Yale Center for British Art and British Studies LONDON TOWN : PAST AND PRESENT ST. PAUL'S AND THE RIVER. From the Painting by W. L. Wyllie, R.A. LONDON TOWN PAST AND PRESENT BY W. W. HUTCHINGS Ml WITH A CHAPTER ON THE FUTURE IN LONDON BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED FROM OLD PRINTS AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS Vol. I CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 1909 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE Although of books on London the name is legion, the reception accorded to the present work in serial form has shown that there was room left for a book which aims at giving, in the itinerary form, a descriptive and historical account of the cities and boroughs that make up the Administrative County of London, with some speculations upon the future of the Metropolis. The reader who may fail to find in the following pages something which he would have included had he been the writer will, I hope, in his charity, make allowance for the difficulty created by the immense mass of material available. At every step in the journey it has been necessary, from exigencies of space, to reject matter which clamoured for acceptance ; and many an unhappy quarter of an hour has been spent in deciding between subjects which had exasperafingly equal claims to inclusion. Should the reader's eye fall upon a mistake, the same charity will, I trust, lead him to reflect that the work embraces thousands of names and dates and facts and allusions, and that in the history of London, in spite of the good work done of late years by many diligent students, there is still no lack of slippery places. At the cost of some slight repetition I have aimed at making each chapter as far as possible self-containing, so that the reader may not be distracted by a multitude of cross-references. In the section which has the City of London for its theme, I have been glad to draw upon the books published under the auspices of the ancient City Corporation, among them Riley's " Memorials of London Life," Price's " Historical Account of the Guildhall," Dr. Reginald Sharpe's " London and the Kingdom," and Mr. Charles Welch's " Modern History of the City of London " ; and throughout the work I have been greatly helped by the publica tions of the London County Council — notably the wonderful collection of facts and figures entitled " London Statistics," and the booklets that authoritatively tell the story of the houses to which the Council has affixed commemorative tablets. I have also to make acknowledgment to Thornbury and Walford's " Old and New London," the last edition of which it was my pleasant task to revise and bring up to date ; to the graceful and scholarly writings of the Rev. vi PREFACE W. J. Loftie, F.S.A., among whose disciples I am proud to be numbered ; to the volumes of the late Sir Walter Besant, most fervent of the more recent lovers of London ; to the " Retrospect of the City and Liberty of Westminster," by Mr. John Hunt, the Town Clerk of that city; to the original researches of Professor W. R. Lethaby ; to the Right Hon. Charles Booth's " Life and Labour of the People in London " ; and to the monumental " Dictionary of National Biography." Not less am I indebted to the accurate and entertain ing books of Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, and particularly his " London Past and Present," based upon the late Peter Cunningham's classic " Handbook of London," and published by Mr. John Murray — a work which is indispensable to the student of London's topographical history. To Mr. Somers Clarke, formerly Surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral ; to Dr, Reginald Sharpe, the erudite Clerk of the Records of the City ; to Sir William Soulsby, Private Secretary of many successive Lord Mayors ; to Mr. Edward M. Borrajo, Librarian to the City Corporation and Curator of the Guildhall Museum ; to Mr. James Bell, Town Clerk of London ; to Mr. G. Laurence Gomme, F.S.A., Clerk of the London County Council ; to the Clerks of the chief Livery Companies and of the various Metropolitan Borough Councils, and to many other gentlemen holding official positions in the County of London, I must tender thanks for assistance most courteously rendered. In the months during which the work has been passing through the press a good deal of water has flowed under London Bridge. The new buildings of the Victoria and Albert Museum were opened by King Edward VII. on the 26th of June, 1909, and in the following month his Majesty laid the founda tion-stones of further buildings for the Imperial College of Science and Technology at South Kensington and of the new King's College Hospital at Denmark Hill. Mr. George Meredith has passed behind the veil ; and, as is recognised in the Index, knighthoods have been conferred upon Mr. George Frampton, R.A., Mr. Deputy and Sheriff Baddeley, and Mr. H. Beerbohm Tree. W. W. H. CONTENTS Introduction — The Story of London PAGE I BOOK I.— THE CITY ¦chapter i. The First and Second Cathedrals of St. Paul 2. The Builder and the Building of the Third St. Paul's 3. St. Paul's : Descriptive 4. St. Paul's Churchyard 5. Paternoster Row 6. Cheapside . 7. Around Cheapside 8. The Guildhall . 9. The Crypt and Subsidiary Buildings to. Incidents in the History of the City Corporation 11. The City Corporation : Its Constitution and Functions 12. Around the Guildhall 13. The Mansion House . 14. The Royal Exchange 15. The Stock Exchange . 16. The Bank of England 17. Around the Bank 18. Around the Bank (concluded) 19. Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street 20. Aldgate, Crutched Friars and the Minories 21. The Tower .... 22. From the Royal Mint to Eastcheap 23. Lower Thames Street 24. The City Bridges 25. Upper Thames Street 26. Castle Baynard and Blackfriars 27. Queen Victoria Street and Cannon Street 28. Gracechurch Street and Bishopsgate Street 29. From Bishopsgate to Aldersgate 30. Aldersgate Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand 25 35 425256647996 106 112 125 130142149163173183194 206 218 228 247 256265 273287295305 315 331 viii CONTENTS chapter page 31. Little Britain and Smithfield . . 341 32. St. Bartholomew's : Priory and Hospital 348 33. Christ's Hospital 359 34. Newgate and the Old Bailey . 369 35. Newgate Street to Holborn Circus 382 36. Holborn Circus to Holborn Bars 399 37. Farringdon Street, the Fleet, and New Bridge Street . 403 38. Ludgate Hill 412 39. Fleet Street 418 40. Some Fleet Street Tributaries 434 41. Whitefriars 449 42. The Temple 454 BOOK II.— WESTMINSTER AND WEST LONDON 43. The City of Westminster 469 44. Westminster Abbey : to the Dissolution . 474 45. Westminster Abbey: after the Dissolution 487 46. Westminster Abbey : Descriptive . 502 47. Old Westminster 520 48. The Royal Palace of Westminster and St. Margaret's 530 49. Westminster Hall and Palace Yard 547 50. Old Whitehall 556 LIST OF PLATES St. Paul's and the River (Rembrandt Photogravure) . . Frontispiece Tournament in Chepe to Celebrate the Black Prince's Birth Facing page 76 Sir Henry Picard Entertaining the Kings of England, France, Scotland, and Cyprus . . . . . . 114 Livery Hall of the Merchant Taylors' Company . . . 192 Colonel Blood's Attempt upon the Crown Jewels in the Tower ..........„,, 236 Robert Fitzwalter Receiving from the Lord Mayor the City's Banner .........„,, 288 Crosby Hall in 1908 . . . . . . . . ,, ,, 310 St. Bartholomew's-the-Great after Restoration . . „ 358 The Inner Temple Gate-house ......„„ 422 Funeral of Edward the Confessor . „ ,, 474 Westminster Abbey ........,,,, 502 The King's Champion Entering Westminster Hall at the Coronation of George IV. ......„,, 546 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Introduction : The Story of London William the Conqueror Granting a Charter to the Citizens of London ... 5 Old London Bridge, about 1756 . . 8 Leicester Square, about 1750 ... 9 Savoy Palace in 1750 .... 12 " Compassion " : an Incident of the Plague in London . . .13 "A Prospect" of London, 1751 . . 16 The Great Fire of London . . 17 Bethlem Hospital, about 1750 ... 20 The Customs House, 1753 . . . 21 The First and Second Cathedrals of St. Paul A Bird's-eye View of the City, about 1759 . 25 The Altar of Diana at Goldsmiths' Hall . 26 Old St. Paul's, about 1540 ... 28 St. Faith's Church, in the Crypt of Old St. Paul's ..... 31 Brawling and Trafficking in " Paul's " . 32 The Great Fire of London, Showing Old St. Paul's in the Distance . . 34 The Builder and the Building of the Third St. Paul's The Builder of St. Paul's. . 36 Wren's First Design as Amended . 37 Charles II. Visiting Wren during the Build ing of St. Paul's ... 39 St. Paul's, from the South . . 41 St. Paul's : Descriptive Section through the Dome .... 43 The West Front .... 44 The Choir . . . 47 Some Famous Memorials in St. Paul's . 49 "Time, Death, Judgment" . . 50 Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Nelson 5 1 St. Paul's Churchyard In the Cathedral Gardens. . . -53 Paul's Cross Early in the Seventeenth Century 54 St. Paul's School, as Rebuilt after the Great Fire 55 Paternoster Row The Boy of Panyer Alley. . . 56 Paternoster Row . . 57 Stationers' Hall . . . . .61 Barge of the Stationers' Company . . 62 Arms of the Stationers' Company . . 63 Cheapside Coronation Procession of Edward VI. through Cheapside .... 64 Seal of Bow Church . 64 Cheapside Cross in 1547 .... 65 Modern Cheapside . . . 67 Confirmation in Bow Church (1862) . . 69 Wren's Loveliest Steeple (Bow Church) . 70 The Chained Swan ... 71 Old House in Cheapside . . 71 Mercers' Hall Prepared for a Livery Dinner 73 Alderman Boydell ..... 74 Arms of the Mercers' Company . 75 A Lord Mayor's Procession in Cheapside (1761) . . ¦ ¦ 77 Arms of the Saddlers' Company . . 78 Around Cheapside View from the Spire of Bow Church . 79 Scene in the "Mermaid" Tavern . . 81 St. Mildred's, Bread Street ... 82 Watling Street, Looking West ... 84 Goldsmiths' Hall : the Staircase . 87 Goldsmiths' Hall : the Banqueting Hall . 89 St. Alban's, Wood Street. . . 90 The Wood Street Compter . 91 Brewers' Hall ... -93 Old City of London School . 94 Arms of the Goldsmiths' Company . . 95 The Guildhall The Guildhall . . .96 The Guildhall before the Roof was Raised, and as it Appears now . 97 The Guildhall in 1741 . 99 Gog. ... ... 100 Magog . . . .101 The Beckford Monument . . .102 The King of Spain Taking the Loving-Cup at the Guildhall . . . 104 The Crypt and Subsidiary Buildings Crypt of the Guildhall .... The Second Guildhall Chapel The Present Common Council Chamber The Old Common Council Chamber, De stroyed in 1908 . . .110 Volumes of Records at the Guildhall 1 1 1 Incidents in the History of the City Corporation Figures from the Front of the Guildhall Chapel 113 West View of Bakewell Hall . . 115 106107 109 XII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Mayoralty Seal which was Broken in 1381 . . . . . The Mayoralty Seal which Replaced the Earlier One The Aldermen's Court Room Visit of Charles I. to the Guildhall Alderman Brass Crosby The Coronation Sceptre The Pearl Sword The State Sword The Mace In Guildhall Courtyard 116116 117 119 121123123 123123124 The City Corporation : Its Constitution and Functions The Lord Mayor's Collar of S's . .127 Obverse of the Common Seal . . .129 Reverse of the Common Seal . . .129 Old Reverse of the Common Seal . .129 Around the Guildhall St. Lawrence Jewry . . . . .131 The Vestry of St. Lawrence Jewry . . 132 St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury . 133 Judge Jeffreys 135 Dr. Richard Price . . . .136 Sir Robert Clayton's House . . 137 St. Mildred's, Poultry . . . .138 Inside the Poultry Compter . . .139 Relief at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street . 141 The Mansion House The Mansion House ..... 143 Sir Robert Vyner . . . 144 The Old Stocks Market . . . .145 The Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House . 146 John Wilkes ...... 147 The Mansion House Plate . . . 148 The Royal Exchange The First Royal Exchange . . -149 Sir Thomas Gresham . . . .150 The Second Royal Exchange . . .152 Tympanum of the Present Royal Ex change ...... 153 Dome and Roof of the Royal Exchange . 156 A Relic of the First Royal Exchange . 157 Sir William Tite 157 Interior of the Royal Exchange . . 159 Lloyd's : the Underwriters' Room . .160 The Lydekker Memorial in Lloyd's . . 161 The Stock Exchange A Stockbroker's Badge . . . .164 The Stock Exchange in Capel Court . . 165 Lord Cochrane . . . . .166 The De Berenger Fraud : Pseudo-French Officers Scattering Billets Announcing the Death of Napoleon . . .167 Abraham Goldsmid . . . . .168 Nathan Meyer Rothschild . . .169 " Hammered ! " . . . . . 171 The Bank of England Early View of the Bank . . . .174 William Paterson, the Founder of the Bank 175 St. Christopher-le-Stocks . . . .176 Charles Price in His Usual Dress . .177 Courtyard of the Bank . . . .178 Garden Court, Bank of England . .179 North-western Angle of the Bank . .180 Arrival of the Military Guard at the Bank. 181 Facsimile of the Largest Cheque ever drawn upon the Bank of England . .182 Around the Bank Grocers' Hall in 1695 .... 183 Livery Hall of the Grocers' Company . 185 Statue of Sir John Cutler in Grocers' Hall . 186 St. Bartholomew's-by-the-Exchange in 1834 187 Arms of the Grocers' Company. . . 188 Arms of the Drapers' Company . .188 Livery Hall of the Drapers' Company . 189 South Sea House, Threadneedle Street . 190 St. Benet Fink ..... 191 Arms of the Merchant Taylors . .192 The Eastern End of Cornhill . . .193 Around the Bank (concluded) Cornhill, about 1630 ..... 194 The Standard, in 1599 .... 194 " Birch's "...... 195 Keyboard of the Organ in St. Peter's, Cornhill 195 The Tablet in St. Peter's, Cornhill . . 196 Mendelssohn's Autograph in St. Peter's . 196 " Pope's House " in Plough Court, in i860 . 197 " Garraway's," shortly before Demolition . 198 A Jovial Alderman : Edward Backwell . 199 Altar of St. Mary Abchurch . . . 200 Rev. John Newton ... . 201 A Massive City Church : St. Mary Woolnoth 203 The Bank Subways . . .205 Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street The East India House in 1648 The Throckmorton Monument in St. Katherine Creechurch Sir John Gayer . . . St. Andrew Undershaft Stow's Monument in St. Andrew Undershaft The Baltic : the Marble HaU Livery Hall of the Clothworkers' Company Offices of Lloyd's Register Pepys's Loving-Cup ..... Arms of the Clothworkers' Company 206 208 209211213214215216217217 Aldgate, Crutched Friars and the Minories Aldgate Pump . . . . .218 Aldgate 219 St. Botolph's Without, Aldgate. . . 220 The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue . 221 Bit of the Roman Wall in Jewry Street . 222 Pepys's Church : St. Olave's, Hart Street . 223 Monument of Mrs. Pepys in St. Olave's . 224 Pepys's Monument in St. Olave's . .225 " Whittington's House " in Hart Street . 226 The Old Navy Office, Seething Lane. 227 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Xlll The Tower General View of the Tower The Tower Menagerie Traitor's Gate, Looking Riverwards . The Regalia ..... Where the Remains of the Princes Found . . . . Block, Axe, and Scavenger's Daughter The White Tower . . . . St. John's Chapel .... Inscriptions in the Beauchamp Tower Site of the Scaffold on Tower Hill . Church of S. Petrus ad Vincula were 231 233234237 238239240 241243 244 245 From the Royal Mint to Eastcheap The Royal Mint Cutting Room at the Royal Mint Trinity House .... Allhallows' Barking . St. Dunstan's-in-the-East The " Boar's Head," Eastcheap Sign of the Boar's Head, Guildhall Museum Lower Thames Street The Customs House built by Wren Old Billingsgate Fish Market in 1820 Billingsgate Porters The Coal Exchange . The Monument Steeple of St. Magnus-the-Martyr Old Weigh House Chapel in 1780 The City Bridges Norden's Engraving of London Bridge Nonsuch House on Old London Bridge John Rennie, the Designer of London Bridge Eustace Budgell ..... Old Blackfriars Bridge The Tower Bridge ..... Upper Thames Street Dagger with which Wat Tyler was Slain Fishmongers' Hall .... Statue of Walworth in Fishmongers' Hall Arms of the Fishmongers' Company . Arms of the Vintners' Company Skinners' Hall : the Banqueting Hall Vintners' Hall : the Court Room Silver Gilt Salt-cellar at Vintners' Hall The " Milkmaid Cup " at Vintners' Hall Hearse Cloth at Vintners' Hall Richard Whittington The " Whittington Stone " Reputed Portrait of Peter Blundell Steeple of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal Steeple of St. James's Garlickhithe Vane of St. Michael's Queenhithe Tower of St. Mary Somerset Painters' Hall : the Banqueting Hall Camden's Loving-Cup Arms of the Painters' Company 247249251252253254255 256 259260261262263264 266268 269270271272 273274275275275 276277278 278 278279280280281281281 281 282283 283 St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf . . . 284 Junction of Upper Thames Street and Queen Victoria Street . . .285 Inigo Jones ..... 286 Castle Baynard and Blackfriars Remains of the Blackfriars Monastery Baynard's Castle ..... Apothecaries' Hall ..... Arms of the Society of Apothecaries. Advocates' College, Doctors' Commons, in i854 Sign of the " Bell " Tavern, Knightrider Street .... 287289291 292 293294 Queen Victoria Street and Cannon Street St. Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe . Rev. Thomas Charles, of Bala . College of Arms Steeple of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey London Stone .... St. Stephen's, Walbrook . John Dryden .... 296297 299 300301303304 Gracechurch Street and Bishopsgate Street Bishop's Gate St. Helen's, Bishopsgate . Sir Thomas Gresham's Altar-tomb in St Helen's .... St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate . Old Gresham College St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate Sir Paul Pindar's House . Arms of the Leathersellers' Company From Bishopsgate to Aldersgate The Dutch Church, Austin Friars Moorgate .... Cripplegate .... Bit of the City Wall at Allhallows Electra House, Finsbury Pavement St. Giles's, Cripplegate John Foxe .... Bastion of the City Wall at St. Giles's Henry VIII. Presenting to the Barber Surgeons their Charter The Nursery, Golden Lane The Cripplegate Institute . Arms of the Barbers' Company 3°5306 307 309 3103"313 3U 317318319 320 321323 324325327 328329330 Aldersgate Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand Aldersgate : the Outer Front Postmen's Park, Aldersgate Street Postmen's Park : the Watts Cloister . London House, Aldersgate Street, in 180 Shaftesbury House, Aldersgate Street Old View of the City Boundary Sign of "the " Bull and Mouth " Courtyard of the "Bull and Mouth" The Earliest of the Post Office Buildings 33i 332 333 334335337338339340 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Little Britain and Smithfield Little Britain, with the Tower of St. Botolph's 342 Bartholomew Fair . ... 343 The Smithfield Cattle Market . . -344 The Central Markets .... 346 The Martyrs' Stone ..... 347 St. Bartholomew's : Priory and Hospital Old View of St. Bartholomew's Hospital . 348 The Smithfield Gate of St. Bartholomew's 349 The Quadrangle, St. Bartholomew's Hospital 350 St. Bartholomew's Hospital . . 351 Dr. Abernethy . . . . -352 Hogarth's "Pool of Bethesda". . . 353 Percivall Pott . . ... 354 St. Bartholomew's-the-Great before Restor ation. . . . . 355 Rahere's Monument ... .356 Old Houses in Cloth Fair 357 Shield on House in Cloth Fair . . 358 Christ's Hospital Bluecoat Boys Officiating in a State Lottery 359 Christ's Hospital in the Eighteenth Century 362 Christ's Hospital shortly before its Demolition 363 Statue of Edward VI 364 Bit of the Older Part of Christ's Hospital 364 Edward VI. Granting the Charter of Incor poration to Christ's Hospital . . 365 Christ Church, Newgate Street . . . 367 Figure of Bluecoat Boy .... 368 Newgate and the Old Bailey Surgeons' Hall, Old Bailey . . . 369 Newgate ....... 370 Old View of Newgate . . . . 371 Lord George Gordon .... 372 The Execution of John Thurtell . -373 The " Graveyard," Newgate . . . 374 The New Sessions House . . . -375 New Sessions House : the Central Hall . t,77 Cell in Newgate . . . .378 Cell in the New Sessions House . . 378 Jonathan Wild 379 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey . . 380 Newgate Street to Holborn Circus The Fat Boy of Pie Corner Newgate Market in 1856 Bas-relief at the Corner of Warwick Lane Statue of Charles II. The Old College of Physicians Mrs. Craythorne . The Giltspur Street Compter in 1805 The " Saracen's Head," Snow Hill, in 185 Captain John Smith Holborn before the Improvement Roger Ascham, Tutor to Queen Elizabeth Colonel and Lucy Hutchinson . John Rogers, First of the Marian Martyr St. Andrew's, Holborn William Marsden, M.D. 3823333§4385386387387 5 389 39039i392393393 395396 Dr. Joseph Parker 396 The City Temple 397 Arms of the Cutlers' Company . . . 398 Holborn Circus to Holborn Bars 'Thomas Chatterton 399 Where Chatterton died . . . .400 The Holborn Front of Staple Inn . .401 HaU of Staple Inn 402 Farringdon Street, the Fleet, and New Bridge Street Mouth of the River Fleet, about 1793. . 404 The Fleet Prison 4«7 Bridewell in 1660 ..... 408 Cell in the Present Bridewell . . 409 Mrs. Rossetti . . . ¦ • .411 Ludgate Hill Old View of Ludgate HiU . . .412 Lud Gate, the West Front . . 413 Statue of Queen Elizabeth from Lud Gate 415 Old La Belle Sauvage : the Inner Court . 416 Bas-relief from Old La Belle Sauvage . 417 Fleet Street The Temple Bar End of Old Fleet Street . 419 Bust of Apollo • 421 Old Sign of the "Cock" Tavern . 421 Room in the Old " Cock " Tavern . . 423 "Dr. Johnson's Room " in the " Cheshire Cheese " . • • 424 Chamber in the Inner Temple Gate-house. 425 Sign of the Marygold . . 426 Sign of the Three Squirrels . . 427 Old St. Dunstan's-in-the-West . . . 429 Steeple of the Present Church . . . 431 Some Fleet Street Tributaries Serjeants' Inn, Looking towards Fleet Street 435 Richard Lovelace . . . 438 William Lilly, the Astrologer . . 439 Dr. Johnson's House in Gough Square . 440 The Old Home of the Royal Society . 441 Count Zinzendorf . . . 443 The Moravian Chapel, Fetter Lane . . 443 NeviU's Court, Fetter Lane . . . 445 Museum of the Public Record Office 446 Charles Wentworth Dilke .... 447 Domesday Volumes, Public Record Office . 448 Whitefriars The Dorset Gardens Theatre . . . 450 City of London School : The Large Hall . 452 The Temple Effigy of William Mareschall in the Temple Church ...... 454 The Temple Church . . . 455 Temple Church : the Chancel . . . 457 The Master's House, Temple . . . 458 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pegasus .... The Lamb and Flag Hall of the Middle Temple Library of the Inner Temple Hare Court, Temple Where Goldsmith died : No. 2, Brick Court Goldsmith's " Tomb " in the Temple Temple Bar in 1800 .... The City of Westminster Mace and Staves of the Old Court Burgesses . . . . Loving-Cup of the Court of Burgesses Head of Doorway of the Chapter-house of 459459 461463 464 465466467 469 470473 Westminster Abbey • to the Dissolution " Sebert's Tomb " .... 474 Edric with the Salmon . . . -475 Coronation of the Conqueror . . . 476 Henry III. Bearing the Crystal Phial . 478 Translation of the Confessor's Body to the New Shrine . . . 479 Robert de Haule at Bay . . . .481 Tomb of Henry V. . . . .482 Funeral of Henry V. . . . . 484 Abbot Islip Laying the Foundation-Stone of Henry VII. 's Chapel . . 485 The Abbey Portrait of Richard II. . 486 Westminster Abbey : after the Dissolution Tomb of Mary Queen of Scots . . 487 Chapel of St. Benedict . . . .488 Tomb of Queen Elizabeth . . . 489 Coronation of Charles I. . . 491 Funeral of Cromwell . 493 View of the Abbey before the Restoration 496 Monument to Handel .... 497 The Chapter-house as Restored . . . 498 The Funeral of Tennyson . . 499 Edward VII. being Presented by the Arch bishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) . 500 The Crowning of Queen Alexandra by the Archbishop of York (Dr. Maclagan) . 501 Westminster Abbey : Descriptive Tomb of Edward III 502 Westminster Abbey : the Nave, Looking East 507 Statesmen's Aisle ..... 508 Poets' Corner . .... 509 Edward the Confessor's Shrine . . .510 Details of Screen of the Confessor's Chapel 511 Tomb of Philippa of Hainault . . . 511 Henry the Seventh's Chapel . . . 513 Tomb of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York 514 Tomb of Margaret, Countess of Richmond 515 The Abbot's House . . . . .516 The Cloisters . . . . . 517 A Monk being Scourged in the Chapter house . . . .518 Mantelpiece in the Jerusalem Chamber . 519 Old Westminster Tothill Fields 520 Westminster School : College HaU . .521 Inigo Jones's Staircase, Ashburnham House 523 Dr. Busby . . ... 524 Church House; the Hoare Memorial Hall . 525 Henry Purcell . . . . . .526 The United Westminster Almshouses . 527 The Greycoat School . .528 The Royal Palace of Westminster and St. Margaret's The Old Houses of Parliament ini82i . 531 The Commons in St. Stephen's Chapel . 532 Sitting of the Commons in 1742 . . 533 Sir Charles Barry . . -535 View of Buildings designed by Barry to Enclose New Palace Yard . -537 The Houses of Parliament, from the River 539 Houses of Parliament : the Central Hall . 541 Bernini's Bust of Oliver Cromwell . . 542 Houses of Parliament : the Royal Gallery 543 St. Stephen's Crypt ..... 544 St. Margaret's, Westminster, Looking East . 545 Westminster Hall and Palace Yard Westminster Hall, with the Abbey, in 1826 . 547 Coronation Banquet of George IV. . . 548 Westminster Hall, Looking South . . 551 Statue of Oliver Cromwell . . -552 The Earl of Strafford . . . -553 Sir Walter Raleigh . . . . -554 Old Whitehall Whitehall Palace from the River in the Reign of Queen Anne . . 557 Inigo Jones's Design for a New Whitehall Palace : the River Facade . . 559 Portion of Inner Court of Whitehall Palace as Designed by Inigo Jones . . 561 The Execution of Charles I. . 562 The Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace 563 Interior of the Banqueting Hall . 565 In the Cockpit, Whitehall . . . 566 Holbein Gateway of Whitehall in 1725 . . 567 The King Street Gateway in 1723 . . 567 Whitehall in 18 15, Looking towards Charing Cross ...... 568 LIST OF PLANS County of London .... Wren's First Design for St. Paul's . Old St. Paul's ..... The Present St. Paul's Streets North and South of Cheapside Wards of the City .... Streets around the Guildhall . The Royal Exchange in 1837 Streets around the Bank . Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street Region . The Tower .......... Region between the Royal Mint and Eastcheap Lower Thames Street in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Riverside Streets, from the Tower to Blackfriars. Streets between Bishopsgate and Aldersgate . Central Markets ...... Christ's Hospital and the Neighbourhood in Queen Elizabeth Fleet Street and its Tributaries ..... Fleet Street District in Queen Elizabeth's Day Old City Wall ......... Ancient Manor and Modern City of Westminster . Westminster Abbey . . ..... Houses of Parliament ....... s Day Facing page 25 37 40 40 So 126130 162184 207 229 248 257 258 3LS34536i 433437 468 47i 503536 >zaii Introduction ^a THE STORY OF LONDON WOULD we begin our story at the beginning, we must wing our way across the dark backward and abysm of time for a full two thousand years. We must blot out of our mental picture of Lofldon the streets and buildings that now cover the Thames Valley for miles north and south, east and west of London Bridge, must in vision see the Two river bordered with vast tracts of marsh and swamp, Years Ago. must watch its waters expanding southwards at high tide, until they almost lave the bases of the Surrey hills, must conjure up away to the north, stretching beyond the heights familiar to us as Hampstead and Highgate and Barnet, a dense forest, in whose obscure thickets lurk savage beasts. On the northern bank, rising steeply from the water's edge, where two streams, in after ages named the Wall Brook and the Fleet, pour their waters into the great river, are several little hills ; and it is to one or other of these hills that we must look for traces of the founders of the city whose story we would tell. When was London first founded ? No one knows. For our guidance there is nothing more conclusive than the rude relics that have cropped out from time to time, though this lack of direct evidence has not deterred intrepid antiquaries from coming to extremely positive conclusions for and against every conceivable theory of the origin of the city. When History is pleased to lift the veil, about the middle of the first century of the Christian era, we find the Romans in possession. It is not improbable that before the coming of the Romans there was here a British settlement, but that is all we are warranted in saying. So weighty an authority as Dr. Guest, author of the " Origines Celticae," takes the opposite view, and BritishLondon ? o £L 'v; ^ ^7 «/« f% m /l ..' so, in " The Making of England," does J. R. Green. But Guest appears to have accepted the generally received derivation of Londinium, the Roman form of London, from the Celtic Lyn-din, the Lake-fort, and it is not easy to see why the Romans should have drawn upon the Celtic for a name if, as he supposes, Aulus Plautius, in the year 43 A.D., founded Londinium on virgin ground. However this may be, at last we find ourselves on solid fact, for Tacitus records that in the year 61, less than twenty years from the probable date of the founding of Roman London, it was " crowded with merchants." In that year occurred the first, and one of the worst, of London's recorded calamities. For Paulinus Suetonius found it necessary to abandon the town to the Britons, led by the infuriated Boadicea. " Not relenting," says the grave Roman historian, " at the sighs and tears of the inhabitants, Boadicea. who entreated his aid and protection, he gave orders to march, receiving such as followed him into his army ; those who, by weakness of sex or age, stayed behind or were tempted by their affection for the place to remain there, were destroyed by the enemy." London, with Verulam (St. Albans) and Camulodunum (Colchester), was sacked, and it was believed that in the three towns seventy thousand were massacred. At this time London was of less importance than either Verulam or Camulodunum. But now, making a fresh start, it waxed greatly, and though it never became the capital of Roman Britain, a distinction which was reserved for Eboracum (York), yet when, in the fourth century, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine — so says tradition — it became a walled town with a mint of its own, the area enclosed was not The far short of four hundred acres. It was this wall which, Wails. rebuilt by Alfred and repaired from time to time, survived to modern days, the only extension it ever received being that which was made in the thirteenth century at Ludgate in order that the monastery there built for the Black Friars might enjoy its protection ; and bits of the basement, revealing Roman work, are still, after more than a millennium and a half, brought to light from time to time. How long the Romans contented themselves with a ferry across the river, which they would no doubt establish at its narrowest point, close to the mouth of the Wall Brook, we know not. But the discovery Bhid e oi 2l. multitude of Roman coins of different periods, and of other Roman relics, in the bed of the Thames, when old London Bridge was taken down early in the nineteenth century, leaves little doubt that at some time during their occupation of London they threw a bridge across &Ti re S5 \&g Between the Devil and the Deep Sea the stream, defending it probably with a fortress at the southern as well as at the northern end. Around the southern fortress there would naturally grow up a settlement, if indeed there was not one here long before the bridge was built, and so it may well be that Ptolemy, the geographer, was stating a half-truth rather than perpetrating a blunder when, writing in the second century, he located London in Cantium (Kent). During the Roman occupation, London continued to grow in import ance and dignity, and at some time — perhaps when it became, instead of a mere fortified camp, a walled city — it was styled Augusta. Its Augusta. career as a Roman town lasted for close upon four hundred years. When in the early years of the fifth century — A.D. 409 is the date given by the Saxon Chronicle — the last of the Roman legions marched away southwards, the Britons soon had good reason for wishing them back. Harassed by savage foes from Scotland and Ireland, they appealed piteously to Rome for succour. " The savages drive us to the sea," they wailed, " and the sea casts us back upon the savages ; so arise two kinds of death, and we are either drowned or slaughtered." When they saw that no help was to be looked for from Rome, they enlisted the aid of the pirates from Ger many, who soon proved to be a worse foe than the Picts and Scots. In 457 a great battle was fought between Saxons and the Kentish Britons at Crayford, and the Britons, defeated, " forsook Kent, and in great terror, fled to London." So says the Saxon Chronicle, and then for a century and a half it lapses into silence concerning London. What happened to London during that century and a half? Was it stormed and sacked ? Did its inhabitants flee away and leave it deso late ? Or was some arrangement come to between them and the invaders by which they were suffered to continue in occupation ? The A _ first hypothesis may be dismissed, for had a place of such Blank. importance been taken by storm and destroyed, it is barely supposable that the event would have been passed over by the Chronicle. Dr. Guest leaned to the belief that for a while London lay desolate and uninhabited, and Mr. Loftie cautiously favours the same view. The late Sir Walter Besant, in his " London," the first of the long series of delightful volumes with which he has enriched the topography of the capital, has no hesitations whatever. " London, I am convinced," he says, with a magnificent dogmatism, "must — not may — but must have remained for a time desolate and empty." He puts into the witness box an imaginary Briton, who testifies that Augusta, finding itself cut off from one after another of its sources of supply, as the country round m { nC Strange Behaviour of the Saxons. WESTMINSTER, FROM OLD SOMERSET HODSE, 1754- about came into possession of the Saxons, was gradually deserted by the greater number of its inhabitants, many of them perishing of cold, of hunger, and by the sword of the enemy. A few sir Waiter remained behind, but at last these also were forced by lack Theory. of food to depart, and finally Augusta was left desolate. How long it remained so we are not told, but it continued to be uninhabited until a few merchants came up the river with their wares, were amazed to find nothing but a city of the dead, settled here, tempted the Saxons in the country round about to trade, and * so gradually won them from their repugnance to town life. If things really happened in the way thus described, how can we sufficiently admire the superiority to mere vulgar curiosity of the Saxons who formed their little village communities in the" country around Augusta ? Here on the banks of a mighty river was one of the largest cities in the land, walled and fortified. But for year after year, for decade after decade, the English conquerors, though raging with a lust for blood which urged them to indiscriminate slaughter, lived their lives without so much as giving a thought to it. "Now had the enemy attacked the city," says the imaginary Briton, " there would have been no resistance ; but no enemy appeared. We were left alone, perhaps forgotten. . . . Augusta to the invader was invisible. And she was silent." How gross must have been the film that covered the eyes of the Saxons sailing up and down the river, that this great city on both its banks, with its bridge connecting the two parts, its fortresses, and its walls perhaps twenty feet high and from nine to twelve feet thick, was not visible to them ! Mean-spirited as it may be, the policy of avoiding dogmatic conclusions, in the absence of direct evidence, will commend itself to unadven- turous minds. That in the arguments which Sir Walter Besant urges with such enviable vivacity and vigour to convince us that for a shorter or a longer period Augusta was deserted there is not a little force, may be cheerfully admitted. On the other hand, it is at least conceivable that terms were arranged by which the Britons were left in occupation, until the Saxons had overcome their aversion to dwelling within a walled city. An arrangement by which Saxons and Britons dwelt side by side was made at Exeter when the tide of invasion reached that city ; and what actually, took place there, though at a later period in the English conqu'est, may possibly have happened here. When the Saxon Chronicle breaks its long silence, it is to show us \ZL\\ ^ ^$£db^l-£'::'* i:\J^^JZ-y.^k£t ' WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR GRANTING A CHARTER TO THE CITIZENS OF LONDON. From the Wall Painting by Seymour Lucas, R.A,, in the Royal Exchange. 5 Saxon London. London — not Augusta, for the name had died out, but London — the metropolis of the East Saxons. From this time, the beginning of the seventh century, dates the foundation of St. Paul's Cathedral, and possibly (though doubtfully) of Westminster Abbey. During this and the next century the city appears to have prospered, but as the eighth century advanced it was much troubled by the Danes, who swarmed up the river and several times possessed them selves of it. Towards the end of the ninth century London seems to have once more passed into their hands, for ever as they may have supposed, but in 884 it was successfully besieged by Alfred, who was quick to discern its strategical importance. Him we may speak of as the re-founder of the city. The vagueness of the Saxon Chronicle Alfred. leaves ample room for difference of opinion as to precisely what it was that he did; but so sagacious a warrior is not likely to have failed to rebuild the walls, and such strength did they confer upon the city that never afterwards, though often assailed, was it taken. Of Saxon London the remains are much less considerable than those of Roman London. But in a more important sense Saxon London has proved to be more durable than Roman London. Not only was the very name of Augusta, as we have seen, blotted out, but of its customs, its traditions, its forms of government, there is no trace left ; while in Saxon London are to be found the germs of the municipal system under which the City is administered to this day. By the time of Edward the Confessor London had supplanted Winchester as the capital of England, and when Harold had fallen at Senlac, the citizens bore themselves proudly enough. Dover, Resisting tf\e strongest fortress in the land, Canterbury, the ancient Conqueror, ecclesiastical metropolis, Winchester, the ancient temporal capital, submitted tamely enough. " But there was one spot," says Freeman, " where another spirit reigned ; there was one city which even now had no mind to bow to the invader The men of London, whose forefathers had beaten back Swend and Cnut, whose brothers had died around the standard of Harold, were not men to surrender their mighty city, defended by its broad river and its Roman walls, without at least meeting the invader in the field." When William marched up to Southwark, the citizens made a sally, but though they were beaten back, he did not venture upon a direct attack, but preferred to wait, meanwhile ravaging all the country round about. He was not without friends in the city. Under the Confessor, the Bishop of London was a Norman, many Norman merchants had settled within the walls, Norman influences had long been at work ; and so it was that when at last it surrendered to the Conqueror, there was no violent break in its life. The first of the two charters which William granted to the citizens, pre- Londom served to this day at the Guildhall as the most ancient and most precious of the City's muniments, was addressed specially to the Bishop and the portreeve, the latter the civil governor, corresponding roughly, perhaps, with a sheriff of the shires. " William King," runs this laconic document, " grants William bishop and £he Gosfrith portreeve and all the burghers within London, French Charter. and English, friendly ; and I do you to wit that I will that ye be all lawworthy that were in King Edward's day. And I will that every child be his father's heir, after his father's day ; and I will not endure that any man offer any wrong to you. God keep you." The first of the Norman Kings had a very qualified trust in the citizens of London, and to encourage their loyalty he began at the south eastern extremity of the wall the mighty Keep which still, Tower. though now dwarfed by the monstrous Tower Bridge, looks down upon the Thames. It was continued by his successor. the Red King, who also built at Westminster the great Hall which, heightened and greatly altered by Richard II., has, like the White Tower, survived the changes and chances of the centuries. Rufus's successor, Henry I., in Iioi, laid the first stone of the City's municipal structure by conferring upon the citizens the right of choosing their own justiciar ; but the rearing of the civic superstructure was reserved for the early Plantagenet period. It was in the last years of the cen tury, during the reign of Richard I., though in his absence, that the citizens succeeded in obtaining their commune, with a Mayor of their own choosing at its head in the person of Henry Fitz-Aylwin. Ma'or'"* ^he fact must not be passed over, even in the baldest sketch of the history of London, with bare mention, for who can doubt that to its civic freedom London largely owes the supremacy which it achieved ? No overlord, as Dr. Reginald Sharpe points out in " London and the Kingdom," has it ever known, save the King himself, whereas other towns were subject to archbishop or bishop, to abbot or baron. How is it that Westminster was never in any serious sense a rival to London ? Like London, it is of great antiquity ; equally with London it lies on the Thames ; it was, too, the seat of a royal palace, and was destined to be the home of Parliament ; yet it was the city in the east that became the capital, and London was making and breaking kings while Westminster remained little more than a geo graphical expression. And is not the explanation of the different fortunes m sZ. OLD LONDON BRIDGE, 1760. M \* Wl of the two cities mainly this — that while Westminster belonged to its abbot, London belonged to itself? During the Norman period, ending in 1154, London rose to be, with Bristol, one of the two chief ports of the kingdom. This era witnessed the foundation of many great monasteries, such as the College of St. Martin's-le-Grand, the Priory of. St. Bartholomew at Smithfield and that of the Holy Trinity at Aldgate, while at Clerkenwell the Knights Hospitallers established themselves, and at Holborn the Knights Templars. In the early part of the Plantagenet period (1154-1485) came the friars. The Black Friars pitched their tent at Holborn in 1221, and in 1276 LeTndon?"6' migrated to the region which still bears their name ; the Grey Friars established themselves close to Newgate in 1224, that they might mortify themselves with the odours of the Town Ditch ; the White Friars settled between Fleet Street and the Thames in 1241, the Austin Friars off Broad Street in 1253, the Crutched Friars near Aldgate in 1298. Writing quite early in this period, about the year 1 174, William Fitz-Stephen, a monk with a graphic pen, who had been in Becket's ser vice and was present at his murder at Canterbury, tells us churches that, besides its cathedral and conventual churches, the city had 126 parish churches, so that it must have been, as Sir Walter Besant picturesquely says, applying to it Rabelais' phrase, a veritable lie Sonnante. Yet even more than a city of churches was it a Palaces. c*ty °f palaces, the mansions of great nobles and of great mer chants, some of them built beside the river, where their places have been taken by grimy wharves and uncouth warehouses, others scattered about the city's streets. The later part of this period must indeed have been the time of London's architectural glory. For the wooden bridge across the Thames of Roman and Saxon and Norman days had been substituted one of stone, which, begun by Peter of Colechurch in 1176 and finished in 1209, survived into the nineteenth century. Old St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in the kingdom, was now, with its sky-piercing spire, in its full glory ; and around it on all sides was a multitude of monasteries and Houses. churches, of stately palaces, of civic halls, some of them Norman, but most of them probably Pointed. By this time the houses of mud and timber, thatched with straw or reeds, had to some extent given way to houses of stone and brick. Now, too, for the most part they con sisted not of one room, but of two, one on the ground' floor, the other, a sleeping chamber, above it, and approached by a staircase / E s & jM^m » I * & 1 1 *?J?S from without. In most cases the shop was a booth outside and detached from the house, and distinguished by a huge sign swung overhead at a height of at least nine feet, so that horsemen might pass beneath unscathed. The streets, however, were still quite primitive ways, unprovided with footpaths, but sloping down from the centre to a trench on each side, to carry off the surface water and garbage. London, accord- Streets. in& to ®r- C- Creighton, writing in " Social England " of the City in the fourteenth century, did not neglect its scavenging, but like other towns, in this and other lands, its failure was in the radical disposal of its refuse. The shambles were inside the walls, not far from Newgate ; just outside the walls were the laystalls, where the scavengers deposited their clearings, and there, too, was the Town Ditch, though of this it is curious to learn that, in spite of the filth that was poured into it, there was " great store " of excellent fish to be found in it right down to the time of Henry VIII. ! In the history of London the fourteenth century is remarkable for the number of bold and vigorous men who held the office of Mayor. In this connection we must not forget Mayor Fitz-Thomas, who belongs to the previous century, and who had the courage to tell Henry III. to his face in St. Paul's Cathedral that the citizens of London would be faithful and duteous so long as he was a good lord and king. No wonder that Fitz-Thedmar, the chronicler, stood aghast at the " wondrous and unheard-of " behaviour of " this most wretched Mayor." But in the next century the city had for its chief ruler four of the most remarkable men — all of them contemporaries — who have ever sat in the Mayoral chair. They were William Walworth, John Philipot, Nicholas Brembre, and Richard Whittington. Walworth's feat in Smithfield in ridding Richard II., at this time a boy Walworth °f f°urteen> °f Wat Tyler (1381) has gained for him immortal renown. It was certainly a bold deed, nor does there appear to have been treachery in it, for the fact seems to be — though the narratives are conflicting — that Tyler was the first to " begin it " by striking one in the king's suite with his dagger. When Walworth came forward and asked the king to allow him to arrest the rebel leader, Tyler dealt him also a blow with his dagger, which spent itself upon the Mayor's armour. Then it was that Walworth drew and got in his blow or blows, which were followed up by blows from one of his supporters, and before Tyler, putting spur to his horse, had gone thirty yards he fell off and was carried into St. Bartholomew's to die. The young king, who by A Bold Mayor. \Ji H mi :) LEICESTER SQUARE, ABOUT 1750. 9 HAMPSTEAD CAMBERVELL riding up to the bent bows of the enraged rebels and appealing to them as their king to follow him, showed a courage not less splendid, lost j^J no time in knighting his doughty Mayor, and with him John Philipot and Nicholas Brembre. Philipot had already at this time served the office of Mayor. Soon after Richard II. 's accession (1377) the south coast was harried by the ,, French, and a Scottish freebooter of the name of Mercer, with The Mayor a fleet of French, Scottish, and Spanish vessels, had captured Freebooter. a number of English merchantmen at Scarborough, to the great indignation and alarm of the capital. At his own charges Philipot at once fitted out a squadron, with which he went in pursuit of the pirates, and having the good fortune to find them he utterly routed them, wresting from them their prizes, taking fifteen Spanish ships into the bargain, and capturing Mercer himself. London rang with the gallant feat, and Philipot was elected Mayor at' the next opportunity (1378). At a time of great unsettlement he ruled the City with a vigorous but judicious hand. Then and afterwards he showed himself to be as generous as he was brave and enterprising, and when he died in 1384, it was said of him that he left not "his like behind in zeal for the king and the realm." He is less known than he deserves to be, and of those who daily throng Philpot Lane, between Fenchurch Street and Eastcheap, probably few know that it is named after one of the ablest and boldest chief magistrates the City of London has ever had. At the time of Sir John Philipot's death Sir Nicholas Brembre held the office of Mayor. For him was reserved a tragic end. In 1388 as one of the late advisers of the king he was accused of treason, and, Tragedy. denied time to take counsel's advice, he claimed the right of proving his innocence by wager of battle, when there was instantly such a multitude of gages flung down by his enemies that they are said to have "seemed like snow on a winter's day." But the right of wager by battle was held not to apply, and his foes, in spite of the king's influence, succeeding in securing his conviction, he was ignominiously drawn on a hurdle through the city over whose administration he had presided, and barbarously done to death at Tyburn. It was eight years after this, in 1396, that Richard Whittington, the last of these fourteenth-century Mayors, was for the first time called to the chair. Of him there will be much to say in later pages ; here we need only recall the fact, brought to light by Dr. Reginald Sharpe, that in the City's records the four names which we have thus bracketed S^1 FUL.HAM A Word about Whittington together are found in the same list on at least one occasion, for in the year 1378, when the City was anxious to re plenish its empty coffers in order to win back the nobles by wholesale bribery, the list of subscribers was headed by Philipot, while among the other contributories appear the names of Brembre, Walworth, and Richard " Whytyngdon." In 1348-49 London suffered the first of the visitations known as the Black Death, now believed to have been a specially severe form of the Plague, which is a malignant kind of contagious fever, Pestilence, characterised by swellings and by carbuncles. Sometimes, also, dark spots or patches appear on the skin, and it was this symptom that led men to give to the visitation of 1348-49 the dreadful name of the Black Death. Starting from China, the scourge reached London in the winter of 1348, and Stow declares that 50,000 of its victims were buried in Spital Croft, afterwards the site of the Charterhouse. Until the epidemic of 1563 the mortality of the Plague is not known with numerical exactness, but from the figures taken in that and subsequent outbreaks, Dr. Creighton infers that, on an average, once in every generation during a period of three centuries, from the Black Death to the virtual extinction of the Plague in 1666, London " lost from a fourth to a sixth of its population at one stroke in a single season," besides suffering a more or less steady drain of its poorer classes from the same cause from year to year. In the year which witnessed the end of the Plantagenet and the beginning of the Tudor period (1485), the City was ravaged by another and even more deadly scourge, the Sweating Sickness, also a The form of malignant fever, which came again in 1508, a third sicHness. time in 1517, a fourth in 1528, a fifth in 1551. It began with " a burning sweat that invaded the body and vexed the blood, and with a most ardent heat infested the stomach and head grievously." In the first of these outbreaks, which occurred four weeks after Henry VII.'s triumphant entrance into London, the Sickness carried off the Mayor, Sir Thomas Hill, his successor, Sir William Stockes, who survived his election by but a few days, and six of the Aldermen. If the sufferer was able to withstand the fever and pain for twenty-four hours he usually recovered, but of those attacked ninety-nine out of a hundred succumbed. In the second outbreak, that of 1508, the Sickness was taken by Anne Boleyn, by her father and by her brother George, all of whom, in flat defiance of probability, recovered. We must not leave the Plantagenet period without noting that the 11 ¦^ II tu MA \0 : a -Oi v. 7 0a %k Ilk ri ins m i- Tr I,,,' - V.. SAVOY PALACE IN 1750. same king (Edward I.) who in 1291 banished the Jews from his capital and kingdom, granted twelve years later a special charter to the foreign merchants, who had long had a footing in the city ; and, thus privileged, they gradually acquired a virtual monopoly of London's foreign trade, which monopoly they maintained until they were expelled by Queen Elizabeth. In this same era, too, took place the rise of the City Guilds. Guilds, which in return for large sums of money advanced to the national Exchequer received charters from Edward III. and later kings, reaching the pinnacle of their prosperity in the next century -r- the fifteenth — to be despoiled of much of their wealth when the Reformation came in the sixteenth century. Whatever else the Reformation meant, it certainly meant the spoiling of London. Henry VIII. laid his heavy hand on the religious houses as well as on the guilds and brotherhoods ; the conventual buildings London. were pulled down, or degraded to secular uses and allowed to go to ruin; the glorious churches for the most part were ruth lessly destroyed. To this . period, however, it owes its first , Royal Ex change, while at Westminster Henry VII. added to the Abbey founded by Edward the Confessor his splendid chapel, and in the next reign York House was erected into the royal palace of Whitehall, though West minster lost by fire its ancient royal palace, little of it surviving except Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's Chapel. But if the Tudor age was an age of destruction it was also a period of enterprise and expansion. In 1505 the Merchant Adventurers were incorporated, and soon were doing a busy trade with the pril"" Netherlands in wool. The eyes of the citizens were now in the ends of the earth, and later in the same century charters were granted to the Turkey Company and the East India Com pany. When the monasteries were dissolved, it is estimated that the monks, nuns, and friars formed somewhere about one-third of the whole population of London. The social dislocation caused by the ex trusion of this vast multitude from the religious houses is sion*"" hardly now to be realised ; but in spite of it London con tinued to grow, and a large part of the population had to find accommodation outside the walls and gates, in the districts which, one after the other, were erected into liberties, under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor. In 1580, at the instance of the Mayor and Aldermen, Queen Elizabeth signed an ordinance prohibiting the erection of further dwellings in the liberties and out-parishes, or within three 'W^MMWM COMPASSION " : AN INCIDENT OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. From the Painting by Miss Florence Reason. &Fr V "Cb miles of the City gates, and forbidding also the sub-division of houses into numerous tenements. London, the authorities agreed, with a popula tion of about 123,000 — twice as many as at the dissolution of the monasteries, fifty years earlier — was big enough, and its further growth must be checked. But London thought differently, and the result of the policy of repression, persisted in for nearly a century, was that the city quadrupled its population. It were unpardonable to leave the Tudor period without a word about the man whose name is, perhaps, dearer to every student of London's history than that of any other citizen. John Stow, who stow. was b°rri about 1525, and survived until 1605, was admitted a freeman of the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1547, but from about the year 1560 he gave himself up to the patient labours and sober joys of the antiquary. The story of this most industrious chronicler and most simple-minded man is not an ex hilarating one. His researches cost him, in his own words, " many a weary mile's travel, many a hard-earned penny and pound, and many a cold winter night's study." His tailoring, had he stuck to it, would have paid him far better, for in his eightieth year he found himself compelled by poverty to petition James I. for a licence to beg. He died the year after this kingly favour was conferred upon him, " so that," as Strype drily remarks, "it is to be feared the poor man made but little progress in this collection." According to Edmond Howes, his literary executor, he was " of a pleasant and cheerful countenance . . . very sober, mild, and courteous to any that required his instructions. , . . He always protested never to have written anything either for malice, fear, or favour, nor to seek his own particular gain or vainglory ; and, that his only pains and care was to write truth." The spirit which his writings breathe makes it transparently clear that in these protestations the good old man claimed no more than his due. Riley and other modern students have convicted the " Survey of London " of errors, most of them false derivations ; but when it is remembered that so much of his work was that of a pioneer the wonder is that his mistakes are so few ; and even about his blunders there is an ingenuousness that helps to endear him to us. The Stuart period began badly, as the Tudor period had done, with a visitation of the Plague. For the City it was on the whole an era of tribulation, both political and social, but it has among its bright spots the re-admission of the Jews, which, as has recently been shown, began, not under the Commonwealth, but in the reign of Charles I. though it was continued under Oliver Cromwell. Charles alienated the City His Reward. 1*111 1LS6'" 14 by confiscating the money which the goldsmiths had deposited at the Mint in the Tower ; and it is probable that London, with its money and its men — its Trained Bands — had hardly less to do with his overthrow London. than had Cromwell's Ironsides. It groaned under the tyranny of the Army, and it welcomed Charles II. to his capital with immoderate joy. But it was soon in antagonism with him, and he scrupled not to lay hands on the bankers' money, as his father before him had done. Him it just managed to tolerate, but the cruel and petty tyranny of his brother it found intolerable, and when the Deliverer came from Holland, it loosed its purse-strings and invited him to assume the Crown. The social calamities that befell London under the Stuarts reached their climax in the Great Plague and the Great Fire. The winter of 1664- 65 was one of exceptional dryness — a frost which lasted almost Plague'''* continuously from before Christmas to March, and was followed by a cold dry spring and an almost intolerably hot summer — week after week of glaring sun, with never a breeze. The Pestilence therefore had every chance. It broke out at the end of 1664 ; soon it had the whole city, both within and without the walls, in its clutches, and it had hardly ceased its ravages in September of 1666, when the Fire came to burn it out. Its victims are believed to have numbered not less than 90,000. Like the Plague, the Fire was no new thing to London. Again and again, from the seventh century downwards, had flame wrought havoc in its midst. In 1665 Charles II. had warned the City FireGrea* authorities of the danger arising from the narrowness of the streets, and the erection of houses mostly of wood with over hanging fronts, and had charged them in future to pull down all new build ings which did not conform to the regulations of the Act governing highways and sewers. But the Plague gave them other occupation, and the Fire found the City a ready prey. Beginning in the early hours of Sunday, the 2nd of September, in Pudding Lane, near where the Monument's flaming head now commemorates the catastrophe, it was borne westwards by a strong wind, devouring nearly all that lay between that point and the Temple. