110 BEN JONSON AND THE DEVIL TAVERN. 
 
 Between the Temple-gates, at one time, lived Bernard 
 Lintot, who was in no better esteem with authors than the 
 other great bookseller of those times, Jacob Tonson. There 
 is a pleasant anecdote of Dr. Young's addressing him a letter 
 by mistake, which Bernard opened, and found it begin thus : — ■ 
 " That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." — " It must 
 have been very amusing," said Young, " to have seen him in 
 his rage : he was a great sputtering fellow."* 
 
 Between the gates and Temple-bar, but nearer to the latter, 
 was the famous Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his 
 club. Messrs. Child, the bankers, bought it in 1787, and the 
 present houses were erected on its site. We believe that the 
 truly elegant house of Messrs. Hoare, their successors, does 
 not interfere with the place on which it stood. We rather 
 think it was very near to Temple-bar, perhaps within a house 
 or two. The club-room, which was afterwards frequently 
 used for balls, was called the Apollo, and was large and hand- 
 some, with a gallery for music. Probably the house had 
 originally been a private abode of some consequence. The 
 Leges Convivales, which Jonson wrote for his club, and which 
 are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style 
 of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that 
 dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has 
 been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he un- 
 doubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 
 " Insipida poemata," says he, "nulla recitantur" (Let nobody 
 repeat to us insipid poetry) ; as if all that he should read of 
 his own must infallibly be otherwise. The club at the Devil 
 does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the 
 Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. 
 He most probably had it all to himself. This is the tavern 
 mentioned by Pope : — 
 
 " And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, 
 He swears the Muses met him at the Devil." 
 
 It was in good repute at the beginning of the last century. 
 " I dined to-day," says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, 
 " with Dr. Garth and Mr. Addison at the Devil Tavern, near 
 Temple-bar, and Garth treated : and it is well I dine every 
 day, else I should be longer making out my letters ; for we 
 are yet in a very dull state, only inquiring every day after 
 new elections, where the Tories carry it among the new 
 * Spence's Anecdotes, Singer's edit. p. S55, 
 
FAMOUS COFFEE-HOUSES. Ill 
 
 members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy 
 and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen 
 king, he would hardly be refused."* Yet Addison was a 
 Whig. Addison had not then had his disputes with Pope 
 and others ; and his intercourse, till his sincerity became 
 doubted, was very delightful. It is impossible to read of those 
 famous wits dining together and not lingering upon the occa- 
 sion a little, and wishing we could have heard them talk. 
 Yet wits have their uneasiness, because of their wit. Swift 
 was probably not very comfortable at this dinner. He was 
 then beginning to feel awkward Avith his Whig friends ; and 
 Garth, in the previous month of September, had written a 
 defence of Godolphin, the ousted Minister, which was unhand- 
 somely attacked in the Examiner by their common acquaintance 
 Prior, himself formerly a Whig. 
 
 There was a multitude of famous shops and coffee-houses 
 in this quarter, all of which make a figure in the Tatter and 
 other works, such as Nando's coffee-house ; Dick's (still ex- 
 tant as Kichard's) ; the Rainbow (which is said to have been 
 indicted in former times for the nuisance of selling coffee); 
 Ben Tooke's (the bookseller); Lintot's; and Charles Mather's, 
 alias Bubble-boy, the Toyman, who, when Sir Timothy 
 Shallow accuses him of selling him a cane " for ten pieces, 
 while Tom Empty had as good a one for five," exclaims, 
 " Lord ! Sir Timothy, I am concerned that you, whom I took 
 to understand canes better than anybody in town, should be 
 so overseen ! Why, Sir Timothy, yours is a true jambee, and 
 esquire Empty's only a plain dragon." f 
 
 The fire of London stopped at the Temple Exchange coffee- 
 house ; a circumstance which is recorded in an inscription, 
 stating the house to have been the last of the houses burnt, 
 and the first restored. The old front of this house was taken 
 down about a century ago ; but on its being rebuilt, the stone 
 with the inscription was replaced. 
 
 But we must now cross over the way to Shire Lane, which 
 is close to Temple Bar on the opposite side. 
 
 * Swift's Works, ut supra, vol. iv., p. 41. 
 
 f Tatler, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling 
 book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a 
 great amateur in sticks. " My uncle," says he, " was universally 
 allowed to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot 
 Hot excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even 
 after his death ; for his collection of the various headed sticks and 
 canes, from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was unri- 
 valled."— Wine and Walnuts, vol. i., p. 242. 
 
112 TEMPLE BAR. 
 
 Here, " in ancient times," says Maitland, writing in the 
 middle of the last century, " were only posts, rails, and a 
 chain, such as are now at Holborn, Smithfield, and "White- 
 chapel 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." The present gate was 
 built by Wren after the great fire, but although the work of 
 so great a master, is hardly worth notice as a piece of archi- 
 tecture. It must be allowed that Wren could do poor things 
 as well as good, even when not compelled by a vestry. As 
 the last of the city gates, however, we confess we should be 
 sorry to see it pulled down, though we believe there is a 
 general sense that it is in the way. If it were handsome or 
 venerable we should plead hard for it, because it would then 
 be a better thing than a mere convenience. The best thing 
 we know of it is a jest of Goldsmith's ; and the worst, the 
 point on which the jest turned. Goldsmith was coming from 
 Westminster Abbey, with Dr. Johnson, where they had been 
 looking at the tombs in Poets' Corner, and Johnson had 
 quoted a line from Ovid : — 
 
 " Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." 
 (Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with theirs.) 
 
 " When we got to Temple Bar," says Johnson, "Goldsmith 
 stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered 
 to me (' in allusion,' says Boswell, l to Dr. Johnson's supposed 
 political opinions, and perhaps to his own,') 
 
 " ' Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' " 
 (Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with theirs.') 
 
 These heads belonged to the rebels who were executed for 
 rising in favour of the Pretender. The brutality of such 
 spectacles, which outrage the last feelings of mortality, and as 
 often punish honest mistakes as anything else, is not likely to 
 be repeated. Yet such an effect has habit in reconciling 
 men's minds to the most revolting, and sometimes the most 
 dangerous customs, that here were two Jacobites, one of 
 whom made a jest of what we should now regard with horror. 
 However, Johnson must often have felt bitterly as he passed 
 there; and the jesting of such men is frequently nothing but 
 salve for a wound. 
 
 Shire Lane still keeps its name, and we hope, however 
 altered and improved, it will never have any other ; for here, 
 at the upper end, is described as residing, old Isaac Bickerstaff, 
 
SHIRE LANE. — KIT-KAT CLUB. 113 
 
 the Tatler, the more venerable but not the more delightful 
 double of Richard Steele, the founder of English periodical 
 literature. The public-house called the Trumpet, now known 
 as the Duke of York, at which the Tatler met his club, is 
 still remaining. At his house in the lane he dates a great 
 number of his papers, and receives many interesting visitors ; 
 and here it was that he led down into Fleet Street that 
 immortal deputation of " twaddlers " from the country, who, 
 as a celebrated writer has observed, hardly seem to have 
 settled their question of precedence to this hour.* 
 
 In Shire Lane is said to have originated the famous Kit-Kat 
 Club, which consisted of " thirty-nine distinguished noblemen 
 and gentlemen, zealously attached to the Protestant succession 
 of the house of Hanover." " The club," continues a note in 
 Spence by the editor, " is supposed to have derived its name 
 from Christopher Katt, a pastry-cook, who kept the house 
 where they dined, and excelled in making mutton-pies, which 
 always formed a part of their bill of fare ; these pies, on 
 account of their excellence, were called Kit-Kats. The 
 summer meetings were sometimes held at the Upper Flask on 
 Hampstead Heath. "f 
 
 "You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club," says Pope to Spence. 
 " The master of the house where the club met was Christopher Katt; 
 Tonson was secretary. The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berwick 
 were entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just going to be 
 ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the 
 top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man 
 who would do that, would cut a man's throat. So that he had the 
 good and the forms of the society much at heart. The paper was all 
 in Lord Halifax's handwriting of a subscription of four hundred 
 guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, and was dated 1709, 
 soon after they broke up. Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Van- 
 brugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney, were of it ; so 
 was Lord Dorset and the present Duke. Manwaring, whom we hear 
 nothing of now, was the ruling man in all conversations; indeed, 
 what he wrote had very little merit in it. Lord Stanhope and the 
 Earl of Essex were also members. Jacob has his own, and all their 
 pictures, by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Each member gave his, and he is 
 going to build a room for them at Barn Elms." J 
 
 It is from the size at which these portraits were taken (a 
 three-quarter length), that the word Eat-Kat came to be 
 applied to pictures. The society afterwards met in higher 
 places ; but humbleness of locality is nothing in these matters. 
 The refinement consists in the company, and in whatever they 
 
 * Tatler, No. 86. 
 
 f Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, p. 337. $ Ibid. 
 
 I 
 
114 ISAAC WALTON. 
 
 choose to throw a grace over, whether venison or beef. The 
 great thing is, not the bill of fare, but, as Swift called it, the 
 " bill of company." 
 
 We cross to the south side of the street again, and come to 
 Mrs. Salmon's. It is a curious evidence of the fluctuation of 
 the great tide in commercial and growing cities, that, a cen- 
 tury ago, this immortal old gentlewoman, renowned for her 
 wax-work, gives as a reason for removing from St. Martin's- 
 le-Grand to Fleet Street, that it was " a more convenient 
 place for the coaches of the quality to stand unmolested."* 
 Some of the houses in this quarter are of the Elizabethan age, 
 with floors projecting over the others, and looking pressed 
 together like burrows. The inmates of these humble tene- 
 ments (unlike those of great halls and mansions) seem as if 
 they must have had their heights taken, and the ceiling made 
 to fit. Yet the builders were liberal of their materials. Over 
 the way, near the west corner of Chancery Lane, stood an 
 interesting specimen of this style of building, in the house of 
 the famous old angler, Isaac Walton. 
 
 Walton's was the second house from the lane, the corner 
 house being an inn, long distinguished by the sign of the 
 Harrow. He appears to have long lived here, carrying on 
 the business of a linen-draper about the year 1624. Another 
 person, John Mason, a hosier, occupied one-half of the tene- 
 ment. Walton afterwards removed to another house in 
 Chancery Lane, a few doors up from Fleet Street, on the 
 west side, where he kept a sempster's, or milliner's shop. 
 
 A great deal has been said lately of the merits and demerits 
 of angling, and Isaac has suffered in the discussion, beyond 
 what is agreeable to the lovers of that gentle pleasure. Un- 
 fortunately the brothers of the angle do not argue ingenuously. 
 They always omit the tortures suffered by the principal party, 
 and affect to think you affected if you urge them ; whereas 
 their only reason for avoiding the point is, that it is not to be 
 defended. If it is, we may defend, by an equal abuse of 
 reason, any amusement which is to be obtained at another 
 being's expense ; and an evil genius might angle for ourselves, 
 and twitch us up, bleeding and roaring, into an atmosphere 
 that would stifle us. But fishes do not roar ; they cannot 
 express any sound of suffering ; and therefore the angler 
 chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient 
 to him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport that depends for 
 * Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 600. 
 
INHUMANITY OF ANGLING. 115 
 
 its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of 
 imagination in the sportsman. Angling, in short, is not to 
 be defended on any ground of reflection ; and this is the worst 
 thing to say of Isaac ; for he was not unaware of the objections 
 to his amusement, and he piqued himself upon being contem- 
 plative. 
 
 Anglers have been defended upon the ground of their 
 having had among them so many pious men ; but unfortu- 
 nately men may be selfishly as well as nobly pious ; and even 
 charity itself may be practised, as well as cruelty deprecated, 
 upon principles which have a much greater regard to a man's 
 own safety and future comfort, than anything which concerns 
 real Christian beneficence. Doubtless there have been many 
 good and humane men anglers, as well as many pleasant men. 
 There have also been some very unpleasant ones — Sir John 
 Hawkins among them. They make a well-founded pretension 
 to a love of nature and her scenery ; but it is a pity they 
 cannot relish it without this pepper to the poor fish. Walton's 
 book contains many passages in praise of rural enjoyment, 
 which affect us almost like the fields and fresh air themselves, 
 though his brethren have exalted it beyond its value; and his 
 lives of his angling friends, the Divines, have- been prepos- 
 terously over-rated. If angling is to be defended upon good 
 and manly grounds, let it ; it is no longer to be defended on 
 any other. The best thing to be said for it (and the instance 
 is worthy of reflection) is, that anglers have been brought up 
 in the belief of its innocence, and that an inhuman custom is 
 too powerful for the most humane. The inconsistency is to 
 be accounted for on no other grounds ; nor is it necessary or 
 desirable that it should be. It is a remarkable illustration of 
 what Plato said, when something was defended on the ground 
 of its being a trifle, because it was a custom. " But custom," 
 said he, " is no trifle." Here, among persons of a more 
 equivocal description, are some of the humanest men in the 
 world, who Avill commit what other humane men reckon 
 among the most inhuman actions, and make an absolute 
 pastime of it. Let one of their grandchildren be brought up 
 in the reverse opinion, and see what he will think of it. This, 
 to be sure, might be said to be only another instance of the 
 effect of education; but nobody, the most unprejudiced, thinks 
 it a bigotry in Shakspeare and Steele to have brought us to 
 feel for the brute creation in general ; and whatever we may 
 incline to think for the accommodation of our propensities, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 
 
 there will still remain the unanswered and always avoided 
 argument, of the dumb and torn fish themselves, who die 
 agonised, in the midst of our tranquil looking on, and for no 
 necessity. 
 
 John Whitney, author of the Genteel Recreation, or the 
 Pleasures of Angling, a poem printed in the year 1700, 
 recommends the lovers of the art to bait with the eyes of fish, 
 in order to decoy others of the same species. A writer in the 
 Censura Liter aria exclaims, " What a Nero of Anglers doth 
 this proclaim John Whitney to have been! and how unworthy 
 to be ranked as a lover of the same pastime, which had been 
 so interestingly recommended by Isaac Walton, in his Con- 
 templative Man's Recreation."* 
 
 But Isaac's contemplative man can content himself with 
 impaling live worms, and jesting about the tenderness with 
 which he treats them — using the worm, quoth Isaac, " as if 
 you loved him." Doubtless John thought himself as good a 
 man as Isaac. He poetizes, and is innocent with the best of 
 them, and probably would not have hurt a dog. However, 
 it must be allowed that he had less imagination than Walton, 
 and was more cruel, inasmuch as he could commit a cruelty 
 that was not the custom. Observe, nevertheless, that it was 
 the customary cruelty which led to the new one. Why 
 must these contemplative men commit any cruelty at all ? 
 The writer of the article in the Censura was, if we mistake 
 not, one of the kindest of human beings, and yet he could see 
 nothing erroneous in torturing a worm. " A good man," 
 says the Scripture, "is merciful to his beast." Therefore 
 " holy Mr. Herbert" very properly helps a horse out of a 
 ditch, and is the better for it all the rest of the day. Are 
 we not to be merciful to fish as well as beasts, merely because 
 the Scripture does not expressly state it ? Such are the 
 inconsistencies of mankind, during their very acquirement of 
 beneficence. 
 
 On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane was 
 born a man of genius and benevolence, who would not have 
 hurt a fly — Abraham Cowley. His father was a grocer; 
 himself, one of the kindest, wisest, and truest gentlemen that 
 ever graced humanity. He has been pronounced by one, 
 competent to judge, to have been " if not a great poet, a 
 great man." But his poetry is what every other man's 
 poetry is, the flower of what was in him ; and it is at least so 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. iv., p. 345. 
 
CHANCERY LANE. 117 
 
 far good poetry, as it is the quintessence of amiable and deep 
 reflection, not without a more festive strain, the result of his 
 sociality. Pope says of him — ■ 
 
 " Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art ; 
 Yet still we love the language of his heart."* 
 
 His prose is admirable, and his character of Cromwell a 
 masterpiece of honest enmity, more creditable to both parties 
 than the zealous royalist was aware. Cowley, notwithstand- 
 ing the active part he took in politics, never ceased to be a 
 child at heart. His mind lived in books and bowers — in the 
 sequestered " places of thought ; " and he wondered and 
 lamented to the last, that he had not realised the people he 
 found there. His consolation should have been, that what he 
 found in himself was an evidence that the people exist. 
 
 Chancery Lane, " the most ancient of any to the west," 
 having been built in the time of Henry the Third, when it 
 was called New Lane, which was afterwards altered to 
 Chancellor's Lane, is the greatest legal thoroughfare in 
 England. It leads from the Temple, passes by Sergeants' 
 Inn, Clifford's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and the Kolls, and conducts 
 to Gray's Inn. Of the world of vice and virtue, of pain and 
 triumph, of learning and ignorance, truth and chicanery, of 
 impudence, violence, and tranquil wisdom, that must have 
 passed through this spot, the reader may judge accordingly. 
 There all the great and eloquent lawyers of the metropolis 
 must have been, at some time or other, from Fortescue and 
 Littleton, to Coke, Ellesmere, and Erskine. Sir Thomas 
 More must have been seen going down with his weighty 
 aspect ; Bacon with his eye of intuition ; the coarse Thurlow ; 
 and the reverend elegance of Mansfield. In Chancery Lane 
 was born the celebrated Lord Strafford, who was sent to the 
 block by the party he had deserted, the victim of his own 
 false strength and his -master's weakness. It is a curious 
 evidence of the secret manners of those times, which are so 
 often contrasted with the licence of the next reign, that 
 Clarendon, in speaking of some love-letters of this lord, a 
 married man, which transpired during his trial, calls them 
 " things of levity." What would he have said had he found 
 any love letters between Lady Carlisle and Pym ? Of 
 Southampton Buildings, on the site of which lived Shak- 
 speare's friend, Lord Southampton, we shall speak imme- 
 * Imitations of Horace, Ep. i. ? book ii. 
 
118 sergeants' inn. 
 
 diately; and we snail notice Lincoln's Inn when we come to 
 the Western portion of Holborn. But we may here observe, 
 that on the wall of the Inn, which is in Chancery Lane, Ben 
 Jonson is said to have worked, at the time he was compelled 
 to assist his father-in-law at his trade of bricklaying. In the 
 intervals of his trowel, he is said to have handled his Horace 
 and Virgil. It is only a tradition, which Fuller has handed 
 down to us in his Worthies ; but tradition is valuable when 
 it helps to make such a flower grow upon an old wall. 
 
 Sergeants' Inn, the first leading out of Chancery Lane, 
 near Fleet Street, has been what its name implies for many 
 generations. It was occasionally occupied by the Sergeants 
 as early as the time of Henry the Fourth, when it was called 
 Farringdon's Inn, though they have never, we believe, held 
 possession of the place but under tenure to the bishops of 
 Ely, or their lessees. Pennant counfounds this inn with 
 another of the same name, now no longer devoted to the same 
 purpose, in Fleet Street.* Sergeants' Inn in Fleet Street was 
 reduced to ruins in the great fire, but was soon after rebuilt 
 in a much more uniform style than before. It continued 
 after this to be occupied by the lawyers in 1730, when the 
 whole was taken down, and the present court erected. The 
 office of the Amicable Annuitant Society, on the east side of 
 the court, occupies the site of the ancient hall and chapel. 
 All the judges, as having been Sergeants-at-law before their 
 elevation to the bench, have still chambers in the inn in 
 Chancery Lane. The windows of this house are filled with 
 the armorial bearings of the members, who, when they are 
 knighted, are emphatically equites aurati (knights made 
 golden), at least as far as rings are concerned, for they give 
 rings on the occasion, with mottoes expressive of their senti- 
 ments upon law and justice. As to the equites, learned 
 "knights" or horsemen (till "knight" be restored to its 
 original meaning — servant) will never be anything but an 
 anomaly, especially since the brethren no longer even ride to 
 the Hall as they used. The arms of the body of Sergeants 
 are a golden shield with an ibis upon it; or, to speak 
 scientifically, "Or, an Ibis proper;" to which Mr. Jekyll 
 might have added, for motto, " In medio tutissimus." The 
 same learned punster made an epigram upon the oratory and 
 scarlet robes of his brethren, which may be here repeated 
 
 * Pennant, ut supra, p. 1 72. 
 
Clifford's inn. 119 
 
 without offence, as the Sergeants have had among them some 
 of the best as well as most tiresome of speakers : 
 
 " The Sergeants are a grateful race ; 
 Their dress and language show it ; 
 Their purple robes from Tyre we trace, 
 Their arguments go to it." 
 
 One of the customs which used to be observed so late as 
 the reign of Charles I. in the creation of sergeants, was for 
 the new dignitary to go in procession to St. Paul's, and there 
 to choose his pillar, as it was expressed. This ceremony is 
 supposed to have originated in the ancient practice of the 
 lawyers taking each his station at one of the pillars in the 
 cathedral, and there waiting for clients. The legal sage stood, 
 it is said, with pen in hand, and dexterously noted down the 
 particulars of every man's case on his knee. 
 
 Clifford's Inn, leading out of Sergeants' Inn into Fleet 
 Street and Fetter Lane, is so called from the noble family 
 of De Clifford, who granted it to the students-at-law in the 
 reign of Edward III. The word inn (Saxon, chamber), 
 though now applied only to law places, and the better sort 
 of public-houses in which travellers are entertained, formerly 
 signified a great house, mansion, or family palace. So 
 Lincoln's Inn, the mansion of the Earls of Lincoln; Gray's 
 Inn, of the Lords Gray, &c. The French still use the word 
 hotel in the same sense. Inn once made as splendid a figure 
 in our poetry, as the palaces of Milton : 
 
 " Now whenas Phoebus, with his fiery waine, 
 Unto his inne began to draw apace ;"* 
 
 says Spenser ; and his disciple Browne after him : 
 " Now had the glorious sun tane up his inne."f 
 There are three things to notice in Clifford's Inn : its little 
 bit of turf and trees ; its quiet ; and its having been the 
 residence of Robert Pultock, author of the curious narrative 
 Peter Wilkins, with its Flying Women. Who he was, is not 
 known ; probably a barrister without practice ; but he wrote 
 an amiable and interesting book. As to the sudden and 
 pleasant quiet in this little inn, it is curious to consider what 
 a small remove from the street produces it. But even in the 
 back room of a shop in the main street, the sound of the carts 
 and carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear ; and 
 a remove, like Clifford's Inn, makes it remote or nothing. 
 
 * Faerie Queen, book vi., canto iii. 
 
 f Britannia's Pastorals, book i., song iii. 
 
120 ST. dunstan's in the west. 
 
 The garden of Clifford's Inn forms part of the area of the 
 Rolls, so called from the records kept there, in rolls of parch- 
 ment. It is said to have been the house of an eminent Jew, 
 forfeited to the crown ; that is to say, it was most probably 
 taken from him, with all that it contained, by Henry III., 
 who made it a house for converts from the owner's religion. 
 These converted Jews, most likely none of the best of their 
 race (for board and lodging are not arguments to the scrupu- 
 lous), appear to haye been so neglected, that the number of 
 them soon came to nothing, and Edward III. gave the place to 
 the Court of Chancery to keep its records in. There is a fine 
 monument in the chapel to a Dr. Young, one of the Masters, 
 which, according to Vertue, was executed by Torregiano, 
 who built the splendid tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel. Sir 
 John Trevor, infamous for bribery and corruption, also lies 
 here. " Wisely," says Pennant, " his epitaph is thus con- 
 fined : < Sir J. T. M.R. 1717.' " Some other Masters," he 
 adds, " rest within the walls ; among them Sir John Strange, 
 but without the quibbling line, 
 
 1 Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.' " 
 Another Master of the Eolls, who did honour to the profes- 
 sion, was Sir Joseph Jekyll, recorded by Pope as an 
 
 . " odd old Whig, 
 Who never changed his principles or wig." 
 
 When Jekyll came into the office, many of the houses were 
 rebuilt, and to the expense of ten of them he added, out of his 
 own purse, as much as 350Z. each house ; observing, that 
 " he would have them built as strong and as well as if they 
 were his own inheritance."* The Master of the Rolls is a 
 great law dignitary, a sort of under -judge in Chancery, 
 presiding in a court by himself, though his most ostensible 
 office is to take care of the records in question. He has a 
 house and garden on the spot, the latter secluded from public 
 view. The house, however, has not been used as a residence 
 by the present holder of the office or his predecessor. 
 
 Between Chancery and Fetter Lane is the new church of 
 St. Dunstan's in the West — a great improvement upon the old 
 one, though a little too plain below for the handsome fret- 
 work of its steeple. The old building was eminent for the 
 two wooden figures of wild men, who, with a gentleness not- 
 to be expected of them, struck the hour with a little tap of 
 * Londinium Recfivivum, vol. ii., p. 279, 
 
FETTER LANE. 121 
 
 their clubs. At the same time they moved vheir arms and 
 heads, with a like avoidance of superfluous action. These 
 figures were put up in the time of Charles II., and were 
 thought not to confer much honour on the passengers who 
 stood " gaping'' to see them strike. But the passengers 
 might surely be as alive to the puerility as any one else. An 
 absurdity is not the least attractive thing in this world. They 
 who objected to the gapers, -probably admired more things 
 than they laughed at. It must be remembered also, that 
 when the images were set up, mechanical contrivances were 
 much rarer than they are now. Two centuries ago, St. Dun- 
 stan's Churchyard, as it was called, being the portion of Fleet 
 Street in front of the church, was famous for its booksellers' 
 shops. The church escaped the great fire, which stopped 
 within three houses of it, and consequently was one of the 
 most ancient sacred edifices in London. It was supposed to 
 have been built about the end of the fourteenth century, but 
 had undergone extensive repairs. Besides the clock with the 
 figures, it was adorned by a statue of Queen Elizabeth, which 
 stood in a niche over the east end, and had been transferred 
 thither about the middle of last century from the west side 
 of old Ludgate, which was then removed. 
 
 The only repute of Fetter Lane in the present days is, or 
 was, for sausages. But at one time it is said to have had the 
 honour of Dryden's presence. The famous Praise God Bare- 
 bones also, it seems, lived here, in a house for which he paid 
 forty pounds a year, as he stated in his examination on a 
 trial in the reign of Charles II.* He paid the above rent, he 
 says "except during the war:" that is, we suppose, during 
 the confusion of the contest between the King and the Par- 
 liament, when probably this worthy contrived to live rent 
 free. In this neighbourhood also dwelt the infamous Elizabeth 
 Brownrigg, who was executed in 1767 for the murder of one 
 of her apprentices. Her house, with the cellar in which she 
 used to confine her starved and tortured victims, and from the 
 grating of which their cries of distress were heard, was one 
 of those on the east side of the lane, looking into the long and 
 narrow alley behind, called Flower-de-Luce Court. It was 
 some years ago in the occupation of a fishing-tackle maker. 
 
 Johnson once lived in Fetter Lane, but the circumstances 
 of his abode there have not transpired. We now, however, 
 come to a cluster of his residences in Fleet Street, of which 
 * See Malcolm's Londinium Eedivivum, vol. iii., 453, 
 
122 ANECDOTE OF JOHNSON— HIS RESIDENCES. 
 
 place he is certainly the great presiding spirit, the Genius loci. 
 He was conversant for the greater part of his life with this 
 street, was fond of it, frequented its Mitre Tavern above any 
 other in London, and has identified its name and places with 
 the best things he ever said and did. It was in Fleet Street, 
 we believe, that he took the poor girl tip in his arms, put her 
 to bed in his own house, and restored her to health and her 
 friends ; an action sufficient to redeem a million of the aspe- 
 rities of temper occasioned by disease, and to stamp him, in 
 spite of his bigotry, a good Christian. Here, at all events, he 
 walked and talked, and shouldered wondering porters out of 
 the way, and mourned, and philosophised, and was "a good- 
 natured fellow" (as he called himself), and roared with peals 
 of laughter till midnight echoed to his roar. 
 
 " We walked in the evening," says Boswell, " in Greenwich Park. 
 He asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, 'Is not this 
 very fine ? ' Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, 
 and being more delighted with the busy hum of men, I answered, 
 ' Yes, sir ; but not equal to Fleet Street.' Johnson. 'You are right, 
 sir/"* 
 
 Boswell vindicates the tastes here expressed by the example 
 of a " very fashionable baronet," who, on his attention being 
 called to the fragrance of a May evening in the country, 
 observed, " This may be very well, but I prefer the smell of 
 a flambeau at the playhouse." The baronet here alluded to 
 was Sir Michael le Fleming, who, by way of comment on his 
 indifference to fresh air, died of an apoplectic fit while con- 
 versing with Lord Howick (the late Earl Grey), at the 
 Admiralty.")* However, Johnson's ipse dixit was enough. He 
 wanted neither Boswell's vindication, nor any other. He was 
 melancholy, and glad to be taken from his thoughts; and 
 London furnished him with an endless flow of society. 
 
 Johnson's abodes in Fleet Street were in the following 
 order: — First, in Fetter Lane, then in Boswell Court, then in 
 Gough Square, in the Inner Temple Lane, in Johnson's Court, 
 and finally, and for the longest period, in Bolt Court, where 
 he died. His mode of life, during a considerable portion of 
 his residence in these places, is described in a communication 
 to Boswell by the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, assistant preacher at 
 the Temple, who was intimate with Johnson for many years, 
 and who spoke of his memory with affection. 
 
 * Boswell, ut supra, vol. i., p. 441. 
 
 f Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid, 
 
 v 
 
ANECDOTE OF JOHNSON. 123 
 
 "About twelve o'clock," says the doctor, "I commonly visited him, 
 and found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he drank 
 very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning visitors, 
 chiefly men of letters ; Ha wkes worth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, 
 Steevens, Beauclerk, &c, &c, and sometimes learned ladies ; par- 
 ticularly, I remember, a French lady of wit and fashion doing him 
 the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of 
 public oracle, whom everybody thought they had a right to visit and 
 consult; and, doubtless, they were well rewarded. I never could 
 discover how he found time for his compositions. He declaimed all 
 the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly 
 staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which 
 he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must 
 have read and wrote chiefly in the night; for I can scarcely recollect 
 that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went to 
 Eanelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation. 
 
 " He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who 
 watched him between his house and the tavern where he dined. He 
 walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed, for the 
 rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance of having 
 much. 
 
 "Though the most accessible and communicative man alive, yet 
 when he suspected that he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly 
 spurned the invitation. 
 
 " Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was 
 present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they 
 were inclined. ' Come (said he), you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell 
 and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject ; which they 
 did, and after dinner he took one of them on his knees, and fondled 
 them for half en hour together."* 
 
 This anecdote is exquisite. It shows, that however impa- 
 tient he was of having his own superstitions canvassed, he 
 was loth to see them inflicted on others. He is here a harm- 
 less Falstaff, with two innocent damsels on his knees, in lieu 
 of Mesdames Ford and Page. 
 
 In Gough Square, Johnson wrote part of his Dictionary. 
 He had written the Rambler and taken his high stand with 
 the public before. " At this time," says Barber, his servant, 
 " he had little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. 
 Shiels when in distress." (Shiels was one of his amanuenses 
 in the dictionary.) His friends and visitors in Gough Square 
 are a good specimen of what they always were — a miscellany 
 creditable to the largeness of his humanity. There was Cave, 
 Dr. Hawkesworth, Miss Carter, Mrs. Macauley (two ladies 
 who must have looked strangely at one another), Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir Joshua) Reynolds, Langton, Mis. Williams (a poor 
 poetess whom he maintained in his house), Mr. Levett (an 
 
 * Boswell, vol. ii., p. 117. 
 
124 JOHNSON AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 
 
 apothecary on the same footing), Garrick, Lord Orrery, Lord 
 Southwell, and Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow chandler on 
 Snow-hill — " not in the learned way," said Mr. Barber, "but 
 a worthy good woman." With all his respect for rank, 
 which doubtless he regarded as a special dispensation of 
 Providence, his friend Beauclerk's notwithstanding, * Johnson 
 never lost sight of the dignity of goodness. He did not, 
 however, confine his attentions to those who were noble or 
 amiable ; though we are to suppose, that everybody with 
 whom he chose to be conversant had some good quality or 
 other ; unless, indeed, he patronised them as the Duke of 
 Montague did his ugly dogs, because nobody would if he did 
 not. The great secret, no doubt, was, that he was glad of the 
 company of any of his fellow-creatures who would bear and 
 forbear with him, and for whose tempers he did not care as 
 much as he did for their welfare. And he was giving alms ; 
 which was a catholic part of religion, in the proper sense of 
 the word. 
 
 " He nursed," says Mrs. Thrale, in her superfluous style, " whole 
 nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and 
 the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little 
 income could secure them; and commonly spending the middle of the 
 week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon 
 a settled allowance ; but returned to them every Saturday to give 
 them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us 
 on the Monday night, treating them with the same, or perhaps more, 
 ceremonious civility, than he would have done by as many people of 
 fashion, making the Holy Scripture thus the rule of his conduct, and 
 only expecting salvation as he was able to obey its precepts." f 
 
 Johnson's female inmates were not like the romantic ones 
 of Richardson. 
 
 "We surely cannot but admire," says Bos well, "the benevolent 
 exertions of this great and good man, especially when we consider 
 how grievously he was afflicted with bad health, and how uncom- 
 fortable his home was made by the perpetual jarring of those whom 
 he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has sometimes suf- 
 fered me to talk jocularly of his group of females, and call them his 
 seraglio. He thus mentions them, together with honest Levitt, in one 
 of his letters to Mrs. Thrale : ' Williams hates everybody ; Levett 
 hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams ; Desmoulins hates 
 them both ; Poll loves none of them.' " f 
 
 Of his residence in Inner Temple Lane we have spoken 
 
 * Beauclerk, of the St. Alban's family, was a descendant of Charles 
 II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which Johnson 
 by no means liked him the less. 
 
 f Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p. 69. 
 
 % Boswell, vol. iii., p. 398. 
 
Johnson's residences. 125 
 
 before. He lived there six or seven years, and then removed 
 to Johnson's Court, No. 7, where he resided for ten. Johnson's 
 Court is in the neighbourhood of Gough Square. It was 
 during this period that he accompanied his friend Boswell to 
 Scotland, where he sometimes humorously styled himself 
 " Johnson of that ilk" (that same, or Johnson of Johnson), in 
 imitation of the local designations of the Scottish chiefs. In 
 
 Johnson's house in bolt court. 
 
 1776, in his sixty-seventh year, still adhering to the neigh- 
 bourhood, he removed into Bolt Court, No. 8, where he died 
 eight years after, on the 13th December, 1784. In Bolt 
 Court he had a garden, and perhaps in Johnson's Court and 
 
126 ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 
 
 Gough Square : which we mention to show how tranquil and 
 removed these places were, and convenient for a student who 
 wished, nevertheless, to have the bustle of London at hand. 
 Maitland (one of the compilers upon Stow), who published 
 his history of London in 1739, describes Johnson and Bolt 
 Courts as having " good houses, well inhabited ;" and Gough 
 Square he calls fashionable.* 
 
 Johnson was probably in every tavern and coffee-house in 
 Fleet Street. There is one which has taken his name, being 
 styled, par excellence, ''Doctor Johnson's Coffee-house." But 
 the house he most frequented was the Mitre tavern, on the 
 other side of the street, in a passage leading to the Temple. 
 It was here, as we have seen, that he took his two innocent 
 theologians, and paternally dandled them out of their mis- 
 givings on his knee. The same place was the first of the 
 kind in which Boswell met him. " We had a good supper," 
 says the happy biographer, " and port wine, of which he then 
 sometimes drank a bottle." (At intervals he abstained from 
 all fermented liquors for a long time.) " The orthodox, 
 high-church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the 
 celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power and pre- 
 cision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding 
 myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of 
 sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I 
 had before experienced." "j" They sat till between one and 
 two in the morning. He told Boswell at that period that 
 " he generally went abroad at about four in the afternoon, 
 and seldom came home till two in the morning. I took the 
 liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and 
 not to make more use of his great talents. He owned it was 
 a bad habit." 
 
 The next time, Goldsmith was with them, when Johnson 
 made a remark which comes home to everybody, namely, 
 that granting knowledge in some cases to produce unhappiness, 
 " knowledge per se was an object which every one would 
 wish to attain, though, perhaps, he might not take the trouble 
 necessary for attaining it." One of his most curious remarks 
 followed, occasioned by the mention of Campbell, the author 
 
 * Johnson's Court runs into Gough Square, " a place lately built 
 ■with very handsome houses, and well inhabited by persons of fashion." 
 — Maitland's History and Survey of London, by Entick, folio, 175G, 
 p. 961. 
 
 f Boswell, vol. i., p. 384. 
 
Johnson's opinion of taverns. 127 
 
 of the Hermippus Eedivivus, on which Boswell makes a no 
 less curious comment. " Campbell," said Johnson, " is a 
 good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the 
 inside of a church for many years ; but he never passes a 
 church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has 
 good principles." On which, says Boswell in a note, " I am 
 inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. 
 I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. 
 For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from 
 public worship, /cannot."* 
 
 It was at their next sitting in this house, at which the 
 Rev. Dr. Ogilvie, a Scotch writer, was present, that Johnson 
 made his famous joke, in answer to that gentleman's remark, 
 that Scotland has a great many "noble wild prospects." 
 Johnson. " I believe, sir, you have a great many. Norway, 
 too, has noble, wild prospects ; and Lapland is remarkable for 
 prodigious, noble, wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell you, 
 the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high 
 road that leads him to England!" "This unexpected and 
 pointed sally," says Boswell, " produced a roar of applause. 
 After all, however" (he adds), "those who admire the rude 
 grandeur of nature, cannot deny it to Caledonia." f 
 
 Johnson had the highest opinion of a tavern, as a place in 
 which a man might be comfortable, if he could anywhere. 
 Indeed, he said that the man who could not enjoy himself in 
 a tavern, could be comfortable nowhere. This, however, is 
 not to be taken to the letter. Extremes meet ; and Johnson's 
 uneasiness of temper led him into the gayer necessities of 
 Falstaff. However, it is assuredly no honour to a man, not 
 to be able to " take his ease at his inn." " There is no private 
 house," said Johnson, talking on this subject, "in which 
 people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. 
 Let there be ever so great a plenty of good things, ever so 
 much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire 
 that everybody should be easy, in the nature of things it 
 cannot be : there must always be some degree of care and 
 anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his 
 guests ; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him ; and 
 no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely com- 
 mand what is in another man's house as if it were his own. 
 Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. 
 You are sure you are welcome ; and the more noise you 
 * Boswell, vol. i., p. 400. f Id., p. 408. 
 
128 ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 
 
 make, the more trouble you give, the more good things yoti 
 call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you 
 with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the 
 prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. 
 No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by 
 man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good 
 tavern or inn." He then repeated with great emotion Shen- 
 stone's lines : — 
 
 " Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 
 Where'er his stages may have been, 
 May sigh, to think he still has found 
 The warmest welcome at an inn." * 
 
 11 Sir John Hawkins," says Boswell in a note on this pas- 
 sage, " has preserved very few memorabilia of Johnson." 
 There is, however, to be found in his bulky tome, a very 
 excellent one upon this subject. " In contradiction to those 
 who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments 
 to those which a'tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that 
 a tavern chair ivas the throne of human felicity. ' As soon ' 
 (said he), c as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an 
 oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude : when I am 
 seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obse- 
 quious to my call, anxious to know and ready to supply my 
 wants : wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to 
 free conversation, and an interchange of discourse with those 
 whom I most love ; I dogmatise, and am contradicted ; and 
 in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight.' " 
 
 The following anecdote is highly to Johnson's credit, and 
 equally worthy of every one's attention. " Johnson was 
 known to be so rigidly attentive to the truth," says Boswell, 
 " that even in his common conversation the slightest circum- 
 stance was mentioned with exact precision. The knowledge 
 of his having such a principle and habit made his friends 
 have a perfect reliance on the truth of everything that he 
 told, however it might have been doubted if told by many 
 others. As an instance of this I may mention an odd inci- 
 dent, which he related as having happened to him one night 
 in Fleet Street. ' A gentlewoman' (said he) ' begged I would 
 give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I 
 accordingly did ; upon which she offered me a shilling, sup- 
 posing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was 
 somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would 
 * Boswell, vol. ii., p. 469, 
 
ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 129 
 
 have been thought an invention ; when told by Johnson, it 
 was believed by his friends, as much as if they had seen what 
 passed." * 
 
 The gentlewoman, however, might have taken him for the 
 watchman without being in liquor, if she had no eye to discern 
 a great man through his uncouthness. Davies, the bookseller, 
 said, that he " laughed like a rhinoceros." It may be added 
 he walked like a whale ; for it was rolling rather than walking. 
 "I met him in Fleet Street," says Boswell, "walking, or rather, 
 indeed, moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described 
 in a very just and picturesque manner, in a short life of him 
 published very soon after his death : — ' When he walked the 
 streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the con- 
 comitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by 
 that motion independent of his feet.' That he was often much 
 stared at," continues Boswell, " while he advanced in this 
 manner, may be easily believed ; but it was not safe to make 
 sport of one so robust as he was. Mr. Langton saw him one 
 day, in a fit of absence, by a sudden start, drive the load off a 
 porter's back, and walk forwards briskly, without being con- 
 scious of what he had done. The porter was very angry, but 
 stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much earnestness, 
 till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be satisfied 
 and take up his burden again." f 
 
 There is another remark on Fleet Street and its superiority 
 to the country, which must not be passed over. Boswell, not 
 having Johnson's reasons for wanting society, was a little over- 
 weening and gratuitous on this subject; and on such occasions 
 the doctor would give him a knock. " It was a delightful 
 day," says the biographer ; " as we walked to St. Clement's 
 Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the most 
 cheerful scene in the world ; ' Fleet Street,' said I, ' is in my 
 mind more delightful than Teinpe.' Johnson. — ' Ay, sir, but 
 let it be compared with Mull.' "J 
 
 The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has 
 enabled us to say, without presumption, that we differ with 
 this extraordinary person on many important points, without 
 ceasing to have the highest regard for his character. His 
 faults were the result of temperament ; perhaps his good 
 qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some measure, 
 so too ; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect 
 
 * Boswell, vol. ii., p. 455. f Ibid. vol. iv., p. 77. 
 
 % Ibid. vol. iii., p. 327. 
 
130 CRANE COURT. 
 
 and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command 
 respect ; and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with 
 foibles which belong to the common chances of humanity. If 
 Johnson has added nothing very new to the general stock, he 
 has contributed (especially by the help of his biographer) a 
 great deal that is striking and entertaining. He was an 
 admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as 
 could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good 
 sense; and one thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in 
 England, before or since — he advanced, by the powers of his 
 conversation, the strictness of his veracity, and the respect he 
 exacted towards his presence, what may be called the personal 
 dignity of literature. The consequence has been, not exactly 
 what he expected, but certainly what the great interests of 
 knowledge require ; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom 
 he little thought of co-operating, in setting the claims of truth 
 and beneficence above all others. 
 
 East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is 
 Crane Court — the principal house in w T hich, facing the entry, 
 was that in which the Eoyal Society used to meet, and where 
 they kept their museum and library before they removed to 
 their late apartments in Somerset House. The society met in 
 Crane Court up to a period late enough to allow us to present 
 to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries prosecuting 
 their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early 
 dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding 
 in the noontide glory of the light w r hich he had shed over 
 rature. 
 
131 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STEAND. 
 
 Ancient State of the Strand — Butcher Row — Death of Lee, the 
 dramatic Poet — Johnson at anEating-House — Essex Street — House 
 and History of the favourite Earl of Essex — Spenser's Visit there — 
 Essex, General of the Parliament — Essex Head Club — Devereux 
 Court — Grecian Coffee-House — Twining, the accomplished Scholar 
 — St. Clement Danes — Clement's Inn — Ealstaff and Shallow — 
 Norfolk, Arundel, Surrey, and Howard Streets — Norfolk House — 
 Essex's Ring and the Countess of Nottingham — William Penn — 
 Birch — Dr. Brocklesby — Congreve, and his Will — Voltaire's Visit 
 to him — Mrs. Bracegirdle — Tragical End of Mountford the Player — 
 Ancient Cross — Maypole — New Church of St. Mary-le-Strand — Old 
 Somerset House — Henrietta Maria and her Erench Household — 
 Waller's Mishap at Somerset Stairs — New Somerset House — Eoyal 
 Society, Antiquarian Society, and Royal Academy — Death of 
 Dr. King — Exeter Street — Johnson's first Lodging in London — Art 
 of living in London — Catherine Street — Unfortunate Women — 
 Wimbledon House — Lyceum and Beef-steak Club — Exeter Change 
 — Bed and Baltimore — The Savoy — Anecdotes of the Duchess of 
 Albemarle — Beaufort Buildings — Lillie, the Perfumer — Aaron Hill 
 — Fielding — Southampton Street — Cecil and Salisbury Streets — 
 Durham House — Raleigh — Pennant on the Word Place or Palace — 
 New Exchange — Don Pantaleon Sa — The White Milliner — Adelphi 
 — Garrick and his Wife — Beauclerc — Society of Arts, and Mr. Barry 
 — Bedford Street — George, Villiers, and Buckingham Streets — York 
 House and Buildings — Squabble between the Spanish and French 
 Ambassadors — Hungerford Market — Craven Street — Franklin — 
 Northumberland House — Duplicity of Henry, Earl of Northampton 
 — Violence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury — Percy, Bishop ot 
 Dromore — Pleasant mistake of Goldsmith. 
 
 N going through Fleet Street and the Strand, 
 we seldom think that the one is named 
 after a rivulet, now running under ground, 
 and the other from its being on the banks 
 of the river Thames. As little do mosfc 
 of us fancy that there was once a line of 
 noblemen's houses on the one side, and 
 that, at the same time, all beyond the 
 other side, to Hampstead or Highgate, was open country, with 
 the little hamlet of St. Giles's in a copse. So late as the 
 reign of Henry VIII. we have a print containing the vill a 
 of Charing. Citizens used to take an evening stroll to the 
 well now in St. Clement's Inn. 
 
 In the reign of Edward III, the Strand was an open country 
 
132 THE STRAND. 
 
 road, with a mansion here and there, on the banks of the river 
 Thames, most probably a castle or stronghold. In this state 
 it no doubt remained during the greater part of the York and 
 Lancaster period. From Henry VII. 's time the castles most 
 likely began to be exchanged for mansions of a more peaceful 
 character. These gradually increased ; and in the reign of 
 Edward VI. the Strand consisted, on the south side, of a line 
 of mansions with garden walls ; and on the north, of a single 
 row of houses, behind which all was field. The reader is to 
 imagine wall all the way from Temple Bar to Whitehall, on 
 his left hand, like that of Kew Palace, or a succession of 
 Burlington Gardens ; while the line of humbler habitations 
 stood on the other side, like a row of servants in waiting. 
 
 As wealth increased, not only the importance of rank 
 diminished, and the nobles were more content to recollect 
 James's advice of living in the country (where, he said, they 
 looked like ships in a river, instead of ships at sea), but the 
 value of ground about London, especially on the river side, 
 was so much augmented, that the proprietors of these princely 
 mansions were not unwilling to turn the premises into money. 
 The civil wars had given another jar to the stability of their 
 abodes in the metropolis ; and in Charles the Second's time 
 the great houses finally gave way, and were exchanged for 
 streets and wharfs. An agreeable poet of the last century lets 
 us know that he used to think of this great change in going 
 up the Strand. 
 
 " Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienc'd friend, 
 Thy briefs, thy deeds, and e'en thy fees suspend ; 
 Come, let us leave the Temple's silent walls ; 
 Me, business to my distant lodging calls ; 
 Through the long Strand togethe-r let us stray ; 
 With thee conversing, I forget the way. 
 Behold that narrow street which steep descends, 
 Whose building to the slimy shore extends ; 
 Here Arundel's fam'd structure rear'd its fame : 
 The street alone retains the empty name. 
 Where Titian's glowing paint the canvass warmed, 
 And Kaphael's fair design with judgment charmed, 
 Now hangs the bellman's song ; and pasted here 
 The coloured prints of Overton appear. 
 Where statues breathed, the works of Phidias' hands. 
 A wooden pump, or lonely watch-house stands. 
 There Essex's stately pile adorned the shore, 
 There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers', — now no more."* 
 
 * Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, 
 book ii. 
 
THE STRAND. 133 
 
 As the aspect in this quarter is so different from what it 
 was, and the quarter is one of the most important in the 
 metropolis, we may add what Pennant has written on the 
 subject : — 
 
 " In the year 1353, that fine street the Strand was an open high- 
 way, with here and there a great man's house, with gardens to the 
 water's side. In that year it was so ruinous, that Edward III., by 
 an ordinance, directed a tax to be raised upon wool, leather, wine, 
 and all goods carried to the staple at Westminster, from Temple Bar 
 to Westminster Abbey, for the repair of the road ; and that all owners 
 of houses adjacent to the highway should repair as much as lay before 
 their doors. Mention is also made of a bridge to be erected near the 
 royal palace at Westminster, for the conveniency of the said staple ; 
 but the last probably meant no more than stairs for the landing of the 
 goods, which I find sometimes went by the name of a bridge. 
 
 " There was no continued street here till about the year 1533 ; 
 before that it entirely cut off Westminster from London, and nothing 
 intervened except the scattered houses, and a village, which after- 
 wards gave name to the whole. St. Martin's stood literally in the 
 fields. But about the year 1560 a street was formed, loosely built, for 
 all the houses on the south side had great gardens to the river, were 
 called by their owners' names, and in after times gave name to the 
 several streets that succeeded them, pointing down to the Thames ; 
 each of them had stairs for the conveniency of taking boat, of which 
 many to this day bear the names of the houses. As the court was 
 for centuries either at the palace at Westminister, or Whitehall, a 
 boat was the customary conveyance of the great to the presence of 
 their sovereign. The north side was a mere line of houses from 
 Charing-cross to Temple Bar ; all beyond was country. The gardens 
 which occupied part of the site of Covent Garden were bounded by 
 fields, and St. Giles's was a distant country village. These are cir- 
 cumstances proper to point out, to show the vast increase of our 
 capital in little more than two centuries."* 
 
 The aspect of the Strand, on emerging through Temple 
 Bar, is very different from what it was forty years ago. "A 
 stranger who had visited London in 1790, would on his 
 return in 1804," says Mr. Malcolm, " be astonished to find a 
 spacious area (with the church nearly in the centre) on the 
 site of Butcher Kow, and some other passages undeserving of 
 the name of streets, which were composed of those wretched 
 fabrics, overhanging their foundations, the receptacles of dirt 
 in every corner of their projecting stories, the bane of ancient 
 London, where the plague, with all its attendant horrors, 
 frowned destruction on the miserable inhabitants, reserving 
 its forces for the attacks of each returning summer."j* 
 
 The site of Butcher Eow, thus advantageously thrown 
 
 * Pennant, ut supra, p. 139. 
 
 f Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 397. 
 
134 DEATH OF LEE. 
 
 open, is called Pickett Street, after the alderman who pro- 
 jected the improvements. Unfortunately they turned out to 
 be on too large a scale ; that is to say, the houses were found 
 to be too large and expensive for the right side of the Strand 
 in this quarter ; the tide of traffic between the city and West- 
 minster flowing the other side of the way. The consequence 
 is, that the houses are under-let, and that something of the old 
 squalid look remains in the turning towards Clement's Inn, in 
 spite of the pillared entrance. 
 
 Butcher Eow, however squalid, contained houses worth 
 eating and drinking in. Johnson frequented an eating-house 
 there; and, according to Oldys, it was "in returning from 
 the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Eow, through Clare Market, 
 to his lodgings in Duke Street, that Lee, the dramatic poet, 
 overladen with wine, fell down (on the ground, as some say — 
 according to others, on a bulk), and was killed, or stifled in 
 the snow. He was buried in the parish church of St. Clement 
 Danes, aged about thirty -five years."* "He was a very hand- 
 some as well as ingenious man," says Oldys, "but given to 
 debauchery, which necessitated a milk diet. When some of 
 his university comrades visited him, he fell to drinking out of 
 all measure, which, flying up into his head, caused his face to 
 break out into those carbuncles which were afterwards ob- 
 served there^ and also touched his brain, occasioning that mad- 
 ness so much lamented in so rare a genius. Tom Brown says, 
 he wrote, while he was in Bedlam, a play of twenty-five acts ; 
 and Mr. Bowman tells me that, going once to visit him there, 
 Lee showed him a scene, ' in which,' says he, ' I have done a 
 miracle for you.' 'What's that?' said Bowman. 'I have 
 made you a good priest.' " 
 
 Oldys mentions another of his mad sayings, but does not 
 tell us with whom it passed. 
 
 " I've seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought, 
 And walk away upon the wings of angels !" 
 
 " What say you to that, doctor ? " " Ah, marry, Mr. Lee, that's 
 superfine indeed. The thought of a winged spider may catch sublime 
 readers of poetry sooner than his web, but it will need a commentary 
 in prose to render it intelligible to the vulgar." f 
 
 Lee's madness does not appear to have been melancholy, 
 otherwise these anecdotes would not bear repeating. There 
 are various stories of the origin of it ; but, most probably, 
 
 * Biographia Dramatic a, from Oldys's MS. Notes on Langbaine. 
 f Censura Literaria, vol. i., p. 176. 
 
Clifton's eating-house. 135 
 
 he had an over-sanguine constitution, which he exasperated 
 by intemperance. Though he died so young, the author of 
 A Satyr on the Poets gives us to understand that he was cor- 
 pulent. 
 
 " Pembroke loved tragedy, and did provide 
 For the butchers' dogs, and for the whole Bank-side : 
 The bear was fed ; but dedicating Lee 
 Was thought to have a greater paunch than he."* 
 
 This Pembroke, who loved a bear-garden, was the sevent?* 
 earl of that title. His daughter married the son of Jefferies. 
 Lee, on a visit to the earl at Wilton, is said to have drunk so 
 hard, that "the butler feared he would empty the cellar." 
 The madness of Lee is almost visible in his swelling and over- 
 laden dramas; in which, however, there is a good deal of true 
 poetic fire, and a vein of tenderness that makes us heartily 
 pity the author. 
 
 The social Boswell, in speaking of Johnson's eating-house 
 in Butcher Row, does not approve of establishments of that 
 sort. We shall see, by and by, that he was wrong. 
 
 " Happening to dine," says he, " at Clifton's eating-house in 
 Butcher Row, I was surprised to see Johnson come in and take his 
 seat at another table. The mode of dining, or rather being fed, at 
 such houses in London, is well known to many to be peculiarly 
 unsocial, as there is no ordinary or united company, but each person 
 has his own mess, and is under no obligation to hold any intercourse 
 with any one. A liberal and full-minded man, however, who loves to 
 talk, will break through tbis churlish and unsocial restraint. Johnson 
 and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of 
 some part of mankind being black. ' Why, sir (said Johnson), it has 
 been accounted for in three ways : either by supposing that they are 
 the posterity of Ham, who was cursed ; or that God at first created 
 two kinds of men, one black and another white ; or that, by the heat 
 of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This 
 matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never 
 been brought to any certain issue.' What the Irishman said is totally 
 obliterated from my mind ; but I remember that he became very warm 
 and intemperate in his expressions ; upon which Johnson rose, and 
 quietly walked away. When lie had retired, his antagonist took his 
 revenge, as he thought, by saying, ' He has a most ungainly figure, 
 and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius.'" * 
 
 The ungainly figure might have been pardoned by the 
 Irishman ; who, we suppose, was equally fiery and elegant. 
 As to Johnson's pompous manner, the most excusable part of 
 it originated, doubtless, in his having decided opinions. The 
 rest may have been an instinct of self-defence, arising from 
 
 * State Poems, vol. ii., p. 143, 
 f Boswell, vol. i., p. 383. 
 
136 ESSEX HOUSE. 
 
 the "ungainly figure," not without a sense of the dignity of 
 his calling. He certainly lost nothing by it, upon the whole. 
 At all events, one is willing to think the best of what was 
 accompanied by so much excellence. Affectation it was not ; 
 for nobody despised pretension of any kind more than he did. 
 Johnson was a sort of born bishop in his way, with high 
 judgments and cathedral notions lording it in his mind ; and 
 ex cathedra he accordingly spoke. 
 
 In Butcher Row, one day, Johnson met, in advanced life, a 
 fellow-collegian, of the name of Edwards, whom he had not 
 seen since they were at the university. Edwards annoyed 
 him by talking of their age. "Don't let us discourage one 
 another," said Johnson. It was this Edwards, a dull but good 
 man, who made that naive remark, which was pronounced by 
 Burke and others to be an excellent trait of character: — "You 
 are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson," said he : "I have tried in 
 my time to be a philosopher ; but, I don't know how, cheer- 
 fulness was always breaking in."* 
 
 Before we come to St. Clement's, we arrive, on the left- 
 hand side of the way, at Essex Street ; a spot once famous 
 for the residence of the favourite Earl of Essex. We have 
 mentioned an Outer Temple, which originally formed a com- 
 panion to the Inner and Middle Temples, the whole consti- 
 tuting the tenements of the knights. This Outer Temple 
 stretched beyond Temple Bar into the ground now occupied 
 by Essex Street and Devereux Court; and after being pos- 
 sessed (Dugdale supposes) by the Prior and Canons of the 
 Holy Sepulchre, was transferred by them, in the time of 
 Edward III., to the Bishops of Exeter, who occupied it till 
 the reign of Henry VI,, and called it Exeter House. Sir 
 William Paget (afterwards Lord Paget) then had it, and did 
 " re-edify the same," calling it Paget Place. After this it 
 was occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was executed for 
 his dealings with Mary, Queen of Scots ; then by Dudley, 
 Earl of Leicester, the favourite, who called it Leicester House, 
 and bequeathed it to his " son, Sir Robert ;" and then by the 
 other favourite, Leicester's son-in-law, Essex, from whom it 
 retained the name of Essex House. It was occasionally 
 tenanted by men of rank till some time after the Restoration, 
 when it was pulled down, and the site converted into the pre- 
 sent street and court. The only remnant of it supposed to 
 exist is the present Unitarian Chapel, which, before it became 
 * Bos well, vol. iii., p. 331. 
 
earl oe ess£X. 137 
 
 such, was called Essex House, and latterly contained an 
 auction room.* 
 
 The repose enjoyed in this precinct since the Restoration 
 has been like silence after a succession of storms, for the 
 house was of a turbulent reputation. The first bishop who 
 had it after the Templars, being a favourite of Edward II., 
 was seized by the mob, hurried to Cheapside, where they 
 beheaded him, and then carried back a corpse, and buried 
 in a heap of sand at his door. Lord Paget got into trouble, 
 together with his friend the Duke of Somerset, who was 
 accused of intending to assassinate Northumberland and others 
 at this house. Norfolk possessed it while he formed his 
 designs on Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was brought 
 to the scaffold ; Leicester was always having some ill design 
 or other — perhaps poisoned a visitor or so occasionally (for 
 he is said to have thought nothing of that gentle expediency) ; 
 and Essex made the house famous by standing a siege in it 
 against the troops of his mistress. The siege was not long, 
 nor any of his actions in the business very wise, though he 
 was a man of an exalted nature. Essex got into his troubles 
 partly from heat and ambition, partly from the inferior and 
 more cunning nature of some of his rivals at court. There is 
 no doubt that all these causes, together with his confidence in 
 Elizabeth's inability to proceed to extremities, conspired to 
 lead him into rebellion. His first offence that we hear of, 
 next to a general petulance of manner, which the Queen's own 
 mixture of fondness and petulance was calculated enough to 
 provoke, was a quarrel with some young lords for her favour ; 
 the second, his joining the expedition to Cadiz without leave ; 
 and the third, his marriage with the daughter of Sir Francis 
 Walsingham : for Elizabeth never thought it proper that her 
 favourites should be married to any thing but her " fair 
 idea." 
 
 His next dispute with her, which was on the subject of an 
 assistant in the affairs of Ireland, to which he was going as 
 
 * Dugdale's Antiquities of Westminster. Heraldic MS. in the 
 Museum, quoted in Londinium Kedivivum (vol. ii., p. 282). Brydges's 
 Collins's Peerage. Belsham's Life of Lindsey. We have been thus 
 minute in tracing the occupancies of this house, from the interest 
 excited by some of the members connected with it. Pennant says, 
 upon the authority of the Sydney Papers, that Leicester bequeathed it 
 to his son-in-law, which appears probable, since the latter possessed 
 it. Perhaps the herald was confused by the name of Robert, which 
 belonged both to son and son-in-law. 
 
138 EARL OF ESSEX. 
 
 lord deputy, terminated in the singular catastrophe of his 
 receiving from her a box on the ear, with the encouraging 
 addition of bidding him " Go, and be hanged." It is said to 
 have been occasioned by his turning his back upon her. He 
 clapped his hand to his sword, and swore he would not have 
 put up with such an insult from her father. His fall is 
 generally dated from this circumstance, and it is thought he 
 never forgave it. But surely this is not a correct judgment : 
 for the blow which might have been intolerable from the hand 
 of a king, implied, in its very extravagance, something not 
 without flattery and self-abasement from that of a princess. 
 It was as if Elizabeth had put herself into the situation 
 of a termagant wife. The quarrel preceded the violence. 
 Essex went to Ireland against the rebels, but apparently with 
 great unwillingness, calling it, in a letter to the Queen, the 
 " cursedest of all islands," and insinuating that the best thing 
 that could happen both to please her and himself was the loss 
 of his life in battle. The conclusion of this letter is a remark- 
 able instance of the mixture of romance with real life in those 
 days. It is in verse, terminating with the following pastoral 
 sentiment. Essex wishes he could live like a hermit, " in 
 some unhaunted desert most obscure" — 
 
 " Erom all society, from love and hate 
 
 Of worldly folk ; then should he sleep secure, 
 Then wake again, and yield God every praise, 
 
 Content with hips and hawes, and bramble-berry ; 
 In contemplation parting out his days, 
 
 And change of holy thoughts to make him merry. 
 Who when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, 
 
 Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush. 
 Your Majesty's exiled servant, 
 
 " Robert Essex." 
 
 Think of this being a letter from a lord lieutenant of 
 Ireland to his sovereign! Warton says, from the evidence of 
 some sonnets preserved in the British Museum, that although 
 Essex was " an ingenious and elegant writer of prose," he 
 was no poet. There is an ungainliness in the lines we have 
 just quoted, and he was probably too much given to action to 
 be a poet ; but there is something in him that relished of 
 the truth and directness of poetry, when he had to touch 
 upon any actual emotion. Poetry is nothing but the volun- 
 tary power to get at the inner spirit of what is felt, with 
 imagination to embody it. It was supposed that Essex's 
 enemies first got him into the office of lord lieutenant, and 
 
REBELLION OF ESSEX. 139 
 
 then took advantage of his impatience under it to ruin him. 
 He was accused of tampering with the rebels, and meditating 
 his return into England with the troops under his charge ; 
 with a view to which object he is said to have described his 
 army as a force with which he " would make the earth to 
 tremble as he went." He came over, with the passion of an 
 injured man, and presented himself before the Queen, who 
 gave him a tolerable reception, but afterwards confined him 
 to the house of the lord keeper. It was then, according to 
 his confession before his death, that he first contemplated 
 violent measures against the throne, though always short of 
 treason. Before his liberation, he was soured by his ineffec- 
 tual attempts to renew his facility of admission to the presence 
 chamber ; and he let fall an expression which his enemies 
 greedily seized at, to wit, that the " Queen grew old and 
 cankered, and that her mind was become as crooked as her 
 carcase." This was exactly in his style, which was off-hand 
 and energetic, with a gusto of truth in it. Meantime he 
 began to have his friends about him more than ever, and to 
 affect a necessity for it; and a summons being sent him to 
 attend the council, he was driven by anger and fear to decline 
 it, and to fortify himself in his house. His chief and most 
 generous companion on this occasion was Henry, Earl of 
 Southampton, the friend of Shakspeare. There was some 
 little resistance ; and the Lord Keeper, with the Lord Chief 
 Justice and the Earl of Worcester, coming to summon him 
 to his allegiance, he locked them up in a room, on pretence 
 of taking care of their persons, and then sallied through 
 Fleet Street into the city, where he expected a rising in his 
 favour ; for he was the most popular noble, perhaps, that 
 England had ever seen, and the city had been disgusted by 
 repeated levies on its purse, under pretence of invasions from 
 Spain: though, according to Essex, Spain had never been so 
 much in favour. The levies, in truth, were made against 
 himself. He was disappointed : heard himself proclaimed a 
 traitor by sound of trumpet in Gracechurch Street, and after 
 a little more scuffling on the part of his adherents, returned 
 by water from Queenhithe, and surrendered himself ; being 
 partly moved, he said, by the " cries of ladies." It is clear 
 that he did not know what to be at. He expected, most 
 likely, every moment, that the Queen's tenderness would 
 interfere, fearful of seeing her once beloved favourite in 
 danger. But the Cecils and others aided her good sense in, 
 
140 EARL OF ESSEX. 
 
 keeping her quiet. Essex had certainly acted in a way in* 
 compatible with the duty of a subject, and such as no 
 sovereign could tolerate. He was tried in Westminster Hall, 
 and convicted of an intention to seize the court and the 
 Tower, to surprise the Queen in her apartments, and then to 
 summon a parliament for a "redress of grievances ;" which, 
 he said, should give his enemies " a fair trial." Southampton 
 was acquitted, no doubt from a sense that he intended nothing 
 but a romantic adherence to his friend. 
 
 How a man of Essex's understanding could give into these 
 preposterous attempts, it would be difficult to conceive, if 
 every day's experience did not show how powerful a succes- 
 sion of little circumstances is to bring people into situations 
 which themselves might have least looked for. Essex evi- 
 dently expected pardon to the last. When Lord Grey's name 
 was read over among the peers who were to try him, he 
 smiled and jogged the elbow of Southampton, for offending 
 whom Grey had been punished. He was at his ease through- 
 out the trial. He said to the Attorney-General (Coke), who 
 had told him in the course of his speech that he should be 
 "Robert the Last" of an earldom, instead of "Robert the 
 First" of a kingdom — " Well, Mr. Attorney, I thank God 
 you are not my judge this day, you are so uncharitable." 
 
 u Coke. Well, my lord, we shall prove you anon, what you are ; 
 which your pride of heart, and aspiring mind, hath brought you unto. 
 
 Essex. Ah, Mr. Attorney, lay your hand upon your heart, and 
 pray to God to forgive us both."* 
 
 And when sentence was passed, though it is not true that 
 he refused to ask for mercy, for he did it after the best 
 fashion of his style, " kneeling (he said) upon the very knees 
 of his heart," yet he seemed to threaten Elizabeth, in a tender 
 way, with his resolution to die. She left him, like a politic 
 sovereign, to his fate ; but is thought never to have recovered 
 it, as a friend. The romantic story of her visiting the 
 Countess of Nottingham, who had kept back a ring which 
 Essex sent her after his condemnation, of her shaking her on 
 her deathbed, and crying out that " God might forgive, but 
 she could not," is more and more credited as documents 
 transpire. The ring, it is said, had been given to Essex, 
 with a promise that it should serve him in need under any 
 circumstances, if he did but send it. It is supposed that the 
 non-appearance of it hurt the proud heart of Elizabeth, and 
 * Howell's State Trials, vol. i., p. 1343. 
 
REMORSE OF ELIZABETH FOR DEATH OF ESSEX. 141 
 
 finally allowed her to let him die. Yet she was a great 
 sovereign, and might have suffered the law to take its course, 
 with whatever sorrow. She was jealous of her reputation 
 with the old and cool-headed lords about her. When the 
 death, however, had taken place, she might have fancied 
 otherwise. Something preyed strongly on her mind towards 
 her decease, which happened within two years after his 
 execution. She refused to go to bed for ten days and 
 nights before her death, lying upon the carpet with cushions 
 about her, and absorbed in the profoundest melancholy. To 
 be sure, this may have been disease. A princess like 
 Elizabeth, possessed of sovereign power, which had been 
 sharply exercised on some doubtful occasions, might have 
 had misgivings when going to die. Two certain causes of 
 regret she must have had for Essex. She must have been 
 well aware that she had alternately encouraged and irritated 
 him over much ; and she must have known that he was a 
 better man than many who assisted in his overthrow, and 
 that if he had been less worthy of regard, he probably would 
 have survived her, as they did. 
 
 It may easily be imagined that Essex was a man for whom 
 a strong affection might be entertained. He excited interest 
 by his character, and could maintain it by his language. In 
 everything he did there was a certain excess, but on the 
 liberal side. When a youth, he plunged into the depths of 
 rural pleasures and books ; he was lavish of his money and 
 good words for his friends; he said everything that came 
 uppermost, but then it was worth saying, only his enemies 
 were not as well pleased with it as his friends, and they never 
 forgot it: in fine, he was romantic, brave, and impassioned. 
 He is so like a preux chevalier, that till we call to mind other 
 gallant knights who have not been handsome, we are some- 
 what surprised to hear that he was not well made, and that 
 nothing is said of his face but that it looked reserved — a 
 seeming anomaly, which deep thought sometimes produces 
 in the countenances of open-hearted men. These were no 
 hindrances, however, to the admiration entertained of him 
 by the ladies ; and he was so popular with authors and with 
 the public, that Warton says he could bring evidence of his 
 scarcely ever quitting England or even the metropolis, on the 
 most frivolous enterprise, without a pastoral or other poetical 
 praise of him, which was sold and sung in the streets. He 
 was the friend of Spenser, most likely of Shakspeare too, 
 
142 SPENSER'S LINES ON ESSEX. 
 
 being the friend of Southampton. Spenser was well acquainted 
 with Essex House. In his l Protlialamion] published in 1596, 
 he has left interesting evidence of his having visited Leicester 
 there; and he follows up the record with a panegyric on 
 Leicester's successor, which was probably his first hint to 
 Essex that he was still in want of such assistance as he had 
 received from his father-in-law. The two passages taken 
 together render the hint rather broad, and such as would 
 make one a little jealous for the dignity of the great poet, 
 were not the manners of that time different in this respect 
 from what they are now. Speaking of the Temple, in the 
 lines quoted in our last chapter, he goes on to say — 
 
 " Next whereunto there stands a stately place, 
 Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace 
 Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell. 
 Whose want too well now feels my friendless case : 
 But, ah ! here fits not well 
 Olde woes, but ioyes, to tell 
 Against the bridale daye, which is not long : 
 Sweet Themmes ! runne softly till I end my song. 
 
 Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer, 
 
 Great England's glory, and the world's wide wonder, 
 
 Whose dreadful name late through all Spaine did thunder, 
 
 And Hercules' two pillars standing near 
 
 Did make to quake and feare : 
 
 Faire branch of honour, flower of chevalrie ; 
 
 That fillest England with thy triumph's fame, 
 
 Joy have thou of thy noble victorie." 
 
 Essex no doubt took the poet at his word, both for his pane- 
 gyric and his hint : for it was he that gave Spenser his funeral 
 in Westminster, and he was not of a spirit to treat a great poet, 
 as poets have sometimes been treated — with neglect in their 
 lifetime, and self-complacent monuments to them after their 
 death. 
 
 We shall close this notice (in which we have endeavoured 
 to concentrate all the interest we could) of the once great and 
 applauded Essex, whose memory long retained its popularity, 
 and gave rise to several tragedies, with a letter of his to the 
 Lord Keeper Egerton, in which there is one of his finest senti- 
 ments expressed -with his most passionate felicity. Egerton's 
 eldest son had accompanied Essex into Ireland, and died there, 
 which is the subject of the letter. As Spenser's death also 
 happened just before the earl set out for that country, at a 
 moment when he might have been of political as well as 
 poetical use to him (for Spenser was a politician, and had 
 
LETTER OF ESSEX TO LORD KEEPER EGERTON. 143 
 
 been employed in the affairs of Ireland), Mr. Todd thinks, 
 that among the friends alluded to, part of the regret may have 
 been for him : 
 
 " Whatt can you receave from a cursed country butt vnfortunate 
 newes ? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to 
 make a martyr) butt a stile of mourning ? nott for myself thatt I 
 smart, for I wold I had in my hart the sorow of all my frends, but I 
 mourn that my destiny is to overlive my deerest frendes. Of y r losse 
 yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I 
 felt myself sensibly dismembered, when I lost my frend. Shew 
 y r strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be God's will, shew yt in taking 
 leave of the world, and hasting after my frends. Butt I will live 
 and dy 
 
 " More y r lp's then any 
 
 " man's living, 
 
 " Essex." 
 il Arbrackan, this last day of August" [1599]. 
 
 "Little,"* says Mr. Todd, " did the generous but unfortunate Essex 
 then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of con- 
 dolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to 
 issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the 
 name ol Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis 
 of Stafford ; and the queen has written her name, not with the firm- 
 ness observable in numerous documents existing in the same and 
 other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation." 
 
 In Essex House was born another Robert, Earl of Essex, 
 son of the preceding, well known in history as general of the 
 Parliament. He was a child when his father died ; and was 
 in the hands, first, of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, 
 and, secondly, of Henry Saville (afterwards Sir Henry), under 
 whose severe discipline he was educated at Eton. We men- 
 tion these circumstances, because they tended to keep him in 
 that Presbyterian interest, Avhich his father patronised out of 
 a love of toleration and popularity. Perhaps, also, they did 
 him no good with his wives ; for he married two, and was 
 singularly unfortunate in both. To the first, Lady Frances 
 Howard, he was betrothed when a boy. He travelled, re- 
 turned, and married her, with little love on his own side, and 
 none on hers. Her connection with Car, Earl of Somerset, 
 and all the infamy, crime, and wretchedness it brought upon 
 her, are well known. Her best excuse, which is the ordinary 
 one in cases of great wickedness (and it is a comfort to human 
 nature that it is so), is, that she was a great fool. Her dislike 
 of her first husband was not, perhaps, the least excusable part 
 of her conduct, first, because she was a child like himself 
 * Todd's edit, of Spenser, vol. i., p. cxli. 
 
144 ESSEX, GENERAL OF THE PARLIAMENT. 
 
 when they were betrothed ; and secondly, because his second 
 wife appears to have liked him no better. The latter was 
 divorced also. After this, Essex took to a country retire- 
 ment, and subsequently to an active part in the Civil Wars, 
 during which his love of justice and affability to his inferiors 
 rendered him extremely popular. He was of equivocal ser- 
 vice, however, to the Parliament. He was a better general 
 than politician, not of a commanding genius in any respect, 
 and was suspected, not without reason, of an overweening 
 desire to accommodate matters too much, partly out of 
 ignorance of what the nature of the quarrel demanded, and 
 partly from an affectation of playing the part of an amicable 
 dictator for his own aggrandisement. So the Parliament got 
 rid of him by the famous self-denying ordinance. Clarendon 
 says, that when he resigned his commission, the whole Parlia- 
 ment went the day following to Essex House, to return him 
 thanks for his great services ; but a late historian of the 
 commonwealth says, there is no trace of this compliment on 
 the journals.* Next year they attended him to his grave. 
 Essex's character was a prose-copy of his father's, with the 
 love and romance left out. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, founded in Essex 
 Street one of his minor clubs. The Literary Club did not 
 meet often enough for his want of society, was too distant, and 
 perhaps had now become too much for his conversational 
 ambition. He wanted a mixture of inferior intellects to be 
 at ease with. Accordingly, this club, which was held at the 
 Essex Head, then kept by a servant of Mr. Thrale, was of a 
 more miscellaneous nature than the other, and made no pre- 
 tension to expense. One cannot help smiling at the modest 
 and pensive tone of the letter which Johnson sent to Sir 
 Joshua, inviting him to join it. " The terms are lax, and the 
 expenses light. We meet thrice a-week ; and he who misses, 
 forfeits two-pence." f This stretch of philosophy seems to 
 have startled the fashionable painter, who declined to become 
 a member. When we find, however, in the list the names 
 of Brocklesby, Horsley, Daines Barrington, and Windham, 
 Bos well has reason to say that Sir John Hawkins's charge of 
 its being a "low ale-house association" appears to be suffi- 
 ciently obviated. But the names might have been subscribed 
 out of civility without any further intention. The club, 
 
 * Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 410, 
 f Boswell, vol. iv., p. 276, 
 
ST. CLEMENT DANES. 145 
 
 nevertheless, was in existence when Boswell wrote, and went 
 on, he says, happily. Johnson said of him, when he was pro- 
 posed, " Boswell is a very clubable man." 
 
 In Devereux Court, through which there is a passage round 
 into the Temple, is the Grecian Coffee House, supposed to be 
 the oldest in London. We should rather say the revival of 
 the oldest, for the premises were burnt down and rebuilt. 
 The Grecian was the house from which Steele proposed to 
 date his learned articles in the Tatler. 
 
 In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, 
 Messrs. Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its 
 stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the 
 Strand. We notice the house, not only on this account, but 
 because the family have to boast of a very accomplished 
 scholar, the translator of the Poetics of Aristotle. Mr. 
 Twining was contemporary with Gray and Mason at Cam- 
 bridge; and besides his acquirements as a linguist (for, in 
 addition to his knowledge of Greek and Latin, he wrote 
 French and Italian with idiomatic accuracy), was a musician 
 so accomplished as to lead the concerts and oratorios that 
 were performed during term-time, when Bate played the organ 
 and harpsichord. He was also a lively companion, full of 
 wit and playfulness, yet so able to content himself with 
 country privacy, and so exemplary a clergyman, that for the 
 last forty years of his life he scarcely allowed himself to be 
 absent from his parishioners more than a fortnight in a 
 year. 
 
 The church of St. Clement Danes, which unworthily occu- 
 pies the open part of the Strand, to the west of Essex Street, 
 was the one most frequented by Dr. Johnson. It is not 
 known why this church was called St. Clement Danes. 
 Some think because there was a massacre of the Danes there- 
 abouts; others because Harold Harefoot was buried there; 
 and others, because the Danes had the quarter given them to 
 live in, when Alfred the Great drove them out of London, 
 the monarch at the same time building the church, in order 
 to assist their conversion to Christianity. The name 'St. 
 Clement has been derived with probability from the patron 
 saint of Pope Clement III., a great friend of the Templars, to 
 whom the church at one time belonged. St. Clement's was 
 rebuilt towards the end of the century before last by Edward 
 Pierce, under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, but is a 
 very incongruous ungainly edifice. Its best aspect is at 
 
 L 
 
146 ST. CLEMENT DANES. 
 
 night-time in winter, when the deformities of its body are not 
 seen, and the pale steeple rises with a sort of ghastliness of 
 grandeur through the cloudy atmosphere. The chimes may 
 still be heard at midnight, as FalstafT describes having heard 
 them with Justice Shallow. If they did not execute one of 
 Handel's psalm-tunes, we should take them to be the very 
 same he speaks of, and conclude that they had grown hoarse 
 with age and sitting-up ; for to our knowledge they have lost 
 some of their notes these twenty years, and the rest are 
 falling away. A steeple should set a better example. 
 
 A few years back, when the improvements on the north 
 side, in this quarter, had not been followed by those on the 
 south, Gay's picture of the avenue between the church and 
 the houses was true in all its parts. We remember the 
 " combs dangling in our faces," and almost mourned their 
 loss for the sake of the poet. 
 
 " Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, 
 Whose straiten'd bounds encroach upon the Strand ; 
 Where the low penthouse bows the walker's head, 
 And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread ; 
 Where not a post protects the narrow space, 
 And, strung in twines, combs dangle in thy face ; 
 Summon at once thy courage, rouse thy care, 
 Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware. 
 Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier's steeds 
 Drag the black load ; another cart succeeds ; 
 Team follows team, crowds heap'd on crowds appear, 
 And wait impatient till the road grow clear." 
 
 Everybody can testify to the truth of this description. A 
 little patience, however, is well repaid by the sight of the 
 noble creatures dragging up the loads. The horses of the 
 colliers and brewers of London are worth notice at all times 
 for the magnificence of their build. Gay proceeds to other 
 particulars, now no longer to be encountered. He cautions 
 you how you lose your sword ; and adds a pleasant mode of 
 theft, practised in those times : — 
 
 " Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn : 
 High on the shoulder, in a basket borne, 
 Lurks the sly boy, whose hands, to rapine bred, 
 Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."* 
 
 * Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book iii. 
 Of a similar, and more perplexing facetiousness was the trick of 
 extracting wigs out of hackney coaches. " The thieves," says the 
 Weekly Journal (March 30, 1717), "have got such a villanous way 
 now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of 
 
147 
 
 Clement's Inn is named from the church. The device over 
 the gate, of an anchor and the letter C, is supposed to allude 
 to the martyrdom of St. Clement, who is said to have been 
 tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, by order of the 
 Emperor Trajan. 
 
 "The hall is situated on the south side of a neat but small 
 quadrangle. It is a Tuscan diminutive building, with a very large 
 Corinthian door, and arched windows, erected in 1715. Another 
 irregular area is surrounded by convenient houses, in which are the 
 possessor's chambers. Part of this is a pretty garden, with a kneel- 
 ing African, of considerable merit, supporting a dial, on the eastern 
 side."* 
 
 In Knox's Elegant Extracts are some lines on this negro, 
 which have often been repeated : — 
 
 " In vain, poor sable son of woe* 
 Thou seek'st the tender tear ; 
 Eor thee in vain with pangs they flow $ 
 For mercy dwells not here. 
 
 From cannibals thou fledst in vain ; 
 
 Lawyers less quarter give ; 
 The first won't eat you till you're slain, 
 
 The last will do't alive." 
 
 This inn, like all the other inns of court, is of great 
 antiquity. Dugdale states it to have been an inn of Chancery 
 in the reign of Edward II. Some have conjectured, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Moser, " that near this spot stood an inn, as far 
 back as the time of King Ethelred, for the reception of 
 penitents who came to St. Clement's Well ; that a religious 
 house was in process of time established, and that the church 
 rose in consequence." Be this as it may, the holy brother- 
 hood was probably removed to some other institution ; the 
 Holy Lamb, an inn on the west side of the lane, received the 
 guests ; and the monastery was converted, or rather perverted, 
 from the purposes of the gospel to those of the law, and was 
 probably, in this profession, considered as a house of consider- 
 able antiquity in the days of Shakspeare ; for he, who with 
 
 hackney coaches, and take away their wigs, or fine head-dresses of 
 gentlewomen ; so a gentleman was served last Sunday in Tooley 
 Street, and another but last Tuesday in Eenchurch Street ; wherefore 
 this may serve as a caution to gentlemen and gentlewomen that ride 
 single in the night-time, to sit on the fore-seat, which will prevent 
 that way of robbing." — Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and 
 Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, second edit., 
 vol. i., p. 104. 
 * Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii. 
 
 L2 
 
148 CLEMENT'S INN, 
 
 respect to this kind of chronology may be safely quoted, 
 makes in the second act of Henry IV. one of his justices a 
 member of that society : — 
 
 " He must to the Inns of Court. I was of Clement's once myself, 
 where they talk of Mad Shallow still." 
 
 A pump now covers St. Clement's Well. Fitzstephen, in 
 his description of London, in the reign of Henry II., speaks 
 of certain " excellent springs at a small distance" from the 
 city, " whose waters are sweet, salubrious, and clear, and 
 whose runnels murmur o'er the shining stones : among these," 
 he continues, " Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's 
 Well may be esteemed the principal, as being much the most 
 frequented, both by the scholars from the school (West- 
 minster) and the youth from the city, when on a summer's 
 evening they are disposed to take an airing." 
 
 Six hundred years and upwards have elapsed since Eitz- 
 stephen wrote. It is pleasant to think that the well has lasted 
 so long, and that the place is still quiet. 
 
 The Clare family, who have left their name to Clare 
 Market, appear to have occupied Clement's Inn during part 
 of the reign of the Tudors. From their hands it reverted to 
 those of the law. It is an appendage to the Inner Temple. 
 We are not aware of any greater legal personage having 
 been bred there, than the one just mentioned. Shallow takes 
 delight in his local recollections, particularly of this inn. 
 In one of the masterly scenes of this kind, Falstaff's 
 corroboration of a less pleasant recollection, and Shallow's 
 anger against the cause of it, after such a lapse of time, are 
 very ludicrous. 
 
 " Shallow. Oh, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in 
 the windmill in St. George's Fields ? 
 
 " Fals. No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that. 
 
 " Shal. Ha, it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive ? 
 
 " Fals. She lives, Master Shallow. 
 
 " Shal She never could away with me. 
 
 " Fals. Never, never ; she would always say she could not abide 
 Master Shallow. 
 
 " Shal. By the mass. I could anger her to the heart. She was then 
 a bonaroba. Doth she hold her own well ? — and had Kobin Night- 
 work by old Nightwork, before I came to Clement's Inn. 
 
 '* Silence. That's fifty-five years ago. 
 
 " Shal. Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this 
 knight and I have seen ! Ah, Sir John, said I well ? 
 
 " Fals, We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow. 
 
 " Shal. That we have, that we have, that we have ; in faith, Sir 
 John, we have; our watchword was, Bern, boyst Come, let's to 
 
STORT OF THE COUNTESS OF NOTTINGHAM. 149 
 
 dinner: come, let's to dinner: Oh, the days that we have seen! 
 Come, come." * 
 
 The sites of Arundel, Norfolk, Surrey, and Howard Streets 
 (the last of which crosses the others), were formerly occupied 
 by the house and grounds originally constituting the town 
 residence of the Bishop of Bath and "Wells, then of the Lord 
 High Admiral Seymour, and afterwards of the Howards Earls 
 of Arundel, from whom it came into possession of the Duke of 
 Norfolk. It was successively called Bath's Inn (Hampton 
 Place, according to some, but we know not why), Seymour 
 Place, Arundel House, and Norfolk House. It was a wide low 
 house, but according to Sully, who lodged in it when he was 
 ambassador to James L, very convenient, on account of the 
 multitude of rooms on the same floor. 
 
 In this house the Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour, 
 brother of the Protector Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., 
 contrived to place the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth, 
 with a design of possessing her person, and sharing her suc- 
 cession to the Crown. No doubt is entertained of these view r s 
 by the historians. Elizabeth was not averse to him, though 
 he had lately married the Queen Dowager (Catherine Parr) ; 
 and some gossipping stories transpired of the evidences of 
 their good-will. Catherine's death increased the suspicion, 
 and she herself expressed it on her death-bed. Seymour's 
 ambition, however, shortly brought him to the scaffold, and 
 saved us from a King Thomas I., who would probably, as 
 Pennant thinks, have been a very bad one. 
 
 We have mentioned the Countess of Nottingham who with- 
 held from Elizabeth the ring sent her by Essex. It was in 
 this house she died. Her husband w T as a Howard, and, pro- 
 bably, she was on a visit there. "We take an opportunity, 
 therefore, of relating the particulars of that romantic story, 
 as collected by the accurate Dr. Birch, and repeated in the 
 Memoirs of the Peers of England during the reign of James I. 
 " The following curious story," says the compiler of this work, 
 " was frequently told by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, great grand- 
 daughter of Sir Eobert Carey, brother of Lady Nottingham, 
 and afterwards Earl of Monmouth, whose curious memoirs of 
 himself were published a few years ago by Lord Corke." 
 
 " When Catherine, Countess of Nottingham, was dying (as she did, 
 according to his lordship's own account, about a fortnight before 
 Queen Elizabeth), she sent to her Majesty to desire that she might 
 
 * Second fart of Henry IV, act 3. sc 2, 
 
150 THOMAS HOWARD EARL OF ARUNDEL. 
 
 see her, in order to reveal something to her Majesty without the 
 discovery of which she could not die in peace. Upon the Queen's 
 coming, Lady Nottingham told her, that, while the Earl of Essex lay 
 under sentence of death, he was desirous of asking her Majesty's 
 mercy, in the manner prescribed by herself, during the height of his 
 favour ; the -Queen having given him a ring, which being sent to her 
 as a token of his distress, might entitle him to her protection. But 
 the earl, jealous of those about him, and not caring to trust any of 
 them with it, as he was looking out of his window one morning, 
 saw a boy, with whose appearance he was pleased ; and engaging him 
 by money and promises, directed him to carry the ring, which he 
 took from his finger and threw down, to Lady Scroope, a sister of the 
 Countess of Nottingham, and a friend of his lordship, who attended upon 
 the Queen ; and to beg of her that she would present it to her Majesty. 
 The boy, by mistake, carried it to Lady Nottingham, who showed it 
 to her husband, the admiral, an enemy of Lord Essex, in order to 
 take his advice. The admiral forbid her to carry it, or return any 
 answer to the message; but insisted upon her keeping the ring. 
 
 " The Countess of Nottingham, having made this discovery, begged 
 the Queen's forgiveness; but her Majesty answered, ' God may forgive 
 you, but I never can,' and left the room with great emotion. Her mind 
 was so struck with the story that she never went into bed, nor took 
 any sustenance from that instant, for Camden is of opinion, that her 
 chief reason for suffering the earl to be executed, was his supposed 
 obstinacy in not applying to her for mercy."* 
 
 " In confirmation of the time of the countess's death," continues 
 the compiler, " it now appears from the parish register of Chelsea, 
 extracted by Mr. Lysons (Environs of London, vol. ii., p. 120), that 
 she died at Arundel House, London, February 25, and was buried the 
 28th, 1603. Her funeral was kept at Chelsea, March 21st; and Queen 
 Elizabeth died three days afterwards." 
 
 Clarendon gives a singular character of this house and its 
 master -when it was in possession of Thomas Howard, Earl of 
 Arundel. He says that the earl 
 
 " Seemed to live, as it were, in another nation, his house being a 
 place to which all people resorted, who resorted to no other place; 
 strangers, or such as affected to look like strangers, and dressed 
 themselves accordingly. He was willing to be thought a scholar, and 
 to understand the most mysterious parts of antiquity, because he 
 made a wonderful and costly purchase of excellent statues whilst in 
 Italy and in Rome (some whereof he could never obtain permission to 
 remove out of Rome, though he had paid for them), and had a rare 
 collection of medals. As to all parts of learning, he was almost 
 illiterate, and thought no other part of history so considerable as 
 what related to his own family, in which, no doubt, there had been 
 
 * Birch's Negotiations, pp. 206, 207, quoted in the work above 
 mentioned, p. 189. Whenever we quote from any authorities but the 
 original, we beg the reader to bear in mind, first, that we always 
 notice our having done so ; and, secondly, that we make a point of 
 comparing the originals with the report. Both Monmouth and Birch, 
 for example, have been consulted in the present instance. 
 
WILLIAM PENN. 151 
 
 some very memorable persons. It cannot be denied that he had in 
 his own person, in his aspect and countenance, the appearance of a 
 great man, which he preserved in his gait and motion. He wore and 
 affected a habit very different from that of the time, such as men had 
 only beheld in pictures of the most considerable men; all which drew 
 the eyes of most, and the reverence of many, towards him, as the 
 image and representative of the ancient nobility, and native gravity 
 of the nobles, when they had been most venerable ; but this was 
 only his outside, his nature and true humour being much disposed to 
 levity and delights, which indeed were very despicable and childish." 
 
 The marbles here mentioned, now at Oxford, were collected 
 at Arundel House. This character from the pen of Clarendon 
 has been thought too severe. Perhaps the earl had given the 
 noble historian a repulse when he was nothing but plain 
 Mr. Hyde ; for personal resentments of this sort are apparent 
 in his writings. The last Duke of Norfolk but one, who 
 wrote anecdotes on the Howard family, asks how the man 
 who collected the Oxford marbles could be the slave of such 
 family self-love as Clarendon describes, and how it was that 
 he held the first places in the state, and_ the most important 
 commissions abroad. It is well-known, however, that a man 
 may do all this, and yet be more fortunate than wise. 
 Arundel was certainly proud, if not dull ; and the proudest 
 men are not apt to be the brightest. It was he that, in a 
 dispute with Lord Spenser, in the Upper House, when the 
 latter spoke of the treason of the earl's ancestors, said, " My 
 lord, my lord, while my ancestors were plotting treason, 
 yours were keeping sheep." He little thought that his 
 marbles would help to bring about a time, when an historian, 
 by no means indifferent to rank and title, should regard a 
 romantic poem as the " brightest jewel" in a ducal coronet, 
 and that coronet be a Spenser's. * 
 
 At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street lived at one 
 time the famous Penn, who from being a coxcomb in his 
 youth became a Quaker and a founder of a state. However, 
 his coxcombry was a falling-off from early seriousness. His 
 father was a rough admiral, who could not for the life of him 
 conceive why his son should relapse into a preciseness so 
 unlike the rest of the world, and so unfitted to succeed at 
 court. Voltaire says,f that young Penn (for he was little 
 more than twenty years of age) appeared suddenly before his 
 
 * We allude to the celebrated saying of Gibbon respecting the Fairy 
 Queen. 
 
 f In his Letters on the English Ration, But we quote from 
 memory. 
 
152 DR. BIRCH. 
 
 father in a Quaker dress, and to the old man's astonishment 
 and indignation said, without moving his hat, "Friend Penn, 
 how dost thee do?" But, according to more serious bio- 
 graphers, the change was not so sudden. The hat, however, 
 was a great matter of contention between them, the admiral 
 wishing to stipulate that his son should uncover to the King 
 (Charles II.), the King's brother, and himself; but Penn 
 having recourse to " fasting and supplication," found that 
 his hat was not to be moved. These were the weaknesses of 
 a young enthusiast. His enthusiam remained for greater 
 purposes ; but he is understood to have grown wiser with 
 regard to the rest, though he continued a Quaker for life. 
 Penn, though a legislator, never seems to have given up a 
 taste for good living. His appearance in the portraits of 
 him, notwithstanding his garb, is fat and festive ; and he 
 died of apoplexy. 
 
 In the same house, we believe, that had been occupied by 
 Penn*, resided an author who must not be passed over in a 
 work of this kind ; to wit, the indefatigable and honest 
 antiquary, Dr. Birch. He came of a Quaker stock. Birch 
 astonished his friends by going a great deal into company ; 
 but the secret of his uniting sociality with labour, was his 
 early rising. This, which appears to be one of the main 
 secrets of longevity, ought to have kept him older, for he died 
 at the age of sixty-one: but he was probably festive as well 
 social, and should have taken more exercise. Being a bad 
 horseman, he was thrown on the Hampstead road, and killed 
 on the spot ; but the doctors were uncertain whether apoplexy 
 had not a hand in the disaster. In speaking of Birch, nobody 
 should omit a charming billet, written to him by his first 
 wife, almost in the article of death. The death took place 
 within a year after their marriage, and was accelerated by 
 childbed. 
 
 " This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere hearty thanka 
 for every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife. 
 " July 31, 1729." "Hannah Birch."* 
 
 In Norfolk Street, for upwards of thirty years, lived 
 Dr. Brocklesby, the friend and physician of Dr. Johnson. 
 Physicians of this class may, par excellence, be styled the 
 
 * "We conclude so from our authorities in both instances. Mr. 
 Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 398. 
 
 f See his life in Chalmers's General Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., 
 p. 280. 
 
DR. BROCKLESBY. 153 
 
 friends of men of letters. They partake of their accomplish- 
 ments, understand their infirmities, sympathise with their 
 zeal to do good, and prolong their lives by the most delicate 
 and disinterested attentions. Between no two professions 
 has a more liberal and cordial intimacy been maintained than 
 between literature and medicine. Brocklesby was an honour 
 to the highest of his calling. 
 
 " In the course of his practice," we are told that " his advice, as 
 well as his purse, was ever accessible to the poor, as well as to men 
 of merit who stood in need of either. Besides giving his advice 
 to the poor of all descriptions, which he did with an active and 
 unwearied benevolence, he had always upon his list two or three 
 poor widows, to whom he granted small annuities ; and who, on 
 the quarter-day of receiving their stipends, always partook of the 
 hospitalities of his table. To his relations, who wanted his assist- 
 ance in their business or professions, he was not only liberal, but 
 so judicious in his liberalities as to supersede the necessity of a repe- 
 tition of them. To his friend Dr Johnson (when it was in agitation 
 amongst his friends to procure an enlargement of his pension, the 
 better to enable him to travel for the benefit of his health), he offered 
 an establishment of one hundred pounds per year during his life; and 
 upon Dr. Johnson's declining it (which he did in the most affec- 
 tionate terms of gratitude and friendship), he made him a second 
 offer of apartments in his own house, for the more immedi-ate benefit 
 of medical advice. To his old and intimate friend Edmund Burke, 
 he had many years back bequeathed by will the sum of one thousand 
 pounds ; but recollecting that this event might take place (which it 
 afterwards did) when such a legacy could be of no service to him, he, 
 with that judicious liberality for which he was always distinguished, 
 gave it to him in advance, ' ut pignus amicitice : ' it was accepted as 
 such by Mr. Burke, accompanied with a letter, which none but a 
 man feeling the grandeur and purity of friendship like him could 
 dictate."* 
 
 If it be dangerous in the present condition of society, to 
 incur pecuniary obligations, particularly for those who are 
 more qualified to think than to act, and who may ultimately 
 startle to find themselves in positions in which they can 
 neither prove the benefit done them, nor the good feelings 
 which allowed them to receive it, nobody can doubt the 
 generosity of such a man as Brocklesby; who, so far from 
 being a mere patron, jealous of being obliged himself, was 
 equally as prepared to receive kindness as to show it. 
 Proposing just before he died to go down to Burke's 
 house at Beaconsfield, and somebody hinting to him the 
 danger of being fatigued, and of lying out of his own bed, 
 
 * General Biographical Dictionary, 8vo., 1812, vol. vii. 
 
154 CONGREVE. 
 
 he replied with his usual calmness, " My good friend, I per- 
 fectly understand your hint, and am thankful to you for it ; 
 but where's the difference, whether I die at a friend's house, 
 at an inn, or in a postchaise ? I hope I am every way pre- 
 pared for such an event, and perhaps it is as well to elude the 
 expectation of it." This was said like a man, and a friend. 
 Brocklesby was not one who would cant about giving trouble 
 at such a moment — the screen of those who hate to be troubled ; 
 neither would he grudge a friend the melancholy satisfaction 
 of giving him a bed to die in. He better understood the first 
 principles which give light and life to the world, and left 
 jealousy and misgiving to the vulgar. 
 
