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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
 
 
 '^*^ 
 
 IS 
 
 1 •-•"i>! 
 
 m:<^. 
 
% 
 
/a y9k 
 
LUDGATE HiLL: 
 
 Past a7id Present. 
 
 A NARRATIVE CONCERNING THE PEOPLE, PLACES, LEGENDS, 
 
 AND CHANGES OF THE 
 
 GREAT LONDON HIGHWAY. 
 
 Illustrated with N'umerous Engravings. 
 
 SECOIO) EDITION. 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, Ld., 
 I, CREED LANE, E.G. 
 
 1892. 
 
 ;2.lt^ 
 
DA ess" 
 
 Zq tbe 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE DA VI D EVANS, 
 
 LORD MAYOR OB LONDON. 
 
 My Lord Mayor,— 
 
 The honour you coji/er upon me hy permitting the 
 Second Edition of this little book to be inscribed to you is grati- 
 fying in more than one respect ; and I hope I may be excused 
 for saying that the association of your name ivith the subject 
 of the book itself is, in more than one respect, appropriate. 
 
 I am one of those who sincerely appreciate your well-known 
 interest in works of public utility and improvement, and your 
 assiduous and successful endeavours to fulfil the duties that 
 awaited you at every step, ivhich have led to your attainment of 
 the distinguished position that you now^occupy* 
 
 Instead of contriving to secure the high office of Lord Mayor 
 of London, by relying only on wealth and influence to 'enter at 
 once upon the preliminary dignities of Sheriff and Alderman, 
 ivithout the education and experience acquired by the humbler 
 work of an ordinary member of the Co?nfno?i Council, you 
 
 iv.?0'^.'^-9i2 
 
4 DEDICATION. 
 
 honourably ^^ won your spurs'** on the '"'' floor of the Court ''* by 
 undertakmg, at the solicitation of your neighbours^ to represeftf 
 your ward, and by heartily devoting your efforts to the work 
 of adequately accomplishing the duties of the successive offices 
 which in the course of time devolved upon you. 
 
 Permit me to say, 7?iy Lord Mayor, that the course which 
 you have followed has gained for you the regard and esteem of 
 all those who place the claims of public duty before the advantages 
 of public office. 
 
 It seems to be appropriate that this expjxssion of respect and 
 goodwill should be offered in the dedication of a book to a Lo7'd 
 Mayor who is the Alderman of the Ward of Castle Bay?iard, 
 with some scenes in the history of which the folloiving pages 
 have to deal. 
 
 Without saying more, except to repeat 77iy thanks, and to 
 express a sincere hope that your term of office may be distinguished 
 by the happy accomplishment of the work you are so competent 
 to initiate and direct, 
 
 1 am my Lord Mayor, 
 
 Your obedient seiuant, 
 
 W. P. TRELOAR. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 IT is more than ten years since the first edition (of twenty 
 thousand) of this book was issued. 
 
 While it was in the press I became a member of the 
 Corporation of the City of London ; my chief object in 
 entering upon civic duties being to secure the opportunity 
 for caUing attention to the necessity for completing the 
 widening and effectually carrying out the improvements of 
 this important thoroughfare in which I have always taken 
 so much interest. 
 
 The favour with which " Ludgate Hill Past and Present ' 
 was received, and the fact that the first issue has been long 
 exhausted, might be sufficient reasons for my venturing to 
 republish it, but I am right glad to be able to say that there 
 is a perhaps better reason still. 
 
 The improvements and extension to which I refer are 
 practically accomplished, and therefore this chronicle de- 
 mands the addition of another chapter. A brief retrospect 
 of the proceedings in the Court of Sewers, which marked 
 the vicissitudes of the work now so satisfactorily completed, 
 will, I hope, be interesting and acceptable. 
 
 These few prefatory words would be incomplete if I 
 did not take the opportunity of referring with much gratifi- 
 
6 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 cation (not unmingled with deep regret for the loss the 
 citizens and indeed all the inhabitants of London have so 
 recently sustained), to the late Chamberlain of the City, 
 Mr. Benjamin Scott, who in letters addressed to me im- 
 mediately after the publication of the first edition, in 1881, 
 was good enough to speak in terms of commendation of 
 the book, and to express an opinion that it would be well 
 if every quarter of our ancient city were similarly treated. 
 He also furnished me with some items of information in 
 regard to the Prison of Bridewell, the incarceration there of 
 the so-called " Separatists," or Nonconformists, who were 
 unpolitical Puritans in the time of Elizabeth ; and to the 
 maintenance of " Bridewell " at the present day as a place to 
 which stubbornly rebellious and disorderly City apprentices 
 may be committed for short terms of imprisonment. 
 
 These memoranda, which I had the honour to receive 
 from so distinguished a scholar and antiquarian, are inserted 
 in their proper places in this edition. 
 
 "You will be issuing a second edition some day," he 
 wrote, in a courteous and encouraging letter dated January 
 26th, 1882 ; and now, though the recollection is that of 
 " the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice 
 
 that is still," the words are verified. 
 
 W. P. TRELOAR. 
 LuDGATE Hill, London, 
 Jaji. 1892. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 THE following pages are intended as a gossiping, but, 
 it is hoped, an entertaining, and perhaps in some 
 instances an instructive, memorial of one of the great 
 highways of the greatest city in the world. The vast extent 
 and continuous growth of London render it impossible for 
 any writer even to indicate its historical associations and 
 archaeological remains, unless he is prepared to produce 
 a large book in several volumes, like that of the late 
 Mr. Charles Knight, or the admirable narrative of Old 
 and Ahw London published by Messrs. Cassell, Petter, 
 Galpin and Co. But it is still possible to indulge in a 
 brief and yet inclusive retrospect of the history of one 
 particular street or neighbourhood, and to recall its 
 antiquities, its legendary history, and its social aspects 
 with pleasure and advantage. Whether this result has 
 been achieved in the present volume remains to be seen ; 
 but at any rate one who has for many years been 
 associated with the locality and with the prosperity of 
 Ludgate Hill may be excused if he imagines that some 
 of its records cannot fail to interest, not only the indul- 
 gent, but the impartial reader. 
 
 W. P. TRELOAR. 
 Ludgate Hill, London, 
 Sept. iSSi. 
 
LUDGATE HILL AS IT IS — 1 88 1. 
 
atirpt^ pill : ^mt m\b fres^ut. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 "'N intimate acquaintance with 
 the historical highways 
 and byways of London is 
 itself a kind of education. 
 A thoughtful observer 
 who has leisure to loiter 
 and reflect can scarcely 
 tire of the vast field for 
 recollection and specu- 
 lation which is open to 
 him in the streets. 
 
 The multitudinous shops are an 
 endless international and industrial 
 exhibition, where the productions of 
 painters, sculptors, designers, en- 
 gravers, artificers in gems and precious 
 metals, artists in the making and 
 :. fashioning of costly fabrics, workmen 
 in wood and stone and iron, and all 
 the manufactures of loom and wheel, 
 are displayed in infinite variety. 
 
 On either hand as we pass along we come upon some 
 astonishing example of the application of modern scientific 
 discoveries and inventions, or some stupendous result of 
 
 'ii.yww>rf«w«?'»:'HV»'iii*'"» p ) Wi. i» . i« <» a!i" w« -w-«B 
 
 
lO LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 mechanical power, amidst surprising transformations, where 
 the old and the new in architecture and in art are blended 
 or contrasted. 
 
 But beyond all this, and even in the midst of perpetual 
 change, we are constantly reminded of great historical 
 episodes and exploits, of which there are still so many 
 memorials, not only in public buildings and monuments, 
 but in ancient houses, each with its particular legend, and 
 in the names and titles of streets and localities in which 
 modern improvement and ruthless changes of nomenclature 
 have not erased all historical interest. 
 
 All these things make London a perpetual marvel, even 
 to the accustomed wayfarer, and in order truly to appreciate 
 the education afforded by the streets it is necessary to be 
 accustomed. They who have learnt the aspects of ancient 
 neighbourhoods, and who know their history — to whom cer- 
 tain houses, doorways, steeples, porches, or even quaint bits 
 of mellowing wall and gable, bear a familiar and friendly 
 aspect, while others are more suggestive of a darker interest, 
 — find in the Great City an unfailing source of pleasure. 
 They will mark with reluctance and regret the inevitable 
 changes that obliterate some records of the past, but they 
 will also remember that these changes are caused by the 
 enormous and continued expansion of that commerce which 
 has been the mainspring of London's prosperity and the 
 occasion of its renown. Even the man of business can 
 spare a few moments of appreciation for the stirring epi- 
 sodes and the venerable memorials of a far-reaching history, 
 which, when rightly understood, is intimately associated with 
 the later developments of human progress. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no spot in all wide London where 
 the characteristics to which we have referred are more 
 obvious than in the busy approach to the very core and 
 centre of the world's metropolis — the ascent to the Cathedral 
 of St. Paul — the Hill of Ludgate. 
 
 The Hill is here — and the name, it may be hoped, will 
 never become obsolete. For those who seek them, there 
 are not wanting as many indications of the " old and wide 
 renown " of this great thoroughfare as there are of its 
 present importance. Much of the pomp and circumstance 
 
ITS LEGENDS. II 
 
 which distinguished it in the days of gorgeous pageants 
 and imposing processions has passed away. It no longer 
 resounds with the clank of arms or the chanting of priests 
 and acolytes ; the splendid spectacle of a royal progress 
 scarcely belongs to modern experience ; but the mementoes 
 of the vivid events and picturesque shows that distinguished 
 the famous Hill when Lud Gate opened in the City Wall are 
 still numerous, and have formed an appreciable element in 
 the less romantic but perhaps greater " story of our lives 
 from year to year." 
 
 Will the reader, to whom this sober introduction may in 
 some sort appeal, give us the pleasure of an hour's good 
 company, and step aside with us, heedless of the passing 
 throng, to a coign of vantage, whence, in brief and simple 
 phrase, we may recall some of the 
 
 True Legends of Ludgate Hill ? 
 
 Here is the very place for such discourse, on the rise 
 of the Hill itself. You have but to shut your eyes in a 
 momentary day-dream, and so — vanish the great dreary iron 
 span of the usurping railway bridge at the hill's foot, — vanish 
 the lofty piles of buildings that flank the bridge of Black- 
 friars ; — vanish the bridge itself ! There on the right, 
 looming large, is the palace of Bridget's Well, or Bridewell ; 
 and across the brawling stream of the Fleet which runs along 
 the valley at the foot of the hill to join the Oldbourne is 
 Fleet Bridge. Looking beyond the intervening space towards 
 the Thames is the church and former Friary of the 
 Dominicans, anciently the seat of the Parliament, and where 
 AVolsey sat with the Pope's Legate ; and behind us is the 
 Fleet Prison. On the left is the old Bail Hill and Newgate 
 with its gaol ; while further towards St. Paul's the successor 
 of the ancient Lud Gate bestrides the roadway and joins 
 the City Wall, wherein is embedded the prison misnamed 
 a refuge for poor debtors. The great Cathedral is not a 
 church of cupola and dome, but of long nave, broad transept 
 and pointed towers or spires. There, not long ago, the 
 high altar shone resplendent with gold and jewels, and 
 censers swung incense, during high mass, and priests and 
 
12 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 acolytes crowded the aisles, or waited to show visitors the 
 saintly relics in the shrines. 
 
 The tower of Baynard Castle stands upon Thames 
 Bank, where the great navigator, Sir Francis Drake, the foe 
 to Spain, had taken up his abode, while his ship, the 
 Golden Hind, lay in the river at Deptford — a grand show, 
 to which the Queen Elizabeth herself has paid a stately 
 visit, and given the knightly accolade to the brave com- 
 mander. 
 
 Still nearer, amidst the huddled streets opposite our 
 standing-place, is Playhouse Yard, and there has been built 
 a new theatre, whither comes one Burbage, from the other 
 theatre — the Globe — on Bankside. He has brought with 
 him a company of players to perform the dramas of Ben 
 Jonson and of one William Shakespeare, of whom not only 
 the Court, but all the town, will soon be talking. This 
 Shakespeare will be here presently, for we have taken our 
 stand beside the deep archway of the old " Bell Savage " 
 Inn (you can see the wide, cool inn-yard beyond, with its 
 tier of upper rooms behind heavy wooden balconies). The 
 guests are even now coming from their rooms, and taking 
 their places on the balconies, to witness the performance of 
 Bankes and his wonderful horse Marocco, and to listen to 
 the jests of the famous clown, Tarleton, who comes from 
 performing at another inn in Grasschurch Street, by London 
 Bridge. 
 
 There is a bench here, so let us sit down. It is the 
 seat where rested Sir Thomas Wyatt. But we must tell that 
 story presently — the story of the old Bell Savage — for we 
 must go further backward yet in the chronicles of brick and 
 stone, and have but mentioned Shakespeare and his day as a 
 hint of the kind of company that we shall meet with, and of 
 the place where the legends of Ludgate Hill may be most 
 fitly recalled."* 
 
 * The corner of Belle Sauvage Yard, by the spot formerly the outer 
 gateway of the old inn of the Savage family, with the title of " The 
 Bell on the Hoop," and afterwards the " Bell Savage" inn or hostelry. 
 The place is mentioned as early as the reign of Henry VI. in the record 
 of a legal transfer, and was then of some antiquity. The corner now 
 referred to is No. 68, Ludgate Hill, the new establishment of Messrs. 
 Treloar & Sons, who also occupy the premises No. 69, opposite. 
 
KING LUD. 13; 
 
 Ludgate Hill has been a representative locality from 
 the earliest age from which we can date either records or 
 traditions of London. It was the famous highway of our 
 chronicles, for it was in the midst of noted churches, castles, 
 palaces, courts of ecclesiastical and civil law, hospitals, 
 prisons, priories, theatres, fairs and markets ; and was daily 
 crowded with nobles, priests, knights, mendicant friars, 
 flagellants, pilgrims, men-at-arms, citizens and yeomen ; who 
 visited its shops and stalls, or passed about its narrow streets, 
 many of which led to the mansions of the nobility in various 
 parts of the City between St. Bride's or Holborn and the 
 Tower. 
 
 If King Lud did not sit, as it were, enthroned for all 
 time at Lud Gate, at all events he has had the credit of it in 
 popular legend, and with him, therefore, our own veracious 
 chronicle truly begins. 
 
 But as with him the inflated exaggerations of the former 
 legend-mongers appear to draw to a close, we must take their 
 praises of his achievements with a very large pinch of salt in- 
 deed. That he was a jovial feaster and boon companion is 
 quite probable, and he may have been famous in his day as a 
 warrior, and even as a legislator, so far as these qualities would 
 be exercised by a chief whose brother became historical, 
 and of whom, therefore, we know something definite. It is 
 even possible that he really repaired several old towns and 
 buildings ; but we have to ask ourselves what were the 
 towns and edifices of Britain before the Roman conquest ? 
 and above all, what was the old city of " Troynovant " 
 before, as was alleged, Lud enlarged it, surrounded it with 
 a wall of stone, built Lud Gate, and erected a palace which 
 long afterw'ards became the bishop's palace, and a temple 
 which was the beginning of the Church of St. Paul ? 
 
 It is impossible to reduce these declarations to any definite 
 proportions, and we are therefore driven to the humiliating 
 confession that though it is also asserted that the name 
 London is derived from Lud Town, which sounds as though 
 somebody with a cold in his head had tried to mention the 
 more modern appellation, and the word Ludgate remains 
 apparently unaltered, there are as many etymological objec- 
 tions to these derivations as there are historical difticulties 
 
14 
 
 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 in the way of assigning to Lud himself a position of such 
 high distinction as the older legends claim for him. 
 
 All that we can really yield to the memory of King Lud 
 is that he probably was a person of some importance in his 
 day; and he may have given his name to a town ; but Lud 
 
 EFFIGIES OF KING LUD AND HIS SONS, ON LUD GATE {seepage I lO). 
 
 Town is almost as visionary as Troynovant when we seek in 
 it the derivation of London ; and the oldest Lud Gate of 
 the remains of which there is any authentic record, was no 
 older than the reign of King John, and was adorned with 
 sculptured figures purporting to represent Lud and his two 
 sons (who were to succeed him in place of his brother Cassi- 
 
ITS ETYMOLOGY. I5 
 
 vellaunus), all three in Roman costume, so that if the family 
 had been thus immortalised at any earlier date it must still 
 have been by some artificer to whom their fame had come 
 down by local association. 
 
 That there was a town on the site which is now occupied 
 by St. Paul's and its surroundings, and that a heathen temple, 
 perhaps afterwards a Temple of Diana, may have stood there, 
 is by no means improbable ; nor is it impossible that the 
 town may have had a gate, though it is exceedingly unlikely 
 that in the time just before the Roman invasion it was sur- 
 rounded by a stone wall, since the Britons were never known 
 to have walled towns — a fact certainly remarked by Caesar 
 and never contradicted, even when London was spoken of 
 not long afterwards. 
 
 " London." 
 
 There is room and verge enough for choosing the deri- 
 vation of " London " without King Lud, or the Caer Ludd 
 of the Welsh fabulists, who, by-the-bye, perhaps meant Caer 
 Floyd or Lloyd ; and Troynovant may be no more than the 
 Cornish Tre and the Latin ?iova?ti — the New City. Tacitus 
 and other Latin writers call it Lotidinhwi and Lu?idinium, 
 and it was afterwards named Augusta, in compliment to 
 Valentinian, by whom probably the greater part of the wall 
 was built. Bede called it Lu?idoma, which Alfred the Great 
 translated into Lundenceastre ; and it has been called Lundene 
 and Lundunes, which come tolerably near to the other 
 Welsh or Celtic British Llyfi Din, or City on a Lake ; or 
 the Belgic-British Lu7i-Den, a Grove City. Then we have 
 Llawn (full) and Dyn (man), implying a populous place. 
 Camden went for Llong Dinas, a City of Ships ; and Selden, 
 who thought of the reputed Temple of Diana, ventured to 
 suggest Llati Dien. 
 
 But the maze of etymologists would seem to be only less 
 hopeless than the flights of fabulists ; so there we leave the 
 subject, with a lingering suspicion, however, that our old 
 friend Lud is, to use a modern phrase, " not in it." Nor — 
 grievous as the admission may be — is it by any means certain 
 that his name actually survives in the gate supposed to have 
 been his, exceot that the coincidence of his real and im- 
 
t6 
 
 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 portant historical existence at a period near to that of gate 
 and wall having been built has led to the association. The 
 contention is that it meant Flud or Flood Gate — the Gate 
 on the Fleet or Flood, which was the stream fed by the 
 
 
 ^.Y(if?v/^^=^ 
 
 LUD GATE. 
 
 River of Wells and Turnmill Brook, and running from the 
 Old Bourne, along the bottom of the Hill, to the Thames. 
 But, as Leigh Hunt observes, it is not easy to see in that 
 case why Fleet Street should not have been called Lud 
 Street, and perhaps the old tradition is so far true that some 
 
\V ROMAN LONDON. 1 7 
 
 ancient Lud or Lloyd was the builder of an "old original" 
 gate, whether king or not. 
 
 In 1669, while the workmen were digging out the ruins 
 after the Fire of London, in the place where the vallum^ or 
 rampart, of this camp had been, near Ludgate, they came 
 upon a sepulchral monument in memory of Vivius Mar- 
 cianus, a Roman soldier of the Second Legion, quartered 
 here.* It had been erected by his wife, Januaria Marina, and 
 represented him as a British soldier, probably of the Cohors 
 Britonum, dressed and armed after the manner of the 
 country, in long hair, a short lower garment, fastened round 
 the waist by a girdle and fibula, a long sagum or plaid flung 
 over his breast and one arm, ready to be cast off in time 
 of action, bare legs, and in his right hand a sword of vast 
 length, like the claymore of the later Highlanders. The 
 point of the sword was resting on the ground. In his left 
 hand was what appears to be a portion of a weapon, the 
 end of which is broken. 
 
 And here we are met at once by a difficulty. The old 
 Roman wall of London could scarcely have come beyond 
 where the east end of Saint Paul's now stands, unless the 
 Romans there departed from their rule of never permitting 
 a cemetery to be within their cities. They were strict 
 advocates of extra-mural interment, and it might have been 
 better in some respects if their successors had followed 
 their example, though we confess that antiquarians and 
 archaeologists would have had less to write about if there 
 had been no tombs in the churches, and the cemeteries had 
 all been reduced to the condition lately presented by Bun- 
 hill Fields. It is possible, however, to imagine an outer as 
 well as an inner wall ; and, according to the most authentic 
 narrators, the old Roman — or the restored Roman — wall 
 began at a fort which occupied part of the site of the 
 present Tower of London ; continuing by the Minories to 
 Aldgate, Bevis Marks, Camomile Street, and Houndsditch, 
 to Bishopsgate, and straight through to Cripplegate ; turning 
 to Aldersgate, Newgate, and Ludgate ; passing at the back 
 
 * The bodies of soldiers were always buried in the valluf/i ; those 
 of the citizens in the poNiccriuin, a space outside fortitied towns on which 
 all buildings were prohibited. 
 
l8 LUDGATE hill: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 of the spot not very long ago occupied by the College of 
 Physicians in Warwick Lane ; by Stationers' Hall, and so 
 to the gate near St. Martin's Church ; crossing Ludgate 
 Hill, and extending down the opposite side westward to the 
 present Ludgate Circus ; thence turning southward, and 
 skirting Fleet Brook, to the Thames, where was another 
 tower joining it to the wall that ran along Thames Bank, 
 back again to the Tower ; a wall which even Fitz-Stephen, 
 who wrote in the reign of the Second Henry, says "was 
 long since subverted by the y^j-Zz/?// river." 
 
 Comparatively few Saxon relics have been discovered 
 within that area, the circuit of which from the Tower round 
 to the Fleet at the foot of Ludgate Hill was two miles and a 
 furlong, without reckoning that along the river bank. Still 
 fewer are the relics of the ancient Britons. Saxon London 
 was but a small improvement upon the Roman city ; in- 
 deed, it was Roman London despoiled, but growing yearly 
 richer in the commerce planted by the former invaders, and 
 more enlightened by the Christianity which Augustine had 
 brought to Ethelbert, the builder of the then humble 
 cathedral church of Saint Paul, wherein was placed the 
 shrine of the Saxon saint Erkenwald. It was in digging out 
 the foundations of the stupendous and magnificent cathe- 
 dral, which had been finished in the reign of Henry HL, 
 covering the site of the former poor structure, that the 
 excavators employed by Sir Christopher Wren came upon a 
 large cemetery, wherein first lay the Saxons in graves lined 
 with boulders of chalk or in coffins of hollowed stone. 
 Beneath these were the graves of Britons and of Romans, 
 the latter the deepest, but apparently of the same period, 
 when conquerors and conquered lived and died together in 
 the city. The graves of the Britons contained little but the 
 wooden or bone pins with which the woollen shrouds had 
 been fastened round the dead ; in the deeper Roman graves 
 were found funeral urns, lamps, lachrymatories (or tear- 
 phials), and some sacrificial and other glass and earthenware 
 vessels of great beauty of design and colour. The little 
 blocks of jasper, porphyry, and marble belonging to a tesse- 
 lated pavement were also found, and numerous glass rings 
 and beads, probably belonging to the Britons, as well as 
 
THE FLEET RIVER. TQ 
 
 boars' tusks and deer-horns half sawn through, and coins of 
 different emperors, including Constantine. 
 
 But we must pass that period — the early time of Ludgate 
 and the Hill — and must leave Canute the Dane to make 
 London stronger, and to increase its importance, till the 
 Norman comes to lord it within the walls, and build there 
 palaces, and castles, and bishops' mansions and fairer 
 churches, and to bring the legends and the sports and 
 pastimes of chivalry into the broad streets, with their quaint, 
 low houses of w^ood, thatched with straw or reeds, and 
 fronted wnth beams and coloured plaster, overhanging the 
 footways. The great enemy of London in these days is 
 fire, and the wells and brooks and conduits are the chief 
 safeguard, for they are numerous, from the Towner Ditch to 
 Fleet, and from the Clerk's-well to Walbrook and Lang- 
 bourne. The wide hill of Ludgate is thronged, for the 
 City flourishes, and William King has granted to William 
 Bishop a charter ensuring its wonted liberties and privileges, 
 as they were ordained by Edward King and Confessor. 
 But the castle of the Norman noble dominates all, and the 
 power of feudal rule is seen in tower and portcullis, and 
 pierced battlements ; — in processions of proud knights and 
 fighting bishops, in the bravery of caparisoned steed and 
 flaunting pennon, the songs of friars and the chants of 
 monks, the chatter of dames and damsels with flagons and 
 water-pitchers, the clatter of men-at-arms and the thrumming 
 of lutes and bow-strings at the shops by Ludgate in Bowyer 
 Row, where the armourers have their stalls, or by the banks 
 of the Fleet, that runs brawling and foaming in the valley 
 and along by the walls and the water-gate of Bridewell. 
 
 The Fleet River. 
 
 The Fleet was w^ell named the river of wells at the time 
 we speak of it, for it was a clear and pellucid stream, fit 
 tributary of a fishful Thames ; but it appears to have acquired 
 a bad reputation at a very early date — not for its own in- 
 herent qualities, but because the population which had 
 gathered about this important neighbourhood converted 
 what was once a clear stream into a dirty channel, by which 
 
20 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 the refuse and garbage of the houses might be carried to the 
 Thames. Even as early as 1290 we find the White Friars, 
 near the Temple, and the Black Friars, who were nearer to 
 Ludgate Hill, complaining that the evil odours of the Fleet 
 were so noisome as to prevail over the smell of the incense. 
 This led to a cleansing and scouring and deepening of the 
 river (a process which had to be repeated on many succeed- 
 ing occasions), and thus in the reign of the Second Edward 
 this swift little stream had become indeed the Fleet river, 
 able to carry " ten or twelve ships' navies at once, with mer- 
 chandise," that " were wont to come to the aforesaid Bridge 
 of Fleet." Of course these ships were little more than canal 
 boats of small draught ; but the " river " was of some import- 
 ance, for after leaving its source at Hampstead Hills it was 
 fed by numerous wells — Clerk's Well, Skinner's Well, Fags' 
 Well, Tode Well, and other wells at the North of London — 
 from which it was surnamed the River of Wells. The tide 
 flowed from the Thames, where now is Bridge Street, Lud- 
 gate Circus, and Farringdon Street, past the prison of the 
 Fleet, and to the foot of Holborii Hill, where it united with 
 the Old Bourne. Here it was afterwards crossed by one of 
 four stone bridges — the principal of which was Fleet Bridge, 
 uniting Ludgate Hill with Fleet Street, and, as Stow informs 
 us, made or repaired at the charges of John W^ells, Mayor 
 of London in the year 143 1. This doubtless replaced an 
 earlier bridge of timber ; and Fleet Bridge, with the other 
 two bridges, one at Bridewell, the other at Fleet Lane, pro- 
 vided for the traffic of this main approach to London from 
 the West, at the time that it was the centre of the Royal 
 Court, and the trysting-place for the nobility. But all 
 efforts to keep the Fleet River clean were ineffectual, and it 
 eventually became known as the Fleet Ditch. The river 
 had ceased to take sufficient water from its various feeders 
 to keep the channel clear, the increased number of dweUings 
 had diverted the water of the wells from their former 
 course, and it became little else than a stagnant creek of 
 the Thames, a receptacle for the filth and garbage of the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The attempted restoration was unsuccessful, but the ex- 
 cavations brought to light some interesting relics in the 
 
ANCIENT FORTRESSES. 21 
 
 shape of Roman pottery, and, deeper still, Roman coms and 
 silver ring money. At Holborn Bridge were found two 
 brazen Lares, about four inches long (a Bacchus and a 
 Ceres), and a number of Saxon ornaments, seals, spurs, and 
 weapons, and several later medals, crosses and crucifixes. 
 
 But we must give Time the slip again, and, recalling the 
 period of the babbling and crystal stream, look across its 
 channel to that further corner there by the back of Sir 
 Polydore de Keyser's hotel, where stood the castle, — palace, 
 — prison, the remnant of which has been known to living 
 memory as the place of punishment for idle apprentices 
 and sturdy vagabonds who now haunt the casual wards of 
 the more attractive workhouses. 
 
 Bridewell. 
 
 As we have seen, the Old Wall encircling the City may 
 be said to have commenced at the Tower and to have com- 
 pleted the circuit at about the foot of the present Blackfriars 
 Bridge, on the Ludgate Hill side of the Fleet River. At 
 the corner of the wall at this spot was a fortress, the remains 
 of which, when it was pulled down, at a very early date, 
 were used in building a palace named Bridewell, after the 
 Well of St. Bridget close by. Bridewell, like the rest of the 
 buildings of that magnitude, was both palace and fortress. 
 It stood, and the last remains of it are hardly yet cleared 
 away, just on the other side of the Fleet River, which 
 brawled past its walls, and formed a kind of moat, giving 
 access to the building by a water-gate. A frowning, bode- 
 ful pile enough it would seem to modern eyes — vast, yet 
 lowering, full of bravery, show and rude luxury, but with 
 a menacing look outward towards the common people. A 
 stronghold like that of Mountfiquit on the Thames bank, 
 south of the hill of Ludgate, and Baynard's Castle, further 
 still, between Paul's Wharf and Puddle Dock, at the bottom 
 of what is now known as St. Andrew's Hill, in the district 
 of the " Royal Wardrobe," about which we will inquire 
 presently. All three of these places — Bridewell, Mount- 
 fiquit, or ]\Iontfichet, and Baynard's Castle — represented 
 Norman domination in the time of the Conqueror William, 
 whose realm was built, like his castles, out of the material 
 
22 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 taken from both Roman and Saxon memorials. The barons 
 who came in his train were quick in asserting their claims, 
 and among them were Montfichet and Baynard, the first, 
 probably proud enough to defy even William of Normandy, 
 losing his place and local habitation, the second holding the 
 castle named after him, and standing nearer to the broad 
 stream of Thames, until after the reign of John, when the 
 Baynards had forfeited their possession, and the castle had 
 been conferred on the Fitzwalters, descendants of the Earls 
 of Clare, and hereditary standard-bearers to the City of 
 London. 
 
 Bridewell continued to be a royal palace till the death 
 of Henry VIII., and it was here that he lodged (having had 
 a way made connecting the building with the Black Friars) 
 when the Pope's Legate and the proud Wolsey sat at the 
 shameful trial of Queen Catharine. It is little to be 
 wondered at, therefore, that the daughter of Catherine should 
 shun the place, or that by the time that Edward VI. came 
 to the throne it was deserted and fast going to decay. It 
 was to Bishop Ridley that the benevolent scheme for con- 
 verting it into a refuge for the houseless is to be attributed, 
 and his curious but suggestive letter to the Secretary of 
 State (Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh) is worth notice, 
 " Good Mr. Cecil, I must be a suitor to you in our good 
 Master Christ's cause. I beseech you to be good to Him. 
 The matter is, sir, alas ! He hath lain too long abroad (as 
 you do know) without lodging, in the streets of London, 
 both hungry, naked, and cold. Now, thanks be to Almighty 
 God, the citizens are willing to refresh Him, and to give 
 Him meat, drink, clothing, and firing ; but, alas ! sir, they lack 
 lodging for Him. For in some one house, I dare say, they 
 are fain to lodge three families under one roof. Sir, there 
 is a large, wide, empty house of the King's Majesty's called 
 Bridewell, that would wonderfully well serve to lodge Christ 
 in, if He might find such good friends in the Court to pro- 
 cure in His cause. Surely I have such a good opinion of 
 the King's Majesty, that if Christ had such faithful and 
 hearty friends, who would heartily speak for Him, He should 
 undoubtedly speed at the King's Majesty's hands. Sir, I 
 have promised my brethren, the citizens, to move ycu. 
 