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Blud- worth, cut a very poor figure in the emergency, for when Pepys brought him the King's command to pull down houses in every direction, that the fire might die of inanition, he could only helplessly cry, " Lord, what can I do ? I am spent ; people will not obey me." At the end of five days the flames had consumed St. Paul's Cathedral and nearly a hundred fe ¦^ "A PROSPECT" OF LONDON, 1751. parish churches and consecrated chapels, four of the City gates, fifty of the Livery Companies' Halls, four prisons, and 13,200 houses.. Four hundred streets were annihilated, about five-sixths of the City was devastated, and outside the walls an area about equal to the remaining sixth; and the loss sustained has been calculated at nearly .£11,000,000 sterling. Though the citizens did their best to save their movable treasures by burying them or removing them to places of safety^ many must have lost all they had. But the merchants contrived to meet their obligations to foreign customers, and almost before the ground The cm= nacj cooled, the homeless citizens, who had run up booths and daunted. huts at Moorfields and elsewhere, were busy identifying the sites of their houses and making preparations for clearing away the ruins. Four years afterwards (1670) Parliament, which does not usually give much heed to poetic justice, imposed a duty on sea-borne coal for the rebuilding of St. Paul's and of the parish churches, allocating one- fourth of the proceeds to the first object and three-fourths to the second. By the time London had been rebuilt," or very shortly after, it had displaced Paris as the largest city in Europe. Yet it was still but a small place. As Macaulay says in his wonderful third chapter, describ ing it as it was in 1685, three years before the end of the Stuart period, St. James's Square was a receptacle for the noi some rubbish of Westminster. " He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded ~ part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. On the north, the Oxford Road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls. of a few great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which," long afterwards, Conduit Street, was named." As yet, Golden Square was not ; and north of Piccadilly there were no houses save three or four isolated mansions. The people of fashion had not got much further westward than Covent Garden ; the extension of London north-west and south-west had not begun, but the influx of Huguenot silk weavers, driven from their native land by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), led to the formation of a new colony beyond the walls on the east. Of Georgian London there is not much that is interesting to say. It was a time of rampant vulgarity and vice, not greatly exaggerated, Smallnessof the LargestCity in Europe. 16 THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON . From the Sketch for the Wall Painting by Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A., in the Royal Exchange. By permission of S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd London and Manchester, owners of the copyright. I 4 perhaps, in Hogarth's plates ; but London owes to it the Adelphi Terrace and Portland Place, the creation of the brothers Adam ; Regent Street, the work of Nash during the Regency ; and not a London" ^ew public structures, such as Somerset House, the Bank, the Mansion House, the Custom House, the Mint, the older part of the General Post Office, London and Waterloo Bridges, and the York Column. It was not until the first half of the nineteenth century was well advanced that, the long war with France at an end, and prosperity slowly following in the wake of peace, London began to advance with giant strides. In 1820 Mile End was regarded as a health resort for jaded Londoners ; Woburn, Tavistock, and Gordon Squares were in the still laid OUI as market gardens. Ten years later Bow, Strat- Nlneteenth ° J Century. ford, Clapham, Tottenham, and Canonbury were still but villages ; even Chalk Farm and Kentish Town formed no part of continuous London ; North Kensington was given up to grass farms, Brompton to nurseries. When the late Queen came to the throne in 1837, as Mr. Laurence Gomme records in " London in the Reign of Victoria," the population of London proper — the continuous occupied area — was less than a million and three-quarters (1,646,000), and even with the rural and semi-rural parishes around, it was only two millions. Yet Fenimore Cooper, who was in London nine years before Queen Victoria's accession, gravely records that " many think the place already too large for the kingdom," and he adds that " Mr. McAdam," the road contractor whose name is frequently on our lips as a common noun, considered the size of London an evil — as though that were final! It was now, in the later years of the first half of the nineteenth century, that London began to grow at such a marvellous rate. From 1 801 to 1850 the population of what is now the Administra- Bounds.nd t've County of London increased by well-nigh a million and a half — from rather less than a million to nearly two-and-a-half millions. Yet even this increase was exceeded in the second half of the century, when an addition of not far short of two millions and a quarter was made to the population, the inhabitants of London — not Greater London, the area of the City and Metropolitan Police, which has a population of over six-and-a-half-millions, but the Administrative County of London — numbering over four millions and a half in 1901. It is now about four millions and three-quarters. Nor during the second half of the nineteenth century was there less progress made in all that composes a well-ordered city. In the mid- s w. & J»«AVL aJ>- ft Unifica tion. century London, though certainly not void, was, in a municipal sense, without form. There was the City of London, governed by its ancient Corporation, but when one spoke of London in the larger sense of the capital, one employed an expression which had no fixed meaning. London in this sense had no corporate existence. It was a mere welter of overlapping areas and of conflicting and for the most part irresponsible authorities ; and it is not too much to say that at that time London was one of the worst-governed cities in Europe. Water supply, sanitation, well-nigh all the primary needs of a civilised community, were grossly neglected. The Thames was a mere open sewer, its waters, as the Lancet vigorously wrote in July, 1855, " swollen with the feculence of the myriads of living beings that dwell upon the banks, and with the waste of every manufacture that is too foul for utilization. . . . The abominations, the corruptions, we pour into the Thames are not, as some falsely say, carried away into the sea. The sea rejects the loathsome tribute, and heaves it back again with every flow." Two years before the mid-century the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was created by the welding together of a number of separate Commissions. But a much more important step in the unification of London was taken in 1855 by the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works. It was brought into being primarily to provide main sewers for London, but as ofhWorhs'd t^me went on it was entrusted with the duty of constructing new thoroughfares and vast public works, such as the Thames Embankments, and it also undertook the removal of insanitary dwellings, the creation and control of open spaces, the administration of the Fire Brigade, and so forth. This authority, though only responsible to the ratepayers indirectly, through the vestries and district boards which were created at the same time, did much memorable work. In 1867, by the Metropolitan Poor Act, the Metropolitan Asylums Board was constituted to provide hospitals for cases of infectious sickness, and asylums for those suffering from harmless forms of insanity. In 1889 the Metropolitan Board of Works was super seded by the London County Council, an authority which, with London greatly extended powers but with much the same area as that County 0f the old Board, is elected directly by the ratepayers of the metropolis, female as well as male. A further change in the government of London was made ten years later, when, by an Act which came into operation in the last year of the century, the vestries and district boards of the County of London were abolished, and their place was taken by twenty-eight Borough Councils, with larger powers than had P*5S7 p&> 19 1 | HlMHIlHHiK' ¦ ¦ ¦ I ¦¦I] I • » •¦¦¦¦¦ «||*.» !¦ "!¦»¦¦«! Ill ' = » * i r»Ji II MyillH-y ' ; , ; " 77;/; ;;.;"&... ::YijjrV"miTti.iLTt3ii.v'']!i)i W^ i \;; BETHLEM HOSPITAL, ABOUT 1 750. been vested in the authorities which they superseded. In 1903 the London School Board was abolished, its functions being transferred to the London County Council. The year before was created the Boroughs Metropolitan Water Board, to acquire the properties of the Water Companies and take into its own hands the water supply of the metropolis, and in 1908 Parliament addressed itself to the erection of a Port Authority, to administer the docks, from London Bridge to Tilbury. * * * * ** * * * When M. Taine, who had made several sojourns in London about the middle of the last century, in order to read in the British Museum, summed up his impressions of the capital, he was forced into the ex- Magnitude, clamatory mood. " Enormous, enormous ! " he wrote. Everything was on a large scale — " the clubs are palaces, the hotels are monuments ; the river is an arm of the sea." To say that London — we still speak of the Administrative County and not of Greater London — has nearly twice as many inhabitants as Paris, and almost as many as Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg combined ; that its population is consider ably larger than that of such States as Bulgaria, Saxony, and Switzer land, about double that of Denmark, of Greece, or of Servia, and more than double that of Norway, may be to give a rather vulgar reason for finding it interesting. Yet the magnitude of London — its vast area, its league upon league of streets, its millions of inhabitants — has after all to be taken into account if we would understand the impression it makes ; for here magnitude connotes not merely bigness, but endless variety, the widest comprehensiveness, a mystery that whets the edge of curiosity and leaves ample scope for wonder and surmise. No man was ever vain knows enough to suppose that he knew London. Those who know London? most of it — the late Sir Walter Besant, for example, who studied it for many years with unflagging enthusiasm, and has made its dead past live again, or the Right Hon. Charles Booth, whose patient and disinterested investigations of its life and labour are beyond all praise — would be the last to make such a preposterous claim. Many know London in a few of its aspects; a few know it in many of its aspects ; no one knows it in all its aspects. As it is without a staple industry, but comprises well-nigh every species and variety of industry and trade and commerce, so has it in other respects as well the same universality. Much more than an epitome of the country, it should rather, with its cosmopolitan population, be called a microcosm of the globe. As to its physical aspect, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer justly says ¦¦ ry ¦T THE CUSTOMS HOUSE, 1753. in "The Soul of London" that the last thing that the provincial who comes to the capital will get " is any picture, any impression of London as a whole, any idea to carry about with him — of a city, in a plain dominated by a great building, bounded by a horizon, brought into composition by mists, great shadows, great clouds, or, a bright and stippled foreground." Yet mists, clouds, shadows London has in abundance, and rich and infinitely varied are the effects they produce. Darwin saw grandeur even in its fogs, and to M. Rodin they appealed by their sphere vague suggestiveness, though for saying so he- was told by one critic that this was but another proof that he ought to have been a painter rather than a sculptor! But the fogs which elicited this admiration are of course not the dense palls of mephitic vapour that make us grope like blind men and gasp for breath, but those which but half conceal the objects they envelope. Though London must confess to the grey and gloomy skies of which Mr. Lionel Johnson musically accuses her, yet, thanks to her smoke, colour is rarely absent from her atmosphere. Where else in these islands do turbid sunsets array them selves in such apocalyptic pomps, such sombre and wrathful reds and yellows and golds ? And where else does stone take on such generous tints as St. Paul's or Bow Church or "the Abbey" borrow on a bright winter's day? Henley in his "London Voluntaries" sings with, clamorous joy of the magic wrought by an October sun — how "... Clement's, angular and cold and staid, Glimmers in glamour's very stuffs arrayed ; And Bride's, her aery, unsubstantial charm, Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone Grown flushed and warm, Laughs into life high-mooded and fresh-blown; And the high majesty of Paul's Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls — Calls to her millions to behold and see How goodly this his London Town can be ! " The visible memorials of distant days form the most obvious element of London's charm. M. Taine surmises that Napoleon III, demolished and rebuilt Paris because, familiar with London, he wished to give to his capital the same spaciousness and dignity. Voltaire had called for a statesman to " improve " Paris. " The centre of the town, obscure, confined, hideous," he wrote, " represents H3y W, V W' ';*¦© rRoN tTbt BATTERSEA mm kWaNDSWORTH . (Vs. a period of the most shameful barbarism." After many days, the statesman came in the person of Baron Haussmann, and, if M. Taine's conjecture is accurate, one can only rejoice that London, Things. m turn, has not rivalled Paris in the wholesale destruction of its antiquities. But we must not plume ourselves overmuch. Even in recent times a great deal that is most precious has been sacrificed, not a little of it quite needlessly. We still hear from time to time of schemes for doing away with another of Wren's churches, with some house memorable for its associations, with some quaint old street, and the year 1908 witnessed the destruction of Crosby Hall, the City's chief treasure in the way of domestic architecture. It is some consolation to know that the new buildings for which the old have to make way are many of them not without seemliness and dignity. In the City, especially, banks and assurance offices have been and still are springing up which will prove to future generations that in the early years of the twentieth century even joint-stock and limited liability companies were not unaffected by the growth of architectural taste. Still more consoling is it to reflect that though we may have to part with yet more of London's ancient things, yet its associations, its memories of the great men who have dwelt within its borders, of the historic events of which it has been the theatre, remain, and that the passing Associa- years can do naught but add to the rich store. What a tions. heritage it is ! Of native Londoners of genius the name is legion. Naming but a few, we find among Churchmen Thomas Becket and Lancelot Andrewes ; of bards there are Chaucer and Spenser, Milton, the City's greatest son, who shall be bracketed with no one,* Ben Jonson and Herrick, Cowley, Prior and Pope, Gray and Churchill, Blake and Rogers, Byron and Keats and Tom Hood, the Brownings and Rossettis and Swinburne ; among prose-writers and philosophers, Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon, Defoe, Sir Thomas Browne and Charles Lamb, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman and Ruskin ; among architects and painters, the great Inigo Jones, Hogarth and Gillray, Cruikshank and Leech, Turner and Landseer, Frederick Walker and G. F. Watts and Holman Hunt ; among composers, Purcell and Arne and Sullivan ; among actors, Edmund Kean ; among statesmen — with apologies for putting them last — John Hampden and Sir William Temple, Chatham and Canning, Fox and Lord John Russell, Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. And of the illustrious dead who saw the light else where, the great majority have become her sons by adoption. She has * " His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." — Wordsworth. J9, hm *fci* LBERMONDSEY ra:,d drawn to herself those eager for fame equally with those avid of fortune, and few indeed are our great men of any period with whom she does not possess intimate associations. Widely different are the reasons men give when they try to put their sense of London's charm into words. Herrick, in the " Hesperides," praises her for her power " to please All nations, customs, kindreds, Why Men languages," but the filial sentiment comes out strongly in his London. lines. Cowper, in " The Sofa," rather aridly exalts her as a home of Science and Philosophy, and as a great Mart. But the poets have not been happy when they have taken London for their theme, as Mr. William Watson confesses when he invokes her as " City that waitest to be sung." Sydney Smith — to come to the prosemen — was not so much a lover of London as a hater of the country. To Dr. Johnson, London was attractive mainly as an intellectual centre, but he felt also the charm of its many-sided life — the stir and bustle, the clash and jar of its streets, the vitality with which it throbs. Lord Beaconsfield, a native of London, praises bits of the town ; but though he felt it to be overpowering in its vastness, he also found it monotonous — which is precisely the impression that his Oriental mind might have been expected to receive. His great rival was never tired of roaming its streets, but one does not know that Mr. Gladstone was interested in its better part, its history and associations, so much as in the London before his eyes. Carlyle was given to taking long solitary walks through its streets at night, but though he was not blind to the loveliness of Chelsea, he perhaps was too much occupied with the immensities to have much thought for a mere speck like London. Macaulay, whom he little liked, had a truer sense of London's charm. " London is the place for me," he writes to a friend. " Its smoky atmosphere and muddy river charm me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire and the crystal currents of the Rib. Nothing is equal to the splendid varieties of London life, the ' fine flow of London talk,' and the dazzling brilliancy of London spectacles." Still more enthusiastic was Dickens's delight in London. He speaks of it as his " magic lantern," and avows that if he was long away from its living pictures, his pen, like Pharaoh's chariot-wheels, drave heavily, and London s t^at ^ ^j tQ fun UD tQ t0wn for a fresh draught of Ardent inspiration. Yet even Dickens has not glorified London as did Charles Lamb. Him we put first among lovers of London, past or present, prosemen or poets. "Enchanting London," he exclaims, " whose dirtiest, drab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn ! " And again — " O ! her lamps of a night, her rich goldsmiths, toy shops, mercers, hardware M> men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul's Churchyard, the Strand, Exeter 'Change, Charing Cross, with the man upon a black horse ! These are thy gods, O London ! " Such — and how much more ! — is the London with which we have to do in these pages. We shall, of course, begin with the ancient City, giving the pride of place to St. Paul's Cathedral, and passing on, through thronged Cheapside, to Guildhall, where we shall pause to watch the evolution of ancient civic institutions from their dim beginnings, and to recount some of the City's determined struggles for its liberties against despotic kings. Having traversed the streets of "the one square mile," and given some account of its other institutions, we shall pass on to the neighbouring city of Westminster, and shall tell the story of its venerable Abbey, where our kings and queens have been hallowed and many of them have been buried ; of its ancient royal palace, of the modern Houses of Parliament, of Westminster Hall and Whitehall, and of its many other features, old and new. After Westminster our pilgrimage will take us to the royal borough of Kensington, and then in turn to the other boroughs which, with Westminster and the City, make up the area over which the City Cor poration and the London County Council wield authority. Finally, my collaborator, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, will essay to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds the future of London. In our wanderings through the streets of the metropolis we shall witness scenes of pomp and pageantry — royal progresses and civic processions, the houses draped with gorgeous hangings, the conduits spouting wine ; shall often hear the clash of arms, and see the gutters running with some thing redder than wine ; shall have enacted before our eyes many a deed that stirs the blood like a trumpet, many a tragedy that moves to pity. At every turn we shall meet with those whose names are familiar in our mouths as household words — kings and queens, warriors and legislators, poets and prosemen, artists and actors, orators and wits ; and it will be our delightful task to recount great things that they have done, to recall memorable things that they have said. But enough of prologue. Let us ring up the curtain for Act I. 24 cassell &compamy,limited,lith lowd A BIRD S-EYE VIEW OF THE CITY FROM BELOW BRIDGE, ABOUT 1759. From the Engraving by F. Patton. Book I.— THE CITY CHAPTER I THE FIRST AND SECOND CATHEDRALS OF ST. PAUL Antiquity of St. Paul's — Its Situation — The Legend of a Temple to Diana — The First Christian Church on Ludgate Hill — St. Erkenwald — William the Norman — The Cathedral destroyed by Fire — The Second Cathedral — The Bishop of London Excommunicated — Dimensions of the Cathedral — The Bell Towers — St. Gregory's and St. Faith's — The Wall and Gate-houses — Jesus Chapel — Pardon Church yard — The Interior — A Strange Ceremony — A Marriage " at the Top of Paul's " — Destruction of the Spire — Profaned to Base Uses — The Reformers — Renovation — The End WHAT better starting-point can we have for our pilgrimage through the City than the gusty hill-top which is crowned with London's cathedral church ? The Royal Exchange, the stately structure which focusses the City's commerce ? Nay : it was not till late in the sixteenth century that the capital found herself provided with a Bourse, so that, as things go in the City, " the Exchange" is a mere stripling. The Guild hall ? The claims of the Guildhall are not to be dismissed so summarily. The present Hall, though it was largely rebuilt after the Great Fire and took its present form in the last century, is close upon five hundred years old, and its predecessor — which, however, did not stand on quite the same site — carries us back a further three hundred years. But London has had her cathedral church on the top of the hill named after the Lud Gate not 3 25 for eight hundred years merely, but for thirteen hundred years, and from the earliest days down to the Reformation it was the true centre of the City's life. And as St. Paul's has the strongest claims to precedence in point of antiquity, so is it incomparably the City's finest ornament, its loftiest and noblest landmark. Not happy in its immediate surroundings, it is most fortun ate in its situation on an eminence which falls rapidly away to the Thames and to the old bed of the Fleet ; and for miles in every direc tion can its lovely peristyle, its soaring dome and gleaming cross, be seen, from the Surrey hills and the northern heights, from Shooter's Hill and the slopes of Greenwich Park. It was a distant view of London's crown, seen in a tremulous atmosphere, that inspired one of the most musical of Mr. John Davidson's stanzas : — 26 LONDON TOWN A Temple to Diana ? question,cathedralpreceded " Oh sweetheart, see ! how shadowy, Of some occult magician's rearing, Or swung in space of heaven's grace, Dissolving, dimly reappearing, Afloat upon ethereal tides St. Paul's above the city rides ! " But it is not with the present St. Paul's that we are concerned in this chapter, but with the two cathedrals dedicated to the Apostle to the Gentiles that preceded it. And at the outset we have to ask whether we may believe the old tradition, which many writers on London, anxious to make a good start, have accepted without that this first of St. Paul was by a temple to Diana, built during the Roman occupation. The story rests mainly upon a report that in the reign of Edward III. a great quantity of bones of cattle and beasts of the chase, with instruments and vessels sup posed to be sacrificial, were unearthed on this site. In Wren's time the tradition was defended by his friend Dr. Woodward, Pope's Martinus Scriblerus, who appealed in support of it to an image of Diana which had been found some where between the Deanery and Blackfriars. But Wren would have none of it. He had dug deep into the soil — had, to use his own words, " rummaged all the ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find some footsteps of such a temple," could not " discover any." Nor is this all. Though Wren had dis covered no Roman masonry, he had found, many feet from the surface, that during the Roman occupation, and later, Ludgate Hill was used as a cemetery. But, as Dean Milman points out, in his " Annals of St. Paul's Cathedral," a Roman cemetery by no means implied a temple, but the contrary, for law and usage alike forbade burial within the city walls. Wren's discovery of the Roman graves must therefore have confirmed his disbelief of the legend of a heathen temple. In the year 1830 the old myth found a THE ALTAR OF GOLDSMITHS new lease of life in the discovery, made in the course of excavations for the site of the Gold smiths' Hall in Foster Lane, some two or three hundred yards from the cathedral, of a stone altar with an image of Diana, " in form and attitude closely resembling the Diana of the Louvre," says Milman. Now it may well be, as has been suggested, that this shrine was set up at or near where it was found — that is, at the point where the old British road led the hunter forth through the northern gates into the forest — and it is easy to conceive "the ancient votary of Diana to have made his oblation on going forth, or an offering of part of the spoils on returning, to the tutelary goddess of his sports." But from this to the Roman temple on the site of St. Paul's, what a jump ! Had Sir Christopher Wren been living in 1830 he would, we may be sure, have been as proof against the image found in Foster Lane as he had been against the one found between the Deanery and Blackfriars. Neither of the relics was unearthed on the site of St. Paul's, and if both had been, how could they have proved a Roman temple ? Milman, however, could not resist the temptation to toss a little pleasantry at the head of his " dear friend the Dean of West minster." It so happens that this legend of a Roman temple to Diana on the site of St. Paul's has a precise analogue in the myth of a Roman temple to Apollo on the site of the Minster in the West, and the Dean of St. Paul's points out to his brother of West minster that the latter " must produce an image of Apollo as like that of the Belvedere as this to the Diana of the Louvre before he can fairly compete with us for the antiquity of heathen worship ! " How Dean Stanley must have enjoyed the sally ! So let us leave the old legend, dismiss ing it from our story in no spirit of churlish contempt. It has pleased many writers to record it, it has pleased many readers to believe it, as a shining mark of the triumph of their faith, and it THE FIRST ST. PAUL'S 27 The First Cathedral has furnished occasion for a truly decanal jest. Coming to sober history, we find from the Venerable Bede that quite early in the seventh century a cathedral was built on this site by Ethelbert of Kent, attached to a monastery dedicated to St. Paul. At that time Mellitus, the com panion of St. Augustine, was Bishop of London. He was not, perhaps, the first bishop who held this title, for at the Council of Aries in 314 were present three British prelates, of whom one, Resti- tutus — to us a name and nothing more — is styled Bishop of London. The king of the East Saxons, under Ethelbert, was that ruler's nephew, Sebert, and the sons who succeeded Sebert having relapsed into idolatry, Mellitus was banished. When he would have returned to his see he found London closed against him, and had to retire to Kent, where presently he became Archbishop of Canterbury. The fourth successor of Mellitus, as Bishop of London, was St. Erkenwald, who is said to have done much to enlarge and beautify this first cathedral of St. Paul. In- waid!*en" directly at any rate, if not directly, both this cathedral and its suc cessor were much indebted to the bishop. Even during his life he "committed miracles," to use Gibbon's expression. At his death there were three sets of claimants of his mortal remains — the canons of St. Paul's, the brothers of a monastery he had founded at Chertsey, and the nuns of Barking, where, about the year 693, in a convent also founded by him and ruled by his sister, he drew his last breath. The canons of St. Paul's had the right oi force majeure, for they were reinforced by a multitude of the citizens, and when the bier was seized and borne Londonwards the monks and nuns could only follow and tear fully appeal to Heaven for redress. It seemed as though the appeal would not be in vain. A great storm arose, and the River Lea became so swollen that it could not be forded. In this extremity the disputants were ex horted to refer the question to the decision of Heaven. No sooner had the canons begun to intone the litany than, as though to favour their pretensions, the flood abated, so that the procession was able to cross, not dryshod, it is true, but without danger or difficulty. At Stratford this interposition in their favour was confirmed by the sun bursting through the clouds, and, without further challenge, the rejoicing canons continued their journey and laid their precious freight in the bishop's own church. Small wonder that Erkenwald was in due course canonised, or that his shrine soon became an object of reverence and a copious source of revenue. Of another Bishop of London whose chair stood in this first cathedral of St. Paul something must be said. At the Conquest the see was held not by a Saxon Norman.*1"5 ^ut by a member of the conquering race, whom we know as William the Norman, and who had been chaplain to Edward the Confessor. Like other eccle siastics of the old regime, he was dispossessed and banished the country, but his piety pleaded for him, and he was allowed to return and resume his office. Between his fierce namesake on the throne and the citizens of London he played the part of mediator, and by obtaining for them a renewal of their privileges he won the gratitude of successive generations of citizens, whose wont it long was to go once a year to do homage at his tomb. What the first St. Paul's was like we have no means of knowing ; but, even after the additions and adornments of successive gene rations, it could have been but a comparatively small and simple structure. In the year 962 it had been greatly damaged by fire, and rather more than a hundred years later, in 1086 or 1087, it was utterly destroyed in a conflagration which ravaged the greater part of the city. The building of the second St. Paul's was at once begun by Bishop Maurice, the style being, of course, the prevalent Norman. The cathedral was still unfinished Ca.hfdCr:r.d ^en, in 1136, some fifty years after it was begun, it was assailed by the same ruthless enemy that had made an end of the first St. Paul's. When the scathe had been repaired, William of Malmes- bury, who, no doubt, was acquainted with the glorious cathedrals at Rouen and Caen, was moved to write of it that " such is the state- liness of its beauty that it is worthy of being numbered amongst the most famous of buildings." At this time, however, Old St. Paul's, as we call it, had much less than the magnificence to o-I- 3 Ocq < ajo "OLD ST. PAUL'S" 29 which it ultimately attained. It had not long been finished when the admiration to which William of Malmesbury gave expression was turned into dissatisfaction. First, the tower was carried up into a lofty spire of timber covered with lead, which was com pleted in 1 22 1, and then the short apsidal choir was prolonged until, like the nave, it consisted of twelve bays, the arches not round, however, like those of the nave, but pointed. Not until some 220 years after Bishop Maurice had made a beginning with it was the mighty work consummated. Long before this, in the year 1169, St. Paul's witnessed one of the most dramatic incidents ever enacted within its walls, when the Bishop of London was excom- The Bishop municated in his own cathedral. municated. Archbishop Becket, in his struggle with Henry II., had fled to the Continent, and in his absence the administra tion of the diocese of Canterbury devolved upon Foliot, Bishop of London, whose sym pathies were strongly with the king. On Ascension Day in the year named, while Vitalis the priest was saying mass, a stranger, who turned out to be a young Frenchman of the name of Berengar, marched up to the altar and presented a paper. Thinking it was an offering, the priest took it. Then the stranger demanded that it should be read before mass was pro ceeded with, and no sooner had he opened the document than the daring Frenchman in a loud voice proclaimed : " Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excom municated by Thomas, Archbishop of Can terbury ! " The consternation caused by this unex pected interruption quickly gave place to anger, and Becket 's emissary narrowly escaped with a whole skin. Foliot, who was not present at the service, for a time defied the interdict, which was certainly irregular enough, and lacking in the very elements of justice, since he had been condemned without citation and without hearing ; but afterwards he abstained from entering his church. Presently the ex communication was withdrawn by the Pope ; but soon afterwards Foliot was again excom municated for having with the Archbishop of York and other prelates crowned the king's son. It was the bishop's complaint of this fresh act of hostility that provoked the king to the outburst which prompted the murder of Becket by the graceless four ; and when Henry did penance at Canterbury it was Foliot who preached the sermon. One would like to know whether he dealt with the king more gently than did the monks who ad ministered the flagellation in the crypt below. Old St. Paul's was much the largest cathedral in England. The spire, far loftier than that of Salisbury, was probably 150 feet nearer the heavens than the sions"" golden cross of its successor. Its astonishing height, given by some authorities as 520 feet from the pave ment, was proverbial, and the late Dr. Sparrow Simpson, in his " Chapters on the History of Old St. Paul's," quotes from Lodge's " Wounds of Civil War " an allusion, put into the mouth of a clown, to " Paul's steeple of honour," meaning the highest point that could be attained. At the west end of the cathedral were two bell-towers, additions, probably, to the original scheme, and probably, too, detached from the building. The one on Towels" the south side is the true Lollards' tower, and not that tower of Lam beth Palace which, from no sins of its own, has had to bear the name. This " Lowlardes' Tower," says Stow, " has been used as the bishop's prison, for such as were detected for opinions in religion contrary to the faith of the church." It seems indeed that the north tower also was used as a prison, for John Philpot, one of Bishop Bonner's victimSj graphically describes his incarceration in it. He reaches his quarters through many nar row passages, and comforts himself with the thought of the strait gate and the narrow path. He finds himself in a room thirteen feet by eight, as high almost as the battle ments of the cathedral, " having a window opening towards the east, by the which I may look over the tops of a great many houses, but see no man passing into them." One curious feature of Old St. Paul's was that at its south-western angle, stuck on to the south-west tower and the western bays of the south aisle, was the little parish church of St. Gregory, originally, no doubt, Nor man, but presently rebuilt in a later style. Another parish church, that of St. Faith, was in the cathedral itself, in the crypt 33 LONDON TOWN beneath the choir. Hence the description of St. Paul's which we owe to that master of homely wit, Thomas Fuller, St. Faith's, that she was truly " the mother- church, having one babe in her body — St. Faith's — and another in her arms — St. Gregory's." St. Faith's, however, was not always within the cathedral. Originally it stood at the eastern end of St. Paul's, and it had to be sacrificed when the choir was ex tended. To compensate the parishioners of St. Faith's, so much of the crypt as supported the extension of the choir was awarded to them, and this arrangement remained in force until the Great Fire. After that event the parish was attached to the church of St. Augustine-at-the-Gate, as it is to this day. In the walls of the cathedral close were six gate-houses. The principal one opened upon Ludgate Hill, a second one was at St. Paul's Alley in Paternoster Row, housed6" a third at Canon Alley, the fourth gave entrance from Cheapside, of the fifth (St. Augustine's) we are reminded to this day by the church of that name, the sixth was over against the south porch. The wall was not finished till about the end of the thirteenth century, for at that time Edward I. issued a patent authorising the Dean and Canons to complete the cincture, and to close the gates and posterns at night, so as to shut out the bad characters whose evil deeds had scandalised the public conscience. Of Paul's Cross, the most famous feature of the Churchyard, something is said in a later chapter ; but of the numerous chapels within the precincts two must be mentioned here. One, Jesus Chapel, was originally attached to the first St. Faith's Church, and it shared both St. Faith's fate and its compen sation. Another of the chapels, in the part of the precincts known as Pardon Pardon Churchyard, on the north side of yard. the cathedral, came to its end in the same age. Built by Thomas Becket's father, Gilbert, portreeve in the reign of King Stephen, it was presently re built. The cloister which surrounded Pardon Churchyard was, to use Dugdale's expression, " artificially [artistically] and richly '; painted, at the charges of John Carpenter, Town Clerk, with the famous series of pictures known as " The Dance of Death," showing a grisly skeleton conducting to the shades The Interior. all sorts of unrejoicing mortals, from poten tates and ecclesiastics to those of common degree. In 1549 the Protector Somerset made a clean sweep of everything, chapel, cloister, tombs, and monuments, in order to provide materials for the construction of his palace in the Strand ; and it is said that more than a thousand cart-loads of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields. As to the interior of St. Paul's, Hollar's engravings, and other sources of information, leave us in no doubt that with its dwindling vista of lofty vaulting, its massive pillars, its wealth of stained glass, its richly embellished altars and shrines, its monuments and chantries, it pre sented a scene of quite exceptional magni ficence and impressiveness. The nave, as we remember, was Norman, the choir was a lovely example of the Decorated, with a glorious rose window — no common feature in our English cathedrals — in the east wall. To reach the choir, raised upon the crypt, a flight of twelve steps had to be ascended ; and its roof was slightly higher than that of the nave. In the roof of the nave was a large aper ture through which, on Whit Sunday, a white pigeon flew into the church to typify the descent of the Holy Ghost. Fol- a Cunous iowjnpr the bird came a long silver Ceremony. o o censer which — in the words of Lambarde, who was present as a child one Whitsuntide, about the middle of the six teenth century — descended almost to the ground, and " was swung up and down to such a length that it reached at one sweep almost to the west gate of the church, and with the other to the choir stairs of the same, breathing out over the whole church and company a most pleasant perfume of such sweet things as burned therein." The censer is described as being of solid silver, " with many windows and battlements." A massive censer swung from one end of the nave to the other ! By what means could this extraordinary ceremony have been per formed ? It is as curious in its way as another circumstance brought to light by the same student of old St. Paul's, Dr. Sparrow Simp son. In his " St. Paul's and Old City Life " he quotes a letter, preserved in the Record Office, written in 1630 by a Sir Thomas Gardiner, presumably father of the Recorder THE KNIGHT AND HIS DAUGHTER 3i of this name, to Charles I., to excuse him self from appearing before the Council. Mentioning his youngest daughter, whom the king had once seen at his Ai1a"iage house, he relates how, without his .at the Top ' of Paul's, consent or knowledge, she had " mounted up to the top of Paul's, the nearer to heaven, for to show God there how wise she was in her actions, and there she was married unto Sir Henry Main- waring." He adds that she was " not there taken up into heaven," as he clearly considered she had deserved to be, but ¦" came down again upon earth, here further to trouble me before I die." Dr. Simpson, naturally enough, was puzzled. The context forbids one to suppose that by "the top of Paul's" this father with a grievance meant the upper end of the choir. How, Simpson asks, could a couple be married at the top of old St Paul's, and where could they find a priest who would officiate ? He drops the problem as insoluble. May not the explanation be that the writer of the letter was out of his wits, and that his letter was preserved through inadvertence, or as an epistolary curiosity ? We have already seen how repeatedly St. Paul's was assailed by fire. Its custodians particularly apprehensive that the glorious spire might be struck by lightning, and so fall a prey to the flames. Though of lightning con ductors they knew nothing, they adopted other measures which no doubt, in their esti mation, rendered any merely natural pre cautions superfluous. In the huge bowl on which the cross at the summit rested — Dug- dale terms it a " pommel," and says it was large enough to contain ten bushels of corn — they deposited many precious relics, among the rest a piece of the True Cross. Their faith, alas, was little justified by the result, for twice the spire was assailed with fire from heaven itself. The first time was in 1444, when it was so seriously damaged that its restoration occupied eighteen years. The second occasion was in 1561, when, in a terrific storm that burst over London, the lightning was seen to flash into an aperture in the steeple of the cathedral. " The fire," says Milman, " burned downwards for four hours with irresistible force, the bells melted, were Assailedby Fire. ST. FAITH S CHURCH, IX THE CRYPT OF OLD ST. PAUL S. From Hollar's Engraving (1651). the timber blazed, the stones crumbled and fell. The lead flowed down in sheets of flame, threatening, but happily not damaging, the organ. The fire ran along the roof, east, west, north, and south, which fell in, filling the whole church with a mass of ruin." This was the beginning of the end of old St. Paul's. Queen Elizabeth, it is true, immediately set her subjects a good example by giving a thousand marks in gold out of her own purse towards the cost of repairing the ravages of the fire, and the Dean and Chapter, the citizens and others, made liberal contributions. The stone vaulting was re paired, and the outer roof, of timber covered with lead, was renewed ; but the cloud- piercing spire was never rebuilt. For many years before this, at least as early as the end of the fourteenth century, the cathedral had been degraded to base uses. The desecration seems to have fio°fana° been begun by the transepts, each of which had a grand entrance, being converted into a thoroughfare, as a short cut from one side of the churchyard to the other. Those who carried burdens LONDON TOWN would put them down to rest in the cool of the cathedral ; and from this to the displaying of goods for sale, the transition was only too easy. At last, when the old reverences had lost their hold upon the mind of the populace, the walls were profaned with advertisements, buying and selling were openly carried on, and St. Paul's became a market place, and worse — a " den of thieves," and a haunt for the wantons of the streets. One favourite loung- ing-place for gossips was the tomb, at the north-east end of the nave, which had come to be known as that of the good Duke Hum phrey, but which was really that of a Sir John Beauchamp, the popular Duke of Gloucester having been buried in St. Albans Abbey ; and the impecunious who lingered here when more fortunate idlers had gone to their dinner were said " to dine with Duke Humphrey." Again and again proclamations against brawling and the like in Paul's Walk, as the glorious nave came to be called, were issued, but they seem not to have been enforced, and St. Paul's continued to present a daily spectacle of flaunting vice and blatant vul garity which could only be bettered at St. Bartholomew's Fair. The advertisements for things wanted were posted on a certain door, which on that account was known as the Si quis door ; and it is curious to find that among the most frequent of the announce ments displayed here were those of parsons hungering after fat livings. Another learned profession, too, the law, turned the sacred building to its own account. St. Paul's was a regular meeting-place for the lawyer and his client, who would carry on their conference at one or other of the pillars. How it was that the custodians of the cathedral allowed it to be debased to such uses, who shall explain ? But surely there must have been many pious souls, both those who held to the old doctrines and those who leaned to the new, who viewed the desecration with pain and shame, and longed for the advent of a prophet with a whip of small cords — who never came. In due time the Reformers took up the work of destruction so well begun by the spire when it crashed through the Reformers. roofs of ttle church. When the Great Rood, with its images of the Virgin and St. John, was taken down, it fell a little too soon and killed one of the work men, an accident which was, of course, a convincing proof of the Divine displeasure. But the iconoclasts prosecuted their task undismayed. Altars and tombs were de molished, jewels, vestments, and other con tents of the treasury were sold, and much gold and silver embroidery found its way to Spanish cathedrals. In Mary's reign the Great Rood was restored to its pride of place by Bonner on his release from prison ; but when Elizabeth came to the throne it was once more, and finally, taken down, and yet again was St. Paul's purged of relics and symbols. One very ancient custom that came to an end at the Reformation was that of the visit paid by the Lord Mayor and Corporation to the tomb of old Bishop William, the Norman prelate who interceded for the City with the Conqueror. On the day of his inauguration the Mayor, with the Aldermen, all of them in their scarlet robes, would go forth to the church of St. Thomas Aeon, whence they would make their way to St. Paul's and say a De Profundis at the good Bishop's tomb, and then proceed to the churchyard, where was buried Gilbert Becket, the father of St. Thomas. When the Reformation came in, this visit to Bishop William's tomb was abandoned, as savouring of superstition. This, by the way, was but one of several occasions on which the City dignitaries attended service at St. Paul's in state, the most splendid of the annual ceremonies being that of Whit Sunday, when the long procession, consisting of the Lord Mayor, the Recorder, the aldermen, the liverymen, the sheriffs, and the great City Companies, with the rectors of London parishes at its head, having been formed at St. Peter's, Cornhill, marched along Cheapside to the north-east corner of the Churchyard. Met at this point by the cathedral clergy, it made its way round the south side of the Churchyard to the great west door, where " Veni Creator " was sung antiphonally, the Mayor and Aldermen then advancing to the high altar to make their offering. At this service it was that the white pigeon descended from the roof, and that the silver censer was swung from end to end of the nave. After the fall of the spire, Queen Elizabeth, as we have seen, placed herself at the head of the renovation movement. James I. made an BRAWLING AND TRAFFICKING IN " PAUL'S " IN TUDOR TIMES. 33 34 LONDON TOWN Renova tion. restoring effort to stimulate it, and Inigo Jones added to the west end a lovely but incongruous Renascence portico. He appears, also, to have patched up the walls, and was prepared do a great deal that was extremely desirable in the way of cathedral. But James's son provided the nation with business than the restoration and, happily, Wren's great predecessor was denied the opportunity of wasting his genius upon so unfitting a task. When the Puritans gained the upper hand there was no place in the nation's economy for St. Paul's. To pull it down would have been too difficult and too costly, but very thoroughly was it neglected, and hideously was it misused. In the beau tiful new portico mean shops were installed, to un- the and successor more urgent of cathedrals, and the body of the church was turned into barracks for Parliamentary troopers. At the Restoration one of the first things Charles II. did was to appoint a commission for the renovation of the cathedral, now little better than a dismal ruin. Inigo Jones, who had suffered for his devotion to the Royalist cause, had died in poverty and obscurity, and the brilliant young man who was known among men as Dr. Christopher Wren was called in to give advice. In 1666 he drew up a report in which he proposed to add to the cathedral features " after a good Roman manner," with a spacious dome and lantern to take the place of the old steeple. Fortune was too kind to permit of this misdirection of his genius, and a few days after the plans were accepted there broke out the Great Fire, which reduced their value to that of waste paper. THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, SHOWING OLD ST. PAUL S IN THE DISTANCE. After the Picture by P. de Loitiherbourgi R.A. CHAPTER II THE BUILDER AND THE BUILDING OF THE THIRD ST. PAUL'S A One-man Cathedral — Christopher Wren — His Successive Designs — Clearing the Ground — The Building Begun — The Story of William Wood the Carver — Wren's Enemies and their Petty Spite — His Glory TN the present cathedral of St. Paul we have a fabric which, unlike almost any other that has come down to us from a more or less remote past, is the work of one man. The more ancient cathedrals are, for the most part, not associated predominantly with any one name. They were the growth of many decades, and their progress can be traced in the styles which were successively evolved as they slowly rose to their full stature. St. Paul's was not a growth, but a creation. It was not merely conceived in the brain of one man, but was reared, from base to lantern, under his personal supervision. No one has ever claimed to share his glory. Help he must, of course, have had, but it was a help limited to details, and as he gazed upon the completed structure he might have said, had he not been one of the most modest of men, " Alone I did it." Sir Christopher Wren was the Admirable Crichton of his age. To find a parallel to him in versatility we must go back to the great artists of the Renascence. Like Christopher. them> he war' n0 mere specialist. It was not till he was turned thirty that he began to apply himself mainly to architecture, and then, as Dean Milman says, he " suddenly breaks out, as it were, a con summate architect." From his achievements in other fields, it cannot be doubted that, had he not made Architecture his mistress, he would still have become famous as one of the half-dozen greatest Englishmen of that age. Born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on the 20th of October, 1632, he was at first educated at home, being a delicate child. At thirteen he entered Westminster School, then under the famous Dr. Busby. As a boy of fourteen, having already shown a brilliant faculty for mathe matics, as well as for mechanical invention, he was admitted a gentleman commoner at Wad- ham College, Oxford. He graduated at the age of eighteen, at twenty-one was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls, and in 1657 was chosen Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London. In 1662, when he was just thirty, we find Isaac Barrow, on becoming Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, declaring him to be " one of whom it is doubt ful whether he is most to be commended for the divine felicity of his genius, or for the sweet humanity of his disposition — formerly, as a boy, a prodigy ; now, as a man, a miracle, nay, even something superhuman." And Sir Isaac Newton, in the " Principia," refers to Wren and two others as " beyond comparison the leading geometers of this age." For him is claimed the credit of no less than fifty- two scientific inventions and discoveries, some of them of no small importance. Having held his chair at Gresham College for three years, Wren resigned it and became Savilian Professor of Astronomy. A few months after this he was invited by Charles II. to become assistant to Sir John Denham, who with no qualifications for the post had been fortunate enough to get himself ap pointed Surveyor General of Public Works. The offer was accepted, and in 1669, at Den- ham's death, Wren was appointed Surveyor General himself. From the first Wren was opposed to any attempt at patching up the old cathedral. His first design for a new church was in the form of a Greek cross. In Desigi!"' this, to quote his own words, he sought to gratify " the taste of the Conoisseurs and Critics with something coloss and beautiful, con formable to the best stile of the Greek and Roman architecture," and in 1673 the King gave orders for this design to be carried out. A model of it was made which may now be seen in the Cathedral. The work of clearing the ground was begun, 35 36 LONDON TOWN but while it was in progress the clergy agitated against the design because it was a departure from the usual cathedral type, the choir being circular, and there being neither nave nor aisles. Wren tried to pacify his critics by adding a second and smaller dome to the west of the other (see p. 37), but they were not to be appeased by any such modification, and he had to try his hand in the church as actually built, is a question about which good judges may differ. But that what we may call his second thoughts, re presented by the design authorised by the warrant of May, 1675, were vastly inferior to his first, no one is likely to doubt. It is, in fact, utterly unworthy of him, and the probability is that the current of his genius was at this time turned awry TheSecond. THE BUILDER OF ST. PAUL S. From the Painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in the National Portrait Gallery. again. Several designs appear to have quickly sprung from his fertile brain, and by royal warrant dated May 14th, 1675, one of these, described as " very artificial [artistic], proper, and useful," was accepted. In the first design the dome was of about the same diameter as the present one, but it was not so lofty, and the lantern was less elaborate and less beautiful. The exterior of the church conformed to the Corinthian order, and was not in two storeys, like the existing cathedral, but consisted of one only, with an attic above. Wren appears to have considered that his first thoughts were best. That they were better than his final thoughts, embodied by disappointment and disgust at the re jection of his favourite design. The western facade is tame and commonplace, and the im position of a spire upon a small dome conveys an impression of mere lankiness. Happily the King had expressly given Wren the right to make alterations, and though it was stipu lated that these were to be " rather orna mental than essential," he appears to have left his surveyor free to interpret this per mission as he pleased. About Wren's inter pretation there was certainly nothing pedantic. He ceased to make his plans and drawings public, and went his own way ; and the result is a building which differs hardly less from the CLEARING THE GROUND 37 authorised design, except in ground plan, than from the design of which the clerical party procured the rejection. The spire, rising in graduated stages from a small dome, not unlike the spire of St. Bride's, was soon WREN'S FIRST DESIGN AS AMENDED (j>. From Schynvoet's Print, 1726. abandoned, and the idea of general height adopted in its place. It was on May Day, in the year 1674, that Wren began to clear the ground. To demolish the walls, which were still standing to a height of eighty feet, was no easy task, so massive were they. Still more difficult was it to deal with the great central tower, which reached a height of about two hundred feet. Wren determined to blow this up with gunpowder, and his scientific know ledge enabled him to calculate to a nicety the force required. Exploding a charge of eighteen pounds level with the TheWorK foundation at the centre of the of Clearance, north - west pillar, he brought down not only the tower itself with two great arches that rested upon it, but also two adjoining arches, the whole suddenly " jumping down without scattering." In his absence his second in command conducted a similar operation, but without the same nice calculation of forces, the result being that there was a terrific explosion which sent a stone flying across the churchyard and through an open window into a room where some women were sitting at work ; and though no one was injured there was naturally a great outcry, and the use of gunpowder had to be abandoned in favour of the battering-ram. Reference to the plans figured on page 40 will show at a glance that the new cathedral is considerably shorter than was old St. Paul's, though both nave and choir are broader. Nor is the direction of the two buildings quite the same, for the long axis of Wren's church inclines seven degrees more to the north. Wren, of course, was most de sirous that his church should exactly face Ludgate, which old St. Paul's had failed to do, but the commissioners for rebuilding the City had staked out the streets before any decision had been come to about St. Paul's, and as soon as Parliament had confirmed their report the owners of the ground so marked out began to build, and in a short time, says the " Parentalia," had made such " incredible pro gress " as to render hopeless any effort to stop them. The first stone of the new building was laid at the north-east corner of the choir by Strong, the master mason, on the 21st of June, 1675, some fourteen months The after Wren had begun to clear Building ° Begun. the ground. The King placed the quarries in the Isle of Portland exclusively at the architect's disposition. In 1688, thirteen years after the first stone was laid, the choir was ready for roofing, PLAN OF WREN'S FIRST DESIGN. 