 Dr. Brocklesby died at his house in the street above men- 
 tioned, and was buried in the churchyard. Lee was buried, 
 " at St. Clement Danes ;" probably, therefore, in the church- 
 yard also. There are now in that spot some trees, by far 
 the best things about the church. The reader may imagine 
 them to shade the places where the poet and the physician lie. 
 
 Arundel or Norfolk House, after the great fire, became the 
 temporary place of meeting for the Royal Society, previously 
 to its return to Gresham College. It was pulled down on 
 their leaving it, the century before last, and the streets before 
 mentioned built in its room. They appear to have been 
 favourite places of residence with persons connected with the 
 drama. Congreve lived in Surrey Street, Mountford the 
 player in Norfolk Street, Mrs. Bracegirdle in Howard Street, 
 and Mrs. Barry somewhere near her. 
 
 Congreve died where he had lived (Jan. 29, 1728-9), after 
 having been for several years afflicted with blindness and 
 gout ; of which, however, he seems to have made the best he 
 could, by the help of good sense and naturally good spirits. 
 If his wits ever failed him, it was in the propensity to a love of 
 rank and fashion, which, in spite of all that he had seen in the 
 world, never forsook him. It originated probably in the need 
 he thought he had of them, when he first set out in life. The 
 finest sense of men of his cast does not rise above a graceful 
 selfishness. It was most probably in Surrey Street (for he 
 had come to the " verge of life"), that he had a visit paid 
 him by Voltaire, who has recorded the disgust given him by 
 an ebullition of his foppery : for the Frenchman had a great 
 admiration of him as a writer. " Congreve spoke of his 
 works," says Voltaire, " as of trifles that were beneath him ; 
 and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that I should visit 
 
CONGREVE *S BEQUEST TO DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 155 
 
 him upon no other foot than upon that of a gentleman, who 
 led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered, that had he 
 been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never 
 have come to see him ; and I was very much disgusted at so 
 unseasonable a piece of vanity."* Our readers will admire 
 the fineness of this rebuke. 
 
 But the most glaring instance of this propensity was his 
 leaving the bulk of his fortune to a duchess, when he had 
 poor relations in want of it. 
 
 "Having lain in state," says Johnson, "in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected 
 to his memory by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for 
 reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of 
 about ten thousand pounds, the accumulation of attentive parsimony, 
 which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great 
 assistance to the ancient family from which he descended ; at that 
 time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and 
 distress."! 
 
 " Congreve," says Dr. Young, " was very intimate for years with 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle, who lived in the same street — his house very near 
 hers; until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. 
 He then quitted that house. The duchess showed me a diamond 
 necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear), that cost seven 
 thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left 
 her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle !"J 
 
 Yet this dramatist, throughout his life, had had the good 
 word of everybody. All parties praised him : all parties kept 
 him in office (he had some places that are said to have pro- 
 duced him twelve hundred a year) : Pope dedicated his Iliad 
 to him ; called him, after his death, Ultimus Romanorum ; and 
 added that " Garth, Yanbrugh, and he were the three most 
 honest-hearted, real good men of the Kit-Kat Club ! " § 
 
 The secret of this is, that Congreve loved above all things 
 to be at ease, and spoke politicly of everybody. He had a 
 bad opinion of mankind, as we may see by his comedies ; 
 and he made the best of it, by conversing with them as if he 
 took heed of their claws. The only person, we believe, that 
 he ever opposed, was Collier, who attacked the stage with 
 more spirit than elegance, and who was at enmity with the 
 whole world of wit and fashion. We are far from thinking 
 with Collier, that the abuses of the stage outweigh the benefit 
 it does to the world ; nor do we think the world by any 
 
 * Letters on the English Nation. 
 
 f Life, in Chalmers's English Poets, p. 26. 
 
 X Spence's Anecdotes, p. 376. § Idem, p. 46. 
 
156 CONGREVE. 
 
 means so bad as Congreve supposed it, nor himself either : 
 but it is useful to know the tendencies of those who have a 
 habit of thinking otherwise. 
 
 Congreve's bequest created a good deal of gossip. Curll, 
 the principal scandal-monger of those times, got up a catch- 
 penny life of him, professing to be written by " Charles 
 Wilson, Esq.," but supposed to be the work of Oldmixon. 
 There is no relying upon Charles Wilson ; but, from internal 
 evidence, we may take his word occasionally ; and we may 
 believe him when he says that the duchess and her friends 
 were alarmed at the threatened book. The picture which he 
 draws of her manner has also an air like a woman of quality. 
 She had demanded a sight of the documents on which the 
 book was founded ; and being refused, asked what authority 
 they had, and what pieces contained in it were genuine. 
 " Upon being civilly told there would be found several essays, 
 letters, and characters of that gentleman's writing," says 
 Mr. Wilson, " she, with a most affected, extraordinary, 
 dramatic drawl, cried out, ' Not one single sheet of paper, I 
 dare to swear.'"* Mr. Wilson's own grand air in return is 
 very amusing. He speaks of Arbuthnot's coming with " ex- 
 presses," probably to Curll's ; and adds, that if he be 
 despatched with any more, " he may, if he please, come to 
 me, who am as easily to be found in Great Kussell Street, 
 Bloomsbury, when in town, as he is in Burlington Gardens. — • 
 Cha. Wilson." 
 
 Mr. Wilson's book opens with a copy of the will, in which 
 500?. are left among the Congreves ; about 500Z. more to 
 friends and domestics, &c. (not omitting 200?. to Mrs. Brace- 
 girdle) ; and all the rest (with power to annul or increase the 
 complimentary part of the legacies) to the Duchess of 
 Marlborough. We know not that anybody could have 
 brought forward grounds for objecting to this will, had the 
 duchess been poor herself ; for his relations may or may not 
 have have had claims upon him — relations, as such, not 
 being of necessity friends, though it is generally fit that they 
 should partake of the family prosperity. We except, of 
 course, a man's immediate kindred, particularly those whom 
 
 * Memoirs of the Life, Writings, &c, of William Congreve, Esq., 
 1730, p. xi. Curll discreetly omits his name in the titlepage. [On 
 reconsidering this interview (though we have no longer the book by 
 us, and therefore speak from memory) we are doubtful, whether the 
 lady was not Mrs, Bracegirdle, instead of the duchess,] 
 
HIS CHARACTER. 157 
 
 he has brought into the world. But here was a woman, 
 rolling in wealth, and relatives neither entirely forgotten, nor 
 yet, it seems, properly assisted. The bequest must, therefore, 
 either have been a mere piece of vanity, or the consequence of 
 habitual subjection to a woman's humours. The duchess was 
 not ungrateful to his memory. She raised him, as we have 
 seen, a monument ; and it is related in Cibber's Lives of the 
 the Poets,* we know not on what authority, that she missed 
 his company so much, as to cause " an image of him to be 
 placed every day on her toilet-table, to which she would talk 
 as to the living Mr. Congreve, with all the freedom of the 
 most polite and unreserved conversation." There is something 
 very ludicrous in this way of putting a case, which might 
 otherwise be affecting. It is as if there had been a sort of 
 polite mania on both sides. 
 
 Congreve's plays are exquisite of their kind, and the exces- 
 sive heartlessness and duplicity of some of his characters are 
 not to be taken without allowance for the ugly ideal. There 
 is something not natural, both in his characters and wit ; and 
 we read him rather to see how entertaining he can make his 
 superfine ladies and gentlemen, and what a pack of sensual 
 busybodies they are, like insects over a pool, than from any 
 true sense of them as " men and women." As a companion 
 he must have been exquisite to a woman of fashion. We can 
 believe that the duchess, in ignorance of any tragic emotion 
 but what was mixed with his loss, would really talk with a 
 waxen image of him in a peruke, and think the universe con- 
 tained nothing better. It was carrying wit and politeness 
 beyond the grave. Queen Constance in Shakspeare makes 
 grief put on the pretty looks of her lost child : the Duchess 
 of Marlborough made it put on a wig and jaunty air, such as 
 she had given her friend in his monument in Westminster 
 Abbey. No criticism on his plays could be more perfect. 
 Congreve's serious poetry is a refreshment, from its extreme 
 insipidity and common -place. Everybody is innocent in some 
 corner of the mind, and has faith in something. Congreve 
 had no faith in his fellow-creatures, but he had a scholar's 
 (not a poet's) belief in nymphs and weeping fauns ; and he 
 wrote elegies full of them, upon queens and marquisses. If 
 it b& true that he wrote the character of Aspasia (Lady 
 Elizabeth Hastings), in the Tatler (No. 42), he had indeed 
 faith in something better ; for in that paper is not only given 
 * Lives of the Poets, &c, by Mr. Cibber and others, 1753. 
 
158 MRS. BRACEGIRDLE. 
 
 an admiring account of a person of very exalted excellence, 
 but the author has said of her one of the finest things that a 
 sincere heart could utter ; namely, that " to love her was a 
 liberal education." We cannot help thinking, however, that 
 the generous and trusting hand of Steele is very visible 
 throughout this portrait ; and in the touch just mentioned, in 
 particular. 
 
 The engaging manners of Mrs. Bracegirdle gave rise to a 
 tragical circumstance in Howard Street — the death of Mount- 
 ford her fellow-player. Mrs. Bracegirdle, one of the most 
 popular actresses of that time, was a brunette, not remarkable 
 for her beauty, but so much so for the attractiveness superior 
 to beauty, that Cibber calls her the " darling of the stage," 
 and says it was a kind of fashion for the young men about 
 town to have a tenderness for her. This general regard she 
 preserved by setting a value on herself, not so common with 
 actresses at that time as it has been since. Accordingly, some 
 made honourable proposals, which were then still more re- 
 markable. In Rowe's poems, there is a bantering epistle to 
 
 an Earl of S , advising him not to care for what people 
 
 might think, but to pursue his inclinations to that eifect. 
 Among others a Captain Hill made desperate love, professing 
 the same intentions ; but he was a man of bad character, 
 and the lady would have nothing to say to him. The captain, 
 like a proper coxcomb, took it into his head that nothing 
 could have prevented his success, but some other person ; and 
 he fixed upon Mountford as the happy man. Mountford was 
 the best lover and finest gentleman then on the stage, as 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle was the most charming heroine ; but it does 
 not appear that Hill had any greater ground for his suspicion 
 than their frequent performance in the same play, which, 
 however, to a jealous man, must have been extremely provok- 
 ing. They used to act Alexander and Statira together. In 
 Mountford' s Alexander, according to Cibber, there were seen 
 " the great, the tender, the penitent, the despairing, the trans- 
 ported, and the amiable, in the highest perfection ;" and " if 
 anything," he said, " could excuse that desperate extravagance 
 of love, that almost frantic passion," it was when Mrs. 
 Bracegirdle was the Statira. Imagine a dark-souled fellow in 
 the pit thinking himself in love with this Statira, and that 
 the passion between her and the Alexander was real. This 
 play was acted a few nights before the catastrophe which we 
 are about to relate. 
 
MRS. BRACEGIKDLE. 159 
 
 Hill was intimate with another man of bad character, Lord 
 Mohun; who agreed to assist him in carrying off Mrs. Brace- 
 girdle. The captain had often said that he would be 
 " revenged" upon Mountford ; and dining with Lord Mohun 
 on the day when they attempted the execution of their 
 plot, he said, further, that he would "stab" him "if he 
 resisted;" upon which Mohun said that he would " stand by 
 his friend." 
 
 Mohun and Hill met at the playhouse at six o'clock, 
 changed clothes there, and waited some time for Mrs. Brace- 
 girdle ; but not finding her come, they took a coach which 
 they had ordered to be ready, drove towards her lodgings in 
 Howard Street, and then back to Drury Lane, where they 
 directed the coach to stop near Lord Clare's house (by the 
 present Craven Buildings). Mrs. Bracegirdle had been 
 supping at a Mr. Page's, in Princess Street, Drury Lane. 
 She came out, accompanied by her mother, brother, and 
 Mr. Page, and was seized by Hill, who, with the aid of a 
 number of soldiers, endeavoured to force her into the coach. 
 In the coach was Lord Mohun, with seven or eight pistols. 
 Old Mrs. Bracegirdle threw her arms round her daughter's 
 waist ; her other friends, and at length the passengers, 
 interfered; and our heroine succeeded in getting into her 
 lodgings in Howard Street, Hill and Mohun following them 
 on foot. When they all came to the door, Hill would have 
 spoken with Page, but the latter refused ; and the door was 
 shut. A witness, at the trial of Lord Mohun, deposed, that 
 they knocked several times at the door, and then the captain 
 entreated to beg pardon of Mrs. Bracegirdle for having 
 affronted her, but in vain. 
 
 Hill and Mohun remained in the street. They sent to a 
 tavern for a bottle of wine, and perambulated before the door 
 with drawn swords. Mrs. Browne, the mistress of the house, 
 came out to know what they did there; upon which Hill 
 said that he would light upon Mountford some day or other, 
 and that he would be revenged on him. The people in-doors, 
 upon this, sent to Mountford's house in Norfolk Street, to 
 inform his wife; and she despatched messengers to all the 
 places where he was likely to be found, to warn him of his 
 danger, but they could not meet with him. Meanwhile the 
 constables and watchmen come up and ask the strangers 
 what they mean. They say they are drinking a bottle of 
 wine. Lord Mohun adds that he is ready to put up his 
 
HO DEATH OF MOUNTFORD. 
 
 sword, remarking, withal, that he is a " peer of the realm." 
 Upon asking why the other gentleman did not put up his, 
 his lordship tells them, that his friend had lost the scabbard. 
 The watchmen, like " ancient and quiet watchmen," go away 
 to the tavern to "examine who they are;" and in the 
 meantime Mountford makes his appearance coming up the 
 street. Mountford lived in Norfolk Street, but he turned out 
 of the path that led to his own house, and was coming 
 towards Mrs. Bracegirdle's — whether to her house, or to any 
 other, does not appear. By this time two hours had elapsed. 
 Mrs. Browne, who seems to have remained watching at the 
 door, caught sight of Mountford, and hastened to warn him 
 how he advanced. She was either not quick enough, or 
 Mountford (which appears most likely) pressed on in spite of 
 what she said, and, according to her statement, the following 
 dialogue took place between him and Lord Mohun : — 
 
 "Your humble servant, my lord." 
 
 "Your servant, Mr. Mountford. I have a great respect for you, 
 Mr. Mountford, and would have no difference between us ; but there 
 is a thing fallen out between Mr. Hill and Mrs. Bracegirdle." 
 
 " My lord, has my wife disobliged your lordship ? if she has, she 
 shall ask your pardon. But Mrs. Bracegirdle is no concern of mine : 
 I know nothing of this matter; I come here by accident. But I hope 
 your lordship will not vindicate Hill in such actions as these are." 
 
 Upon this, according to Mrs. Browne's statement, Hill bade 
 Mountford draw ; which the other said he w T ould ; but whether 
 he received his wound before or after she could not tell, owing 
 to its being night-time. 
 
 Another female witness, who lived next door, gives the 
 dialogue as follows. Lord Mohun begins : — 
 
 "Mr. Mountford, your humble servant. I am glad to see you" 
 (embracing him). 
 
 " Who is this ? my Lord Mohun ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is." 
 
 " "What bringeth your lordship here at this time of night ? " 
 
 "I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountford ?" 
 
 "No, indeed ; I came by chance." 
 
 " You have heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle ? " 
 
 Hill (interfering). "Pray, my lord, hold your tongue, This is 
 not a convenient time to discuss this business." (On saying which, 
 the witness adds, that he would have drawn Mohun away.) 
 
 Mountford. " I am very sorry, my lord, to see that your lordship 
 should assist Captain Hill in so ill an action as this : pray let me 
 desire your lordship to forbear." 
 
 As soon as he had uttered these words Hill, according to 
 the witness, came up and struck Mountford a box on the ear; 
 
THE MAY POLE IN THE STRAND. 161 
 
 upon which the latter demanded with an oath, " what that 
 was for;" and then she gives a confused account of the 
 result, which was the receipt of a mortal wound by the 
 poor actor. It was agreed that Mountford's sword was not 
 drawn in the first instance, and that Hill's was ; and the 
 question was settled by the dying deposition of Mountford, 
 who stated several times over, that Lord Mohun offered him 
 no violence, but that Hill struck him with his left hand, and 
 then ran him through the body, before he had time to draw 
 in defence. 
 
 Mountford died next day. Hill fled at the time, and we 
 hear no more of him. Mohun was tried for his life, but 
 acquitted, for want of evidence, of malice prepense. The 
 truth is, he. was a great fool, and Hill appears to have been 
 another. The captain himself, probably, did not know what 
 he intended, though his words would have hung him had he 
 been caught. They were a couple of box-lobby swaggerers, 
 who had heated themselves with wine ; and Hill, who told the 
 constables " they might knock him down if they liked," and 
 was for drawing Mohun away on Mountford's appearance, 
 was most likely overcome with rage and jealousy at hearing 
 the latter speak of him with rebuke. Mohun was at that time 
 very young. He never ceased, however, hankering after this 
 sort of excitement to his dulness, till he got killed in a duel 
 about an estate with the Duke of Hamilton, who was at the 
 same time mortally wounded. Swift, in a letter about it, calls 
 Mohun a " dog." Pennant says, that when his body was 
 taken home bleeding (to his house in Gerrard Street), Lady 
 Mohun was very angry at its being flung upon the best 
 bed."* 
 
 In front of the spot now occupied by St. Mary-le- Strand, 
 commonly called the New Church, anciently stood a cross, at 
 which, says Stowe, " in the year 1294, and other times, the 
 justices itinerant sat without London." In the place of this 
 cross was set up a May-pole, by a blacksmith named John 
 Clarges, whose daughter Ann became the wife of Monk, Duke 
 of Albemarle. It was for a long time in a state of decay, and 
 having been taken down in 1713, a new one was erected 
 opposite Somerset House. This second May-pole had two 
 gilt balls and a vane on the summit, and was decorated on 
 
 * Pennant's London, ut supra, p. 124. Swift's Letters to Stella. 
 The particulars of the case are taken from Howell's State Trials, 
 vol. xii., p. 947. 
 
 M 
 
J 62 CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-STRAND. 
 
 holidays with flags and garlands. The races in the "Dunciad" 
 tale place 
 
 " Where the tall May -pole overlook'd the Strand." 
 
 It was removed in 1718, probably being thought in the 
 ■way of the new church, which was then being finished. 
 Sir Isaac Newton begged it of the parish, and afterwards 
 sent it to the Kector of Wanstead, who set it up in 
 Wanstead Park to support the then largest telescope in 
 Europe. The gift of John Clarges came a day too late. In 
 old times, May had been a great holiday in the streets of 
 London. We shall speak further of it when we come to the 
 parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, so called from a May-pole 
 higher than the church. But though the holiday returned 
 with the Restoration, it never properly recovered the disuse 
 occasioned by the civil wars, and the contempt thrown on it 
 by the spirit of puritanism. We gained too many advantages 
 by the thoughtfulness generated in those times to quarrel with 
 their mistakes ; and have no doubt that the progress of know- 
 ledge to which they gave an impulse, will bring back the 
 advantages they omitted by the way."* 
 
 The New Church, or, more properly, the Church of 
 St. Mary -le- Strand, was built by Gibbs, the architect of 
 St. Martin-in-the-Fields. It was one of the "fifty," impro- 
 perly so called, that are said to have been built in the reign 
 of Queen Anne ; for though fifty were ordered, the number 
 was not completed. The old church in this quarter, which 
 stood at a little distance to the south, was removed by the 
 Protector Somerset, to make way for Somerset House, and has 
 never been restored. The parishioners went to the neighbour- 
 ing churches. The New Church is in the pretty, over-orna- 
 mented style, very different from that of St. Martin's with its 
 noble front : and though far better than St. Clement's, and as 
 superior to many places of worship built lately j" as art is 
 
 * u Captain Baily, said to have accompanied Raleigh in his last 
 expedition to Guiana, employed four hackney coaches, with drivers 
 in liveries, to ply at the May-pole in the Strand, fixing his own rates, 
 about the year 1634. Baily's coaches seem to have been the first of 
 what are now called hackney-coaches ; a term at that time applied 
 indiscriminately to all coaches let for hire." The favourite Bucking- 
 ham, about the year 1619, introduced the sedan. The post-chaise, 
 invented in Prance, was introduced by Mr. Tull, son of the well- 
 known writer on husbandry. The stage first came in about the year 
 1775 ; and mail-coaches appeared in 1785. — See a note to the Tatkr, 
 as above, vol. iv., p. 415. 
 
 f This was written in 1834. 
 
SOMERSET HOUSE. 163 
 
 superior to ignorance, yet it surely is not worthy of its advan- 
 tageous situation. It is one of those toys of architecture 
 which have been said to require glass cases. For the super- 
 fluous height of the steeple, Gibbs offered an excuse. A 
 column was to have been erected near the church in honour 
 of Queen Anne, but, as the Queen died, she was no longer 
 thought deserving the column, and the architect was ordered 
 to make a steeple with the materials, whereas he had intended 
 only a belfry. Now, to render the steeple fitting, the church 
 should have had a wider base ; but the structure was already 
 begun, and there was no changing the plan of it. It might be 
 still argued, that the steeple should not have been made so 
 high : but then, what was to be done with the stones ? This, 
 in the mouth of parish virtu, was a triumphant reply. After 
 all, however, the artist need not have spoilt his church with 
 ornament. He said, that being situated in a very public place, 
 " the parishioners" spared no cost to beautify it; but to beau- 
 tify a church is not to make it a piece of confectionery."* 
 
 Somerset House occupies the site of a princely mansion 
 built by Somerset the Protector, brother of Lady Jane 
 Seymour, and uncle to King Edward VI. His character is 
 not sufficiently marked to give any additional interest to the 
 spot. He was great by accident ; lost and gained his great- 
 ness, according as others acted upon it ; and ultimately 
 resigned it on the scaffold. The house he left became the 
 property of the Crown, and was successively in possession of 
 Queen Elizabeth and of the queens of James I., Charles I., and 
 Charles II. 
 
 The rooms in this house witnessed many joyous scenes and 
 many anxious ones. Somerset had not long inhabited it when 
 he was taken to the scaffold. Elizabeth, in her wise economy, 
 lent it to hei cousin Lord Hunsdon, whom she frequently 
 visited within its walls. 
 
 During its occupation by James's queen, Anne of Denmark 
 (from whose family it was called Denmark House), Wilson 
 says, that a constant masquerade was going on, the Queen and 
 
 * The faults of the New Church are, that it is too small for the 
 steeple; that it is divided into two stories, which make it still smaller; 
 that the entablature on the north and south parts is too frequently 
 interrupted; that pediments are "affectedly put over each projection;" 
 in a word, that a little object is cut up into too many little parts, and 
 rendered fantastic with embellishment. See the opinions of Gwynn, 
 Kalph,and Malton, quoted in Bray ley's London and Middlesex, vol.iv., 
 P . 199 f 
 
 , H 2 
 
164 CHARLES I. AND HIS FRENCH HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 her ladies, " like so many sea-nymphs, or nereids," appearing 
 in various dresses, " to the ravishment of the beholders."* 
 
 Here began the struggle for mastery between Charles I. and 
 Henrietta Maria, which terminated in favour of the latter, 
 though the King behaved himself manfully at first. Henrietta 
 had brought over with her a meddling French household 
 which, after repeated grievances, his Majesty was obliged to 
 send " packing." He summoned them all together one even- 
 ing in the house, and addressed them as follows : — 
 
 " Gentlemen and ladies, 
 
 "I am driven to that extremity, as I am personally come to acquaint 
 you, that I very earnestly desire your return into Prance. True it is, 
 the deportment of some amongst you hath "been very inoffensive to 
 me; but others again have so dallied with my patience, and so highly 
 affronted me, as I cannot, and will not, longer endure it."f 
 
 " The King's address, implicating no one, was immediately followed 
 by a volley of protestations of innocence. An hour after he had 
 delivered his commands, Lord Conway announced to the foreigners, 
 that early in the morning carriages and carts and horses would be 
 ready for them and their baggage. Amidst a scene of confusion, the 
 young Bishop (he was scarcely of age) protested that this was im- 
 possible; that ihey owed debts in London, and that much was due to 
 them. On the following day, the procureur- general of the Queen flew 
 to the keeper of the great seal at the privy council, requiring an 
 admission to address his Majesty, then present at his council, on 
 matters important to himself an J the Queen. This being denied, he 
 exhorted them to maintain the Queen in all her royal prerogatives ; 
 and he was answered, ' So we do. 5 
 
 " Their prayers and disputes served to postpone their departure. 
 Their conduct during this time was not very decorous. It appears, 
 by a contemporary letter-writer, that they flew to take possession of 
 the Queen's wardrobe and jewels. They did not leave her a change 
 of linen, since it was with difficulty her Majesty procured one. 
 Everyone now looked to lay his hand on what he might call his own. 
 Everything he could touch was a perquisite. One extraordinary 
 expedient was that of inventing bills to the amount of ten thousand 
 pounds, for articles and other engagements in which they had entered 
 for the service of the Queen, which her Majesty acknowledged, but 
 afterwards confessed that the debts were fictitious." % 
 
 " In truth," continues the writer, " the breaking up of this 
 French establishment was ruinous to the individuals who had 
 purchased their places at the rate of life annuities." Charles 
 now grew indignant, and sent the following letter to Buck-* 
 ingham : — 
 
 * Life of James I. quoted in Pennant, p. 155. 
 f L'Estrange's Life of Charles I., quoted in DTsraeli's Commen* 
 taries on the Life and Beign of Charles I., vol. ii.,, p. 218, 
 ± L'Estrange's Life of Charles I. 
 
LETTER OF CHARLES I. TO BUCKINGHAM. 1G5 
 
 " Steenie, * 
 
 " I have receaved your letter by Die Greame (Sir Richard Grahame). 
 This is my answer : I command you to send all the French away to- 
 morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair meanes (but stike not 
 long in disputing), otherways force them away, dryving them away 
 lyke so manie wilde beastes, until ye have shipped them, and so the 
 devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance 
 of my command. So I rest, 
 
 " Your faithful, constant, loving friend, 
 
 " Oaking, " C. R." 
 
 "The seventh of August, 1626." 
 
 " This order put an end to the delay, but the King paid the debts, 
 the fictitious ones and all — at the cost, as it appears, of fifty thousand 
 pounds. Even the haughty beauty, Madame St. George, was pre- 
 sented by the king on her dismission with several thousand pounds 
 and jewels." 
 
 Still the French, could not go quietly. " The French 
 bishop," says DTsraeli, " and the whole party having con- 
 trived all sorts of delays to avoid the expulsion, the yeomen 
 of the guard were sent to turn them out of Somerset House, 
 whence the juvenile prelate, at the same time making his 
 protest and mounting the steps of the coach, took his depar- 
 ture ' head and shoulders.' In a long procession of near 
 forty coaches, after four days' tedious travelling, they reached 
 Dover; but the spectacle of these impatient foreigners so 
 reluctantly quitting England, gesticulating their sorrows or 
 their quarrels, exposed them to the derision, and stirred up 
 the prejudices, of the common people. As Madame St. George, 
 whose vivacity is always described as extremely French, was 
 stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the 
 satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English 
 courtier who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, 
 ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the 
 boat. The man died on the spot, but no further notice appears 
 to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the 
 English courtier." 
 
 Henrietta had a magnificent Catholic chapel in Somerset 
 House, and a cloister of Capuchins. The former, has given 
 occasion to some interesting descriptions of papal show and 
 spectacle in the commentaries just quoted, f 
 
 * Steenie — a familiarisation of Stephen. The name was given 
 Buckingham by James I., in reference to the beauty of St. Stephen, 
 whose face, during his martyrdom, is described in the New Testament 
 fts shining like that of an angel. 
 
 f See the account of the Paradise of Glory, in vol. ii., p. 225. 
 
ICG PEPYs's GOSSIP OP THE COURT OF CHARLES II. 
 
 Cromwell's body lay in state at Somerset House, as Monk's 
 did afterwards, probably on that account. 
 
 Pepys, the prince of gossips, gives an edifying picture of 
 the presence chamber in this palace, when the queens of the 
 two Charleses were there together, a little after the Kestora- 
 tion: 
 
 " Meeting Mr. Pierce the chyrurgeon," says he, " he took me into 
 Somerset House, and there carried me into the Queene-mother's 
 presence chamber, where she was with our own queene sitting on her 
 left hand, whom I did never see before, and though she be not very 
 charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is 
 pleasing. Here I also saw Madame Castlemaine; and, which pleased 
 me most, Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard, a most pretty sparke of 
 about fifteen years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady 
 Castlemaine, and is always with her ; and, I hear, the queenes both 
 are mighty kind to him. By and by, in comes the King, and anon the 
 duke and his duchesse ; so that they being all together, was such a 
 sight, as I never could almost have happened to see, with so much 
 ease and leisure. They staid till it was dark and then went away ; 
 the King and his Queene, and my Lady Castlemaine and young 
 Crofts, in one coach, and the rest in other coaches. Here were great 
 stores of great ladies, but very few handsome. The King and Queene 
 were very merry ; and he would have made the Queene-mother 
 believe that his Queene was with child, and said that she said so, 
 and the young Queene answered, 'You lye;' which was the first 
 English word that I ever heard her say : which made the King good 
 sport."* 
 
 After this we shall not wonder at the following: — 
 "30th (Dec, 1662). Visited Mrs. Ferrer and staid talking with 
 her a good while, there being a little proud, ugly, talking little lady 
 there, that was much crying up the Queene-mother's court at 
 Somerset House above our own Queen e's ; there being before her no 
 allowance of laughing and the mirth that is at others ; and, indeed, 
 it is observed that the greatest court now-a-days is there." f 
 
 The following print represents Old Somerset House, as it 
 appeared in the reign of Charles II. We have seen, but in 
 vain endeavoured to procure for this book, a scarce one by 
 Hollar, in which the towers in the back ground mark out the 
 front in the Strand, and a tall May-pole to the right was the 
 May-pole of John Clarges. The front, looking on the river, 
 was added by Charles II. Inigo Jones was the architect. 
 In Hollar's print it gives us a taste of the banqueting room 
 at Whitehall in its elevation, and in the harmonies of the 
 windows and pilasters, Below is a portico ; and there is 
 another to the right. The chapel, with an enclosure to the 
 left, was the Catholic one; the houses by it, the cloisters of 
 
 * Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., 2nd edition, vol. i., p. 309. 
 
 t Id., p. 357. 
 
OLD SOMERSET HOUSE. 1G7 
 
 the Capuchins. There was a figure walking in the chapel 
 garden, whom, by his gesticulating arm, we might imagine 
 to be the queen's confessor, studying his to-morrow's sermon, 
 or thinking how he shall get the start of the king's chaplain 
 in saying grace. A curious scene of this kind is worth 
 extracting. " Once," Mr. D'Israeli informs us, "when the 
 king and queen were dining together in the presence, Hacket 
 being to say grace, the queen's confessor would have antici- 
 
 pated him, and an indecorous race was run between the 
 Catholic priest and the Protestant chaplain*, till the latter 
 shoved him aside, and the king pulling the dishes to him, 
 the carvers performed their office. Still the confessor, stand- 
 ing by the queen, was on the watch to be before Hacket for 
 the after-grace, but Hacket again got the start. The con- 
 fessor, however, resounded the grace louder than the chaplain, 
 and the king, in great passion, instantly rose, taking the 
 queen by the hand." The bowling-green that we read of is 
 probably between the two rows of trees to the right, in front 
 of the right portico (the left, if considered from the house). 
 The garden is in the most formal style of the parterre, 
 where . 
 
 ' f each alley has its brother, 
 
 And half the platform just reflects the other ;'* 
 a style, however, not without its merits, particularly in 
 admitting so many walks among the flowers, and inviting a 
 pace up and down between the trees. Milton, though he 
 made a different garden for his Eden, spoke of "trim 
 gardens," as enjoyed by " retired leisure." In this back 
 
168 NEW SOMERSET HOUSE. 
 
 front were the apartments of the court. The scene we have 
 just been reading in Pepys must have passed in one of them. 
 Here Charles the First's widow lived with her supposed 
 'husband, the Earl of St. Albans ; though she was not so 
 constant to the place as Waller prophesied she would be. 
 She had been used to too much power as a queen, and found 
 she had too little as a dowager. Poor Catherine remained as 
 long as she could. She lived here till she returned to 
 Portugal, in the reign of William III. Speaking of Waller, 
 we must not quit the premises without noticing a catastrophe 
 that befel him at the water-gate, or Somerset-stairs (also, by 
 the way, the work of Inigo Jones). Waller, according to 
 Aubrey, had but " a tender weak body, but was always very 
 
 temperate." (we know not who this is) " made him 
 
 damnable drunk at Somerset House, where, at the water 
 stayres, he fell down, and had a cruel fall. T was a pity to 
 use such a sweet swan so inhumanly."* Waller, who, not- 
 withstanding his weak body, lived to be old, was a water- 
 drinker; but he had a poet's wine in his veins, and was 
 excellent company. Saville said, " that nobody should keep 
 him company without drinking, but Ned Waller." 
 
 Subsequently to Catherine's departure, old Somerset House 
 was chiefly used as a residence for princes from other countries 
 when on a visit. It was pulled down towards the end of the 
 last century, and the present structure erected by Sir William 
 Chambers, but left unfinished. The unfinished part, which 
 is towards the east, is now in a state of completion, as the 
 King's College. The only memorial remaining of the old 
 palace and its outhouses is in the wall of a house in the Strand, 
 where the sign of a lion still survives a number of other 
 signs, noticed in a list made at the time, and common at that 
 period to houses of all descriptions. 
 
 The area of New Somerset House occupies a large space 
 of ground, the basement of the back-front being in the river. 
 Three sides of it are appropriated to a variety of public offices, 
 connected with trade, commerce, and civil economy; and the 
 front was lately dignified by the occupancy of the Eoyal and 
 Antiquarian Societies and the Royal Academy of Painting. 
 The structure was an ambitious one on the part of the 
 architect, and upon the whole is elegant but timid. There is 
 a look of fragility in it. It has the extent, but not the 
 * Lives and Letters, as above. 
 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 169 
 
 majesty, of a national emporium. Rules are violated in some 
 instances for the sake of trifles, as is the case of pillars 
 *' standing on nothing and supporting nothing ; " and in 
 others, it would seem out of a dread of the result, as in the 
 instance of the huge basement over the water, supporting a 
 cupola, which is petty in the comparison. Sir William did 
 well in wishing to have an imposing front towards the river; 
 but he might have had another towards the Strand, nobler 
 than the present one. The lower part is nothing better than 
 a pillared coach way. However, the front of the story is, 
 perhaps, the best part of the whole building. It present a 
 graceful harmony in the proportions. 
 
 The Eoyal Society, which originated in the college rooms 
 of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester, met, when it 
 was incorporated, at Old Gresham College in Aldersgate 
 Street ; then at Arundel House (on account of the fire) ; then 
 returned to Gresham College; and, after a variety of other 
 experiments upon lodging, was settled by the late king in 
 New Somerset House. This society, on its foundation, was 
 much ridiculed by the wits. Though its ends were great, it 
 naturally busied itself with little things; pragmatical and 
 pedantic persons naturally enough got mixed up with it; 
 some of its members had foibles of enthusiasm and pedantry, 
 which were easily confounded with their capacities ; and the 
 jokes were most likely encouraged by the king (Charles II.), 
 who, though fond of scientific experiments, and wearing a 
 grave face in presence of the learned body (of which he 
 declared himself a member), was not a man to forego such an 
 opportunity of jesting. Wilkins wrote a book to show that 
 a man might go to the moon; and the ethical common-places 
 of Boyle (who was as great a natural philosopher as he was a 
 poor moralist) were the origin of Swift's Essays on the Tritical 
 Faculties of the Mind. Then there was the good Evelyn 
 with his hard words, wondering sentimentally at every thing; 
 and jolly Pepys marvelling like Sancho Panza. The readers 
 of Pepy's Diary have been surprised at his not liking 
 Hudibras. Perhaps one reason was, that Butler was the 
 greatest of the jesters against the society. It was impossible 
 not to laugh at the jokes, in which he charges them with 
 attempting to 
 
 " Search the moon by her cvvn light j 
 To take an inventory of all 
 Her real estate and personal j— 
 
170 SATIRE ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 
 
 To measure wind, and weigh the air, 
 And turn a circle to a square ; 
 And in the "braying of an ass, 
 Find out the treble and the bass ; 
 If mares neigh alto, and a cow 
 In double diapason low." * 
 
 Evelyn got angry, and pretended to be calm. Cowley ex- 
 pressed his anger with a generous indignation. The follow- 
 ing passage in his Ode to the Society concludes with a fine, 
 appropriate simile. " Mischief and true dishonour," says he, 
 
 " fall on those 
 
 Who would to laughter and to scorn expose 
 
 So virtuous and so noble a design, 
 
 So human for its use, for knowledge so divine. 
 
 The things which these proud men despise and call 
 
 Impertinent, and vain, and small, 
 
 Those smallest things of Nature let me know, 
 
 Rather than all their greatest actions do ! 
 
 Whoever would deposed Truth advance 
 
 Into the throne usurped from it, 
 Must feel at first the blows of Ignorance, 
 
 And the sharp points of envious Wit. 
 So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance 
 
 In many thousand years 
 
 A star, so long unknown, appears, 
 Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, 
 It troubles and alarms the world below, 
 Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show." f 
 
 Perhaps a part of the jealousy against the Eoyal Society 
 arose from a notion which has since become not uncommon, 
 that bodies of this nature, incorporated by kings, are calcu- 
 lated rather to limit inquiry, than to enlarge it. Without 
 stopping to discuss this point, we shall merely observe, that 
 the real greatness of all such bodies, like those of nations 
 themselves, must arise from the greatness of individuals ; and 
 that whether the bodies give any lustre to them or not, there 
 is no denying that the individuals give lustre to the bodies. 
 When Sir Isaac Newton became president, jesting ceased. 
 
 It is pleasant to think, while passing Somerset House, in 
 the midst of the noise of a great thoroughfare, that philoso- 
 phical speculation is, perhaps, going on within those graceful 
 walls ; that in the midst of all sorts of new things, sight is not 
 lost of the venerable beauties of old ; and that art, as well as 
 philosophy, is considering what it shall do for our use and 
 
 * See three Poems in his Genuine Remains.— Chalmers's British 
 Poets, vol. viii., p. 187. 
 f British Poets, vol. vii., p. 101. 
 
THE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. 171 
 
 entertainment. The Antiquarian Society originated as far 
 back as the sixteenth century (about the year 1580), and held 
 its first sittings in a room in the Herald's College ; but it did 
 not receive a charter till the year 1751. Neither Elizabeth 
 nor James would give it one, fearful, perhaps, of bringing up 
 discussions on matters connected with politics and religion 
 Elizabeth has now become one of the most interesting of its 
 heroines. There is no society, we think, more likely to in- 
 crease with age, and to outgrow half-witted objection. The 
 growth of time adds daily to its stock ; and as reflecting men 
 become interested in behalf of ages to come, they naturally 
 turn with double sympathy towards the periods that have 
 gone by, and to the multitudes of beating hearts that have 
 become dust. We should like to see the society in a venerable 
 building of its own, raised in some quiet spot, with trees 
 about it, and with painted windows reflecting light through 
 old heraldry. 
 
 The Royal Academy of Painters, now removed to Trafalgar 
 Square, first met in Saint Martin's Lane, under the title of 
 the Society of Artists of Great Britain. They had a division 
 among them, which gave rise to the establishment as it now 
 stands ; and are a flourishing body, we believe, in point of 
 funds. Of the deceased members who have done them honour, 
 we shall speak when we come to their abodes. 
 
 The Turk's Head Coffeehouse, near Somerset House, was 
 frequented by Dr. Johnson. 
 
 In a lodging opposite Somerset House, died the facetious 
 Dr. King, whom we have mentioned in speaking of Doctors' 
 Commons. He had been residing in the house of a friend in 
 the garden-grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall, where 
 he stuck so close to his books and bottle, that he began to 
 decline with the autumn, and shut himself up from his friends. 
 Lord Clarendon, who resided in Somerset House, and was his 
 relation, sent his sister to fetch him to a lodging he had pre- 
 pared for him over the way, where he died before the lapse of 
 many hours, while all the world were busy with the meats 
 and mince-pies he had so often celebrated ; for it was 
 Christmas-day. Dr. King was the author of an Art of Cookery, 
 in which he pleasantly bantered a learned Kitchener of his 
 time ; though no man had a livelier relish of their subjects 
 than he. But he wished the relish to be lively in others. At 
 least, he wished them to be leviter in modo, if graviter in re. 
 Though occasionally coarse, he had the right style of banter, 
 
172 THE SAVOY. 
 
 and was of use to the Tories. In return, they would have 
 been of use to him, if his habits would have let them. Swift 
 procured him the place of Gazetteer ; but he soon got rid 
 of it. 
 
 The precinct called the Savoy was anciently the seat of 
 Peter, Earl of Savoy, who came into England to visit his niece 
 Eleanor, Queen to Henry III. It is not known whether the 
 house was built or appointed for him, but on his death it 
 became the property of the queen, who gave it to her second 
 son Edmund, afterwards Earl of Lancaster ; and from his 
 time the Savoy was reckoned part and parcel of the earldom 
 and honour of Lancaster, afterwards the duchy. Henry VII. 
 
 converted the palace into an hospital for the poor ; and it 
 remained so till the time of Charles II.; though the master 
 and other officers, by an abuse which grew into a custom, 
 appear to have had no regular inmates, except themselves. 
 The poor were to apply, as it might happen ; and what they 
 got depended on the generosity of the master. In answer to a 
 question put by Government in the reign of Queen Anne, it 
 was stated by the lawyer and four chaplains, that " the statutes 
 relating to the reception of the poor had not been observed 
 within the memory of man."* Charles II. put wounded 
 soldiers and sailors into the hospital ; and since his time it 
 appears to have been used for the reception of soldiers and 
 prisoners. Latterly, it was a prison for deserters. 
 
 The Savoy was the scene of a conference in Charles II. 's 
 * Londinium Bedivivum, vol. iv., p. 410. 
 
SAVOY CHAPEL. 173 
 
 reign, between the Church and the Presbyterians, in which 
 possession was proved to be nine points of the Gospel, as well 
 as law. The Presbyterians thought so when it was their turn 
 to rule, and would have thought so again ; and the progress 
 of genuine Christianity has been a gainer by the mild sway of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 In the chapel was buried old Gawen Douglas, the Chaucer 
 of Scotland ; and Anne Killegrew, celebrated by Dryden's ode 
 for her poetry and painting. She was the daughter of one of 
 the masters, Dr. Henry Killegrew, brother of the famous 
 jester, and himself a man of talent. 
 
 Mrs. Anne Killegrew, 
 
 A grace for beauty, and a muse for wit, 
 had probably the honour, some day, of dining with her 
 washerwoman's daughter, in the guise of Duchess of 
 Albemarle ; for John Clarges, the blacksmith, who lived in 
 the Savoy, had a wife who was a washerwoman, and the 
 washerwoman had a daughter, who took linen to Monk, when 
 he was in the Tower, and married him. It is not commonly 
 known that the validity of this marriage was contested. 
 Upon the trial of an action at law between the representatives 
 of Monk and Clarges, some curious particulars, says an article 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine, came out respecting the family 
 of the duchess. 
 
 "It appeared that she was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier, 
 in the Savoy, and farrier to Colonel Monk, in 1632. She was married 
 in the church of St. Lawrence Pountney, to Thomas Eatford, son of 
 Thomas Eatford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and resident 
 in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 1634, and died in 
 1638. Her husband and she ' lived at the Three Spanish Gypsies, in 
 the New Exchange, and sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, and such 
 things, and she taught girls plain work. About 1647, she, being a 
 sempstress to Colonel Monk, used to carry him linen.' In 1648 her 
 father and mother died. In 1649, she and her husband 'fell out and 
 parted.' But no certificate from any parish register appears, reciting 
 his burial. In 1652, she was married in the church of St. George, 
 Southwark, to 'General George Monk;' and in the following year 
 was delivered of a son, Christopher, (afterwards the second and last 
 Duke of Albemarle), who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold 
 apples, herbs, oysters, &c. One of the plaintiff's witnesses swore, 
 'that a little before the sickness, Thomas Eatford demanded and 
 received of him the sum of twenty shillings; that his wife saw Eatford 
 again after the sickness, and a second time after the Duke and 
 Duchess of Albemarle were dead.' A woman swore, 'she saw him 
 on the day his wife (then called Duchess of Albemarle) was put into 
 her coffin, which was after the death of the duke her second husband, 
 who died the 3rd of January, 1669-70.' And a third witness swore. 
 
174 DUCHESS OF ALBEMAELE. 
 
 that he saw Ratford about July, 1660.' In opposition to this evidence, 
 it was alleged, that ' all along, during the lives of Duke George and 
 Duke Christopher, this matter was never questioned,' that the latter 
 was universally received as only son of the former, and that ' this 
 matter had been thrice before tried at the bar of the King's Bench, 
 and the defendant had three verdicts.' A witness swore that he 
 owed Ratford five or six pounds, which he had never demanded. 
 And a man, who had married a cousin to the Duke of Albemarle, 
 had been told by his wife, that Ratford died five or six years before the 
 duke married. Lord Chief Justice Holt told the jury, 'If you are 
 certain that Duke Christopher was born while Thomas Ratford was 
 living, you must find for the plaintiff. If you believe he was born 
 after Ratford was dead, or that nothing appears what became of him 
 after Duke George married his wife, you must find for the defendant.' 
 A verdict was given for the defendant, who was only son to Sir 
 Thomas Clarges, knight, brother to the illustrious duchess in question, 
 who was created a baronet October 30, 1674, and was ancestor to the 
 baronets of his name."* 
 
 It does not appear on which of these accounts the jury 
 found a verdict for the defendant — whether because Ratford 
 was dead, or because nothing had been heard of him ; so that 
 the duchess, after all, might have been no duchess. However, 
 she carried it with as high a hand as if she had never been 
 anything else, and Monk had been a blacksmith. There are 
 some amusing notices of her in Pepys. 
 
 "8th (March, 1661-2). At noon, Sir W. Batten, Col. Slingsby, 
 and I, by coach to the Tower, to Sir John Robinson's, to dinner, 
 where great good cheer. High company, and among others the 
 Duchess of Albemarle, who is ever a plain homely dowdy."f 
 
 "9th (Dec. 1665). My Lord Brouncker and I dined with the 
 Duke of Albemarle. At table, the duchess, a very ill-looked woman, 
 complaining of her lord's going to sea next year, said these cursed 
 words: — 'If my lord had been a coward, he had gone to sea no more; 
 it may be then he might have been excused, and made an ambassador,' 
 (meaniog my Lord Sandwich). This made me mad, and I believe 
 she perceived my countenance change, and blushed herself very 
 much. I was in hopes others had not minded it, but my Lord 
 Brouncker, after we came away, took notice of the words to me with 
 displeasure." % 
 
 Lord Sandwich, the famous admiral, who has such light 
 repute with posterity, was a relation of Pepys, and much con- 
 nected with him in affairs. There does not appear to have 
 been the least foundation for the duchess's charge ; except, 
 perhaps, that Sandwich had brains enough to know the 
 danger which he braved, while Monk knew nothing but how 
 to fight and lie. 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine for 1793,, p. 88. 
 
 f Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 182, 
 
 J Vol. ii., p. 348. 
 
DUCHESS OF ALBEMARLE. 175 
 
 "4th (Nov. 1666)." Pepys says that Mr. Cooling tells him, "the 
 Duke of Albemarle is grown a drunken sot, and drinks with nobody 
 but Troutbecke, whom nobody else will keep company with. Of 
 whom he told me this story; that once the Duke of Albemarle in his 
 drink taking notice, as of a wonder, that Nan Hide should ever come 
 to be Duchess of York: 'Nay/ says Troutbecke, ' ne'er wonder at 
 that, for if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as 
 great, if not greater, miracle.' And what was that, but that our 
 dirty Besse (meaning his duchess) should come to be Duchess of 
 Albemarle."* 
 
 "4th (April, 1667). I find the Duke of Albemarle at dinner with 
 sorry company, some of his officers of the army; dirty dishes and a 
 nasty wife at table, and bad meat, of which I made but an ill dinner. 
 Colonel Howard asking how the Prince (Rupert) did (in the last 
 fight); the Duke of Albemarle answering, 'Pretty well,' the other 
 replied, 'but not so well as to go to sea again.' — 'How!' says the 
 duchess, ' what should he go for, if he were well, for there are no 
 ships for him to command? And so you have brought your hogs to 
 a fair market/ said she."f 
 
 "29th (March 1667-8). I do hear by several, that Sir W. Pen's 
 going to sea do dislike the Parliament mightily, and that they have 
 revived the Committee of Miscarriages, to find something to prevent 
 it ; and that he being the other day with the Duke of Albemarle, to 
 ask his opinion touching his going to sea, the duchess overheard and 
 came into him ; and asked W. Pen how he durst have the confidence 
 to go to sea again to tbe endangering of the nation, when he knew 
 himself such a coward as he was; which, if true, is very severe." J 
 
 The habit of charging cowardice against the first officers of 
 the time, which was not confined to the Duchess, is charac- 
 teristic of the grossness of that period, the refinements of 
 which were entirely artificial and modish. No people talked 
 or acted more grossly than the finest gentlemen of the day, or 
 believed more ill of one another ; and it was not to be ex- 
 pected that the uneducated should be behindhand with them. 
 The Duchess of Albemarle is supposed to have had a con- 
 siderable hand in the Restoration. She was a great loyalist, 
 and Monk was afraid of her ; so that it is likely enough she 
 influenced his gross understanding, when it did not exactly 
 know what to be at. Aubrey says, that her mother was one 
 of the " five women barbers." Plow these awful personages 
 came up we know not — but he has quoted a ballad upon 
 them : — 
 
 " Did you ever hear the like, 
 Or ever hear the fame, 
 Of five women barbers, 
 
 That lived in Drury Lane?"§ 
 
 * Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. iii., p. 75. 
 
 f Id., p. 185. J Vol. iv., p. 81. 
 
 § Granger's Biographical History of England, 1824, vol. v., p. 356. 
 
176 DURHAM PLACE. ... / 
 
 After all, the father, John Clarges, must have been a man 
 of substance in his trade, to be enabled to set up the enor- 
 mous May-pole which we see in the picture. But this did 
 not prevent the daughter from growing up vulgar and foul- 
 mouthed, and a very different person from the Belles Ferro- 
 nieres of old. 
 
 The Savoy, on the one side, with its Gothic gate and flint 
 wall, and the splendid mansion called Exeter House on the 
 other, appear in former times to have narrowed the highway 
 hereabouts, as much as Exeter 'Change did lately. 
 
 At the corner of Beaufort Buildings nourished Mr. Lillie, 
 the perfumer so often mentioned in the Tatler. He was secre- 
 tary to Mr. Bickerstaff's Court of Honour, in Shire Lane, 
 where people had actions brought against them for pulling out 
 their watches while their superiors were talking ; and for 
 brushing feathers off a gentleman's coat, with a cane ".value 
 fivepence." Lillie published two volumes of Contributions, 
 of which the Tatler had made no use. "We believe they had 
 no merit. In Beaufort Buildings lived Aaron Hill, and at 
 one time Fielding. 
 
 Southampton Street, a little to the west, on the other side of 
 the way, has been much inhabited by wits and theatrical 
 people. Congreve once lived there, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and 
 Garrick. It was called Southampton Street from the noble 
 family of that title, who are allied to the Bedford family, the 
 proprietors. 
 
 On the ground of Cecil and Salisbury Streets, opposite 
 Southampton Street, stood the mansion of Eobert Cecil, first 
 Earl of Salisbury, the cunning son of a wise father. It was 
 he who, contriving to keep up to the last his interest with the 
 queen Elizabeth, and to oust his rivals, Essex and others, 
 was the first to make secret terms with her successor James, 
 and to prepare the way for his reception in England : of which, 
 perhaps, Elizabeth was aware, when she lay moaning on the 
 ground. 
 
 Where the Adelphi now stands, was Durham Place, ori- 
 ginally a palace of the Bishops of Durham, who resigned it to 
 Henry VIII. Henry made it the scene of magnificent tourna- 
 ments. The Lord High Admiral Seymour caused the Mint 
 to be established in this house, with a view to coin money for 
 his designs on the throne. It was afterwards inhabited by 
 Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, who here married his son 
 to Lady Jane Grey. But its most illustrious tenant w r as 
 
DURHAM PLACE* 177 
 
 Raleigh, to whom it was lent by Queen Elizabeth, and who 
 lived in it during the attempt made at Essex House. The 
 four turrets of the mansion, under the roof of which lived 
 and speculated that romantic but equivocal person, have been 
 marked out in an engraving from Hollar. Durham Place, 
 though it got into royal hands during the fluctuation of reli- 
 gious opinions, never seems to have been reckoned out of the 
 pale of the bishopric of Durham ; for Lord Pembroke bought 
 it of that see in 1640, and pulled it down for the erection of 
 houses on its site. 
 
 "Be it known," says the lively Pennant, speaking of the word 
 * place,' as applied to great mansions, and interpreted by him to mean 
 palace, " that the word is only applicable to the habitations of princes, 
 or princely persons, and that it is with all the impropriety of vanity 
 bestowed on the houses of those who have luckily acquired money 
 enough to pile on one another a greater quantity of stones or bricks 
 than their neighbours. How many imaginary parks have been formed 
 within precincts where deer were never seen ! And how many houses 
 misnamed halls, which never had attached to them the privilege of a 
 manor."* 
 
 This is true ; but unless the words palazzo and piazza are 
 traceable to the same root, palatium (as perhaps they are), 
 place does not of necessity mean palace; and palace certainly 
 does not mean exclusively the habitation of princes or princely 
 persons (that is to say, supposing princeliness to exclude 
 riches,) for in Italy, whence it comes, any large mansion may 
 be called a palace ; and many old palaces there were built 
 by merchants. Palatium,- it is true, with the old Eomans, 
 though it may have originally meant any house on Mount 
 Palatine, yet in consequence of that place becoming the court, 
 end of the city, and containing the imperial palace, may have 
 come ultimately to mean only a princely residence. Ovid 
 uses it in that sense in his Metamorphoses, f But custom is 
 everything in these matters. Place is now used as a variety 
 of term, either for a large house or street. Perhaps in both 
 
 * Pennant, ut supra, p. 144. 
 
 f Where he likens Jupiter's house in the Milky Way to the palace 
 of Augustus : — 
 
 " Hie locus est, quern, si verbis audacia detur, 
 Haud timeam magni dixisse Palatia cceli." 
 
 Lib. i. v. 175. 
 Which Sandys, by a felicitous conceit in the taste of his age (and 
 of Ovid too), has transferred to the palace of Charles the First, and 
 rendered still more applicable to the Milky Way: — 
 
 " This glorious roofe I would not doubt to call, 
 Had I but boldness giv'n me, Heaven's White-Hall." 
 
178 THE NEW EXCHANGE. 
 
 cases it ought to imply something of the look of a palace, of 
 at least an openness of aspect analogous to that of a square — 
 square in England, corresponding with place, piazza, and placa 
 on the Continent. The Piazza in Covent Garden, properly 
 means the place itself, and not the portico. 
 
 " To the north of Durham Place, fronting the street," says Pennant, 
 " stood the New Exchange, which was built under the auspices of our 
 monarch in 1608, out of the rubbish of the old stables of Durham 
 House. The King, Queen, and Koyal Family, honoured the opening 
 with their presence, and named it Britaine's Burse. It was built 
 somewhat on the model of the Royal Exchange, with cellars beneath, 
 a walk above, and rows of shops over that, rilled chiefly with milliners, 
 sempstresses, and the like. This was a fashionable place of resort. 
 In 1654, a fatal affair happened here. Mr. Gerard, a young gentle- 
 man, at that time engaged in a plot against Cromwell, was amusing 
 himself in a walk beneath, when he was insulted by Don Pantaleon 
 de Saa, brother to the Ambassador of Portugal, who, disliking the 
 return he met with, determined on revenge. He came there the next 
 day with a set of bravoes, who, mistaking another gentleman for 
 Mr. Gerard, instantly put him to death, as he was walking with his 
 sister in one hand and his mistress in the other. Don Pa?italeon was 
 tried, and with impartial justice condemned to the axe. Mr. Gerard, 
 who about the same time was detected in the conspiracy, was likewise 
 condemned to die. By singular chance, both the rivals suffered on the 
 scaffold, within a few hours of each other : Mr. Gerard with intrepid 
 dignity ; the Portuguese with all the pusillanimity of an assassin. 
 
 "Above stairs," continues Pennant, "sat, in the character of a 
 milliner, the reduced Duchess of Tyrconnel, wife to Eichard Talbot, 
 Lord Deputy of Ireland, under James II. ; a bigoted Papist, and fit 
 instrument of the designs of the infatuated prince, who had created 
 him Earl before his abdication, and after that, Duke of Tyrconnel. 
 A female, suspected to have been his duchess, after his death, sup- 
 ported herself for a few days (till she was known and otherwise 
 provided for) by the little trade of this place; but had delicacy 
 enough to wish not to be detected. She sat in a white mask, and a 
 white dress, and was known by the name of the White Widow. This 
 Exchange has long since given way to a row of good houses, with 
 uniform front, engraved in Mr. Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 
 which form a part of the street."* 
 
 The houses in the quarter behind these, built by the Earl 
 of Pembroke, made way, sixty years back, for the present 
 handsome set of buildings called the Adelphi, from the Messrs. 
 Adam, brothers, who built it."}* The principal front faces the 
 
 * Pennant, p. 147. 
 
 f It was a joke, probably invented, against a late festive alderman, 
 that some lover of Terence, at a public dinner, having toasted two 
 royal brothers, who were present, under the title of the Adelphi (the 
 Greek word for "brothers"), the Alderman said, that as they were 
 on the subject of streets, " he would beg leave to propose " Finsbury 
 Square.' " 
 
MRS. GARRICK. 179 
 
 Thames, and is almost the only public walk left for the inha- 
 bitants of London on the river side. The centre house was 
 purchased when new, by Garrick in 1771, and was his town 
 house for the rest of his life. He died there about nine years 
 after ; but Mrs. Garrick possessed it till a late period. 
 Mrs. Garrick had been a dancer in her youth, with a name as 
 vernal as need be — Mademoiselle Violette : she died a vener- 
 able old lady, at the age of ninety odd. Boswell has recorded 
 a delightful day spent with Johnson and others at her house, 
 the first time she re-opened it after Garrick's death. Sir 
 Joshua Eeynolds was there, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Boscawen, and 
 others. a She looked well," says Boswell ; " talked of her 
 husband with complacency; and while she cast her eyes at 
 his portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, 
 that ' death was now the most agreeable object to her.'"* It 
 is no dishonour to her, that her constitution was too good for 
 her melancholy. She spoke enthusiastically of her husband 
 to the last, and used to decide on theatrical subjects/ by right 
 of being his representative. 
 
 On the same terrace had lived their common friend 
 Beauclerc. On coming away after the party just mentioned, 
 Boswell tells us that Johnson and he stopped a little while by 
 the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames ; " and I said 
 to him," says Boswell, " with some emotion, that I was now 
 thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the 
 buildings behind us, Beauclerc and Garrick." " Ay, sir," 
 said he tenderly, " and two such friends as cannot be sup- 
 plied." * 
 
 When Beauclerc was labouring under the illness that car- 
 ried him off, Johnson said to Boswell, in a faltering voice, 
 that he " would walk to the extent of the diameter of the 
 earth to save him." It does not appear what Beauclerc had 
 in his nature to excite this tenderness ; but it is observable, 
 that Johnson had a kind of speculative regard for rakes and 
 men of the town, if he thought them not essentially vicious. 
 He seemed willing to regard them as evidences of the natural 
 virtue of all men, bad as well as good, and of the excuse 
 furnished for irregularity by animal spirits. It is not impos- 
 sible even that he might have thought them rather conven- 
 tionally than abstractedly vicious. He had a similar regard 
 for Hervey, a great rake, who was very kind to him. " Sir," 
 said he, " if you call a dog ' Hervey,' I shall love him." At 
 
 * Boswell, iv., p. 102. f Id., p. 106. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 LANGTON AND BEAUCLERC. 
 
 the same time it is not to be forgotten, that these rakes were 
 fine gentlemen and men of birth ; representatives, in some 
 respect, of the license assumed by authority. Beauclerc, 
 however, like Hervey, had a taste for better things than he 
 practised, and could love scrupulous men. Boswell has given 
 an interesting account of his first intimacy with Johnson. 
 Langton and Beauclerc had become intimate at Oxford. 
 "Their opinions and mode of life," we are told, "were so 
 different, that it seemed utterly impossible they should at all 
 agree ;" but Beauclerc " had so ardent a love of literature, so 
 acute an understanding, such elegance of manners, and so 
 well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton, a gentle- 
 man eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inex- 
 haustible fund of entertaining conversation, that they became 
 intimate friends." 
 
 "Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a consider- 
 able time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton 
 should associate so much with one who had the character of being 
 loose, both in his principles and practice, but by degrees, he himself 
 was fascinated. Mr. Beauclerc' s being of the St. Albans family, and 
 having, in some particulars, a resemblance to Charles the Second, 
 contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to throw a lustre upon his 
 other qualities; and, in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and 
 the gay, dissipated Beauclerc were companions. 'What a coalition!' 
 said Garrick, when he heard of this: 'I shall have my old friend to 
 bail out of the round-house.' But I can bear testimony that it was 
 a very agreeable association. Beauclerc was too polite, and valued 
 learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity 
 or licentiousness ; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of 
 Beauclerc, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the 
 scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beau- 
 clerc could take more liberty with him than any body with whom I 
 ever saw him ; but, on the other hand, Beauclerc was not spared by 
 his respectable companion, when reproof was proper. Beauclerc had 
 such a propensity to satire, that at one time, Johnson said to him, 
 • You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain, and 
 you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, 
 out from seeing your intention.' At another time, applying to him, 
 Mth a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said — 
 
 ' Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools' — 
 Every thing thou dost shows the one, and every thing thou say'st the 
 other.' At another time he said to him, ' Thy body is all vice, and 
 thy mind all virtue.' Beauclerc not seeming to relish the compli- 
 ment, Johnson said, 'Nay, sir, Alexander the Great, marching in 
 triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said 
 to him.' "* 
 
 The streets in the Adelphi — John, Robert, Adam, &c. — are 
 
 * Boswell, vol. i., p. 225. 
 
STREET NOMENCLATURE. 181 
 
 named from the builders. In this instance, the names are well 
 bestowed ; but the " fond attempt," on the part of bricklayers 
 and builders in general to give a "deathless lot" to their 
 names in the same way, is very idle. Wherever we go now- 
 a-days, among the new buildings, especially in the suburbs, 
 we meet with names that nobody knows anything about, nor 
 ever will know. Probably, as knowledge increases, this custom 
 will go out. With this exception, streets in the British metro- 
 polis have hitherto been named after royalty or nobility, or 
 from local circumstances, or from saints. Saints went out 
 with popery. The reader of the Spectator will recollect the 
 dilemma which Sir Eoger de Coverley underwent in his youth, 
 from not knowing whether to ask for Marylebone or Saint 
 Marylebone. In Paris they have streets named after men of 
 letters. There is the Quai de Voltaire ; and one of the most 
 frequented thoroughfares in that metropolis, for it contains the 
 Post-Office, is Jean Jacques Rousseau Street. It is not unlikely 
 that a similar custom will take place in England before long. 
 A nobleman, eminent for his zeal in behalf of the advance- 
 ment of society, has called a road in his neighbourhood, 
 Addison Road.* 
 
 In John Street, Adelphi, are the rooms of the Society for the 
 Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. This 
 society originated in 1753, at the suggestion of Mr. Shipley, 
 an artist, and, as the title implies, is very miscellaneous in its 
 object ; perhaps too much so to make sufficient impression. It 
 gives rewards for discoveries of all sorts, and for performances 
 of youth in the fine arts. It is, however, one of those combi- 
 nations of zealous and intelligent men, which have marked the 
 progress of latter times, and which will have an incalculable 
 effect on posterity. Its great room is adorned with the cele- 
 brated pictures of Mr. Barry, which he painted in order to 
 refute the opinion that Englishmen had no genius for the 
 higher department of art, no love of music, &c, nor a proper 
 relish of anything, " even life itself." The statement of these 
 positions was not so discreet as the paintings were clever. 
 Mr. Barry was one of those impatient, self-willed men who, 
 with a portion of genuine power, think it greater than it is, 
 and will not take the pains to make themselves masters of 
 their own weapons. His pictures in the Adelphi, which are 
 illustrations of the progress of society, are striking, ingenious, 
 with great elegance here and there, and now and then an 
 
 * Near Holland Jlouse, Kensington. Addison die4 in that house. 
 
182 YORK HOUSE. 
 
 evidence of the highest feeling ; as in the awful pity of the 
 retributive angel who presides over the downfall of the wicked 
 and tyrannical. But the colouring is bad and "foxy;" his 
 Elysium is deformed with the heterogeneous dresses of all ages, 
 William Penn talking in a wig and hat with Lycurgus, &c. 
 (which, however philosophically such things might be re- 
 garded in another world, are not fitly presented to the eye in 
 this) ; and by way of disproving the bad taste of the English 
 in music, he has put Dr. Burney in a coat and toupee, floating 
 among the water nymphs! The consequence is, that although 
 these pictures are, perhaps, the best ever exhibited together 
 in England by one artist, they fall short of what he intended 
 to establish by them, as far as England is concerned. 
 
 Between Adam Street and George Street, on the other side 
 of the Strand, is Bedford Street, the site of an old mansion of 
 the Earls and Dukes of Bedford. 
 
 With George Street commence the precincts of an ancient 
 "Inn," or palace, originally belonging to the Bishops of 
 Norwich ; then to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; then to 
 the Archbishops of York, from whom it was called York 
 House ; then to the Crown, who let it to Lord Chancellor 
 Egerton and to Bacon ; then to the Duke of Buckingham, 
 the favourite, who rebuilt it with great magnificence, and at 
 whose death it was let to the Earl of Northumberland; and 
 finally to the second Duke of Buckingham, who pulled it 
 down and converted it into the present streets and alleys, the 
 names of which contain his designation at full length, even to 
 the sign of the genitive case, for there is an " Of Alley :" so 
 that we have George, Villiers, Duke, Of, Buckingham. 
 
 Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was the man who, on his 
 marriage with Henry VIII.'s sister, appeared at a tourna- 
 ment on a horse that had a cloth half frieze and half gold, 
 with that touching motto — 
 
 Cloth of gold, do not thou despise, 
 Though thou be matched with cloth of frize: 
 Cloth of frize, be not thou too bold, 
 Though thou be matched with cloth of gold. 
 
 Bacon belongs to Gray's Inn, and the second Duke of 
 Buckingham to Wallingford House, where he chiefly re- 
 sided (on the site of the present Admiralty) : but the reader, 
 who should go down Buckingham Street, and contemplate the 
 spot which Inigo Jones and the trees have beautified, will not 
 fail to be struck with the many different spirits that have 
 
WATER-GATE AT YORK STAIRS. 
 
 183 
 
 passed through this spot — the romantic Suffolk ; the correct 
 Egerton ; the earth-moving Bacon ; the first Buckingham with 
 a spirit equal to his fortunes; the second, witty but selfish, 
 who lavished them away ; and all the visitors, of so many 
 different qualities, which these men must have had, crowding 
 or calmly moving to the gate across the water, in quiet or 
 in jollity, clients, philosophers, poets, courtiers, mistresses, 
 gallant masques, the romance of Charles the First's reign, 
 and the gaudy revelry of Charles II. A little spot remains, 
 with a few trees, and a graceful piece of art, and the river 
 flowing as calmly as meditation. 
 
 A\ ft 
 
 WATER-GATE OP YORK HOUSE. 
 
 The only vestige now remaining of the splendid mansion of 
 the Buckinghams is the Water-Gate at the end of Buckingham 
 Street, called York Stairs,* and built by Inigo Jones. It has 
 
 * " York Stairs," says the author of the ' Critical Reviews of Public 
 Buildings,' quoted in ' Brayley's London and Middlesex,' " form un- 
 questionably the most perfect piece of building that does honour to 
 Inigo Jones ; it is planned in so exquisite a taste, formed of such equal 
 and harmonious parts, and adorned with such proper and elegant 
 decorations, that nothing can be censured or added. It is at once 
 happy in its situation beyond comparison, and fancied in a style exactly 
 suited to that situation. The rock-work, or rustic, can never be 
 better introduced than in buildings by the side of water; and, indeed, 
 
184 SQUABBLE BETWEEN THE SPANISH 
 
 been much admired, and must have admitted, in its time, the 
 entrance of many extraordinary persons. 
 
 York Buildings affords us another name, not unworthy to 
 be added to the most useful and delightful of these, Richard 
 Steele, who lived here just before he retired into Wales. The 
 place in his time was celebrated for a concert-room. "We must 
 not omit the termination of a curious dispute at the gate of 
 York House, to which Pepys was a witness. 
 
 " 30th (September 1661). This morning up by moonshine, at five 
 o'clock," (here was one of the great secrets of the animal spirits of 
 those times), "to Whitehall, to meet Mr. More at the Privy Seale, 
 and there I heard of a fray between the two embassadors of Spaine 
 and France, and that this day being the day of the entrance of an 
 embassador from Sweeden, they intended to fight for the precedence. 
 Our King, I heard, ordered that no Englishman should meddle in the 
 business, but let them do what they would. And to that end, all the 
 soldiers in town were in arms all the day long, and some of the train 
 bands in the city, and a great bustle through the city all the day. 
 Then we took coach (which was the business I came for) to Chelsey, 
 to my Lord Privy Seale, and there got him to seal the business. 
 Here I saw by daylight two very fine pictures in the gallery, that a 
 little while ago I saw by night ; and did also go all over the house, 
 and found it to be the prettiest contrived house that ever I saw in my 
 life. So back again; and at Whitehall light, and saw the soldiers and 
 people running up and down the streets. So I went to the Spanish 
 embassador's and the French, and there saw great preparations on 
 both sides; but the French made the most noise and ranted most, but 
 the other made no stir almost at all; so that I was afraid the other 
 would have too great a conquest over them. Then to the wardrobe 
 and dined there; and then abroad, and in Cheapside hear, that the 
 Spanish hath got the best of it, and. killed three of the French coach- 
 horses and several men, and is gone through the city next to our King's 
 coach; at which, it is strange to see how all the city did rejoice. And, 
 indeed, we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French. But 
 I, as I am in all things curious, presently got to the water side, and 
 there took oars to Westminster Palace, and ran after them through 
 all the dirt, and the streets full of people ; till at last, in the Mews, I 
 saw the Spanish coach go with fifty drawn swords at least to guard 
 it, and our soldiers shouting for joy And so I followed the coach, 
 and then met it at York House, where the embassador lies; and there 
 it went in with great state. So then I went to the French house, 
 where I observe still, that there is no men in the world of a more 
 insolent spirit where they do well, nor before they begin a matter, and 
 
 it is a great question whether it ought to have been made use of any- 
 where else. On the side next the river appear the arms of the Villiers 
 family; and on the north front is inscribed their motto: Fidei Coticula 
 Crux, — The Cross is the touch-stone of faith. On this side is a small 
 terrace, planted with lime-trees ; the whole supported by a rate raised 
 upon the houses in the neighbouring streets; and being inclosed from 
 the public, forms an agreeable promenade for the inhabitants." 
 
AND FRENCH AMBASSADORS. 185 
 
 more abject if they do miscarry, than these people are ; for they all 
 look like dead men, and not a word among them, but shake their 
 heads. The truth is, the Spaniards were not only observed to fight 
 more desperately, but also they did outwitt them; first in lining their 
 own harnesse with chains of iron that they could not be cut, then in 
 setting their coach in the most advantageous place, and to appoint 
 men to guard every one of their horses, and others for to guard the 
 coach, and others the coachman. And, above all, in setting upon the 
 French horses and killing them, for by that means the French were 
 not able to stir. There were several men slaine of the French, and 
 one or two of the Spaniards, and one Englishman by a bullet. Which 
 is very observable, the French were at least four to one in number, 
 and had near one hundred cases of pistols among them, and the 
 Spaniards had not one gun among them, which is for their honour for 
 ever, and the others' disgrace. So having been very much daubed 
 with dirt, I got a coach and home; where I vexed my wife in telling 
 her of this story, and pleading for the Spaniards against the French."* 
 
 In James the Second's time, the French embassy had the 
 house of their rival, and drew the town to see Popish devices 
 in wax- work. 
 
 "The fourth of April," says Evelyn (1672), " I went to see the 
 fopperies of the Papists at Somerset House and York House, where 
 now the French ambassador had caused to be represented our Blessed 
 Saviour at the Pascal Supper with his disciples, in figures and puppets 
 made as big as the life, of wax- work, curiously clad and sitting round 
 a large table, the room nobly hung, and shining with innumerable 
 lamps and candles ; this was exposed to all the world ; all the city 
 came to see it: such liberty had the Roman Catholicks at this time 
 obtained."! 
 
 They have obtained more liberty since, and can dispense 
 with these " fopperies." At least they would do well to 
 think so. 
 
 Hungerford Market takes its name from an old Wiltshire 
 family, who had a mansion here in the time of Charles II., 
 which they parted with, like others, to the encroachments of 
 trade. It used to be an inconvenient and disagreeable place, 
 little frequented, but has lately been converted into a hand- 
 some market, and put an end to the monopoly of Billingsgate. 
 
 No. 7 in Craven Street is celebrated as having been, at one 
 time, the residence of Franklin. What a change along the 
 shore of the Thames in a few years (for two centuries are less 
 than a few in the lapse of time), from the residence of a set of 
 haughty nobles, who never dreamt that a tradesman could be 
 anything but a tradesman, to that of a yeoman's son, and a 
 printer, who was one of the founders of a great state ! 
 
 * Diary, vol. i., p. 221. 
 
 f " Memoirs of John Evelyn, Esq." Second edit. vol. ii., p. 364. 
 
186 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 
 
 Northumberland House is the only one remaining of all the 
 great mansions which lorded it on the river side. It was 
 built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the 
 famous Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet ; but a very 
 unworthy son, except in point of capacity. He was one of 
 those men, who, wanting a sense of moral beauty, are in 
 every other respect wise in vain, and succeed only to become 
 despised and unhappy. He was the grossest of flatterers ; 
 paid court to the most opposite rivals, in the worst manner ; 
 and seems to have stuck at nothing to obtain his ends. His 
 
 OLD NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 
 
 perception of what was great, extrinsically, led him to build 
 this princely abode ; and his worship of success and court 
 favour degraded him into an accomplice of Carr, Earl of 
 Somerset. It is thought by the historians, that he died just 
 in time to save him from the disgraceful consequences of the 
 murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.* 
 
 * In 1596, Northampton writes thus to Lord Burghley (Essex's 
 great enemy), upon presenting to him a devotional composition. " The 
 weight of your lordship's piercing judgment held me in so reverend 
 an awe, as before I were encouraged by two or three of my friends, 
 who had a taste, I durst not present this treatise to your view : but 
 since their partiality hath made me thus bold, my own affection to 
 sanctify this labour to yourself hath made me impudent." 
 
 Yet in the year succeeding, our authority observes, he has the foi- 
 
NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 187 
 
 Northumberland House was built upon the site of the old 
 hospital of St. Mary Roncesvaux — Osborne says, with Spanish 
 gold. "Part of the present mansion," says the Londinium 
 Bedivivum, " is from the designs of Bernard Jansen, and the 
 frontispiece or gateway from those of Gerard Christmas. 
 This gateway cannot possibly be described correctly, as the 
 ornaments are scattered in the utmost profusion, from the 
 base to the attic, which supports a copy of Michael Angelo's 
 celebrated lion. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters inclose 
 eight niches on the sides, and there are a bow window and an 
 open arch above the gate. The basement of the whole front 
 contains fourteen niches, with ancient weapons crossed within 
 them ; and the upper stories have twenty-four windows, in two 
 ranges, with pierce battlements. Each wing terminates in a 
 cupola, and the angles have rustic quoins. The quadrangle 
 within the gate is in a better style of building, but rather 
 distinguished by simplicity than grandeur ; and the garden 
 next the Thames, with many trees, serves to screen the man- 
 sion from those disagreeable objects which generally bound 
 the shores of the river in this vast trading city." 
 
 " Northumberland House was discovered to be on fire, Marcb 18, 
 1780, at five o'clock in the morning, which raged from that hour till 
 eight, when the whole front next the Strand was completely destroyed. 
 Dr. Percy's apartments were consumed; but great part of his library 
 escaped the general ruin."* 
 
 We have been the more particular in laying this extract 
 before our readers, because, though the house still exists, the 
 public see little of it. All they behold, indeed, is the screen 
 or advanced guard, which is no very fine sight, and only 
 serves to narrow the way. Of the quadrangle inside the 
 public know nothing ; and thousands pass every day without 
 
 lowing passage in a letter to Essex: — "Some friend of mine means 
 this day, before night, to merit my devotion and uttermost gratitude 
 by seeking to do good to you ; the success whereof my prayers in the 
 meantime shall recommend to that best gale of wind that may favour 
 it. Your lordship, by your last purchase, hath almost enraged the 
 dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba's favour by 
 bringing pearls. If you could once be as fortunate in dragging old 
 Leviathan (Burghley) and his cub, tortuosum colubrum (Sir Kobert 
 Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of this den of mischievous 
 device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that 
 of Hercules." See " Memoirs of the Peers of James I." p. 240. Such 
 " wise men" are the worst of fools. And here he was acting, as such 
 men are apt to do, like one of the commonest fools, in saying such 
 contradictory things under his own hand. 
 * Vol, iv., p. 308. 
 
188 VIOLENCE OF LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. 
 
 suspecting that there is such a thing as a tree on the pre- 
 mises. 
 
 The Percys had this house in consequence of a marriage 
 with the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was Northamp- 
 ton's nephew. During the Earl's possession it was called 
 Suffolk House, and furnished an escape to a person of the 
 name of Emerson from one of the mad pranks of Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury, who was for righting everybody. His 
 lordship had had sundry fits of ague, which brought him at 
 last to be " so lean and yellow, that scarce any man," he says, 
 " did know him." 
 
 " It happened," he continues, " during this sickness, that I walked 
 abroad one day towards Whitehall, where, meeting with one Emerson, 
 who spoke very disgraceful words of Sir Robert Harley, being then 
 my dear friend, my weakness could not hinder me to be sensible of 
 my friend's dishonour; shaking him, therefore, by a long beard he 
 wore, I stept a little aside, and drew my sword in tlte street; Captain 
 Thomas Scrivan, a friend of mine, not being far off on one side, and 
 divers friends of his on the other side. All that saw me wondered 
 how I could go, being so weak and consumed as I was, but much 
 more that I would offer to fight; howsoever, Emerson, instead of 
 drawing his sword, ran away into Suffolk House, and afterwards in- 
 formed the Lords of the Council of what I had done; who, not long 
 after sending for me, did not so much reprehend my taking part with 
 my friend, as that I would adventure to fight, being in such a bad 
 condition of health."* 
 
 The disgraceful words spoken by Emerson were very likely 
 nothing at all, except to his lordship's ultra-chivalrous fancy ; 
 but this is a curious scene to imagine at the entrance of the 
 present quiet Northumberland House — Emerson slipping into 
 the gate with horror in his looks, and the lean and yellow 
 ghost of the knight- errant behind him, sword in hand. 
 
 Mr. Malcolm has spoken of the apartments of Dr. Percy. 
 This was Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, who gave an im- 
 pulse to the spirit of the modern muse by his Eeliques of 
 Ancient English Poetry. He was a kinsman of the Northum- 
 berland family. We believe it was in Northumberland House 
 that his friend Goldsmith, stammering out a fine speech of 
 thanks to a personage in a splendid dress whom he took for 
 the Duke, was informed, when he had done, that it was his 
 Grace's "gentleman." 
 
 A little way up Catherine Street is Exeter Street, where 
 Johnson first lodged when he came to town. His lodgings 
 
 * "Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury," in the "Autobio- 
 graphy," p. 11Q. 
 
CATHERINE STREET. 189 
 
 were at the house of Mr. Morris, a stay-maker. He dined at 
 the Pine-apple in New Street, " for eightpence, with very- 
 good company." Several of them, he told Boswell, had 
 travelled. " They expected to meet every day ; but did not 
 know one another's names." The rest of his information is a 
 curious and interesting specimen of his disposition. " It 
 used," said he, " to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank 
 wine : but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a 
 penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so that I was quite as 
 well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter 
 nothing." Johnson drank at this time no fermented liquors. 
 Boswell supposes that he had gained a knowledge of the art of 
 living in London from an Irish painter, whom he knew at 
 Birmingham, and of whom he gave this account. 
 
 " Thirty pounds a year," according to this economical philosopher, 
 " was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. 
 He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might 
 live in a garret at eighteen pence a week; few people would inquire 
 where he lodged : and if they did, it was easy to say, ( Sir, I am to be 
 found at such a place.' By spending three pence at a coffee-house, 
 he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he 
 might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, 
 and do without supper. On clean shirt day he went abroad and paid 
 visits."* 
 
 The Strand end of Catherine Street is mentioned in Gay's 
 " Trivia " for a notoriety which it now unfortunately shares 
 with too many places to render it remarkable. His picture 
 of one of the women he speaks of possesses a literal truth, 
 the characteristic of the whole of this curious poem. 
 "'Tis she who nightly strolls with sauntering pace; 
 No stubborn stays her yielding shape embrace; 
 Beneath the lamp her tawdry ribands glare, 
 The new scower'd manteau, and the slattern air; 
 High draggled petticoats her travels show, 
 And hollow cheeks with artful blushes glow. 
 In riding-hood, near tavern door she phes, 
 Or muffled pinners hide her livid eyes. 
 With empty band-box she delights to range, 
 And feigns a distant errand from the 'Change." 
 
 Gay contents himself with a picture, and a warning. In 
 our times, we have learnt to pity the human beings, and to 
 think what can be done to remedy the first causes of the evil. 
 
 The houses between Catherine Street and Burleigh Street 
 stand upon ground formerly occupied by Wimbledon House, 
 a mansion built by Sir Edward Cecil, whom Charles I. created 
 * Boswell, vol. i., p. 81. 
 
190 BEEF-STEAK CLUB. 
 
 Viscount Wimbledon. It was burnt down ; and Stow says, 
 that the day before, his lordship's country house at Wimbledon 
 was blown up. 
 
 The late Lyceum was built about the year 1/65, as an 
 academy and exhibition-room, in anticipation of the royal one 
 then contemplated. It did not succeed ; and part of it was 
 converted into a theatre for musical performances. It then 
 became a place of exhibition for large panoramic pictures, 
 among which we remember with pleasure the battle pieces of 
 Eobert Ker Porter (Seringapatam, Acre, &c.) A species of 
 entertainment then took place in it, which has justly been 
 called " useful and liberal," presenting, on a regular stage, 
 pictures or scenes of famous places, while a person read 
 accounts of them from a desk. We remember the iEgyptiana, 
 or description of iEgypt, and, if we mistake not, an attempt, 
 not quite so well founded, to illustrate the scenes of Milton's 
 Allegro and Penseroso. Neither of the attempts met with 
 success ; but the former, perhaps, might be tried again with 
 advantage, now that information and the thirst for it have so 
 wonderfully increased. The panorama, however, may have 
 realised all that can be done in this way. Visitors to those 
 admirable contrivances may be almost said to become 
 travellers ; and a reader at hand might disturb them, like 
 an impertinence. We recollect being so early one morning 
 at a panorama, that we had the place to ouselves. The room 
 was without a sound, and the scene Florence ; and when we 
 came out, the noise and crowd of the streets had an effect on 
 us, as if we had been suddenly transported out of an Italian 
 solitude. The Lyceum has since been handsomely rebuilt 
 as a new English Opera House, under the management of 
 Mr. Arnold, who has done much to cultivate a love of music 
 in this country. Over the former theatre, we believe, was a 
 room built by him for the members of the famous Beef-Steak 
 Club, equally celebrated for loving their steaks and. roasting 
 one another.* 
 
 * The author of a " History of the Clubs of London" (vol. ii. p. 3.), 
 says that this is not the Beef-Steak Club of which Estcourt, the 
 comedian, was steward, and Mrs. Woffington president. He derives 
 its origin from an accidental dinner taken by Lord Peterborough 
 in the scenic room of Rich, the Harlequin, over Covent Garden 
 Theatre. The original gridiron, on which Rich broiled the Peer's 
 beef-steak, is still preserved, as the palladium of the club; and the 
 members have it engraved on their buttons. It has generally, we 
 believe, admitted the leading men of the day, of whatever description, 
 
EXETER CHANGE. 19.1 
 
 The little crowded nest of shop-counters and wild beasts, 
 called Exeter Change, which has lately been pulled down, 
 took its name from a mansion belonging to the Bishop of 
 Exeter, whether on the south or north side of the street does 
 not appear. It is not necessary that the spot should have 
 been the same. Any connection with a large mansion, or its 
 neighbourhood, is sufficient to give name to a new house. 
 Pennant thinks, we know not on what authority, that the 
 great Lord Burleigh had a mansion on the spot ; and he adds, 
 that he died here. Exeter Change was supposed to have 
 been built in the reign of William and Mary, as a speculation. 
 The lower story, at the beginning of the last century, was 
 appropriated to the shops of milliners ; and upholsterers had 
 the upper. In the year 1721, the town were invited to this 
 place to look at a bed. 
 
 " Mr. Normond Cony," saith the historian, " exhibited a singular 
 bed for two shillings and sixpence each person, the product of his own 
 ingenuity ; the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious 
 manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty he could 
 procure ; the ground represented white damask, mixed with silver 
 and ornaments of various descriptions, supporting vases of flowers 
 and fruits. Each curtain had a purple border a foot in breadth, 
 branched with flowers shaded with scarlet, the valence and bases the 
 same. The bed was eighteen feet in height ; and from the description 
 must have been a superior effort of genius, equally original with the 
 works of the South Sea Islanders, whose cloaks, mantles, and caps, 
 grace the collection formed by Captain Cook, now preserved in the 
 British Museum."* 
 
 This was a gentle exhibition enough. Sixty years ago, 
 instead of the bed, was presented the right honourable body 
 of Lord Baltimore, a personage who ran away with young 
 ladies against their will. The body lay " in state," previously 
 to its interment at Epsom. Lord Baltimore was succeeded by 
 the wild beasts, who kept possession in their narrow unhealthy 
 cages till the death of the poor elephant in 1826, which con- 
 spiring with the new spirit of improvement to call final atten- 
 tion to this excresence in the Strand, it was adjudged to be 
 rooted out. The death of this unfortunate animal, who seems 
 to have had just reason enough to grow mad, had its proper 
 effect, in exciting the public to guard against similar evils ; 
 nor is it likely that these intelligent and noble creatures, nor 
 
 provided they can joke and bear joking. The author just mentioned 
 says, that Lord Sandwich's and Wilkes's days are generally quoted 
 as the golden period of the society. 
 * Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 302. 
 
192 
 
 Lincoln's inn and its neighbourhood. 
 
 indeed any others, will 
 •undergo such a mon- 
 strous state of exist- 
 ence again. 
 
 Passing one day by 
 Exeter Change, we be- 
 held a sight strange 
 enough to witness in a 
 great thoroughfare — 
 a fine horse startled, 
 and pawing the ground, 
 at the roar of lions and 
 tigers. It was at the 
 time, we suppose, when 
 the beasts were being 
 fed. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn — Ben Jonson's Bricklaying — Enactments against 
 Beards — Oliver Cromwell, More, Hale, and other eminent Students 
 of Lincoln's Inn — Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Square — Houses there 
 built by Inigo Jones — Pepys's Admiration of the Comforts of Mr. 
 Povey — Surgeons' College — Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe, and 
 Lord Sandwich— Execution of the patriotic Lord Russell, with an 
 Account of the Cimrmstances that led to and accompanied it, and 
 some Remarks on his Character — Affecting Passages from the Let- 
 ters of his Widow — Ludicrous Story connected with Newcastle House. 
 
 INCOLN'S INN, upon the side of Chan- 
 cery Lane, presents a long, old front of 
 brick, more simple than clean. It is 
 saturated with the London smoke. With- 
 in is a handsome row of buildings, and 
 a garden, in which Bickerstaff describes 
 himself as walking, by favour of the 
 Benchers, who had grown old with him.* 
 It will be recollected that Bickerstaff lived in Shire Lane, 
 which leads into this inn from Temple-bar. The garden- 
 * Tatler, No. 100. 
 
BEN jonson's bricklaying. 193 
 
 wall on the side next Chancery Lane is said by Aubrey to 
 have been the scene of Ben Jonson's performance as a brick- 
 layer. We have spoken of it in our remarks on that lane ; 
 but shall now add the particulars. " His mother, after his 
 father's death," says Aubrey, " married a bricklayer ; and 'tis 
 generally said that he wrought for some time with his father- 
 in-law, and particularly on the garden-wall of Lincoln's Inn v 
 next to Chancery Lane." Aubrey's report adds, that " a 
 knight, or bencher, walking through and hearing him repeat 
 some Greek names out of Homer, discoursing with him, and 
 finding him to have a wit extraordinary, gave him some 
 exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge."* 
 Fuller says, that he had been there before at St. John's, and 
 that he was obliged by the family poverty to return to the 
 bricklaying. j" " And let them not blush," says this good- 
 hearted writer, " that have, but those who have not a lawful 
 calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of 
 Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowell in his hand, he had a 
 book in his pocket." A late editor of Ben Jonson rejects these 
 literary accounts of the poet's bricklaying as " figments." J 
 And he brings his author's own representations to prove that 
 he left the business, not for the University, but the continent. 
 As this writer has nothing, however, to oppose to what Aubrey 
 and Fuller believed respecting the rest, the reports, so far, are 
 worth as much as they were before. Nobody was more likely 
 than Ben Jonson to carry a Greek or Latin book with him on 
 such occasions : nor, as far as that matter goes, to let others 
 become aware of it. 
 
 Pennant's sketch of Lincoln's Inn continues to be the best, 
 notwithstanding all that has been said of it since his time. 
 He begins with observing, that " the gate is of brick, but of 
 no small ornament to the street." This is the gate in Chancery 
 Lane. 
 
 "It was built," he continues, "by Sir Thomas Lovel, once a 
 member of this inn, and afterwards treasurer of the household to 
 Henry VII. The other parts were rebuilt at different times, but 
 much about the same period. None of the original building is left, 
 for it was formed out of the house of the Black Friars, which fronted 
 Holborn end of the palace of Kalph Nevil, Chancellor of England, and 
 Bishop of Chichester, built by him in the reign of Henry HI., on a 
 piece of ground granted to him by the king. It continued to be in- 
 
 * "Lifes and Letters," ut supra. 
 
 f " Worthies of England," ut supra. 
 
 J Gifford's " Works of Ben Jonson," vol. i., p. ix. 
 
 © 
 
194 ENACTMENTS AGAINST BEARDS. 
 
 habited by some of the successors in the see. This was the original 
 site of the Dominicians or Black Friars, before they removed to the 
 spot now known by that name. On part of the ground, now covered 
 with buildings, Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, built an Inne, as it was 
 in those days -called, for himself, in which he died in 1312. The 
 ground did belong to the Black Friars; and was granted by Edward I. 
 to that great Earl. The whole has retained his name. One of the 
 Bishops of Chichester, in after times, did grant leases of the buildings 
 to certain students of the law, reserving to themselves a rent, and 
 lodgings for themselves whenever they came to town. This seems to 
 have taken place about the time of Henry VII." 
 
 " The chapel,'' continues our author, " was designed by Inigo 
 Jones ; it is built upon massy pillars, and affords, under its shelter, 
 an excellent walk. This work evinces that Inigo never was designed 
 for a Gothic architect. The Lord Chancellor holds his sittings in the 
 great halL This, like that of the Temple, had its revels, and great 
 Christmasses. Instead of the Lord of Misrule, it had its King of the 
 Cocknies. They had also a Jack Straw ; but in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth he, and all his adherents, were utterly banished. I must 
 not omit, that in the same reign sumptuary laws were made to regu- 
 late the dress of the members of the house; who were forbidden to 
 wear long hair, or great ruffs, cloaks, boots, or spurs. In the reign of 
 Henry VIII. beards were prohibited at the great table, under pain of 
 paying double commons. His daughter, Elizabeth, in the first year 
 of her reign, confined them to a fortnight's growth, under penalty of 
 3s. Ad. : but the fashion prevailed so strongly, that the prohibition 
 was repealed, and no manner of size limited to that venerable ex- 
 crescence."* 
 
 "Tis merry in the hall, 
 When beards wag all, 
 
 says the proverb ; but the lawyers in those days had already 
 so many refreshments to their solemnity, in masks and revels, 
 that it was thought necessary to provide for decency of masti- 
 cation in ordinary. Attempts to regulate trifles of this sort, 
 however, have always been found more difficult than any 
 others, the impertinence of the interference being in propor- 
 tion. Think of the officers watching the illegal growth of the 
 beard ; the vexation of the " dandies," who wanted their 
 beards out of doors ; and the resentment of the unservile part 
 of the elders ! He that parted with his beard, rather than his 
 three and fourpence, would be looked upon as an alien. 
 
 In the hall of Lincoln's Inn is Hogarth's celebrated failure 
 of " Paul preaching before Felix." It seems hard upon a 
 great man to exhibit a specimen of what he could not do. 
 However, the subject does not appear to have. been of the 
 society's choosing. A bequest had been made them which 
 produced a commission to Hogarth, probably in expectation 
 
 * Pennant, ut supra, p. 176, 
 
EMINENT STUDENTS OF LINCOLN'S INN. 195 
 
 that he would illustrate some of the consequences of good laws 
 in his usual manner. 
 
 Old Fortescue was of Lincoln's Inn ; Spelman, the great 
 antiquary ; Sir Thomas More ; Cromwell ; Sir MathewHale; 
 Lord Chancellor Egerton, otherwise known by his title of Lord . 
 Ellesmere ; Shaftesbury, the statesman ; and Lord Mansfield. 
 Dr. Donne also studied there for a short time, but left the Inn 
 tp enjoy an inheritance, and became a clergyman. However, 
 he returned to it in after life as preacher of the lecture ; which 
 office he held about two years, to the great satisfaction of his 
 hearers. Tillotson was another preacher. It is difficult to 
 present to one's imagination the venerable judges in their 
 younger days ; to think of Hale as a gay fellow (which he 
 was till an accident made him otherwise) ; or fancy that Sir 
 Thomas More had any other face but the profound and pon- 
 derous one in his pictures. His face, indeed, must have been 
 fall of meaning enough at all times ; for at twenty-one he was 
 a stirring youth in Parliament ; and at twenty he took to 
 wearing a hair-shirt, as an aid to his meditations. It is inte- 
 resting to fancy him passing us in the Inn square, with a glance 
 of his deep eye ; we (of posterity) being in the secret of his 
 hair-shirt, which the less informed passengers are not. 
 
 The account of Hale's change of character, on his entrance 
 into Lincoln's Inn, merits to be repeated. 
 
 " At Oxford," says his biographer, " he fell into many levities and 
 extravagances, and was preparing to go along with his tutor, who 
 went chaplain to Lord Vere, into the Low Countries, with a resolution 
 of entering himself into the Prince of Orange's army, when he was 
 diverted from his design by being engaged in a lawsuit with Sir 
 William Whitmore, who laid claim to part of his estate. Afterwards, 
 by the persuasions of Serjeant Glanville, who happened to be his 
 counsel in this case, and had an opportunity of observing his capacity, 
 he resolved upon the study of the law, and was admitted of Lincoln's 
 Inn, November 8, 1629. Sensible of the time he had lost in frivolous 
 pursuits, he now studied at the rate of sixteen hours a-day, and threw 
 aside all appearance of vanity in his apparel. He is said, indeed, to 
 have neglected his dress so much, that, being a strong and well-built 
 man, he was once taken by a press-gang, as a person very fit for sea- 
 service, which pleasant mistake made him regard more decency in his 
 clothes for the future, though never to any degree of extravagant 
 finery. What confirmed him still more in a serious and regular way 
 of life was an accident, which is related to have befallen one of his 
 companions. Hale, with other young students of the Inn, being 
 invited out of town, one of the company called for so much wine, that 
 notwithstanding all Hale could do to prevent it, he went on in his 
 excess till he fell down in a fit, seemingly dead, and was with some 
 difficulty recovered. This particularly affected Hale, in whom the 
 
 2 
 
196 OLIVEJR CROMWELL — MANSFIELD. 
 
 principles of religion had been early implanted ; and, therefore, 
 ing into another room, and falling down upon his knees, he prayed 
 earnestly to God, both for his friend, that he might be restored to life 
 again, and for himself, that he might be forgiven for being present 
 and countenancing so much excess ; and he vowed to God, that he 
 would never again keep company in that manner, nor drink a health 
 while he lived. His friend recovered ; and from this time Mr. Hale 
 forsook all his gay acquaintance, and divided his whole time between 
 the duties of religion, and the studies of his profession." 
 
 Cromwell is supposed to have been about two years in 
 Lincoln's Inn, and while he was there attended to anything 
 but the law, the future devout Protector being, in fact, nothing 
 more or less than a gambler and debauchee. However, lie is 
 supposed to have run all his round of dissipation in that time. 
 Mansfield's residence in Lincoln's Inn, when Mr. Murray, 
 gave rise to a singular reference in Pope. It is in the trans- 
 lation of Horace's ode, " Intermissa Venus diu," where the 
 poet says to the goddess — 
 
 '* I am not now, alas ! the man 
 As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne. 
 To number jive direct your doves, 
 There spread round Murray all your blooming loves ; 
 Noble and young, who strikes the heart 
 With every sprightly, every decent part ; 
 Equal the injured to defend, 
 To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend.'* 
 
 This number five to which Venus is to go with her doves, 
 points out Murray's apartments in Lincoln's Inn. Pope, as 
 we have mentioned elsewhere, thought that nature intended 
 his noble acquaintance for an Ovid ; a notion partly suggested, 
 perhaps, by Ovid's having been a lawyer. It was during his 
 residence in Lincoln's Inn, that the future Lord Chief Justice 
 is said to have drunk the Pretender's health on his knees; 
 which he very likely did. The charge was brought up 
 twenty years afterwards, to ruin his prospects under the 
 Hanover succession ; but it came to nothing. One dynasty 
 has no dislike to a strong prejudice in favour of a preceding 
 dynasty, when the latter has ceased to be formidable. The 
 propensity to adhere to royalty is looked upon as a good 
 symptom ; and the event generally answers the expectation. 
 The favourite courtiers under the house of Brunswick have 
 come of Jacobite families. 
 