BRIDEWELL. 23 
 
 because I do take you for one that feareth God, and would 
 that Christ should lie no more in the streets." 
 
 There is something nobly simple about this direct 
 practical interpretation of the declaration " I was sick, and 
 in prison, and ye visited me," and the man who wrote that 
 letter was of the stuff of which martyrs are made. 
 
 And Cecil was not slow to back up the representations 
 of the Bishop. Soon after (in 1553) the Lord Mayor and 
 Commons of the City were called to Whitehall, and Bride- 
 well was made over to them for an asylum and place of 
 employment for the poor and destitute. But " Bridewell " 
 included a prison as well as a refuge. Here, as at the 
 Fleet, the Nonconformists, who were called Separatists, were 
 held in durance, and suffered great privations, though they 
 belonged to a body which was loyal and had no political 
 significance. Here, too, the members of that body who 
 were called Brownists formed what may be designated as 
 the first Nonconformist Church — a church within their prison 
 walls, whence, after long incarceration, they were taken to 
 execution. Not till a later period did Bridewell become a 
 " penitentiary " (?), a place of punishment intended for the 
 reformation of the vicious, with special departments for idle 
 and disobedient apprentices, and for women of bad reputa- 
 tion, of whom one of the last incarcerated there before the 
 Great Fire destroyed the old building was one Madam 
 Creswell, notorious even in those days of licence. Her 
 name has survived chiefly because at her death, which took 
 place in the gaol, it was found that she had expressed in 
 her will a desire to have a sermon preached at her funeral, 
 for which the preacher was to have ten pounds, but upon 
 the condition that he was to say nothing but what was well 
 of her. A preacher was with some difficulty found who 
 undertook the task. He, after a sermon on the general 
 subject of mortality and the good uses to be made of it, 
 concluded by saying, " By the will of the deceased it is 
 expected that I should mention her, and say nothing but 
 what is ivell of her. All that I shall say of her, therefore, 
 is this : she was born well, she lived well, and she died well. 
 For she was born with the name Creswell, she lived in 
 Clerkenwell, and she died in Brideswell." 
 
24 ludgate hill : past and present. 
 
 Baynard's Castle. 
 
 The story of Baynard's Castle, and all the activities, 
 intrigues, and conspiracies that were associated with it, 
 forms a large section of the History of England, with which 
 Ludgate Hill has always been prominently identified. When 
 the long, narrow-windowed, frowning pile went out of the 
 family of Bainardus — for what reason who can tell ? except 
 that the baron may have been another of the haughty 
 knights who dared to quarrel with his liege, " the Bastard " 
 — it went to the Fitzwalters, who were also Lords of Dun- 
 mow Robert Fitzwalter, with his great retinue armed 
 and in flaming surcoats, presented himself periodically at 
 Ludgate, there to receive from the Mayor and citizens the 
 great banner of London, which he was entitled to bear to 
 the wars, if war there should be, or even the threat of it. 
 He was a proud and puissant knight ; but the story of his 
 family is a tragic one. His daughter Matilda, one of the 
 most beautiful maidens in England, attracted the base 
 attentions of the false and licentious King John, who 
 perhaps met her at some high festival in Baynard's Castle. 
 It was in accordance with the monarch's detestable character 
 that he should urge a dishonourable suit, which was resented 
 indignantly both by the father and the daughter ; but John 
 was at once a fury and a sneak. He waited, and nursed his 
 revenge and plotted, until he was able to drive Fitzwalter 
 to take refuge in France. The daughter, then at his mercy, 
 was taken away, and, it is said, died from poison — murdered 
 by her royal suitor, whose passion hud turned to hate. It 
 is added, on the authority of an old chronicler, that her 
 body was buried between the two pillars in the church at 
 Dunmow, in Essex. Baynard's Castle was to have been 
 demolished to complete the King's revenge, but the war 
 with France followed quickly, and in the next year the 
 encamped armies of the English and French kings lay 
 opposite each other, during a truce, one on either side of 
 a river. Tired of awaiting the signal for battle, an English 
 knight challenged any one of the opposing force to break 
 a lance with him. No sooner said than done. An un- 
 attended knight from the French camp came across the 
 
STORY OF BAYNARD'S CASTLE. 25 
 
 river, and having quickly reached the bank, at once mounted 
 a horse, rode at the challenger, and with one tremendous 
 blow of his lance, which was splintered to pieces with the 
 shock, hurled both the antagonist and his horse to the 
 ground. With one of his usual feeble profane oaths, John, 
 who knew what prowess meant, and, in spite of his villainy 
 was himself no mean adept in the art of war, cried out, 
 " He were a king indeed who had such a knight." These 
 words were heard by the bystanders, who had recognised 
 in the successful warrior the renowned Fitzwalter, to whom 
 they were duly reported, and on the following day he 
 returned to the English camp, where he again sought the 
 favour of the Sovereign who had so bitterly wronged him, 
 and was graciously received, his possessions, and Baynard's 
 Castle among them, being restored to the family. This is 
 the story, and it has even been hinted that the challenge of 
 the English knight, the response of Fitzwalter, the defeat, 
 the restoration to favour, and all the rest of it, was a planned 
 thing among Fitzwalter's friends, in order to get the doughty 
 champion back again. Only on these grounds, and with 
 the knowledge of what followed, can we consent to receive 
 what is after all a rather vague narrative. The King could 
 not restore the daughter of the man whom he had wronged, 
 and there is something revolting in the idea of the father 
 kneeling at the murderer's feet for the sake of regaining 
 royal favour and worldly wealth. The tale does not corre- 
 spond either with what we know of Robert Fitzwalter, who 
 was at the head of the barons whose demands obtained from 
 John the Great Charter at Runnymede. It was he who 
 headed the knights when they went (probably from Baynard's 
 Castle) to the King at the Temple to insist on the con- 
 cessions, and in the appeal to arms which forced John to 
 yield, Fitzwalter was chief of the barons, commander of their 
 forces, " Marshal of the Army of God and of Holy Church." 
 One of the first things they did when they came from 
 Bedford was to enter the City by Aldgate, and then to begin 
 to plunder the houses of the Royalists and the Jews (who 
 were usually mulcted on both sides), even taking the stones 
 and materials of their dwellings to repair the City wall, 
 which it was necessary to strengthen in case of siege. In 
 
26 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 1586, two years before the Spanish Armada, and when 
 Ludgate Hill was entirely rebuilt, there was found embedded 
 among the stones of the ancient structure one bearing in 
 Hebrew characters the words, "This is the ward (or home) 
 of Rabbi Moses, the son of the honorable Rabbi Isaac." 
 
 In 1428 Baynard's Castle shared the fate which so often 
 befell the more important as well as the meaner buildings of 
 a city composed so largely of houses constructed of timber. 
 It was almost entirely destroyed by fire. Having been after- 
 wards granted to Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, 
 he rebuilt it, but on his attainder it again became Crown 
 property, and by Henry VI. was granted to the Duke of 
 York, who made it the scene of his ambitious plotting to 
 secure the throne, and gathered above 1,000 armed men 
 within its walls. After he was slain at the Battle of Wakefield 
 the castle became the residence of his son Edward, his 
 widow Cicely going to live in a mansion close by, near 
 Paul's Wharf. 
 
 It is in the garden at Baynard's Castle that Shakespeare 
 lays the scene between the Duke of York and the Earls of 
 Salisbury and Warwick, in the play of King Henry VI. : — 
 
 York : Now, my good lords of Salisbury and Warwick, 
 Our simple supper ended, give me leave, 
 In this close walk to satisfy myself, 
 In craving your opinion of my title, 
 Which is infallible, to England's crown. 
 
 * ^f * * * 
 
 JVarwick : What plain proceeding is more plain than this ? 
 Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt, 
 The fourth son ; York claims it from the third. 
 Till Lionel's issue fails, his should not reign : 
 It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee 
 And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock. 
 Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together ; 
 And in this private plot be we the first 
 That shall salute our rightful sovereign 
 With honour of his birthright to the crown. 
 
 In the gloomy but stately pile of Baynard's Castle, which, 
 with Crosby Hall, was then the most important of the City 
 palaces, the treacherous Richard waited for the ripening of 
 
baynakd's castle. 27 
 
 the plot that brought him to the throne. Here he held 
 counsel with the Duke of Buckingham and the other 
 creatures whom he used and crushed. After the pro- 
 clamation at Paul's Cross, and the address from which the 
 reverend preacher never recovered, but of the shame of 
 which he pined and died, it was at Baynard's Castle that 
 the wily usurper received his emissaries, and, as Shakespeare 
 represents it, kept up a show of reluctance and of humility 
 which was so subtly acted that we might almost imagine he 
 had deceived himself and his instruments as well as the 
 people. In the gallery of the great room — on each side of 
 him a bishop — stands the crouching, sinister figure of the 
 false Gloucester, and in subdued, pensive tone says, in mock 
 rejection of the offered crown : — 
 
 "Alas ! why would you heap these cares on me? 
 I am unfit for state and majesty : 
 I do beseech you take it not amiss ; 
 I cannot nor I will not yield to you." 
 
 We know^ the end of the story, and may read how it was 
 in the "high chamber" next the chapel that Richard had 
 the Great Seal delivered to him on the day of his coronation; 
 but retribution soon followed, and the Tudor was the next 
 tenant of the grand old pile, to which he took such a liking 
 that in 1501 he almost entirely rebuilt it. Doubtless its 
 situation was pleasant. Its position on the river bank, 
 when the Thames was the great highway from Greenwich 
 to Westminster, and its secluded, beautiful, and spacious 
 gardens, courtyards, and tilting-grounds made it a stately 
 residence, though it was then prison-like and forbidding in 
 the front that looked on the Thames. Henry VII., with 
 great taste, made it, " not embattled, nor so strongly fortified, 
 castle-like, but far more beautiful and commodious, for the 
 entertainment of any prince of great estate, such as Philip 
 of Austria, or the ambassadors from the King of the 
 Romans, who were received here when they visited this 
 country." 
 
 It was by water from Baynard's Castle that Prince 
 Henry of Greenwich, afterwards Henry VIII., and his 
 bride, Catherine of Aragon, were conducted in a splendid 
 
28 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 procession to the royal palace at Westminster, when the 
 Mayor and commonalty of London, in barges garnished 
 with standards, streamers, and pennons of their device, gave 
 them their attendance ; and there in the palace were such 
 martial feats, such valiant jousts, such vigorous tourneys, 
 such fierce fights at the barriers, as before that time was of 
 no man had in remembrance. 
 
 But Baynard's Castle went finally out of the royal 
 possession in the reign of Edward VI., when it became the 
 residence of Sir William Sydney, the Royal Chamberlain, 
 and from his hands passed to William Herbert, first Earl 
 of Pembroke, who lived there in almost regal magnificence 
 with his Countess Anne, sister of Queen Catherine Parr. 
 At Edward's death the earl, who was a cautious nobleman, 
 was induced to sign the famous document in favour of the 
 claims of Lady Jane Grey, but backed out when he saw the 
 danger, and was particularly practical in helping to proclaim 
 Queen Mary, whose supporters met at Baynard's Castle. 
 Thenceforward his caution seems not to have forsaken him, 
 for he became a prominent personage in all the Court 
 pageants, was appointed to receive Philip of Spain on his 
 arrival, was present at the royal marriage at Winchester in 
 1564, and three months afterwards came up to London to 
 the first Parliament under the newly-married sovereigns to his 
 mansion of Baynard's Castle, followed by a retinue of two 
 thousand horsemen in velvet coats with three laces of gold 
 and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats, with 
 his badge of the green dragon. Again we see him at the 
 coronation of Queen Elizabeth, who appointed him Master 
 of the Horse, and (he certainly was a careful man) accepted 
 an invitation to supper at the grand old mansion by Ludgate 
 Hill. At ten o'clock at night (a late hour for those times), 
 after a sumptuous entertainment, he handed the Queen into 
 her state barge at the water-gate of Baynard's Castle to the 
 sound of music, and amidst the blaze of a grand display of 
 fireworks, and thus attended her to Whitehall, surrounded 
 by a flotilla of boats, and cheered by the acclamations of 
 the citizens. These were rare times for Ludgate Hill, and 
 Baynard's Castle was then in its palmy days. The earl was 
 succeeded by his son Henry, whose countess was the 
 
PAULS WHARF AND PUDDLE DOCK. 29 
 
 "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother" of Ben Jonson's 
 verse. 
 
 The name of Baynard's Castle now only remains in that 
 of the ward which is called Castle Baynard, unless we 
 accept the curious allegation that in its early history a tract 
 of well-watered land, or land furnished with springs, beyond 
 Paddington, belonged to the founders of the family, and was 
 known as Baynard's Water, now corrupted into Bayswater. 
 
 Paul's Wharf and Puddle Dock. 
 
 Next to Paul's Wharf, and still in the w^ard of Castle 
 Baynard, is the ancient Puddle Dock, once a water-gate and 
 wharf, named either after its owner or because it was a 
 watering-place for horses, and so became trampled and 
 puddled. There are allusions to it in the later days of 
 Elizabeth, and no wonder, for it was close to the theatre at 
 Blackfriars, where Shakespeare and Ben Jonson met, and 
 of which we shall have to speak presently. In Jonson's 
 " Bartholomew Fair " we read of Puddle Wharf, — 
 
 "Which place we'll make bold with to call it our Abydos, 
 As the Bankside is our Sestos." 
 
 And in " Hudibras " it is spoken of as though persons 
 arrested for debt were sent there on their way to prison — 
 perhaps either to Newgate, Bridewell, the Giltspur Street 
 Compter, or the Fleet. Shadwell, too, in his "Epsom 
 Wells" (1676), makes Clodpole say, "Is not this better 
 than anything in that stinking town ? " To which Lucia 
 retorts, " Stinking town ! I had rather be Countess of Puddle 
 Dock than Queen of Sussex." More interesting still is the 
 reference to the place in Shakespeare s will, in which he 
 bequeaths to his daughter, Susannah Hall, his house in the 
 Blackfriars "abutting upon a streete leading down to 
 Puddle Wharffe, on the east part, right against the King's 
 Majesty's ^Vardrobe . . . and now, or late, in the tenure 
 or occupation of one William Ireland, or of his assignee or 
 assignees." This description is in the conveyance, but the 
 will says, " I gyve, will, bequeath, and devise unto my 
 daughter, Susannah Hall ... all that messuage or tene- 
 ment, with the appurtenances, wherein one John Robinson 
 
30 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 dvvelleth, scituat, lying, and being in the Blackfriars, in 
 London, near the Wardrobe." The street leading down to 
 Puddle Wharf is the present St. Andrew's Hill, so called 
 from the Church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe, but the 
 old name was Puddle Dock Hill. It was in 1612 that 
 Shakespeare bought the house in the place afterwards 
 called, from its proprietor, Ireland Yard, and part of the 
 house was built over a great gate leading to a building 
 •occupied by Henry, Duke of Northumberland. 
 
 Close to both Baynard's Castle and Puddle Dock was 
 the harbour for corn coming from the Cinque Ports, and for 
 centuries the successful rival of Billingsgate as a landing- 
 place for fish and other commodities. It is said to have 
 taken its name of Queenhithe, or Ripa Regina (Queen's bank 
 or harbour), from the fact of its having become royal 
 property, and the dues having been apportioned by King 
 John to his mother, the queen of Henry IL, from whom it 
 descended to succeeding queens as belonging to them 
 specially. But here we seem to have an example of one of 
 those peculiar involutions of title which are a frequent 
 puzzle to antiquaries and etymologists. There can be no 
 doubt that in very early times the place was called Corn- 
 hithe, and Stow surmises that Queenhithe may have been 
 a corruption of Cornhithe. If so, the royal proprietor may 
 have taken advantage of the corruption, and confirmed it 
 in order to fix the association between the place and its 
 owner. But there is another possible derivation which the 
 archaeologists seem to have overlooked. It is possible that 
 the place was originally named Quernehithe — querne being 
 Saxon for a hand-mill, and afterwards probably for a corn- 
 mill, so that we find querne and corn used indifferently. 
 On the other side of St. Paul's, beyond Bowyer Row 
 (Ludgate Hill) and along Ave Mary Lane by Paul's Gate 
 in West Cheape, was the corn market, next to the shambles, 
 and here — in the spot which would be the extreme end of 
 Paternoster Row — was the church of St. Michael le Querne, 
 or St. Michael ad Bladum (at the corne), destroyed in the 
 Great Fire, and never rebuilt. It seems likely that near the 
 corn harljour there may in early times have been a flour- 
 mill, and that Querne-hithe may have been easily turned into 
 
THE WARDROBE. 3 I 
 
 Queenhithe. The church of St. Michael, Queenhithe, in 
 Upper Thames Street, with its vane in the form of a ship 
 large enough to hold a bushel of grain, was built by Sir 
 Christopher Wren immediately after the Fire of London, 
 and contains some very finely carved woodwork on the 
 doorway next the pulpit. 
 
 The "Wardrobe." — Printing-House Square. 
 
 The Wardrobe, to which Shakespeare refers, is close by 
 (in our imagination), and if our fancy is not strong enough 
 to picture it, we may find the place where it once stood, 
 which has since retained the name of Wardrobe Court. 
 There are so many quaint, shadowy nooks and corners still 
 remaining in the whole of this ancient precinct of Doctors' 
 Commons (it was not named Doctors' Commons till the 
 time of Elizabeth, however), that a contemplative wayfarer 
 with a little of the romantic lore of history might linger there 
 for a long summer's day. The Wardrobe, which gave a 
 second name to the Church of St. Andrew Wardrobe, was 
 originally a mansion built by Sir John Beauchamp (son of 
 the famous Guy, Earl of Warwick), after whose death, in 
 1359, it was sold to Edward III., and became, as its name 
 implies, the depository for the Royal clothes, and a very 
 extensive and valuable assortment of " toggery " some of 
 our ancient monarchs must have had ; as may be still seen 
 by reference to the private accounts kept by the stewards at 
 a time when the household expenses — the candles (which 
 were a great item), the various rations of minstrels, pages, 
 and attendants, the dishes for the Royal table, and the small 
 beer of the servants' hall — were solemnly set forth and 
 chronicled. Edward IV., who was as luxurious and self- 
 indulgent as he was merciless, took care to have the Ward- 
 robe well stocked with garments to set off his lanky but not 
 ungraceful person on great state occasions, when it is, of 
 course, a duty for a monarch to show his clothes. A manu- 
 script account-book in the Harleian Collection shows that 
 from April to Michaelmas, 1481, the sum of £11']^ ^s. 2d. 
 was received by the Wardrobe-keeper, most of which was 
 spent on velvet at 8j". to 16s. a yard ; silks from Mont- 
 pellier, " velvet upon velvet," and " black cloths of gold," at 
 
32 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 40s. a yard; satins at 6s. to 12s.; camlets 305". a-piece ; 
 sarcenets, 4s. to 4^. 2d. ; damask, Ss. Surely the Queen 
 must have had her wardrobe here, too ; and we have only to 
 remember the relative value of money in those days, when 
 the carcass of an ox could be bought for five-and-twenty 
 shillings, and a sheep for about three, to compute how 
 luxuriously the Court dressed, and what fine birds were 
 made of such fine feathers. Feather beds, with bolsters, 
 for the King, cost i6s. Sd. each; a pair of double- 
 soled Spanish shoes (they were long in the toes then), un- 
 lined, cost i^. 4^. ; a pair of black leather boots 6s. Sd. ; 
 hats IS. ; and ostrich feathers loj". a-piece. Sometimes the 
 King lodged at the Wardrobe, perhaps while Baynard's 
 Castle was being cleaned down, and then there was a wash- 
 ing bill. Of course, we must take the wardrobe to be that 
 of the royal household, and the cost will not be so 
 extravagant, especially as other items were charged in the 
 amount ; for instance, that of book-binding — for we find an 
 entry of 205'. paid to Piers Baudwyn (Peter Baldwin he 
 would be now), stationer, " for binding, gilding, and dressing 
 of a book called 'Titus Livius,' and i6i'. each for a Bible, a 
 ' Froissard,' ' Josephus,' " and other books. 
 
 This would seem to imply that stationers had already 
 settled in the locality which they have occupied ever since — 
 near Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's ; and we must remember 
 that at that date (1481) copper-plate printing had been 
 invented in Germany thirty years before, and that Caxton 
 had been five years at the Almonry at Westminster with his 
 press for printing books with movable types. The lever 
 that was to move the world and change the face of society 
 had already been applied. And here close by is the place 
 that may be called the representative core and centre of 
 that great power of the press which followed in due course. 
 The King's Printers, whose House, which formerly stood in 
 Printing-House Square, and gave it its name, are no longer 
 there; nor does the house itself exist. John Bill, who 
 printed the Royal proclamations of Charles H., and the 
 first London Gazette^ established in that reign, had no 
 successor in the Square. The last of the King's printers 
 who had their house here were Charles Eyre and William 
 
ST. PAULS. 33 
 
 Strahan ; and in 1770 the King's Printing-house was re- 
 moved to New Street, Goiigh Square, where George Eyre 
 and Andrew Strahan succeeded to it. Of the great business 
 of Eyre and Spottiswoode, which is still in the neighbour- 
 hood, and near to Ludgate Hill, all the world knows. 
 
 But before the King's Printing-house had been removed, 
 a vast power had appeared in Printing-House Square. On 
 the ist of January, 1788, the first number of the Ti?nes was 
 issued from the printing-office that had there been set up by 
 Mr. Walter. In 1803 the Times became the most import- 
 ant newspaper in the world ; for many years exercised a 
 power which was recognised, and was sometimes feared, 
 all over Europe, and was the precursor of the enormous 
 influence of the newspaper press at the present time. After 
 the Great Fire the " Royal Wardrobe " was removed to the 
 Savoy, and afterwards to Buckingham Street. The last 
 Master was Ralph, Duke of Montague ; and it was abolished 
 in 1709. 
 
 Round Old St. Paul's. 
 
 But returning to the now half-demolished buc traditional 
 neighbourhood, just beyond Ludgate towards St. Paul's, 
 we come again to Paul's Wharf, which old Stow describes as 
 "a large landing-place with a common stair upon the River 
 Thames, at the end of a street called Paul's Wharf Hill, 
 which runneth down from Paul's Chain." Here within a 
 great gate once stood a number of houses said to have been 
 called in the leases granted by the Dean and Chapter the 
 Camera Dianae, or Diana's Chamber. The legendary reasons 
 for this name being given to the place, as stated by Maitland, 
 are curious and highly improbable, viz., that there existed 
 there a spacious building in the form of a labyrinth, which 
 had been constructed there by Henry H. for the conceal- 
 ment of the fair Rosamond Clifford, and that there was a 
 subterranean passage from the place to Baynard's Castle. 
 Maitland declares that for a long time there remained some 
 evidence of tedious turnings and windings — and that is 
 exceedingly probable — for within living memory some of 
 the adjacent courts and alleys were mazy enough ; but why 
 Rosamond Clifford should have been called Diana, or why 
 
34 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 there should have been a labyrinth close to St. Paul's to 
 imitate that at Woodstock, when the place was full of prying 
 eyes and bustling activity, is not easily explained. Probably 
 there may have been some building used by the ecclesiastics, 
 and even called the Diana Chamber, as has been ingeniously 
 suggested, from the designs of some old tapestry on the walls, 
 or even from a tradition of the Temple of Diana that was 
 supposed to have been on the site of the Cathedral. For 
 we are now amidst the dependencies of St. Paul's — here in 
 Paul's Chain — so called from the chain or barrier drawn 
 across the roadway to prevent traffic during the time of 
 Divine Service, the barrier on the north side being a wooden 
 beam. It was at Paul's Chain that the famous arithmetician 
 and caligraphist Edward Cocker lived in t66o, where he 
 taught the arts which he professed "in an extraordinary 
 manner at his dwelling on the south side of St. Paul's 
 Church," and it was here that he wrote "The Pen's As- 
 cendancy," a remarkable illustration of his skill, but one by 
 which his name was less remembered than by his arith- 
 metical accuracy, which has even come down to us tradition- 
 ally in the phrase " according to Cocker." In Godliman 
 Street, Paul's Chain, was Paul's Bakehouse, which has left 
 its name to the court on which it stood. Here the bread 
 for the church and its clergy was baked, and at Paul's 
 Brewhouse, at the corner of the entrance to Doctors' Com- 
 mons from the Churchyard, the beer was supplied to those 
 Churchmen who, like Bishop Still, loved ale whether new 
 or old. St. Paul's Coffee House stood on the site of he 
 brewery, and that was followed by the Paul's Head Tavern, 
 and afterwards, as Sam Weller says in the inimitable adven- 
 tures of Mr. Pickwick, " Bookseller's at one corner, hot-el on 
 the other, and porters in the middle as touts for licenses." 
 
 But we must abandon all notions of the present aspect 
 of St. Paul's and the Churchyard if we desire to picture 
 to ourselves the Cathedral — not that of Ethelbert, but its 
 successor. The old Saxon church, of which Melitus was 
 first bishop and Erkenwald the fourth, was entirely destroyed 
 by fire, so William the Conqueror began to construct a 
 vast pile upon the site in 1083 ; and it was again injured by 
 fire in 1137, before it was really finished — for the building 
 
OLD ST. PAULS* 37 
 
 was not completed till the reign of Henry III. It took 
 nearly two centuries to complete such a stupendous work in 
 days when kings so often wanted sudden " benevolences " 
 of money, that even the Church had to wait. Old St. 
 Paul's was an enormous building — inelegant, and without 
 the grander and purer lines and beautiful ornamentation 
 which distinguish the Gothic architecture of other cathedrals, 
 but vast and imposing ; and with an interior which was 
 regarded as one of the finest sights in the world, because of 
 its great size, its many gorgeous shrines, and the numerous 
 multitude of priests and acolytes who officiated at the altar, 
 the chapels, the chantries, and the choir. 
 
 To begin with, the old Cathedral did not stand in the 
 same direction as the present one. The west front of the 
 ancient structure came much further towards Ludgate, and 
 the building stood, as it were, more square with the two 
 main thoroughfares of Chepe and Ludgate Hill. It covered 
 a much greater space, for its extent was so enormous that 
 that alone was sufficient to make any pile of building im- 
 posing. The entire edifice measured 690 feet in length by 
 130 in breadth, and above the great height of the spacious 
 roof rose a timber spire to a height of 520 feet, surmounted 
 not only by a ball and cross, but by a large gilt eagle, which 
 served as a weathercock. The wall which bounded the 
 churchyard ran along by the present streets of Ave Maria 
 Lane, Paternoster Row, Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed 
 Lane, and in this ample, partly-enclosed area were included 
 many buildings and many appendages to the church, the 
 most historically important of which was Paul's Cross — a 
 structure the antiquity of which is not to be determined by 
 any record. It stood on the north side, at a spot now 
 marked, within the present garden of the Cathedral. It 
 was at Paul's Cross that the citizens assembled for the 
 folkmote or for any public purpose — either political, social, 
 or ecclesiastical ; and afterwards proclamations, wState 
 sermons, denunciations, declarations of allegiance, or even 
 the trial and condemnation of public offenders, were 
 constantly associated with this famous landmark of Old 
 London. 
 
 The early history of the old Cathedral was one of con- 
 
3^ LUDGATE hill: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 tinual architectural restoration, and the growth of artistic 
 taste which had been developed in the reign of the Third 
 Henry was nowhere more practically exemplified than at 
 St. Paul's, under that energetic Churchman and skilful 
 designer Bishop Roger, who was surnamed Niger. A new 
 steeple was completed in 1221, and a new choir in 1240, 
 and the Bishop depended not directly upon King, Pope, or 
 Prelate, but indirectly upon the people, and very artfully he 
 went to work. He induced nearly all his brother bishops 
 in England to issue letters to their clergy granting " indul- 
 gences " for a certain number of days to all those persons 
 who, having penance to perform and being penitent, should 
 assist in the building. Such was the alacrity with which 
 these appeals were answered, that St. Paul's, the tiny 
 Church of St. Gregory, standing as it were in the arms ot 
 the mother church at the south-west corner, and the sub- 
 terranean Church of St. Faith, which occupied the space 
 beneath the crypt, were soon completed, and pictures, shrines, 
 vestments, and sacred vessels and ornaments for the high 
 altar, all richly dight with gold, silver, and precious stones, 
 were among the costly presents that told of the general 
 interest in making the great Cathedral worthy of its position 
 in the very centre of the English metropolis. Charles 
 Knight, in his " London," has called up a picture of Old 
 St. Paul's in the beginning of the 15th century which is 
 exceedingly graphic. 
 
 We are to imagine ourselves now passing up the hill. 
 Behind us lies the moderately broad and rapid Fleet River, 
 with its numerous vessels riding quietly at anchor. We 
 pass through Lud Gate, and so to the entrance into the 
 Cathedral enclosure. The place is crowded with people, 
 chiefly of the poorer classes, who are being fed by the 
 ecclesiastical officers. It is evidently a day of high festival, 
 no less, indeed, than the festival of the conversion of the 
 patron saint — St. Paul. Before we pass through the 
 sumptuous western gates of the church let us cast a glance 
 at the Bishop's palace where London House Yard since 
 stands. Here it was that Edward HL and his queen were 
 lodged after the great tournament in Smithfield, when so 
 many goodly knights appeared, the charger of each knight 
 
OLD ST. Paul's. 39 
 
 led by a beautiful dame mounted on a palfrey, and, as 
 Froissart tells us, " there was goodly dancing in the Queen's 
 lodging in the presence of the King and his uncles and 
 ladies and damoiselles till it was day, which was time for 
 every person to draw to their lodgings, except the King and 
 Queen, who lay there in the Bishop's palace." But we 
 must pass on to the Cathedral before the great business of 
 the day begins. We enter, and are at once fixed in amaze- 
 ment at the scene of enchantment suddenly visible. An 
 apparently endless perspectiv:^ of lofty arches lost in the 
 distance in a luminous mist — a confused blaze of many- 
 coloured streams of light, a great number of persons in all 
 kinds of dresses moving to and fro, sublime sounds, at once 
 press upon and bewilder the attention. As we gaze more 
 steadily the wonderful perspective becomes gradually clear, 
 until at last, for nearly seven hundred feet^ we can follow the 
 range — unbroken from the tesselated marble pavement 
 below to the roof with its gilded groins above — of arches 
 upon arches, and of the dim but richly-coloured painted 
 windows at the top. The only, and that very slight, inter- 
 ruption is the low screen which crosses the pavement far 
 down, probably about the centre of the pile. The glorious 
 vista is terminated by a rose window of great size, but 
 appearing from hence scarcely larger than the flower from 
 which it borrows its name, whilst its colours, while revelling 
 in the intensest of dyes, appear mingled into one glowing 
 but nameless hue. As the eye wanders from this, the first 
 impressive feature of the place, it falls upon the huge lighted 
 tapers on the different altars that we see scattered about the 
 nave and aisles, then to the kneeling people before them — 
 here a large group, there a solitary individual. 
 