3§ LONDON TOWN but nine years more were to pass before it could be opened for Divine Service. The actual date was the 2nd of December, 1697, and the' service, attended by the Cor poration in state, but not by King William, who was kept away by the fear that his pro cession would draw the whole population into the streets, so that the parish churches would be empty, was not only a conse cration service of the new building, but a thanksgiving for the Peace of Ryswick. A special form of dedicatory prayer was intro duced into the Communion office, and Bishop Compton preached from the words, " I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." Wren had been singularly fortunate in some of the craftsmen whose services were at his command for the stone and wood and iron work of the cathedral. One of CraHsmen. triese was Jean Tijou, who ham mered into things of beauty the gates which now separate the choir from its aisles. Another was Grinling Gibbons, who lavished upon stalls and organ front, and other fittings, as well as upon the capitals of some of the piers, his inimitable skill as a carver. How yet another artist in wood fell under Wren's notice is told by Miss Phillimore in her Life of the architect. A clever young carver had come to London from Sudbury in Suffolk in the hope of making enough money to marry his sweetheart. For a long time he could get no work, and at last he bethought him to see if they would take him on at St. Paul's. So he applied to one of the foremen, who contemptuously told him that they wanted no " carpenters " there. He con tinued, however, to haunt the cathedral, and one day Wren's quick eye fell upon him, and, finding out what it was that he wanted, he asked him what he could carve. The youth was -jo overwhelmed at finding himself in c< ation with the great architect that h aid only stammer out, " I have been used to carve troughs!" "Troughs!" was the rather derisive reply, "then carve me a sow and pigs and bring it to me this day week ! " At first young Wood was all for going back home in despair, for he feared he was being made mock of. But the woman whom he was lodging with advised him to take the great man at his word, and spending his last guinea in buying a large block of pear-wood, he set to work. Strenuously and patiently he carved and carved, and by the appointed day, having finished his task, he presented himself, carrying his handiwork under his craftsman's apron. Wren looked at the piece and engaged the young man on the spot ; and a few minutes later he handed the astonished youth ten golden guineas, at which price a friend of his had bought the group, adding for his own part an apology for having been unduly sceptical of the artist's talent. For seven years Wood plied his craft in the cathedral, and it is pleasant to know that he made enough money to secure the desire of his heart. Nine years after the opening of the choir, that is in 1708, the time had come to deter mine what material should be employed for covering the dome. Copper was at first de cided upon, but this would have cost some £500 more than lead, and therefore the duller metal was substituted. Two years later, the architect being now in his seventy- eighth year, his son laid the top stone of the lantern that surmounts the dome, his father looking on, and so structurally the great architect saw the completion of his task. But Wren had outlived his influential friends in authority, and in 1696-7, some years before the date we have now reached, his enemies succeeded in intro- Enemies ducing into an Act for completing and adorning the cathedral a clause keeping back half his modest salary of .£200 a year until the church should be finished ; " thereby," to quote the delightful reason assigned, " the better to encourage him to finish the same with the utmost dili gence." * The commissioners who engi neered this petty restriction had got the notion into their foolish heads that Wren was delay ing progress in order that his salary might run on as long as possible ! Wren protested against this insulting treatment again and again, but it was not until 171 1 that the em bargo was removed and the arrears were paid. 'Tis a pity the Duchess of Marlborough had no opportunity of bringing the commissioners to a more rational view of Wren's emoluments. In her quarrels with Vanbrugh over the building of Blenheim, she rates that architect * Thus by more than half a century was Voltaire's famous wit ticism apropos of the execution of Admiral Byng anticipated. CHARLES II. VISITING WREN DURING THE BUILDING OF ST. PAULS. From the Picture by Seymour Lucas, R.A., in the possession of Mrs. W. G. King, Billingshurst, Sussex. 39 40 LONDON TOWN for asking ^300 a year for himself, besides a salary for his clerk, when it was well known " that Sir Christopher Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three or four times a week to the top of St. Paul's, and at great hazard, for ^200 a year." There were differences between Wren and the commissioners, too, on artistic grounds. upwards into light," is brought down by dark and heavy figures." Yet another dispute between Wren and the commissioners has to do with the balustrade which runs along the side walls of the building. He had intended that the entablature should have simply a plinth, relieved only by an ornament above each pilaster, and when per- ST. GREGORY PLAN OF OLD ST. PAUL S, WITH DOTTED LINES SHOWING THE EXACT SITE AND RELATIVE ALIGNMENT OF THE PRESENT CATHEDRAL. 50 SCALE OF FEET 100 150 200 250 300 PLAN OF THE PRESENT ST. PAUL S, DRAWN TO THE SAME SCALE AS THAT OF THE OLD CATHEDRAL. He wished the cathedral to be enclosed by a low railing of wrought iron, that there might be nothing to interrupt the view of ¦with* the the great west front ; they insisted Com- upon cooping it up in a high fence missioners. of cast iron. His intention was that the surface of the inner dome — let us call it the cupola, to distinguish it from the exterior dome — should be adorned with mosaics, like the cupola of St. Peter's, and with this intent he wished to bring over four artists in mosaic work from Italy, the art being little understood in this country. Here again he was over ruled, the work was taken out of his hands, and Thornhill was commissioned to paint the cupola in monochrome. Thus, as Milman says, the cupola, which ought to have " melted emptorily informed that a balustrade would be set up unless he declared in writing that such an addition would be contrary to the principles of architecture, he could not repress his contempt. " I take leave," he wrote to the commissioners, " first to declare 1 never designed a balustrade. Persons of little skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something they had been used to in Gothic structures, and ladies think nothing well with out an edging." He then gave his reason for objecting to the balustrade, but on this point also he was overruled. Long familiarity has perhaps induced a feeling of toleration of this feature of the exterior, but who that sees a portion of the entablature figured with and without it, as in Longman's " History of REN'S LAST YEARS 41 the Three Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul," can fail to see that the effect of it is to detract from the dignity and repose of the fabric ? But the worst part of the dismal tale has yet to be told. In 171 8, a year after the dispute about the balustrade, Wren's foes succeeded in getting the great architect cashiered. George I. seems to have been ready enough to eject from the office of Surveyor of Public Works the man who may almost be said to have rebuilt his capital* Thus, dismissed at the age of eighty-five, having held his office for forty-eight years, Wren soon retired with undisturbed serenity to Hampton Court, and gave himself up wholly to the study of philosophy and the sacred writings. One thing neither his enemies nor the King who became their tool could do : they *In London alone, not to speak of private houses, Wren built or rebuilt upwards of fifty parish churches, and thirty-six halls of City Companies, besides the Customs House and the Monument. Wren's Glory. could not rob him of the glory of his great work. Once a year, now a feeble old man, but with a mind undimmed and a temper unsoured, he came to London and was carried beneath his majestic dome, that he might look once again upon the greatest of his works. He survived to enter his ninety-first birthday, passing away in his sleep on the 25 th of February, 1723, and upon his tomb in the crypt was inscribed the noble epitaph, composed by his son, " Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice." Some of the nation's greatest men, as we shall see, were afterwards laid to rest beneath the ponderous arches that uphold his mighty fabric ; but it is Wren's shade that dominates the scene, and when we speak of the crypt of St. Paul's it is of the plain slab that covers his ashes, and not of the kingly sepulchre of a Wellington or of a Nelson, that the lover of London first thinks. st. paul's, from the south. CHAPTER III ST. PAUL'S— DESCRIPTIVE The Domes and the Lantern — The Walls — The West Front — The Porticoes of the Transepts — The Bell Towers — The Railings — The Interior — Mosaics — The Reredos— The Organ — Monuments — The Crypt — The Ascent to the Golden Ball — The Future — Ceremonies IT has already been hinted that the external dome and the internal dome or cupola of the cathedral are not one structure, as one might assume Domes them to be, but two. Expected to provide an external dome of greater height than was consistent with a graceful interior, Wren, having built his cupola, or internal dome, constructed a strong cone of brick to support the stone lantern and its ornaments, masking this with another dome of timber and lead, which is supported by a network of wooden beams built up between it and the cone. Seen from the ground, the lantern looks light enough, but it is really a structure of enormous weight, computed at seven hundred tons. To say that it is 85 feet high and 21 feet in diameter may convey no real sense of its dimensions, but the mind can easily grasp them when it is pointed out that if it were placed on the floor of the church it would nearly reach the ceiling of the nave. It will be seen, therefore, that Wren had a problem of exceptional difficulty to solve. To give to his exterior the loftiness required of it, he had not merely to construct a double dome, but to find means of supporting a lantern heavier than the inner dome could sustain. First, then, as a glance at the section on page 43 will show, there is at St. Paul's the cupola, which one sees from the interior, com posed of brick, plastered inside to receive the painting, and banded together with iron. Outside this, and covering the whole of it, is a strong cone of brick 18 inches thick spring ing from the main walls and great arches of the cathedral, and bearing upon its apex the lantern. Built up on this cone is the network of beams which supports the much larger dome, of timber covered with lead, which one sees from the outside. Fergusson, a very critical authority, though he considered the dome too high for its width, pronounced the introduction of a cone to support the lantern a master-stroke of mechanical skill. And who is there to dissent from the praise he gives to the peristyle — the lovely colonnade of two and thirty Corinthian columns that surrounds the base of the outer dome ? Every fourth inter-columnar space is filled with masonry, which masks the but tresses that absorb the thrust of the cupola or inner dome. By this means, as Fergusson says, " not only is a great appearance of strength given, but a depth of shadow between, which gives it a richness and variety, combined with simplicity of outline, fulfilling every requisite of good architecture, and rendering this part of the design immensely superior to its rivals." The most cursory observer, as he passes St. Paul's, must sometimes have wondered why in the upper stage there are niches instead of windows, reminding one The Wails, of those blind windows which were built when the window-tax was in operation. The explanation is that only the lower of the two stages forms the wall of the church, the upper stage fulfilling the pur pose of a buttress. " It is a mere empty show with nothing behind it," says one critic. This is very severe, and all who know anything of Wren will feel sure that there must be another side to the question. The truth is that he adopted this device because he disliked buttresses. The outer wall of the church, that is, the wall of the aisles, needed support, so also did the clerestory wall, which con tinues the inner or nave wall. Now, in the first place, this upper stage of the exterior renders unnecessary any buttresses for the wall of the aisles, or for the four great arches which span the nave, choir, and transepts ; and, in the 42 EXTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S 43 second place, it forms a screen to the flying buttresses which support the wall of the clerestory stage. The upper storey ..is some thing more, then, than " a mere empty show," for it serves an important structural purpose. And yet, if it should be urged that after all the upper storey is not a wall, but a make-weight and a mask, what answer could one make ? After the dome, the noblest feature of the exterior is the west front, with its broad flight of steps, its spacious portico where light and shade have ample space The West ror plaV; its massive columns of the lower stage, its lofty pediment, and its flanking, cupola - crowned bell- towers. The sculpture in the tympanum of the portico, representing the Con version of St. Paul, is, like the statues on the various pediments, the work of Francis Bird, and was done in Wren's day. The figure at the apex is, of course, that of the patron saint, supported on his right by St. Peter, at whose side (unkind reminder !) is the cock that crew, and on his left by St. James. Bird it is, too, who is primarily responsible for the undignified monument of Queen Anne in front of the cathedral, though what one now sees is a reproduction by Belt of the original. The semi-circular porticoes of the transepts also claim unstinted admiration. The pedi ment of the north transept contains the royal arms, that of the south a phoenix, The Porti- with the inscription Resurgam. Transe^. For this vigorous piece of work Cibber received a hundred pounds, and he can hardly have felt that he was overpaid, seeing that Bird was remunerated with £650 for his sculpture in the pediment of the west front. Each of the porticoes bears the figures of five of the Apostles, completing, with those of the west front, the series of twelve. The bell-towers appear to much greater advantage at a little distance than close at hand. Viewed, for example, from the eastern ¦end of Cannon Street, or from the southern half of Blackfriars Bridge, they present them selves not as a confused cluster of shafts but as models of airy grace. The northern campanile contains, besides the old five-minute service bell, still in use, a peal of twelve bells presented to the cathedral in 1877 by the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts and certain of the City Companies. In the south tower are the three old bells on which the clock strikes ; the largest of Towfrs!" these> weighing 5 tons 4 cwt, on which the hours, as distinct from the quarters, are struck, is that which is tolled at the death of a member of the Royal Family, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of the Bishop of London, of the Dean of St. Paul's, or of the Lord Mayor. But in point of weight it is quite insignificant compared with " Great Paul," on the storey beneath the hour-bell, weighing nearly seventeen tons, some three tons more than " Big Ben " of Westminster, and first rung on the 3rd of June, 1882. Its solemn, full-throated note it is that is heard for five minutes daily at one o'clock, as well as for services on Sundays and holy days. SECTION THROUGH THE DOME, SHOWING INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN'S SCHEME OF DECORATION. 44 LONDON TOWN That part of the fence which obscured the west front has happily gone, together with the gates, and though the rest remains, it is now less obtrusive than before, for in 1878-9, when the space around the cathedral on the north, south, and east sides was converted into a public garden, TheRailings which in Gothic churches is furnished by lofty vaulting and dim, religious light. Here, as in the matter of the railings, interior. Wren is coming by his own. Thornhill's pictures, it is true, are still where he left them, though there is usually too much mist for them to be made THE WEST FRONT. Photo : Pictoi 10.I Agency. at the expense of the City Corporation, the wall upon which it rests was lowered. One cannot help regretting, however, that it was not abolished instead of being merely reduced in height, so that the walls of the cathedral might be seen, as they should be seen, rising sheer from the ground. As of the exterior, so of the interior, the dome is the finest feature, supplying that element of mystery and impressiveness out clearly. But the eight spandrels are now filled with mosaics representing the four Evangelists and the four major Prophets,. designed by Alfred Stevens, by Mosaics. G. F. Watts, R.A., and by Mr. A. Brittan, and executed by Dr. Salviati, of Venice, who completed his task in 1894 ; and in the eight niches of the drum or wall of the cupola, corresponding with the in ter-columnar spaces of the peristyle, which are MOSAICS IN ST. PAUL'S 45 occupied with the buttresses of the cupola {see p. 42), stand stone figures of the four great Eastern and the four great Western Doctors of the Church. Better still, the quarter-domes are now resplendent with the mosaic work of Sir William Richmond, R.A., setting forth with an effect of solemn rich ness the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Entombment, and the Ascension. The superiority of this mosaic work to that of Dr. Salviati is obvious at the merest glance. In the latter, the effect aimed at was the smoothness and finish which charac terise modern mosaic work. Sir William Richmond, before he began his decorative work in St. Paul's, had made a close study of the methods of early workers in mosaic, especially of those at Ravenna, and, deter mining to revert to their bolder style, he adopted their plan of glass tessera;, of four shapes, the cube, the double cube, the equilateral triangle, and a longer form with sharp points. Instead of applying the design to the wall surface in blocks, he has had each individual cube inserted in its place on the wall itself, and the tesserae, which are in eight to ten different tones of colour, are so disposed in the mastic cement that their facets may better reflect the light. The ad vantages of this method are, in the first place, enhanced brilliancy of reflection, rendered desirable by the distance from which the work has to be viewed ; and in the second place greater durability, so that the surface can be cleaned without injury. But it is in the choir and apse that most of Sir William Richmond's work has so far been done. As one walks up the nave the eye is soon caught by the grave splendour of this part of the church. The little cupolas of the roof and the pendentives, the clerestory, the triforium, the spandrels, the arches and mouldings glow with colour and gilding, the colours blending into harmony and dis tributed into forms which, no matter what the difficulties of the surface, are majestic and lovely. Into this exquisite colour scheme the great reredos — the design of Messrs. Bodley and Garner — of white Parian Ihe . marble, enriched with other stones Reredos. ' of divers hues and with gilt, fits admirably. The beautiful sculptures, by Guillemin, set forth the chief events in the life of the Redeemer, from the Nativity to the Resurrection ; and besides the Saviour on the cross, which forms the centre of the design, there are figures of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Virgin and Child, and the risen Lord. When the reredos, which rises to a height of nearly seventy feet, was first erected, in 1888, it seemed to be too large, blocking as it does the windows of the apse ; and even long familiarity, and a growing sense of the chaste beauty of the structure, have not sufficed entirely to dispel this feeling. The baldachino which Wren intended for this position, and the design of which is recalled by the twisted pillars that flank the centrepiece of the structure, would have been of much smaller dimensions. The great candlesticks before the high altar are reproductions of those which, according to an unauthenticated tra dition, were removed to Ghent after their ejection from old St. Paul's. The organ was built by Father Schmidt, about the year 1695, and, contrary to Wren's wishes, was placed on the screen at the entrance to the choir. Here it Organ remained, spoiling the viewr of the choir from the nave, until 1858-9, when it was removed to the central northern arch of the choir, a part of the screen being- erected inside the portico of the north tran sept door. In 1870 the organ was recon structed and disposed on both sides of the choir at the west end, over the stalls, and it was further improved in 1897. The platform over the porch of the south transept is a reminder of an organ which was built by Hills when services were first held under the dome. When Father Schmidt's organ was removed to its present position at the west end of the choir this second instrument was no longer needed, and it was sold and re-erected in the Victoria Rooms at Bristol, the platform, however, being left behind to disfigure the porch. It was not until services began to be held under the dome, in the sixth decade of the last century, that the cathedral as a whole was warmed. The authorities were not deterred from the enterprise by the famous mot of Canon Sydney Smith, who, when the scheme was broached in his day, exclaimed, " Warm St. Paul's ! They might as well set about warming Salisbury Plain." The apse, now that it is separated from LONDON TOWN the choir by the reredos, is known as the Jesus chapel, after the chapel of that name in old St. Paul's. The altar-piece, which con tains a copy of Cima's " Doubting of St, Thomas," in the National Gallery, was de signed by Messrs. Bodley and Garner, and both it and the cenotaph with recumbent statue of Canon Liddon form a memorial of that great preacher. Of the monuments in the body of the church little need be said. The four first to be erected were those which stand against the great piers of the dome, and ments" they commemorate John Howard the philanthropist, Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir William Jones the Orientalist. The Reynolds was the work of Flaxman, the other three were by John Bacon, who has very imperfectly draped the figures of Dr. Johnson and Sir William Jones in Roman togas. The majority of the monuments are to warriors, for St. Paul's has become the Valhalla of the heroes of battle. The lovely Wellington monument of white marble and bronze, by Alfred Stephens, formerly relegated to the south-west chapel, now the chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, is in these days more fittingly placed under the central arch on the north side of the nave ; but it is still without the equestrian figure with which the sculptor intended it to be surmounted. It must be admitted that with this dignified and ex quisitely proportioned memorial, Flaxman's theatrical monument in the south transept to Wellington's great compeer Nelson can only be compared to the disadvantage of the latter. The figure of Nelson is a redeeming feature, but of the effigies in bas-relief that represent the Frozen Ocean, the German Ocean, the Nile, and the Mediterranean, the less said the better. Flaxman did himself more justice in his statue in the north transept of Sir Joshua, wearing his robes of a Doctor of Laws. In the north aisle is a fine cenotaph, with a recumbent figure in bronze, by Boehm, of the most chivalrous figure of these later days, Charles Gordon, whose ashes are " blown about the desert dust " in the Soudan. Behind it is a mural tablet, also by Boehm, commemorating Sir Herbert Stewart, who, leading one of the columns that attempted to relieve Gordon, won a brilliant victory at Abu-Klea (January 17, 1885), but died a few days later of wounds received at Gubat. In the next bay westwards is the imposing cenotaph with recumbent figure — the finest monument in the cathedral after that of the Duke — of Lord Leighton, most accomplished of the Presidents of the Royal Academy, erected by " his many friends and admirers." It is the work of Thomas Brock, R.A., who has placed at the head and the foot bronze figures representing Painting and Sculpture, the latter holding a miniature of the artist's celebrated " Sluggard." In the bay next to Gordon on the east is Maro- chetti's much criticised monument to Lords Frederick and William Melbourne, showing in black marble the gates of death with two slumbering angels of white marble, the Angel of Death leaning upon a sword, and the Angel of the Resurrection with a trumpet. Close to the statue of Dr. Johnson, at the north-east pier, is a medallion, by Pegram, of Sir John Stainer, who from 1872 to 1888 was organist of the cathedral, and did much to raise its music to the high standard to which it has ever since conformed. Under the same arch is a bronze medallion to another gifted musician, Sir Arthur Sullivan. In the south aisle of the choir are some of the best sculptures in the cathedral — Hamo Thornycroft's statue of Bishop Creighton, a replica of Pomeroy's memorial of Archbishop Temple in Canterbury Cathedral, George Richmond's monument of Bishop Blomfield, Thomas Woolner's of Bishop Jackson, and, above all, Chantrey's kneeling figure of Reginald Heber, the missionary bishop, lean ing upon a large Bible, so that the posture is not felt to be fatiguing. Here, too, is com memorated Dean Milman, historian and poet as well as divine, who died in 1868, just before completing his " Annals " of the cathedral of which he had been dean for nineteen years. Close by stands, upright, the shrouded figure of a much earlier dean who also was a man of letters, the eccentric Dr. Donne. This is the only monument that was left intact by the Fire, which, however, made its mark upon the stone. In the south transept is a bronze memorial by the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, to the Colonials who fell in the South African War. The crypt extends beneath the whole area THE CHOIR OF ST. PAUL'S. Photo: Pictorial ,ig€tuy. 48 LONDON TOWN of the church, and the piers which support its vaulting answer to those above, though, with all the weight of the church The Crypt, resting upon them, they are, of course, more massive. In the eastern part of the south aisle is Wren's plain tomb, and hard by, in what is known as the Painters' Corner, lie other artists — Reynolds and Turner and James Barry, Boehm and Lord Leighton, and Leighton's successor in the presidency, Sir John Millais, who followed him to this majestic resting- place within a few short months. In the chapel of the crypt, where service is held at eight o'clock ever)' week-day morning, are the graves of Dean Milman, Canon Liddon and Bishop Creighton, and near the altar, on either side, may be seen fragments of the few- memorials in old St. Paul's that escaped total destruction at the Fire. The place of honour, beneath the very centre of the dome, is held by Nelson. His remains, as all the world knows, were en closed in a coffin made of the mainmast of L' Orient, one of the French ships destroyed at the Battle of the Nile, and it was presented to him just after the battle by Captain Hallo- well, of the Swift sure — as strange a memento of the victory as can be imagined. The black marble sarcophagus also has a story. It was executed by Benedetto da Rovezzano, a Florentine artist, for Cardinal Wolsey, and was to have been placed in Wolsey's memorial chapel in St. George's, Windsor, now the royal vault. But the Cardinal was destined to humbler sepulture, and this magnificent tomb remained at Windsor without a tenant until it was brought here to be occupied by " the greatest sailor since our world began." It was found, however, to be too small to receive the coffin, which was therefore deposited in the masonry at its base. When seven and fort)' years later Welling ton died, it was proposed that he should rest side by side with the man who was great by sea as he by land. But Collingwood and Lord Northcote, the commanders of the van guard and rearguard at Trafalgar, lay on either side, and so a chamber to the east was allocated to Wellington. Here he rests in a magnificent sarcophagus sculptured from a rare British rock known as luxulyanite, purple-black in colour, finely spotted with large crystals of red felspar. At the west end of the crypt is the enormous car upon which he was " to glorious burial slowly borne," designed by Alfred Stevens, and cast from guns captured by the Duke. Hard by Wellington rests one of his generals, Sir Thomas Picton, slain at Water loo ; and elsewhere lies Lord Napier of Magdala, who died in 1890. And among men, eminent in other walks of life, who are sleeping their long sleep in the crypt, are Cruikshank, the artist, Lord Mayor Nottage, who died during his mayoralty in 1886, and is commemorated by a large brass let into the floor by the Corporation, Sir Bartle Frere, who died in 1884, and Sir George Williams, the founder of the Young Men's Christian Associa tion, who died in 1905. Some who rest else where are commemorated by tablets, such as Randolph Caldecott and Frank Holl, Lord Mayo, slain by a fanatic during his Vice- royalty of India, Sir John Macdonald, the Canadian statesman, Dalley and Parkes, the Australian statesmen, Archibald Forbes and other war correspondents, W. E. Henley, Sir Walter Besant, whose enthusiasm for London was ample justification for the honour thus done to his memory, and whose bust comes between a memorial of Charles Reade, the novelist, and one of Mr. George Smith, the publisher to whom the public owes the great Dictionary of National Biography. Many who make the descent to the crypt do not care to undertake the toilsome ascent to the Stone Gallery, which sur mounts the peristyle of the dome, Up to the b^ those who do are amply re- Golden r / Bail. warded. After mounting 143 steps one comes to the triforium, at the end of which, over the south-west chapel, is the Cathedral Library, founded by Bishop Compton, who occupied the see in the reign of James II., and was one of those who invited the Prince of Orange to deliver the nation from Stuart tyranny. Another flight of steps, about 120, brings one to the Whis pering Gallery, which runs round the foot of the cupola. After this 1 1 8 more steps have to be climbed, and then one reaches the Stone Gallery, and, if not merely a fine but a clear day has been chosen, one is regaled with a glorious view of London — the flowing river with its bridges and wharves, its barges and its shipping, the spires and towers of a hundred churches, the public buildings, the THE GORDON MONUMENT. THE LEIGHTON MONUMENT. J'X^i^l^&V RNEsShT THE STAINER TABLET. THE SULLIVAN' TABLET. THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT. NELSON S TOMB. WELLINGTON'S TOMB. Pitotos : Pictorial Agency. SOME FAMOUS MEMORIALS IN ST. PAUL S. 49 5o LONDON TOWN miles of crowded streets. If your breath is unspent and you sigh for more heights to conquer you may climb to the Golden Gallery, which runs round the base of the lantern, and even to the Golden Ball which bears the Cross, and enjoy the yet more expansive views which lie spread out before you from those dizzy heights. We cannot close our account of Wren's cathedral without a glance at the future. The work of decoration is going The Future, on. The stained glass is gradually being added to, and much may yet be done in this direction without unduly ob scuring the light. The decoration with Sir William Rich mond's mosaics is still proceeding. From the north-east pier of the nave there now hangs G. F Watts's fine allegorical picture of " Time, Death, Judg ment " ; close by is to be seen his " Peace and Goodwill " ; and in the south aisle is Mr. Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," the gift of the Right Hon. Charles Booth. The electric light, with handsome fittings designed by Mr. Somers Clarke, formerly the surveyor of the cathedral, has been installed throughout the fabric at the charges of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, more than twenty miles of cable being laid down ; and Mr. Somers Clarke has himself presented a gilt-iron balustrade which runs round the cornice of the nave. So the good work goes on. Already one cannot think without some feeling of compassion of those who only knew St. Paul's in the days of its nakedness, and before the things done in opposition to Wren's wishes were undone. But in distant days to come, when further decoration has been bestowed upon the dome, and the nave and its aisles gleam with mosaic and gold as does now the eastern Photo : F. Hottyer, TIME, DEATH. From the Painting by G. F. limb of the church, and more of the windows are radiant with chastened splendour, we shall merit a glance of the same pity that we be stow upon our predecessors. Not till then will Wren's masterpiece have been finished. Many a ceremony of national significance has been enacted at St. Paul's. Seven times did Queen Anne go in solemn Ceremonies, procession to render thanks for victories won by Marlborough and other generals. The accession of the House of Brunswick was cele brated by a service attended by the king himself and the princes and prin cesses. There was no other royal visit to the cathedral till, in 1789, the third of the Hanoverian kings returned thanks for his escape from the cloud which had darkened his mind. A second time the king gave thanks, eight years later, this time for victories achieved by his sailors, when French, Spanish, and Dutch flags were borne into the cathedral, among others by the Nelson — at this time Sir Horatio — who was presently to outshine all rivals, and to win for himself the chief place of sepulture in the crypt. In recent times St. Paul's has been the scene of the thanksgiving for the recovery of King Edward, when Prince of Wales, from all but mortal illness in 1872. In the Jubilee celebrations of 1897 the chief services of praise were held not at West minster Abbey but at St. Paul's. Memorable, and indeed unique was the Thanksgiving Service held before the west front on the day of the procession, " Diamond Jubilee Day." In her passage through the streets of the City Queen Victoria's carriage was halted at the foot of the steps, on the spot now marked by an inscription deeply cut into the granite paving. The steps and the sides of the portico were occupied by a throng which represented all JUDGMENT. Watts, R.A., in St. Paul's. A UNIQUE CEREMONY Si that was most distinguished in the nation. Tiers of benches erected within the portico up to the very top of the Corinthian columns, and even in the recess of the upper stage, were also thronged. The royal carriages, as Then the Bishop of London (Dr. Creighton) intoned the special prayer for the occasion, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) in his mighty voice pronounced the Bene diction, and the whole assembly joined in GREENWICH PENSIONERS AT THE TOMB OF NELSON. From the Painting by Sir J. E Millais, Bart., P. R.A. they arrived, drew up outside the temporary railing, with their horses' heads towards the spot reserved for the Queen's carriage, and the foreign princes on horseback ranged themselves inside the enclosure. When at last the Queen's carriage, drawn by the eight cream-coloured Hanoverian horses, gay in their golden harness and purple mane-ribbons, had taken its appointed place, the five hundred choristers began the chanting of the Te Deum of Sir George Martin, their conductor, supported by a powerful band. the Old Hundredth. Here the service was to have ended, but the deeply stirred feelings of the multitude needed some further expres sion, and spontaneously they broke out into the National Anthem. Nor was this all. Moved by an irresistible impulse, the Arch bishop of Canterbury, most unconventional of Primates, called for " three cheers for the Queen," and there burst forth such a volume of sound as might almost have startled " Great Paul " in his dark chamber in the southern campanile. CHAPTER IV ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD The Cathedral Gardens — Paul's Cross — Stirring Scenes — Chapter-house and Deanery — The Choir School— The Monastic Buildings— St. Paul's School— The " Goose and Gridiron " — Publishers in the Churchyard ST. PAUL'S is now surrounded, except on the western side, by comely gardens, which are under the control of the City Corporation, and are provided with seats that form pleasant resting-places in the heat of summer for passers-by. In these gardens the cathedral pigeons disport themselves. It is said that they form two distinct colonies, one belonging to the east end and the other to the west end, and that the groups carefully abstain from intermixture. Let us hope that the difference between them is merely tribal and not ecclesiastical ! However this may be, it is evident from their fat and sleek condition that they find many to feed them, and one suspects that the sparrows profit from their abundance, for they seem to be, for sparrows, quite portly and dignified. Or is it that they have learnt to ad just their deportment to their august en vironment ? In the garden between the west end and the south porch may be seen a few fragments of the Chapter-house and cloisters of old St. Paul's. These adjuncts of the cathedral were not built till about the middle of the four teenth century, and the Chapter-house was never commensurate with the dignity of the cathedral. A much more notable feature of the Churchyard in olden time was Paul's Cross, of which some account must now be given. From very early days it was pre eminently London's pulpit. Here also it was that edicts were pro claimed, that Papal Bulls were promulgated, that dolorous penances were performed, and that at the sound of a bell the old City folkmotes once were held. It is described by Stow as "a pulpit-cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone and covered with lead, in which were sermons preached by learned Paul's Cross. 52 divines every Sunday in the forenoon." To Stow it was of unknown antiquity. It was certainly in existence in the year 1241. Towards the end of the fifteenth century it was rebuilt in a more beautiful style by Bishop Kemp, and a hundred years later it was surrounded by a low brick wall with a gate, at which a verger was stationed. It was at Paul's Cross that the Reformation was fought out in London. At one time, when neither party was decidedly uppermost, the rival theologians had their say here in turn. Bishop Latimer was no stranger to the Lollards' Tower, but he was much better acquainted with Paul's Cross, and mightiiy more comfortable there. One day he would be here denouncing the corruptions of the clergy ; another day a champion of the old faith would be delivering a counterblast. During the years when the Royal divorce was the burning question of the day, it was canvassed here in the most outspoken way, but not always without unpleasant conse quences to the preacher, as in the case of one John Scott, who after having with the utmost candour denounced the divorce and its pro moter, was flung into prison, where, so the faithful believed, he lived for a hundred and six days without food or drink. Under the Puritan rigime Paul's Cross, though it had been, so to speak, the sounding- board of the Reformation in London, was not spared. It was surmounted by a Popish symbol, it bore a Popish name, so it must go the way of the Holy Rood. As Thomas Fuller says, it had been " guilty of no other super stition save accommodating the preacher and some about him with convenient places." And Thomas Carlyle, quoting, in connection with Paul's Cross, Queen Elizabeth's remark that she used to " tune her pulpits " when there was a great thing on hand, adds, " as governing IN THE CATHEDRAL GARDENS. 53 54 LONDON TOWN persons now strive to tune the morning news papers." Paul's Cross, he adds, " a kind of Times newspaper, but edited partly by Heaven itself, was then a most important entity." Until our own day the precise situation of Paul's Cross was not known ; but in excavations made a few years ago, Mr. F. C. Penrose, at that time surveyor of the cathedral, discovered its foundations — which show it to have been about 1 8 feet in diameter — just at the north east corner of the present choir {see the first plan on page 40), and now any one who cares to step in to that part of the Church yard — which, by the way, was opened as a public garden by the Lord Mayor in 1879 — may see tablets which mark its site. A sum of money has been bequeathed by an enthusiastic Churchman for the rebuilding of the Cross, but one need not be over-anxious that the pious scheme should be carried out. The Bishops' Palace, which was destroyed by the Great Fire, stood on the north side of the nave, near its western end, and is commemorated to this day by London-house Yard, just as Canon Alley, on the same side, but more to the east, is reminiscent of the college of the minor canons. The present Chapter-house, with a quite plain and even dingy exterior, of red brick, stands between these two openings out of the Churchyard. In 1885 a part of it was fitted up for the resi dence of the Archdeacon of London. The Deanery, a more shapely building than the Chapter-house, is in Dean's Court, on the south-west side of the cathedral, and as it is screened from the court by a wall it is noticed by few who visit the cathedral. It was originally built by De Diceto, the historian, who was Dean of St. Paul's from 1181 to 1210, and was rebuilt on the same site after the Fire by Sancroft, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from Wren's designs. It has about it a look of solid comfort, and though it is within twenty paces of the busy street that skirts the cathedral on the south, its wall and courtyard give it an air of leisured seclusion, while in summer the plane-trees that overhang its sloping roof and dormer windows make it appear a little oasis in an arid desert. Adjoining it is the Choir School, built by Dean Church in 1874, in the seven teenth century Renascence style, from designs by Mr. F. C. Penrose, and provided with a flat roof, which is used by the choris ters as a playground, the balls being pre vented from flying into space by a wire netting. Much more secluded than the Deanery are the canons' residences, which hide them selves, within a stone's-throw of busy Ludgate Hill, in Amen Court, with one entrance from Amen Corner, the continua tion of Paternoster Row, and another from Warwick Lane, but shut off by gates from both those paul's cross early in the 17TH century. TheDeanery. narrow but busy thoroughfares. On the same south side of the cathedral as the Deanery, in olden days, were Paul's Brewhouse and Paul's Bakehouse and other domestic buildings, which supplied the wants of the cathedral staff — the thirty prebendaries, the twelve petty canons, the fifty chantry priests, the vicars choral, the twelve scribes who sat in the cathedral to write letters for the illiterate public, and the rest. St. Paul's, by the way, was a cathedral of the old founda tion ; its canons were secular, and not bound by monastic vowrs, and until the reign of Henry III. they could marry if they pleased. Of Paul's Bakehouse a reminder still exists to this day in Bakehouse Court, on the east side of Godliman Street, the road which runs steeply down from St. Paul's Churchyard to Queen Victoria Street. An historic feature of the Churchyard which is now no longer to be seen was St. Paul's School. This famous school is of School1'8 immemorial antiquity — it was al ready in existence at the Norman Conquest, but it was refounded in 15 12 by Dean Colet, the friend of the New Learning and of Erasmus. Rebuilt after the Fire, and again in the nineteenth century, it remained in St. Paul's Churchyard, facing the eastern end of the cathedral, until 1884, when it was transferred to Hammersmith and its place taken by warehouses. It was a poor building, and its disappearance from its ancient site need not be immoderately re gretted. Many of the shops and warehouses in St. Paul's Churchyard have now been rebuilt, and the Chapter-house is almost the only building which has any look of even a moderate antiquity. But at the corner of Canon Alley, on the side of the shop num bered 63, St. Paul's Churchyard, high up, where it is not likely to be seen except by those who seek it, is a sculptured sign of the Prince of Wales's Feathers, with the familiar motto, and the date 1670. The property to which it is attached, says Mr. Philip Norman in his " London Signs and Inscriptions," belonged to the Dean and Chapter, but is now vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. And until 1895, when it was pulled down, there stood in London-house Yard the " Goose and Gridiron," the home of the St. Paul's Free masons' Lodge. Sir Christopher Wren, who, as became so great a builder, was a de voted Freemason, presided regularly at the meetings of the lodge for eighteen years, and presented it with the trowel and mallet which he used in laying the first stone of the cathedral. The house which occupied this site before the Fire bore the sign of " The Mitre," indicating that it was the property or was attached to the see of London. Or perhaps, as Mr. Norman sug gests, it may have been known by this name because it was near the residence of the Bishops of London. At the present time St. Paul's Churchyard is mainly occupied on the south and east with tall warehouses, and on the north side with drapers' and milliners' shops. In past days it was affected by publishers, Publishers, and here were first given to the world Shakespeare's " Venus and Adonis " and " The Rape of Lucrece," and quite a number of his plays. Here, too, in a later age, John Newbery, who carried on busi ness at the north-west corner of the Church yard, published " The Traveller " for Oliver Goldsmith, who, in " The Vicar of Wake field," has immortalised him as "the friend of all mankind." Another bookseller here — to use the old term — was Joseph Johnson, the publisher of " The Task " and of others of Cowper's works, who, sentenced to a term of imprisonment for selling the political writings of Gilbert Wakefield, made the best of the situation by renting the mar shal's house and giving dinners to his literary friends. ST. P«\UL S SCHOOL, AS REBUILT AFTER THE GREAT FIRE. CHAPTER V PATERNOSTER ROW The Name — Old Associations — The Chapter Coffee-house and Charlotte Bronte — St. Michael-le-Querne and John Leland — Panyer Alley and its Boy — Mrs. Turner the Sorceress — Stationers' Hall Court — The Livery Companies — The Stationers and Their Hall. ACCORDING to Stow, the Eliza bethan antiquary, the straight and narrow street which runs parallel with St. Paul's Churchyard on the north side, and has long been the haunt of publishers and booksellers, was called Paternoster Row " because of stationers or text-writers that dwelt there, who T.he wrote and sold all sorts of books Name. then in use." This looks very much like a non sequitu.r, and suggests that Stow, who knew so much about ancient London, did not know precisely what a stationer was. According to Riley, to whose "Memorials of London and London Life" every student of London is under the deepest obligation, stationers were origin ally those who dealt in small wares at the "stations "or stands around the two crosses in Cheapside, and who on being turned out of Chepe, in the fifteenth century, probably took re fuge in Paternoster Row. Long before they came here, two centuries before at the least, this street bore its present name, except, in deed, that originally it was Paternoster Lane ; and it was no doubt, says Riley, named Paternoster because it was the haunt of the paternostrers, that is, makers of '¦ paternosters " or prayer- beads, specially, no doubt, for the use of worshippers at St. Paul's. In modern times the pub lishing trade has followed the sun in his motions, but " the Row " is still al most entirely devoted to the Old Asso ciations. THE BOY OF PANYER ALLEY 56 trade in books and music, and here the great house of Longmans, founded about the year 1724 by a native of Bristol of this name, still has its headquarters. Paternoster Row no longer, alas, has any savour of antiquity, for most of the houses have in recent days been rebuilt, some of them after a great fire in 1884, which did damage estimated at a quarter of a million. But it has no lack of ancient memories. Here, until the Great Fire, was the " Castle," an ordinary which was once kept by Richard Tarleton, the low comedian for whom Shakespeare wrote such songs as that in All's Well that Ends Well, " When that I was a little tiny boy," and who danced them to the music of a pipe and tabor played by himself. Near the " Castle," which was re built after the Fire, was " Dolly's Tavern," with a coffee-room dating from the time of Queen Anne, whose head, painted on one of the windows, gave name to Queen's- head Passage, which still leads from Paternoster Row to Newgate Street. This tavern, named, or more likely re-named, after a favourite cook whose por trait Gainsborough painted, has now, like the " Castle," disappeared. Another old coffee-house, however, the " Chapter," at the corner of Chapter house Court, which runs from the Row into St. Paul's Churchyard, has not wholly vanished, for, though it has been rebuilt and is now a winehouse, it retains some of the fittings of "CURRER BELL" IN PATERNOSTER ROW 57 A Famous Coffee- House. the old house. The " Chapter " was long a favourite rendezvous of publishers, and here, too, came authors, among the num ber Oliver Goldsmith, whose usual seat, long after he had been buried in the Temple, was an attraction to visitors. Poor Chatterton, in one of the letters he wrote to his mother at Bristol, boasted, with perhaps little war rant, " I am quite familiar at the ' Chapter coffee-house ' and know- all the geniuses there." A cer tain corner box in the coffee- room was the meeting-place of an informal society of good fellows who were known as " The Witenagemot." Of this coterie Dr. Buchan, author of a popular work on " Domestic Medicine," was moderator, and among its members were Dr. Gower, of the Middlesex Hospital ; Walker, the dictionary-maker ; Dr. Busby, the musician ; and Alderman Waith- man. Dr. Buchan had a faith in the virtues of alcohol which in these days few of the faculty would share with him. If any member of the company appeared out of sorts, he would call to the waiter to bring a glass of punch, unless the sufferer liked brandy- and-water better. " Now take that, sir," he would prescribe, " and I'll warrant you'll soon be well. You're a peg too low ; you want stimulus ; and if one glass won't do, call for a second." But, to many, a more interest ing memory of the " Chapter " coffee-house than this of the Witenagemot is to be found in the sojourn within its hospitable walls of Charlotte Bronte. How it came about that, with her sister Anne, she spent a few nights here in the year 1848 is set out by Mrs. Gaskell in her " Life " of Charlotte. Up to this time the anonymity of the three sister novelists had been strictly preserved, and they were still only known by their pretty pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. This anonymity had led to a complication in the arrangements made for publishing their novels in America, and one morning a letter was received at Haworth from Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., the publishers of " Jane Eyre," which determined Charlotte and Anne to start off that very day to assure Mr. Smith of their separate identity. The trouble had arisen out of an assumption on the part of Anne's publisher that Currer, Ellis, and Photo : Pictorial Charlotte Bronte. PATERNOSTER ROW. Acton Bell were but different names for the same writer, and the letter from Mr. Smith made them eager to unravel the tangle. So after early tea Charlotte and Anne set out to walk to Keighley, encountering on the way a thunderstorm from which they had no time to seek shelter. At Keighley they just caught the night train, and arrived at the " Chapter " coffee-house about eight o'clock the next morning. Having breakfasted, they sat down to lay their plans. The day before, they had 5» LONDON TOWN decided to take a cab from their inn to Messrs. Smith and Elder's offices, then at Cornhill ; but now so excited were they at their unaccustomed surroundings that they forgot all about hiring a conveyance, and sallied forth to make their way through the crowded streets on foot. The throng and the bustle were too much for their nerves, and it took them an hour to walk the few hundred yards they had to go. " On reaching Mr. Smith's," says Mrs. Gaskell, " Charlotte put his own letter into his hands ; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. ' Where did you get this ? ' said he — as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures but diminutive stature, look ing pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain." Explanation followed, and Mr. Smith at once set himself to make the visit of the sisters from the Yorkshire moor lands as pleasant as possible. But they were bent upon preserving their secret, and they refused to meet the literary friends to whom he was eager to introduce them, or to leave their inn to stay with him. What the " Chapter " coffee-house was like about this time we learn from Mrs. Gaskell, who visited it in 1856, the year before she wrote the " Life." She found it unoccupied. " It had the appearance of a dwelling-house, two hundred years old or so, such as are sometimes seen in ancient country towns ; the ceilings of the small rooms were low, and had heavy beams running across them ; the walls were wainscotted breast high ; the staircase was shallow, broad, and dark, taking up much space in the centre of the house." In Mr. Bronte's visits to town he had stayed here, and here his daughters had come because they knew not where else to go. It was a place frequented solely by men, and little used as an hotel. The old grey-haired waiter, says Mrs. Gaskell, " seems to have been touched from the very first with the quiet simplicity of the two ladies, and he tried to make them feel comfortable and at home in the long, low, dingy room upstairs." Paternoster Row has associations also with Johnson, and with Richardson, but we shall meet with- more intimate memories of these great figures elsewhere. Let us therefore pass on to recall the fact that until the Great Fire Paternoster Row had its church, that of St. Michael-le-Querne, St. Michael-at-the-Corne, so called, says Stow, because of the corn-market which was held close by. After the Fire the parish was united with that of St. Vedast, Foster Lane. St. Michael's, which stood at the east end of the Row, is mainly of interest to us in these days as being the burial-place of John Leland the antiquary, who TrfgedyarS WaS b°rn about tne year r 502, and died in 1552. Educated at St. Paul's School, he was one of the first in this country to become proficient in Greek, and was also versed in Saxon and Welsh. Henry VIII. became his patron, and com missioned him to go about the country to inquire into the records of collegiate and cathedral libraries. After a search that ex tended over six years, he came back home to St. Michael's parish to study his ac quisitions, but the vast mass of material he had accumulated was too heavy a weight for his mind to sustain, and the poor man died insane. His " Itinerary of Great Britain " was published after his death, but his col lections relating to London antiquities were lost. Leland's monument perished with the church in the Great Fire. Another association of St. Michael-le-Querne was with Sir Thomas Browne, author of the " Religio Medici," who was baptised here, his father being a merchant in the parish. Not far from the site of St. Michael's, and near the north-east corner of Paternoster Row, is Panyer Alley, a narrow pas- Aiiey?r saSe communicating with Newgate Street, and here, let into the wall of a modern building, is an ancient piece of sculpture showing a boy an naturel, sitting upon a panyer. When Strype wrote about him, a century and a half ago, he could be seen holding between hand and foot what that writer believed to be a bunch of grapes — " in token, perhaps, of plenty," as the worthy antiquary suggested. But since then the tooth of time has gnawed out of all simili tude the object so held, and the features, also, have been completely obliterated. Beneath it is an inscription which has evi- THE SORCERESS OF PATERNOSTER ROW 59 dently been renewed in recent times, and which runs thus : — "When yv have sovght The City Rovnd Yet still Ths is The Highst Grovnd. Avgvst the 27 1688." Pity it is that so venerable a piece of topo graphy should not have the more common place merit of accuracy. Panyer Alley is not quite the highest ground in the City, for the more exact measurements of recent times, as Mr. Loftie has pointed out, have shown that it is about a foot lower than the highest point of Cornhill. Stow, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, seems to suggest, though his language is vague, that Panyer Alley was so called from this sign ; and Mr. Charles Welch, formerly the Guildhall librarian, has discovered among the documents of the Brewers' Company a reference to a Panyer Tavern existing in Paternoster Row about the year 1430. The " Liber Albus," the book compiled from the City archives by John Carpenter, the Town Clerk, early in the fifteenth century, shows that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries bread could only be bought in the market, not at the bakers' houses ; and it was usually sold in panyers or bread-baskets. Panyer Alley was at one time, no doubt, the resort of those who made these bakers' baskets, for here they would be conveniently near to Bread Street, the bakers' quarter in Chepe ; and it may be that the relief was put up as a sign for the street, the inscription being added at some later date, when the Alley was in the mood to exalt its horn on account of its elevated situation. Strype was probably mistaken in fancying that the boy is shown handling a bunch of grapes. Riley's opinion that the object is a loaf of bread is much more likely to be correct. In Paternoster Row lived, early in the sixteenth century, Anne Turner, the sorceress, who was accused of complicity A Sorceress, in the wicked plot by which Sir Thomas Overbury, statesman and poet, was done to death while a prisoner in the Tower. King James I. had been foolish enough to elevate to the position, virtually though not officially, of chief Minister his favourite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Though a man of parts, Somerset was unequal to such high responsi bilities, and was glad to instal Overbury as his counsellor and prompter. When Somer set became infatuated with the Countess of Essex, whom he used to meet at Anne Turner's house in Paternoster Row, and entered into her scheme of obtaining a divorce from her husband, that she might marry him, Overbury strongly opposed the scheme and stigmatised Lady Essex as " a base woman." To her Somerset was ill- advised enough to repeat the contemptuous expression, and she at once conceived towards Overbury a malignant hatred which nothing but his death could appease. Presently Overbury offended the king, and was flung into the Tower, and here, a few days before Lady Essex obtained the divorce that set her free to marry Somerset, he died in circumstances that pointed clearly to poison. But three years passed by before Somerset's enemies thought it safe to accuse him of having compassed Overbury's death. The king consented to an investigation, and the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, reported that the Countess, in order to estrange the affections of her husband and gain those of Somerset, had resorted to the arts of sorcery, as practised by the woman Turner and others ; that through Turner she had obtained from an apothecary poison, which was mixed with Overbury's food and was no doubt the cause of his death. The woman was brought to trial at the Guildhall about the end of October, 161 5. She had undoubtedly practised the arts of sorcery, and the jury had no difficulty in finding her guilty of murder. Asked what she had to urge why judgment should not be pronounced against her, she tried to plead for mercy, but was choked with tears. It is said that the ferocious Lord Chief Justice, who, though he had an abundance of fulsome compliments for the king, did not spare the unhappy woman who implored his mercy, ordered her to be hanged at Tyburn in a ruff stiffened with a fashionable yellow starch of her own invention ; and though this story finds no confirmation in the official reports, it is stated by Howell, a contemporary writer, that at her execution 6o LONDON TOWN she did, in fact, wear a ruff so starched, and that, as a consequence, yellow starch at once went out of vogue. The rest of this gruesome story has nothing to do with Paternoster Row, but having told so much of it here, we may give the sequel and have done with it. Weston, the gaoler, who administered the poison, and who had formerly been in Anne Turner's service, had already been convicted. Justice was next done upon Sir Gervase Helwys, Lieutenant of the Tower, who before suffering at Tyburn made full confession. Franklin, the apothe cary who supplied the poison, was also con victed and executed. Then came the turn of the chief culprit, the Countess of Essex, now Countess of Somerset. Brought to trial before her peers in Westminster Hall, she pleaded guilty, and, since the law is no respecter of persons, was pardoned by the king. Somerset himself also, though the evidence against him was by no means strong, was found guilty, but he stoutly maintained his innocence and refused the royal pardon, and it was not till he had endured several years' incarceration, that, abandoning all hope of securing a reversal of judgment, he brought himself to accept the king's clemency. In Stationers' Hall Court, at the west end of Paternoster Row, is the habitation of one of the ancient City Companies. The origin of these Livery Companies, as they are called from the distinctive dress adopted by most of them, is involved in Companies, a good deal of obscurity. Such vexed questions as their evolution from or the precise nature of their con nexion with the ancient religious guilds of the City, which were abolished in the six teenth century, cannot in these pages be entered upon ; but it is certain that they came gradually to be entrusted with the administration of a great deal of property by the guilds, whose members had more confidence in them than in their priests. By the end of the fourteenth century many of the Companies had secured charters. They were already invested with the right of prescribing the conditions both of admis sion to the various crafts and of the way in which these should be exercised, and they were not long in acquiring a pre dominant influence in the government of the City. To be a member of a Livery Com pany was to enjoy full rights of citizenship, and ever since the later years of the fifteenth century the liverymen have in effect elected the Lord Mayor — that is to say, they have nominated for the office two Aldermen, one of whom is chosen by the aldermanic body and the outgoing Lord Mayor. Many of the Companies received charters from Edward III. and Richard II., in return for large sums of money advanced to the National Exchequer ; and it was at this period that they began to assume their dis tinctive costumes. The Companies reached the height of their prosperity in the next century, the fifteenth. They were not usually engaged in trade in their corporate capacity, as Mr. Ditchfield shows in the handsome volume which recites their good works*; they were voluntary associations of persons many of whom were engaged in a particular trade, but the Company itself seldom traded, one of the most familiar exceptions to this rule being the Stationers' Company. The members of a Company would assemble daily in their hall " to drink their guild " and to transact their business. " The Court of the Company had great power ; in addi tion to the management of the large charitable schemes, the regulation of the industry was assigned to it. No one was allowed to trade unless he was a member of the Company. He must only ply his trade in the particular part of the City where that industry was carried on. The quality of his goods must satisfy the requirements of the Court, and also the wages he paid to his servants and apprentices. The price of commodities was taxed by the Court, and not left to the regulation of the law of supply and demand." So things remained until the extension of the various trades made it impossible for the Companies effectively to regulate them. Then came the Reformation, which deprived them of all the property which had been bequeathed to them for what were now regarded as " superstitious " purposes, and though out of their funds they bought back the estates of which they were dispossessed, they were still, of course, so much the poorer. Finally, the Great Fire wrought havoc among their halls and almshouse and house * " The City Companies of London." By P. H. Ditchfield. 