 A century ago, according to a passage in Gay, Lincoln's 
 Inn and the neighbourhood were dangerous places to walk 
 through at night. 
 
Lincoln's inn fields. 197 
 
 " Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is railed around, 
 Cross not with venturous step ; there oft is found 
 The lurking thief, who while the daylight shone, 
 Made the wall echo with his begging tone : 
 That crutch, which late compassion moved, shall wound 
 Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground. 
 Though thou art tempted by the linkman's call, 
 Yet trust him not along the lonely wall ; 
 In the midway he'll quench the flaming brand, 
 And share the booty with the pilfering band. 
 Still keep the public streets, where oily rays, 
 Shot from the crystal lamp, o'erspread the ways." 
 
 The wall here mentioned is probably that which was not 
 long since displaced by the new one, and the elegant structure 
 that now adorns the east side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, now a handsome square, set more 
 agreeably than most others, with grass plat and underwood, 
 were first disposed into their present regular appearance by 
 Inigo Jones, under the auspices of a committee of gentry and 
 nobility, one of whom was Bacon. Inigo built some of the 
 houses, and gave to the ground-plot of the square the exact 
 dimensions of the base of one of the pyramids of Egypt. He 
 could not have hit upon a better mode of conveying to the 
 imagination a sense of those enormous structures. If the 
 passenger stops and pictures to himself one of the huge 
 slanting sides of the pyramid, as wide as the whole length of 
 the square, leaning away up into the atmosphere, with an 
 apex we know not how high, it will indeed seem to him a 
 kind of stone mountain. 
 
 The houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields built by Inigo Jones 
 are in Arch Row (the western side), and may still be distin- 
 guished. Pennant speaks of one of them as being " Lindesey 
 House, once the seat of the Earls of Lindesey, and of their 
 descendants, the Dukes of Ancaster." They are probably still 
 a great deal more handsome inside, and more convenient, 
 than any of the flimsy modern houses preferred to them ; but 
 London has grown so large, that everybody who can afford it 
 lives at the fashionable outskirts for the fresh air. It is pro- 
 bable that Inigo's houses created an ambition of good building 
 in this quarter. Pepys speaks of a Mr. Povey's house in Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields as a miracle of elegance and comfort. His 
 description of it is characteristic of the snug and wondering 
 Pepys. 
 
 " Thence (that is to say, from chapel and the ladies) with Mr. 
 Povey home to dinner ; where extraordinary cheer. And after dinner 
 
198 HOUSES BUILT BY INIGO JONES. 
 
 up and down to see his house. And in a word, methinks, for his per- 
 spective in the little closet ; his room floored above with woods of 
 several colours, like, but above the best cabinet-work I ever saw ; his 
 grotto and vault, with his bottles of wine, and a well therein to keep 
 them cool ; his furniture of all sorts ; his bath at the top of the house, 
 good pictures, and his manners of eating and drinking ; do surpass all 
 that ever I did see of one man in all my life." * 
 
 The Country and City Mouse, in Pope's imitation of Horace, 
 
 g° 
 
 To a tall house near Lincoln's Inn, 
 
 which had 
 
 Palladian walls, Venetian doors, 
 Grotesco roofs, and stucco floors. 
 
 The house of a late architect (Sir John Soane) is observable 
 in Holborn Eow (the north side of the square), and has a 
 singular but pleasing effect, though not quite desirable perhaps 
 in this northern climate, where light and sun are in request. 
 It presents a case of stone, added to the original front, and 
 comprising a balcony and arcade. Shrubs and plate-glass 
 complete the taste of its appearance. On the opposite side of 
 the way (called Portugal Eow, most likely from our connec- 
 tion with Portugal in Charles the Second's time), the inha- 
 bitant of the above house had the pleasure, we believe, of 
 contemplating his own work in the handsome front and 
 portico of Surgeon's College. This mode of giving a new 
 front to a house, and fetching it out into a portico, is an 
 ingenious way of getting up an ornament to the metropolis at 
 little expense. Surgeons' College, instead of being two or 
 three old houses with a new face, looks like a separate build- 
 ing. In Portugal Eow sometime lived Sir Eichard Fanshawe, 
 in whose quaint translation of the Camoens there is occa- 
 sionally more genuine poetry, than in the less unequal version 
 of Mickle. This accomplished person was recalled from an 
 embassy in Spain, on the ground that he had signed a treaty 
 without authority ; which was fact ; but the suspicious neces- 
 sity of finding some honourable way of removing Lord Sand- 
 wich from his command in the navy, induced Lady Fanshawe 
 and others to conclude that he was sacrificed to that con- 
 venience. He died on the intended day of his return, of a 
 violent fever, aggravated, not improbably, perhaps caused, by 
 this awkward close of his mission : for such things have been, 
 with men of sensitive imaginations. His wife, a very frank 
 and cordial woman, has left interesting memoirs of him, in 
 
 man, una leu inicrcaung mej 
 * Diary, ut supra, vol. ii., p. 185. 
 
SIR RICHARD AND LADY FANSHAWE. 199 
 
 which she countenances a clamour of that day, that Lord 
 Sandwich was a coward. She adds, " He neither understood 
 the custom of the (Spanish) court, nor the language, nor 
 indeed anything but a vicious life ; and thus (addressing her 
 children) was he shuffled into your father's employment, to 
 reap the benefit of his five years' negotiation."* We quote 
 this passage here, because Lord Sandwich was himself an 
 inhabitant of Lincoln's Inn Fields. His want of courage (a 
 charge shamefully bandied to and fro between officers at 
 that time) is surely not to be taken for granted upon the word 
 of his enemies, considering the testimonies borne in his favour 
 by the Duke of York and others, and his numerous successes 
 against the enemy. It is possible, however, that the pleasures 
 of Charles's court might have done him no good. Sandwich 
 had been one of Cromwell's council. He appears afterwards 
 to have been a gallant of Lady Castlemain's ; was a great 
 courtier ; and probably had as little principle as most public 
 men of that age. Pepys, who was his relation, describes him 
 as being a lute-player. 
 
 On Lady Fanshawe's return to England, she took a house 
 for twenty-one years in Holborn Eow (the north side of the 
 Fields), where the contemplation of the houses opposite must 
 have been very sad. Her account of the circumstances under 
 which she returned is of a melancholy interest. 1 
 
 "I had not," she says, "God is my witness, above twenty-five 
 doubloons by me at my husband's death, to bring home a family of 
 three score servants, but was forced to sell one thousand pounds' 
 worth of our own plate, and to spend the Queen's present of two 
 thousand doubloons in my journey to England, not owing nor leaving 
 one shilling debt in Spain, I thank God ; nor did my husband leave 
 any debt at home, which every ambassador cannot say. Neither did 
 these circumstances following prevail to mend my condition, much 
 less found I that compassion I expected upon the view of myself, that 
 had lost at once my husband, and fortune in him, with my son, but 
 twelve months old, in my arms, four daughters, the eldest but thirteen 
 years of age, with the body of my dear husband daily in my sight for 
 near six months together, and a distressed family, all to be by me in 
 honour and honesty provided for ; and, to add to my afflictions, neither 
 persons sent to conduct me, nor pass, nor ship, nor money to carry 
 me one thousand miles, but some few letters of compliment from the 
 chief ministers, bidding ' God help me ! ' as they do to beggars, and 
 they might have added, \ they had nothing for me,' with great truth. 
 But God did hear, and see, and help me, and brought my soul out of 
 trouble ; and, by his blessed providence, I and you live, move, and 
 
 * "Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c, written by herself." 1729, 
 p. 267. 
 
200 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 
 
 have our being, and I humbly pray God that that blessed providence 
 may ever relieve our wants, Amen."* 
 
 Lady Fanshawe was no coward, whatever her foes may 
 have been. During a former voyage with her husband to 
 Spain, when she had been married about six years, the vessel 
 was attacked by a Turkish galley, on which occasion she has 
 left the following touching account of her behaviour : — 
 
 " When we had just passed the straits, we saw coming towards us, 
 with full sails, a Turkish galley well manned, and we believed we 
 should be all carried away slaves, for this man had so laden his ship 
 with goods from Spain, that his guns were useless, though the ship 
 carried sixty guns ; he called for brandy, and after he had well 
 drunken, and all his men, which were near two hundred, he called for 
 arms, and cleared the deck as well as he could, resolving to fight 
 rather than lose his ship, which was worth thirty thousand pounds ; 
 this was sad for us passengers, but my husband bid us be sure to keep 
 in the cabin, and not appear — the women — which would make the 
 Turks think we were a man-of-war, but if they saw women they 
 would take us for merchants and board us. He went upon the deck, 
 and took a gun and bandoliers, and sword, and, with the rest of the 
 ship's company, stood upon deck, expecting the arrival of the Turkish 
 man-of-war. This beast, the captain, had locked me up in the cabin ; 
 I knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy 
 came and opened the door ; I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as 
 to give me his blue thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coat, which he 
 did, and I gave him half-a-crown, and putting them on, and flinging 
 away my night-clothes, I crept up softly, and stood upon the deck by 
 my husband's side, as free from sickness and fear, as, I confess, from 
 discretion ; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never 
 master. 
 
 " By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well 
 satisfied with speech and sight of each other's forces, that the Turks' 
 man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when 
 your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed 
 himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, ' Good God, that 
 love can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he 
 would laugh at it as often as he remembered that voyage." 
 
 We now come to an event, uniting the most touching cir- 
 cumstances of private life with the loftiest utility of public, 
 and the benefits of which we are this day enjoying, perhaps 
 in every one of our comforts. In this square, now possessed 
 by inhabitants who can think and write as they please on all 
 subjects, and the centre of which is adorned with roses and 
 lilacs, was executed the celebrated patriot, Lord Eussell. We 
 should ill perform any part of the object of this work, if we 
 did not dwell at some length upon a scene so interesting, and 
 upon the circumstances that led to it. 
 
 * "Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c, written by herself." 1729, 
 p. 298. 
 
THE EXECUTION OF LORD RUSSELL. 201 
 
 Lord Russell (sometimes improperly called Lord William 
 Russell, for he had succeeded to the courtesy-title by the 
 decease of his elder brothers,) was son of William, Earl of 
 Bedford, by Lady Ann Carr, daughter of Carr, Earl of 
 Somerset; and he was beheaded in the year 1683, the last 
 year but two of the reign of King Charles II. , for an alleged 
 conspiracy to seize the King's guards and put him to death. 
 The conspiracy was called the Eye House Plot, but incorrectly 
 as far as Lord Russell was concerned ; for it is not proved 
 that he ever heard of the house which occasioned the name ; 
 and he was condemned upon allegations which would have 
 destroyed him, had no such place existed. The Rye House 
 was a farm near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, belonging to 
 one of the alleged conspirators, and it had a bye-road near it 
 through which Charles was accustomed to pass in returning 
 from the races at Newmarket. It was said that the King was 
 to have been assassinated in this road, but that a fire at New- 
 market, which put the town into confusion, hastened his return 
 to London before the conspirators had time to assemble. 
 
 Charles II., and his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards 
 James II. , in the prosecution of those designs against the 
 liberty and religion of the state, which are now acknowledged 
 by all historians, had lately succeeded in producing a strong 
 re-action against the party opposed to them. This party, the 
 Whigs, in their dread of abitrary power and popery, had 
 attempted with great pertinacity to exclude the Duke of York, 
 an avowed papist, from the succession. They had indicted 
 him as a popish recusant : they had listened, with too great 
 credulity, to the story of a Popish Plot, for which several 
 persons were executed : and while these strong measures were 
 going forward, to which the general dread of popery en- 
 couraged them, they were inquiring into the King's illegal 
 connections with France, and putting the last sting to his 
 vexation by refusing him money. Charles's gambling and 
 debaucheries kept him in a perpetual state of poverty. He 
 was always endeavouring to raise money upon every shift he 
 could devise, and misappropriating all he obtained, which 
 completed the ingloriousness of his reign by rendering him a 
 pensioner of France. He had a strong party of corruptionists 
 in the House of Commons ; but the public feeling against the 
 Duke gave the elections a balance the other way ; and the 
 poor King was compelled, from time to time, to purchase what 
 money he wanted, by the surrender of a popular right. 
 
202 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 
 
 Driven thus from loss to loss, and not knowing where the 
 diminution of his resources would end, Charles at length 
 expressed himself willing to limit the powers of a Popish 
 successor, though he would not consent to exclude him. The 
 Whigs, strong in their vantage-ground, and backed by the 
 voice of the country, rejected what they would formerly have 
 agreed to, and insisted on the exclusion. And here the re- 
 action commenced in Charles's favour. The Whigs had allied 
 themselves to the dissenters, whose toleration they advocated 
 in proportion as they opposed that of the Catholics. It was a 
 contradiction natural enough at that time, when the remem- 
 brance of Protestant martyrdom was still lively, and the 
 growth of philosophy had not neutralised the papal spirit, or, 
 at least, was not yet understood to have done so ; but by 
 means of this alliance between the Whigs and Presbyterians 
 Charles succeeded in awakening the fears of the orthodox. 
 A secret treaty with the French King enabled him to reckon 
 for a time on being able to dispense with the contributions of 
 Parliament; and when the latter again pressed the exclusion 
 bill, he dissolved them, with high complaints of their inve- 
 teracy against government, and artful insinuations of the 
 favour they showed the dissenters. This declaration was 
 read in all the churches and chapels, and produced the re- 
 action he looked for. The Whig leaders, withdrawing into 
 retirement, seemed to give up the contest for the present ; 
 but this was no signal to power to abstain from pursuing 
 them. Charles, to secure himself a Parliament that should 
 give him money without inquiry, and to indulge his brother 
 in his love of revenge (not omitting a portion on his own 
 account), set himself heartily about influencing the elections 
 for a new House of Commons. The dissenters were perse- 
 cuted all over the country ; the Whig newspapers put down ; 
 one man, for his noisy zeal against Popery, put to death by 
 means of the most infamous witnesses, who had sworn on the 
 other side ; and Shaftesbury's life was aimed at, but saved by 
 the contrivances of the city authorities. The liberties of the 
 city were then assailed, with but too great success, by means 
 of judges placed on the bench for that purpose. Other cor- 
 rupt law officers were brought into action ; a servile lord- 
 mayor was induced to force two sheriffs upon the city, in 
 open defiance of law and a majority ; in short, every obstacle 
 was removed which accompanied the existence of properly 
 constituted authorities, and of that late anti-popery spirit of 
 
THE EXECUTION OF LOED RUSSELL. 203 
 
 the nation, which was now comparatively silent, for fear of 
 being confounded with disaffection to the church. 
 
 For an account of what took place upon this corruption of 
 church and bench, and neutralisation of the popular spirit, we 
 shall now have recourse to the pages of the latest writer on the 
 subject ; who, though a descendant of Lord Eussell, has stated 
 it with a truth and moderation worthy of the best spirit of his 
 ancestor. The narrative of the execution we shall take from 
 an eye-witness, and intersperse such remarks as a diligent 
 inquiry into the conduct and character of Lord Russell has 
 suggested to our own love of truth. 
 
 " The election of the sheriffs," says our author, " seemed to com- 
 plete the victory of the throne over the people. It was evident, from 
 the past conduct of the court, that they would now select whom they 
 pleased for condemnation. 
 
 " Lord Russell received the news with the regret which, in a person 
 of his temper, it was most likely to produce. Lord Shafteshury, on 
 other hand, who was provoked at the apathy of his party, received 
 with joy the news of the appointment of the sheriffs, thinking that 
 his London friends, seeing their necks in danger, would join with him 
 in raising an insurrection. He hoped at first to make use of the 
 names of the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Russell, to catch the idle 
 and unwary hy the respect paid to their characters ; but when he 
 found them too cautious to compromise themselves, he endeavoured 
 to ruin their credit with the citizens. He said that the Duke of 
 Monmouth was a tool of the court ; that Lord Essex had also made 
 his bargain, and was to go to Ireland ; and that, between them, Lord 
 Russell was deceived. It is a strong testimony to the real worth of 
 Lord Eussell, that, when he made himself obnoxious, either to the 
 court or to the more violent of his own party, the only charge they 
 ever brought against him was, that of being deceived, either by a vain 
 air of popularity or too great a confidence in his friends, 
 
 "Lord Shaftesbury, finding himself deserted, then attempted to 
 raise an insurrection, by means of his own partisans in the city. The 
 Duke of Monmouth, at various times, discouraged these attempts. 
 On one of these occasions, he prevailed on Lord Russell, who had come 
 to town on private affairs, to go with him to a meeting, at the house 
 of Sheppard, a wine-merchant. 
 
 " Lord Shaftesbury, being concealed in the city at this time, did 
 not dare to appear himself at this meeting, but sent two of his crea- 
 tures, Rumsey and Ferguson. Lord Grey and Sir Thomas Armstrong 
 were also there; but nothing was determined at this meeting. 
 
 " Soon after this, Lord Shaftesbury, finding he could not bring his 
 friends to rise with the speed he wished, and being in fear of being 
 discovered if he remained in London any longer, went over to Holland, 
 He died in January, 1683. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 "After Shaftesbury was gone, there were held meetings of his 
 former creatures in the chambers of one West, an active, talking man, 
 who had got the name of being an atheist. Colonel Rumsey, who had 
 
201 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 
 
 served under Cromwell, and afterwards in Portugal j Ferguson, who 
 had a general propensity for plots; Goodenough, who had been under- 
 sheriff; and one Holloway, of Bristol, were the chief persons at these 
 meetings. Lord Howard was, at one time, among them. Their dis- 
 course seems to have extended itself to the worst species of treason 
 and murder; but whether they had any concerted plan for assas- 
 sinating the King is still a mystery. Amongst those who were 
 sounded in this business was one Keeling, a vintner, sinking in busi- 
 ness, to whom Goodenough often spoke of their designs. This man 
 went to Legge, then made Lord Dartmouth, and discovered all he 
 knew. Lord Dartmouth took him to Secretary Jenkins, who told him 
 he could not proceed without more witnesses. It would also seem 
 that some promises were made to him, for he said in a tavern, in the 
 hearing of many persons, that 'he had considerable proffers made 
 him of money, and a place worth 100/. or 80Z. per annum, to do some- 
 thing for them ;' and he afterwards obtained a place in the Victualling 
 office, by means of Lord Halifax. The method he took of procuring 
 another witness was, by taking his brother into the company of 
 Goodenough, and afterwards persuading him to go and tell what he 
 had heard at Whitehall. 
 
 "The substance of the information given by Josiah Keeling, in his 
 first examination, was, that a plot had been formed for enlisting forty 
 men, to intercept the King and Duke on their return from New- 
 market, at a farm-house called Eye, belonging to one Rumbold, a 
 maltster; that this plan being defeated by a fire at Newmarket, which 
 caused the King's return sooner than was expected, the design of an 
 insurrection was laid; and, as the means of carrying this project into 
 effect, they said that Goodenough had spoken of 4,000 men and 
 20,000/. to be raised by the Duke of Monmouth and other great men. 
 The following day, the two brothers made oath, that Goodenough bad 
 told them, that Lord Kussell had promised to engage in the design, 
 and to use all his interest to accomplish the killing of the King and 
 the Duke. When the Council found that the Duke of Monmouth and 
 Lord Russell were named, they wrote to the King to come to London, 
 for they would not venture to go farther without his presence and 
 leave. In the meantime, warrants were issued for the apprehension 
 of several of the conspirators. Hearing of this, and having had 
 private information from the brother of Keeling, they had a meeting, 
 on the 18th of June, at Captain Walcot's lodging. At this meeting 
 were present Walcot, Wade, Rumsey, Norton, the two Goodenoughs, 
 Nelthrop, West, and Ferguson. Finding they had no means either of 
 opposing the King or flying into Holland, they agreed to separate, 
 and shift each man for himself. 
 
 " A proclamation was now issued for seizing on some who could 
 not be found ; and amongst these, Rumsey and West were named. 
 The next day West delivered himself, and Rumsey came in a day 
 after him. Their confessions, especially concerning the assassinations 
 at the Rye-house, were very ample. Burnet says, they had concerted 
 a story to be brought out on such an emergency. 
 
 " In this critical situation, Lord Russell, though perfectly sensible 
 of his danger, acted with the greatest composure. He had long before 
 told Mr. Johnson, that 'he was very sensible he should fall a sacrifice; 
 arbitrary government could not be set up in England without wading 
 through his blood.' The day before the King arrived, a messenger of 
 
THE EXECUTION OF LORD RUSSELL. 205 
 
 the Council was sent to wait at his gate, to stop him if he had offered 
 to go out; yet his back-gate was not watched, so that he might have 
 gone away, if he had chosen it. He had heard that he was named 
 by Rumsey; but forgetting the meeting at Sheppard's, he feared no 
 danger from a man he had always disliked, and never trusted. Yet 
 he thought proper to send his wife amongst his friends for advice. 
 They were at first of different minds; but as he said he apprehended 
 nothing from Rumsey, they agreed that his flight would look too like 
 a confession of guilt. This advice coinciding with~his own opinion, 
 he determined to stay where he was. As soon as the King arrived, a 
 messenger was sent to bring him before the Council. When he 
 appeared there, the King told him, that nobody suspected him of any 
 design against his person ; but that he had good evidence of his being in 
 designs against his government. He was examined upon the infor- 
 mation of Rumsey, concerning the meeting at Sheppard's, to which 
 Rumsey pretended to have carried a message, requiring a speedy 
 resolution, and to have received for answer that Mr. Trenchard had 
 failed them at Taunton. Lord Russell totally denied all knowledge 
 of this message. When the examination was finished, Lord Russell 
 was sent a close prisoner to the Tower. Upon his going in, he told 
 his servant Taunton that he was sworn against, and they would have 
 his life. Taunton said, he hoped it would not be in the power of 
 his enemies to take it. Lord Russell answered, * Yes ; the devil is 
 loose!' 
 
 "From this moment he looked upon himself as a dying man, and 
 turned his thoughts wholly upon another world. He read much in 
 the Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms; but whilst he behaved 
 with the serenity of a man prepared for death, his friends exhibited 
 an honourable anxiety to preserve his life. Lord Essex would not 
 leave his house, lest his absconding might incline a jury to give more 
 credit to the evidence against Lord Russell. The Duke of Monmouth 
 sent to let him know he would come in and run fortunes with him, 
 if he thought it could do him any service. He answered, it would be 
 of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him. 
 
 " A committee of the Privy Council came to examine him. Their 
 inquiries related to the meeting at Sheppard's, the rising at Taunton, 
 the seizing of the guards, and a design for a rising in Scotland. In 
 answer to the questions put to him, he acknowledged he had been at 
 Sheppard's house divers times, and that he went there with the Duke 
 of Monmouth; but he denied all knowledge of any consultation tend- 
 ing to an insurrection, or to surprise the guards. He remembered 
 no discourse concerning any rising in Taunton ; and knew of no 
 design for a rising in Scotland. He answered his examiners in a 
 civil manner, but declined making any defence till his trial, when he 
 had no doubt of being able to prove his innocence. The charge of 
 treating with the Scots, as a thing the council were positively assured 
 of, alarmed his friends; and Lady Russell desired Dr. Burnet to 
 examine who it could be that had charged him ; but upon inquiry, it 
 appeared to be only an artifice to draw confession from him ; and 
 notwithstanding the power which the court possessed to obtain the 
 condemnation of their enemies, by the perversion of law, the servility 
 of judges, and the submission of juries, Lord Russell might still have 
 contested his life with some prospect of success, had not a new cir- 
 cumstance occurred to cloud his declining prospects. This was the 
 
206 APPREHENSION OF LORD HOWARD. 
 
 apprehension and confession of Lord Howard. At first, he had talked 
 of the whole matter with scorn and contempt ; and solemnly professed 
 that he knew nothing which could hurt Lord Eussell. The King 
 himself said, he found Lord Howard was not amongst them, and he 
 supposed it was for the same reason which some of themselves had 
 given for not admitting Oates into their secrets, namely, that he was 
 such a rogue they could not trust him. But when the news was 
 brought to Lord Howard that West had delivered himself, Lord 
 Eussell, who was with him, observed him change colour, and asked 
 him if he apprehended any thing from him ? He replied that he had 
 been as free with him as any man. Hampden saw him afterwards 
 under great fears, and desired him to go out of the way, if he thought 
 there was matter against him, and he had not strength of mind to 
 meet the occasion. A warrant was now issued against him on the 
 evidence of West, and he was taken, after a long search, concealed in 
 a chimney of his own house. He immediately confessed all he knew 
 and more. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 " Hampden and Lord Russell were imprisoned upon Lord Howard's 
 information ; and, four days afterwards, Lord Russell was brought to 
 trial : but, in order to possess the public mind with a sense of the 
 blackness of the plot, Walcot, Hone, and Rouse were first brought to 
 trial, and condemned upon the evidence of Keeling, Lee, and West, 
 of a design to assassinate the King."* 
 
 It is not necessary to enter at large into the trial. We 
 shall give the main points of it, on which sentence was 
 founded ; but when it is considered that the bench had lately 
 had an accession of accommodating judges ; that Jeffries was 
 one of the counsel for the prosecution ; that the jury, illegally 
 returned, were not allowed to be challenged ; that the wit- 
 nesses were perjured, contradicted themselves, and swore to 
 save their lives ; that one of them (Lord Howard) was a man 
 of such infamous character, that the King said, " he would not 
 hang the worst dog he had, upon his evidence ;" that neverthe- 
 less the testimonies of the most honourable men against him 
 were not held to injure his evidence, and that a crowd of them 
 in Lord Russell's favour were of as little avail in giving the 
 prisoner the benefit of a totally different reputation, it will 
 be allowed, that our pages need not be occupied with details, 
 which in fact had nothing to do with his condemnation. 
 
 The ground on which Lord Russell was sentenced to death 
 was, that he had violated the law in conspiring the death of 
 the King. He argued, that granting the charge to be true 
 (which he denied), it was not that of conspiring the death of 
 
 * " Life of William Lord Russell, with some Account of the Times 
 in which he lived." By Lord John Russell, 3rd edition, 1820, vol. ii. s 
 p. 18, &c. 
 
CHARGE AGAINST LORD RUSSELL. 207 
 
 the King, but " a conspiracy to levy war;" that this was not 
 treason within the statute (which it was not) ; and that if it 
 had been, a statute of Charles II. made the accusation null 
 and void, because the time had expired to which the operation 
 of it was limited. The lawyers, who in fact had been com- 
 pelled by their imperfect enactment to lay the charge on the 
 ground of conspiring the King's death, had so worded the 
 statute of Charles, that, like the oracles of old, it was capable 
 of a double construction. But not to observe that the prisoner 
 ought to have had the benefit of the doubt (and it has been 
 generally thought that the statute was clearly the other way), 
 they could never get rid of the necessity of assuming that the 
 King's death was intended ; whereas, nothing can be more 
 plain, not only from their own enactments, but from all history, 
 that an insurrection, though against a King himself, may have 
 no such object ; so that here was a man to be sacrificed to 
 the spirit of the law (which by its very nature should have 
 saved him,) while the court, in this and a thousand other 
 instances, was violating the letter of it. 
 
 " Of the Eye House Plot," says Mr. Fox, " it may be said, much 
 more truly than of the Popish, that there was in it some truth, mixed 
 with much falsehood. It seems prohable, that there was among some 
 of the accused a notion of assassinating the King ; but whether this 
 notion was ever ripened into what may be called a design, and much 
 more, whether it were ever evinced by such an overt act as the law 
 requires for conviction, is very doubtful. In regard to the conspira- 
 tors of higher ranks, from whom all suspicion of participation in the 
 intended assassination has been long since done away, there is un- 
 questionable reason to believe that they had often met and consulted, 
 as well for the purpose of ascertaining the means they actually 
 possessed, as for that of devising others, for delivering their country 
 from the dreadful servitude into which it had fallen ; and thus far 
 their conduct appears clearly to have been laudable. If they went 
 further, and did anything which could be really construed into an 
 actual conspiracy to levy war against the King, they acted, consider- 
 ing the disposition of the nation at that time, very indiscreetly. But 
 whether their proceedings had ever gone this length, is far from cer- 
 tain. Monmouth's communications with the King, when we reflect 
 on all the circumstances of those communications, deserve not the 
 smallest attention ; nor, indeed, if they did, does the letter which he 
 afterwards withdrew prove anything upon this point. And it is an 
 outrage to common-sense to call Lord Grey's narrative, written as 
 he himself states in his letter to James II., while the question of his 
 pardon was pending, an authentic account. That which is most cer- 
 tain in this affair is, that they had committed no overt act, indicating 
 the imagining the King's death, even according to the most strained 
 construction of the statute of Edward III. ; much less was any such 
 act legally proved against them. And the conspiracy to levy war was 
 
202 CHARACTER OF LORD RUSSELL. 
 
 not treason, except by a recent statute of Charles II., the prosecutions 
 upon which were expressly limited to a certain time, which in these 
 cases had elapsed ; so that it is impossible not to assent to the opinion 
 of those who have ever stigmatised the condemnation and execution 
 of Kussell as a most flagrant violation of law and justice." * 
 
 The truth, respecting Lord Russell seems to be, that he was 
 a man of the highest character and the best intentions, who 
 suffered himself, not very discreetly, to listen to projects 
 which he disapproved, in the hope of seeing better ones sub- 
 stituted. There can be no doubt that he wished to make 
 changes in an illegal government, short of interfering with 
 the King's possession of the throne. He had a right, by law, 
 to endeavour it. He had openly shown himself anxious to do 
 so ; and the doubt can be as little, that the Duke of York, 
 from that moment marked him out for his revenge. Russell 
 implied as much in the paper he gave the sheriff; showing, 
 indeed, such a strong sense of it, as (considering the truly 
 Christian style of the paper in general) is very affecting. It 
 has been justly said of him, that he was a man rather eminent 
 for his virtues than his talents. We cannot help thinking 
 that the paucity of words, to which he repeatedly alludes him- 
 self, and which was very evident during his trial, did him 
 serious injury, both then and before. We mean, that if he 
 had had a greater confidence, he might have advocated his 
 cause to very solid advantage, perhaps to his entire acquittal. 
 It is touching to observe, in the account of his behaviour 
 after sentence, how the excitement of the occasion loosened 
 his tongue, and inspired him with some turns of thought, 
 more lively, perhaps, than he had been accustomed to. His 
 character has been respectfully treated by all parties since the 
 
 * "History of the Reign of James the Second." Introductory 
 Chapter. It is worth while, as a puzzle for the reader, to give here 
 the contested point in the statute, which Lord Russell's enemies 
 thought so clear against him, and his friends so much in his favour. 
 13 Car. H. "Provided always, that no person be prosecuted for any 
 of the offences in this act mentioned, other than such as are made and 
 declared to be high treason, unless it be by order of the King's Majesty, 
 his heirs or successors, under his or their sign manual, or by order of 
 the Council Table of his Majesty, his heirs or successors, directed unto 
 the attorney-general for the time being : or some other counsel learned 
 to his Majesty, his heirs or successors, for the time being : nor shall 
 any person or persons, by virtue of this present act, incur any of the 
 penalties herein before-mentioned, unless he or they be prosecuted 
 within six months next after the offence committed, and indicted 
 thereupon within three months after such prosecution ; anything 
 herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 
INTERCOURSE OF RUSSELL WITH FRANCE. 209 
 
 Revolution, and his death lamented. A startling charge, 
 however, was brought against him and Sidney, in consequence 
 of the discovery of a set of papers belonging to Barillon, the 
 French Ambassador of that time, in which Sidney's name 
 appears set down for five hundred pounds of secret service 
 money from the French Government, and Eussell is described 
 as having interviews with Barillon's agent, Rouvigny, tending 
 to prevent a war disagreeable both to Louis and the English 
 patriots. The vague allusions of some modern writers, 
 together with an unsupported assertion of Ralph Montague, 
 the intriguing English Ambassador in France, that money 
 was to be distributed in Parliament " by means of William 
 Russell, and other discontented people," have tended to lump 
 together in the public mind the two charges occasioned by 
 these documents. But they are quite distinct. Lord Russell 
 had nothing to do with the money-list, in which the name of 
 Sidney appears. The amount of the matter is this. Charles II. 
 was always pretending to go to war with France, chiefly to 
 get money for his debaucheries, and partly to raise an army 
 which he might turn against the constitution. The nation, in 
 their hatred of Louis's anti-protestant bigotry, and their old 
 and less warrantable propensity to fight with those whom 
 they publicly considered as their natural enemies (a delusion, 
 we trust, now going by), were always in a state to be deceived 
 by Charles on this point ; and the patriots were as regularly 
 perplexed how to agree to the wishes of the King and people, 
 knowing as they did, the former's insincerity, loth to give him 
 more money to squander, and yet anxious to show their dislike 
 of an arbitrary neighbour, and afraid of his being in collision 
 with their prince. Their greatest fear, however, was upon 
 this last point: it was very strong at the juncture in question ; 
 and therefore, when Louis gave them to understand, through 
 his agent, that he himself was desirous of avoiding a war, 
 Russell certainly does appear to have allowed the agent to talk 
 with him on the subject, and to have expressed a willingness 
 to influence the votes of Parliament accordingly. There was 
 a further understanding that Louis was to complete the mutual 
 favour, by assisting to obtain a dissolution of Parliament, in 
 case the peace should continue ; for the patriots expected very 
 different things from a dissolution at that time (1678), than 
 what it produced afterwards. Russell's noble biographer 
 justly observes, that for the truth of these statements we are 
 to trust Rouvigny's report, coming through the hands of 
 
 P 
 
210 INFLECTIONS ON LORD RUSSELL'S 
 
 Barillon: but granting them to be true, lie thinks there was 
 nothing criminal in the intercourse. He observes, that, in the 
 first place, Russell was Rouvigny's kinsman by marriage, 
 being first cousin to his wife, which accounts for the com- 
 mencement of the intercourse ; and, secondly, 
 
 •' The imminent danger," he says, " which threatened us from the 
 conduct of France abetting the designs of Charles, cannot, at this day, 
 be properly estimated. At the very time when Parliament was giving 
 money for a war, Lord Danby was writing, by his master's order, to 
 beg for money as the price of peace. We shall presently see, that 
 five days after the House of Commons had passed the act for a supply, 
 Lord Danby wrote to Paris, that Charles expected six millions yearly 
 from France. Had Louis been sincere in the project of making 
 Charles absolute, there can be no doubt that it might have been easily 
 accomplished. Was not this sufficient to justify the popular party in 
 attempting to turn the battery the other way ? The question was 
 not, whether to admit foreign interference, but whether to direct 
 foreign interference, already admitted, to a good object. The conduct 
 of Lord Russell, therefore, was not criminal; but it would be difficult 
 to acquit him of the charge of imprudence. The object of Louis 
 must have been, by giving hopes to each party in turn, to obtain the 
 command of both. Charles, on the other hand, was ready to debase 
 himself to the lowest point, to maintain his alliance with Prance ; any 
 suspicion, therefore, of a connection between Louis and the popular party 
 would have rendered him more and more dependent; till the liberties of 
 England might at last have been set up to auction at Versailles."* 
 
 This is impartial. But surely an imprudence so extremely 
 dangerous, and an intercourse on any terms with an envoy's 
 agent, the nature of which it must have been necessary to 
 conceal, partook of a disingenuousness and selfwill that can- 
 not be held innocent. That Lord Russell had the best inten- 
 tions is granted ; but his principles were specially opposed by 
 the doctrine of " doing evil, that good might come;" and if it 
 be argued that good men are sometimes defeated in their in- 
 tentions by not imitating the less scrupulous conduct of evil 
 ones, it is to be replied, that there is no end of the re -actions 
 consequent on such imitations, nor any bounds, on the other 
 hand, to be put to the good consequences of a perfect example, 
 even should its very perfection retard them. Good causes 
 are not lost for want of passion and energy, but for that defect 
 of faith and openness, which is the worst destroyer of both, 
 and the loss of which is the worst hazard produced by a defect 
 of example. We should be surprised that the patriots, while 
 they were about it, did not denounce Charles's anti-constitu- 
 tional behaviour more than they did, and openly demand their 
 * Life, as above, vol. i., p. 121. 
 
CONDUCT AND CHARACTER. 211 
 
 tights as a matter of course ; but it is easy to account for it 
 upon the supposition that they were hampered -with court 
 connections, and not sure of one another. 
 
 The worst thing to be said of Lord Russell (for as to the 
 letters he wrote for pardon, they must be considered as ob- 
 tained from him by his friends and a tender wife) is, that 
 when Lord Stafford, the victim of a plot charged on the 
 papists, was sentenced to death, Russell opposed the King's 
 privilege of dispensing with a barbarous part of the execution ; 
 so unworthy the rest of their character can men be rendered 
 by party feeling, and so little do they foresee what they may 
 themselves require in a day of adversity. When Charles II. 
 was applied to on the same point in behalf of Lord Russell, 
 he is reported to have said, "Lord Russell shall find I am 
 possessed of that prerogative, which in the case of Lord Staf- 
 ford he thought fit to deny me." The sarcasm (if made — 
 for there is no real authority for it) was cruel ; but it is not 
 to be denied, that Lord Stafford, a man old and feeble, whose 
 protestations of innocence called forth tears from the spectators 
 when he was on the scaffold, might have thought Russell's 
 conduct equally so. Let us congratulate ourselves, that the 
 fiery trials which men of all parties have gone through, have 
 enabled us to benefit by their experience, to be grateful for 
 what was noble in them, and to learn (with modesty) how to 
 avoid what was infirm. 
 
 Lord Russell, besides the general regard of posterity, has 
 left two glorious testimonies to his honour— his behaviour in 
 his last days, .and the inextinguishable grief of one of the best of 
 women. The latter, the celebrated Lady Rachael Russell, the 
 daughter of Charles's best servant, Southampton, threw her- 
 self at the King's feet, " and pleaded," says Hume, " with 
 many tears, the merit and loyalty of her father, as an atone- 
 ment for those errors into which honest, however mistaken, 
 principles had seduced her husband. These supplications 
 were the last instance of female weakness (if they deserve the 
 name) which she betrayed. Finding all applications vain, 
 she collected courage, and not only fortified herself against the 
 fatal blow, but endeavoured by her example to strengthen the 
 resolution of her unfortunate lord."* 
 
 Echard says, that Charles refused her a reprieve of six 
 weeks. If so, he probably feared some desperate attempt in 
 Russell's favour; which, in fact, was proposed, as we shall 
 * Hume's History of England, vol. x. chap. 69. 
 
 P2 
 
212 EFFORTS TO SAVE LORD RUSSELL. 
 
 see ; and it is possible, that remembering what had happened 
 to Charles L, and conscious of his own deserts, he might really 
 have thought that Lord Eussell would willingly have seen him 
 put to death ; for Bapin tells us that he said, in answer to 
 Lady Eachael, "How can I grant that man six weeks, who, if 
 it had been in his power, would not have granted me six 
 hours?"* And Lord Dartmouth in his notes upon Burnet, tells 
 us that when his (Dartmouth's) father represented to the King 
 the obligations which a pardon would lay upon a great family, 
 and the regard that was due to Southampton's daughter and 
 her children, the King answered, " All that is true ; but it is 
 as true, that if I do not take his life, he will soon have mine;" 
 "which," says Dartmouth, "would admit of no reply." "f 
 Some, however, have said, that the King would have granted 
 Eussell his life, if he had not been afraid of his brother, the 
 Duke of York ; and as an instance of what was thought of the 
 characters of these two princes, whether the story is true or 
 not, it was added, that Charles did not like to hear any dis- 
 courses about the pardon, because he could not grant it ; 
 whereas James would hear anything, though he resolved to 
 grant nothing. 
 
 Every other effort was made to save the live of Eussell. 
 
 " Money," says Burnet, "was offered to the Lady Portsmouth, and to 
 all that had credit, and that without measure. He was pressed to 
 send petitions and submissions to the King and to the Duke ; but he 
 left it to his friends to consider how far these might go, and how they 
 were to be worded. All that he was brought to was, to offer to live 
 beyond sea, in any place that the King should name ; and never to 
 meddle any more in English affairs. But all was in vain. Both King 
 and Duke were fixed in their resolutions ; but with this difference, as 
 Lord Bochester afterwards told me, that the Duke suffered some, 
 among whom he was one, to argue the point with him, but the King 
 could not bear the discourse. Some said, that the Duke moved that 
 he might be executed in Southampton Square before his own house, 
 but that the King rejected that as indecent. So Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 was appointed for the place of his execution." J 
 
 As a last resource Lord Cavendish offered to attack the 
 coach on either side with a troop of horse, and take his friend 
 out of it ; but Eussell would not consent to bring any one 
 into jeopardy on his behalf. 
 
 It has been said that Lincoln's Inn Fields was chosen, in 
 order that the people might witness the triumph of the Court, 
 
 * Ra pin's History of England, 1731, vol. xiv., p. 333. 
 
 + Burnet's History of his Own Times. 
 
 J Burnet's History of his Own Times, 12mo., 1725, vol. ii.,p. 260. 
 
LETTERS TO THE KING. 213 
 
 in seeing him led through the city; but others have reason- 
 ably observed upon this, that as he was to be taken from 
 Newgate, the desire of making him a spectacle to the citizens 
 would have been better gratified by his being carried to the 
 old place of execution, the Tower. It is most probable, that 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields was selected, as being the nearest feasible 
 spot to the great town property of the Bedford family; 
 Bloomsbury lying opposite, and Covent garden on one side. 
 
 The following is the letter addressed to the King by 
 Russell's father, followed by that of Russell himself, which 
 Burnet has mentioned as being drawn from him by his 
 friends. 
 
 "To the King's most Excellent Majesty. 
 
 " The humble petition of William, Earl of Bedford : 
 " Humbly sheweth; 
 
 " That could your petitioner have been admitted into your presence, 
 he would have laid himself at your royal feet, in behalf of his unfor- 
 tunate son, himself, and his distressed and disconsolate family, to 
 implore your royal mercy, which he never had the presumption to 
 think could be obtained by any indirect means. But shall think 
 himself, wife, and children, much happier to be left but with bread 
 and water, than to lose his dear son for so foul a crime as treason 
 against the best of princes ; for whose life he ever did, and ever shall 
 pray, more than for his own. 
 
 " May God incline your Majesty's heart to the prayers of an afflicted 
 old father, and not bring grey hairs with sorrow to my grave. 
 
 " Bedford." 
 
 "To the King's most Excellent Majesty. 
 
 " The humble petition of William Russell: 
 " Most humbly sheweth; 
 
 " That your petitioner does once more cast himself at your Majesty's 
 feet, and implores, with all humility, your mercy and pardon, still' 
 avowing that he never had the least thought against your Majesty's 
 life, nor any design to change the government ; but humbly and 
 sorrowfully confesses his having been present at those meetings, which 
 he is convinced were unlawful, and justly provoking to your Majesty; 
 but being betrayed by ignorance and inadvertence, he did not decline 
 them as he ought to have done, for which he is truly and heartily 
 sorry ; and, therefore, humbly offers himself to your Majesty, to be 
 determined to live in any part of the world which you shall appoint, 
 and never to meddle any more in the affairs of England, but as your 
 Majesty shall be pleased to command me. 
 
 "May it therefore please your Majesty to extend your royal favour 
 and mercy to your petitioner, by which he will be for ever engaged to 
 pray for your Majesty, and to devote his life to your service. 
 
 " William Russell.'' 
 
 The third is to the Duke of York. It is certainly to be 
 regretted, that these letters were drawn from a patriot, 
 willing, there is no doubt, to h^v§ endured all extremities 
 
214 LETTER TO THE DUKE OF YORK. 
 
 without compromising the dignity of conscious right : but 
 the reader will bear in mind what has been said of them ; 
 and we shall see presently what the writer said of the present 
 one. 
 
 " May it please your Highness; 
 
 " The opposition I have appeared in to your Highness's interest has 
 been such, as I have scarce the confidence to be a petitioner to you, 
 though in order to the saving of my life. Sir, God knows what I did 
 did not proceed from any personal ill-will, or animosity to your royal 
 Highness, but merely because I was of opinion, that it was the best 
 way for observing the religion established by law, in which, if I was 
 mistaken, yet I acted sincerely, without any ill end in it. And as for 
 any base design against your person, I hope your Royal Highness will 
 be so just to me as not to think me capable of so vile a thought. But 
 I am now resolved, and do faithfully engage myself, that if it shall 
 please the King to pardon me, and if your Royal Highness will inter- 
 pose in it, I will in no sort meddle any more, but will be readily 
 determined to live in any part of the world which his Majesty shall 
 prescribe, and will never fail in my daily prayers, both for his 
 Majesty's preservation and honour, and your Royal Highness's happi- 
 ness, and will wholly withdraw myself from the affairs of England, 
 unless called by his Majesty's orders to serve him, which I shall never 
 be wanting to do, to the uttermost of my power. And if your Royal 
 Highness will be so gracious to me, as to move on my account, as it 
 will be an engagement upon me, beyond what I can in reason expect, 
 so it will make the deepest impressions on me possible ; for no fear of 
 death can work so much with me, as so great an obligation will for 
 ever do upon me. May it please your Royal Highness, your Royal 
 Highness's most humble and most obedient servant, 
 
 "W. Russell." 
 
 "Newgate, July 16th, 1683." 
 
 Burnet says of this last letter, which he tells us was written 
 at the "earnest solicitations" of Lady Rachael, that as Russell 
 was folding it up, he said to him, " This will be printed, and 
 will be selling about the streets as my submission, when I am 
 led out to be hanged." 
 
 All efforts failed, and the patriot and husband composed 
 himself to die. The touching particulars of his last days 
 we shall extract from the account of his friend Bishop Burnet. 
 It is one that, as it contains no disputed points, may be safely 
 relied on; and indeed, if we had not wished to show how 
 interested we are in the case of this advancer of public right, 
 and how anxious to spare no proper trouble for our readers, 
 we might safely have copied the whole case from the lively 
 pages of that historian, whose writings, whatever may have 
 been his faults of partizanship and complexion, have risen in 
 value, in proportion as documents come to light. A great 
 
russell's la.st days. 215 
 
 modern statesman, equally qualified to judge of it, both as a 
 politician and a man, alludes with interesting emotion to 
 Burnet's account of his last hours. Speaking of the dying 
 behaviour of Eussell and Sidney, he says, " In courage they 
 are equal, but the fortitude of Russell, who was connected 
 with the world by private and domestic ties, which Sidney 
 was not, was put to the severer trial ; and the story of the 
 last days of this excellent man's life fills the mind with such 
 a mixture of tenderness and admiration, that I know not any 
 scene in history that more powerfully excites our sympathy, 
 or goes more directly to the heart." * 
 
 " The last week of his life," says Burnet, " he was shut up all the 
 morning as he himself desired. And about noon I came to him, and 
 staid with him till night. All the while he expressed a very Christian 
 temper, without sharpness or resentment, vanity or affectation. His 
 whole behaviour looked like a triumph over death. Upon some occa- 
 sions, as at table, or when his friends came to see him, he was decently 
 cheerful. I was by him when the sheriffs came to show him the 
 warrant for his execution. He read it with indifference ; and when 
 they were gone he told me it was not decent to be merry with such a 
 matter, otherwise he was near telling Rich (who, though he was now 
 on the other side, yet had been a member of the House of Commons, and 
 had voted for the exclusion), that they should never sit together in 
 that house any more to vote for the bill of exclusion. The day before 
 his death he fell a bleeding at the nose ; upon that he said to me 
 pleasantly, I shall not now let blood to divert this : that will be done 
 to-morrow. At night it rained hard, and he said, such a rain to- 
 morrow will spoil a great show, which was a dull thing in a rainy 
 day. He said, the sins of his youth lay heavy upon his mind ; but he 
 hoped God had forgiven them, for he was sure he had forsaken them, 
 and for many years he had walked before God with a sincere heart. 
 If in his public actings he had committed errors, they were only the 
 errors of his understanding; for he had no private ends, nor ill designs 
 of his own in them; he was still of opinion that the King was limited 
 by law, and that when he broke through those limits, his subjects 
 might defend themselves and restrain him. He thought a violent 
 death was a very desirable way of ending one's life ; it was only the 
 being exposed to be a little gazed at, and to suffer the pain of one 
 minute, which, he was confident, was not equal to the pain of drawing 
 a tooth. He said he felt none of those transports that some good 
 people felt ; but he had a full calm in his mind, no palpitation at heart, 
 nor trembling at the thoughts of death. He was much concerned at 
 the cloud that seemed to be now over his country ; but he hoped his 
 death would do more service than his life could have done. 
 
 " This was the substance of the discourse between him and me. 
 Tillotson was oft with him that last week. We thought the party 
 had gone too quick in their consultations, and too far; and that resist- 
 ance in the condition we were then in was not lawful. He said he 
 
 * Mr. Fox, in his history above-mentioned, 
 
216 bishop burnet's account 
 
 had leisure to enter into discourses of politics ; but he thought a 
 government limited by law was only a name, if the subjects might 
 not maintain those limitations by force; otherwise all was at the dis- 
 cretion of the Prince : that was contrary to all the notions he had 
 lived in of our government .* But, he said, there was nothing among 
 them but the embryos of things that were never like to have any 
 effect, and they were now quite dissolved. He thought it was neces- 
 sary for him to leave a paper behind him at his death : and, because 
 he had not been accustomed to draw such papers, he desired me to 
 give him a scheme of the heads fit to be spoken to, and of the order in 
 which they should be laid ; which I did. And he was three days 
 employed for some time in the morning to write out his speech. He 
 ordered four copies to be made of it, all which he signed ; and gave 
 the original with three of the copies to his lady, and kept the other to 
 give to the sheriffs on the scaffold. He writ it with great ease, and 
 the passages that were tender he writ in papers apart, and showed 
 them to his lady and to myself, before he writ them out fair. He was 
 very easy when this was ended. He also writ a letter to the King, in 
 which he asked pardon for every thing he had said or done contrary 
 to his duty, protesting he was innocent as to all designs against his 
 person or government, and that his heart was ever devoted to that 
 which he thought was his Majesty's true interest. He added that, 
 though he thought he had met with hard measures, yet he forgave all 
 concerned in it, from the highest to the lowest ; and ended, hoping 
 that his Majesty's displeasure at him would cease with his own life, 
 and that no part of it should fall on his wife and children. The day 
 before his death he received the sacrament from Tillotson with much 
 devotion : and I preached two short sermons to him, which he heard 
 with great affection ; and we were shut up till towards the evening. 
 Then he suffered his children that were very young, and some few of 
 his friends, to take leave of him ; in which he maintained his con- 
 stancy of temper, though he was a very fond father. He also parted 
 from his lady with a composed silence ; and as soon as she was gone, 
 he said to me, ' The bitterness of death is passed ; ' for he loved and 
 esteemed her beyond expression, as she well deserved it in all respects. 
 She had the command of herself so much that at parting she gave him 
 no disturbance. He went into his chamber about midnight, and I 
 stayed all night in the outward room. He went not to bed till about 
 two in the morning, and was fast asleep at four, when, according to 
 his order, we called him. He was quickly dressed, but would lose no 
 time in shaving, for, he said, he was not concerned in his good looks 
 that day." 
 
 * * • * # 
 
 " Lord Russell," continues Burnet, " seemed to have some satisfac- 
 tion to find that there was no truth in the whole contrivance of the 
 Rye Plot ; so that he hoped that infamy, which now blasted their 
 party, would soon go off. He went into his chamber six or seven 
 times in the morning, and prayed by himself, and then came out to 
 Tillotson and me; he drank a little tea and some sherry. He wound 
 up his watch, and said, now he had done with time, and was going to 
 
 * Burnet and Tillotson thought so too, when James II. afterwards 
 forced the church to declare one way or other, 
 
of lord russell's last days. 217 
 
 eternity. He asked what he should give the executioner : I told him 
 ten guineas : he said, with a smile, it was a pretty thing to give a fee 
 to have his head cut off. When the sheriffs called him about ten 
 o'clock, Lord Cavendish was waiting below to take leave of him. 
 They embraced very tenderly. Lord Russell, after he had left him, 
 upon a sudden thought came back to him, and pressed him earnestly 
 to apply himself more to religion, and told him what great comfort 
 and support he felt from it now in his extremity. Lord Cavendish 
 had very generously offered to manage his escape, and to stay in 
 prison for him while he should go away in his clothes ; but he would 
 not hearken to the motion. The Duke of Monmouth had also sent 
 me word to let him know, that if he thought it could do him any 
 service, he would come in and run fortunes with him. He answered, 
 it would be of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him. 
 Tillotson and I went in the coach with him to the place of execution. 
 Some of the crowd that filled the streets wept, while others insulted ; 
 he was touched by the tenderness that the one gave him, but did not 
 seem at all provoked by the other. He was singing psalms a great 
 part of the way, and said, he hoped to sing better very soon.* As he 
 observed the great crowds of people all the way, he said to us, 'I 
 hope I shall quickly see a much better assembly.' When he came to 
 the scaffold, he walked about it four or five times. Then he turned to 
 the sheriffs, and delivered his paper. He protested that he had always 
 been far from any designs against the King's life or government. He 
 prayed God would preserve both, and the Protestant religion. He 
 wished all Protestants might love one another, and not make way for 
 Popery by their animosities." 
 
 Of the paper given by Russell to the sheriffs, Burnet has 
 given the following honest abridgment. This testament to 
 patriotism made a great sensation. To posterity, who have 
 so benefited by its spirit, it is surely still of great interest. 
 
 " The substance of the paper he gave them," says Burnet, '* was, 
 first, a profession of his religion, and of his sincerity in it ; that he 
 was of the Church of England, but wished all would unite together 
 against the common enemy ; that churchmen would be less severe, 
 and dissenters less scrupulous. He owned he had a great zeal against 
 Popery, which he looked on as an idolatrous and bloody religion ; but 
 that, though he was at all times ready to venture his life for his 
 religion or his country, yet that would never have carried him to a 
 black or wicked design. No man ever had the impudence to move to 
 
 * In his Journal, Burnet says that he often sung " within himself," 
 but that the words were not audible. When his companion asked 
 him what he was singing, he said the beginning of the 119th Psalm. 
 It is stated in the Life by his descendant (who has added some 
 original passages from papers at Woburn), that "just as they were 
 entering Lincoln's Inn Fields, he said, ' This has been to me a place 
 of sinning, and God now makes it the place of my punishment.' " 
 He had lived freely in his youth, though he is not the Kussell spoken 
 of in the Memoirs of Grammont, as many are led to believe by the 
 engravings of him inserted in that work. The person there men- 
 tioned was a cousin. 
 
218 
 
 him anything with relation to the Ring's life : he prayed heartily for 
 him, that in his person and government he might be happy, both in 
 this world and the next. He protested that in the prosecution of the 
 Popish Plot he had gone on in the sincerity of his heart, and that he 
 never knew of any practice with the witnesses. He owned he had 
 been earnest in the matter of the exclusion, as the best "way, in his 
 opinion, to secure both the King's life and the Protestant religion, and 
 to that he imputed his present sufferings ; but he forgave all con- 
 cerned in them, and charged his friends to think of no revenges. He 
 thought his sentence was hard, upon which he gave an account of all 
 that had passed at Shepherd's. Prom the heats that were in choosing 
 the sheriffs, he concluded that matter would end as it now did, and 
 he was not much surprised to find it fall upon himself ; he wished it 
 might end in him ; killing by forms of law was the worst sort of 
 murder. He concluded with some very devout ejaculations. 
 
 "After he had delivered this paper, he prayed by himself; then 
 Tillotson prayed with him. After that he prayed again by himself, 
 and then undressed himself and laid his head on the block, without 
 the least change of countenance ; and it was cut off at two strokes." 
 
 The following additional particulars are from Burnet's 
 "Journal:"— 
 
 "When my lady went, he said he wished she would give over 
 beating every bush, and running so about for his preservation. But 
 when he considered that it would be some mitigation of her sorrow 
 afterwards, that she left nothing undone that could have given any 
 probable hopes, he acquiesced : and, indeed, I never saw his heart so 
 near failing him, as when he spake of her. Sometimes I saw a tear 
 in his eye, and he would turn about and presently change the dis- 
 course. 
 
 "At ten o'clock my lady left him. He kissed her four or five 
 times ; and she kept her sorrows so within herself, that she gave him 
 no disturbance by their parting. After she was gone, he said, ' Now 
 the bitterness of death is passed,' and ran out a long discourse con- 
 cerning her — how great a blessing she had been to him ; and said 
 what a misery it would have been to him, if she had not had that 
 magnanimity of spirit, joined to her tenderness, as never to have 
 desired him to do a base thing for the saving of his life ; whereas, 
 otherwise, what a week should I have passed, if she had been crying 
 on me to turn informer, and be a Lord Howard ; though he then re- 
 peated what he often before said, that he knew of nothing whereby 
 the peace of the nation was in danger; and that all that ever was, was 
 either loose discourse, or at most embryos that never came to any- 
 thing, so that there was nothing on foot to his knowledge. 
 
 " As we came to turn into Little Queen Street, he said, ' I have 
 often turned to the other hand with great comfort, but now I turn to 
 this with greater,' and looked towards his own house; and then, as the 
 Dean of Canterbury, who sat over against him, told me, he saw a tear 
 or two fall from him. 
 
 " When he had lain down, I looked once at him and saw no change 
 in his looks ; and though he was still lifting up his hands, there was 
 no trembling, though, in the moment in which I looked, the execu- 
 tioner happened to be laying the axe to his neck to direct him to 
 
LADY RUSSELL, 219 
 
 take aim. I thought it touched him, but I am sure he seemed not to 
 mind it." 
 
 The widow of Lord Russell, daughter of the Lord South- 
 ampton above mentioned, the most honest man ever known 
 to have been in the service of Charles the Second, was grand- 
 daughter of Shakspeare's Southampton, and appears to have 
 united in her person the qualities of both. She was at once 
 a pattern of good sense, and of romantic affection. Nor 
 are the two things incompatible, when either of them 
 exist in the highest degree, as she proved during the re- 
 mainder of her life ; for though she continued a widow all 
 the rest of it, and it was a very long one, and though she 
 never ceased regretting her lord's death, and had great 
 troubles besides, yet the high sense she had of the duties of a 
 human being enabled her to enjoy consolations that ordinary 
 pleasure might have envied; first, in the education of her 
 children, and secondly, in the tranquillity which health and 
 temperance forced upon her. Her letters, with which the 
 public are well acquainted, are not more remarkable for the 
 fidelity they evince to her husband's memory, than for the 
 fine sense they display in all matters upon which the pre- 
 judices of education had left her a free judgment, and 
 especially for their delightful candour. It has been thought 
 that the blindness into which she fell in her old age was 
 owing to weeping ; but Mr. Howell, the judicious editor of 
 the " State Trials," informs us, upon the authority of " a 
 very learned, skilful, and experienced physiologist," " that a 
 cataract, which seems," he says, " to have been the malady 
 of Lady Eachael's eyes, is by no means likely to be produced 
 by weeping."* 
 
 We will here insert a few of the most touching passages 
 from the " Letters of Lady Russell" (seventh edition, 1819). 
 On the 30th of September, she writes thus to her friend. Dr 
 Fitzwilliam : — 
 
 " I endeavour to make the best use I can of both (a letter and 
 prayer which the Doctor sent her) ; but I am so evil and unworthy a 
 creature, that though I have desires, yet I have no disposition, or 
 worthiness, towards receiving comfort." And again: — "I know I 
 have deserved my punishment, and will be silent under it ; but yet 
 secretly my heart mourns, and cannot be comforted, because I have 
 not the dear companion and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. I want 
 
 * For complete reports of all the trials connected with the Rye 
 House Plot, and for several pamphlets written pro and con upon Lord 
 Russell's case, see the " State Trials," vol. ix., beginning at p. 357. 
 
220 AFFECTING PASSAGES FROM 
 
 him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with ; all these things 
 are irksome to me now ; all company and meals I could avoid, if it 
 might be. Yet all this is, that I enjoy not the world in my own way, 
 and this same hinders my comfort. When I see my children before 
 me, I remember the pleasure he took in them ; this makes my heart 
 shrink." 
 
 On the 21st July, 1685, the anniversary of her husband's 
 death, two years after it, she writes thus : — 
 
 " My languishing weary spirit rises up slowly to all good ; yet I 
 hope by God's abundant grace, in time, your labours will work the 
 same effect in my spirits : they will, indeed, in less time on others 
 better disposed and prepared than I am, who in the day of affliction 
 seem to have no remembrance with due thankfulness of prosperity." 
 
 In a letter written the 4th October, 1686, she says, speak- 
 ing of a recovery of one of her children from sickness, — 
 
 " I hope this has been a sorrow I shall profit by ; I shall, if God 
 will strengthen my faith, resolve to return him a constant praise, and 
 make this the season to chase all secret murmurs from grieving my 
 soul for what is past, letting it rejoice in what it should rejoice, his 
 favour to me, in the blessings I have left, which many of my betters 
 want, and yet have lost their chiefest friend also. But, oh, Doctor ! 
 the manner of my deprivation is yet astonishing." 
 
 The following is dated five years after her loss. She is 
 speaking of a letter she wrote once a week to Dr. Fitzwilliam. 
 Her grief had now begun to taste the sweets of patience and 
 temperance ; but we see still how real it is : — 
 
 u I can't but own there is a sort of secret delight in the privacy of 
 one of thost mournful days ; I think, besides a better reason, one is, 
 that I do not tie myself up as I do on other days ; for, God knows, my 
 eyes are ever ready to pour out marks of a sorrowful heart, which I 
 shall carry to the grave, that quiet bed of rest." 
 
 In 1692, Lady Russell writes less patiently, but shortly 
 afterwards appears to have regained her composure ; and in 
 Letter 134, there is a remark on the blessings of health, and 
 on the comfort of being able to do one's duty, if we aim at it. 
 In 1711, she lost her only son, the Duke of Bedford, in his 
 31st year; and six months afterwards was deprived of one of 
 her daughters, who died in childbed. It was on this occasion 
 that an affecting annecdote is told. She had another daughter 
 who happened to be in childbed also ; and as it was neces- 
 sary to conceal from her the death of her sister, this admirable 
 woman assumed a cheerful air, and in answer to her daughter's 
 anxious inquiries, said, with an extraordinary colouring of the 
 fact, for which a martyr to truth could have loved her ? " J 
 have seen your sister out of bed to-day." 
 
lady russell's letters. 221 
 
 We intended not to omit the following charming passage 
 from her letters, and therefore add it here. It is in the letter 
 last quoted: — 
 
 "My friendships have made all the joys and troubles of my life ; 
 and yet who would live and not love? Those who have tried the 
 insipidness of it would, I believe, never choose it. Mr. Waller says, 
 'tis (with singing) all we know they do above! And 'tis enough; for 
 if there is so charming a delight in the love, and suitableness in 
 humours, to creatures, what must it be to the clarified spirits to love 
 in the presence of God ! " 
 
 The passage from Waller is, — 
 
 " What know we of the blest above, 
 But that they sing and that they love ? " 
 
 Certainly, if ever there was an angel upon earth this 
 woman was one. Compare the above extracts with a letter 
 from her to her husband, written in the year 1681, and 
 published in the work of Lord John Russell, vol. ii., p. 2. It 
 is a true, loving, happy wife's letter, and renders the contrast 
 inexpressibly affecting. 
 
 The present ducal family of Bedford have the honour to be 
 lineally descended from these two excellent persons, and to 
 derive their very dukedom from public virtue — a rare patent. 
 And they have shown that they estimate the honour. What 
 must not Lady Russell have felt when James II., within six 
 years after the destruction of her husband, was forced to give 
 up his throne? And what, above all, must she not have felt, 
 when she heard of the answer given by her aged father-in-law 
 to the same prince, who had the meanness, or want of 
 imagination, to apply to him in his distress? "My Lord," 
 said James to the Earl of Bedford, " you are an honest man, 
 have great credit, and can do me signal service." " Ah, sir," 
 replied the Earl, "I am old and feeble, but I once had a 
 son." The King is said to have been so struck with this 
 reply, that he was silent for some minutes. With this 
 anecdote we may well terminate our account of the patriot 
 Russell.* 
 
 One remark, however, we must make. It has been 
 asserted, that the great reason why the Whigs of those days 
 wished to keep the Catholics out of power was the dread of 
 losing their estates as well as political influence, and of being 
 
 * We quote the Earl of Bedford's reply from Granger's Biographical 
 History of England, not being able to refer to Orrery, who we believe 
 is the authority for it. Burnet's Journal is to be found at the end of 
 Lord Russell's Life, by his descendants. 
 
222 
 
 NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 
 
 obliged to give up the Abbey lands. There may have been 
 a good deal of truth in this, and yet the rest of their feelings 
 have been very sincere. Men may be educated in undue 
 notions of the value of wealth and property, and yet prove 
 their possession of nobler thoughts, when brought to heroical 
 issues of life and death. 
 
 The house in this square (Lincoln's Inn,) at the corner of 
 Great Queen Street, with a passage under its side, was once 
 called Newcastle House, and was occupied by the well-known 
 fantastical duke of that name, Minister of George II. Pennant- 
 says it was built about the year 1686, " by the Marquis of 
 Powis, and called Powis House, and afterwards sold to the 
 late noble owner. The architect was Captain "William Winde. 
 
 NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 
 
 *B is said," he adds, " that government had it once in con- 
 templation to have bought and settled it officially on the 
 great seal. At that time it was inhabited by the lord keeper, 
 Sir Nathan Wright." It is at present occupied by the Society 
 for the diffusion of the Bible. 
 
 The Marquis of Powis, here mentioned, had scarcely built 
 his house in the square where Lord Russell was beheaded, 
 when he saw his lordship's destroyer forced to leave hJ3 
 
LUDICROUS INCIDENT AT NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 223 
 
 throne. The Marquis followed his fortunes, and was created 
 by him Duke of Powis. 
 
 A laughable, and, we believe, true story, connected with 
 the Duke of Newcastle's residence in this house, is told in 
 a curious miscellany intitled the " Lounger's Common-Place 
 Book." 
 
 " This nobleman," says the writer, " with many good points, and 
 described by a popular contemporary poet as almost eaten up by his 
 zeal for the house of Hanover, was remarkable for being profuse of 
 his promises on all occasions, and valued himself particularly on being 
 able to anticipate the words or the wants of the various persons who 
 attended his levees before they uttered a word. This sometimes led 
 him into ridiculous embarrassments ; but it was his tendency to lavish 
 promises, which gave occasion for the anecdote I am going to relate. 
 
 i( At the election of a certain borough of Cornwall, where the oppo- 
 site interests were almost equally poised, a single vote was of the 
 highest importance; this object, the Duke, by well-applied arguments, 
 and personal application, at length attained, and the gentleman he 
 recommended gained his election. 
 
 " In the warmth of gratitude, his Grace poured forth acknowledg- 
 ments and promises without ceasing, on the fortunate possessor of 
 the casting vote ; called him his best and dearest friend ; protested 
 that he should consider himself as for ever indebted ; that he would 
 serve him by night or by day. 
 
 " The Cornish voter, an honest fellow, as things go, and who would 
 have thought himself sufficiently paid, but for such a torrent of 
 acknowledgments, thanked the Duke for his kindness, and told him, 
 ' The supervisor of excise was old and infirm, and if he would have 
 the goodness to recommend his son-in-law to the commissioners in 
 case of the old man's death, he should think himself and his family 
 bound to render Government every assistance in his power, on any 
 future occasion.' 
 
 " ' My dear friend, why do you ask for such a trifling employment?' 
 exclaimed his Grace, ' your relation shall have it at a word's speaking, 
 the moment it is vacant.' — ' But how shall I get admitted to you my 
 Lord? for, in London, I understand, it is a very difficult business to 
 get a sight of you great folks, though you are so kind and complaisant 
 to us in the country.' — ' The instant the man dies,' replied the pre- 
 mier, used to and prepared for the freedom of a contested election, — 
 * the moment he dies, set out post-haste for London; drive directly to 
 my house, by night or by day, sleeping or waking, dead or alive, 
 thunder at the door; I will leave word with my porter to show you 
 up-stairs directly, and the employment shall be disposed of according 
 to your wishes.' 
 
 " The parties separated; the Duke drove to a friend's house in the 
 neighbourhood, where he was visiting, without a wish or a design of 
 seeing his new acquaintance till that day seven years; but the memory 
 of a Cornish elector, not being loaded with such a variety of subjects, 
 was more retentive. The supervisor died a few months after, and the 
 ministerial partisan relying on the word of a peer, was conveyed to 
 London post-haste, and ascended with alacrity the steps of a large 
 house, now divided into three, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the corner of 
 Great Queen Street. 
 
224 LUDICROUS INCIDENT AT NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 
 
 " The reader should he informed that precisely at the moment when 
 the expectations of a considerable party of a borough in Cornwall 
 were roused by the death of a supervisor, no less a person than the 
 King of Spain was expected hourly to depart; an event in which the 
 Minister of Great Britain was particularly concerned. 
 
 " The Duke of Newcastle, on the very night that the proprietor of 
 the decisive vote was at his door, had sat up anxiously expecting 
 despatches from Madrid: wearied by official business and agitated 
 spirits, he retired to rest, having previously given particular instruc- 
 tions to his porter not to go to bed, as he expected every minute a 
 messenger with advices of the greatest importance, and desired he 
 might be shown up-stairs the moment of his arrival. 
 
 " His Grace was sound asleep ; for, with a thousand singularities, 
 of which the rascals about him did not forget to take advantage, his 
 worst enemies could not deny him the merit of good design, that best 
 solace in a solitary hour. The porter, settled for the night in his 
 chair, had already commenced a sonorous nap, when the vigorous arm 
 of the Cornish voter roused him from his slumbers. 
 
 " To his first question, 'Is the Duke at home?' the porter replied, 
 'Yes; and in bed, but has left particular orders that come when you 
 will, you are to go up to him directly/ — ' God for ever bless him, a 
 worthy and honest gentleman,' cried our applier for the vacant post, 
 smiling and nodding with approbation at a Prime Minister's so accu- 
 rately keeping his promise; ' how punctual his Grace is! I knew he 
 would not deceive me. Let me hear no more of lords and dukes not 
 keeping their words. I believe, verily, they are as honest and mean 
 as well as other folks, but I can't always say the same of those who 
 are about them.' Repeating these words as he ascended the stairs, 
 the burgess of was ushered into the Duke's bedchamber. 
 
 " ' Is he dead ? ' exclaimed his Grace, rubbing his eyes, and scarcely 
 awaked from dreaming of the King of Spain, 'Is he dead?' ' Yes, 
 my lord,' replied the eager expectant, delighted to find that the elec- 
 tion promise, with all its circumstances, was so fresh in the Minister's 
 memory. ' When did he die ? ' ' The day before yesterday, exactly 
 at half-past one o'clock, after being confined three weeks to his bed, 
 and taking a power of doctor's stuff; and I hope your Grace will be as 
 good as your word, and let my son-in-law succeed him.' 
 
 " The duke, by this time perfectly awake, was staggered at the im- 
 possibility of receiving intelligence from Madrid in so short a space 
 of time, and perplexed at the absurdity of a king's messenger applying 
 for his son-in-law to succeed the King of Spain : ' Is the man drunk 
 or mad ; where are your despatches ? ' exclaimed his Grace, hastily 
 drawing back his curtain ; when, instead of a royal courier, his eager 
 eye recognised at the bedside the well-known countenance of his friend 
 in Cornwall, making low bows, with hat in hand, and ' hoping my lord 
 would not forget the gracious promise he was so good as to make in 
 favour of his son-in-law at the last election at .' 
 
 "Vexed at so untimely a disturbance, and disappointed of news 
 from Spain, he frowned for a few seconds, but chagrin soon gave way 
 to mirth at so singular and ridiculous a combination of opposite 
 circumstances. Yielding to the irritation, he sank on the bed in a 
 violent fit of laughter, which, like the electrical fluid, was communi- 
 cated in a moment to his attendants." * 
 
 * Lounger's Common-Place Book, 1805, 8vo. vol. i., p. 301. 
 
225 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Great Queen Street — Former fashionable Houses there — Lewis and 
 Miss Pope, the Comedians — Martin Folkes — Sir Godfrey Kneller 
 and his Vanity — Dr. Radcliffe — Lord Herbert of Cherbury — 
 Nuisance of Whetstone Park — The Three Dukes and the Beadle — 
 Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II — Former Theatres 
 in Vere Street and Portugal Street — First appearance of Actresses 
 — Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford — 
 Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage — Anecdotes of the 
 Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the 
 Theatre in this Quarter — Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, 
 Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers — Rich — Joe Miller — Carey 
 Street and Mrs. Chapone — Clare Market — History, and Specimens, 
 of Orator Henley — Duke Street and Little Wild Street — Anecdotes 
 of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman 
 Printer. 
 
 REAT Queen Street, in the time of the 
 Stuarts, was one of the grandest and 
 most fashionable parts of the town. 
 The famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
 died there. Lord Bristol had a house 
 in it, Lord Chancellor Finch, and the 
 Conway and Paulet families. Some of 
 the houses towards the west retain 
 pilasters and other ornaments, probably 
 as Pennant observes, the abodes in question. 
 Little thought the noble lords that a time would come, when 
 a player should occupy their rooms, and be able to entertain 
 their descendants in them ; but in a house of this description, 
 lately occupied by Messrs. Airman the booksellers, died Lewis, 
 the comedian, one of the most delightful performers of his 
 class, and famous to the last for his invincible airiness and 
 juvenility. Mr. Lewis displayed a combination rarely to be 
 found in acting, that of the fop and the real gentleman. With 
 a voice, a manner, and a person, all equally graceful and light, 
 and features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the 
 top of his profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio ot 
 the age, in every sense of the word mercurial. His airy, 
 breathless voice, thrown to the audience before he appeared, 
 was the signal of his winged animal spirits ; and when he 
 gave a glance of his eye, or touched his finger at another's 
 ribs, it was the very jpunctum saliens of playfulness and 
 inuendo. We saw him take leave of the public, a man of 
 
 Q 
 
 indicating, 
 
226 
 
 LEWIS AND MISS POPE. 
 
 sixty -five, looking not more than half the age, in the character 
 of the Copper Captain ; and heard him say, in a voice broken 
 by emotion, that " for the space of thirty years, he had not 
 cnce incurred their displeasure." 
 
 Next door but one to the Freemasons' Tavern (westward), 
 for many years lived another celebrated comic performer, Miss 
 Pope, one of a very different sort, and looking as heavy and 
 insipid as her taste was otherwise. She was an actress of the 
 highest order for dry humour ; one of those who convey the 
 most laughable things w T ith a grave face. Churchill, in the 
 Rosciad, Avhen she must have been very young, mentions her 
 as an actress of great vivacity, advancing in a "jig," and 
 performing the parts of Cherry and Polly Hone} r comb. There 
 was certainly nothing of the Cherry and Honeycomb about 
 her when older ; but she was an admirable Mrs. Malaprop. 
 
 Queen Street continued to be a place of fashionable resort 
 for a considerable period after the Eevolution. As we have 
 been speaking of the advancement of actors in social rank, we 
 will take occasion of the birth of Martin Folkes in this street, 
 the celebrated scholar and antiquary, to mention that he was 
 one of the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an 
 actress. His wife was Lucretia Bradshaw. It may be thought 
 
 OLD HOUSES IN GREAT QUEEN STREET. 
 
 worth observing by the romantic, that the ladies who were 
 first selected to give this rise to the profession, had all some- 
 thing peculiar in their Christian names. Lord Peterborough 
 married Anastasia Robinson, and the Duke of Bolton, Lavinia 
 Fenton. 
 
SIR GODFREY KNELLER AND RADCLIFFE. 227 
 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Eadcliffe the physician, lived in 
 this street. We mention them together because they were 
 neighbours, and there is a pleasant anecdote of them in con- 
 junction. The author of a book lately published, describes 
 their neighbourhood as being in Bow Street ; but Horace 
 Walpole, the authority for the story, places it in the street 
 before us ; adding, in a note, that Kneller " first lived in 
 Durham Yard (in the Strand), then twenty-one years in 
 Covent Garden (Ave suppose in Bow Street), and lastly in 
 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields." H Kneller," says 
 Walpole, " was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As 
 there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he 
 permitted the latter to have a door into his garden ; but Rad- 
 cliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller 
 sent him word he must shut up the door. Eadcliffe replied 
 peevishly, ' Tell him he may do anything with it but paint 
 it.' ' And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, ' can take anything from 
 him but physic.'"* 
 
 Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is sup- 
 posed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, 
 that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), 
 was a man of wit ; but so vain, that he is described as being 
 the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances. They played 
 upon him undoubtedly, and at a great rate ; but it has been 
 suggested by a shrewd observer, that while he consented to 
 have his vanity tickled at any price, he humoured the joke 
 himself, and was quite aware of what they were at. Nor is 
 this inconsistent with the vanity, which would always make 
 large allowances for the matter of fact. The extravagance it 
 would limit where it pleased ; the truth remained ; and Sir 
 Godfrey, as Pope said, had a large appetite. With this pro- 
 bability a new interest is thrown upon the anecdotes related 
 of his vanity, with the best of Avhich the reader is accordingly 
 presented. Kneller was a German, born at Lubec, so that his 
 English is to be read with a foreign accent. 
 
 The younger Richardson tells us, that Gay read Sir Godfrey 
 a copy of verses, in which he had pushed his flattery so far, 
 that he was all the while in dread lest the knight should 
 detect him. When Kneller had heard this through, he said, 
 in his foreign style and accent, " Ay, Mr. Gay, all what you 
 have said is very fine, and very true ; but you have forgot 
 one thing, my good friend ; by G — , I should have been a 
 * Anecdotes of Painting, in his Works, 4to. vol. iii., p. 364. . 
 
 Q2 
 
228 VANITY OF SIR tiUDFEEY KNELLER. 
 
 general of an army ; for when I was at Venice, there was a 
 girandole, and all the place of St. Mark was in a smoke of 
 gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay ; should have 
 been a great general, Mr. Gay !" 
 
 Perhaps it was this real or apparent obtuseness which 
 induced Gay to add " engineering" to his other talents, in 
 the verses describing Pope's welcome from Greece ; — 
 
 " Kneller amid the triumph bears his part, 
 Who could (were mankind lost) a new create : 
 What can the extent of his vast soul confine ? 
 A painter, critic, engineer, divine." 
 
 The following is related on the authority of Pope : — 
 
 " Old Jacob Tonson got a great many fine pictures, and two of him- 
 self, from him, by this means. Sir Godfrey was very covetous, but 
 then he was very vain, and a great glutton ; so he played these pas- 
 sions against the others ; besides telling him that he was the greatest 
 master that ever was, sending him, every now and then, a haunch of 
 venison, and dozens of excellent claret. ' 0, my G — , man,' said he 
 once to Vander Gucht, 'this old Jacob loves me; he is a very good 
 man ; you see he loves me, he sends me good things; the venison was 
 fat.' Old Geekie, the surgeon, got several fine pictures of him too, anl 
 an excellent one of himself; but then he had them cheaper, for he 
 gave nothing but praises ; but tnen his praises were as fat as Jacob's 
 venison ; neither could be too fat for Sir Godfrey." 
 
 Pope related the following to Spence : — 
 
 " As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was 
 drawing a picture, he stopt, and said, ' I can't do as well as I should 
 do, unless you flatter me a little, Mr. Pope! You know I love to be 
 flattered.' I was for once willing," continues Pope, " to try how 
 far this vanity would carry him ; and after considering a picture 
 which he had just finished, for a good while very attentively, I said 
 to him in French (for he had been talking for some time before in that 
 language), ' On lit dans les Ecritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit 
 l'homme apres son image : mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un 
 autre a present, qu'il le feroit apres l'image que voila.' Sir Godfrey 
 turned round, and said very gravely, ' Vous avez raison, Monsieur 
 Pope; par Dieu, je le crois aussi.' " 
 
 It must not be omitted that Kneller was a kind-hearted 
 man. At Whitton, where he had a seat, he was justice of the 
 peace, and, 
 
 " Was so much more swayed," says Walpole, ft by equity than law, 
 that his judgments, accompanied with humour, are said to have 
 occasioned those lines by Pope : — 
 
 " I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, 
 Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away, 
 And punish'd him that put it in his way." 
 "This alluded to his dismissing a soldier who had stolen a joint of 
 
DR. RADCLIFFE. 229 
 
 meat, and accused the butcher of having tempted him by it. When- 
 ever Sir Godfrey was applied to, to determine what parish a poor man 
 belonged to, he always inquired which parish was the richer, and 
 settled the poor man there ; nor would he ever sign a warrant to dis- 
 train the goods of a poor man who could not pay a tax."* 
 
 Poor Radcliffe, after reigning as a physician so despotically, 
 that Arbuthnot, in his projected map of diseases, was for 
 putting him up at the corner of it disputing the empire of the 
 world, became a less happy man than Sir Godfrey, by reason 
 of his falling in love in his old age. He set up a coach, 
 adorned with mythological paintings, — at least, Steele says 
 so ; but soon had to put it in mourning for the death of his 
 flame, who was a Miss Tempest, one of the maids of honour. 
 Radcliffe was the Tory physician, and Steele, in the " Tatler," 
 with a party spirit that was much oftener aggrieved than 
 provoked in that good-natured writer, was induced, by some 
 circumstance or other, perhaps Radcliffe's insolence, to make 
 a ludicrous description of him, " as the mourning Esculapius, 
 the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe." Steele 
 accuses him of avarice. Others have said he was generous. 
 He was the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, and 
 made other magnificent bequests ; which prove nothing 
 either way. But it is not favourable to a reputation for 
 generosity, to own ( as he did ), that he was fond of spunging, 
 and to avoid the paying of bills. However, when he lost 
 5,000£. in a speculation, he said " he had nothing to do but 
 to go up so many pair of stairs to make himself whole again." 
 He was undoubtedly a very clever physician, though he made 
 little use of books. Like many men who go upon their 
 own grounds in this way, he had an abrupt and clownish 
 manner, which he probably thought of use. According to 
 Richardson, he one day said to Dr. Mead, " Mead, I love you; 
 now I will tell you a sure secret to make your fortune. Use 
 all mankind ill." It is worth observing, that Mead acted on 
 the reverse principle, and made double the fortune of his 
 adviser. Radcliffe is is said have attended the lady of Judge 
 Holt, in a bad illness, with unusual assiduity, " out of pique 
 to her husband ; " a very new kind of satire. He used to 
 send huffing messages to Queen Anne, telling her that he 
 would not come, and that she only had the vapours ; and 
 when King William consulted him on his swollen ankles and 
 thin body, Radcliffe said he " would not have his Majesty's 
 
 * Walpole's Works, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 364. 
 
230 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. 
 
 two legs for his three kingdoms ; " a speech which it was not 
 in the nature of royalty to forgive. His death is said to have 
 been hastened by his refusal to attend on Queen Anne in her 
 last illness ; which so exasperated the populace that he was 
 afraid to leave his country house at Carshalton, where he 
 died. He lived in Bow Street when he first came to London ; 
 and afterwards in Bloomsbury Square. 
 
 But the most remarkable inhabitant of Queen Street was 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of those extraordinary indivi- 
 duals who, with- a touch of madness on the irascible side, and 
 subject to the greatest blindness of self-love, possess a profound 
 judgment on every other point. Such persons are supposed to 
 be victims of imagination ; but they are rather mechanical 
 enthusiasts ( though of a high order ), and, for want of an 
 acquaintance with the imaginative, become at the mercy of 
 the first notion which takes their will by suprise. Lord 
 Herbert, who in the intellectual part was intended for a 
 statist and a man of science, was unfortunately one of the 
 hottest of Welchmen in the physical. Becoming a Knight 
 of the Bath, he took himself for a knight-errant, and fancied 
 he was bound to fight everybody he met with, and to lie 
 under trees in the fields of Holland. He thought Revelation 
 a doubtful matter, and so he had recourse to the Deity for a 
 revelation in his particular favour to disprove it. We have 
 related an anecdote of him at Northumberland House, and 
 shall have more to tell ; but the account of his having 
 recourse to Heaven for the satisfaction of his doubts of its 
 interference, must not be omitted here. Perhaps it took 
 place in this very street. His Lordship was the first Deist 
 in England that has left an account of his orjinions. Speak- 
 ing of the work he wrote on this subject, he says : — 
 
 " My book ' De Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione verisimili, 
 possibili, et a falso,' having been begun by me in England, and formed 
 there in all its principal parts, was about this time finished ; all the 
 spare hours which I could get from my visits and negotiations being 
 employed to perfect this work ; which was no sooner done, but that 
 I communicated it to Hugo Grotius — that great scholar, who, having 
 escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into France, and was 
 much welcomed by me and Monsier Tieleners, also one of the greatest 
 scholars of his time ; who, after they had perused it, and given it more 
 commendations than is fit for me to repeat, exhorted me earnestly to 
 print and publish it ; howbeit, as the frame of my whole work was 
 so different from anything which had been written heretofore, I found 
 I must either renounce the authority of all that I had written for- 
 merly, concerning the method of finding out truth, and consequently 
 
lord Herbert's book " de veritate." 231 
 
 insist upon my own way, or hazard myself to a general censure con- 
 cerning the whole argument of my book ; I must confess it did not a 
 little animate me, that the two great persons above-mentioned did so 
 highly value it ; yet, as I knew it would meet with much opposition, 
 I did consider whether it was not better for me for a while to sup- 
 press it. 
 
 "Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day in the summer, 
 my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining clear, 
 and no wind stirring, I took my book, ' De Veritate/ in my hand, 
 and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: — 
 
 " ' Oh, thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon 
 me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy 
 infinite goodness to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to 
 make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book 
 'De Veritate;' if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some 
 sign from heaven ; if not, I shall suppress it.' 
 
 " I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though gentle 
 noise came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth) which 
 did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and 
 that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print 
 my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest, before 
 the eternal God, is true ; neither am I any way superstitiously 
 deceived herein ; since I did not only hear the noise, but, in the 
 serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my 
 thinking see the place from whence it came."* 
 
 " How could a man," justly observes Walpole on this pas- 
 sage, " who doubted of partial, believe individual revelation ! 
 What vanity to think his book of such importance to the 
 cause of truth, that it could extort a declaration of the Divine 
 will, when the interest of half mankind could not !" Yet the 
 same writer is full of admiration of him in other respects. It 
 is well observed by the editor of the Autobiography (in reply 
 to the doubts thrown on his lordship's veracity respecting his 
 chivalrous propensities, the consequences of which always fell 
 short of duels), that much of the secret might be owing " to 
 his commanding asj^ect and acknowledged reputation ; and a 
 little more to a certain perception of the Quixote in his 
 character, with which it might be deemed futile to contend. 
 His surprising defence of himself against the attack of Sir 
 John Ayres, forcibly exhibits his personal strength and mas- 
 tery ; and his spirited treatment of the French Minister, 
 Luynes, and the general esteem of his contemporaries, suffi- 
 
 * Life of Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, in the Autobiography. 
 p. 145. It is an honour to Grotius, who wrote a book, De Veritate, 
 on the other side of the question, that he encouraged so renowned an 
 antagonist to publish : though, perhaps, he saw less danger in it than 
 singularity. 4,t all events, he could anticipate no harm from the 
 close. 
 
232 WHETSTONE PARK. 
 
 ciensly attest his quick feeling of national and personal dig* 
 nity, and general gallantry of bearing." There is no doubt, 
 in short, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a brave, an 
 honest, and an able man, though with some weaknesses, both 
 of heat and vanity, sufficient to console the most common- 
 place. 
 
 With all this elegance of neighbourhood, Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, in the time of Charles II., had one eyesore of an 
 enormous description, in a place behind Holborn row, entitled 
 Whetstone Park. It is now a decent passage between Great 
 and Little Turnstiles. 
 
 " It is scarcely necessary," says Mr. Malcolm, " to remind the 
 reader of a well-known fact, that all sublunary things are subject to 
 change : — he who passes through the Little Turnstile, Holborn, at 
 present, will observe on the left hand, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a 
 narrow street, composed of small buildings, on the corner of which is 
 inscribed Whetstone Park. The repose and quiet of the place seem 
 to proclaim strong pretensions to regular and moral life in the inha- 
 bitants ; and well would it have been for the happiness of many a 
 family, had the site always exhibited the same appearance. On the 
 contrary, Whetstone Park contributed to increase the dissoluteness of 
 manners which distinguished the period between 1660 and 1700. Being 
 a place of low entertainment, numerous disturbances occurred there, 
 and rendered it subject to the satire and reprehension even of 'Poor 
 Robin's Intelligencer,' a paper almost infamous enough for the pro- 
 duction of a keeper of this theatre of vice. The publication alluded 
 to says, in 1676, 'Notwithstanding the discourses that have been to 
 the contrary, the boarding-school is still continued here, where a set 
 of women may be readily untaught all the studies of modesty or 
 chastity; to which purpose they are provided with a two-handed 
 volume of impudence, loosely bound up in greasy vellum, which is 
 tied by the leg to a wicker chair (as you find authors chained in a 
 library), and is always ready to give you plain instructions and 
 directions in all matters relating to immorality or irreligion.' * * 
 
 " Incomprehensible as it certainly is," continues our author, " the 
 brutal acts of a mob are sometimes the result of a just sense of the ill 
 consequences attending vice ; and, although almost every individual 
 composing it is capable of performing deeds which deserve punish- 
 ment from the police, they cannot collectively view long and deliberate 
 offences against the laws of propriety, without assuming the right of 
 reforming them. ' The Loyal and Impartial Mercury' of Sept. 1, 
 1682, has this paragraph: — ' On Saturday last, about 500 apprentices, 
 and such like, being got together in Smithfield, went into Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, where they drew up, and marching into Whetstone Park, 
 fell upon the lewd houses there, where, having broken open the doors, 
 they entered, and made great spoil of the goods; of which the con- 
 stables and watchmen having notice, and not finding themselves 
 strong enough to quell the tumult, procured a party of the King's 
 guards who dispersed them, and took eleven, who were committed to 
 New Prison; yet on Sunday night they came again, and made worse 
 
THE THREE DUKES AND THE BEADLE. 233 
 
 havoc than before, breaking down all the doors and windows, and 
 cutting the featherbeds and goods in pieces.' Another newspaper 
 explains the origin of the riot by saying, ' that a countryman who 
 had been decoyed into one of the houses alluded to, and robbed, 
 lodged a formal and public complaint against them to those he found 
 willing to listen to him in Smithfield, and thus raised the ferment.' "* 
 
 In the " State Poems" is a doggrel set of verses on a tragical 
 circumstance occasioned by a frolic of three of Charles's 
 natural sons in this place. It is entitled " On the three Dukes 
 killing the Beadle on Sunday morning, Feb. the 26th, 1671." 
 A great sensation was made by this circumstance, which was 
 naturally enough regarded as a signal instance of the conse- 
 quences of Charles's mode of life. Our Grub Street writer 
 selected his title well — the " Dukes," the " Beadle," and the 
 " Sunday." His first four lines might have been put into 
 Martinus Scriblerus, as a specimen of the Newgate style. 
 
 " Near Holborn lies a park of great renown, 
 The place, I do suppose, is not unknown : 
 For brevity's sake the name I shall not tell, 
 Because most genteel readers know it well." 
 
 The three Dukes pick a quarrel with one poor damsel, and 
 " murder" was cried u 
 
 " In came the watch, disturbed with sleep and ale, 
 By noises shrill, but they could not prevail 
 T' appease their Graces. Strait rose mortal jars, 
 Betwixt the night blackguard and silver stars; 
 Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand, 
 For daring to pronounce the saucy stand. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 See what mishaps dare e'en invade Whitehall, 
 
 This silly fellow's death puts off the ball, 
 
 And disappoints the Queen, poor little chuck ; ■ 
 
 I warrant t'would have danced it like a duck. 
 
 The fiddlers, voices, entries, all the sport, 
 
 And the gay show put off, where the brisk court 
 
 Anticipates, in rich subsidy coats, 
 
 All that is got by necessary votes. 
 
 Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent, the good, 
 
 See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood."f 
 
 The " subsidy coats" allude to Charles's raising money for 
 his profligate expenditure under pretence of the public ser- 
 vice. The last couplet would have done credit to a better 
 satire. 
 
 * Malcolm's Customs and Manners of London, from the Eoman In- 
 vasion to the Year 1700, vol. i., p. 318. 
 
 f Poems on Affairs of State, from the Time of Oliver Cronrwell to 
 the Abdication of King James the Second, vol. i., p. 147. 
 
^Oi ROGUES AND VAGABONDS 
 
 As we are upon the subject of a neighbourhood to which 
 they apply, we shall proceed to give a few more extracts from 
 Mr. Malcolm, highly characteristic of the lower orders of 
 desperadoes in Charles's reign. 
 
 " The various deceivers," he tells us, " who preyed upon the public 
 at this time were exposed in a little filthy work called the * Canting 
 Academy,' which went through more than one edition (the second is 
 dated 1674). I shall select from it enough to show the variety of 
 villany practised under their various names. The Ruffler was a 
 wretch who assumed the character of a maimed soldier, and begged 
 from the claims of Naseby, Edgehill, Newbury, and Marston Moor. 
 Those who were stationed in the city of London were generally found 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden ; and their prey was people 
 of fashion, whose coaches were attacked boldly ; and if denied, their 
 owners were told, "Tis a sad thing that an old crippled cavalier 
 should be suffered to beg for a maintenance, and a young cavalier 
 that had never heard the whistle of a bullet should ride in his coach.' 
 
 " There were people called Anglers, from the nature of their method 
 of depredating, which was thus . — They had a rod or stick, with an 
 iron hook affixed : this they introduced through a window, or any 
 other aperture, where plunder might be procured, and helped them- 
 selves at pleasure ; the day was occupied by them in the character 
 of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the 
 night. 
 
 " Wild Rogues were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who re- 
 ceived the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' 
 backs : " To go into churches and great crowds, and to nim golden 
 buttons off men's cloaks ; and being very little are shown how to 
 creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night 
 to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, 
 who wait without for that purpose ; and sometimes do open the door 
 to let in such who have designed to rob the house ; if taken, the ten- 
 derness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for then" fault, and 
 so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.' 
 
 " Palliards or Clapperdogeons, were those women who sat and re- 
 clined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children 
 hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, 
 who begged relief as widows, and, in ,the name of their fatherless 
 children, gaining by this artifice, ' a great deal of money, whilst her 
 comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' 
 The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or arsenic, 
 which will draw blisters ; or they take unslacked lime and soap, 
 mingled with the rust of old iron : these being well tempered together, 
 and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, 
 binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret 
 the skin so that the flesh would appear all raw, &c. &c. 
 
 " Fraters were impostors who went through the country with 
 forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper 
 direction. 
 
 " Abram men were fellows whose occupations seem to have been 
 forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these 
 words : — ' Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams ; they 
 
IN THE TIME OF CHARLES H. 235 
 
 are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands 
 or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging 
 down, a long stick with ribands streaming, and the like ; yet for all 
 their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.'* 
 
 " The Whip-Jacks have left us a specimen of their fraternity. 
 They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully 
 embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the 
 exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs 
 close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern 
 whip-jack is in the habit of doing, to excite compassion for the loss of 
 limbs and severe wounds), the ancields merely pretended they had 
 lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a 
 sea-port, if in the country ; or to some remote one, if in London. 
 
 "Mumpers. — The persons thus termed are described as being of 
 both sexes : they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloathes. 
 * The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in 
 an old torn cassock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a 
 white one peeping out underneath.' "With a formal and studied 
 countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in 
 the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many 
 children. At other times, they would assume the habit of a decayed 
 gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment 
 to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an apron 
 before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken 
 tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his re- 
 maining stock, and so weak he cannot work ! The females of this 
 class of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner 
 suited to make an impression on their finer feelings. 
 
 " Domerars are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a 
 notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that 
 you would verily believe their tongues were cut out ; and, to make 
 you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where 
 it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make 
 it bleed — and then the ignorant dispute it no further.' 
 
 " Patricos are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, 
 and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, 
 is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common 
 Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus : the parties to be married find 
 out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one 
 side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together 
 till death them part ; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.' " f 
 
 On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back 
 of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing 
 a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane 
 is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the 
 Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, 
 patronised one of the principal companies of players, as his 
 brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury 
 Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally 
 
 * It is still a phrase with the vulgar to say, a man " shams Abram." 
 f Manners and Customs, vol. i., p. 322. 
 
236 
 
 FORMER THEATRES 
 
 led to conclude that there was only one theatre in the Lincoln's 
 Inn quarter ; but this is a mistake. There were at least two 
 successive houses in two different places, though usually con- 
 founded under the title of" the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." 
 The first was in Gibbon's tennis-court, in Vere Street, Clare 
 Market, where the actors who had played at the Red Bull 
 opened their performances in the year of the Restoration, 
 under the direction of Killigrew, and with the title of King's 
 Company. These in 1663 removed to Drury Lane. The 
 Duke's, or Sir William Davenant's company, removed in 1662 
 from Salisbury Court ( see Fleet Street ) to a new theatre " in 
 Portugal Row," says Malone, " near Lincoln's Inn Fields." * 
 Malone is a correct inquirer : so that he makes us doubt 
 whether the name of Portugal Row did not formerly belong 
 to Portugal Street. The latter is certainly meant, or he 
 
 OLD THEATRE IN PORTUGAL STREET. 
 
 would describe it as in and not near the Fields. Davenant's 
 company performed here till 1671, when they quitted it to 
 return to the renovated theatre in Salisbury Court, under the 
 management of his son, Charles Davenant(the father being 
 dead), and the famous Betterton, who had been Sir William's 
 first actor. The two companies afterwards came together at 
 Drury Lane, but again fell apart; and in 1695 the Duke's 
 company (if its altered composition could still warrant the 
 name), with Betterton remaining at its head, and Congreve 
 * Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 320. 
 