 As we pace along the nave, and the transepts open on 
 either hand, magnificent shrines lining the walls, tall crosses 
 with tapers before them, and gorgeous pictures, are seen at 
 every step. There seems no end to the wealth that has 
 been lavished upon the place. Gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, 
 pearls begin even to lose their value from their profusion. 
 A kind of low, confused hum pervades the church, above 
 which may be continually distinguished the voices of the 
 priests, who are performing the duties of their respective 
 
40 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 chantries, scattered along the entire length of the nave, 
 aisles, and transepts — seventy or eighty in number ; whilst 
 grandly towering over all we hear the chant and responses 
 of the choral multitude. The Cathedral is now rapidly be- 
 coming full. Noblemen, warriors, citizens, and labourers, 
 arrayed in all kinds of materials — satin, damask, cloth of 
 gold and silver, and the plain but good old English broad- 
 cloth of different colours — their dresses exhibiting every 
 variety of fashion, as little hoods, long gowns, short coats, 
 long piked shoes, parti-coloured hose, and ornamented, in 
 so many cases, with gems and embroidery, that, as Knighton 
 observes, " it is impossible to distinguish the rich from the 
 poor, the high from the low." Nor are the ladies generally 
 less fantastically or less sumptuously arrayed. The prepar- 
 ations for the coming festivity are now begun. Noiseless 
 figures are gliding to and fro, setting up additional tapers in 
 every part of the church where there is room and convenience 
 for placing them ; but a short time elapses, and hundreds 
 of such lights are burning in every direction. Hark ! the 
 sound of horns blown more loudly than skilfully reverberates 
 through the pile ; and, as if it were some wizard's signal, 
 there is a general cessation of the devotional business of 
 the place. The devotee starts from his knees, the penitent 
 sinner wipes the tears from his cheeks, the grave become 
 gay, the gloomy look cheerful, as all eagerly press forward 
 and line the intercommunications of the nave ; first in a 
 single row, then a second behind that, then a third, till both 
 aisles are filled, and little more than a lane is left for the 
 passage of the coming procession down the central part of 
 the nave. The officers with their gilded staves have to 
 bestir themselves even to keep that clear. Again and again 
 blow the horns, the western doors are thrown back, and a 
 strange procession enters, consisting of a group of horn- 
 blowers, then a body of ruddy-cheeked yeomen and others, 
 bearing, on a kind of frame raised aloft, the doe, which the 
 family of Baud are bound yearly to offer in procession at 
 the high altar on this day, in addition to a buck on the 
 summer feast called the Commemoration of St. Paul, both 
 being in lieu of certain lands granted to Sir William Baud, 
 in the third year of Edward I., by the Church, to be en- 
 
OLD ST. Paul's. 41 
 
 closed within his park of Toringham, in Essex. Imme- 
 diately before the doe-bearers marches proudly the keeper, 
 or huntsman, clad in green coat and hood, and bearing 
 beneath his belt a sheaf of peacock arrows, in his hand a 
 bow, and, as Chaucer sings of one of his characters — 
 
 " A nut head had he with a brown visage, 
 Of woodcraft could he well all the usage." 
 
 On moves the procession towards the choir, which it 
 enters, and so to the steps of the high altar at its extremity. 
 There it is met by the Dean and Chapter, arrayed in rich 
 copes and robes, jewelled and embroidered, and wearing 
 garlands of roses on their heads. The head of the doe is 
 now divided from the body, and, whilst the body is at once 
 sent off to be baked, the head is fixed on a spear, and borne 
 before the cross in the usual daily procession, which now 
 starts towards the western door. This reached, the keeper 
 makes the whole neighbourhood ring again with his lusty 
 horn, and, before the sound has well died away, it is 
 answered from different quarters of the City by similar 
 instruments. All the parties are now dismissed with a small 
 present in money to their dinners, provided by the Dean 
 and Chapter, whilst the keeper will also have to receive his 
 customary five shillings, and his loaf of bread stamped with 
 the image of St. Paul. 
 
 So ends this portion of the business of the day ; but the 
 most splendid is yet to come — the commemoration of St. 
 Erkenwald's burial in the Cathedral, where, we are told, his 
 "glorious merits did shine forth miraculously." Again 
 through the western door comes a procession winding from 
 the Bishop's palace, this time the Bishop himself at its head, 
 having the Dean on his right hand, other distinguished 
 officers of the church on his left, and followed by nearly all 
 the clergy of his diocese, with all the customary parapher- 
 nalia of the church processions during such high solemni- 
 ties. The sumptuousness of their appearance beggars 
 description. The Bishop wears a long, snow-white robe 
 almost concealing his feet, above which is another of ruby- 
 coloured silk, reaching a little below the knee, open at the 
 sides, embroidered all over in the most exquisite manner 
 
42 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 with representations of animals, birds, and flowers, and 
 having a deep border, which consists chiefly of rows of 
 interlaced pearls. From the low, upright collar of this 
 upper robe, down the centre of the front to the bottom, 
 extends a band formed of one entire mass of precious 
 stones, of different colours, and arranged in a variety of 
 close patterns. The golden mitre on his head, the golden 
 pastoral staff in his hand, are each similarly ornamented. 
 Towards the shrine of St. Erkenwald slowly moves the 
 procession amidst the fragrant perfumes shed around by 
 incense-bearers from their sflver censers, now up the nave, 
 thence through one of the aisles, and so round to the 
 shrine at the back of the high altar. This is the most 
 gorgeous piece of combined architecture, sculpture, and 
 decoration even in a Cathedral rich in such works. Rising 
 from behind a kind of table covered with jewels and precious 
 stones of all kinds, including small shrines, rings, and silver 
 girdles, the gifts of the pious, appears a lofty pyramidal 
 Gothic structure in the purest and most exquisitely decorated 
 style ; the outlines formed by pinnacles rising one above 
 another towards a single pinnacle in the centre at the top, 
 and the central portion consisting of three slender windows 
 side by side, and an exceedingly elegant one filling the 
 triangular space above. A railing encloses the whole for 
 the preservation of the invaluable treasures lying on the 
 table within, or that have been used in the adornment of 
 the shrine. Among the former we may find the sapphire 
 stone which Richard de Preston, citizen and grocer of 
 London, gave to be placed here for the curing of infirmities 
 in the eyes, appointing at the same time that proclamation 
 should be made of its virtues. Solemn masses for the 
 repose of the dead are now said ; the indulgences granted 
 to all who visit the shrine, and to those who bring oblations, 
 are explained. The words fall upon no dull or unheeding 
 ears ; they come pressing around, rich and poor, lay and 
 ecclesiastic, depositing their gifts of money or jewels or 
 whatever else the tastes or means of the owners instigate, 
 the very poorest having at least a taper for their favourite 
 shrine. 
 
 All is still at last. Prelates, clergy, choristers have gone ; 
 
LOOKING ROUND. 43 
 
 the lights, save those which burn perpetually before the 
 different chantries, shrines, and altars are extinguished; 
 the rich western window, lit up by a sudden burst of sun- 
 shine, seems to glow with preternatural radiance and 
 splendour, and throws its warm light far along the pave- 
 ment, and, catching the edge of the gilded crucifix raised 
 aloft in the centre of the nave, makes it appear even more 
 brilliant than the taper by its side. 
 
 There may be some other processions outside — of Fran- 
 ciscans, or those Dominicans who are hereafter to give the 
 name to the precinct of Blackfriars ; but a goodly number 
 of visitors stay in the Cathedral to look round at the superb 
 altar of Our Lady and Our Lady's chapel, the sculptured 
 image of Our Lady with its lamp constantly burning, and 
 an iron box at the foot of the statue for the offerings of the 
 pious. Behind this statue, on the right of the nave as we 
 approach the choir, is the low sculptured tomb of Sir John 
 Beauchamp, with his effigy in complete armour lying on 
 the top, and the lower part decorated with painted and 
 sculptured shields. Not much farther, and we look up to 
 the great height of the four arches that support the high 
 tower of the Cathedral, and yet spring so lightly upward that 
 they seem incapable of bearing the square tower that rises 
 to 260 feet, and in its turn supports the spire of wood covered 
 with lead, which is 274 feet more. 
 
 LuDGATE Hill and Prison. — Lollards' Tower. 
 
 Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane — yes, 
 the stationers have settled here — the stationers and text 
 writers, sellers of prayers, rosaries, hornbooks, A B C's, and 
 such volumes as those which Edward IV. had bound, 
 '' tooled," and gilded. Stationers' Hall is not yet founded, 
 but here is the building which is to become the centre of 
 that craft and mystery on which the progress of the world is 
 so greatly to depend. Between Amen Corner and Bowyer 
 Row (hereafter to be named Ludgate Street), stands a great 
 house of stone and wood, the house of John, Duke of 
 Bretagne, in the time of Edward H., and going down to 
 the Earls of Pembroke, after whom it is named Pembroke 
 Inn. It is worthy of note that these great mansions of the 
 
44 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 nobility in London are called inns, and that in the City and 
 its Liberties — within the encircling wall — are a number of 
 such goodly piles, with their courtyards and surrounding 
 lodgings, where retainers and men-at-arms dwell and have 
 their rations served to them. Close by, near Newgate 
 Market and Prison, is Warwick Inn, in Eldenesse Lane 
 (but soon to be called Warwick Lane), the great mansion of 
 the Nevills, wherein " the King-maker " takes up his abode 
 when Henry VI. has summoned the estates of the realm to 
 London. Great doings are there then, for along Ludgate 
 Hill march the Earl's men, six hundred of them, clad in red 
 jackets, embroidered before and behind with the cognisance 
 of the Nevills, that ragged staff which has rallied its bearers 
 in many a hard-fought field. Away to Warwick House tramp 
 they, amidst sharp ring of arms and the shouts of the people, 
 and great state will be kept, for there will be often as many 
 as six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern will be full 
 of the Earl's meat, for he that has any acquaintance in that 
 house may go there and take so much of sodden and roast 
 meat as he can prick and carry away on a long dagger. 
 Yes, there are brave doings in these days about that quarter, 
 and in the large open space fronting St. Paul's and behind 
 Ludgate. Once more will the people in Bowyer's Row do 
 a brisk trade, and the clink of anvils and the sound of car- 
 pentry be heard. Still later, and in the great Smoothfield, 
 by the Priory and Hospital of Saint Bartholomew, there will 
 again be jousts and tournaments, and from the Tower, by 
 the old Roman road of Watling Street, and so along Knight- 
 rider Street to the front of St. Paul's, will come the champions, 
 the squires, the men-at-arms, to attend the Weapon Show, 
 or, as the Scotch call it, the Wapin-schaw. There is a blare 
 of trumpets, a crash and clatter of iron, a flash of gold and 
 steel, quaint devices and gay colours of banner and pennon 
 and painted shield, as the cavalcade rides by, with heralds 
 in tabards ablaze wdth gold and crimson, pursuivants with 
 jewelled housings and truncheons of office, ladies on ambling 
 palfreys, or borne in litters, gently heaving forward, as they, 
 are carried by low, easy-paced horses, and surrounded with a 
 glittering retinue of pages. 
 
 The prisons are full enough. Here at Ludgate itself the 
 
THE LOLLARDS' TOWER. 45 
 
 cry of the poor debtors who are confined in the gaol where 
 the gate joins the City wall is heard daily. It is a wretched 
 place, and the abode of the wretched who are kept there by 
 remorseless creditors. Merchants and tradesmen who have 
 been ruined by losses at sea are among them ; and it has 
 had an evil reputation ever since the days of Richard II., 
 when it was first used as a place of confinement, not for evil- 
 doers, but for the unfortunate. But it has its romantic story ; 
 for here, according to the old chroniclers, was a prisoner, one 
 Robert Forster, who, begging at the grate with the alms-box 
 into which benevolent donors cast their money for the relief 
 of the inmates, was asked by a wealthy widow what sum of 
 money would pay his debts and set him free. He replied 
 that twenty pounds would suffice (a good round sum in those 
 days, for he had been a merchant of London) ; and she at 
 once paid it, and took him into her service, where he be- 
 haved with such discretion that she afterwards married him, 
 and he built up a still larger fortune, and became Lord Mayor 
 of London. This worthy pair, remembering the sufferings 
 of the poor debtors, enlarged the prison, added to it a chapel 
 for the inmates, and provided that in future there should be 
 free lodging and water, to which effect an inscription was 
 placed outside the gate. That this was a real relief may be 
 understood when we learn that at other prisons for debtors 
 lodgings and even water had to be paid for ; and but for 
 the alms-box, the broken victuals from the Lord Mayor's 
 table, and other contributions of the charitable, many of 
 those who were kept in hopeless durance would have perished 
 of want. 
 
 Even over the tiny church of St. Gregory, snuggling there 
 in the very elbow of St. Paul's, is the Lollards' Tower, where 
 heretics are tormented and martyrs have lived and died 
 within the sound of the great Cathedral, and of the campanile 
 that stands just beyond apart from the church — the bell- 
 tower whence in older times came the peal that summoned 
 citizens to the folkmote, and rang out the chime of rejoicing, 
 or the alarum that gave warning of strife, and called men to 
 arms. So, amidst the splendid shows, the gorgeous pageants, 
 the solemn celebrations, the ever-changing and abundant 
 vitality of this great thoroughfare from the hill foot to East 
 
46 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Chepe, are heard the undertones of misery and persecution, 
 the wail against cruelty and oppression. Amidst the vigorous 
 life one might almost turn to find some meaning of that 
 symbolic " dance of death " which is painted on the walls of 
 the cloister surrounding the Pardon Church Haugh, in the 
 churchyard just beyond the bishop's house, to the east by 
 Paternoster Row. The father of Thomas Becket built that 
 chapel, and the strange, weird dance was added but lately 
 (for we are now in the reign of Henry VI.), at the special 
 request of Jenkin Carpenter, citizen and mercer. This 
 dance of death is already a favourite delineation for cloister 
 walls, and is an illustration of a poem written by one 
 Machabre, a German, after whom it is sometimes called 
 " the dance of Machabre." It is a " moral " performance, 
 and consists of a long train of figures representing persons 
 of all degrees and stations, from the Pope to the lowest 
 beggar or outcast, who perform a procession or dance each 
 with a skeleton partner, and heading the train the bony 
 spectre who flourishes his emptying hour-glass. The gro- 
 tesque memento may have its moral uses, but better for 
 the true instruction of the people, if the people could only 
 read, would be the " faire library with faire written books 
 in vellum just placed in the room over the east side of 
 the cloister by Walter Shyrington, Canon Residentiary of 
 St. Paul's and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster." 
 
 The " Bell Savage." — Its Origin. 
 
 But we must return to our standpoint beside the old 
 Bell Savage Inn, for the history of that ancient building 
 emerges in the reign of Henry VI., when one John French 
 legally conveys " to his mother for her life all that tenement 
 or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage's Inn, otherwise 
 called the Bell on the Hoop." This is the first regular 
 mention of the inn ; it was evidently in possession of the 
 Savage family, and as there are indications that it became 
 the property of one Isabella Savage, Stow thinks that it was 
 from her that the old inn got its name. The title which it 
 bore in more modern times — La Belle Sauvage — has pro- 
 bably one of two derivations, It was the custom of the 
 
THE "bell savage." 47 
 
 wits, poets, and players, and indeed of almost everybody of 
 the time of the Tudors and the Stuarts, to make anagrams, 
 and sometimes to convert the anagrams into rebuses or 
 pictorial tokens. We see such among many of the trades- 
 men's and tavern tokens still preserved, and it is therefore 
 easy to suppose that Isabella Savage, or Bella Savage, might 
 be converted into La bel Savage, or, in more modern French, 
 La Belle Sauvage. The other possible origin of the sign, 
 according to Pennant, is mentioned in the Spectator by 
 Addison. " As for the Bell Savage," he says, " which is 
 the sign of a savage man standing by a bell, I was formerly 
 very much puzzled upon the cause 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." With all grave reverence for Mr. Addison 
 and Mr. Pennant, we can scarcely think the old French 
 romance was known here before the Wars of the Roses, and 
 the fact of the old place being called Savage's Inn, and having 
 the token, as it were, of a bell, sufficiently accounts for the 
 savage man and the bell, which was the rebus for Bell Savage. 
 But let us reflect for a minute. The place is sometimes 
 called the Belly Savage, and in later times the Old Bell 
 Savage. This may suggest a rather simple derivation, when 
 we consider that the ancient building, like the great pile 
 which more than covers its area to-day, was close to, and 
 one portion of it may have opened upon, the Ballium or 
 Bailey (which at one time would have been crossed by a bail 
 or bar of wood), the residence of the high bailiff, and the 
 bail or boundary of the district. Now, as the inn was the 
 mansion of the Savage family, and near the Bailey or Ballium, 
 it is at least conceivable that it would come to be known as 
 the Bail or Bailey Savage Inn, and afterwards the Old Bail 
 or Bailey Savage Inn. The similarity in sound between 
 bail and bell might have justified the pictorial token, and 
 the derivation, at all events, seems probable. But, as we 
 have before mentioned, the old place was not an inn for 
 public entertainment in the times that we have been de- 
 picting. In its courtyards were tenements for retainers or 
 
48 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 tenants of the owners of the mansion, and its great gate shut 
 it from the roar and turmoil of Ludgate Hill. 
 
 The Hill in Old Times. 
 
 We can scarcely picture to ourselves what the streets of 
 London were like in those days — the houses, mostly of 
 timber and wood, cement or plaster, built in overhanging 
 storeys, evidently the best way of making each storey 
 preserve from the effects of rains and storms that which was 
 beneath it. Not till the time of Edward IV. do we hear of 
 brick houses, and glass windows were by no means common 
 till long afterwards. The middle of the streets began to be 
 paved in Henry VHI.'s reign, and though there was then 
 much magnificence and display, the customs were not over 
 cleanly. The floors were commonly of clay, strewed with 
 rushes, beneath which often lay unmolested, as Erasmus tells 
 us, "an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments offish, 
 etc., etc., and everything that is nasty." 
 
 Even the City was not lighted at night till the reign of 
 Henry V., and then the illumination was with lanterns slung 
 upon robes or haybands which crossed the streets — an 
 arrangement which might be applied to our electric lighting. 
 The City Watch in the time of Henry VHI. had grown to 
 be a stately body of men, and when they went out for their 
 muster on the Eve of St. John the sight was one that the 
 King himself liked to look upon; but robbery had been 
 rife, and in the dark and devious bye-ways and alleys thieves 
 and footpads had easily escaped. The cry, " Hang out 
 your lights ! " and the ordinance of the City that every 
 householder should hang outside his dwelling a horn lantern 
 and a whole candle somewhat mitigated the evil ; but it 
 was as difficult to enforce the law as it was to compel the 
 extinction of fires when the bells rang the curfew (or couvre 
 fell) to warn housekeepers and servants that at eight o'clock 
 at night they must place upon the embers the metal lid or 
 cover that should extinguish the burning wood or coal, and 
 so prevent the danger of houses being suddenly found 
 ablaze in a neighbourhood where there was wood and thatch 
 to spread it, and but a poor supply of water — even though 
 there were twelve great conduits, or leaden cisterns, in 
 
QUEEN ELIZABETH. 49 
 
 various parts of the City. The need for the coiivre feu may 
 very well be imagined if we remember that there were no 
 chimneys ; the hearth was in the middle of the room, the 
 smoke escaping by louvres or flues either in walls or roof; 
 " whence," as John Aubrey, the antiquarian, who lived in 
 1678, says, " comes the saying ' round about our coal fire.'" 
 " Public Inns," he goes on to tell us, " were rare " (in the 
 country he means). " Travellers were entertained at re- 
 ligious houses for three days together, if occasion served. 
 The meetings of the gentry were not at taverns, but in the 
 fields or forests, with hawks and hounds and their buglehorns, 
 in silken baldricks." 
 
 Queen Elizabeth on Ludgate Hill. 
 
 But a great change has taken place in the manners as 
 well as the customs of the people of London, although there 
 may be only a small improvement in some of their dwellings, 
 and in the multitude of conveniences which we are ac- 
 customed to regard as the signs of increased civilisation. 
 The Priory of Bartholomew has been suppressed, the Black 
 Friars unhoused and disestablished. For a time only Mary 
 succeeded in undoing what her father did, or doing what her 
 brother, the young Edward, undid ; and now, with the 
 Spaniard at bay and the Pope in check, the figure of 
 Elizabeth comes to fill the great place that could have been 
 filled by none else. A youthful, slight, but determined 
 figure, with clear, intrepid eyes, which the grim shadow of the 
 Tower has not dimmed ; with her father's imperial temper, 
 and the Boleyn art of winning the loyalty of brave and 
 gifted men ; with grand, noble impulses, and second thoughts 
 of dissimulation ; with courage unshrinking, and insight 
 that seldom fails ; with learning enough to talk with the 
 wise, and accomplishments to please the gay, and compel 
 a true admiration in the midst of sycophants — a Tudor, 
 perhaps more like her grandfather, Henry VH., than her 
 father, except in the early days when he was Henry of 
 Greenwich. The bells are ringing out till every steeple 
 rocks ; flags are flying ; balconies are hung with tapestry 
 and velvet pile ; at every conduit in the City some alle- 
 
50 LUDGATE hill: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 gorical show is set ; the streets are decked with flowers, 
 and gay colours flaunt from every window. All Ludgate 
 is astir ; the shops and stalls are full of wares, and the 
 City 'prentices, in their cloaks and caps, shout till they 
 are too hoarse to cry, " What d'ye lack ? " The taverns are 
 full, and great piles of brawn and stacks of bread, flagons of 
 ale and bottles of sack and canary, salads of colewort and 
 mighty rounds of beef, capons, and a dozen kinds of meat 
 and drink, of which the names are now almost forgotten, 
 though the things themselves 'survive, are ready for the 
 feasters, who will soon come in, hungry from much loyalty ; 
 for the shouting of a great crowd is heard coming from 
 Chepe, and in its midst, seated in an open litter, seen of all 
 the people, is the Princess Elizabeth, soon to be known as 
 Good Queen Bess. It is as though a great pall had been 
 lifted from the land, and there is a new light in men's faces, 
 a new hope in their hearts ; and only a few, dark and 
 moody, slip aside as the trampling throng comes on, and get 
 them away, wondering whether the times of Mary have 
 really passed away, and her heretic sister will uphold the 
 Reformation and defy the authority of Rome. 
 
 By-the-bye, it should be mentioned that among the 
 draperies that hang from the beetling windows of the 
 citizens' houses are rich Turkey carpets^ for even in the 
 days of the Eighth Harry ships trading to the East to 
 Tripoli and Baruth brought these costly fabrics for the 
 wealthy merchants and substantial citizens, who now dress 
 as richly and furnish their rooms as sumptuously as the 
 nobles themselves, with cloth of arras and silk adorning 
 the walls, and silver plate upon their sideboards, where pike 
 and sturgeon, peacock, venison pasty, chine of beef, ruffs 
 and reeves, swan, heron, and capons, puddings, pies, and 
 cream are piled for the feast — except between Michaelmas 
 and Whitsuntide, when the meat, or the beef, at all 
 events, is salted, and no cattle are slaughtered, even for 
 the Royal table. The Turkey carpets, by-the-bye are not 
 placed upon the floors, where rushes or matting still do 
 duty, but are used to cover chairs and tables, or as drapery 
 for wall and door. The outer appearance of many of the 
 houses, even about Ludgate Hill, is poor and mean, but 
 
QUEEN ELIZABETH. 5 I 
 
 quaint and picturesque too,* and they are divided by larger 
 mansions and imposing buildings. The streets are irregular, 
 winding, and dirty; there are no coaches or carriages; but 
 all along the banks of the Thames Strandwards, and at 
 intervals from the Temple to the Tower, the palaces of the 
 nobles have their gardens running down to the river, where, 
 at wharves or landing-stages, the family barge and its at- 
 tendant wherries are moored, for people who do not care to 
 walk travel mostly on the silent highway, and the waterman's 
 business flourishes. There are laws (made by Henry VIII.) 
 stringently imposing heavy fines on those who pollute the 
 Thames with any sort of refuse. Robert Brooke, Chaplain 
 to Henry VIII., has long ago done much for supplying 
 water to the City by the invention of making leaden pipes 
 for conveying the water underground from Hampstead 
 Heath, St. Marylebone, Hackney, Muswell Hill, and the 
 springs of St. Agnes le Clair, Hoxton. 
 
 Surely, as Elizabeth passed here by the Bell Savage, and 
 cast a glance at the spot where we are standing, she must 
 have had a sudden sad memory (she is one who knows little 
 of fear) of the mad expedition of Wyatt, which ended here 
 so tragically, and for which, though she has affirmed she 
 neither knew nor approved it, she was near finding a grave 
 within the w^alls of the Tower, whence she has just come to 
 be made Queen. Sir Thomas Wyatt was the son of the 
 poet w^ho had been so close a friend of the Earl of Surrey, 
 and so faithful a partisan of Anne Boleyn. He was opposed 
 to the marriage of Mary to the King of Spain, and raised 
 an insurrection, which, if it had been successful, would 
 probably have brought Elizabeth earlier to the throne — at a 
 cost of civil war. So formidable was Wyatt's following that 
 Mary had to go to the City, and there, at the Guildhall, 
 disown any fixed intention to marry against the objections 
 of the people. By this she gained the help of the citizens 
 to put down the rebellion ; but Wyatt had raised an army 
 in Kent, and held Rochester, where he was joined by a 
 number of Londoners, who had been sent against him as a 
 part of the army of the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk's army 
 
 * One or two houses of a rather later date are still standing in Fleet 
 Street, and others in Holborn. 
 
52 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 fled, and the rebels came on to Deptford, and thence to 
 Southwark, but, being denied admission that way, went to 
 Kingston rather than attack the City. The Queen was then 
 at the Guildhall prevaricating, and had Wyatt not delayed 
 because of a brokendown field-gun at Turnham Green, he 
 might have gained London, for he forced back his opponents, 
 restored the broken bridge at Kingston by a bridge of barges, 
 and while some of his officers deserted him, and rode on to 
 the City to entrap him, had come to Charing Cross, and 
 repulsed a thousand men under Sir John Gage, who was 
 obliged to retreat within Whitehall Palace, amidst the 
 shrieks and cries of treason and general uproar of the Court, 
 who expected nothing less than to be slaughtered outright. 
 But Wyatt was away towards Ludgate, the Queen's troops 
 and Pembroke's horse closing on his rear. He was too 
 late. Lord William Howard was already there with the 
 citizens, and the gate had become a fortress of armed men. 
 He had thought he needed only to show himself, and that 
 the citizens would welcome the enemy of that Spaniard who 
 was coming to England to be their master ; but he was 
 undeceived when Howard shouted, " Avaunt, traitor ! thou 
 shalt not come in here." The troops filled the Strand, and 
 cut off his retreat at Temple Bar. A fierce and deadly 
 fight must soon make the Fleet run blood. Here, by the 
 Old Bell Savage, is the bench on which he flung himself in 
 despair of a cause already lost. He would strive to return, 
 but it could only be by fighting, and the fighting, already 
 begun, would be hopeless. Clarencieux, King at Arms, 
 comes riding through the press, and begs that he will save 
 the great bloodshed that must ensue, when, perchance, he 
 himself may find the Queen merciful. It was the only 
 course left, except to sacrifice a number of brave men to his 
 own pride ; and, surrendering to Sir Maurice Berkely, who 
 called to him to leap up behind him on his horse, and so 
 carried him through the ranks of the soldiers to Whitehall, 
 Wyatt passed out of the streets, and to the Tower, whence 
 he came not out again till he came to be beheaded. The 
 rebels were put down ; and then Mary, caring very little 
 for the citizens or the people, made haste to marry the 
 Spaniard. 
 
QUEEN ELIZABETH AT ST. PAUL's. 53 
 
 But the Spaniard has gone his way ; and Ehzabeth's 
 name and the name of her gallant defenders — of Grenville, 
 Howard, Hawkins, Raleigh, Essex — and of the generals, 
 admirals, soldiers, seamen, and navigators, have become 
 famous, and are already denounced and hated by those 
 who proudly pretend that to them belongs the dominion 
 of the hitherto unknown seas, and the great golden lands 
 beyond. Most of all is the name of one Francis Drake held 
 in fear, for he has sailed round the world, and has struck 
 hard at Spanish pride and cruelty in their own strongholds 
 — performing deeds that have no parallel in history, and 
 making the name of English adventurers words of terror in 
 the remote garrisons of "the Indies" and the vast plains 
 and mountain fortresses of the South. 
 
 Drake's ship, in which he circumnavigated the world, 
 the famous Pelican, lies at Deptford now; and there the 
 Queen, making a fair procession by water, and amidst the 
 crowd of people who line the banks of the river, or lie out 
 in barges and wherries in the stream, has accepted the invi- 
 tation to a stately banquet, and Drake has been made Sir 
 Francis. Still more years, and the Pelican, re-named the 
 Golden Hind, has swept the coast of the Spanish main, and 
 Drake has " singed the King of Spain's beard," and the Great 
 Armada has borne down on England, and Elizabeth has 
 been with the English troops at Tilbury, waiting for the foe 
 that never came, but was swept from the sea; and so again 
 a grand and brilliant procession comes to Ludgate. For 
 Elizabeth comes to give thanks at St. Paul's for the great 
 victory vouchsafed to us against our enemies. It is indeed a 
 day of solemn thanksgiving throughout the kingdom, and 
 one of show and state, too, and especially here on Ludgate 
 Hill ; for the Queen rides from Somerset House on a tri- 
 umphal chariot or car, decked with the streamers taken 
 from the Spaniards, and with all the great officers of her 
 Court, lords spiritual and temporal, ladies of her household. 
 Members of Parliament, and all the nobility and gentry. 
 One, alas ! — the great and accomplished Sir Philip Sidney 
 — is not here, for not long ago his body was brought from 
 Zutphen in a sad cortege to be buried in the church where 
 his monument now is. 
 