1904. (J. M. Dent & Co.) - * z ? O B 62 LONDON TOWN BARGE OF THE STATIONERS' COMPANY. property, and more or less crippled their resources until the great rise in house and land values in the nineteenth century brought them a return of prosperity and affluence. By the Royal Commission of 1880 the total income of the Companies was calculated at from .£750,000 to £800,000, but this estimate includes the annual value of their halls and almshouses and schools, as well as of their plate and furniture, and the interest on incurred debts, and if allowance be made for this, the figures would be reduced, ac cording to Mr. Ditchfield's calculation, to between £625,000 and £675,000. The income is partly corporate revenue, which is at the absolute discretion of each Company, and partly trust income, which the Company is obliged to use for the objects specified in the wills of the testators, or by Acts of Parlia ment, or the decrees of the Law Courts or of the Charity Commissioners. Though not ranking among the twelve great Companies, the Stationers' Company is one of the most important of these bodies, incorporated by Philip and Mary in 1557, but it was founded much earlier, staHoners. in I4°3> when the Corporation of the City gave authority " to the text writers, limners and others who bind and sell books, to appoint two wardens to govern the said trades." Few of the Com panies, as we have seen, ever traded as corporations, and of those which did the Stationers' is almost the only one which has not ceased to do so. Its shares have been regularly transmitted since 1605, like those of any ordinary company. The Stationers' trading operations are now, however, carried on upon a much smaller scale than formerly. Its once extensive business in Almanacs and Primers, in Bibles and Psalters and other religious works, has dwindled to the publication of a Latin Gradus, and various almanacs, among them the British Almanac and Moore's Almanac, the latter of which in 1908 reached its 211th year of publi cation. But the great function which the Stationers still fulfil is that of registering publications for copyright purposes. The copyright registry was established Copyright, early in the 16th century, and in the series of works entered for publication, extending from 1557 downwards, they possess a treasure of unique value. The registration of these days is governed by the Copyright Act of 1 842, which, though it does not compel publishers to enter their books in the register, makes registration a necessary preliminary to proceedings to protect copy right. In 1 86 1 the Stationers established a Commercial School in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, for the sons of liverymen and free men of the Company, but the institution was afterwards removed to Ridge Road, Hornsey, and thrown open to all boys of the middle class, subject to the payment of very moderate fees. The Stationers first settled, in a corporate sense, in Milk Street, Cheapside, whence in 1553 they removed to the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard. In 161 1 they pur chased Abergavenny House, the mansion, STATIONERS' HALL 63 in the reign of Edward III., of John Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond, after wards of the Earls of Pembroke and Aber gavenny, on the site of the present Hall. Enlarged and adapted to the requirements of the Company, it was destroyed by the Great Fire, which was otherwise a terrible disaster to the Company, for its members, according to Evelyn, lost stock, much of it deposited for safety in churches, of a value not far short of two hundred thousand pounds. The present Hall was built of brick in 1670, but HtiiPreSen1 in l8o° [t was cased with Portland stone by Robert Mylne, who was Surveyor of St. Paul's. In 1828 the octagonal card-room was added by his son, William Chadwell Mylne. The flood of publications in these later days made the provision of further accommodation a necessity, and in 1 887 a new north-eastern wing was added by Robert Mylne's grandson, Robert William Mylne. Here it is, on the ground floor, that copyrights are registered, while on the upper floor is the new stock-room, which is used also for receptions. On the west side of the hall is a small garden with a fine plane tree, which casts its shadow over the spot where in past times bonfires were made of books which did not meet with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. At Stationers' Hall, in past days, lotteries were drawn, and many splendid funerals were marshalled, and here was held (May 28, 161 2) the funeral feast of good old Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse. But of all the ceremonies associated with the Hall the most markworthy was the annual musical festival instituted towards the end of the seventeenth century, and held on the 22nd of November, in commemoration of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. A sumptuous feast was preceded by a concert, of which the chief feature was the rendering of an ode to St. Cecilia, set to music by one of the leading composers of the da)-, and it was for these festivals that Pope and Dryden wrote their glorious odes in praise of the saint who from the skies " drew an angel down." The Hall was wainscotted in 1674 by Stephen Colledge, an eminent joiner of those days, and the screen at the south end of the room is also his handiwork. Besides some interesting portraits, the Company possesses a curious and valuable collection of plate, chiefly of the period of Charles I. In its arms appear clasped Bibles and a Holy Dove, with an eagle rising within a nim bus and holding a penner and inkhorn ; the motto is, Verbum Domini Manet in Aiternum. The Stationers have found their historian in their Clerk, Mr. C. R. Rivington, whose " Records of the Wor shipful Company of Stationers " appeared in 1903 as a memorial of the five hundredth year of their corporate foundation. The clerkship of the Company, by the way, has been held by members of the family to which Mr. Rivington belongs since the year 1800. ARMS OF THE STATIONERS COMPANY. CORONATION PROCESSION OF EDWARD VI. THROUGH CHEAPSIDE. From a print of the Fresco of about 1550, destroyed with Cowdray House in 1793. CHAPTER VI CHEAPSIDE An Open-air Market — The Roman Causeway — Cheapside Cross — The Standard and the Conduits — Mob Violence — Hostility towards Aliens — Old Bow Church — Burning out Fitzosbert — A Murder in the Church — The Present Steeple — The " Seldam '' — Old Houses in Cheapside — Simpson's — The Wood Street Corner and its Myths — Alderman Boydell— Saddlers' and Mercers' Halls — Pageants in Cheapside IN the beginning Chepe, or West Chepe as it was often called, to dis tinguish it from East Chepe, was a spacious open-air market, not alto gether unlike those which are still car ried on in some provincial towns, and the purveyors who frequented the place found shelter in movable booths or sheds. The open space where the booths were run up was bordered by one of the main roads of the City. Chepe itself no longer exists, but the main road we still have with us, under the name of Cheapside, one of the most crowded of our City streets. Some writers on early London have con cluded that when first Chepe became a SEAL OF BOW CHURCH, SHOWING THE LANTERNS OF THE OLD TOWER. market, and for long afterwards, there was no street skirting the open space. But when Wren excavated the foundations of old Bow Church, he discovered, after digging to a depth of eighteen feet, a Roman causeway four feet thick, and it was upon this solid basis that he reared the steeple of the present Bow Church. He believed that this cause way followed the northern boundary of Roman London, and that between it and the Thames ran Watling Street, "the principal middle street or Praetorian way." For this hypothesis Mr. Lethaby, whose work * is the fruit of much indepen dent research, has found support in two deeds given by Dugdale under Barn staple, recording the gift, in the early years of the twelfth century (1110-1115), of a new house and land in "foro " or " magno vico LondonicE quam liabuit Odone Bafocensi." This reference to the property of Odo of Bayeux, in the " market-place " or " great * " London before the Conquest." By W. R. Lethaby. 1902- (Macmillan& Co., Ltd.) 04 CROSSES IN CHEAPSIDE 65 street of London," as he says, carries Cheapside the thoroughfare back to Con quest days, and he adds that " there is no doubt Chepe was the Saxon High Street and the official meeting-place of the citizens from the earliest days of the English settle ment." However this may be, it is beyond question that from the earliest times Chepe was one of the two great markets and trading places of the City, and the names borne by the streets leading out of Cheapside — on the north, for example, Wood Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane Market ; on the south, Bread Street, Sopers' (Soapers') Lane (now Queen Street), Old Change — indicate roughly the places where the various trades were carried on. Then there was Goldsmiths' ¦ Row, on the south side of Chepe, extending from the west end to Bread Street, built in 1491 by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, and Sheriff of London, and described by Stow in 1598 as "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London, or elsewhere in England." It contained, he goes on to say, " ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly builded four stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmith arms, and the likeness of Wood men (in memory of the founder's name) riding on monstrous beasts, all of which is cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt." After wards the row seems to have been extended eastwards to Bucklersbury. Until the Great Fire the majority of the goldsmiths lived in Chepe, but after that calamity they migrated to Lombard Street. One great feature of old Cheapside was its cross. There were indeed two, of which one, at the west end, was demolished in 1390 to make way for the Little Conduit. But the cross was that which, commemorating Queen Eleanor, stood in the middle of r^ffside the road facing Wood Street. Cross. o Originally built in 1290, in three octangular stages which reached to a height, probably, of some forty feet, it was rebuilt or enlarged in the fifteenth century, and was further beautified on the accession of Edward VI. But this was the beginning of evil days for the splendid memorial of CHEAPSIDE CROSS IN 1 54/, WITH PART OF THE CORONATION PROCESSION OF EDWARD VI. ON ITS WAY TO WESTMINSTER. From an old Print after a contemporary painting. 66 LONDON TOWN Edward I.'s grief. The Reformers began to inveigh against it, several times it was the object of violence, and finally, on the 2nd of May, 1643, by order of Parliament, it was utterly demolished. As the cross on the summit fell there was great beating of drums and blaring of trumpets and ringing of bells, and the multitude raised a joyful shout. Among the spectators was one who shouted not. John Evelyn, who had to see so much else that grieved him, tells us in his Diary that he saw " the furious and zelous people demolish the stately crosse in Cheap- side." Other ancient features of Cheapside were its Standard and its Conduits. The Standard, which stood opposite the narrow opening styled Honey Lane Market, not far from Bow Church, and also served the purposes of a fountain, was a structure of great antiquity, and in the reign of Henry VI. it had to be rebuilt. The Little Conduit, suc ceeding the old Cross, stood in the middle of the street at the west end, between Foster Lane on the north and Old Change Th Conduits. on tne south ; the Great Conduit, also in the middle of the road, at the eastern end of Cheap, near its junction with the Poultry, was " castellated with stone and cisterned in lead about the year 1285," says Stow, and rebuilt and enlarged by one of the sheriffs in 1479. It brought a supply of sweet water to the City from the Tye-burn at Paddington. The Little Conduit reminds us of some of those scenes of mob violence which blot the pages of the history of the vioUnce. CltY- In the conflict between Edward II. and his wife Isabella, the " she-wolf of France," the citizens favoured the Queen. As soon as he heard that she had landed at Harwich (September 24, 1326) Edward left his capital and fled to the west. Isabella addressed to the City two letters, and at the exhibition of the first of these on the cross in Chepe, on the 15th of October, the City rose. The Mayor, Chigwell, and other leading men repaired to the house of the Black Friars to meet the Bishops of London and Exeter, who were both king's men, but the mob, hastening after them, brought them back to the Guildhall, Chigwell " crying mercy with clasped hands," and offering to yield all their demands. The first to fall victim to the fury of the populace was one John le Marshall, who was suspected of being a spy. Him they beheaded at the Little Conduit here in Chepe. Then they made for the house of Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, in the Strand, for he, as Edward's treasurer, had confiscated Isabel's property. The bishop at this very time was on his way to the City to dine at his house in what is now Warwick Lane, before going to the Tower, and divin ing from the signs of tumult that something was wrong, he galloped towards St. Paul's to take sanctuary. He was too late, how ever. Before he could enter the north door, he was seized, pulled from his horse, and dragged to the Little Conduit, and there his head also was smitten off. Stapledon's two esquires shared their master's fate, and the bodies lay stark naked all that day in Chepe, while the bishop's head was sent to the queen at Gloucester, as another head was once sent to another queen. Yet another tumult of which Cheapside has been the scene was that known as the Evil May Day riot, in the reign of Ma" Day. Henry VIII. London has seldom been without its aliens question, though in past times its grievance against the foreigners has usually been that they throve too well, and not that they were " undesir ables " on account of their poverty. In Henry VI I I.'s day it was the Lombard merchants who were the special objects of popular resentment, and in the year 15 13, as May Day approached, it was rumoured that there was to be a general massacre of foreigners. Before nine o'clock, Sir Thomas More, a member of the King's Privy Council, with the Recorder of the City, came to Guildhall and desired the aldermen to send to the wards forbidding citizens' servants to be abroad after seven o'clock that evening. "After this command had been given," says Holinshed, graphically enough, " in the evening, as Sir John Mundie, an alderman, came from his ward, and two young men in Chepe, playing at the bucklers, and a great many others looking on, for the command was then scarce known, he commanded them to leave off; and when one of them asked why, he would have had him to the compter. Then all the young prentices resisted the alderman, taking the young fellow from him, and Photo : Pictorial Agency. MODERN CHEAPSIDE. 68 LONDON TOWN crying, ' Prentices and Clubs.' Then out of every door came clubs and weapons. The alderman fled, and was in great danger. Then more people arose out of every quarter, and forth came serving men, watermen, courtiers, and others ; so that by eleven o'clock there were in Chepe six or seven hundred ; and out of Paul's Churchyard came three hundred, which knew not of the other. So out of all places they gathered, and broke up the compters, and took out the prisoners that the Mayor had committed for hurting the strangers." The disorder which thus began lasted until three o'clock the next morning, and the houses of many of the hated foreigners in various parts of the City were attacked, and some of the king's men were injured, though it does not appear from Holinshed's account that anyone was killed. Dire was the retribution which waited upon the riot. Some three hundred arrests were made, most of them ap prentices, and of the 278 persons who, bound with ropes, were marched to the Guildhall to take their trial, thirteen were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, the sentences being carried out on eleven pairs of gallows erected at various points in the City, and in the presence, says our sympathetic chronicler, "of the Lord Edward Howard, son to the Duke of Norfolke, a knight marshal, who showed no mercie, but extreme crueltie, to the poore yonglings in their execution ; and likewise the duke's servants spake many opprobrious words." The most famous feature of Chepe in mediaeval days was neither the Cross nor the Standard, nor the Conduits, but old Bow Church. It was the bells of the old Church church which Whittington contrived to hear from the foot of Highgate Hill ; and no one may claim to be a true cockney who is not born within sound of the present peal. But what has Bow to do with Central London ? There is a Bow at the East End, beyond Bethnal Green, but between that parish and Bow Church in Cheapside there is no connexion whatever. Stow, hitting the nail on the head at the second stroke, tells us that it came to bear this name from the stone " bows " or arches upon which the church was built. So we get the name St. Mary-le-Bow, or, in Latin, Sancta Maria de Arcubus. When Wren came to rebuild the church after the Fire he found these arches, forming a Norman crypt, still intact, and although much of the old work was concealed in the rebuilding, the present church still has beneath it a crypt formed by massive columns. This crypt gave its name to the Court of Arches, an ecclesiastical court which before the Fire used to hold its sessions in the vestry, Bow Church being chosen for the purpose because it was one of the thirteen " peculiars " of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the City of London. After the Fire the Court of Arches never returned to Bow Church ; but the ceremony of con firmation of the bishops of the province of Canterbury continued to be performed here until a few years ago, when, owing to " scenes " created by anti-Ritualists, it was transferred — only temporarily, let us hope — to the Church House, Westminster. In the year 1091 London was visited by a terrific storm, which lifted the roof of Bow Church clean off, and flung it down into the midst of Chepe, and it is recorded that some of the great rafters were driven twenty-two feet into the ground. Stow explains the statement by telling us that the ground was of " a moorish nature," as indeed it must have been ! In 1271, apparently without any storm to supply it with a reason, a great part of the tower fell, slaying many people, both men and women. The work of rebuilding went on so slowly that the tower was not completed until the early years of the sixteenth century, when it received its crown in the form of five stone " lanthorns," one at each corner and one in the centre, raised above the rest on arches. These lanterns, Stow tells us, were not mere architectural ornaments, but were intended to be glazed so that lights might be placed in them " whereby travellers to the City might have the better sight thereof, and not to miss of their ways." It does not appear, however, that Bow Church tower was ever thus used as a beacon for the guidance of benighted travellers. Long before the fall of the tower, Bow Church was set on fire, in violation of its right of sanctuary, by order of an Arch bishop. In the reign of Richard I., William Fitzosbert, otherwise William with the A TWELFTH CENTURY DEMAGOGUE 69 Longbeard, gave the authorities of the City a good deal of trouble by his fiery harangues at the folkmoot in St. Paul's Violated Churchyard, his object being to at Bow stjr up the commonalty to resist Cnurch. r J the exactions of the Mayor and rich aldermen. At first he seems to have been in favour with the king, for he was careful in his orations to profess to be zealous for the king's interest, but at last, in 1 196, his enemies were able to get orders issued for his arrest. But Fitzosbert was not a man tamely to allow himself to be taken captive, and having slain one of those who sought to arrest him, he with some friends fled to Bow Church for sanctuary, barring the door and taking refuge in the tower. As they were well supplied with food, Archbishop Hubert scrupled not to order the church to be fired, and the refugees were smoked out. They were now secured — for the thousands who had been moved by Fitzosbert's declamation seem to have raised scarcely a hand in his defence — and a son of the man whom Fitzosbert had slain stabbed him, though not mortally, with a dagger. Then they were hurried to the Tower, where Hubert was waiting to pronounce sentence, and this formality completed, Long beard himself and nine of his adherents were dragged by the heels to Smithfield and there hanged. Of the character of this " seditious tailor," as Stow calls him, the most opposite views are taken by the chroniclers. Thus Matthew Paris speaks of him as " dying a shameful death for upholding the cause of truth and of the poor " ; while William of Newburgh writes that he " perished, according to justice, as the instigator and contriver of troubles." That early in his career he brought a charge of treason against his elder brother, who is said to have refused to supply him with money wherewith to gratify his extravagant tastes, appears to be probable ; and Dr. Stubbs, referring to this incident, sums him up as a disreputable man who, having failed to obtain the king's consent to a piece of private spite, made political capital out of a real grievance of the people. That he was a demagogue of extra ordinary power is certain. Of commanding CONFIRMATION OF ARCHBISHOP LONGLEY IN BOW CHURCH (1862) : THE ARCHBISHOP'- ELECT TAKING THE OATHS. stature and wonderful gift ledge of great strength, he had a of speech and some know- of law. " Addressing the people on every occasion, especially at their folkmoot in St. Paul's Churchyard," says Mr. Round in " The Dictionary of National Biography," " he roused them by stinging invective against the mayor and aldermen. . . The craftsmen and the populace flocked to hear him, and he was said to have had a following of more than fifty thousand men." A danger ous man, no doubt, in those times, and Hubert probably found little difficulty in persuading 70 LONDON TOWN himself that it was expedient "that one man should die for the people." This was not the only occasion upon which sanctuary was violated at Bow Church. In the year 1284 a goldsmith named Laurence Duckett, who in a quar rel had wounded Ralph Creppin, M.P. for the City and clerk to the mayor, took refuge in the tower, and during the night was murdered by a party of his antagonist's friends, instigated by Creppin's mistress, Alice atte Bowe, the body being then hung by the neck to a mullion of one of the windows, so as to suggest suicide. This wicked and cowardly assassination must have been carefully planned, for it is not likely that wounds inflicted in the course of a fight would have lent themselves to the theory of self-destruc tion. For the time no suspicion of foul play was entertained, but pre sently a boy who had been with Duckett in the church and had hid him self, so that he saw them do their devilish work, proclaimed what he had seen. This time, the culprits not having acted under archiepiscopal in stigation, the sacrilege was avenged, sixteen per sons being hanged, while the woman was burnt alive. Nor did Creppin escape scot-free: he, with two other clerks and the sheriff, was sent to the Tower, and they were only, after a time, enlarged on payment of certain fines. The church also was punished, interdiction being laid upon it, and the doors and windows being " stopped up with thorns." By the Great Fire not only was St. Mary- le-Bow destroyed, but with it two other Photo : Ptctonat Agency. wren's loveliest steeple (bow church). Cheapside churches, St. Pancras', Soper Lane (now Queen Street), and All Hallows', Honey Lane, almost opposite Bow Church. These two churches were never rebuilt, the parishes to which they belonged being joined to that of St. Mary-le-Bow. Upon the present Bow Church, the crowning glory of Cheapside, Wren expended £15,400, more by at least £3,000 than he spent upon any other of the parish churches which he rebuilt, and _£ 7,388, or close upon half the total, was absorbed by the steeple. And who will say that this exquisite tower and spire were not cheap at the price ? Fer gusson deemed the steeple " beyond all doubt the most elegant building of its class erected since the Reformation " ; and to most lovers of London, we suspect — we speak here of the City, as dis tinct from London in any of the larger senses — there is no building, after St. Paul's, which they would regret so poign antly, were it by some maleficent mischance des troyed, as this lovely structure. Its lower part is a square tower in three stages, the highest of them forming the belfry, which is relieved with Ionic pilasters, and has at each corner a prominent finial supporting a vase, the object of these finials being to break the transi tion from the square to the round. The belfry sustains a stone cylinder encircled by a lovely peristyle of twelve Corinthian columns ; upon this rests a small lantern, supported also by the same number — twelve — of radiating flying buttresses springing from the entablature of the peristyle, and so curved as to present in TURN AGAIN, WHITTINGTON1 71 the aggregate the outline of a ribbed cupola, with an effect hardly less lovely than that of the peristyle itself. Above the lantern comes the spire, topped by a vane in the form of a dragon. This dragon was the subject of a curious prophecy. It was pre- THE CHAINED SWAN (p. J2 dieted of old, says Swift, "that when the dragon on Bow Church kisses the cock behind the Exchange, great changes will take place in England." Well, in the year 1832, as Haydon the painter noted, these ornaments were both taken down to be repaired, and were placed side by side in the same yard. And before the year was out the Reform Bill was passed ! According to Fergusson, the height of the steeple is 235 feet, which would make it the loftiest of Wren's spires. Its actual height, however, to be very precise, is 221 feet 10 inches, so that it is slightly inferior, in stature to St. Bride's off Fleet Street, which ¦ measures 226 feet ; but as Mr. A. E. Daniell points out in his admirable volume on " London City Churches," * the Fleet Street church stands upon much lower ground that its sister in Cheapside. There are several points in Cheapside from which the spire can be seen to advantage — from the west end of the street, for example, a little to the north of Behnes's poor statue of Sir Robert Peel, though this is not the safest spot in London at which to invite architectural impressions ! A charming view of it is also to be caught from the bridge of Holborn Viaduct, where, too, one may compare it with the tapering spire of St. Bride's and with that of Christ Church, *" London City Churches." By A. E. Daniell. 1896. (Archi bald Constable & Co. ) Newgate, the latter, alas, spoilt by the removal of the pedestals from the angles of the topmost stage. The belfry of Bow Church now possesses the twelve bells for which it was designed, but at first there were only eight, to which two were added in 1758, the peal being brought to its full complement in the extensive restoration carried out between 1878 and 1882. In 1905 the bells were re-hung, and since then the old chimes have been revived, and one may now hear, modified by Sir Charles Stanford, the " Turn again, Whit tington " melody which was a familiar strain in Chepe until the Great Fire. On the exterior of the west wall may be seen a tablet inscribed with the arid lines of Dryden comparing Milton with Homer and Dante — " Three poets in three distant ages born." This tablet was early in the nineteenth century placed on the church of All Hallows, Bread Street, where Milton was baptised, and was removed to its pre sent situation when, in 1876, that church was de molished. In the secondstorey of the tower, on the face of it that fronts the street, is a balconyprovid ed by W r e 11 to replace the stone building which stood in front of old Bow Church, and from which suc- c e s s i v e m o n archs, from Ed ward III. onwards, watched the joustings and pageants that were so frequently enacted in Chepe. How Edward came to build this " seldam," as OLD HOUSE IN CHEAPSIDE BEARING THE CHAINED SWAN {p. J2). From a Water-colour by Findley. 72 LONDON TOWN Stow calls it, has often been told. At a great tournament in Chepe to celebrate the birth of the Black Prince a wooden tower was run up for the accommodation of Queen Philippa and the ladies of her court, and so badly had the carpenters done their work that in the midst of the mock combat down it came ¦with a crash, and with it the Queen and her ladies. Happily no one was hurt, but Edward's hot Plantagenet temper flamed out against the workmen, and he swore an oath that the culprits should at once be put to death. But the Queen fell on her knees and craved mercy for them, and her impetuous consort relented and spared them. In Bow Churchyard, on the west side and at the rear of the church, is to be seen a house which looks as though it might have been built about the same time as the church. Cheapside itself has of late years been widened and mostly rebuilt. But there are still two or three houses which oid remain pretty much in their Houses in original state. One of them is the eapsi e. corner house on the east side of Friday Street, numbered u, Cheapside. Of red brick, of a very venerable tinge, it no doubt carries us back to the rebuilding of Cheapside after the Fire ; and though the windows have been altered, the exterior generally has suffered little in the way of modernisation. But old as is the house, the relief which its Cheapside front bears is probably much more ancient. It figures the Chained Swan from the arms of Henry V. when Prince of Wales ; and it may well be, as Mr. Loftie suggests in his " History of London," the sole surviving fragment of a building which stood here from the time of the Plan tagenet king until, six years after the Stuart Restoration, it perished in the flames. Not far from the other (eastern) end of Cheapside, on the same south side of the street, is a passage bearing the name of Bird- in-Hand Court, which formerly led to the " Queen's Arms," as now it leads to Simpson's restaurant. In rooms over this passage Keats was lodging in 1816, and here he wrote the greater part of his first volume of poems, pub lished in 1 8 17, including his splendid sonnet entitled, " On First Looking into Chapman's 'Homer.' " This is not Cheapside's only literary association, but we must not leave Bird-in- Hand Court without recalling that Simpson's restaurant, well known for its fish dinners, was established by a worthy of this name who had carried on a fish-dinner house Simpson's, founded in 1723 in Bell Alley, at the west end of old Billingsgate. When he sold his business there, a few years before the market was rebuilt (1877), he entered into an undertaking, as the story is told by Mr. Edward Callow in " Old London Taverns," not to engage in a similar enter prise within a specified distance of Bell Alley. Finding that he could not be happy out of business, he paid- the forfeit of £5°° and bought the " Queen's Head," in Bird-in-Hand Court, and, renaming the house after himself, ran it on much the same lines as the old house in Bell Alley. A few years ago a familiar figure at Simpson's was the late Alderman Sir John Bennett, whose shop (No. 65), high up on the front of which Gog and Magog strike the hour on a large bell, is still one of the " sights " of Cheap- side for country cousins. The other famous literary association of Cheapside is with Wordsworth, for was it not at the corner of Wood Street, where flourishes a large plane-tree, that there hung the thrush whose song figures in the reverie of Poor Susan ? Familiar as are the lines, we must quote the two first stanzas, for they appear to be bearing their part in the creation of a pretty myth. " At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years ; Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the bird. " 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? she sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheap- side." It is sometimes assumed, by a pardonable confusion of ideas, that the thrush whose song conjured up the poor woman's vision wai* clinging to the plane-tree which casts its shade upon the site of the church of St. Peter's-in-Chepe, destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, the parish being joined to that of St. Matthew, Friday Street. But the first couplet shows that the song ster was a caged bird, and the poet Photo ;_SaitdeU, Ltd., Xont<6od S.B. MERCERS' HALL PREPARED FOR A LIVERY DINNER. 74 LONDON TOWN has made it clear that this was so by a note which he prefixed to the little piece : " This arose out of my observation of the affecting music of these birds, hanging in this way in the London streets during the freshness ALDERMAN BOYDELL. From the Painting by Sir William Beechey. and stillness of the Spring morning." It is of less moment to point out that it was physic ally impossible for Susan to have beheld volumes of vapour or anything else gliding through Lothbury. Poetry, even when it tells you precisely how long a bird has hung in one station, need not allow itself to be trammelled by regard for topographical accuracy. The Wood Street plane-tree has some responsibility for another pretty legend. The passer-by must have wondered how it is that the three Cheapside shops* in front of * Until 1902 they were four, but in that year a portion of one was taken for the widening of Wood Street, and what was left of it was added to the adjoining shop. it are so much lower than all the other buildings in the street. How pleasantly could the fact be explained if we assumed that the leases under which the property is held forbid the raising of the houses out of re gard to the tree whose branches overhang them ! The assumption has, in fact, been made by more than one writer ; but, sad to say, it is entirely erroneous. The houses formerly belonged to St. Peter's, and are now vested in the City Paro chial Foundation, and from information supplied by that institution it ap pears that the freehold is absolute, and that the height of the buildings is restricted by nothing but the doctrine of ancient lights. ' It may be added that for at least two hundred years there have been clauses in the lease giving the lessors the right of going on the roofs on the occasion of royal or civic processions. This, however, was a common feature of Cheapside leases. At No. 90, Cheapside, at the corner of Ironmonger Lane, now occupied by the massive premises of the Atlas Assurance Office, stood the shop of Alderman Boydell, the famous print-seller, whose business career was one of the most remarkable on record. Apprenticed to an engraver after he had turned twenty, he became so enamoured of his art that he determined to popularise and extend it, Having etched some small plates of land scapes, in groups of six, he induced the keepers of toy-shops to expose them in their windows, and Saturday by Saturday did he go the round of these shops, as was the way in those days, to square the accounts. From small things he went on to great, until he conceived his grand project of a " Shakespeare Gallery," a collection of THE MERCERS' COMPANY 75 modern historical pictures, prints of which were to accompany a magnificent edition of the plays. But Boydell was a generous and lavish man, who forgot to see to it that his princely schemes yielded a profit, and in 1804, now an old man of eighty-five, he had to petition the House of Commons for leave to dispose of his stock of paintings and drawings by lottery. He described himself as anxious to be freed from the debts which oppressed him, claimed that he had created both a demand and a supply for English prints, lamented that he could not leave his Shakespeare Gallery to the nation, as he had hoped to do, the French Revolution having cut up his revenue by the roots, and admitted the mistake he had made in having increased his stock of copper-plates to such an extent that all the print-sellers in Europe, in those unfavourable times, could not pur chase them. The House granted the petition, and Boydell lived just long enough to know that all the tickets were disposed of. He had been Alderman of Cheap Ward since 1782, and Lord Mayor in 1790, and he died on the nth of December, 1804, as the result of a chill caught at the Old Bailey Sessions. In Cheapside are the halls of two of those Livery Companies of which some general account was given in the preceding chapter. The Saddlers' Company, whose hall Saddlers' aDuts Up0n Foster Lane as well as upon Cheapside, is of great anti quity, as is clear from documents, still in existence, which show that in n 54 it had relations with the convent of St. Martin-le- Grand. But it is one of the minor Companies, and, interesting as is its story, we can only say here that the present hall dates from 1822, its predecessor having been destroyed by fire in 1 82 1, thus sharing the fate of the first hall, which perished in 1666. The Mercers' Company, one of the twelve great Companies, and the first in order of civic precedence, claims less summary notice. Its hall is further east, with one entrance in Ironmonger Lane, and another, 71he used on great occasions, in Cheap- Mercers. ° r side, to which it presents a front that ever since this was rebuilt, in 1880, has been one of the architectural features of the street. It reproduces the old front of the hall, which has been variously attributed to Wren and to an Italian architect of the seventeenth century ; and the rest of the frontage of the block, extending from Iron monger Lane to the Old Jewry, having a length of 200 feet, was designed to harmonise with it. The whole of the block belongs to the Mercers, and so much of it as they do not require for their own purposes is let out to business firms. At first mercers were dealers in all small wares, including even spices and drugs ; but as trades became differentiated, they dealt more particularly in silks and velvets, leaving to the haberdasher smaller articles of dress. In the reign of Henry II. they had their stalls in the part of Cheapside where their hall now stands, but presently they shifted to the south side of Chepe, on the western side of Bow Church, between the church and Friday Street, so that this part of Chepe came to be known as the Mercery. The Mercers' Company, though its origins have been traced back considerably further, was formally incorporated in 1393, when Sir Richard Whittington induced Richard II. to bestow upon it a charter. By his will, Whit- ARMS OF THE MERCERS COMPANY. tington constituted the Company the trustees of his almshouses on College Hill — an example which was followed by opulent merchants and others in later days, with the result that the Mercers are now the wealthiest of all the City Companies. Long before this incorporation, towards the 76 LONDON TOWN end of the twelfth century, Agnes, the sister of Archbishop Becket, and wife of Thomas Fitz-Theobald, a Norman knight, had built a college of Augustine Friars, with a church, close to Ironmonger Lane, Cheap- side, on the site of the house where the Archbishop was born, their father being Gilbert Becket, mercer and portreeve of Lon don. This college and church, which were dedicated to St. Thomas of Aeon — why " Aeon " is a mere matter of unprofitable conjecture — came to be associated with the Mercers' fraternity, and when the college was dissolved by Henry VIII. the collegiate build ings, with adjoining property, were bought by the Mercers. Of these buildings a clean sweep was made by the Great Fire. Then it was that the present hall, with The old ^ court-roC)m behind it, and the Jtlall. ' chapel, were built. The hall is a lofty wainscotted room, richly decorated with carvings. It is elevated above an extensive piazza, and rests upon Doric columns. The windows are filled with painted glass, show ing on the one side Queen Elizabeth, flanked by Dean Colet and Sir Thomas Gresham, and on the other side Richard II., with St. Thomas Becket and Sir Richard Whittington. The chapel, on the ground floor, which occupies the site of the house where Thomas Becket was born, is reached from the piazza, and this, too, is wainscotted, and is paved with white and black marble. Here service is held on Sunday evenings, and also on saints' days. In 1908 the business offices of the Company, fronting Ironmonger Lane, were found to be insecure, and had to be rebuilt. The portion of the premises which was re built in 1880 includes a handsome staircase, leading from the entrance in Cheapside to the drawing or reception room — one of the most elegant apartments in the City, with wains cotted walls, marble pilasters lined with gilt, gilt cornices, and a panelled and painted ceiling. In the Hall and elsewhere are portraits of Gresham, Colet, Whittington, and other distinguished Mercers, and occupying a place of honour in the large court-room is a portrait of an eminent " Mercer " of these later days, the late Lord Selborne, lawyer and states man. Here, too, is displayed the medal granted to the Company by the War Secretary on the recommendation of Earl Roberts, in recognition of its liberality in assisting to raise and equip the City of London Imperial Volunteers for active service in South Africa. Besides the Whittington Almshouses, at the foot of Highgate Hill, the Mercers carry on St. Paul's School, at Hammersmith, with funds provided by Dean Colet ; a middle-class school of their own in Barnard's Inn, Holborn, and other schools in the country. They are also trustees of the Gresham Estate, and of a multitude of smaller properties ; and their benefactions to a great variety of public objects are on a princely scale. The badge of the Company shows a maiden's head, or, in more formal language, a demi-virgin with dishevelled hair, believed by some to relate to the Virgin Mary, and by others to have reference to Queen Eliza beth. " When any of this Company," says Strype, " is chosen mayor, or makes one of the triumph of the day wherein he goes to Westminster to be sworn, a most beautiful virgin is carried through the streets in a chariot, with all the glory and majesty pos sible, with her hair all dishevelled about her shoulders, to represent the maiden head which the Company give for their arms, and this lady is plentifully gratified for her pains, be sides the gift of all the rich attire she wears." Cheapside, as the main thoroughfare of the City, has been favoured more than any other London street with those pageants, cheapside11 c^vlc and national, in which our remoter ancestors took such im mense delight, carrying them out with a sumptuousness that makes our efforts in this kind, though we do such things better than we did, appear flimsy and futile. Let us play the spectator, with the chronicler whose narrative is adapted by Sir Walter Besant,* at one of these pageants, that with which London welcomed Henry V. when, on his return from France, he came in procession to St. Paul's to render thanks for Agincourt. He was met at Black- heath by the Mayor and the Aldermen " ap parelled in orient grained scarlet, and four hundred commoners clad in beautiful murrey,. well mounted and trimly horsed, with rich collars and great chains " ; and at St. Thomas of Waterings, on the Old Kent Road, he was received by the clergy of London in solemn procession, " with rich crosses, sumptuous ?"London." By Walter Besant. 1892. (Chatto & Windus.) TOURNAMENT IN CHEPE TO CELEBRATE THE BLACK PRINCE'S BIRTH (p. 72). From a Draining by R. Caton Woodville. copes, and massy censers." The King bore himself, our chronicler tells us, " like a grave and sober personage," and " would not suffer his helmet to be carried with him, whereby the blows and dints upon it might have been returned from his victory over the Four Kings." When the King came to the Cross which his great ancestor had built he found it screened by " a beautiful castle " of timber, hung with A LORD MAYOR'S PROCESSION IN CHEAPSIDE (1761). After a Drawing by June. seen by the people, nor would he suffer any ditties to be made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victory, because he would the praise and thanks should be altogether given to God." At London Bridge and in Cornhill the decorations, largely allegorical, made a brave show. At the tower of the conduit, at the entrance of Chepe, which was draped with green hangings, and ornamented with scutcheons, " sat twelve venerable old men, having the names of the twelve apostles written on their foreheads, together with the twelve Kings, Martyrs, and Confessors of the succession of England, who . gave their chaunt at the King's approach, and sent forth upon him round leaves of silver mixed with wafers, and wine out of the pipes of the conduit, imitating Mel- chisedeck's reception of Abraham when he linen painted to resemble squared blocks of white marble and green and crimson jasper, and smothered with coats of arms. " On a stage in front came forth a chorus of virgins with timbrel and dance, as to another David coming from the slaughter of Goliah ; their song of congratulation was, ' Welcome, Henry the Fifte, King of Englond and of Fraunce.' Throughout the building there was also a multitude of boys, representing the heavenly host, who showered down on the King's head small coins resembling gold, and boughs of laurel, and sang, accompanied by organs, the Te Deum Laudamus.'' But the climax of the pageant was reached at the Conduit at the West End of Chepe, where, the procession being now at the Cathedral, the show ended. Here were pavilions " in each of which was a virgin, 78 LONDON TOWN who from cups in their hands blew forth golden leaves on the King. The tower was covered with a canopy made to resemble the sky and clouds, the four posts of which were supported by angels, and the summit crowned with an archangel of brilliant gold. Beneath the canopy, on a throne, was a majestic image representing the sun, which glittered above all things, and round it were angels singing and playing all kinds of musical instruments." What a show ! Yet was there nothing ex ceptional about it, except that there seems to have been, perhaps owing to the King's grave demeanour, more of solemnity and less of riot ous humour than was customary. Our for bears in olden days were mindful enough of the serious side of life, but when they took their pleasures they gave themselves to the business with an energy and a thoroughness that enable us to understand the great things they did on stricken fields and stormy seas. Was it because they were so very much in earnest in their festivities that Froissart charged them with taking their pleasures sadly ? It were easy to fill page after page with these stories of pomp and jubilation, but we can but recall one more incident, which befel when Richard I I.'s coronation pro cession passed through Chepe. The Mayor had claimed his customary right of assisting the chief butler at the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. The claim was opposed by Chief Justice Belknap, who at last gave way with the churlish gibe that the Mayor might, if he chose, lend a hand at washing up the pots and pans. The citizens of London were not the men to take such a flout meekly, and when the royal procession came to the upper end of Chepe, where a castle had been built which poured forth wine, none could fail to see that one of the fountains was the very image of the Chief Justice. Now, therefore, the spouter of taunts was vomiting wine. ARMS OF THE SADDLERS' COMPANY. Photo: Pictorial Agency. VIEW EASTWARDS FROM THE SPIRE OF BOW CHURCH. CHAPTER VII AROUND CHEAPSIDE Old Change — Friday Street — The " Mermaid " — Was Shakespeare of the Company ? — Bread Street and John Milton — All Hallows' Church — St. Mildred's — " Gerard the Giant " — Soper Lane — Pancras Lane and St. Benet's Sherehog — Watling Street — Budge Row — Tower Royal — Foster Lane and St. Vedast's — Goldsmiths' Hall — Wood Street and its Churches — A Curious Story — Brewers' Hall — Milk Street — ¦ An Ambitious Sheriff — Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and His Forbears— A Murder in Ironmonger Lane — King Street — A Tragedy OF the streets leading out of Cheapside on the south side, the most westerly is Old Change, so called, according to Stow, because here was kept the King's Exchange, where bullion was received to be Change. converted into coin of the realm, and whence new coins were dis tributed. There were two such Exchanges in London, the other being at the Tower, and afterwards a third was set up in Lombard Street. Friday Street was the fishmongers' quarter. and was so named, of course, on account of the consumption of fish on the sixth Stir^e? day °f the Week' Riley. in the " Memorials," gives a document in which the street is mentioned under this name so early as the year 1277. In this street, near its Cheapside end, stood till 188 1, when it was destroyed, the church of St. Matthew, rebuilt by Wren in 1685. Sir Hugh Myddelton, the creator of the New River, who died in the year 163 1, was churchwarden of this parish, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Matthew's. We may here mention the famous " Mer maid " Tavern, which is variously spoken of as having been in Bread Street and in "Mermaid " Friday Street and in Chepe. In one sense it was in all three, for while the front appears to have looked down upon the main thoroughfare, there was access to it from both the smaller streets. Here it was that Ben Jonson and Beaumont, and other great lights of that age, forgathered to pass the cup and toss the jest. As Keats sings — " Souls of poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine ? " Let us hope that they all were as witty as, and more temperate than Jonson, whose wont it is said to have been to drink " seas of Canary wine," reel home to bed, and after a profuse perspiration, get up and write his dramas. Often as they have been quoted, we must borrow some of the lines which 79 So LONDON TOWN Beaumont wrote to Jonson recalling their passages of wit in this tavern : " . . What things have we seen Done at the ' Mermaid ' ? Heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life." Was Shakespeare of those who have made the " Mermaid " familiar in our mouths as a household word ? That he was is not improb able, and it may very well have been here that he had some of those passages with Ben Jonson which are described by Fuller in a passage quite worthy of the theme. " Many,'- he tells us in his " Worthies of England," " were the wit combats betwixt him (Shake speare) and Ben Jonson ; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war : Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances ; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, Scale of 100 Yards PLAN OF THE STREETS NORTH AND SOUTH OF CHEAPSIDE. but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." This passage has not always been quoted correctly. Fuller is sometimes made, to say that he " beheld " Shakespeare and Jonson as like a Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war, and then we are gravely told, even by so careful a writer as Mr. Laurence Hutton, the author of " Literary Landmarks of London," that " as Fuller was but eight years old when Shakspere died, his accounts of what he saw and heard of Shakspere in the " Mermaid " are hardly to be relied upon." But Fuller does not represent these wit combats as having taken place at the " Mer maid," or in any other special place. And, as anyone may satisfy himself by turning to the first edition of the " Worthies," what he wrote was not " I beheld," but " I behold." He was therefore drawing a comparison present to his mind at the time of writing, not professing to recall a scene which he could never have witnessed. If there is some doubt as to Shakespeare's association with the " Mermaid," there is none about Milton's connection with Bread Street, the old bakers' quar ter of Chepe ; for here, at the sign of the " Spread Eagle," London's greatest son was born, on the 9th of December, 1608. Professor Masson, in his " Life " of Milton, not only pictures Shakespeare meeting Ben Jonson at the " Mermaid," in the year 16 14, when he paid his last visit to London, but even thinks that he " may have passed a fair child of six playing at his father's door, and, looking down at h i m kindly, have thought of a little grave in Stratford churchyard, and the face of his own dead Hamnet." A pretty fancy, which the reader may, if he please, believe. But certain is it that here in Bread Street, at least as early as 1603, SCENE IN THE " MERMAID " TAVERN. From a Drawing by Lawson Wood. 82 LONDON TOWN Milton's father, also named John, pursued the vocation of a scrivener. Originally, as Professor Masson points out, scriveners were penmen of all kinds of writings, but in process of time, and especially after the in vention of printing, their business became very much that of a modern attorney, or of an attor ney in conjunction with a law stationer. They culture, with a special bent to music. "An organ and other musical instruments were part of the furniture of the house in Bread Street ; and much of his spare time was given to musical study." The son in herited, or caught, from the father a love for the heavenly art, and when long after wards he framed his scheme of education Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. MILDRED'S, BREAD STREET [p. 83). were incorporated in 1617, but long before this they had been one of the recognised City Companies, and though they have had no hall since 1703, when they sold it to the Coach and Harness Makers, their name is still to be found in the list. The house in which Milton was born was burnt down in the Great Fire, but it was commemorated by Black Eagle Court — the first on the left hand going from Cheapside, and only three houses back from that street — until 1885, when warehouses were built upon the site, and so even the name of the house disappeared. Puritan though he was, the poet's father was also a man of liberal he urged in his lofty style that the intervals of severer labour might " be taken up . . . with the solemn and divine harmonies of music, heard or learnt — either while the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace the well-studied chords of some choice composer ; sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil ditties, which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have a great power over dispositions and manners to smooth and make them gentle." BREAD STREET: MILTON AND SHELLEY 83 At about the age of twelve the boy entered St. Paul's School, within a stone's-throw of his home, and there he remained for some four years, when the time had come for him to go to Christ's College. When he became a Pauline he was already no mean scholar, and we learn from Aubrey, who got his information from Christopher Milton, a younger brother, that at the age of ten he was " a poet." How the boy demeaned himself during his school days we know from his own words (the " Defensio Secunda "). " My father," he wrote, " destined me while yet a little boy for the study of humane letters, which I seized with such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight ; which indeed was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added frequent headaches. All which not retarding my impetuosity in learning, he caused me to be daily instructed both at the grammar-school [i.e., St. Paul's] and under other masters at home ; and then, when I had acquired various tongues, and also some not insignificant taste for the sweetness of philosophy, he sent me to Cambridge." Here, for the time, we leave Milton, merely recalling the circumstance that he was baptised in the church of All Hallows, on the east side of Bread Street, just at the point where that street is intersected Ail by Watling Street. The church Hallows . , 1 . , r^ t-- Church. perished in the Great Fire, and was rebuilt by Wren on the same site. In 1877 this second All Hallows' was demolished, the parish having the year before been united with that of St. Mary-le-Bow ; and the register of his baptism is now preserved in St. Mary's. Let into the wall of one of the warehouses which sprang up where All Hallows' stood is a bust of the poet, with an inscription setting forth his baptism in the church. Here it was also that, in his early years, he worshipped. Bread Street still has, on its eastern side, a little nearer the river than the site of All Hallows', its church, that of St. Mildred, one of the few City churches of which the interior has not been modernised by the substitution of benches for the old pews of substantial oak. Very handsome and very uncomfort able do they look. Over a fine oak pulpit is a large sounding-board with extremely choice carvings, and, in the middle of the church, a spacious Corporation pew, fitted with a sword-rest. The church is also remarkable internally for its ceiling, which takes the form of a dome, with an arch on one side for the chancel and another on the opposite side for the organ-loft. The church was rebuilt by Wren, and finished in 1683. Bread Street may well exalt itself in connection with British poetry, for as All Hallows' witnessed Milton's baptism, so St. Mildred's was the scene of Shelley's marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. The wedding was celebrated on the 30th December, 18 16, in the presence of Mary's father and stepmother, the former of whom she had met on the previous day for the first time since her flight from his home to live with Shelley. With the parish of St. Mildred is united that of St. Margaret Moses, the church of which, in Friday Street, named after a priest known as Moses or Moyses, was not rebuilt after the Fire. St. Mildred, by the way, was a Saxon princess who withdrew to a convent in France, returned to England, and was con secrated abbess of a new convent in the Isle of Thanet, where she died in the year 676. One other feature of Bread Street in former days must we notice — the so-called Gerrard's Hall, on the south side HanT"1'8 of Basing Lane. Stow describes it as a " great house of old time, built upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone brought from Caen in Nor mandy." It was then a hostelry, and the popular belief was that it was named after a giant who once dwelt in it ; but Stow had been able to ascertain that Gerrard's Hall was a corruption of Gisors' Hall, the house having been the property of John Gisors, Mayor of London in 1245, and of his son, Sir John Gisors, who was Constable of the Tower in 131 1. In the lofty hall, says Stow, " stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the wars to run withal." Stow, however, would have none of giant Gerrard, and suggested that the pole was simply a superannuated maypole. The house was rebuilt after the Great Fire, on the same Early English crypt that had supported the original Gisors' Hall, and it survived until 1852, when it was de molished. Basing Lane also has disappeared. 