IN VERE STREET AND PORTUGAL STREET. 237 
 
 for a partner, again opened " the theatre in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields," which was rebuilt for the purpose, and is described 
 as being in " the Tennis-court." Was this the tennis-court 
 theatre in Vere Street ? or were there two tennis-courts, one 
 in Vere Street, and one in Lincoln's Inn Fields ? We confess 
 ourselves, after a diligent examination, unable to determine. 
 At all events, the latest theatre of which we hear in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, was not in Vere Street. It stood in Portugal 
 Street, on the east end of the present burial ground, just at 
 the back of Surgeons' College, and was subsequently the 
 china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.* This 
 theatre, which was built of red brick, and had a front facing 
 the market, is the one generally meant by the theatre in Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields. It finally became celebrated for the harle- 
 quinades of Eich; but, on his removal to Covent Garden, 
 was deserted, and, after a short re-opening by Gifford from 
 Goodman's Fields, finally ceased to be a theatre about the 
 year 1737. Since that period Covent Garden and Drury Lane 
 playhouses have had this part of the town to themselves. 
 
 It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on 
 the English stage, to the scandle of the Puritans, and with 
 many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the perfor- 
 mances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre 
 in Vere Street, on Saturday, Dec. 8, 1660. The part first 
 performed was certainly that of Desdemona ; a very fit one 
 to introduce the claims of the sex."j* 
 
 Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this 
 occasion by Thomas Jordan ; which, as it shows the " sen- 
 sation " that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the 
 situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of 
 some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here 
 repeat. It is entitled " A Prologue, to introduce the first 
 Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called 
 the Moor of Venice : " 
 
 " I came unknown to any of the rest, 
 To tell the news ; I saw the lady drest : 
 The woman plays to-day ; mistake me not, 
 No man in gown, or page in petticoat : 
 A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't, 
 If I should die, make affidavit on't. 
 Do you not twitter, gentlemen ? I know 
 You will be censuring : do it fairly, though ; 
 
 * It has recently been pulled down to make room for the enlarge- 
 ment of the museum of the College of Surgeons. 
 f See Malone, pp. 135, 136. 
 
238 FIRST APPEARANCE OF ACTRESSES, 
 
 'Tis possible a virtuous woman may 
 
 Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play ; 
 
 Play on the stage — where all eyes are upon her : 
 
 Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour ? 
 
 In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em ; 
 
 The difference lies only in the custom. 
 
 And let it be our custom, I advise ; 
 
 I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise, 
 
 And may procure us custom : hearts of flint 
 
 Will melt in passion, when a woman's in't. 
 
 But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit 
 
 In the Star-chamber of the house — the pit, 
 
 Have modest thoughts of her ; pray, do not run 
 
 To give her visits when the play is done, 
 
 "With ' damn me, you?- most humble servant, lady ;' 
 
 She knows these things as well as you, it may be ; 
 
 Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know 
 
 Her own deserts, — and your temptations too. 
 
 But to the point ■ — in this reforming age 
 
 We have intents to civilize the stage. 
 
 Our women are defective, and so sized, 
 
 You'd think they were some of the guard disguised ; 
 
 For to speak truth, men act, that are between 
 
 Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen ; 
 
 With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, 
 
 When you call Desdemona, enter giant. 
 
 We shall purge everything that is unclean, 
 
 Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene; 
 
 And when we've put all things in this fair way, 
 
 Barebones himself may come to see a play." * 
 
 The epilogue, " which consists of but twelve lines, is in 
 the same strain of apology." 
 
 "And how do you like her ; Come, what is't ye drive at ? 
 She's the same thing in public as in private, 
 As far from being what you call a whore, 
 As Desdemona injured by the Moor ; 
 Then he that censures her in such a case, 
 Hath a soul blacker than Othello's face. 
 But, ladies, what think you ? for if you tax 
 Her freedom with dishonour to your sex, 
 She means to act no more, and this shall be 
 No other play, but her own tragedy. 
 She will submit to none but your commands, 
 And take commission only from your hands." f 
 
 From the nature of this epilogue, and the permission accorded 
 by the ladies, the women actors appear to have met with all 
 the success they could wish ; yet a prologue to the second 
 part of Davenant's " Siege of Ehodes," acted in April, 1662, 
 
 * Malone, p. 135. f Ibid. p. 136. 
 
INFAMOUS CONDUCT OF THE EARL OF OXFORD. 239 
 
 shows us that the matter was still considered a delicate one 
 
 upwards of a year afterwards. 
 
 " Hope little from our poet's withered wit, 
 From infant players scarce grown puppets jet ; 
 Hope from our women less, whose bashful fear 
 Wondered to see me dare to enter here : 
 Each took her leave, and wished my danger past, 
 And though I came hack safe and undisgraced, 
 Yet when they spy the wits here, then I doubt 
 No amazon can make them venture out, 
 Though I advised them not to fear you much, 
 For I presume not half of you are such." * 
 
 It was in the Theatre at Vere Street that Pepys first saw a 
 woman on the stage.f One of the earliest female performers 
 mentioned by him was an actress whose name is not ascer- 
 tained, but who attained an unfortunate celebrity in the part 
 of Roxana in the " Siege of Rhodes." She was seduced by 
 Aubery de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford of that name, under 
 the guise of a private marriage — a species of villany which 
 made a great figure in works of fiction up to a late period. 
 The story is "got up" in detail by Madame Dunois, in her 
 " History of the Court of Charles II. ;" J but it is told with 
 more brevity in Grammont ; and as the latter, though apocry- 
 phal enough, pretends to say nothing on the subject in which 
 he is not borne out by other writers, his lively account may 
 be laid before the reader. 
 
 " The Earl of Oxford," says one of his heroines, "fell in love with 
 a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke's theatre, who 
 performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very 
 fashionable new play; insomuch that she ever after retained that 
 name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, 
 if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents 
 and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his 
 passion; he had recourse to invectives and even spells; but all in 
 vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he 
 could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his 
 passion at length became so violent, that he could neither play nor 
 smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of 
 Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very hand- 
 some man; he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an 
 air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you 
 would suppose he was really possessed of some sense; but as soon as 
 ever you hear him speak, you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. 
 This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in 
 due form, signed with his own hand; she would not, however, rely 
 
 * Malone, p. 136. f Memoirs, ut supra, vol. i., p. 167. 
 
 X Memoirs of the English Court in the Reign of Charles II., &c, 
 by the Countess of Dunois, part ii., p. 71. 
 
240 THE GERMAN PEINCEPS. 
 
 upon this; but the next day she thought there could be no danger, 
 when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergy- 
 man, and another man for a witness; the marriage was accordingly 
 solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her 
 fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will 
 suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to 
 appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl's arms 
 upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When exami- 
 nation was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere 
 deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord's 
 trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and 
 his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over, and as 
 for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the 
 Sultana Roxana might have supposed, in some part or other of a 
 play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the 
 poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man; 
 both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this 
 infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king's feet 
 to demand justice; she had only to rise up again without redress; 
 and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one 
 thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Eoxana, instead of 
 Countess of Oxford."* 
 
 This scoundrel Earl (whose alleged want of sense is 
 extremely probable, and was his best excuse, as well as the 
 worst thing to say for the lady), died full of years and honours, 
 and was buried in "Westminster Abbey. 
 
 In 1664, Mr. Pepys witnessed a scene in the theatre in 
 Portugal Street, which shows the extremity to which the 
 speculation of managers and the curiosity of the British 
 public can go. This was no other than the appearance of 
 an imposter, called the German Princess, in the part of her 
 own character, after having been tried for it at the Old 
 Bailey. She was tried for bigamy, and acquitted; but she 
 had inveigled a young citizen into marriage under pretence 
 of being a German Princess, the citizen pretending at the 
 same time to be a nobleman. The impudence of the thing 
 was completed by the badness of her performance. Granger, 
 however, who appears to have read a vindication of her, 
 which she published, thinks she had great natural abilities. 
 
 The following is curious : — 4th (Feb. 1666-7). 
 
 " Soon as dined,' says Pepys, iC my wife and I out to the Duke's 
 playhouse, and there saw Heraclius, an excellent play, to my extra- 
 ordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and 
 great company; among others Mrs. Stuart, f very fine, with her 
 locks done up in puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other 
 
 * Memoirs of Count Grammont, 8vo. 1811, vol. ii. p. 142. 
 f With whom Charles II. was in love — afterwards Duchess of 
 Richmond. 
 
TEE duke's theatre. 241 
 
 great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it, but my wife do 
 mightily; but it is only because she sees it is the fashion. Here I 
 saw my Lord Rochester * and his lady, Mrs. Mallet, who hath after 
 all this ado married him; and, as I hear some say in the pit, it is a 
 great act of charity, for he hath no estate. But it was pleasant to 
 see how everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of 
 Ormond's son, came into the pit, towards the end of the play, who 
 was a servant to Mrs. Mallett, and now smiled upon her, and she on 
 him."t 
 
 One little thinks, now-a-days, in turning into Portugal 
 Street, that all the fashionable world, with the wits and poets, 
 once thronged into that poor-looking thoroughfare, with its 
 bailiffs at one end, and its butchers at the other. The differ- 
 ence, however, between beaux and butchers was not so great 
 at that time as it became afterwards ; though none arrogated 
 the praise of high breeding more than the fine gentlemen of 
 Charles II. Next year Pepys speaks of a fray at this house 
 between Harry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham, in 
 which the latter beat him, and took away his sword. Another 
 time, according to his account, Rochester beat Tom Killigrew, 
 at the Dutch Ambassador's, and in the King's presence. 
 Blows from people of rank do not appear to have been 
 resented as they would be now. 
 
 In the following passage we have an author's first night 
 before us, and that author the gallant Etherege, with dukes 
 and wits about him in the pit. He makes, however, a very 
 different figure in our eyes from what we commonly conceive 
 of him, for he is unsuccessful and complaining. 
 
 "My wife," says Pepys, "being gone before (6th Feb. 1667-8), I 
 to the Duke of York's playhouse, where a new play of Etheridge's, 
 called ' She would if she could;' and, though I was there by two 
 o'clock, there was one thousand people put back that could not have 
 room in the pit ; and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift 
 to get into the 18c?. box, and there saw. But Lord! how full was the 
 house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good 
 in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat 
 mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The 
 play being done, I into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and 
 raining; but could not find her, and so staid, going between the two 
 doors and through the pit, an hour and a half, I think, after the play 
 was done, the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk 
 one with another. And among the rest here was the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my 
 Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet; the last of 
 whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were 
 
 * The famous wit and debauchee. 
 ;-> f Pcpvs' Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 136. 
 
242 MANNERS OF THE TIMES OP CHARLES H. 
 
 out of humour and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do 
 nothing, nor could so much as sing a catch in it; and so was mightily 
 concerned; while all the rest did through the whole pit blame the 
 play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish 
 and witty; but the design of the play and end mighty insipid. At 
 last I did find my wife." 
 
 The ensuing is a specimen of the manners of one of the fine 
 ladies : — 
 
 " 5th (May, 1668), Creed and I to the Duke of York's playhouse; 
 and there, coming late, up to the balcony -box, where we find my 
 Lady Castlemaine (the King's mistress) and several great ladies; and 
 there we sat with them, and I saw the ' Impertinents ' once more than 
 yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I find, the better too. By Sir 
 Positive At-all I understand is meant Sir Robert Howard. My lady 
 pretty well pleased with it; but here I sat close to her fine woman, 
 Wilson, who indeed is very handsome, but they say with child by the 
 King. I asked, and she told me this was the first time her lady had seen 
 it, I having a mind to say something to her. One thing of familiarity I 
 observed in my Lady Castlemaine ; she called to one of her women, 
 another that sat by tins, for a little patch off of her face, and put it 
 into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own by the 
 the side other mouth; I suppose she feeling a pimple rising there."* 
 
 More manners of this gallant reign. Pepys says he went 
 to see a woman with a great bushy beard, " which pleased 
 him mightily." 
 
 " Thence to the Duke's playhouse, and saw 'Macbeth.' The King 
 and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castle- 
 maine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose 
 gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so something. And my 
 wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I 
 never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as 
 they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York 
 minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; 
 but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in the box over the King and my 
 Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the King and he up to her; and 
 so did my Lady Castlemaine once to see who it was; but when she 
 saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire; which troubled me."t 
 
 Modes of thinking. Mr. Pepys is of opinion that the 
 "Tempest," which he saw at this house, is an "innocent" 
 play; "no great wit, but yet good above ordinary plays." 
 This appears to have been his general opinion of Shakspeare. 
 That year he says, 
 
 " After dinner to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw 
 ' Sir Martin Mar-all,' which I have seen so often, and yet am mightily 
 pleased with it, and think it mighty witty, and the fullest of proper 
 matter for mirth that was ever writ ; and I do clearly see that 
 they do improve in their acting of it. Here a mighty company of 
 citizens, 'prentices, and others ; and it makes me observe, that 
 
 * Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 99. f Id. p. 222. 
 
KYNASTON*S FEMALE CHARACTERS. 243 
 
 when I began first to be able to bestow a play on myself, I do 
 not remember that I saw so many by half of the ordinary 'pren- 
 tices and mean people in the pit, at 2s. 6c?. a piece, as now ; I 
 going for several years no higher than the 12c?. and then the 18c?. 
 places, though I strained hard to go in them when £ did : so 
 much the vanity and prodigality of the age is to be observed in 
 this particular." * 
 
 What he calls the vanity of the age, was one of the best 
 signs of its advancement. Plays, at the time above mentioned, 
 began as early as they did before the civil wars ; and when 
 they were over, people rode out in their coaches to take the 
 air. Our author, when the King visited the theatre, speaks 
 of being there by one o'clock to get a seat. Kynaston, a 
 favourite actor at this bouse, used to be taken out airing 
 by the ladies, in the dress which he wore as a female. Cib- 
 ber mentions this particular among others in an entertaining 
 account of Kynaston, whom the ladies do not appear to have 
 spoiled : — 
 
 "Though women," he says, ,w were not admitted to the stage till 
 the return of King Charles, 3-et it coald not be so suddenly supplied 
 with them, but that there was still a necessity, for some time, to put 
 the handsomest young men into petticoats, which Kynaston was then 
 said to have worn with success ; particularly in the part of Evadne, 
 in the 'Maid's Tragedy,' which I have heard him speak of; and 
 which calls to my mind a ridiculous distress that arose from these 
 sort of shifts, which the stage was then put to. The King, coming 
 a little before his usual time to a tragedy, found the actors not ready 
 to begin, when his Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience 
 as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it; upon 
 which the master of the company came to the box, and rightly judg- 
 ing that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly 
 told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet: the King, whose 
 good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted 
 the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen could be 
 effeminated. In a word, Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a 
 youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him 
 with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after 
 the play; which in those days they might have sufficient time to do, 
 because plays then were used to begin at four o'clock : the hour that 
 people of the same rank are now going to dinner. Of this truth I 
 had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own 
 mouth, in his advanced age : and, indeed, to the last of him, his 
 handsomeness was very little abated; even at past sixty his teeth 
 were sound, white and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning 
 toast of twenty. He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, 
 which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined 
 to, in a female decency. But even that, in characters of superiority, 
 had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon, in 
 
 * Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 2. 
 
 R 2 
 
244 BETTERTON. 
 
 Fletcher's ' Eule a Wife,' &c., which he executed with a determined 
 manliness, and honest authority, well worth the best actor's imita- 
 tion. He had a piercing eye, and, in characters of heroic life, a quick 
 imperious vivacity in his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly 
 terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone with 
 uncommon lustre ; in ' Aurengzebe ' he played Morat, and in ' Don 
 Sebastian,' Muley Moloch; in both these parts he had a fierce, lion- 
 like majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind 
 of trembling admiration." * 
 
 Pepys does not speak much of Betterton, the chief per- 
 former at the Portugal-street playhouse. The reason must 
 be, either that Betterton played chiefly in tragedy, or that 
 his comic talent (which is probable) was not equal to his 
 tragic. He was the great actor of his time, as Garrick was 
 of the last century, and Mr. Kean lately. His most admired 
 character appears to have been that of Hamlet ; though Steele, 
 in a paper to his memory in the c TatlerJ seems to have been 
 most impressed by his performance of Othello. If an actor's 
 Othello is really fine, perhaps it must be his best part, as in 
 Mr. Kean's instance, owing to the nature of the character. 
 Hamlet speaks to the reflecting part of us; Othello to the 
 sensitive. We will not present the reader with extracts from 
 Cibber which contain little respecting this actor that might 
 not be said of others; only it may be observed, that in the 
 better parts of the performances of the old players we have 
 something perhaps handed down to us of the manner of these 
 ancient ornaments of the stage. The liveliest idea remaining 
 of the genius of Betterton is furnished by an anecdote of 
 Booth, who, when he first performed the Ghost to Betterton's 
 Hamlet, is said to have been so astonished at the other's look 
 of surprise, that for some moments he was unable to speak. 
 Betterton died old and poor, rather, it should seem, from 
 misfortune than imprudence. The actors in those times, 
 though much admired, were not rewarded as they have been 
 since ; nor received anything like the modern salaries. His 
 death is said to have been hastened by tampering with the 
 gout, in order to perform on his benefit night. His person 
 was rather manly than graceful. He was a good-natured 
 man; and, like Moliere, would perform when he was ill, 
 rather than hinder the profits of his brother actors.f At 
 Caen Wood, Hampstead, the seat of Lord Mansfield, there is 
 a portrait of him by Pope, who was an amateur in painting. 
 They became acquainted when the latter was young, and the 
 
 * Cibber's Apology, chap, v., &c. f See Tatler, No. 167. 
 
NOKES. — MRS, BARRY. — MRS. MOUNTFORD. 245 
 
 actor old ; and took such a liking to one another, that Pope is 
 supposed to have had a hand in a volume of pieces from 
 * Chaucer,' purporting to have been modernised by Bet- 
 terton. 
 
 Another celebrated actor in Portugal Street during the 
 reign of Charles II. was Nokes, who appears, from Cibber's 
 account of him to have been something between Liston and 
 Munden. By a line in one of Dry den's Epistles, the town 
 seem to have thought a comedy deficient in which he did not 
 make his appearance. The poet says to Southern on his play 
 of the ' Wives' Excuse ' — 
 
 " The hearers may for want of Nokes repine, 
 But rest secure, the readers will be thine." 
 
 Nokes was one of those actors who create a roar the moment 
 they are seen, and make people ache with laughter. 
 
 These were among the older performers in Portugal Street. 
 When Congreve took a share in the theatre, some others had 
 joined it, and become celebrated, two of whom, Mr. Mountford 
 "and Mrs. Bracegirdle, we have already described. Another 
 two, whose names remain familiar with posterity, are Mrs. 
 Mountford and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Mountford was a capital 
 stage coquette ; besides being able to act male coxcombs and 
 country dowdies. Mrs. Barry was a fine tragedian, both of 
 the heroic and tender cast. Dryden pronounced her the best 
 actress he had seen. It is said she was a mistress of Lord 
 Eochester's when young ; that it was to her his love-letters 
 were addressed ; and that she owed her celebrity to his 
 instructions. She was not handsome, and her mouth was a 
 little awry, but her countenance was very expressive. This 
 is the actress, who, in the delirium of her last moments, is 
 said to have alluded in an extempore blank verse to a 
 manoeuvre played by Queen Anne's ministry some time 
 before : — 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! and so they make us lords by dozens ! " 
 
 Cibber's sketch of Mrs. Mountford, in the character of 
 Melantha is the masterpiece of his book, and presents a por- 
 trait sufficiently distinct to be extracted. 
 
 " Melantha," says our lively critic (himself a coxcomb of the first 
 water), " is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing- 
 room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female 
 foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a 
 fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul and body, are 
 in a continual hurry to do something more than is necessary or com- 
 mendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you 
 
2i6 congreve's plays. 
 
 a just likeness of Mrs. Mountford's action, yet the fantastic impression 
 is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, 
 though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that break 
 from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a 
 letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces, as an 
 honourable lover. Here now, one would think, she might naturally 
 show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly 
 covered. No, sir, not a tittle of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor- 
 souled country gentlewoman; she is too much a court lady to be 
 under so vulgar a confusion; she reads the letter, therefore, with a 
 careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, 
 as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making 
 a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter might not 
 embarrass her attack, crack ! she scrambles it at once into her palm, 
 and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion ; 
 down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if she were 
 sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then launches 
 into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest 
 forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and 
 to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, 
 that she will not give her lover leave to praise it: silent assenting 
 bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conver- 
 sation he is admitted to, which, at last, he is relieved from, by her 
 engagements to half-a-score visits, which she swims from him to 
 make, with a promise to return in a twinkling." * 
 
 Three of Congreve's plays, l Love for Love,' the 'Mourning 
 Bride,'' and the ' Way of the Worldf came out at the theatre 
 in Portugal Street. In the first paper of the l Tatlerf Steele 
 gives a criticism on the performance of c Love for Lovef which 
 contains one or two curious points of information respecting 
 the customs of play-goers in the reign of Anne. The " article" 
 begins like that of a modern newspaper. 
 
 ?' On Thursday last was acted, for the benefit of Mr. Betterton, the 
 celebrated comedy called ' Love for Love.' Those excellent players, 
 Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mr. Dogget, though not at present 
 concerned in the house, acted on that occasion. There has not been 
 known so great a concourse of persons of distinction as at that time : 
 the stage itself was covered with gentlemen and ladies; and when the 
 curtain was drawn, it discovered even there a very splendid audience. 
 This unusual encouragement, which was given to a play for the 
 advantage of so great an actor, gives an undeniable instance that the 
 true relish for manly entertainments and rational pleasures is not 
 wholly lost. All the parts were acted to perfection : the actors were 
 careful of their carriage, and no one was guilty of the affectation to 
 insert witticism of his own; but a due respect was had to the audience 
 for encouraging this accomplished player. It is not now doubted but 
 plays will revive, and take their usual course in the opinion of persons 
 of wit and merit, notwithstanding their late apostacy in favour of 
 dress and sound. The place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden 
 
 * Cibber's Apology, 2d edit. p. 138, 
 
RICH. — CAREY STREET. — MRS. CHAPONE. 247 
 
 frequented it; where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires, in 
 the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; 
 and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance 
 of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the 
 truth of the game." 
 
 The last proprietor of this theatre was Rich, the famous 
 harlequin, who, having, a poor company, unable to compete 
 with Drury Lane, introduced that love of show and spectacle 
 which has ever since been willing to forego the regular 
 drama, however reproached by the critics. Pope has hitched 
 him into the i Dunciad,' (book iii.), as one of the ministers of 
 Dulness. 
 
 '• Immortal Rich ! how calm he sits at ease, 
 'Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; 
 And proud his mistress' order to perform, 
 Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 
 
 He had the merit, however, of producing the 'Beggar's 
 Opera,' which was acted scores of nights together all over 
 England, and finally rendered its heroine a duchess, and is 
 said to have made " Gay Rich, and Rich Gay." Rich had 
 no education. He was in the habit, when conversing, of 
 saying mister, instead of sir. 
 
 One of Rich's actors was Quin, of whom more by and by. 
 Garrick was never at this theatre. It closed a little before 
 his time, and was never reopened. The vulgar attributed its 
 desertion to a supernumerary devil, who made his appearance 
 in the pantomine of ' Harlequin and Dr. FaustusJ and took 
 his exit through the roof instead of the door; which so 
 frightened the manager that he had not the courage to open 
 the theatre again. The only memorial now remaining in 
 Portugal Street of theatres and play-goers, and all their lively 
 generation, is a table set up in the burial-ground to the 
 memory of the famous Joe Miller, author of so many posthu- 
 mous good things. He was an actor in Congreve's time, and 
 has the reputation of having been an honest, as well as a 
 pleasant fellow. The jest-book, which passes for his publi- 
 cation, was collected by a companion of his, who is thought to 
 have owed to him nothing but his name. It is but reasonable 
 to conclude, however, that many of the jests were of the 
 comedian's relating. 
 
 In Carey Street, when she was first married, lived Mrs. 
 Chapone. She afterwards resided in Arundel Street. When 
 we have no greater names to mention, we think it our duty 
 to avail ourselves of those of any intelligent and amiable 
 
248 HISTORY AND SPECIMENS 
 
 persons who are really worth mention, though they may not 
 be of the first order. They will be welcome to the inhabitants 
 of the street, and perhaps serve to throw a grace over neigh- 
 bourhoods that want it. It is better to think of Mrs. Chapone 
 in going along Carey Street, than of bailiffs and lock-up 
 houses — unless, indeed the latter should make us zealous to 
 reform the debtor and creditor laws ; and even then we might 
 be glad of the refreshment. Mrs. Chapone was one of the 
 disciples of Richardson, and is well known for her ' Letters on 
 the Improvement of the Mind.'' Ten months after her marriage 
 she lost her husband, to whom she was greatly attached, and 
 then she left Carey Street ; so that the pleasantest part of her 
 life was probably spent there. 
 
 Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's 
 Inn Fields, the property of the Earls of Clare, one of whom 
 built the market about the year 1657. He is said to have 
 lived close by, in a style of magnificence. The names of the 
 family, Denzel, Holies, &c, are retained in some of the 
 neighbouring streets. 
 
 Clare Market became notorious in the time of Pope, for 
 the extravagance of Orator Henley, a clever, but irregular- 
 minded man, who overrated himself, and became, it may be 
 said, mad with impudence. Some describe his Oratory as 
 being in the Market, others in Duke Street, which is the 
 street going out of the western side of Lincoln's Inn Square 
 through the archway. Another writer says it was the old 
 theatre of Sir William Davenant, in Gibbon's Tennis Court, 
 of which we have just spoken, and which is said to have 
 been in Vere Street. Most likely all these accounts are to be 
 reconciled. A tenement is often described as existing in a 
 certain street, when the street presents nothing but a passage 
 to it ; and we take Henley's Oratory to have been the old 
 theatre, with a passage to it from the market, from Vere 
 Street, and from Duke Street. Having settled this magni- 
 ficent point, we proceed with the no less magnificent orator. 
 
 He was a native of Melton Mowbray, in the county of 
 Leicester, the son of a clergyman, and after going to St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, returned to his native place, and 
 became master of the school there. 
 
 " reefing, or fancying," says the author of the ' Lounger's Common- 
 place Book/ "that a genius like his ought not to be buried in so 
 obscure a situation, having been long convinced that many gross 
 errors and impostures prevailed in the various institutions and esta- 
 blishments of mankind ; being also ambitious of restoring ancient 
 
OF ORATOR HENLEY. 24.9 
 
 eloquence, but as his enemies asserted, to avoid the scandalous 
 embarrassments of illicit love, he repaired to the metropolis, and for 
 a short time performed clerical functions at St. John's Chapel, near 
 Bedford Kow, with the prospect of succeeding to the lectureship of 
 an adjoining parish (Bloomsbury), which soon became vacant. 
 
 "Several candidates offering for this situation, a warm contest 
 ensued; probation sermons were preached; and Henley's predomi- 
 nating vanity made him expect an easy victory. 
 
 " We may guess at his disappointment, when this disciple of 
 Demosthenes and Cicero was informed that the congregation had no 
 objection to his language or his doctrine, but that he threw himself 
 about too much in the pulpit, and that another person was chosen. 
 
 "Losing his temper as well as his election, he rushed into a room 
 where the principal parishioners were assembled, and thus addressed 
 them, in all the vehemence of outrageous passion : — 
 
 " ' Blockheads ! are you qualified to judge of the degree of action 
 necessary for a preacher of God's word ? Were you able to read, or 
 had you sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the 
 renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you, almost the only 
 requisite of a public speaker was action, action, action. 
 
 " ' But I despise and defy you ; provoco ad populum ; the public 
 shall decide between us/ He then hastily retired, and, to vindicate 
 his injured fame, published the probationary discourse he had 
 delivered. 
 
 " Thus disappointed in the regular routine of his profession, he 
 became a quack divine ; for this character he was eminently qualified, 
 possessing a strong voice, fluent language, an imposing magisterial 
 air, and a countenance, which no violation of propriety, reproach, or 
 self-correction, was ever known to embarrass or discompose. 
 
 "He immediately advertised that he should hold forth publicly, 
 two days in the week, and hired for this purpose, a large room in or 
 near Newport Market, which he called the Oratory ; but previous to 
 the commencement of his ' academical discourses,' he chose to consult 
 Mr. Whiston, a learned clergyman of considerable mathematical and 
 astronomical research, but who had rendered himself remarkable by 
 eccentric simplicity of heart, and the whimsical heterodoxy of his 
 creed. 
 
 " In a letter to this gentleman he desired to be informed, whether 
 he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from 
 the Church of England. Mr. Whiston did not encourage Henley's 
 project, and a correspondence took place, which, ending in virulence 
 and ill-language, produced, a few years after, the following letter : — 
 
 " < To Mr. William Whiston, 
 1 Take notice, that I give you warning not to enter my room in 
 Newport Market, at your peril. * John Henley.' "* 
 
 Henley succeeded in his speculation, by lecturing, in the 
 most important manner, on all sorts of subjects, from the 
 origin of evil down to a shoe. He also published a variety 
 of pamphlets, and a periodical farrago called the ' Hyp 
 Doctor,' for which he is said to have had pay from Sir 
 * «» Lounger's Common Place Book," vol. ii., p. 137. 
 
250 HISTORY AND SPECIMENS 
 
 Robert Walpole ; and as his popularity rapidly increased in 
 consequence of his addressing himself to uneducated under- 
 standings, he removed from his Oratory in Newport Market 
 to the more capacious room in Clare Market ; for he seems to 
 have had a natural propensity to the society of butchers, 
 and they were fond of his trenchant style. He sometimes 
 threatened his enemies with them. Pope, in answering the 
 assertions of those who charged him with depriving people of 
 their bread, asks whether Colley Cibber had not " still his 
 lord," and Henley his butchers. 
 
 " And has not Colley still his lord 
 
 His butchers Henley, his freemasons Moore." 
 
 Pope had been attacked by him. The poet speaks of him 
 again, several times, in the ' Dunciad :' 
 
 " Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo ! Henley stands, 
 Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands. 
 How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue ! 
 How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung ! 
 Still break the benches, Henley ! with thy strain, 
 While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain. 
 O great restorer of the good old stage, 
 Preacher at once and zany of the age ! 
 O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes, 
 A decent priest where monkeys were the gods." 
 
 Book iii., v. 199. 
 
 Pope says he had a " gilt tub," and insinuates that he 
 sometimes got drunk. Among the sleeping worthies in the 
 * Dunciad,' 
 
 " Henley lay inspired beside a sink, 
 
 And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink." 
 
 A contemporary journalist, who says that the fame of 
 Henley induced him to be present at one of the lectures in 
 Newport Market, describes him as entering like a harlequin 
 by a door behind the pulpit, and " at one large leap jumping 
 into it, and falling to work." " His notions," he says, " the 
 orator beat into the audience with hands, arms, legs, and 
 head, as if people's understandings were to be courted and 
 knocked down with blows." The price of admission was a 
 shilling. The following are samples of Henley's extraordinary 
 advertisements : — 
 
 " At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour 
 after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch ol Endor. At half-an-hour 
 after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and 
 original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians ; 
 St. Andrew's relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of 
 the Apostles, 
 
OF ORATOR HENLEY. 251 
 
 " On Wednesday, at six, or near the matter, take your chance, will 
 be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion, 
 and of confounders, in the road and out of the way. 
 
 " On Friday, will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus, and 
 conjuration ; after each, the Chimes of the Times, No. 23 and 24. 
 N.B. Whenever the prices of the seats are occasionally raised in the 
 week days, notice will be given of it in the prints. An account of 
 the performances of the Oratory from the 1st of August is published, 
 with the Discourse on Nonsense ; and if any bishop, clergyman, or 
 other subject of his Majesty, or the subject of any foreign prince or 
 state, can at my years, and in my circumstances and opportunities, 
 'without the least assistance or any patron in the world, parallel the 
 study, choice, variety, and discharge of the said performances of the 
 Oratory by his own or any others, I will engage forthwith to quit the 
 said Oratory. 
 
 "J.Henley."* 
 
 In the bill of fare issued for Sunday, September 28, 1729, 
 the most extraordinary theological speculations are followed 
 by a list of the fashions in dress. 
 
 "At the Oratory, the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, near Clare 
 Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten : 1. The postil will be 
 on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. 2. The sermon will 
 be on the necessary power and attractive force which religion gives 
 the spirit of a man with God and good spirits. 
 
 "II. At five : 1. The postil will be on this point: in what language 
 our Saviour will speak the last sentence on mankind. 2. The 
 lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of God ; 
 where that is ; the honours and lustre of his inauguration ; the 
 learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article. 
 
 " The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday, 
 the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of 
 family pictures in all ages ; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold ; shoes, wedding- 
 shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pan- 
 taloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, 
 tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minikins, slammakins, ruffles, round 
 robins, toilets, fans, patches ; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the 
 wit and beauty of my grannum ; Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared 
 with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy ; fine ladies, and pretty gentle- 
 women ; being a general view of the beau monde, from before Noah's 
 flood to the year 29. On Friday will be something better than last 
 Tuesday. After each, a bob at the times." f 
 
 Henley must have lectured a long while ; for one of his 
 " bobs at the times" was occasioned by the dismissal of 
 Dr. Cobden, a chaplain to George II. in the year 1748, for 
 preaching from the following text : " Take away the wicked 
 from before the king, and his throne shall be established in 
 righteousness." The wicked, we believe, meant the king's 
 
 * Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London 
 during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i„ p. 417, 
 f Malcolm, et seq., p. 421. 
 
252 ORATOR HENLEY. 
 
 mistresses. Next Saturday, Henley's advertisement appeared 
 with an epigram on this text for a motto :— 
 
 " Away with the wicked before the king, 
 And away with the wicked behind him ; 
 
 His throne it will bless 
 
 With righteousness, 
 And we shall know where to find him." 
 
 This must be what the reviewers call a " favourable 
 specimen." 
 
 "Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of 
 his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye ; on these 
 occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and 
 resentment ; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate 
 interloper in words to the following effect : ' You see, sir, all mankind 
 are not exactly of your opinion ; there are, you perceive, a few 
 sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified 
 for the office I have undertaken.' 
 
 " His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public 
 company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire 
 precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's 
 partizans." * 
 
 It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes 
 necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, 
 though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. 
 He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing 
 that he could teach them a method of making shoes with 
 wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the 
 tops of old boots. His motto to the advertisement (omne 
 majus continet in se minus, the greater includes the less) had a 
 pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor 
 shoemakers doubly ludicrous. 
 
 Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the 
 custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the dis- 
 pleasure of the House of Lords. " Lord Chesterfield, at that 
 time secretary of state," says the c Lounger,' " amused himself 
 and his associates in office by sporting with the hopes and 
 fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence ; during his exami- 
 nation before the privy council, he requested permission to 
 sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended 
 rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his 
 eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his ques- 
 tions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the 
 laugh he had himself created. 
 
 * Lounger's Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 139. 
 
DUKE STREET AND LITTLE WILD STREET. 253 
 
 " The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of 
 ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion 
 raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, ' I thought there 
 was no harm, my Lord, in cracking a joke on a red-herring :' alluding 
 to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, 
 had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy. 
 
 " Many disrespectful and unwarrantable expressions he had applied 
 to persons high in office, being mentioned to him, he answered, with- 
 out embarrassment, ' My Lords, I must live.' 
 
 " * I see no kind of reason for that,' said Lord Chesterfield, ' but 
 many against it.' The council were pleased, and laughed at the 
 retort ; the prisoner, somewhat irritated, observed, ' That is a good 
 thing, but it has been said before.' 
 
 " A few days after, being reprimanded for his improper conduct, 
 and cautioned against repeating it, he was dismissed, as an impudent, 
 but entertaining fellow."* 
 
 To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for 
 his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian ; over it the 
 motto, Ad summa (to the height), and below, Inveniam viam 
 aut faciam (I will find a way or make one). As might be 
 expected, he found no way at last, but that of falling into 
 contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to make 
 money by his vagaries ; and his manners, probably in 
 consequence, became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. 
 His person makes a principal figure in two humorous plates, 
 attributed to Hogarth. 
 
 Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, 
 as illustrious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person 
 of Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, 
 worked in the printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, 
 and lodged in the former. When he came to England after- 
 wards, as the agent of Massachusetts, he went into this office, 
 " and going up," says his biography, "to a particular press 
 [now in America], thus addressed the two workmen : l Come, 
 my friends, we will drink together : it is now forty years 
 since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman 
 printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him 
 during this period, which, besides containing more than one 
 curious local particular, is highly worth the attention of 
 those who confound stimulus with vigour. 
 
 "After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at 
 Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the 
 printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he 
 continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British 
 metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in 
 
 * Lounger's Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 141. 
 
254 ANECDOTES OF FRANKLIH. 
 
 Duke Street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which he paid at his 
 old rate of three and sixpence weekly, and received no new impres- 
 sions in favour of Christians from his occasional notices of the Romish 
 superstitions in this family and neighbourhood. His landlady was a 
 clergyman's daughter, who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Pro- 
 testantism, and became acquainted with several distinguished families 
 of that persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each 
 other's society. He kept good hours, and she was too lame generally to 
 leave her room; frugality was the habit of both; half an anchovy, a 
 small slice of bread and butter each, with half a pint of ale between 
 them, furnished commonly their supper. So well pleased was the widow 
 with her inmate, that when Franklin talked of removing to another 
 house, where he could obtain the same accommodation as with her 
 for two shillings per week, she became generous in his favour, and 
 abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her more 
 during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole time he 
 continued in London. In the attic, was a maiden Catholic lady, by 
 choice and habit a nun. She had been sent early in life to the Con- 
 tinent to take the veil; but the climate disagreeing with her health, 
 she returned home; devoted her small estate to charitable purposes, 
 with the exception of about I2l. a-year; practised confession daily; 
 and lived entirely on water-gruel. Her presence was thought a 
 blessing to the house, and several of its tenants in succession had 
 charged her no rent. Her room contained a mattress, table, crucifix, 
 and stool, as its only furniture. She admitted the occasional visits 
 of Franklin and her landlady ; was cheerful, he says, and healthful : 
 and while her superstition moved his compassion, he felt confirmed 
 in his frugality by her example, and exhibits it in his journal as 
 another proof of the possibiblity of supporting life, health, and cheer- 
 fulness on very small means. 
 
 " During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr. "Watts, he 
 worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had 
 their five pints of porter each, per day; and his strength was superior 
 to theirs. He ridiculed the verbal iogic of strong beer being neces- 
 sary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt 
 liquor could only be in proportion to the quantity of flour or actual 
 grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a pennyworth of bread must 
 have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water- American, as he 
 was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this 
 case, being clearly better than his philosophy.* 
 
 * "For," says the note, "while the mucilaginous qualities of porter 
 may form one criterion of the nourishment it yields, it does not follow 
 that mere nourishment is or ought to be the only consideration in a 
 labouring man's use of malt liquor, or any other aliment. It is well 
 known that flesh-meats yield chyle in greater abundance than any 
 production of the vegetable kingdom; but Franklin would not have 
 considered this any argument for living wholly upon meat. The fact 
 is, that the stimulating quality of all fermented liquors (when moder- 
 ately taken) is an essential part of the refreshment, and therefore of 
 the strength they yield. 
 
 * We curse not wine — the vile excess we blame.' " 
 [To this Franklin might have answered, that the want of stimulus is 
 
ANECDOTES OF FRANKLIN. 255 
 
 "Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of 
 the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the 
 so-called chapel-\a,vrs of the printing office ; resisted what he thought 
 the impositions, while he conciliated the respect of his fellow- workmen; 
 and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to 
 which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes 
 largely indebted. He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life: — 
 ' On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I 
 had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in 
 America, where the printers work alternately, as compositors and at 
 the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the 
 number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occa- 
 sionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, 
 while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised 
 to see by this and many other examples, that the American aquatic, 
 as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. 
 The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in 
 serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a 
 pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for break- 
 fast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about 
 six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his 
 day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had 
 need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work. 
 
 " '1 endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished 
 by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley 
 dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there 
 was a larger portion of flour in a penny -loaf, and that, consequently, 
 if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water, he would derive more 
 strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, 
 did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, 
 and paying every Saturday night a score of four or five shillings 
 a-week for this cursed beverage ; an expense from which I was 
 wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in 
 a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty. 
 
 " ' My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their 
 abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they pro- 
 cured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm 
 gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and 
 nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more 
 than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time 
 
 generally produced by a previous abuse of it, and that the having 
 recourse to fermented liquors is likely to continue the abuse, whatever 
 may be said about moderation. The moderation is so difficult, that 
 it is better to abstain than to hazard it. It is true (not to quote the 
 words irreverently) "man does not live by bread alone," but by 
 sociality and good-humour; and that even a little excess occasionally 
 is not to be narrowly considered; but for the purposes of labour we 
 may surely gather from the recorded experience of those who have 
 laboured most, whether physically or mentally, first, that the more 
 temperate our habits, the more we can perform; and, secondly, that 
 an habitual abstinence from some kinds of refreshment is the only 
 way to secure thein.} 
 
256 
 
 ANECDOTES OP FHANEXlN. 
 
 preserved the head clearer. Those who continued to gorge them- 
 selves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from 
 neglecting to pay their score. They had then recourse to me to 
 become security for them, their light, as they used to call it, being out. 
 I attended at the table every Saturday evening to take up the little 
 sums which I had made myself answerable for, and which sometimes 
 amounted to near thirty shillings a- week. 
 
 '• * This circumstance, added to the reputation of my being a 
 tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, skilful in the art of bur- 
 lesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had, besides, recom- 
 mended myself to the esteem of my master by nvy assiduous application 
 to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary 
 quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most 
 urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed 
 away in a very pleasant manner.' " * 
 
 * Life of Benjamin Franklin, 1826, p. 31. 
 
 WHS PRINTING PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORXBTfc 
 
DRURY LANE. 
 
 "a 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DRURY LANE, AND THE TWO THEATRES IN DRURY 
 LANE AND COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 •raven House — Donne and his vision — Lord Craven and the Queen 
 of Bohemia — Nell Gwynn — Drury Lane Theatre — Its antiquity, 
 different eras, and rebuildings — The principal theatre of Dryden, 
 Wycherley, Farquhar, Steele, Garrick, and Sheridan — Old Drury 
 in the time of Charles II. — A visit to it — Pepys and his theatrical 
 gossip, with notes — Hart and Mohun — Goodman — Nell Gwynn — 
 Dramatic taste of that age — Booth — Artificial tragedy — Wilks and 
 Cibber — Bullock and Penkethman — A Colonel enamoured of 
 Cibber's wig — Mrs. Oldfield — Her singular position in society — Not 
 the Flavia of the Tatler — Pope's account of her last words pro- 
 bably not true — Declamatory acting — Lively account of Garrick 
 and Quin by Mr. Cumberland — Improvement of stage costume — 
 King — Mrs. Pritchard — Mrs. Ciive — Mrs. Woffington — Covent 
 Garden — Barry — Contradictory characters of him by Davies and 
 Churchill — Macklin — Woodward — Pantomime — English taste in 
 music — Cooke — Rise of actors and actresses in social rank — Im- 
 provement of the audience — Dr. Johnston at the theatre — Churchill 
 a great pit critic — His Rosciad — His picture of Mossop — Mrs. 
 Jordan and Mr. Suett — Early recollections of a play-goer. 
 
 RURY LANE takes its name from "the 
 habitation of the great family of the 
 Druries," built, " I believe," says Pen- 
 nant, " by Sir William Drury, knight of 
 the garter, a most able commander in 
 the Irish wars, who unfortunately fell 
 in a duel with Sir John Burroughs, in a 
 foolish quarrel about precedency. Sir 
 Robert, his son, was a great patron of Dr. Donne, and 
 assigned to him apartments in his house. I cannot learn 
 into whose hands it passed afterwards. During the time of 
 the fatal discontents of the favourite, Essex, it was the place 
 where his imprudent advisers resolved on such counsels as 
 terminated in the destruction of him and his adherents." * 
 
 Drury House stood at the corner of Drury Lane and Wych 
 Street, upon the ground now included in Craven Buildings 
 in the one thoroughfare, and the Olympic Pavilion in the 
 other. 
 
 Pennant proceeds to say, that it was occupied in the next 
 century by " the heroic William Lord Craven, afterwards 
 
 * P. 160, 
 
258 CRAVEN HOUSE. 
 
 Earl Craven," who rebuilt it in the form standing in his 
 time. He describes it as "a large brick pile," — a public- 
 
 CRAVEN HOUSE. 
 
 house with the sign of the Queen of Bohemia, — a head which 
 still mystifies people in some parts of the country. The 
 remains were taken down in 1809, and the Olympic Pavilion 
 built on part of the site. But the public-house was only a 
 portion of it. 
 
 Who would suppose, in going by the place now, that it was 
 once the habitation of wit and elegance, of a lord and a queen, 
 and of more than one "romance of real life?" Yet the 
 passenger acquainted with the facts can never fail to be 
 impressed by them, especially by the romantic history of 
 Donne. This master of profound fancies (whom Dryden pro- 
 nounced " the greatest wit, though not the best poet," of our 
 nation) had in his youth led a gay imprudent life, which left 
 him poor. He became secretary to Lord Chancellor Elles- 
 mere, and fell in love with his lordship's niece, then residing 
 in the house, daughter to a Sir George Moor or More, who, 
 though Donne was of an ancient family, was very angry, and 
 took the young lady away into the country. The step, how- 
 ever, was too late ; for, the passion being mutual, a private 
 marriage had taken place. The upshot was, that Sir George 
 would have nothing to say to the young couple, and that they 
 fell into great distress. After a time, Sir Robert Drury, a 
 man of large fortune, who possessed the mansion above 
 described, invited Donne and his wife to live with him, and 
 this too in a spirit that enabled all parties to be the better for 
 
DONNE AND HIS VISION. 259 
 
 it. But for thi,s, and the curious story connected with it, we 
 shall have recourse to the pages of our angling friend Walton, 
 who was a good fellow enough when he was not " handling 
 a worm as if he loved him." 
 
 " Sir Kobert Drury," says Walton, " a gentleman of a very noble 
 estate, and a more liberal mind, assigned him and his wife an useful 
 apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent 
 free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as 
 sympathised with him and his, m all their joy and sorrows. 
 
 "At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living in Sir Robert's 
 house, the Lord Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious em- 
 bassy to the then French King, Henry IV., and Sir Robert put on a 
 sudden resolution to accompany him to the French Court, and to be 
 present at his audience there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden reso- 
 lution to solicit Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. 
 And this desire was suddenly made known to his wife, who was then 
 with child, and otherwise under so dangerous a habit of body as to 
 her health, that she professed an unwillingness to allow him any 
 absence from her; saying, ' her divining soul boded her some ill in his 
 absence,' and, therefore, desired him not to leave her. This made 
 Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of his journey, and really to resolve 
 against it. But Sir Robert became restless in his persuasions for it, 
 and Mr. Donne was so generous as to think he had sold his liberty 
 when he received so many charitable kindnesses from him, and told 
 his wife so; who did, therefore, with an unwilling-willingness, give 
 a faint consent to the journey, which was proposed to be but for two 
 months ; for about that time they determined their return. Within 
 a few days after this resolve, the ambassador, Sir Robert, and Mr. 
 Donne, left London ; and were the twelfth day got all safe to Paris. 
 Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that 
 room, in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined 
 together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; 
 and as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but in such an ecstacy 
 and so altered in his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him; 
 insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had 
 befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne 
 was not able to make a present answer; but, after a long and per- 
 plexed pause, did at last say, ' I have seen a dreadful vision since I 
 saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me in this room, 
 with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her 
 arms : this I have seen since I saw you.' To which Sir Robert 
 replied, ' Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and this is the 
 result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for 
 you are now awake.' To which Mr. Donne's reply was, ' I cannot 
 be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you ; 
 and am as sure, that at her second appearing she stopped and looked 
 me in the face, and vanished.' Rest and sleep had not altered Mr. 
 Donne's opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this vision with 
 a more deliberate, and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir 
 Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true. It is truly said, 
 that desire and doubt have no rest ; and it proved so with Sir Robert; 
 tor he immediately sent a servant to Drewry House, with a charge to 
 
 s 2 
 
L v JO DONNE AND HIS VISION. 
 
 hasten back, and bring him word, whether Mrs. Donne were alive; 
 and, if alive, in what condition she was in as to her health. The 
 twelfth day the messenger returned with this account : — That he 
 found and left Mrs. Donne very sad, and sick in her bed; and that, 
 after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead 
 child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the same 
 day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her 
 pass by him in his chamber. 
 
 "This is a relation," continues "Walton, "that will beget some 
 wonder, and it well may ; for most of our world are at present 
 possessed with a»> opinion, that visions and miracles are ceased. And, 
 though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and tuned 
 to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other that is not 
 touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance will — like an echo 
 to a trumpet — warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same 
 tune; yet many will not believe that there is any such thing as the 
 sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy 
 his own opinion. But if the unbelieving will not allow the believing 
 reader of this story a liberty to believe that it may be true, then I 
 wish him to consider, that many wise men have believed that the ghost 
 of Julius Caesar did appear to Brutus, and that both St. Austin, and 
 Monica his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And 
 though these, and many others — too many to name — have but the 
 authority of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the 
 sacred story, that Samuel, &c." * 
 
 We may here break off with the observation of Mr. Chal- 
 mers, that " the whole may be safely left to the judgment of 
 the reader."")* Walton says he had not this story from Donne 
 himself, but from a " Person of Honour," who " knew more 
 of the secrets of his heart than any person then living," 
 and who related it " with such circumstance and asseve- 
 ration," that not to say anything of bis hearer's belief, 
 Walton did " verily believe," that the gentleman " himself 
 believed it." 
 
 The biographer then presents us with some verses which 
 " were given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time he then 
 parted from her," and which he " begs leave to tell us " that 
 he has heard some critics, learned both in languages and 
 poetry, say, that " none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever 
 equal." 
 
 These lines are full of the wit that Dryden speaks of, hor- 
 ribly misused to osbcure the most beautiful feelings. Some 
 of them are among the passages quoted in Dr. Johnson to 
 illustrate the faults of the metaphysical school. Mr. Chal- 
 mers and others have thought it probable, that it was upon 
 
 * Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, kc. oy 
 Izaac Walton, 1825, p. 22. 
 
 | Life of Donne, in Chalmers's " British Boets," 
 
DONNE AND HIS VISION. 261 
 
 this occasion Donne wrote a set of verses, which he addressed 
 to his wife, on her proposing to accompany him abroad as a 
 page ; but as the writer speaks of going to Italy, which 
 appears to have been out of the question in this two months' 
 visit to Paris, they most probably belong to some other jour- 
 ney or intended journey, the period of which is unknown. 
 The numbers of these verses are sometimes rugged, but they 
 are full of as much nature and. real feeling, as sincerity 
 ever put into a true passion. There is an awfulness in the 
 commencing adjuration : — 
 
 " By our first strange and fatal interview, 
 By all desires which thereof did ensue; 
 By our long striving hopes; by that remorse 
 Which my words' masculine persuasive force 
 Begot in thee, and by the memory 
 Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me, 
 I calmly beg : but by thy father's wrath, 
 By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 
 I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I 
 And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, 
 I here unswear, and overs wear them thus: 
 Thou shalt not love by means so dangerous. 
 Temper, O fair Love! love's impetuous rage; 
 Be my true mistress, not my feigned page. 
 I'll go; and by thy kind leave, leave behind 
 Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind 
 Thirst to come back. ! if thou die before, 
 My soul from other lands to thee shall soar: 
 Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move 
 Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 
 Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness : thou hast read 
 How roughly he in pieces shivered 
 Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved. 
 Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved 
 Dangers unurged : feed on this flattery, 
 That absent lovers one in the other be; 
 Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change 
 Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange 
 To thyself only: all will spy in thy face 
 A blushing womanly discovering grace. 
 * * * * • 
 
 When I am gone dream me some happiness, 
 Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; 
 Nor praise nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse 
 Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse 
 With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh! oh! 
 Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go 
 O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 
 Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, fall, and die. 
 Augur me better chance; except dread Jove 
 Think it enough for me to have had thy love." 
 
262 LOED CRAVEN AND 
 
 Drury House, when rebuilt by Lord Craven, took the 
 Dame of Craven House. To this abode, at the restoration of 
 Charles II., his lordship brought his royal mistress, the 
 Queen of Bohemia, to whose interest he had devoted his 
 fortunes, and to whom he is supposed to have been secretly 
 wedded. She was daughter to James L, and, with the 
 reluctant consent of her parents (particularly of her mother, 
 who used to twit her with the title of Goody Palsgrave), was 
 married to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, for whom the 
 Protestant interest in Germany erected Bohemia into a 
 kingdom, in the vain hope, with the assistance of his father- 
 in-law, of competing with the Catholic Emperor. Frederic 
 lost everything, and his widow became a dependent on the 
 bounty of this Lord Craven, a nobleman of wealthy com- 
 mercial stock, who had fought in her husband's cause, and 
 helped to bring up her children. It is through her that the 
 family of Brunswick succeeded to the throne of this kingdom, 
 as the next Protestant heirs of James I. James's daughter, 
 being a woman of lively manners, a queen, and a Protestant 
 leader, excited great interest in her time, and received more 
 than the usual portion of flattery from the romantic. Donne 
 wrote an epithalamium on her marriage, in which are those 
 preposterous lines beginning — 
 
 "Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there." 
 
 Sir Henry Wotton had permission to call her his " royal 
 mistress," which he was as proud of as if he had been a 
 knight of old. And when she lost her Bohemian kingdom, 
 it was said that she retained a better one, for that she was 
 still the " Queen of Hearts." Sir Henry wrote upon her his 
 elegant verses beginning — 
 
 " You meaner beauties of the night," 
 
 in which he gives a new turn to the commonplaces of stars 
 and roses, and calls her 
 
 " Th' eclipse and glory of her kind." 
 It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether she was ever handsome. 
 None of the Stuarts appear to have been so, with the 
 exception of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, who resembled, 
 perhaps, her mother. Pepys, who saw the Queen of 
 Bohemia at the Eestoration, " thought her a very debonaire, 
 but plain lady." This, it is true, was near her death; but 
 Pepys was given to admire, and royalty did not diminish the 
 inclination. Had her charms ever been as great as reported, 
 
THE QUEEN OP BOHEMIA. 263 
 
 he would have discovered the remains of them. It has been 
 beautifully said by Drayton, that 
 
 "Even in the aged'st face, where beauty once did dwell, 
 And nature, in the least, but seemed to excel, 
 Time cannot make such waste, but something will appear 
 To show some little tract of delicacy there." 
 
 Pepys saw the queen afterwards two or three times at the 
 play, and does not record any alteration of his opinion. Her 
 Majesty did not survive the Restoration many months. She 
 quitted Craven House for Leicester House (afterwards Norfolk 
 House, in the Strand,) seemingly for no other purpose than 
 to die there; which she did in February 1661-2. Whether 
 Lord Craven attended her at this period does not appear ; but 
 she left him her books, pictures, and papers. Sometimes he 
 accompanied her to the play. She and her husband, King 
 Frederick, appear to have been lively, good-humoured persons, 
 a little vain of the royalty which proved such a misfortune to 
 them. The queen had the better sense, though it seems to 
 have been almost as much over-rated as her beauty. But all 
 the Stuarts were more or less clever, with the exception 
 of James II. 
 
 The author of a History and Antiquities of the Deanery of 
 Craven in Yorkshire, gives it as a tradition, that Lord Craven's 
 father, a lord-mayor, was born of such poor parents that they 
 sent him when a boy by a common carrier to London, where 
 he became a mercer or draper. His son was a distinguished 
 officer under Gustavus Adolphus, was ennobled, attached 
 himself to the King and Queen of Bohemia, and is supposed, 
 as we have seen, to have married the king's widow. He was 
 her junior by twelve years. He long resided in Craven 
 House, became Colonel of the Coldstream Regiment of Foot 
 Guards, and was famed for his bustling activity. He so con- 
 stantly made his appearance at a fire, that his horse is said to 
 have " smelt one as soon as it happened." Pepys, during a 
 riot against houses of ill-fame (probably the houses in Whet- 
 stone Park, as well as in Moornelds, for he talks of going to 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields to see the 'prentices,) describes his lord- 
 ship as riding up and down the fields, " like a madman," 
 giving orders to the soldiery. It was probably in allusion to 
 this military vivacity that Lord Dorset says, in his ballad on 
 a mistress, — 
 
 " The people's hearts leap, wherever she comes, 
 And beat day and night, like my Lord Craven's drums." 
 
264 NELL GWYNN. 
 
 When there was a talk in his old age of giving his regiment 
 to somebody else, Craven said, that " if they took away his 
 regiment they had as good take away his life, since he had 
 nothing else to divert himself with." The next king, how- 
 ever, William III., gave it to General Talmash; yet the old 
 lord is said to have gone on, busy to the last. He died in 
 1697, aged nearly 89 years. He was intimate with Evelyn, 
 Eay, and other naturalists, and delighted in gardening. The 
 garden of Craven House ran in the direction of the present 
 Drury Lane; so that where there is now a bustle of a very 
 different sort, we may fancy the old soldier busying himself 
 with his flower-beds, and Mr. Evelyn discoursing upon the 
 blessings of peace and privacy."* 
 
 The only other personage of celebrity whom we know of as 
 living in Drury Lane, is one of another sort; to wit, Nell 
 Gwynn. The ubiquitous Pepys speaks of his seeing her there 
 on a May-morning. 
 
 " May 1st, 1667. To Westminster, in the way meeting many milk- 
 maids with garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before 
 them; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury 
 Lane in her smock sleeves and boddice, looking upon one. She seemed 
 a mighty pretty creature." 
 
 Lodgings in this quarter, though Nell lived there, must 
 have been of more decent reputation than they became after- 
 wards. It is curious that the old English word Drury, or 
 Druerie, should be applicable to the fame we allude to. It has 
 more or less deserved it for a long period, though we believe 
 the purlieus rather warrant it now, than the lane itself. Pope 
 and Gay speak of it. Pope describes the lane also as a place 
 of residence for poor authors: — 
 
 " ' Keep your piece nine years.' 
 1 Nine years! ' cries he, who high in Drury Lane, 
 LulPd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, 
 Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, 
 Obliged by hunger and request of friends." 
 
 The existence of a theatre in Drury Lane is as old as the 
 time of Shakspeare. It was then called the Phoenix; was 
 "a private," or more select house, like that of Blackfriars; 
 and had been a cock -pit, by which name it was also desig- 
 
 * For complete particulars of the history of James's daughter and 
 son-in-law, and their gallant adherents, see " Memoirs of Elizabeth 
 Stuart, Queen of Bohemia," by Miss Benger, and " Collins's Peerage," 
 by Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. v., p. 446. Miss Benger is as romantic 
 as if she had lived in the queen's time, but she is diligent and amusing. 
 The facts can easily be separated from her colouring. 
 
DfcURY LANE THEATRE. 265 
 
 nated. Phoenix generally implies that a place has been 
 destroyed by fire, a common fate with theatres ; but the first 
 occasion on which we hear of the present one is the destruc- 
 tion of it by a Puritan mob. This took place in the year 
 -1617, in the time of James; and was doubtless caused by the 
 same motives that led to the demolition of certain other houses, 
 whicli it was thought to resemble in fame. In Howe's Con- 
 tinuation of Stowe, it was called a " new play-house;" so that 
 it had lately been either built or rebuilt. This theatre stood 
 opposite the Castle tavern. There is still in existence a 
 passage, called Cockpit Alley, into Great Wild Street; and 
 there is a Phoenix Alley, leading from Long Acre into Hart 
 Street. 
 
 The Phoenix was soon rebuilt : and the performances con- 
 tinued till 1648, when they were again stopped by the 
 Puritans who then swayed England, and who put an end to 
 playhouses for some time. In the interval, some of the most 
 admired of our old dramas were produced there, such as 
 Marlowe's Jew of Malta; Hey wood's Woman killed with 
 Kindness ; The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Decker, 
 and Ford ; Webster's White Devil, or Vittoria Colombona, 
 Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, and indeed many 
 others.* It does not appear that Shakspeare or his immediate 
 friends had any pieces performed there. He was a performer 
 in other theatres ; and the pressure of court, as well as city, 
 lay almost exclusively in their direction, till the growth of 
 the western part of the metropolis divided it. The Phoenix 
 known in his time was probably nearly as select a house as 
 the Blackfriars. The company had the title of Queen's 
 Servants (James's Queen), and the servants of the Lady 
 Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia). 
 
 A few years before the Restoration, Davenant, supported 
 by some of the less scrupulous authorities, ventured to 
 smuggle back something like the old entertainments, under 
 the pretence of accompanying them with music; a trick 
 understood in our times where a license is to be encroached 
 upon. In 1656, he removed with them from Aldersgate Street 
 to this house ; and, after the fluctuation of different companies 
 hither and thither, the Cockpit finally resumed its rank as a 
 royal theatre, under the direction of the famous Killigrew, 
 whose set of players were called the King's company, as those 
 under Sir William Davenant had the title of the Duke's. 
 * See Baker's Biographia Dramatica, vol. ii. 
 
266 
 
 DRURY LANE THEATRE. 
 
 Killigrew, dissatisfied with the old theatre at the Cockpit, 
 built a new one nearly on the site of the present, and opened 
 it in 1663. This may be called the parent of Drury Lane 
 theatre as it now stands. It was burnt in 1671-2, rebuilt by 
 Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in 1674, with a prologue, 
 from the pen of Dryden, from which time it stood till the 
 year 1741. There had been some alterations in the structure 
 of this theatre, which are said to have hurt the effect contem- 
 plated by Sir Christopher Wren, and perhaps assisted its 
 destruction; for seventy years is no great age for a public 
 
 ENTRANCE FRONT OP DRURY LANE THEATRE, ERECTED BY GARRICK. 
 
 building. Yet old Drury, as it was called, was said to have 
 died of a " gradual decline." It was rebuilt, and became 
 Old Drury the second; underwent the usual fate of theatres, 
 in the year 1809 ; and was succeeded by the one now 
 standing. 
 
 It is customary to divide the eras of theatres according to 
 their management; but, as managers become of little conse- 
 quence to posterity, we shall confine ourselves in this as in 
 other respects to names, with which posterity is familiar. In 
 Shakspeare's time, Drury Lane appears to have been cele- 
 brated for the best productions of the second-rate order of 
 dramatists, a set of men who would have been first in any 
 other age. We have little to say of the particulars of Drury 
 
ITS ANTIQUITY, ERAS, ETC. 267 
 
 Lane at this period, no memorandums having come down to 
 lis as they did afterwards. All we can imagine is, that, the 
 Phoenix being much out of the way, with fields and country 
 roads in the interval between court and city, and the per- 
 formances taking place in the day time, the company probably 
 consisted of the richer orders, the poorer being occupied in 
 their labours. The court and the rich citizens went on 
 horseback; the Duke of Buckingham in his newly-invented 
 sedan. In the time of the Puritans we may fancy the visitors 
 stealing in, as they would into a gambling-house. 
 
 The era of the Restoration, or second era of the Stuarts, is 
 that of the popularity of Ben Jonson's and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's plays, compared with Shakspeare's, though Davenant 
 tried hard to revive him; of the plays of Dryden, Lee, and 
 Otway ; and finally of the rise of comedy, strictly so called, in 
 those of Wycherly, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. All 
 these writers had to do with Drury Lane Theatre, some of 
 them almost exclusively. Nineteen out of Dryden's twenty- 
 seven plays were produced there ; seven out of Lee's eleven ; 
 all the good ones of Wycherly (that is to say, all except the 
 4 Gentleman Dancing-Master'); two of Congreve' s (the 'Old 
 Bachelor' and 'Double Dealer'), and all Farquhar's, except 
 the ' Beaux' Stratagem.' Otway 's best pieces came out at the 
 Duke's Theatre ; and Vanbrugh's in the Haymarket.* This 
 may be called the second era of Drury Lane, or rather the 
 second and third; the former, which is Dryden's and Lee's, 
 having for its principal performers Hart, Mohun, Lacy, 
 Goodman, Nell Gwynn, and others; the latter, which was 
 that of Congreve and Farquhar, presenting us with Cibber, 
 Wilks, Booth, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle. The two, 
 taken together, began with the Eestoration and ended with 
 George II. 
 
 Sir Richard Steele and the sentimental comedy came in at 
 the close of the third era, and may be said to constitute the 
 fourth; which, in his person, did not last long. Steele, 
 admirable as an essayist, and occasionally as humorous as 
 any dramatist in a scene or two, was hampered in his plays 
 by the new moral ambition now coming up, which induced 
 him to show, not so much what people are, as his notions of 
 what they ought to be. This has never been held a legiti- 
 mate business of the stage, which, in fact, is nothing else than 
 what its favourite metaphor declares it, a glass of men and 
 * See Baker, passim. 
 
268 OLD DRURY 
 
 manners, in which they are to see themselves as they actually 
 exist. It is the essence of the wit and dialogue of society 
 brought into a focus. Steele was manager of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, and made as bad a one as improvidence and animal 
 spirits could produce. 
 
 The sentimental comedy continued into the next or fifth 
 Drury Lane era, which was that of Garrick, famous for his 
 great reputation as an actor, and for his triumphant revival of 
 Shakspeare's plays, which have increased in popularity ever 
 since. Not that he revived them in the strictest sense of the 
 word; for the attempt was making when he came to town; 
 but he hastened and exalted the success of it. 
 
 The last era before the present one was that of Sheridan, 
 who, though he began with Covent Garden, produced four 
 out of his seven pieces at this theatre; where he showed 
 himself a far better dramatist, and a still worse manager than 
 Steele. 
 
 We shall now endeavour to possess our readers with such 
 a sense of these different periods, as may enable them to 
 " live o'er each scene," not indeed of the plays, but of the 
 general epochs of Old Drury ; to go into the green-room with 
 Hart and Nell Gwyn ; to see Mrs. Oldfield swim on the stage 
 as Lady Betty Modish; to revive the electrical shock of 
 Garrick's leap upon it, as the lively Lothario; — in short, to 
 be his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, and 
 make one of the successive generations of play-goers, now in 
 his peruke a la Charles II, and now in his Ramillie wig, or 
 the bobs of Hogarth. Did we introduce him to all this our- 
 selves, we should speak with less confidence; but we have a 
 suceesssion of play-goers for his acquaintance, who shall 
 make him doubt whether he really is or is not his own 
 ancestor, so surely shall they place him beside them in 
 the pit. 
 
 And first, for the immortal and most play-going Pepys. 
 To the society of this j oiliest of government officers, we 
 shall consign our reader and ourselves during the reign of 
 Charles II. ; and if we are not all three equally intimate with 
 old Drury at that time, there is no faith in good company. 
 By old Drury, we understand both the theatres ; the Cockpit 
 or Phoenix and the new one built by Killigrew, which took 
 the title of " King's Theatre." There was a cockpit at White- 
 hall, or court theatre, to which Pepys occasionally alludes; 
 but after trying in vain to draw a line between such of his 
 
IN THE TIME OF CHARLES II. 269 
 
 memorandums as might be retained and omitted, we here 
 give up the task as undesirable, the whole harmonizing in one 
 mass of theatrical gossip, and making us acquainted col- 
 laterally, even with what he is not speaking of. We have 
 not, indeed, retained everything, but we have almost. 
 
 We now, therefore, pass Drury House, proceed up the lane 
 by my Lord Craven's garden, and turn into Russell Street 
 amongst a throng of cavaliers in flowing locks, and ladies 
 with curls a la Valliere. Some of them are in masks, but 
 others have not put theirs on. We shall see them masquing 
 as the house grows full. It is early in the afternoon. There 
 press a crowd of gallants, who have already got enough wine. 
 Here, as fast as the lumbering coaches of that period can do 
 it, dashes up to the door my lord Duke of Buckingham, 
 bringing with him Buckhurst and Sedley. There comes a 
 greater, though at that time a humbler man, to wit, John 
 Dryden, in a coat of plain drugget, which by and by his fame 
 converted into black velvet. He is somewhat short and 
 stout, with a roundish dimpled face and a sparkling eye; 
 and, if scandal says true, by his side is "Madam " Reeves, a 
 beautiful actress ; for the ladies of the stage were so entitled 
 at that time. Horses and coaches throng the place, with 
 here and there a sedan; and, by the pulling off of hats, we 
 find that the king and his brother James have arrived. The 
 former nods to his people as if he anticipated their mutual 
 enjoyment of the play; the latter affects a graciousness to 
 match, but does not do it very well. As soon as the king 
 passes in, there is a squeeze and a scuffle ; and some blood is 
 drawn, and more oaths uttered, from which we hasten to 
 escape. Another scuffle is silenced on the king's entrance, 
 which also makes the gods quiet; otherwise, at no period 
 were they so loud. The house is not very large, nor very 
 well appointed. Most of the ladies masque themselves in the 
 pit and boxes, and all parties prepare for a play that shall 
 render it proper for the remainder to do so. The king 
 applauds a new French tune played by the musicians. 
 Gallants, not very sober, are bowing on all sides of us to 
 ladies not very nice ; or talking to the orange girls, who are 
 ranged in front of the pit with their backs to the stage. We 
 hear criticisms on the last new piece, on the latest panegyric, 
 libel, or new mode. Our friend Pepys listens and looks 
 everywhere, tells all who is who, or asks it ; and his neigh- 
 bours think him a most agreeable fat little gentleman. The 
 
270 PEPYS AND 
 
 curtain rises : enter Mistress Marshall, a pretty woman, and 
 speaks a prologue which makes all the ladies hurry on their 
 masks, and convulses the house with laughter. Mr. Pepys 
 " do own " that he cannot help laughing too, and calls the 
 actress " a merry jade; " " but, lord ! " he says, " to see the 
 difference of the times, and but two years gone." And then 
 he utters something between a sigh and a chuckle, at the 
 recollection of his Presbyterian breeding, compared with the 
 jollity of his expectations. 
 
 But let us hear our friend's memorandums : — 
 
 "29th (September 1662). To the King's Theatre, where we saw 
 
 * Midsummer's Night's Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor 
 shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I 
 saw in my life. [The gods certainly had not made Pepys poetical, 
 except on the substantial side of things.] 
 
 " 5th (January 1662-3). To the Cockpit, where we saw ' Claracilla,' 
 a poor play, done by the King's house; but neither the king nor 
 queen were there, but only the duke and duchess. 
 
 " 23d (February, 1662-3). We took coach and to court, and there 
 we saw ' The Wilde Gallant,' performed by the King's house, but it 
 was ill acted. The king did not seem pleased at all, the whole play, 
 nor anybody else. My Lady Castlemaine was all worth seeing to- 
 night, and little Stewart. [This is Miss, or as the designation then 
 was, Mrs. Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond. ' The Wild 
 Gallant ' was Dryden's first play, and was patronised by Lady 
 Castlemaine, afterwards not less notorious as Duchess of Cleveland. 
 Miss Stewart and she were rival beauties.] 
 
 " 1st (February, 1663-4). To the King's Theatre, and there saw 
 the * Indian Queen ' (by Sir Robert Howard and Dryden) ; which 
 indeed is a most pleasant show, and beyond my expectation the play 
 good, but spoiled with the rhyme, which breaks the sense. But 
 above my expectation most, the eldest Marshall did do her part most 
 excellently well as I have heard a woman in my life; but her voice 
 is not so sweet as Ianthe's: but, however, we come home mightily 
 contented. 
 
 " 1st (January, 1664). To the King's house, and saw 'The Silent 
 Woman ' (Ben Jonson's); but methought not so well done or so good 
 a play as I formerly thought it to be. Before the play was done, it 
 fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain 
 to rise, and all the house in a disorder. 
 
 " 2nd (August, 1664). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 
 * Bartholomew Fayre' (Ben Jonson's), which do still please me; and 
 is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced 
 to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery; 
 that is, is going to build a house in Moorfields, wherein we will have 
 common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to 
 act six weeks at a time: where we shall have the best scenes and 
 machines, the best musique, and everything as magnificent as in 
 Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and 
 other persons from Italy. 
 
 "4th (August, 1664). To play at the King's house, ' The Rivall 
 
HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 271 
 
 Ladies ' (Dryden's), a very innocent and most pretty witty play. I 
 was much pleased with it, and it being given me, I look upon it as no 
 breach of my oath. [Pepys means that he had made a vow not to 
 spend money on theatres, but that he was now treated to a play.] 
 Here we hear that Clun, one of their best actors, was, the last night, 
 going out of town after he had acted the Alchymist (wherein was one 
 of his best parts that he acts), to his countrv house, set upon and 
 murdered ; one of the rogues taken, an Irish fellow. It seems most 
 cruelly butchered and bound. The house will have a great miss of 
 him. [Chin's body was found at Kentish Town in a ditch. Pepys 
 went to see the place.] 
 
 " 11th (October, 1664). Luellin tells me what an obscene loose 
 play this ' Parson's Wedding ' is (by Tom Killigrew), that is acted by 
 nothing but women at the King's house. 
 
 " 14th (January, 1664-5). To the King's house, there to see ' Vul- 
 pone,' a most excellent play (Ben Jonson's); the best, I think, I ever 
 saw, and well acted. 
 
 • c 19th (March, 1666). After dinner we walked to the King's play- 
 house, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. 
 But God knows when they will begin to act again ; but my business 
 here was to see the inside of the stage, and all the tiring-rooms and" 
 machines ; and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see 
 their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things 
 there was; here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there 
 a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and 
 particularly Lacy's wardrobe and Shotrell's. But then again to 
 think how fine they show on the stage by candlelight, and how poor 
 things they are to look at too near hand, is not pleasant at all. The 
 machines are fine, and the paintings very pretty. 
 
 " 7th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, where two acts 
 were almost done when I came in; and there I sat with my cloak about 
 my face, and saw the remainder of ' The Mayd's Tragedy ; ' a good 
 play, and well acted, especially by the younger Marshall, who is be- 
 come a pretty good actor; and is the first play I have seen in either 
 of the houses, since before the great plague, they having acted now 
 about fourteen days publickly. But I was in mighty pain, lest I 
 should be seen by anybody to be at the play. [The plague seems to 
 have made it an indecorum to resume visits to the theatre very 
 speedily. Pepys had been educated among the Commonwealth -men, 
 for whom he never seems to have got rid of a respect. The contrast 
 aggravated his festivity.] 
 
 " 8th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, and there 
 did see a good part of 'The English Monsieur' (by James Howard), 
 which is a mighty pretty play, very witty and pleasant. And the 
 women do very well; but above all, little Nelly. [Nell Gwynn, not 
 long entered upon the stage.] 
 
 " 27th (December, 1666). By coach to the King's playhouse, and 
 there saw 'The Scornful Lady ' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), well acted; 
 Doll Common doing Abigail most excellently, and Knipp the widow 
 very well (and will be an excellent actor, I think). In other parts the 
 play not so well done as need be by the old actors. 
 
 " 3rd (January, 1666-7). Alone to the King's house, and there saw 
 'The Customeof the Country' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the second 
 time of its being acted, wherein Knipp does the widow well; but cf 
 
272 PEPYS AND 
 
 all the plays that ever I did see, the worst, having neither plot, lan- 
 guage nor anything on the earth that is acceptable; only Knipp sings 
 a song admirably. [Mistress Knipp was a particular acquaintance of 
 our friend's.] 
 
 "23rd (January, 1666-7). To the King's house, and there saw the 
 'Humourous Lieutenant' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), a silly play, I 
 think; only the spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again 
 to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one, and then Knipp's 
 singing did please us. Here in a box above we spied Mrs. Pierse ; 
 and going out they called us ; and so we staid for them ; and Knipp 
 took us all in and brought us to Nelly (Nell Gwynn), a most pretty 
 woman, who acted the great part of Coelia to-day very fine, and did it 
 pretty well : I kissed her, and so did my wife ; and a mighty pretty 
 soul she is. We also saw Mrs. Ball, which is my little Roman-nose 
 black girl, that is mighty pretty; she is usually called Betty. Knipp 
 made us stay in the box, and see the dancing preparatory to to- 
 morrow for the ' Goblins,' a play of Suckling's, not acted these twenty 
 years ; which was pretty. 
 
 "5th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house to see 'The Chances' 
 (Beaumont and Fletcher's). A good play I find it, and the actors 
 most good in it. And pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very 
 properly, ' All night I weepe ; ' and sung it admirably. The whole 
 play pleases me well : and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies ; 
 among others, my lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Middleton : the latter of 
 the two hath also a very excellent face and body, I think. And so 
 home in the dark over the ruins with a link. [The ruins are those of 
 the city, occasioned by the fire. Mr. Pepys lived in Creed Lane, where 
 the Navy Office then was, in which he had an appointment.] 
 
 "18th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house, to 'The Mayd's 
 Tragedy' (Biaumont and Fletcher's) ; but vexed all the while with 
 two talking ladies and Sir Charles Sedley ; yet pleased to hear the 
 discourse, he being a stranger. And one of the ladies would and did 
 sit with her mask on all the play, and being exceedingly witty as ever 
 I heard a woman, did talk most pleasantly with him ; but was, I 
 believe, a virtuous woman and of quality. He would fain know who 
 she was, but she would not tell; yet did give him many pleasant hints 
 of her knowledge of him, by that means setting his brains at work to 
 find out who she was, and did give him leave to use all means to find 
 out who she was, but pulling off her mask. He was mighty witty, 
 and she also making sport with him mighty inoffensively, that more 
 pleasant rencontre I never heard. But by that means lost the plea- 
 sure of the play wholly, to which now and then Sir Charles Sedley's 
 exceptions against both words and pronouncing were very pretty. 
 [This is the famous wit and man of pleasure. We have him before 
 us, as if we were present, together with a curious specimen of the 
 manners of these times. The pit, though subject to violent scuffles, 
 greatly occasioned by the wearing of swords, seems to have contained 
 as good company as the opera pit does now.] 
 
 "2nd (March, 1666-7). After dinner with my wife to the King's 
 house, to see ' The Mayden Queen,' a new play of Dryden's, r.iighty 
 commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit : and the 
 truth is, there is a comical part, played by Nell, which is Florimell, 
 that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman. 
 The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so great per- 
 
HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 273 
 
 formance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as 
 Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she 
 comes in like a young gallante; and hath the motions and carriage of 
 a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I con- 
 fess, admire her. 
 
 "25th (March, 1666-7). To the King's playhouse, and by and by 
 comes Mr. Lowther and his wife and mine, and into a box, forsooth, 
 neither of them being dressed, which I was almost ashamed of. Sir 
 W. Pen and I in the pit, and here saw the ' May den Queen ' again ; 
 ■which, indeed, the more I see the more I like, and is an excellent 
 play, and so done by Nell her merry part, as cannot be better done in 
 nature. 
 
 "9th (April, 1667). To the King's house, and there saw the ' Taming 
 of the Shrew,' which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally 
 is but a mean play ; and the best part ' Sawny,' done by Lacy ; and 
 hath not half its life, by reason of the words, I suppose, not being 
 understood, at least by me. [This was one of the rifacimentos of 
 Shakspeare, by which he was to be rendered palatable.] 
 
 " 15th (April, 1667). To the King's house, by chance, where a new 
 play : so full as I never saw it ; I forced to stand all the while close to 
 the very door till I took cold, and many people went away for want of 
 room. The King and Queene and Duke of York and Duchesse there, 
 and all the court, and Sir W. Coventry. The play called 'The 
 Change of Crownes;' a play of Ned Howard's, the best that I ever 
 saw at that house, being a great play and serious ; only Lacy did act 
 the country gentleman come up to court with all the imaginable wit 
 and plainness about the selling of places, and doing everything for 
 money. The play took very much. 
 
 " 16th (April, 1667). Knipp tells me the King was so angry at the 
 liberty taken by Lacy's part to abuse him to his face, that he com- 
 manded they should act no more, till Moone (Mohun) went and got 
 leave for them to act again, but not in this play. The King mighty 
 angry; and it was bitter indeed, but very fine and witty. I never was 
 more taken with a play than I am with this ' Silent Woman ' (Ben 
 Johnson's) as old as it is, and as often as I have seen it. [Ned 
 Howard, the author of 'The Change of Crownes,' was one of the sons 
 of the Earl of Berkshire, and though of a family who helped to bring 
 in the King, was probably connected with the Presbyterians, and dis- 
 gusted, like many of the royalists on that side, by the disappoinments 
 they had experienced in church and state. Dry den, who married one 
 of his sisters, was of a Presbyterian stock. Ned, however, who after- 
 wards became the butt of the wits, was not very nice, and might have 
 ' committed himself,' as the modern phrase is, in his mode of conduct- 
 ing his satire] . 
 
 " 20th (April, 1667). Met Mr. Eolt, who tells me the reason of no 
 play to-day at the King's house — that Lacy had been committed to 
 the porter's lodge, for his acting his part in the late new play ; and 
 being thence released to come to the King's house, he there met with 
 Ned Howard, the poet of the play, who congratulated his release ; 
 upon which Lacy cursed him, as that it was the fault of his non- 
 sensical play that was the cause of his ill-usage. Mr. Howard did 
 give him some reply, to which Lacy answered him that he was more 
 a fool than a poet j upon which Howard did give him a blow on the 
 
 T 
 
274 PIPYS AND 
 
 face with his glove ; on which Lacy, having a cane in his hand, did 
 give him a blow over the pate. Here Rolt and others, that discoursed 
 of it in the pit, did wonder that Howard did not run him through, he 
 being too mean a fellow to fight with. But Howard did not do any- 
 thing but complain to the King ; so the whole house is silenced : and 
 the gentry seem to rejoice much at it, the house being become too 
 insolent. 
 
 *' 1st (May, 1667). Thence away to the King's playhouse, and saw 
 'Love in a Maze:' but a sorry play; only Lacy's clown's part, which 
 he did most admirably indeed ; and I am glad to find the rogue at 
 liberty again. Here was but little, and that ordinary company. We 
 sat at the upper bench, next the boxes ; and I find it do pretty well, 
 and have the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which 
 may be pleasant when there is good store. 
 
 " 15th (August, 1667). And so we went to the King's house, and 
 there saw ' The Merry Wives of Windsor ; ' which did not please me 
 at all, in no part of it. 
 
 " 17th (August, 1667). To the King's playhouse, where the house 
 extraordinary full ; and there the King and Duke of York to see the 
 new play, ' Queene Elizabeth's Troubles, and the History of Eighty- 
 eight.' I confess I have sucked in so much of the sad story of Queene 
 Elizabeth from my cradle, that I was ready to weep for her some- 
 times ; but the play is the most ridiculous that sure ever came upon 
 stage, and, indeed, is merely a show, only shows the true garb of the 
 Queene in those days, just as we see Queene Mary and Queene 
 Elizabeth painted ; but the play is merely a puppet play, acted by 
 living puppets. Neither the design nor language better ; and one 
 stands by and tells us the meaning of things : only I was pleased to 
 -see Knipp dance among the milkmaids, and to hear her sing a song 
 to Queene Elizabeth, and to see her come out in her nighte-gown 
 with no lockes on, but her bare face, and hair only tied up in a 
 knot behind ; which is the comeliest dress that ever I saw her in to 
 her advantage. 
 
 "22nd (August, 1667). With my lord Brouncker and his mistress 
 to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Indian Emperour;' 
 where I find Nell come again, which I am glad of; but was most 
 infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperour's daughter, 
 which is a great and serious part, which she does most basely. 
 
 "14th (September, 1667). To the King's playhouse, to see 'The 
 Northerne Castle, (quaere Lasse, by Richard Brome ?) which I think 
 I never did see before. Knipp acted in it, and did her part very 
 extraordinary well; but the play is but a mean sorry play. 
 
 " , my wife, and Mercer, and I, away to the King's playhouse, 
 
 to see ' The Scornful Lady' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), but it being 
 now three o'clock, there was not one soul in the pit ; whereupon, for 
 shame, we could not go in ; but against our wills, went all to see ' Tu 
 Quoque' again (by John Cooke), where there was pretty store of 
 company. Here we saw Madame Morland, who is grown mighty fat, 
 but is very comely. Thence to the King's house, upon a Avager of 
 mine with my wife, that there would be no acting there to-day, there 
 being no company : so I went in and found a pretty good company 
 there, and saw their dance at the end of the play. [There is a confu- 
 sion in the memorandum under this date.] 
 
HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 275 
 
 "20th (September, 1667). By coach to the King's playhouse, and 
 there saw 'The Mad Couple' (by Richard Brome), my wife having 
 been at the same play with Jane in the 18c?. seat. 
 
 "25th (September, 1667). I to the King's playhouse, my eyes 
 being so bad since last night's straining of them, that I am hardly 
 able to see, besides the pain that I have in them. The play was a 
 new play; and infinitely full; the King and all the court almost there. 
 It is "The Storme,' a play of Fletcher's; which is but so-so, me- 
 thinks; only there is a most admirable dance at the end, of the ladies, 
 in a military manner, which indeed did please me mightily. 
 
 " 5th (October 1667.) To the King's house; and there going in met 
 with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms ; and to the 
 women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, 
 and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene- 
 room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the 
 questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of 
 'Flora's Figarys,' which was acted to-day. But, lord! to see how 
 they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me 
 loath them, and what base company of men comes among them, and 
 how lewdly they talk . And how poor the men are in clothes, and 
 yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very 
 observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in 
 the pit, was strange ; the other house carrying away all the people at 
 the new play, and is said now-a-days to have generally most company, 
 as having better players. By and by into the pit, and there saw the 
 play, which is pretty good. 
 
 " 19th (October 1667). Full of my desire of seeing my Lord 
 Orrery's new play this afternoon at the King's house, ' The Black 
 Prince,' the first time it is acted; where, though we came by two 
 o'clock, yet there was no room in the pit, but were forced to go into 
 one of the upper boxes at 4s. a piece, which is the first time I ever 
 sat in a box in my life. And in the same box came by and by, be- 
 hind me, my Lord Barkely and his lady; but I did not turn my face 
 to them to be known, so that I was excused from giving them my seat. 
 And this pleasure I had, that from this place the scenes do appear 
 very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit. The house infinite 
 full, and the King and Duke of York there. The whole house was 
 mightily pleased all along till the reading of a letter, which was so 
 long and so unnecessary, that they frequently began to laugh, and to 
 hiss twenty times, that had it not been for the King's being there, 
 they had certainly hissed it off the stage. 
 
 "23d (October 1667). To the King's playhouse, and saw 'The 
 Black Prince;' which is now mightily bettered by that long letter 
 being printed, and so delivered to everybody at their going in, and 
 some short reference made to it in the play. [This is in the style of 
 what Buckingham called "insinuating the plot into the boxes."] 
 
 " 1st (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there caw a 
 silly play and an old one, ' The Taming of the Shrew.' 
 
 " 2d (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 'Henry the Fourth;' and, contrary to expectation, was pleased in 
 nothing more than in Cartwright's speaking of Falstaffe's speech 
 about 'What is honour?' The house full of parliament-men, it 
 being holyday with them: and it was observable how a gentleman of 
 good habit sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of 
 
 T 2 
 
276 fEPYS AtfD 
 
 play, did drop down as dead, being choked ; but with much ado 
 Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him 
 to life again. 
 
 '•26th (December 1667). With my wife to the King's playhouse, 
 and there saw ' The Surprizall' by Sir Robert Howard, brother of 
 Ned) ; which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing me ; 
 and especially Nell's acting of a serious part which she spoils. 
 
 "28th (December 1667). To the King's house, and there saw 
 4 The Mad Couple,' which is but an ordinary play ; but only Nell's 
 and Hart's mad parts are most excellent done, but especially hers: 
 which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious 
 part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad 
 part, do beyond all imitation almost. It pleased us mightily to see 
 the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the chil- 
 dren brought on the stage ; the child crying, she by force got upon 
 the stage, and took up her child, and carried it away off the stage 
 from Hart. Many fine faces here to-day. 
 
 "7th (January 1667-8). To the Nursery [qy. in Barbican, for 
 children performers?], but the house did not act to-day; and so I to 
 the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there 
 did, by this means, for nothing, see an act in ' The Schoole of Com- 
 pliments ' at the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry the Fourth' at 
 the King's house ; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach 
 again, and home. [It would here seem, that a man who did not 
 choose to pay for a seat, might witness a play for nothing.] 
 
 " 11th (January 1667-8). To the King's house, to see ' The Wild- 
 Goose Chase' (Beaumont and Fletcher's). In this play I met. with 
 nothing extraordinary at all, but very dull inventions and designs. 
 Knipp came and sat by us, and her talk pleased me a little, she tell- 
 ing me how Miss Davies is for certain going away from the Duke's 
 house, the King being in love with her ; and a house is taken for her, 
 and furnishing; and she hath a ring given her already worth 600/.: 
 that the King did send several times for Nelly, and she was with him ; 
 and I am sorry for it, and can hope for no good to the state from 
 having a prince so devoted to his pleasure. She told me also of a play 
 shortly coming upon the stage, of Sir Charles Sedley's, which, she 
 thinks, will be called ' The Wandering Lady's,' a comedy that she 
 thinks will be most pleasant; and also another play called 'The 
 Duke of Lorane;' besides 'Cataline,' which she thinks, for want of the 
 clothes which the King promised them, will not be acted for a good 
 while. 
 
 " 20th (February 1667-8). Dined, and by one o'clock to the King'? 
 house; a new play, 'The Duke of Lerma,' of Sir Robert Howard's-, 
 where the King and court was ; and Knipp and Nell spoke the pro- 
 logue most excellently, especially Knipp, who spoke beyond any 
 creature I ever heard. The play designed to reproach our King with 
 his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be 
 interrupted ; but it ended all well ; which salved me. 
 
 "27th (February 1667-8.) With my wife to the King's house, to 
 see 'The Virgin Martyr' by (Massinger), the first time it hath been 
 acted a great while : and it is mighty pleasant ; not that the play is 
 worth much, but it is finely acted by Beck Marshall. But that which 
 did please me beyond anything in the world, was the wind-musique 
 when the angel comes downj which is so sweet that it ravished me, 
 
HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 277 
 
 and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really 
 sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that 
 neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was 
 able to think oi anything, but remained all night transported, so as I 
 could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over 
 the soul of a man, as this did upon me; and makes me resolve to 
 practise wind-musique, and to make my wife do the like. [Pepys's 
 use of the word " sick," and his resolution to make his wife practise 
 the hautboy, are very ludicrous. His love of music, however, is 
 genuine. He was an amateur composer. On the 23d Feb. 1666, he 
 has the following memorandum : " Comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, 
 and I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her 
 my song of 'Beauty retire,' which she sings and makes go most 
 rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be."] 
 
 "6th (March 1667-8.) After dinner to the King's house, and 
 there saw part of the ' Discontented ColonelP (Sir John Suckling's 
 
 * Brennoralt'). 
 
 "7th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there saw 'The 
 English Monsieur,' (sitting for privacy sake in an upper box): the 
 play hath much mirth in it, as to that particular humour. After the 
 play done, I down to Knipp, and did stay her undressing herself ; 
 and there saw the several players, men and women, go by; and pretty 
 to see how strange they are all, one to another, after the play is done. 
 Here I hear Sir W. Davenant is just now dead, and so, who will 
 succeed him in the mastership of the house is not yet known. The 
 eldest Davenport is, it seems, gone from this house to be kept by 
 somebody; which I am glad of, she being a very bad actor. Mrs. 
 Knipp tells me that my Lady Castlemaine is mighty in love with 
 Hart of their house, and he is much with her in private, and she goes 
 to him and do give him many presents; and that the thing is most 
 certain, and Beck Marshall only privy to it, and the means of bringing 
 them together: which is a very odd thing; and by this means she is 
 even with the King's love to Mrs. Davies. 
 
 "28th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there did see ' Love 
 in a Maze,' (the author is not mentioned in Baker); wherein very 
 good mirth of Lacy the clown, and Winter shell, the country-knight, 
 his master. 
 
 " 1st (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 
 
 * Surprizall;' and a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the 
 cupola at top. 
 
 " 7th (May 1668). To the King's house; where going in for Knipp, 
 the play being done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off of the 
 stage, and look mighty fine, and pretty and noble; and also Nell in 
 her boy's clothes mighty pretty. But lord ! their confidence, and 
 how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the 
 stage, and how confident they are in their talk. Here was also 
 Haynes, the incomparable dancer of the King's house. 
 
 " 16th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 
 best part of 'The Sea Voyage' (Beaumont and Fletcher), where 
 Knipp did her part of sorrow very well. 
 
 " 18th (May 1668). It being almost twelve o'clock, or little more, 
 to the King's playhouse, where the doors were not then open ; but 
 presently they did open, and we in, and find many people already 
 come in by private ways into the pit, it being the first day of Sir 
 
278 PEPYS AND 
 
 Charles Sedley's new play so long expected * The Mulberry Garden/ 
 of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great mat- 
 ters. I having sat here a while and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, 
 getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Kose Tavern (Will's, in 
 Kussell Street), and there got half a breast of mutton off the spit, and 
 dined all alone. And so to the playhouse again, where the King and 
 Queene by and by come, and all the court, and the house infinitely 
 full. But the play, when it come, though there was here and there a 
 pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the 
 play had nothing extraordinary in it at all, neither of language nor 
 design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh nor pleased from 
 the beginning to the end, nor the company ; insomuch that I have not 
 been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think. 
 
 "30th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 * Philaster ;' where it is pretty to see how I could remember almost 
 all along, ever since I was a boy, Arethusa, the part which I was to 
 have acted at Sir Kobert Cooke's ; and it was very pleasant to me, 
 but more to think what a ridiculous thing it would have been for me 
 to have acted a beautiful woman. 
 
 "22nd (June 1668). To the King's playhouse, and saw an act 
 or two of the new play, ' Evening Love' again (Dryden's) but like it 
 not. 
 
 " 11th (July 1668). To the King's playhouse, to see an old play of 
 Shirley's, called ' Hyde Parke,' the first day acted ; where horses are 
 brought upon the stage ; but it is but a very moderate play, only an 
 excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall. 
 
 "31st (July 1668). To the King's house, to see the first day of 
 Lacy's ' Monsieur Kagou,' now new acted. The King and court all 
 there, and mighty merry : a farce. 
 
 " 15th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse to see a new 
 play, acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, 
 called 'The Ladys a la Mode' [probably the Precieuses, but not 
 translated by Dryden] : so mean a thing as when they came to say it 
 would be acted again to-morrow, both he that said it (Beeston) and 
 the pit fell a-laughing. 
 
 " 19th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 the ' Silent Woman ;' the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote : 
 and sitting by Shad well the poet, he was big with admiration of it. 
 Here was my Lord Brouncker and W. Pen and their ladies in the box, 
 being grown mighty kind of a sudden ; but, God knows, it will 
 last but a little while, I dare swear. Knipp did her part mighty 
 well. 
 
 " 28th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 'The City Match' (by Jasper Maine), not acted these thirty years, 
 and but a silly play ; the King and court there ; the house, for the 
 women's sake, mighty full. 
 
 " 14th (October 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 1 The Faithful Shepherdess' (Fletcher's), that I might hear the French 
 eunuch sing ; which I did to my great content ; though I do admire 
 his actions as much as his acting, being both beyond all I ever saw 
 or heard. 
 
 " 2nd (December 1678). So she (Mrs. Pepys) and I to the King's 
 playhouse, and there saw 'The Usurper;' a pretty good play in all 
 but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is 
 
HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 279 
 
 mighty silly. [The Usurper was by Ned Howard, who seems to have 
 wished to show how impartial he could be.] 
 
 " 19th (December 1678). My wife and I by hackney to the King's 
 playhouse, and there, the pit being full, sat in the box above, and saw 
 ' Catsdine's Conspiracy' (Ben Jonson's), yesterday being the first day: 
 a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the 
 worst upon the stage, I mean the least diverting, that ever I saw any, 
 though most fine in clothes ; and a fine scene of the senate and of a 
 fight as ever I saw in my life. We sat next to Betty Hall, that did 
 belong to this house, and was Sir Philip Howard's mistress ; a mighty 
 pretty wench. 
 
 " 7th (January 1668-9). My wife and I to the King's pla,, house, 
 and there saw ' The Island Princesse' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the 
 first time I ever saw it ; and it is a pretty good play, many good 
 things being in it, and a good scene of a town on fire. We sat in an 
 upper box, and the merry Jade Nell came in and sat in the next box ; 
 a bold slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade 
 of hers, of the Duke's house, that came to see the play. 
 
 "llth (January 1668-9). Abroad with my wife to the King's 
 playhouse, and there saw ' The Joviall Crew' (by Eichard Brome), ill 
 acted to what it was in Clun's time, and when Lacy could dance. 
 
 "19th (January 1668-9). To the King's house to see 'Horace' 
 (translated from Corneille by Charles Cotton) ; this is the third day 
 of its acting ; a silly tragedy ; but Lacy hath made a farce of several 
 dances — between each act one ; but his words are but silly, and in- 
 vention not extraordinary as to the dances. [Pepys adds, with 
 seeming approbation, an instance of satire on the Dutch, too gross to 
 extract, and highly disgraceful to that age of "fine ladies and 
 gentlemen."] 
 
 "2nd (February 1668-9). To dinner at noon, where I find Mr. 
 Sheres ; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to 
 the King's playhouse, where ' The Heyresse,' notwithstanding Kynas- 
 ton's being beaten, is acted ; and they say the King is very angry 
 with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But 
 his part is done by Beetson, who is fain to read it out ot a book all 
 the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being 
 one of the best parts in it : and though the design is, in the first 
 conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play; wrote, 
 they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston 
 come in with others, supposing it to be dark, and yet forced to read 
 his part by the light of the candles; and this I observing to a gentle- 
 man, that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith and spread it 
 up and down. But that that pleased me most in the play, is the first 
 song that Knipp sings (she sings three or four); and indeed it was 
 very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her. 
 