54 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 See, the Queen descends, and kneels at the great western 
 door of the Cathedral, amidst the bishop and clergy in rich 
 copes and vestments — while stretching away on either side to 
 Temple Bar and the Bridge of Fleet, the City Companies, in 
 their liveries, line the way, standing within a double railing 
 covered with blue cloth ; the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, 
 clothed in scarlet, having received her Majesty on her enter- 
 ing the City. It is a splendid sight ; for though the great 
 nobility and wealthy knights have subscribed liberally to the 
 charges of the fleet, so that the vessels that beat the 
 Spaniards were many of them found by these private ad- 
 venturers, there is great show and sumptuous apparel for 
 the work of rejoicing. Velvet coats and doublets slashed 
 with satin and broidered with pearls and other gems, shoes 
 that glisten with precious stones, and hats turned up with 
 costly jewels and rare ornaments — while the ladies in yellow 
 ruffs and farthingales, and bodices stiff with gold and gems, 
 attend the Queen in litters or on palfreys. All the great 
 men here to-day have names that will be writ in the history 
 of this land, and will live in the memories of men — in public 
 benefactions, in the record of heroic deeds, in noble works, 
 and in poetry, philosophy, science, and song, long after this 
 crowd has turned to dust, and in the meaner and less heroic 
 time to come ; after Elizabeth's great heart has been gnawed 
 by the falsehood of Essex, and she has come for the last 
 time to Blackfriars to Lord Herbert's house to see a masque, 
 in which she has ceased to take pleasure, but where she 
 bears up bravely, and still dances " high and grand," though 
 she is now old and failing. Men will speak of Spenser and 
 Sidney, Raleigh and Cecil, Frobisher and Winter, Hawkins, 
 Drake, Seymour, and, most of all, perhaps, of Francis Bacon, 
 and of one other who is to stand in the forefront of the world, 
 and yet of whom little is known at present, though we shall 
 find him presently with Raleigh, and the wits who meet and 
 see or hear "great things done at the 'Mermaid,'" that 
 famous tavern of Bread Street in Chepe, where the club 
 meets for those tournaments of fancy and of repartee which 
 are thereafter to be associated with the name of William 
 Shakespeare. 
 
the playhouses. 55 
 
 The Players at the Bell Savage. 
 
 among whom Shakespeare may be numbered, were probably 
 among the privileged, for over and over again we find in 
 the records of the earHer and middle portion of the reign 
 of Elizabeth the City magnates denouncing and suppressing 
 the practice of acting stage plays at inns and other public 
 places, whereas in the older time these dramas and mysteries 
 were only performed by the servants of the nobility at 
 those " inns " which were private mansions, and for the 
 amusement and moral edification of the family or of visitors, 
 who witnessed the performance from the balconies over- 
 looking the courtyard where the play was performed. This 
 will perhaps explain the practice, in the earlier days of regular 
 English dramatic art, of a company of actors or stage-players 
 being known as "the servants" of some nobleman, who, as 
 it were, gave them the protection of his name ; and so we 
 had the Dorset Theatre, close to Salisbury Square in Fleet 
 Street, the Duke's, the King's, and other playhouses, while 
 in Southwark there was the Paris Garden, the Globe, and 
 others, some of which were devoted to bear- and bull-baiting 
 sports, not to be suppressed while Elizabeth reigned. The 
 great objection of the City Fathers to the players seems to 
 have been that in many of the " inns," which were once 
 mansions, and came to be veritable hostelries, the per- 
 formance of stage plays led to much immorality, not only 
 because of the licence of speech afforded by the drama, 
 and its unfitness for youthful ears, or, indeed, for decent 
 ears at all, but in consequence of the opportunities given 
 in such places for immoral companionship. Hence we find 
 that the players were not permitted to perform without a 
 licence, or were only allowed on sufferance and by petition ; 
 and this nppears to have been, with various vicissitudes, the 
 condition of the drama in London — that is to say, in the 
 City and its Liberties — until Shakespeare appears, as it were, 
 standing in the gateway of the old Bell Savage Inn with — 
 and we can easily fancy it — Raleigh's arm round his neck, 
 and in his pocket a new comedy, which he is going to carry 
 to Greenwich, Whitehall, or St. James's, to read to the 
 Queen. 
 
56 ludgate hill i past and present. 
 
 The Old Inns of London. 
 
 The transition of many old mansions into inns for public 
 entertainment was in accordance with the changes that had 
 taken place in other respects. The laws against vagrancy 
 and masterless men were revived and revised, and a syste- 
 matic " poor law " had been organised. Bridewell was in 
 full swing; but so also was St. Bartholomew's, where the 
 sick or maimed were sent for cure, and, when they had been 
 healed, work was found for them. As to the Fleet Prison, 
 that was full enough, and Newgate also; but, on the whole, 
 England became under Elizabeth " a land of great and 
 wide renown " ; and there was so much show and action, 
 earnest work and hearty play, so much intense nationality, 
 and such a revival of letters, and also so much mirth and 
 jollity, that it was natural even for people of consideration 
 to meet at inns which already had a history, and there to 
 take their ease and pleasure. 
 
 Nor was it unseemly, therefore, that those entertainments 
 of players, morris-dancers, conjurors, and masters-of-arms, 
 which had been held in the courtyards of private mansions 
 should be continued in the inn yards, where the players, 
 who had now a regular drama, could perform on a movable 
 stage. The boys of Paul's School, too, in the age of 
 Elizabeth act Terence and Seneca, and the choristers of 
 Westminster and of the Queen's Chapel are called " Child- 
 ren of the Revels," and among them were some who had 
 come to be fellow actors with Shakespeare, and perhaps 
 have graced the stage of the Bell Savage. Malone, in his 
 account of the English stage, says, " Many of our ancient 
 dramatic pieces were performed in the yards of carriers' 
 inns, in which, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
 the comedians who first united themselves in companies 
 erected an occasional stage. The form of these temporary 
 playhouses 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 that were built in a 
 subsequent period expressly for dramatic exhibitions, still 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 57 
 
 etained their old name, and were frequently called rooms 
 by our ancient writers. The yard bears a sufficient resem- 
 blance to the pit as at present in use. We may suppose 
 the stage to have been raised on 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 
 playhouse not incommodious might have been formed." 
 So here we have Shakespeare, Burbage, Alleyn (the founder 
 of Dulwich College) and other men famed as the represen- 
 tatives of English drama and poetry, come across from 
 Southwark and the Globe and Paris Garden on Bankside 
 to Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Shakespeare's Theatre at Blackfriars. 
 
 But they were not there only for " splitting the ears of 
 the groundlings " at the old inn. They had purposed to 
 have a theatre of their own close to Ludgate Hill, and there 
 seems to have been an endeavour to avoid the persecutions 
 which harassed the actors of that time by making it 2i private 
 theatre, where, perhaps, the many friends and influential 
 supporters of the " bard of Avon" maintained the drama by 
 subscription. At all events, we find that James Burbage 
 purchased, by deed dated February 4th, 1596, from Sir 
 William More, of Loseley, Surrey, a large house in the 
 Blackfriars, which he soon after converted into a theatre. 
 In 1608 William Shakespeare had a share in the speculation, 
 and was the proprietor of the wardrobe and properties, 
 valued at ;£^5oo. Serious complaints were made at a later 
 date (in 16 18) of the disturbance of public order and the 
 inconvenience to the neighbourhood caused almost daily 
 in winter time (not excepting Lent) from one or two o'clock 
 till five at night (the usual time for christenings, burials, 
 and afternoon service) by the playhouse being open, so that 
 the inhabitants of Blackfriars were unable to get to the 
 church, the ordinary passage of a great part of the precinct 
 being close by the playhouse door. It was also represented 
 that there was such a resort of people, and such a multitude 
 of coaches (many of them hackney coaches, bringing people 
 of all sorts) that they clogged up Ludgate Hill, endangered 
 one another, broke down stalls, threw down goods, and the 
 
58 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 inhabitants were unable to get to their houses or bring in 
 their provisions, the tradesmen to utter their wares, or 
 passengers to get to the common water-stairs without danger 
 of life and limb ; quarrels and effusion of blood had followed, 
 and other dangers might be occasioned by the broils, plots, 
 and practices of such an unruly multitude. It seems to 
 have taken about fourteen years to have vindicated the 
 necessity for this petition, for only on November 22nd, 1633, 
 do we find an order of the Star Chamber upon complaint 
 of the inconvenience occasioned by the stoppage of the 
 streets by the carriages of persons frequenting the playhouse 
 of the Blackfriars. " Their lordships, remembering that 
 there is an easy passage by water into that playhouse, with- 
 out troubling the streets, and that it is more fit and reason- 
 able that those which go thither should go by water or else 
 on foot," order that all coaches shall leave as soon as they 
 have set down, and not return till the play is over, nor return 
 further than the west end of St. Paul's Churchyard or( Fleet 
 Conduit. Coachmen disobeying this order were to be 
 committed to Newgate or Ludgate. Some poor pedestrians 
 who now dread the dangers of the streets might well be ex- 
 cused for thinking that a week or two of the Star Chamber 
 would do the drivers of public and even some private 
 vehicles much good. 
 
 Land and Water. 
 
 The times were moving faster, and the conveniences of 
 life were multiplying. One sign of change had been the 
 introduction of coaches into England by Guilliam Boonen, 
 a Dutchman, who became the Queen's coachman. 
 
 It is not very wonderful to find Taylor, " the water 
 poet," denouncing this new mode of conveyance ; for the 
 Thames had been the great highway from Whitehall to the 
 Tower, and all intermediate stations ; and it was in a wherry 
 that ladies living near the Thames went to take their airing 
 upon the water. John Taylor, beside being a vigorous 
 poet, author of sixty-three pieces, was a veritable water- 
 man. He was never ashamed of his trade, though he was 
 acquainted with Ben Jonson, and, having his boat at the 
 
STAGE COACHES. 59 
 
 Hope Theatre, Bankside, probably did a good business, for 
 he says — 
 
 "But noble Thames, while I can hold a pen, 
 I will divulge thy glory unto men ; 
 Thou, in the morning when my coin is scant, 
 Before the evening doth supply my want."' 
 
 But times had changed from the day when even the Lord 
 Mayor's procession was by state barges on the noble river, 
 where a fleet of swans sailed up and down amidst gaily- 
 decked wherries and broad galleys, and we find Taylor 
 saying, not without bitterness, " 'Tis not fit " that 
 
 " Fulsome madams and new scurvy squires 
 
 Should jolt the street at pomp, at their desires ; 
 Like great triumphant Tamburlaines each day. 
 Drawn with the pamperVl jades of Belgia ; 
 That almost all the streets are choked outright. 
 Where men can hardly pass from morn till night, 
 Whilst watermen want work." 
 
 He not unreasonably satirises the pride that led a gentle- 
 woman to send her man to hire a coach from Ludgate Hill 
 to carry her to see a play at the Blackfriars. 
 
 But coaches multiplied, and though the sedan chair, 
 which was brought here by Prince Charles (afterwards 
 Charles L) on his return from his pretended wooing in 
 France, superseded the litter^ and remained a fashionable 
 conveyance for short distances almost to within living 
 memory — the number of public vehicles so increased that 
 when they were limited by proclamation in 1635 there were 
 about 1,900 in London, and in a four-miles compass of 
 London and suburbs there were said to be 6,000, the first 
 hackney coach stand \\i\\x\g been established in 1634 by a 
 sea captain named Baily, who set up four, with drivers in 
 livery, to wait at the Maypole, in the Strand. 
 
 The coaches were so distasteful to the common people — 
 partly because they made the streets dangerous, and pushed 
 pedestrians to the wall, or constantly bespattered them with 
 mire — that the name given them by Taylor, " hell-carts," 
 was adopted by the populace, and they were constantly so 
 called. The passage of Ludgate Street between the (late 
 and St. Paul's must have been difficult for these lumbering 
 
'6o LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 vehicles, except on state occasions, for there is Httle doubt 
 that at one period it had what is called a middle row, or 
 passage formed of stalls or booths erected on one side the 
 street, with a narrow passage between them and the regular 
 shops. But in all probability these structures were movable, 
 and perhaps were cleared away on the occasions of pro- 
 cessions of state or other important occasions. 
 
 Paul's Walkers — Doctors' Commons. 
 
 The narrow streets, the ill-drained houses, the want of 
 paving, and the insufficiency of water for cleansing the city, 
 which had expanded beyond the ancient walls, in spite of 
 Royal proclamations against the increase of houses and the 
 extension of the former boundaries, exposed the inhabitants 
 to two deadly foes — fire and plague. The large quantity 
 of timber used in building, the crowding of overhanging 
 storeys in close thoroughfares, the inflammable materials 
 collected in shops and warehouses, and the constant use of 
 candles, torches, and flambeaux, made the first peril common 
 enough, and the lack of water increased its terror. Plague 
 was recurrent, and to this may be partly attributed the fre- 
 quent acts of the City Corporation for restraining stage plays, 
 and preventing people from assembling in large numbers 
 for purposes of amusement within a building. The truth 
 is that there was a great deal of legislation and much com- 
 manding and proclaiming ; but that did not prevent a vast 
 amount of disorder. St. Paul's Cathedral was in a dis- 
 graceful condition, for it had become a promenade and 
 general resort for loungers, idlers, and persons whose 
 characters were by no means unquestionable. It had 
 always had this disgraceful reputation in former times, and 
 even as early as the reign of Edward III. there were com- 
 plaints of the kind, while in the reign of Richard III. the 
 scandal continued, even though excommunication had been 
 pronounced against the offenders. Indeed, the marketing, 
 gossiping, lounging and making of assignations in St. Paul's 
 came to be defended as ancient usages, and in the reign of 
 Philip and Mary the church was a common passage-way 
 for conveying all kinds of merchandise, including beer, 
 bread, fish, and meat, and mules, horses, and cattle were 
 
Paul's walkers. 6i 
 
 actually led through the building. After the Reformation 
 many of these indecencies continued, and the condition of 
 the grand old Cathedral is frequently suggested by the 
 dramatists and poets of that age. Before, and even after, 
 the building of the Royal Exchange by Sir Thomas Gresham, 
 and its inauguration by the Queen herself, who dined with 
 the eminent merchant on the occasion at his house in 
 Bishopsgate, the church was used as a commercial mart, 
 and bills or advertisements were fastened to the columns 
 in the aisles. 
 
 Among the curious notices relating to the irreverent 
 practices pursued in this church in the time of Elizabeth, 
 collected by Mr. Malcolm from the manuscript presentments 
 or visitations preserved at St. Paul's, are found that, " in 
 the upper quier, wher the common [communion] table 
 dothe stande, there is much unreverente people walking 
 with their hatts on their lieddes commonly all the service 
 time, no man reproving them for yt." And also, "Yt is 
 greate disorder in the church, that porters, butchers, and 
 water-bearers, and who not, be suffered (in special time of 
 service) to carrye and recarrye whatsoever, no man with- 
 standinge them or gainsaying them." 
 
 The middle of St. Paul's was, in fact, the Bond Street of 
 the period — if, indeed, we can now realise what Bond Street 
 was when it was regarded as a daily resort in the time of 
 George IV. Up to the time of the Commonwealth the 
 young gallants from the Inns of Court, and others who 
 desired to make a show of spirit and fashion, used to meet 
 at the central point of St. Paul's, and were known as " Paul's 
 Walkers " ; just as in the last generation some men were 
 known as " Bond Street Loungers." However strange it 
 may seem, tradition says that the great Lord Bacon in his 
 youth was one of them. Many of them were poor enough, 
 and they, along with other impecunious frequenters of the 
 place, were said to go there at mid-day " to dine with Duke 
 Humphrey " — a proverb which originated in the fact that 
 one of the chief meeting-places was at the only conspicuous 
 monument near the screen of the altar, really the monument 
 of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the House of Warwick 
 already mentioned, but erroneously supposed to be that of 
 
62 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester — before which 
 the poor visitors used to strew herbs and sprinkle water. 
 The high altar no longer shone resplendent as in the days 
 before the Reformation, nor were there throngs of priests 
 and choristers mingling with the visitors, or making pro- 
 cessions in the aisles. Several other tombs were added, 
 however, the most prominent being that of Sir Christopher 
 Hatton, whose high and stately dancing '•' was said to have 
 won the admiration of Ehzabeth, who subsequently made 
 him her Chancellor ; or, as Gray says of him, — 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Another of Elizabeth's great statesmen lay there also — 
 Walsingham, who died so deeply in debt that his body was 
 secretly buried, lest it should be seized by his creditors. Sir 
 Christopher Hatton, too, is said to have died broken-hearted 
 because his royal mistress exacted from him a debt which 
 he found it difficult to pay ; and we may, therefore, under- 
 stand that all the great show and state was not maintained 
 without cost, and that the extravagant dress, and jewelled 
 shoes and hats, were, after all, paid for — if not in coin, in 
 anxiety and care. The tomb of Chancellor Hatton so 
 eclipsed those of Sir Philip Sidney and Walsingham by its 
 size and pretentiousness, and its long, pompous, and rather 
 absurd epitaph, that old Stow made an epigram on it, which 
 has been often quoted as a legend of St. Paul's, — 
 
 " Philip and Francis have no tomb, 
 For great Christopher takes all the room." 
 
 Many changes were made in Ludgate Hill and its 
 neighbourhood. The old gate was not only repaired, but 
 rebuilt ; the statues of King Lud and his sons placed in a 
 niche on the east side ; and on the west front the statue of 
 the Queen herself was placed in 1586. 
 
 Doctors' Commons, on the Hill of St. Bennet, just behind 
 Great Knightrider Street, may be said to have been begun 
 
 * The dancing of that period csjisisted in high steps, leaps, and 
 posing of the figure. 
 
DOCTORS COMMONS. 63 
 
 in the reign of Elizabeth, for though, as people found to 
 their cost, the ecclesiastical lawyers who held courts within 
 the jurisdiction of the Church were numerous and powerful 
 enough in the time of Henry VIL, and had grown so over- 
 bearing in the next reign that Cranmer set himself to reduce 
 the number of proctors (or attorneys), and to bring the 
 Courts into something like order, there were still a large 
 number of civil cases which were brought under ecclesiastical 
 law\ Doctors' Commons was, in fact, a college or common- 
 house for doctors of law, and for the study and practice of 
 the law. Cardinal Wolsey had intended to build a college 
 of stone, for the purpose of receiving the community ; but 
 his fortunes waned, and it was not till the early part of the 
 reign of Elizabeth that Master Henry Harvey, Doctor of the 
 Civil and Canon Laws, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 
 Prebendary of Ely, and Dean of the Arches, succeeded in 
 taking the lawyers and Canonists from their rather mean 
 lodgings in Paternoster Row, in a house which afterwards 
 became the Queen's Head Tavern, and procuring for them 
 a lease of a large building, formerly the house of Lord 
 Mountjoy. 
 
 After the Fire of London, which swept away the old 
 College, the doctors, proctors, and advocates met at Essex 
 House till the new building was finished — a brick-fronted 
 structure, of the kind that prevailed immediately after the 
 Fire, wath an interior consisting of two quadrangles, chiefly 
 occupied by the doctors, a hall for the hearing of causes, a 
 spacious library, a refectory, and other apartments. The 
 Admiralty Court was of great importance in later times, and 
 the judge was distinguished by being preceded as he went 
 into Court by an usher carrying a silver oar. 
 
 In our own day, however, Doctors' Commons has been 
 most famous for the Matrimonial and Wills Courts. The 
 Bank of England acknowledged no wills that had not been 
 proved there, and the enormous number of wills searched in 
 the Prerogative Will Office, and the wills there deposited 
 have been of the greatest importance, not only for determin- 
 ing the succession of various families, but in order to verify 
 the personal history of famous individuals. Shakespeare's 
 will, in three folio sheets, each signed in proper legal form, 
 
64 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 the will of Vandyck (the Court painter to Charles I., who 
 lived and died in the precinct), of Inigo Jones, Sir Isaac 
 Newton, of John Milton, Edmund Burke, and formerly (for 
 it was sent to Paris at the request of the late Emperor), the 
 will of Napoleon I. were all deposited here. Each folio of 
 Shakespeare's will is on a polished oak frame, and kept in 
 an air-tight space between two sheets of plate glass. The 
 original wills begin with the year 1483, and the copies from 
 1383, and the more ancient, mostly on strong parchment 
 bound in clasped volumes, are, or were, allowed to be in- 
 spected on permission obtained from the Judge of the Court 
 of Probate, who will also allow extracts to be copied for 
 historical purposes. 
 
 The marriage licences, however, have been less carefully 
 preserved, or at all events they have none earlier than 1632, 
 and until 1695 they are not complete. But the very name 
 of Doctors' Commons will soon be either lost or perverted. 
 There is virtually an end to all that made either the place 
 or its practice truly distinctive. The Probate, Divorce, and 
 Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice has absorbed 
 its functions, and perhaps by the time the building of the 
 new Law Courts is finished, only the memory of the habitue 
 will be able to discover the once well-known places where 
 the advocates from Oxford sat in scarlet and taffety, and 
 those from Cambridge in minever and round black velvet 
 caps. 
 
 Yet it is worth while to plunge into the nest of steep 
 lanes that lie on the " bow " side of the yard. We are sure 
 to come upon some quaint remnant of former state, some 
 building only half demolished which tells a scrap of history, 
 some antique nook or corner that may remind us how 
 clumsy are the innovators who think they are improvers, 
 and who begin by destroying the truly old and venerable, 
 instead of the commonplace and sordid adjuncts of an 
 historic neighbourhood, till the chandler's shop blots out the 
 heraldic blazonry of some palace gateway, and the solemn 
 vestibule of a forgotten court or a prelate's hall of judgment 
 crumbles in ruin behind the stall of a greengrocer or the 
 dimly-lighted shed of a retail coal merchant. 
 
 There is a glamour about heraldry which gives it an 
 
THE heralds' college. 65 
 
 appearance of antiquity ; but, as matter of fact, the devices 
 borne by the early warriors were but the badges, the distinctive 
 signs, afterwards associated with the motto or war-cries as- 
 sumed by leaders or great families who took the field with 
 their followers, and had a crest or design by which they and 
 their retainers might be known — just as the Plantagenets 
 bore a branch of broom, or the Houses of York and Lancaster 
 took the white and red roses for their caps. The heralds, 
 who were, in fact, only messengers on the field or at the tourna- 
 ments, were acquainted with these distinctive emblems, but 
 it was at a late date that they had any authority to pronounce 
 on the right of the wearers to assume them. There was, in 
 fact, no heraldic science till the reign of Edward III., and 
 the Heralds' College, or College of Arms, was founded by 
 Richard H. at Cold Harbour House, Poultney Lane, whence 
 it was removed by Henry VH., that Bishop Tunstal might 
 have the place for a mansion after he had been turned out 
 of Durham House. It was not till Mary, in 1555, gave 
 Gilbert Dethick, Garter King-at-Arms, and his heralds and 
 pursuivants the building on the east side of Bennet's Hill, 
 that the College may be said to have been established, and 
 by that time the adoption of coats-of-arms by the leaders 
 who had orisrinated them had led to a formal record of 
 shields, crests, and quarterings. 
 
 i\.fter the Great Fire, from which the books and records 
 of the College of Arms were saved, it seemed as though the 
 officials would find no home, for the City's cash had to be 
 spent for more immediately practical purposes, and only 
 about pf 700 was raised by subscription ; but the amount 
 required to rebuild was taken from the office fees, and Sir 
 William Dugdale, Garter King-at-Arms, most learned and 
 enthusiastic of antiquaries, author of the great Monastico7i 
 Anglicaimm^ built the north-west portion at his own charge. 
 The present quaint but spacious and handsome building, 
 brought into the main thoroughfare by the extensive changes 
 that have been made by opening up Queen Victoria Street 
 to Blackfriars, is one of the most complete relics now 
 remaining of London immediately after the Great Fire. It 
 is so peculiarly fresh and sharp in all its architectural details 
 that we are almost surprised to find so much that is 
 
 5 
 
66 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 really ancient in its repositories ; far more ancient are the 
 monuments and curiosities to be found there than the 
 escutcheons bearing the arms — or rather legs — of the Isle 
 of Man, and the eagle claw of the house of Stanley, which 
 denotes that it is on the site of old Derby House. There 
 are, for instance, a pedigree of the Saxon kings from Adam, 
 illustrated with many fine pen-and-ink drawings, executed 
 in the time of Henry VHL ; the "Warwick Roll," with a 
 series of the figures of all the Earls of Warwick from the 
 Conquest to the reign of Richard HI. ; the roll of the 
 Tournament at Westminster held in honour of Queen 
 Katherine after the birth of Prince Henry; the sword, 
 dagger, and turquoise ring of the gallant James IV. of 
 Scotland, who was slain on Flodden Field, and a great 
 collection of papers, certificates, and historical MSS. If for 
 no other reason, the College of Arms commands the respect 
 even of the most obstinate objector to the heraldic science 
 because of the number of eminent men who held high office 
 there. The principal staff consists of three Kings-at-Arms 
 — Garter, Clarencieux, and Norroy ; six heralds — Somerset, 
 Richmond, Lancaster, Windsor, Chester, and York; and 
 four pursuivants — Rouge Dragon, Blue Mantle, Portcullis, 
 and Rouge Croix. All these offices are in the gift of the 
 Duke of Norfolk, Hereditary Grand Marshal, and among 
 the famous Kings-at-Arms have been William Camden, 
 author of the learned and interesting Brita7i7iica and Annals 
 of Elizabeth ; Sir William Le Neve ; Elias Ashmole, the 
 founder of the Ashmolean Museum ; Dugdale, the great 
 antiquary already mentioned ; Sir John Vanbrugh, wit and 
 dramatist ; Francis Grose, author of Grose's Antiquities ; 
 and William Oldys, the queer little fellow who spent most 
 of his evenings at the Bell Tavern in the Old Bailey, was 
 rather too fond of porter, and is now chiefly known for the 
 Anacreontic verse on a fly drinking from his cup of ale, — 
 
 "Busy, curious, thirsty fly. 
 Drink with me, and drink as I ; 
 P'reely welcome to my cup, 
 Couldst thou sip, and sip it up. 
 Make the most of life you may ; 
 Life is short, and wears away. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 67 
 
 " Both alike are mine and thine 
 Hastening quick to their decline ; 
 Thine's a summer, mine no more, 
 Though repeated to threescore ; 
 Threescore summers, when they're gone, 
 Will appear as short as one." 
 
 We cannot, however, omit one more name, well known 
 to the past generation, that of James Robinson Planche, 
 Somerset Herald, whose delightful extravaganzas, as charm- 
 ing for their versification and their wit as for the superb 
 manner in which they were placed upon the stage, made 
 the great attraction of the Lyceum Theatre under the man- 
 agement of Madame Vestris. It is but a few years ago 
 that Mr. Planche passed away, at a ripe old age, still distin- 
 guished for his ready humour, his facile pen, and for the 
 charm of his social qualities. 
 
 There were great transitions during the time of Elizabeth, 
 and many changes came over Ludgate Hill and its neighbour- 
 hood. Among other imposing landmarks, the high cam- 
 panile, or bell-tower, by St. Paul's School, disappeared when 
 Sir Miles Partridge won it from Henry A^HI. at a throw of 
 dice, arrd promptly took it down and sold the materials — 
 perhaps lest his imperious debtor should revoke the stakes. 
 
 But the age of Bacon and of Raleigh, of Spenser and of 
 Shakespeare, was one of progress. 
 
 In a very definite sense the people, and especially the 
 citizens of London and the "men of light and leading," 
 were brought nearer together, and to this the conversion of 
 many old buildings into public inns and hostelries doubtless 
 contributed, for it was here that many of the amusements in 
 which all classes participated were carried on. The old 
 Bell Savage held a prominent position in this respect, and 
 Ludgate Hill and its immediate neighbourhood was a centre 
 both of the intellectual and the social life of that period. It 
 is true that some of the amusements were not very refined, 
 but they will mostly bear comparison with many that are 
 familiar to ourselves. We might not tolerate such an exhi- 
 bition as that of the ascent of a horse to the top of St. 
 Paul's Cathedral, a feat performed by the famous nag 
 Marocco, whose fame, with that of Bankes, his master, has 
 lived in every history of the time, and was even alluded to 
 
68 LUDG7\TE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 by Shakespeare himself in Lovers Labour's Lost, where Moth, 
 to prove the simpHcity of a certain problem in arithmetic, 
 says, "The dancing horse will tell you." It was in 1595 
 that all London was crowding to Ludgate Hill to see this 
 famous animal, who was a young chestnut or bay nag, 
 trained to perform such tricks as to walk on its hind legs 
 and gravely to dance "The Canaries," to carry a glove to 
 any person indicated by its master, such as the gentleman 
 in the large ruff, or the lady with the green hood. It would 
 count coins by raps of its feet, tell the number of a cast of 
 dice, and occasionally assist in such jocularities as singling 
 out the gentleman who was in love, or the lady who was 
 waiting for a lover. Along with Bankes and his horse, the 
 Bell Savage was often visited by the famous clown or jester 
 Tarleton, who was landlord of Dolly's Tavern, in Paternoster 
 Row. Tarleton was the prototype of the circus clowns and 
 most of the other jesters of our day, and his witticisms were 
 the constant talk of the town, for which he provided quips 
 and popular sayings. A book of his jests ("Tarleton's Jest 
 Booke ") was published, and the order of his wit was about 
 equal to that of the "bones" of the negro troupes, or the 
 best of the circus clowns of to-day, but, in the manner of 
 the earlier jesters, sometimes contained grave and suggestive 
 allusions to state affairs, or the doings of great persons. 
 During the period of Elizabeth, and to the time of the 
 Commonwealth, w^hen theatres, stage plays, and public 
 shows were put down by the sterner Puritans, and public 
 amusements would have been suppressed altogether but for 
 the interposition of Cromwell, Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street 
 as far as Temple Bar was the great show-place of London, 
 for it was the centre, the highway from Whitehall and the 
 Strand, where the Maypole stood by St. Mary's Church, to 
 the Tower and the great trading neighbourhoods of Chepe, 
 Grass Church, Leadenhall, and Mart Lane. But it was, as 
 we have seen, the centre of ecclesiastical rule and of learning 
 also, and this was made more obvious by the establishment of 
 
 Stationers' Hall. 
 
 We have already noted that Paternoster Row and the 
 neighbourhood of Ludgate had become the quarter whence 
 
stationers' hall. 69 
 
 learning was disseminated by means of books, and it is well 
 to remember that the title of Stationers was at that time 
 applied almost exclusively to booksellers, and that this 
 meaning continued to be attached to it until the beginning 
 of the last century. It signified a person who had a station, 
 or stall, in some public place for the sale of books, and in 
 the middle ages was applied to the official who sold at a 
 stall the books written for the particular university with 
 which he was connected. 
 