84 LONDON TOWN The stones of the crypt, carefully numbered, were handed over by the City authorities to the projectors of the Crystal Palace, on the understanding that the crypt should be re built at Sydenham ; but, instead of being used for this purpose, they went to form the bodies of the antediluvian monsters which were sprinkled about the grounds of the Palace. A wooden figure of " Gerard the Giant," bear ing a staff, and habited in the costume of the Stuart period, had a happier destiny than the crypt,for it is still to be seen in the Guildhall Museum. Queen Street, the most easterly of the tributaries of Cheapside on the south side, leading from that thoroughfare down to Southwark Bridge, was formerly known as Soper Lane, its name being changed after the Fire in honour of Catherine of Braganza, Charles I I.'s consort. Why Soper Lane ? Not, Stow says, because of the soap- makers, " as some have supposed," but after one Alleyne le Sopar, who flourished in the reign of Edward II. Here, however, Stow was in error, and those whom he set himself to cor rect were right. Riley, in the " Memorials," shows that Soper Lane was so called as early as 1288, and that Stow's le Sopar or le Soper was a maker of brass pots who in the ninth year of Edward II. was charged with carrying on his business fraudulently. The soapmakers dwelt here more than three centuries before this person lived, and gave place in the reign of Edward II. to the pep- perers or spicers, who some seventy years later were succeeded by the curriers and cordwainers. In Bishop Latimer's time the street, sad to say, " had degenerated to the sale of pies." Leading out of Queen Street eastwards to Queen Victoria Street is Pancras Lane, Photo : pictorial Agency. WATLING STREET, which is named after the old church of St. Pancras, in Soper Lane, but was for merly, styled Needlers' Lane. In Pancras this little street, until the Great Fire, stood a church remarkable for its name— St. Benet Sherehog. Origin ally it was dedicated to St. Osyth, a Saxon saint, but in the reign of Edward II., Stow tells us, it was rebuilt or repaired by Benedict Shorne, a stock-fishmon ger, whose name came to be substituted for that of the patron saint — the Benedict contracted into Benet, and Shorne being corrupted first into Shrog or Shorehog, and finally into Sherehog. This is very ingenious, and makes agreeable reading, but Riley destroys much of our pleasure in it by insisting that Benedict Shorne was simply a fishmonger living near London Bridge, who, for selling fish by retail at a stall instead of in a shop, in 1322, was suspended from the freedom of the City, and that the church is found mentioned as that of St. Benedict Scherhog from thirty to forty years before that date. Riley's belief, which certainly has not the merit of dignity, is that the church got its qualifying name from the fact of hogs wallowing in the " shores " or ditches close by, which ditches discharged themselves into the Wall Brook. He leaves us undisturbed, however, in the belief that St. Osyth's name survives to this day in con tracted form as Sise Lane, the northern end of which faces a piece of the old burying- ground of St. Benet Sherehog. A little further eastward is a piece of the old burial-ground of St. Pancras Church, spoken of above. It is easy to identify both these sites, for in the one case there is a tablet on the wall of a warehouse that abuts upon the vacant space, and in the other there is an inscription on the LOOKING WEST. WATLING STREET 85 gate of the little enclosure. St. Beliefs parish, by the way, is united for ecclesiastical pur poses with that of St. Stephen Walbrook. Crossing most of these southern tributaries of Cheapside is a narrow street which is no doubt considerably older than the street"8 oldest of them. Watling Street, which begins at Old Change on the east, and ends at Budge Row, on the other side of Queen Victoria Street, bears a Saxon name, which in the thirteenth century took the form of Atheling or ^Etheling Street, the noble or High Street, as Athelney (Athel- ingey) is the Noble's Island. Mr. Lethaby, in his " London before the Conquest," makes the interesting suggestion that Addle Hill, in Carter Lane, called by Stow Adle Street, is allied to Atheling, and he adds that the earliest instance of the present form of the name, Watling, which he has been able to discover as applied to this street, belongs to the fourteenth century. But there is little doubt that this street is far older than even the earliest form of its Saxon name. As we saw in our last chapter, Wren discovered in Cheapside, in excavating for the foundations of the steeple of Bow Church, a Roman causeway of rough stone, 4 feet thick, and 18 feet beneath the surface, and his opinion was that this causeway, which now we call Cheapside, ran along the northern boundary of the Roman city, and that the street which the Saxons presently called Atheling Street, and which is known to us as Watling Street, was the " principal middle street or Praetorian way " of Roman London. If this be so, our present Watling Street, or some portion of it, was a part of that Roman road which ran to what is now the Edgware Road, there to join the great road (Iter 2 of the Romans, Atheling Street of the Saxons) which ran from Dover in the south east to Chester in the north-west. Until recent years Watling Street had a church at each end — St. Augustine's at the west, or St. Paul's Churchyard end, St. Antholin's (St. Anthony's) at the east end, where the street joins Budge Row. But in 1875 St. Antholin's, rebuilt by Wren after the Fire, was made away with, its splendid steeple not sufficing to save it from the hand of the destroyer. It is, however, pleasantly kept in mind by a monument in Sise Lane, which includes a medallion of the church with an inscription setting forth that it was " taken down " (observe the tenderness of the expres sion ! ) and the proceeds devoted in part to the restoration of the neighbouring church of St. Mary Aldermary, and to the erection at Nunhead of another church dedicated to the same saint. St. Augustine's, dedicated not to the great Bishop of Hippo, but to the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was anciently styled Sancti Augustini ad Portam, from its nearness to the south-eastern gate of old St. Paul's, and since the Fire, when it was rebuilt by Wren, it has served the parish of St. Faith, which had its church beneath the crypt of the old cathedral, as well as that of St. Augustine. It has a graceful spire, with a beautiful pierced parapet between it and the tower out of which it rises, but is not otherwise remark able, except that among its rectors it numbers the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, author of the Ingoldsby Legends, who held the incumbency from 1842 till his death in 1845. Of a third Watling Street church, St. John's, which was not rebuilt after the Fire, the parish being joined with that of All Hallows, Bread Street, a bit of the graveyard may still be seen at the spot where Watling Street and Friday Street intersect. In Watling Street were established, in 1866, the headquarters of the Metropolitan (now the London) Fire Brigade, afterwards removed to the Southwark Bridge Road. The Brigade still has a station close by, in Cannon Street, built in 1906, and here in Watling Street are the handsome new headquarters of the London Salvage Corps, which takes charge of premises after the Fire Brigade has done its work of extinction. Watling Street is continued at its eastern end by Budge Row, once the quarter of the dealers in budge (lamb-skin). At the junc tion of the two thoroughfares is a Row8C ^ane wmch by its designation of Tower Royal recalls one of those corruptions of name in which the City abounds. The Tower, says Stow, " was of old time the king's house, but was afterwards called the Queen's Wardrobe. By whom the same was first built, or of what antiquity continued, I have not read, more than that in the reign of Edward I. it was the tenement of Simon Beaumes." But Riley's researches show that the house, or tower — it was probably both — 86 LONDON TOWN Tower Royal. was not called royal because " of pertaining to the kings of this realm," as Stow believed, but from its adjacency to the Street of the Reole or Riole, built by the merchants of the Vintry who imported wine from the town of La Reole, near Bordeaux. There is no doubt, however, that Tower Royal, named as it was after a mere street, was in the reign of Richard II. a dwelling-place of royalty. When Wat Tyler's followers broke into the Tower and terrified Richard's mother by thrusting their swords through her bed, she took refuge here. As soon as Wahvorth had done his work in Smithfield, " the king, his lords and all his company," in Stow's naive language, " entered the City of London in great joy and went to the lady princess his mother, who was then lodged in the Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where she had remained three days and two nights, right sore abashed. But when she sawr the king her son she was greatly rejoiced, and said, ' Ah, son, what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day ! ' The king answered and said, ' Certainly, madam, I know it well ; but now rejoice, and thank God, for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near-hand lost' " By the next Richard, the " Tower Royal " was conferred upon the Duke of Norfolk, and after this its descent was rapid, until it became a stable for the King's horses, and by Stow's day it had been parcelled out into mean tenements. Crossing now to the north of Cheapside, and beginning, as before, at the western end, we come first to Foster Lane. Like so many of the City streets, this formerly had two churches to its name, but after Foster fhe Fire, St. Leonard's, which stood Lane. on tne West side, was not rebuilt, the parish being added to that of Christ Church, Newgate Street. St. Vedast's, on the other side of the street, dedicated to a French saint who was Bishop of Arras and Cambray in the sixth century, fared less badly than most of the City churches in the Fire, although so near St. Paul's, which must have been the chief centre of the conflagra tion ; for the walls were left standing, and the old steeple was allowed to remain until 1694, when it was replaced by the present one, remarkable among Wren's steeples for its massive tower-like character, though by no means wanting in grace. In old St. Vedast's was baptised, on the 24th of August, 1591, Robert Herrick, son of Nicholas Herrick, a Cheapside goldsmith. Though most of his life was spent in the country, the poet was in spirit a true Londoner. We have left till last the chief feature of Foster Lane— Goldsmiths' Hall, most sumptuous of the halls of the City Gold- Companies, though unfortunate in ^JK s its situation in the rear of the General Post Office, and with an exterior that gives an impression of heaviness. It dates only from 1832-35, when it was built by Philip Hardwick, the old hall, restored or rebuilt by Jerman, the City surveyor, after the Fire, having been demolished in 1829. But the Goldsmiths had a meeting-place of their own at least as early as 1366, and in 1 40 1 there is an explicit reference to their hall. The history of the Company itself takes us back even further than the middle of the fourteenth century. It first comes under notice in 1180, when it was fined as an adulterine association — that is, an association carried on without the royal licence. It was in the reign of Edward I. (1272-1307) that the Company was first invested with its assaying powers, it being then directed, says Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt in his " Livery Companies," that " no vessels of gold or silver should leave the maker's hands till they bad them tested by the wardens [of the Company], and stamped with the leopard's head." This law of Edward I., however, was for long only partially operative, and as late as 1505 heavy penalties were necessary to enforce it. In that year Henry VII. gave the Company right of search, and power of fining or imprisoning those who sold articles of gold or silver without having them assayed. The Goldsmiths still exercise the assaying powers which were conferred upon them some five hundred years ago. Gold plate tested by them and found to contain no more than the due proportion of alloy bears the initials of the maker, which he stamps upon it him self; the Leopard's Head of the Company, the hall-mark ; a Crown, which symbolises the Sovereign's approbation ; and a letter indicating the year of manufacture, the date- Photo ; Sandell, Ltd., Nonvood, S.B. goldsmiths' hall : THE staircase (p. 88 LONDON TOWN mark. The marks for silver plate are the same, except that in place of the Crown appears a Lion Passant. The hall-mark ing of all articles of gold and silver except certain small objects is compulsory, but the Company makes only a nominal charge for its assaying and marking, the cost for a dozen tea-spoons, for example, being but 3d. By means of the letter which denotes the year of manufacture, it is possible to tell the age of any piece of plate made in London and assayed at Goldsmiths' Hall, from the year 1438 down to the present time ; and any who are curious to see these date- marks may find them figured in a publi cation so readily accessible as " Whitaker's Almanack." Another duty of great import ance with which the Goldsmiths' Company is charged is that of testing the coin of the realm before it passes into circulation. The function is known as " the Trial of the Pyx," from the pyx or box in which the coins to be tested are deposited, and it is followed by a " Pyx " dinner in the banqueting-hall. The domed entrance hall and staircase of the Goldsmiths' Palace were originally pan elled with oak, but in 1871 they were lined from top to bottom with costly marble of eighteen different kinds — a promise of mag nificence which is abundantly fulfilled by the splendid banqueting hall, the sump tuous drawing-room, and the various other apartments. The heavy panelled ceiling of the banqueting-hall is supported by a range of Corinthian columns of scagliola on either side ; the five arched windows are blazoned, in delicate hues, with the armorial bearings of many distinguished Goldsmiths, past and present. At the Company's banquets their splendid plate, including the gold cup out of which Queen Elizabeth is said to have drunk at her coronation, is displayed in an alcove behind " the chair," where it rivals in dazzling glory the glittering chandeliers that depend from the ceiling. The court-room is dignified with a large mantelpiece of white marble from Canons, the seat of the princely Duke of Chandos near Edgware ; and the terminal busts are believed to be by Roubillac. Here is a portrait by Jenssen of Sir Hugh Myddel ton, who bequeathed to the Company a share in his New River, and others of Sir Thomas Vyner, Lord Mayor in the reign of Charles II., and Sir Martin Bowes, an earlier Lord Mayor, who bequeathed to the Company Queen Elizabeth's corona tion cup. Here, too, are the mirrors from the barge in which members of the Com pany used to disport themselves on the Thames, and a much more venerable sur vival, the little altar of Diana, which, as we saw in our first chapter, was discovered in the excavations for the foundations of the present hall, in 1830. The Goldsmiths rank fifth among the twelve great Companies in order of civic pre cedence. In 1897, to commemorate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, they set apart a sum of ^20,000, of which the income is employed for the relief of needy persons engaged in the gold and silver trades in London. The livery numbers some 250, and among distinguished Goldsmiths of to-day is Lord Alverstone, the Lord Chief Justice. The Company is ever ready to employ its wealth for the promotion of public objects, but it does not neglect the festive and ceremonial side of its duties. It yields place to none of the City Companies in the sumptuousness and stateliness of its banquets, and it may be worth recording, as an evidence of its regard for tradition, that it was not till the fourth year of the twentieth century that smoking was permitted at its feasts, the Goldsmiths being the last of the City Companies to make this concession to human frailty. How can one sufficiently admire their more than spartan self-denial ? In Noble Street, which continues Foster Lane northwards, is the hall of one of the minor City Companies, the Coachmakers, street wh° acquired it from the Scriv eners. Within these walls it was that, on the 29th of May, in 1780, the Protestant Association met and passed that resolution, calling upon their adherents to assemble in St. George's Fields the next Friday, which issued in the Gordon riots. Gutter Lane, the next of the Cheapside tributaries, is said by Stow to have been named after Guthurun, presumably La"" a Dane. But in a manuscript chro nicle of London written in the reign of Edward IV. it appears as Goster Lane. For the name of Wood Street Stow leaves us to choose between two conjectures — one WOOD STREET. 89 that it was conferred upon the street be cause the houses in it were built of timber, in defiance of the edict of Richard I. that builders should use stone in stead of wood, to guard against fire ; the other that it is due to a Thomas Wood, who was sheriff in the reign of Henry VII. WoodStreet. companies amounted to more than a million sterling ; and again five years later, when the damage was estimated at a quarter of a million. But the probability is that neither of Stow's theories is correct, and that the street, as Mr. Loftie suggests,* was named after firewood that was sold there. Photo: Sandcll, Ltd., Norwood, SB. GOLDSMITHS' HALL : THE BANQUETING HALL [p. 88). (1491), was a benefactor of St. Peter's in Chepe, and built " the beautiful row of houses over against Wood Street end." This second theory is negatived by the fact that there is extant a document, cited in Riley's " Memorials," belonging to the reign of Edward I. (1304), in which the street appears as " Wode Strete." It was bearing its present name, therefore, nearly two hundred years before Sheriff Wood's day. If the other theory were the correct one, it would be curious to note that the use of stone in recent days has not saved Wood Street from destructive conflagrations. It was ravaged by fire in '882, when the claims upon the insurance 7 Of the Wood Street churches, but one has survived, that of St. Alban — the only church in the City proper which is dedi- st. Alban's. cated to Britain's proto-martyr. It is said to have been originally the chapel of King Offa, who had his palace close by, and who granted the parish to the Abbey of St. Alban's, which he had founded in 793. In 1077 the advowson was exchanged with one belonging to the Abbot of Westminster, but in the fifteenth century it was transferred to the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, to whom it still belongs. With this parish is associated ecclesiastically that * Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. XII., p. 162. 90 LONDON TOWN of St. Olave, Silver Street (connecting Wood Street with Noble Street), the church of which was not rebuilt after the Fire. A piece of the graveyard, however, has to this day been saved from the builder, and preserved as a recreation ground, in which, in summer, those who step inside to rest find welcome shade under the plane-trees that ST. ALBAN'S, WOOD STREET (WITH THE HOUR-GLASS). From a Water-colour by W. Pearson in the Grace Collection. flourish here. The present church was rebuilt by Wren in 1685, and is believed to be on the same general lines as its predecessor. But it has been drastically modernised. The east end was converted by Sir Gilbert Scott into an apse with three small windows, filled with poor stained glass ; the fine old altar-piece, with its four fluted columns and pediment, surmounted by the royal arms, has gone ; the organ gallery at the other end of the church has been removed ; the walls have lost their panelling, and the finely-carved pulpit its sounding- board, and the piers and the vaulting have been painted. The old hour-glass, in its brass frame, has, however, survived to these de generate days of sermonettes. Of the other Wood Street churches one — that of St. Mary Staining— stood at the north corner of Oat Lane, where its graveyard, with some of the gravestones still in situ, may yet be seen. Why it was called Staining is not known. Some have supposed that it was named after the painters' stainers, who perhaps congregated in this part of London ; others that it was called Staining because it was built of stone, and not of wood. After the Fire the parish was annexed to that of St. Michael, Wood Street, of which the church, rebuilt by Wren, survived to the closing years of the nineteenth century. The site is now occupied by a bank, which displays on its front the church clock ; and on one of the side walls, where it is little likely to distract the attention of those who hurry along Wood Street in eager pursuit of their business, is a tablet commemorating St. Michael's. Stow tells a curious story of this earlier St. Michael's. Here, he says, was buried, without any monument, the head of James IV. of Scotland, slain at Flodden. " After the battle the body of the said king, being found, was enclosed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and so to the monastery of Shene [Richmond], in Surrey, where it remained for a time ; but since the dissolution of that house, in the reign of Edward VI., Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, being lodged and keeping house there, I have been shown the said body, so lapped in lead, close to the head and body, thrown into a waste room, amongst the old timber, lead, and other rubble. Since the which time workmen there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head ; and Launcelot Young, master glazier to Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth], feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and seeing the same dried from all moisture, and yet the form remaining, with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London, to his house in Wood Street, where for a time he kept it for the sweetness, but in the end caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out of their charnel." In Wood Street Mr. Holman Hunt was born, on the 2nd of April, 1827, his father being the manager of a warehouse, and living above the place of business. Nor is THE WOOD STREET AND MILK STREET COMPTER 9i Brewers' once haunted it. standing back from this Mr. Holman Hunt's only connection with the City, for at the age of twelve he entered the office of an estate HunIt!0lman aSent as copying clerk and re mained there for four years, when, threatening to take the Queen's shilling unless he were allowed to prepare himself for the life of an artist, he prevailed upon his father to give him the desire of his heart. Since his early years were spent almost within the shadow of St. Paul's, it is specially appropriate that one of this great artist's masterpieces should have found a permanent home in the cathedral (p. 50). Of the streets branching out from Wood Street, Love Lane is said by Stow to be named from the wantons who In Addle Street, the street, with an ancient gateway, is the hall of the Brewers' Company, which, though it was refaced in 1893, is structurally the same as when it was rebuilt after the Great Fire. Internally, indeed, this hall, with its substantial wainscotting and its massive and richly carved screen, is excelled by none of the City Com panies' halls in its aspect of antiquity. On the walls are hung contemporary portraits of two of those whose gifts are administered by the Company — Dame Alice Owen (1547-1613), wife of Judge Owen, and foundress of the schools at Islington which are still named after her ; and Alderman Richard Piatt (d. 1600), who founded a school and almshouses at Aldenham, Hertfordshire, The parlour, which looks out upon an admirably kept garden of quite respectable dimensions, is, like the hall, wainscotted, and over the fireplace is an inscription setting forth that this was done at the charges of Samuel Starling, a Brewer who was Lord Mayor in 1670. The Brewers were incorporated in 1438, but at this time they had long been in existence. Besides the foundations already mentioned, the Frances Mary Buss Schools in the north of London, and other institutions, owe much to their benefactions. The Company, as we read in Mr. Charles Booth's " Life and Labour," " is composed almost entirely of London employers, and is noteworthy as being the only City Company which refuses to admit anyone to its Court of Assistants who is not a master actively engaged in the trade which it represents." We must not leave Wood Street without mention of its compter, first established here in 1555, when it superseded the Bread Street compter. Burnt down in the Fire, Wood it Was rebuilt in 1670, on the east Street ' ' Compter. side oi the street, and continued in use until 1791, when it was closed, the prisoners being transferred to the compter in Giltspur Street. Milk Street, to which we next come, also had its compter, which figures in a curious incident that happened in the reign of Richard II. On Sunday, the 7th of March, 1378, the goldsmiths and the pepperers came to blows in Chepe the while the Bishop of Carlisle was preaching at Paul's Cross, and the tumult Milk Street THE WOOD STREET COMPTER. was only quelled by the interposition of the Mayor, Nicholas Brembre, and other alder men. At a meeting of the aldermen at Guildhall that same day, the Mayor person ally arrested a man named Worsele on a charge of being one of the leaders in the fray, and ordered him to be sent to the compter of Sheriff Pykeman. Now, Worsele was in the train of the other sheriff, Nicholas Twy- ford, an eminent goldsmith, who went to the serjeant-at-arms and directed that the prisoner LONDON TOWN should be taken to his compter, here in Milk Street. When the Mayor, a stand-no-nonsense sort of man, heard of this, he arrested Twy- ford also, and did not even give him the satis faction of lying in his own prison, but sent him to Sheriff Pykeman's. Then he sum moned a meeting of the Common Council and other leading citizens, and moved them to great indignation by his recital of Twyford's contumacy. With one accord the Common Council removed Twyford from the office of sheriff, pending a better frame of mind, re turned him to the custody of his brother sheriff, and ordered that for the time being the compter whose claims he rated so highly should be taken into the hands of the Mayor, and his goods and chattels sequestrated. How ever, he presently gave surety for his good behaviour, which surety, four years later, was cancelled as no longer required, and in 1388 he became Mayor. In Milk Street was born, in the year 1480, Thomas More, " the brightest man," says Fuller, " that ever shone in that via lactea." His father was a judge of the King's Bench, and he was educated at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street. We shall meet this good and great man again in the course of our wanderings, and here we may merely note that he had long to wait for his beati fication, which was not decreed until 1887. From old to new. At No. 36 in this street the father of the Right Hon. Joseph Cham berlain lived, and conducted a \f r Chamber- business — that of a wholesale boot Iain's and shoe manufacturer — which had Ancestors. , . , been carried on in the same pre mises and under the same name for nearly a century and a half. On leaving University College School, at the age of sixteen, the future statesman, who was born at Camber- well, joined his father here, and remained in the business for two years, when he left it to associate himself with his relatives the Nettle- folds, the Birmingham screw manufacturers. It has usually been assumed that the first of Mr. Chamberlain's forbears to be con nected with the city was his great-great grandfather, Daniel by name, a maltster at Laycock, in Wiltshire. Daniel Chamberlain came to London in the first half of the eighteenth century, and his son, William, founded the Milk Street business, and in due time was elected Master of the Cordwainers' Company. Like his successors, the grandfather and father of the statesman, William Chamberlain lived on his premises in Milk Street, and, like them too, he served as overseer and churchwarden of St. Mary Mag dalene's {see p. 93). In 1905, however, as the result of his examination of the records of the parish, which is now united with that of St. Lawrence Jewry, the Rev. J. Stephen Barrass, rector of St. Lawrence, started the theory that Mr. Joseph Chamberlain is a descendant of the armigerous Chamberleyns who were established in the City from time immemorial. Though the founder of the business in Milk Street came to London from Wiltshire, it is conceivable, he suggests, that the Chamberlains had previously migrated from London to Wiltshire. He has dis covered that some of the earlier Chamber lains in the City were maltsters, or brewers. Another circumstance which he regards as supporting his theory is that in the possession of Mr. Chamberlain's family is a seal bearing an impress of a bird and a key, and the records at Heralds' College show that in the arms granted in 1588 to Robert Chamber- layne of London, whose father had been alderman and sheriff, appears an ostrich hold ing in its beak a key. The evidence that Mr. Chamberlain's con nection with the City is much more ancient than he had supposed is, it must be confessed, not conclusive, and when the theory was sub mitted to him, he replied through his secretary (April 5, 1905) that it was " a plausible sugges tion that Daniel or his predecessors emigrated to Wiltshire during the Plague, and that when Daniel came to London it was a return of that branch of the family, and not a first visit. To prove this it would be necessary to establish the connexion between Daniel and the Chamberlains previously noted as living in the immediate neighbourhood of Milk Street." The writer cautiously added that Mr. Chamberlain could neither confirm nor deny the statements that had been made. Here for the present the question rests ; but we may hope that further investi gations may throw more light upon it, either in the way of corroboration or of disproof. Until 1882, when it was transferred to the Victoria Embankment, the City of London School had its home on the east side of Milk LONDON SCHOOL, MILK STREET 93 Street, towards the Cheapside end, in a build ing of which the first stone was laid by Lord Brougham in 1835, and which was opened in 1837. It was an ugly piece of Gothic work, gratuitous ingenuity, says that it originated in the frequent " washing and sweeping " to keep it clean. Lawrence Lane is obviously so called after the church of St. Lawrence BREWERS' HALL [p. CJl). From a Drawing by Hedley Fitton. and one need not regret that it did not long survive the removal from it of the school. It occupied part of the site of the old church of St. Mary Magdalene, burnt down in 1666 and not rebuilt, the parish being annexed to that of St. Lawrence Jewry. To Honey Lane and its church of All Hal lows reference has been made in our chapter on Cheapside* The name may be left to speak for itself, though Stow, with rather * See ante, p. 70. Lawrence Lane. Jewry, which we shall notice when we come to Gresham Street. In ancient times Law rence Lane must have been a much more important thorough fare than now it is, for it was the most direct way of approaching the old Guildhall, in Aldermanbury, from Cheap- side. In Stow's day there was here a large inn styled the " Bosoms," a corruption, he explains, of " Blossoms." Ironmonger Lane — we reserve King Street for the end of the 94 LONDON TOWN chapter — is said to have been in the reign of Edward I. the resort of dealers in hardware ; in documents belonging to this u™™8" period, the name appears as Is- mongerelane, and so late as 1382 that form remained in use. One of these documents, dated 1277, and quoted in the " Memorials," gives an account of the murder of Simon de Winton, who here kept a tavern. The document cited by Riley is specially interesting, as showing that already inquests while asleep, cut off his head and hid the remains in the coal-house On the following day he set out the bench and sold wine as usual, and when de Winton was asked after, said that he had gone to Westminster to recover some debts. At twilight on the third day the murderer decamped, taking with him some of his victim's property, and the foul deed was not discovered until some four months later, when the owner of the house broke it open. Whether the murderer was OLD CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL {p. 93). From an Engraving in the Grace Collection. in cases of unnatural death were held at this early date, although there appears to have been no separately appointed An Early 0ff[cer — the coroner — to conduct Inquest. them. It was in the year before this that the statute De Officio Coronatorio, the foundation of the law on the subject, was passed. As soon, then, as de Winton's death was reported, the Chamberlain and sheriffs called together good men of the ward of Chepe and Bassishaw, and of Cripplegate, to make dili gent inquisition. They found that de Winton had quarrelled with a man in his employ, Roger of Westminster, who, attacking him ever caught we know not : the record only adds that, in accordance with the custom of those days, the four nearest neighbours and all the witnesses were attached by sureties. In Ironmonger Lane was one of the many City churches not rebuilt after the Fire, that of St. Martin Pomary, so called, Stow conjec tured, because " of apples growing where now houses are lately builded," for he him self, he adds, had seen " large void places there." But the origin of the name is more probably to be found in an apple market. King Street was constructed shortly after the Fire to provide convenient access to the Guildhall from Cheapside. It was still, A JUDICIAL CRIME IN KING STREET 95 therefore, a new street when it was sullied by one of the judicial murders of the reign of James II. After the failure of street. the Monmouth Rebellion, Henry Cornish, a prominent haberdasher, who had been alderman and sheriff, and had given offence to the Court party by his defence of the rights and privileges of the City when attacked by Charles II., was selected as the means of teaching the City a lesson. On Tuesday, the 13th of October, 1685, says Dr. Sharpe, in " London and the Kingdom," he was arrested, " kept a close prisoner, not allowed to see friends or counsel, and deprived of writing materials. On Saturday he was informed for the first time that he would be tried on a charge of high treason, and that the trial would commence on the follow ing Monday (19th October). His attitude before the judges was calm and dignified. Before pleading not guilty to the charge of having consented to aid and abet the late Duke of Monmouth and others in their attempt on the life of the late King (the Rye House plot), he entered a protest against the indecent haste with which he had been called upon to plead, and the short time allowed him to prepare his case. He asked for further time, but this was refused." The issue was a foregone conclusion. In vain did Cornish insist upon the improbability of his having acted in the way alleged against him. This was not enough for his judges, who told him to produce evidence and yet refused an adjournment to enable him to bring a witness up from Lancashire. A compliant jury found him guilty, and, his hands having been tied like those of any common malefactor, he was sentenced to death. Three days later, bearing himself with fortitude, he was taken to the Cheapside corner of King Street, and there hanged, within sight of the Guildhall, on which his head was afterwards set. Four years after wards Parliament annulled the conviction and attainder. But it could not restore to life this victim of the last and worst of the Stuart kings ! ARMS OF THE GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY. THE GUILDHALL. From a Drawing by W. B. Robinson. CHAPTER VIII THE GUILDHALL The First Guildhall — Its Successor — Richard Whittington and John Carpenter — The Great Fire — Restora tion The Porch— The Present Roof — The Windows — The Hustings — Gog and Magog— Monuments —Banquets— Trial of Lady Jane Grey— Mary Tudor at Guildhall to Stow, stood a little to the west of its successor, and was entered from Alderman- bury, so called because here the TRADITION asserts that London has had a Guildhall near the site of the present Hall ever since the time of Edward the Con fessor; but of this belief no proof has ever been urged beyond the fact that the arms of that king appear on one of the bosses of the present porch, and upon others in the crypt and elsewhere in the building. The presence of these arms, however, as Mr. Nichols pointed out long ago, lends little or no support" to the tradition, since they might very well have been introduced into the enrichments casually, or from a" feeling of veneration for the Confessor-king, and not because he had any personal association with the building. But when we come to the thirteenth century we meet with many references to a Guildhall, the hall of the guilds that had sprung up in the city. This hall, according Gu«d°sf.the "Aldermen" had their "bury," or Court or Hall. The name " Alder- manesbury " can be traced back, according to Mr. Lethaby, to early in the twelfth century, and as it no doubt carries the Guildhall with it, we are safe in concluding that London's municipal palace has stood near the site of the present one for some eight hundred years, if not longer. Giraldus Cambrensis relates how, in the year 1191, the citizens met in their " Aula Publica," which took its name from the custom of fellowship- drinking there ; and that this is the true derivation is confirmed by the fact that under Athelstane (925-941) there were formed in London Peace Guilds, whose members were to meet once a month at an ale-drinking 96 THE GUILDHALL BEFORE THE ROOF WAS RAISED, AND AS IT APPEARS NOW. 98 LONDON TOWN in their Guildhall. Somewhere, then, Lon don had a Guildhall in the tenth century, and by early in the twelfth century, if not before, its Guildhall stood near the site of the present one. We may go further, and say with Price, to whose great work * all later writers on the subject must necessarily be indebted, that " no evidence is forth coming to show that the Guildhall of ancient times was ever situated in any other part of London than where it at present stands." By the beginning of the fifteenth century the need of a larger Hall was felt, and in the year 141 1 the new building was begun, on a site a little to the east of the old Hall. The event is recorded, quaintly Gufilhan"1 enough, by Robert Fabyan, Alder man of Farringdon Without, and Sheriff in 1493. " In this yere also [141 1]," he says, " was ye Guylde halle of Lodon begon to be newe edified, and of an olde and lytell cotage made into a fayre and goodly howse as it nowe apperyth." And Stow tells us what arrangements were made to provide the money for the undertaking. The Livery Companies gave " large benevolences ; also, offences of men were pardoned for sums of money towards this work, extraordinary fees were raised, fines, amercements, and other things employed during seven years, with a continuation thereof three years more." It took much longer than ten years, however, to complete the building. In 1439 it was still unfinished, for in that year we find the executors of Robert Chichele, grocer, pay ing in a sum of ^20 bequeathed by him " towards the sustentation of the work of the Guildhall." But the new Hall was still more indebted to Richard Whittington, or rather to his executors, John Coventry and John Carpenter, whom he had left a free hand in WhHtin'gton. t^ie disposal of much of his wealth. In 1422 they contributed £20 towards the paving of the Hall with Purbeck stone, and in the following year ^15 more, besides glazing some of the windows, both of the large Hall and of the Mayor's Court, Whittington's arms being blazoned in every one of such windows. They and the executors of Richard Bury also built a library for the * "A Descriptive Account of the Guildhall of the City of London." By John Edward Price, F.S.A., F.R.S.L. use of students connected with the collegiate chapel of which we shall have to speak pre sently, this library being situate on the south side of the chapel. John Carpenter, too, Town Clerk, became a benefactor of the library on his own account. " If any good or rare books," he wrote in his will, " shall be found amongst the residue of my goods, which, by the discretion of Master William Lichfield and Reginald Pecok may seem necessary to the common library at Guildhall for the profit of the students there, and those discoursing to the common people, then I will and bequeath that those books be placed by my executors and chained in that Library, and in such form that the visitors and students thereof may be the sooner admonished to pray for my soul." In the reign of Edward VI. the library thus founded fared ill at the hands of the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector. That rapacious personage sent for the books, promising speedily to restore them, but they were never returned, and shortly afterwards the building was converted into " a common market house for the sale of clothes." So came to naught a good work which it was reserved to our own day to revive. The last of the additions to be made to the Guildhall was that of the kitchen and cognate offices, built, it is said, in the year 1501 by Sir John Sha, goldsmith, who was Mayor in that year and gave his banquet in the Guild hall. Up to that time the inaugural feasts had taken place in one or other of the Halls of the City Companies, but since then, except when the Hall was being rebuilt, after the Fire, they have always been held in the Guildhall. By the Fire, sad havoc was played with the Guildhall. An exceedingly graphic picture of the aspect it presented while it was in the clutch of the destroyer has come The Fire, down to us in the little book entitled " God's Terrible Voice in the City." " That night " (Tuesday, the 4th of September, 1666), says Vincent, the author, whose pen bit like an etcher's tool, " the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view for several hours together after the Fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was of such solid oake) in a bright shining coale, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass." GUILDHALL: THE PORCH 99 In the restoration after the Fire, the old walls and the interior of the fine porch, with the crypt, were preserved, but with these exceptions the Hall had to be rebuilt. According to Blome, writing in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the old walls were only 30 feet in height, and now very much for the worse, by George Dance in 1789. The view of it given on this page, depicting it as it was before these Porch alterations, shows that even with its classical addition it was, as to its exterior, a much finer piece of work than the unsymmetrical structure which now meets THE GUILDHALL IN 174I. After an Engraving by T. Bowles. they were raised to the extent of 20 feet " on either side and at both ends " ; and accord ingly, when, in 1864, Digby Wyatt and Edward Roberts made careful examination of the structure they found that the walls showed ancient stonework to a height of just about 30 feet, and that all above that line was much more modern work — the work, that is to say, of Sir Christopher Wren, who had a hand in, and perhaps superintended, the restoration. The old porch of the Guildhall was built in 1425, the front of it being, as Stow records, " beautified with images of stone." It seems to have suffered less in the Fire than the main building ; but when it was restored or repaired after that event a clumsy design in the classical style was superimposed upon the Gothic work. The porch was considerably altered, and altered the sight. In canopied niches were six statues, symbolising Law and Learning, Dis cipline, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. There appears also to have been a seventh, although in no extant view of the porch are more than six to be seen ; and there can be little doubt, from verses of the six teenth century ascribed to William Elderton, an attorney in the Sheriffs Court, that this seventh statue was intended for Jesus Christ. The statues were taken down about the time when Dance demolished the facade of the porch, and relegated to one of the cellars. But in 1794 they were presented to Thomas Banks the sculptor, who set high store upon them, and at his death in 1809 they were acquired by the owner of Corfe Castle. The interior of the porch, symmetrical and highly ornamented, has happily been little IOO LONDON TOWN harmed, and probably is much the same now as it was before the Fire. There are two bays with richly groined vaulting, the sculptured and gilded bosses at the intersec tions presenting a variety of devices, among them the arms of Edward the Confessor and of Henry VI., the eagle of St. John, the bull of St. Luke, the lion of St. Mark, the angel of St. Matthew, and the monogram I.H.S. When the Guildhall was re stored after the Fire, for its fine, hig h-pi tched, open -timbered roof was substi- tuted a flat ceiling, which robbed the Hall of much of its nobility. About the year 1864 it was determined to replace this with a roof more con gruous with the style and dignity of the building, and it was in order to make suggestions to this end that Digby Wyatt and Roberts made the examination mentioned in an earlier paragraph. In the following year the City architect, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Jones prepared the drawings from which the present magnificent roof of open timber, lighted by sixteen dormer windows, with a central louvre and an uncommonly graceful spire, was constructed. Next to the roof the most striking features of the interior are the great east and west stained windows, the one sur- X^d mounting an arched canopy of stone, rising into a cornice and embattled parapet, the other having beneath it a screen of timber formed of open panels, supporting a balcony with a pro jecting centre, both screen and balcony being designed by Sir Horace Jones. The east window, filled with stained glass by Clayton and Bell, illustrating the rebuilding of London by Alfred the Great and the granting of the first charter by William the Conqueror, re presents the gratitude of Lancashire for generous help during the cotton famine of 1862-65, when the Corporation, "as almoners of a world's bene volence," to quote from the inscrip tion, " distributed to the operatives more than £500,000." The west window, a memorial of the Prince Consort, whose s eated figure in an atti tude of medita tion occupies the centre, was de signed by Messrs. Ward and Hughes, and was unveiled by the Duke of Con- naught in 1870. The other win dows of the Hall also now glow with colour, as they did in olden times before their subjects excited the iconoclastic fury of theological zealots. This great improvement has been effected at the charges of the Corporation itself, of cer tain of the City Companies, and of in dividual members of the Corporation. Specially interesting is one on the south side, which was presented by Alderman Sir David Salomons, Bart, who was elected Alderman in 1847 and became Lord Mayor in 1 85 5, and who thus gratefully acknowledged " the im pulse given to the cause of religious liberty by the Corporation of London," and also commemorated "the removal by Parliament of all obstacles to persons professing the Jewish religion holding public offices." He had been elected Alderman twice before, in 1835 and again in 1844, and, declining to take the usual oath, was unable to serve ; but GUILDHALL: GOG AND MAGOG IOI in 1845 was passed the Act which made the way clear for him. Not merely by the gift of this window did he celebrate the triumph of his cause, but also by founding a perpetual scholarship of £50 per annum in the City of London School, and in his will he bequeathed a thousand pounds to the Guildhall Library. At the east end of the Hall is a dais, known as the hustings, because here is held the Court of Hus tings, the " domes tic judicatory '' of London, which ranks among the most venerable of our civic institu tions, and takes us back to Anglo- Saxon times. Anciently, this Court was the sole tribunal for dealing with dis putes between the citizens, but in process of time its jurisdiction be came limited. The judges are the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs, with whom sits the Recorder as As sessor to pro nounce the judg ment of the Court. On the hustings also take place the meetings of the Common Hall — i.e., an assembly of the members of the various Livery Companies, held on Midsummer Day to elect the Sheriffs, on Michaelmas Day to elect the Lord Mayor, and at such other times as the Lord Mayor may direct. At the other, the western, end of the Hall, perched upon pedestals above the balcony, are Gog and Magog, the grotesque Gog and giants who in past times took a leading part in the Lord Mayor's annual pageant. The Gog and Magog of ancient days perished in the Fire, and after MAGOG. that event they seem to have been re-cieated in wicker-work and pasteboard. In a little book published in the year 1 74 1 by one Thomas Boreman, who, -like other tradesmen, was allowed to sell his wares in the Hall, it is said that " before the present giants inhabited Guildhall there were two giants made only of wicker-work and pasteboard, put together with great art and ingenuity, and these two terrible original giants had the honour yearly to grace my Lord Mayor's show, be ing carried in great triumph in the time of the pageants; and when that emin ent annual service was over, re mounted their old stations in Guild hall, till by reason of their very great age old Time, with the help of a number of City rats and mice, had eaten up all their en trails. The dis solution of the two old, weak, and feeble giants gave birth to the two present sub- stantial and majestic giants, who by order and at the City charge were formed and fashioned." Bore- man adds that " Captain Richard Saunders, an eminent carver in King Street, Cheapside, was their father, who, after he had com pletely finished, clothed, and armed these his two sons, they were immediately ad vanced to their lofty stations in Guildhall, which they have peaceably enjoyed ever since the year 1708." That Boreman was correct in his account of the origin of the present figures becomes virtually certain from the fact that William Hone discovered an entry in the City accounts, under date 1707, of a payment made to " Richard Saunders, carver," of a sum of io: LONDON TOWN £yo, " for work done by him." By 1815 Gog and Magog had become somewhat dilapi dated, and they were " repaired and decor ated." In 1827 they were again restored, and in that year replicas of them figured in the Lord Mayor's show on foot, the motive power being furnished by a man who walked inside each of the figures, which delighted the sightseers by moving their faces every now and again. This, however, was nothing compared to the feats of the wicker-work and paste-board giants, who, in the year 1672, rode in the procession " in two several chariots, moving, talking, and taking tobacco as they rode along, to the great admiration and delight of all the spectators." So easy is it for a crowd to be amused ! The names of the giants wrere originally Gogmagog and Corineus, the latter having at some period unknown aban doned his own name, perhaps as savouring too much of a classical tongue, and " conveyed " the ultimate and pen ultimate syllables of his compeer's. And who were Gogmagog and Corineus ? Two warriors who, ac cording to the monk ish chroniclers, fought in the war between the aborigines of these islands and the Tro jans, who came hither to found on the banks of the Thames the new Troy, Troynovant. Gog, to give him his present name, is armed with a spiky globe attached by a chain to a staff, a weapon which was known among mediaeval warriors as a " morning star." He is girt also with a sword, and at his back he carries bow and arrows. Magog, clad in the guise of a Roman warrior, is armed with spears and shield, as well as with sword. Mr. Fairholt, who made a special study of the origin and descent of the Guildhall giants, concluded that they are to be traced to the early history of the municipalities of Bel gium and Flanders and elsewhere, pointing to the fact that these municipalities each have their giant, who is paraded in their festivals, Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE BECKFORD MONUMENT {p. IO3). as Gog and Magog used to be at the Lord Mayor's pageant. Price, however, suggests that the giants have an earlier origin than this, and he connects them with the belief, prevalent in Oriental lands, in the existence of races of gigantic stature. He adds that in the Sacred Writings " Gog and Magog are familiar terms, the words, according to modern commentators, being typical not so much of individuals as of warlike nations noted for cruelty and rapacity, such as the Scythians, a dominant race, said to have descended from Japhet, and settled between the Caucasus and Meso potamia, the names of the mountains in the district being known as Ghogh and Moghef to the present day." And he supports this sug gestion by pointing to the bow and arrows borne by Gog. The bow was the national weapon of the race referred to, and Ezekiel prophesies the taking away of Gog's bow and arrows as one of the judgments which were to come upon him and his kingdom. The theory is, it must be confessed, vague and shadowy, but it is at any rate suggestive. Of the monuments in Guildhall, the most interesting, from its subject, is that, against the south wall, which represents William Beckford delivering his historic ments speech to George III. on the 23rd of May, 1770. It is the work of a sculptor of the name of Moore, a native of Hanover, who lived and died in Wells Street, Oxford Street. Flanked by a figure representing the City of London in mourning, and by another which personifies Trade and Navigation in a languishing con dition, Beckford stands in a deprecating atti tude, which he may very well have assumed at the beginning of his speech. But when he uttered his closing sentence — '- Permit me, sire, farther to observe that whosoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, by false insinuations and suggestions, to MONUMENTS IN THE GUILDHALL 103 alienate your Majesty's affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from the City of London in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in and regard for your people, is an enemy to your Majesty's person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as it was established at the glorious revolution " — he must surely have drawn himself upright, and assumed an attitude more in keeping with the bold note on which he ended. On the same side of the Hall as the statue of Beckford is an elaborate monument to Pitt, executed in 18 13 by J. G. Bubb, who was paid over £4,000 for his work, and ought to have considered himself handsomely remuner ated. Pitt appears in his robes of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and while Apollo and Mercury are there to symbolise his gifts, Britannia, sitting side-saddle on a recumbent sea-horse, is below, thunderbolt in hand. The inscription, though it is from the pen of George Canning, is long and turgid, and one may doubt whether any visitor to the Guild hall ever got to the end of it. Facing this monument, on the north side of the Hall, is the group commemorating the Earl of Chatham which John Bacon, R.A., executed at a cost of over £3,400. The sculptor has given free rein to his fancy, and we see jubilant infants, emblematical of the four quarters of the globe, pouring treasures from a cornucopia into the lap of Britannia as she reclines, all smiles of gratitude, upon a lion. In the background is a profusion of anchors, sails, masts, and ropes. As for the central figure, he is shown standing upon a rock, in classic garb, one hand directing the rudder of State, the other resting upon a figure of Commerce, his stern features having some thing more than a trace of smugness as he looks down upon the " fruits " of his policy. The inscription has been ascribed to Edmund Burke, but the internal evidence is not con vincing, and it is difficult to conceive that that great master of rich and pregnant prose could have indited such a thin-spun sentiment as that for the citizens to withhold from the virtues infused into great men the tribute of esteem and veneration " is to deny to them selves the means of happiness and honour." The monument to Nelson, the work of James Smith, a disciple of Flaxman's, who executed it in 18 10, at a cost to the Corpor ation of over £4,400, is another elaborate group, of which the central figure, personify ing the City of London, is recording upon a tablet the most memorable of Nelson's vic tories. Britannia, sitting upon a lion, is musing pensively over the hero's portrait, and Neptune, lying in an incongruously easy posture, is sharing her sorrow at her loss. The inscription, composed by Sheridan, is nearly as long as that of Canning on the Pitt monument, but it is less formal and cumbrous, and it contains a happy reference to the victories of the Nile and Copenhagen, of which it is said that though " never before equalled," they were " afterwards surpassed by his own last achievement." After these highly allegorical groups it is a relief to turn to the monument, in Carrara marble, to the Duke of Wellington wrought by John Bell, R.A., in 1857, at a cost of £5,000. The Duke himself is raised on a pedestal, his right hand holding the Declar ation of Peace of 181 5, his left resting upon his marshal's baton ; and there are but two other figures — on one side War, leaning on a sheathed sword and grasping a wreath of victory, on the other, Peace, holding out a civic wreath in recognition of the Duke's services to the nation as a Minister. In 1908 an addition to the memorials in the Guildhall was made in the form of a bronze relief, let into the south wall, com memorating the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) who fell in the South