 " 6th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there in an 
 upper box (where come in Colonel Poynton and Doll Stacey, who is 
 very fine, and by her wedding-ring I suppose he hath married her at 
 last), did see the ' Moor of Venice :' but ill acted in most parts, Moon 
 (which did a little surprise me) not acting Iago's part by much so 
 well as Clun used to do : nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's ; 
 nor indeed Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. 
 
 " 9th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
 the 'Island Princesse,' which I like mighty well as an excellent play; 
 
280 MOHUN AND HART. 
 
 and here we find Kynaston to be well enough to act again ; which he 
 do very well, after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley's appointment. 
 [Kynaston is generally supposed to have been taken for Sedley, and 
 beaten for some offence of the baronet's. He affected to be Sedley's 
 double.] 
 
 "26th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and saw the 
 4 Faithful Shepherdesse.' But, lord ! what an empty house, there not 
 being, as I could see the people, so many as to make up above 10Z. in 
 the whole house ! But I plainly discern the musick is the better, by 
 how much the house the emptier." [The same thing was said by 
 the great Handel, to console himself once, when he found a spare 
 audience.] 
 
 Of the performers mentioned in this curious theatrical 
 gossip, one of them, Hart, had been a captain in the civil 
 wars ; another, Mohun, a major ; and there was a third a 
 quarter -master ; all on the royal side. Hart and Mohun were 
 old actors, when Betterton was young ; and they lived to see 
 him reckoned superior to either. The two were accustomed 
 to act together, Hart generally in the superior character, as 
 Brutus to the other's Cassius ; and both, like Betterton, acted 
 in comedy as well as tragedy. They performed, for instance, 
 Manly and Horner in { The Country Wife,' and there appears 
 to have been less distinction in their styles of acting than is 
 customary. If Hart shone in the Dorimant of ' Sir Fopling 
 Flutter,' Mohun was highly applauded in Davenant's Valen- 
 tine, in ' Wit without Money.' Mohun, however, appears to 
 have excelled in the more ferocious parts of tragedy, as 
 Catiline ; and Hart in the mixture of gaity with boldness, as 
 in Hotspur and Alexander. His Alexander was particularly 
 famous. Upon the whole, we should conclude, Mohun's to 
 have the more artifical acting of the two, more like " the 
 actor," in Partridge's sense of the word, but very fine never- 
 theless, otherwise Rochester would hardly have admired him, 
 as he is said to have done ; unless, indeed, it was out of spite 
 to some other actor ; for he was much influenced by feelings 
 of that kind. Perhaps, however, it was out of some chance 
 predilection, The Duke of Buckingham is said to have pre- 
 ferred Ben Jonson to Shakspeare, for no other reason than 
 his having been introduced to him when a boy. The best 
 compliment ever known to have been paid to Hart, is an 
 anecdote recorded of Betterton. Betterton acted Alexander 
 after Hart's time ; and " being at a loss," says Davies, " to 
 recover a particular emphasis of that performer, which gave 
 a force to some interesting situation of the part, he applied 
 for information to the players who stood near him. At last, 
 
GOODMAN. 281 
 
 one of the lowest of the company repeated the line exactly in 
 Hart's key. Betterton thanked him heartily, and put. a piece 
 of money into his hand, as a reward for so acceptable a 
 service." * Hart had the reputation of being the first lover 
 of Nell Gwyn, and one of the hundreds of the Duchess of 
 Cleveland. 
 
 Goodman was another of the favoured many. He was one 
 of the Alexanders of his time, but does not appear to have 
 been a great actor. He was a dashing impudent fellow, who 
 boasted of his having taken "an airing" on the road to 
 recruit his purse. He was expelled from Cambridge for 
 cutting and defacing the portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, 
 Chancellor of the University, but not loyal enough to his 
 father to please Goodman. James II. pardoned the loyal 
 highwayman, which Goodman (in Cibber's hearing) said 
 " was doing him so particular an honour, that no man could 
 wonder if his acknowledgement had carried him a little 
 further than ordinary into the interest of that prince. But 
 as he had lately been out of luck in backing his old master, 
 he had now no way to get home the life he was out, upon his 
 account, but by being under the same obligations to King 
 William." f The meaning of this is understood to be, that 
 Goodman offered to assassinate William, in consequence of his 
 having had a pardon from James ; but the plot not succeed- 
 ing, he turned king's evidence against James, in order to 
 secure a pardon from William. This " pretty fellow" was 
 latterly so easy in his circumstances, owing, it is supposed, to 
 the delicate Cleveland, that he used to say he would never 
 act Alexander the Great, but when he was certain that "his 
 duchess " would be in the boxes to see him. 
 
 The stage in that day was certainly not behind-hand with 
 the court ; and as it had less conventional respectability in 
 the eyes of the world, its private character was never so low. 
 But we must do justice and not confound even the disreput- 
 able. Poor Nell Gwynn, in a quarrel with one of the 
 Marshalls, who reproached her with being the mistress of 
 Lord Buckhurst, said she was mistress but of one man at a 
 time, though she had been brought up in a bad house " to fill 
 strong waters to the gentlemen ;" whereas her rebuker, 
 
 * Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii., chap. 24. Most of the above 
 particulars respecting Hart and Mohun have been gathered from that 
 work. There are scarcely any records of them elsewhere. 
 
 f Cibber's ' Apology,' ut supra, p. 226. 
 
282 NELL GWYNN. 
 
 though a clergyman's daughter, was the mistress of three. 
 This celebrated actress, who was as excellent in certain giddy 
 parts of comedy as she was inferior in tragedy, was small of 
 person, but very pretty, with a good-humoured face, and eyes 
 that winked when she laughed. She is the ancestress of the 
 ducal family of St. Albans, who are thought to have retained 
 more of the look and complexion of Charles II. than any 
 other of his descendants. Beauclerc, Johnson's friend, was 
 like him ; and the black complexion is still in vigour. The 
 King recommended her to his brother with his last breath, 
 begging him " not to let poor Nelly starve." Burnet says 
 she was introduced to the King by Buckingham, to supplant 
 the Duchess of Cleveland ; but others tell us, he first noticed 
 her in consequence of a hat of the circumference of a coach- 
 wheel, in which Dryden made her deliver a prologue, as a set- 
 off to an enormous hat of Pistol's at the other house, and which 
 convulsed the spectators with laughter. If Nelly retained a 
 habit of swearing, which was probably taught her when a 
 child ( and it is clear enough from Pepys that she did), the 
 poets did not discourage her. One of her epilogues by 
 Dryden began in the following startling manner. It is 
 entitled " An Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Ellen, when she was 
 to be carried off dead by the Bearers." 
 
 " Hold, are you mad, you damn'd confounded dog ? 
 I am to rise and speak the epilogue." 
 
 The poet makes her say of herself, in the course of the 
 lines, that she was " a harmless little devil," and that she was 
 slatternly in her dress. Lely painted her with a lamb under 
 her arm. Mr. Pegge discovered that Charles made her a 
 lady of the chamber to his queen. Pennant seems to think 
 this was only a title ; but it is plain from Evelyn's Memoirs 
 that she had apartments in Whitehall.* She died a few 
 years after the King, at her house in Pall Mall. Nell was 
 much libelled in her time, and among others by Sir George 
 
 * "March 1st (1671). I thence walked with him through St. 
 James's Parke to the garden, where I both saw and heard a very 
 familiar discourse between .... and Mrs. Nellie, as they called an 
 inpudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the 
 top of the wall, and .... standing on ye greene walke under it. I 
 was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the 
 Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our 
 nation." — Evelyn's 'Memoirs,' ut supra, vol. ii., p. 339. It would be 
 curious to know how Mr. Evelyn conducted himself during this time, 
 if he and the King saw one another. 
 
DRAMATIC WRITERS. 283 
 
 Etherege ;* very likely out of some personal pique or rejection, 
 for such revenges were quite compatible with the " loves " of 
 that age.f But she was a general favourite, nevertheless, 
 owing to a natural good-heartedness which no course of life 
 could overcome. Burnet's character of her is well known. 
 " G-uin," says he, " the indiscreetest and wildest creature that 
 ever was in a court, continued, to the end of that king's life, 
 in great favour and was maintained at a vast expense. The 
 Duke of Buckingham told me that when she was first brought 
 to the King, she asked only five hundred pounds a year ; and 
 the King refused it. But when he told me this, about four 
 years after, he said, she had got of the King above sixty 
 thousand pounds. She acted all persons in so lively a 
 manner, and was such a constant diversion to the King, that 
 even a new mistress could not drive her away. But after all 
 he never treated her with the decencies of a mistress." J Nell 
 Gwynn is said to have suggested to her royal lover the build- 
 ing of Chelsea Hospital, and to have made him a present of 
 the ground for it. 
 
 Upon the whole the dramatic taste during the greater part 
 of Charles's reign was false and artificial, particularly in 
 tragedy. Etherege produced one good comedy, the pre- 
 cursor of Wycherly and Congreve ; but Dryden, the reigning 
 favourite, was not as great in dramatic as he was in other 
 writing ; his heroic plays, and Lee's u Alexander," were 
 admired, not so much for the beauties mixed with their 
 absurdity, as for the improbable air they gave to a serious 
 passion ; and the favourite plays of deceased authors were 
 those of the most equivocal writers of the time of James, not 
 the pure and profound nature of Shakspeare and his fellows. 
 Otway flourished, but was not thought so great as he is now ; 
 and even in Otway there is a hot bullying smack of the 
 tavern, very different from the voluptuousness in Shakspeare. 
 Towards the close of this reign comedy came to its height 
 with Wycherly, who, almost as profligate in point of dialogue 
 as any of his contemporaries, nevertheless hit the right vein 
 of satire. Wycherly lived at the other end of Eussell Street, 
 in Bow Street, where we shall see him shortly. 
 
 * Miscellaneous Works of the Duke of Buckingham and others. 
 1704, vol. i., p. 34. 
 
 f The verses are attributed to Etherege ; but, from a Scotch rhyme 
 in them of trull and will, are perhaps not his. 
 
 $ History of His own Times, Edin. 1753, vol. i., p. 387. 
 
284 DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 We are now come to the time of Congreve, Mrs. Brace- 
 girdle, and others ; Betterton remaining. Of these indivi- 
 dually we have spoken before ; and therefore shall only 
 observe that by the more serious examples of James II. and 
 King William, the manners of the day were reforming, and 
 those of the stage with them. We now find ourselves among 
 audiences more composed, and witness plays less coarse, though 
 with an abundance of double meaning and exuberantly witty. 
 Coquetry and fashion are now the reigning stage goddesses, as 
 mere wantonness was that of the age preceding. 
 
 Farquhar and Yanbrugh succeeded, together with Cibber, 
 Wilkes, Booth, and latterly Steele and Mrs. Oldfield. Yan- 
 brugh does not belong to Drury Lane, but Farquhar does, 
 with the rest ; and a lively place he made of it. He is Cap- 
 tain Farquhar, has a plume in his hat, and prodigious animal 
 spirits, with invention at will, and great good nature. Cap- 
 tains abounded among the wits and adventurers of those days 
 down to Captains Macheath and Gibbet. Yanbrugh was a 
 captain; Steele at one time was Captain Steele; and Mrs. Old- 
 field's father, though the son of a vinter, became Captain 
 Oldfield, and genteelly ran out an estate. This is still the 
 age of genuine comedy, and the stage is worthy of it. The 
 tragedy was proportionably bad. Booth, indeed, was a good 
 tragic actor, but he suited the age in being declamatory. He 
 was the hero of Addison's Cato, once the favourite tragedy of 
 the critics, now of nobody. 
 
 Eowe was another artificial writer of tragedy, but not with- 
 out a vein of feeling. It seems to have been thought in those 
 times, as we may see by these authors, and by the tragedies of 
 Banks and Lillo, that to be natural, an author was to be 
 prosaical ; while, if he had any pretensions to be poetical, it 
 was his business to — 
 
 " wake the soul by tender strokes of art." 
 
 The gradual approach, also, of this period to our own times, 
 which are more critical in costume, and the pictures left to us 
 of favourite performers in Hamlet and Hermione, dressed in 
 wigs and hoop petticoats, render those outrages upon propriety 
 still stranger to one's imagination. They set tragedy in a 
 mock-heroical light. Cato wore a long peruke ; Alexandei 
 the Great a wig and jack-boots ; and it was customary, down 
 to Garrick's time, to dress Macbeth and other tragic general- 
 
COMPARISON BEWEEN WILES AND CIBBER. 285 
 
 officers in a suit of brick-dust. "Booth enters," says 
 Pope : — 
 
 " Hark, the universal peal ! 
 
 But has he spoken ? Not a syllable. 
 
 What shook the stage and made the people stare ? 
 
 Cato's long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair.' 
 
 The stare was not that of ridicule, but of admiration. All 
 this makes the comedy of that period shine out the more as 
 the only truth extant. Cherry, and Archer, and Sir Harry 
 Wildair, and Sir John Brute, and my Lady Betty Modish, 
 were like the age, and like the performers. 
 
 To return to these. Wilks was the fine gentleman of that 
 period. He was a friend of Farquhar's, and came to London 
 with him from Dublin. Cibber, though he wrote a good 
 comedy, would appear, by some accounts of him, to have been 
 little more on the stage than a mimic of past actors. Steele, 
 however, has a criticism on him and Wilks, in which he speaks 
 of them both as perfect actors in their kinds'. 
 
 " Wilks," he tells us, " has a singular talent in representing the 
 graces of nature ; Cibber the deformity in the affectation of them. 
 Were I a writer of plays, I should never employ either of them in parts 
 which had not their bents this way. This is seen in the inimitable 
 strain and run of good humour which is kept up in the character of 
 Wildair, and in the nice and delicate abuse of understanding in that 
 of Sir Novelty. Cibber, in another light, hits exquisitely the flat 
 civility of an affected gentleman usher, and Wilks the easy frankness 
 of a gentleman To beseech gracefully, to approach respect- 
 fully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilks may be 
 made to shine with the utmost beauty. To rally pleasantly, to scorn 
 artfully, to flatter, to ridicule, and to neglect, are what Cibber would 
 perform with no less excellence." * 
 
 This criticism produced a letter to Steele from two inferior 
 actors of that time, Bullock and Penkethman, who, rather 
 than not be noticed at all, were willing to be bantered. They 
 knew it would be done good-naturedly. Accordingly the 
 "Tatler" says, 
 
 " For the information of posterity I shall comply with this letter, 
 and set these tw r o great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his 
 Cato and Caesar. Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman 
 are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish them- 
 selves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crab 
 tree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable 
 squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman 
 devours cold chick with great applause ; Bullock's talent lies chiefly 
 in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself 
 
 * Tatler, No. 1S2. 
 
286 STORY of cibber's wig. 
 
 under a table ; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. 
 Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money ; but Mr. Bullock is the 
 taller man."* 
 
 Off the stage, and behind the scenes, Cibber performed the 
 part of a coxcomb of the first order. We shall not be pro- 
 perly acquainted with Drury Lane at this period if we do not 
 repeat his story of the wig. 
 
 This was a peruke of his, famous in the part of Sir Fopling 
 Flutter. It was so much admired, that Cibber used to have 
 it brought upon the stage in a sedan, and put it on publicly, 
 to the great content of the beholders. A set of curls so 
 applauded was the next thing to a toast ; and accordingly 
 Colonel, then Mr. Brett, whom the. toasts admired, could not 
 rest till he had taken possession of it. 
 
 "The first view," says Colley, "that fires the head of a young 
 gentleman of this modish ambition, just broke loose from business, 
 is to cut a figure (as they call it) in a side box at the play, from 
 whence their next step is to the green-room behind the scenes, some- 
 times their non ultra. Hither at last, then, in this hopeful quest of 
 his fortune, came this gentleman-errant, not doubting but the fickle 
 dame, while he was thus qualified to receive her, might be tempted to 
 fall into his lap. And though, possibly, the charms of our theatrical 
 nymphs might have their share in drawing him thither ; yet, in my 
 observation, the most visible cause of his first coming was- a more 
 sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottomed periwig, 
 which I then wore in my first play of the ' Fool in Fashion/ in the 
 year 1695. For it is to be noted that the beaux of those days were of 
 a quite different cast to the modern stamp, and had more of the state- 
 liness of the peacock in their mien, than (which now seems to be their 
 highest emulation) the pert of a lapwing. Now, whatever contempt 
 philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not to 
 despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well, that so material 
 an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, 
 could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevo- 
 lence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, 
 perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful a purchase 
 might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made his attack 
 upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do for a lady of 
 pleasure ; first, by a few familiar praises of her person, and then a 
 civil inquiry into the price of it. But on his observing me a little 
 surprised at the levity of his question about a fop's periwig, he began 
 to rally himself with so much wit and humour upon the folly of his 
 fondness for it, that he struck me with an equal desire of granting 
 anything in my power to oblige so facetious a customer. This singular 
 beginnining of our conversation, and the mutual laughs that ensued 
 upon it, ended in an agreement to finish our bargain that night over a 
 bottle."! 
 
 * Tatler, No. 188. See also No. 7. 
 f Apology, p. 303. 
 
MRS. OLDFIELD. 287 
 
 Colonel Brett, being a man of " bonnes fortunes" married 
 Savage's mother ! 
 
 Mrs. Oldfield made such an impression in her day, and 
 has been noticed by so many writers, that she must have a 
 passage to herself. She was the daughter of Captain Oldfield 
 above-mentioned, and went to live with her aunt, who kept 
 the Mitre tavern in St. James's Market. Here, we are told, 
 Captain Farquhar, overhearing Miss Nancy read a play 
 behind the bar, v:as so struck " with the proper emphasis 
 and agreeable turn "lie gave to each character, that he swore 
 the girl was cut out for the stage." As she had always 
 expressed an inclination for that way of life, and a desire of 
 trying her fortune in it, her mother, on this encouragement, 
 the next time she saw Captain Vanbrugh ( afterwards Sir 
 John), who had a great respect for the family, acquainted 
 hiii with Captain Farquhar's opinion, on which he desired to 
 know whether her bent was most tragedy or comedy. Miss, 
 being called in, informed him that her principal inclination 
 was to the latter, having at that time gone through all Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher's comedies ; and the play she was reading 
 when Captain Farquhar dined there having been ' The 
 Scornful Lady.' Captain Vanbrugh, shortly after, recom- 
 mended her to Mr. Christopher Rich, who took her into the 
 house at the allowance of fifteen shillings per week. 
 However, her agreeable figure and sweetness of voice soon 
 gave her the preference, in the opinion of the whole town, to 
 all the young actresses of that time ; and the Duke of 
 Bedford, in particular, being pleased to speak to Mr. Rich in 
 her favour, he instantly raised her to twenty shillings per 
 week. After which her fame and salary gradually increased, 
 till at length they both attained that height which her merit 
 entitled her to."* 
 
 The new actress had a silver voice, a beautiful face and 
 person, great good-nature, sprightliness, and grace, and 
 became the fine lady of the stage in the most agreeable sense 
 of the word. She also acted heroines of the sentimental 
 order, and had an original part in every play of Steele. 
 But she was particularly famous in the part of Lady Betty 
 Modish, in " The Careless Husband" The name explains 
 the character. Cibber tells us that he drew many of the 
 strokes in it from her lively manner. 
 
 * Baker's Biographia Dramatica, Art. Farquhar, vol. i., p. 155. 
 Faithful Memoirs, &c., of Mrs. Anne Oldfield, by Egerton, p. 76. 
 
238 MRS. OLDFIELD. 
 
 " Had her birth," he says, " placed her in a higher rank of life, she 
 had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she only excellently 
 acted, an agreeable gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her 
 natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies, where 
 women of the best rank might have borrowed some part of their 
 behaviour, without the least diminution of their sense or dignity. 
 And this very morning, where I am now writing, at the Bath, 
 November 11th, 1738, the same words were said of her by a lady of 
 condition, whose better judgment of her personal merit in that light 
 has emboldened me to repeat them. After her success in this 
 character of higher life, all that nature had given her of the actress 
 seemed to have risen to its full perfection : but the variety of her 
 power could not be known till she was seen in a variety of characters, 
 which, as fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. Authors 
 had much more from her performance than they had reason to hope 
 for, from what they had written for her ; and none had less than 
 another, but as their genius, in the parts they allotted her, was more 
 or less elevated. 
 
 " In the wearing of her person she was particularly fortunate ; her 
 figure was always improving to her thirty-sixth year ; but her ex- 
 cellence in acting was never at a stand ; and the last new character 
 she shone in (Lady Townly) was a proof that she was still able to do 
 more, if more could have been done for her. She had one mark of 
 good sense, rarely known in any actor of either sex but herself. I 
 have observed several, with promising dispositions, very desirous of 
 instruction at their first setting out ; but no sooner had they found 
 their best account in it, than they were as desirous of being left to 
 their own capacity, which they then thought would be disgraced by 
 their seeming to want any farther assistance. But this was not 
 Mrs. Oldfield's way of thinking ; for to the last year of her life she 
 never undertook any part she liked, without being importunately 
 desirous of having all the helps in it that another could possibly give 
 her. By knowing so much herself, she found how much more there 
 was of nature yet needful to be known. 
 
 " Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint, that she was not 
 able to take or improve. With all this merit, she was tractable, and 
 less presuming in her station than several that had not half her pre- 
 tensions to be troublesome. But she lost nothing by her easy conduct ; 
 she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always 
 reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as denied a 
 civility. Upon her extraordinary action in the ' Provoked Husband,' 
 the managers made her a present of fifty guineas more than her 
 agreement, which never was more than a verbal one ; for they knew 
 she was above deserting them to engage upon any other stage, and 
 she was conscious they would never think it their interest to give her 
 cause of complaint. In the last two months of her illness, when she 
 was no longer able to assist them, she declined receiving her salary, 
 though by her agreement she was entitled to it. Upon the whole she 
 was, to the last scene she acted, the delight of her spectators."* 
 
 This charming actress (Mrs. Oldfield) is said to have been 
 the Flavia of " The Tatler" (No. 212). The catch-penny 
 * Apology, p. 250. 
 
MRS. OLDFIELD. 289 
 
 writer of her memoirs equivocally speaks of it as her " vera 
 effigies" and on his authority the assertion has been repeated. 
 But as a Flavia mentioned in the same work (No. 239) turns 
 out to be Miss Osborne, afterwards the wife of Bishop Atter- 
 bury (upon whom he wrote the lines on a fan there inserted, 
 beginning 
 
 " Flavia the least and slightest toy 
 Can with resistless art employ,") 
 
 and as the first Flavia is praised for her quality and the 
 extreme simplicity of her manners (which, according to 
 Cibber, was not exactly one of the charms of Mrs. Oldfield,) 
 the supposition, we think, falls to the ground. We need 
 have less hesitation in admitting that Steele, who knew her 
 well, alludes to her in another paper under her favourite title 
 of Lady Betty Modish. Speaking of the effects of love upon 
 a generous temper, in refining the manners, he says, " There 
 is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath until he 
 saw the Lady Betty Modish, now never gives his man an 
 order, but it is, ' Pray, Tom, do it.' The drawers where he 
 drinks live in perfect happiness. He asked Will at the 
 George the other day, how he did ? Where he used to say, 
 ' Damn it, it is so ; ' he now c believes there is some mistake ; 
 he must confess, he is of another opinion ; but, however, he 
 will not insist.' " * This Colonel Ranter is supposed by the 
 commentators to. have been Brigadier- General Churchill, one 
 of the Marlborough family, who lived with Mrs. Oldfield 
 after the death of Mr. Maynwaring. Steele elsewhere speaks 
 of a" General" (supposed to be the same) " weeping for her, 
 in the character of Indiana in his ' Conscious Lovers ; ' " upon 
 which he said Mr. Wilks observed (for he had made all the 
 fine gentlemen tender) that the General " would fight ne'er 
 the worse for that." 
 
 Mrs. Oldfield's position in life was singular. With all her 
 beauty and attraction, and the license of stage manners, she 
 is understood to have attached herself but to two persons 
 successively, and on the footing of a wife. The first was 
 Mr. Maynwaring, a celebrated Whig writer, to whom one of 
 the volumes of " The Spectator" is dedicated, and by whom 
 she had a son ; and, after his death, she lived with General 
 Churchill, by whom she had a son also. " She left," says 
 ' The General Biography] " the bulk of her substance to her 
 son Maynwaring, from whose father she had received it ; 
 * Tatler, No. 10. 
 
290 MBS. OLDFIELD. 
 
 without neglecting, however, her other son Churchill, and her 
 own relations." 
 
 During the period of these two connections, Mrs. Oldfield 
 appears to have been received into the first circles, where she 
 is described as being a pattern of good behaviour ; and yet 
 the feeling of Mr. Maynwaring's friends against the connection 
 was so strong, that she herself, though she is understood to 
 have had a sincere affection for him, is said to have often 
 remonstrated with him against it as injurious to his interest. 
 Marriage with an actress, though the example had been set 
 by a duke, appears in neither case to have been thought of. 
 The feeling of society seems to have been this : — " Here is a 
 woman bred up to the stage, and passing her life upon it. It 
 is therefore impossible she should marry a gentleman of 
 family ; and yet, as her behaviour would otherwise deserve 
 it, and the examples of actresses are of no authority for any 
 one but themselves, some license may be allowed to a woman 
 who diverts us so agreeably, who attracts the society of the 
 wits, and is so capital a dresser. We will treat her pro- 
 fession with contempt, but herself with consideration." Upon 
 these curious grounds Mrs. Oldfield lived in every respect 
 like a woman of fashion, and as she became rich (which was, 
 perhaps, not the least of her recommendations), she was 
 admitted into the best society, and went to court. The 
 pretence among her visitors during both *her connections 
 probably was, that she was privately married ; but she was 
 too sincere to warrant the deception. The Princess of Wales 
 (afterwards queen of George II.) asked her one day at a levee 
 if her marriage with General Churchill was true. " So it is 
 said, may it please your highness, but w r e have not owned it 
 yet." — " It may appear singular," says Mr. Chalmers, who 
 tells us this story, " to quote the late pious Sir James Ston- 
 house for anecdotes of Mrs. Oldfield ; yet in one of his letters 
 we are informed, that she always went to the house in the 
 same dress she had worn at dinner in her visits to the houses 
 of great people ; for she was much caressed on account of 
 her professional merit and her connection with Mr. Churchill, 
 the Duke of Marlborough's brother ; that she used to go to 
 the playhouse in a chair, attended by two footmen ; that she 
 seldom spoke to any one of the actors ; and was allowed a 
 sum of money to buy her own clothes."* Mrs. Oldfield's 
 
 * Letters from the Rev. J. Orton and the Rev. Sir John Stonhouee, 
 quoted in the " General Biographical Dictionary," vol. xxiii. p. 326. 
 
MRS. OLDFIELD. 2Vl 
 
 generosity was much admired in giving a pension to Savage, 
 which he received regularly as long as she lived. This is 
 what has given posterity a liking for her. When she died 
 she lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and her funeral in 
 Westminster Abbey was attended by several noblemen, among 
 others, as pall-bearers. Mr. Chalmers has repeated, with 
 other biographers, that, " at her own desire," she was elegantly 
 dressed in her coffin ; on which account, it is added, Pope 
 introduced her in the character of Narcissa : 
 
 " Odious ! in wollen ! 'twould a saint provoke, 
 (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke) ; 
 No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace 
 Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face : 
 One would not sure be frightful when one's dead — 
 And, Betty, give this cheek a little red." 
 
 But it does not appear that there is any authority for this 
 speech, except the poet's. A letter written to her first 
 biographer by an attendant during her last illness says, that 
 " although she had no priest," she " prayed without ceasing," 
 which does not look like an attention to dress ; but the 
 biographer adds, that " as the nicety of dress was her delight 
 when living, she was as nicely dressed after her decease ; 
 being, by Mrs. Saunders' direction, thus laid in her coffin." 
 The nicety here mentioned was, to be sure, " mortal fine." — 
 " She had on," says the writer, " a very fine Brussels lace- 
 head, a Holland shift with tucker, and double ruffles of the 
 same lace ; a pair of new kid gloves, and her body, wrapt up 
 in a winding sheet."* Yet we are of Montaigne's opinion, 
 and know not why death should be rendered more melancholy 
 than it is. When a tomb was opened in Greece, supposed to 
 be that of Aspasia, there was found in it a sprig of myrtle in 
 gold. 
 
 The next batch of players, with Garrick at their head, are 
 Quin, Macklin, Barry, King, Woodward, Gentleman Smith, 
 and others ; with Mrs. Clive, Pritchard, Cibber, and Woffing- 
 ton. Garrick's later contemporaries are Parsons, Dodd, Quick, 
 the Palmers, Miss Pope, Mrs. Abingdon, and others, who 
 bring us down to Mrs. Siddons, Miss Farren, &c, the com- 
 mencers of our own time. Of Steele and the sentimental 
 comedy we need say no more. Goldsmith belongs to Covenfc 
 Garden ; Foote to the Hay market ; and Cumberland, though 
 an elegant writer, does not call for any particular mention in 
 an abstract like this. 
 
 '* Memoirs, p. 144. 
 
 v 2 
 
292 GARRICK AND HIS NEW STYLE. 
 
 When Garrick first appeared, a declamatory grandeur 
 prevailed in tragedy, which we conceive to have arisen in the 
 time of Charles II. It was probably handed down by Booth ; 
 and imitated, with the usual deterioration, from Betterton, 
 who, though a true genius and a universal one, may not have 
 been uncorrupted by the taste of the times ; not to mention 
 that it is doubtful, till Garrick appeared, whether the art of 
 acting was not identified with something too much of an art, 
 and the delicacy of verses expected to partake more of reci- 
 tation and musical accompaniment than we now look for. 
 Our suspicion to this effect arises from the traditional habits 
 of the stage, one generation handing down the manner of 
 another, and Betterton himself having been educated in the 
 school of those who were bred up in the recollection of Bur- 
 bage and Condell. Shakspeare himself, from custom, or even 
 from some subtlety of reason, might have approved of some- 
 thing of this kind ; though, on the other hand, in the cele- 
 brated directions of Hamlet to the players, there appears to 
 be a secret dissatisfaction with the most applauded actors of 
 that time, as not being exactly what was desirable. If this 
 notion is just, and the great poet of nature was as much 
 advanced beyond his time in this as in other respects, he 
 might indeed have hailed such an actor as Garrick, however 
 hyperbolically they have been sometimes put together. The 
 best performers whom Garrick found in possession of public 
 applause, though some of them are described as excelling in 
 all the varieties of passion (as Mrs. Cibber, for instance, not- 
 withstanding the different impression given of her in the fol- 
 lowing quotation), appear to have been more or less of the 
 old declamatory school. Quin in particular, then at the head 
 of the profession, was an avowed declaimer, having the same 
 notions of tragedy in the delivery which his friend Thomson 
 had in the composition. Posterity respects Quin as the 
 friend of Thomson, and laughs with him as an epicure and a 
 wit. Garrick- and he ultimately became friends. Of the 
 first reception of the new style introduced by Garrick, its 
 electrical effects upon some, and the natural hesitation of 
 others to give up their old favourites, a lively picture has 
 been left us by Cumberland. 
 
 Speaking of himself, who was then at Westminster school, 
 
 ho S2JS,« — 
 
 "I was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the 
 play, wh';re, for the first time in my life, I was treated by the sight 
 
Cumberland's account of garrick:. 293 
 
 of Garrick in the character of Lothario. Quin played Horatio; Ryan, 
 Altaniont; Mrs. Cibber, Calista; and Mrs. Pritchard condescended 
 to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage 
 from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was rivetted to 
 the scene. I have the spectacle even now, as it were, before my eyes. 
 Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green 
 velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed 
 periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With 
 very little variation of cadence, and in a deep, full tone, accompanied 
 by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the 
 stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, 
 that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. 
 Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet withal, sung, or rather 
 recitatived, Rowe's harmonious strain, something in the manner of 
 the improvisatore's; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, 
 though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it ; when she had once 
 recited two or three/speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every 
 succeeding one; it was like a long, old, legendary ballad of innumer- 
 able stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally 
 chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an 
 actress of a different cast, had more nature, and, of course, more 
 change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my 
 opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favour; but when, after 
 long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young 
 and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bound- 
 ing on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy- 
 paced Horatio — heavens, what a transition ! — it seemed as if a whole 
 century had been swept over in the transition of a single scene; old 
 things were done away and a new order at once brought forward, 
 bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms 
 and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of 
 custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing 
 declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to eman- 
 cipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and 
 though, at times, he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of new- 
 born light upon them, yet, in general they seemed to love darkness 
 better than light, and, in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio 
 and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master 
 of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, 
 my feelings in. those moments led me right; they were those of 
 nature, and therefore could not err." * 
 
 * Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself, 4to. p. 59. 
 Davies, in his " Life of Garrick," vol. i. p. 136, gives us a different 
 idea of the preference awarded by the audience. To be sure, upon his 
 knowledge, he says only that Quin was defeated " in the opinion of 
 the best judges; " but he adds, from report, an anecdote that looks as 
 if the general feeling also was against him. "When Lothario," he 
 says, " gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it 
 instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of 
 superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words, 
 
 ' I '11 meet thee there ! ' 
 in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous, lie 
 
294 IMPROVEMENT OF STAGE COSTUME. 
 
 It is needless to add that Garrick excelled in comedy as 
 well as tragedy, and in the lowest comedy too — in Abel 
 Drugger as well as Hamlet. He was first at Goodman's 
 Fields ; then appeared both at Covent Garden and Drury 
 Lane; but in a short time settled for life at Drury Lane as 
 actor, manager, and author. He was a sprightly dramatist, 
 a man of wit, and no doubt a generous man, though the 
 endless matters of business in which he was concerned, and 
 the refusals of all kinds which he must have been often 
 forced into, got him, with many, a character for the reverse. 
 Johnson, who did not spare him, pronounced him generous. 
 Fine as his tragedy must have been, we suspect his comedy 
 must have been finer; because his own nature w r as one of 
 greater sprightliness than sentiment. We hear nothing 
 serious of him throughout his life; and his face, with a great 
 deal of acuteness, has nothing in it profound or romantic. 
 
 Garrick has the reputation of improving the stage costume: 
 but it was Macklin that did it. The late Mr. West, who was 
 the first (in his picture of the " Death of Wolfe ") to omit the 
 absurdity of putting a piece of armour instead of a waistcoat 
 upon a general officer, told us, that he himself once asked 
 Garrick why he did not reform the stage in that particular. 
 Garrick said the spectators would not allow it ; " they would 
 throw a bottle at his head." Macklin, however, persevered, 
 and the thing was done. The other, with all his nature, 
 seems to have had a hankering after the old dresses. He had 
 first triumphed in them, and they suited his propensity to the 
 airy and popular. Garrick had a particular dislike to 
 appearing in the Roman costume. Probably in this there 
 was a consciousness of his small person. There are many 
 engravings of him extant, in which his tragic characters are 
 seen in coats and toupees. His appearance as Hotspur, in a 
 laced frock and Ramillie wig, was objected to, not as being 
 unsuitable to the time, but as " too insignificant for the 
 character." * 
 
 Of Barry, the most celebrated antagonist of Garrick, we 
 shall speak at Covent Garden. King, according to Churchill, 
 by the force of natural impudence as well as genius, excelled 
 in "Brass; " and Churchill's opinions are worth attending to, 
 
 paused so long before he spoke, that somebody, it was said, called out 
 from the gallery, ' Why don't you tell the gentleman whether you 
 will meet him or not ? '" 
 
 * Davis's Miscellanies, ut supra, vol. i., p. 120. 
 
MRS. WOFFINGTON AND GARRICK. 295 
 
 though he expresses them with vehemence, and by wholesale. 
 Gentleman Smith explains his character by his title. We 
 should entertain a very high opinion of Mrs. Pritchard, even 
 had she left us nothing but the face in her portraits. She 
 seems to have been a really great genius, equally capable of 
 the highest and lowest parts. The fault objected to her was, 
 that her figure was not genteel ; and we can imagine this well 
 enough in an actress who could pass from Lady Macbeth to 
 Doll Common. She seems to have thrown herself into the 
 arms of sincerity and passion, not, perhaps, the most refined, 
 but as tragic and comic as need be. As Churchill says, 
 
 "Before such merits all objections fly, 
 Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick six feet high." 
 
 Clive was an admirable comic actress, of the wilful and 
 fantastic order, and a wit and virago in private life. She 
 became the neighbour and intimate of Horace Walpole, and 
 always seems to us to have been the man of the two. Mrs. 
 Woffington was an actress of all work, but of greater talents 
 than the phrase generally implies. Davies says she was the 
 handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, and that 
 Garrick was at one time in doubt whether he should not 
 marry her. She was famous for performing in male attire, 
 and openly preferred the conversation of men to women — the 
 latter she said, talking of " nothing but silks and scandal." 
 She was the only woman admitted into one of the beef-steak 
 clubs, and is said to have been president of it. These 
 humours, perhaps, though Davies praises her for feminine 
 manners, as contrasted with her antagonist Mrs. Clive, 
 frightened G-arrick out of his matrimony. 
 
 We now pass at once to Covent Garden Theatre, which 
 lies close by. Many old play -goers who are in the habit of 
 associating the two theatres in their fancy, like twins, will be 
 surprised to hear that the Covent Garden establishment is 
 very young, compared with her sister, being little more than 
 a hundred years old. It was first built by Eich, the harlequin, 
 and opened in 1733 under the patent granted to the Duke's 
 company. The Covent Garden company may therefore be 
 considered as the representatives of the old companies of 
 Davenant and Betterton ; while those at Drury Lane are the 
 successors of Killigrew, and more emphatically the King's 
 actors. Indeed, they exclusively designate themselves as " his 
 Majesty's servants ; " and, we believe, claim some privileges 
 on that account. Covent Garden theatre was partly rebuilt 
 
296 COVENT GARDEN THEATRE. 
 
 in 1772, and wholly so in 1809, having undergone the usual 
 death by conflagration. The new edifice was a structure in 
 classical taste, by Mr. Smirke, the portico being a copy from 
 the Parthenon of Athens.* 
 
 Actors have seldom been confined to any one house ; and 
 those whom we are about to mention performed at Drury 
 Lane as well as Covent Garden ; but as they were rivals or 
 opponents of Garrick, and may be supposed to have made the 
 greatest efforts when they acted on a different stage, we shall 
 speak of them apart under the present head. The first of 
 them is Barry, who at one time almost divided the favour of 
 of the town with Garrick, and in some characters is said to 
 have excelled him, especially in love parts. How far this 
 was owing to superiority of figure, and to a reputation for 
 gallantry, it is impossible to say; and never were judgments 
 more discordant than those which have been left us on the 
 subject of Barry's merits. For instance, his character is thus 
 summed up by Davies : — 
 
 " Of all the tragic actors who have trod the English stage for these 
 last fifty years, Mr. Barry was unquestionably the most pleasing. 
 Since Booth and Wilks, no actor had shown the public a just idea of 
 the hero or the lover; Barry gave dignity to the one and passion to 
 the other: in his person he was tall without awkwardness; in his 
 countenance, handsome without effeminacy; in his uttering of passion, 
 the language of nature alone was communicated to the feelings of an 
 audience." 
 
 Davies proceeds to tell us, that Barry could not perform 
 such characters as Eichard and Macbeth, though he made a 
 capital Alexander. " He charmed the ladies by the soft 
 melody of his love-complaints, and the noble ardour of his 
 courtship. There was no passion of the tender kind so truly 
 pathetic and forcible in any actor as in Barry, except in Mrs. 
 Cibber, who, indeed, excelled, in the expression of love, grief, 
 tenderness, and jealous rage, all I ever knew. Happy it was 
 for the frequenters of the theatre, when these two genuine 
 children of nature united their efforts to charm an attentive 
 audience. Mrs. Cibber, indeed, might be styled the daughter 
 or sister of Mr. Garrick, but could be only the mistress or 
 wife of Barry." f Our author afterwards calls him the 
 
 * Since this was written, Covent Garden has been converted into an 
 Italian Opera House, has been a second time burnt, and a third time 
 rebuilt; the architect being Mr. Barry, a son of Sir Charles Barry, 
 who designed and erected the New Houses of Parliament. 
 
 f Alluding to her performance of Cordelia, &c, with the one, and 
 of Juliet, Belvidera, &c, with the other. 
 
CHARACTER OF BARRY THE ACTOR. 297 
 
 " Mark Antony of the stage," whether his amorous disposition 
 was considered, or his love of expense. He delighted in giving 
 magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham, who 
 once invited himself to sup with him, in a style so princely, 
 that the Minister rebuked him for it ; which was not very 
 civil. An actor has surely as much right to do absurd things 
 as a statesman. 
 
 Now, as a contrast to this romantic portrait by Davies, 
 take the following from the severer but masterly hand of 
 Churchill:— 
 
 " In person taller than the common size, 
 Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes; 
 When lab'ring passions in his bosom pent, 
 Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent, 
 Spectators, with imagined terrors warm, 
 Anxious expect the bursting of the storm: 
 But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell, 
 His voice comes forth like Echo from her cell; 
 To swell the tempest needful aid denies, 
 And all a-down the stage in feeble murmur dies. 
 What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err 
 In elocution, action, character ? 
 What man could give, if Barry was not here, 
 Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear ? 
 Who else can speak so very, very fine, 
 That sense may kindly end with every line ? 
 Some dozen lines, before the ghost is there, 
 Behold him for the solemn scene prepare. 
 See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb, 
 Puts the whole body into proper trim, — 
 From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art, 
 Five lines hence comes a ghost, and lo ! a start. 
 When he appears most perfect, still we find 
 Something which jars upon and hurts the mind. 
 Whatever lights upon a part are thrown, 
 We see too plainly they are not his own : 
 No flame from nature ever yet he caught, 
 Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught; 
 He raised his trophies on the base of art, 
 And conn'd his passions, as he conn'd his part."* 
 
 The probability, we fear, is that Barry was one of the old 
 artificial school, who made his way more by person than by 
 genius. Davies, who was a better gossip than critic, though 
 he affected literature, was an actor himself of the mouthing 
 order, if we are to believe Churchill ; and his criticisms show 
 him enough inclined to lean favourably to that side. 
 
 We have spoken of Quin, who acted much at this house in 
 Opposition to Garrick, It was here that he delivered the pro- 
 
 * The Kosciad. 
 
298 PANTOMIME. 
 
 logue to the memory of his friend Thomson; and affected the 
 audience by shedding real tears.* 
 
 Macklin was celebrated in Shylock; and in some other 
 sarcastic parts, particularly that of Sir Archy, in his comedy 
 of " Love-a-la-Mode." We take him to have been one of 
 those actors whose performances are confined to the reflection 
 of their own personal peculiarities. The merits of Shuter, 
 Edwin, Quick, and others who succeeded one another as 
 buffoons, were perhaps a good deal of this sort; but pleasant 
 humours are rare and acceptable. Macklin was a clever 
 satirist in his writing, and embroiled himself, not so cleverly, 
 with a variety of his acquaintances. He foolishly attempted 
 to run down Garrick; and once, in a sudden quarrel, poked 
 out a man's eye with his stick and killed him ; for which he 
 narrowly escaped hanging. However, he was sorry for it; 
 and he*is spoken of, by the stage historians, as kind in his 
 private relations, and liberal of his purse. A curious speci- 
 men of his latter moments we reserve for our mention of the 
 house where he died. 
 
 Woodward seems to have been a caricature anticipation of 
 Lewis, and was a capital harlequin. But nobody in harlequins 
 beat Rich, the manager of this theatre. His pantomimes and 
 spectacles produced a re-action against Garrick, when nothing 
 else could; and Covent Garden ever since has been reckoned 
 the superior house in that kind of merit, — "the wit," as Mr. 
 Ludlow Holt called it, " of goods and chattels." However, a 
 considerable degree of fancy and observation maybe developed 
 in patomime : it is the triumph of animal spirits at Christmas, 
 for the little children ; and for the men there is occasionally 
 some excellent satire on the times, reminding one, in its 
 spirit, of what we read of the comic buffoonery of the 
 ancients. Grimaldi, in his broad and fugitive sketches, often 
 showed himself a shrewder observer than many a comic actor 
 who can repeat only what is set down for him. Covent Garden 
 has, perhaps, been superior also in music, at least since 
 
 * " He (Thomson) left behind him the tragedy of ' Coriolamis,' 
 which was, by the zeal of his patron, Sir George Lyttleton, brought 
 upon the stage for the benefit of his family, and recommended by a 
 prologue, which Quin, who had long lived with Thomsom in fond 
 intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed him 'to be,' on that 
 occasion, ' no actor.' The commencement of this benevolence is very 
 honourable to Quin ; who is reported to have delivered Thomson, 
 then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest, by a very 
 considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to both; for 
 friendship is not always the sequel of obligation." Life, by Dr. 
 Johnson, in Chalmers's ' Poets,' p. 409. 
 
COOKE. — KEMBLE. 299 
 
 the existence of the two houses together: for Purcell was 
 before its time. Many of Arne's pieces came out here ; and 
 the famous Beard, a singer as manly as his name, the delight 
 both of public and private life, was one of the managers. 
 
 Among the Covent Garden actors must not be forgotten 
 Cooke, who came out there in Eichard III. For some time he 
 was the greatest performer of this and a few other characters. 
 He was a new kind of Macklin, and like him, excelled in 
 Shylock and Sir Archy M* Sarcasm; a confined actor, and a 
 wayward man, but highly impressive in what he could do. 
 His artful villains have been found fault with for looking too 
 artful and villanous ; but men of that stamp are apt to look 
 so. The art of hiding is a considerable one ; but habit will 
 betray it after all, and stand foremost in the countenance. 
 They who think otherwise are only too dull to see it. Besides, 
 Cooke had generally to represent bold-faced, aspiring art; and 
 to hug himself in its triumph. This he did with such a 
 gloating countenance, as if villany was pure luxury in him, 
 and with such a soft inward retreating of his voice — a wrap- 
 ping up of himself, as it were, in velvet — so different from 
 his ordinary rough way, that sometimes one could almost 
 have wished to abuse him. 
 
 John Kemble, who, like the whole respectable family of 
 that name, contributed much to maintain the rising character 
 of the profession, may be considered the last popular actor of 
 the declamatory school. His sister was a far greater per- 
 former, a true theatrical genius, especially for the stately and 
 dominant; and had a great effect in raising the character of 
 the profession. The growth of liberal opinion is nowhere 
 more visible than in the different estimation in which actors 
 and actresses are now held, compared with what it was. 
 Individuals, it is true, always made their way into society by 
 dint of the interest they excited; but still they were upon 
 sufferance. Anybody could insult an actor, could even beat 
 him-, without its being dreamt that he had a right to retaliate; 
 and the most amiable and lady-like actresses were thought 
 unfit for wives, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Oldfield. 
 Things are now upon a different footing. Talent is allowed 
 its just pretensions, whether coming from author or per- 
 former, and actresses have taken such a step, in ascension, 
 that nobility almost seems to look out for a wife among 
 them, as in a school that will inevitably furnish it with some 
 kind of grace and intellect. The famous Lord Peterborough, 
 who was the first nobleman that married an actress, kept the 
 
300 RISE OF ACTORS IN SOCIAL RANK. 
 
 iniioii concealed as long as he could, and only owned it just 
 before his death. The Duke of Bolton, who married Miss 
 Fenton, the Polly of Gay's opera, had first had several 
 children by her as his mistress; so that this is hardly a 
 case in point; and the marriage of Beard, the singer, with 
 a lady of the Waldegrave family, though he was one of the 
 most excellent of men, was looked upon as such a degrada- 
 tion, that they have contrived to omit the circumstance in 
 the peerage-books to this day ! Martin Folkes's marriage 
 with Mrs. Bradshaw probably made the world consider the 
 case a little more rationally, as he was a clever man; but 
 Lord Derby's marriage with Miss Farren, who was eminently 
 the gentlewoman, as well as of spotless character, seems to 
 have been the first that rendered such unions compatible with 
 public opinion. Lord Craven's with Miss Brunton followed, 
 though at a considerable interval; and since that time, the 
 town are so far from being surprised at the marriages of 
 .actresses with people of rank or fashion, that they seem to 
 look for them. Lord Thurlow, not long afterwards, married 
 Miss Bolton; another noble lord was lately the husband of an 
 eminent singer; and several other favourites of the town, 
 Miss Tree, Miss O'Neill, &c, have become the wives of men 
 of fortune. We remember even a dancer, Miss Searle (but 
 she was of great elegance, and had an air of delicate self- 
 possession), who married into a family of rank. 
 
 The whole entertainmeut of a theatre has been rising in 
 point of accommodation and propriety for the last fifty 
 years. The scenery is better, the music better — we mean 
 the orchestra — and last, not least, the audiences are better. 
 They are better behaved. Garrick put an end to one great 
 nuisance — the occupation, by the audience, of part of the 
 stage. Till his time, people often sat about a stage as at 
 the sides of a room, and the actor had to make his way 
 among them, sometimes with the chance of being insulted ; 
 and scuffles took place among themselves. Dr. Johnson, at 
 Lichfield, is said to have pushed a man into the orchestra 
 who had taken possession of his chair. The pit, also, from 
 about Garrick's time, seems to have left to the galleries the vul- 
 garity attributed to it by Pope. There still remains, says he— 
 
 to mortify a wit, 
 
 The many-headed monster of the pit, 
 A senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd, 
 Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud, 
 Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke. 
 Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke,' 1 
 
DR. JOHNSON AT THE THEATRE. 301 
 
 This would now be hardly a fair description of the galleries ; 
 and yet modern audiences are not reckoned to be of quite so 
 high a cast as they used, in point of rank and wealth; so 
 that this is another evidence of the general improvement of 
 manners. Boswell, in an ebullition of vivacity, while sitting 
 one night in the pit by his friend Dr. Blair, gave an extem- 
 pore imitation of a cow ! The house applauded, and he 
 ventured upon some attempts of the same kind which did not 
 succeed. Blair advised him in future to " stick to the cow." 
 No gentleman now-a-days would think of a freak like this. 
 There is one thing, however, in which the pit have much to 
 amend. Their destitution of gallantry is extraordinary, espe- 
 cially for a body so ready to accept the clap-traps of the 
 stage, in praise of their " manly hearts," and their " guardian- 
 ship of the fair." Nothing is more common than to see 
 women standing at the sides of the pit benches, while no one 
 thinks of offering them a seat. Eoom even is not made, 
 though it often might be. Nay, we have heard women 
 rebuked for coming without securing a seat, while the re- 
 prover complimented himself on his better wisdom, and the 
 hearers laughed. On the other hand, a considerate gentleman 
 one night, who went out to stretch his legs, told a lady in our 
 hearing that she might occupy his seat " till he returned !" 
 
 A friend of ours knew a lady who remembered Dr. Johnson 
 in the pit taking snuff out of his waistcoat pocket. He used 
 to go into the green-room to his friend Garrick, till he honestly 
 confessed that the actresses excited too much of his admira- 
 tion. Garrick did not much like to be seen by him when 
 playing any buffoonery. It is said that the actor once com- 
 plained to his friend that he talked too loud in the stage box, 
 and interrupted his feelings : upon which the doctor said, 
 " Feelings ! Punch has no feelings." It was Johnson's 
 opinion (speaking of a common cant of critics), that an actor 
 who really " took himself" for Eichard III., deserved to be 
 hanged; and it is easy enough to agree with him; except 
 that an actor who did so would be out of his senses. Too 
 great a sensibility seems almost as hurtful to acting as too 
 little. It would soon wear out the performer. There must 
 be a quickness of conception, sufficient to seize the truth of 
 the character, with a coolness of judgment to take all advan- 
 tages; but as the actor is to represent as well as conceive, 
 and to be the character in his own person, he could not with 
 impunity give way to his emotions in any degree equal to 
 what the spectators suppose. At least, if he did, he would 
 
302 CHURCHILL. 
 
 fall into fits, or run his head against the wall. As to the 
 amount of talent requisite to make a great actor, we must not 
 enter upon a discussion which would lead us too far from our 
 main object; but we shall merely express our opinion, that 
 there is a great deal more of it among the community than 
 they are aware. 
 
 Goldsmith was a frequenter of the theatre : Fielding and 
 Smollett, Sterne, but particularly Churchill. " His obser- 
 vatory," says Davies, " was generally the first row of the pit, 
 next the orchestra." His " Eosciad," a criticism on the most 
 known performers of the day, made a great sensation among 
 a body of persons who, as they are in the habit of receiving 
 applause to their faces, and in the most victorious manner, 
 may be allowed a greater stock of self-love than most people 
 — a circumstance which renders an unexacting member of 
 their profession doubly delightful. " The writer," says Davies, 
 " very warmly, as well as justly, celebrated the various and 
 peculiar excellencies of Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber, and Clive; 
 but no one has, except Garrick, escaped his satirical lash." 
 Poor Davies is glad to say this, because of the well-known 
 passage in which he himself is mentioned : — 
 
 a With him came mighty Davies ! On my life 
 That Davies hath a very pretty wife." 
 
 We will make one more quotation from this poem, because 
 it describes a class of actors, who are now extinct, and who 
 carried the artificial school to its height : — 
 " Mossop, attached to military plan, 
 
 Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man. 
 
 Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill, 
 
 The right hand labours, and the left lies still; 
 
 Por he resolved on scripture grounds to go, 
 
 What the right doth, the left hand shall not know. 
 
 With studied impropriety of speech, 
 
 He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach; 
 
 To epithets allots emphatic state, 
 
 Whilst principals, ungraced, like lackeys, wait; 
 
 In ways first trodden by himself excels, 
 
 And stands alone in indeclinables; 
 
 Conjunction, preposition, adverb join, 
 
 To stamp new vigour on the nervous line: 
 
 In monosyllables his thunders roll; 
 
 He, she, it, and we, ye, thet, fright the soul." 
 
 Mr. Barrymore (of whom we have no unpleasing recollec- 
 tion) had something of this manner with him; but the extre- 
 mity of the style is now quite gone out. 
 
 The only capital performers we remember, that are now 
 dead and gone, with the exception of two or three already 
 
MRS. JORDAN AND MR. SUETT. 303 
 
 mentioned, were Mrs. Jordan, a charming cordial actress, on 
 the homely side of the agreeable, with a delightful voice ; 
 and Suett, who was the very personification of weak whim- 
 sicality, with a laugh like a peal of giggles. Mathews gives 
 him. to the life. 
 
 We shall "conclude this chapter with some delightful play- 
 going recollections of the best theatrical critic now living * — 
 the best, indeed, as far as we know, that this country ever 
 saw. He is one who does not respect criticism a jot too 
 much, nor any of the feelings connected with humanity, or 
 the imitation of it, too little. We here have him giving us 
 an account of the impression made upon him by the first 
 sight of a play, and concluding with a good hint to those older 
 children, who, because they have cut their drums open, 
 think nothing remains in life to be pleased with. A child 
 may like a theatre, because he is not thoroughly acquainted 
 with it ; but if he beeome a wise man, he will find reason to 
 like it, because he is. 
 
 Life always flows with a certain freshness in these quarters ; 
 nor, with all their drawbacks, have we more agreeable impres- 
 sions from any neighbourhood in London, than what we receive 
 from the district containing the great theatres. It is one of 
 the most social and the least sordid. 
 
 " At the north end of Cross Court," says Mr. Lamb, " thsre yet 
 stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to 
 humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. 
 This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know- 
 was the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all 
 of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years 
 from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed 
 through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and 
 the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that 
 the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch 
 from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was 
 taught to prognosticate the desired cessation. I seem to remember 
 the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it. 
 ***** 
 
 " In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable 
 manager who abolished them! — with one of these we went. I 
 remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left — but 
 between that and an inner door, in shelter. Oh, when shall I be 
 such an expectant again! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indispen- 
 sable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as I can 
 recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses 
 was, * chase some oranges, chase some nonpareils, chase a bill of the 
 play: ' chase pro chuse. But when we got in and I beheld the green 
 
 * Alas! now dead. This passage was written before the departure 
 of our admirable friend. 
 
304 EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A PLAY-GOER. 
 
 curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to 
 be disclosed — the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen 
 something like it in the plate prefixed to ' Troilus and Cressida,' in 
 Rowe's ' Shakspeare,' — the tent scene with Diomede; and a sight of 
 that plate can always bring back, in a measure, the feeling of that 
 evening. The boxes at that time full of well-dressed women of qua- 
 lity, projected over the pit; and the pilasters, reaching down, were 
 adorned with a glittering substance (I know not what) under glass 
 (as it seemed), resembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be 
 sugar-candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier 
 qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The orchestra lights at 
 length arose, those ' fair Auroras ! ' Once the bell sounded. It was 
 to ring out yet once again; and, incapable of the anticipation, I 
 reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. 
 It rang the second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six 
 years old — and the play was ' Artaxerxes ! ' 
 
 "I had dabbled a little in the ' Universal History ' — the ancient 
 part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It was bekig admitted 
 to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going 
 on, for I understood not its import ; but I heard the word Darius* 
 and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. 
 Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princes, passed before me — I knew 
 not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol 
 of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe- 
 struck, and believed those significations to be something more than 
 elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such 
 pleasure has ever since visited me but in dreams. Harlequin's inva- 
 sion followed ; where, I remember, the transformation of the magis- 
 trates into reverend beldames seemed to me a piece of grave historic 
 justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity 
 as the legend of St. Denys. 
 
 " The next play to which I was taken, was the ' Lady of the Manor/ 
 of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are 
 left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime called ' Lun's 
 Ghost ' — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead 
 — but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire) Lun was as remote a 
 piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of harlequins — trans- 
 mitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless 
 ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in 
 a ghastly vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead 
 rainbow. So harlequins (thought 1) look when they are dead. 
 
 " My third play followed in quick succession. It was ' The Way 
 of the World.' I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, 
 I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected 
 me like some solemn tragic passion. ' Robinson Crusoe ' followed, 
 in which Crusoe, Man Friday, and the Parrot were as good and 
 authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
 pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no more 
 laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed 
 to laugh at the grotesque gothic heads (seeming to me then replete 
 with devout meaning) that gape and grin, in stone, around the inside 
 of the old round church (my church) of the Templars. 
 
 "I saw these plays in the season of 1781-2, when I was from six to 
 seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven years (for at 
 school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a 
 
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A PLAY-GOER. 
 
 305 
 
 theatre. That old Artaxerxes' evening had never done ringing in 
 my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same 
 occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than 
 the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At 
 the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated 
 nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 
 
 1 Was nourished I could not tell how.' 
 I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The 
 same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reverence 
 was gone ! The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn between 
 two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to 
 present a 'royal ghost,' but a certain quantity of green baize, which 
 was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their 
 fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The 
 lights — the orchestra lights — came up, a clumsy machinery. The first 
 ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell, 
 which had been like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no 
 hand seen or guessed at, which ministered to its warning. The 
 actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in 
 them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many 
 centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Perhaps 
 it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an 
 indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable 
 expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emo- 
 tions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first 
 appearance, to me, of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and 
 retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and 
 the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of 
 recreations." — Elia, p. 221. 
 
 ENTRANCE DOOR, OLD COVENT GARDEN. 
 
306 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OOVENT GARDEN CONTINUED AND LEICESTER SQUARE. 
 
 Bow Street once the Bond Street of London — Fashions at that time — 
 Infamous frolic of Sir Charles Sedley and others — Wycherly and 
 the Countess of Drogheda — Ton son the Bookseller — Fielding — 
 Russell Street — Dry den beaten by hired ruffians in Rose Street — 
 His Presidency at Will's Coffee-House — Character of that Place — 
 Addison and Button's Coffee-House — Pope, Philips, and Garth — 
 Armstrong — BoswelTs introduction to Johnson — The Hummums — 
 Ghost Story there — Covent Garden — The Church — Car, Earl of 
 Somerset — Butler, Southern, Eastcourt, Sir Robert Strange — 
 Macklin — Curious Dialogue with him when past a century — 
 Dr. Walcot — Covent Garden Market — Story of Lord Sandwich, 
 Hackman, and Miss Ray — Henrietta Street — Mrs. Clive — James 
 Street — Partridge, the almanack-maker — Mysterious lady — King 
 Street — Arne and his Father — The four Indian Kings — 
 Southampton Row — Maiden Lane — Voltaire — Long Acre and its 
 Mug-Houses — Prior's resort there — Newport Street — St. Martin's 
 Lane, and Leicester Square — Sir Joshua Reynolds — Hogarth — Sir 
 Isaac Newton. 
 
 0¥ STREET was once the Bond Street 
 of London. Mrs. Bracegirdle began an 
 epilogue of Dryden's with saying — 
 
 "I've had to-day a dozen billet-doux 
 From fops, and wits, and cits, and Bow- 
 street beaux ; 
 Some from Whitehall, but from the Temple 
 
 more : 
 A Covent-garden porter brought me four." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott says, in a note on the passage, " With a 
 slight alteration in spelling, a modern poet would have written 
 Bond Street beaux. A billet-doux from Bow Street would 
 now be more alarming than flattering."* 
 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle spoke this epilogue at Drury Lane. 
 There was no Covent Garden theatre then. People of fashion 
 occupied the houses in Bow Sti-eet, and mantuas floated up 
 and down the pavement. This was towards the end of the 
 Stuart's reign, and the beginning of the next century — the 
 times of Dry den, Wycherly, and the Spectator. The beau of 
 Charles's time is well-known. He wore, when in full flower, 
 a peruke to imitate the flowing locks of youth, a Spanish hat, 
 clothes of slashed silk or velvet, the slashes tied with ribands, 
 * Scott's 'Dryden,' vol. viii., p. 178, 
 
 
BOW STREET. 307 
 
 a coat resembling a vest rather than the modern coat, and 
 silk stockings, with roses in his shoes. The Spanish was 
 afterwards changed for the cocked hat, the flowing peruke 
 for one more compact ; the coat began to stiffen into the 
 modern shape, and when in full dress, the beau wore his hat 
 under his arm. His grimaces have been described by 
 Dryden — 
 
 "His various modes from various fathers follow; 
 
 One taught the toss, and one the new Trench wallow; 
 
 His sword-knot this, his cravat that designed; 
 
 And this the yard-long snake that twirls behind. 
 
 From one the sacred periwig he gained, 
 
 Which wind ne'er blew, nor touch of hat profaned. 
 
 Another's diving bow he did adore, 
 
 Which with a shog casts all the hair before, 
 
 Till he, with full decorum, brings it back, 
 
 And rises with a water-spaniel shake." * 
 
 One of these perukes would sometimes cost forty or fifty 
 pounds. The fair sex at this time waxed and waned through 
 all the varieties of dishabilles, hoop -petticoats, and stomachers. 
 We must not enter upon this boundless sphere, especially as 
 we have to treat upon it from time to time. We shall content 
 ourselves with describing a set of lady's clothes, advertised as 
 stolen in the year 1709, and which would appear to have 
 belonged to a belle resolved to strike even Bow Street with 
 astonishment. They consisted of <{ a black silk petticoat, 
 with a red-and-white calico border; cherry-coloured stays, 
 trimmed with blue and silver ; a red and dove-coloured 
 damask gown, flowered with large trees ; a yellow satin apron, 
 trimmed with white Persian; muslin head-cloths, with crow- 
 foot edging ; double ruffles with fine edging ; a black silk 
 furbelowed scarf, and a spotted hood!" if It is probable, 
 however, the lady did not wear all these colours at once. 
 
 A tavern in Bow Street, the Cock, became notorious for a 
 frolic of Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Buckhurst, and others, 
 frequently mentioned in the biographies, but too disgusting to 
 be told. There was an account of it in Pepy's manuscript, 
 but it was obliged to be omitted in the printing. Anthony a 
 Wood found it out, and first gave it to the public. It was not 
 commonly dissolute, there was a filthiness in it, which would 
 have been incredible if told of any other period than that of 
 
 * In the prologue to Etherege's play of the ' Man of Mode.' Scott's 
 'Dryden,' vol. x., p. 340. 
 
 I f Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, 
 vol. ii., p. 317. 
 
 x 2 
 
308 WYCHERLY AND 
 
 the fine gentlemen of the court of Charles. What can be 
 repeated has been told by Johnson in his life of Sackville, 
 Lord Dorset. 
 
 *' Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles 
 Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, 
 by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to 
 the company in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew 
 warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in 
 such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened; 
 the crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in 
 the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. 
 For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five 
 hundred pounds; what was the sentence of the others is not known. 
 Sedley employed Killegrew and another to procure a remission of the 
 King, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine 
 for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat." 
 
 Opposite this tavern lived Wycherly, with his wife, the 
 Countess of Drogheda. Charles paid him a visit there, before 
 Wycherly knew the lady ; and showed him a kindness which 
 his marriage is said to have interrupted. The story begins 
 and ends with Bow Street, and, as far as concerns the lady, is 
 curious. 
 
 " Mr. Wycherly," says the biographer, " happened to be ill of a 
 fever at his lodgings in Bow Street, Covent Garden: during his sick- 
 ness, the King did him the honour of a visit: when, finding his fever 
 indeed abated, but his body extremely weakened, and his spirits 
 miserably shattered, he commanded him to take a journey to the 
 south of France, believing that nothing could contribute more to the 
 restoring his former state of health than the gentle air of Montpelier 
 during the winter season : at the same time, the King assured him, 
 that as soon as he was able to undertake the journey, he would order 
 five hundred pounds to be paid him to defray the expenses of it. 
 
 " Mr. Wycherly accordingly went to France, and returned to 
 England the latter end of the spring following, with his health 
 entirely restored. The King received him with the utmost marks of 
 esteem, and shortly after told him he had a son, who he resolved 
 should be educated like the son of a king, and that he could make 
 choice of no man so proper to be his governor as Mr. Wycherly; and 
 that, for this service, he should have fifteen hundred pounds a-year 
 allotted to him; the King also added, that when the time came that 
 his office should cease, he would take care to make such a provision 
 for him as should set him above the malice of the world and fortune. 
 These were golden prospects for Mr. Wycherly, but they were soon 
 by a cross accident dashed to pieces. 
 
 " Soon after this promise of his Majesty's, Mr. Dennis tells us that 
 Mr. Wycherly went down to Tunbridge, to take either the benefit of 
 the waters or the diversions of the place, when, walking one day 
 upon the Wells-walk with his friend, Mr. Fairbeard, of Gray's Inn, 
 just as he came up to the bookseller's, the Countess of Drogheda, a 
 young widow, rich, noble, and beautiful, came up to the bookseller 
 
THE COUNTESS OP DROGHEDA. 309 
 
 and inquired for the * Plain Dealer.' * Madam,' says Mr. Fairbeard, 
 ' since you are for the " Plain Dealer," there he is for you,' pushing 
 Mr. Wycherly towards her. 'Yes,' says Mr. Wycherly, 'this lady 
 can bear plain-dealing, for she appears to be so accomplished, that 
 what would be a compliment to others, when said to her would be 
 plain-dealing.' 'No, truly, sir,' said the lady, 'I am not without my 
 faults more than the rest of my sex : and yet, notwithstanding all my 
 faults, I love plain-dealing, and am never more fond of it than when 
 it tells me of a fault.' ' Then, Madam,' says Mr. Fan-beard, " you 
 and the plain dealer seem designed by heaven for each other.' In 
 short, Mr. Wycherly accompanied her upon the walks, waited upon 
 her home, visited her daily at her lodgings whilst she stayed at 
 Tunbridge; and after she went to London, at her lodgings in Hatton 
 Garden: where, in a little time, he obtained her consent to marry her. 
 This he did, by his father's command, without acquainting the King ; 
 for it was reasonably supposed, that the lady's having a great inde- 
 pendent estate, and noble and powerful relations, the acquainting the 
 King with the intended match would be the likeliest way to prevent 
 it. As soon as the news was known at court, it was looked upon as 
 an affront to the King, and a contempt of his Majesty's orders ; and 
 Mr. Wycherly's conduct after marrying made the resentment fall 
 heavier upon him : for being conscious he had given offence, and 
 seldom going near the court, his absence was construed into in- 
 gratitude. 
 
 • " The Countess, though a splendid wife, was not formed to make a 
 husband happy; she was in her nature extremely jealous; and 
 indulged in it to such a degree, that she could not endure her husband 
 should be one moment out of her sight. Their lodgings were in Bow 
 Street, Co vent Garden, over against the Cock Tavern, whither, if 
 Mr. Wycherly at any time went, he was obliged to leave the windows 
 open, that his lady might see there was no woman in the company."* 
 
 " The Countess," says another writer, "made him some amends 
 by dying in a reasonable time." His title to her fortune, 
 however, was disputed, and his circumstances, though he 
 had property, were always constrained. He was rich enough 
 however to marry a young woman a few days before he died, 
 in order to disappoint a troublesome heir. In his old age he 
 became acquainted with Pope, then a youth, who vexed him 
 by taking him at his word, when asked to correct his poetry. 
 Wycherly showed a candid horror at growing old, natural 
 enough to a man who had been one of the gayest of the gay, 
 very handsome, and a " Captain." He was captain in the 
 regiment of which Buckingham was colonel. We have men- 
 tioned the Duchess of Cleveland's visits to him when a student 
 in the Temple. Wycherly is the greatest of all our comic 
 dramatists for truth of detection in what is ill, as Congreve 
 is the greatest painter of artificial life, and Farquhar and 
 
 * Cibber's ' Lives of the Poets ' vol. iii., p. 252. 
 
310 TONSON, THE BOOKSELLER. 
 
 Hoadley the best discoverers of what is pleasant and good- 
 humoured. When the profligacy of writers like Wycherly is 
 spoken of, we should not forget that much of it is not only 
 confined to certain characters, but that the detection of these 
 characters leaves an impression on the mind highly favour- 
 able to genuine morals. A modern critic, as excellent in his 
 remarks on the drama as the one quoted at the conclusion of 
 our last chapter is upon the stage, says on this point, speaking 
 of the comedy of the " Plain Dealer," — " The character of 
 Manly is violent, repulsive, and uncouth, which is a fault, 
 though one that seems to have been intended for the sake of 
 contrast; for the portrait of consummate, artful hypocrisy 
 in Olivia, is, perhaps., rendered more striking by it. The 
 indignation excited against this odious and pernicious quality 
 by the masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is 
 ' a discipline, of humanity.' No one can read this play atten- 
 tively without being the better for it as long as he lives. It 
 penetrates to the core; it shows the immorality and hateful 
 effects of duplicity, by showing it fixing its harpy fangs in 
 the heart of an honest and worthy man. It is worth ten* 
 volumes of sermons. The scenes between Manly, after his 
 return, Olivia, Plausible, and Norel, are instructive examples 
 of unblushing impudence, of shallow pretensions to principle, 
 and of the most mortifying reflections on his own situation, 
 and bitter sense of female injustice and ingratitude on the 
 part of Manly. The devil of hypocrisy and hardened assu- 
 rance seems worked up to the highest pitch of conceivable 
 effrontery in Olivia, when, after confiding to her cousin 
 the story of her infamy, she, in a moment, turns round upon 
 her for some sudden purpose, and affecting not to know the 
 meaning of the other's allusions to what she had just told her, 
 reproaches her with forging insinuations to the prejudice of 
 her character, and in violation of their friendship. ' Go ! 
 you're a censorious woman.' This is more trying to the 
 patience than anything in the Tartuffe." 
 
 Tonson, the great bookseller of his time, had a private 
 house in Bow Street. Rowe, in an amusing parody of Horace's 
 dialogue with Lydia, has left an account of old Jacob's visitors 
 here, and of his style of language. 
 
 Tonson got rich, but he was penurious; and his want of 
 generosity towards Dry den (to say the least of it) has done 
 him no honour with posterity. It may be said that he cared 
 little for posterity or for anything else, provided he got his 
 
TONSON, THE BOOKSELLER. 311 
 
 money ; but a man who cares for money (unless he is a pure 
 miser) only cares for power and consideration in another 
 shape; and no man chooses to be disliked by his fellow- 
 creatures, living, or to come. In the correspondence between 
 Tonson and Dryden, we see the usual painful picture (when 
 the bookseller is of this description) of the tradesman taking 
 all the advantages, and the author made to suffer for being a 
 gentleman and a man of delicacy. This is the common, and, 
 perhaps, the natural order of things, till society see better 
 throughout ; though there have been, and still are, some 
 handsome exceptions, as in the instances of Dodsley, the late 
 Mr. Johnson, and others. The bookseller generally behaves 
 well, in proportion to his intelligence ; nothing being so eager 
 to catch all petty advantages as the consciousness of having no 
 other ground to go upon. It may be answered that Dryden's 
 patience with Tonson sometimes got exhausted, and he became 
 " captious and irritable:" and it is always to be remembered 
 that the bookseller need not pretend to be anything more 
 than a tradesman seeking his allowed profits ; but he should 
 not on every occasion retreat into the strongholds of trade, 
 and yet claim the merit of acting otherwise ; and Tonson, who 
 undertook to be the familiar friend of Eowe and Congreve, 
 ought not to have been able to insult the man whom they both 
 respected, because he was not so well off as they. The fol- 
 lowing passage of mingled amusement and painfulness is out 
 of Sir Walter Scott:— 
 
 " Dryden/' says Sir Walter, in his life of the poet, " seems to have 
 been particularly affronted at a presumptuous plan of that publisher 
 (a keen whig, and Secretary to the Kit-Cat Club) to drive him into 
 inscribing the translation of 'Virgil' to King William. With this 
 view Tonson had an especial care to make the engraver aggravate 
 the nose of Eneas in the plates into a sufficient resemblance of the 
 hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance, and foreseeing 
 Dryden's repugnance to his favourite plan, he had recourse, it would 
 seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for the poet expresses 
 himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means, his correspondence 
 with his sons, then at Kome, was intercepted. I suppose Jacob, 
 having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had no scruple to 
 intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed him in his 
 pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleagured, held fast 
 his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or importunity 
 on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step inconsistent 
 with his religious and political sentiments. It was probably during 
 the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that Dryden, 
 incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson, 
 
312 RUSSELL STREET. 
 
 sent him three well-known coarse and forcible satirical lines descriptive 
 of his personal appearance : — 
 
 * With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, 
 With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, 
 And frouzy pores, that taint the ambient air/ 
 
 " ' Tell the dog,' said the poet to the messenger, * that he who 
 wrote these can write more.' But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with 
 this single triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, 
 without requiring any further specimen of his poetical powers. It 
 would seem, on the other hand, that when Dryden neglected his 
 stipulated labour, Tonson possessed powers of animadversion, which, 
 though exercised in plain prose, were not a little dreaded by the poet. 
 Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of the Muses, and admitted to 
 visit their high-priest, was wont to relate, that one day he heard 
 another person enter the house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson; 
 you will take care not to depart before he goes away, for I have not 
 completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me un- 
 protected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can 
 prompt his tongue.' " * 
 
 Fielding lived some time in Bow Street, probably during 
 his magistracy. 
 
 We turn out of Bow Street into Eussell Street, so called 
 from the noble family of that name, who possess great pro- 
 perty in this quarter. It is pleasant to think that the name 
 is accordant with the reputation of the place, for we are more 
 than ever in the thick of wits and men of letters, especially 
 of a race which was long peculiar to this country, literary 
 politicians. At the north-east corner of the two streets 
 was the famous Will's coffee-house, formerly the Eose, 
 where Dryden presided over the literature of the town ; and 
 on the other side of the way, on a part of the site of 
 the present Hummums, stood Button's coffee-house, no less 
 
 * Works of Dryden, vol. i., p. 387. Sir Walter thus notices a letter 
 of Tonson's on the subject of Dry den's contribution to one of the 
 volumes known under the title of his Miscellanies: — " The contribu- 
 tion, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who 
 wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter to Dry- 
 den, which is fortunately still preserved, as a curious specimen of the 
 minutias of a literary bargain in the seventeenth century. Tonson, 
 with reference to Dryden, having offered a strange bookseller six 
 hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of 
 three, by which he discovers and proves, that for fifty guineas he has 
 only 1,446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had 
 not counted the lines until he had paid the money; from all which 
 Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw 
 him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more 
 kindly in Juvenal, which, saith old Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to 
 translate as Ovid." — Vol. i., p. 379. 
 
DRYDEN BEATEN BY HIRED RUFFIANS. 313 
 
 celebrated as the resort of the wits and poets of the time of 
 Queen Anne. 
 
 Dryden is identified with the neighbourhood of Covent 
 Garden. He presided in the chair at Eussell Street; his plays 
 came out in the theatre at the other end of it ; he lived in 
 Gerrard Street, which is not far off; and, alas! for the anti- 
 climax ! he was beaten by hired bravos in Eose Street, now 
 called Eose Alley. Great men come down to posterity with 
 their proper aspects of calmness and dignity ; and we do not 
 easily fancy that they received anything from their contem- 
 poraries but the grateful homage which is paid them by our- 
 selves. " But the life of a wit," says Steele, "is a warfare 
 upon earth." Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the beautiful 
 description given by Dryden of the Attic nights, he enjoyed 
 with Sir Charles Sedley and others, observes, " He had not 
 yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, 
 or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object 
 of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can 
 best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated 
 habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted 
 feeling against loving its possessors." * 
 
 The outrage perpetrated upon the sacred shoulders of the 
 poet was the work of Lord Eochester, and originated in a 
 mistake not creditable to that would-be great man and das- 
 tardly debauchee. The following is Sir Walter's account of 
 the matter. 
 
 " The * Essay on Satire ' (by Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of 
 Buckinghamshire), though written, as appears from the title-page of 
 the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, with this 
 observation : — I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own 
 share is not the least. The king having perused it, is no way dis-. 
 satisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr [yden], his 
 patron Lord M [ulgrave], having a panegyric in the midst. From 
 hence it is evident that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the 
 author ; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and 
 cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed ; and he thus coolly 
 expressed his intention in another of his letters : — ' You write me 
 word that I am out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have 
 admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a 
 rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that 
 could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which 
 is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please, and 
 leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel.' 
 
 " In pursuance of this infamous resolution, upon the night of the 
 18th December, 1679, Dryden was waylaid by hired ruffians, and 
 
 Dryden, vol. i., p. 114. 
 
314 DRYDEN BEATEN BY HIRED RUFFIANS. 
 
 severely beaten, as he passed through Eose Street, Covent Garden, 
 returning from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard Street. 
 A reward of fifty pounds was in vain offered in the * London Gazette ' 
 and other newspapers, for the discoverers of the perpetrators of this 
 outrage. The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester 
 as the employer of the bravos, with whom the public suspicion joined 
 the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront 
 thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to 
 hired bravos to avenge his personal quarrels against any one, more 
 especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his 
 account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, 
 the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed 
 Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners 
 and sentiments of the people. Encounters, where the assailants took 
 all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as 
 honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to 
 assassination ; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was 
 waylaid and had his nose slit by some young men of rank, for a 
 reflection upon the King's theatrical amours. This occasioned the 
 famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry 
 Act, an Act highly necessary, for so far did our ancestors' ideas of 
 manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killegrew introduces the 
 hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the 
 piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, 
 who had cheated him. 
 
 "It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark, 
 and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But if 
 Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester's own hand, 
 without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently 
 made a matter of reproach to him : a sign, surely, of the penury of 
 subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which 
 might have happened to the greatest hero that ever lived, was resorted 
 to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose Alley ambuscade became 
 almost proverbial ; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, 
 and upon whose shoulders the blows ought injustice to have descended, 
 mentions the circumstance in his ' Art of Poetry/ with a cold and 
 self-sufficient sneer : — 
 
 ' Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, 
 
 His own deserve as great applause sometimes.'' 
 To which is added in a note, ' A libel for which he was both applauded 
 and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.' This 
 flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper 
 to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer 
 the friend of Rochester, and, perhaps, no longer the enemy of Dryden, 
 has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt 
 it deserved : — 
 
 ' Poets in honour of the truth should write, 
 
 With the same spirit brave men for it fight ; 
 
 And though against him causeless hatreds rise, 
 
 And daily where he goes of late, he spies 
 
 The scowls ot sudden and revengeful eyes ; 
 
 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear. 
 
 And serves a cause too good to let him fear & 
 
will's coffee-house. 315 
 
 He fears no poison from incensed drab, 
 
 No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's sxab ; 
 
 Nor any other snares of mischief laid, 
 
 Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade ; 
 
 From any private cause where malice reigns, 
 
 Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.' " * 
 
 We dismiss this specimen of the times, that we may enjoy 
 the look of Dryden as posterity sees it, — that is to say, as 
 that of the first poet of his class, presiding over the tastes and 
 aspirations of the town. Milton sat in his suburban bower, 
 equally removed from outrage and compliment, and con- 
 templating a still greater futurity. In the following passage 
 from the ' Country and City Mouse,' by Prior and Montagu, 
 Dryden, it is true, is spoken of with hostility, but his acknow- 
 ledged predominance shines through it. Prior's instinct 
 misgave him in writing against his natural master. 
 
 "Then on they jogg'd; and since an hour of talk 
 Might cut a banter on the tedious walk, 
 As I remember, said the sober mouse, 
 I've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee-house; 
 Thither, says Brindle, thou shalt go and see 
 Priests supping coffee, sparks and poets tea; 
 Here rugged frieze, there quality well drest, 
 These baffling the grand Senior, those the Test, 
 And there shrewd guesses made, and reasons given, 
 That human laws were never made in heaven; 
 But, above all, what shall oblige thy sight, 
 And fill thy eye-balls with a vast delight, 
 Is the poetic judge of sacred wit, 
 Who does i' th' darkness of his glory sit; 
 And as the moon w T ho first receives the light, 
 With which she makes these nether regions bright, # 
 So does he shine, reflecting from afar 
 The rays he borrowed from a better star; 
 For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, 
 Admired by all the scribbling herd below, 
 Prom French tradition while he does dispense 
 Unerring truths, 'tis schism, a damned offence, 
 To question his, or trust your private sense." f 
 
 Will's Coffee-house was at the western corner of Bow 
 Street. It first had the title of the Eed Cow, then of the 
 Rose; and we believe is the same house alluded to in the 
 pleasant story in the second number of the l Tatler : ' — 
 " Supper and friends expect we at the Rose." 
 
 The Rose, however, was a common sign for houses of 
 public entertainment. The company, of which our poet was 
 
 * Dryden, vol. i., p. 203. f Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 99. 
 
316 DRYDEN AT WILL'S COFFEE-HOUSE. 
 
 the arbiter, sat up-stairs in what was then called the dining, 
 but now the drawing-room ; and there was a balcony, to which 
 his chair was removed in summer from its prescriptive corner 
 by the fire-side in winter. " The appeal," says Malcolm, 
 " was made to him upon every literary dispute. The com- 
 pany did not sit in boxes, as at present, but at various tables 
 which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was per- 
 mitted in the public room : it was then so much in vogue that 
 it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, 
 as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided 
 themselves into parties ; and we are told by Ward, that the 
 young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal 
 table, thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of 
 Dryden' s snuff-box." * 
 
 A lively specimen of a scene with Dryden in this coffee- 
 house has been afforded us by Dean Lockier. "I was about 
 seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, " an 
 odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of 
 awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the 
 country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and 
 appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's, 
 to have the pleasure of seeing the most celelebrated wits of 
 that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that 
 ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, 
 as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately 
 published. ' If anything of mine is good,' says he, l 'tis 
 " Mac-Flecno; " and I value myself the more upon it, because 
 it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hear- 
 ing this* I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice 
 but just loud enough to be heard, ' that " Mac-Flecno " was a 
 very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first 
 that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short 
 upon me, as surprised at my interposing ; asked me how long 
 *I had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile, 
 ' Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ 
 so before ? ' — I named Boileau's ' Lutrin,' and Tassoni's 
 1 Secchia Eapita,' which I had read, and knew Dryden had 
 borrowed some strokes from each. ' 'Tis true,' said Dryden, 
 ' I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in 
 going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see 
 him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation ; 
 
 * Spence's ' Anecdotes,' p. 263. 
 
CHARACTER OF DRYDEN. 317 
 
 went to see him accordingly ; and was well acquainted with 
 him after, as long as he lived."* 
 
 Dryden's mixture of simplicity, good-nature, and good 
 opinion of himself, is here seen in a very agreeable manner. 
 It must not be omitted, that it was to this house Pope was 
 taken when a boy, by his own desire, on purpose to get a 
 sight of the great man ; which he did. According to Pope, 
 he was plump, with a fresh colour and a down look, and not 
 very conversable. It appears, however, that what he did say 
 was much to the purpose ; and a contemporary mentions his 
 conversation on that account as one of the few things for 
 which the town was desirable. He was a temperate man ; 
 though, for the last ten years of his life, Davies informs us 
 that he drank with Addison a great deal more than he used to 
 do, " probably so far as to hasten his end." 
 
 It is curious, considering his peculiar sort of reputation 
 with posterity, that Addison's name should be found so con- 
 nected in his own time with this species of irregularity. The 
 same cause is supposed to have hastened his own end ; and it 
 is related by Pope, that he was obliged to avoid the Russell 
 Street Coffee-house, and the bad hours of Addison, otherwise 
 they might have hastened his. 
 
 Will's Coffee-house was the great emporium of libels and 
 scandal. The channels that have since abounded for the 
 dregs of literature had scarcely then begun to exist ; and, 
 instead of purveying for periodical publications, the retailers 
 of obloquy attended among the minor wits of this place, and 
 distributed the last new lampoon in manuscript. There was a 
 drunken fellow of that time, named Julian, who acquired an 
 infamous celebrity in this way. Sir Walter Scott, in his 
 edition of Dryden, has given the following account of him and 
 his vocation. 
 
 " The extremity of license in manners necessarily leads to equal 
 license in personal satire, and there never was an age in which both 
 were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal 
 and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the estab- 
 lished burden formerly sung to them : — 
 
 ' Lampone lampone, camerada lampone.' 
 
 "Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as 
 much as any of his age ; to which his own words in several places of 
 his writing, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves 
 in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his pro- 
 logues and epilogues, he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and 
 
 * Spence's ' Anecdotes,' p. 59. 
 
318 LAMPOONS OF WILL'S COFFEE-HOUSE, 
 
 to the employment which it found for the half and three-quarter wits 
 and courtiers of the time! 
 
 * Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes; 
 Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times; 
 Scandal, the glory of the English nation, 
 
 Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion : 
 Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise, 
 They had agreed their play before their prize. 
 Faith, they may hang their harp upon the willows; 
 'Tis just like children when they box their pillows/ 
 " Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity 
 of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the 
 scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded 
 the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he calls himself, to the 
 Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was 
 called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of 
 gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately commu- 
 nicated to him by their authors. 'He is described/ says Mr. Malone, 
 ■ as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel.' 
 Several satires were written, in the form of addresses to him as well 
 as the following. There is one among the ' State Poems,' beginning — 
 ' Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write, 
 Not moved by envy, malice or by spite, 
 Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense, 
 But merely to supply thy want of pence: 
 
 • This did inspire my muse, when out at heel, 
 She saw her needy secretary reel; 
 Grieved that a man, so useful to the age, 
 Should foot it in so mean an equipage ; 
 
 A crying scandal that the fees of sense 
 Should not be able to support the expense 
 Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants, 
 When able to procure a cup of Nantz.' 
 
 "Another, called a ' Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been 
 written by the Duke of Buckingham. 
 
 " From a passage in one of the letters from the 'Dead to the Living,' 
 we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, 
 called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay ; and there was no 
 more that ' brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and 
 vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new 
 ones faster than lampoons exposed them." * 
 
 These " "brisk spirits" have still their descendants, and 
 always will have till their betters cease to set the example of 
 railing, or to encourage it. There is a difference, indeed, 
 between the lampoons of such men and those of Dry den, or 
 the literary personalities to which some ingenious minds will 
 give way, before they well know what they are about, out 
 of mere emulation, perhaps, of the names of Pope and 
 Boileau. But it is not to be expected that the others will 
 * Vol. xv., p. 218, 
 
ADDISON, AND BUTTON'S COFFEE HOUSE. 319 
 
 stop where they do, or refine with the progress of their years 
 and knowledge. The most generous sometimes find it diffi- 
 cult to leave off saying ill-natured things of one another, out 
 of shame of yielding, or the habit of indulging their irrita- 
 bility. They endeavour to reconcile themselves to it by 
 trying to think that the abuse has a utility ; but when they 
 come to this point, the doubt is a proof that they ought to 
 forego it, and help to teach the world better. Honest con- 
 tention, however, is one thing, and scandal is another. The 
 dealer in the latter has always a petty mind and inferior 
 understanding, most likely accompanied with conscious un- 
 worthiness ; the great secret of the love of scandal lying in 
 the wish to level others with the calumniators. 
 
 "Will's continued to be the resort of the wits at least till 1710," 
 says Mr. Malcolm. "Probably Addison established his servant 
 [Button] in a new house about 1712, and his fame after the produc- 
 tion of ' Cato,' drew many of the Whigs thither." * 
 
 "Addison," says Pope, "passed each day alike ; and much in the 
 manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, 
 dined en famille, and then went to Will's : only he came home earlier 
 a'nights." And again : " Addison usually studied all the morning ; 
 then met his party at Button's ; dined, and staid there five or six 
 hours; and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for 
 about a vear, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so 
 I quitted it." f 
 
 Button had been a servant of the Countess of "Warwick, 
 whom Addison married. It is said that when the latter was 
 dissatisfied with the Countess (we believe during the period 
 of his courtship), he used to withdraw the company from her 
 servant's coffee-house. Unfortunately it is as easy to believe 
 a petty story of Addison as a careless one of Steele. 
 Addison, intellectually a great man, was complexionally a 
 little one. He was timid, bashful, and reserved, and instinct- 
 ively sought success by private channels and disingenous 
 measures. 
 
 Under the influence of these eminent persons, Button's 
 became the head-quarters of the Whig literati, as Will's had 
 been that of the Tory. Steele, however, dated his poetical 
 papers in the ' Tatler ' from Will's, as the old haunt of the 
 town muse. Ferhaps the Whiggery of Button's- Avas one of 
 the reasons why Pope left off going there, as he did not wish 
 -to indentify himself with either party. Ambrose Philips is 
 said to have hung up a rod at that coffee-house, as an intima- 
 tion of what Pope should receive at his hands, in case the 
 * Spence, p. 263, f Ibid, p, 28S- 
 
320 POPE, PHIUPS, AND GARTH. 
 
 satirist chose to hazard it. A similar threat is related of 
 Cibber. The behaviour of both has been cried out against 
 as unhandsome, considering the little person and bodily in- 
 firmities of the illustrious offender : but as the threateners 
 were so much his inferiors in wit, and he exercised his great 
 powers at their expense, it might not be difficult to show that 
 their conduct was as good as his. Why attack a man, if he 
 is to be allowed no equality of retaliation ? The truth is, that 
 personal satire is itself an unhandsome thing, and a childish 
 one, and there will be no end to childish retorts, till the more 
 grown understandings reform. Pope accused Philips of pil- 
 fering his pastorals, and of " turning a Persian tale for half- 
 a-crown ; " the one an offence not very likely, unless, indeed, 
 all common- places may be said to be stolen ; the other no 
 offence at all, though it might have been a misfortune. 
 These littlenesses in great men are a part of the childhood of 
 society. They show us how young it still is, and what a 
 parcel of wrangling schoolboys (in that respect) a future 
 period may consider us. 
 
 One of the most agreeable memories connected with 
 Button's is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness 
 and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He 
 was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable 
 and intelligent class of men — the physicians. 
 
 Armstrong, another poet and physician and not unworthy 
 of either class, for genius and goodness of heart, though he 
 had the weakness of affecting a bluntness of manners, and of 
 swearing, drew his last breath in this street. He is well 
 known as the author of the most elegant didactic poem in 
 the language, — the ' Art of Preserving Health.' The affecta- 
 tions of men of genius are sometimes in direct contradiction 
 to their best qualities, and assumed to avoid a show of pre- 
 tending what they feel. Armstrong, who had bad health, and 
 was afraid perhaps of being thought effeminate, affected 
 the bully in his prose writings ; and he was such a swearer, 
 that the late Mr. Fuseli's indulgence in that infirmity has 
 been attributed to his keeping company with the Doctor when 
 a youth. We never met with a habitual swearer in whom 
 the habit could not be traced to some feeling of conscious 
 weakness. Fuseli swore as he painted, in the hope of making 
 up for the defects of his genius by the violence of his style. 
 
 At No. 8, Russell Street, Boswell was introduced to his 
 formidable friend of whom he became the biographer. The 
 
boswell' s INTRODUCTION TO JOHNSON. £>21 
 
 house then belonged to Davies the bookseller. The account 
 given us of his first interview is highly characteristic of both 
 parties. Boswell had a thorough specimen of his future 
 acquaintance at once, and Johnson evidently saw completely 
 through Boswell. 
 
 "Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor," saith the particular Boswell, 
 "who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, 
 told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently 
 to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by 
 some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to us. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and 
 talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though some- 
 what pompous, he was an entertaining companion ; and his literary 
 performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a 
 friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who had 
 been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many 
 years, maintained an uniform decency of character, and Johnson 
 esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them as any 
 family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies recollected several of 
 Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many 
 imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased 
 my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose 
 works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so 
 peculiarly excellent. 
 
 "At last," continues Mr. Boswell, "on the 16th of May, when I 
 was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlour, after having drank tea with 
 him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectdly came into the shop, and 
 Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room 
 in which we were sitting, advancing towards us — he announced his 
 awful approach somewhat as an actor in the part of Horatio, when 
 he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, * Look, 
 my lord, it comes.' I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's 
 figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Eeynolds soon 
 after he had published his ' Dictionary,' in the attitude of sitting in 
 his easy chair in deep meditation ; which was the first picture his 
 friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and 
 from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies 
 mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him; I was 
 much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of 
 which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ' Don't tell where I come 
 from.' — 'From Scotland,' cried Davies, roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' 
 said I, ' I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am 
 willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe 
 and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense 
 of my country. But however that might be, this speech was some- 
 what unlucky ; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so 
 remarkable, he seized the expression ' come from Scotland !' which I 
 used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come away 
 from it, or left it, retorted, ' That, sir, I find, is what a great many 
 of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke stunned me a good 
 deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, 
 and apprehensive of what might come next. He then addressed hiofc- 
 
 T 
 
322 THE HUMMUMS. 
 
 self to Davies': ' What do you think of Garrick ? he has refused me 
 an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the house 
 will be full, and that an order will be worth three shillings.' Eager 
 to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I ventured to 
 say, ' 0, sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle 
 to you/ ' Sir (said he, with a stern look,) I have known David 
 Garrick longer than you have done ; and I know no right you have 
 to talk to me on the subject' Perhaps I deserved this check ; for it 
 was rather presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any 
 doubt of the justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance 
 and pupil. I noAV felt myself much mortified, and began to think that 
 the hope I had long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was 
 blasted. And, in truth, had not my ardour been uncommonly strong, 
 and my resolution uncommonly persevering, so rough a reception 
 might have deterred me for ever from making any further attempts. 
 Fortunately, however, I remained upon the field, not wholly discom- 
 fited." * * * " I was highly pleased with the extraordinary 
 vigour of his conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away 
 from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the 
 evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an obser- 
 vation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was 
 satisfied that, though there was a roughness in his manner, there was 
 no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and 
 when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great 
 man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 
 * Don't be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well.' "* 
 
 The Humnmms Hotel and Coffee-house which occupies the 
 south-west corner of this street, and stretches round into 
 Covent Garden market, is so called from an eastern word 
 signifying baths. It was one of the earliest houses set up in 
 England of that kind, and thence called bagnios ; and one of 
 the few that retained their respectability. The generality 
 were so much the reverse, that the word bagnio came to mean 
 a brothel. It appears from a story we are about to relate, 
 that people went to the Hummums not only to bathe, but to 
 get themselves cupped. Bathing is too much neglected in 
 this country ; but the consequences of our sedentary habits 
 have forced upon us a greater degree of attention to it, and 
 the imitation of the Turkish system of cleanliness has been 
 carried further in vapour baths and the startling luxury of 
 shampooing, which makes people discover that they have in 
 general two or three skins too many. Englishmen, in the pride 
 of their greater freedom, often wonder how Eastern nations 
 can endure their servitude. This is one of the secrets by 
 which they endure it. A free man in a dirty skin is not in 
 so fit a state to endure existence as a slave with a clean one ; 
 because nature insists, that a due attention to the clay which 
 * Boswell, vol. i.. p. 373. 
 
GHOST STOEY THERE. dJo 
 
 our souls inhabit, shall be the first requisite to the comfort of 
 the inhabitant. Let us not get rid of our freedom ; let us 
 teach it rather to those that want it ; but let such of us as 
 have them, by all means get rid of our dirty skins. There is 
 now a moral and intellectual commerce among mankind, as 
 well as an interchange of inferior goods ; we should send 
 freedom to Turkey as well as clocks and watches, and import 
 not only figs, but a fine state of the pores. 
 
 Of the Hummums there is a ghost-story in Boswell, a thing 
 we should as little dream of in this centre of the metropolis, 
 as look for a ghost at noonday. The reader will see how 
 much credit is to be given it, by the style of the narrator, 
 who, with all his good-will towards superstition (and it is no 
 less a person that speaks than Dr. Johnson), had an inveterate 
 love of truth, which led him to defeat his own object. 
 