 The Stationers' Company, which, though it is distinguished 
 by being the only London company restricted to members 
 of the craft implied by its name, now consists of dealers in 
 the material for making books, as well as of booksellers^ was 
 incorporated in the reign of Philip and Mary, and for 
 nearly two centuries had, so to speak, a monopoly of the 
 means of learning. Printers were obliged to serve an 
 apprenticeship to a member of the company, and every 
 book or printed matter published — " from a bible to a 
 ballad," as Peter Cunningham says — was required to be 
 entered at Stationers' Hall. Now, the company publishes 
 nothing but almanacks, of which, till the last few years, they 
 had a monopoly ; and Old Moore's Almanack, which is the 
 imitation of a farrago by Lilly, the pretended astrologer, 
 who lived near, in Shoe Lane, in the time of Charles IL, 
 was one of their great sources of income. It is not now 
 necessary to enter publications at Stationers' Hall ; but, by 
 the Copyright Act, the proprietor of every published work 
 must register his claim to it in the books of the company if 
 he wishes to protect himself before taking legal proceedings 
 for piracy or imitation. The company soon had a local 
 habitation, as well as a name. Their first hall appears to 
 have been in Milk Street, Cheapside, and in 1553 they 
 removed to St. Peter's College, near St. Paul's Deanery, 
 where the chantry priests of the Cathedral had formerly 
 lived. Between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street, at the 
 end of a passage from Ave Maria Lane, in the same spot 
 now occupied by Stationers' Hall, stood a great house of 
 stone and wood which, in the days of Edward III., belonged 
 to John, Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond. From 
 him it went to the Earl of Pembroke, and was called 
 
70 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Pembroke's Inn, and then came into possession of the 
 family of Henry Nevill, Lord of Abergavenny, and was 
 known as Burgavenny House. This was the place where 
 the Stationers' Company was located in 1611 (James I.), 
 and here, in another building erected on the same place, 
 after the old Inn was burnt in the Fire of London, the 
 honourable guild holds state to-day. Property to the value 
 of ;^2 00,000 was lost by the Stationers' Company in the 
 Great Fire, but their priceless records are still most inter- 
 esting, consisting chiefly of the enormously extensive 
 register of works for publication, which may be said to be 
 an index to English Hterature from 1557, the date at which 
 it commences. 
 
 The Stationers' Company has been famous, like some 
 other guilds, for its festivals, and particularly for its venison 
 feast, founded in 1659, and held in the large and handsome 
 hall, with its raised dais, its fine window, and its buffets or 
 cupboards full of numerous articles of quaint and valuable 
 plate, collected since the Great Fire, in which all their 
 former possessions of this kind were destroyed. That 
 which now remains is chiefly of the time of Charles II. 
 In the Hall have been seen some remarkable meetings, and 
 many of them are historical, such as the St. Cecilian Feast, 
 in 1697, for which Dryden wrote "Alexander's Feast," 
 afterwards set to music by Handel, in 1736; the Reform 
 Banquet to Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell, in 1831 ; 
 and others, among which have been some funeral cele- 
 brations of great state and magnificence. The chief attrac- 
 tion of the Hall to visitors is the interesting and admirable 
 collection of portraits that adorn the walls ; including those 
 of Steele, Richardson, Prior, Pope, and Dr. Hoadley, 
 Bishop of Bangor, Steele's friend and decorously festive com- 
 panion. It was at an anniversary banquet at the Hall one 
 day that one of the inferior officers of the company, who was 
 know as a humourist, but who on that occasion was "half 
 seas over," came in on his knees to drink to the " glorious 
 memory." Everybody present was pretty far gone, Steele 
 included, and Hoadley was rather disconcerted when the 
 genial writer and wit whispered to him, " Do laugh, my 
 lord ; pray laugh ; 'tis humanity to laugh," and the good- 
 
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. 7 1 
 
 humoured prelate broke into a chuckle. Steele sent him 
 
 an apology next day, in which the following couplet must 
 
 have been sufficient acknowledgment of the grace of the 
 
 reverend bishop, — 
 
 " Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
 All faults he pardons, though he none commits.'' 
 
 We can scarcely dismiss our recollections of the educa- 
 tional agencies about Ludgate Hill without thinking for a 
 moment of the College of Physicians ; not the present fine 
 building in Pall Mall East, but the old one in Warwick 
 Lane, and the still older one in Knightrider Street, in the 
 house of Linacre, the founder of the college, and physician 
 to Henry VHI. It was on the site of No. 5, Knightrider 
 Street, that Linacre lived, and that spot is worthily distin- 
 guished by the house being still the property of the College. 
 It was not till (1564) after the accession of Elizabeth that 
 dissections were permitted ; and when the first lectures 
 were commenced in 1583, a large anatomical theatre was 
 built adjoining the house. Here it was that the great 
 Harvey first lectured ; but the College, at about the time 
 Charles I. succeeded to the throne, moved to a house belong- 
 ing to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, at the farther 
 end of Amen Corner, where they built another theatre, and 
 planted a botanical garden, which occupied ground going as 
 far west as the Old Bailey, and skirting behind the houses of 
 Ludgate Street, as far as St. Martin's Church. Here was 
 the fine library to which Selden, Ashmoie, Sir Theodore 
 Mayerne, and others contributed such a valuable collection 
 of books. But the building was swept away in the conflag- 
 ration of the following year, and only 112 folio volumes of 
 all the library were saved. Then the College left the site of 
 building and garden for the erection of houses for the 
 clergy of St. Paul's, and bought a plot of ground in 
 Warwick Lane, where a new building was erected, and 
 opened in 1674 — a quaint old brick and stone structure 
 with which, as the College of Physicians, many of us were 
 once familiar, though it had long since ceased to have any 
 connection with its original design, and was hustled and 
 profaned by the greasy sheds and shambles of Newgate 
 Market. 
 
72 ludgate hill: past and present. 
 
 Sword, Plague, Fire, and Revolution. 
 
 There is no need to follow all the subsequent legends of 
 Ludgate Hill during the reign of the Stuarts. When James I. 
 was ready to be crowned, the plague had been rife in 
 London, and there was no great procession ; but the King 
 began by knighting everybody all round, and the Lord 
 Mayor and Aldermen had a good time of it at the Corona- 
 tion Banquet, a circumstance which was probably remem- 
 bered when the King went a-borrowing in the City. It was 
 a sad time, and Bartholomew Fair was closed, the theatres 
 were forbidden, and the yard of the Old Bell Savage was 
 unusually silent ; but the distemper having ceased, the 
 pageants and feasting and brave shows began, and Ludgate 
 was alive again with a magnificent procession, wherein the 
 King " rode a white gennet under a rich canopy upheld by 
 six gentlemen of the Privy Council." But there was 
 another kind of procession not long after — a dark and 
 wretched train, moving slowly under the shadow of the 
 scaffold erected at the west front of St. Paul's, for Sir 
 Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas 
 Bates, for their share in the Gunpowder Plot. Next day, 
 Guy Fawkes, Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rockwood, and 
 Robert Key met a similar fate at Old Palace Yard, and the 
 quartered bodies and severed heads of these unhappy 
 wretches were seen upon the City gates, or on poles on 
 London Bridge, a gruesome spectacle. The great festivals, 
 processions, and splendid pageants prepared for the visit of 
 Christian IV. of Denmark took away the scent of the blood, 
 for the conduits ran wine, and were adorned with pretty 
 pastoral devices and bowers, where songs were sung and 
 orations were made, and down the hill through Ludgate 
 passed a splendid train of Danish and English nobles. 
 
 The reign of the first James was a lively time for Ludgate. 
 The Inns were in full swing. Ben Jonson had his Apollo 
 Club at the Devil Tavern, by Temple Bar, and there was 
 goodly company all round. Burbage and Shakespeare had 
 obtained their theatre at Blackfriars in spite of the oppo- 
 sition of the Civic Council, and Fleet Street was full of 
 shows, some burlesque indication of which may be found 
 
CHANGES. 73 
 
 in Jonson's Every Man in His Humour^ where it speaks of 
 " a new motion of the City of Nineveh, with Jonah and the 
 Whale at Fleet Bridge." Down to a comparatively modern 
 date these shows continued, and were at their height in the 
 reign of Queen Anne. The last of them may still be 
 remembered by some of our older readers — by name, at 
 all events — as Mrs. Salmon's collection of w^axwork, at the 
 "former palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey," 
 opposite Chancery Lane, which, by-the-bye, was neither a 
 palace nor a residence of either the King or his Minister, 
 but the office of the Duchy of Cornwall in the reign of 
 James I., and perhaps the house built by Sir Amyas Paulet. 
 Before Mrs. Salmon took it, it was " Nando's," a famous 
 coffee-house frequented by the barristers of the Temple. 
 
 Our gossip has already carried us from the days of 
 doublet and trunk hose, of ruff and farthingale, and indeed 
 we need not dwell upon the times that followed the reign of 
 the Royal pedant. Nor is there occasion to do more than 
 refer the reader to Sir Walter Scott's " Fortunes of Nigel " 
 to discover how lawless the neighbourhood of the Fleet 
 Ditch had by that time become, and how^ between the 
 Temple and Bridewell lay the Alsatia of London, occupying 
 the steep and crooked lanes and sinks that then made the 
 foul district of Whitefriars. We come now to royal domina- 
 tion, popular resistance, plague, the stocks, the pillory, and 
 the whipping-post, courtly magnificence, a decorous royal 
 family, licentious and unscrupulous favourites, a Church ex- 
 ceedingly militant, and everywhere the element of organised 
 revolt on the one hand, and of hot resistance to the demand 
 for Constitutional government on the other. 
 
 St. Paul's Church had taken a new aspect, for the restora- 
 tions begun by James I. were finished, and Inigo Jones had 
 added to the great rugged structure a splendid but absurdly 
 incongruous portico at the Western front. It consisted of 
 fourteen Corinthian columns, rising to the height of forty- 
 six feet, and so disposed that eight with two pilasters placed 
 in front and three on each side formed an oblong square 
 peristyle, and supported an entablature and balustrade in 
 which were the statues of the royal predecessors of Charles I. 
 The whole of the body of the Church had been cased with 
 
74 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 rustic work, so that the ancient details were obHterated, and 
 only the general forms and proportions left ; and some of 
 the windows were fitted with Italian decorations, so that the 
 " restoration " was a confusing and anomalous performance. 
 But the march and tramp of armed men again sounds 
 on Ludgate Hill. The grim, ungracious warriors of the 
 Commonwealth are clanking in the streets, and the reign 
 of the sectaries has begun by sweeping away show and 
 pageant and stage play. Laughter and jest are hushed for 
 the moment at the old inns and at the City feasts. Men 
 look grave, and begin to count the number of courses, and 
 to wonder whether there shall be no more cakes and ale. 
 Yet there must be amusements, and the shops and stalls 
 about Ludgate find customers even among the Parliamentary 
 soldiers, who take up their quarters, not only in the inns 
 and taverns, but elsewhere. St. Paul's Churchyard echoes 
 with the noise of these troopers playing at ninepins, and at 
 unseasonable hours, too ; and they and their comrades show 
 so little respect for the grand old cathedral that its destruction 
 seems almost imminent. Some scaffolding set up for repair- 
 ing the building has been made over to them for arrears of 
 pay, and they take it down so hurriedly that part of the vault- 
 ing falls in and lies in a heap. They dig pits in the body of 
 the church to use as saw-pits for converting this timber into 
 saleable lengths, and their barracks and stables occupy 
 another portion of the cathedral, so that only the east end 
 and a part of the choir are used for public worship, a brick 
 wall having been raised to separate them from the rest of 
 the building, the congregation entering and departing by 
 one of the northern windows. Inigo Jones's magnificent 
 portico is occupied with milliners' and other shops, to con- 
 struct which and to make lodgings above them the ends of 
 beams are let into the superb Corinthian columns. Of course, 
 the statues of the kings are tumbled down and broken, and 
 unless some change should occur the whole edifice will be a 
 heap of ruins. 
 
 A change comes with the Restoration, when all the bells 
 in London are ringing, and the streets are gay again with 
 tapestries and rich mats and carpets hung from balconies 
 and windows. The conduits flow with wine, and through 
 
THE PLAGUE. 75 
 
 Lud Gate (which was somewhat defaced when other gates 
 and portcuHises w^ere destroyed by order of the Rump Parha- 
 ment, before General Monk found out that he must concihate 
 the City), rides Charles II. between his two brothers, the 
 Dukes of York and Gloucester, and attended by a gorgeous 
 cavalcade. There are amusements enough now ; and though 
 Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are no longer in Blackfriars, the 
 yard of the Bell Savage is open to the merry-andrews, jack- 
 puddings, and rope-dancers, while new playhouses are 
 opened in Dorset Gardens, in Lincoln's Inn, Salisbury 
 Court, Holborn, and other places ; but the plays are full of 
 immoral allusions, and the audience has already caught the 
 licence and the immodesty of the Court. 
 
 But again these houses are closed ; public assemblies are 
 forbidden, and the whole City is wrapped in gloom, for once 
 more the plague has begun its ravages, and the dismal cry 
 of " Bring out your dead ! " and the rumble of the cart that 
 comes to convey corpses to the dreadful pits that have been 
 dug around the confines of the populous neighbourhoods 
 sounds like a nightly dirge in the dark and nearly-deserted 
 streets, where fires of coal and bitumen flare in braziers, and 
 cast a lurid glare upon the dreadful scene. Defoe tells us 
 that 100,000 people died of the plague only in that one 
 year 1665, and it was beheved that 10,000 were saved by 
 going to live in boats and barges on the river. The King 
 and Court went to Oxford, and there was much hurrying 
 from the City ; but amidst it all old gossiping Pepys seems 
 to have kept his head, and to have gone about his business 
 steadily, after sending his wife to Woolwich, which was, so 
 to speak, in his official beat as he had so often to go to 
 Deptford about the business of the Fleet. There was little 
 known of the disease from which the people were suffering, 
 and the deaths went on increasing until some atmospheric 
 change seems to have occurred. The plague was no new- 
 thing. It had been recurrent in London for ages, though 
 some improvements had taken place, and a better water 
 supply had been obtained since 15 So, when Peter Morris, 
 the Dutchman, had set up huge w-ater-wheels at London 
 Bridge, which, moved by the rapid tide, became a motive 
 power to force the water through wooden tubes to the 
 
76 LUDGA'J'E HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 conduits ; a method which lasted till'nearly the end of the 
 last century, and did not, even in conjunction with Sir Hugh 
 Myddelton's scheme, supersede the water-carriers, who plied 
 their trade from the conduits even in the time of William III. 
 There was only one remedy for the plague, as it seemed, 
 and that was the destruction of the nests of infection which 
 propagated, if they did not originate, it. The plague was 
 stayed by fire, and with the Great Fire of 1666 the Legends 
 of Ludgate Hill take a new phase. The old buildings of 
 which we have recounted the story disappeared, and where 
 once was a great, ancient, and wealthy city stood a vast 
 smouldering plain, dotted in complex lines and confusing 
 ranks with heaps of ruins. The people bore it bravely, 
 living in huts in the fields outside the large space where 
 once arose churches, mansions, towers, warehouses, palaces, 
 and marts. Merchants kept to their engagements, and 
 carried on their business with dogged, painstaking patience. 
 Never was English endurance and English courage more 
 strikingly manifested than in the manner in which this vast 
 calamity was borne ; never was English energy and deter- 
 mination more signally exemplified than in the fact that in 
 little more than four years another London had arisen from 
 the ashes of the former one — and perhaps too closely on 
 the foundations of that w^hich had perished — for in spite 
 of the advice and the desire of the great architect, who 
 seemed himself to be an embodiment of the energy and 
 pluck of the nation, the new London, instead of opening out 
 with broad thoroughfares and a great river enbankment and 
 fine streets, with the Cathedral as a centre, was built much 
 on the old lines. It was a restoration ; and so, where 
 church and hall and college and mansion had fallen, new 
 buildings rose with the same names and purposes, and 
 Ludgate and the Hill, Newgate and the Fleet, and Bridewell 
 and the old Bell Savage stood there yet, what had been left 
 of the latter to be restored into a venerable inn, soon to 
 receive into its capacious yard the coaches which were to 
 open up the country to Londoners, and to awaken the 
 echoes of the streets with the lumbering clatter of their 
 wheels. But only the nucleus of the present capital then 
 existed. There were no lines of warehouses and immense 
 
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THE FIRE OF LONDON. 79 
 
 docks for shipping between the Tower and Blackwall. 
 Chelsea was a country village. There were no stately 
 mansions extending far beyond Whitehall and Westminster. 
 Over the site of the borough of Marylebone, and over the 
 greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs of 
 Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets, sportsmen wandered with 
 dog and gun, and cattle roamed and fed. 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren had been appointed surveyor- 
 general and principal architect, and he had planned out a 
 new City, with enlarged streets and lanes, carrying them as 
 nearly parallel as might be ; avoiding, if compatible with 
 greater convenience, all acute angles. All the parochial 
 churches were to be conspicuous and insular ; the most 
 public places were to be large piazzas, the centre of six or 
 eight ways ; the halls of the twelve chief City companies 
 were to be united in one regular square annexed to Guild- 
 hall, and a quay or esplanade was to be made on the whole 
 river bank from Blackfriars to the Tower. The streets 
 w^re to be of three magnitudes, the three principal leading 
 straight through the City, and one or two cross streets to be 
 at least ninety feet wide, others sixty feet, and lanes about 
 thirty feet, excluding all narrow, dark alleys without 
 thoroughfares, and all courts. But the enormous increasing 
 value of land in the City, the rigid conservatism of the 
 owners of property, and the cry of "vested interests" 
 prevented the scheme from being executed, and — here we 
 are — slowly and at enormous cost gradually assimilating the 
 City to something like the plan advised above two centuries 
 ago. But if the plan was rejected, the style of building was 
 vastly improved, so far as ordinary houses and dwellings 
 were concerned. The ordinary material was brick of a good 
 quality. On the sites of the ancient parish churches had 
 arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires, which 
 bore the marks of the fertile genius of Wren. In every 
 place save one the traces of the great devastation had been 
 completely effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaf- 
 folds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen 
 when the noblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on 
 the ruins of the old Cathedral of St. Paul.* 
 
 * Macaulay. 
 
8o LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 To give an account of the Great Fire it would be only 
 necessary to make copious extracts from Evelyn and dear 
 old amusing Pepys ; but their books are now within the 
 reach of every reader of cheap editions. It is to be noted 
 that while all Ludgate and the Hill and the surrounding 
 thoroughfares were in cinders, the gate of Lud was little 
 injured — even the statue of Elizabeth, the figures of Lud 
 and his sons, and the coat-of-arms being but slightly 
 damaged. 
 
 The Church of wSt. Martin, Ludgate, of course, was burnt. 
 It was one of the most ancient (some said the most ancient) 
 in London, for it was declared that Cadwallo, the ancient 
 British king, was buried here in a former church. The one 
 destroyed by the Fire was dated 1437, and was a fine building, 
 with two projecting porches in Ludgate Hill, and a curious 
 spire. The new church stands farther back than the old. 
 The little black spire that adorns the tower rises from a 
 small bulb of a cupola, round which runs a light gallery. 
 Between the street and the body of the church Wren, always 
 ingenious, contrived an ambulatory the whole depth of the 
 tower, to deaden the sound of passing traffic. The church 
 is a cube, the length 57 feet, the breadth 66 feet ; the spire, 
 168 feet high, is dwarfed by St. Paul's. The building cost 
 in erection ;£^5,378 i8j". %d. 
 
 The font, the gift of Thomas Morley, in 1673, i^ encircled 
 with an old Greek palindrome, or line which reads the same 
 both ways, and means 
 
 " Cleanse thy sins, not merely thy outward self." 
 
 An old carved seat and some ornamented chests in the 
 vestry room are of the date 1690. Perhaps the Church of 
 St. Martin Ludgate is most famous for the fact that, in 
 16 13, the famous Samuel Purchas was rector there. He 
 was the editor of " Hakluyt's Voyages," and brought them 
 into his " Pilgrims," a work of five folio volumes, full of 
 accounts of travels and adventures. 
 
 It is said that Wren designed the present slender spire 
 of St. Martin's to give a greater importance to the dome of 
 St. Paul's, before which it stands as we look up Ludgate 
 Hill from one point of view. Coleridge used to compare a 
 
apothecaries' hall. 8 1 
 
 certain gentleman, who was always putting himself forward 
 to explain Mr. Fox's sentiments, to the steeple of St. Martin, 
 which is always getting in the way w^hen you want to look 
 at St. Paul's. 
 
 There is one familiar building which has had an associa- 
 tion with Ludgate Hill ever since the reconstruction of 
 London, but it is not a restoration. It is original, and was 
 erected in 1670, marking '' a new departure " in the practice 
 of physic. Apothecaries' Hall, in Water Lane, Blackfriars, 
 at once elevated the druggists' business to a professional 
 status by providing the Apothecaries' Company (incorporated 
 by charter in the reign of James I.) with a hall and a dis- 
 pensary. Originally the physicians formed a part of the 
 Apothecaries' Company, but professional jealousies and the 
 demand of the apothecaries not only to dispense, but to 
 prescribe, brought them into conflict. It may be mentioned 
 that students at the hospitals still go up to pass an examina- 
 tion at Apothecaries' Hall, w^here they are often asked 
 questions on surgery, or rather on what surgery was a 
 generation ago, so that some of the queries are out of the 
 line of modern practice ; and that they are expected to be 
 able to read and explain some of the prescriptions, yellow 
 with age, which may have been almost identical with those 
 of Radcliffe, Lettsom, or Garth. The quarrel between the 
 physicians and the apothecaries began by the latter gradually 
 superseding the "regular practitioners," who retaliated by 
 commencing to see " gratis patients," who took the prescrip- 
 tions to the apothecaries to be "made up." Then the 
 physicians accused their opponents of making extortionate 
 charges, and though the apothecaries indignantly denied it, 
 and offered to adopt a scale settled by a committee of 
 physicians, it was decided to sell drugs and to dispense 
 medicines at the College of Physicians at cost price ; an 
 unjust proceeding which ended in long litigation, and, before 
 the claim of the apothecaries was settled by law^, to a bitter 
 quarrel, not only between apothecaries and physicians, but 
 between physicians themselves, who were divided into 
 dispensarians and anti-dispensarians. The famous Sir 
 Samuel Garth was one of the former, and his famous 
 satire, " The Dispensary," shows us a great deal of the 
 
 6 
 
^2 LtJDGATE HlLL I tAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 pretty quarrel with the apothecaries, of whose Hall he 
 says : — 
 
 " Nigh where Pleet Ditch descends in sable streams, 
 To wash the sooty naiads of the Thames, 
 There stands a structure on a rising hill, 
 Where tyros take their freedom out to kill." 
 
 The poem is graphic enough, and abounds with bitter and 
 unsparing satire, which must have told heavily at the time, 
 but it is now almost forgotten, and there are few " apothe- 
 caries " practising as such, though the modern " chemist " is 
 often accused of illegally assuming the prerogative of the 
 physician, instead of merely discharging the duty of the 
 dispenser, and " practitioners " in poor neighbourhoods are 
 opening shops for giving " medical advice " and selling 
 medicines under the name of "dispensaries." Thus "his- 
 tory repeats itself," even in its less prominent and striking 
 features. 
 
 The old " Surgeons' Hall," or College of Surgeons, which 
 every reader of Smollett will remember, was in the Old 
 Bailey, and it was here that Oliver Goldsniith, who was 
 then living in a court close by, was rejected in his examina- 
 tion for a surgeon's mate. Had he passed we should pro- 
 bably never have had the " Vicar of Wakefield," or the 
 " Deserted Village." 
 
 The improvement in the public health by the rebuilding 
 of London can scarcely be over-estimated, but we find it 
 difficult to realise the condition of the streets and the means 
 of locomotion at that time, and even to a much later date. 
 The pavement was detestable, and at night many of the foot- 
 ways were dangerous, and the drainage was so imperfect 
 that in rainy weather the gutters, especially those which 
 roared and gurgled their " disemboguing streams " into 
 Fleet Ditch, were torrents, and foot passengers were bespat- 
 tered with the evil-smelling mud by the broad wheels of 
 carts and coaches lumbering past. Ben Jonson, Dryden, 
 Pope, Swift, and nearly all the satirists have launched their 
 denunciations against Fleet Ditch, as the river came to be 
 called, and not a few of them have told us in striking lan- 
 guage what was the condition of the thoroughfares near at 
 hand. In the narrow streets the sedan chair was the 
 
PATERNOSTER ROW. 83 
 
 favourite conveyance ; and no wonder. Only people robustly 
 shod could walk except in very fine weather, and though 
 after the rebuilding the thoroughfares were wider and the 
 coaches became wider also, while the driver could sit on a 
 box, instead of on a low bar or astride his horse, the dangers 
 of the streets were very considerable. It must be remem- 
 bered, too, that public games were still played in the open 
 spaces, and that it was no uncommon event for a foot- 
 ball party to come rushing down from the Strand. It 
 was necessary for safety to " take the wall " side of the 
 pavement, and keep as far from the road as possible ; but 
 the wall was mostly taken by the bully, by the butcher, 
 greasy from Newgate Market, or the sweep, sooty from a 
 court in the Old Bailey. If two bullies or roysterers met 
 they cocked their hats in each other's faces, and had a 
 tussle till one of them was shoved into the kennel. The 
 rule of the pavement — keeping to the right — as it is prac- 
 tised, or should be practised, in our time, was unobserved, 
 and indeed the dangers of the edge of the pathway were 
 imminent. Strong posts to protect the pedestrian from 
 cart and coach wheels, or to form landmarks to prevent him 
 from sousing into the gutter on dark nights, were abso- 
 lutely necessary. From the roofs and gutters a flood often 
 descended, and close overhead creaked innumerable signs, 
 which added to the picturesque appearance of the City more 
 than to its safety or convenience. The houses were not 
 numbered, and the signs were necessary where porters, 
 coachmen, errand boys, and chairmen had never learnt to 
 read. The painted boards, therefore, projected from shop- 
 fronts, not from taverns or inns merely, but even from the 
 booksellers' in St. Paul's Churchyard and Paternoster Row. 
 At night the danger and difficulty of walking in the streets 
 was increased. Not only were thieves and bullies lying in 
 wait at dark corners, but more unscrupulous and more ter- 
 rifying ruffians, who called themselves " men of spirit " and 
 gentlemen, played their pranks by night — upset coaches, 
 prodded quiet and feeble men with their swords, assaulted 
 women, and even invented tortures and ill-usage for the 
 weak and the defenceless who came in their way. They 
 had various names, and there was a regular succession of 
 
84 LUDGATE HtLL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 high-life scoundreHsm, from the Muns and Tityre Tus to 
 the Hectors, and in later times the Scourers, the Nickers, 
 the Hawcubites, and, in the day of Swift, Gay, and even of 
 Johnson, the Mohocks, who made night hideous and the 
 streets a terror, defying and often persistently ill-using the 
 watch — amusements in which an imitation was successfully 
 attempted in the present generation by the Corinthians and 
 men about town who survived the Regency, but were 
 defeated by the organisation of the " New Police," and the 
 disappearance of the " Charlies," who were so frequently 
 found screwed up in their watch boxes while the depre- 
 dators committed all the mischief that their ingenuity could 
 devise. In the last year of the reign of Charles II. a bold 
 innovator, named Edward Heming, obtained a patent giving 
 him the exclusive right to light the streets by placing a 
 lamp before every tenth door on moonless nights from 
 Michaelmas to Lady Day, from six to twelve o'clock, and, 
 small as the improvement may seem to us, it was of immense 
 importance. 
 
 Perhaps the most complete change in the ocmpation of 
 the inhabitants of streets adjacent to Ludgate Hill was to 
 be found in Paternoster Row. " My wife and I went to 
 Paternoster Row, and there we bought some green watered 
 moyre for a morning waistcoat." So writes old gossipy 
 Pepys in his diary on November 21st, 1660. 
 
 For Paternoster Row was not at that time devoted to 
 publishing and bookselling. It was the head-quarters of silk- 
 mercers and lacemen till the Fire drove the more fashionable 
 traders in these goods westward, and then " the Row " was 
 a place for milliners and " tire-women " for a short time, till 
 the booksellers took it. Before the Fire the stationers were 
 mostly in the churchyard itself, in the " string," or straight 
 side,* where the Chapter-house then stood, and its successor 
 still stands. As each stationer had his sign, the list of 
 houses reads like that of a row of taverns. It was at the 
 White Greyhound that John Harrison first published Shake- 
 speare's poems ; at the Flower de Luce and the Crown 
 
 * The two sides of St. Paul's Churchyard were formerly known as 
 the " bow " and the " string " ; the south side having the form of a bow 
 and the north side that of its rather slack string. 
 
LUDGATE HILL AFTER THE REMOVAL OF LUD GATE— I7S0. 
 
QUEEN ANNE. 87 
 
 appeared the first edition of the Meny Wives of ]Vi?tdsor ; 
 and the Green Dragon, the Fox and the Angel, the Spread 
 Eagle, the Gun and the Red Bull, are all associated with 
 the publication of plays of the great dramatist. 
 
 The booksellers had suffered almost irreparable loss by 
 the Great Fire, for a vast number of the volumes had been 
 deposited in the crypt or church of St. Faith, beneath the 
 cathedral, for safety, but the heat of the conflagration burnt 
 them, and the whole were destroyed, to the value of 
 ;!^2oo,ooo. From that time, however, the trade was more 
 than ever identified with this neighbourhood, and in what 
 has been called "the Augustan age" of literature, when 
 Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, and the rest of the 
 bigwigs whose names have come down to us in verse or 
 prose, in Spectators, Tatkrs, essays, poems, allegories, 
 epigrams, odes, and choice latinity, the association of " the 
 Row " and the publishers was inseparable, and a new era 
 had opened for Ludgate Hill, which may be said to have 
 continued to the present generation. 
 
 The Ludgate of Queen Anne and the Georges. 
 
 The " bloodless revolution " which had dethroned the 
 second James had passed ; the fear that once again high 
 mass might be heard in London churches had given place 
 to a rather rampant and self-assertive Protestantism, which 
 was as militant as it was triumphant. Every Fifth of No- 
 vember the Pope was burnt in effigy, with much tumult, at 
 Temple Bar, the turbulent procession going down Ludgate 
 with drum and trumpet and flaming torches to light the 
 bonfire ; and though the Jacobites were never absent from 
 London, and sometimes grew bold, and were always plotting, 
 in spite of pillory and prison, "the Pretender" came to 
 be as unlikely to gain authority as the Pope himself For 
 after the Peace of Ryswick, whereon there was a great and 
 gorgeous Royal procession, in which William IIL went from 
 Greenwich through the City to Whitehall, the streets being 
 lined by the trained bands, and the balconies and windows 
 so hung with rich draperies and Turkey and Persian carpets 
 that there had been nothing like it since the time of Elizabeth, 
 the army was disbanded, and the disaffected plotters came 
 
88 • LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 to London, and there made themselves so busy that a pro- 
 clamation had to be issued forbidding them to live within 
 ten miles of the City, suppressing mass-houses and Popish 
 schools, and empowering the seizure of arms found in the 
 possession of Papists. 
 