African War. Of what a multitude of brilliant and moving spectacles has the Guildhall been the scene during the eight hundred Banquets, years of its existence ! Here, since 1 501, as we have seen, has been held the Lord Mayor's annual banquet, which, if it has parted with something of its olden profusion and costliness, has lost none of its ancient brilliance, and is invested with more than its ancient importance ; for in these days it is an event of national significance, with the First Minister of the Crown for chief guest, and with many of the most distin guished figures in the nation's life, as well as the Ambassadors of other Powers, to hang upon his words as he descants upon the ques tions of the day. Within these venerable walls, too, has the Corporation been wont to feast o < IS its'i q S-' i''r JS*?5^i£i WEST VIEW OF BAKEWELL HALL (/. I07). From a Drawing by Schnebbelie (1819). Then, says the record, as translated from the Latin by Riley (" Memorials") — then " the said William, persisting in his malice, drew his sword upon the Alderman, and would have slain him with it, had not the Alderman manfully defended himself." Now a Fleet Street constable intervened, but Hughlot was quite as ready to shed his blood as an Alderman's, and him he wounded with his dagger. How at last this very robustious person was suppressed we are not told, but in the end he was properly subdued. Even now he was not at the end of his offences against civic majesty, for in Newgate he fell to abusing the Mayor (Extone) and the Aldermen, saying that he had to thank Nicholas Extone for his imprisonment, but that seven years hence Extone would find himselfdeserted by his influential friends ; and was that the hand which drew the sword upon the Alderman should be cut off, unless that personage interceded for him. The offender seems to have had influential friends, and the whole thing probably was pre-arranged, for no sooner had an axe been brought than the Alderman himself, " in reverence for our Lord the King, and at the request of divers lords," played the role of mediator, and the sentence was remitted. For his assault upon the con stable, Hughlot was condemned to imprison ment for a year and a day, " unless he should meet with an increase of favour from the said Mayor and Aldermen " ; and for having slandered the Mayor and the Court he was sentenced to the pillory, a whetstone to be hung about his neck in token of his being a liar. A few days afterwards, however, sureties for his better behaviour were accepted, and n6 LONDON TOWN having borne a lighted wax candle through Chepe and Fleet Street to the church of St. Dunstan — the parish in which his offences were committed — he was released. In the performance of his duties each Alderman was assisted by a certain number of leading citizens chosen The for the purpose by the inhabi- Councii? tants of the ward over which he presided, the number of these Councillors, or, as we should now call them, Common Councilmen, being fixed according to the population. " As time went on," says Price, " and the City became had attempted unsuccessfully to raise a loan in the City, and when his son Edward seized money and jewels lying in Trouble the Temple, the citizens retaliated Henry in. by pelting Queen Eleanor with stones and mud as she attempted to pass in her barge under London Bridge on her way to the Tower, and by calling her opprobrious names. In these circumstances it was that Henry refused to ratify the elec tion of Mayor. After the triumph of Simon de Montfort at Lewes shortly afterwards, Henry was glad for the Mayor and Aldermen once more to do Photos : Pictorial Agency. THE MAYORALTY SEAL WHICH WAS BROKEN IN 1 38 1 (p. 128). THE MAYORALTY SEAL WHICH REPLACED THE EARLIER ONE {p. 12a). extended in every direction, and with a con stantly increasing population, the number of members returned was gradually augmented. For a brief period, from 1376 to 1384, they were elected from the Guilds or Companies, and not by the wards. Thus we have seen the municipality of London well started, with Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, and Councillors of its own choos ing. It was not long, however, before there was trouble between the monarch and the powerful authority which represented the citizens of the capital. It was still necessary that the Mayor, on election, should present himself to the King or his representatives for approval ; and the municipality in its new form was still a long way from completing its first century when the Barons of the Ex chequer refused to admit Mayor Fitz-Thomas on his presenting himself on his third election. There was trouble between Henry III. and the citizens at this time (1263). The King homage to him in St. Paul's. But Fitz-Thomas was in no mood of grovelling humility, and it was on this occasion that as he took the oath he promised that the citizens would be faith ful and true so long as Henry was " a good king and lord," an expression of highly con ditional loyalty which throws Alderman Beck- ford's address to George III. quite into the shade. When Simon de Montfort had been dis posed of at Evesham, Henry felt that his time had come to teach the upstart Londoners a lesson, and taking the City into Teaching _ his own hands, he superseded the a Lesson. Mayor by a warden appointed by himself, an arrangement which continued for five years (1265-70). The first intimation the citizens had of the new order was when, the day after Michaelmas, they, with their Mayor, went to Westminster to present to the Barons of the Exchequer the new Sheriffs. They found no one to receive ¦1HK MYSTERY OF A MAYOR 117 them, and so, with foreboding minds, returned to the City. Then the King demanded that Fitz-Thomas and the chief men of the City should come in person to him at Windsor, under safe conduct. " Trusting to the royal word," says Dr. Sharpe, "the Mayor and guilds against the more aristocratic mercantile guilds, may never be known. In the following reign (Edward I.) the City lost its liberties for a period of thirteen years (1285-1298), owing, it would seem, to the pedantry of its Mayor, Gregory de Rokesly, Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE ALDERMEN'S COURT ROOM {p. 10 about forty of the more substantial men of the City proceeded to Windsor, there to await a conference with the King. To their great surprise, the whole of the party were made to pass the night in the Castle keep. They were practically treated as prisoners." Pre sently some of them were released, but of Fitz-Thomas nothing more is heard. In May, 1266, the citizens believed him to be still alive, for they clamoured for his release and that of his companions who were " at Windleshores." And about the same time we find them declaring : " We will have no one for Mayor save only Thomas Fitz-Thomas." When, in 1267, Henry and the citizens were reconciled, not a word is said in the terms of reconciliation about the missing Mayor ! What had become of this stalwart champion of the City against royal tyranny, of the craft A Pedantic Mayor. wool merchant and goldsmith, though it may well be that more substantial causes, of which we know nothing, were in opera tion. On account of some infor mality in the document, de Rokesly refused to obey the summons officially, but on reaching the church of All Hallows, Barking, on the confines of the City, handed his seal of office to Stephen Aswy, one of the Aldermen. Then presenting himself before the King's justiciars, he excused himself for not appearing officially by alleging insuf ficiency of notice. This slight to the King's representatives, so different from the usual behaviour of the City's representatives on such occasions, was not to be borne, and it was declared that since the City was without a Mayor, the King took it into his own hands. The citizens were at the same time summoned n8 LONDON TOWN to appear before the King at Westminster the next day, and when they arrived eighty of them were detained in the Tower. After a few days, however, all were released except Stephen Aswy, who, as having received the City's seal, was haled to Windsor. By 1298 the King's need of money, and his trouble with his barons, had brought him to a different frame of mind, and a month after the citizens had taxed themselves for his benefit, he restored to them the right of choosing their Mayor. In the troubles between the youthful Edward III. and his subjects caused by the Queen-mother's favourite, Mortimer, London's Mayor suffered. It was the same Hamo de Chigwell who three years before, in 1326, had cut so miserable a figure in the Agafin'6 rising which ended in the murder of Bishop Stapledon (p. 66). Now, in 1329, Mortimer being master of the situa tion, de Chigwell was put upon his trial in the Guildhall, and only saved his life by claiming benefit of clergy. Taken possession of by the Bishop of London on the ground that he was a clerk, he was kept for some months in honourable confinement at the episcopal manor of Orset, in Essex, and was then released. Though at once a quarrelsome and a pusillanimous man, he was not without admirers among the citizens, and on his return to the City he was met by a crowd, who gave him an ovation. Both the Queen- mother and the King were alarmed, and a writ was issued for his arrest ; but he made good his escape, and so disappears from the story of the City. In this reign (Edward III.) the head of the municipality is said to have become a Lord Mayor, but there is no proof The First that this was so, and it was not till Ma'yor. l°ng afterwards that the title Lord Mayor came into general use. The story is that the first to bear the title was Alderman Thomas Legge, a member of the Skinners' Company, who had lent money to Edward III. for the expenses of the French War, and had married into the aristocracy, having espoused the daughter of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. For a Legge of the next generation, John Legge, perhaps a son of Thomas, an evil fate was reserved, for he was seized by the followers of Wat Tyler and hurried to Tower Hill, where they smote off his head. Among later kings Henry VII. dealt very high-handedly with the City, and there was trouble too with Henry VIII., owing to the backwardness of the citizens in filling the royal treasury. But it was reserved for Charles I. to bring to a head these Charles I. quarrels between king and capital, City. and the events that fell out were of such moment and are of such in terest that we must narrate them at some length. Charles probably little realised the full significance of what he was doing when, in the spring of 1640, two years and a-half before he raised his standard at Nottingham, he attempted to force a loan from Lord Mayor Garraway and the Alder men. The money not being forthcoming, efforts were made to win over the Aldermen individually, and this endeavour also failing, they were called upon to appear collectively before the King on Sunday, the nth of April. Charles then addressed them in the most in sistent fashion : he must have the money, and must have it at once. Next the Lord Privy Seal, Henry Montague, Earl of Manchester, who many years before had been Recorder of the City, reminded them of the £100,000 which had been lent to James I., and repaid with interest, and quite seriously sought to show them that the City was rather beholden to that monarch for borrowing the money than he to the City for lending it. How the tongues of the Aldermen must have itched to reply to this proposition ! But it was not for them to argue : they were simply bidden to go and devise means for raising the money. Still the money was not found, and three weeks later, Garraway and his brother Alder men were told that they must now provide £200,000, and were warned that if there were further delay this sum would be raised to £300,000. They must appear again the next Sunday, and have ready a list of the rich men of the wards. Sunday came, and with it the Aldermen, but instead of the list they brought with them a petition to be excused from making it. At this Strafford lost his temper, and recom mended the King to hang a few of the citizens ; and Charles, though he rejected this policy of " thorough," would have deprived the Lord VISIT OF CHARLES I. TO THE GUILDHALL TO DEMAND THE SURRENDER OF THE FIVE MEMBERS. From the Wall Painting by Sclomon J. Solomon, R.A., in the Royal Exchange. 120 LONDON TOWN Mayor of his sword and collar there and then but for the intercession of counsellors more prudent than Strafford. As it was, he con tented himself with committing four of the Aldermen, one of whom rejoiced in the name, long afterwards to become famous, of Thomas Atkins. " I was an honest man whilst I was a commoner," one of the four, Alderman Soame, boldly declared, " and I would con tinue to be so now I am an Alderman." The next day the citizens, wroth at these high-handed doings, swarmed to Lambeth to pay their attentions to Archbishop Laud, who, having been warned, had retired to Whitehall. The excitement showing no sign of abatement, martial law was declared ; but fearing to provoke the City further, the King released the four Aldermen on the fifth day of their imprisonment. Finding that he could get no loan from the City, Charles appropriated the money, amounting to £200,000, which the gold smiths, for safety's sake, had deposited in the Royal Mint in the Tower. This dishonour able and high-handed proceeding was bitterly resented, not only by the goldsmiths them selves, but by the City generally. For the goldsmiths the situation was a serious one, but the confiscation of their money had not so impoverished them that they were unable to find both men and money for Parliament. When (Monday, January 3rd, 1642) the five members, Pym, Hampden, and the others, fled from Westminster to avoid arrest, it was in the City that they found refuge. Charles knew whither his birds had flown, and the citizens fully expected to hear from him. On Tuesday the 4th the City was under arms all night. At dawn on the Wednesday, word came from Whitehall that the King would visit Guildhall before noon. Preceded by war rants of arrest, delivered into the hands of the Sheriffs, he set out, unattended by any guard, soon after nine o'clock. As he passed through the streets of the City he was greeted with shouts of " Privilege of Parliament ! " and one of those who pressed around his coach flung into the window a paper ominously inscribed, " To your tents, O Israel ! " At the Guildhall the King was received with due homage by the Mayor, the Sheriffs, the Aldermen, and the Common Council. The Five Members. He protested his sorrow to hear that the City was apprehensive of danger, and said he was come to show them how much he The King relied upon their affections for his Guildhall. guard, since he had brought with him no other. He assured them that he was bent upon preserving the privi leges of Parliament, but again and again he declared that he must question " those traitors," and again and again he demanded that they should be surrendered for trial by law. He ended by inviting himself to dinner with one of the Sheriffs, and was careful to choose for the honour of entertaining him Sheriff Garrett, who was thought to be less well affected towards him than the other Sheriff. There was a pause when the King ceased, and then from among the Common Council voices began to cry, " Privilege of Parliament ! " Others exclaimed, " God bless the King! " and the two parties tried to shout each other down. In the outer hall was a multitude of " ruder people," who as the King passed through the midst of them set up a cry of " Privilege of Parliament ! " and here no voices were raised in his favour. And the same cry came from thousands of throats when, at three o'clock, the King took his coach and returned to Whitehall, his heart aflame with anger and resentment. Two days afterwards he received at White hall the answer of the City in the form of a petition read by the Recorder, praying him to consult with his Parliament, to cease from military preparations, and not further to proceed, otherwise than according to parlia mentary right and privilege, against the five members. On the day of the King's visit to the City the Commons decided to meet, in Committee of the whole House, at Guildhall ; and here next morning, when they assembled, they were greeted by the leading members of The Com- (-jjg Common Council, in their robes mons at Guildhall, and chains, and by a military guard in which figured some of the wealthiest of the citizens. As the Guildhall chamber was required for City uses, the Commons decided to meet next morning in Grocers' Hall. The King was still bent upon getting the five members into his clutches, and the City, alarmed and angry, shut up its shops and prepared for the worst. On Thursday night, the 6th, word came to the IriE STUART TROUBLES 121 watch at Ludgate that the swashbucklers who had accompanied the King to the House on the Monday were going to raid the City. At once London, suburbs as well as City, became an armed camp. In little more than an hour forty thousand men were under arms, and close upon a hundred thousand more were furnished with halberds, swords, and clubs. Nothing, however, happened, and pre sently the citizens cooled down and went home to bed, disappointed, probably, that nothing had happened to justify their excite ment. At Grocers' Hall on the Friday the Com mons boldly directed that the five members who were in hiding should attend, and accordingly on the Mon day (the ioth) they pre sented themselves, and then it was arranged that they should be escorted to Westminster next day by a military guard pro vided jointly by the Com mon Council and the House. Charles, kept in formed of what was afoot, now saw that London was lost to him, and by the time the Committee rose he had decided upon flight. He was not at Whitehall, therefore, to be humiliated by the triumphant return of the dauntless five to West minster. After the triumph of the Parliamentarians, the City authorities got along but ill with the Army, but they stood by Cromwell in the emergencies which successively arose. After Worcester they appointed a day of thanksgiving, and they celebrated his acceptance of the Lord Protectorship by entertaining him at dinner in Grocers' Hall. But they were always suspicious of the Army, and in other ways also the Puritan regime was little enough to the taste of large sections of the City. Thus it was that they were ready to welcome Charles II., as Monk found when he came to London to make sure of his ground before committing himself to a restoration. Pie was appointed Sergeant-Major-General of the The Res toration. ALDERMAN BRASS CROSBY. From the Portrait by J. Hardy {Guildhall Art Gallery). Cromwell and the City. City's forces, and besides raising a heavy loan, the City voted a gift of £10,000 to Charles, who was publicly proclaimed King by the Lord Mayor on the 8th of May, 1660, and entered his capital on the 29th of the same month, amid the most ecstatic rejoicings. Ill was the City's loyalty requited. In 1672 (January 2nd) Charles brought many of the bankers, and many of their customers also, to bankruptcy by suspending pay ment of the interest upon money which, to the amount of £1,328,526, had been advanced to him and deposited in the Exchequer. Five years later, moved by the public indignation, the King issued letters patent covenant ing to pay to the gold smiths interest at the rate of 6 per cent, and interest was so paid until 1683, when it ceased, never to be resumed. In 1680 the City presented to Charles an address begging him to summon a Parliament. In effect he bade them mind their own business. He was offended by the election of unacceptable persons as Sheriffs, and when (1681) the Recorder and Sheriffs presented them selves to invite him to dinner, he replied, " Mr. Recorder, an invitation from my Lord Mayor and the City is very ac ceptable to me, and to show that it is so, not withstanding that it is brought by messengers so unwelcome to me as these two Sheriffs, yet I accept it." At last, in 1683, the King obtained judgment in his favour, by process of law, in the matters at issue between him and the City, which now found itself deprived of its most cherished privileges of electing whom it would for its Lord Mayor and Sheriffs and officers. Next the King took the Court of Aldermen in hand, and having packed it to his satisfaction, he bestowed his attentions upon the Livery Companies. From 1683 to 1688 no Common Council was elected, but in the latter year, James II., who had if possible shown an even more 122 LONDON TOWN bitter hostility to the City than his brother, was smitten with panic at the news of the preparations being made James II. by William of Orange, and in his fright restored to London its charter. But repentance had come too late. The City had had enough of the Stuarts, and nowhere was the Deliverer more gladly welcomed than in the Deliverer. caPital- To William's appeal for a loan the City responded with alacrity, and again and again during his reign did it willingly provide him with the large sums of money which the necessi ties of the State demanded. Under Queen Anne the City had peace. Neither now nor later did it offer aught but the most determined hostility to Jacobite conspiracies and risings, and when Anne died it cordially welcomed the House of Hanover. But in the reign of George III. the Corpor ation found itself repeatedly in conflict both with Parliament and with the King and his Ministers. When John Wilkes was arrested on a " general warrant " (a warrant in wnKes which no name was mentioned) for his attack upon the Government and the King in No. 45 of the North Briton, in which he went so far as to insinuate that the King had been induced to countenance a deliberate lie, he became a popular hero in the City. The House of Commons ordered the offending paper to be burnt at the Royal Exchange by the common hangman ; but the Sheriffs were mobbed and the paper was rescued from the flames, the while Lord Mayor Bridgen carried on his private business, and the Common Council upheld his official inactivity and condemned the behaviour of the Sheriffs. They also voted the Freedom of the City to Lord Chief Justice Pratt, who had pronounced the arrest of Wilkes illegal, and had his portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds for the Guildhall. After Wilkes had been visited with fine and imprisonment for the libel in the North Briton and for an indecent essay which he had had printed at his press, he was elected Alderman. When for the fourth time he had been elected M.P. without being allowed to take his seat, the Livery, at its meeting in Common Hall on Midsummer Day, 1769, resolved to petition the King against the arbitrary action of the Government. It was at this juncture that William Beckford, though, as he himself said, " a worn-out man," consented to serve the office of Mayor a second time. No notice was taken of the Livery's remon strance, and on the 6th of March, 1770, another remonstrance, stronger than the first, was drawn up in Common Hall, which only elicited from the King the statement that he would take time to consider the matter. On his release from prison Wilkes, sworn in as Alderman for his ward, that of Far ringdon Without, was nominated a member of a committee appointed by the Common Council to draw up yet another remonstrance to the King. It being couched in more respectful terms, the King consented to receive it, and the Lord Mayor and other members of the Corporation attended, but without their Recorder, Eyre, who, though by his absence he lost standing in the City, was rewarded by the Government by being created a Baron of the Exchequer. Dr. Sharpe thinks that Beckford himself must have read the address ; but by whom soever it was read, the King vouchsafed to it but a very curt reply, declining to use his prerogative of dissolving Parliament and dis missing his Ministers. Now it was that Lord Mayor Beckford,. flinging aside precedent and etiquette, stepped forward and supplemented the address with the speech which is inscribed on Speech'8 the Pedestal of his monument. He began deferentially enough by assuring the King of the dutiful attachment of his fellow citizens, begged him not to dismiss them from his presence " without some comfort, without some prospect at least of redress," and then, striking a bolder note, ended with the words cited in our Guildhall chapter (p. 102). The King was so much taken by surprise at this daring innovation upon Court procedure that at first he hesi tated whether to stay or withdraw. He remained until Beckford had made an end, and then got up and walked out without a word. According to one narrator, his count enance flushed with anger when Beckford be gan his speech. Beckford's reply suggests that his act was really conceived in no disrespect ful spirit. " What I spoke in the King's presence," he wrote, "was uttered in the language of truth, and with that humility and submission which become a subject DISPUTE WITH THE COMMONS 123 speaking to a lawful king : at least, I endeav oured to behave properly and decently : but I am inclined to- believe that I was mistaken, for the language of the Court is that my deportment was impudent, insolent, and unprecedented. God forgive them all ! " And it was in the same spirit that the Common Council approved of Beckford's and the King on the one hand and the City Corporation on the other, the subject of the dispute this time being the right of reporting Parliamentary debates. In the course of the conflict, which began with the arrest of two City printers by order of the House of Commons, Crosby and Alderman Oliver were committed to the Brass Crosby THE CORPORATION SCEPTRE. THE PEARL SWORD. THE STATE SWORD. THE MACE. conduct, for they thanked him for having vindicated " at the foot of the throne the loyalty and affection of the citizens of London." When Beckford thus secured for himself immortal renown the sands of his life were fast running out. Eight days afterwards, on the 31st of May, he laid the first stone of the new prison of Newgate — his last public act. He had caught a chill on his way from Fonthill to town, which developed into rheumatic fever, and on the 21st of June this bold and eloquent Mayor died. The election, at the following Michaelmas, of Brass Crosby as Lord Mayor introduces us to another breach between the Commons Tower, and there they remained until the prorogation of Parliament set them at liberty, when they were welcomed back to the City with tumultuous enthusiasm. To the policy which issued in the loss of the American Colonies the City offered uncompromising resistance. In 1775 the Livery in Common Hall solemnly warned the King that the proceedings of the Govern ment were at once ruinous to trade and calculated to alienate the colonists. " Your petitioners conceive the liberties of the whole to be inevitably connected with those of every part of an empire founded on the common rights of mankind. They cannot, therefore,. The American Rebellion. I24 LONDON TOWN observe without the greatest concern and alarm the Constitution fundamentally violated in any part of your Majesty's dominions. They esteem it an essential, unalterable principle of liberty, the source and security of all constitutional rights, that no part of the dominion can be taxed without being represented." And they thanked Chatham and Burke for the measures those great statesmen had advised for conciliating the colonists. After hostilities had broken out, the Common Council petitioned more than once that an end should be put to them. When at last Lord North's Ministry fell, the Common Council presented an address of thanks to the King, and so ended the conflict between George III. and the municipal authority of his capital. Through all its differences with the Sovereign the Corporation was not without some sense of his virtues, and when in 1810 he lost his reason it com missioned Chantrey to carve the statue of the King which looks down upon the Lord Mayor to-day as he presides over the Court of Common Council. Under the Regency the Common Council repeatedly protested against the policy of repression with which the Government sought to delay the era of reform, and after the Regent had come to the throne it sympathetically espoused the cause of Queen Caroline as against her unkingly husband. It exerted its influence against the Corn Laws and in favour of Catholic and Jewish emancipation and Parliamentary reform, and when to its un bounded delight the Reform Bill became the Reform Act, it succeeded in saving its livery franchise. Since the days of George IV. there has been nothing to ruffle the relations between the Corporation and the Court, and little to disturb those between the Corporation and the Government of the day. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the influence of the Corporation suffered some decline, owing, as Sir Walter Besant suggests, to its being chiefly re cruited from the ranks of retail tradesmen of humble origin ; for the younger sons of the country gentry no longer came to London to make their fortunes there as the Whittingtons and the Greshams had done, the wars finding them other employment. It is certain, however, that whatever prestige the Corporation may have lost in the eighteenth century it recovered in the nineteenth and still enjoys in the twentieth. ft i I V 13>~ ¦sht- Photo : Pictorial Agency. IN GUILDHALL COURTYARD. CHAPTER XI THE CITY CORPORATION: ITS CONSTITUTION AND FUNCTIONS How the City Corporation is Constituted — The Common Council — The Officials — The Corporation's Duties and Responsibilities — The Maces— The Swords — The Seals — The Collar of S'S — The Lord Mayor's Coach AS now constituted, the City Corporation consists of the Lord Mayor and twenty-five other Aldermen, elected for life, and 206 Common Councillors, annually elected for the respective wards Present in varying numbers, Cripplegate tuHon. and Farringdon Without having the largest number of represen tatives, sixteen each, and Bassishaw and Lime Street the smallest number, four each. The wards are twenty-six in number, not reckoning that of Bridge Without (Southwark), which is not substantially a part of the City, though it has repeatedly petitioned to become so, for it is not represented on the Common Council, and its Alderman is chosen not by the ward itself, but by the other Aldermen from among their own number, and when so chosen he vacates his seat for the ward he previously represented, which proceeds to elect his suc cessor. That while there are twenty-six wards there are (not including the Alderman for Bridge Without) only twenty-five Aldermen is explained by the fact that the two Cripplegate wards have but one Alderman between them. The voters for the Aldermen and Common Councillors are the registered householders, lodgers, and occupiers of buildings of £10 annual value. These, at their Wardmotes, elect the Aldermen and Common Common Councillors, the former as vacan- Councll. . . , . ,, cies arise, the latter annually, on St. Thomas's Day, the 21st of December. The Aldermen and Common Councillors, with the Lord Mayor, form the Court of Common Council which does much of its business by commissions or committees, such as the " Irish Society," which has the management of large estates in Ulster ; the Police Committee, which has the con trol of the finest police force in these islands ; the Bridge House Estates Com mittee, which maintains the City bridges ; the Corn, Coal, and Finance Committee ; the Markets Committees ; the Public Health Department, which carries on the work formerly done by the City Commission of Sewers ; the Valuation and Rating Depart ment, and so forth. The City Sheriffs, two in number, are elected by the liverymen, in Common Hall, on Midsummer Day. Their duties are now mainly ceremonial, but they have shrieval functions to perform at the Old Sheriffs. Bailey, and they help the Lord Mayor in the discharge of his duties. It is their business also to attend Parliament in State to present petitions from the Corporation. In these days the right is not often exercised, but in 1903 the Sheriffs petitioned against the London Education Bill, and the next year against an abortive Bill for administering the Port of London. The choice of Lord Mayor rests in the first place with the Common Hall, composed of liverymen who are of one year's standing, and are free of the City and have paid their livery fines, with at least four Election Aldermen and the Lord Mayor. Mayor. From the Aldermen who have served the office of Sheriff the Common Hall, on Michaelmas Day, nominates two, usually the senior Aldermen who have not yet passed the chair ; and of the two so nominated, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen select one, almost always the senior of the two. In practice, therefore, every Alderman becomes Lord Mayor unless he dies before his turn comes, or resigns his Aldermanship, or fails to obtain nomination by the Common Hall or the votes of his aldermanic brethren, which does sometimes happen, though very seldom. Membership of the City Companies, "5 126 LONDON TOWN Peculiari ties of the City Cor- poration. which have for hundreds of years been the fountain of power in the City, is obtained either by birth, by apprenticeship, by pur chase, or by gift. The City Corporation is differentiated from all other municipalities in the kingdom in several ways. Its chief constituent, the Common Council, has some claims to be considered what that useful pub lication " The London Manual " styles it, " the most democratic assembly in the world," the whole of the members, except the Aldermen, who are elected for life, going out of office every year, and most of its principal officials having to be appointed afresh annually. The Common Council, too, is not a deliberative body merely, as other City, as well as Town and County Councils are, but has also legislative functions, and is invested with the power of altering its own constitution. For some purposes, as the maintenance of open spaces, the carry ing on of markets, and the sanitation of the Port of London, the jurisdiction of the Corporation extends far beyond the borders of the City ; and though the City is in intimate relation with the London County Council, to which it sends four representatives, the jurisdiction of that authority, in several important particulars, ceases at the City boundaries. Another peculiarity of the Corporation is that most of the money with which it carries on the government of the City is derived not from rates, but from its own estates. Over those estates, and the applica tion of the funds which they yield, it claims absolute control ; it recks nothing of the auditor of the Local Government Board ; and he would be a bold man who would undertake to define the precise limits of its legal expenditure. It maintains the bridges "between the City and Southwark, from the Tower Bridge in the east to Blackfriars Bridge in the west, out of the revenue of the Bridge House Estate, which it holds in trust for this exclusive purpose ; and conjointly with the Mercers' Company it administers the Gresham Estate, maintaining from this source the fabric of the Royal Exchange, Gresham College, and a group of almshouses at Brix ton. It should be added that by an Act of 1907, which for civil purposes fused into one the 114 parishes and places in the City, the functions of the vestries and overseers, etc., were transferred to the Corporation. Of the officers of the Corporation the most important is the Recorder, its senior law officer, who represents the Officials. Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their judicial capacity, and is appointed by the Court of Aldermen. Be sides sitting as judge in the Mayor's Court, he PLAN OF THE WARDS OF THE CITY. OFFICERS OF THE CITY CORPORATION 127 acts as one of the judges at the Central Criminal Court, and has also important ceremonial duties to perform, it being his duty to present the Lord Mayor-elect to the Lord Chancellor for the approval upon whom is bestowed the honorary free dom of the City ; and the City apprentices — a less boisterous race than they were in olden times — are subject to his jurisdiction. The Town Clerk's duties are sufficiently I> ¦0 00 *¦ , * '.1 \t k4 ft K^M 3 to "4. . to' S 1 V % .%i • t i '¦'*V^'"'^l*jt fWflf Photo : Pictorial Agency, THE LORD MAYOR'S COLLAR OF s's {p. 1 29). of the Sovereign, and to present him to His Majesty's Judges on his being sworn in. The Common Serjeant, who is now appointed by the Crown, also acts as Judge at the Central Criminal Court, besides dis charging other judicial duties and duties of an advisory and ceremonial character. The Chamberlain, elected annually by the Livery in Common Hall, is the Treasurer of the City ; of his ceremonial duties the most important is that of addressing and giving the right hand of fellowship to those indicated by his title, and all that need be said about them further is that he has to attend the meetings of the various corporate bodies, and advise upon any points of pro cedure that may arise. The Comptroller is the conveyancing officer of the Corporation ; the City Solicitor and the City Remem brancer are others of the Corporation's law officers, and the latter is the guardian of the City's innumerable privileges, and has to watch all Parliamentary proceedings bearing upon the Corporation's interests, 128 LONDON TOWN in addition to seeing that on ceremonial occasions the City enjoys all its ancient rights. Of these officers the appointment is vested in the Common Council. Besides doing the work which outside the City devolves upon the Borough Councils, controlling the City Police, maintaining the City bridges and the various markets, includ ing the Cattle Market at Islington Miscei- and the Foreign Cattle Market at laneous . Functions. Deptford, and superintending the sanitation of the Port of London, from Teddington to the mouth of the Thames, the Corporation owns and manages large recreation grounds, among them Epping Forest, Burnham Beeches, Coulsdon Common, Highgate Wood, and West Ham Park. Its directly educational activities are represented by the City of London School for Boys and that for Girls, the Guildhall School of Music and the Freemen's Orphan School ; it appoints governors to the ancient royal hospitals, of which the- Lord Mayor is the official head, as well as to Christ's Hospital ; and it built and maintains a Lunatic Asylum for the City at Stone, near Dartford, Kent, as well as an infectious hospital at Denton, near Gravesend, for the Port of London. Of the insignia of the Corporation, the famous crystal mace, which has been in use at least since the fifteenth century, and which some authorities believe to be of Th^liiaces. Saxon origin, consists of a tapering shaft of rock crystal, a foot and a half long, mounted in gold, with a coroneted head also of gold, embellished with jewels and pearls. At the election of Lord Mayor it is handed to the incoming Chief Magistrate. Except at this function it is used only on such very special occasions as a Coronation, when it is borne by the Lord Mayor in his capacity of Chief Butler. The ordinary mace, of silver gilt, dates from 173S, when it superseded one made at the Restoration by Sir Thomas Vyner, the famous goldsmith. According to Mr. Deputy Baddeley's Handbook to the Guildhall, so early as the fourteenth century there was a City functionary styled the Mace-bearer ; and in the year 1514 there is a reference to " the Mace for the Sergaunt of Armes," handed over by the outgoing Mayor to his successor. TheSwords. There are no less than four City swords — the Pearl Sword, its scabbard studded with pearls, which Queen Elizabeth is said to have presented when she opened Gresham's Royal Ex change in 1571 ; the Sword of State, first used about 1680, which is borne before the Lord Mayor point upwards, except in the presence of the Sovereign or any of the Judges, when its point is inverted ; the Black Sword, employed on fast days in Lent and at the death of a member of the Royal Family ; and lastly the Old Bailey Sword, which is placed above the Lord Mayor's chair when he sits at the Central Criminal Court. The Sword-bearer wears his Cap of Maintenance, of sable fur lined with black silk, on all occasions, even in the presence of the Sove reign. Until the Mayoralty of Sir Robert Fowler (1883) it was the custom for the Lord Mayor to go in state on Sundays to one or other of the City churches, escorted by the Mace-bearer and the Sword-bearer, the latter carrying the State Sword and wearing the Cap of Maintenance. It was soon after the Great Fire that it became customary for the Sword to be borne into church before the Lord Mayor, though when the practice began is not known. The State visits of the Lord Mayor to the churches were at last discontinued because of the inconvenience they entailed upon the City officials, who of course preferred to spend the Sunday at their homes in the country. The Mayoralty Seal, which bears the legend Sigill : Maioratus : Civitatis : London : dates from 1381, when it replaced The Seals, one which was not considered sufficiently handsome. We read in Price's " Descriptive Account," the passage being taken from one of the City Letter Books, that on the 17th of April, 1 381, at a meeting at Guildhall summoned by William Walworth, Mayor, and the Aldermen, it was by common consent agreed that the old Mayoralty Seal should be broken, " seeing that it was too small, rude, and ancient, and was unbecoming and derogatory from the honour of the City ; and that another new Seal, of honourable aspect and a work of art, which the said Mayor had had made, should in future be used for that office in place of the other." The record adds that " therefore the old seal of the office of Mayoralty was then COMMON SEAL OF THE CITY 129 delivered to Richard Odyham, the Chamber lain, who broke it, and in its place the said new Seal was delivered to the Mayor." In this new seal appears the City Shield, with the sword which is still often said to have Court of Common Council ; and the seal is only affixed in open Court, and after formal resolution, to documents that have been examined and signed by one of the Corporation's Law Officers. OBVERSE OF THE COMMON SEAL. REVERSE OF THE COMMON SEAL. been added to the shield in commemoration of Lord Mayor Walworth's feat in slaying Wat Tyler. The date upon which this new seal was formally handed to Walworth, the 17th of April, 1381, was two months before he smote the rebel down in West Smithfield ; and it has long been a truism of City history that the sword has nothing whatever to do with him, but is em blematic of St. Paul, the City's patron saint. The Common Seal of the City dates from the early part of the same century, the fourteenth. The obverse bears a figure of St. Paul, with a sword in his right hand and in his left a banner of Eng land. The legend is Sigillum Baronum Londoniarum. OLD REVERSE OF THE COMMON SEAL. Until the Reformation the reverse showed a figure of St. Thomas Becket, with kneeling figures on either side, but at that epoch the City Arms were substituted. There are three keys of the Common Seal, all of them different, one kept by the Lord Mayor, another by the Chamberlain, as representing the Court of Aldermen, the third by the Comptroller, as the representative of the The Lord Mayor's collar of S'S, be queathed by Alderman Sir John Alen, of the Mercers' Company, who died in 1544, was enlarged in 1567 by the addition of four S'S, two knots, and two roses, and it now consists of twenty- eight richly-worked S'S, with a Tudor rose and knot inserted alternately between the two letters, the ends joined by a port cullis from which hangs the jewel. The material is gold ; the Tudor roses, white upon red, are of enamel. A pendant was first presented by Sir Mar tin Bowes, the goldsmith, in 1588, but in 1607 this was replaced by the present jewel, purchased by the City. The Lord Mayor's coach was built and decorated at a cost of £1,065. At first it was kept in repair by a fee of £60 paid by each Alderman on his appointment to an aldermanic chair, but the charge was presently shifted to the Lord Mayor for the time being, and it occasionally proved to be so burden some that eventually the coach was taken over by the Corporation. The Lord Mayor'sCoach. CHAPTER XII AROUND THE GUILDHALL St. Lawrence Jewry— Sir Richard Gresham— Lad Lane— Gresham Street— Haberdashers' Hall— Alderman- bury— St. Mary the Virgin— Judge Jeffreys— Gresham College— Coopers' and Girdlers' Halls- Masons' Avenue and the "Dr. Butler's Head "—Coleman Street and the Fifth Monarchy Men— Great Bell Alley and Robert Bloomfield— Old Jewry and the Jews— Dr. Richard Price— The London Insti tution and Richard Porson— The City of London Police— Poultry : Its Chapel and its Compter— The Crusade against the Slave Trade— Old Poultry Taverns THE church at the corner of Gresham Street and King Street, close to the south-west corner of Guildhall Yard, is that in which the Lord Mayor and Corporation attend service on Michaelmas Day -st. Law- as a preliminary to the election of Jewry. the new Chief Magistrate of the City. Dedicated to St. Lawrence, it is styled St. Lawrence Jewry from the circumstance that in olden time the district around was London's Ghetto. In designing St. Lawrence's, Wren, with characteristic alertness to his opportunities, gave his attention not so much to the steeple — though that, with pyramidal finials at the angles of the tower, which suggest the spire, has merits of its own — as to the east front, which looks down upon all who pass to or from the Guildhall. This consists of four Corin thian columns, supporting an ornate entabla ture from which springs an effective pediment. Internally the church is beautiful with mould ing and panelling, with carved oak and stained glass, and, as befits the St. Margaret's of the City's Parliament, it is kept in admirable condition. The visitor to the church should not miss the little vestry, with its oak panel ling and its moulded ceiling bearing a painting by Sir James Thornhill. In 1908 there were presented to the church two valuable speci mens of Spanish art of the seventeenth century, the subjects being the " Immaculate Conception " and the " Entombment." No fewer than six Lord Mayors have been buried in St. Lawrence's, the most eminent of Sir them being Sir Richard Gresham, Richard whose tomb perished in the Great Gresham. p^ Father of the founder of the Royal Exchange, he was a scion of a family long resident at the village of Gresham, in PLAN OF THE STREETS AROUND THE GUILDHALL. 130 LORD MAYORS BURIED IN ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY 131 Norfolk. In the fifteenth century a member of the family removed to Holt, three miles distant, and here, about 1485, the future Lord Mayor was born. After a while his father and mother lived chiefly in London, and the ward of Cheap on the aldermanic body. Elected Lord Mayor in 1537, he was knighted in the same year. He died at his house at Bethnal Green on the 21st of February, 1548-9. His younger brother John brought up their four sons to trade, Richard also rose to be Lord Mayor in 1547-48. Photo: Pictorial . I gcncy. ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY. being apprenticed to a leading Mercer, and being in 1507 admitted to the freedom of the Mercers' Company. Four years later we find him lending money to Henry VIII., and having an extensive connection with the Low Countries, he frequently acted as the State's financial agent, and was con fidential correspondent of Wolsey and Crom well in foreign affairs. From 1536 to 1539 he was Alderman for the ward of Walbrook, and from 1539 till his death he represented Another of the Lord Mayors who were buried in St. Lawrence's was Geffrey Bullen, Chief Magistrate in 1457, and great-grand father of Henry VI I I.'s second wife. Here, too, lies Archbishop Tillotson (died 1694), whose monument is to be seen against the north wall, and who had a double association with the church, for he once held the Tuesday lectureship here, and here he was married. Gresham Street, upon which the church 132 LONDON TOWN of St. Lawrence abuts, and which stretches from Lothbury to Aldersgate Street, has borne its present name only since Gresham 1 845 when it was widened and straightened, and absorbed Cat- eaton Street, Lad Lane, and Maiden Lane. In Lad Lane was for more than a century one of the great coaching inns of the City, Gresham Street has two churches to its name, for near its Aldersgate Street end is the church, quaint as to its exterior, but well-proportioned and graceful as to its interior, of St. Anne and St. Agnes, dedicated, according to legend, to two sisters at whose charges it was originally built. It also serves the parish of St. John Zachary, the church Photo : Pictorial Agency THE VESTRY OF ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY, SHOWING THE OAK PANELLING {p. 130). the " Swan with Two Necks " (Nicks). The last owner of this famous house was a Mr. William Chaplin, who began as a coach man and lived to be the greatest coach proprietor of the age. According to " Nim- rod," he occupied the yards of five of the most important inns in London, the other four being the " Spread Eagle " and the " Cross Keys " in Gracechurch Street, the " Angel " behind St. Clement's, and the " White Horse " in Fetter Lane. With the coming of the railways he turned his atten tion to a cognate industry, the carrying business, of which Gresham Street is still an important centre. of which was not rebuilt after the Fire, and of which a piece of the graveyard is still to be seen close by. In Gresham Street, abutting upon Staining Lane, so called, Stow conjectures, " of painter stainers dwelling there," is the hall of one of the twelve great City Companies, the Haberdashers, who come eighth on the list. At first a branch of the Mercers, the Haberdashers formed two separate fraternities, Catherine and St. Nicholas for patron saints, but in the reign of Richard III. or that of Henry VII. these guilds coalesced, and under the latter king the Cappers and Haber dashersHall. with St. THE HABERDASHERS 133 Hatters were combined with them. The first extant reference to a hall is in a docu ment belonging to the reign of Elizabeth, and the ground upon which it stood, in what was then known as Maiden Lane, was large schools at Hatcham, New Cross, Hamp- stead, and Acton. It also administers chari ties and schools at various places in the pro vinces, has exhibitions to the Universities, and subscribes liberally to public causes. Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. MARY THE VIRGIN, ALDERMANBURY, WITH THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL (/. I34). bequeathed to the Company by William Baker, a haberdasher, in 1478. The Hall built by Wren after the Fire was again assailed by the same enemy on the 19th of September, 1864, and had to be to a great extent rebuilt, and it was after this event that the present entrance from Gresham Street was constructed. Among the portraits in the Hall is that of Robert Aske, who, dying in 1688, left £20,000 in trust to the Company for eleemosynary and educational purposes. Out of these funds the Company maintains The old Hall was placed at the service of the Parliament Commissioners before and during the Commonwealth, and here in 1650 was founded an Independent church which had a succession of distinguished pastors. It has already been mentioned that Alder- manbury, which runs from Gresham Street northwards to London Wall, a bury""3"' little t0 the west of the Guildhall, was so named because it gave en trance to the earlier Guildhall, the court or hall of the Aldermen — that is, the Guildhall. 134 LONDON TOWN About half-way along the street stands the church of St. Mary the Virgin, built by Wren, and opened in 1677. The eastern facade presents to the street an enriched cornice with pediment, and the tower, with its pierced parapet and with pedestals at the angles, is, with the turret it supports, an effective struc ture. On the south side of the church is a shady graveyard, adorned with a bust of Shake speare, with an inscription setting forth that it is in memory of John Heminge and Henry Condell, " fellow-actors and personal friends of Shakespeare, who lived many years in this parish and are buried here." They were the editors of the first Shakespeare folio, published in 1623, and beneath the bust is a representa tion in stone of that work, open at the title- page. The monument was erected in 1896 by Mr. Charles Clement Walker, of Lilleshall Old Hall, Shropshire. St. Mary's has other interesting associations. The register records the marriage of Milton with his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, who lived in this parish. And here, in a vault beneath the Communion-table, was buried, on the petition of his family, Judge Jeffreys, his remains being removed hither in Jeffreys. J6Q3 from the Tower, where he had died in 1689. Jeffreys was a resident of this parish in the days when he was Common Serjeant and Recorder of the City, and several of his children, includ ing the second Baron Jeffreys, were also buried here. A racy account of Jeffreys and of the lady who became his wife is given by Timbs in " The Romance of London." He lorded it over the City in the most abso lute fashion ; " was Lord Mayor, Common Council, Court of Aldermen, and supreme Judge, all in one. . . . At the feasts he was a tippling, truculent fellow — browbeating the men and staring the most dauntless of the women out of countenance. In the latter pastime he was well matched, perhaps excelled, by his learned brother Trevor ; and my Lord Mayor Bludworth had good reason to remember both of them. The Mayor had a fair daughter, the young and wild widow of a Welsh squire, and one who made City entertainments brilliant by her presence and hilarious by her conduct and her tongue. . . . When she finally accepted the hand of Jeffreys, her own was in the hand of Trevor ; and no City match was ever so productive of a peculiar sort of satirical ballad as this one. . . . Poets and poetasters pelted him with anonymous epigrams; aldermen drank queer healths to him in their cups ; and lively- tongued women, in his own court, when he was too hard upon them, would thrust at him an allusion to his lady from Guildhall which would put him into a fume of impotent indignation." Timbs goes on to point out that the blood of this able but unjust judge afterwards flowed in noble veins. His son, the second and last Baron Jeffreys, who also was buried in St. Mary's, was a dissolute, drunken fellow whose undeserved fortune it was to marry a daughter and sole heiress of the house of Pembroke. Their only child, Henrietta, be came Countess of Pomfret and Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline, and one of her many children, Charlotte Finch, became governess to George the Third's children, whom she often escorted into the City to see the Lord Mayor's Show. Among distinguished vicars of St. Mary's appears the name of Edmund Calamy, the Presbyterian divine, one of the authors of "Smectymnuus," and one of the victims of the Act of Uniformity, who is believed to have died of shock caused by the destruction of the church with which he had been obliged to sever his pastoral connection. He found a resting-place beneath its ruins. Let into the string-course above one of the first-floor windows of No. 70, Aldermanbury, is the sign of the Pelican. This is identified by Mr. Philip Norman, the author of " Lon don Signs and Inscriptions," with the crest of two merchants of the name of Chandler, who occupied the house, and whose monument in St. Mary the Virgin shows that they died, the one in 1686, the other in 1691. Above the inscription appears the Pelican, as in the sign on the house. It was one of these Chandlers, Richard, who gave the font, in 1675. At the corner of Gresham Street and Basinghall Street is Gresham College, a large stuccoed building in the enriched Roman style, with a Corinthian portico, siree"?1"*11 built in 1843, n'om the designs of George Smith, architect to the Mercers' Company, at a cost of £7,000. It is named, of course, after Sir Thomas Gresham, who transferred to the Corporation of BASINGHALL AND COLEMAN STREETS 135 the City and the Mercers' Company the Royal Exchange which he had built, on the condi tion that they should institute courses of lec tures on seven subjects — Divinity, Civil Law, Astronomy, Music, Geometry, Rhetoric, and Physic. He also bequeathed for the pur poses of the College his fine house in Bishops gate Street, where the lectures were delivered from 1597 until 1768, when the house was demolished ; and from that time until the present College was built the lectures were delivered in a room over the Royal Exchange. In Gresham College, too, are the offices of the City and Guilds of London Institute. In Basinghall Street, at the southern end, is the Coopers' Hall, which in 1868 superseded the hall rebuilt after the Fire. The Coopers were incorporated in 1501, when they were invested with the duty of gauging all beer casks within the City and for two miles beyond. On the east side of the street, standing back around a courtyard, is the Girdlers' Hall, re built after the Fire, and again in 1878-79 as the centre of a handsome group of offices. The Girdlers, who had to do with the making of girdling-irons, were incor porated by Henry VI. in 1448, but they existed as a brotherhood at least as far back as the days of Edward III. In thereign of Elizabeth the wire- workers and pinners were united with them. A building which has more recently disap peared from Basinghall Street is one of the many City churches dedicated to St. Michael — St. Michael Bassishaw, taken down in 1899, when the benefice was united with that of St. Lawrence Jewry. It was not one of the best of Wren's churches, and it had been much neglected during its later years, but it had an effective arched and panelled ceiling. Leading from Basinghall Street to Coleman Street on the east is Masons' Avenue, named after the hall of one of the City Companies which was incorporated in 1677 but was in existence at least as early as 14 10. The site is now occupied by Masons' Hall Tavern, A Famous QuacK. with a hunting JUDGE JEFFREYS {p. 1 34). From the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller in the National Portrait Gallery. with its sale-rooms ; and here, too, is a quaint old tavern known as the " Dr. Butler's Head." The head displayed as a sign might very well be that of another Dr. Butler, the profound thinker who wrote " The Analogy." But the- house is named after a Dr. William Butler, a physician born at Ipswich in 1535, who ac quired so great a reputation, largely by the employment of empirical methods, that many years after his death practitioners found it to their interest to set up as his disciples. He attended Henry Prince of Wales in his last illness in 16 12, and two years later he had for a patient King James himself, who had met accident, and who, when he came to Cambridge in 161 5, visited Dr. Butler„ and stayed with him nearly an hour. The " Dr. Butler's Head," founded in 16 16, appears to have been one of a number of inns estab lished to supply an ale of his own brew. This appears to be the only one of them which has kept its name to the present day. Coleman Street, in which we now find our selves, and which runs roughly parallel with Basinghall Street, is named after the charcoal- burners, or " colemen," and not, as Stow records, from one " Coleman, the first builder and owner thereof." At its north- street3" east corner) vvith an exceedingly plain Doric front, is the hall of the Armourers' and Braziers' Company, built in 1840 on the site of the old hall. The Armourers' Company was in existence at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and was incorporated in 1453. Early in the next century the Armourers were joined by the Blacksmiths, and by the Braziers in 1708. On the west side of the street is the Wool Exchange, built in 1874, and on the same side, and nearer the Lothbury end, is the church of St. Stephen, with a gateway that attracts the attention of passers-by by its curious alto- relievo of the Last Judgment. This gateway 136 LONDON TOWN dates only from 1780, but the church itself was rebuilt by Wren. It is one of the least effective of his works, though the interior is not unpleasing, and the east window contains in vivid colours a representation of the Descent from the Cross, after Rubens. Coleman Street was one of the Puritan quarters of the City. It was here that the five members lay when they fled from West minster to avoid arrest ; and at the Star Tavern Oliver Cromwell held meetings with By permission 0/ the Royal Society. DR. RICHARD PRICE (/. 