 "Amongst the numerous prints," says Boswell, "pasted on the 
 walls of the dining-room at Streatham, was ' Hogarth's Modern Mid- 
 night Conversation.' I asked him what he knew of Parson Ford, who 
 makes a conspicuous figure in the riotous group. Johnson. ' Sir, he 
 was my acquaintance and relation, — my mother's nephew. He had 
 purchased a living in the country, but not simoniacally. I never saw 
 him but in the country. I have been told that he was a man of great 
 parts, very profligate, but I never heard he was impious.' Boswell. 
 ' Was there not a story of his ghost having appeared?' Johnson. ' Sir, 
 it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums, in which house Ford died, 
 had been absent some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was 
 dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him ; 
 going down again he met him a second time. When he came up, he 
 asked some people of the house what Ford could be doing there. 
 They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he 
 lay for some time. When he recovered he said he had a message to 
 deliver to some women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to 
 whom. He walked out; he was followed ; but somewhere about St. 
 Paul's they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the 
 message, and the women exclaimed, ' Then we are all undone ! ' 
 Dr. Pellett, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of 
 this story, and he said, the evidence was irresistible. My wife went 
 to the Hummums (it is a place where people get themselves cupped). 
 I believe she went with intention to hear about this story of Ford. 
 At first they were unwilling to tell her; but after they had talked to 
 her, she came away satisfied that it was true. To be sure the man 
 had a fever; and this vision may have been the beginning of it. But 
 if the message to the women, and their behaviour upon it, were true 
 as related, there was something supernatural. That rests upon his 
 word : and there it remains.' " * 
 
 At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, Covent Garden 
 (or, as it would be more properly spelt, Convent Garden j) 
 
 * Boswell, vol. iii., p. 378. 
 
 •f It is still so called by many of the poorer orders, wiio are oftener 
 
324 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 extended from Drcuy Lane to St. Martin's Lane, and was 
 surrounded by a brick wall. It bad lately belonged to the 
 abbots of Westminster, whom it supplied, doubtless, with 
 fruit and vegetables, as it has since done the metropolis, and 
 hence its appellation. The reader will see it in the old print 
 of London by Aggas. There was a break into it on the 
 south-west, made by the garden of Bedford House, which stood 
 facing the Strand between the present Bedford and South- 
 ampton Streets. On the dissolution of the monasteries, Covent 
 Garden was given to the Duke of Somerset, and on his fall, to 
 John, Earl of Bedford, whose family converted it into a 
 pasture ground, including Long Acre, then part of the fields 
 leading to St. Giles's. His descendant Francis, about seventy 
 years afterwards, let the whole pasture on a building lease, 
 and built the old church for the intended inhabitants. The 
 architect was Inigo Jones. To the same hand we are indebted 
 for the portico of the north-eastern quarter, which still 
 remains. There was a continuation of it on the south-east, 
 which was burnt down. It was to have been carried all round 
 the square, and the absence of it might be regretted on the 
 score of beauty ; but porticoes are not fit for this climate, 
 unless where the object is to furnish a walk during the rain. 
 Covered walks devoted to that purpose, and conveniently dis- 
 tributed, might be temptations to out-of-door exercise in bad 
 weather. If they succeeded, they would effect a very desir- 
 able end. But covered walks, however beautiful, which are 
 not used in that way, are rather to be deprecated in this cold 
 and humid climate. In Italy, where the summer sun at 
 noon-day burns like a cauldron, they are much to the pur- 
 pose ; but the more sun we can get in England the better. 
 Luckily, there is a convenience in this portico, as far as the 
 theatre is concerned ; otherwise the circuit would be more 
 agreeable without it, and the coffee-houses of the place more 
 light and cheerful. 
 
 Of the style of building observed in the church there is a 
 well-known story. " The Earl is said to have told Inigo 
 Jones he wished to have as plain and convenient a structure 
 as possible, and but little better than a barn ; to which the 
 architect replied, he would build a barn, but that it should 
 fce the handsomest in England." * 
 
 ta the right in their old English than is suspected. Some of them call 
 it Common Garden, which is a better corruption than its present one, 
 * Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv.. p. 213, 
 
Inigo Jones's church. 
 
 m 
 
 Inigo Jones's church was burnt down in the year 1795, 
 owing to the carelessness of some plumbers who were mend- 
 ing the roof. " When the flames were at their height," says 
 Malcolm, " the portico and massy pillars made a grand scene, 
 projected before a back-ground of liquid fire, which raged 
 with so much uncontrolled fury, that not a fragment of wood, 
 in or near the walls, escaped destruction." * 
 
 INJGO JONES S CHURCH, AND OLD COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 The barn-like taste, or in other words the Grecian (for 
 usefulness and simplicity are the secrets of it, and the Temple 
 of Theseus and a common barn have the same principles of 
 structure), was copied in the new edifice. By a passage 
 quoted in the Londinmm Redivium from the Weekly Journal 
 of April 22, 1727, it appears that the portico of the old 
 church had been altered by the inhabitants, and restored by 
 the Earl of Burlington, " out of regard to the memory of the 
 celebrated Inigo Jones, and to prevent our countrymen being 
 exposed for their ignorance." The spirit of this portico has 
 been retained, and the church of St. Paul's Covent garden is 
 one of the most pleasing structures in the metropolis. 
 
 A great many actors have been buried in this spot ; among 
 them, Eastcourt the famous mimic, Edwin, Macklin, and King. 
 We shall speak of one or two of them presently, but it is 
 desirable, especially in a work of this kind, to observe a 
 chronological order. The mere observance itself conveys in- 
 * Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 219. 
 
326 CAR, EARL OF SOMERSET 
 
 formation. Among the variety of persons buried here may 
 be mentioned, first: 
 
 Car, Earl of Somerset, in the old church. His burial in 
 Covent Garden was, doubtless, owing to his connection with 
 the family of Russell, his daughter having married William, 
 afterwards Earl and Duke of Bedford, father of the famous 
 patriot. It is said that his lady was bred up in such igno- 
 rance of the dishonour of her parents, that having met by 
 accident with a book giving an account of it, she fainted away, 
 and was found in that condition by her domestics. Her 
 lover's family were very averse to the match, but wisely 
 allowed it upon due trial, and had no reason to repent their 
 generosity. To read the history of the foolish and unprin- 
 cipled Countess of Somerset, who would suppose that her 
 daughter was to give birth to the conscientious martyr for 
 liberty? But the blood which folly makes wicked, a good 
 education may render noble. 
 
 Butler in the church-yard. The popular notion that he was 
 starved is unfounded ; but he was very ill-treated by a court 
 whom his wit materially served. It is said that Charles, once 
 and away, gave him a hundred pounds. This is possible ; 
 but it is at least as possible that he gave him nothing, though. 
 he would willingly have done it, perhaps, had his debaucheries 
 left him the means. Charles, in his way, was as poor as 
 Butler, though not as honourably so, for it does not appear 
 that the poet was unwilling to labour for his subsistence. 
 There is a mystery, however, in Butler's private affairs. He 
 once appears to have had some office in the family of the 
 Countess of Kent. Perhaps he was not a very good man of 
 business, though the learning exhibited in ' Hudibras' showed 
 how he could work on a favourite subject. When men 
 succeed to this extent in what nature evidently designs them 
 for, great allowance is to be made for their disinclination to 
 other tasks ; and Butler had no children to render the neglect 
 of his fortune criminal. The Duke of Buckingham, who 
 once undertook to "do something for him," and had a 
 meeting for the purpose at a coffee-house, saw a pander of his 
 go by the window with a " brace of ladies," and going after 
 him, we hear no more of his Grace. Luckily, to prevent 
 him from starvation, Butler found a friend in the excellent 
 Mr. Longueville of the Temple, a scholar and a real gentle- 
 man, who did not confine his generosity to an admiration of 
 him in books. The poet is understood to have been indebted 
 
BUTLER. 327 
 
 to him for support during the latter part of his life ; and 
 it was he who buried him in this church-yard. It is to 
 Mr. Longueville that we are indebted for the publication 
 of Butler's " Kemains," which are quite worthy of the wit 
 of " Hudibras," and deserve to be more generally known. 
 Butler was the greatest wit that ever wrote in verse ; perhaps 
 the greatest that ever wrote at all, meaning by wit the union 
 of remote ideas. He was undoubtedly the most learned. 
 His political poem is out of date ; and much of the humour 
 that delighted the cavaliers must, of necessity, be lost to us ; 
 but passages of it will always be repeated ; and it is difficult 
 to hear his name mentioned, without quoting some of his 
 rhymes. He was the first man that gave rhyme itself an air 
 of wit. His couplets are not only witty themselves, but seem 
 to add a new idea to their imagery in the very sounds at the 
 end of them. His startling turns of thought are accompanied 
 by as surprising a turn in the cadence, as if the echo itself 
 could not help laughing. Thus his doctor's shop is 
 
 " stored with deletery medicines, 
 
 Which whosoever took is dead since : " 
 
 his sour religionists 
 
 " Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
 By damning those they have no mind to : " 
 and again, 
 
 " Synods are mystical bear-gardens, 
 Where elders, deputies, church-wardens, 
 And other members of the court, 
 Manage the Babylonish sport; 
 For prolocutor, scribe, and bear-ward, 
 Do differ only in a mere word: 
 Both are but several synagogues 
 Of carnal men, and bears, and dogs ; 
 Both antichristian assemblies 
 To mischief bent, as far 's in them lies." 
 
 His most quoted rhyme, when 
 
 " Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, 
 
 Was beat with fist instead of a stick, 
 
 is, singularly enough, no rhyme at all ; but the surprise of 
 the echo, and the truth conveyed in it, affect us as if it were 
 perfect. Here are one or two more of the wilful order, very 
 ludicrous : — 
 
 The captive knight 
 
 And pensive squire, both bruised in body 
 And conjured into safe custody. 
 
328 SIR fETER LELt. 
 
 in all the fabrick 
 
 You could not see one stone or a brick. 
 
 Who deals in destiny's dark counsels, 
 And sage opinions of the moon sells. 
 
 Those wholesale critics that in coffee- 
 Houses cry down all philosophy." 
 
 Mrs. Pilkington tells us that Swift took down a "Hudibras" 
 one day, and ordered her to examine him in the book, when, 
 to her great suprise, she found he remembered " every line, 
 from beginning to end of it."* Mrs. Pilkington is a lady whose 
 word is to be taken cum multis granis ; nor is it very likely 
 she should ever have heard the Dean repeat a whole volume 
 through ; but if Swift knew any author entire, Butler is 
 likely to have been the man. Butler had the same politics, 
 the same love of learning, the same wit, the same apparent 
 contempt of mankind, the same charity underneath it, and 
 the same impatient wish to see them wiser. His style of 
 writing is evidently the origin of Swift's. If the reader is 
 not yet acquainted with his ' Remains,' the following sample 
 or two will give him a desire to be so : — 
 
 " The truest characters of ignorance 
 Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance ; 
 As blind men use to bear their noses higher, 
 Than those who have their eyes and sight intire." 
 
 ***** 
 
 " There needs no other charm, nor conjuror, 
 To raise infernal spirits up, but fear ; 
 That makes men pull their horns in like a snail, 
 That's both a prisoner to itself, and jail ; 
 Draws more fantastic shapes than in the grains 
 Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains, 
 When all the cocks they think they see, and bulla, 
 Are only in the inside of their skulls." 
 
 Sir Peter Lely, the painter of the meretricious beauties 
 of the court of Charles II. — Pope's couplet on him is well 
 known : — 
 
 " Lely on animated canvass stole 
 The sleepy eye that spoke the melting soul." 
 
 The canvass is more sleepy than animated, and the ladies 
 more like what they were in inclination than in features. 
 However, there is a great likeness on that very account. 
 They are all of a sisterhood ; — qualem non decet esse sororum. 
 A master of pictorial criticism has said of the collection of 
 them at Windsor Castle, that " they look just like what they 
 
 * Memoirs of Mrs. Letitia Pilkington. Dublin, 1748, vol. i., p. 136. 
 
SOUTHERN. 329 
 
 were, a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off 
 their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one 
 trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment 
 to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of 
 them ; and though $he most voluptuous in her attire and 
 attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth 
 ( Cleveland), in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a 
 heroine of "romance, or modern Amazon; but for an air of 
 easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing 
 
 but being thought coy, commend us to my Lady above, 
 
 in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly over her shoulders . 
 As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. 
 They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner 
 and execution ; and they have that contortion of attitude and 
 setness of features, which we afterwards find carried to so 
 disgusting and insipid an excess in Knell er's portraits. Sir 
 Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey 
 ICneller — that is the highest praise that can be accorded to 
 him. He had more spirit, more originalty, and was the live- 
 lier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed con- 
 siderable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. 
 Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet 
 they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves 
 superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years 
 we see the thing plainly enough." * Sir Peter was a West- 
 phalian, of a family named Vander Yaas. His father was an 
 officer in the army, who, having been born in a perfumer's 
 house which had a lily for its sign, got the name of Captain 
 Du Lys, or Lely, and the cognomen was retained by his son. 
 He aimed at magnificence in his style of living, probably in 
 imitation of his predecessor at the English court, Vandyke ; 
 but there was a certain coarseness about him which showed 
 the inferiority of his taste in that particular, as well as in the 
 rest. 
 
 Wycherly in the Church. See Bow Street. 
 
 Southern, one of those dramatic writers who, without much 
 genius, succeed in obtaining a considerable name, and justly, 
 by dint of genuine feeling for common nature. He began in 
 Dryden's time, who knew and respected his talents, was known 
 and respected by Pope, and lived to enjoy a similar regard 
 from Gray. " I remember," says Oldys, " this venerable old 
 gentleman, when he lived in Covent Garden, and used to 
 * Hazlitt's * Picture Galleries of England,' p. 80. 
 
830 EASTCOURT. 
 
 frequent the evening prayers in the church there. He was 
 always neat and decently dressed, commonly in black, with 
 his silver sword, and silver locks." Gray, in a letter to 
 Walpole, dated Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, 1737, says, 
 " We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman's house, a little 
 way off, who often comes to see us ; he is now seventy-seven 
 years old, and has- almost wholly lost his memory ; but is as 
 agreeable an old man as can be ; at least I persuade myself so 
 when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko." 
 Southern died about nine years after this period, aged about 
 eighty-five. With all the respect he obtained, probably a 
 great deal more by the decency and civility of his habits 
 than by his genius, Southern, it appears, was not above 
 making application to the nobility and others to buy tickets 
 for his plays. 
 
 Joe Haines, the comedian. See Drury Lane. 
 
 Eastcourt, the comedian — or mimic, rather — for, like most 
 players who devote themselves to mimicry, which is a kind of 
 caricature portrait-painting, his comedy or general humour 
 was inferior to it. He was, however, a man of wit as well as 
 a mimic ; and, in spite of a talent which seldom renders men 
 favourites in private, was so much regarded, that, when the 
 Beef-steak Club was set up (which a late author says must 
 not be confounded with the Beef-steak Club held in Covent 
 Garden Theatre and the Lyceum), Eastcourt was appointed 
 provveditore or caterer, and presented as a badge of distinc- 
 tion with a small gridiron of gold, which he wore about his 
 neck fastened to a green ribbon. He is said at one time to 
 have been a tavern-keeper, in which quality (unless it was in 
 the other) Parneli speaks of him in the beginning of one of 
 his poems : — 
 
 Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt's wine 
 
 A noble meal bespoke us, 
 And for tbe guests that were to dine 
 Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus.* 
 
 * The best account we are acquainted with of the various Beef-steak 
 Clubs has been given us by the good-humoured author of ' Wine and 
 Walnuts.' His book is an antiquarian fiction, but not entirely such ; 
 and the present account, among others, may be taken as fact. George 
 Lambert, Bieh's scene-painter at Covent Garden, says he, " being a 
 man of wit, and of repute as an artist, was frequently visited by 
 persons of note while at his work in the scene-room. In those days 
 it was customary for men of fashion to visit the green-room, and to 
 indulge in a morning lounge behind the curtain of the theatre. 
 Lambert, when preparing his designs for a pantomine or new spectacle 
 
EASTCOURT. 331 
 
 But his greatest honour is the following remarkable testi- 
 mony borne to his merits by Sir Eichard Steele, whose own 
 fineness of nature was never more beautifully evinced in any 
 part of his writings : — 
 
 " Poor Eastcourt ! the last time I saw him we were plotting to show 
 the town his great capacity for acting in his full light, by introducing 
 
 (for which exhibitions the manager, Rich, was much renowned), 
 would often take his chop or steak cooked on the German stove, 
 rather than quit his occupation for the superior accommodation of a 
 neighbouring tavern. Certain of his visitors, men of taste, struck 
 with the novelty of the thing perhaps, or tempted by the savoury 
 dish, took a knife and fork with Lambert, and enjoyed the treat. 
 Hence the origin of the Beef- steak Club, whose social feasts were 
 long held in the painting-room of this theatre, which, from its com- 
 mencement, has enrolled among its members persons of the highest 
 rank and fortune, and many eminent professional men and dis- 
 tinguished wits. The Club subsequently met in an apartment of the 
 late theatre ; then it moved to the Shakspeare Tavern; thence again 
 to the theatre; until, being burnt out in 1812, the meetings adjourned 
 to the Bedford. At present the celebrated convives assemble at an 
 apartment at the English Opera House in the Strand. 
 
 "At the same time this social club flourished in England, and about 
 the year 1749, a Beef-steak Club was established at the Theatre Royal, 
 Dublin, of which the celebrated Mrs. Margaret Woffington was presi- 
 dent. It was begun by Mr. Sheridan, but on a very different plan to 
 that in London, no theatrical performer, save one female, being ad- 
 mitted; and though called a Club, the manager alone bore all the 
 expenses. The plan was, by making a list of about fifty or sixty 
 persons, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, who were 
 invited. Usually about half that number attended, and dined in the 
 manager's apartment in the theatre. There was no female admitted 
 but this Peg Woffington, so denominated by all her contemporaries, 
 who was seated in a great chair at the head of the table, and elected 
 president for the season. 
 
 " 'It will readily be believed,' says Mr. Victor, who was joint pro- 
 prietor of the house. ' that a club where there were good accommo- 
 dations, such a lovely president, full of wit and spirit, and nothing to 
 pay, must soon grow remarkably fashionable.' It did so — but we 
 find it subsequently caused the theatre to be pulled to pieces about 
 the manager's head. 
 
 " Mr. Victor says of Mrs. Margaret, ' she possessed captivating 
 charms as a jovial, witty bottle companion, but few remaining as a 
 mere female.' We have Dr. Johnson's testimony, however, who had 
 often gossipped with Mrs. Margaret in the green-room at old Drury, 
 more in the lady's favour. 
 
 " This author (Victor) says, speaking of the Beaf -steak Club, • It 
 was a club of ancient institution in every theatre ; when the principal 
 performers dined one day in the week together (generally Saturday), 
 and authors and other geniuses were admitted members.' 
 
 " The club in Ivy Lane, celebrated by Dr. Johnson, was originally 
 a Beef -steak" 
 
332 EASTCOURT. 
 
 him as dictating' to a set of young players, in what manner to speak 
 this sentence and utter t'other passion. He had so exquisite a dis- 
 cerning of what was defective in any object before him, that in an 
 instant he could shew you the ridiculous side of what would pass for 
 beautiful and just, even to men of no ill judgment, before he had 
 pointed at the tailure. He was no less skilful in the knowledge of 
 beauty ; and, I dare say, there is no one who knew him well, but can 
 repeat more well-turned compliments, as well as smart repartees of 
 Mr. Eastcourt's, than of any other man in England. This was easily 
 to be observed in his inimitable faculty of telling a story, in which he 
 would throw in natural and unexpected incidents to make his court 
 to one part, and rally the other part of the company. Then he would 
 vary the usage he gave them, according as he saw them bear kind or 
 sharp language, He had the knack to raise up a pensive temper and 
 mortify an impertinently gay one, as he saw them bear kind or sharp 
 language. 
 
 " It is an insolence natural to the wealthy, to affix, as much as in 
 them lies, the character of a man to his circumstances. Thus it is 
 ordinary with them to praise faintly the good qualities of those below 
 them, and say, it is very extraordinary in such a man as he is, or the 
 like, when they are forced to acknowledge the value of him whose 
 lowness upbraids their exaltation. It is to this humour only that it 
 is to be ascribed, that a quick wit in conversation, a nice judgment 
 upon any emergency that could arise, and a most blameless inoffensive 
 behaviour, could not raise this man above being received only upon 
 the foot of contributing to mirth and diversion. But he was as easy 
 under that condition as a man of so excellent talents was capable ; 
 and since they would have it that to divert was his business, he did 
 it with all the seeming alacrity imaginable, though it stung him to 
 the heart that it was his business. Men of sense, who could taste his 
 excellencies, were well satisfied to let him lead the way in conversa- 
 tion, and play after his own manner ; but fools, who provoked him to 
 mimicry, found he had the indignation to let it be at their expense 
 who called for it ; and he would show the form of conceited heavy 
 fellows as jests to the company at their own- request, in revenge for 
 interrupting him from being a companion, to put on the character of 
 a jester. 
 
 " What was peculiarly excellent in this memorable companion was, 
 that in the accounts he gave of persons and sentiments, he did not 
 only hit the figure of their faces, and manner of their gestures, but he 
 would in his narration fall into their very way of thinking, and this 
 when he recounted passages wherein men of the best wit were con- 
 cerned, as well as such wherein were represented men of the lowest 
 rank of understanding. It is certainly as great an instance of self- 
 love to a weakness, to be impatient of being mimicked, as any can be 
 imagineJ. There were none but the vain, the formal, the proud, or 
 those who were incapable of mending their faults, that dreaded him ; 
 to others he was in the highest degree pleasing, and I do not know 
 any satisfaction of any indifferent kind I ever tasted so much as 
 having got over an impatience of seeing myself in the air he could 
 put me when I have displeased him. It is indeed to his exquisite talent 
 this way, more than any philosophy I could read on the subject, that my 
 person is very little of my care ; and it is indifferent to me what is said of 
 my shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my addi-ess. It is to poor East" 
 
SIR ROBERT STRANGE. 333 
 
 court I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing 
 a diminution to me, but what argues a depravity or my will. 
 
 " I have been present with him among men of the most delicate 
 taste a whole night, and have known him (for he saw it was desired) 
 keep the discourse to himself the most part of it, and maintain his 
 good humour with a countenance and in a language so delightful, 
 without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving 
 the distance his circumstances obliged him to ; I say, I have seen him 
 do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I 
 hint at will read this without giving him some sorrow for their 
 abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter 
 I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory that my 
 eyes are too much suffused to let me go on."* 
 
 Closterman in the church-yard. He was an indifferent, 
 but once popular artist, whom we mention on account of his 
 painful domestic end. He had a mistress, whom he thought 
 devoted to him. She robbed him of everything she could lay her 
 hands on, money, plate, jewels, and moveables, and fled out of 
 the kingdom. He pined away with an impaired understanding, 
 and was soon brought to the grave. Closterman was once set 
 in competition with Sir Godfrey Kneller. He painted the 
 family of the Duke of Marlborough, and had so many dis- 
 putes about the picture with the Duchess, that Marlborough 
 said to him, " It has given me more trouble to reconcile my 
 wife and you, than to fight a battle." 
 
 Arne, the celebrated musician, in the church -yard. See 
 King Street. 
 
 Sir Eobert Strange, the greatest engraver, perhaps, this 
 country has seen ; that is to say, supposing the merits of an 
 engraver to be in proportion to his relish for and imitation of 
 his originals. Other men may have drawn a finer mechanical 
 line, but none have surpassed Strange in giving the proper 
 diversity of surfaces, or equalled him in transferring to hard 
 copper the roundness and delicacy of flesh. His engravings 
 from Titian almost convey something of the colours of that 
 great painter. Like all true masters, Strange took pains with 
 whatever he did, and bestowed attention on every part of it; 
 so much indeed, that his love for his art appears to have been 
 an exhausting one, and he was anxious to keep the burin out 
 of the hands of his children. He had seen a great deal of the 
 world, and was a very amiable as well as intelligent man. 
 When young he was a great Jacobite, and fought sword-in- 
 hand for the Pretender ; though it is said that a main cause of 
 his ardour was the hope of attaining the hand of a fair friend, 
 * Erorn a paper of Steele's in the ' Spectator,' No. 403. 
 
334 MACKLIN. 
 
 equally devoted to the cause. It is pleasant to add, that he 
 did attain it, and that she made him a good wife. Sir Robert 
 was a Scotchman of a good family ; but his knighthood came 
 from George the Third, a few years before the artist's death. 
 
 Macklin, the comedian, in the church-yard, at the age of 
 one hundred and seven, and upwards. We have spoken of 
 him before in his stage character. His long age in the midst 
 of cities and theatres is very remarkable. It seems to have 
 been owing to the inheritance of a robust constitution — the 
 great cause of longevity next to temperance, perhaps the 
 greatest, unless contradicted by the reverse. Most persons 
 who have been long-lived have had long-lived progenitors; 
 but somebody must begin. The foundation is always tem- 
 perance. Macklin must have been very lucky in his physical 
 advantages, for he did not keep any very strict rein over his 
 temper; nor does he appear to have followed any regimen, 
 till latterly, and then he consulted the immediate ease of his 
 stomach, and not the quality of what he took. However, his 
 habits, whatever they were, were most likely regular. " It 
 had been his constant rule," says his biographer, "for a period 
 of thirty years and upwards, to visit a public-house called the 
 Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden, where his 
 usual beverage was a pint of beer called stout, which was 
 made hot and sweetened with moist sugar, almost to a syrup. 
 This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from having 
 any inward pains." * The same writer, in a report of a con- 
 versation he had with Mr. Macklin, has left us an affecting 
 but not unpleasing picture of the decay of faculties, remark- 
 able to the very last for their shrewdness and vivacity. It is 
 the liveliest picture of old mortality we ever met with. 
 
 Question. " Well, Mr. Macklin, how do you do to-day ?" 
 
 Answer. " Why, I hardly know, sir ; I think I am a little better 
 than I was in the morning." 
 
 Q. " Why, sir, did you feel any pain in the morning ? " 
 
 A. " Yes, sir, a good deal." 
 
 Q. « In what part ? " 
 
 A. " Why, I feel a sort of a — a — a — " (shaking his head), " I forget 
 everything ; I forget the word : I felt a kind of pain here" (putting 
 his hand upon his left breast), — " but it is gone aAvay, and I am better 
 now." 
 
 Q. " How do you sleep, sir ? " 
 
 A. " Not so well as I could wish ; I am becoming more wakeful 
 
 * Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., &c, by Jamea 
 Thomas .Kirkman, vol. ii. ; p. 419. 
 
CURIOUS DIALOGUE WITH MACKLIN. 335 
 
 than usual ; I awoke last night two or three times : I got up twice, 
 walked about my room here, and then went to bed again." 
 
 Q. " Do you always get up when you awake, sir ? " 
 
 A. " No, sir, not always ; but I get up and walk about as soon as I 
 feel myself — there, now, it is all gone " (putting his hand upon his 
 forehead). 
 
 Q. " You get up, sir, I suppose, as soon as you feel yourself uneasy 
 in bed?" 
 
 A. " Yes, sir, when I begin to be troublesome to myself/' 
 
 Q. " Do not you, sir, find it unpleasant to walk about here alone, 
 and to have nobody to converse with ? " 
 
 A. " Not at all, sir, I get up when I am tired abed, and I walk about 
 till I am tired, and then I go to bed again; and so forth." 
 
 Q. " But does it not afford you great pleasure when any person 
 comes to see you ? " 
 
 A. " Why, not so much as one would expect, sir." 
 
 Q. " Are you not pleased when your friends come and converse 
 with you ? " 
 
 A. " I am always very happy to see my friends, and I should be 
 very happy to hold a — a — a, see there now " 
 
 Q. " A conversation you mean, sir ?" 
 
 A. " Ay, a conversation. Alas ! sir, you see the wretched state of 
 my memory — see there now, I could not recollect that common word 
 — but I cannot converse. I used to go to a house very near this 
 where my friends assemble .... it was a — a — a [a company] no, 
 that's not the word, a — a — club, I mean. I was the father of it, but 
 I could not hear all ; and what I did hear, I did not — a — a — under 
 — under — understand; they were all very attentive to me, but I could 
 ot be one of them. I always feel an uneasiness, when I don't know 
 what the people are talking about. Indeed, I found, sir, that I was 
 not fit to keep company — so I stay away." 
 
 Q. " Have you been reading this morning, sir ? " 
 
 A. " Yes, sir." 
 
 Q. "What book?" 
 
 A. <l I forget : — here, look at it ;" — handing the book. 
 
 Q. " I see, it is Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' " 
 
 [He then took the book out of my hand and said : — " I have only 
 read this much" (about four pages) " these two days — but what I read 
 yesterday, I have forgot to-day." He next read a few lines of the 
 beginning inimitably well, and laying down the book, said] " I under- 
 stand all that, but if 1 read any farther, I forget that passage which I 
 understood before." 
 
 Q. " But I perceive with satisfaction, sir, that your sight is very 
 good." 
 
 A. " Oh, sir, my sight, like everything else, begins to fail too ; 
 about two days ago I felt — a — a — there now .... I have lost it — a 
 pai'n just above my left eye, and heard something give a crack, and 
 ever since, this eye (pointing to the left) has been painful." 
 
 Q. "I think, sir, it would be advisable for you to refrain from 
 reading a little time." 
 
 A. " I believe you are in the right, sir." 
 
 Q. " I think you appear at present free from pain ? " 
 
 A. " Yes, sir, I am pretty comfortable now : but I find my — my— 
 my strength is all gone. I feel myself going gradually." 
 
336 DR. WALCOT. 
 
 Q. "But you are not afraid to die?" 
 
 A. " Not in the least, sir— I never did any person any serious mis- 
 chief in my life : — even when I gambled, I never cheated : — I know- 
 that a — a — a — see, now — death, I mean, must come, and I am ready 
 to give it up" (meaning the ghost). 
 
 Q. " I understand you were at Drury Lane theatre last night ? " 
 
 A. " Yes, sir, I was there." 
 
 Q. " Yes, sir, the newspapers of this morning take notice of it." 
 
 A. "Do they?" 
 
 Y. " Yes, sir ; — the paragraph runs thus : — ' Among the numerous 
 visitors at Drury Lane Theatre last night, we observed the Duke of 
 Queensbury and the veteran Macklin, whose ages together amount to 
 one hundred and ninety-six." 
 
 Mr. Macklin. " The Duke of who ?" 
 
 A. " The Duke of Queensbury, sir." 
 
 Mr. Macklin. " I don't know that man. The Duke of Queensbury! 
 The Duke of Queensbury! Oh ! ay, I remember him now very well : 
 — The Duke of Queensbury old ! Why, sir, I might be his father ! 
 ha! ha! ha!" 
 
 Q. " Well, sir, I understand that you went to the Haymarket 
 Theatre to see the * Merchant of Venice ? ' " 
 
 A. " I did, sir." 
 
 Q. " What is your opinion of Mr. Palmer's Shylock ?" 
 
 [This question was answered by a shake of the head. Being de- 
 sirous of hearing his opinion I asked him the second time.] 
 
 Mr. Macklin. — " Why, sir, my opinion is, that Mr. Palmer played 
 the character of Shylock in one style. In this scene there was a 
 sameness, in that scene a sameness, and in every scene a sameness : 
 it was all same ! same ! same ! — no variation. He did not look the 
 character, nor laugh the character, nor speak the character of Shaks- 
 peare's Jew. In the trial scene, where he comes to cut the pound of 
 flesh, he was no Jew. Indeed, sir, he did not hit the part, nor the part 
 did not hit him."* 
 
 This conversation took place in September 1796 : in July 
 1797 he died. 
 
 Dr. Walcot, better known by the name of Peter Pindar. 
 He was a coarse and virulent satirist, and content to write so 
 many common-places, that they will stifle his works with 
 posterity, with the exception of a few pieces. His humour, 
 however, was genuine of its kind. His caricatures are strik- 
 ing likenesses ; and the innocent simplicity which he is fond 
 of affecting makes a ludicrous contrast with his impudence. 
 Dr. Walcot's largest poems are worth little, and his serious 
 worth nothing. What we think likely to last in the collec- 
 tions, are his " Bozzy and Piozzi," his 'Koyal visit to 
 Whitbread's Brewhouse,' one or two more, of that stamp, 
 some of his " Odes to Academicians," and the immortal 
 
 * Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., by James Thomas 
 Kirkman, vol. ii., p. 416, 
 
COVENT GARDEN MARKET. 337 
 
 " Pilgrims and the Peas," the hero of which is assuredly 
 hobbling to this day, and will never arrive. Dr. Walcot was 
 a man of taste in the fine arts, and produced some landscapes, 
 which we believe do credit to his pencil. We have never 
 seen them. His critical good taste is not to be disputed, 
 though the Academicians, at one time, would have given a 
 great deal to find it wanting. He was latterly blind, but 
 maintained his spirits to the last. He had a fine skull, which 
 he was not displeased to be called upon to exhibit, taking his 
 wig oif, and saying " There," with a lusty voice; which formed 
 a singular contrast with the pathos attached to the look of 
 blind eyes. 
 
 Covent Garden market has always been the most agreeable 
 in the metropolis, because it is devoted exclusively to fruit, 
 flowers, and vegetables. A few crockery-ware shops make 
 no exceptions to this " bloodless " character. The seasons 
 here regularly present themselves in their most gifted looks, 
 — with evergreens in winter, the fresh verdure of spring, 
 all the hues of summer, and whole loads of desserts in 
 autumn. The country girls who bring the things to market 
 at early dawn are a sight themselves worthy of the apples 
 and roses ; the good-natured Irish women who attend to carry 
 baskets for purchasers are not to be despised, with the half- 
 humorous, half pathetic tone of their petitions to be employed; 
 and the ladies who come to purchase, crown all. No walk 
 in London, on a fine summer's day, is more ageeeable than 
 the passage through the flowers here at noon, when the 
 roses and green leaves are newly watered, and blooming faces 
 come to look at them in those cool and shady avenues, while 
 the hot sun is basking in the streets. On these occasions we 
 were very well satisfied with the market in its old state. 
 The old sheds, and irregular avenues, when dry, assorted 
 well with the presence of leaves and fruits. They had a 
 careless picturesque look, as if a bit of an old suburban 
 garden had survived from ancient times. 
 
 Nothing, however, but approbation can be bestowed on the 
 convenient and elegant state into which the market has been 
 raised by the magnificence of the noble proprietor, whose 
 arms we are glad to see on the side next James Street. They 
 are a real grace to the building and to the owner, for they 
 are a stamp of liberality. In time we hope to see the roofs of 
 the new market covered with shrubs and flowers, nodding 
 over the balustrades, and fruits and red berries sparkling iu 
 
 I 
 
B38 STORY OF LORD SANLWiCH. 
 
 the sun.* As an ornament, nothing is more beautiful in 
 combination than the fluctuating grace of foliage and the 
 stability of architecture. And, as a utility, the more air and 
 sun the better. There is never too much sun in this country, 
 and every occasion should be seized to take advantage of it. 
 
 The space between the church and the market is the scene 
 of Hogarth's picture of the ' Frosty Morning.' Here in 
 general take place the elections for Westminster. Sheridan 
 has poured forth his good things in this spot, and Charles Fox 
 won the hearts of multitudes. It would be an endless task to 
 trace the recollections connected with the coffee-houses under 
 the portico. Perhaps there is not a name of celebrity in the 
 annals of wit or the stage, between the reigns of Charles II. 
 and the present sovereign, which might not be found con- 
 cerned in the clubs or other meetings which they have wit- 
 nessed, particularly those of Garrick, Hogarth, and their 
 contemporaries. Sir Roger de Coverley has been there, a 
 person more real to us than nine-tenths of them. When in 
 town he lodged in Bow Street. 
 
 Opposite the Bedford Coffee-house a tragical scene took 
 place, the particulars of which are interesting. The Earl 
 of Sandwich, grandson of Charles II.'s Earl of Sandwich, 
 and first Lord of the Admiralty during the North administra- 
 tion, had for his mistress a Miss Ray, whom he had rendered 
 as accomplished as she was handsome. Some say that she 
 was the daughter of a labourer at Elstree, others of a stay- 
 maker in Covent Garden. Her father is said to have had a 
 shop in that way of business in Holywell Street in the Strand. 
 Miss Ray was apprenticed at an early age to a mantua-maker 
 in Clerkenwell Close, with whom she served her time out and 
 obtained a character that did her honour. A year or two 
 after the expiration of this period she was taken notice of by 
 Lord Sandwich, who gave her a liberal education ; rendered 
 her a proficient in his favourite arts of music and singing ; 
 and made her his mistress. He was old enough to be her 
 father. 
 
 Lord Sandwich was in the habit of having plays and music 
 at his house, particularly the latter. At Christmas the musical 
 performance was an oratorio, for, " to speak seriously," says 
 Mr. Cradock, " no man was more careful than Lord Sandwich 
 not to trespass on public decorum." This gentleman, in his 
 
 * A few days after writing this passage, we saw the shrubs making 
 their appearance. 
 
HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 339 
 
 Memoirs, has furnished us with accounts which will give a 
 livelier idea of the situation of Miss Kay in his Lordship's 
 house than any formal abstract of them. 
 
 " Plays at Hinchinbrook had ceased before I had ever been in com- 
 pany with Lord Sandwich, and oratorios for a week at Christmas had 
 been substituted. Miss Eay, who was the first attraction, was in- 
 structed in music both by Mr. Bates and Signor Giardini. Norris and 
 Champness regularly attended the meetings, and there were many 
 excellent amateur performers ; the Duke of Manchester's military 
 band assisted, and his Lordship himself took the kettle-drums to 
 animate the whole. ' Non nobis, Dornine,' was sung after dinner, and 
 then catches and glees succeeded ; all was well conducted, for what- 
 ever his Lordship undertook he generally accomplished, and seemed 
 to have adopted the emphatic advice of Longinus, ' always to excel.' 
 Miss Ray, in her situation, was a pattern of discretion ; for when a 
 lady of rank, between one of the acts of the oratorio, advanced to 
 converse with her, she expressed her embarrassment; and Lord Sand- 
 wich, turning privately to a friend, said, ' As you are well acquainted 
 with that lady, I wish you would give her a hint, that there is a 
 boundary line in my family I do not wish to see exceeded; such a 
 trespass might occasion the overthrow of all our music meetings.' 
 
 " From what I have collected, Miss Eay was born in Hertfordshire, 
 in 1742, and that his lordship first saw her in a shop in Tavistock 
 Street where he was purchasing some neckcloths. This was all that 
 Mr. Bates seemed to have ascertained, for both his lordship and the 
 lady were equally cautious of communicating anything on the subject. 
 From that time her education was particularly attended to, and she 
 proved worthy of all the pains that were taken with her. Her voice 
 was powerful and pleasing, and she has never been excelled in that 
 fine air of Jephtha, ' Brighter scenes I seek above ; ' nor was she less 
 admired when she executed an Italian bravura of the most difficult 
 description."* 
 
 Again : — " I did not know his lordship in early life ; but this I can 
 attest, and call any contemporary to ratify who might have been 
 present, that we never heard an oath, or the least profligate conver- 
 sation at his lordship's table in our lives. Miss Eay's behaviour was 
 particularly circumspect. Dr. Green, Bishop of Lincoln, always said, 
 ' I never knew so cautious a man as Lord Sandwich.' The Bishop 
 came too soon once to an oratorio ; we went to receive him in the 
 dining-room, but he said, ' No ; the drawing-room is full of company, 
 and I will go up and take tea there.' Lord Sandwich was embarrassed, 
 as he had previously objected to Lady Blake speaking to Miss Eay 
 between the acts ; and as the Bishop would go up, a consequence 
 ensued just as I expected. Some severe verses were sent, which 
 Mr. Bates intercepted. ***** 
 
 " The elegant Mrs. Hmchcliffe, lady of the Bishop, attended one 
 night with a party. She had never seen Miss Eay before, and she 
 feelingly remarked afterwards, 'I was really hurt to sit directly 
 opposite to her, and mark her discreet conduct, and yet to find it 
 improper to notice her. She was so assiduous to please, was so very 
 
 * Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
 F.S.A., vol. i., p. 117. 
 
S40 STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 
 
 excellent, yet so unassuming, I was quite charmed with her ; yet a 
 seeming cruelty to her took off the pleasure of my evening.' "* 
 
 While Miss Eay was thus situated, his lordship, through 
 the medium of a neighbour, Major Eeynolds, became ac- 
 quainted with a brother officer of the major's, a Captain 
 Hackman, and invited him to his house. The Captain fell in 
 love with Miss Eay, and Miss Eay is understood not to have 
 been insensible to his passion. He was her junior by several 
 years, though the disparity was nothing like the reverse one 
 on the part of Lord Sandwich. Sir Herbert Croft, who wrote 
 a history of their intimacy and correspondence, under the 
 title of " Love and Madness," represents the attachment as 
 mutual. According to his statement, Hackman urged her to 
 marry him, and Miss Eay was desirous of doing so, but fearful 
 of hurting the feelings of the man who had educated her, and 
 who is represented as a sort of Old Eobin Gray. In this sen- 
 timent, Hackman with all his passion is represented as par- 
 taking. Sir Herbert's book, though founded on fact, and 
 probably containing more truth than can now be ascertained, 
 is considered apocryphal: and Mr. Cradock, who is as cautious 
 in his way as his noble acquaintance, doubts whether any 
 man was really acquainted with the particulars. All that he 
 could call to mind relative to either party was, that for three 
 weeks after the Captain's introduction, till his military pur- 
 suits led him to Ireland, he was observed to bow to Miss Eay 
 whenever she went out ; and that Miss Eay, during the latter 
 part of her time at the Admiralty, did not continue to speak 
 of her situation as before. " She complained," he says, " of 
 being greatly alarmed by ballads that had been sung, or cries 
 that had been made, directly under the windows that looked 
 into the park ; and that such was the fury of the mob, that 
 she did not think either herself or Lord Sandwich was safe 
 whenever they went out ; and I must own that I heard some 
 strange insults offered ; and that I with some of the servants 
 once suddenly rushed out, but the offenders instantly ran 
 away and escaped. One evening afterwards, when sitting 
 with Miss Eay in the great room above stairs, she appeared 
 to be much agitated, and at last said, ' she had a particular 
 favour to ask of me ; that, as her situation was very preca- 
 rious, and no settlement had been made upon her, she wished 
 I would hint something of the kind to Lord Sandwich.' I 
 
 * Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
 F.S.A., vol. iv., p. 166. 
 
HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 341 
 
 need not express my surprise, but I instantly assured her, 
 i that no one but herself could make such a proposal, as I 
 knew Lord Sandwich never gave any one an opportunity of 
 interfering with him on so delicate a subject.' She urged 
 that her wish was merely to relieve Lord Sandwich as to 
 great expense about her ; for as her voice was then at the 
 best, and Italian music was particularly her forte, she was 
 given to understand she might succeed at the Opera-house, 
 and as Mr. Giardini then led, and I was intimate with Mrs, 
 Brooke and Mrs. Yates, she was certain of a most advan- 
 tageous engagement. I then instantly conjectured who one 
 of the advisers must have been ; and afterwards found that 
 three thousand pounds and a free benefit had been absolutely 
 held out to her, though not by the two ladies who managed 
 the stage department. Whether any proposals of marriage at 
 that time or afterwards were made by Mr. Hackman, I know 
 not." * Be this as it may, Hackman's passion was undoubted. 
 He was originally an apprentice to a merchant at Gosport ; 
 was impatient of serving at the counter ; entered the army at 
 nineteen, but during his acquaintance with Miss Ray, ex- 
 changed the army for the church, " as a readier road to 
 independence ;" and was presented to the living of Wyverton 
 in Norfolk. 
 
 Whatever was the nature of the intimacy between these 
 unfortunate persons, a sudden stop appears to have been put 
 to Hackman's final expectations, and he became desperate. 
 By what we can gather from the accounts, Lord Sandwich, 
 either to preserve her from her lover or herself, thought 
 proper to put Miss Ray under the charge of a duenna. 
 Hackman grew jealous either of him or of some other person; 
 he was induced to believe that Miss Ray had no longer a 
 regard for him, and he resolved to put himself to death. In 
 this resolution a sudden impulse of frenzy included the unfor- 
 tunate object of his passion. 
 
 On the evening of the fatal day, Miss Ray went with her 
 female attendant to Covent Garden Theatre to see " Love in a 
 Village." Mr. Cradock thinks she had declined to inform 
 Hackman how she was engaged that evening. Hackman, 
 who appears to have suspected her intentions, watched her, 
 and saw the carriage pass by the Cannon Coffee-house 
 (Cockspur Street, Charing Cross), in which he had posted 
 
 * Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J, Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
 I\S,A., vol, i., p. 143, 
 
312 STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 
 
 himself. Singularly enough, Mr. Cradock happened to be in 
 the same coffee-house, and says that he wondered to see the 
 carriage go by without Lord Sandwich. This looks as if 
 there was more in Hackman's suspicion than can now be 
 shown, Hackman followed them. 
 
 "The ladies sat in a front box," says Mr. Cradock; "and three 
 gentlemen, all connected with the Admiralty, occasionally paid their 
 compliments to them ; Mr. Hackman was sometimes in the lobby, 
 sometimes in an upper side box, and more than once at the Bedford 
 coffee-house to take brandy and water, but still seemed unable to 
 gain any information ; and I can add, as a slight circumstance, that 
 in the afternoon I had myself been at the coffee-house (Cockspur 
 Street, Charing Cross), and, observing the carriage pass by, had 
 remarked to my friend that I wondered at seeing the ladies on their 
 way to the theatre without Lord Sandwich ; that I meant to have 
 dined at the Admiralty, but had been prevented ; so that it appears 
 now that most of the circumstances must have been accidental. The 
 dreadful consummation, however, was, that at the door of the theatre, 
 directly opposite the Bedford coffee-house, Mr. Hackman suddenly 
 rushed out, and as a gentleman was handing Miss Ray into the 
 carriage, with a pistol he first destroyed this most unfortunate 
 victim, and, though not at the time, fell a most dreadful sacrifice 
 himself." * 
 
 " Miss Ray," says the Introduction to ' Love and Madness,' " was 
 coming out of Covent Garden Theatre in order to take her coach, 
 accompanied by two friends, a gentleman and a lady, between whom 
 she walked in the piazza. Mr. Hackman stepped up to her without 
 the smallest previous menace or address, put a pistol to her head, and 
 shot her instantly dead. He then fired another at himself, which, 
 however, did not prove equally effectual. The ball grazed upon the 
 upper part of the head, but did not penetrate sufficiently to produce 
 any fatal effect ; he fell, however, and so firmly was he bent on the 
 entire completion of the destruction he had meditated, that he was 
 found beating his head with the utmost violence with the butt-end of 
 the pistol, by Mr. Mahon, apothecary, of Covent Garden, who wrenched 
 the pistol from his hand. He was carried to the Shakspeare, where 
 his wound was dressed. In his pocket were found two letters ; the 
 one a copy of a letter which he had written to Miss Ray, and the 
 other to Frederic Booth, Esq., Craven Street, Strand. When he had 
 so far recovered his faculties as to be capable of speech, he inquired 
 with great anxiety concerning Miss Ray ; and being told she was 
 dead, he desired her poor remains might not be exposed to the 
 observation of the curious multitude. About five o'clock in the 
 morning, Sir John Fielding came to the Shakspeare, and not finding 
 his wounds of a dangerous nature, ordered him to Tothill Fields 
 Bridewell. 
 
 " The body of the unhappy lady was carried into the Shakspeare 
 Tavern for the inspection of the coroner."f 
 
 * Cradock, as above, p. 144. 
 
 t Love and Madness, a Story too True, in a series of Letters, &C* 
 1822, p. 11. 
 
343 
 
 The whole of the circumstances connected with this catas- 
 trophe are painfully dramatic. 
 
 " The next morning," says Mr. Cradock, " I made several efforts 
 before I had resolution enough to see any one of the Admiralty ; at 
 last old James, the black, overwhelmed with grief, came down to me, 
 and endeavoured to inform me, that when he had mentioned what had 
 occurred, Lord Sandwich hastily replied, ' You know that I iorbad 
 you to plague me any more about those ballads: let them sing or say 
 whatever they please about me ! ' ' Indeed, my lord,' I said, ' I am 
 not speaking of any ballads; it is all too true.' Others then came in, 
 and all was a scene of the utmost horror and distress. His lordship 
 for a while stood, as it were, petrified, till, suddenly seizing a candle, 
 he ran up-stairs and threw himself on the bed ; and in an agony 
 exclaimed, ' Leave me for a while to myself — I could have borne any- 
 thing but this ! ' The attendants remained for a considerable time at 
 the top of the staircase, till his lordship rang the bell and ordered that 
 they should all go to bed. They assured me that at that time they 
 believed fewer particulars were known at the Admiralty than over 
 half the town besides; indeed all was confusion and astonishment; and 
 even now I am doubtful whether Lord Sandwich was ever aware that 
 there was any connection between Mr. Hackman and Miss Ray. His 
 lordship continued for a day or two at the Admiralty, till, at the 
 earnest request of those about him, he at last retired for a short time 
 to a friend's house in the neighbourhood of Richmond."* 
 
 Hackman was executed at Tyburn. He confessed at the 
 bar that he had intended to kill himself, but he protested that 
 but for a momentary frenzy he should not have destroyed 
 her, " who was more dear to him than life." It appears, 
 however, that he was furnished with two pistols ; which told 
 against him on that point. 
 
 " On Friday," says Boswell, "I had been present at the trial of the 
 unfortunate Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of frantic jealous love, had 
 shot Miss Ray, the favourite of a nobleman. Johnson, in whose com- 
 pany I dined to-day, with some other friends, was much interested by 
 my account of what passed, and particularly with his prayer for 
 mercy of heaven. He said in a solemn, fervent tone, 'I hope he shall 
 find mercy.' In talking of Hackman, Johnson argued as Judge 
 Blackstone had done, that his being furnished with two pistols was a 
 proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, * No ; 
 for that every wise man who intended to shoot himself, took two 
 
 pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once. Lord 's cook 
 
 shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. 
 
 Mr. , who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because 
 
 they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself, and then 
 he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast before shooting himself, 
 knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion ; he had two 
 charged pistols ; one was found lying charged upon the table by him, 
 after he had shot himself with the other.' ' Well (said Johnson with 
 
 * Cradock's Memoirs, vol. iv„p. 166, 
 
344: STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 
 
 an air of triumph), you see here one pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk 
 replied smartly, ' Because it happened to kill him.' "* 
 
 It is impossible to settle this point. The general impres- 
 sion will be against Hackman ; but, perhaps, the second 
 pistol, though not designed for himself, might have been for 
 Miss Eay. His victim was buried at Elstree, where she had 
 been a lowly and happy child, running about with her 
 blooming face, and little thinking what trouble it was to cost 
 her. 
 
 In Mr. Cradock's book we hear again of Lord Sandwich 
 on whom this story has thrown an interest. On his return 
 from Eichmond, Mr. Cradock went to see him, and was ad- 
 mitted into the study where the portrait of Miss Eay, an 
 exact resemblance, still hung over the chimney-piece. " I 
 fear," says Mr. Cradock, " I rather started on seeing it, which 
 Lord Sandwich perceiving, he instantly endeavoured to speak 
 of some unconnected subject ; but he looked so ill, and I 
 felt so much embarrassed, that as soon as I possibly could, I 
 most respectfully took my leave." 
 
 " His lordship rarely dined out anywhere ; but after a great length 
 of time he was persuaded by our open-hearted friend, Lord Walsing- 
 hani, to meet a select party at his house. All passed off exceedingly 
 well for a while, and his lordship appeared more cheerful than could 
 have been expected; but after coffee, as Mr. and Mrs. Bates were 
 present, something was mentioned about music, and one of the company 
 requested that Mrs. Bates would favour them with, ' Shepherds, I 
 have lost my love.' This was, unfortunately, the very air that had 
 been introduced by Miss Eay at Hinchinbrook, and had been always 
 called for by Lord Sandwich. Mr. Bates immediately endeavoured to 
 prevent its being sung, and by his anxiety increased the distress, but 
 it was too late to pause. Lord Sandwich for a while struggled to over- 
 come his feelings, but they were so apparent that at last he went up 
 Mrs. Walsingham, and in a very confused manner said, he hoped she 
 would excuse his not staying longer at that time ; but that he had 
 just recollected some pressing business, which required his return to 
 the Admiralty, and bowing to all the company, rather hastily left the 
 room. Some other endeavours to amuse him afterwards did not 
 prove much more successful."! 
 
 His lordship afterwards lived in retirement, and died in 1792. 
 It does not appear that Lord Sandwich's disinclination to 
 be amused arose from excessive sensibility. Mr. Cradock 
 represents him in his political character as bearing "daily 
 insults and misrepresentations as a stoic rather than an 
 injured and feeling man," and he describes his calmness of 
 
 * Boswell, vol. iii., p. 414. 
 f Cradock's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 146, 
 
HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 345 
 
 mind in retirement, and his enjoyment of solitude. The 
 same writer who calls him " a steady friend," speaks highly 
 of his classical attainments, and his accomplishments as a 
 modern linguist and an amateur, to which he added great 
 caution (as the Bishop said), a love of " badgering," and an 
 incompetency for the personal graces. When he played his 
 part in the oratorios, it was on the kettle-drum. He related 
 the following anecdote of himself. 
 
 "When I was in Paris, I had a dancing-master; the man was very 
 civil, and on taking leave of him, I offered him any service in London. 
 'Then,' said the man, bowing, 'I should take it as a particular 
 favour, if your lordship would never tell any one of whom you have 
 learned to dance.' " 
 
 "Hurd once said to me," adds Mr. Cradock, "there is aline in the 
 Heroic Epistle that I do not at all comprehend the meaning of ; but 
 you can, perhaps, acquaint me. It alludes to Lord Sandwich, I sup- 
 pose; but one word, shambles, I cannot guess at, — 
 
 ' See Jemmy Twitcher shambles — stop, stop, thief.' 
 ' That, sir,' said I, 'alludes to his lordship's shambling gait/ "* 
 
 Upon the whole we have no doubt that he was a cold and 
 superficial person, and that Miss Eay would not have been 
 sorry had Hackman succeeded in retaining her heart ; for, as 
 to Hackman, the great cause of his mischance, according to 
 the passage in Boswell, appears to have been the violence of 
 his temper, — the common secret of most of these outrageous 
 love stories. He was not a bad-hearted man, merely selfish 
 and passionate, otherwise he would have meditated no 
 mischief against himself. 
 
 " He that beats or knocks out brains, 
 The devil's in him, if he feigns," 
 
 says the poet. But he was weak, wilful, and, by his 
 readiness to become a clergyman from a Captain, perhaps not 
 very principled. The truest love is the truest benevolence ; it 
 acquires an infinite patience out of the very excess of its 
 suffering, and is content to merge its egotism in the idea of 
 the beloved object. He that does not know this, does not 
 know what love is, whatever he may know of passion. 
 
 In Henrietta Street Mrs. Clive once resided. She was the 
 favourite Nell of the stage in the " Devil to Pay," and similar 
 characters ; and, according to Garrick, there was something 
 of the Devil to Pay in all her stage life. She might have 
 been Macklin's sister for humour, judgment, and a sturdiness 
 of purpose amounting to violence, not unmixed with gene- 
 * Uradoek's Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 166. 
 
o4b HENRIETTA STREET, 
 
 rosity. The latter part of her life she spent in retirement at 
 Strawberry Hill, where she was a neighbour and friend to 
 Horace Walpole, whose effeminacy she helped to keep on the 
 alert. It always seems to us, as if she had been the man of 
 the two, and he the woman. 
 
 Henrietta Street was most probably named after the queen 
 of Charles I., and James Street after her father-in-law. In 
 both these streets lived the egregions almanack-maker, and 
 quack doctor, the butt of the wits of his time. He died in 
 Salisbury Street, Strand, which is the scene of his posthumous 
 behaviour, — his pretending to be alive, when BickerstafF 
 had declared him dead. Partridge had foretold the death of 
 the French king. Swift, under the name of BickerstafF, 
 foretold Partridge's, and, when the time came, insisted he was 
 dead. Partridge gravely insisted that he was alive. The wits, 
 the friends of Swift, maintained the contrary, wondering at the 
 dead man's impudence : and the whole affair was hawked 
 about the streets, to the ludicrous distress of poor Partridge, 
 who not only highly resented it, and repeatedly advertised 
 his existence, but was fairly obliged to give up almanack- 
 making. " He persisted, indeed, sturdily in his refusal to be 
 buried till 1715 : but he actually died as an almanack- 
 maker in 1709, his almanack for that year being the last, 
 and the only one he wrote after this odd misfortune befell 
 him." * 
 
 The following are specimens of the way in which Partridge 
 resisted his death and burial. In the almanack for 1709, he 
 says, 
 
 " You may remember there was a paper published predicting my 
 death on the 29 th of March at night, 1708, and after that day was 
 passed the same villain told the world I was dead, and howl died, and 
 that he was with me at the time of my death. I thank God, by whose 
 mercy I have my being, that I am still alive, and, excepting my age, 
 as well as ever I was in my life, as I was on that 29th of March. 
 And that paper was said to be done by one BickerstafF, Esq., but that 
 was a sham name, it was done by an impudent lying fellow. But his 
 prediction did not prove true. What will he say to excuse that? for 
 the fool had considered the star of my nativity, as he said. Why, the 
 truth is, he will be hard put to it to find a salvo for his honour. It 
 was a bold touch, and he did not know but it might prove true. 
 
 " Feb. 1709. Much lying news dispersed about this time, and also 
 scandalous pamphlets; perhaps we may have some knavish scribbler, 
 
 * Account of John Partridge, in the Appendix to the Tatler, vol, iv, 
 p. 613, 
 
PARTRIDGE, THE ALMANACK-MAKER. — KING STREET. 347 
 
 a second Bickerstaff, or a rascal under that name for that villain, &c. 
 It is a cheat, and he a knave that did it, &c. 
 
 " Whereas, it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff, Esq., 
 and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John 
 Partridge is dead; this may inform all his loving countrymen, that, 
 blessed be God, he is still living in health, and they are knaves who 
 reported otherwise. • Merlinus Liberatus, with an almanack [printed 
 by allowance for 1710]. By John Partridge, student in Physic and 
 Astrology.' " 
 
 In James Street, towards the begining of the last century, 
 lived a mysterious lady, who will remind the reader of the 
 Catholic lady in the " Fortunes of Nigel." 
 
 " In the month of March 1720," says Mr. Malcolm, " an unknown 
 lady died at her lodgings in James Street, Covent Garden. She is 
 represented to have been a middle-sized person, with dark-brown 
 hair, and very beautiful features, and mistress of every accomplish- 
 ment peculiar to ladies of the first fashion and respectability. Her 
 age appeared to be between thirty and forty. Her circumstances 
 were affluent, and she possessed the richest trinkets of her sex, gene- 
 rally set with diamonds. A John Ward, Esq., of Hackney, published 
 many particulars relating to her in the papers; and amongst others, 
 that a servant had been directed by her to deliver him a letter after 
 her death ; but as no servant appeared, he felt himself required to 
 notice those circumstances, in order to acquaint her relations of her 
 decease, which occurred suddenly after a masquerade, where she 
 declared she had conversed with the King, and it was remembered 
 that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne ; 
 though after the Queen's demise she had lived in obscurity. This 
 unknown arrived in London from Mansfield, in 1714, drawn by six 
 horses. She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, 
 her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct ; adding, 
 that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recom- 
 mendation. 
 
 " It was conjectured that she might be the daughter of a Eoman 
 Catholic, who had consigned her to a convent, whence a brother had 
 released her and supported her in privacy. She was buried at 
 St. Paul's, Covent Garden."* 
 
 Perhaps she had some connection with Queen Anne's 
 brother, the Pretender. 
 
 In King Street lived the father of Arne and Mrs. Cibber. 
 He was an upholsterer, and is said to have been the original 
 of the Quid-nunc in the Tatler, and the hero of Murphy's 
 farce of the Upholsterer, or, What News? His name is 
 connected also with that of the four "Indian Kings," as they 
 were called, who came into this country in Queen Anne's 
 time, to ask her assistance against the French in Canada. 
 
 * Anecdotes, Manners, and Customs of London during the Eighteenth 
 Century, vol. i., p. 407, 
 
348 THE FOUR INDIAN KINGS. 
 
 " They were clothed and entertained," says a note in the ' Tatler, 
 " at the public expense, being lodged, while they continued in London, 
 in an handsome apartment," perhaps in the house of Mr. Arne, as 
 may be inferred from ' Tatler,' 1 55, and note. Certainly their land- 
 lord was an upholsterer in Covent Garden, in a new street, which 
 seems at that time to have received the name of King Street, which 
 it retains to this day, in common with many other streets so called, in 
 honour of Charles II. The figures of these four Indian kings or chiefs 
 are still preserved in the British Museum. The names and titles of 
 their Majesties are recorded there and in the * Annals of Queen Anne/ 
 but with the following differences from the account of them in this 
 paper : Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Prow, and Sa Ga Yean Qua Prah Ion, 
 of the Maquas ; — Elow Oh Kaom, and Oh Nee Yeath Ion No Prow, of 
 the river Sachem, and the Ganajoh-hore Sachem. On the 18th of 
 April 1710, according to Salmon, on the 19th according to Boyer, 
 these four illustrious personages were conveyed in two of the Queen's 
 coaches to St. James's, by Sir Charles Cotterel, master of the cere- 
 monies, and introduced to their public audience by the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury, then Lord Chamberlain. They made a speech by an 
 interpreter, which Major Pidgeon, an officer who came over with them 
 from America, read in English to her Majesty. " They had (they 
 said) with one consent hung up the kettle and taken up the hatchet, 
 in token of their friendship to their great queen and her children, and 
 had been, on the other side of the great water, a strong wall of secu- 
 rity to their great queen's children, even to the loss of their best men. 
 For the truth of what they affirmed, and their written proposals, they 
 referred to Colonel Scuyder and Colonel Nicholson, whom they 
 called, in their language, Brother Queder, and Anadgargaux, and, 
 speaking of Colonel Vetch, they named him Anadiasia. They said 
 they always considered the French as men of falsehood, and rejoiced 
 in the prospect of the reduction of Canada; after which they should 
 have free hunting, and a great trade with their great queen's chil- 
 children , and as a token of the sincerity of the six nations, in the 
 name of all, they presented their great queen with the belts of 
 wampum. They concluded their speech with recommending their 
 very hard case to their great queen's gracious consideration, expres- 
 sing their hopes of her favour, and requesting the mission of more of 
 her children to reinforce and to instruct, for they had got, as they 
 said, since their alliance with her children, some knowledge of the 
 Saviour of the world. The curious may see this speech at full length 
 in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' year 9th, p. 191, etseq.,%\o. On 
 the same day, according to Boyer, a royal messenger of the Emperor of 
 Morocco, Elhadge Guzman, was likewise introduced by the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury to a private audience, and delivered letters to the Queen 
 from Mula Ishmael, his master; the same emperor, probably, who 
 sent an ambassador to our court in 1706, mentioned in the 'Tatler,' 
 No. 130, and note, vol. iii., p. 44. The Indian Kings continued about 
 a fortnight longer in London, during which time they were hospi- 
 tably entertained by some of the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, 
 by the Duke of Ormond, and several persons of distinction. They 
 were carried to see Dr. Elamstead's house and the mathematical 
 instruments in Greenwich Park, and entertained with the sight of the 
 principal curiosities in and about the metropolis ; then conveyed 
 to Portsmouth through Hampton Court and Windsor,, and emba,rke4 
 
ARNE, AND HIS FATHER. 349 
 
 v/ith Colonel Frances Nicholson, commander-in-chief of the forces 
 appointed to the American service, on board the Dragon, Captain 
 Martin, Commodore, who, with about eighteen sail under his convoy, 
 sailed from Spithead on the 18th of May, and landed their Majesties 
 safe at Boston, in New England, July 15th, 1710."* 
 
 Their names are like a set of yawns and sneezes. 
 
 Young Arne, who was born in King Street, was a 
 musician against his father's will, and practised in the garret, 
 on a muffled spinnet, when the family had gone to bed. He 
 was sent to Eton, which was probably of use to him in con- 
 firming his natural refinement, but nothing could hinder his 
 devoting himself to the art. It is said the old man had no 
 suspicion of his advancement in it, till, going to a concert 
 one evening, he was astonished to see his son exalted, bow in 
 hand, as the leader. Seeing the praises bestowed on him, he 
 suffered him to become what nature designed him for. Arne 
 was the most flowing, Italian-like musician of any we have 
 had in England ; not capable of the grandeur and profound 
 style of Purcell, but more sustained, continuous, and seduc- 
 tive. His " Water parted " is a stream of sweetness ; his 
 song, "When Daisies pied" is truly Shaksperian, full of arch- 
 ness and originality. Like many of his profession, who feel 
 much more than they reflect, he became, in some measure, 
 the victim of his sense of beauty, being excessively addicted 
 to women. His sister, Mrs. Cibber, whose charming perfor- 
 mances on the stage we have before noticed, did not escape 
 without the reputation of a like tendency : but she had a 
 bad husband (the notorious Theophilus Cibber) ; and on the 
 occasion that gave rise to it, is understood to have been the 
 victim of his mercenary designs. 
 
 Southampton Street we have noticed in speaking of the 
 Strand. Godfrey's, the chemist's, in this street, is an estab- 
 lishment of old standing, as may be seen by the inscription 
 over the door. A hundred years ago, Mr. Ambrose Godfrey, 
 who lived here, proposed to extinguish fire by a new method 
 of " explosion and suffocation ; " that is to say, a mixture of 
 water and gunpowder. Tavistock Street (where Lord Sand- 
 wich first saw Miss Ray) was once the great emporium of 
 millinery and mantua- making. Macklin died there. He 
 lived many years in Wyld Street. In Maiden Lane, Voltaire 
 lodged, when in England, at the sign of the White Peruke, 
 probably the house of a fashionable French peruquicr. la 
 
 * Tatler, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 397. 
 
350 MAIDEN LANE — VOLTAIRE. 
 
 " Swift's Works" (vol. xx. of the duodecimo edition, p. 294), 
 there is a letter to him, in English, by Voltaire, and dated 
 from this house. The English seems a little too perfect. 
 There is another following it which looks more authentic. 
 But there is no doubt that Voltaire, while in England, made 
 himself such a master of the language, as to be able to write 
 in it with singular correctness for a foreigner. He was then 
 young. He had been imprisoned in the Bastile for a libel ; 
 came over here, on his release ; procured many subscriptions 
 for the "Henriade;" published in English "An Essay on 
 Epic Poetry," and remained some years, during which he 
 became acquainted with the principal men of letters — Pope, 
 Congreve, and Young. He is said to have talked so inde- 
 cently at Pope's table (probably no more than was thought 
 decent by the belles in France), that the good old lady, the 
 poet's mother, was obliged to retire. Objecting, at Lord 
 Chesterfield's table, to the allegories of Milton, Young is said 
 to have accosted him in the well-known couplet : — 
 Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
 Thou seem'st a Milton, with his Death and Sin. 
 
 But this story has been doubted. Young, though not so thin, 
 was as witty and profligate in his way as Voltaire : for, even 
 when affecting a hermit-like sense of religion, he was a servile 
 flatterer and preferment-hunter. The secret of the gloomy 
 tone in his " Night-Thoughts" was his not having too much, 
 and his missing a bishopric. This is the reason why the 
 "Night-Thoughts" are overdone, and have not stood their 
 ground. Voltaire left England with such a mass of subscrip- 
 tions for his " Henriade" as laid the foundation of his fortunes^ 
 and with great admiration of English talent and genius, par- 
 ticularly that of Newton and Locke, which, with all his 
 insinuations against our poetry, he took warm pains to extend, 
 and never gave up. He was fond to the last of showing he 
 had not forgotten his English. Somebody telling him that 
 Johnson had spoken well of his talents, he said, in English, 
 " He is a clever fellow ;" but the gentleman observing that 
 the doctor did not think well of his religion, he added, " a 
 superstitious dog." 
 
 During his residence in Maiden Lane, there is a story of 
 Voltaire's having been beset, in one of his walks, by the 
 people, who ridiculed him as a Frenchman. He got upon the 
 steps of a door-way and harangued them in their own language 
 in praise of English liberty and the nation ; upon which, the 
 
LONG ACRE, AND ITS MUG 1IOUSKS. 351 
 
 story adds, they hailed him as a fine fellow, and carried him 
 to his lodgings on their shoulders. The treatment of foreigners 
 at this time in the streets of London (and every foreigner was 
 a Frenchman) was very much the reverse of what the inhabi- 
 tants took it for. Thanks to the progress of knowledge, 
 nations have learnt to understand one another's common cause 
 better, and to suspect that the most ridiculous thing they 
 could do is to forget it. 
 
 Long Acre is a portion of the seven acres before men- 
 tioned. The great plague of London began there in some 
 goods brought over from Holland ; but as that calamity 
 made its principal ravages in the city, we shall speak of it 
 under another head. Daring the battles of the Whigs and 
 Tories, Long Acre was famous for its Mug-houses, where 
 beer-drinking clubs were held, and politics " sung or said." 
 Cheapside was another place of celebrity for these meetings. 
 There is a description of them in a Journey through England 
 in 1724, quoted by Mr. Malcolm in his "Manners and 
 Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century." " Gentle- 
 men, lawyers, and tradesmen," says the account, " used to 
 meet in a great room, seldom under a hundred." 
 
 " They had a president, who sat in an arm-chair some steps higher 
 than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A 
 harp played all the time at the lower end of the room, and every now 
 and then one or other of the company rose and entertained the rest 
 with a song, and (by the by) some were good masters. Here was 
 nothing drank but ale, and every gentleman had his separate mug, 
 which he chalked on the table where he sat as it was brought in; and 
 every one retired when he pleased, as from a coffee-house. 
 
 " The rooms were always so diverted with songs, and drinking 
 from one table to another one another's healths, that there was no 
 room for anj-thing that could sour conversation. 
 
 " One was obliged to be there by seven to get room, and after ten 
 the company were for the most part gone. 
 
 " This was a winter's amusement, agreeable enough to a stranger 
 for once or twice, and he was well diverted with the different humours 
 when the mugs overflow. 
 
 " On King George's accession to the throne, the Tories had so much 
 the better of the friends to the Protestant succession, that they gained 
 the mobs on all public days to their side. This induced this set of 
 gentlemen to establish mug-houses in all the corners of this great city, 
 for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty 
 to the Protestant succession, and to be ready upon all tumults to join 
 their forces for the suppression of the Tory mobs. Many anenconnter 
 they had, and many were the riots, till at last the Parliament was 
 obliged by law to put an end to this city strife, which had this good 
 effect, that, on pulling down the mug-houses in Salisbury Court, for 
 
852 prior. 
 
 which some boys were hanged on this Act, the city has not "been 
 troubled with them since."* 
 
 One of the mistresses whom Prior celebrates, under the 
 name of Chloe, and compares to Yenns and Diana, lived in 
 Long Acre, and was the wife, some say, of a common soldier, 
 others of a cobbler, others of the keeper of an ale-house. 
 Perhaps she was all these, or there were three mistresses 
 whose alliances were confounded. Spence says that the ale- 
 house keeper was the first husband, and the cobbler the 
 second. "Everybody knows," says Pope, "what a wretch 
 she was." And again : — " Prior was not a right good man. 
 He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, 
 with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He turned 
 from a strong Whig (which he had been when most with 
 Lord Halifax) to a violent Tory ; and did not care to converse 
 with any Whigs after, any more than Rowe did with Tories. "f 
 " I have been assured," says Pope's friend, Eichardson, the 
 painter, " that Prior, after having spent the evening with 
 Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a 
 pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and 
 his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed.' ; J After the 
 poet's death, Arbuthnot says something to the same effect ; 
 but we forget what. 
 
 None of the wits of that time seem to have known much 
 about love as a sentiment. There is no end of the misconcep- 
 tions of what is called love. Prior would probably have 
 retorted upon Pope, that his own taste was not very delicate ; 
 and upon Arbuthnot, that the doctor was a sensualist in his 
 way, and of a lower order. § He would have quoted Pro- 
 pertius, Raphael, and others, for the impartiality of his taste ; 
 and the woman, though in low life, might have had wit and 
 beauty. The secret of these inequalities has been explained 
 by Fielding. || 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds lived successively in St. Martin's 
 Lane, and on the north side of Great Newport Street, before 
 
 * Anecdotes, Manners, &c. ut supra, vol. iii., p. 239. 
 
 f Spence, ut supra, pp. 2. and 49. 
 
 t Johnson's Lite of Prior. 
 
 § Arbuthnot was a lover of the table, and is understood to have 
 embittered his end by it ; a charge which has been brought against 
 Pope. Perhaps there is not one that might be brought with more 
 safety against ninety men out of a hundred. 
 
 U Journey to the Next World. 
 
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. — ST. MARTIN'S LANE. — HOGARTH. 35S 
 
 he settled finally in Leicester Square. In Newport Street was 
 born the celebrated Home Tooke, the son of a poulterer in the 
 adjoining market ; which made him say, that his father was 
 a " Turkey merchant." He was, perhaps, the hardest-headed 
 man that ever figured in the union of literature and politics ; 
 meaning, by that epithet, the power to discuss, and impene- 
 trability to objection. He died at his house at Wimbledon, 
 and was buried at Ealing. His history trenches too closely 
 on the politics of our own day, to allow us to expatiate upon 
 it in a work expressly devoted to the past. 
 
 St. Martin's Lane (see Charing Cross, for a notice of the 
 church,) was once as famous for artists as Newman Street has 
 been since. In Salisbury Court and in St. Martin's Lane the 
 Royal Academy may be said to have originated, for in those 
 places successively its original members first came together as 
 a society established by themselves. Perhaps there was not a 
 single artist, contemporary with Sir Joshua, who was uncon- 
 nected with St. Martin's Lane, either as a lodger, student, 
 or visitor. Old Slaughter's coffee-house, in the same lane, 
 became celebrated on the same account, and as a resort of the 
 contemporary wits, especially Hogarth, who may be said to 
 have amalgamated in his works the wit and the painter. 
 St. Martin's Lane and Leicester Square are the head-quarters 
 of the memory of English art. In the annals of the former 
 we meet with the names of Wilson and Gainsborough : in the 
 latter flourished and died Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square was on the eastern 
 side, four doors from Sydney's Alley.* It was there he kept 
 a handsome table, and was visited by Johnson and Goldsmith, 
 and had the whole round of the fashionable world fluttering 
 before him, and steadying itself to become immortal in his 
 pictures : if, indeed, immortal they are to be, in the ordinary 
 meaning of that word ; for, out of certain misgivings, which 
 perhaps argued a want of perfect claim to that destiny, he 
 dabbled in experiments upon colours which have failed ; and 
 his pictures, though but of yesterday, already look old and 
 worn out, while Titian's are as blooming as Apollo. 
 
 Hogarth, the greatest name in English art, lived in one of 
 the two houses which now form Sabloniere's hotel. It was 
 the one to the north. He was a little bustling man, with a 
 face more lively than refined, a sort of knowing jockey look ; 
 
 * The house was probably on the site now occupied by the south- 
 east corner of New Coventry Street. 
 
 A A 
 
354 
 
 LEICESTER SQUARE. 
 
 and was irritable and egotistical, but not ungenerous 
 
 a painter, he did what no man ever did before or since — 
 
 brought out the absurdities of artificial life, 
 
 " Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image," 
 and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning ! 
 His intentions were less profound than his impulses ; that is 
 to say, he sometimes had an avowed common-place in view, 
 as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, 
 while the execution of it was full of much higher things and 
 profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a 
 wit on canvass, it was he. To take one instance alone, his 
 spider's v. eb over the poors box is a union of remote ideas, 
 coalescing but too perfectly.* 
 
 Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built 
 upon till i owards the restoration of Charles II. It took its 
 name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, 
 which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses 
 and of Leicester Place. 
 
 RESIDENCE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 
 
 " It was for a short time," says Pennant, " the residence of Elizabeth, 
 daughter of James I., the titular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 
 13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life. It has been tenanted for 
 
 * For masterly criticisms on Hogarth, see the " Works of Charles 
 Lamb," vol. ii., p. 88, and the "Picture Galleries of England," p. 181. 
 
SIR ISAAC NEWTOS. B55 
 
 a great number of years. It was successively the poun ting-place of 
 princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he 
 had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son 
 Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it 
 finished his days." 
 
 " Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, " stood, in 
 1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the 
 spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept' here 
 his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign 
 of Charles H., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, 
 opposite the end of Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose 
 of a riding-house ; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the 
 parish of St. James's." * 
 
 But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields is 
 in St. Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which 
 was occupied by the great Newton. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church— Statue of Charles I. 
 —Execution of Regicides— Ben Jonson— Wallingford House, now 
 the Admiralty— Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ; Sir Walter Scott's 
 Account of him— Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death- 
 Charles's Horse a Satirist — Locket's Ordinary— Sir George Etherege. 
 — Prior and his Uncle's Tavern— Thomson— Spring Gardens — 
 Mrs. Centlivre— Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c, formerly 
 Hedge Lane— The Wits and the Bailiffs— Suffolk Street— Swift 
 and Miss Vanhomrigh— Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occa- 
 sioned—Scotland Yard— Pleasant Advertisement— Beau Fielding, 
 and his Eccentricities— Vanbrugh— Desperate Adventure of Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury. 
 
 ^N the reign of Edward L, on the country road 
 
 from London to Westminster, stood the hamlet 
 
 of Charing ; a rustic spot, containing a few 
 
 houses, and the last cross set up by that 
 
 Prince in honour of the resting-places of his 
 
 wife's body on its way to interment in the 
 
 Abbey. The Cross was originally of wood, 
 
 but afterwards of stone. The reader may see 
 
 it in the old map of London by Aggas. He 
 
 will there observe, that towards the beginning of Elizabeth's, 
 
 reign Charing Cross was united with London on the Strand 
 
 side, and at little intervals with Whitehall ; but Spring Gar- 
 
 * Pennant, p. 120. 
 
 A A 2 
 
S56 
 
 CHARING CROSS. 
 
 dens was then and long after what its name implies ; and, iii 
 the reign of Charles II., Hedge Lane (now Whitcomb Street) 
 and the Haymarket were still real lanes and passages into 
 the fields. In Elizabeth's time, you might set out from the 
 site of the present Pall-mall, and, leaving St. Giles in the 
 Fields on the right hand, walk all the way to Hampstead 
 without encountering perhaps a dwelling-place. Lovers 
 plucked flowers in Cranbourne Alley, and took moonlight 
 walks in St. James's market. 
 
 On this spot, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, is to be found the 
 fullest "tide of human existence" in the metropolis. We 
 know not how that may be at present when the tide is so full 
 everywhere ; but Charing Cross has long been something the 
 reverse of a rural village, and is now exhibiting one of the 
 newest and grandest evidences of an improving metropolis. 
 
 THE VILLAGE OP CHARING FROM AGGAS S MAP. 
 
 By way of north front, the Mews (formerly the mews of the 
 King's falcons) has given way to a sorry palace for the Fine 
 Arts ; on the west is a handsome edifice including the new 
 college of Physicians ; on the east St. Martin's church has 
 obtained its long desired opening : and in the midst of these 
 buildings and of the Strand-end is a new square, named after 
 the greatest of our naval victories, adorned with a column 
 surmounted by their hero, and disgraced by a couple of shabby 
 
357 
 
 fountains. Here also is an equestrian statue of George the 
 Fourth. What for? 
 
 " In the reign of Henry VIII.," says Pennant, " speaking of St 
 Martin's, " a small church was built here at the King's expense, by 
 reason of the poverty of the parishioners, who possibly were at that 
 period very poor. In 1607 it was enlarged because of the increase of 
 buildings. In 1721 it was found necessary to take the whole down, 
 and in five years from that time this magnificent temple was com- 
 pleted at the expense of near thirty-seven thousand pounds. This is 
 the best performance of Gibbs, the architect of the Radcliffe Library. 
 The steeple is far the most elegant of any of that style which I named 
 the pepper-box ; and with which (I beg pardon of the good people of 
 Glasgow) I marked their boasted steeple of St. Andrew."* 
 
 Our lively biographer seems chiefly to admire the steeple 
 of this church. The Corinthian portico, we believe, is the 
 usual object of praise. Both of them may deserve praise 
 separately ; nor, indeed, will their size and situation allow 
 them to be regarded with indifference in conjunction ; but the 
 elevation of the steeple on the neck of the church, or without 
 any apparent or proper base to rest upon, is a fault not to be 
 denied ; and Mr. Pennant perhaps would not have been in the 
 wrong, had he found an ill name for steeples in general, as 
 well as for the species which he " peppered." Steeples, how- 
 ever noble, and porticoes, however Greek, can never truly 
 coalesce. The finest steeple with a portico to it is but an 
 excrescence and an anomaly, a horn growing out of the 
 church's neck. The Italians felt this absurdity so much, 
 that they have often made a separate building of the steeple, 
 converting it into a beautiful tower aloof from the church, as 
 in the instances of the famous Hanging Tower in Pisa, and 
 the Campanile in Florence. Suppose a shaft like the Monu- 
 ment, in a space near St. Martin's church, and the church 
 itself a proper building with a portico, like St. Paul's Covent 
 Garden, and you have an improvement in the Italian style. 
 The best thing to say for 
 
 sharped steeples high shot up in air 
 
 (as Spenser calls them) is, that they seem to be pointing to 
 heaven, or running up into space like an intimation of inter- 
 minability. An idea of this kind is supposed to have given 
 rise to them. But they always have a meagre, incongruous 
 look, considered in their union with the body to which they 
 are attached. Their best appearance is at a distance, and 
 when they are numerous, as in the view of a great city ; but 
 * fage 143 ? 
 
358 STATUE OF CHARLES I. 
 
 even then, how inferior are they to the massive dignity of 
 such towers as those of Westminster Abbey, or to a dome 
 like that of St. Paul's ! 
 
 The origin of the word Charing is unknown. The cross 
 was destroyed during the Eeformation. The spot where it 
 stood is occupied by the statue of Charles I. originally the 
 property of the Earl of Arundel, for whom it was cast by Le 
 Sceur in 1633. It was not placed in its present situation till 
 the decline of the reign of Charles II. ■ The pedestal is the 
 work of Grinling Gibbons. The statue had been condemned 
 by Parliament to be sold and broken in pieces ; " but John 
 Kiver, the brazier, who purchased it," says Pennant, " having 
 more taste or more loyalty than his masters, buried it unmu- 
 tilated and showed to them some broken pieces of brass in 
 token of his obedience. M. D'Archenholz gives a diverting 
 anecdote of this brazier, and says that he cast a vast number 
 of handles of knives and forks in brass, which he sold as made 
 of the broken statue. They were bought with great eager- 
 ness by the royalists, from affection to their monarch ; by the 
 rebels as a mark of triumph over the murdered sovereign."* 
 The sovereign now faces Whitehall as if in triumph : yet 
 behind the Banquetting house lurks a statue of another of 
 this unfortunate race, who lost his throne for attempting to 
 renew the dictatorial spirit which cost his ancestor his head. 
 The omission of the horse's girth in this statue his been 
 thought a singular instance of forgetfulness in the artist. But 
 it is hardly possible he could have forgotten it. Most likely 
 he took a poetical license, and rejected what might have hurt 
 the symmetry of his outline. 
 
 Charles's memory, like his life, was destined to be connected 
 with tragedies. On this spot, before the statue was erected, a 
 number of the regicides were executed with tortures ; and, 
 till of late years, it was a place for the pillory. Harrison 
 died there, Scrope, Colonel Jones, Hugh Peters, and others of 
 those extraordinary men, who, in welcoming a bloody death, 
 gave the last undoubted proofs that they were real patriots as 
 well as bigots. The spirit in which they died (bold and in- 
 vincible, though in the very glow and loquacity evincing that 
 lingering love of life which is so affecting to one's own mor- 
 tality,) had such an effect on the public, that the king was 
 advised not to have any more such executions near the court, 
 
 * Pennant, p. 112. He quotes Archenholz's Tableau d'Angleterre ? 
 ,183, 
 
EXECUTION OF REGICIDES. 359 
 
 and the scaffold was accordingly removed to Tyburn. A 
 ghastly story is related of Harrison ; — that after he was cut 
 down alive (according to his sentence), and had his bowels 
 removed and burnt before his face by the executioner, he rose 
 up and gave the man a box on the ear. He had behaved 
 with great patience before this half-death ; so that there 
 appears to have been something of delirium in this action, — 
 the action, perhaps, of a being feeling himself to be no longer 
 under the ordinary condition of his species. 
 
 The particular sort of religious enthusiasm evinced by 
 these men is now as obsolete as some of the absurdities which 
 they fought against, and as others which they would have 
 upheld ; but there are passages of lasting interest in the 
 account of their last moments, which the reader will perhaps 
 expect to see. 
 
 As Harrison was going to suffer, " one in derision called to 
 him and said, l Where is your Good Old Cause ? ' He with a 
 cheerful smile clapt his hand on his breast, and said ' Here it 
 is, and I am going to seal it with my blood ? ' And when he 
 came to the sight of the gallows, he was transported with joy, 
 and his servant asked him how he did ; he answered * Never 
 better in my life.' His servant told him, * Sir, there is a 
 crown of glory ready prepared for you.' ' O yes,' said he, 
 
 * I see.' When he was taken off the sledge, the hangman 
 desired him to forgive him. ' I do forgive thee,' said he, 
 
 * with all my heart, as it is a sin against me ;' and told him 
 he wished him all happiness. And further said, ' Alas, poor 
 man, thou dost it ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin 
 may not be laid to thy charge ! ' And putting his hand into 
 his pocket gave him all the money he had, and so parting with 
 his servant, hugging of him in his arms, he went up the ladder 
 with an undaunted countenance. 
 
 " The people observing him to tremble in his hands and legs, he, 
 taking notice of it, said : — 
 
 " * Gentlemen, by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that 
 some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands 
 and knees ; I tell you no, but it is by reason of much blood I have 
 lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which 
 caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves; I have had it this 
 twelve years: I speak this to the praise and glory of God; he hath 
 carried me above the fear of death ; and I value not my life, because 
 I go to my Father, and am assured I shall take it again. 
 
 " ' Gentlemen, take notice, that for being instrumental in that 
 cause and interest of the Son of God, which hath been pleaded amongst 
 us, and which God hath witnessed to my appeals and wonderful 
 
360 EXECUTION OF REGICIDES. 
 
 victories I am brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I 
 had ten thousand lives, I could freely and cheerfully lay them down 
 all, to witness to this matter.' "* 
 
 The time of Colonel Jones's departure being come " this 
 aged gentleman," says the account, " was drawn in one 
 sledge with his aged companion Scroope, whose grave and 
 graceful countenances, accompanied with courage and cheer- 
 fulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the 
 spectators, as they passed along the streets to Charing Cross, 
 the place of their execution ; and, after the executioner had 
 done his part upon three others that day he was so drunk 
 with blood, that, like one surfeited, he grew sick at stomach ; 
 and not being able himself, he set his boy to finish the 
 tragedy upon Col. Jones." The night before he died he 
 " told a friend he . had no other temptation but this, lest he 
 should be too much transported, and carried out to neglect 
 and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in that 
 cause." 
 
 *' The day he suffered, he grasped a friend in his arms, and said to 
 him with some expressions of endearment, ' Farewell : I could wish 
 thee in the same condition with myself, that thou mightes* share with 
 me in my joys.'"! 
 
 The famous Hugh Peters, the commonwealth preacher, 
 whom Burnet speaks of as an " enthusiastical buffoon," and 
 a very " vicious man," is thought by a greater loyalist 
 (Burke) to have had " hard measures dealt him at the Restor- 
 ation." He calls him a " poor good man." Peters was afraid 
 at first he should not behave himself with the proper courage, 
 but rallied his spirits afterwards, and, according to the 
 account published by his friends (and all the accounts, it 
 should be observed, emanate from that side), no man appears 
 to have behaved better. Burnet says otherwise, and that 
 he was observed all the while to be drinking cordials to 
 keep him from fainting, and Burnet's testimony is not to be 
 slighted, though he seems too readily to have taken upon trust 
 some evil reports of Peters' life and manners, which the 
 " poor man," expressly contradicted in prison. Be this as it 
 may, " Being carried," says the account, " upon the sledge to 
 execution, and made to sit thereon within the rails at 
 Charing Cross to behold the execution of Mr. Cook, one 
 comes to hirn and upbraided him with the death of the King, 
 
 * State Trials, ut supra, vol. v., p. 1236. 
 f Id. pp. 1284, 1286. 
 
BEN JONSON. — THE ADMIRALTY. 361 
 
 bidding him (with opprobrious language) to repent ; he 
 replied, 'Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying 
 man ; you are greatly mistaken, I had nothing to do in the 
 death of the King.' " 
 
 " When Mr. Cook was cut down and brought to be quartered, one 
 they called Colonel Turner called to the Sheriff 's men to bring Mr. 
 Peters near that he might see him ; and by and by the hangman 
 came to him all besmeared in blood, and rubbing his bloody hands 
 together, he tauntingly asked, ' Come, how do you like this, how do 
 you like this work ? ' To whom he replied, ' I am not, I thank God, 
 terrified at it ; you may do your worst.' 
 
 " When he was going to his execution, he looked about and espied 
 a man, to whom he gave a piece of gold (having bowed it first), and 
 desired him to go to the place where his daughter lodged, and to 
 carry that to her as a token from him, and to let her know that his 
 heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that before that piece 
 should come into her hands he should be with God in glory. 
 
 /' Being upon the ladder, he spake to the Sheriff, saying, ' Sir, you 
 have here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and 
 have made me to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me ; 
 but God hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and 
 encouragement.' 
 
 " When he was going to die, he said, ' What ! flesh, art thou un- 
 willing to go to God through the fire and jaws of death ? Oh' (said 
 he), ' this is a good day ; he is come that I have long looked for, and 
 I shall be with him in glory ;' and so smiled when he went away. 
 
 " What Mr. Peters said farther at his execution, either in his speech 
 or prayer, it could not be taken, in regard his voice was low at that 
 time, and the people uncivil." * 
 
 Ben Jonson is supposed to have been born in Hartshorn 
 Lane, Charing Cross, where he lived when a little child. 
 " Though I cannot," says Fuller, " with all my industrious 
 inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long 
 coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, 
 Charing Cross, when his mother married a bricklayer for her 
 second husband. He was first bred in a private school in St. 
 Martin's Court ; then in Westminster school." But we shall 
 have other occasions of speaking of him. 
 
 The famous reprobate Duke of Buckingham, Villiers, the 
 second of that name, was born in Wallingford House, which 
 stood on the site of the present Admiralty. " The Admiralty 
 Office," says Pennant "stood originally in Duke Street, 
 Westminster : but in the reign of King William was removed 
 to the present spot, to the house then called Wallingford, I 
 believe, from its having been inhabited by the Knollys, 
 Yiscounts Wallingford. From the roof the pious Usher, 
 
 f State Trials, vol, v., p. 1282. 
 
SC2 VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM; 
 
 Archbishop of Armagh, then living here with the Countess of 
 Peterborough, was prevailed on to take the last sight of his 
 beloved master Charles I., when brought on the scaffold before 
 Whitehall. He sank at the horror of the sight, and was 
 carried in a swoon to his apartment." Wallingford House was 
 often used by Cromwell and others in their consultations. 
 
 " The present Admiralty Office," continues Pennant, " was 
 rebuilt in the late reign, by Eipley ; it is a clumsy pile, but 
 properly veiled from the street by Mr. Adam's handsome 
 screen." Where the poor Archbishop sank in horror at the 
 sight of the misguided Charles, telegraphs have since plied 
 their dumb and far-seen discourses, like spirit in the guise of 
 mechanism, telling news of the spread of Jiberty and know- 
 ledge all over the world. Of the Villierses, Dukes of Buck- 
 ingham, who have not heard ? The first one was a favourite 
 not unworthy of his fortune, open, generous, and magnificent ; 
 the second, perhaps because he lost his father so soon, a 
 spoiled child from his cradle, wilful, debauched, unprincipled, 
 but witty and entertaining. Here, and at York House in the 
 Strand, he turned night into day, and pursued his intrigues, 
 his concerts, his dabblings in chemistry and the philosopher's 
 stone, and his designs on the Crown : for Charles's character, 
 and the devices of Buckingham's fellow quacks and astro- 
 logers, persuaded him that he had a chance of being king. 
 When a youth, he compounded with Cromwell, and married 
 Fairfax's daughter ; — he was afterwards all for the king, 
 when he was not " all for rhyming" or ousting him; — when 
 an old man, or near it (for these prodigious possessors of 
 animal spirits have a trick of lasting a long while), he was 
 still a youth in improvidence and dissipation, and his whole 
 life was a dream of uneasy pleasure. He is now best known 
 from Dryden's masterly portrait of him in the "Absalom and 
 Achitophel." 
 
 " A man so various, that he seemed to be, 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome ; 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
 Blest madman ! who could every hour employ 
 With something new to wish or to enjoy. 
 Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
 And both, to show his judgment, in extremes j 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ACCOUNT OF HIM. 3G3 
 
 So very violent, or over civil, 
 
 That every man with him was God or devil. 
 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 
 
 Nothing went unrewarded "but desert. 
 
 Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, 
 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
 
 He laugh'd himself from court ; then sought relief 
 
 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief ; 
 
 For spite of him, the weight of business fell 
 
 On Absalom, or wise Achitophel ; 
 
 Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
 
 He left not faction, but of that was left." 
 
 " This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note 
 on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George 
 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., 
 who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands 
 of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who 
 ever lived, an estate of 20,000/. a year, to be squandered in every wild 
 scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, 
 could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the 
 situation of President of the North, he was suspected of having 
 favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced 
 accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and 
 became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, 
 which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and 
 laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham 
 changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country 
 party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation 
 to the Popish plot ; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distin- 
 guished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he 
 stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire ; which we may believe 
 was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal 
 affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes 
 in the " Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has 
 shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the 
 infamous part of his character is touched upon ; and the unprincipled 
 libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous 
 countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of 
 caressing her before he changed the bloody clothes in which he had 
 murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spend- 
 thrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, 
 is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the follow- 
 ing sober historical account. 
 
 " ' The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an 
 infinite deal of wit and humour ; but wanted judgment, and had no 
 virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his 
 whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond 
 measure, and implacable in his resentments ; these qualities were the 
 effects or different faces of his pride ; which, whenever he pleased to 
 lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. 
 He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule ; but, by 
 his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any 
 which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, 
 
364 DEATH OF VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his 
 life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: 
 running into the wildest extravagances and pushing his debaucheries 
 to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as 
 downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject 
 had at that time in England ; yet his profuseness made him always 
 necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that 
 would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, 
 and proud without magnanimity ; and though he did not want some 
 bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; 
 for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor any- 
 thing so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking.' " 
 
 "Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "was as awful 
 a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost 
 both the means of procuring and the power of enjoying the pleasures to 
 which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of 
 ambition into the last degree of contempt and disregard." His dying 
 scene, in a paltry inn, in Yorkshire, has been immortalized by Pope's 
 beautiful lines: — 
 
 " In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung ; 
 The floors of plaister and the walls of dung ; 
 On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, 
 With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, 
 The George and Garter, dangling from that bed, 
 Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, 
 Great Villiers lies ! Alas ! how changed from him ! 
 That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ; 
 Gallant and gay in Cliefden's proud alcove, 
 The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; 
 Or just as gay at council, in a ring 
 Of mimicked statesmen and a merry king; 
 No wit to flatter left of all his store, 
 No fool to laugh at, which he valued more ; 
 There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, 
 And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends !"* 
 
 " The worst inn's worst room," however, is a poetical 
 fiction. Buckingham died at the house of one of his tenants 
 at Kirby Mallory, where he was overtaken with illness. He 
 had wasted his fortune to a comparitive nothing ; but was 
 not reduced to such necessity as the poet would imply. f 
 
 Andrew Marvel makes the statue of Charing Cross the 
 speaker in one of his witty libels on Charles and his brother. 
 There was an equestrian statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch, 
 the horse of which is made to hold a dialogue with this other. 
 The poet fancies that the riders, " weary of sitting all day," 
 
 * Scott's Edition of " Dryden," vol. ix.. p. 270. 
 
 f See the life of him by his retainer Fairfax, and the account of 
 him on his deathbed in the "Collection of Letters of several Person^ 
 of Quality and others." 
 
Marvel's satire oft tee Stuarts. 365 
 
 Stole off one evening, and the two horses came together. 
 The readers at Will's must have been a little astonished at 
 the boldness of such passages as the following : — 
 
 *' Quoth the marble horse, It would make a stone speak, 
 To see a Lord Mayor and a Lombard Street beak, 
 Thy founder and mine, to cheat one another, 
 When both knaves agreed to be each other's brother. 
 Here Charing broke forth, and thus he went on — 
 My brass is provoked as much as thy stone 
 
 To see church and state bow down to a 
 
 And the King's chief ministers holding the door, 
 
 The money of widows and orphans employed, 
 
 And the bankers quite broke to maintain the 's pride. 
 
 Woolchurch. To see Dei Gratia writ on the throne. 
 And the King's wicked life says God there is none. 
 
 Charing. That he should be styled Defender of the Faith, 
 Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith. 
 
 Woolchurch. That the Duke should turn Papist, and that church 
 defy, 
 For which his own father a Martyr did die. 
 
 Charing. Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he 's so civil, 
 Not to think his own father has gone to the Devil. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Charing. Pause, brother, awhile, and calmly consider 
 What thou hast to say against my royal rider. 
 
 Woolchurch. Thy priest-ridden King turned desperate fighter 
 For the surplice, lawn -sleeves, the cross, and the mitre; 
 Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the lurch, 
 By knaves, who cried themselves up for the church, 
 Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans. 
 
 Charing. Thy King will ne'er fight unless for his Queens. 
 
 Woolchurch. He that dys for ceremonys, dys like a fool. 
 
 Charing. The King on thy back is a lamentable tool. 
 
 Woolchurch. The goat and the lion I equally hate, 
 And freemen alike value life and estate : 
 Tho' the father and son be different rods, 
 Between the two scourgers we find little odds; 
 Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes, 
 This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our throats. 
 ***** 
 
 What is thy opinion of James Duke of York ? 
 
 Charing. The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork. 
 With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his heart, 
 Father Patrick's disciples will make England smart. 
 If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom, 
 We must all to a stake, or be converts to Rome. 
 Ah! Tudor, ah! Tudor, of Stuarts enough ; 
 
 None ever reigned like old Bess in the ruff. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Woolchurch. But canst thou devise when things will be mended? 
 CharinGc When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended." 
 