 All this time, amidst wars, persecutions, revolution, 
 dismay, recovery, and change of dynasty, the work of 
 building the great cathedral had gone on, and it was in 
 thanksgiving for the Peace of Ryswick that the first service 
 was performed in it, December 2nd, 1697. The first stone 
 was laid in June 1675, and the last in 17 10. But on 
 November 12th, 1702, Queen Anne, who had but just 
 been crowned, went in state to the new cathedral w^ith both 
 Houses of Parliament, to return thanks for Marlborough's 
 victories in the Low Countries, and for the success of Sir 
 George Rooke at Vigo. And in 1704 and 1706 the great 
 conqueror Marlborough himself marches triumphant, with 
 a goodly company, up Ludgate Hill, to be entertained at 
 the Guildhall, where the colours taken at Ramilies are hung 
 by order of the Queen, while those that were among the 
 spoils of honour at Blenheim are put up in the Hall at 
 Westminster. Again in the latter year there is a solemn 
 royal procession to the Cathedral, for the union of England 
 and Scotland has been ratified and confirmed by Act of 
 Parliament, and there is sober rejoicing thereat. A year 
 before St. Paul's w^as finished the famous sermon denouncing 
 and ridiculing the Whigs, and upholding passive obedience 
 and submission to regal authority, was preached there before 
 the Lord Mayor and Corporation by Dr. Sacheverel, the 
 chaplain of St. Saviour, South wark ; and the effect of this and 
 another similar discourse which he had already delivered 
 at Derby was first to provoke the House of Commons to 
 pronounce him guilty of malicious, scandalous, and seditious 
 libels, and, secondly, to bring him to trial, and thereby to 
 cause a riot among the common people, who thought that 
 this was a device of the Presbyterians and Dissenters to 
 overthrow, not Dr. Sacheverel only, but the Church of 
 England. To prove at once their piety and their consistency, 
 they escorted the Doctor from the Court to his lodgings in 
 the Temple, and then went to the Presbyterian meeting- 
 
ST. PAULS REBUILT. * 89 
 
 house of Mr. Burgess in New Court, gutted the building, 
 carried doors, casements, and pews to Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 where they made them into a pile, with the pulpit on the 
 top, and soon sent a select party to drag Burgess out of his 
 house that they might put him in the pulpit to be burnt. 
 Fortunately he had escaped by a back window, and the mob 
 then directed their energies to destroying the meeting-house 
 in Carter Lane, Blackfriars, and other Nonconformist chapels 
 in the neighbourhood. The military and train bands were 
 called out ; drums were beating on Ludgate Hill as the 
 troops marched to Blackfriars. The mob after some time 
 was finally dispersed, and the Doctor who had caused the 
 riot was inhibited from preaching for three years, his sermons 
 being burnt at the Exchange by the common hangman. But 
 when his term was out, the Queen, who probably relished 
 his doctrine, and had no great love left for the Whigs, or 
 for her once dear ally, Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, 
 gave him the living of St. Andrew's, Holborn. 
 
 In 1 7 10 the great Cathedral was finished — finished with 
 what anxiety, pain, and sense of ill-treatment to the 
 courageous, patient enthusiast who was its architect, few 
 could tell ; for he not only had to abandon much that was 
 noble in his main design, but to alter at the caprice of the 
 stupid bigot who succeeded Charles. Against the contra- 
 dictory orders and opposition of Court and clergy he had 
 to conciliate and to compromise, and but for the strenuous 
 personal efforts he made he would have been overthrown by 
 inferior workmen, who, after all, did not worthily carry out 
 his great design. All the time that it was building, too, he 
 received only the pittance of a common artificer, ;!^2oo a 
 year ; and even for half of this he had to wait till the whole 
 building was completed. 
 
 We need not enter into any description of this vast and 
 splendid structure, for those who visit it will easily obtain a 
 guide to all its various attractions, its monuments, and its 
 memorials. It is enough now to look up to its stupendous 
 dome, to enter its still and solemn portals, and after we have 
 gazed and dreamed and wondered, or, if it be during Divine 
 service, have listened with devout hearts, and sung and 
 prayed, to look at the epitaph which Mylne, the architect 
 
9© LUDGATE HILL I PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 of Blackfriars Bridge, caused to be brought from the vaults 
 beneath the church, and placed in gold letters over the 
 Choir, — 
 
 " Subtus conditur, 
 Hujus ecclesiae et urbis conditor, 
 
 Ch. Wren, 
 Qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta 
 Non sibi sed bono publico, 
 Lector. Si monumentum requiris, 
 Circumspice." 
 
 Yes, the Church was finished at a cost of ^^747,954 2s. gd., 
 paid for by a tax on coal brought into London. The 
 statue of the Queen was placed in the midst of the western 
 area, with the figures of Britain, France, Ireland, and 
 America round the base of the pedestal. Bird was the 
 sculptor, who also executed the figures in the " Conversion 
 of St. Paul " on the entablature, and the statues of St. Paul, 
 St. Peter, and St. James, on the pediment. The statue of 
 Anne is a poor affair, and not more noticeable now than it 
 was in the place it formerly occupied. Defoe wrote in 1722 
 that it was " very masterly done," though he could not say it 
 was extremely like Her Majesty. There were some coarse 
 and scurrilous verses which were made at the time, referring 
 to the pretended liking of the Queen for a^tm vitce^ and to 
 the position of the statue with its back to the Church and 
 facing a brandy-shop, which occupied a corner of the 
 Churchyard ; but the character of Anne, and the position 
 she had to maintain, amidst much personal sorrow, and a 
 strife in which she held a true and faithful part to the nation, 
 have long ago confuted calumnies, and given her a place of 
 honour in the national regard. 
 
 These and the succeeding years were again palmy days 
 for the shops on Ludgate Hill and the booksellers in Pater- 
 noster Row, where, in 17 10, Rivingtons, the Church 
 publishers, lived at the Bible and Crown, and afterwards 
 continued " Dodsley's Annual Register," with Edmund 
 Burke as a contributor. At No 47 (afterwards the house of 
 Messrs. W. & R. Chambers), Robert Baldwin published 
 the London Magazine, commenced in 1732 ; and at the 
 Ship and Black Swan were the progenitors of the 
 Longmans, whose dinners and parties to authors and artists 
 

 THE BRISTOL COACH IN THg OUTER YARD OF THE BELL SA\'AGE, 
 
THE DAYS OF THE GEORGES. 93 
 
 were once famous for the number of eminent men who 
 were the guests. 
 
 The principal resort of booksellers and authors who had 
 business together was the Chapter Coffee House, so often 
 alluded to by poor Chatterton in his letters. This, like 
 other houses of the kind, has changed its position since 
 that time, and is indeed a tavern adapted to modern re- 
 quirements, as publishers and authors now seldom transact 
 business in the old fashion, and the ancient taverns about 
 St. Paul's Churchyard having mostly disappeared. They 
 had distinguished visitors in the days of the Georges, how- 
 ever, — the days of Pope, Swift, and afterwards of Doctor 
 Johnson, Goldsmith, and Richardson, and those of Cowper, 
 Darwin, Doctor Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld, Godwin, and other 
 shining lights of the literary revival of the beginning of this 
 century, who used to meet at the house of Johnson, the 
 bookseller, where the premises of Messrs. Hitchcock now 
 stand, and there dine with their genial host. Bonnycastle, 
 the arithmetician, was there too, perhaps as the successor 
 in the Yard to Cocker. The supremacy of the Church was 
 to be found in the ancient days in Creed Lane, Ave Maria 
 Lane, Canon Alley, Paternoster Row, and Amen Corner, 
 the residence of the clergy of the Chapter House. We will 
 say nothing of Do-Little Lane, which was probably named 
 after some learned prebend ; while Addle Lane is a cor- 
 ruption of Athelstan, the Saxon King, who had a palace 
 there ; and Sermon Lane has been disputed in favour of 
 " Sheremoney," because Old Change, Cheapside, was the 
 " old original " Mint of the Edwards, and in the lane close 
 by were the shearers or clippers of the round pieces of 
 metal, who thus prepared the coin for stamping after it had 
 come from the " Blackloft " (in the same lane), where the 
 silver was melted. 
 
 One of the most interesting of all the booksellers' shops, 
 however, was that of Mr. Newbery, the publisher of children's 
 books, at the very corner of St. Paul's Churchyard and 
 Ludgate Street, now occupied by Messrs. Griffith and 
 Farran, who maintain the juvenile reputation of the old 
 house. Here was issued the original " Goody -Two-Shoes," 
 "Valentine and Orson," and all the stories that, with 
 
94 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 their staring queer woodcuts and gilded covers, used to 
 delight the hearts of our great-grandfathers when they were 
 only just breeched and had a crown-piece to spend on 
 Ludgate Hill. 
 
 There must have been rare company in the taverns and 
 inns about Ludgate Hill in the early days of the Georges, 
 and, doubtless, the Old Bell Savage had its share of it, even 
 after Addison had written about it in the Spectator^ and 
 when the flying coaches, going for the whole journey at an 
 average of five miles an hour, had come to be recognised as 
 the consummation of the art of travelling, and when the 
 mails went out regularly in coaches of their own. Steele 
 and his jovial companions in the City have probably had 
 many a bowl of punch and tobacco at Dolly's or elsewhere, 
 for smoking had been long established as a common practice, 
 and there were tobacco houses to which country squires 
 and men about town went to have, as it were, a smoking 
 debauch, coming out dazed and drunk, and only recovered 
 by coffee and wet cloths round their temples, as those who 
 list may read in that curious but not always edifying book, 
 "The London Spy," by Ned Ward. There were alehouses 
 and ordinaries enough all about this neighbourhood to suit 
 any purse, and we find Swift in his Journal to Stella saying, 
 " To-day 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 is 
 the second time he has served me so ; but I will never do 
 it again, though all mankind should persuade me — uncon- 
 sidering puppies." Such is the fretful intimation in one of 
 those saddest of epistles. Swift's letters to Stella, wherein we 
 see the gloomy, carping temper of the man, who was, even 
 then, approaching the dark and melancholy end of his 
 turbulent disputes. To go to the top of St. Paul's and pay 
 for his own dinner afterwards, instead of being treated, as he 
 had hoped and might reasonably have expected, when he 
 could ill afford more than a shilling ordinary ! There is no 
 record of the spectacle from the golden ball, and yet Swift 
 might have written a great satire on the subject. 
 
 There was one man who, perhaps more than poet, 
 essayist, or even dramatist, preserved for us the true picture 
 
LORD mayors' shows. 95 
 
 of what London was in the early Georgian period ; and he 
 was one of the constant visitors to Ludgate Hill and all its 
 neighbourhood, for he was an engraver to the booksellers in 
 his youth, had marked with observant eye, and soon repre- 
 sented with unerring, and, at the same time, unflattering 
 pencil, the aspect of the streets. His name was William 
 Hogarth, and from his pictures we learn more of Bridewell, 
 of the narrow lanes and alleys, of the bustle of the markets, 
 the excesses of the mob, the crime and jollity and extra- 
 vagance and drollery of London life, than from most written 
 descriptions — for from a highwayman on the way to execu- 
 tion from Newgate, to the progress of the civic carriage in 
 the Lord Mayor's Show, he had seen and estimated them 
 all. And, speaking of Lord Mayor's Shows, these had come 
 to be the only pageants left to the populace by the time that 
 the succession was fixed. The old allegorical structures 
 that occupied the streets during a royal progress had 
 already become historical, coaches of state were compara- 
 tively common, all gold and varnish and great heraldic 
 panels, and full of carved devices. A few of these, a troop 
 of Life Guards, a dozen heralding trumpeters, and a score 
 of banners, with the attendant footmen and gentlemen-at- 
 arms, made a royal procession. There were only the Lord 
 Mayors' Shows left, and these were still stately affairs, 
 especially as that part of the journey to Westminster was 
 still made by water in the grand barges of the City Com- 
 panies, before the Conservancy of the Thames was taken 
 from the City. An account of the great civic shows that 
 have wound their way round the bow of St. Paul's, and so 
 come with a sudden rush of colour and sparkle of steel and 
 gold and blare of music, down the hill to Fleet Bridge, 
 would fill a volume. We need not go back to the earliest 
 on record when, on the passage of Henry IH. and Eleanor 
 of Provence through London, they were escorted by the 
 mayor, aldermen, and 350 mounted citizens apparelled in 
 robes of embroidered silk, and each carrying in his hand a 
 cup of gold or silver, in token of the claim of the Lord 
 Mayor to act as Chief Butler at the Coronation ; nor will we 
 describe the grand water procession in honour of the coro- 
 nation of Anne Boleyn, when the Mayor's barge, covered 
 
96 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 with red cloth, was garnished with goodly banners and 
 streamers, and hung with emblazoned shields, while a band 
 of " shalms, shagbushes, and divers other instruments " 
 made good harmony, as the fifty barges of the City Com- 
 panies, marshalled by three light wherries with officers, 
 followed, all gorgeously bedight ; and before all went 
 another barge full of ordnance, containing a dragon vomiting 
 wild fire, and surrounding it terrible monsters and savages 
 also vomiting fire, discharging squibs, and making hideous 
 noises. Flags of silk, and sails of cloth of gold and silver, 
 banners with devices and shields of beaten gold, were the 
 decorations of the Lord Mayor's barge, and there was also 
 a floating pageant of a white falcon on a rock environed with 
 white and red roses, the cognisance of the House of 
 Boleyn. 
 
 There have been some not very intelligible or successful 
 attempts to revive the old civic pageants even in our own 
 time, but the last example of the truly gorgeous shows 
 of the Middle Ages was that of John Leman, of the Fish- 
 mongers' Company, who was Mayor in the reign of James I. 
 The pageant was designed by Munday, one of the Shake- 
 spearean dramatists, and the drawings, now in possession 
 of the Fishmongers' Company, are full of fancy. The first 
 pageant represented a buss, or Dutch fishing-boat, on wheels. 
 The fishermen in it w^ere busy drawing up nets full of live 
 fish, and throwing them to the people. On the mast and at 
 the head of the boat were the insignia of the company — 
 St. Peter's keys and two arms supporting a crown. The 
 second pageant was a gigantic crowned dolphin, ridden 
 by Arion. The third pageant was the King of the Moors, 
 riding on a golden leopard, and scattering gold and silver 
 freely around him. He was attended by six tributary kings 
 in gilt armour on horseback, each carrying a dart and gold 
 and silver ingots. This pageant was in honour of the Fish- 
 mongers' brethren, the Goldsmiths. The fourth pageant 
 was the usual pictorial pun on the Lord Mayor's name and 
 crest. The car bore a large lemon-tree full of golden fruit, 
 with a pelican in her nest feeding her young (proper). At 
 the top of the tree sat five children, representing the five 
 senses. The boys were dressed as women, each with her 
 
A LORD mayor's SHOW {from Hogarth). 
 
LORD MAYORS SHOWS. 99 
 
 emblem — Seeing, by an eagle ; Hearing, by a hart ; Touch, 
 by a spider ; Tasting, by an ape ; and Smelling, by a dog. 
 The fifth pageant was Sir William Walworth's bower, which 
 was hung with the shields of all Lord Mayors who had been 
 Fishmongers. Upon a tomb within the bower was laid the 
 effigy in knightly armour of Sir William, the slayer of W^at 
 Tyler. Five mounted knights attended the car, and a 
 mounted man-at-arms bore "\^'at Tyler's head upon a dagger. 
 In attendance were six trumpeters and twenty-four halber- 
 diers, arrayed in light blue silk, emblazoned with the 
 Fishmongers' arms on the breast and Walworth's on the 
 back. Then followed an angel with golden wings and 
 crown, riding on horseback, who, on the Lord Mayor's 
 approach, with a golden rod awoke Sir William from his 
 long sleep, and the two then became speakers in the inter- 
 lude. The great central pageant was a triumphal car drawn 
 by two mermen and two mermaids. In the highest place 
 sat a guardian angel defending the crown of Richard II., 
 who sat just below her. Under the King sat female 
 personifications of the royal virtues, Truth, Virtue, Honour, 
 Temperance, Fortitude, Zeal, Equity, Conscience, beating 
 down Treason and Mutiny, the two last being enacted " by 
 burly men." In a seat corresponding with the King's sat 
 Justice, and below her Authority, Law, Vigilance, Peace, 
 Plenty, and Discipline. 
 
 This was the grandest show that was to be seen on 
 Ludgate Hill for many a day, and the less political and, 
 indeed, very commonplace displays of the Georges fall far 
 below it. After the coronation of George III., however, 
 when their Majesties went to the civic dinner, Ludgate Hill 
 and the other streets on the route made a pageant which 
 was, in its way, very grand and impressive. Sir Samuel 
 Fludyer was Lord Mayor then (in 1761), and the Thames 
 was covered with boats and gilded barges, with strange 
 allegorical figures in quaint dresses in some of them. The 
 Lord Mayor landed on the return journey at the Temple, 
 and there his pageant waited till the royal procession had 
 gone on some time. Every house from Temple Bar to 
 Guildhall was crowded from top to bottom, and all the 
 citizens kept open house for their friends, The royal family 
 
lOO LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Stopped at the house of Mr. Barclay, the Quaker, where from 
 the balcony, hung with crimson silk damask, they saw the 
 civic pageant go by, and then followed to the feast at 
 Guildhall, But just before the pageant arrived came Mr. 
 Pitt in his chariot, accompanied by Earl Temple ; and 
 the great commoner had the real honour, for at every step 
 the mob clung about every part of the vehicle, hung upon 
 the wheels, hugged his footmen, and even kissed his horses. 
 It was a rough time, the successor of still rougher times, 
 when an enthusiastic mob would not be denied, and it 
 required some nerve to face the imminent danger of 
 popularity. 
 
 Wilkes must have found it so, for he ran the gauntlet 
 both of favour and disfavour when his trial was proceeding, 
 after the obnoxious number of the Noi'th Briton had been 
 issued from Ludgate Hill ; and a later date, when, on his 
 being arrested, the populace unhorsed the coach, turned 
 out the tipstaves, who would probably have been killed but 
 for Wilkes' entreaties, and drew the popular representative 
 of Middlesex up Ludgate Hill and as far as Spitalfields. 
 
 The Fleet, Fleet Marriages, the Market, the 
 Prisons, Blackfriars Bridge. 
 
 Even to those of us who have heard of " runaway 
 matches " and marriages at Gretna Green, on the borders 
 between England and Scotland (where it used to be pre- 
 tended, but without much authenticity, that the ceremony 
 was performed by a blacksmith) — the Fleet marriages are 
 now scarcely credible. There is ample evidence, however, 
 that within the Fleet or its liberties — in dingy lodgings, low 
 taverns or beerhouses — a number of besotted, broken-down, 
 and unscrupulous parsons, drunken chaplains, and other 
 debased clergymen carried on a competitive business in 
 marrying people with little or no ceremony. Some of those 
 weddings were originally performed in the chapel of the 
 prison ; but the business became so extensive that they were 
 afterwards celebrated in some dingy room in one or other of 
 the taverns, each of which kept its book of registers. These 
 marriages were not, of course, strictly legal, and yet in such a 
 condition was the ecclesiastical law that they were tacitly 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. lOT 
 
 recognised as being valid, and if conducted by one of the 
 Fleet parsons were not to be dissolved. A collection of the 
 registrar books, weighing more than a ton, and recording 
 Fleet marriages between 1686 and 1754 were purchased 
 by the Government in 182 1, and deposited in the registry 
 office of the Bishop of London in Doctors' Commons, and 
 among the names are many of great celebrity and high rank. 
 
 There were three classes of marriages at the Fleet — those 
 of couples who had eloped and desired to be married imme- 
 diately and secretly ; those who followed a kind of fashion 
 (for it became fashionable with a certain " fast " set of people 
 to be married at the Fleet), or who, having made up their 
 minds in a moment, hurried to the parson before they had 
 time to change it ; and those in which w^omen were in- 
 veigled under some false pretence, or forcibly carried there, 
 and intimidated into consenting to a ceremony of which they 
 did not understand the meaning, but which by a few inco- 
 herent words bound them to a life-long compact. The 
 parsons had touts about Ludgate Hill and Fleet Market, or 
 themselves stood at their doors inviting likely couples to 
 come in and be married ; and it may be imagined what 
 were the scandalous results of such a disgraceful practice. 
 A bride or a bridegroom could be found at a few minutes' 
 notice for a consideration, and registers could either be 
 destroyed or ante-dated if a suitable arrangem'ent were made. 
 It was known that extravagant ladies had been to the Fleet, 
 and had hired husbands for the ceremony, merely that they 
 might obtain a certificate enabling them to evade their 
 creditors by pleading coverture against any action for debt. 
 
 " Marriages, with a license certificate and a crown stamp, 
 at a guinea^ at the new chapel, next door to the china shop, 
 near Fleet Bridge, by a regular-bred clergyman, and not by 
 a Fleet parson "... is part of an advertisement in the 
 Daily Advertiser in 1749; and a handbill of the period 
 invites candidates for matrimony to "the true chapel at the 
 Old Red Hand and Mitre, three doors from Fleet Lane, 
 and next door to the White Swan," where the ceremony was 
 performed " by authority, by the Reverend Mr. Symson, 
 educated at the University of Cambridge, and late Chaplain 
 to the Earl of Rothes." An emphatic line at the foot of 
 
I02 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 the bill is, "N.B. Without imposition." One window bears 
 a board, with " Weddings performed cheap here " ; another 
 announces "The old and true Register"; and at the 
 Horseshoe and Magpie, the Rainbow Coffee-house at the 
 corner of the Ditch, the Hand and Pen, the Bishop Blaize, 
 the Fighting Cocks, the Naked Boy, and other brandy- 
 shops, taverns, and ale-houses, some of them kept by the 
 turnkeys, and most of them houses of call for the parsons, 
 who are called in by the landlord, and share their fees 
 with him, the nefarious work goes on daily. Besides the 
 numbers who are married by force or guile, and those 
 who are now and then kidnapped and robbed by being 
 frightened out of the fees before they are permitted to 
 escape, scores of people go through the Fleet ceremony 
 in preference to that of the regular celebration at church, 
 and parties of half-intoxicated sailors and their lasses from 
 Wapping, or of other roysterers with their partners, have 
 been known to go to be married as a kind of termination 
 to a frolic. The same kind of marriages were also held 
 at Mayfair, where a rascally clergyman named Keith, 
 famous in those days, had a chapel, and, as Horace Walpole 
 said, made " a very bishopric of revenue." This fellow 
 was excommunicated, but he retorted by excommunicating 
 at his own chapel the bishop, the judge of the Ecclesiastical 
 Court, and two reverend doctors. He was imprisoned 
 in the Fleet, but left curates in charge of his Mayfair 
 business, and commenced another in the prison. When 
 it was threatened that the bishops would put an end to 
 these illegal marriages, Keith swore he would raise money 
 to buy a plot of ground for a cemetery, and " under-bury " 
 them. The Fleet and Mayfair marriages were a public 
 scandal, but the latter especially were supported by the 
 aristocracy. It was in Mayfair that the Duke of Hamilton, 
 who was impatient to marry one of the beautiful Miss 
 Gunnings, had the marriage ceremony performed at the 
 chapel at half-past twelve at night. Keith died in the Fleet 
 prison in 1758, four years after the Act against clandestine 
 marriages came into operation. The people of rank were be- 
 coming a little alarmed at the fashion of the Fleet, but the 
 mischief had become so great that the business increased 
 
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THE FLEET DITCH. TO5 
 
 during the few months' interval between the passing of the 
 iVct and its operation, and therefore before the law came 
 in force 217 marriages were entered there in one register, 
 and 61 marriages were performed at May fair, so eager were 
 couples to make the most of the interval, and so much had 
 the evil custom prevailed. 
 
 Fleet Market, which was established when the Fleet 
 Ditch had been covered in from the corner of the foot of 
 Ludgate to Holborn Bridge, was instituted when the site of 
 Stocks' Market, at the corner of the Poultry, was wanted for 
 the building of the Mansion House in 1738, the year in 
 which two large birds, said to be eagles or cormorants, were 
 seen perched one on the cross, and the other on the pine- 
 apple on St. Paul's. All sorts of superstitious notions got 
 about, and the appearance w^as said to be ominous. Very 
 likely it was, for the naval authorities, seeing what crowds 
 assembled on Ludgate Hill, took advantage of public 
 curiosity by securing a live turkey to the top of the monu- 
 ment on Fish Street Hill, and when a large number of 
 people had gone to stare at it the press-gangs made a raid 
 and kidnapped a number of likely young fellows to be taken 
 to serve on board His Majesty's fleet. The prisons of 
 Bridewell, the Fleet, Newgate, and even that of Ludgate, 
 were still in full operation, and the whole neighbourhood 
 about the Fleet Valley, and indeed from Temple Bar to the 
 Old Bailey, and from Bridewell to Saffron Hill, teemed with 
 the haunts of vice and crime. There were houses which 
 were dens of murderers, coiners, and thieves, and some of 
 them communicated by cellars and secret passages, so that 
 victims who were decoyed into them could be made away 
 with, and the bodies of missing men were more than once 
 discovered in vaults and dark passages. It seemed as 
 though the great prison of Newgate, which, like the Fleet 
 and Bridewell, had been rebuilt after the Fire, attracted the 
 gaol-birds, by an evil fascination, to hover around its pre- 
 cincts, and to roost in the tangle of courts and alleys about 
 the banks of the foul stream which flowed in the Holborn 
 Valley at the foot of Ludgate Hill. When Fielding wrote 
 that strange, repulsive history of Jonathan Wild, the trade 
 of the thief-taker and the thief was one, for the thief taker 
 
io6 
 
 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 was often the decoy, and himself had graduated in crime 
 that he might afterwards Hve on the " blood money " gained 
 by informing on his victims, who had once been his con- 
 federates. Not only was the Fleet Ditch, before it was 
 
 THE LAST OF FLEET DITCH. 
 
 enclosed, dangerous to passengers, who at night often fell 
 into the black stream and were drowned, but it was the 
 dark scene of midnight murders perpetrated in the im- 
 penetrable jungle of decaying and ruinous houses that stood 
 on the space on the Fleet Street side towards St. Andrew's 
 Church. 
 
THE OLD BAILEY. I07 
 
 The Newgate Calendar — the true Newgate Calendar — 
 the records and reports of the Ordinaries of Newgate, alone 
 could give any idea of the horrors of that dreadful prison in 
 a time when the press-yard was still in use as a place of 
 torture to extract confessions, or even in the later time when 
 highwaymen, manacled but defiant, sat together in one of the 
 great rooms of the gaol, and there caroused or crouched 
 silent and moody till they were taken out and went the road 
 to Tyburn ; of murderers in the condemned cells, and of 
 unfortunate prisoners wrongly condemned to suffer death 
 for crimes that they had not committed, in the days when 
 hanging was the short and easy method of punishment, 
 even for petty larceny, and yet when crime was rampant and 
 murder scarcely seemed to be diminished by the sight of 
 the gallows. There were no executions at Newgate then — 
 Tyburn was the place where felons were executed— except 
 in cases when they were hanged in front of the places where 
 the offence for which they suffered had been committed ; 
 and in the exceptions made for piracy, when the bodies of 
 the malefactors swung in chains at Execution Dock. It was 
 not till 1783 that the place of execution was changed from 
 Tyburn to the front of Newgate, and at that period the mode 
 of hanging was to take the prisoner beneath the gibbet in a 
 cart, which was driven from under him when the fatal knot 
 had been fastened and the cap drawn over his eyes. The 
 gallows was built with three cross-beams, that three rows of 
 prisoners might be executed at one time ; an awful indication 
 of the wholesale infliction of capital punishment which cha- 
 racterised the times. In 1785 the "new drop" was sub- 
 stituted for the cart, and the sufferers were no longer 
 " turned off" ; but hanging became a fine art — and " Ketch " 
 was succeeded by the predecessors of Marwood. Between 
 February and December that year ninety-six persons suffered 
 the penalty of death at Newgate, and in the following year 
 the last instance took place of burning the body by heaping 
 faggots round and over it — as it hung upon a low gibbet — and 
 setting them on fire. It was the corpse of a woman that 
 closed the list of those which had been subjected to this 
 dreadful cremation. But both before and after executions 
 took place at Newgate, Surgeons' Hall received the bodies 
 
Io8 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 of the criminals from the gallows. Here, in 1760, the 
 corpse of Lord Ferrers was brought from Tyburn for the 
 completion of the sentence by disembowelling, and here it 
 was exposed to view. Near Surgeons' Hall, at No. 12, 
 Green Arbour Court, at the corner of Breakneck Steps, 
 in Seacole Lane, lodged Oliver Goldsmith from 1758 
 to 1760. It was here he was writing his "Polite Learning 
 Enquiry " when Dr. Percy called on him and found him 
 in great poverty. At the bottom of Breakneck Steps, 
 when the place existed at -a much later date, might still 
 be seen a massy fragment of the old city wall, which was 
 near the Ballium, or outer bail. Seacole Lane was opposite 
 the entrance to the Old Bailey from St. Martin's Court, 
 Ludgate Hill. The present Central Criminal Court, estab- 
 lished in 1834, forms part of the Sessions House, divided 
 by a broad paved yard from the prison. Here every kind 
 of offence is tried, and the journey is a short one from 
 "dock" to "cell." The site of Surgeons' Hall was taken 
 into that of the old Justice Hall, and the Sessions House 
 and Court House were built on it in 1809. Even to-day any 
 one who visits the entirely re-modelled prison, or sits and 
 listens to the trials in the Sessions House, may fancy that he 
 sees some of the remnants that have been bequeathed to us 
 from the evil times when, every Monday, the front of the gaol 
 showed a horrible spectacle, which was supposed to be in the 
 interests of humanity ; and even the thoughts of the stately 
 dining-room above the Old Court, where, during the Old 
 Bailey sittings, the sheriffs' dinners are served, at which judges 
 and civic officials and pleaders sit down daily, remind us of the 
 line that marks the carelessness of justice and the hurried 
 hearing of evidence and pronouncing sentence in the days 
 when it was said — 
 
 " Wretches liang that jurymen may dine." 
 
 There are many of us who remember, not without a shudder, 
 the hanging days at the Old Bailey, and how, with a sicken- 
 ing sense, we have hurried past just as the turbulent, hoarse, 
 and brutal crowd came pouring into Ludgate Hill, or went 
 their way towards Smithfield, when the show was over, and 
 the rigid corpse had ceased to swing, and was " cut down." 
 
MORE CHANGES. IO9 
 
 It seems horrible to think of even now, and yet it was no 
 longer ago than 1864 that the seven pirates were hanged 
 there for murder on the high seas. It is a shorter time since 
 the gallows and its dreadful burden was taken inside the 
 gaol, so that sensitive people could go, even on a Monday, 
 down the Old Bailey. The aspect of the place has changed 
 since then. Williams's famous boiled beef shop, which used 
 to be so crowded after an execution morning, has disap- 
 peared. We should all be shocked to hear that a prisoner 
 was to be hanged in public again, and yet it is held by some 
 that the very fact of our shirking the sight and hiding the 
 deed is an argument in favour of abolishing the gallows 
 altogether. We leave that argument, for it is not within the 
 scope of these memorials ; but how far we seem to have got 
 from the times of Jack Sheppard, the " good old times " when 
 prisoners were hung in batches — the murderer, the highway- 
 man, the unfortunate woman who has pilfered that she 
 might not starve ; the lad guilty of petty larceny, who had to 
 stand on a stool because he was too small for the rope to 
 reach him ! These were the times when the prison had its 
 revenge even on the Court, and when the rue strewn in 
 front of the dock and the bench could not avert the gaol- 
 fever that crept from the loathsome cells into the court itself, 
 and struck down judge and counsel and officers. How far 
 we are even from the days when my Lord Tomnoddy 
 "jumped up at the news," exclaiming, — 
 
 * ' Ropedancers a score 
 
 I've seen before — 
 Madarne Sacchi, Antonio, and Master Blackniore ; 
 
 But to see a man swing: 
 
 At the end of a string, 
 With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing." 
 