137). From the Painting by Sir Benjamin West, P. R.A. some of his party. The street, too, is associ ated with one of those fanatical movements which gave successive Governments, both Parliamentarian and Royalist, so much trouble. In a conventicle in Swan Alley, leading out of Coleman Street on the east side, Venner, a wine-cooper, preached The Fifth his Fifth Monarchy gospel, and on Men"C y Sunday, the 6th of January, 1661, his followers armed themselves and sallied forth, posted sentinels around St. Paul's, and killed a person who declared himself to be for God and King Charles. Put to flight by the trained bands, they took refuge in Caen Wood, Highgate, until they were driven out and thirty of them taken prisoners. The rest returned to the City on the Wednesday, and were not overpowered until there had been some sharp fighting in Threadneedle Street, Bishopsgate Street, Wood Street, and finally at Cripplegate. Altogether twenty-two of the fanatics and an equal number of the King's men were killed. Venner, who was taken wounded, was hanged and quartered here in Coleman Street on the 19th of January, and certain of his followers were executed in various parts of the City. In another narrow turning out of Coleman Street on the east side, Great Bell Alley, lived Robert Bloomfield, the poet, who in 1 78 1, at the age of fifteen, was sent here from his home in Suffolk to learn shoe-making because he was not strong enough to follow the plough. Presently he brought to his lodgings a wife to double his poverty, and it is said that it was some years before they could scrape together enough money to buy a bed of their own. It was while work ing here in a garret, which he had to share with half-a-dozen other shoe makers, that he wrote " The Farmer's Boy," which, when published in 1798, had an immense vogue, due chiefly to factitious circumstances, 26,000 copies being sold in three years, while it was translated into French, German, and Italian. The Duke of Grafton gave Bloomfield a small post in the Seal Office, but this he was compelled by ill- health to resign, and then the Duke bestowed upon him a pension of a shilling a day. After a time he set up as a bookseller, but failed, and retired to Shefford, in Bedfordshire, where he died a hypochondriac in 1766, at the age of fifty- seven. Coleman Street is continued by the Old Jewry to the Poultry. In this thoroughfare settled many of the Jews who came over from Rouen at the invi tation of William the Conqueror, others of them, however, taking up their abode in the liberties of the Tower. From the erudite article on London in the " Jewish Encyclopaedia," it appears that the earliest reference to a collective Jewish settle ment in this country is in a document of about 1 1 15, "The Terrier of St. Paul's," in which mention is made of some land in Jew Street, corresponding to a part of the Old Old Jewry. AN UNORTHODOX REGION n; Jewry. The dreadful massacre in 1189 was the first indication that the Jews in England were in ill favour with the popu lace. After that event, probably crowded out by the houses which the Church estab lished in this part of the City, they appear to have begun to desert Old Jewry, and to spread westwards in the streets around Chepe, such as Gresham Street, Milk Street, being generously allowed to take with them part of their money and of their movables. It was not until the seventeenth century that this embargo upon a race was removed ; but the Jews who then came to London did not re turn to the Old Jewry, but settled at Aldgate. In the eighteenth century, Old Jewry, as if determined not to be in the main stream of religious orthodoxy, was one of the great ] 7 -__——- — *v«g»v [.^-¦¦;~'~:^_~~~ 1 .llyll.il. 1 F SIR ROBERT CLAYTON'S HOUSE {p. 1 38). From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, and Wood Street. Their chief synagogue was probably the one that stood on the site after wards occupied by Bakewell Hall (p. 107), and this, it is believed, continued in use until the expulsion ; but they had another in the north-east corner of Old Jewry, which was handed over to the Fratres de Sacca, and a third where now stands the London City and Midland Bank. We need not tell over again the dismal and revolting story of the persecutions suffered by the Jews in successive reigns : enough to say that in and around Old Jewry they remained until they were expelled from the country by Edward I. in 1290, when some 15,000 of them, of whom about 2,000 dwelt in London, were driven from these shores, 10 Dr. Price. centres of London Nonconformity, and so it remained until 1808, when the congregation of Presbyterians removed to Jewin Street The most distinguished of the divines who ministered here was Dr. Richard Price, politician and publicist, as well as philosopher and theologian, whose lecture on Civil Liberty, in which he de nounced the policy of the Government to wards the American Colonies, induced the Corporation to present to him the freedom of the City, while on the other side his efforts were recognised by the degree of LL.D., confirmed upon him by Yale College at the same time that the degree was bestowed upon Washington. Still more memorable was the sermon he preached here on " The Love of 138 LONDON TOWN our Country," for it was chiefly this ex pression of satisfaction at the outbreak of the French Revolution which provoked Burke to write his " Reflections," in which he criticises Price with unsparing severity. Dr. Price, who died in 1791, and did not therefore live to witness the excesses which Burke had so knowledge," and was first housed in the mansion built for himself by Sir Robert Clayton, who was Lord Mayor in the time of Charles II. Here it remained until 1812, when it was transferred to King's Arms Yard, Coleman Street, and thence, seven years later, to Finsbury Circus. Sir Robert ST. MILDRED'S POULTRY. From a Drawing by G. Shepherd. sagaciously foreseen, was one of the ablest thinkers and publicists of his day, and when Lord Shelburne took office in 1782, he offered him the post of private secretary. Old Jewry has associations also with the London Institution, which was es- wuuuon" tablished in 1805 by a proprietary in the City, " for the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful Clayton's fine old house, of a rich red brick, stood on the east side of the street, upon a balustraded terrace, in a courtyard. After it ceased to be the home of the London Institution the house became the Museum of the London Missionary Society, and for a time furnished accommodation for the Lord Mayor's Court. It was demolished in 1863. "THE RULING PASSION 139 The first librarian of the London Institution Richard Porson, the dissolute Greek scholar, who was so irregular in his Porsonf attendance and so negligent of his duties that the directors told him they only knew he was their librarian from seeing his name on the salary receipts. At was Clarke about a Greek inscription from Ephesus, and Dr. Clarke noticed that the Greek came to him much more readily than the English. He lingered until the night of the 25th, expiring just as the clock struck twelve. Old Jewry has been a good deal altered of INSIDE THE POULTRY COMPTER. Drawn and Etched by J. T. Smith. last they determined to dismiss him, but he saved them the trouble by dying. On the 19th of September, 1808, he was smitten down in the Strand by a stroke of apoplexy, and taken into the St. Martin's Lane Work house. Here he was found by the under- librarian, as the result of an announcement in the Press, and was brought home to the Institution. He had recovered consciousness, and was able to converse with Dr. Adam late years, though there are still not a few houses of respectable antiquity in Frederick's Place, a turning on the west side, as well as some in the street itself. On the east side, occupying the site of the old offices of the National Debt Commissioners, is a handsome stone building of Mr. A. C. Blomfield's design ing, occupied by the National Debt Com missioners and the Public Works Loan Board. The latter authority created in 18 17 for the 140 LONDON TOWN The Poultry, purpose of advancing money to municipal bodies for public works, migrated from Princes Street in 1903 ; the National Debt Commis sioners went into occupation in 1905. In a court on the west side of the street are the in significant headquarters of the most intelligent, most efficient, and most courteous police force in this country, the City of London Police. It numbers about a thousand men of all ranks, and is the only purely municipal body of police in the land ; for, alone among police forces, it receives no Government grant and is free from the control of the Home Office. To the capital, therefore, belongs the paradoxical distinction of possessing the only strictly muni cipal police, and the only police — the Metro politan Force — which is entirely free from municipal control. The Poultry, which continues Cheapside eastwards to the heart of the City, was, until just before Stow's time, when they flitted to Gracechurch Street and Newgate Market, the quarter of the poul terers, who sent their birds to be plucked in Scalding Alley hard by. Until 1872 Poultry had, on its north side, its church, that of St. Mildred, of which the name is pre served by St. Mildred's Court. It stood at the corner of Scalding Alley, and was rebuilt by Wren after the Fire. Poultry Chapel, built in 18 19, still survives, but in an altered form, for in 1872 the site and premises were acquired by the chapef. London Joint Stock Bank at a cost of £50,200, which was em ployed by the congregation for the erection of the City Temple on Holborn Viaduct. The old chapel underwent no structural alteration, but the gallery and pews having been removed, and the pulpit presented to the City Temple congregation, the interior was adapted to the requirements of the Bank. The Congregational church which wor shipped in the Poultry Chapel is much older than the chapel itself — is, indeed, the oldest Congregational church in London, having been founded in the early years of the seven teenth century by the famous Thomas Good win, D.D. (1600-1679), preacher to the Council of State, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, whom he attended on his deathbed, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and some time President of Magdalen College, Ox ford. It first met in Anchor Lane, Thames Street ; thence it migrated to Paved Alley, Lime Street, and after a sojourn there of eighty-three years removed (1755) to Miles Lane. There it made but a brief stay, pass ing on to Camomile Street, where it re mained until in 18 19, during the pastorate of the Rev. John Clayton, Poultry Chapel was built for it. The chapel was closed as a place of worship on Thursday, the 26th of June, 1872. On the previous Sunday even ing Dr. Joseph Parker, the minister of the church, had preached from two felicitously complementary texts : " The door was shut " (Matt. xxv. 10), and " I have set before them an open door, and no man can shut it '' (Rev. iii. 8). The building which bore the name of Poultry Chapel occupies a part of the site of the old Poultry Compter, and Coi~»trter from information supplied by Mr. Edward Clodd, the courteous secre tary of the London Joint Stock Bank, it appears that in excavations made in 1903 cross walls were discovered which were no doubt a part of this old sheriff's prison. It was of immemorial antiquity in Stow's day, and was not superseded until 18 17, when its inmates were transferred to the Whitecross Street prison. From its vicinity to the Old Jewry it had a ward set apart for Jews, and it is said to have been the only prison in London which contained such a ward. Into this prison Dekker, the Elizabethan dramatist, was cast for debt, and here died Dr. Lamb, the wizard, who, on the 13th of June, 1628, had been nearly torn limb from limb in the streets of the City, because he was believed to have assisted the Duke of Buckingham, by his unholy arts, to deceive the King. The Poultry Compter was not without as sociations of a nobler kind. Here was con fined John Bradford, the Protestant martyr, and herefrom, on the 30th of June, 1550, he was smuggled out at night to meet his fiery doom at Smithfield. Here, too, were im prisoned some of those slaves whose cause was espoused by Granville Sharp, Chimp""' the philanthropist. The first of his negro protege's was Jonathan Strong, whose owner, David Lisle, had used him so ill that he was crippled and almost blind. In this condition Lisle cast him aside, but when afterwards, thanks to the care of Granville Sharp, and of his brother, a surgeon, ASSOCIATIONS OF THE POULTRY 141 the poor fellow recovered his health, Lisle induced an officer of the Lord Mayor to arrest him and lodge him in the Compter. Granville Sharp procured his release, and prosecuted Lisle for assault and battery, but an action was brought against him in turn for unlawfully detaining the property of another, and he was advised that in the then state of the law there could be no valid defence to such a suit. Nothing daunted, Sharp went on taking up one case after another, and in 1772, seven years after Jonathan Strong was flung into the Poultry Compter, the judges laid it down in the case of James Somersett that as soon as a slave sets foot upon English territory he becomes a free man. The glory of this noble example of "judge- made law " Sir James Stephen awards to Granville Sharp, who, " though poor and de pendent, and immersed in the duties of a toilsome calling, supplied the money, the leisure, the perseverance, and the learning required for this great controversy." Since about the middle of the last century the Poultry has been widened and rebuilt, and almost the only house left with any look of antiquity is that used for the purposes of Pimm's oyster-rooms. Among the houses which the pilgrim will look for in vain is that (No. 31) in which Tom Hood was born, over the bookseller's shop carried on by his father and a partner (Vernor and Hood), and that (No. 22) occupied by a more celebrated book seller, Dilly, where Boswell's " Life of John son " was published, and where Dr. Johnson was inveigled by his future biographer into a meeting with John Wilkes in which the dema gogue bore himself with such tact and made such excellent play with his wit that levia than was charmed into his most amiable mood. Gone also with these booksellers' shops are the old inns of Poultry, the " Three Cranes," and the " Rose," afterwards the " King's Head," the change of title being made about the time of the Restoration by William King, who lived up to his name by being a zealous royalist. It is said that his wife was on the point of childbirth when Charles II. made his entry into his capital, and that, hearing of her anxiety to see him, the King stayed his pro gress at the door of the " King's Head " and saluted her. RELIEF OVER THE GATEWAY OF ST. STEPHEN S, COLEMAN STREET {p. I35). CHAPTER XIII THE MANSION HOUSE The Stocks Market— Fitting the Penalty to the Offence— A Statue Transformed— The Mansion House Built— The Pediment— The Egyptian Hall and other Features of the Interior— The Lord Mayor's Duties— Deaths during Office— Lord Mayor Wilkes and how he treated his Creditors— His Wit- Some Memorable Scenes at the Mansion House THE official residence of the Lord Mayor of London occupies the site of the old Stocks Market, of which some account must here be given. Named after a pair of stocks which had formerly stood here, Marrfe\°.CKS the market was one of great antiquity, being first built in 1282, for the sale of fish and flesh, by Henry Walis, the Mayor, who allocated the rents to the repair of London Bridge. We read in Riley's "Memorials" that on November 1st, 1319 — not many years, therefore, after the market was opened— a West Ham butcher named William Sperlyng was brought before the Mayor and Aldermen charged with being in possession of two putrid and poisonous oxen which he intended to sell at " the shambles called les Stokkes." Sperlyng " readily admitted that he did intend there to have sold those two carcases " ; but boldly maintained that the flesh thereof was " good and clean, and fit for human food." The jury to whom he appealed held, however, that the charge was established, and the Mayor and Aldermen, inflicting one of those penalties in kind in which to KiSndnent the older records abound, adjudged that he " should be put upon the pillory, and the said carcases burnt beneath him." Let us in charity hope that since he believed them to be fit for human food, he found the odour appetising. In the reign of Henry IV. the market was rebuilt, and it continued to be used for the sale of meat and fish until it perished in the Great Fire of 1666, although a trade in fruit, flowers, and vegetables was also carried on here. But when it was again rebuilt the butchers and fishmongers deserted or were excluded from it, and it became a fruit and vegetable market, for which, says Strype, it surpassed all other markets in London. At Story of a. Statue. the north end of the market, says the same historian, there stood, beside a water con duit, " a nobly great statue of Charles II. on horseback, trampling on slaves." The origin of this piece of statuary is related by Pennant. It was inaugurated on the 29th of May, 1672, and was the gift of Sir Robert Vyner, who had " fortunately " discovered a statue, made at Leghorn, of John Sobieski trampling on a Turk. The good knight caused some alter ations to be made and christened the Polish monarch by the name of Charles, and bestowed on the turbaned Turk that of Oliver Cromwell. If Horace Walpole may be believed, the statue " came over unfinished, and a new head was added by Latham." When in 1737 the market was demolished and the business transferred to what is now Farringdon Street, where it came to be known as the Fleet Market, the statue was lost sight of, but in 1779 the Common Council pre sented it to Mr. Robert Vyner, a descendant of Lord Mayor Vyner, and by him it was removed to Gautby Park, his seat in Lin colnshire. Its original destination, we may add, was the centre of the quadrangle of the Royal Exchange, but the Gresham Com mittee, while thanking Sir Robert Vyner for what they termed his " noble offer," declined it, considering that the statue would take up too much room and would obstruct the view from both the entrances to that building. The first stone of the Mansion House was laid by Lord Mayor Perry on the 25th of October, 1739, but the ground The Mansion , „ /¦ j ", ¦ , House Built. was found to be so honey combed with springs that piles had to be laid down, and owing to this and other difficulties the building was not finished till 1753, when Sir Crisp Gascoigne moved 142 Photo : Pictorial A» THE MANSION HOUSE. 144 LONDON TOWN into it. Up to this time the Lord Mayors had exercised their hospitality in one or other of the halls of the great City Companies, or in their own houses, but ever since 1753 each Lord Mayor has spent his year of office at the Mansion House. The cost of the building, with the furniture, was — to be very exact — £70,985 13s. 2d., of which about £9,000 was provided out of the City's income, while the rest was derived from the accumulated fines paid by persons to be excused from serving the office of Sheriff. The architect was George Dance the elder, the City Surveyor ; and it is said that a design by Palladio which Lord Burlington, the builder of Burlington House in Piccadilly, offered to the City was rejected on the ground that Palladio was not a freeman, but was a Roman Catholic ! However this may be — and the story is prob ably too good to be true — Dance had no great reason to be proud of his work when it was finished. It had behind the portico a cumbrous attic storey, and over the Egyptian Hall, at the other end of the building, was a corresponding attic. The latter of these was removed in 1796 by Dance's son ; the former, which had been dubbed the Mare's Nest, remained until 1842, when it also was removed. Seldom has a building been so improved by a considerable alteration as was the Mansion House by the removal of these attics, which imparted to it a look of top-heaviness. Built of Portland stone, the structure has a massive rusticated basement, with a portico of six fluted Corinthian columns supporting a pediment filled with sculpture in high relief, the work of Mr. (after wards Sir) Robert Taylor, architect to the Bank of England, whose object was to set forth in symbol the dignity and opulence of the City. London is personified by a female SIR ROBERT VVNER, STATUE IN THE From a scarce P. Descriptive. form crowned with turrets, who is vigorously trampling upon squirming Envy, while other figures represent Plenty, Commerce, the Thames, and so forth. But the Mansion House is remarkable rather for the splendour and sumptuousness of its interior than for any exterior feature. The most stately of its rooms, glowing with colour and gilding, is the Egyptian Hall, so called because its creator, the Earl of Burlington, based his design upon an Egyptian chamber described by Vitruvius. This apartment, which has only two windows, one at each end, and these filled with painted glass, so that it is de pendent upon artificial light, has a vaulted roof supported by two side screens of Corinth ian columns. Measuring ninety feet by sixty feet, it can seat from 350 to 400 guests, and here it is that balls take place and that the Lord Mayor gives those mul tifarious feasts for which his office is renowned all the world over. From the ceiling depend the banners of successive Chief Magistrates of the City ; and behind the Lord Mayor, as he pre sides over his guests, glitters the magnificent collection of silver-gilt plate which, when the Mansion House was built, cost about £11,500, and to which of recent years each Lord Mayor has made an addition as a souvenir of his year of office. Some of the plate is ordinarily displayed on a side-table in the Long Parlour, where the Lord Mayor lunches with such friends as he may informally be entertaining. The other rooms in the Mansion House, the Saloon — where the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress receive their guests, and where is Onslow Ford's bust of Queen Victoria, presented in the last year of the last century — the Drawing-room and the rest are also sumptuous in their appointments, and even the Justice Room, just inside the portico, on the left, where the Lord Mayor or one of the THE DONOR OF THE STOCKS MARKET. Hnt by Faithorne. WriAi THE LORD MAYOR DOES 1 45 City Aldermen adjudicates upon police cases arising in the southern part of the City, has a dignity not characteristic of police courts. During his year of office the Lord Mayor is as busy a man as the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is seldom that a Lord Mayor at the end of his year of office is re-elected, though the late Sir Robert Fowler, who was Lord Mayor in 1883, The Lord Mayor's Duties. over the Court of Aldermen and the meetings of the Common Council, to administer justice in the Police Court, to attend at the opening of the Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, where he is the Chief Commissioner, and entertain the Judges, to go to St. Paul's in state on given occasions, such as the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, and in many other ways to play his part in public functions as London's first citizen, in addition to dis- THE OLD STOCKS MARKET, WITH THE " CONVERTED " STATUE OF CHARLES II. From a Drawing by Sutton Nicholls. stepped into the breach created by the death during his year of office (1885) of Alderman Nottage, and in i860 and 1861 Alderman Cubitt served the office two years in suc cession. It is well that the custom of the City does not favour the re-election of its Chief Magistrate, for few men would be able to withstand the strain of a second year of office. The dispensation of hospi tality, with the speechmaking that it involves, whether the guests be His Majesty's Judges, the Archbishops and Bishops, or representa tives of the great commercial and other interests of the City, is in itself a serious tax upon the Chief Magistrate's time and But besides this he has to preside charging a mass of routine and other duties. Fortunately for themselves the Lord Mayors of London have not only served a long apprenticeship to the public work of the City but are captains of commerce, and the habits of mind which they have acquired in the conduct of large business operations stand them in good stead when they come to assume the heavy burden of the mayoralty. Even so, they would find their task much more difficult than it is if there were not at the Mansion House an experienced official in the person of Sir William Soulsby, who has been the efficient and courteous private secretary of over thirty successive Lord Mayors. It is not often that a Lord Mayor has died 146 LONDON TOWN during his year of office. There is, however, as is noted in the introduction, one case on record of two Mayors dying in one year. In 1485, the year of the Sweating Sickness, the Mayor, Sir Thomas Hille, was one of the earliest victims, dying on the 23rd of Sep tember. The next day William Stocker was died during office until Alderman Nottage, in 1885, and to him was accorded a public funeral in the crypt of St. Paul's, where, as we saw in an earlier chapter, he is com memorated by a brass. The Lord Mayor's salary is £10,000, but it is well known that his expenditure con- Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE EGYPTIAN HALL OF THE MANSION HOUSE. appointed, and four days afterwards he too succumbed ; and before the week was out six aldermen also had perished. In 1688, when Lord Mayor Sir John Shorter, on his way to Smithfield on horseback to open Bartholomew Fair, called at Newgate, as usual, to partake of a tankard of wine, the flapping of the tankard lid frightened the horse and poor Sir John was thrown and killed. Curiously enough, in the following year Sir John Chapman died during his tenure of office, on the 17th of March, a few weeks after he had officiated at the corona tion of William and Mary. In the next century three Lord Mayors died while holding office, Alderman Godschall in 1742, Sir Samuel Pennant, a kinsman of the historian, in 1750, the result of gaol fever caught at Newgate, and Alderman Beckford in 1770. After Beckford, no Lord Mayor siderably exceeds that allowance, liberal as it may seem. When Wilkes, of whose con flict with the Government we have had some thing to say in an earlier chapter, WiiKesay°r served the office, in 1774-75, he entertained so lavishly that he would have been nearly £3,500 out of pocket had he paid his bills. This he did not do simply because he could not. When his creditors became importunate he coolly assured them that he had expended the whole of his salary in carrying out the duties of his office, and that as their claims were in excess of the allowance he was unable to discharge them. Afraid to put the law in motion against so resourceful an antagonist, who had fought the Government and beaten it, they appealed to the Common Council for redress, but in vain. In 1779 Wilkes was elected to the well-paid office of City Chamberlain, THE WITTIEST OF LORD MAYORS H7 and so was relieved of his pecuniary embarrass ments. That post he held, with credit to him self and to the City, until his death, eighteen years later. It is only fail1 to the memory of this singular man, in whom brilliant gifts and genuine public spirit were allied with an abnormal lack of moral sense, to say that if the story of Wilkes's reply to the Middlesex elector who, when he asked him for his vote, uncompromisingly replied, wiikes-s „ No> j,d rather vote for the devil , >. " Very good," said Wilkes. " But in case your friend doesn't stand ?".... The other specimen of his wit has also a theo- JOHN WILKES. After the Portrait by C. E. Pine. he brought discredit upon the mayoralty by running into debt, he discharged the duties of the office with a distinction that has probably never been excelled. To him it fell to pre sent to George III., on the ioth of April, 1775, the remonstrance of the Livery against the Government's policy of coercing the American Colonies, and so tactfully and with such dignity did he acquit himself of the task that the King, bitterly as he resented the City's action, confessed he had never known " so well-bred a Lord Mayor." Of the wit of this eminent occupant of the Mansion House we may give two of the less familiar examples. That brilliant raconteur, the late Earl Granville, was fond of telling logical savour. When Lord Thurlow solemnly exclaimed, " May God forget me if I forget my sovereign ! " Wilkes retorted, " God for get you ! He'll see you damned first ! " The Mansion House has borne its full share in the national festivities of these latter days. On the wedding day of the Duke and Duchess of York, now Prince and Princess of Wales, the 6th of July, 1893, their Royal Highnesses drove through the City on their way to Sandringham. In St. Paul's National^ Churchyard the royal procession was met by the Lord Mayor and other members of the Corporation, and con ducted to the Mansion House, which was draped with crimson cloth and festooned with 148 LONDON TOWN flowers, and here the City's congratulations were offered. Still more memorable, though marked by even less formality, was the scene enacted at the Mansion House at the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. When Queen Victoria arrived in her carriage drawn by the eight cream-coloured Hanoverians, and had been greeted with the National Anthem played by massed bands, the Lord Mayor, Sir George Faudel-Phillips, Bart, who had met the procession at Temple Bar on horse back, and accompanied by his Sheriffs, advanced and presented to the Queen the Lady Mayoress, who offered a bouquet of flowers in a silver basket of her own designing. The gift was received with very manifest pleasure, and. the National air having once more been played, Queen Victoria's triumphal progress through the streets of her capital was continued. On both these occasions the Mansion House, like the Bank and the Royal Exchange, was splendidly illuminated in the evening, as it was also on the evening of the day on which King Edward and Queen Alexandra were crowned, the 9th of August,. 1902. This was the point in the City upon which the crowds converged from east and west, from north and south, and for hours on each of those great nights the open space in the heart of the City was packed with a mass of enthusiastic but sober and orderly humanity, constantly changing its elements without growing less, until long after the Royal Exchange had sounded its midnight chimes. Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE MANSION HOUSE PLATE. Byrs.i ISnuHierwis ,,,/,., tin- Roval >\rluusc THE FIRST ROYAL EXCHANGE. CHAPTER XIV THE ROYAL EXCHANGE How Gresham came to Build the First Bourse — He drinks a Carouse to his Kinsman — Aliens among the Workmen— Queen Elizabeth's Visit— The "Pawn" — The Building described — Gresham's Bequest — What Manner of Man he was— End of the First Exchange — The Second Exchange — Cibber's Work — Dilapidation— Destruction — A Royal Exchange Foundling — Sir William Tite's Career — Roman Remains found on the Site— The Portico — The Clock and Chimes — The Interior — The Ambulatory — Encaustic Paintings —The " Frescoes " — The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation — " Lloyd's" and its Origins — Lloyd's Bell Sir Thomas Gresham's Offer. IN 1564 Sir Thomas Gresham, the chief London merchant of his day, lost his only son Richard, a young man of twenty, in whom all his hopes had centred. This heavy blow seems to have turned his mind towards the devotion of his wealth to public objects. At a Court of Aldermen, held on the 4th of the following January, he formally offered to build at his own cost and charges " a comely Burse,'' on the understanding that a site was provided by the City, and in Mr. Deputy White's " History of the Three Royal Exchanges," based upon official records which the author, Chairman of the Gresham Trust, had diligently searched, we read that a small committee was at once appointed to make enquiries and report to the Lord Mayor and his brother Aldermen at eight o'clock on the following Sunday morning, " in the Chapel in Paule's Church wherein they usually assembled before sermon time " — an entry which shows that the City Fathers in that age began the day early, and that they saw no incongruity in commingling divine worship and the transaction of public business. The selection of the site and the conclusion of arrangements for its acquisition caused some delay, but by June, 1566, some eighty houses in Cornhill and adjacent alleys had been pulled down, and on the nth of that month, the site having formally been delivered to him, the first stone was laid by Gresham himself, attended by certain of his brother Aldermen, each of whom put down a piece of gold for the workmen. The records also tell of a less formal ceremony enacted earlier in this year. On the 9th of February, being at the house of Alderman Sir John M9 ISO LONDON TOWN Ryvers, in common with other members of the Corporation, Gresham " most frankly and lovingly promised that within a month after that the Burse should be fully finished he would present it in equal moieties to the Corporation of the City of London and the Mercers' Company," and it is added that " in token of his sincerity he therefor gave his Battisford in Suffolk ; but of the rest of the material the greater part was brought from other lands — the stone, glass and slate from the Low Countries, and the small stones which formed the floor, and which still form the floor of the present Exchange, from Turkey ; and, as Dr. Sharpe points out in his " London and the Kingdom," not only the SIR THOMAS GRESHAM, FOUNDER OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. From Pennant's " London." hand to Sir William Garrard, and in the presence of his assembled friends drank a carouse to his kinsman Alderman Rowe." It is pleasant to find that Sir Thomas Gresham's great enterprise was thus at its in ception touched with conviviality and good fellowship. In connection with the building of Gresham's Royal Exchange there was a strong foreign element, as was ^V^J18,, natural, seeing that its founder did at WorK. ' ° much of his business abroad, and was taking a leaf out of the book of Antwerp and other Continental cities which had long had their Bourses. The City, besides the site, provided a hundred thousand bricks, and the timber came from Gresham's estate at clerk of the works, Henryk, but most of the workmen were foreigners, Gresham having got permission from the Court of Aldermen to employ these " strangers," as they were delicately termed. It is not improbable that the dislike of aliens which has often mani fested itself in the history of the City led to disturbance, for in 1567 the Court of Alder men directed that an officer should attend daily to see that the workmen were not molested. Possibly, too, it was owing to some unpopularity which Gresham incurred on this score that within a few weeks of the informal opening of the building his arms and crest on the building were defaced. Once begun, the building operations went on with remarkable rapidity. By November, QUEEN ELIZABETH'S VISIT TO THE "BURSE. i5i The " Royal ' Exchange. 1 567, the Exchange was slated in, and shortly afterwards was ready for occupation. It bore, in Latin, French and Dutch, as well as in English, an inscription setting forth that " Sir Thomas Gresham, knight, at his own costs and charges, to the ornament and public use of this royal City of London, caused this place from the foundation to be erected the 7th June anno 1 566, and is fully ended anno 1 569." But " this place " was not the Royal Exchange until Queen Eliza beth visited it in state on the 27th of January, 1 570. On that day, says Stow, " the Queen's majesty, attended with her nobility, came from her house at the Strand, called Somerset House, and entered the City by Temple Bar, through Fleet Street, Chepe, and so by the north side of the Burse, through Threadneedle Street, to Sir Thomas Gresham's in Bishopsgate Street, where she dined. After dinner her Majesty, returning through Cornhill, entered the Burse on the south side ; and after that she had viewed every part thereof above the ground, especially the pawn, which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the City, she caused the same Burse by a herald and trumpet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called from thenceforth, and not otherwise." The " pawn," a word which is a corruption of the Dutch " Baan," or of the German " Bahn," a path or walk, was a corridor sur mounting the piazza that ran round the interior of the quadrangle, divided into shops so as to form a bazaar. At first some difficulty was found in letting these shops, and, in view of Queen Elizabeth's visit, Gresham himself went round to the trades men there and promised that if they would adorn with wares and illuminate with wax lights the empty shops, they should have them rent free for a year. This proved to be a good stroke of business : it was not long before Gresham was able to raise his rents all round to £4 10s. a year, and the "pawn" became a fashionable lounge. The shops were occupied by " milliners or haberdashers," says Howes, one of Stow's editors, writing in 1631 ; but how little differentiation trade had undergone in those days may be gathered from his remark that their wares consisted of " mouse-traps, bird-cages, shoeing-horns, lanthorns, and Jews' trumps " ! The first Royal Exchange, as now we may call it, closely resembled the Bourse of Antwerp. It was a long build- SesecHbed.in8 in?> with * ground floor and good courtyard for the mer chants, and above the piazza the " pawn " with its hundred shops. On the south or Cornhill front was a lofty bell-tower which was not a mere ornament, for its bell summoned merchants to 'Change daily at noon and at six in the evening ; and both this tower and a lofty Corinthian column on the north side were surmounted by a large grass hopper, Gresham's crest. The Exchange indeed was powdered with grasshoppers, for the peak of every dormer window had one, and there was one at each corner of the building. It was open to the heavens, but in wet weather the piazzas beneath the " pawn '• gave shelter to the merchants as they struck their bargains. In niches above this ambula tory were statues of English monarchs, from the Confessor to Queen Elizabeth, and near the north end of the western piazza stood an effigy of Gresham. To the royal statues were in turn added the three Stuart kings. When Charles I. had been beheaded his statue was removed, but the pedestal was left, inscribed with the words, in gilt, Exit tyrannus, regum ultimus — " The tyrant has gone, last of the kings." In these days of devotion to football it is not without interest to recall the fact that in the early years of the Royal Exchange this game was allowed to be played, or at any rate was played, within its walls. In 1576, however, eight years after the informal open ing of the building, it was prohibited not only within the Exchange but in any of the wards of the city. In those days, too, as Dr. Sharpe records, the city waits used to play in the Exchange of an evening, after business hours. Gresham duly fulfilled his promise of bequeathing the building to the Corporation and the Mercers' Company, and to this magnificent gift he added the noble house which he had built for himself in Bequest?'* Bishopsgate Street, and to which in 1 5 59-60 he " moved " from his shop in Lombard Street. To Lady Gresham a life interest was reserved, and when she died in 1 596, having survived her husband seventeen years, it was found that the revenues of the Exchange amounted to £73 1. 152 LONDON TOWN Let us now ask ourselves who and what of his office, but the change did not improve manner of man was the founder of the the Queen's credit abroad, and he was soon Royal Exchange. A native of reinstated. He was the intimate friend of London, he was born about the Sir William Cecil, and in 1555 received that year 15 19, and both his father, Sir Richard statesman at his house in Antwerp, and when (p. 130), and his uncle, Sir John, filled the Cecil became Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of His Career. , _^_ n h3 if * A ((t ',', V < -(• 'T-'na ".£TCfU- J Cfittiti lur.s f* K.W l.tlJ—J/i.,,, NtfJsn.T.'t !'!¦'. ¦¦ln''M,-i, M-,. ¦.l..;„jmMr.-k*Ka[lf,,;.-r, 'J.-:: :.'.', ./".'¦.' ¦.¦.'." I - ¦ .. ¦' -'"'v' l/t.UI. I '.MS.i. ',¦'¦, :¦ . . ... .' .; J!." .u-L' .l.,-^!.-.- A >'-¦.¦?' -i;i'.r.-Jif.S,crA*£- ff^^'i' £,j ' ^kkjiumi ms. THE SECOND ROYAL EXCHANGE. From Pennant's " London." office of Lord Mayor. On leaving Cambridge he was apprenticed to his uncle, who, like his father, was a leading mercer. In 1 55 1 or 1552 he was appointed royal agent or king's merchant, which necessitated his spending a large part of his time at Antwerp. His chief duties, says Mr. C. Welch in the article on Gresham in the " Dictionary of National Biography," were " to negotiate loans for the Crown with the wealthy merchants of Ger many and the Netherlands, to supply the State with any foreign products that were required, and to keep the Privy Council informed of all matters of importance passing abroad." Gresham was a Protestant, and at the accession of Queen Mary he was deprived State Gresham once more found himself in the highest favour at Court. In 1574 he ceased to be the Queen's agent. His accounts had not been audited for eleven years, and the Commissioners for the Government now found that after making all allowances due to him he owed the Government about £10,000. Gresham tried to wipe out this debt by claiming exorbitant interest and an excessive rate of exchange on sums due to him at the last audit. In this way he sought to make out that instead of his owing the Government £10,000, they owed him £1 1,506, or, to be as precise as he was himself, £11,506 1 8s. o'^d. ! "This exorbitant de mand," says Mr. Welch, " was at once disputed GRESHAM'S SMARTNESS 153 by the Commissioners. Gresham promptly obtained a duplicate copy of his accounts and caused a footnote to be added to the document acknowledging the impudent claim for in terest and exchange which had already been fault with the court of the house as being too great " ; it would have been more hand some, she thought, if divided by a wall in the middle. Gresham thereupon sent to London for a little army of workmen, who, in the * 1 I I M 1 I I Photo : PiUorial Ag TYMPANUM OF THE PRESENT ROYAL EXCHANGE {p. 1 57). practically rejected. With this paper he set out for Kenilworth, where the Queen was stay ing as the guest of Leicester. Through the good offices of her host, Elizabeth was induced to allow the claim, and, fortified by the royal endorsement, Gresham obtained the signatures of the Commissioners to his duplicate account, with its deceitfully appended note." That Sir Gresham, adding to his shrewdness and sagacity and industry such smartness as this, should have grown rich is not ?ls surprising. Besides the mansion Prosperity. c ° which he built for himself in Bishopsgate Street, he had several country houses, and at two of these, Mayfield in Sussex and Osterly in Middlesex, he re ceived Queen Elizabeth in 1573 and 1 575- It was of the visit to Osterly that Thomas Fuller in his " Worthies " relates a familiar anecdote. The Queen, he says, " found 11 course of a single night, noiselessly built a wall, so that " the next morning discovered that court double which the night had left single before." Gresham died suddenly, probably from apoplexy, on the 21st of November, 1579, on his way home from 'Change in the afternoon, and was buried in Great St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. If Fuller is to be believed, Lady Gresham lived on no very amicable terms with her husband. When Hentzner, the German traveller, visited London in 1598, he was struck with the stateliness of the building and " the assemblage of different nations," as well as the quantities of merchandise exposed for sale. And yet, effective as it may have been — and it is not improbable that the extant views fail to do it justice — it was ill-built The inquest book of the Ward of Cornhill shows that in 1581, within a few years of its 154 LONDON TOWN A Word Picture. completion, it was reported to be " dangerous for those which walk under, part being broken and like to fall down." Another extract from official records quoted by Mr. Deputy White informs us that in 1624 the clock was " presented " for telling stories, the solemn allegation being preferred that though " stand ing in one of the most public places in the Cittie," it was " the worst kept of any Clocke." How in the Great Fire the Royal Exchange was attacked, we learn from Vincent, the preacher whose vivid account of the partial destruction of the Guildhall we have quoted. Some of the houses in Cornhill were pulled down, but the timbers were not re moved, and this graphic writer makes us see the flames " licking up the whole street as they go ; they mount up to the top of the highest houses ; they descend down to the bottom of the lowest vaults and cellars, and march along on both sides of the way with such a roaring noise as never was heard in the City of London ; no stately building so great as to resist their fury : the Royal Exchange itself, the glory of the merchants, is now invaded with much violence, and when once the fire was entered, how quickly did it run round the galleries, filling them with flames ; then came downstairs, compasseth the walks, giving forth flaming volleys, and filleth the court with sheets of fire ; by-and- bye, down fell all the kings upon their faces, and the greatest part of the stone building after them." Vincent adds that of the statues the only one which escaped de struction was that of the founder. The flames, it would seem, were visited with a solitary touch of compunction. The Joint Gresham Committee, con stituted then, as now, of twelve members appointed by the Corporation, and twelve by the Mercers' Company, with the Lord Mayor an ex-officio member, lost no time in setting to work to replace the Exchange. The fire took place in the first week of September, 1666, and on the 18th of that month they met to consider what should be done. The task of rebuilding was committed to the hands of Edward Jerman, E«hSaenren.d one of the CitY surveyors, who died before it was finished, as is so often the fate of architects of great buildings. The foundation stone was laid on the 6th of May, 1667, and the stones of columns on the eastern and western sides were laid respectively by the King, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert. On each of these occasions a banquet was provided, and it is curious to find that, in 1670, the butlers who officiated at the feasts came be fore the Joint Committee with one consent to complain that the £20 they had received failed to cover their expenses. A further grant of £8 was therefore made to them, the Committee prudently stipulating that this was to be " in full of all demands." The build ing was to have been opened by the King, but when the day came, the 28th of Sep tember, he was unable to be present, and the ceremony was performed by the Lord Mayor, Sir William Turner. The second Royal Exchange was similar in plan to the first, with a quadrangle, piazzas supporting " pawns," and, in niches above the piazzas, a series of statues of our monarchs looking down into the open court yard, in the centre of which was a statue of King Charles II., chiselled by Grinling Gibbons. But the design was classical. The principal entrance was in the south or Cornhill front, where was a lofty archway flanked on each side by two Corinthian columns, and surmounted by an imposing clock tower in three stages, the lower of stone, the two upper of timber, the topmost stage rising into a cupola. It was the King's wish that there should be a portico on each of the four sides, but there was difficulty in securing the necessary ground, and this feature was found to be so expensive that the Committee begged Dr. Wren, not yet Sir Christopher, to persuade his Majesty, should he be consulted on the point, that it might be dispensed with on the east and west sides. The Committee also enjoyed the good offices of Sir John Denham, the King's Surveyor-General of Works, and an entry in their minutes records how certain of their number were desired " to make provision of six or eight dishes of meate at the Sun Tavern on Wednesday next to entertain him withal at his coming down, and to present him with thirty guinea pieces of gold, as a token of their gratitude." The cost of the second Exchange was £58,962, in addition to a sum of £7,017 expended in acquiring additional land. As THE SECOND AND THIRD EXCHANGES ¦55 time went on the building was found to need extensive repair. In 1767 a petition was presented to Parliament, setting forth that it was '' so much decayed as to threaten its total demolition unless speedily and effec tively repaired," and seeking authority to raise a sum of £10,000 for its renovation. Many thousands of pounds were spent upon it in later years, and in 1821 the tower of the Cornhill front was rebuilt, but was now carried up to a height of only 128 feet against the 178 feet of the old one. It was on the night of the 13th of January, 1838, that the second Exchange went the way of the first. The fire, which The second was believed to have been Exchange Destroyed. caused by an overheated stove in Lloyd's Coffee-house, was discovered by two of the Bank watchmen about half-past ten o'clock, but there was delay owing to the necessity of forcing the gates, and then the hose of the fire-engine was found to be frozen. The flames seized upon the new tower about one o'clock, and presently the eight bells fell, but not until they had chimed, pitifully enough, " Life let us cherish " and " There's nae Luck aboot the Hoose." Had the wind been from the south, the Bank would almost certainly have shared the fate of its neighbour. As it was, the blaze was big enough for its reflection to be seen at Roydon Mount, near Epping, a distance of eighteen miles, and even at Windsor, twenty-four miles away. Of the statues, curiously enough, that of Gresham was again spared by the flames* and with it the statue of Charles II. What became of the former I have not been able to discover, nor could Mr. Deputy White throw any light upon its fate. Before passing from the second Royal Exchange we must recall a curious incident connected with it. On the 16th a Royal 0f September, 1787, a child was Exchange r , Foundling, discovered on the stone steps leading from Lloyd's (p. 161) to Cornhill. Mr. Samuel Birch, the confec tioner, who was churchwarden of the parish of St. Michael's Cornhill, made himself respon sible for the upbringing of the foundling, who was named Gresham after the original founder of the Exchange, and Michael after * In its report of the fire, the day afterwards, the Times speaks of it as "uninjured." the patron saint of the parish. When he grew to man's estate Michael Gresham prospered, established in Sackville Street, Dublin, an hotel to which he lent his surname, and about 1836 sold it for £30,000 and retired to his estate at Raheny Park near Dublin, distinguishing himself by his benevolence and the interest he took in the orphan societies of the Irish capital. For the third Royal Exchange, the Gresham Committee invited competitive designs. Thirty-eight were sent in, among The Third them those of Mr. William Tite, Royal ' Exchange, who, two years before, had been elected President of the Architec tural Society, afterwards the Royal Institute of British Architects. None of the designs gave general satisfaction, but Tite tried again in competition with C. R. Cockerell, and this time was successful. The architect, who was knighted in 1869, was a native of the City, born in the parish of St. Tite!™"'"11 Bartholomew the Great in 1798. A pupil of David Laing, the architect of the Customs House, he assisted him in rebuilding the body of the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. After the com pletion of the Royal Exchange, he occupied himself mainly with the valuation of land for railways and the building of railway stations ; but in 1853-4 he planned the Woking Ceme tery, and after this built Gresham House, Old Broad Street, and the enormous ware house of Messrs. Tapling and Co. in Gresham Street. A man of many interests, he re presented Bath in the House of Commons, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, was an excellent lin guist, and founded a scholarship named after him at the City of London School. He died childless, leaving personalty of the value of £400,000. At an early stage of the arrangements for rebuilding the Exchange, there was a dispute between the Lords of the Treasury and the Corporation which involved the jealously guarded rights of the City. The Treasury Lords demanded that the designs should be submitted to them ; the Corporation main tained that as the State was to provide none of the funds, since the building was to be erected at the cost of the Gresham Committee with money to be raised on the credit of the Bridge House Estate, its right of criticism or i56 LONDON TOWN veto was limited to the site and the approaches. For some time neither side would give way, but at last the Government, not caring probably to incur the odium of delaying an enterprise so necessary to the commerce of the capital, consented to limit their functions to the consideration of the ground plan and the approaches. catalogued by the learned architect, and they may now be seen in the Guildhall Museum. It was not till the beginning of 1843 (the 17th of January) that the foundation stone, a huge block of granite weighing nearly four tons, was laid by Prince Albert, who, after the charity children of Broad Street Ward had sung the National Anthem, was conducted by ••|,«» Photo : Pictorial Agency. DOME AND ROOF OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, SHOWING THE WHIRLIGIG {p. 162) In excavating for the foundations the workmen came upon a huge hole which appeared to have been a gravel- Roman -t m t^e tjme 0f rhe Romans, and Relics. 