 And these very lampoons had a hand in ending them. 
 
366 locket's ordinary. 
 
 In the days of Buckingham there was a famous house of 
 entertainment' in Charing Cross, called Locket's Ordinary. 
 "Where it exactly stood seems to be no longer known : we 
 suspect by the great Northumberland Coffee-house. " It is 
 often mentioned," says a manuscript in Birch's collection, 
 "in the plays of Cibber, Vanbrugh, &c, where the scene 
 sometimes is laid." It was much frequented by Sir George 
 Etherege, as appears from the following anecdotes, picked up 
 at the British Museum. Sir George Etherege and his com- 
 pany, " provoked by something amiss in the entertainment or 
 attendance, got into a violent passion and abused the waiters. 
 This brought in Mrs. Locket : ' We are so provoked,' said Sir 
 George, ' that even I could find in my heart to pull the nose- 
 gay out of your bosom, and throw the flowers in your face.' 
 This turned all their anger into jest." 
 
 " Sir G. Etherege discontinued Locket's Ordinary, having run up a 
 score which he could not conveniently discharge. Mrs. Locket sent 
 one to dun him, and to threaten him with a prosecution. He bid the 
 messenger tell her that he would kiss her if she stirred a step in it. 
 When this answer was brought back, she called for her hood and 
 scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that ' she 'd see if there 
 was any fellow alive who had the impudence.' ' Pr'ythee, my dear, 
 don't be so rash,' said her husband, 'you don't know what a man may 
 do in his passion.' "* 
 
 The site of the tavern is now also unknown, where Prior 
 was found, when a boy, reading Horace. It was called the 
 Rummer. Mr. Nichols has found that, in the year 1685, it 
 was kept by " Samuel Prior," and that the " annual feasts of 
 the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin" 
 were held there, October 14, in that year. " Prior," says 
 Johnson, " is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, 
 into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, 
 who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster ; 
 but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of 
 the school, took him, when he was well educated in literature, 
 to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for 
 patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, 
 reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, 
 that he undertook the care and cost of his academical ' edu- 
 cation." f 
 
 . * MSS. Birch, 4221, quoted in the Notes of the Tatler, ut supra, 
 vol. i., p. 208. 
 
 •j- Life of Prior in the " Lives of the Poets." 
 
367 
 
 It is doubtful, however, from one of Prior's epistles to 
 Fleetwood Shepherd, whether the poet was more indebted to 
 the Lord Dorset or to that gentleman for his first advance- 
 ment in life, though the Earl finally became his great patron. 
 He says to Shepherd, — 
 
 " Now, as you took me up when little 
 Gave me my learning and my vittle, 
 Asked for me, from my lord, things fitting 
 Kind, as I 'ad been your own begetting, 
 Confirm what formerly you 've given, 
 Nor leave me now at six and seven, 
 As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " My uncle, rest his soul! when living, 
 Might have contrived me ways of thriving; 
 Taught me with cider to replenish 
 My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish ; 
 So, when for hock I drew pricked white-wine, 
 Swear 't had the flavour, and was right- wine ; 
 Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni- 
 VaPs Inn, to some good rogue attorney ; 
 "Where now, by forging deeds and cheating, 
 I 'ad found some handsome ways of getting. 
 All this you made me quit to follow 
 That sneaking, whey-fac'd god Apollo; 
 Sent me among a fiddling crew 
 Of folks, I 'ad never seen nor knew, 
 Calliope, and God knows who. 
 I add no more invectives to it, 
 You spoiled the youth to make a poet." 
 
 Johnson says " A survey of the life and writings of Prior 
 may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well 
 when he read Horace at his uncle's ; ' the vessel long retains 
 the scent which it first receives.' In his private relaxation he 
 revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhi- 
 bited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler sub- 
 jects, when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflec- 
 tion, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a 
 poet." It is doubtful whether the general colour of every- 
 body's life and character might not be found in that of his 
 childhood ; but there is no more reason to think that Prior's 
 tavern propensities were owing to early habit than those of 
 his patrician companions. No man was fonder of his bottle 
 than Lord Dorset, and of low company than many a lord has 
 been. According to Burke, who was a king's man, kings are 
 naturally fond of low company. Yet they are no nephews of 
 
368 THOMSON. — SPRING GARDENS. 
 
 tavern-keepers. Nor does it appear that Prior did anything 
 in his uncle's house but pass the time and read. 
 
 Thomson wrote part of his " Seasons " in the room over the 
 shop of Mr. Egerton, bookseller, where he resided when he 
 first came to London. He was at that time a raw Scotchman, 
 gaping about town, getting his pocket picked, and obliged to 
 wait upon great men with his poem of " Winter." Luckily 
 his admiration of freedom did not hinder him from acquiring 
 the highest patronage. He obtained an easy place, which 
 required no compromise with his principles, and passed the 
 latter part of his life in a dwelling of his own at Richmond, 
 writing in his garden, and listening to nightingales. He was 
 of an indolent constitution, and has been seen in his garden 
 eating peaches off the trees, with his hands in his waistcoat 
 pockets. But his indolence did not hinder him from writing. 
 He had the luck to have the occupation he was fond of ; and 
 no man perhaps in his native country, with the exception 
 of Shakspeare, has acquired a greater or more unenvied fame. 
 His friends loved him, and his readers love his memory. 
 
 In Spring Gardens, originally a place of public entertainment, 
 died Mrs. Centlivre, the sprightly authoress of the " Wonder," 
 the "Busy Body," and the " Bold Stroke for a Wife." She 
 was buried at St. Martin's. She is said to have been a 
 beauty, an accomplished linguist, and a good-natured friendly 
 woman. Pope put her in his " Dunciad," for having written, 
 it is said, a ballad against his " Homer " when she was a 
 child ! But the probability is that she was too intimate with 
 Steele and other friends of Addison while the irritable poet 
 was at variance with them. It is not impossible, also, that 
 some raillery of hers might have been applied to him, not 
 very pleasant from a beautiful woman against a man of his 
 personal infirmities, who was naturally jealous of not being 
 well with the sex. Mrs. Centlivre is said to have been 
 seduced when young by Anthony Hammond, father of the 
 author of the "Love Elegies," who took her to Cambridge with 
 him in boy's clothes. This did not hinder her from marry- 
 ing a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who died a year there- 
 after ; nor from having two husbands afterwards. Her 
 second was an officer in the army, of the name of Carrol, 
 who, to her great sorrow, was killed in a duel. Her third 
 husband, Mr. Centlivre, who had the formidable title of Yeo- 
 man of the Mouth, being principal cook to Queen Anne, fell 
 in love with her when she was performing the part of 
 
MRS. CENTLIVRE. — HEDGE LANE. 369 
 
 Alexander the Great, at "Windsor ; for she appears at one 
 time to have been an actress, though she never performed in 
 London. Mrs. Centlivre's dramas are not in the taste of Mrs. 
 Hannah More's, but the public still have a regard for them. 
 All the plays above-mentioned are stock pieces. The reason 
 is, that, careless as they are in dialogue, and not very scrupu- 
 lous in manners, they are full of action and good-humour. 
 
 Hedge Lane retained its name till lately, when, ceasing 
 to be a heap of squalidity, it was new christened and re- 
 ceived the appellation of Dorset Place. Part of it is merged 
 in Pall Mall East. It is now the handsomest end of the 
 thoroughfare which runs up into Oxford Road, and takes the 
 successive names of Whitcomb, Princes, and Wardour Streets. 
 Not long ago the whole thoroughfare appears to have been 
 called Hedge Lane. It is related of Steele, Budgel, and Philips, 
 that, issuing from a tavern one day in Gerrard Street, they were 
 about to turn into Hedge Lane, when they were told that some 
 suspicious -looking persons were standing there as if in wait. 
 "Thank ye," said the wits, and hurried three different ways. 
 
 It is not pleasant to have old places altered which are 
 connected with interesting recollections, even if the place or 
 recollection be none of the pleasantest. When the houses 
 in Suffolk Street were pulled down, we could not help 
 regretting that the abode was among them in which 
 poor Miss Vanhomrigh lived, who died for love of Swift. 
 She resided there with her mother, the widow of a Dutch 
 merchant, and had a small fortune. Swift while in England, 
 upon the affairs of the Irish Church, was introduced to them, 
 and became so intimate as to leave his best gown and cas- 
 sock there for convenience. He found the coffee also very 
 pleasant, and gradually became too much interested in the 
 romantic spirit and flattering attentions of the young lady, 
 whose studies he condescended to direct, and who, in short, fell 
 in love with him at an age when he was old enough to be her 
 father. Unluckily he was married ; and most unluckily he 
 did not say a word about the matter. It is curious to observe 
 in the letters which he sent over to Stella (his wife), with 
 what an affected indifference he speaks of the Vanhomrighs 
 and his visits to them, evidently thinking it necessary all the 
 while to account for their frequency. When he left England, 
 Miss Vanhomrigh, after the death of her mother, followed 
 him, and proposed that he should either marry or refuse her. 
 lie would do neither, 
 
 B B 
 
370 SWIFT AND MISS VANHOMRlGH. 
 
 At length botli the ladies, the married and unmarried, dis- 
 covered their mutual secret : a discovery which is supposed 
 ultimately to have hastened the death of both. Miss Van- 
 homrigh's survival of it was short — not many weeks. For 
 what may remain to be said on this painful subject the 
 reader will allow us to quote a passage from one of the 
 magazines. 
 
 "There was a vanity, perhaps, on both sides, though it may be 
 ■wrong to attribute a passion wholly to that infirmity, where the 
 object of it is not only a person celebrated, but one full of wit and 
 entertainment. The vanity was certainly not the less on his side. 
 Many conjectures have been made respecting the nature of this con- 
 nection of Swift's, as well as another more mysterious. The whole 
 truth, in the former instance, appears obvious enough. Swift, partly 
 from vanity, and partly from a more excusable craving after some 
 recreation of his natural melancholy, had suffered himself to take a 
 pleasure, and exhibit an interest, in the conversation of an intelligent 
 young woman, beyond what he ought to have done. An attachment 
 on her part ensued, not greater, perhaps, than he contemplated with 
 a culpable satisfaction as long as it threatened no very great disturb- 
 ance of his peace, but which must have given him great remorse in 
 after-times, when he reflected upon his encouragement of it. On the 
 occasion of its disclosure his self-love inspired him with one of his 
 most poetical fancies: — 
 
 * Cadenus many things had writ ; 
 Vanessa much esteemed his wit, 
 And called for his poetic works : 
 Meanwhile the boy in secret lurks, 
 And while the book was in her hand 
 The urchin from his private stand, 
 Took aim, and shot with all his strength 
 A dart of such prodigious length, 
 
 It pierced the feeble volume through, 
 And deep transfixed her bosom too. 
 Some lines more moving than the rest, 
 Stuck to the point that pierced her breast, 
 And borne directly to the heart, 
 "With pains unknown increased her smart. 
 Vanessa, not in years a score, 
 Dreams of a gown of forty-four, 
 Imaginary charms can find 
 In eyes with reading almost blind: 
 Cadenus now no more appears 
 Declined in health, advanced in years, 
 She fancies music in his tongue, 
 Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.* 
 u A reflection ensues which it i6 a pity he had not made before: — 
 
 * What mariner is not afraid 
 To venture in a ship decayed ? 
 What planter will attempt to yoke 
 A sapling with a fallen oak ? 
 
calves' head club. 371 
 
 As years increase she brighter shines, 
 
 Cadenus with each day declines ; 
 
 And he must fall a prey to time 
 
 While she continues in her prime.' 
 "If he had thought of this when he used to go to her mother's 
 house in order to change his wig and gown and drink coffee, lie would 
 have avoided those encouragements of Miss Vanhomrigh's sympathy 
 and admiration, which must have given rise to very bitter reflections 
 when she read such passages as the lines that follow : — 
 
 * Cadenus, common forms apart, 
 
 In every scene had kept his heart; 
 
 Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ, 
 
 For pastime, or to show his wit.' 
 " It was sport to him, but death to her. His allegations of not 
 being conscious of anything on her part, are not to be trusted. There 
 are few men whose self-love is not very sharp-sighted on such occa- 
 sions, — men of wit in particular ; nor was Swift, notwithstanding the 
 superiority he assumed over fopperies of all sorts, and the great 
 powers which gave a passport to the assumption, exempt, perhaps, 
 from any species of vanity. The more airs he gives himself on that 
 point, the less we are to believe him. He was fond of lor Is and great 
 ladies, and levees, and canonicals, and of having the verger to walk 
 before him. He saw very well, we may be assured, the impression 
 which he made on the young lady ; but he hoped, as others have 
 hoped, that it would accommodate itself to circumstances in cases of 
 necessity; or he pretended to himself that he was too modest to be- 
 lieve it a great one ; or sacrificing her ultimate good to her present 
 pleasure and to his own, he put off the disagreeable day of alteration 
 and self-denial till it was too late. There are many reasons why 
 Swift should have acted otherwise, and why no man, at any time of 
 life, should hazard the peace of another by involvements which he 
 cannot handsomely follow up. If he does, he is bound to do what he 
 can for it to the last."* 
 
 The famous Calves' Head Club (in ridicule of the memory 
 of Charles I.) was held at a tavern in Suffolk Street ; at least 
 the assembly of it was held there which made so much noise 
 in the last century, and produced a riot. At this meeting it 
 was said that a bleeding calf's head had been thrown out 
 of the window, wrapt up in a napkin, and that the members 
 drank damnation to the race of the Stuarts. This was 
 believed till the other day, and has often been lamented as a 
 disgusting instance of party spirit. To say the truth, the 
 very name of the club was disgusting, and a dishonour to the 
 men who invented it. It was more befitting their own heads. 
 But the particulars above mentioned are untrue. The letter 
 has been set right by the publication of " Spence's Anecdotes," 
 at the end of which are some letters to Mr. Spence, including 
 pne from Lord Middlesex, giving the real account of the 
 
 * New Monthly Magazine, vol. xvii., p. 140. 
 
 B B 2 
 
6C2, CALVES HEAD CLUB. 
 
 affair. By the style of the letter the reader may judge what 
 sort of heads the members had, and what was reckoned the 
 polite way of speaking to a waiter in those days : — 
 
 Whitehall, Feb. y e 9th, 1735. 
 
 "Dear Spanco, 
 
 " I don't in the least doubt but long before this time the noise of the 
 riot on the 30 of Jan. has reached you at Oxford, and though there 
 has been as many lies and false reports raised upon the occasion in 
 this good city as any reasonable man could expect, yet I fancy even 
 those may be improved or increased before they come to you. Now, 
 that you may be able to defend your friends (as I don't in the least 
 doubt you have an inclination to do), I'll send you the matter of fact 
 literally and truly as it happened, upon my honour. Eight of us 
 happened to meet together the 30th of January, it might have been the 
 10th of June, or any other day in the year, but the mixture of the 
 company has convinced most reasonable people by this time that it 
 was not a designed or premeditated affair. We met, then, as I told 
 you before, by chance upon this day, and after dinner, having drunk 
 very plentifully, especially some of the company, some of us going to 
 the window unluckily saw a little nasty fire made by some boys in 
 the street, of straw I think it was, and immediately cried out, ' Damn 
 it, why should not we have a fire as well as anybody else?' Up 
 comes the drawer, ' Damn you, you rascal, get us a bonfire.' Upon 
 which the imprudent puppy runs down, and without making any 
 difficulty (which he might have done by a thousand excuses, and 
 which if he had, in all probability, some of us would have come more 
 to our senses), sends for the faggots, and in an instant behold a large 
 fire blazing before the door. Upon which some of us, wiser, or rather 
 soberer, than the rest, bethinking themselves then, for the first time, 
 what day it was, and fearing the consequences a bonfire on that day 
 might have, proposed drinking loyal and popular healths to the mob 
 (out of the window), which by this time was very great, in order to 
 convince them we did not intend it as a ridicule upon that day. The 
 healths that were drank out of the window were these, and these only: 
 The King, Queen, and Royal Family, the Protestant Succession, 
 Liberty and Property, the present Administration. Upon which the 
 first stone was flung, and then began our siege: which, for the time 
 it lasted, was at least as furious as that of Philipsbourgh ; it was 
 more than an hour before we got any assistance; the more sober part 
 of us, doing this, had a fine time of it, fighting to prevent fighting; in 
 danger of being knocked on the head by the stones that came in at the 
 windows; in danger of being run through by our mad friends, who, 
 sword in hand, swore they would go out, though they first made their 
 way through us. At length the justice, attended by a strong body 
 of guards, came and dispersed the populace. The person who first 
 stirred up the mob is known; he first gave them money, and then 
 harangued them in a most violent manner; I don't know if he did not 
 fling the first stone himself. He is an Irishman and a priest, and be- 
 longing to Imberti, the Venetian Envoy. This is the whole story 
 from which so many calves' heads, bloody napkins, and the Lord 
 knows what has been made; it has been the talk of the town and the 
 country, and small beer and bread and cheese to my friends the Gar? 
 
retters in Grub Street, for these few days past. I, as well as your 
 friends, hope to see you soon in town. After so much prose, I can't 
 help ending with a few verses: — 
 
 O had I lived in merry Charles's days, 
 
 When dull the wise were called, and wit had praise ; 
 
 When deepest politics could never pass 
 
 For aught, but surer tokens of an ass; 
 
 When not the frolicks of one drunken night 
 
 Could touch your honour, make your fame less bright, 
 
 Tho' mob-form'd scandal rag'd, and Papal spight. 
 
 " Middlesex." 
 
 The author of a " Secret History of the Calves' Head Club, 
 or the Republicans Unmasked " (supposed to be Ned Ward, of 
 ale-house memory), attributes the origin to Milton and some 
 other friends of the Commonwealth, in opposition to Bishop 
 Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, and others, who met privately every 
 30th of January, and had compiled a private form of service 
 for the day, not very different from that now in use. 
 
 " After the Restoration," says the writer, " the eyes of the Govern- 
 ment being upon the whole party, they were obliged to meet with a 
 great deal of precaution; but in the reign of King William they met 
 almost in a public manner, apprehending no danger." The writer 
 farther tells us, he was informed that it was kept in no fixed house, 
 but that they moved as they thought convenient. The place where 
 they met when his informant was with them was in a blind alley 
 near Moorfields, where an axe hung up in the club-room, and was 
 reverenced as a principal symbol in this diabolical sacrament. Their 
 bill of fare was a large dish of calves' heads, dressed several ways, by 
 which they represented the king and his friends who had suffered in his 
 cause; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, as an emblem of 
 tyranny; a large cod's head by which they intended to represent the 
 person of the king singly ; a boar's head with an apple in its mouth, 
 to represent the king by this as bestial, as by their other hieroglyphics 
 they had done foolish and tyrannical. After the repast was over, one 
 of their elders presented an Icon Basilike, which was with great 
 solemnity burnt upon the table, whilst the other anthems were sing- 
 ing. After this, another produced Milton's Defensio Populi Anglicani, 
 upon which all laid their hands, and made a protestation in form of 
 an oath for ever to stand by and maintain the same. The company 
 only consisted of Independents and Anabaptists ; and the famous 
 Jeremy White, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, who no doubt 
 came to sanctify with his pious exhortations the ribaldry of the day, 
 said grace. After the table-cloth was removed, the anniversary 
 anthem, as they impiously called it, was sung, and a calf's skull filled 
 with wine, or other liquor; and then a brimmer went about to the 
 pious memory of those worthy patriots who had killed the tyrant and 
 relieved their country from his arbitrary sway: and, lastly, a collec- 
 tion was made for the mercenary scribbler, to which every man con- 
 tributed according to his zeal for the cause and ability of his purse.'* 
 
 "■ Although no great reliance," says Mr. Wilson, from whose life 
 of De Foe this passage is extracted, " is to be placed upon the faith» 
 
374 
 
 SCOTLAND YARD. 
 
 fulness of Ward's narrative, yet, in the frighted mind of a high-flying 
 churchman, which was continually haunted by such scenes, the cari- 
 cature would easily pass for a likeness." "It is probable," adds the 
 honest biographer of De Toe, " that the persons thus collected together 
 to commemorate the triumph of their principles, although in a manner 
 dictated by bad taste, and outrageous to humanity, would have con- 
 fined themselves to the ordinary methods of eating and drinking, if 
 it had not been for the ridiculous farce so generally acted by the 
 royalists upon the same day. The trash that issued from the pulpit 
 in this reign, upon the 30th of January, was such as to excite the 
 worst passions in the hearers. Nothing can exceed the grossness of 
 language employed upon these occasions. Forgetful even of common 
 decorum, the speakers ransacked the vocabulary of the vulgar for 
 terms of vituperation, and hurled their anathemas with wrath and 
 fury against the objects of their hatred. The terms rebel and fanatic 
 were so often upon their lips, that they became the reproach of honest 
 men, who preferred the scandal to the slavery they attempted to 
 establish. Those who could profane the pulpit with so much rancour 
 in the support of senseless theories, and deal it out to the people for 
 religion, had little reason to complain of a few absurd men who mixed 
 politics and calves' heads at a tavern; and still less, to brand a whole 
 religious community with their actions."* 
 
 Scotland Yard is so called from a palace built for the 
 reception of the Kings of Scotland when they visited this 
 
 [B m 
 
 l=p^-"^ _ j== == " V^i^ "::. ■ 
 
 
 £9fl IK 
 
 
 
 SCOTLAND YARD IN 1750. 
 
 country. Pennant tells us that it was originally given to 
 King Edgar, by Kenneth, Prince of that country, for the 
 purpose of his coming to pay him annual homage, as Lord 
 Paramount of Scotland. Margaret, widow of James Y. and 
 sister of Henry VIII., resided there a considerable time after 
 the death of her husband, and was magnificently entertained 
 * Memoirs of the Life and Writings of De Foe, 1829, vol. ii., p. 116. 
 
PLEASANT ADVERTISEMENT. 375 
 
 by her brother on his becoming reconciled to her second 
 marriage with the Earl of Angus.* When the Crowns 
 became united, James I. of course waived his right of abode 
 in the homage-paying house, which was finally deserted as a 
 royal residence. We know not when it was demolished. 
 Probably it was devoted for some time to Government offices. 
 Scotland Yard was the place of one of Milton's abodes during 
 the time he served the Government of Cromwell. He lost an 
 infant son there. The eccentric Beau Fielding died in it at 
 the beginning of the last century, and Vanbrugh a little after 
 him. There was a coffee-house in the yard, which seems, by 
 the following pleasant advertisement, to have been frequented 
 by good company : — 
 
 "Whereas six gentlemen (all of the same honourable profession), 
 having been more than ordinarily put to it for a little pocket-money, 
 did, on the 14th instant, in the evening, near Kentish Town, borrow 
 of two persons (in a coach) a certain sum of money, without staying 
 to give bond for the repayment : And whereas fancy was taken to the 
 hat, peruke, cravat, sword, and cane, of one of the creditors, which 
 were all lent as freely as the money: these are therefore to desire the 
 said six worthies, how fond soever they may be of the other loans, to 
 un-fancy the cane again and send it to Well's Coffee House in Scot- 
 land Yard; it being too short for any such proper gentlemen as they 
 are to walk with, and too small for any of their important uses ; and 
 withal, only valuable as having been the gift of a friend." f 
 
 Beau Fielding was thought worthy of record by Sir Richard 
 Steele, as an extraordinary instance of the effects of personal 
 vanity upon a man not without wit. He was of the noble 
 family of Fielding, and was remarkable for the beauty of his 
 person, which was a mixture of the Hercules and the Adonis. 
 It is described as having been a real model of perfection. He 
 married to his first wife the dowager Countess of Purbeck ; 
 followed the fortunes of James II., who is supposed to have 
 made him a major-general and perhaps a count; returned and 
 married a woman of the name of Wadsworth, under the im- 
 pression that she was a lady of fortune ; and, discovering his 
 error, addressed or accepted the addresses of the notorious 
 Duchess of Cleveland, and married her, who, on discovering 
 her mistake in turn, indicted him for bigamy and obtained a 
 divorce. Before he left England to follow James, " Handsome 
 Fielding," as he was called, appears to have been insane witn 
 
 * Pennant, p. 110. 
 
 t Extracted from Salisbury's Flying Post, of October 27, 1696, in 
 Malcolm's Manners and Customs of London to the year 1700, vol. i., 
 p. 396. 
 
S76 BEAU FIELDING. 
 
 vanity On his return, he had added, to the natural absurdities 
 of that passion, the indecency of being old ; but this only 
 rendered him the more perverse in his folly. He always 
 appeared in an extraordinary dress : sometimes rode in an 
 open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, the better to display 
 the nobleness of his person ; and his footmen appeared in 
 liveries of yellow, with black feathers in their hats, and black 
 sashes. When people laughed at him, he refuted them, as 
 Steele says, "by only moving." Sir Richard says he saw 
 him one day stop and call the boys about him, to whom he 
 spoke as follows : — 
 
 " Good youths, — Go to school, and do not lose your time in 
 following my wheels : I am loth to hurt you, because I know 
 not but you are all my own offspring. Hark ye, you sirrah 
 with the white hair, I am sure you are mine, there is half-a- 
 crown for you. Tell your mother, this, with the other half- 
 crown I gave her .... comes to five shillings. Thou 
 hast cost me all that, and yet thou art good for nothing. 
 "Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" 
 " Never such a one as you, noble general," replied a truant 
 from Westminster. " Sirrah, I believe thee : there is a crown 
 for thee. Drive on, coachman." Swift puts him in his list of 
 Mean Figures, as one who " at fifty years of age, when he was 
 wounded in a quarrel upon the stage, opened his breast and 
 showed the wound to the ladies, that he might move their love 
 and pity ; but they all fell a laughing." His vanity, which 
 does not appear to have been assisted by courage, sometimes 
 got him into danger. He is said to have been caned and 
 wounded by a Welsh gentleman, in the theatre in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields ; and pressing forward once at a benefit of Mrs. Old- 
 field's, 'to show himself,' he trod on Mr. Fulwood, a barrister, 
 who gave him a wound twelve inches deep. His fortune, 
 which he ruined by early extravagance, he thought to have 
 repaired by his marriage with Mrs. Wadsworth, and endea- 
 voured to do so by gambling ; but succeeded in neither 
 attempt, and after the short-lived splendour with the Duchess 
 of Cleveland, returned to his real wife, whom he pardoned, 
 and died under her care. During the height of his magni- 
 ficence, he carried his madness so far, according to Steele, as 
 to call for his tea by beat of drum ; his valet got ready to 
 shave him by a trumpet to horse ; and water was brought for 
 his teeth, when the sound was changed to boots and saddle." 
 If this looks like a jest, there is no knowing how far vanity 
 
VANBRUGH. 377 
 
 might be carried, especially when the patient may cloak it 
 from himself under the guise of giving way to a humour.* 
 
 Vanbrugh, comic poet, architect, and herald, was comp- 
 troller of the royal works. His house in Whitehall, built 
 by himself, was remarkable for its smallness. Swift com- 
 pared it to a goose-pie. On the other hand, his Blenheim 
 and public buildings are ridiculed for their ponderous huge- 
 ness. The close of Dr. Evans's epitaph upon him is well 
 known: — 
 
 Lie heavy on him earth, for he 
 
 Laid many a heavy load on thee. 
 
 When he was made Clarencieux king-at-arms, Swift said 
 he might now " build houses." The secret of this ridicule 
 was, that Vanbrugh was a Whig. Sir Joshua Reynolds has 
 left the following high encomium on his merits as an archi- 
 tect. " In the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as 
 well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination 
 than we shall find, perhaps, in any other ; and this is the 
 ground of the effect we feel in many of his works, notwith- 
 standing the faults with which many of them are charged. 
 For this purpose, Vanbrugh appears to have had recourse to 
 some principles of the Gothic architecture, which, though not 
 so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with 
 which the artist is more concerned than with absolute truth." 
 " To speak of Vanbrugh (adds Sir Joshua), in the language 
 of a painter, he had originality of invention; he understood 
 light and shadow, and had great skill in composition. To 
 support his principal object, he produced his second and third 
 groups or masses. He perfectly understood in his art, what 
 is the most difficult in ours, the conduct of the back-ground, 
 by which the design and invention are set off to the greatest 
 advantage. What the back-ground is in painting, in archi- 
 tecture is the real ground on which the building is erected ; 
 and no architect took greater care that his work should not 
 appear crude and hard ; that is, that it did not abruptly start 
 out of the ground without expectation or preparation. This 
 is a tribute which a painter owes to an architect who com- 
 
 * See State Trials, ut supra, " Egerton's Memoirs of Mrs. Oldfield;' 
 " Swift's Great and Mean Figures," vol. xvii., 1765 ; and the "History 
 of Orlando the Fair, in the Tatler," as above, Nos. 50 and 51. " The 
 author of Memoirs of Fielding in the Select Trials," says a note on 
 the latter number, " admits, that for all the ludicrous air and 
 pleasantry of this narration (Steele's), the truth of facts and character 
 is in general fairly represented." 
 
378 LORD HERBERT AND 
 
 posed like a painter, and was defrauded of the due reward of 
 his merit by the wits of his time, who did not understand the 
 principles of composition in poetry better than he, and who knew 
 little or nothing of what he understood perfectly — the general 
 ruling principles of architecture and painting. Vanbrugh's 
 fate was that of the great Perrault. Both were the objects of 
 the petulant sarcasms of factious men of letters, and both 
 have left some of the fairest monuments which, to this day, 
 decorate their several countries ; — the facade of the Louvre ; 
 Blenheim, and Castle Howard."* Perrault, however, had a 
 worse fate than Vanbrugh, for the Frenchman was ridiculed 
 not only as an architect but as a man of letters, whereas our 
 author's pretensions that way were acknowledged. 
 
 In the front of Scotland Yard an extraordinary adventure 
 befell Lord Herbert of Cherbury — {see Queen Street, Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields), who relates it in a strain of coxcombry 
 (particularly about the ladies) which would have brought 
 discredit upon such a story from any other pen. There is no 
 doubt, however, that the story is true. 
 
 " There was a lady," says his lordship, " wife to Sir John Ayres, 
 knight, who finding some means to get a copy of my picture from 
 Larkin, gave it to Mr. Isaac, the painter, in Blackfriars, and desired 
 him to draw it in little, after his manner ; which being done, she 
 caused it to he set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her 
 neck so low that she hid it under her breasts, which I conceive, coming 
 afterwards to the knowledge of Sir John Ayres, gave him more cause 
 of jealousie than needed, had he known how innocent I was from 
 pretending to anything that might wrong him or his lady, since I 
 could not so much as imagine that either she had my picture, or that 
 she bare more than ordinary affection to me. It is true, that as she 
 had a place in court, and attended Queen Anne, and was beside of an 
 excellent wit and discourse, she had made herself a considerable 
 person. Howbeit, little more than a common civility ever passed 
 betwixt us ; though I confess I think no man was welcomer to her 
 when I came, for which I shall allege this passage : — 
 
 " Coming one day into her chamber, I saw her through the curtains 
 lying upon her bed Avith a wax candle in one hand, and the picture I 
 formerly mentioned in the other. I coming thereupon somewhat 
 boldly to her, she blew out the candle and hid the picture from me : 
 myself thereupon being curious to know what that was she held in 
 her hand, got the candle to be lighted again, by means whereof I 
 found it was my picture she looked upon with more earnestness and 
 passion than I could easily have believed, especially since myself was 
 not engaged in any affection towards her. I could willingly have 
 omitted this passage, but that it was the beginning of a bloody history 
 which followed : howsoever, yet I must before the eternal God clear 
 
 * Discourses delivered at the Royal Academy. Sharpe's Edition, 
 vol. ii., pp. 113, 115. 
 
SIR JOHN AYRES. 379 
 
 her honour. And now in court a great person sent for me divers 
 times to attend her ; which summons, though I obeyed, yet God 
 knows I declined coming to her as much as conveniently I could 
 without incurring her displeasure ; and this I did, not only for very 
 honest reasons, but, to speak ingenuously, because that affection 
 passed between me and another lady (who I believe was the fairest 
 of her time) as nothing could divert it. I had not been long in 
 London, when a violent burning fever seized upon me, which brought 
 me almost to my death, though at last I did by slow degrees recover 
 my health. Being thus upon my amendment, the Lord Lisle, after- 
 wards Earl of Leicester, sent me word, that Sir John Ayres intended 
 to kill me in my bed; and wished me to keep guard upon my 
 chamber and person. The same advertisement was confirmed by 
 Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the Lady Hobby, shortly after. 
 Hereupon I thought fit to entreat Sir William Herbert, now Lord 
 Powis, to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him that I marvelled much 
 at the information given me by these great persons, and that I could 
 not imagine any sufficient ground hereof ; howbeit, if he had anything 
 to say to me in a fair and noble way, I would give him the meeting 
 as soon as I had got strength enough to stand on my legs. Sir 
 William hereupon brought me so ambiguous and doubtful an answer 
 from him, that, whatsoever he meant, he would not declare yet his 
 intention, which was really, as I found afterwards, to kill me any way 
 that he could." The reason, Lord Herbert tells us, was, that Sir 
 John, though falsely, accused him of having seduced his wife. 
 " Finding no means thus to surprise me," continues the noble lord, 
 " he sent me a letter to this effect ; that he desired to meet me some- 
 where, and that it might so fall out as I might return quietly again. 
 To this I replied, that if he desired to fight with me on equal terms, I 
 should, upon assurance of the field and fair play, give him meeting 
 when he did any way specify the cause, and that I did not think fit 
 to come to him upon any other terms, having been sufficiently in- 
 formed of his plots to assassinate me. 
 
 " After this, finding he could take no advantage against me, then 
 in a treacherous way he resolved to assassinate me in this manner ; 
 — hearing I was to come to Whitehall on horseback with two lacqueys 
 only, he attended my coming back in a place called Scotland Yard, at 
 the hither end of Whitehall, as you come to it from the Strand, hiding 
 himself here with four men armed to kill me. I took horse at White- 
 hall Gate, and, passing by that place, he being armed with a sword 
 and dagger, without giving me so much as the least warning, ran at 
 me furiously, but instead of me, wounded my horse in the brisket, as 
 far as his sword could enter for the bone ; my horse hereupon starting 
 aside, he ran him again in the shoulder, which, though it made the 
 horse more timorous, yet gave me time to draw my sword : his men 
 thereupon encompassed me, and wounded my horse in three places 
 more ; this made my horse kick and fling in that manner, as his men 
 durst not come near me, which advantage I took to strike at Sir John 
 Ayres with all my force, but he warded the blow both with his sword 
 and dagger ; instead of doing him harm, I broke my sword within a 
 foot of the hilt ; hereupon, some passenger that knew, me, observing 
 my horse wounded in so many places, and so many men assaulting 
 ine, and my sword broken, cried to me several times, ' Ride away, 
 ride away;' but I scorning a base flight upon what terms soever, 
 
380 LORD HERBERT AftD 
 
 instead thereof alighted as well I could from my horse ; 1 had n<) 
 sooner put one foot upon the ground than Sir John Ayres, pursuing 
 me, made at my horse again, which the horse perceiving, pressed on 
 me on the side I alighted, in that manner, that he threw me down, so 
 that I remained flat upon the ground, only one foot hanging in the 
 stirrup, with that piece of a sword in my right hand. Sir John Ayres 
 hereupon ran about the horse, and was thrusting his sword into me, 
 when I, finding myself in this danger, did with both my arms reach- 
 ing at his legs pull them towards me, till he fell down backwards on 
 his head ; one of my footmen hereupon, who was a little Shropshire 
 boy, freed my foot out of the stirrup, the other, who was a great fellow, 
 having run away as soon as he saw the first assault ; this gave me 
 time to get upon my legs and to put myself in the best posture I 
 could with that poor remnant of a weapon ; Sir John Ayres by this 
 time likewise was got up, standing betwixt me and some part of 
 Whitehall, with two men on each side of him, and his brother behind 
 him, with at least twenty or thirty persons of his friends, or attendants 
 on the Earl of Suffolk ; observing thus a body of men standing in oppo- 
 sition against me, though to speak truly I saw no swords drawn but Sir 
 John Ayres' and his men, I ran violently against Sir John Ayres, 
 but he, knowing my sword had no point, held his sword and dagger 
 over his head, as believing I could strike rather than thrust, which I 
 no sooner perceived but I put a home thrust to the middle of his 
 breast, that I threw him down with so much force, that his head fell 
 first to the ground and his heels upwards ; his men hereupon assaulted 
 me, when one Mr. Mansel, a Glamorganshire gentleman, finding so 
 many set against me alone, closed with one of them ; a Scotch gentle- 
 man also, closing with another, took him off also : all I could well do 
 to those that remained was to ward their thrusts, which I did with 
 that resolution that I got ground upon them. Sir John Ayres was 
 now got up a third time, when I making towards him with intention 
 to close thinking, that there was otherwise no safety for me, put by 
 a thrust of his with my left hand, and so coming within him, received 
 a stab with his dagger on my right side, which ran down my ribs as 
 far as my hips, which I feeling, did with my right elbow force his 
 hand, together with the hilt of the dagger, so near the upper part of 
 my right side, that I made him leave hold. The dagger now sticking 
 in me, Sir Henry Carey, afterwards Lord of Eaulkland, and Lord 
 Deputy of Ireland, finding the dagger thus in my body, snatched it 
 out ; this while I, being closed with Sir John Ayres, hurt him on the 
 head and threw him down a third time, when kneeling on the ground 
 and bestriding him, I struck at him as hard as I could with my piece 
 of a sword, and wounded him in four several places, and did almost 
 cut off his left hand; his two men this while struck at me, but it 
 pleased God even miraculously to defend me, for when I lifted up my 
 sword to strike at Sir John Ayres, I bore off their blows half a dozen 
 times; his friends now finding him in this danger, took him by the 
 head and shoulders and drew him from betwixt my legs, and carrying 
 him along with them through Whitehall, at the stairs whereof he took 
 boat, Sir Herbert Croft (as he told me afterwards) met him upon the 
 water vomiting all the way, which I believe was caused by the 
 violence of the first thrust I gave him ; his servants, brother, and 
 friends, being now retired also, I remained master of the place and his 
 
SIR JOHN AYRES. - 381 
 
 weapons, having first wrested his dagger from him, and afterwards 
 struck his sword out of his hand. 
 
 " This being done, I retired to a friend's house in the Strand, where 
 I sent for a surgeon, who, searching my wound on the right side, and 
 finding it not to be mortal, cured me in the space of some ten days, 
 during which time I received many noble visits and messages from 
 some of the best in the kingdom. Being now fully recovered of my 
 hurts, I desired Sir Robert Harley to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell 
 him, that though I thought he had not so much honour left in him, 
 that I could be in any way ambitious to get it, yet that I desired to 
 see him in the field with his sword in his hand ; the answer that he 
 sent me was (repeating the charge above mentioned) ' that he would 
 kill me with a musket out of a window.' 
 
 " The Lords of the Privy Council, who had at first sent for my 
 sword, that they might see the little fragment of a weapon with which 
 I had so behaved myself, as perchance the like had not been heard in 
 any credible way, did afterwards command both him and me to 
 appear before them ; but I, absenting myself on purpose, sent one 
 Humphrey Hill with a challenge to him in an ordinary, which he 
 refusing to receive, Humphrey Hill put it upon the point of his sword, 
 and so let it fall before him and the company then present. 
 
 " The Lords of the Privy Council had now taken order to appre- 
 hend Sir John Ayres, when I, finding nothing else to be done, sub- 
 mitted myself likewise to them. Sir John Ayres had now published 
 everywhere that the ground of his jealousie, and consequently of his 
 assaulting me, was drawn from the confession of his wife, the Lady 
 Ayres. She, to vindicate her honour, as well as free me from this 
 accusation, sent a letter to her aunt, the Lady Crook, to this purpose: 
 
 that her husband, Sir John Ayres, did lie falsely but 
 
 most falsely of all did lie when he said he had it from her confession, 
 for she had never said any such thing. 
 
 " This letter the Lady Crook presented to me most opportunely, as 
 I was going to the Counsell table before the Lords, who, having 
 examined Sir John Ayres concerning the cause of his quarrel with 
 me, found him still to persist on his wife's confession of the fact; and 
 now, he being withdrawn, I was sent for, when the Duke of Lennox, 
 afterwards of Richmond, telling me that was the ground of his quarrel, 
 and the only excuse he had for assaulting me in that manner, I desired 
 his lordship to peruse the letter, which I told him was given me as I 
 came into the room ; this letter being publicly read by a clerk of the 
 Counsell, the Duke of Lennox then said, that he thought Sir John 
 Ayres the most miserable man living, for his wife had not only given 
 him the lie, as he found by the letter, but his father had disinherited 
 him for attempting to kill me in that barbarous fashion, which was most 
 true, as I found afterwards ; — for the rest, that I might content myself 
 with what I had done, it being more almost than could be believed, 
 but that I had so many witnesses thereof; for all which reasons, he 
 commanded me in the name of his Majesty, and all their lordships, 
 not to send any more to Sir John Ayres, nor to receive any message 
 from him, in the way of fighting, which commandment I observed: 
 howbeit, I must not omit to tell, that some years afterwards Sir John 
 Ayres, returning from Ireland by Beaumaris, where I then was, some 
 of my servants and followers broke open the doors of the house where 
 he was, and would, I believe, have cut him into pieces, but that L, 
 
382 
 
 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 hearing thereof, came suddenly to the house and recalled them, sending 
 him word also that I scorned to give him the usage he gave me, and 
 that I would set him free of the town, which courtesie of mine (as I 
 was told afterwards) he did thankfully acknowledge."* 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 Eegal Character of Whitehall — York Place — Personal and Moral 
 Character of Wolsey — Comparison of him with his Master, Henry 
 — His Pomp and Popularity — Humorous Account of his Flatterers 
 by Sir Thomas More — Importance of his Hat — Cavendish's Account 
 of his household State, his goings forth in Public, and his entertain- 
 ments of the King. 
 
 HE whole district containing all that col- 
 lection of streets and houses, which ex- 
 tends from Scotland Yard to Parliament 
 Street, and from the river side, with its 
 wharfs, to St. James's Park, and which 
 is still known by the general appellation 
 of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a 
 sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, 
 the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the 
 beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old 
 name of the Banqueting House. 
 * Life of Lord Herbert ot Cherbury, in the "Autobiography," p. 79, 
 
WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 3S3 
 
 As this palace was the abode of a series of English sove- 
 reigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from 
 Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose 
 downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very 
 thick of the air of royalty ; and so being, we mean to lead 
 a princely life with the reader for a couple of chapters,— 
 whether he take the word " princely" in a good or ill sense, 
 as first in magnificence and authority, or in wilfulness and 
 profusion. Cavendish, Holinshed, and the poets, will enable 
 us to live with Wolsey, with Henry, and with Elizabeth ; 
 Wilson and the poets, with James the First ; Clarendon, Pepys, 
 and others with Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the 
 Second, and his brother. We shall eat and drink, and swell 
 into most unapostolical pomp, with the great Cardinal ; shall 
 huff and fume with Henry, and marry pretty Anne Bullen in 
 a closet (Lingard says in a " garret") ; send her to have her 
 head cut off as if nothing had happened ; be an everlasting 
 young old gentlewoman with Queen Elizabeth, enamouring 
 people's eyes at seventy ; drink and splutter, and be a great 
 baby, with King James ; have a taste, and be henpecked, and 
 not very sincere, yet melancholy and much to be pitied, with 
 poor Charles the First; be uneasy, secret, and energetic, and 
 like a crowned Methodist preacher, or an old dreary piece of 
 English oak (choose which you will) with Oliver Cromwell ; 
 saunter, squander, and be gay, and periwigged, and laughing, 
 and ungrateful, and liked, and despised, and have twenty mis- 
 tresses, and look as grim and swarthy, and with a face as fall 
 of lines, as if Ave were full of melancholy and black bile, 
 with Charles the Second ; and, finally, have all his melancholy, 
 and none of his wit and mirth, with his poor, dreary, bigoted 
 brother James. 
 
 "Now, this is worshipful society." 
 Whether it be happy or not, or enviable by the least peasant 
 who can pay his way and sleep heartily, will be left to the 
 judgment of the reader. 
 
 The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion 
 built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, and Chief Justice of 
 England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors 
 of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed 
 it to the Brotherhood of the Black Friars, near " Oldborne," in 
 whose church he was buried ; the Brotherhood sold it to 
 Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, who left it to his succes- 
 sors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which pro- 
 
384 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 cured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two 
 centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the 
 pomp and festal splendour of the " full-blown" priest, Wolsey, 
 the magnificent butcher's son. Wolsey, on highly probable 
 evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the 
 mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt 
 it, and given it its first royalty of aspect : but, as we shall see 
 by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything 
 like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Car- 
 dinal's master. 
 
 We have always thought the epithet of " full-blown," as 
 applied to Wolsey, the happiest poetical hit ever made by 
 Dr. Johnson : 
 
 " In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand, 
 Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand." 
 
 His ostentation, his clerical robes, his very corpulence, and 
 his subsequent fading, all conspire to render the image feli- 
 citous. Wolsey is the very flower of priestly prosperity — fat, 
 full-blown, gorgeous, called into life by sunshine ; the very 
 odours he was fond of carrying in his hand, become a part of 
 his efflorescence ; one imagines his cheek florid, and his huge, 
 silken vestments expanding about him, like bloated petals. 
 Anon, the blast blows from the horrid royal mouth : the 
 round flower hangs its head ; it lays its dead neck on the 
 earth ; and in its room, is a loathed weed. 
 
 Wolsey, however, did not grow to be what he was with the 
 indolence of a flower. He began his career with as much 
 personal as mental activity, rendered himself necessary to the 
 indolence of a young and luxurious Sovereign, — in fact, 
 became his Sovereign's will in another shape, relieving the 
 royal person of all trouble, and at the same time securing all 
 his wishes, from a treaty down to a mistress; and hence, as 
 he himself intimated, the whole secret of his prosperity. He 
 had industry, address, eloquence, the power of pleasing, the 
 art (till success spoilt him) of avoiding whatever was unplea- 
 sant. He could set his master at ease with himself, in the 
 smallest points of discourse, as well as on greater occasions. 
 Henry felt no misgiving in his presence. He beheld in his 
 lordly and luxurious agent a second self, with a superior 
 intellect, artfully subjected to his own, so as to imply intel- 
 lectual as well as royal superiority ; and he loved the priestly 
 splendour of Wolsey, because, in setting the church so high, 
 and at the same time carrying himself so loyally, the church* 
 
WOLSEt AND WHITEHALL. 885 
 
 man only the more elevated the Prince. The moment the 
 great servant appeared as if he could do without the greater 
 master, by a fortune superior to failure in his projects, 
 Henry's favour began to give way ; and when the princely 
 churchman, partly in the heedlessness arising from long 
 habits of security, and partly in the natural resentment of a 
 superior mind, expressed a doubt whether his Sovereign was 
 acting with perfect justice towards him, his doom was sealed. 
 Kings never forgive a wound to their self-love. They have 
 been set so high above fellowship by their fellow-creatures, 
 that they feel, and in some measure they have a right to feel, 
 the least intimation of equality, much more of superiority, as 
 an offence, especially when it is aggravated by a secret sense 
 of the justice of the pretension ; and all Wolsey's subsequent 
 self-abasements could not do away with that stinging recol- 
 lection, pleased as Henry was to widen the distance between 
 them, and recover his own attitude of self-possession by airs 
 of princely pity. Wolsey was a sort of Henry, himself — 
 wilful, worldly, and fat, but with more talents and good- 
 nature ; for he appears to have been a man of rare colloquial 
 abilities, and, where he was not opposed in large matters, of 
 a considerate kindliness. He was an attached as well as 
 affable master ; and his consciousness of greater merit in 
 himself would never have suffered him to send a couple of 
 poor light-hearted girls to the scaffold, for bringing the royal 
 marriage-bed into some shadow of a doubt of its s^redness. 
 He would have sent them to a nunnery, and had a new 
 marriage, without a tragedy in it, like a proper Christian 
 Sultan ! Had Henry been in Wolsey's place, he would have 
 proposed to set up the Inquisition ; and King Thomas would 
 have reproved him, and told him that such severities did not 
 become two such fat and jolly believers as they. 
 
 The people appear to have liked Wolsey much. They 
 enjoyed his pomp as a spectacle, and pitied his fall. They 
 did not grudge his pomp to one who was so generous. 
 Besides, they had a secret complacency in the humbleness of 
 his origin, seeing that he rose from it by real merit. Those 
 that quarrelled with him for his pride, were proud nobles and 
 grudging fellow-divines. It is pretty clear that Shakspeare, 
 who was such a " good fellow " himself, had a regard for 
 Wolsey as another. He takes opportunities of echoing his 
 praises, and dresses his fall in robes of pathos and eloquence. 
 As to a true feeling of religion, it is out of the question in 
 
 c c 
 
386 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 
 
 considering Wolsey 's history and times. It was not expected 
 of him. It was not the fashion or the morality of the day. 
 It was sufficient that the Church made its way in the world, 
 and secretly elevated the interests of literature and scholar- 
 ship along with it. A king in those times was regarded as a 
 visible God upon earth, not thoroughly well behaved, but 
 much to be believed in ; and if the Church could compete 
 with the State, it was hoped that more perfect times would 
 somehow or other ensue. A good deal of license was allowed 
 it on behalf of the interests of better things — a singular 
 arrangement, and, as the event turned out, not likely to better 
 itself quite so peaceably as was hoped for ; but it was making 
 the best, under the circumstances, of the old perplexity 
 between " the shows of things, and the desires of the mind." 
 Wolsey (as the prosperous and the upper classes are apt to 
 do in all ages) probably worshipped success itself as the final 
 proof of all which the divine Governor of the world intended, 
 in his dealings with individuals or society. Hence his proud 
 swelling while possessed of it, and his undisguised tears and 
 lamentations during his decline. He talks with his confidants 
 about the King and good fortune, like a boy crying for a cake, 
 and they respectfully echo his groans, and evidently think 
 them not at all inconsistent, either with manliness or wisdom. 
 There was a breadth of character in all that Wolsey thought, 
 did, and suffered — in his strength and in his weakness. In 
 his prosperity he set no bounds to his pomp ; in adversity he 
 cries out and calls upon the gods, not affecting to be a 
 philosopher. When he was angry he huffed and used big 
 words, like his master ; when in good humour, he loaded 
 people with praise ; and he loved a large measure of it himself. 
 He issued forth, with his goodly bulk and huge garments, 
 and expected a worship analogous to his amplitudes. There 
 is a passage written with great humour by Sir Thomas More, 
 which, according to Dr. Wordsworth (the poet's brother), is 
 intended, " no doubt, to represent the Cardinal at the head of 
 his table." What reasons the doctor has for not doubting the 
 application, we cannot say, and therefore do not think our- 
 selves any more justified than inclined to dispute them. The 
 supposition is hghly probable. Wolsey must have offered a 
 fine dramatic spectacle to the eyes of a genius like More. We 
 shall therefore copy the passage for the reader's entertainment, 
 from a note in Mr. Singer's excellent edition of the Cardinal's 
 Life by Cavendish : — . 
 
B87 
 
 ° Anthony. I praye you, Cosyn, tell on. Vincent. Whan I was 
 fyrste in Almaine, Uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with 
 a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all 
 that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche 
 as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in 
 anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above 
 all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him 
 abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he 
 saciate of hearinge his owne prayse. 
 
 " So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an 
 oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that 
 at his dinner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how 
 they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commende it. And 
 whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, 
 iippon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste for 
 lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he 
 brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes 
 end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) 
 how well we lyked his oracion that he hadde made that daye. But in 
 fayth, Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full 
 answered, no manne {I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every 
 manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exqui- 
 site prayse. For he that shoulde have broughte out but a vulgare and 
 a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for 
 ever. Then sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the 
 lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of 
 the common weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my 
 parte, I wyll not say it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure 
 Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked 
 my selfe the better because mee thoughte my words beeinge but a 
 straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong ; wherein 
 lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped 
 to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and 
 should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he 
 could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part 
 with my Lordes commendation, the wyly fox hadde be so well accus- 
 tomed in courte with the crafte of flattry, that he wente beyonde me 
 to farre. 
 
 "And then might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane 
 witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life study eth and 
 busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a 
 Bolempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched 
 together at that boarde agayne, whan we should fall to our fiattrye, I 
 would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. 
 For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would 
 I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But, Uncle, here 
 beganne no we the game; he that sate hyghest, and was to speake, 
 was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour only, but also some- 
 what learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was 
 to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. 
 And it seemed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he 
 liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. 
 manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while 
 now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it <&me 
 
 CC2 
 
38& ms cardinal's fiAf* 
 
 to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al 
 among us before, that we hadde not lefte him one wye worde to speake 
 after. 
 
 "Anthony. Alas good manne ! amonge so manye of you, some good 
 felow shold have lente hym one. Vincent. It needed not, as happe 
 was, Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatterying he 
 passed us all the many. Anthony. Why, what sayde he, Cosyn ? 
 Vincent. By our Ladye, Uncle, not one worde. But lyke as I trow 
 Plinius telleth, that when Appelles the Paynter in the table that he 
 paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the 
 makynge of the sorrowefull countenances of the other noble menne of 
 Greece that beehelde it, spente out so much of his craft and hys 
 cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King 
 
 Agamemnon her father, which hee reserved for the laste 
 
 he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance — but 
 to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, 
 that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte him, holdyng 
 his face in his handkercher — the like pageant in a maner plaide us 
 there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that 
 he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde 
 bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a 
 worde, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of 
 the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace had uttered in that 
 oracyon. hefette a long syghe with an Oh ! from the bottome of his breste, 
 and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe both his handes, and lyfte 
 uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wept." 
 
 But if Wolsey set store by his fine speaking, he knew also 
 what belonged to his hat ; he was quite alive to the effect 
 produced by his office, and knew how to get up and pamper a 
 ceremony — to cook up a raw material of dignity for the 
 public relish. It should be no fault of his, that any toy of 
 his rank should not be looked up to with awe. Accordingly, 
 a most curious story is told of the way in which he contrived 
 that the Cardinal's hat, which was sent him during his resi- 
 dence in York Place, should make its first appearance in 
 public. Cavendish says, that the hat having been sent by 
 the Pope through the hands of an ordinary messenger, with- 
 out any state, Wolsey caused him to be " stayed by the way," 
 newly dressed in rich apparel, and met by a gorgeous caval- 
 cade of prelates and gentry. But a note in Mr. Singer's 
 edition, referring to Tindal and Fox, tells us that the messenger 
 actually reached him in York Place, was clothed by him as 
 aforesaid, and sent back with the hat to Dover, from whence 
 the cavalcade went and fetched him. The hat was then set 
 on a sideboard full of plate, with tapers round about it, " and 
 the greatest Duke in the lande must make curtesie thereto." 
 
 Cavendish has given a minute account of the household at 
 York Place, from which the following are extracts. CompajQ 
 
WOLSEY'S HOUSEHOLD AT YORK PLACE. 389 
 
 them with the recollection of " the disciples plucking ears of 
 corn :" — 
 
 " He had in his hall, daily, three especial tattles furnished with three 
 principal officers ; that is to say, a Steward, which was always a dean 
 or a priest; a Treasurer, a knight; and a Comptroller, an esquire; 
 which bore always within his house their white staves. Then had he 
 a cofferer, three marshals, two yeoman ushers, two grooms, and an 
 
 almoner," &c, &c, &c "In his privy kitchen, he had a 
 
 master-cook, who went daily in damask, satin, or velvet, with a chain 
 of gold about his neck." .... In his chapel, he had " a Dean, 
 who was always a great clerk and a divine ; a Sub-dean ; a Repeater 
 of the quire ; a Gospeller, a Pisteller (separate men to read the 
 Gospels and the Epistles), and twelve singing Priests ; of Scholars, 
 he had first, a Master of the children ; twelve singing children ; six- 
 teen singing men ; with a servant to attend upon the said children. 
 In the Revestry, a yeoman and two grooms : then were there divers 
 retainers of cunning singing men, that came thither at divers sundry 
 principal feasts. But to speak of the furniture of this chapel passeth 
 my capacity to declare the number of the costly ornaments and rich 
 jewels, that were occupied in the same continually. For I have seen 
 there, in a procession, worn forty-four copes of one suit, very rich, 
 besides the sumptuous crosses, candlesticks, and other necessary orna- 
 ments to the comely furniture of the same. Now shall ye understand 
 that he had two cross-bearers, and two pillar-bearers ; and in his 
 chamber, all these persons ; that is to say: his High Chamberlain; 
 his Vice - Chamberlain ; twelve Gentlemen Ushers, daily waiters; 
 besides two in his Privy Chamber ; and of Gentlemen waiters in his 
 Privy Chamber he had six; and also he had of Lords nine or ten, who 
 had each of them allowed two servants ; and the Earl of Derby had 
 allowed five men. Then had he of Gentlemen, as cup-bearers, carvers, 
 sewers, and Gentlemen daily waiters, forty persons; of yeomen ushers 
 he had six; of grooms in his chamber he had eight; of yeomen of his 
 chamber he had forty-six daily to attend upon his person ; he had 
 also a priest there which was his Almoner, to attend upon his table at 
 dinner. Of doctors and chaplains attending in his closet to say daily 
 mass before him, he had sixteen persons: and a clerk of his closet. Also 
 he had two secretaries, and two clerks of his signet : and four coun- 
 sellors learned in the laws of the realm. 
 
 " And, for as much as he was Chancellor of England, it was neces- 
 sary for him to have divers officers of the Chancery, to attend daily 
 upon him, for the better furniture of the same. That is to say, first, 
 he had the Clerk of the Crown, a Riding Clerk, a Clerk of the 
 Hanaper, a Chafer of Wax. Then had he a Clerk of the Check, as 
 well to check his chaplains, as his yeomen of the chamber; he had 
 also four Footmen, which were apparelled in rich running coats, 
 whensoever he rode any journey. Then had he an Herald at Arms, 
 and a Serjeant at Arms; a Physician; an Apothecary; four Minstrels ; 
 A Keeper of his Tents ; an Armourer ; an Instructor of his Wards ; 
 two Yeomen in his Wardrobe ; and a Keeper of his chamber in the 
 court. He had also daily in his house the Surveyor of York, a Clerk 
 of the Green Cloth; and an auditor. All this number of persons were 
 daily attendant upon him in his house, down-lying and up-rising, 
 
390 wolsey's love of state. 
 
 And at meals, there was continually in his chamber a hoard kept for 
 his Chamberlains, and Gentlemen Ushers, having with them a mes? 
 of the young Lords, and another for gentlemen. Besides all thes^ 
 there was never an officer and gentleman, or any other worthy per- 
 son in his house, but he was allowed some three, some two servants; 
 and all other one at the least; which amounted to a great number 
 of persons." 
 
 Such was the style in which Wolsey grew fat, in-doors* 
 When he went out of doors, to Westminster Hall for instance) 
 as Chancellor, or merely came into an anteroom, to speak 
 with his suitors, the following was the state which he always 
 kept up. Think of Lord Brougham or Lord Lyndhurst in 
 our own times, modestly eschewing notice, and going down to 
 the House in a plain hat and trowsers, and then look on the 
 following picture : — 
 
 "Now will I declare unto you," says the worthy Cavendish, strik- 
 ing up a right gentleman-usher note (and out of this very gentleman- 
 usher's family came the princely house of Devonshire, which has 
 lasted with so much height and refinement ever since,) — "Now will 
 I declare unto you his order in going to Westminster Hall, daily in 
 the term season. First, before his coming out of his privy chamber, 
 he heard most commonly every day two masses in his private closet ; 
 and there then said his daily service with his chaplain ; and, as I 
 heard his chaplain say, being a man of credence and of excellent 
 learning, that the Cardinal, what business or weighty matters soever 
 he had in the day, he never went to his bed with any part of his 
 divine service unsaid, yea, not so much as one collect; wherein I 
 doubt not but he deceived the opinion of divers persons. And after 
 mass he would return in his privy chamber again, and being adver- 
 tised of the furniture of his chambers without, with noblemen, 
 gentlemen, and other persons, would issue out into them, apparelled 
 all in red, in the habit of a cardinal ; which was either of fine scarlet, 
 or else of crimson satin, taffety, damask, or caffa, the best that he 
 could get for money; and upon his head a round pillion, with a noble 
 of black velvet set to the same in the inner side; he had also a tippet 
 of fine sables about his neck; holding in his hand a very fair orange, 
 whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up 
 again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other con- 
 fections against the pestilent airs ; the which he most commonly 
 smelt unto, passing among the press, or else when he was pestered, 
 with many suitors. There was also borne before him, first, the great 
 seal of England, and then his cardinal's hat, by a nobleman or some 
 worthy gentleman, right solemnly, bareheaded. And as soon as he was 
 entered into his chamber of presence, where there was attending his 
 coming to await upon him to Westminster Hall, as well noblemen 
 and other worthy gentlemen, as noblemen and gentlemen of his own 
 family ; thus passing forth with two great crosses of silver borne 
 before him ; with also two great pillars of silver, and his pursuivant 
 at arms with a great mace of silver gilt. Then his gentlemen ushers 
 cried, and said : ' On, my lords and masters, on before; make way for 
 my Lord's Grace J ' Thus passed he down from his chamber through 
 
wolsey's love of state. 391 
 
 the hall; and when he came to the hall door, there was attendant for 
 him his mule, trapped altogether in crimson velvet, and gilt stirrups. 
 "When he was mounted, with his cross bearers, and pillow bearers, 
 also upon great horses trapped with [fine] scarlet, then marched he 
 forward, with his train and furniture in manner as I have declared, 
 having about him four footmen, with gilt poll-axes in their hands ; 
 and thus he went until he came to Westminster Hall door. And 
 there alighted and went after this manner, up through the hall into 
 the chancery; howbeit he would most commonly stay awhile at a bar, 
 made for him, a little beneath the chancery [on the right hand], and 
 there commune some time with the judges, and some time with other 
 persons. And that done he would repair into the chancery, sitting 
 there till eleven of the clock, hearing suitors, and determining on 
 divers matters. And from thence, he would divers times go into the 
 star chamber, as occasion did serve ; where he spared neither high 
 nor low, but judged every estate according to their merits and de- 
 merits.'* 
 
 But this style of riding abroad was not merely for official 
 occasions. He went through Thames Street every Sunday, 
 in his way to the court at Greenwich, with his crosses, his 
 pillars, his hat, and his great seal. He was as fond of his 
 pomp out of doors, as a child is of its new clothes. 
 
 The description of the way in which he used to receive the 
 visits of the King at York Place, has acquired a double 
 interest from the use made of it by Shakspeare, by whom it 
 has been, in a manner, copied, in his play of " Henry the 
 Eighth:" 
 
 " Thus in great honour, triumph, and glory," says Cavendish, " he 
 reigned a long season, ruling all things within this realm, appertain- 
 ing unto the King, by his wisdom, and also all other weighty matters 
 of foreign regions with which the King of this realm had any occa- 
 sion to intermeddle. All Ambassadors of foreign potentates were 
 always dispatched by his discretion, to whom they had always access 
 for their dispatch. His house was also always resorted and furnished 
 with noblemen, gentlemen, and other persons, with going and coming 
 in and out, feasting and banqueting all Ambassadors divers times, 
 and other strangers right nobly. 
 
 " And when it pleased the King's Majesty, for his recreation, to 
 repair unto the Cardinal's house, as he did divers times in the year, 
 at which time there wanted no preparations, or goodly furniture, with 
 viands of the finest sort that might be provided for money or friend- 
 ship, such pleasures were then devised for the King's comfort and 
 consolation, as might be invented, or by man's wit imagined. The 
 banquets were set forth, with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous 
 a sort, and costly a manner, that it was a heaven to behold. There 
 wanted no dames, or damsels, meet or apt to dance with the maskers, or to 
 garnish the place for the time, with other goodly disports. Then was 
 there all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excellent voices 
 both of men and children. I have seen the King suddenly come in 
 thither in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like 
 
392 THE KING AND THE GARDINAL 
 
 shepherds, made of fine cloth of gold and fine crimson satin paned, 
 and caps of the same, with visors of good proportion of visnomy; 
 their hairs, and beards, either of fine gold wire, or else of silver, and 
 some being of black silk ; having sixteen torch-bearers, besides their 
 drums, and other persons attending upon them, with visors, and 
 clothed all in satin, of the same colours. And at his coming, and 
 before he came into the hall, ye shall understand, that he came by 
 water to the water gate, without any noise: where, against his 
 coming, were laid charged, many chambers*, and at his landing they 
 were all shot off, which made such a rumble in the air, that it was like 
 thunder. It made all the noblemen, ladies, and gentlewomen, to 
 muse what it should mean coming so suddenly, they sitting quietly 
 at a solemn banquet ; under this sort: First, ye shall perceive that 
 the tables were set in the chamber of presence, banquet-wise covered, 
 my Lord Cardinal sitting under the cloth of estate, and there having 
 his service all alone; and then was there set a lady and a nobleman, 
 or a gentleman and gentlewoman, throughout all the tables in the 
 chamber on the one side, which were made and joined as it were but 
 one table. All which order and device was done and devised by the 
 Lord Sands, Lord Chamberlain to the King; and also by Sir Henry 
 Guildford, Comptroller to the King. Then immediately after this 
 great shot of guns, the Cardinal desired the Lord Chamberlain and 
 Comptroller to look what this sudden shot should mean, as though 
 he knew nothing of the matter. They thereupon looking out of the 
 windows into Thames, returned again, and showed him that it seemed 
 to them there should be some noblemen and strangers arrived at his 
 bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that, quoth 
 the Cardinal, ' I shall desire you, because ye can speak French, to 
 take the pains to go down into the hall to encounter and to receive 
 them, according to their estates, and to conduct them into this cham- 
 ber, where they shall see us, and all these noble personages sitting 
 merrily at our banquet, desiring them to sit down with us, and to 
 take part of our fare and pastime.' Then [they] went incontinent 
 down into the hall, where they received them with near twenty 
 new torches, and conveyed them up into the chamber, with such a 
 number of drums and fifes as I have seldom seen together at one 
 time, in any masque. At their arrival into the chamber, two and two 
 together, they went directly before the Cardinal where he sat, saluting 
 him very reverently; to whom the Lord Chamberlain for them said ; 
 ' Sir, for as much as they be strangers, and can speak no English, 
 they have desired me to declare unto your Grace thus : they, having 
 understanding of this your triumphant banquet, where was assembled 
 such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no less, under the sup- 
 portation of your good Grace, but to repair hither to view as well as 
 their incomparable beauty, as for to accompany them at mumchancef, 
 
 * Chambers, short guns, or cannon, standing upon their breaching 
 without carriages, chiefly used for festive occasions; and having their 
 name most probably from being little more than chambers for powder. 
 It was by the discharge of these chambers in the play of Henry VHIth. 
 that the Globe Theatre was burnt in 1613. Shakspeare followed 
 pretty closely the narrative of Cavendish. — Singer. 
 
 f Mumchance appears to have been a game played with dice, a$ 
 which silence was to be observed,— Singer. 
 
At YORK PLACE. 393 
 
 and then after to dance with them, and so to have of them acquaint- 
 ance. And, sir, they furthermore require of your Grace license to 
 accomplish the cause of their repair.' To whom the Cardinal an- 
 swered, that he was very well contented that they should do so. Then 
 the maskers went first and saluted, all the dames as they sat, and. then 
 returned to the most worthiest, and there opened a cup full of gold, 
 with crowns and other pieces of coin, to whom they set divers pieces 
 to cast at. Thus in this manner perusing all the ladies and gentle- 
 women, and to some they lost, and of some they won. And this done, 
 they returned unto the Cardinal, with great reverence, pouring down 
 all the crowns into the cup, which was ahout two hundred crowns. 
 * At all,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast the dice, and won them all 
 at a cast ; whereat was great joy made. Then quoth the Cardinal 
 to my Lord Chamberlain, ' I pray you,' quoth he, ' show them that it 
 seemeth me that there should be among them some noble man, whom 
 I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to sit and occupy this 
 room and place than I; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, 
 surrender my place, according to my duty.' Then spake my Lord 
 Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal's 
 mind, and they rounding him again in the ear, my Lord Chamberlain 
 said to my Lord Cardinal, ' Sir, they confess,' quoth he, ' that among 
 them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace can 
 appoint him from the other, he is contented to disclose himself, and to 
 accept your place most worthily.' With that the Cardinal, taking a 
 good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, * me seemeth the 
 gentleman with the black beard should be even he.' And with that 
 he arose out of his chair, and offered the same to the gentleman in the 
 black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he 
 offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of a 
 goodly personage,* that much more resembled the King's person in that 
 mask than any other. The King, hearing and perceiving the Cardinal 
 so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not forbear laughing ; 
 but plucked down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashedf 
 out with such a plesant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates 
 there assembled, seeing the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced 
 very much. The Cardinal eftsoons desired his highness to take the 
 place of estate, to whom the King answered, that he would go first 
 and shift his apparel; and so departed, and went straight into my 
 lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and prepared for 
 him; and there new apparelled him with rich and princely garments. 
 And in the time of the King's absence the dishes of the banquet were 
 clean taken up, and the tables spread again with new and sweet per- 
 fumed clothes; every man sitting still until the King and his maskers 
 came in among them again, every man being newly apparelled. Then 
 the King took his seat under the cloth of state, commanding no man 
 to remove, but sit still, as they did before. Then in came a new 
 banquet before the King's majesty, and to' all the rest through the 
 tables, wherein, I suppose, were served two hundred dishes or above, 
 
 * Probably a handsomer figure than the King. This (though not the 
 subtlest imaginable) would be likely to be among Wolsey's court- 
 tricks, and modes of gaining favour. 
 
 f This "dashed out" is in the best style of bluff King Hal, ani 
 Capitally well said by Caivendigh, 
 
394 ANNE BULLEN. 
 
 of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly devised. Thus passed 
 they forth the whole night with banqueting, dancing, and other 
 triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant 
 regard of the nobility there assembled. 
 
 '■' All this matter I have declared at large, because ye shall under- 
 stand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and 
 sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased, which 
 was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing 
 of the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much, to have the 
 King's pleasant princely presence, that nothing was to him more 
 delectable than to cheer his sovereign lord, to whom he owed so much 
 obedience and loyalty, as reason required no less, all things well con- 
 sidered. 
 
 " Thus passed the Cardinal his life and time, from day to day, and 
 year to year, in such great wealth, joy, and triumph, and glory, having 
 always on his side the King's especial favour; until Fortune, of whose 
 favour no man is longer assured than she is disposed, began to wax 
 something wroth with his prosperous estate [and] thought she would 
 devise a mean to abate his high port; wherefore she procured Venus, 
 the insatiate Goddess, to be her instrument. To work her purpose, 
 she brought the King in love with a gentlewoman, that, after she 
 perceived and felt the King's goodwill towards her, and how diligent 
 he was both to please her, and to grant all her requests, she wrought 
 the Cardinal much displeasure ; as hereafter shall be more at large 
 declared." 
 
 Pretty Anne Bullen completed the ruin of Wolsey for having 
 thwarted her, and not long afterwards was sent out of this very 
 house from which she ousted him, to the scaffold, herself ruined 
 by another rival. On the Cardinal's downfall, Henry seized 
 his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal 
 residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the 
 first time, called also Whitehall. 
 
 " It is not impossible," says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana, vol. ii., p. 27.) 
 " that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and 
 obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, 
 when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shaks- 
 peare, in his play of King Henry VIII., makes one of the interlocutors 
 say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn : — 
 
 ' So she parted, 
 And with the same full state paced back again 
 To York Place, where the feast is held.' 
 
 To this is replied — 
 
 * Sir, you 
 Must no more call it York Place — that is past. 
 Por since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost. 
 'lis now the King's, and called Whitehall.' " 
 
 It is curious to observe the links between ancient names and 
 their modern representatives, and the extraordinary contrast 
 sometimes exhibited between the two. The " Judge," who by 
 
£~ 
 
 HENRY THE EIGHTH. 
 
 395 
 
 Henry's orders went to turn Wolsey out of his house, without 
 any other form of law — a proceeding which excited even the 
 fallen slave to a remonstrance — was named Shelly, and was 
 one of the ancestors of the poet! the most independent-minded 
 and generous of men. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Henry the Eighth — His Person and Character — Modern Qualifications 
 of it considered — Passages respecting him from Lingard, Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt, and others — His additions to Whitehall — A Retrospect at 
 Elizabeth — Court of James resumed — Its gross Habits — Letter of 
 Sir John Harrington respecting them — James's Drunkenness — 
 Testimonies of Welldon, Sully, and Koger Coke — Curious Omission 
 in the Invective of Churchill the Poet — Welldon's Portrait of 
 James — Buckingham, the Favourite— Frightful Story of Somerset 
 — Masques — Banqueting House — Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson — 
 Court of Charles the First — Cromwell — Charles the Second — James 
 the Second. 
 
 E have said more about Wolsey than we 
 intend to say of Henry the Eighth ; for 
 the son of the butcher was a great man, 
 and his master was only a king. Henry, 
 born a prince, became a butcher ; 
 Wolsey, a butcher, became a prince. 
 And we are not playing upon the word 
 as applied to the king ; for Henry was 
 not only a butcher of his wives, he 
 resembled a brother of the trade in its better and more ordi- 
 nary course. His pleasures were of the same order; his Ian- 
 
396 HENRY THE EIGHTH; 
 
 guage was coarse and jovial; he had the very straddle of a 
 fat butcher, as he stands in his doorway. Take any picture 
 or statue of Henry the Eighth — fancy its cap off, and a knife 
 in its girdle, and it seems in the very act of saying, " What 
 d'ye buy? What d'ye buy ?" There is even the petty com- 
 placency in the mouth, after the phrase is uttered. 
 
 And how formidable is that petty unfeeling mouth, in the 
 midst of those wide and wilful cheeks ! Disturb the self- 
 satisfaction of that man, derange his bile for an instant, make 
 him suppose that you do not quite think him 
 
 " Wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," 
 
 and what hope have you from the sentence of that mass of 
 pampered egotism ? 
 
 Let us not do injustice, however, even to the doers of it. 
 What better was to be looked for, in those times, from the 
 circumstances under which Henry was born and bred — from 
 the son of a wilful father, and an unfeeling state marriage — 
 from the educated combiner of church and state, instinctively 
 led to entertain the worldliest notions of both, and of heaven 
 itself — from the inheritor of the greatest wealth, and power, 
 and irresponsibility, ever yet concentrated in an English 
 sovereign ? It has been attempted of late by various writers 
 (and the attempt is a good symptom, being on the charitable 
 side,) to make out a case for Henry the Eighth, as if he were a 
 sort of rough but honest fellow, a kind of John Bull of that 
 age, who meant well upon the whole, and thought himself 
 bound to keep up the conventionalities of his country. We 
 know not what compliment is intended to be implied by this, 
 either to Henry or his countrymen ; but really when a man 
 sends his wives, one after the other, to the scaffold, evidently 
 as much to enable him to marry another as to vindicate any 
 propriety — when he "cuts" and sacrifices his best friends and 
 servants, and pounces upon their goods — when he takes every 
 license himself, though he will not allow others even to be 
 suspected of it — when he grows a brute beast in size as well 
 as in habits, and dies shedding superfluous blood to the last — 
 we cannot, for our parts, as Englishmen, but be glad of some 
 better excuses for him of the kind above stated, than such as 
 are to be found in the roots of the national character, however 
 jovial. Imagine only the endearments that must have passed 
 between this man and Anne Bullen, and then fancy the heart 
 that could have sent the poor little, hysterical, half-laughing, 
 
HIS VANITY AND TYRANNY. 897 
 
 half-crying thing to the scaffold ! The man was mad with 
 power and vanity. That is his real excuse. 
 
 It has been said, that all which he did was done by law, 
 or at least under the forms of it, and by the consent, some- 
 times by the recommendation, of his statesmen. The asser- 
 tion is not true in all instances ; and where it is, what does it 
 prove but that his tyrannical spirit had helped to make his 
 statesmen slaves? They knew what he wished, and noto- 
 riously played the game into his hands. When they did not, 
 their heads went off. That circumstances had spoilt them 
 altogether, and that society, with all its gaudiness, was but in 
 a half-barbarous state, is granted ; but it is no less true, that 
 his office, his breeding, and his natural temper, conspired to 
 make Henry the worst and most insolent of a violent set of 
 men ; and he stands straddling out accordingly in history, as 
 he does in his pictures, an image of sovereign brutality. 
 
 Excessive vanity, aggravated by all the habits of despotism 
 and luxury, and accompanied, nevertheless, by that uncon- 
 scious misgiving which is natural to inequalities between a 
 man's own powers and those which he derives from his posi- 
 tion, is the clue to the character of Henry the Eighth. 
 Accordingly, no man gave greater ear to tale-bearers and 
 sowers of suspicion, nor resented more cruelly or meanly the 
 wounds inflicted on his self-love, even by those who least 
 intended them, or to whom he had shown the greatest fond- 
 ness. The latter, indeed, he treated the worst, out of a frenzy 
 of egotistical disappointment ; for his love arose, not from any 
 real regard for their merits, but from what he had taken for 
 a flattery to his own. Sir Thomas More knew him well, 
 when, in observation to some one who had congratulated him 
 on the King's having walked up and down with his arm 
 around his neck, he said that he would have that neck cut in 
 two next day, if the head belonging to it opposed his will. 
 He not only took back without scruple all that he had given 
 to Wolsey, but he went to live in the houses of his fallen 
 friend and servant — places which a man of any feeling and 
 kindly remembrance would have avoided. He was very near 
 picking a murderous quarrel with his last wife, Catherine 
 Parr, on one of his theological questions. And how did he 
 conduct himself to the memory of poor Anne Bullen, even on 
 the day of her execution? Hear Lingard, who, though no 
 partizan of his, thinks he must have had some heinous cause 
 of provocation, to induce him to behave so roughly : — , 
 
398 HENRY THE EIGHTH; 
 
 "Thus fell," says the historian, "this unfortunate Queen within 
 four months after the death of Catherine. To have expressed a doubt 
 of her guilt during the reign of Henry, or of her innocence during 
 that of Elizabeth, would have been deemed a proof of disaffection. 
 The question soon became one of religious feeling, rather than of 
 historical disquisition. Though she had departed no farther than her 
 husband from the ancient doctrine, yet, as her marriage with Henry 
 led to the separation from the communion of Rome, the Catholic 
 writers were eager to condemn, the Protestant to exculpate her 
 memory. In the absence of those documents which alone could 
 enable us to decide with truth, I will only observe that the King 
 must have been impelled by some powerful motive to exercise against 
 her such extraordinary, and, in one supposition, such superfluous 
 vigour. Had his object been (we are sometimes told that it was) to 
 place Jane Seymour by his side on the throne, the divorce of Anne 
 without execution, or the execution without the divorce, would have 
 effected his purpose. But he seemed to have pursued her with in- 
 satiable hatred. Not content with taking her life, he made her feel 
 in every way in which a wife and a mother could feel. He stamped 
 on her character the infamy of adultery and incest ; he deprived her 
 of the name and right of wife and Queen ; and he even bastardized 
 her daughter, though he acknowledged that daughter to be his own. 
 If then he were not assured of her guilt, he must have discovered in 
 her conduct some most heinous cause of provocation, which he never 
 disclosed. He had wept at the death of Catherine (of Arragon) ; but, 
 as if he sought to display his contempt for the character of Anne, he 
 dressed himself in white on the day of her execution, and was married 
 to Jane Seymour the next morning."* 
 
 Now, nothing could be more indecent and unmanly than 
 such conduct as this, let Anne have been guilty as she might; 
 and nothing, in such a man, but mortified self-love could 
 account for it. Probably he had discovered, that in some of 
 her moments of levity she had laughed at him. But not to 
 love him would have been offence enough. It would have 
 been the first time he had discovered the possibility of such 
 an impiety towards his barbarous divinityship : and his rage 
 must needs have been unbounded. 
 
 What Providence may intend by such instruments, is one 
 thing : what we are constituted to think of them, is another : 
 charitably, no doubt, when we think our utmost ; but still 
 with a discrimination, for fear of consequences. As to what 
 was thought of Henry in his own time or afterwards, we must 
 not rely on the opinion of Baker, Holinshed, and other servile 
 chroniclers, of mean understanding and time-serving habits, 
 who were the least honourable kind of " waiters upon Provi- 
 dence," taking the commonest appearances of adversity and 
 prosperity (so to speak) for vice and virtue, and flattering 
 * Lingard, vol. iv., p. 246. (Quarto Edit.) 
 
Passages respecting him prom wyat, <&c. 399 
 
 every arbitrary and conventional opinion, as though it were 
 not to perish in its turn. We are to recollect what More said 
 of him (as above) in his confidential moments and Wolsey in 
 his agony, and Pole and others, when, having got to a safe 
 distance, they returned him foul language for his own 
 bullying, and blustered out what was thought of him by 
 those who knew him thoroughly. Observe also the manifest 
 allusions in what was written upon the court of those days, 
 by one of the wisest and best of its ornaments, Sir Thomas 
 Wyat — a friend of Anne Bullen's. The verses are entitled, 
 " Of a Courtier's Life," and it may be observed, by the way, 
 that they furnish the second example, in the English lan- 
 guage, of the use of the Italian rime terzette, or triplets, in 
 which Dante's poem is written, and which had been first 
 introduced among us by Sir Thomas's friend, the Earl of 
 Surrey (another of Henry's victims) : — 
 
 Mine owne John Poynes, sins ye delight to know 
 The causes why that homeward I me draw 
 And flee the prease of courtes whereso they goe, 
 Rather than to live thrall under the awe 
 Of lordly lookes, wrapped within my cloke, 
 To will and lust learning to set a law, 
 It is not, that because I storme or mocke 
 
 The power of those whom fortune here hath lent 
 Charge over us, of right to strike the stroke ; 
 But true it is, that I have alway ment 
 
 Less to esteeme them, than the common sort 
 Of outward thinges that judge in their entent ; 
 * * # # 
 
 My Poynes, I cannot frame my tong to fayn, 
 To cloke the truth, for praise, without desert, 
 Of them that list all vice for to retayne ; 
 
 I cannot honour them that set theyr part 
 
 With Venus and with Bacchus their life long, 
 Nor hold my peace of them although I smart 
 
 I cannot crouch, nor kneele to such a wrong, 
 
 To WORSHIP THEM LIKE GOD ON EARTH ALONE, 
 
 That are as wolves these sely lambs among. 
 (Here was a sigh perhaps to the memory of his poor friend 
 Anne): — 
 
 I cannot wrest the law to fyll the coffer 
 With innocent blood to feed myselfe/a£, 
 And do most hurt where that most help I offer 
 I am not he that can allow the state 
 Of hye Caesar, and damn Cato to die ; 
 (an allusion probably to Sir Thomas More). 
 
 Affirm that favill (fable-lying) hathe a goodly grace 
 In eloquence, and cruelty to name 
 Zeale of justice, and change in time and place ; 
 And he that suffreth offence without blame, 
 
400 HENRY THE EIGHTH. 
 
 Call him pitiefull, and him true andplayne. 
 That raylest reckless unto each man's shame ; 
 Say he is rude, that cannot lye and fayne, 
 The lecher a lover, and tyranny 
 To BE RIGHT OF A PRINCE'S RAIGNE ; 
 
 I cannot, I ; — no, no ; — it will not he ; 
 
 This is the cause that I could never yet 
 
 Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see> 
 A chippe of chaunce more than a pound of wit ; 
 
 This makes me at home to hunt and hawke, 
 
 And in foul weather at my book to sit ; 
 In frost and snowe, then with my howe stalke ; 
 
 No man doth marke whereso I ryde or goe ; 
 
 In lustie leas at libertie I walke. 
 
 Towards the conclusion, he says he does not spend his time 
 among those who have their wits taken away with Flanders 
 cheer and " beastliness :" — 
 
 Nor I am not, where truth is given in prey 
 For money, and prison and treason of some 
 
 A common practice used night and day ; 
 
 But I am here in Kent and Christendom, 
 
 Among the Muses, where I read and ryme ; 
 Where if thou list, mine owne John Poynes, to come, 
 
 Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time. 
 
 Among the poems of Surrey, is a sonnet in reproach of 
 11 Sardanapalus," which probably came to the knowledge of 
 Henry, and may have been intended to do so. 
 
 It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted 
 marriage with Anne Bullen; Dr. Lingard says in a "garret;" 
 Stowe says in the royal " closet." It is likely enough that 
 the ceremony was hurried and sudden ; — a fit of will, perhaps, 
 during his wine ; and if the closet was not ready, the garret 
 was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards 
 made a bishop. 
 
 Henry died in Whitehall ; so fat, that he was lifted in and 
 out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery. 
 
 He was " somewhat gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie," says 
 time-serving Holinshed.* 
 
 " He laboured under the burden of an extreme fat and un- 
 wieldy body," says noble Herbert of Cherbury.f 
 
 " The king," says Lingard, " had long indulged without restraint in 
 the pleasures of the table. At last he grew so enormously corpulent, 
 that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove 
 without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of his 
 palace. Even the fatigue of subscribing his name to the writings 
 
 ♦ Vol. iii., p. 862, Edit. 1808. | Folio edit 
 
WHITEHALL IN OLDEN TIME. 
 
 401 
 
 which required his signature, was more than he could bear; and to 
 relieve him from this duty, three commissioners were appointed, of 
 whom two had authority to apply to the paper a dry stamp, bearing 
 the letters of the king's name, and the third to draw a pen furnished 
 with ink over the blank impression. An inveterate ulcer in the thigh 
 which had more than once threatened his life, and which now seemed 
 to baffle all the skill of the surgeons, added to the irascibility of his 
 temper." * 
 
 It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace 
 
 HOLBEIN S GATE OP WHITEHALL PALACE. 
 
 of the Archbishop of York first became the " King's Palace at 
 Westminster," and expanded into that mass of houses which 
 
 * Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long 
 while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne 
 Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of tempera- 
 ment; but then it should also have made him more considerate 
 towards his wives. It never enters the heads, however, of such people 
 that their faults or infirmities are to go for anything, except to make 
 others considerate for them, and warrant whatever humours they 
 choose to indulge. 
 
 D D 
 
402 EDWARD THE SIXTH. 
 
 stretched to St. James's Park. He built a gate-house which 
 stood across what is now the open street, and a gallery con- 
 necting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard ; and on 
 the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for 
 bowling ; for although he put women to death, he was fond of 
 manly sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts ; and 
 gave an annuity and rooms in the palace to the celebrated 
 Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as 
 decorated the interior. It is to Holbein we are indebted for 
 our familiar acquaintance with his figure. 
 
 The reader is to bear in mind, that the street in front of the 
 modern Banqueting-house was always open, as it is now, from 
 Charing Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south 
 end of the Banqueting-house, at which point the gate looked 
 up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-house, 
 on the site of the present Horse Guards, was the Tilt-yard. 
 The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side com- 
 prised the royal residence. Down this open street then, just 
 as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry 
 coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly ; 
 Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with 
 quiet-faced Erasmus ; Holbein, looking about him with an 
 artist's eyes ; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and 
 feather, as Holbein has painted him ; and a succession of 
 Henry's wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or 
 under canopy ; — handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon ; 
 laughing Anne Bullen ; quiet Jane Seymour ; gross-bodied 
 but sensible Anne of Cleves ; demure Catherine Howard, who 
 played such pranks before marriage ; and disputatious yet 
 buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant, to become 
 the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, 
 also, came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the 
 tilting-yard ; but of them we shall have more to say in the 
 time of Elizabeth. 
 
 We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane 
 Grey and Queen Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward 
 once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly con- 
 dition ; and he used to hear Latimer preach in the Privy 
 garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on 
 purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected 
 on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear 
 the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising 
 through the trees. 
 
LADY JANE GREY.— MARY. 403 
 
 Edward has the reputation usually belonging to young and 
 untried sovereigns, and very likely deserves some of it ; cer- 
 tainly not all — as Mr. Sharon Turner, one of the most con- 
 siderate of historians, has shown. He partook of the obstinacy 
 of his father, which was formalised in him by weak health 
 and a precise education ; and though he shed tears when pre- 
 vailed upon to assign poor Joan of Kent to what he thought 
 her eternity of torment, his faults assuredly did not lie on the 
 side of an excess of feeling, as may be seen by the cool way 
 in which he suffered his uncles to go to the scaffold, one after 
 another, and recorded it in the journal which he kept. He 
 would probably have turned out a respectable, but not an 
 admirable sovereign, nor one of an engaging character. Years 
 do not improve a temperament like his. 
 
 Even poor Lady Jane Grey's character does not improve 
 upon inspection. The Tudor blood (she was grand-daughter 
 of Henry's sister) manifested itself in her by her sudden love 
 of supremacy the moment she felt a crown on her head, and 
 her preferring to squabble with her husband and his relations 
 (who got it her), rather than let him partake her throne. She 
 insisted he should be only a Duke, and suspected that his 
 family had given her poison for it. This undoes the usual 
 romance of "Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley ;" 
 — and thus it is that the possession of too much power spoils 
 almost every human being, practical or theoretical. Lady 
 Jane came out of the elegancies and tranquillities of the 
 schools, and of her Greek and Latin, to find her Platonisms 
 vanish before a dream of royalty. She rediscovered them, 
 however, when it was over ; and that is something. She was 
 brought up a slave, and therefore bred to be despotic in her 
 turn ; but habit, vanity, and good sense alike contributed to 
 restore her to the better part of herself at the last moment. 
 
 We confess we pity " Bloody Mary," as she has been called, 
 almost as much as any unfortunate sovereign on record. She 
 caused horrible and odious suffering, but she also suffered 
 horribly herself, and became odious where she would fain 
 bave been loved. She had a bigoted education and a com- 
 plexional melancholy ; was stunted in person, plain in face, 
 with impressive but gloomy eyes ; a wife with affections 
 unrequited ; and a persecuting, unpopular, but conscientious 
 sovereign. She derived little pleasure apparently from having 
 her way, even in religious matters ; but acted as she did out 
 of a narrow sense of duty ; and she proved her honesty, how- 
 
 PD2 
 
404: RETROSPECT AT ELIZABETH. 
 
 ever perverted, by a perpetual anxiety and uneasiness. When 
 did a charitable set of opinions ever inflict upon honest natures 
 these miseries of an intolerant one ? 
 
 It was under Elizabeth that Whitehall shone out in all its 
 romantic splendour. It was no longer the splendour of Wolsey 
 alone, nor of Henry alone, or with a great name by his side 
 now and then ; but of a Queen, surrounded and worshipped 
 through a long reign by a galaxy of the brightest minds and 
 most chivalrous persons ever assembled in English history. 
 
 Here she comes, turning round the corner from the Strand, 
 under a canopy of state, leaving the noisier, huzzaing multi- 
 tude behind the barriers that mark the precincts of the palace, 
 and bending her eyes hither and thither, in acknowledgment 
 of the kneeling obeisances of the courtiers. Beside her are 
 Cecil and Knolles, and Northampton, and Bacon's father ; or, 
 later in life, Leicester, and Burleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney, 
 and Greville, and Sir Francis Drake (and Spenser is looking 
 on) ; or, later still, Essex, and Ealeigh, and Bacon himself, 
 and Southampton, Shakspeare's friend, with Shakspeare 
 among the spectators. We shall see her by and by, at that 
 period, as brought to life to us in the description of Heutzner 
 the traveller. At present (as we have her at this moment in 
 our eye) she is younger, of a large and tall, but well-made 
 figure, with fine eyes, and finer hands, which she is fond of 
 displaying. We are too apt to think of Elizabeth as thin and 
 elderly, and patched up ; but for a good period of her life she 
 was plump and personable, warranting the history of the 
 robust romps of the Lord Admiral, Seymour ; and till her 
 latter days (and even then, as far as her powers went), we 
 are always to fancy her at once spirited and stately of car- 
 riage, impulsive (except on occasions of ordinary ceremony), 
 and ready to manifest her emotions in look and voice, 
 whether as woman or Queen ; in a word, a sort of Henry 
 the Eighth corrected by a female nature and a better under- 
 standing — or perhaps an Anne Bullen, enlarged, and made 
 less feminine, by the father's grossness. The Protestants 
 have represented her as too staid, and the Catholics as too 
 violent and sensual. According to the latter, Whitehall was 
 a mere sink of iniquity. It was not likely to be so, for many 
 reasons ; but neither, on the other hand, do we take it to have 
 been anything like the pattern of self-denial which some fond 
 writers have supposed. WTiere there is power, and leisure, 
 and luxury, though of the most legitimate kind, and refine^ 
 
EeTrOSFECT AT ELIZABETH. 405 
 
 ment, though of the most intellectual, self-denial on the side 
 of enjoyment is not apt to be the reigning philosophy ; nor 
 would it reasonably be looked for in any court, at all living 
 in wealth and splendour. 
 
 Imagine the sensations of Elizabeth, when she first set 
 down in the palace at Whitehall, after escaping the perils of 
 imputed illegitimacy, of confinement for party's sake and for 
 religion's, and all the other terrors of her father's reign and 
 of Mary's, danger of death itself not excepted. She was a 
 young Queen of twenty-five years of age, healthy, sprightly, 
 good-looking, with plenty of will, power, and imagination ; 
 and the gallantest spirits of the age were at her feet. How 
 pitiable, and how respectable, become almost all sovereigns, 
 when we consider them as human beings put in possession of* 
 almost superhuman power; and when we reflect in general 
 how they have been brought up, and what a provocative to 
 abuse at all events becomes the possession of a throne ! We 
 in general spoil them first ; — we always tempt them to take 
 every advantage, by worshipping them as if they were dif- 
 ferent creatures from ourselves ; — and then we are astonished 
 that they should take us at our word. How much better 
 would it be to be astonished at the likeness they retain to us, 
 even in the kindlier part of our weaknesses. 
 
 By a very natural process, considering the great and 
 chivalrous men of that day, Elizabeth became at once one of 
 the greatest of Queens and one of the most flattered and vain 
 of women. Nor were the courtiers so entirely insincere as 
 they are supposed to have been, when they worshipped her as 
 they did, and gave her credit for all the beauty and virtue 
 under heaven. On the contrary, the power to benefit them 
 went hand-in-hand with their self-love to give them a sincere 
 though extravagant notion of their mistress ; and the romantic 
 turn of the age and its literature, its exploits, its poetry, all con- 
 spired to warm and sanction the enthusiasm on both sides, and 
 to blind the admiration to those little outward defects, and in- 
 ward defects too, which love at all periods is famous for over- 
 looking — nay, for converting into noble grounds of denial, and 
 of subjection to a sentiment. Thus Elizabeth's hook nose, 
 her red hair, nay, her very age and crookedness at last, did 
 not stand in the way of raptures at her " beauty" and " divine 
 perfections," any more than a flaw in the casket that held a 
 jewel. The spirit of love and beauty was there; the appre- 
 ciation of the soul of both; the glory of exciting, and of 
 
40G COURTLY ADULATION OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 giving, the glorification ; — and all the rest was a trifle, an 
 accident, a mortal show of things, which no gentleman and 
 lady can help. The Queen might even swear a good round 
 oath or so occasionally; and what did it signify? It was a 
 pleasant ebullition of the authority which is above taxation ; 
 the Queen swore, and not the woman ; or if the woman did, 
 it was only an excess of feeling proper to balance the account, 
 and to bring her royalty down to a level with good hearty 
 human nature. 
 
 It has been said, that as Elizabeth advanced in life, the 
 courtiers dropped the mention of her beauty; but this is a 
 mistake. They were more sparing in the mention of it, but 
 when they spoke they were conscious that the matter was not 
 to be minced. When her Majesty was in her sixty-second 
 year, the famous Earl of Essex gave her an entertainment, in 
 the course of which she was complimented on her " beauty' 1 '' and 
 dazzling outside, in speeches written for the occasion by Lord, 
 then " Mr. Francis, Bacon." * Sir John Davies, another lawyer, 
 who was not born till she was near forty, and could not have 
 written his acrostical " Hymns" upon her till she was elderly, 
 celebrates her as awakening " thoughts of young love," and 
 being " beauty's rose indeed ;"■{• and it is well known that she 
 was at a reverend time of life when Sir Walter Raleigh wrote 
 upon her like a despairing lover, calling her " Yenus " and 
 " Diana," and saying he could not exist out of her presence. 
 
 At the entrance from Whitehall to St. James's Park, where 
 deer were kept, was the following inscription, recorded by 
 Heutzner, the German traveller : — 
 
 " The fisherman who has been wounded learns, though late, to 
 beware : 
 
 But the unfortunate Actaeon always presses on. 
 The chaste Virgin naturally pitied ; 
 
 But the powerful Goddess revenged the wrong. 
 Let Actaeon fall a prey to his dogs, 
 
 An example to youth, 
 A disgrace to those that belong to him ! 
 
 May Diana live the care of Heaven, 
 The delight of mortals, 
 
 The security of those that belong to her." 
 
 Walpole thinks that this inscription alluded to Philip the 
 
 * Nicholls's "Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth," 
 year 1595, pp. 4-8. "He will ever bear in his heart the picture of 
 her beauty." " He now looks on his mistress's outside with the eyes 
 of sense, which are dazzled and amased." 
 
 f See the poems in Anderson's Edition, vol. ii., p. 706. 
 
ROYAL STATE OF ELIZABETH. 407 
 
 Second, who courted Elizabeth after her sister's death, and to 
 the destruction of his Armada. It might ; but it implied also 
 a pretty admonition to youth in general, and to those who 
 ventured to pry into the goddess's retreats. 
 