 When Barham (Ingoldsby), canon of St. Paul's, wrote his 
 satire in the house of the clergy in the churchyard, every 
 window at the tavern, and other houses opposite Newgate 
 Prison, was let at a high price on hanging mornings, and 
 from early dawn a ruffianly mob pushed, and swore, and 
 yelled, and hooted below ; hooted at authority, hooted at 
 respectability, cursed at remonstrance, yelled the wretched 
 being who was the centre of attraction out of the world, 
 
no LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 and fought and robbed, and sometimes nearly murdered 
 under the very gallows itself. 
 
 The old Prison of Ludgate was pulled down when the 
 old gates of the City were removed on the accession of 
 George III. in 1760, and however much the ancient 
 structure of the gate itself may have been regretted, the way 
 was opened clear and free from the foot of the hill to 
 St. Paul's. The very walls of the wretched prison might 
 have echoed the sighs of the wretches who had been 
 incarcerated there, and there were sermons in the stones, 
 but they were all carted away and sold as building materials 
 for ;£i48. The statue of Elizabeth was placed in a niche 
 of the outer wall of St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, 
 where it remains. The figures of the family of Lud were 
 presented to Sir Francis Gosling, who meant to re-erect 
 them at the east end of the same church, but somehow they 
 were stowed away in the parish bone-house, where they 
 remained till the Marquis of Hertford bought them, and 
 along with the old St. Dunstan's clock and its two giants, 
 that struck the hour on a bell, took them to his villa at 
 Regent's Park. The few " poor debtors " who were at 
 Ludgate were removed to the London Workhouse in 
 Bishopsgate Street, where it is to be hoped they fared 
 better than by the begging-box and the doles of their old 
 gaol. 
 
 The Fleet, however, was full of prisoners. It had been 
 rebuilt after the Fire, and the old prison, which had once 
 been the scene of the Court of the Star Chamber, was 
 changed. There were no State prisoners, but it was still 
 the abode of misery and cruelty, and the poor debtors, 
 victims of rapacious or indifferent governors and gaolers, 
 were loaded with irons, placed to sleep in damp cellars, 
 starved, unclothed, and to judge from the revelations that 
 were made, often tortured by wooden manacles, shaped like 
 tailors' sleeve-boards, the broad end having a hole for the 
 neck, and the narrow end one for the right hand, which had 
 to be constantly raised ; a shocking punishment, not excelled 
 by boot and screw. Bridewell, too, had been rebuilt after 
 the burning, and was now a place of reformation (?) and 
 punishment for persons of bad character, who were set to 
 
FLEET PRISON. T l T 
 
 beat oakum, and were whipped on the bare shoulders, while 
 the governor sat and looked on, till he gave the signal by 
 knocking with a hammer after a certain number of lashes 
 had been inflicted. Bridewell was the Court of Government 
 for Bethlehem Hospital, which in 1829 had its house of 
 occupation, or, as we should call it, a reformatory indus- 
 trial school ; but Bridewell had an industrial school of its 
 own, as well as being a house of correction for idle appren- 
 tices. The Bridewell boys, who were apprenticed to masters 
 of various trades in the building, which was a hospital or 
 workhouse for indigent persons, wore a kind of livery, and 
 were mostly to be seen at fires, where they w^ere very active 
 in working an engine belonging to the hospital ; but they 
 were a disorderly, noisy set of fellows, and added con- 
 siderably to the discomforts of the passengers about Ludgate 
 Hill. It became a prison for thieves and misdemeanants till 
 1863, when a portion of the prison was taken down, and 
 committals of criminals and the worst misdemeanants were 
 made to the City Prison at Holloway. The committal of 
 unruly and disobedient City apprentices to Bridewell by the 
 Chamberlain of London, who has about 3,000 of these 
 youths under his jurisdiction, is still maintained. The 
 court-house and hall were handsome, and the latter was 
 adorned with some good portraits of the successive presidents, 
 and a full-length of Charles H. by Sir Peter Lely, a cartoon 
 of the Good Samaritan by Dadds, and a large picture of 
 Edward VI. transferring the hospital to the City of London. 
 Little more than the offices remained after the building was 
 demolished. 
 
 But we must remember that Newgate, Bridewell, and 
 the Fleet were all rebuilt after 1780, when they were 
 burned down in the anti-Popery riots and the prisoners 
 released. Of that dreadful time the most graphic and 
 intensely interesting account of the scene about Ludgate 
 Hill, before Newgate, and in the adjacent portion of Hol- 
 born, is familiar to most readers in the pages of "Barnaby 
 Rudge." To transcribe the story, as told by the great 
 novelist, would occupy too much space, and after that mar- 
 vellous account it would be folly to attempt another that 
 could approach it for general accuracy, or for picturesque 
 
112 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 effect. Of what the Fleet Prison was when it was devoted 
 only to the reception of debtors, the same master-hand has 
 given a faithful and pathetic narrative in the famous " Pick- 
 wick Papers," and to them also we surely need scarcely refer 
 our readers. 
 
 Fleet Prison was on the east side of the Market — a large, 
 long brick building, shut in by surrounding houses and high 
 walls, and with galleries in every story leading from one end of 
 the house to the other, with the rooms for the prisoners on 
 each side. In order to understand what the Fleet Prison was 
 really like it is necessary to read between the lines of the 
 reports that were from time to time made upon it before it 
 was finally pulled down. Probably the most authentic 
 official statement is to be found in the evidence of Mr. 
 Nicholas Nixon, himself the deputy and sole acting warden ; 
 from this we learn that the only other officers beside the 
 deputy-warden and his clerk were three turnkeys, one 
 watchman, and one scavenger. The turnkeys were paid a 
 guinea a week each, and had each a room, which they par- 
 titioned off and occasionally let to prisoners. The watch- 
 man was also the acting scavenger, and the crier to the 
 prison, and, being himself a prisoner, received loj". dd. 
 a week and a free lodging, as well as some emoluments for 
 bringing down prisoners to inquirers, and for lighting the 
 lamps in the galleries. Thefts were common in the prison, 
 and it was the duty of the crier to " cry " the stolen articles. 
 There was one crier who was himself the thief, purloining 
 portable property that he might cry it and obtain the reward 
 for its recovery. 
 
 All manner of provisions were brought into the prison 
 and sold as they might be in the streets, but only with the 
 authority of the warden and his deputy, and beer and ale 
 sold at the tap was on the credit of the deputy. There was 
 recently no licence for selling wine, and spirituous liquors 
 were prohibited. The cook and the racket-master, being 
 officers of the prisoners, were elected by them twice a year. 
 Only prisoners who paid their entrance fees were entitled to 
 admission to rooms in the prison on the master's side, 
 where they had a priority to chummage, or being placed 
 to share a room with others, according to rotation on their 
 
FLEET PRISON. tI3 
 
 seniority as prisoners. A few venerable prisoners were 
 exempt from having newer arrivals chummed upon them, 
 or sent to share their rooms. No fees were paid on the 
 common side, which was devoted to the unfortunate prisoners 
 who swore they were not worth five pounds in the world, 
 and were allowed to participate in the subscriptions collected 
 from passers-by at the begging-grate, where each of the 
 entided prisoners stood to ask for alms, each in rotation, 
 for twenty-four hours. Besides the begging-grate, there were 
 sometimes charitable donations distributed among the very 
 poorest prisoners, and ;£^5oo a year, granted for the purpose 
 by Act of Parliament, was distributed amongst the poor 
 prisoners indiscriminately. Some of these unfortunate 
 wretches waited on the wealthy ones, and so added a little 
 to the miserable pittance which of itself would seldom keep 
 them from starvation. The racket-masters earned a guinea a 
 week each, as they were paid by the game. Fifteen-pence a 
 week was the rent of a lodging on the master's side. Lights 
 and fires had to be extinguished in the coffee-room and 
 tap at eleven o'clock, before which all strangers were 
 expected to leave the building ; but this was not always 
 complied with, and scenes of riot and disorder were 
 frequent, while the morals of the place were represented by 
 a small and almost unknown quantity. There appears to 
 have been constant neglect, misery, confusion, and disorder. 
 Two clubs were established, one in the coffee-room and 
 another in the tap-room, to which strangers were admitted. 
 The chapel was very badly attended, though the prison 
 gates were kept locked during the time of service. At 
 other times the key was turned, on the average, about once 
 a minute. The prison was " nearly " secured against fire, 
 all the rooms except the top flight being arched with brick. 
 No official medical attendance was provided. Four times a 
 year an officer of the Court of Common Pleas went to look 
 at the prison, before each term, and it was whitewashed as 
 often as that operation was thought to be necessary, and 
 repaired about once in three years. There were about 
 300 prisoners in the building and the rules ^ which extended 
 to a portion of the neighbourhood, to about the circum- 
 ference of three-quarters of a mile, where prisoners might be 
 
 8 
 
1 14 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 entitled to take a lodging by giving sufficient security to the 
 warden by an " instrument " upon a twenty-shilling stamp, 
 and by paying an enquiry fee and percentage on the amount 
 of the debt. These and other fees formed the rather hand- 
 some emoluments of the warden or his deputy ; and there 
 were also day rules to enable prisoners to be out during 
 term-time every day the Court sat. The expense of a day 
 rule was ^2 "js. for the whole time, if the charge was 
 under ;^5oo, and 4^'. dd. a day additional. Thus amidst 
 squalor, misery, and vice, lived the prisoners in the 
 Fleet and its rules, and many of them lived in a kind 
 of coarse luxury and profusion, which was all the more 
 striking because of the sickness and starvation to which the 
 penniless sufferers on the poor side were condemned. 
 
 Fleet Market occupied the space now occupied by Far- 
 ringdon Circus, and extended from the east end of Fleet 
 Street to the bottom of Snow Hill. It really consisted of 
 two rows of butchers' shops, a turret with a clock in the 
 centre, and at the north end an open space with stalls for 
 fish and vegetables. 
 
 In a later edition of the " Pickwick Papers " Mr. Charles 
 Dickens, in noting that vast improvements had taken place 
 since its first issue, was able to conclude with the triumphant 
 words, " and the Fleet Prison is pulled down " — an event to 
 which his admirable exposure of its abuses doubtless con- 
 tributed. It was abolished in 1842, and the few inmates 
 who then remained were drafted to the Queen's Bench. 
 The site, comprising about an acre, was purchased of the 
 Government by the Corporation of London for ;;£'25,ooo. 
 In 1846 the prison was taken down, and the materials sold. 
 The whole area both of the Fleet and of the nest of wretched 
 houses demolished on the removal of the market to the new 
 Farringdon Market lay for seventeen years a waste — a ruin of 
 bricks, stones, and excavations, tiie resort of betting-men 
 and touts, and the haunt of the London ruffian, who fought, 
 gambled, and indulged in horse play until the commence- 
 ment of the work for bridging the Holborn Valley with the 
 new viaduct. 
 
 From the 19th of November, 1769, there had been a 
 bridge across the Thames at Blackfriars, and the Fleet Bridge 
 
IMPROVEMENTS. II5 
 
 and that at Bridewell, as well as the one at Holborn, had 
 become unnecessary and was removed. The first pile was 
 driven in the middle of the Thames on the 7th of June, 
 1760, on the accession of George III. It was built by the 
 Corporation, and a toll was charged to help to defray the 
 cost of the bridge and the large improvements in the streets 
 and approaches. The toll-houses were burnt by the " No 
 Popery " rioters, and the money-boxes stolen ; but the ob- 
 noxious tax of a halfpenny on week-days and a penny on 
 Sundays continued. The architect whose design was chosen 
 was Robert Mylne, a young Scotch engineer, poor and almost 
 unknown, who had just come from Italy, where he had gained 
 a prize. Smeaton, the great engineer, and Gwynn, the friend 
 of Dr. Johnson, who had written a great work on London 
 improvements, were competitors ; but Mylne gained the 
 commission, and at once got into hot water with the news- 
 papers, where his opponents, and particularly Dr. Johnson, 
 denounced the notion of building a bridge on elliptical in- 
 stead of semi-circular arches. Time served to prove that 
 they were right, for though Mylne built a beautiful bridge — 
 was appointed Surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral (where his 
 tomb is beside that of Wren), and rebuilt Bridge Street, 
 where he had a fine house, afterwards the York Hotel — 
 Old Blackfriars Bridge did not stand, and cost a great deal in 
 repairs before it was determined to take it down. Johnson 
 afterwards became friendly with Mylne, and used to dine at 
 his house. Mylne's success was attributed to his friends 
 being supporters of the Bute Ministry. The great antagonist 
 of that Administration, John Wilkes, had the place of honour 
 opposite the bridge-foot at the end of Fleet Street, where an 
 obelisk was erected to him as the representative of the ward 
 of Farringdon Without, and to celebrate his struggle for 
 political liberty, for which he was then in prison. It fared 
 worse with the memory of Pitt, after whom the bridge was to 
 be called, and to whom the tablet recording its completion in- 
 scribed the whole work as a memorial. The inscription and 
 the whole business was ridiculed, and nothing would cause the 
 name " Pitt" Bridge to stick. It became Blackfriars Bridge, 
 and the references to the great Minister only remained on the 
 tablet, and in Chatham Place, William Street, and Earl Street. 
 
Il6 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 With the completion of the bridge a great improve- 
 ment took place in the neighbourhood. The streets were 
 still dark, lighted only by oil-lamps ; but these were placed 
 at more frequent intervals, and, dim as they were, gave some 
 light, especially in open thoroughfares. The pavements 
 were still defective, and in the byeways and side streets 
 the mud and gutters were a common nuisance, and a 
 serious danger, nor were robberies infrequent. Still, there 
 was a great change since Johnson wrote, — 
 
 *' Prepare for death if here at night you roam, 
 And sign your will before you sup from home ; 
 Some fiery fop, with new commission vain 
 Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man ; 
 Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast, 
 Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest. 
 Yet even these heroes, mischievously gay, 
 Lords of the streets and terrors of the way, 
 Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine. 
 Their prudent insults to the poor confine ; 
 Afar they mark the flambeau's light approach, 
 And shun the shining train and golden coach.'" 
 
 What with these Hectors and the armed footpads who, in 
 gangs, waylaid and robbed people even in the City, London 
 was a dangerous place at night in the middle of the last 
 century, and with the doubtful aid of the link-boys who 
 professed to light belated passengers, for, as Gay tells us, — 
 
 " Trust him not along the lonely wall ; 
 In the midway he'll quench the flaming brand. 
 And share the booty with the pilf'ring band. 
 Still keep the public streets, where oily rays, 
 Shot from the crystal lamp, o'erspread thy ways." 
 
 The oily rays were to be extinguished in good time, how- 
 ever, in favour of the brighter illumination. The Paving 
 and Lighting Act of 1762 did much, and the lamp-Hghter 
 became an important public character ; but on the 28th of 
 January, 1807, Winzer had illuminated Pall Mall with "coal- 
 gas," and, in 1812, he had formed his company (the origin 
 of the Gas Light and Coke Company), and London was 
 resplendent. 
 
WELL-KNOWN CHARACTERS. 1 1 7 
 
 LuDGATE Hill in the New Light. 
 
 Blackfriars Bridge had been finished while England 
 was at war with America and at war with France, in the 
 midst of slack trade, want, and public disturbance ; but yet 
 the great thoroughfares were full of life and bustle, the 
 shops were gay, and the business of the world went on. 
 Ludgate Hill had had its shows and processions, one of 
 which was pathetic, for it was on the occasion of the thanks- 
 giving at St. Paul's for the recovery of the King from the 
 attack of insanity from which he had been suffering. Their 
 Majesties and the Royal Family went in state, with peers, 
 judges, statesmen ; and at Temple Bar the civic dignitaries 
 mounted white palfreys, which were each decorated with three 
 dozen " favours," blue and white. There were flags, guards 
 of honour, and lacqueys sumptuously apparelled, in the 
 midst of whom eight cream-coloured horses drew their 
 Majesties in a coach, the panels and front of which were of 
 glass instead of leather. By the Queen's special desire all 
 the London " charity children " assembled in the galleries, in 
 the place they usually occupied at their anniversary meet- 
 ing, and the assembly was an imposing one, while the 
 aspect of the streets, and the whole line of Ludgate Hill, 
 was that of a city en fete. This was the most remarkable 
 procession which the Hill had seen for some years ; but 
 there followed the funereal and yet superb cortege which 
 accompanied the body of our great naval hero, Nelson, to 
 the tomb, after the solemn procession which conveyed it 
 from Greenwich to Whitehall. The vast and brilliant 
 assembly beneath the dome of the Cathedral was illuminated 
 by a lantern, or octagonal frame holding 200 patent lamps. 
 The rejoicings for the jubilee of the reign of George HL, 
 and the continued festivities on the visit of the Allied Sove- 
 reigns after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 18 14, may 
 be said to close the list of truly magnificent spectacles, 
 though in the latter so many people were killed or injured 
 by the crowds which assembled without restraint or order 
 that it was a mournful anniversary for some families. The 
 sombre but impressive spectacle when the body of " the 
 hero of a hundred fights" — the victor of Waterloo — was 
 
ri8 LUDGATE HILL: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 borne to St. Paul's will not be forgotten by those who stood 
 on Ludgate Hill on the i8th of November, 1852. 
 
 LUDGATE HILL ON FEB. 27TH, 1872. 
 
 Another memorable scene was presented by Ludgate 
 Hill on that happy occasion when, on the 27th of February, 
 
RECOVERY OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. II9 
 
 1872, the recovery of the Prince of Wales from an illness 
 which had caused long anxiety to the nation, was celebrated 
 by a public thanksgiving day by the Queen, the Prince, 
 and the whole of the Royal Family in England, at St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. 
 
 I had the honour of assisting to organise a committee 
 for forming a general plan of decorating Ludgate Hill ; and 
 the arrangement of flags, banners, and Venetian masts was 
 acknowledged to be most effective, not the least striking 
 feature of the show being displayed at the moment when the 
 Royal procession commenced the ascent of the Hill, when 
 the appearance of Her Majesty and the Prince was saluted 
 by the sudden flutter of a multitude of small flags, which, at 
 a given signal, waved simultaneously from all the windows. 
 
 All this time the Old Bell Savage had been sedately ac- 
 commodating itself to the altered times, and from its outer 
 yard — where houses had stood, and where, at No. ii, 
 Grinling Gibbons, the famous wood-carver, had once lived, 
 and, as Walpole tells us, had set up for a sign a pot of 
 flowers so beautifully carved that they shook with the rumble 
 of the carriages — the Bristol coach now ran, as well as other 
 " high-flyers," and the old place was in a periodical bustle 
 of excitement ; while in its sedate coff'ee-room snug parties 
 came to eat " a rump and dozen," or to sip some of the 
 famous bees-wing port. 
 
 It was probably here that the story was told of the lady, 
 the widow of a Mr. Rugg, who bestowed her hand and a 
 large fortune on Wilkes' successor. Alderman Price, and, on 
 being afterwards complimented on her re-marriage, said, 
 "Yes, I have got rid of my old Rugg for a good Price"; 
 and Wilkes' remark to a friend, when he had just entered 
 his inn from the bear-garden, and a man, who spoke insult- 
 ingly to him, had just been served with a "grill," was of the 
 same kind, " Ah, the difl'erence between this and the bear- 
 garden is, that here they bring the steak to the bear, and 
 there they take the bear to the stake." 
 
 There were some well-known characters to be seen in the 
 famous old hostelry about that period during the Wilkes' 
 disturbances, and what time his political successor, Mr. 
 Waithman, the linendraper, had his shop over yonder at 
 
I20 
 
 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 the corner of Bridge Street and Fleet Street. Waithman 
 had the same honour as Wilkes, and his obelisk graced the 
 
 
 
 TIM-BUC-TOO. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 bridge-foot not far from his shop. There are the two stone 
 memorials still, but they have been shifted, Waithman's to 
 Farringdon Street, while the other stands in the mouth of 
 
PORTION OF OLD LONDON WALL NEAR THE "BARBICAN,*' 
 ST. martin's COURT, LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 DISCOVERED IN 
 
WELL-KNOWN CHARACTERS. I 23 
 
 Ludgate Circus, though few people knov; which is which. 
 Alderman Waithman was a clear debater, a busy politician 
 in the Common Council, and Cobbett, who disliked him, 
 calls him the Cock of the Democratic Party. He had a 
 talent for the stage, had acted Macbeth, and was uncle to 
 the famous John Reeve, the low comedian. He was elected 
 for the ward of Farringdon in 1796, and went to Parliament 
 as member for the City in 1818, when he defeated Sir 
 William Curtis, but lost the election again in 1820, when he 
 became sheriff; was Lord Mayor in 1823, and got into 
 Parliament again in 1826. One can scarcely speak of Waith- 
 man's shop without referring to Hardham's, the famous 
 tobacconist, at the sign of the Red Lion, next door but two. 
 Hardham's celebrated " 37 " snuff was the rage in Garrick's 
 time, partly because the great actor mentioned it on the 
 stage, for Hardham had been Garrick's "numberer." Men 
 of fashion as well as actors used to lounge at Hardham's, 
 who made a large fortune. Various speculations have been 
 made on the name "37," given to the snuff, of which every- 
 body took a pinch ; but it has been said that it was simply 
 the number on the drawer (37) in which it was kept. 
 Hardham's was before Waithman's time, but it is pretty well 
 remembered, as well almost as the negro sweeper who so 
 long kept the clean crossing from Waithman's corner. For 
 quaint reference this old " black " may be said to have 
 succeeded the cobbler mentioned by Steele, whose stall was 
 near the Bell Savage Gate, and who perhaps, being a rather 
 cynical humourist, had standing by him the wooden figure 
 of a man of fashion, " a swell," in the position of bowing, 
 and so made as to hold in his hand the wax ends required 
 by the old leather-stitcher in his business. 
 
 There were several noted shoeblacks in the locality, one 
 of them also a negro ; but the sweeper was, so to speak, a 
 formidable rival to their trade, if, indeed, " Tim-buc-too," 
 " Romeo," " Brutus Billy," for by these names he seems to 
 have been known, could be antagonistic to any one. The 
 name of this worthy old African was Charles M'Ghee, and 
 he was the son of an old negro in Jamaica, who died at the 
 age of 108. His short, rather clumsy figure, his grey hair, 
 brushed up into a " brutus," or toupee, and his dress, com- 
 
124 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 posed of such decent but often incongruous cast-off garments 
 as were given him, would be seen daily, no matter in what 
 weather, at his " shop," as he called the crossing, from 
 morning till dark, after which he took a basket, and sold 
 nuts or oranges at the doors of a theatre or concert-room. 
 He lived in a court near Drury Lane, and had the negro 
 qualities of good humour and harmless fun, so that his 
 anecdotes and remarks were often very amusing. It has 
 been suggested that " Tim-buc-too " was the original " study " 
 for the famous Billy Waters in Tojn and Jerry ^ and of the 
 " galanty " show drama. Miss Waithman was very kind to 
 him, and often sent him out soup, bread, and other savoury 
 meals, and at his death it was reported, but without autho- 
 rity, that he had left her a large sum of money (^7 poo). 
 That he made enough money to retire on in extreme old 
 age there is Httle doubt, for retire he did, but not till he 
 was very old, for his portrait at 73 was hung in the parlour 
 of a tavern in Bride Lane. It is said, however, that he sold 
 his crossing for a good round sum ; though that is scarcely 
 likely, for his successor was a soldier who got drunk, and, 
 though he made sometimes as much as Zs. or loi". a day, 
 spent it in the evening. M'Ghee, or Brutus Billy, used to 
 attend Rowland Hill's chapel, and lived to the age of 87, 
 when he died in Chapel Court. 
 
 George Cruikskank must have gazed with delight at the 
 queer figure of the negro sweeper, for at that time we find 
 the successor of Hogarth and Rowlandson visiting the famous 
 and once notorious satiriser and parodist, William Hone, at 
 his shop at the corner of Ship Court, Old Bailey, or at the 
 one he subsequently took on Ludgate Hill. 
 
 It would be impossible to record all that might be 
 chronicled of the people who have been intimately associated 
 with Ludgate Hill, even after the time that Dr. Johnson 
 held his club in Ivy Lane, and Goldsmith wrote " Goody 
 Twoshoes " for Mr. Newbery. It is difficult now to point 
 out the exact spot occupied by shops and houses that were 
 once historical, for the " march of improvement " does 
 more than " Time's effacing finger," to destroy the old 
 landmarks. There are ^<?facements, too, as well as efface- 
 ments, and the footprints come to be filled in with the 
 
ROMAN REMAINS DISCOVERED ON LUDGATE HILL. 
 
HISTORIC HAUNTS. I 27 
 
 encroaching sand. If one could see what many of the 
 shops were hke, even at the end of the last century and 
 at the beginning of this, we must abandon the idea of 
 great panes of plate-glass, capacious vestibules, and ample 
 show-rooms. That has not, even up to the present moment, 
 been a characteristic of the Hill — the great London 
 thoroughfare from West to East. But the shop-fronts were 
 often picturesque with quaint carving, and there was a style 
 about them not to be despised. On the north side, at 
 No. 32, was Rundell & Bridge's, the royal goldsmiths and 
 jewellers, with the sign of two golden salmon. Here was 
 fitted up the crown for the coronation of George IV.* 
 Many of us can remember Everington's shop, for the sale 
 of sumptuous Oriental shawls, opposite ; and there were 
 others that are not yet forgotten, even though their suc- 
 cessors have ''room and verge enough" to represent the 
 increased commercial activity of to-day. Ludgate Hill was 
 not very many years ago considered to possess the finest 
 shops in London, and it was here that the use of looking- 
 glass, to reflect light and give a sense of space, was probably 
 first used. It was on Ludgate Hill that the upper floor of 
 a building was first taken into the shop so as to give height 
 and room for displaying the goods, and the premises where 
 this was done are now No. 69, immediately opposite where 
 we are standing, at the corner of the Old Bell Savage. t 
 
 One other almost historic haunt must be mentioned, the 
 " London Coffee House," which stood near Lud Gate and 
 St. Martin's Church, and dates as a place of public entertain- 
 ment from the days of George I., when it was noted for 
 coffee, Dorchester beer, Welsh ale, and punch made in 
 three different ways, and at a minute's notice, either with 
 arrack, Jamaica rum, or French brandy. Later on, Rowley's 
 cephalic snuff was sold here, and the London Coffee House 
 was the resort of publishers, who held there the dinner at 
 w^hich they sold their copyrights. It stood in the liberties 
 fo the Fleet, and had a passage to the Court-house of the 
 Old Bailey, so that it became famous as the place where 
 
 * Mrs. Rundell wrote the once famous book on cookery, 
 t Once known as Harvey's, the linendraper's, but now occupied by 
 Messrs. Treloar & Sons' carpet warehouse. 
 
128 LUDGATE hill: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 juries were taken during a trial, and there kept in snug 
 quarters under the ward of an officer of the Court. This 
 house was, in its later days, kept by the father of the famous 
 John Leech, the artist of Punchy who was born there, and 
 perhaps then acquired his early acquaintance with Londoners 
 and their characteristics. It was in making some alterations 
 at the back of the London Coffee House that several 
 interesting relics of Roman London were discovered. In 
 1792, during some alterations in St. Martin's Court, the 
 workmen came upon the remains of a barbican tower of 
 the old City wall; and in the year 1806, at the^back of the 
 Coffee House, a singular tower and staircase was found, 
 and three feet below the pavement the trunk of a statue of 
 Hercules, half life-size, and a hexagonal altar or pedestal 
 nearly 4 feet high and 2\ feet wide, bearing an inscription 
 which w^as deciphered to mean : ^^ Diis Manibus : ClaiidicE 
 Martina: Annoriun XI. Anencliitiis Provincialis Conjugi 
 Pientissimce hoc Sepulchrum {or hanc Statuam) erexif'' — a 
 monument, in fact, to Claudina Martina, by her husband, 
 a Roman soldier. A portion of a female head, life-size, 
 was also discovered. On page 125 is an engraving re- 
 presenting these relics, and on the same page are engraved 
 a Roman tile found at the foundation of the Post Office, 
 St. Martin's-le-Grand in 1818 (Fig. 4); a small brass figure 
 of Diana, 2\ inches high, discovered between the Deanery 
 of St. Paul's (in Doctors' Commons) and Blackfriars (Fig. 5); 
 and a beautiful little silver figure of Harpocrates, 3I inches 
 high, taken from some depth when digging for the founda- 
 tion of new London Bridge (Fig. 6). The ring attached to 
 the figure is of gold, and attached to a chain. At its feet 
 are the figures of a dog, a tortoise, and a bird. It came 
 into the possession of Messrs. Rundell & Bridge when it 
 was found, in 1825, and they sent it from their shop in 
 Ludgate Hill to the British Museum. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 And so we come down to the time when the London 
 Coffee House was full of customers, and the Old Bell Savage 
 — long ago altered to La Belle Sauvage — was still a flourish- 
 ing inn, kept by Mr. Nelson, and known as a famous 
 
COACH LEAVING BELL SAVAGE YARD. 
 
THE PRESENT LUDGATE HILL. 131 
 
 coaching-house — the days, in fact, when the elder Mr. 
 Weller drove from the Marquis of Granby at Dorking, 
 and his son Sam was employed at that equally famous 
 old inn in the Borough. 
 
 Even then the mail coaches assembled before the new 
 Post Office nightly to carry the letters to the country, and it 
 was not till the mail coach and the passenger coach had 
 disappeared before the great railway system that the Belle 
 Sauvage, along with many another good old inn, disappeared 
 also. But the change is significant — as significant as the 
 transformation of the great area, only part of which was occu- 
 pied by the ancient hostelry, into the site of the vast build- 
 ing whence are issued books, magazines, and periodicals that 
 carry information and instruction to every part of the globe. 
 
 When the London, Chatham and Dover Railway bought 
 of the Corporation the ground made vacant by the destruc- 
 tion of the Fleet Prison, and it was known that the great 
 flat iron bridge, with its snorting and shrieking traffic, was 
 to shut out St. Paul's from the valley where the Fleet Ditch 
 had been made into a part of the great drainage system, 
 there were those who stood against so high-handed a claim ; 
 but the deed was done — 
 
 " A deed to shudder at, not to see ; " 
 
 and to-day the engine pants and quivers on its way from the 
 Holborn Viaduct to Ludgate Station, which occupies the 
 space that once led steeply to the Blackfriars precinct. 
 Beyond it are the stores of the great firm of refreshment 
 purveyors who help to provide for that vast travelling public 
 which is a mighty floating population ; and still further is 
 the great new bridge, built of vast and solid proportions from 
 the designs of Mr. Cubitt, and completed in November 1869, 
 when it was opened by our beloved sovereign — in one of 
 those her rare visits to Ludgate Hill. 
 
 There are no shows and pageants now to adorn the 
 bridge-foot or to climb the hill in honour of Royal visits ; 
 the people make the show, and the streets are filled with life. 
 For the population has so increased that each decennial 
 census is startling. It was computed more than twenty 
 years ago that there passed through Ludgate Hill in twelve 
 
132 
 
 LUDGATE HILL : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 hours nearly 9,000 vehicles, above 13,000 horses, and about 
 106,000 persons ; and it is certain that the number is vastly 
 greater now, as may be judged by the following summary 
 from a work called " Ten Years' Growth of the City of 
 London," which gives the details of a day census taken on 
 May 4th, 1 89 1, by order of the Court of Common Council : — 
 
 Passengers on Foot and in Vehicles entering the City of 
 
 London on May 4TH, 1891. 
 