 It was about the time of Essex's entertainment that the 
 same traveller gives the following minute and interesting 
 account of her Majesty's appearance, and of the superhuman 
 way in which her very dinner-table was worshipped. He is 
 describing the manner in which she went to chapel at 
 Greenwich : — 
 
 " First went Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all 
 richly dressed and bare-headed ; next came the Chancellor, hearing 
 the seals in a silk purse, between two, one of which carried the royal 
 sceptre, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard, studded with 
 golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards ; next came the Queen, in the 
 fifty- sixth year of her age (as we were told), very majestic ; her face 
 oblong, fair but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant ; 
 her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect 
 the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar); she 
 had in her ears two very rich pearls with drops ; she wore false hair, 
 and that red : upon her head she had a small crown, reported to have 
 been made of some of the gold of the celehrated Lunebourg table ; her 
 bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they 
 marry ; and she had on a neckHce of exceeding fine jewels ; her 
 hands were small, her fingers long; and her stature neither tall nor 
 low; her air was stately ; her manner of speaking mild and obliging. 
 The day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the 
 size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads ; 
 her train was very long, the end of it borne by a Marchioness ; instead 
 of a chain, she had on an oblong collar of gold and jewels. As she 
 went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, 
 first to one and then to another (whether foreign ministers, or those 
 who attended for different reasons), in English, French, or Italian; 
 for besides being very well skilled in Greek and Latin, and the lan- 
 guages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and 
 Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling ; now and then she 
 raises some with her hand. While we were there, William Slawater, 
 a Bohemian Baron, had letters to present to her, and she, after pulling 
 off her glove, gave him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings 
 and jewels, a mark of particular favour. Whenever she turned her 
 face as she was going along, everybody'fell down on their knees. The 
 ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well 
 shaped, and for the most part dressed in white. She was guarded on 
 each side by the Gentlemen Pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt 
 battle-axes. In the ante-chamber next the hall, where we were, 
 petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, 
 which occasioned the acclamation of 'God Save the Queen Elizabeth ! ' 
 She answered it with 'I thanke youe, myne good peupel.' In the 
 chapel was excellent music; as soon as it and the service was over, 
 which scarce exceeded half an hour, the Queen returned in the same 
 state by wattr, and prepared to go to dinner. 
 
408 CHARACTER AND HABITS OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 " A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him 
 another bearing a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled 
 three times with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, 
 and after kneeling again they both retired; then came two others, 
 one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and 
 bread; when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed 
 what was brought upon the table, they too retired with the same 
 ceremonies performed by the first : at last came an unmarried lady, 
 (we were told she was a Countess), and along with her a married one, 
 bearing a tasting knife ; the former was dressed in white silk, who 
 when she had prostrated herself three times in the most graceful 
 manner, approachpd the table, and rubbed the table with bread and 
 salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When 
 they had waited there a little while, the Yeoman of the Guard 
 entered, bare headed, clothed in scarlet with golden roses upon their 
 backs, bringing in each turn a course of dishes, served in plate, 
 most of it gilt. These dishes were received by a gentleman in the 
 same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the 
 lady taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the particular 
 dish he had brought, for fear of any poison. During the time that 
 this guard (which consist of the tallest and stoutest men that can be 
 found in all England, being carefully selected for this service), were 
 bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle drums made the hall 
 ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial a 
 number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with particular solemnity 
 lifted the meat from the table and conveyed it to the Queen's inner 
 and more private chamber, where after she had chosen for herself, the 
 next goes to the ladies of the court. 
 
 " The queen dines and sups alone, with very few attendants; and 
 it is very seldom that anybody, foreigner or native, is admitted at that 
 time, and then only at the intercession of somebody in power." * 
 
 A " Character of Queen Elizabeth," written by Edmund 
 Bohun, Esq., published in " Nichols's Progresses," has given 
 the following account of her daily habits : — 
 
 " Before day, every morning, she heard the petitions of those that 
 had any business with her, and, calling her secretaries of state, and 
 masters of requests, she caused the order of councils, proclamations, 
 patents, and ail other papers relating to the public, to be read, whicli 
 were then depending; and gave such order in each affair as she 
 thought fit, which was set down in short notes, either by herself, or 
 her secretaries. As often as anything happened that was difficult, 
 she called her great and wise men to her; and proposing the diversity 
 of opinions, she very attentively considered and weighed on which 
 side the strongest reason lay, ever preferring that way which seemed 
 most to promote the public safety and welfare. When she was thus 
 wearied with her morning work, she would take a walk, if the sun 
 shined, into her garden, or otherwise in her galleries, especially in 
 windy or rainy weather. She would then cause Stanhop, or Sir 
 
 * From an article in the second volume of that elegant and interest- 
 ing publication, the "Retrospective Review;" the discontinuance of 
 which, some years back, was regretted by every lover of literature. 
 
CHARACTER AND HABITS OP ELIZABETH 409 
 
 Henry Savill, or some other learned man, to be called to walk with 
 her, and entertain her with some learned subject; the rest of the day 
 she spent in private, reading history, or some other learning, with 
 great care and attention ; not out of ostentation, and a vain ambition 
 of being always learning something, but out of a diligent care to 
 enable herself thereby to live the better, and to avoid sin; and she 
 would commonly have some learned man with her, or near her, to 
 assist her ; whose labour and industry she would well reward. Thus 
 she spent her winter. 
 
 " In the summer time, when she was hungry, she would eat some- 
 thing that was of light and easy digestion, in her chamber, with the 
 windows open to admit the gentle breezes of wind from the gardens 
 or pleasant hills. Sometimes she would do this alone, but more 
 commonly she would have her friends with her then. When she 
 had thus satisfied her hunger and thirst with a moderate repast, she 
 would rest awhile upon an Indian couch, curiously and richly 
 covered. In the winter time she observed the same order; but she 
 omitted her noon sleep. When her day was thus spent, she went 
 late to supper, which was ever sparing, and very moderate. At 
 supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants; and 
 if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and 
 pleasant discourse with great civility. She would also then admit 
 Tarleton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and other such 
 like men, to divert her with stories of the town, and the common jests 
 or accidents; but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and 
 chastity. In the winter time, after supper, she would sometimes hear 
 a song, or a lesson or two played upon the lute; but she would be 
 much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, any reproach 
 or licentious reflection used. Tarleton, who was then the best 
 comedian in England, had made a pleasant play; and when it was 
 acted before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Eawleigh, and said, 
 — ' See, the knave commands the Queen ;' for which he was corrected 
 by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add, that 
 he was of too much and too intolerable a power ; and going on with 
 the same liberty was so universally applauded by all that were 
 present, that she thought fit for the present to bear these reflections 
 with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended, that 
 she forbad Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, 
 being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable 
 liberty. She would talk with learned men that had travelled, in the 
 presence of many, and ask them many questions concerning the 
 government, customs, and discipline used abroad. She loved a 
 natural jester, that would tell a story pleasantly, and humour it with 
 his countenance, and gesture, and voice ; but she hated all those 
 praters who made bold with other men's reputation, or defamed 
 them. She detested, as ominous and unfortunate, all dwarfs and 
 monstrous births. She loved little dogs, singing birds, parrots, and 
 apes; and when she was in private, she would, recreate herself with 
 various discourses, a game at chess, dancing, or singing. Then she 
 would retire into her bedchamber, where she was attended by 
 married ladies of the nobility, the Marchioness of Winchester, then a 
 widow, the Countess of Warwick, and the Lord Scroop's Lady, 
 whose husband was governor of the West Marshes. She would 
 
410 CHARACTER AND HABITS OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 seldom suffer any one to wait upon her there, except Leicester, 
 Hatton, Essex, Nottingham, and Sir Walter Rawleigh, who were 
 more intimately conversant with her than any other of the courtiers. 
 She frequently mixed serious things with her jests and her mirth ; 
 and upon festival-days, and especially in Christmas time, she would 
 play at cards and tables, which was one of her usual pastimes; and 
 if any time she happened to win, she would be sure to demand the 
 money. "When she found herself sleepy, she would take her leave 
 of them that were present with much kindness and gravity, and so 
 betake her to her rest; some lady of good quality, and of her intimate 
 acquaintance, always lying in the same chamber. And besides her 
 guards, that were always upon duty, there was a gentleman of good 
 quality, and some others, up in the next chamber, who were to wake 
 her in case anything extraordinary happened. 
 
 " Though she was endowed with all the goods of nature and 
 fortune, and adorned with all those things which are valuable and to 
 be desired, yet there were some things in her that were capable of 
 amendment, nor was there any mortal, whose virtues were not 
 eclipsed by the neighbourhood of some vices or imperfections. She 
 was subject to he vehemently transported with anger; and when she 
 was so, she would show it by her voice, her countenance, and her 
 hands. She would chide her familiar servants so loud, that they that 
 stood afar off might sometimes hear her voice. And it was reported, 
 that for small offences she would strike her maids of honour with her 
 hand: but then her anger was short, and very innocent; and she 
 learned from Xenophon's book of the Institution of Cyrus, the 
 method of curbing and correcting this unruly and uneasy passion. 
 And when her friends acknowledged their offences, she with an 
 appeased mind easily forgave them many things. She was also of 
 opinion, that severity was safe, and too much clemency was 
 destructive; and, therefore, in her punishments and justice, she was 
 the more severe. 
 
 Some of the panegyric in this account must be taken with 
 allowance ; as, for instance, in what is said of the maiden 
 modesty of Elizabeth's ears. It would be far easier than 
 pleasant to bring proofs to the contrary from plays and other 
 entertainments performed in her presence, and honoured with 
 her thanks. Some of the licenses in them would be held 
 much too gross for the lowest theatre in our days. Allowance, 
 however, is to be made for difference of times ; and consider- 
 ing the grave assumptions that must have been practised at 
 court in more than one respect, and made most likely a matter 
 of conscience towards the community, it may have been none 
 of the least exquisite of them, that what was understood to all 
 the masculine ears present, was unintelligible to those of 
 " Diana," even though she had a goddess's knowledge as well 
 as beauty. 
 
 Of one thing, it surprises us that there could ever have 
 
JAMES I. 411 
 
 been a question ; namely, that Elizabeth was a great as well 
 as fortunate sovereign, — a woman of extraordinary intellect. 
 To the undervaluing remark that she had wise Ministers, it 
 was well answered that she chose them; and if, like most 
 other people, she was less wise and less correct in her conduct 
 than she had the reputation of being, nothing, on that very 
 account, can surely be thought too highly of the wonderful 
 address with which she succeeded in sitting upon the top of 
 the Protestant world as she did throughout her whole reign, 
 supreme over her favourites as well as her Ministers — the 
 refuge of struggling opinion, and the idol of romance. 
 
 Enter James I., on horseback, fresh from hunting, clad all 
 in grass green, with a green feather, shambling limbs, thick 
 features, a spare beard, and a tongue too big for his mouth. 
 He looks about him at the by-standers, half frightened ; yet 
 he has ridden boldly, and been " in at the death." 
 
 The sensations of James the First on getting snugly nestled 
 in the luxurious magnificence of Whitehall must, if possible, 
 have been still more prodigious than those of Elizabeth in her 
 triumphant safety. Coming from a land comparatively desti- 
 tute, and a people whose contentiousness at that time was 
 equal to their valour, and suddenly becoming rich, easy, and 
 possessor of the homage of Elizabeth's sages and cavaliers, the 
 lavish and timid dogmatist must have felt himself in heaven. 
 There are points about the character of this prince, which it is 
 not pleasant to canvass ; but we think the whole of it (like 
 that of other men, if their history were equally known,) 
 traceable to the circumstances of his birth and breeding. He 
 was the son of the accomplished and voluptuous Mary, and 
 the silly and debauched Darnley; his mother, during her 
 pregnancy, saw Eizzio assassinated before her face ; Buchanan 
 was his tutor, and made him a pedant, " which was all," he 
 said, " that he could make of him; " he was a king while yet 
 a child; — and from all these circumstances it is not to be 
 wondered at that he was at once clever and foolish — confident, 
 and, in some respects, of no courage — the son of handsome 
 people, and yet disjointedly put together — and that he con- 
 tinued to be a child as long as he existed. 
 
 Granger, a shrewd man up to a certain pitch, makes a 
 shallow remark upon what Sir Kenelm Digby has said on one 
 of these points in James's history. " Sir Kenelm Digby," 
 says he, " imputes the strong aversion James had to a drawn 
 sword, to the fright his mother was in, during her pregnancy, 
 
412 COURT OF JAMES I. 
 
 at the sight of the sword with which David Rizzio, her 
 secretary, was assassinated in her presence. ' Hence it came,' 
 says this author, ' that her son, King James, had such an 
 aversion, all his life-time, to a naked sword, that he could not 
 see one without a great emotion of the spirits, although other- 
 wise courageous enough; yet he could not over-master his 
 passion in this particular. I remember, when he dubbed me 
 knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword 
 upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but 
 turned his face another way ; insomuch, that, in lieu of 
 touching my shoulder, he had almost thrust the point into 
 my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand 
 aright.' * I shall only add," continues Granger, " to what 
 Sir Kenelm has observed, that James discovered so many 
 marks of pusillanimity, when the sword was at a distance 
 from him, that it is needless in this case to allege that an im- 
 pression was made upon his tender frame before he saw the 
 light." * And then he makes another objection, which, 
 though not so obviously unfounded, is perhaps equally so ; for 
 effects must have causes of some sort ; and among the mysteries 
 of our birth and being, what is more probable, than that the 
 same wonders by which we exist at all, should cause the pecu- 
 liarities of our existence ? The same " tender frame " would 
 produce the general pusillanimity, as well as the particular. 
 
 Before we continue our remarks on the court of James the 
 First, we must look back a moment at that of Elizabeth, to 
 say, that Tallis, Bird, and others, gave dignity to the service 
 of Elizabeth's chapel at Whitehall, by their noble psalmody 
 and organ-playing. Her Majesty, one day, not in quite so 
 appropriate a strain, looked out of her closet in the chapel, 
 and lectured a preacher out loud, for talking indiscreetly of 
 people's age and dress in a sermon ! 
 
 The Court of James the First was a great falling off from 
 that of Elizabeth, in point of decency. It was Sir Toby keeping 
 house after the death of Olivia; or a fox-hunting squire suc- 
 ceeding to the estate of some courtly dame, and mingling 
 low life with high. The open habit of drinking to intoxica- 
 tion, so long the disgrace of England, seems first to have come 
 up in this reign ; yet James, who indulged in it, was remark- 
 able for his edicts against drunkenness. Perhaps he issued 
 them during his fits of penitence ; or out of a piece of his 
 boasted " kingcraft," as a blind to his subjects ; or, at best, as 
 
 * Biographical History of England. Vol. ii., p. 7. Fifth Edition. 
 
REVELS AT THE COURT OF JAMES I. 413 
 
 intimations to them, that the vulgar were not to take liberties 
 like the gods. James's court was as great in inconsistency as 
 himself. His father's grossness, his mother's refinement, and 
 the faults common to both, were equally to be seen in it — 
 drunkenness and poetry, dirt and splendour, impiety with claims 
 to religion, favouritism without principle, the coarsest and 
 most childish buffoonery, and the exquisite fancies of the 
 masque. 
 
 When Christian IV. of Denmark, brother of James's queen, 
 came into England to visit him, both the kings got drunk 
 together. Sir John Harrington the wit, translator of Ariosto 
 (the best English version of 'that poet, till Mr. Stewart Rose's 
 appeared), has left a letter on the subject of the court revels of 
 those days, which makes mention of these royal elegancies, 
 and is on every account worth repeating: — 
 
 SIR JOHN HARRINGTON TO MR. SECRETARY BARLOW. 
 
 [From London] 1606. 
 " My good Friend, 
 
 " In compliance with your asking, now shall you accept 
 my poor accounte of rich doings. I came here a day or two before 
 the Danish King came, and from the day he did come till this hour, I 
 have been well nigh overwhelmed with carousal and sports of all 
 kinds. The sports began each day in such manner and such sorte, as 
 well nigh persuaded me of Mahomet's paradise. We had women, and 
 indeed wine too, of such plenty, as would have astonished each be- 
 holder. Our feasts were magnificent, and the two royal guests did most 
 lovingly embrace each other at table. I think the Dane hath 
 strangely wrought on our good English nobles ; for those whom I 
 could never get to taste good liquor, now follow the fashion, and 
 wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their sobriety, and 
 are seen to roll about in intoxication. In good sooth, the parliament 
 did kindly to provide his Majestieso seasonably with money, for there 
 have been no lack of good livinge, shews, sights, and banquetings 
 from morn to eve. 
 
 " One day a great feast was held, and after dinner the representation 
 of Solomon, his temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was 
 made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made before 
 their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But, 
 alas ! as all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so 
 did prove our presentment thereof. The lady who did play the 
 Queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; 
 but forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets 
 into his Danish Majestie's lap, and fell at his feet, though I think it 
 was rather in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths 
 and napkins were at hand to make all clean. His Majestie then got 
 up, and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and 
 humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber, 
 and laid on a bed of state, which was not a little defiled with the 
 presents of the Queen, which had been bestowed on his garments; 
 
414 HABITS OF JAMES I. 
 
 such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good 
 matters. The entertainment and show went foward, and most of the 
 presenters went backward or fell down; wine did so occupy their 
 upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and 
 Charity. Hope did essay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours 
 so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the king would excuse her 
 brevity. Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not 
 joyned to good works, and left the court in a staggering condition. 
 Charity came to the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of 
 sins her sisters had committed ; in some sorte she made obeyance, 
 and brought giftes, but said she would return home again, as there 
 was no gift which heaven had not already given his Majesty. She 
 then returned to Hope and Faith, who were both sick .... 
 in the lower hall. Next came Victory, in bright armour, and pre- 
 sented a rich sword to the King, who did not accept it, but put it by 
 with his hand; and by a strange medley of versification, did endea- 
 vour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not triumph long; 
 for, after much lamentable utterance, she was led away like a silly 
 captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. Now 
 did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the King; but I 
 grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her 
 attendants ; and much contrary to her semblance, made rudely war 
 with her olive-branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose 
 her coming/'* 
 
 We suspect that some excuse might be found for James's 
 tendency to drinking, in the same lax and ricketty constitu- 
 tion which made him timid and idle. His love of field sports 
 might indeed have given him strength enough to counteract 
 it, had he been forced into greater economy of living ; but 
 the sportsman is seldom famous for eschewing the pleasures 
 of the table; he thinks he has earned, and can afford, excess; 
 and so he can, more than most men. James would have died 
 of idleness and repletion at half the age he did, had he not 
 been a lover of horseback ; but when he got to his table he 
 loved it too well ; one excess produced another ; the nerves 
 required steadying ; and the poor disjointed, "ill-contrived" 
 son of Mary (to use a popular, but truly philosophic epithet,) 
 felt himself too stout and valiant by the help of the bottle, not to 
 become overfond of it when he saw it return. All his feelings 
 were of the same incontinent maudlin kind, easily flowing into 
 temptation, and subjecting themselves to a ruler. The bottle 
 governed him ; the favourite governed him ; his horse and 
 dogs governed him; pedantry governed him; passion governed 
 him ; and when the fit was over, repentance governed him as 
 absolutely. 
 
 * Nugce Antiques, Ed. 1804, vol i., p. 348, et seq. (Quoted in a note 
 to Peyton's " Catastrophe of the Stuarts," in " Secret History of the 
 Court of James I." Vol. ii., p. 387.) 
 
HABITS Of JAMES I. 415 
 
 Sir Anthony Welldon (a discharged servant of James's 
 for writing a banter upon Scotland, and therefore of doubtful 
 authority concerning him, but credible from collateral evi- 
 dence, and in some respects manifestly impartial,) says that 
 there was an organised system of buffoonery for the King's 
 amusement, at the head of which were Sir Edward Souch, 
 singer and relater of indecent stories, Sir John Finet, com- 
 poser of ditto, and Sir George Goring, master of the practical 
 jokes! Sir George sometimes brought two fools riding on 
 people's shoulders, and tilting at one another till they fell 
 together by the ears. The same writer says that James was 
 not addicted to drinking; but in this he is contradicted by 
 every other authority, and indeed a different conclusion may be 
 drawn from what Sir Anthony himself subsequently remarks. 
 Sully (Henry the Fourth's Sully, who was at one time ambas- 
 sador to James, and who tells us that the English monarch 
 usually spent part of the afternoon in bed, " sometimes the 
 whole of it,") says that his custom was " never to mix water 
 with his wine ; " * and Sir Roger Coke says he was — 
 
 " Excessively addicted tc hunting and drinking, not ordinary French 
 and Spanish wines, but strong Greek wines; and though he would 
 divide his hunting from drinking those wines (that is to say, have set 
 times for them, apart), yet he would compound his hunting with 
 drinking those wines ; and to that purpose he was attended with a 
 special officer, who was, as much as could be, always at hand to fill 
 the King's cup in his hunting when he called for it. I have heard my 
 father say that, being hunting with the King, after the King had 
 drank of the wine, he also drank of it, and though he was young and 
 of a healthful constitution, it so disordered his head that it spoiled his 
 pleasure, and disordered him for three days after. Whether it was 
 Irom drinking these wines, or from some other cause, the King 
 became so lazy and unwieldy, that he was thrust on horseback, and 
 as he was set, so he would ride, without otherwise poising himself on 
 his saddle; nay, when his hat was set on his head, he would not take 
 the pains to alter it, but it sat as it was upon him." f 
 
 Perhaps Sir Anthony was fond of the bottle himself, and 
 thought the King drank no more than a gentleman should. 
 It is curious, that Churchill, in his long and laboured invective 
 against James,J does not even allude to this propensity. The 
 poet drank himself ; probably wrote the very invective with 
 the bottle at his side. However, it is strange, nevertheless, 
 he did not turn the habit itself against the Scottish monarch, 
 as a virtue which failed to redeem him and make him a good 
 fellow. 
 
 * Harris, vol. i., p. 17. f Harris, vol. i., p. 79. 
 
 ^ See the Poem of " Gotham 7 in Churchill's works. 
 
416 HABITS OF JAMES I. 
 
 Sir Anthony Welldon's account of James's person and 
 demeanour is so well painted that we must not omit it. It 
 carries with it its own proofs of authenticity, and is one 
 of those animal likenesses which, in certain people, convey 
 the best evidence of the likeness moral : — 
 
 " He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes 
 than in his body, yet fat enough, his clothes being made large and 
 easie, the doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his breeches in great 
 pleits and full stuffed. He was naturally of a timorous disposition, 
 which was the reason of his quilted doublets; his eyes large, ever 
 rolling after any stranger that came in his presence, insomuch as 
 many for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance; 
 his beard was very thin ; his tongue too large for his mouth, which 
 ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very 
 uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each 
 side of his mouth; his skin was as soft as taffeta sarsnet, which felt 
 so because he never washt his hands, onely rubb'd his fingers' ends 
 slightly with the wet end of a napkin; his legs were very weake, 
 having had (as was thought) some foul play in his youth, or rather 
 before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years 
 of age, that weaknesse made him ever leaning on other men's 
 shoulders. His walke was ever circular, his fingers ever in that 
 walke fiddling about." — "In his dyet, apparell, and journeys, he was 
 very constant; in his apparell so constant, as by his good-wili he 
 would never change his clothes, until worn out to ragges; his fashion 
 never — insomuch, as one bringing to him a hat of a Spanish block, 
 he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions, 
 Another time, bringing him roses on his]shooes, he asked, If they would 
 make him a ruffe-footed dove? One yard of sixpenny ribbon served 
 that turn. His diet and journeys were so constant, that the best 
 observing courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven 
 yeares, and then awakened, he would tell where the King every day 
 had been, and every dish he had had at his table."* 
 
 Sir Anthony tells us, that James could be as pleasant in 
 speech, and " witty," as any man, though with a grave face ; 
 and that he never forsook a favourite, not even Somerset, till 
 the " poisoning " stories about the latter forced him. It may 
 be added, that he did not even then forsake Somerset, as far as 
 he could abide by him ; for he gave a pardon to him and his 
 wife for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, though he 
 hanged their agents. This is the greatest blot on James's 
 character; for though it was a very mean thing in him to 
 put Ealeigh to death, we really believe Kaleigh "frightened" 
 him ; and as to his discountenance of the " mourning " for 
 Queen Elizabeth, it appears to us, that, instead of telling 
 against him, and being a thing " ungrateful," it was the least 
 evidence he could give of something like a feeling for his own 
 * Secret History, &c, as above, voL ii., p. 1. 
 
James i. akd fiis favourites. 41 7 
 
 toother whom Elizabeth had put to death. James owed no 
 " gratitude " to Elizabeth. She would manifestly have hindered 
 him from succeeding her, could she in common policy, or 
 regal feeling, have helped it; and she kept him, or tried 
 to keep him, in doubt of his succession to the last. 
 
 James's style of evincing his regard for his favourites was 
 of a maudlin and doating description, not necessary to be 
 dwelt upon ; and it was traceable perhaps to the same causes 
 as his other morbid imperfections ; but the horrible injustice 
 which he would allow these favourites to perpetrate, and his 
 open violation of his own solemn oaths and imprecations of 
 himself to the contrary, deepen the suffocating shadow which 
 is thrown over this part of the history of Whitehall by the 
 perfumes of effeminacy and the poisons of murderous inconti- 
 nence. James's lavish bestowal of other people's money upon 
 his favourites (for it was all money of the State which he 
 gave away, not his own; though, indeed, he might have 
 bestowed it in a less generous style upon himself) was the 
 fault of those who let him give it. There was something 
 hearty and open in the character of Buckingham, though he 
 was a "man of violence" after his fashion, and made White- 
 hall the scene of his " abductions." But the sternest and most 
 formidable testimony we know against the spirit of this 
 prince's favouritism, and the horrors with which it became 
 mixed up, probably against his will, but still with a con- 
 nivance most weak and guilty, is in the verses entitled the 
 " Five Senses," the production of his countryman, admirer, 
 and panegyrist, and one of the most loyal of men to his 
 house — Drummond of Hawthornden, who had formerly 
 written a beautiful eulogium upon him, in a poem which 
 Ben Jonson wished had been his own, the " Eiver of 
 Forth Feasting." It is clear by these verses that Drummond 
 believed in the worst stories related of Somerset and the 
 Court. The history of that unhappy favourite is well 
 known. The Countess of Essex, the young and beautiful 
 wife of the subsequent parliamentary general, fell in love with 
 him, and got divorced from her husband under circumstances 
 of the most revolting indelicacy. Sir Thomas Overbury, an 
 agent of Somerset's, and one of those natures that puzzle us 
 by the extreme inconsistency of a fine and tender genius, 
 combined with a violent worldliness (with such at least is 
 he charged), was to be got rid of for stopping short in his 
 furtherance of their connection after the divorce. He was 
 
418 ANNE OF DENMARK. 
 
 poisoned, and Somerset and his new wife were tried for the 
 murder. Somerset denied it, but was found guilty; the 
 Countess confessed it; yet both were pardoned, while other 
 agents of theirs were hung. There is no rescuing James, 
 after this, from the imputation of the last degree of criminal 
 weakness, to say the least of it. It is said that the other 
 guilty parties (the victims, most likely, of a bad bringing-up,) 
 grew at last as hateful to one another, as they had been the 
 reverse — the dreadfulest punishment of affections destitute of 
 all real regard, and furthered by hateful means. 
 
 We gladly escape from these subjects into the poetical 
 atmosphere of the Masque, the only glory of King James's 
 reign, and the greatest glory of Whitehall. 
 
 But the Masque, in which James's Queen was a performer, 
 reminds us that we must first say a word or two of herself 
 and the other princely inmates of Whitehall during this reign. 
 The Queen, Anne of Denmark, has been represented by some 
 as a woman given to love intrigues, and by others to intrigues 
 political. We take her to have been a common-place woman, 
 given as much perhaps to both as her position and the 
 surrounding example induced ; — the good-natured wife (after 
 her fashion) of a good-natured husband, sympathising with 
 him in his pleasures of the table, and dying of a dropsy. 
 She danced and performed in the Masques at court, not, 
 we should guess, with any exquisite grace. Her daughter 
 Elizabeth, who married the Elector Palatine, afterwards 
 struggling King of Bohemia, and who has found an agreeable 
 biographer and panegyrist in the late Miss Benger, appears to 
 have partaken of her good nature, with more levity, and was 
 very popular with the gentry for her affable manners and her 
 misfortunes. When she accompanied the Elector to the altar, 
 in the chapel at Whitehall, she could not help laughing out 
 loud, at something which struck her fancy. Her brother 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, who died in the flower of his youth, 
 and who, like all princes who die early, has been extolled as 
 a person of wonderful promise, obtained admiration in his 
 day for frequenting the tilt-yard while his father was lying in 
 bed, and for announcing himself as the opponent of his anti- 
 warlike disposition. There was probably quite as much of 
 the opposition of heirs apparent in this, as anything more 
 substantial; for Henry seems to have exhited his father's 
 levity and inconsistency of character. He was thought to be 
 no adorer of the fair sex, yet has the credit of an intrigue 
 
M$ jonson and inkjo jones. 
 
 419 
 
 With the Countess of Essex; and though he reprobated his 
 father's swearing, made no scruple of taunting his brother 
 Charles for his priestly education, and " quizzing " him for 
 not being straight in the legs. As to poor Charles (" Baby 
 Charles," as his father called him, for he was a fond parent, 
 though not a wise one), he became at once the ornament of 
 his family, and the most unfortunate of its members ; but he 
 seems from an early age to have partaken of the weakness 
 of character, and the consequent mixture of easiness and 
 obstinacy, common to the family. Buckingham lorded it 
 over him like a petulant elder brother. He once rebuked 
 him publicly, in language unbefitting a gentleman; and at 
 another time, threatened to give him a knock on the head. 
 
 We have seen court mummeries in the time of Henry the 
 Eighth, and pageants in that of Elizabeth. In the time of 
 James, the masquings of the one, and the gorgeous shows of 
 the other, combined to produce the Masque, in its latest and 
 best acceptation ; that is, a dramatic exhibition of some brief 
 fable or allegory, uniting the most fanciful poetry and scenery, 
 and generally heightened with a contrast of humour, or an 
 anti-masque. Ben Jonson was their great poetical master in 
 the court of James ; and Inigo Jones claimed to be their no 
 less masterly and important setter-forth in scene and show. 
 
 BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL. 
 
 The poet and artist had a quarrel upon this issue, and Tnigo's 
 memory suffers from divers biting libels in the works of his 
 adversary. The noble Banqueting-house remains to show 
 that the architect might have had some right to dispute pre- 
 
 £ E 2 
 
4£0 COUBT OF CHARLES t, 
 
 tensions, even with the author of the " Alchemist " and the 
 " Sad Shepherd ; " for it is a piece of the very music of his 
 art (if we may so speak) — the harmony of proportion. 
 Within these walls, as we now see them, rose, " like a steam 
 of rich distilled perfumes," the elegant lines of Ben Jonson, 
 breathing court flowers, — the clouds and painted columns of 
 Jones — and the fair faces, gorgeous dresses, and dances, of 
 the beauties that dazzled the young eyesight of the Miltons 
 and Wallers. Ben's burly body would then break out, as it 
 were, after his more refined soul, in some burlesque anti- 
 masque, now and then not a little coarse ; and the sovereign 
 and the poet most probably concluded the night in the same 
 manner, though not at the same table, in filling their skins 
 full of wine. 
 
 The Court of Charles I. was decorum and virtue itself in 
 comparison with that of James. Drunkenness disappeared; 
 there were no scandalous favourites ; Buckingham alone 
 retained his ascendency as the friend and assistant ; and the 
 King manifested his notions of the royal dignity by a stately 
 reserve. Little remained externally of the old Court but its 
 splendour; and to this a new lustre was given by a taste for 
 painting, and the patronage of Eubens and Vandyke. Charles 
 was a great collector of pictures. He was still fonder of 
 poetry than his father, retained Ben Jonson as his laureate, 
 encouraged Sandys, and May, and Carew, and was a fond 
 reader of Spenser and Shakspeare; the last of whom is styled 
 by Milton (not in reproach, as Warton strangely supposed ; 
 for how could a poet reproach a King with loving a poet ?) 
 the " closet companion " of the royal " solitudes." Walpole, 
 as Mr. Jesse observes, was of opinion, that — 
 
 " The celebrated festivals of Louis XIV. were copied from the 
 shows exhibited at Whitehall, in its time the most polite court in 
 Europe." Bassompierre, in mentioning his state introduction to 
 Charles and Henrietta, says, " I found the King on a stage raised 
 two steps, the Queen and he on two chairs, who rose on the first bow 
 I made them on coming in. The company was magnificent, and the 
 order exquisite." " I never knew a duller Christmas than we have 
 had this year," writes Mr. Gerrard to the Earl ot Strafford : " but 
 one play all the time at Whitehall, and no dancing at all. The 
 Queen had some little infirmity, the bile or some such thing, which 
 made her keep in; only on Twelfth Night she feasted the King at 
 Somerset House, and presented him with a play newly studied, the 
 Faithful Shepherdess (Fletcher's) which the King's players acted in 
 the robes she and her ladies acted their pastoral in last year. I had 
 almost forgot to tell your Lordship, that the dicing night, the King 
 carried away in James Palmer's hat 1,850/. The Queen was his help, 
 
COURT OF CHARLES I. 421 
 
 and brought him that luck; she shared presently 900/. There are 
 two masques in hand; first, the Inns ot Court, which is to be pre- 
 sented on Candlemas-day; the other, the King presents the Queen 
 with on Shrove Tuesday, at night: high expenses; they speak of 
 20,000/. that it will cost the men of the law." * 
 
 " Charles was not only well informed," says Mr. Jesse, " in all 
 matters of court etiquette, and in the particular duties of each indivi- 
 dual of his household, but enjoined their performance with remark- 
 able strictness. Ferdinand Masham, one oi the esquires of his body, 
 has recorded a curious anecdote relative to the King's nice exaction 
 of such observances. ' I remember,' he says, ' that coming to the 
 King's bedchamber door, which was bolted in the inside, the Earl of 
 Bristol, then being in waiting and lying there, he unbolted the door 
 upon my knocking, and asked me " What news ? " I told him I 
 had a letter lor the King. The earl then demanded the letter of me, 
 which I told him I could deliver to none but to the King himself; 
 upon which the King said, " The esquire is in the right: for he ought 
 not to deliver any letter or message to any but myself, he being at this 
 time the chief officer of my house; and if he had delivered the letter 
 to any other, I should not have thought him fit for his place." ' It 
 seems, that after a certain hour, when the guard was set, and the 
 ' all right ' served up, the royal household was considered under 
 the sole command of the esquire in waiting. ' The King,' says 
 Lord Clarendon, ' kept state to the full, which made his court very 
 orderly, no man presuming to be seen where he had no pretence to 
 be.'"t 
 
 The truth is, that both from greater virtue and a less 
 jovial temperament, Charles carried his improvement upon 
 the levity of his father's court too far. Public opinion had 
 long been quitting the old track of an undiscerning submis- 
 sion; and, though it was the King's interest to avoid scandal, 
 it was not so to provoke dislike. It was on the side of 
 manner in which he failed. His reformations, the more scanda- 
 lous ones excepted, appear to have been rather external than 
 otherwise. Mrs. Hutchinson, while she speaks of them highly, 
 intimates that there was still a good deal of private licence ; 
 and though it is asserted that Charles discountenanced swear- 
 ing, perhaps even this was only by comparison. It is 
 reported of Charles II., that in answer to a remonstrance 
 made to him on the oaths in which he indulged, he exclaimed 
 in a very irreverent and unfilial manner, " Oaths ! why, your 
 Martyr was a greater swearer than I am." It has been ques- 
 tioned also, whether in other respects Charles's private con- 
 duct was so " immaculate," to use Mr. Jesse's phrase, as the 
 solemnity of his latter years and his fate has led most people 
 
 * Jesse's Memoirs of the Court of England during the Eeign of 
 the Stuarts, vol. ii., p. 91, 
 f Ibid., p. 94. 
 
422 CHARACTER OF CHARLES I. 
 
 to conclude. Indeed, it is a little surprising how anybody, 
 partisans excepted, could Have supposed, that a prince, 
 brought up as he was, and the friend of Buckingham, 
 should be entirely free from the licence of the time. His 
 manners and speeches to women, though not gross for that 
 age, would be thought coarse now; and, at all events, were 
 proofs of a habit of thinking quite in unison with custom. 
 But the present age has been far stricter in its judgment on 
 these points than any which preceded it — at least up to the 
 time of George III. It was not the question of his gallantries, 
 or of his freedom with them, that had anything to do with 
 Charles's unpopularity. The people will pardon a hundred 
 gallantries sooner than one want of sympathy. Charles I. 
 would not have been unpopular in the midst of court elegan- 
 cies, if he had not been stiff and repulsive in his manners. 
 Unfortunately he wanted address; he had a hesitation in his 
 speech ; and his consciousness of a delicate organization and 
 of infirmity of purpose, with the addition of a good deal of 
 the will common to most people, and particularly encouraged 
 in princes, made him afraid of being thought weak and easy. 
 He therefore, in what he thought self-defence, took to an 
 offensive coldness and dryness of behaviour, and gradually 
 became not unwilling even to wreak upon other people the 
 irritability occasioned by it to himself. He got into unseemly 
 passions with ambassadors, and neither knew how to refuse a 
 petition gracefully, nor to repel an undue assumption with 
 real superiority. Even his troubles did not teach him 
 wisdom in these respects till the very last. He was riding 
 out one day during the wars, when a "Dr. Wykes, dean of 
 Burian in Cornwall," says Mr. Jesse, " an inveterate punster, 
 happened to be near him, extremely well mounted. ' Doctor,' 
 said the King, ' you have a pretty nag under you ; I pray, 
 how old is he?' Wykes, unable to repress, even in the 
 presence of majesty, the indifferent conceit which presented 
 itself, 'If it please your Majesty' he said, 'he is in the 
 second year of his reign ' (rein). Charles discovered some 
 displeasure at this unlicensed ribaldry. ' Go,' he replied, 
 ' you are a fool ! ' " Now that the dean was a fool there can 
 be no doubt ; but that this blunt, offensive, and never-to-be- 
 forgotten word was the only one which a king in a state of 
 war with his subjects could find, in order to discountenance 
 his folly, shows a lamentable habit of subjecting the greater 
 consideration to the less. 
 
QUEEN HENRIETTA. 423 
 
 Unluckily for Charles's dignity in the eyes of his attend- 
 ants, and for his ultimate welfare with the people, there was 
 a contest of irritability too often going forward between him 
 and his consort Henrietta; in which the latter, by dint 
 perhaps of being really the weaker of the two, generally con- 
 trived to remain conqueror. Swift has recorded an extraor- 
 dinary instance of her violence in his list of Mean and Great 
 Fortunes. He says, that one day Charles made a present to 
 his wife of a handsome brooch, and gallantly endeavouring 
 to fix it in her bosom, happened unfortunately to wound the 
 skin, upon which her Majesty, in a fit of passion, and in the 
 presence of the whole court, took the brooch out and dashed 
 and trampled it on the floor. The trouble that Charles had 
 to get rid of Henrietta's noisy and meddling French attend- 
 ants, not long after his marriage, is well known; but not 
 so, that, having contrived to turn the key upon her in 
 order that she might not behold their departure, " she fell 
 into a rage beyond all bounds, tore the hair from her head, 
 and cut her hands severely by dashing them through the glass 
 windows." * 
 
 When not offended, however, the Queen's manners were 
 lively and agreeable. We are to imagine the time of the 
 court divided between her Majesty's coquetries, and accom- 
 plishments, and Catholic confessors, and the King's books, 
 and huntings, and political anxieties; Buckingham, as long 
 as he lived, being the foremost figure next to himself ; and 
 Laud and Strafford domineering after Buckingham. In the 
 morning the ladies embroidered and read huge romances, or 
 practised their music and dancing (the latter sometimes with 
 great noise in the Queen's apartments), or they went forth to 
 steal a visit to a fortune-teller, or to see a picture by Rubens, 
 or to sit for a portrait to Vandyke, who married one of theni. 
 In the evening there was a masque, or a ball, or a concert, or 
 gaming; the Sucklings, the Wallers, and Carews repeated 
 their soft things, or their verses ; and " Sacharissa " (Lady 
 Dorothy Sydney) doubted Mr. Waller's love, and glanced 
 towards sincere-looking Henry Spencer ; Lady Carlisle flirted 
 with the Eiches and Herberts ; Lady Morton looked grave ; 
 the Queen threw round the circle bright glances and French 
 mots; and the King criticised a picture with Vandyke or 
 Lord Pembroke, or a poem with Mr. Sandys (who, besides 
 being a poet, was gentleman of his Majesty's chamber) ; or 
 * Jesse, vol. ii., p. 79, 
 
424 COURT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 perhaps he took Hamilton or Strafford into a corner, and 
 talked, not so wisely, against the House of Commons. It was, 
 upon the whole, a grave and a graceful court, not without an 
 under-current of intrigue. 
 
 It seems ridiculous to talk of the court of Oliver Cromwell, 
 who had so many severe matters to attend to in order to keep 
 himself on his throne ; but he had a court, nevertheless ; 
 and, however jealously it was watched by the most influential 
 of his adherents, it grew more courtly as his protectorate 
 advanced ; and it must always have been attended with a 
 respect which Charles knew not sufficiently how to insure, 
 and James not at all. Its dinners were not very luxurious, 
 and the dishes appear to have been brought in by the heavy 
 gentlemen of his guard. In April, 1654, we read of the 
 "grey coats" of these gentlemen, with " black velvet collars, 
 and silver lace and trimmings" — a very sober effort at ele- 
 gance. Here his daughters would pay him visits of a morn- 
 ing, fluttering betwixt pride and anxiety ; and his mother sit 
 with greater feelings of both, starting whenever she heard a 
 noise : flocks of officers came to a daily table, at which he 
 would cheerfully converse ; and now and then ambassadors 
 or the Parliament were feasted ; and in the evening, perhaps 
 after a portion of a sermon from his Highness, there would 
 be the consciousness of a princely presence, and something 
 like a courtly joy. In the circle Waller himself was to be 
 found (making good the doubts of " Sacharissa"), and Lord 
 Broghill, the friend of Suckling, who refused to join him ; 
 and Lady Carlisle, growing old, but still setting her beauty- 
 spots at the saints ; and Eichard Cromwell, heir-apparent, 
 whom Dick Ingoldsby is forcing to die with laughter, though 
 severe Fleetwood is looking that way ; and the future author 
 of Paradise Lost talking Italian with the envoys from the 
 Apennines ; and Marvel, his brother secretary, chuckling to 
 hear from the Swedish ambassador the proposal of a visit 
 from Queen Christina ; and young Dryden, bashfully venturing 
 in under the wing of his uncle Sir Gilbert Pickering, the 
 chamberlain. There was sometimes even a concert ; Crom- 
 well's love of music prevailing against the un-angelical 
 denouncements of it from the pulpit. The Protector would 
 also talk of his morning's princely diversion of hunting ; or 
 converse with his daughters and the foreign ambassadors, 
 some of which latter had that day paid their respects to the 
 former, as to royal personages, on their arrival in England j 
 
COURT OF CHARLES II. 425 
 
 or if the evening were that of a christening or a marriage, or 
 other festive solemnity, his Highness, not choosing to forget 
 the rough pleasures of his youth, and combining, perhaps, 
 with the recollection something of an hysterical sense of his 
 present wondrous condition, would think it not unbecoming 
 his dignity to recall the days of King James, and bedaub the 
 ladies with sweetmeats, or pelt the heads of his brother 
 generals with the chair cushions. Nevertheless, he could 
 resume his state with an air that inspired the pencil of Peter 
 Lely beyond its fopperies ; and Mazarin at Paris trembled in 
 his chair to think of it. 
 
 But how shall we speak of the court of Charles II. ? of 
 that unblushing seminary for the misdirection of young 
 ladies, which, occupying the ground now inhabited by all 
 which is proper, rendered the mass of buildings by the 
 water's side, from Charing Cross to the Parliament, one 
 vast — what are we to call it ? — 
 
 " Chi mi dara le voci e le parole 
 Convenienti a si nobil soggetto ? " 
 
 Let Mr. Pepys explain. Let Clarendon explain. Let all the 
 world explain, who equally reprobate the place and its master, 
 and yet somehow are so willing to hear it reprobated, that 
 they read endless accounts of it, old and new, from the not 
 very bashful expose of the Count de Grammont, down to the 
 blushing deprecations of Mrs. Jameson. Mr. Jesse himself 
 begins with emphatically observing, that " a professed apology 
 either for the character or conduct of Charles II. might 
 almost be considered as an insult to public rectitude and 
 female virtue ; " yet he proceeds to say, that there is a charm 
 nevertheless in " all that concerns the ' merry monarch,' 
 which has served to rescue him from entire reprobation;" 
 and accordingly he proceeds to devote to him the largest 
 portion given to any of his princes, not omitting particulars 
 of all his natural children ; and winding up with separate 
 memoirs of the maids of honour, the mistresses, and those 
 confidential gentlemen — Messrs. Chifnnch, Prodgers, and 
 Brouncker. 
 
 Upon the reason of this apparent contradiction between 
 the morals and toleration of the reading world, we have 
 touched before ; and we think it will not be expected of 
 us to enter further into its metaphysics. The court is before 
 us, and we must paint it, whatever we may think of the 
 matter. We shall only observe in the outset, that the 
 
426 CHARACTER OF CHARLES II. 
 
 " merry monarch," besides not being handsome, had the most 
 serious face, perhaps, of any man in his dominions. It was 
 as full of hard lines as it was swarthy. If the assembled 
 world could have called out to have a specimen of a " man of 
 pleasure" brought before it, and Charles could have been 
 presented, we know not which would have been greater, the 
 laughter or the groans. However, "merry monarch" he is 
 called ; and merry doubtless he was, as far as his numerous 
 cares and headaches would let him be. Nor should it be 
 forgotten that cares, necessities, and bad example, conspired, 
 from early youth, to make him the man he was. We know 
 not which did him the more harm — the jovial despair of his 
 fellow exiles, or the sour and repulsive reputation which 
 morals and good conduct had acquired from the gloominess of 
 the Puritans. 
 
 Charles was of good height as well as figure, and not 
 ungraceful. Andrew Marvel has at once painted and inti- 
 mated an excuse for him, in an exordium touching upon the 
 associates of his banishment. His allusion to the filial occu- 
 pation of Saul is very witty : — 
 
 " Of a tall stature and a sable hue, 
 Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew ; 
 Ten years of need he suffer'd in exile, 
 And kept his father's asses all the while." 
 
 He was a rapid and a constant walker, to settle his nerves ; 
 talked affably with his subjects ; had a parcel of little dogs 
 about him, which did not improve the apartments at White- 
 hall ; hated business ; delighted to saunter from one person's 
 rooms at court to another's, in order to pass the time ; was 
 fond of wit, and not without it himself; drank and gamed, 
 and was in constant want of money for his mistresses, which 
 ultimately rendered him a scandalous pensioner upon the 
 King of France ; in short, was a selfish man, partly by tem- 
 perament, and partly from his early experience of others ; but 
 was not ill-natured ; and, like his grandfather James, would 
 live and let live, provided his pleasures were untouched. His 
 swarthiness he got from the Italian stock of the Medici, and 
 his animal spirits from Italy or France, or both : they were 
 certainly not inherited from his father. 
 
 The man thus constituted was suddenly transferred from 
 an exile full of straits and mortifications into the rich and 
 glorious throne of England. The people, sick of gloom and 
 disappointment, were as mad to receive him as he was to 
 come. It was May, and all England dressed itself in garlands 
 
CHAKLES H. AND HIS QUEEN. 427 
 
 and finery. Crowds shouted at him ; music floated around 
 his steps ; young females strewed flowers at his feet ; gold 
 was poured into his pockets ; and clergymen blessed him. 
 He receives the homage of Church and State ; and goes the 
 same night to sup with Mrs. Barbara Palmer, at a house in 
 Lambeth. 
 
 Such was the event which, by an epithet that has since 
 acquired a twofold significancy, has been called the " blessed 
 Restoration." Orthodoxy and loyalty had obtained an awk- 
 ward champion. 
 
 Mrs. Palmer soon restored the King to Whitehall by coming 
 there herself, where she became in due time Countess of 
 Castlemain, Duchess of Cleveland, and mother of three dukes 
 and as many daughters. This was for the benefit of the 
 peerage. But Charles, for the benefit of royalty, was unfor- 
 tunately compelled to have a wife ; though, as an alleviation 
 of the misfortune, his wife, he reflected, would have an esta- 
 blishment, with ladies of the bedchamber ; nay, with a pleasing 
 addition of maids of honour. He therefore put what face he 
 could on the matter, and wedded Catharine of Braganza. 
 When Lady Castlemain was presented to her as one of the 
 ladies, the poor Queen burst out a-bleeding at the nose. It 
 took a good while to reconcile the royal lady to the " other 
 lady" (Clarendon's constant term for her), but it was done in 
 time, to the astonishment of most, and disgust of some. 
 Clarendon was one of the instruments that effected the good 
 work. From thenceforth the Queen was contented to get 
 what amusement she could, and was as merry as the rest. 
 She was not an ill-looking woman; was as fond of dancing as 
 her husband ; and he used good-naturedly to try to make her 
 talk improper broken English, and would not let her be 
 persecuted. 
 
 Whitehall now adjusted itself to the system which pre- 
 vailed through this reign, and which may be described as 
 follows : we do not paint it at one point of time only, but 
 through the whole period. 
 
 Charles walked a good deal in the morning, perhaps 
 played at ball or tennis, chatted with those he met, fed his 
 dogs and his ducks, looked in at the cockpit, sometimes did 
 a little business, then sauntered in-doors about Whitehall ; 
 chatted in Miss Wells' room, in Miss Price's room, in 
 Miss Stuart's room, or Miss Hamilton's ; chatted in Mr. 
 Chiifinch's room, or with Mr. Prodgers ; then dined, and took 
 
428 CHARLES II. AND HIS COURT. 
 
 enough of wine ; had a ball or a concert, where he devoted 
 himself to Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, or 
 whoever the reigning lady was, the Queen talking all the 
 while as fast as she could to some other lady ; then, perhaps, 
 played at riddles, or joked with Buckingham and Killigrew, 
 or talked of the intrigues of the court — the great topic of the 
 day. Sometimes the ladies rode out with him in the morning, 
 perhaps in men's hats and feathers ; sometimes they went to 
 the play, where the favourite was jealous of the actresses ; 
 sometimes an actress is introduced at court and becomes a 
 " madam" herself — Madam Davis, or Madam Eleanor Gwyn. 
 Sometimes the Queen treats them with a cup of the precious 
 and unpurchasable beverage called tea, or even ventures 
 abroad with them in a frolicsome disguise. Sometimes the 
 courtiers are at Hampton, playing at hide-and-seek in a 
 labyrinth ; sometimes at Windsor, the ladies sitting half- 
 dressed for Sir Peter Lely's voluptuous portraits. 
 
 Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nell 
 Gwyn, all have their respective lodgings in Whitehall, looking 
 out upon gardens, elegant with balconies and trellises. By 
 degrees the little dukes grow bigger, and there is in particular 
 a great romping boy, very handsome, called Master Crofts, 
 afterwards Duke of Monmouth, who is the protege of Lady 
 Castlemain, though his mother was Mrs. Walters, and who 
 takes the most unimaginable liberties in all quarters. He 
 annoys exceedingly the solemn Duke of York, the King's 
 brother, who heavily imitates the reigning gallantries, stupidly 
 following some lady about without uttering a word, and who 
 afterwards cut off the said young gentleman's head. The 
 concerts are French, partly got up by St. Evremond and the 
 Duchess of Mazarin, who come to hear them ; and there, in 
 addition to the ladies before mentioned, come also the Duchess 
 of Buckingham, short and thick, (daughter of the old Parlia- 
 mentary general, Fairfax,) and Lady Ossory, charming and 
 modest, and the Countess of Shrewsbury, who was neither, 
 and Lady Falmouth, with eyes at which Lord Dorset never 
 ceased to look, and the Duchess of York (Clarendon's daugh- 
 ter), eating something, and divine old Lady Fanshawe, who 
 crept out of the cabin in a sea-fight to stand by her husband's 
 side. The Queen has brought her there, grateful for a new 
 set of sarabands, at which Mr. Waller is expressing hi3 
 rapture — Waller, the visitor of three courts, and admired and 
 despised in them all. Behind him stands Dryden, with a 
 
COURT CHRONICLES OF PEPYS. 429 
 
 quiet and somewhat down-looking face, finishing a couplet of 
 satire. "Handsome Sydney" is among the ladies; and so is 
 Ralph Montague, who loved ugly dogs because nobody else 
 would ; and Harry Jermyn, who got before all the gallants, 
 because he was in earnest. Rochester, thin and flushed, is 
 laughing in a corner at Charles's grim looks of fatigue and 
 exhaustion ; Clarendon is vainly flattering himself that he is 
 diverting the king's ennui with a long story ; Grammont is 
 shrugging his shoulders at not being able to get in a word ; 
 and Buckingham is making Sedley and Etherege ready to die 
 of laughter by his mimicry of the poor Chancellor. 
 
 The following delicate morceaux from the pages of our 
 friend Pepys will illustrate the passages respecting my Lady 
 Castlemain and others. 
 
 " 1660— Sept. 14.— To White Hall Chappell, where one Dr. Crofts 
 made an indifferent sermon, and after it an anthem, ill sung, which 
 made the King laugh. Here I first did see the Princesse Royall since 
 she came into England. Here I also observed, how the Duke of York 
 (James II.) and Mrs. Palmer (Lady Castlemaine) did talk to one 
 another very wantonly through the hangings that part the king's 
 closet and the closet where the ladies sit. 
 
 "May 21. — My wife and I to Lord's lodgings, where she and I staid 
 talking in White Hall Garden. And in the Privy-garden saw the 
 finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's, laced 
 with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw ; and did me good to 
 look at them. Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castle- 
 maine's, and supped, every day and night the last week ; and that the 
 night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queene's arrival, the 
 King was there ; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the 
 rest of the doors almost in the street ; which was much observed ; 
 and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed 
 one another ; and she being with child, was said to be heaviest. But 
 she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of doors, 
 since the King's going (to meet his wife). 
 
 " August 23d. — Walked to White Hall, and through my Lord's 
 lodgings we got into White Hall Garden, and so to the Bowling- 
 greene, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over 
 the Thames, which was a most pleasant place as any I could have 
 got ; and all the show consisted chiefly in the number of boats and 
 barges ; and two pageants, one of a king, and the other a queene, 
 with her maydes of honour sitting at her feet very prettily ; and they 
 tell me the queene is Sir Richard Eord's daughter. Anon come the 
 King and Queene in a barge under a canopy with 1,000 barges and 
 boats I know, for they could see no water for them, nor discern the 
 King nor Queene. And so they landed at White Hall Bridge, and 
 the great guns on the other side went off. But that which pleased 
 me best was, that my Lady Castlemaine stood over against us upon a 
 piece of White Hall. But methought it was strange to see her lord 
 and her upon the same place walking up and down without taking 
 notice one of another, only at first entry he put off his hat, and she 
 
430 COURT CHRONICLES OF PEPtS. 
 
 made him a very civil salute, but afterwards took no notice one of 
 another; but both of them now and then would take their child, 
 which the nurse held in her armes, and dandle it. One thing more ; 
 there happened a scaffold below to fall, and we feared much hurt, but 
 there was none, but she of all the great ladies only run down among 
 the common rabble to see what hurt was done, and did take care of a 
 child that received some little hurt, which methought was so noble. 
 Anon, there come one there booted and spurred that she talked long 
 with, and by and by, she being in her haire, she put on his hat, which 
 was but an ordinary one, to keep the wind off. But it become her 
 mightily, as everything else do." 
 
 What Pepys thought "noble" was probably nothing more 
 than the consequence of a habit of doing what she pleased, in 
 spite of appearances. The "hat" is a comment on it, to the 
 same effect. 
 
 "December 25th. — Christmas Day. — Had a pleasant walk to 
 White Hall, where I intended to have received the communion with 
 the family, but I come a little too late. So I walked* up into the 
 house and spent my time looking over pictures, particularly the ships 
 in King Henry the VHIth's Voyage to Bullonn*, marking the great 
 difference between those built then and now. By and by, down to 
 the chapel again, where Bishop Morley preached upon the song of 
 the angels, ' Glory to God on high, on earth peace, and good- will 
 towards men.' Methought he made but a poor sermon, but long, 
 and reprehending the common jollity of the court for the true joy that 
 shall and ought to be on these days; particularized concerning their 
 excess in playes and gaming, saying, that he whose office it is to keep 
 the gamesters in order and within bounds, serves but for a second 
 rather in a duell, meaning the groome-porter. Upon which it was 
 worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions 
 of a bishop seriously, that they all laugh in the chapel when he 
 reflected on their ill actions and courses. He did much press us 
 to joy in these publick days of joy, and to hospitality. But one 
 that stood by whispered in my ear that the bishop himself do not 
 spend one groate to the poor himself. The sermon done, a good 
 anthem followed with violls, and the King come down to receive the 
 sacrament. 
 
 "1662-3 — February 1st. — This day Creed and I walking in White 
 Hall did see the King coming privately from my Lady Castlemaine's; 
 which is a poor thing for a Prince to do: and so I expressed my sense 
 of it to Creed in terms which I should not have done, but that 
 I believe he is trusty in that point." 
 
 The court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted 
 less than four years, and was as dull, as himself. The most 
 remarkable circumstance attending it was the sight of friars 
 and confessors, and the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, 
 too, was once seen there; the fourth court of his visiting. 
 There was a poetess also, who appears to have been attached 
 
 * Boulogne. 
 
S*r. James's pask. 431 
 
 hy regard as well as office to the court of James — Anne 
 Kingsmill, better known by her subsequent title of Countess 
 of Winchilsea. The attachment was most probably one of 
 feeling only and good-nature, for she had no bigotry of any 
 sort. Dryden, furthermore, was laureate to King James ; and 
 in a fit of politic, perhaps real, regret, turned round upon 
 the late court in his famous comparison of it with its pre- 
 decessor. 
 
 James fled from England in December, 1688, and the 
 history of Whitehall terminates with its conflagration, ten 
 years afterwards. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 St. James's Park and its associations. — Unhealthiness of the Place 
 and neighbourhood. — Leper Hospital of St. James. — Henry the 
 Eighth builds St. James's Palace and the Tilt Yard. — Original 
 State and Progressive Character of the Park. — Charles the First. — 
 Cromwell. — Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and 
 Mistresses. — The Mulberry Gardens. — Swift, Prior, Richardson, 
 Beau Tibbs, Soldiers, and Syllabubs. — Character of the Park at 
 present. — St. James's Palace during the Reigns of the Stuarts and 
 two first Georges. — Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George 
 of Denmark. — Characters of Queen Anne and of George the First 
 and Second. — George the First and his Carp. — Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu and the Sack of Wheat. — Horace Walpole's Portrait of 
 George the First. — The Mistresses of that King, and of his Son. — 
 Mistake of Lord Chesterfield. — Queen Caroline's Ladies in Waiting. 
 — Miss Bellenden and the Guineas. — George the Second's Rupture 
 with his Father, and with his Son. — Character of that Son. — Buck- 
 ingham House. — Sheffield and his Duchess. — Character of Queen 
 Charlotte. — Advantages of Queen Victoria over her predecessors. 
 
 T. JAMES'S PARK is associated in con- 
 temporary minds with nothing but amus- 
 ing recollections of bands of music 
 marching soldiers, maid-servants and 
 children, drinkings of "milk from the 
 cow," the hoop-petticoats of the court 
 days of George the Third, and fading 
 images of passages in novels, or of shabby- 
 genteel debtors sitting lounging on the 
 benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist 
 himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his 
 health j then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way 
 
432 UNHEALTHY SITE OF ST. JAMES'S PARK* 
 
 to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond's Pond; 
 then the gallants of the time of Charles the Second, with 
 Charles himself feeding his ducks and playing at mall; then 
 his unhappy father led through it from St. James's Palace on 
 his way to the scaffold at Whitehall; and then the chival- 
 resque sports of the Tudors in the famous tilt-yard, which 
 occupied the site of the Horse Guards. To all these points 
 we shall return for the purpose of entering into a few par- 
 ticulars ; but as geographers begin their accounts of a place 
 with the soil, we shall first make a few remarks of a like 
 nature. 
 
 The site of this park, which must always have been low 
 and wet, is said in the days before the Conquest to have been 
 a swamp. Yet so little understood, not only at that time but 
 any time till within these few years, were those vitalest arts 
 of life which have been disclosed to us by the Southwood 
 Smiths and others, that the good citizens of London in those 
 days built a hospital upon it for lepers (by way of purifying 
 their skins), and people of rank and fashion have been 
 clustering about it more and more ever since, especially of late 
 years. " If a merry-meeting is to be wished," says the man 
 in Shakspeare, " may God prohibit it." If our health is to be 
 injured while in town by luxury and late nights, say the men 
 of State and Parliament, let us all go and make it worse in 
 the bad air of Belgravia. Nay, let us sit with our feet in the 
 water, while in Parliament itself, and then let us aggravate 
 our agues in Pimlico and the park. — There is no use in 
 mincing the matter, even though the property of a great 
 lord be doubled by the mistake. The fashionable world 
 should have stuck to Marylebone and the good old dry parts 
 of the metropolis, or gone up hill to Kensington gravel-pits, or 
 into any other wholesome quarter of the town or suburbs, 
 rather than have descended to the water-side, and built in 
 the mush of Pimlico. Building and house-warming doubtless 
 make a difference; and wealth has the usual advantages com- 
 pared with poverty: but the malaria is not done away. A 
 professional authority on the subject gave the warning five 
 and twenty years ago in the Edinburgh Review ; but what are 
 warnings to house-building and fashion? " It is not suspected," 
 he says (vol. xxxvi. p. 341) " that St. James's Park is a per- 
 petual source of malaria, producing frequent intermittents, 
 autumnal dysenteries, and various derangements of health, 
 in all the inhabitants who are subject to its influence. The 
 
THE LEPER HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. 433 
 
 cause being unsuspected, the evil is endured, and no further 
 inquiries are made." The malaria (he tells us in another 
 passage of the same article) " spreads even to Bridge Street 
 and Whitehall. Nay, in making use of the most delicate 
 miasmometer (if we may coin such a word) that we ever 
 possessed, an officer who had suffered at Walcheren, we have 
 found it reaching up to St. James's Street even to Bruton 
 Street, although the rise of ground is here considerable, 
 and the whole space from the nearest water is crowded with 
 houses." 
 
 This statement, corroborated as it is by the obvious nature 
 of the soil and air in the park, where the people to any eye 
 coming from higher ground seem walking about only in a 
 thinner kind of water — a perpetual haze and mugginess — 
 ought to settle the question respecting the doom of Bucking- 
 ham Palace. Her Majesty, whose life and comfort are pre- 
 cious to her subjects, should have her town residence in quite 
 another sort of place. Almost everything indeed, artificial 
 as well as natural, conspires to render the spot unwholesome. 
 See what the royal lungs receive on all sides of the present 
 abode whichever way the windows are opened. In front of 
 it is the steam of the mushy ground and the canal ; on the 
 left comes draining down the wet of Constitution Hill; and 
 on the right and at the back are the vapours of the river and 
 the pestilential smokes of the manufactories. What an air 
 in which to set forth the colours of the royal flag and 
 refresh the anxieties of the owne'r ! We never look down 
 on the flag from Piccadilly, but we long to see it announc- 
 ing the royal presence on higher ground and in a healthy 
 breeze. 
 
 The Leper Hospital, being the ancientest known domicile 
 in the spot before us, stood on the site of the present St. 
 James's Palace; so that where state and fashion have con- 
 gregated, and blooming beauties come laughing through the 
 trees, was once heard the dismal sound of the " cup and 
 clapper," which solicited charity for the most revolting of 
 diseases. The spot was probably selected for the hospital, 
 not only as being at the greatest convenient distance from the 
 habitations of the good citizens its founders (lepers being 
 always put as far as possible out of the way), but because it 
 suggested itself to the imagination as possessed of an analo- 
 gous dreariness and squalidity. Unfavourable circumstances 
 in those days were only thought fit for one another, not for 
 
 F F 
 
434 THE LEPEK HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. 
 
 the super-induction of favourable ones. The lunatic was to 
 be exasperated by whips and dark-keeping, and the leper 
 thrust into the ditch. The world had not yet found out that 
 light, cleanliness, and consolation were good for all. Imagine 
 this " lake of the dismal swamp," now St. James's Park, with 
 not another house nearer to it than the walls at Ludgate, 
 presenting to the timid eyes of the Sunday pedestrian its 
 lonely spital, which at once attracted his charity and repelled 
 his presence (for leprosy was thought infectious), the wind 
 sighing through the trees, and the rain mingling with the pes- 
 tilential-looking mud. 
 
 The endowment of St. James's Hospital is said to have 
 been originally for women only, fourteen in number, to 
 ■whom were subsequently added eight brethren " to administer 
 divine service." They were probably, however, in a good 
 condition of life — " leper ladies," as an old poem styles the 
 companions of Cressida; but ladies, according to the poem, 
 were not exempt from the duty of asking alms with the " cup 
 and clapper ; " and as it was probably a part of their business 
 and humiliation to -watch for the appearance of wayfarers, 
 and accost them with cries and clamour, scenes of that 
 kind may have taken place in the walk now constituting the 
 Mall. 
 
 The hospital was exchanged with Henry the Eighth for 
 u a consideration ; " and upon its site, or near it, that soul of 
 leprosy built a manor, and transferred into it his own bloated 
 and corrupted body. He was then in the forty-third year of 
 his age, and in the same year (1532) he married poor Anne 
 Boleyn. The town-residences (as they would now be called) 
 of the kings of England had hitherto been at Kensington, 
 or on the banks of the Thames at London and Westminster 
 (such as the Tower, Westminster Hall, &c.) What it was 
 that attracted Henry to the Leper Hospital it is difficult to 
 conceive; though the neighbourhood, no doubt, had become 
 a little cleansed and refined by the growth of Westminster 
 and Whitehall. Much neatness was not required by a state 
 of manners, which, according to Erasmus, must have been 
 one of the dirtiest in Europe, and which allowed the refuse 
 of meats and drinks, in gentlemen's houses, to collect under 
 the rushes in the dining-rooms. Perhaps the new palace was 
 to be a place of retirement for the King and his thoughtless 
 victim, whom four years afterwards he put to death. Most 
 likely, how r ever, his great object was to grasp all he could. 
 
st. james's palace. 435 
 
 and add to the number of his parks and amusements; for 
 the whole of the St. James's Fields (as they were called) fell 
 into his hands with the house, and he stocked them with 
 game, built a tilt-yard in front of Whitehall, on the site of 
 the present Horse Guards, together with a cock -pit in its 
 neighbourhood ; and on the downfall of Wolsey took posses- 
 sion of Whitehall itself, which thenceforth became added to 
 the list of royal abodes. The new palace could never have 
 been handsome. It had the homely look which it retains to 
 
 ST. james's palace. 1650. 
 
 this day, as the reader will see in the print before him ; the 
 gateway looking up St. James's Street being evidently a 
 remnant of it. 
 
 The Tilt Yard, as its name implies, was the chief scene of 
 knightly amusement in the reigns of the Tudors. Here 
 Henry jousted till he grew too fat ; and here Elizabeth sat 
 at the receipt of chivalrous adulation. The spot is full of 
 life and colour in the eyes of one's imagination, with heralds 
 and coats of arms, plumed champions, caparisoned steeds, 
 and courts looking on from draperied galleries. The pre- 
 sent tranquil exercises on parade may be considered as a 
 remnant of the old military shows. But the people had no 
 admittance within the court grounds, except on favour. 
 
 The new park seems to have remained strictly enclosed as 
 a nursery for game till the period of the civil wars of the 
 Commonwealth. A new palace by Inigo Jones was intended 
 to overlook it at Whitehall, of which only the Banqueting 
 House was erected. Charles the First was brought to this 
 house across the Park, from St. James's Palace, in order to 
 
436 MULBERRY GARDENS. 
 
 suffer death. Cromwell is then discerned in the park grounds 
 taking the air in a sedan; but its popular history does not 
 cnmmence till the Restoration, when Charles the Second, who 
 seems not to have known what to do with the quantity of life 
 and animal spirits that had been suppressed during his exile, 
 took to improving and enjoying it with great vivacity. The 
 walks with him became real walks, for he was a great pedes- 
 trian. He had got the habit, perhaps, when he could not 
 afford a horse. He let the people in to see him feed his ducks 
 in the canal, a branch of which, called Duck Island, he 
 pleasantly erected into a " Government " for the French wit 
 and refugee, St. Evremond. He made an aviary on the 
 south-east side of the park, thence called Birdcage Walk ; 
 turned the north side into a mall for the enjoyment of the 
 pastimes so called, in which he excelled ; introduced skating 
 from Holland on the canal and Rosamond's Pond (which was 
 another branch of it on the south-west) ; had mistresses in 
 lodgings east and west of him (Cleveland at Whitehall and 
 Nell Gwyn in Pall Mall) ; and saw, in the course of his reign, 
 new streets rising and old places of entertainment nourishing 
 in other quarters of his favourite district; Spring Gardens 
 (which became famous for the tavern called " Lockett's"), at 
 Charing Cross, and the Mulberry Gardens and noblemen's 
 mansions between Pimlico and Piccadilly. It has been a 
 question whether the site of the Mulberry Gardens was on 
 the spot now occupied by Arlington Street, or on that of the 
 Queen's Palace. We suspect it is difficult to say which, and 
 that they extended along the whole space between the two. 
 Particular sites are too often confounded with places near 
 them ; and houses are said to displace one another, which only 
 occupied successive neighbourhoods. By some writers, for 
 instance, the sites of Arlington and Old Buckingham Houses 
 are considered as identical, while others represent them in one 
 another's vicinity. At all events, the Mulberry Gardens 
 appear to have included the site of both those houses. Ladies 
 came there in masks to eat syllabubs, and converse with their 
 lovers. Sedley made them the scene of a play. The whole 
 park, indeed, in Charles's reign, may be said to have been the 
 scene of a play, especially towards evening, when the meetings 
 took place which Sedley and Etherege dramatised. In the 
 morning all was duck-feeding and dog-playing and playing at 
 mall; in the evening all intrigue and assignation. At one 
 time Waller is admiring the King's masterly use of the small 
 
437 
 
 Stick ; at another Pepys is asking questions of the park-keepers, 
 or transported at sight of the court ladies on horseback ; at 
 another Evelyn is horrified (though he seems to have sought 
 occasions for such horrors) at overhearing a " very familiar 
 discourse" between his Majesty and that "impudent co- 
 median," Nelly Gwyn, who is standing at her garden- wall at 
 the back of Pall Mall (near the present Marlborough House). 
 Matters in this respect mended, though not suddenly, at 
 the Eevolution. Whitehall Palace was then accidentally 
 burnt down, and that of St. James's becomes one of the chief 
 residences of the sovereign, which it remains till the reign of 
 the present. Swift and Prior are now seen walking for their 
 health in the park, — Swift to get thin, and Prior to get fat. 
 The heroes and hungry debtors of the novelists (for the park 
 was privileged from arrest) make their appearance, the former 
 with their wives or friends, the latter sitting starving on the 
 benches. Staid ladies have Sunday promenades under the 
 eye of staid sovereigns. Something of a new license returns 
 with the first and second Georges ; but it comes from Ger- 
 many, is discreet, and makes little impression. The greatest 
 assignation we read of is an innocent one of Richardson with 
 a Lady Bradshaigh, who is " mighty curious" to know what 
 sort of man he is, and accordingly moves him to describe 
 himself in the formal terms of an advertisement, in order 
 that he may be recognised when she meets him. Goldsmith's 
 Beau Tibbs, who " blasts himself with an air of vivacity" at 
 seeing " nobody in town," is now the pleasantest fellow we 
 encounter in the park for many a day. The ducks, and the 
 dogs, and the birdcages, and Rosamond's Pond, dismal for 
 drowning lovers, have long vanished ; and the place begins 
 to look as it used to do forty years ago. The gayest enter- 
 tainment in it is " the soldiers," with their bands of music ; 
 and the most sensual pleasure a glass of milk from the cow. 
 A mad woman (Margaret Nicholson) makes a sensation, by 
 attempting to stab George the Third at the palace door ; but 
 all is quiet again, sedate and orderly, even when court-days 
 bring together a crowd of beauties. George the Fourth just 
 lives long enough to turn Buckingham Palace into a toy, and 
 the site of Carlton Gardens into something better. With his 
 successors comes the greatest of all the park improvements — 
 the conversion of the poor fields and canal into a public 
 pleasure-ground and an ornamental piece of water. Upon 
 this King Charles's ducks have returned, equally improved j 
 
438 . 
 
 and if it did but possess a good atmosphere, St. James's Park 
 would now be as complete a place of recreation for the pro- 
 menaders of its neighbourhood, as it is handsome and well- 
 intended. 
 
 One of the most popular aspects of St. James's Park is that 
 of a military and music-playing and milk-drinking spot. The 
 milk-drinkings, and the bands of music, and the parades, are 
 the same as they used to be in our boyish days ; and, we were 
 going to add, may they be immortal. But though it is good 
 to make the best of war as long as war cannot be helped, and 
 though music and gold lace, &c, are wonderful helps to that 
 end, yet conscience will not allow us to blink all we know of 
 a very different sort respecting battlefields and days after the 
 battle. We say, therefore, may war turn out to be as mortal, 
 and speedily so, as railroads and growing good-sense can make 
 it ; though in the meantime, and the more for that hope, we 
 may be allowed to indulge ourselves as we did when children, 
 in admiring the pretty figures which it cuts in this place — the 
 harmlessness of its glitter and the transports of its beholders. 
 Will anybody who has beheld it when a boy ever forget how 
 his heart leaped within him when, having heard the music 
 before he saw the musicians, he issued hastily from Whitehall 
 on to the parade, and beheld the serene and stately regiment 
 assembled before the colonel, the band playing some noble 
 march, and the officers stepping forwards to the measure with 
 their saluting swords ? Will he ever forget the mystical 
 dignity of the band-major, who made signs with his staff ; 
 the barbaric, and as it were, Othello-like height and lustre of 
 the turbaned black who tossed the cymbals ; the dapper 
 juvenility of the drummers and fifers ; and the astounding 
 prematureness of the little boy who played on the triangle ? 
 Is it in the nature of human self-respect to forget how this 
 little boy, dressed in a " right earnest" suit of regimentals, 
 and with his hair as veritably powdered and plastered as the 
 best, fetched those amazing strides by the side of Othello, 
 which absolutely "kept up" with his lofty shanks, and made 
 the schoolboy think the higher of his own nature for the pos- 
 sibility? Furthermore, will he ever forget how some regi- 
 ment of horse used to come over the Park to Whitehall, in the 
 midst of this parade, and pass the foot-soldiers with a sound 
 of clustering magnificence and dancing trumpets ? Will he 
 ever forget how the foot then divided itself into companies, 
 and turning about and deploying before the colons), marched 
 
ST. james's park and its recreations. 439 
 
 off in the opposite direction, carrying away the school-boy 
 himself and the crowd of spectators with it ; and so, now with 
 the brisk drums and fifes, and now with the deeper glories of 
 the band, marched gallantly off for the court-yard of the 
 palace, where it again set up its music-book, and enchanted 
 the crowd with Haydn or Mozart ? What a strange mixture, 
 too, was the crowd itself — boys and grown men, gentlemen, 
 vagabonds, maid-servants — there they all went listening, 
 idling, gazing on the ensign or the band-major, keeping pace 
 with the march, and all of them more or less, particularly the 
 maid-servants, doting on the u sogers." We, for one, confess 
 to having drunk deep of the attraction, or the infection, or 
 the balmy reconcilement (whichever the reader pleases to call 
 it). Many a holiday morning have we hastened from our 
 cloisters in the city to go and hear " the music in the park," 
 delighted to make one in the motley crowd, and attending upon 
 the last nourish of the hautboys and clarionets. There we 
 first became acquainted with feelings which we afterwards 
 put into verse (if the recollection be not thought an imper- 
 tinence); and there, without knowing what it was called, or 
 who it was that wrote it, we carried back with us to school 
 the theme of a glorious composition, which afterwards became 
 a favourite with opera-goers under the title of Non piic andrai, 
 the delightful march in Figaro. We suppose it is now, and 
 has ever since been played there, to the martialisation of 
 hundreds of little boys, and the puzzlement of philosophy. 
 Everything in respect to military parade takes place, we 
 believe, in the park just as it used to do, or with little varia- 
 tion. The objects also which you behold, if you look at the 
 parade and its edifices, are the same. The Admiralty, the 
 Treasury, the back of the Minister's house in Downing Street, 
 and the back-front of the solid and not inappropriate building, 
 called the Horse Guards, look as they did fifty years ago ; 
 and there also continue to stand the slender Egyptian piece of 
 cannon, and the dumpy Spanish mortar, trophies of the late 
 war with France. The inscriptions, however, on those 
 triumphant memorials contain no account of the sums we are 
 still paying for having waged it. 
 
 " The soldiers" and the " milk from the cow" do not at all 
 clash in the minds of boyhood. The juvenile imagination 
 ignores what it pleases, especially as its knowledge is not very 
 great. It no more connects the idea of village massacre with 
 guns and trumpets, than it supposes the fine scarlet coat 
 
440 st. 
 
 capable of being ragged and dirty. Virgil may say some* 
 thing about ruined fields, and people compelled to fly for their 
 lives ; but this is only part of a " lesson," and the calamities 
 but so many nouns and yerbs. The maid-servants, and 
 indeed the fair sex in general, till they become wives and 
 mothers, enjoy the like happy exemption from ugly associa- 
 tions of ideas ; and the syllabub is taken under the trees, with 
 a delighted eye to the milk on one side, and the military show 
 on the other. 
 
 The late Mr. West, the painter, was so pleased with this 
 pastoral group of cows and milk-drinkers in the park, that he 
 went out of the line of his art to make a picture of it. 
 
 Saint James's Palace was not much occupied by the Tudor 
 and Stuart sovereigns. Their principal town residence was 
 Whitehall. The first of the Stuarts may have intended to 
 make St. James's the residence of the Princes of Wales ; for 
 he gave it his son Henry, who died there. We have spoken 
 of this prince and his doubtful " promise" already. The best 
 thing known of him is the astonishment he expressed at his 
 father's keeping " such a bird" as Walter Raleigh locked up 
 in a cage. 
 
 Charles the First spent the three last days of his life in this 
 palace, occupying himself in devotion, and preparing to fall with 
 dignity ; — happy if he had but known how to value the dignity 
 of truth, which would have saved him from the necessity. The 
 Stuarts, unfortunate everywhere in proportion to the gravity 
 of their pretensions, had their customary bad fortune in this 
 palace ; at least the male portion of them. James the Second's 
 daughters, who got his throne, were born and married there ; 
 but here also was born his son, the first Pretender, whose 
 mother's chamber being situate near some backstairs gave 
 colour to the ridiculous story of his having been a spurious 
 child smuggled into the palace in a warming pan ; and here 
 his unlucky and narrow-minded father partly resided when he 
 per force invited his ouster and son-in-law William to take up 
 his abode in it, and received in return notice to quit his 
 throne. The old romantic Lord Craven, who was supposed 
 to have been privately married to James the First's daughter, 
 the luckless Queen of Bohemia, and who was thus destined 
 to witness the whole of the troubles of the English dynasty of 
 the Stuarts, happened to be on duty at St. James's when the 
 Dutch troops were coming across the park to take possession 
 of it. Agreeably to his chivalrous character, and to his habit 
 
ITS ROYAL RESIDENTS. 441 
 
 of taking warlike steps to no purpose, the gallant veteran 
 would have opposed their entrance ; but his master forbade 
 him ; and he marched away, says Pennant, " with sullen 
 dignity." 
 
 " Est-il- possible" got the house after James ; — we mean his 
 daughter Anne's husband, George of Denmark, who being no 
 livelier a man than his father-in-law, made no other comment 
 than these three words (Is it possible?) on the accounts given 
 him by the poor King of every successive desertion from his 
 cause. In due time the man of one remark followed the 
 deserters ; upon which James observed to one of the few 
 friends left him, " Who do you think is gone now ? Little 
 Est-il-possible himself." 
 
 St. James's was given to Anne and her husband by the new 
 sovereign William the Third. She made it her chief palace 
 when she came to the throne, and such it continued to be 
 with the sovereigns of England till the reign of George the 
 Third, with whom its occupation was divided with Bucking- 
 ham house. Lady Strafford, the wild daughter of Rochester, 
 who lived in France because England, she said, was " too 
 dull" for her, used to relate stories of the " orgies" in Anne's 
 palace. Palaces for the most part have been places of greater 
 license than the world supposes, owing to the natural results 
 of luxury, privilege, and the bringing of idle and agreeable 
 people together ; but the orgies which the rattle-headed Lady 
 Strafford talked of, were probably never anything much 
 greater than a drinking-bout of her husband, who unluckily 
 taught his wife to drink too. Anne, between her Protestant 
 accession and her exiled Popish kindred, her imperious 
 favourite the Duchess of Marlborough, and her quarrelling 
 and fluctuating Administrations, had an . anxious time of it. 
 There is an old French story of a sage but ugly cavalier, 
 who married a handsome fool, in the persuasion that his 
 children would inherit their mother's beauty and his own 
 wisdom. Unfortunately, they turned out to be specimens of 
 his own ugliness, combined with the mother's folly. We do 
 not say that Queen Anne was a fool, though she was not very 
 wise ; but when her grandfather, Lord Clarendon, saw the 
 match between his clever daughter and the future James the 
 Second, he probably hoped that their offspring would possess 
 the father's figure combined with the mother's wit ; whereas 
 neither Mary nor Anne possessed the latter, and Anne in- 
 herited the mother's fat with the father's dulness. She was a 
 
442 CHARACTER OP QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 well-meaning and fond, but sluggish-minded woman, with no 
 force of character ; her temperament was heavy and lax ; 
 she did not know what to do with her political perplexities ; 
 and the screw-up of her nerves with strong waters appears to 
 have become irresistible. Swift gives a curious account of 
 her levees, in which she would sit with a parcel of courtiers 
 about her, silently giving glances at them, and putting the 
 end of her fan in her mouth for want of address. She was 
 glad to get the whole set away, that she might sink into her 
 easy chair, and complain of the troubles of human life. 
 
 St. James's thus began with being a dull court, and dull 
 for the most part it remained to the last — quite worthy of its 
 external appearance. George the First and Second were 
 both dull gentlemen, with a difference ; the former a pale 
 round -featured man, content to appear the insipid personage 
 he was ; the latter, aquiline-nosed, affecting spirit and 
 gallantry, and attaining only to rudeness. They were people 
 of the then German schools of breeding, very different from 
 the present ; and St. James's at that time combined a tasteless 
 air of decorum with gallantries equally unengaging. George 
 the First had two German mistresses, one as lean as the other 
 was fat ; and George the Second another, remarkable for 
 nothing but making money. Lady Wortley Montagu and 
 Horace Walpole have given some amusing notices of the 
 palace in connection with their Majesties and the court. 
 
 " This is a strange country," said George the First on his 
 coming to England. " The first morning after my arrival at 
 St. James's, I looked out of the window' and saw a park with 
 walks, a canal, &c, which they told me were mine. The 
 next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a 
 fine brace of carp out of my canal ; and I was told I must 
 give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for bringing me 
 my own carp out of my own canal in my own park." 
 
 We are not to suppose that the King delivered this speech 
 in the smart good English of its reporter, or in any English ; 
 for he was not acquainted with the language. He and his 
 Minister Sir Eobert Walpole used to converse, even on the 
 most important matters of state, in such Latin as their school 
 recollections furnished, the Minister understanding German 
 or French as little as the King did English. 
 
 His Majesty, in the first days of his new court, was more 
 agreeably surprised one evening by the sudden return of Lady 
 Mary Wortley to the party which were assembled in his 
 
&EORGE THE FIRST. 443 
 
 rooms, and which she had somewhat strangely pleaded a pre- 
 vious engagement for quitting. She returned, borne in the 
 arms of Mr. Secretary Craggs, junior, who had met her going 
 away, and seized hold of the fugitive. .He deposited her in 
 the ante-room ; but the doors of the presence-chamber being 
 hastily thrown open by the pages, she found herself so 
 astonished and fluttered that she related the whole adventure 
 to the no less astonished king ; who asked Mr. Craggs 
 whether it was customary in England to carry ladies about 
 " like sacks of wheat." " There is nothing," answered the 
 adroit secretary, " which I would not do for your Majesty's 
 satisfaction." 
 
 Towards the close of this monarch's reign, the future court 
 historian, Horace Walpole, then a boy of ten years of age, 
 had a longing " to see the King ;" and as he was the son of 
 the Minister, his longing was gratified in a very particular 
 manner. A meeting was arranged on purpose the day before 
 his Majesty took his last journey to Hanover : — 
 
 "My mother," says Walpole, "carried me at ten at night to the 
 apartments of the Countess of Walsingham, on the ground floor, 
 towards the garden of St. James's, which opened into that of her 
 aunt the Duchess of Kendal's ; apartments occupied by George the 
 Second after his Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the 
 Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth. Notice being given that the 
 King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone 
 into the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the King and 
 her. I knelt down and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, 
 and my conductress led me back to my mother. The person of the 
 King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It 
 was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures 
 and coins, not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark 
 tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of snuff-coloured cloth, 
 with stockings of the same colour, and a blue ribband over all. So 
 entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the 
 Duchess ; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I 
 remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill- 
 favoured old lady." 
 
 This lady, the Duchess of Kendal, a German, was the king's 
 lean mistress. The fat one, another German, whom he made 
 Countess of Darlington, was " as corpulent and ample as the 
 duchess was long and emaciated." Walpole, who gives this 
 account of her, adds, that he remembered being " terrified " 
 in his infancy at her enormous figure. She had " two fierce 
 black eyes, large and rolling between two lofty arched eye- 
 brows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of 
 neck," &c, " and no part restrained by stays." " It was not," 
 
444 GEORGE THE SECOND. 
 
 says Horace, " till the last year or two of his reign, that this 
 foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking 
 openly an English mistress." This was Miss Brett, daughter 
 of Savage's reputed mother the Countess of Macclesfield, by 
 her second husband, Colonel Brett, whom we have seen, in 
 our accounts of the Streets of London, keeping company with 
 Addison. Miss Brett was a very lively and aspiring damsel. 
 During the visit to Hanover just mentioned, she took it upon 
 herself to break out a door from her apartments in St. James's 
 Palace into the Eoyal garden. The eldest of the king's 
 grand-daughters, also a very spirited person, ordered it to be 
 closed up again. Miss Brett, more spirited, again broke it 
 open, and we hear of the matter no further. But the king 
 died on his journey, and the new mistress's empire was over. 
 The new King, George the Second, while Prince of Wales, 
 had quarrelled with his father, and had been ordered to quit 
 St. James's with all his household. Though a great formalist, 
 he was also a great, and indeed somewhat alarming, pretender 
 to gallantry, being of opinion, according to Lady Wortley 
 Montagu, that men and women were created solely to be 
 " kicked or kissed" by him at his pleasure. It is of him that 
 stories were told of the King's cuffing his ministers, and kick- 
 ing his hat about the room ; and he is understood to be the 
 King Arthur of Fielding's Tom Thumb. He had a wife, 
 however, of some real pretensions to liveliness of mind, after- 
 wards Queen Caroline, the friend of men of letters, and a very 
 excellent wife too, for she was charitable to her husband's irre- 
 gularities, and is said to have even shortened her life by 
 putting her rheumatic legs into cold water in order to be able 
 to accompany him in his walks. Here, in St. James's Palace, 
 as well as at Kensington, she held her literary and philoso- 
 phico-religious levees (being fond of a little theological 
 inquiry) ; and here also she had brought together the hand- 
 somest and liveliest set of ladies in waiting ever seen on 
 these sober-looking premises before or since. For, though 
 Lady Winchelsea, the poetess, was among those of James the 
 Second, the ladies about that sombre personage and his Queen 
 seem, for the most part, to have been both dull and ugly. 
 His first Queen, Anne Hyde, had been a maid of honour her- 
 self, and did not encourage the sisterhood; and his second 
 Queen, the young and handsome Mary of Modena, who had 
 heard of the doings at Whitehall when her husband was 
 Duke of York, condescended to be jealous of him, in spite of 
 
ANECDOTES OF LORD CHESTERFIELD. 445 
 
 their difference of years ; James being comparatively an old 
 gentleman, while she was not out of her teens. Indeed, he 
 gave cause for the jealousy, and added no hopes of amend- 
 ment ; for being a Papist as well as a solemn gallant, he 
 divided his time between the ugly mistresses he was fond of, 
 and the priests who absolved him from the offence ; an absolu- 
 tion that was superfluous, according to his brother Charles ; the 
 " merry monarch" having been of opinion that the mistresses 
 themselves were penance enough. 
 
 George the Second's German mistress was a Baroness de 
 Walmoden. On the death of Queen Caroline, he brought her 
 over from Germany, and created her Countess of Yarmouth. 
 She had two sons, the younger of whom was supposed to be 
 the King's ; and a ludicrous anecdote connected with the sup- 
 position and with the abode before us, is related of the famous 
 Lord Chesterfield. On the countess's settlement in her state 
 apartments, his lordship found one day in the palace ante- 
 chamber a fair young gentleman, whom he took for the son 
 in question. He was accordingly very profuse in his compli- 
 ments. The shrewd lad received them all with a grave face, 
 and then delightfully remarked, " I suppose your lordship 
 takes me for ' Master Louis ; ' but I am only Sir William 
 Eussell, one of the pages." Chesterfield piqued himself on 
 his discernment, particularly in matters of intercourse ; and 
 it is pleasant to catch the heartless man of "the graces" at 
 a disadvantage that must have extremely mortified him. 
 
 There is another St. James's anecdote of Chesterfield, 
 which shows him in no very dignified light. Mrs. Howard, 
 afterwards Countess of Suffolk, a very amiable woman, sup- 
 posed to have been one of the mistresses of George the Second, 
 was thought to have more influence with his Majesty than 
 she possessed. Sir Robert Walpole told his son Horace that 
 Queen Caroline saw Lord Chesterfield one night, after having 
 won a large sum of money at court, steal along a dark 
 passage under her window that was lighted only by a single 
 lamp, in order to deposit it in Mrs. Howard's apartment, for 
 fear of carrying it home in the dark. Sir Robert (his son 
 adds) thought that this was the occasion of Chesterfield's 
 losing his credit with the Queen ; but the conclusion has 
 shown it to be unfounded. Chesterfield, however, though 
 really a very sharp-sighted man, was rendered liable by his 
 bad principles to a failure in what he thought his acutest 
 views; and Caroline's better nature may have seen through 
 
446 GEORGE I. AND HIS SON. 
 
 his lordship's character without the help of the lamp and the 
 dark passage. 
 
 The Queen's ladies above alluded to were the famous bevy 
 of the Howards, Lepells, and Bellendens, celebrated in the 
 pages of Swift and Pope. They have become well known to 
 the public by the appearance of the Suffolk Correspondence, 
 and Lady Hervey's Letters. George the Second, when Prince 
 of Wales, and living in this palace with his father, had pro- 
 bably made love to them all, fluttering more than flattering 
 them, between his attentions as a prince and his unengaging 
 qualities as a brusque and parsimonious man. Miss Bellen- 
 den, who became Duchess of Argyle, is said to have observed 
 one day to him as he was counting his money in her presence 
 (probably with an intimation of his peculiar sense of the 
 worth of it), " Sir, I cannot bear it. If you count your 
 money any more, I will go out of the room." Another version 
 of the story says that she tilted the guineas over, and then 
 ran out of the room while the Prince was picking them up. 
 This is likely, for she had great animal spirits. When the 
 Prince quarrelled with his father, and he and his household 
 were ordered to quit St. James's, Miss Bellenden is described, 
 in a ballad written on the occasion, as taking her way from 
 the premises by jumping gaily down-stairs. 
 
 The occasion of this rupture between George the First and 
 his son was curious. Palaces are very calm-looking things 
 outside ; but within, except in very wise and happy, or very 
 dull reigns, are pampered passions, and too often violent 
 scenes. George the First and his son, like most sovereigns 
 and heirs apparent, were not on good terms. The Princess 
 of Wales had been delivered of a second son, which was to 
 be christened ; and the Prince wished his uncle the Duke of 
 York to stand godfather with his Majesty. His Majesty, on 
 the other hand, peremptorily insisted on dividing the pious 
 office with the officious Duke of Newcastle. The christening 
 accordingly took place in the Princess's bed-chamber; and 
 no sooner had the bishop shut the book than the Prince, 
 furiously crossing the foot of the bed, and heedless of the 
 King's presence, " held up his hand and forefinger to the 
 Duke in a menacing attitude (as Lady Suffolk described the 
 scene to Walpole) and said, \ You are a rascal, but I shall 
 find you' (meaning in his broken English, ' I shall find a time 
 to be revenged')." The next morning Lady Suffolk (then 
 Mrs. Howard), while about to enter the Princess's apartment. 
 
GEOEGE II. AND HIS SON FREDERICK. 447 
 
 was surprised to find her way barred by the yeomen with 
 their halberds ; and the same night the Prince and Princess 
 were ordered to quit so unexpectedly, that they were obliged 
 to go to the house of their chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, 
 in Albemarle Street. The father and son were afterwards 
 reconciled, but they never heartily agreed. 
 
 Nor was the case better between George the Second and the 
 new Prince of Wales, his son Frederick. If George the First 
 was a common-place man of the quiet order, and George the 
 Second of the bustling, Frederick was of an effeminate sort, 
 pretending to taste and gallantry, and possessed of neither. 
 He affected to patronise literature in order to court popularity, 
 and because his father and grandfather had neglected it ; but 
 he took no real interest in the literati, and would meanly stop 
 their pensions when he got out of humour. He passed his 
 time in intriguing against his father, and hastening the ruin 
 of a feeble constitution by sorry amours. 
 
 Not long after the marriage of George the Third, Bucking- 
 ham House was settled on his young Queen in the event of 
 her surviving him ; and the King took such a liking to it as 
 to convert St. James's Palace wholly into a resort for state 
 occasions, and confine his town residence to the new abode. 
 Buckingham House was so called from John Sheffield, Duke 
 of Buckinghamshire, who built it. It was a dull though 
 ornamented brick edifice, not unworthily representing the 
 mediocre ability and stately assumptions of the owner, who 
 was a small poet and a fastidious grandee, nearly as mad with 
 pride as his duchess. This lady was a natural daughter of 
 James the Second (if indeed she was even that, for a Colonel 
 Godfrey laid claim to the paternity), and she carried herself 
 so loftily in consequence, as to be wish to be treated seriously 
 as a princess, receiving visitors under a canopy, and going to 
 the theatre in ermine. She and the Duchess of Marlborough, 
 who had a rival palace next door to St. James's, used to sit 
 swelling at one another with neighbourly spite. Sheffield, 
 her husband, is said to have first made love to her sister 
 Anne (afterwards Queen), for which her uncle, Charles the 
 Second, has been accused of sending him on an expedition to 
 Tangier in a " leaky vessel." The duke wrote a long com- 
 placent description of Buckingham House, that has often been 
 reprinted, recording, among other things, the classical inscrip- 
 tions which he put upon it and the princely chambers which 
 it contained for the convenience of the births of his illustrious 
 
£48 QUEEN CHARLOTTE. 
 
 house. The births came to nothing in consequence of the 
 death of his only legitimate child ; a natural son inherited 
 the property, and Government bought it for Queen Charlotte. 
 Henceforward it divided its old appellation of Buckingham 
 House with that of the " Queen's House ; " almost all the 
 Queen's children were born there ; and there, as at Kew and 
 Windsor, she may be said to have secreted her husband as 
 much as she could from the world, partly out of judicious 
 consideration for his infirmities, and partly in accordance 
 with the pride as well as penuriousnes that were at the 
 bottom of manners not ungentle, and a shrewd though narrow 
 understanding. The spirit of this kind of life was very soon 
 announced to the fashionable world after her marriage by the 
 non-appearance of certain festivities ; and it continued as long 
 as her husband lived, and as far as her own expenditure was 
 concerned ; though when her son came to the throne she 
 astonished the public by showing her willingness to partake 
 of festivities in an establishment not her own. A deplorable 
 exhibition of her tyrannous and unfeeling habits of exaction 
 of the attentions of those about her is to be found in the 
 Diary of Madame oVArblay (Miss Burney), whom they nearly 
 threw into a consumption. It is clear that they would have 
 done so, had not the poor waiting-gentlewoman mustered up 
 courage enough to dare to save her life by persisting in her 
 request to be set free. Queen Charlotte was a plain, penurious, 
 soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, over-weening personage, 
 "content" through a long life "to dwell on decencies for ever," 
 inexorable " upon principle " to frailty, but not incapable of 
 being bribed out of it by German prepossessions, and what- 
 ever else might assist to effect the miracle, as was seen in the 
 instance of Mrs. Hastings, who had been Warren Hastings's 
 mistress, and who was, nevertheless received at court. Plea- 
 sant as her Majesty might have been to Miss Burney, who 
 seems to have loved to be " persecuted," she was assuredly no 
 charmer in the eyes of the British nation ; nor was she in the 
 slightest degree lamented when she died. Nevertheless she 
 was a very good wife, for such we really believe her to have 
 been ; we mean not merely faithful, (for who would have 
 tempted her ?) but truly considerate, and anxious, and kind ; 
 and besides this she had another merit, not indeed of the same 
 voluntary description, but one for which the nation is strongly 
 indebted to her, though we are not aware that it has ever been 
 mentioned. We mean that her cool and calculating brain 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 449 
 
 turned out to be a most happy match for the warmer one of 
 her husband, in ultimate as well as immediate respects; for 
 it brought reason back into the blood of his race, and drew a 
 remarkable line in consequence between him and his children ; 
 none of whom, however deficient in abilities, partook of their 
 father's unreasonableness, while some went remarkably counter 
 to his want of orderliness and self-government. The happy 
 engraftment of the Cobourg family on the stock, completed 
 this security in its nacst important q carter; and if ever a 
 shade of more than ordinary sorrow for the necessity should 
 have been brought across the memory in that quarter by a 
 ridiculous pen, the sense of the security ought to fling it to 
 the winds, with all the joy and comfort befitting the noblest 
 brow and the wisest reign that have yet adorned the annals of 
 its house. 
 
 T»K END. 
 
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