 In 16 Hours (Day), 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. 
 In 8 Hours (Night), 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. 
 
 1,100,636 
 
 85,458 
 
 Total in 24 Hours (Day and Night), 5 a.m. 
 
 to 5 a.m. ... ... ... ... ... 1,186,094 
 
 Vehicles entering the City of London on May 4TH, 1891. 
 
 In 16 Hours (Day), 5 a.m. to 9 p.m 85,826 
 
 In 8 Hours (Night), 9 p.m. to 5 a.m 6,546 
 
 Total in 24 Hours (Day and Night), 5 a.m. 
 
 to 5 a.m. ... ... ... ... ... 92,372 
 
 Number and Description of Vehicles entering the City 
 
 of London on May 4TH, 1891. 
 
 Cabs ... ... ... ... 18,020 
 
 Omnibuses ... ... ... ... ... 10,389 
 
 Other Four-wheeled Vehicles ... ... 42,366 
 
 Other two- wheeled Vehicles ... ... 21,597 
 
 Total No. of Vehicles 
 
 92,372 
 
 Comparative Statement, 1881-1891. 
 
 Passengers. 
 
 1881 
 1891 
 
 Day Traffic, 
 16 Hours. 
 
 739,640 
 1,100,636 
 
 Night Traffic, 
 8 Hours. 
 
 57-923 
 85458 
 
 24 Hours. 
 
 797,563 
 1,186,094 
 
THE PRESENT LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 ^33 
 
 Cabs, Two 
 and Four- 
 wheeled. 
 
 Vehicles. 
 
 Omnibuses. 
 
 Other Four- 
 wheeled 
 Vehicles. 
 
 Other Two- 
 wheeled 
 Vehicles. 
 
 Total 
 Vehicles. 
 
 1881. 
 
 1 6 Hours 
 8 Hours 
 
 24 Hours 
 
 14,042 
 1,924 
 
 5,326 
 850 
 
 28,244 
 1,152 
 
 19,297 
 1,058 
 
 66,909 
 4,984 
 
 15,966 
 
 6,176 
 
 29,396 
 
 20,355 
 
 71,893 
 
 1891. 
 
 16 Hours ... 
 8 Hours ... 
 
 15,845 
 2,175 
 
 8,955 
 1,434 
 
 40.413 
 1,953 
 
 20,613 
 984 
 
 85,826 
 6,546 
 
 24 Hours ... 
 
 18,020 
 
 10,389 
 
 42,366 
 
 21,597 
 
 92,372 
 
 And yet London may, in a measure, be called the City 
 of the Woods still, for there are yet bright patches of 
 greenery about it, and trees are to be seen within the borders 
 of the Ludgate district. There has lately been an anxious 
 correspondence lest the fine plane-tree in Stationers' Hall 
 Court should be cut down, and it is a pleasure to learn that 
 no ruthless axe will lay it low to make room for " improve- 
 ments." Nearly fifty years ago the esteemed treasurer of 
 the Stationers' Company had it planted, and the " tree it 
 still remains," flourishing yet ; so flourishing that four may- 
 trees planted in the corners of the Court had to be removed 
 because the original tenant overshadowed them— so flourish- 
 ing that two years ago a cuckoo was heard and seen in 
 amidst its leafy covert — the same cuckoo, perhaps, which has 
 this year been heard in that other noble tree at the corner 
 of Wood Street, Cheapside. The garden of St. Paul's 
 Churchyard is already growing apace fresh and green,^ and 
 has become the midday and evening resort for the denizens 
 of the great City. Children skip and play on the very spot 
 where Paul's Cross once stood, with its dark memorials, and 
 from a granite fountain the thirsty wayfarer may take a 
 
134 LUDGATE HILL I PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 draught of water as sweet as ever ran from the conduit in 
 Chepe. In Warwick Lane a new house of red brick and 
 " modern mediaeval " ornamentation is being built for the 
 Canons of St. Paul's, and it may be hoped that there will be 
 room for an academic grove there. On the other side, within 
 Dean's Court, the deanery has its trees, trailing long green 
 branches, and throwing cool shadows, and there is to be 
 heard the cawing of rooks too — a sound, as old Pepys would 
 say, "mighty pleasant"; while even in Addle Hill, and 
 some of the adjacent lanes, we catch glimpses, not only of 
 window-gardening and of climbing plants on string and 
 trellis, but of veritable, goodly, tall trees, sometimes in strange 
 and unexpected places. Nor can we do better than place 
 this on record as one of the links that should serve to 
 connect the Past and the Present of Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Modern I^udgate Hill Widened and Improved. 
 
 On September 27th, 1864, Lieut.-Colonel Haywood, the 
 Engineer to the Commissioners of Sewers, brought up a 
 report which stated that arrangements had been made with 
 the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company, by 
 which the Commissioners could, under certain conditions, 
 purchase ground belonging to the Company, in order 
 to increase the width of Ludgate Hill to sixty feet west 
 of the point where the railway bridge was to cross the 
 thoroughfare. Colonel Haywood submitted that this was a 
 favourable opportunity for effecting a larger and more 
 important improvement at that spot, so that the traffic 
 which had become enormous might be divided, and danger 
 dimished. By his plan he proposed to form a circus, 160 
 feet in diameter, and to erect a refuge or resting place in the 
 centre, round which the traffic in each direction would pass. 
 He said it was desirable that immediate action should be 
 taken in the matter. On October i8th, 1864, the plan had 
 been examined, the cost estimated, and the railway company 
 had, through their solicitor, acceded to the terms for form- 
 ing the eastern portion of the Circus at the foot of Ludgate 
 Hill. The engineer subsequently stated that, according to 
 the plan, an additional 17 feet of carriage way would be 
 obtained, which would greatly facilitate traffic. The Chairman 
 
THE PLANE-TREE IN STATIONERS HALL COURT. 
 
MODERN LUDGATE HILL WIDENED AND IMPROVED. 1 37 
 
 of the Commission proposed that the recommendation of 
 the committee should be carried out, and stated that the 
 estimated cost would be from ^3,000 to ;;f4,ooo. By 
 the original plan for the railway bridge a footway was to be 
 constructed beside the bridge, by which passengers might 
 cross the hill without going on the roadway. The bridge was 
 to be reached by an enclosed staircase on each side, in much 
 the same manner as those which lead up to the Holborn 
 Viaduct from Farringdon Street (the houses on each side of 
 the road on Ludgate Hill have been set back for the 
 purpose). Meanwhile the Committee of the Metropohtan 
 Board of Works had decided to recommend to the Board to 
 contribute half the money then required for further improve- 
 ments on Ludgate Hill, the amount of such contribution 
 being estimated at ^11,756. This decision w^as imparted 
 to the Court by Mr. Deputy Lowman Taylor, who at a 
 subsequent meeting of the Commissioners, on February 25th, 
 announced that the Board of Works had agreed to come to 
 their assistance. This announcement was followed by what 
 w^as practically the first step towards the promised improve- 
 ments. Mr. (now Sir) J. Whittaker Ellis moving that notice 
 should be immediately given under the powers of the Act of 
 Parliament to take the whole of the premises at 57 and 59, 
 Ludgate Hill, and property connected therewith ; a motion 
 which was seconded and carried. A very few plain figures 
 will show that during the past 28 years, that is to say, since 
 1863, the rateable value of property on Ludgate Hill has 
 more than doubled. In the parish of St. Gregory-by-St. 
 Paul, which is on the north and south sides of Ludgate 
 Hill from St. Paul's Churchyard to the centre of Ave Maria 
 Lane and Creed Lane respectively, the gross value of the 
 property in 1863 was ;2^3,4oo ; it is now ;j^7,95o. In St. 
 Martin's, Ludgate, extending on the north side of the hill 
 from the centre of Ave Maria Lane to the corner of Boy 
 Court, and on the south side from the centre of Creed Lane 
 to the east corner of Dolphin Court, the gross value in 1863 
 was ;£i 1,041 ; it is now ^23,020. In St. Bride's parish the 
 rateable value on Ludgate Hill in 1863 was ;£5,62 7 ; 
 it is now ;£"! 1,840. Thus the total amount in 1863 was 
 ;^2o,o68, and it now is ;^42,8io ; the increase has therefore 
 
I3B LUDGATE hill: PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 been ;£'2 2,742. These figures to some extent indicate the 
 cost of delay. But there was more than this. The policy 
 which was adopted had the effect of allowing new interests 
 to be created, and additional claims to be accumulated. 
 The case of Goodman v. the Commissioners of Sewers, 
 tried at Guildhall before the Recorder on April 29th, 1890, 
 illustrated the manner in which claims for compensation 
 were developed by the method of proceeding which had 
 been adopted in relation to improvements on Ludgate Hill. 
 The complainant in that case commenced, in 1885, to 
 occupy premises on the south side of the hill, which should 
 long before have been acquired for the extensions which 
 were known to have been imminent. In February 1888 
 the Commissioners of Sewers gave notice that the premises 
 would be wanted. In May 1889 Mr. Goodman obtained 
 compensation for the compulsory removal. A month 
 after this he secured other premises on the hill where 
 there was sixteen years to run of a lease. None of the 
 interests had been acquired by the Commissioners of 
 Sewers, and no such notices had been given as might 
 have barred the prosecution of a new claim by an occupier 
 securing premises which were known to be on the line 
 of demolition. The plaintiff had received substantial com- 
 pensation in May, and removed to other premises in 
 June. On July 3rd he again received notice to treat, and, 
 not unnaturally, pleaded that he had again a substantial 
 interest, and had incurred considerable expenses. The case 
 was taken into Court, and Mr. Goodman was awarded 
 ;2f 1,570. There is no need to expatiate on this case. It 
 aptly illustrates the manner in which the cost of necessary 
 improvements may be, and has been, enormously increased, 
 and vindicates the action of those who, like myself, have 
 made themselves troublesome by persistently pointing to the 
 consequences of delay. Another announcement was made 
 by Mr. Deputy Lowman Taylor, that the Committee of the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works would recommend the ])oard 
 to support the Commission in carrying out improvements, 
 especially with regard , to acquiring the house, 55, Lud- 
 gate Hill, to which they recommended a contribution of 
 one-half the cost. Mr. Deputy Taylor represented that the 
 
MODERN LUDGATE MILL WIDENED AND IMI'KOVED. 139 
 
 Board was " well alive to the fact that this was but a portion 
 of the larger improvement then being contemplated," and he 
 believed that the Board would readily assist in making the 
 whole of the improvements on the south side. 
 
 The London County Council has repudiated the arrange- 
 ments made by its predecessor, the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works, to pay a proportion of the cost of this great improve- 
 ment. When stating this it is as well to call attention to the 
 fact, that during the past thirty-eight years the Commission 
 of Sewers has expended out of the consolidated rate of the 
 City a gross sum of ;^3, 900,000 for improvements. Towards 
 this the Metropolitan Board of Works has contributed 
 something like ^591,000, which amount, together with 
 that received by the Commission for the sale of surplus 
 lands, etc., amounting to pfi, 12 1,000, leaves a sum 
 approaching ;^2, 188,000 spent by the Commission for 
 improvements in the City since the year 1850. In addition 
 to this large expenditure, it must be borne in mind that the 
 City of London pays annually about one-eighth of the entire 
 cost of all the improvements in the Metropolis effected by the 
 London County Council. It must also be borne in mind 
 that the great bulk of this expenditure has not been made 
 for mere local improvements, for they embrace every main 
 street in the City, through which passes, in the aggregate, 
 the largest traffic in the world. The City improvements 
 are, in fact, for the most part made for the benefit and 
 convenience of the entire Metropolis, and not alone for the 
 City of London. There is not a part of the Metropolis 
 which does not add its quota of traffic to the 1,864,094 of 
 people and 92,000 vehicles which enter and leave the City of 
 London daily. 
 
 At a meeting held on September loth, 1878, Mr. (now 
 Deputy) Bedford effectively awakened the Commission to 
 further action by calling attention to the fact that no fewer 
 than six properties on the south side were being rebuilt, 
 and if this opportunity were lost none such might occur 
 again. He moved a resolution in accordance with his 
 forcible speech, and was seconded by Mr. Hicks, who 
 declared that if they lost this opportunity they would regret 
 it but once — and that would be for ever. Mr. Deputy 
 
T40 LUDGATE HILL : PA^T AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lowman Taylor again said, that if the works were undertaken 
 the MetropoHtan Board of Works would give them aid. 
 The matter was referred to a committee, and in a few days 
 it was agreed to take the six properties referred to. In 1882, 
 when the late Mr. John Cox was chairman of the Finance 
 Committee, the subject was again brought forward, and 
 Mr. Hicks and Mr. Shaw both advocated immediate action, 
 the last named gentleman presenting a petition from the 
 inhabitants praying for the improvement to be completed. 
 
 On October 9th, 1883, Mr. Deputy Cox moved that 
 notice be served to take the several interests in the premises 
 27, 29, and 3T, and the motion, seconded, by Mr. Morton, 
 and supported by Mr. Felton, who declared " that the state 
 of Ludgate Hill was an eyesore to every one," was carried. 
 In January 1885 Mr. Judd called the attention of the 
 Commission of Sewers to the continued delay in the im- 
 provement. He truly said that people occupying premises 
 there had suffered for years, and that many of them had 
 become bankrupt through the still existing disorder. On 
 February 23rd of this year, 1885, 1 presented a petition from 
 the inhabitants asking that immediate steps be taken to pull 
 down the remaining houses. The memorial bore the 
 signature of one hundred and ten firms. I moved to comply 
 with the prayer of the petition, and was supported by Mr. 
 (now Alderman) Green and Mr. Shaw ; but this was not 
 carried, and the question was deferred until November 1887, 
 when I again moved that the usual notice should be served 
 to acquire the leasehold of 37, 39, 41, 45, and 47 ; this 
 motion was seconded by Mr. C. Mathew, and supported by 
 Mr. Deputy Cox, Mr. Judd, Mr. Alderman Lawrence, and 
 Mr. Alderman Gray, and carried. On June i8th, 1889, I 
 moved " that it be referred to the Finance Committee to 
 consider the question of taking immediate steps for com- 
 pleting the improvement of Ludgate Hill"; this was seconded 
 by Mr. MacGeagh, Mr. Deputy Walter, and others. 
 
 In this year, 1889, a proposal was made to open up 
 St. Martin's Court to vehicular traffic, by increasing its width 
 to twenty-five feet. If this had been agreed to the most 
 valuable site on Ludgate Hill, now occupied by the new 
 premises of the City Bank, would have been given up. 
 
MODERN LUDGATE HILL WIDENED AND IMPROVED. I4I 
 
 The rental of the ground is ;^2,2oo. The improvement, if 
 any, was not necessary, as the roadway, when made, would 
 have led only to a narrow lane. On February loth, 1891, 
 I was fortunate enough to induce the Commissioners of 
 Sewers to pass a resolution, which practically completed the 
 widening of Ludgate Hill. Of course the matter was 
 referred to on many other occasions than those I have 
 mentioned, but it would be nothing but " damnable 
 iteration " to mention every time that attention was called 
 to Ludgate Hill. The total length of the thoroughfare is 
 850 feet, the width, which was formerly 47 feet, is now 
 60 feet, and the total net cost to the City has been about 
 
 I desire to place on record that, though I have received 
 most gratifying expressions of the appreciation of my 
 neighbours for the efforts I have been able to make in 
 this matter, I do not claim any credit for the result. Others, 
 as I have endeavoured to show, have been quite as anxious 
 as myself to complete this movement. Mr. Salmon, in his 
 admirable book,!" Ten Years' Growth of the City of London," 
 tells us that "either further improvements in the streets 
 must be made, or the City will become inadequate to the 
 requirements of its business." I quite agree with this 
 remark, and think a very useful further improvement might 
 be made by throwing open the north side of St. Paul's 
 Churchyard to vehicular traffic ; this, I believe, may be done 
 at a trifling cost by removing the railings and making some 
 slight alterations. In the year 1868 the Metropolitan Board 
 of Works considered that this would be desirable, and 
 negotiations with this object were accordingly entered into by 
 the Commission of Sewers with the Dean and Chapter of 
 St. Paul's. The Cathedral authorities, however, objected to 
 the proposal, and therefore no action was taken in the 
 matter. Meantime, it is consolatory to think that it did not 
 take much more than a quarter of a century to accomplish 
 by degrees the widening of Ludgate Hill. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Addle Hill, 134. 
 
 Addle Lane, 93, 
 
 Admiralty Court, The, 63. 
 
 AUeyn, the actor, 57, 
 
 Alms for prisoners, 45, 113. 
 
 Amen Corner, 43, 69, 71, 93. 
 
 Ancient taverns in St. Paul's Church- 
 yard, 93, 94. 
 
 Apothecaries' Hall, 81. 
 
 Ave Mary Lane, 30, 37, 43, 69, 93. 
 
 Ballium, or Bailey, The, 47. 
 
 Bankes, and his horse, 12, 67, 68. 
 
 Barclay, the Quaker, and George HI., 
 99. 
 
 " Barnaby Rudge," Graphic de- 
 scription of City life in, m. 
 
 Bartholomew Fair, 29, 72. 
 
 Baynard's Castle, 12, 21 ; incidents in 
 its history, 24 — 29. 
 
 "Bell Savage" Inn, 10, 46, 52, 55, 
 67, 68, 119 ; origin of the name, 46 ; 
 view of, 91 ; coach leaving the, 129; 
 the Belle Sauvage Works, 127. 
 
 Bell Tavern, Old Bailey, 66. 
 
 Ben Jonson, 12, 29, 58, 72, 82. 
 
 Black Friars, The, 20, 49. 
 
 Blackfriars Bridge, 115 ; the new 
 bridge, 131. 
 
 Blackfriars Theatre, 29, 30, 57. 
 
 Booksellers, Famous, 83, 87, 90, 93, 
 
 Booksellers' shops in the olden time, 
 90. 
 
 Bowyer Row, 30, 43, 44. 
 
 Breakneck Steps, 108. 
 
 Bridewell, 11, 20, 21 — 23, 56,73,95, no. 
 
 Bullies and roysterers in the streets, 
 83, 116. 
 
 Burbage, the actor, 12, 57, 72. 
 
 Burgavenny House, 70. 
 
 Canon Alley, 93. 
 
 Cemetery, Discovery of the site of a, 
 18. 
 
 Central Criminal Court, 108. 
 
 Chapter Coffee House, The, 93. 
 
 City Watch, The, 48. 
 
 Coaches, Use of, 57, 76. 
 
 Cocker, the arithmetician, 34. 
 
 Cold Harbour House, 65. 
 
 Collegeof Arms {see Heralds'Collcge). 
 
 College of Physicians, 18, 71, 81. 
 
 College of Surgeons, 82. 
 
 Creed Lane, 37, 43, 93. 
 
 Cuckoo, The, on Ludgate Hill, 133. 
 
 Dance of Death, 46. 
 
 Dangers of the streets, 83, 84, 116. 
 
 Darkness of the old streets, 48. 
 
 Dean's Court, 134. 
 
 De Keyser's Hotel, 21. 
 
 Derby House, 66. 
 
 Diana Chamber, The, 33. 
 
 Diana, Supposed Temple of, on the 
 
 site of St. Paul's, 15, 33. 
 Doctors' Commons, 31, 62, 63, 64. 
 Do-Little Lane, 93. 
 Dolly's Tavern, 94. 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 12, 53, 54. 
 Dugdale, Sir W., 65. 
 Durham House, 65. 
 Eldernesse Lane, 44. 
 Erkenwald, the Saxon saint, 18, 34, 42. 
 Everington, Messrs., 127, 
 Executions at Newgate, Number of, 
 
 107, 108. 
 Farringdon Market, 114. 
 Fire, the Great, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 76, 
 
 80, &4, 87. 
 Fitzwalter, Robert, 24, 25, 
 Fleet Bridge, 11, 20, 73, 95. 
 Fleet Ditch, 20, 73, 82, 105; view of 
 
 the, 106. 
 Fleet Lane, 20. 
 Fleet Market, 105, 114; illustration of, 
 
 103. 
 Fleet parsons and marriages, 100 — 105 ; 
 
 illustration of, 103. 
 Fleet Prison, n, 56, 76, 100, no; some 
 
 account of, no — 114; abolition and 
 
 demolition of, 114. 
 Fleet Street, 16, 72, 120. 
 Fleet, The River, n, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21 ; 
 
 its stagnant condition, 21. 
 Foot-passengers in the streets. Dan- 
 gers of, 82. 
 Forster, Robert, and the widow, 45. 
 Funeral sermon, a curious, 23, 
 George HI.'s visit to St. Paul's, 115. 
 Gibbons, Grinling, the wood-carver, 
 
 119. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 143 
 
 Giltspur Street Compter, 29. ■ 
 
 Godliman Street, 34. 
 
 Goldsnaith, Oliver, 82, 108, 124, 
 
 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, 108. 
 
 Gunpowder Plot conspirators, The, 
 72. 
 
 Guy Fawkes Processions on Ludgate 
 Hill, 87. 
 
 Hardham's snuff-shop, 123. 
 
 Harvey, the physician, 71, 
 
 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 62, 63, 
 
 Hebrew inscription found on Ludgate 
 Hill, 26. 
 
 Heralds' College, or College of Arms, 
 65, 66. 
 
 Hoadley, Bishop, 70. 
 
 Hogarth, 94, 95. 
 
 Holborn Bridge, 21, 105. 
 
 Holborn Viaduct, 114. 
 
 Hone, the bookseller, 124. 
 
 Horn Lanterns, Illuminations by, 48. 
 
 Inigo Jones, 64, 73, 74. 
 
 Inns of London, formerly the mansions 
 of the nobility, 56. 
 
 Ivy Lane, 124. 
 
 James I., 70 — 72. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 93, 115, 124. 
 
 King John, 24. 
 
 King Lud, 13, 15, no ; effigy of, 14. 
 
 Kings-at-Arms, Eminent, 66. 
 
 King's Printing House, The, 32. 
 
 Knightrider Street, 44, 62, 71. 
 
 La Belle Sauvage Inn, 128. 
 
 Lollards' Tower, 43. 
 
 London Coffee House, The, 127, 128. 
 
 London, Derivation of, 15, 17. 
 
 London House Yard, 38. 
 
 Longmans', Messrs., 90. 
 
 Looking-glass, Use of, on Ludgate 
 Hill, 127. 
 
 Lord Mayor's Show, 95 — 100 ; Ho- 
 garth's sketch of a, 97. 
 
 Lud Gate, 11, 13, 38, 75, 80, 127 ; view 
 of, 16 ; its appearance during the 
 great fire, 80; demolition of, no. 
 
 Ludgate Hill: a retrospective sketch, 
 9 — II ; Roman and other relics found 
 on, 17, 18 ; the feudal period, 19, 21, 
 22; Queen Elizabeth on, 49 — 54; 
 after the fire, 76 ; views of, 85, 121 ; 
 royal and other processions on, 72, 
 87, 117; its former shops and shop- 
 fronts, 123, 124; old view of, 118; 
 present appearance oi, Frontispiece ; 
 the railway bridge, 131 ; daily traffic 
 over, 131. 
 Ludgate Piison, 43, no. 
 Madam Creswell and her funeral 
 
 sermon, 23. 
 Mail-coaches on Ludgate Hill, 131. 
 Marriages at the Fleet Prison, 100 — 105. 
 Matrimonial and Wills Courts, S^. 
 M'Ghee, the negro shoeblack, 123, 124. 
 
 Mohocks, and other street ruffians, 
 84, 116. 
 
 Mrs. Salmon's waxwork, 73. 
 
 Mylne, the architect, 89, 115. 
 
 Narrow streets, Difficulty in travers- 
 ing the, 82 ; darkness of the, 84. 
 
 Newbery, the bookseller, 93, 124. 
 
 Newgate Calendar, The, 107. 
 
 Newgate Market, 44, 71, 
 
 Newgate Prison, 44, 56, 76, 107 ; exe- 
 cutions at, 107, 108, 109. 
 
 Nonconformist meeting-houses. At- 
 tack on, 89. 
 
 "No Popery" riots, in, 115. 
 
 Nos. 68 and 69, Ludgate Hill, 12, 127. 
 
 Oil Lamps, First use of, 116. 
 
 Old Bailey, The, 71, 82, 108, 109. 
 
 Old Bourne, The, or Holborn, 16, 20. 
 
 Old Change, 37, 93. . 
 
 Old Houses on Ludgate Hill, 48, 49. 
 
 Old London Wall, Ludgate Hill, View 
 of, 121. 
 
 Old Moore's Almanack, 69. 
 
 Old St. Paul's, 10, 33 — 43 ; site of the 
 old building, 34 ; view of, 35 ; its 
 dimensions, 37; its historical asso- 
 ciations, 37 — 43 ; a public promenade 
 and a common thoroughfare for 
 merchandise, 59, 61 ; its renovation 
 by Inigo Jones, 73. 
 
 Pardon Church, 46. 
 
 Paternoster Row, 37, 43, 68, 90; silk- 
 mercers and lacemen, its former 
 residents, 84. 
 
 Paul's Bakehouse, 34. 
 
 Paul's Brewhouse, 34. 
 
 Paul's Chain, 33, 34. 
 
 Paul's Cross, 27, 37. 
 
 Paul's Gate, 30. 
 
 Paul's Head Tavern, 34. 
 
 ••'Paul's Walkers," 61! 
 
 Paul's Wharf, 21, 29, 33. 
 
 Peace of Ryswick, 87, 88. 
 
 Pembroke Inn, 43, 70. 
 
 " Pickwick Papers," 112, 114. 
 
 "Pitt Bridge," 115. 
 
 Pitt,Mr.,Enthusiastic reception of, 100. 
 
 Plague, The, in the City, 60, 72, 75. 
 
 Plane-tree, The, in Stationers' Hall 
 Court, Illustration of, 135. 
 
 PIa3'ers at the " Bell Savage," 55, 56. 
 
 Playhouse Yard, 12. 
 
 Prerogative Will Office, 63. 
 
 Printing House Square, 31. 
 
 Processions and pageants on Ludgate 
 Hill, 28, 49 — 54,87, 89, 96 — 100, 117. 
 
 Public games in the open streets, 83. 
 
 Puddle Dock, 21, 29, 30. 
 
 Puddle Dock Hill, 30. 
 
 Puddle Wharf, 30. 
 
 Purchas, Samuel, 80. 
 
 Queen Anne, Ludgate Hill in the time 
 of^ 87 ; her statue, 90. 
 
144 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Queen Catherine, Trial of, 22. 
 Queen Elizabeth on Ludgate Hill, 
 
 49—54. 
 Queenhithe, 30, 31. 
 Queen's Head Tavern, Paternoster 
 
 Row, 63. 
 Remarkable Wills in Doctors' Com- 
 mons, 63. 
 Restoration, Gay doings in honour of 
 
 the, 74. 
 Ridley, Bishop, 22. 
 River of Wells, The, 16, 20, 
 Roman relics and remains, 17, 18, 20, 
 
 128; illustration of, 125. 
 Roman Wall, The old, 17, 18, 128, 
 Royal Wardrobe, The, 21, 30, 31, 32 ; 
 
 some account of, 31. 
 Rundell & Bridge, Messrs., 127, 128. 
 Sacheverel, Dr., Riots on account of, 
 
 88, 89. 
 St. Andrew in the Wardrobe, 30, 31. 
 St. Andrew's Hill, 21, 30. 
 St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 44, 56. 
 St. Bennet's Hill, 62, 65. 
 St. Bridget's Well, 11, 21. 
 St. Cecilia's Feast, 70. 
 St. Faith's Church, 38, 87. 
 St. Gregory's Church, St. Paul's, 38, 
 
 45- 
 St. Martin's, Ludgate, 71, 80. 
 St. Martin's Court, Remains of the 
 
 old City wall in, 128 ; illustration 
 
 of, 121. 
 St. Michael le Querne, Paternoster 
 
 Row, 30. 
 St. Michael's Church, Queenhithe, 
 
 30- 
 St. Paul's Cathedral {sec also Old St. 
 
 Paul's) : completion of Wren's 
 
 edifice, 89 ; cost of, 90 ; George 
 
 in.'s visit to, 117. 
 St. Paul's Churchyard : amusements 
 
 formerl}' practised in, 75 ; its 
 
 shape, 93 ; trees in, 133. 
 St. Paul's Coffee-house, 34. 
 St. Paul's School, 56, 67. 
 St. Petei-'s College, 69. 
 Saxon remains, 18. 
 Seacole Lane, 108. 
 Sedan Chairs, Use of, 59, 82. 
 Sermon Lane, 93. 
 Shakespeare, 12, 26, 27, 29, 54, 55, 56, 
 
 57, 67, 72; his will, 29, 63. 
 Ship Court, Old Bailey, 124. 
 Shops in St. Paul's Churchyard, 74. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 53, 62. 
 Signboards, The old, 83, 84, 123. 
 Stalls or booths on Ludgate Hill, 60, 
 
 74. 
 Star Chamber and the Blackfriars 
 
 Theatre, 58. 
 Stationers' Company, The, 69. 
 Stationers' Hall, 68 — 71. 
 Stationers' Hall Court, The Plane- 
 tree in, 133—135- 
 Stationers, Locality formerly occu- 
 pied by, 32. 
 Surgeons' Hall, 82, 107. 
 Swift, Dean, 82, 94. 
 Tarleton, the jester, 12, 68. 
 Taverns and inns near Ludgate Hill, 
 
 94. 
 Taylor, the water poet, 58, 59. 
 Thames, The, 12, 16, 18, 33, 51. 
 Theatrical performances in the olden 
 
 time, 56, 68. 
 Thieves and robbers, 83, 84 ; haunts 
 
 of, 105. 
 Tim-buc-too, the crossing-sweeper, 
 
 120. 
 Times newspaper. The, 33. 
 Trees in the City, 131, 133, 134. 
 Treloar & Sons, 12, 127. 
 Troynovant, the old city of, 14. 
 Tudor sovereigns, The, 26, 27, 46 — 54, 
 
 72. 
 Turkey carpets, Use of, 50, 87. 
 Waithman, Alderman, 119 — 123; obe- 
 lisk in honour of, 120. 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 62. 
 Wardrobe Court, 31. 
 Waterworks at London Bridge, 75. 
 Warwick House, 44. 
 Warwick Inn, 44. 
 Warwick Lane, 44, 71, 134. 
 " Warwick Roll," The, 66. 
 Weapon show, 44. 
 Weller, Sam, 34, 131. 
 Whitefriars, 73. 
 White Friars, The, 20. 
 Wilkes and the North Briton, 100 ; 
 
 obelisk in honour of, 115. 
 William III., Ludgate Hill in the time 
 
 of, 87. 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 18, 31, 89 ; and 
 St. Martin's Church, 80; his plan 
 for rebuilding of the City after the 
 Fire, 79, 80 ; his poetical monu- 
 ment, 90. 
 Wyatt's Rebellion, 12, 51, 52. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
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