1 ' afterwards a receptacle for rubbish. Here were found a large number of Roman remains — coins of various reigns, bits of stucco, painted shards of Samian ware, jars, urns and vases, styles and wooden tablets, terra-cotta lamps, an amphora, artificers' tools, soldiers' sandals, and so forth. They were carefully preserved, and were afterwards the Lord Mayor to the Mansion House to dine. A beginning once made, rapid progress was effected, and towards the end of the following year (October 28th), the building was opened with great state by Queen Victoria, who was accompanied by the Prince, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord John Russell. When finally completed, the structure was found to have cost £168,534, and a much larger sum, £233,700, had been expended in enlarging the site and improving the EXTERIOR OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 157 The Exterior, A RELIC OF THE FIRST ROYAL EXCHANGE : GRESHAM'S GRASSHOPPER. approaches, alterations which involved the demolition of the church of St. Benet Fink in Threadneedle Street, of the French Protestant Church, of the Bank Buildings, and of Sweeting's Alley — where the Stock Exchange had its quarters before it removed to Capel Court — and the widening of Cornhill, Freeman's Court, and Broad Street. The glory of the Royal Exchange, viewed from without, is its noble portico, which, consisting of eight Corinthian columns, with intercolumns and pediment, looks westward. Pity that so fine a facade is in alignment with neither of the great thoroughfares by which it is approached — neither with Cheapside nor with Queen Victoria Street ; but it is in no worse case — if that is any consolation — than the even grander west front of St. Paul's. On the frieze is inscribed, ANNO ELIZABETHAE R. XII. CONDITUM : ANNO VlCTORIAE R. VI II. RESTAURATUM — a legend which ignores the second Royal Exchange altogether. In the spacious tympanum is allegorical sculpture from the chisel of Richard Westmacott, a crowned figure of Commerce, holding the charter of the Exchange, occupying the centre, and standing upon a pedestal inscribed with the splendid words, " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," It is often said that this most apposite motto was selected by Prince Albert, but the truth is, as the architect himself testified, that when the difficulty of suitably relieving the aggressive plainness of the pedestal was mentioned to the Prince, he simply suggested a religious inscription, and it was Milman, the Dean of St. Paul's, to whom belongs the credit of the actual selection. In the centre of the open space in front of the portico, looking westwards, is Chantrey's bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, cast from captured French cannon. It was the last work of the sculptor, who died before it was finished, and it was unveiled in the year in which the Exchange was opened, on the anniversary of Waterloo. At the east end the building is considerably wider than the west end, with an entrance dignified by four Corinthian columns,, sup porting a clock tower 170 feet high. In niches flanking the northern entrance, that from Threadneedle Street, is a statue, by Joseph of Sir Hugh Middleton, the creator of the New River, and another, by Carew, of the great Sir Richard Whittington, who dis putes with Gresham the honour of being the most distinguished of Mercers. Behnes's statue of Gresham fills a niche in the front of the clock tower, a position in which the SIR WILLIAM TITE, ARCHITECT OF THE PRESENT ROYAL EXCHANGE. By permission of the Royal Institute of British Architects. i58 LONDON TOWN founder of London's Bourse has nothing better to do than to stare at the range of offices — Royal Exchange Buildings —opposite. So placed, Gresham, it is to be feared, gets less attention than Sir Rowland Hill, founder of the penny postage system, whose statue, by Onslow Ford, faces Cornhill from the open space between the Royal Exchange and Royal Exchange Buildings, or even than the sitting figure of George Peabody, the Ameri can philanthropist, the work of W. W. Story. At the top of the clock tower sprawls the same gilded grasshopper, eleven feet in length, which served as vane to Gresham's Exchange. The clock and the machinery for the chimes were supplied by Ind'chimes. Dent> but at Sir William Tite's suggestion the number of bells was afterwards increased from nine to fifteen. In June, 1894, the bells came to grief, and the carillon machine, being entirely worn out by its fifty years' service, had to be replaced by a new one, with three interchangeable barrels, each barrel furnishing forth seven tunes — an English, a Scottish, and an Irish set. The chimes are changed weekly, so that each section of the United Kingdom gets its week in turn. The new chimes were set in motion in July, 1895, by the Master of the Mercers' Company, the whole repertory of twenty-one melodies being gone through to the delight of crowds that filled the sur rounding streets. The tunes, as given by Mr. Deputy White, are played in the follow ing order, beginning in each case with Monday : — ENGLISH WEEK. " God Bless the Prince of Wales." " The Bailiffs Daughter of Islington." " Rule Britannia." " Oh dear ! What can the Matter be ? " " Tom Bowling." " God Save the King." " When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." SCOTTISH WEEK. " Auld Lang Syne." " Kelvin Grove." " Keel Row." " The Blue Bells of Scotland." " Ye Banks and Braes." "There's nae Luck aboot the Hoose." " Hanover." IRISH WEEK. " Believe me if all." " The Minstrel Boy." " The Last Rose of Summer." "Kathleen Mavourneen." " The Harp that once through Tara's Halls." " St. Patrick's Day." " Abide with me." Entering the Exchange, one sees that, like Gresham's and Jerman's, it is quadrangular. The square courtyard, as we have Jh* j said, is paved with the Turkey stones, arranged in patterns, which formed the floor of the first and second Exchanges. At first the courtyard was open to the skies, an arrangement which suggests that our merchants were anxious to have cool heads while doing their business. Very tardily different counsels prevailed, and in 1883 Mr. Charles Barry, son of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, constructed, of glass and stone, at a cost of £20,000, what is, perhaps, the most graceful of modern roofs in the City of London, the centre taking the form of a low dome, while the eastern and western sections are slightly arched. In the middle of the courtyard is a statue of Queen Victoria by Hamo Thorny- croft, R.A., which was unveiled by the Lord Mayor, Sir Walter Wilkin, on the 20th of June, 1896, the fifty-ninth anniversary of her accession, to replace one by Lough which had suffered exposure to the weather in the years when the Exchange had no roof. It represents Queen Victoria as she was at the time she opened the Royal Exchange. Crowned and wearing the ribbon and order of the Garter, she is holding in her right hand a sceptre, and in her left a figure of Victory in silvered bronze, alighting on an orb — a sufficiently daring emblem of universal dominion. The statue, of which a model had been approved by the Princess Louise, herself a practitioner of the sculptor's art, was the joint gift of the City Corporation and the Mercers' Company. In the south-east corner is the statue of Charles II. which occu pied the centre of the second Exchange and survived the fire of 1838, and in the north east corner is one of Queen Elizabeth, by Watson. All the monarchs in whose reigns the successive Exchanges were built are therefore represented in the interior. The ground floor consists of Doric columns and rusticated arches, and above these is a series of Ionic columns with arches and windows. In the keystones of the arches of the upper storey appear the arms of the Photo; Pictojial Agency, INTERIOR OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, SHOWING PART OF THE GRACEFUL ROOF. i6o LONDON TOWN principal nations of the world, in the order determined by the Congress of Vienna, the arms of England being in the centre of the eastern side. Just beneath the roof on the northern side is the Maiden's Head of the Mercers' Company, faced on the opposite side by the arms of the City ; and in the angles and panels, are decorated with a series of encaustic paintings in wax, the work of a Munich artist. TheAmbulatory. The designs in clude the arms of the nations, em blazoned in their proper colours ; those of Edward the Confessor, who granted to the City its first charter, of Edward III., Photo : Pictorial Agency. Lloyd's : the underwriters' room. corresponding position on the eastern side are the arms of Gresham, including the familiar grasshopper. Sown about the interior are familiar mottoes — that of the City Corpora tion, " Domine dirige nos " ; that of the Mercers' Company, " Honor Deo " ; and Gresham's, " Fortun — a my." The rooms in the upper storey are occupied as offices by Lloyd's (of which more presently), the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, and other companies. The ceiling of the spacious ambulatory which runs round the courtyard, and the in whose reign London made notable ad vance in wealth and power, of Queen Elizabeth and of Charles II.; and the arms of the three Mayors and of the three Masters of the Mercers' Company in whose terms of office the present Exchange was built, with those of the architect and of the then chairman of the Gresham Committee, Mr. R. L. Jones. So far the colours have successfully endured the test of time, though they form a scheme somewhat lacking in vividness. But in these later days the ambulatory has been beautified with another and more glow- LLOYD'S CORPORATION 161 ing scheme of colour. In 1895 the late Lord Leighton presented to the Royal Exchange his canvas " The Phoenicians "Frescoes." Trading with the Early Britons on the Coast of Cornwall," which was attached to the panel of the ambula tory just inside the chief entrance on the left-hand side. Of the twenty-four panels many others are now similarly em bellished with speci mens of the work of Seymour Lucas, Ernest Crofts, S. J. Solomon, Stanhope Forbes, Edwin A. Abbe}-, Robert Mac- beth, and other artists, and the work of beautification will be continued until the whole series is completed. The pic tures, though not literally frescoes, since they are can vases, are said to be painted in a medium not less durable than that of frescoes proper. The one which secures perhaps the greatest notice, by reason of its vivid colouring and dram atic treatment, is that in which Mr. Stan hope Forbes depicts riverside dwellers at the time of the Great Fire escaping in boats. High up on the banks are gabled houses fiercely burn ing, and a great cloud of purplish smoke is drifting across the river. The subject was particularly appropriate for a picture of which the donors were the Sun Fire Office, for it was owing to the Great Fire that the fire insurance system was originated. More over, it was almost on the exact spot where the picture is placed that for nearly 1 30 years the old Sun Fire Office stood. It is only of late years, and owing mainly to the attraction of the frescoes, that the general public in any numbers have cared to enter the Royal Exchange. The only restriction upon the THE LVDEKKER MEMORIAL IN LLOYD S. right of entry is from half-past one to half- past two on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when bill exchange business is in full swing, and ladies, for some occult reason, are not admitted. Apart from this the busiest hour on 'Change is from half-past three, when the produce merchants hold the floor. A series of rooms at the west end of the Exchange is occupied by the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, which has a long history, having received a royal charter in 1720. At the east end is the entrance to the offices of a yet more famous corporation — Lloyd's. Here, in spacious and hand some chambers run ning along the north side of the Exchange — t he Captains' Room, the Mer chants' Room, the Underwriters' Room, and so forth — the members of the cor poration carry on the business of marine insurance, to which are added the pro tection of the inter ests of members of the corporation in re spect of shipping and cargoes and freight, and the collection, publication, and diffusion of intelligence with respect to shipping. Lloyd's is, in fact, in conjunction with Lloyd's Register — a quite separate institution, estab lished in Fenchurch Street, of which some account will be found in, a later chapter — as truly the centre of the mercantile marine of the world as the Admiralty is the centre of the British Navy. It is named after one of those coffee-houses which in the seven teenth century were frequented by merchants and sea-captains. In 1688 Edward Lloyd was carrying on his coffee-house in Tower Street; in 1692 he removed to Lombard Street, and in 1696 he established a paper, Lloyds News, afterwards styled Lloyd's List, l62 LONDON TOWN for the shipping interest. In 1770 those engaged in the business of marine insurance — underwriters they were and are now called — and those who do business with them banded themselves together into a society which bought Lloyd's List and took offices in Pope's Head Alley. Four years later they moved into the second Royal Exchange, which they continued to occupy until the building perished. When the present Exchange was completed they took possession of the rooms they still occupy. In 181 1 the society was reorganised, and in 1871 it was incorporated by Act of Parliament. Lloyd's has its agents in all the shipping ports in the world, who send to head quarters immediate news of the arrival or departure of the ships of all nations, as well as of wrecks and casualties. Every important piece of information is at once posted up, and entered in the index, and a summary of each day's shipping news is given in Lloyd's List. When any news of importance has to be announced — the loss of a vessel, it may be, or the tidings that it has been sighted after having been given up for lost — the crier tolls a bell, and having thus secured silence, tells his story, which is sometimes the occasion of " a scene." The bell which figures in this cere- belonged to an old frigate, the Lloyd'sBell. mony Lutine, which in 1770 foundered off the Dutch Coast, carrying with her to the bottom a fortune in British treasure. Many years later a part of this treasure was recovered, and Lloyd's acquired the bell of the ship and some of its timbers, out of which were made a table and chairs for the use of the members. Mounting the stairs, one comes to a vestibule in which are a statue of William Huskisson by Gibson, and another of the Prince Consort by Lough, the latter erected, as its inscription sets forth, " by the merchants, bankers, and underwriters of London to commemorate the laying of the first stone of the new Royal Exchange." There is also a memorial of Captain Lydekker, a South Sea shipowner, who bequeathed upwards of £50,000 to the Merchant Seamen's Society ; and a tablet on the walls commemorates the public spirit of the Times in exposing a fraudulent conspiracy. The most interesting of the rooms in which the business of Lloyd's is carried on is perhaps the Underwriters' Room. Here, elevated on desks are the famous " Lloyd's Books," two huge ledger-like volumes, of which one records the arrival of ships in the various ports, the other the losses and accidents. In this room is an anemometer, which, animated by the whirligig appliance to be seen from Cornhill high above the roof of the Ex change, automatically records the force and direction of the wind. East Country Irish Valk. Walk. Clothiers' - M Silkmen's Walk. - — Walk. X"" NORTH. Threadneedle Street. Hamburg Walk. Scotch Dutch and Walk. Jewellers' Walk. Salters' Walk. ' '= Grocers' and Druggists Wa'k. Biokers, &c , of Stocks Walk. Canary Walk. Italian Walk. Barbadoes Walk French Walk. Virginia Walk. Jamaica Walk. Spanish Walk. lews' Walk. CornhillSouth. PLAN OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE IX 1 837. CHAPTER XV THE STOCK EXCHANGE Beginnings of Stockbroking — The Corporation's Impost — In 'Change Alley — In Sweeting's Alley — The Present Buildings — The De Berenger Fraud and Lord Cochrane — Nathan Meyer Rothschild — Abraham Goldsmid — Not One but Two — Defaulting Members — A Great Crash — Outsiders — Flam boyant Patriotism AT first the dealers in stocks and shares carried on their operations in the Royal Exchange, not the present structure of that name, but its immediate predecessor,destroyed by fire in 1838. The quad- StocKbroKers rangular courtyard of this, the in the Royal . _ , „ . Exchange. second Royal Exchange, was divided into " Walks," the Ham burg Walk, the French Walk, the Spanish Walk, the Barbadoes Walk, and so forth, and the Walk for the brokers of stocks was just on the east side of the statue of Charles II., which occupied the centre of the quadrangle, as the statue of Queen Victoria occupies the centre of the quadrangle of the present Royal Exchange. In his entertaining works on the Stock Exchange* from which some of the following facts are derived, Mr. Charles Duguid points out that stockbrokers made their first appear ance upon the commercial stage at Origins the end of the seventeenth century, broking." tihe age m which the national bank - — the Bank of England — was estab lished and the National Debt was floated. The abuses to which this kind of business is liable at once began to manifest them selves, and in 1697 an Act was passed to check them. It prescribed heavy penalties for brokers acting as such without the licence of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. The stockbroker must not only take out his licence, but was com pelled to carry a badge of his calling in the form of a silver medal inscribed with his name, and bearing on one side the royal arms and on the other side the arms of the City, and this medal had to be produced at the completion of every bargain. If he * " The Story of the Stock Exchange," 1901 (Grant Richards), and "The Stock Exchange," 1904 (Methuen and Co.). dealt in Government funds he had to obtain a further licence from the Lords of the Treasury ; and whatever the nature of his transactions, his brokerage was limited to ten shillings per cent, under a penalty of twenty times that amount for each instance in which it was exceeded, while the number of brokers was restricted to one hundred. This oppres sive measure remained in operation for ten years, and was then replaced by an Act which simply imposed upon brokers a tax of forty shillings per annum, payable to the City authorities. Soon afterwards, however, the brokerage limit was cut down to 2s. 9d. per cent. The new Act presently became in operative, but it was not expunged from the statute-book until 1867. One curious feature of the history of the Stock Exchange is that for a long period the number of Jewish stockbrokers was limited to a dozen. The result was, of course, the keenest competition for the City's licences, and in the days when most men engaged in public life had their price, competitors were prepared to bribe on a lavish scale anyone who had influence with the Corporation. The brilliant but impecunious Wilkes, who was Lord Mayor in 1774, counted upon such bribes as one of the perquisites of his office, and when there was a prospect of a vacancy arising in the Hebrew band his eager inquiries after the progress of one sufferer became the jest of the town, and provoked the latter's son to accuse him of desiring his father's death. " My dear young fellow," Wilkes replied, " you wrong me. I would rather see all the Jew brokers dead than your father ! " Who could gainsay that ? The annual tax of forty shillings which went into the City's coffers, together with an annual fee of £3, provoked remonstrance 163 164 LONDON TOWN The Cor poration and the Stock Exchange. again and again, and in later days, when stockbrokers came to be numbered by the hundred, the impost produced a considerable sum, whereas the City rendered no service to the Stock Exchange, the control it once exercised having entirely fallen into abeyance. The grievance therefore became a substantial one. But the City has always been tenacious of its privileges, and it was not till 1884 that the Corporation consented to the promotion of a Bill which deprived it of a revenue of from £8,000 to £10,000. But this is to anticipate, and we must go In Sweet* ing's Alley. hundred and fifty, formed themselves into a club at Jonathan's, and eleven years later they removed to Sweeting's Alley, in Threadneedle Street, over against the north-east angle of the Royal Exchange. Here they established themselves in a building which was used partly as a coffee-house, but over the door of which were inscribed the words, " The Stock Exchange." The new Stock Exchange styled itself " the House," as the present Stock Exchange does, and its affairs were administered then, as now, by a Committee for General Purposes, a stockbroker's badge {p. 163). back to the early days of London's Money Market. The stockbrokers had not long installed themselves in their " Walk " in the Royal Exchange before the merchants began to clamour for their expulsion. Their num bers were rapidly growing, and their way of doing business lacked restraint. The Gresham Committee adopted a harrying policy, and in 1698 the dealers in money shook the dust of the Turkey stones of the Royal Exchange from their feet and migrated to Exchange Alley, or, as it has come to be Aii'e^anSe called> 'Change Alley, a winding street named after the Exchange, and separated from it by Cornhill. Here they had no house of their own, but took refuge ' as occasion required in the coffee houses, and especially in Jonathan's and Garra way's. On Lady Day in 1748, Change Alley was the scene of a destructive fire, which made a clean sweep of Jonathan's and Garraway's, but both were at once rebuilt, and stock- broking went merrily on. In 1762 certain of the stockbrokers, to the number of about a which settled disputes and laid down rules for the conduct of business. That the stock brokers who forgathered in " The House." Sweeting's Alley were a lively set is to be inferred from what we may read in " The Bank Mirror," a publi cation which appeared in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The writer gives an almost endless list of the cries that were to be heard, and then proceeds to sum them up. " The noise of the screech-owl," he says, " the howling of the wolf, the barking of the mastiff, the grunting of the hog, the braying of the ass, the nocturnal wooing of the cat, the hissing of the snake, the croaking of toads, frogs and grasshoppers — all those, in unison, could not be more hideous than the noise which these beings make in the Stock Exchange." What a notion of unison the writer must have had ! In Sweeting's Alley the Stock Exchange remained until the end of the century. Then the need for more organisation and for larger accommodation became imperative, a capital of £20,000 was raised, members were elected THE STOCK EXCHANGE 165 by ballot, property was acquired in Capel Court, which, named after Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor in 1504, was bounded, as it is now, by Threadneedle Street on the south, by part of the next, business was conducted in the Hall of Commerce, Threadneedle Street. The building in which members assembled in March, 1854, is what is now known as the Old THE STOCK EXCHANGE IN CAPEL COURT. From a Print in the Guildhall Library. Throgmorton Street on the north, and by Bartholomew Lane on the west, and the building was opened early in 1802. Court Pel Anotber step in the way of organis ation was taken in 18 12, when the rules of the Stock Exchange were for the first time printed. By the middle of the nineteenth century the accommodation, in spite of extensions, had once more become totally inadequate. The managers, therefore, decided upon an entire reconstruction. Adjoining property was acquired, and the new works were begun in 1853. f'°r what remained of this year and a House. For though extensions were from time to time carried out, the Stock Exchange was always more or less overcrowded, and in the 'eighties the New House had to be under taken. At the beginning of this decade plots of land in Old Broad Street aud Throgmorton Street were acquired, and the new building was erected, with entrances in Throgmorton Street and Old Broad Street, and was opened on the 9th of January, 1885. Further exten sions, though not on the same scale, have since had to be undertaken. The Settling Room and the House itself were enlarged in 1889, and further works have had to be 166 LONDON TOWN carried out at various times. The builder might, indeed, consider himself " a mem ber," by virtue of almost unintermittent occupation. A few years after the dealers in money removed to Capel Court there was contrived one of the many frauds of which The strange {he Stock Exchange has been Case of Lord & , . Cochrane, the theatre — a fraud which stands out from among all the rest be cause it had dire con sequences for one of the greatest of British sailors, the man who in dash and daring was hardly second even to Nelson. We may there fore retell the strange story in some detail. In 1813 Lord Coch rane, afterwards Earl of Dundonald — grand father, by the way, of the present Earl, the gallant soldier who rode across the desert with the news of Gordon's death, and who distinguished him self as a cavalry leader in the Boer War — re ceived the command of the Tonnant from his uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, Commander- in-Chief of the North American Station. Before he could set sail, something hap pened which turned awry the current of his career. On the 21st of February a man dressed in the uniform of a volun teer, and giving himself out to be Lieu tenant-Colonel de Bourg, aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart, presented himself at Dover and announced that he had just crossed the Channel bringing with him the news that Napoleon had been defeated and that the Allies had entered Paris. He then posted to London, taking every possible means of cir culating his story, which was not long in reaching the Stock Exchange and sending up the funds with a bound. The same news was brought to London the same day by others, including two persons dressed as French officers who drove slowly over London Bridge LORD COCHRANE. From an Engraving in the Print Room, British Museum. in a post-chaise, scattering billets announcing not merely the fall of Paris but the death of Napoleon. They then paraded Cheapside and Fleet Street, crossed Blackfriars Bridge into Lambeth, got out and disappeared, as De Bourg had done. For a while, the good tidings was believed, but no confirmation came and at fast the most sanguine of those who had bought funds at the enhanced prices had to see that they had been hoaxed. Now it so chanced that some weeks before this, Lord Cochrane had given instructions to his stockbroker to sell con sols when they reached a certain figure, and when the prices rose as a result of the hoax, the instructions were acted upon. Most unfor tunately for Cochrane, he had made the ac quaintance of " De Bourg," whose real name was De Berenger, the man having been recommended to him as a skilled rifle in structor and pyrotech nist. After disseminat ing his false news De Berenger had driven in a carriage to Lord beg him to release of his creditors, Tonnant. Cochrane's house to him from the clutches by taking him to America in the On learning the part which De Berenger had played in the swindle Lord Cochrane gave information which led to his arrest. But this did not save himself from suspicion and formal accusation. He had made many enemies, political as well as professional, and fate seemed to be in league with his foes to bring him to disgrace and ruin. Among those who had profited from the conspiracy was an uncle of his, who had assumed the name of Johnstone. Worse still was the fact that he himself had to some slight extent been advantaged by the swindle, shares which stood in his name having been sold at the enhanced prices on the day of the fraud. Of this, as of every other suspicious circum- THE DE BERENGER FRAUD : PSEUDO-FREXCH OFFICERS SCATTERING BILLETS ANNOUNCING THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON {p. 166). i68 LONDON TOWN stance Lord Cochrane was able to give a simple and sufficient explanation. For some time he had anticipated a favourable con clusion to the war, and was holding shares for the rise. He had not increased his holding just before the hoax, as he would have done had he been privy to the fraud, but had been gradually selling out. It was Lord Cochrane's misfortune, however, to be tried before a bitter Tory judge, and, thanks to Lord Ellenborough's in fluence, he was found guilty, fined £1,000, sen tenced to stand in the pillory and to endure a year's imprisonment ; and this penalty carried with it his dismissal from the Navy and his expulsion from the House of Commons. He was stripped also of his orders of knighthood, and his banner was torn down from his stall as a Knight of the Bath and contumeliously kicked out of Henry VI I.'s Chapel in West minster Abbey by the public executioner. The Government, however, were afraid to put their victim into the pillory, but they saw to it that he served his year's imprisonment, which was made exception ally rigorous on the ground that he had escaped from custody. Even at the end of the year's imprisonment Lord Cochrane was not released till he had paid his fine, and to this day is preserved in the Bank of England, in a frame, the thousand pound note which secured his release. Nor did the persecution of this greatly ill- used man cease even now. For having broken out of prison he was subsequently fined a further hundred pounds. He swore that he would not admit the justice of this penalty by payingthe fine, his contention having been that, as a Member of Parliament, his arrest was il legal, and no doubt he would have been as good as his word. But a penny subscription among working men and others was started, and the sum thus raised was sufficient to defray the two fines and also a proportion of his law expenses. A further indication of the feeling of the public towards him was his triumphant re-election for Westminster within a few days of his expulsion from the House of Commons. In 1817 Lord Cochrane accepted the com mand of the Chilian Navy, and played the part of Liberator of South America. First he secured the independence of Chili and Peru from Spain. Next, as Admiral of the Brazil ian fleet, he freed Brazil from the yoke of Por tugal. Then he took command of the dis organised Greek Navy. " i '^i he succeeded his father as Earl of Dundonald, and with the accession of King William and the form ation of a Whig Minis try he received a " free pardon " and was grad- ually rehabilitated. Having been reinstated in the Navy he to be Admiral Rear-Admiral of United Kingdom. rose and the But ABRAHAM From a Pr to the last he never received the arrears of goldsmid. his pay, and though intbyRidier. reinstated in the Order of the Bath his banner was not replaced in Henry VII.'s Chapel till after his death. In his will, made in the year of his death, i860, he concludes with a pathetic reference to his disgrace : " I leave exclusively to my grandson, Douglas," he wrote with his own hand, " all the sums due to me by the British Government for my important services, as well as the sums of pay stopped (under perjured evidence) for the commission of a fraud on the Stock Ex change. Given under my trembling hand this 2 1 st day of February, i860, the anni versary of my ruin." In 1877 Lyon Playfair, afterwards Lord Playfair, who had been a personal friend of Lord Dundonald's, obtained the appointment of a Select Committee to investigate the question of the arrears of salary. The Com mittee were perfectly satisfied of Lord Dun donald's innocence, but from lack of evidence LORD COCHRANE'S ROMANCE 169 A Romance. they hesitated as to their report until Playfair showed them, individually and confidentially, a letter which had been entrusted to him. Thereupon they brought in a report recom mending that the Treasury pay the Admiral's grandson the arrears. This was done, and so at last, after many days, reparation, as far as reparation was possible, was made to the name and fame of a deeply wronged man. Not, however, until Lord Playfair's " Me moirs and Correspondence " was given to the world by the late Sir Wemyss Reicl, was it known outside a small circle of friends that Lord Cochrane had encountered dis grace and ruin as the result of his own chivalrous reticence. The roman tic story must be given in Lord Playfair's own words. " In 18 14," he wrote, " Lord Dundonald and Lady X. were in love, and, though they did not marry, always held each other in great esteem for the rest of their lives. Old Lady X. was still alive in 1877, and she sent me a letter through young Lord Cochrane, the grandson, authorising me to use it as I thought best. The letter was yellow with age, but had been carefully preserved. It was written by Lord Dundonald and was dated from the prison on the night of his committal. It tried to console the lady by the fact that the guilt of a near relative of hers was not sus pected, while the innocence of the writer was his support and consolation. The old lady must have had a terrible trial. It was hard to sacrifice the reputation of her relative ; it was harder still to see injustice resting upon her former lover. Lord Dundonald loved her, and had received much kindness from her relative, so he suffered calumny and the injustice of nearly two generations rather than tell the true story of his wrongs." This letter it was that Playfair showed in confidence to the members of the Select Committee. He adds that he had long suspected the truth, but had never heard it from Lord Dundonald himself. Perhaps the greatest figure ever seen on the Stock Exchange was Nathan Meyer Rothschild, the eldest son of Nathan Meyer Amschel Rothschild, of Meyer J Rothschild. Frankfort. In 1797 he came to these shores with a capital of £20,000 and an absolute ignorance of the English tongue. He settled at Manchester, convinced himself that that city was too 12 small a province for such a mind as his, and in 1805, having been naturalised the year before, came to London. Soon after this the Prince of Hesse-Cassel deposited a sum of £600,000 with his father, who sent the money on to Nathan. " I had £600,000 arrive unexpectedly," the latter afterwards said, " and I put it to so good use that the Prince made me a present of all his wine and linen." Rothschild was a merchant as well as a stockbroker, but the Stock Exchange it was that furnished the field for the most effective NATHAN MEYER ROTHSCHILD. From an Engraving in the Print Room, British Museum. exercise of his financial genius. He was full of " stratagems," which brought him the most abundant "spoils." If he possessed news cal culated to make the funds rise, he would commission the brokers who usually acted for him to sell, say, half a million. When it was known that he was unloading it would be supposed that he had early news of some event that would depress the market, there would be a panic, and prices would fall two or three per cent. At this stage Rothschild would commission large purchases, say, to the amount of a million and a half, from brokers who were not known to do business for him. By the time these purchases were effected the good news would come in, there would be an immediate rise in the funds, and at the enhanced price the great financier would sell again, and thus in transactions that occupied but a few days he would sweep in from £35,000 to £50,000. More than once, indeed, he is said to have made I/O LONDON TOWN upwards of a hundred thousand pounds on one account. When Rothschild died in 1836, he left behind him a colossal fortune of which effective use has been made by his sagacious descendants. For one of the greatest of his rivals, Abraham Goldsmid, a Jew- GoidaSmid. ish financier, born in Holland about the year 1756, a different fate was reserved. After a brilliant career, in which almost everything he touched turned to gold, he joined the Barings in contracting for the Government loan of fourteen millions issued in 18 10. When Sir Francis Baring died the " bears " felt that their chance had come, and under their persistent attacks the loan depreciated. Seeing that he was a ruined man Goldsmid gathered together his friends at his house in Surrey on the 28th of September and made away with himself. His brother Benjamin, who was a victim of melancholia, had committed suicide two years before. The news of Abraham's death caused Consols to drop from 65^ to 63J. Ten years later, the Goldsmid firm having succeeded in paying 16s. 6d. in the pound, the creditors successfully appealed to Parlia ment to cancel the remaining liabilities, those due to private persons as well as those owing to the Government. Many are the stories told of Abraham Goldsmid's generosity. Meeting with a car riage accident in Somersetshire he Finaencie°r?S was nursed for a fortnight in the house of a poor curate. Soon after his guest had left, the curate received a letter informing him that his name had been put down for £20,000 omnium — that is, a mixture of the various kinds of Government securities. Supposing that he had to find the £20,000, the poor curate wrote to say that he hadn't so much as £20 in the world. The next post brought him a letter from Goldsmid, enclosing a cheque for £1,500, the profit on the sale of the £20,000 worth of stock, the price having risen to that extent since his name was put down. It is said that in the drawers of this generous-minded financier were found I.O.U.'s of the aggregate value of £100,000, torn up as waste paper. The Stock Exchange is not one entity but two. One body consists of the proprietors, shareholders to whom the building belongs, and who divide among themselves the profit accruing from the management of the under taking. All of them belong also to the other body, the members or sub- The stock scribers, but qua shareholders One but* Two. tney have no right of entry into the building. To the members or subscribers the Stock Exchange is a place for the transaction of business. By them is chosen the Committee for General Purposes, who have the sole control over the business of the House and the conduct of its members, appoint the official assignees, prescribe the conditions upon which persons are eligible to become subscribers, and vote by ballot for or against the admission of candidates. The shareholders, on the other hand, elect the Managers, who have exclusive control over the income and expenditure as well as over the building and all its arrangements, and who appoint all the officials except the official assignees and the Secretary to the Committee for General Purposes. The Committee for General Purposes is strict in enforcing the rule that any member unable to fulfil his financial engagements is publicly declared a defaulter and ceases to be a member, and the same penalty is enforced in cases in which private arrangements are made with creditors, should the Committee come to know of such arrangements. Nor can one whose membership has thus lapsed be readmitted until he has paid at least 6s. 8d. in the pound from his own resources, apart from any sums received from his sureties, and he is expected to make up any deficiency until 20s. in the pound has been paid and he has obtained a full discharge. No doubt it does well to lean to the side of severity, hard as in special cases this may be for the victims of misfortune which may have been quite un merited. By one of those expressive collo quialisms of which the Stock Exchange is prolific the public declaration of a member's default is known as " hammering." Two waiters, with uncovered heads, " Hammering." simultaneously smite thrice with a small hammer on the side of a stand in different parts of the House. The fateful knell secures immediate silence, and the waiters, mentioning the defaulter's name, announce that he cannot comply with his bargains. Then a notice to the same purport is posted in " the House " and communicated to the Press. 172 LONDON TOWN One of the greatest crashes of late years was that of the group of companies of which the engineer was the late Whittaker Crash.** Wright. On Friday, the 28th of December, 1900, it was known that the cheques of the London and Globe Finance Corporation had been dishonoured, and the next day, Saturday, the 29th of December, member after member of the Stock Exchange was " hammered." Altogether, thirteen Stock Exchange firms, numbering thirty members, went down in the disaster. The late Marquis of Dufferin, most brilliant and most courtly of our diplomatists, was, unfortunately for himself and many others, the chairman of the corporation, but it was never suggested that he was anything more than a victim of the plausible, daring and utterly unscrupulous man who was the animating and controlling spirit of the whole concern. The Government declined to prosecute Whittaker Wright, but the law was put in motion by others, and, brought to trial in 1904 at the Law Courts, to which the venue had been removed from the Old Bailey upon his own application, he was found guilty and sentenced to a term of penal servitude. A few minutes afterwards, while awaiting removal to prison, he con trived to swallow a deadly drug and so did justice upon himself. From the Stock Exchange, unlike the Royal Exchange, the public is rigidly excluded, though it is not now the custom, if ever it was, to hustle and harry Outsiders, any stranger who may inno cently stray in. In the sketch of the Stock Exchange by one of its mem bers, Mr. G. D. Ingall, he records that only twice within his recollection has any violence been offered to outsiders. On the first occasion the intruder brought it upon himself by his contumacy. He was a foreigner who refused to depart when ordered to do so, and none but a precisian for law and order would blame the members who in these circumstances surrounded him, chaffed him, knocked off his hat, tugged at his coat-tails, and made him so furious that he challenged to mortal combat the meekest- looking member he could see. On the second occasion Captain Webb was brought in ac companied by a policeman. The latter's pres ence was resented, and the more exuberant members were not content to honour their visitor until they had bonneted the officer, torn his clothes, relieved him of his wand of office, and sent him flying out of the door. More recently, in 1908, a panic was created in the " House " by a stranger who as soon as he had made his way in drew a revolver and fired three shots, two on the floor and a third which struck a member but was turned aside by a pencil in his pocket. Before the in truder could use his weapon further he was seized and handed over to the police. He was found to be not responsible for his actions, and was placed under medical super- vision. During the Boer War the Stock Exchange, though it suffered heavily then and afterwards from the consequences of that conflict, dis played the most flamboyant patriotism. It out-mafficked the maffickers when Ladysmith and Mafeking were relieved, and on other occasions, and President Kruger was ham mered, and even hanged in effigy. But, more suo, it subscribed handsomely to the charitable funds in connection with the war, it sent more than 120 fighters to the front — members and clerks — and in the person of Lieutenant Doxat it won a Victoria Cross. One of the walls of the " House " now bears a tablet in bronze and white marble commemorating the three-and-twenty mem bers and clerks who fell during the war with the names of the survivors beneath. CHAPTER XVI THE BANK OF ENGLAND Origins— William Paterson's Scheme— Enemies of the Bank— The Buildings— The Church of St. Christopher-le-Stocks — Price the Forger— Theft of Bank-note paper— Paper Money— Senses in which the Bank is a National Institution — Guarding the Bank at Night — Marching Soldiers through the City— Weighing and Printing Machines — Famous Notes — The " White Lady of Threadneedle Street " — Murderous Attack upon Officials \/rERY modest were the beginnings of England's National Bank. Projected by William Paterson, a Scotsman born at Tin- wald, in Dumfriesshire, it was established in pursuance of an Act passed in Th°eUBanKS°f l694> five ye£U'S after William and Mary came to the throne. Need ing money for the war with France, the Government raised a loan of a million and a half, and to such subscribers of this loan as should provide between them the sum of £1,200,000 it promised a charter, and the title of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. To this day that remains the title of the institution. The Government also undertook to pay 8 per cent, interest upon the borrowed money, and the Act reserved to it the right of paying off the loan and with drawing the charter at the end of twelve years. But the charter was not withdrawn, and the loan has never been paid off. The subscription of the capital, as we learn from the late Professor Thorold Rogers's "First Nine Years of the Bank of England," began on Thursday, the 21st of June, in the chapel of the Mercers' Company in Ironmonger Lane, and, though the scheme had many enemies, on the first day no less than £300,000 was subscribed, Queen Mary being put down for £10,000. By the 2nd of July the sub scription was completed, and two days later the Bank received its charter. Paterson him self was one of the twenty-four directors, but differing from his colleagues on the question of the Bank's legitimate operations, he sold out shortly afterwards. Such was the form taken by England's National Bank when at last it was established. For years before this projects for a public bank had been in the air. Thus, in 1658, a London merchant of the name of Lambe submitted to the Lord Protector a scheme for such a bank, but nothing came of it, and Cromwell dying later in the year, every thing was soon in confusion. Then, as the reign of Charles II. was nearing its end, publicists began to insist upon the desira bility of establishing a bank in London, with branches in the largest towns. By some it was argued that the bank ought to be controlled by the City Corporation, who should certify to its credit, as was the case with the Bank of Amsterdam. Others were in favour of grafting it on one or other of the Companies which were then carrying on manufactures and trade ; just as, in later days, a Scottish bank which is still incon gruously known as the British Linen Company was based on a manufacturing company. It was not, as we have seen, until William and Mary were firmly seated on the throne that the idea found embodiment, and when it did it was not established upon a civic but upon a national foundation. The ailments of infancy more than once proved all but fatal to the institution which was destined to become known long Tnf"ncyf. afterwards as "the old lady of Threadneedle Street." Its enemies were the Tories, who would have been glad to ruin a scheme promoted by Whigs and Non conformists and commercial magnates ; the goldsmiths, who for long had played the part of bankers and moneylenders ; and finally the projectors of rival schemes. The first of these crises came upon it when it was but two years old. The Government had called in the silver coinage on account of the clipping it had undergone, and before the new money was ready the goldsmiths swarmed to the i73 174 LONDON TOWN EARLY VIEW OF THE BANK. From a Print by Golder. Bank to demand payment. The directors refused to cash the notes presented by the goldsmiths, leaving them to seek their remedy in the law courts, but they succeeded in meeting all other demands. Then, making a call of 20 per cent, on the proprietors, they provided themselves with enough funds to pay 15 per cent, of all the calls made upon them and returned the notes, bearing a minute that so much of the value had been paid. In 1707, when the alarm at the Pretender's invasion sent the Bank stocks tumbling down, the goldsmiths made another attempt to ruin it, but the Whigs rallied to its support by pouring into it their hoarded gold, and in this way and by means of another call upon the proprietors the Bank was saved. Not less severe was the strait to which the Bank was reduced in 1745, the year of the Young Pre tender's descent upon England. On the 6th of December, " Black Friday," when news arrived that Charles Edward had reached Derby on his way to London, there was a run on the Bank, which had to resort to a ruse a Ruse, to tide over the emergency. It em ployed agents to present notes which, to gain time, were cashed in sixpences, and as each agent received his tale of sixpences he would go out at one door and take the specie back into the Bank by another. The conse quence was that bond-fide holders of notes could never get near the counter to present them. A similar stratagem had had to be resorted to in 1720 when there was a run on the Bank consequent upon the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. In 1797 there occurred a crisis which would have issued in the extinction of the Bank had not the Government and Parliament inter vened. By this time the Bank had an ample balance in its favour after allowing for all liabilities, but it had only about a million and a quarter in cash and bullion, and when on Saturday, the 26th of February, news arrived that a French frigate had landed troops in Wales there was a panic, and the Government, foreseeing a run upon the Bank which could not be met, issued an Order in Council forbidding the directors to cash its notes until the sense of Parliament had been taken. The action of the Government was ratified by Parliament, and an Act was passed directing the Bank only to pay cash for sums under twenty shillings. It was not until 1821 that payments in specie were fully resumed. This was the last really serious crisis through which the Bank has had to pass. Twice since then the Government has author ised an issue of notes in excess of the Bank's statutory powers, but this was not because the Bank was in an extremity, but was intended to restore confidence in the monetary world generally. " As safe as the Bank " has long been a familiar proverb, of which the significance, in its application to the Bank of England, is understood in other countries hardly less than in England. The first few meetings of the directors of the Bank were held in the chapel of Mercers' Hall, where, as we have seen, the capital was originally subscribed. But then the directors rented Grocers' Hall for the purpose, and THE BANK BUILDINGS 175 Stockbrokers in the Rotunda. there the business was carried on until 1734, when it removed to premises of its own on the site which it has ever since occupied. The original building, designed by George Sampson, was opened in 1734, and east and west wings were added by Sir Robert Taylor in the second half of the same century. The Rotunda was built in 1764, and from this time until 1838 it was the Stock Exchange for the Consols Market ; so much so, indeed, that an Act was passed, though it was never strictly carried out, for bidding transactions in the Public Funds anywhere else. As time went on the Stock Exchange in Capel Court drew off more and more the dealers in stocks and shares. Among those who were left behind were some shady characters who had no offices of their own. In the Bank Act of 1834 a clause was inserted enabling the Governor to close the Rotunda against stock brokers, and in 1838 Sir Timothy Curtis exercised the power thus conferred upon him. Neither the exclusion itself nor the manner of it was popular in the City, and when Sir Timothy failed, the news was received in Capel Court with cheers. A few brokers, however, were still allowed to use the Rotunda in a limited degree, and, according to Mr. Duguid's "Story of the Stock Exchange," some half dozen of them survived until comparatively recently. Though the Bank buildings were begun in 1734, "the Bank" as we know it, with its beautiful Renascence features, is the Buildings. work mainly of Sir John Soane, R.A., the Berkshire peasant-boy who lived to be architect of the Bank, and of the Houses of Parliament, and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, and whose collection of antiquities and works of art forms the museum named after him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. To make way for the larger offices which the swollen business of the Bank demanded, he demolished much of the original building, as well as some neigh bouring structures. The Rotunda was rebuilt by him in 1795, and the building as he designed it was completed in 1827, further additions, however, being made in a highly ornate style by C. R. Cockerell, R.A., in 1835 and in 1849. The Bank, an irregular triangle which fails to attain its apex, covers about four acres of ground, and is bounded on the west — the base of the imperfect triangle — by Princes Street, on the north by Lothbury, on the east by Bar tholomew Lane, and on the south by Thread needle Street, For the sake of security, it is built in one storey, and for the same reason there are no exterior windows, light being supplied from windows in the courts, or from lights in the roof. Among admirable features of the building are the north-western angle, at the meeting of Princes Street and Lothbury, WILLIAM PATERSON, THE FOUNDER OF THE BANK. a free imitation of the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, and the gateway leading into the Bul lion Yard, a copy of the arch of Constantine at Rome. But to those who appreciate architecture the most when it is mated with the picturesque, the beautiful quadrangle known as the Garden Court, laid out with shady trees and with shrubs, with a fountain set in the midst, will make the strongest appeal. There is no pleasanter little oasis in all the City than this, and to step An Oasis, into it for a brief space on a summer's day, from the glare and bustle and clamour of the busiest spot in all the City, is to enjoy one of the most ex quisite of contrasts. Formerly, this Garden Court was the grave yard of the church of St. Christopher-le- Stocks, so called from its nearness to the 176 LONDON TOWN Stocks Market,* held on the site where now stands the Mansion House. The church, which stood on the south side of the grave yard, and abutted upon Threadneedle Street, was not burnt down in the Great Fire, though it was much injured, and it fell to Sir Christ opher Wren to restore it. St. Christopher's whose success at the business in the later years of the eighteenth century more than once threw the Bank into con sternation. The operations of this amazingly clever scoun drel are graphically described by the late Major Arthur Griffiths in his " Mysteries " Old Patch the Forger. ST. CHRISTOPHER-LE-STOCKS. From a Print by T. Malton. had the double distinction of being the first of Wren's churches to be finished — in 167 1 — and the first of his churches to be destroyed — in 178 1, when its demolition was effected to make way for the larger building required for the Bank. After the churchyard had become the garden of the Bank there was buried in it one of the clerks, in order that he might be safe from the resurrectionists, to whom, from his great stature — he was 6 ft. 6 in. in height — he would have been a tempt ing prize. The Bank, since it is the only joint-stock bank in England which has the right to issue paper money, has, of course, been of special interest to forgers. One of the most skilful of the fraternity was Charles Price, familiarly known as " Old Patch " from his disguises, * See ante, p. 142. of Police and Crime." As regards manu facture, " he did everything himself, made his own paper with the proper water-mark, engraved his own plates and manufactured his own ink. His plans for disposing of the forged notes were laid with great astuteness, and he took extraordinary pre cautions to avoid discovery ; he had three homes, and a different name and a different wife at each. He was so expert in disguises that none of his agents or instruments ever saw him in his own person, that of a compact, middle-aged, not bad-looking man, inclined to stoutness, but erect and active in figure, with a beaky nose, clear grey eyes, and a nut cracker chin. Sometimes he went with his mouth covered up in red flannel, his gout)' legs swathed in bandages ; at another time he was an infirm old man wearing a long THEFT OF BANK-NOTE PAPER '77 black camlet cloak with a broad cape fasten ing close to his chin." Price at last came to grief from a simple slip of his memory. He had palmed off a forged note upon a pawnbroker in the name of Powel, and, forgetting the circumstance, he went to do more business with the same pawnbroker, who recognised and detained him. When his disguise was stripped off the Bow Street runners found to their joy that they had in their hands, the quarry they had long been hunting. Resourceful as ever, BanK.Note Paper. Price contrived to smuggle to one of his wives a piece of paper bearing the words " Destroy everything." The injunction was obeyed, but upon reflection he seems to have concluded that the game was up, and one day he was found hanged in his cell. The Bank's printing is all clone on its own premises. But it relies for immunity against forgery less upon the difficulty of copying the printed design of its notes than upon the difficulty of imitating the paper, with its elaborate water-mark — secured to the Bank by a special Act of Parliament — its colour, and its texture, so thin that it is exceedingly difficult to make erasures, yet so strong that a leaf of it, after it has been sized, will bear half a hundred weight without tearing. And then its music, how distinctive — and how delightful ! Even the bright clink of gold is surely not so joyous a sound as the crackle of a new bank-note ! It is easy to understand the dismay to which the Bank was reduced -when some forty years ago a gang of thieves succeeded in stealing a quantity of the paper from the mills. It was paper which had gone through An every stage of the process of manu- Theft. facture but one — that of glazing — and presently, when counterfeit bank-notes began to get into circulation, they were found to be printed on unglazed paper. The detectives soon discovered that, with the help of certain workmen, who had been corrupted by an ex-convict named Burnet, unglazed paper had been abstracted from the packing-room at the mills, and with unremit ting zeal they set themselves not merely to lay the thieves by the heels, but — a much more important thing — to recover so much of the paper as was still unused. First Burnet was traced, and then by shadowing him they found that he was in collusion with a West minster butcher of the name of Buncher. Buncher in turn was found to be asso ciated with two men named Cummings and Griffiths, living at Birmingham, the one a coiner, the other an engraver and copperplate printer. When the time had come to pounce, these three worthies were arrested, and in Griffiths' workroom were discovered a large CJiA PRICE in his usuaHDnfi. number of spurious Bank of England notes. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life, Buncher to twenty-five years', and Burnet to twenty years', but from lack of independent evidence Cummings escaped. Only for awhile, however, for he was afterwards detected carrying on the same nefarious occupation and convicted. Until 1834, when the London and Westmin ster Bank, which has its headquarters in Loth bury, just opposite the Bank, was established, the Bank of England was the only joint-stock bank in London. It is still, as we MoPney. have said> the only English bank which is authorised to issue paper money, and its notes, equally with the gold coin of the realm, are a legal tender anywhere i78 LONDON TOWN in England, for all sums over £5, except when tendered by the Bank itself, the effect of this exception being to prevent the Bank from compelling its creditors to take its own notes. By an Act passed in 1844 the Bank was authorised to issue paper money to the extent of fourteen millions sterling against securities of equal value, the greater part of this security consisting of the State debt, which is, of course, the safest of all securities. Beyond the fourteen mil lions, paper money can only be issued on the con dition that the Bank has in its posses sion an equiv alent amount of gold, in coin or in bullion, and so the issue of notes has be come auto matic, rising or falling with the amount of gold in its chest. The value of the notes now issued is £18,450,000. The capital of the Bank is, in round numbers, fourteen and a-half millions, and the reserve fund, known as the "rest," is over three millions. The State's debt to the Bank is now a little over eleven millions, and the interest payable on this debt was reduced in 1892 from 3 to 2| per cent., and in 1903 to 2\ per cent. But these are not the only senses in which the Bank is a national institution. It manages for the Government the National Bank does Debt, for which it receives a for the sum 0f £200,000 a year, and Nation. . . J under this head it has to register transfers of the stock and to pay the quarterly dividends. It also does the banking business of the State : to it go the taxpayers' grudging contributions, and it makes payments to the order of the Government just as an ordinary bank pays to the order of its customers. Further, it puts into circulation the gold and silver coins issued by the Royal Mint. Another obligation imposed upon the Bank COURTYARD OF THE BANK. by Act of Parliament is that of purchasing, with its notes, at a fixed price, all bullion of proper fineness that is brought to it. The bullion usually reaches the Bank in the form of bars or ingots, each bar weigh ing about 1 6 lbs., and having a value of about £600, and it is stored in vaults of solid brick with two sets of doors, which no single official, not even the Governor himself, can unlock. One of the doors has three d i ff e r e n t locks, and the keys to these locks are kept in possession of three different offi cials, and only when they are all present can the door be opened. About six o'clock in the evening a company of the Guards arrives to protect the Bank during the night watches, under the command of an officer who is provided with meals and with sleeping accommodation, and is allowed to invite one guest to dinner so that he may not have to eat a lonely meal. At regular intervals the guard, provided with master- keys, visit the different rooms and make sure that all's well. Further, the Deputy Chief Cashier lives at the Bank, and three clerks sit up all night. The custom of putting the Bank under military protection at night originated after the attack of the Gordon rioters in 1780. When the mob, with itching fingers, reached the Bank, they found that ample preparations had been made for them. There was a force of soldiers outside, the roof and the courts inside were defended by armed clerks and volunteers, and, lest the supply of ammunition should run out, the pewter inkstands had been melted down and cast into bullets. The first rush was checked by a volley from the military; at the second Wilkes, who the year before had been appointed City Photo; Pictorial Agauy AN OASIS IN THE HEART OF THE CITY : GARDEN COURT, BANK OF ENGLAND. i8o LONDON TOWN Chamberlain, with admirable gallantry rushed out and dragged in several of the ringleaders in succession with his own hand. Altogether the rioters were much discouraged, and were glad to draw off to seek less obdurate if less tempting nuts to crack. The continuance of the custom of marching soldiers through the streets to the Bank was for a time regarded with great jealousy by the Citv authorities, as an infringement of warrants issued by Charles II. in 1670 and 1672. At the Bank there is much that is deeply interesting to be seen by those privileged persons who succeed in getting Weighing an orcjer 0f admission. There is, and Printing ' Machines. for example, the weighing room, where sovereigns and half-sover eigns are put into the balances, and auto matically divided into the sheep and the Photo : Pictorial Agcnc THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURAL FEATURE OF THE BANK : THE NORTH-WESTERN ANGLE, LOOKING ALONG LOTHBURY (LEFT) AND PRINCES STREET (RIGHT). their ancient privilege of having the undivided mastership of their own house, and several protests were made against it. In fheHi" in tne enc* susceptibilities were con ciliated, and to this day the Home Secretary never despatches troops through the City without seeking the Lord Mayor's sanction, which is given on the understanding that all troops, except the " Buffs," the Grenadiers, the Royal Fusiliers, the Royal Marines, and the Hon. Artillery Company, march through the streets without beat of drum or colours flying or bayonets fixed. The Hon. Artillery Company exer cises its right by virtue of descent from the ancient Trained Bands of the City; the regiments named derive theirs from goats — those that are of proper weight and those that are light — the latter being defaced and put aside for Ibsen's ladle. As many as thirty-five thousand coins can be tested in a single day by this wonderful piece of mechanism. Then there is the printing establishment, where notes of diverse denomin ations are being printed — five-pounders, ten-pounders, hundred-pounders, thousand- pounders. Here again the machines behave as though they were informed by intelligence, for they automatically register every note they print, so that to abstract a note without the loss being discovered is practically im possible. At first the smallest notes issued were £20 notes. Notes of £10 value were first issued NOTES AND CHEQUES 181 in 1759, and £5 notes in 1794. Three years later £2 and £1 notes were sent out, but after a time these were discontinued in consequence of the many forgeries that were Notes."* committed. The largest note ever issued by the Bank was one for a million pounds, and the largest cheque ever drawn upon it was one dated the 7th of May, elapsed, lest any occasion should arise for their production. Until a few years ago, indeed, they were kept for ten years before being made away with. To this rule, that a note once cashed is not to be re-issued, there is no exception. A note may be presented for payment on the very day of its issue, but as soon as it has been Photo : pictorial Agency. ARRIVAL OF THE MILITARY GUARD AT THE BANK. 1898, directing the Bank to pay to the Japanese Minister in London the sum of £11,008,857 J6s. 9d. in settlement of the indemnity which China had agreed to pay to Japan as the price of peace. The Bank has preserved as curiosities the note for a million pounds, another for twenty-five pounds that was out for 1 1 1 years, and some thousand- pound notes signed by illustrious persons, including the one that bears an inscription signed by the Earl of Dundonald whose romantic story is told in our chapter on the Stock Exchange.* Like any other bank, the Bank of England returns its cheques to its customers, but its own notes, when once it has cashed them, it destroys, not however, until three years have * See ante, p. 168. cashed a corner is torn off and it is consigned to the limbo of cancelled notes, there to await its turn to be cast into a fiery furnace. The Bank of England, the synonym for riches beyond the dreams of avarice, has at times cast its magic over disordered minds. A story of which the pathos may excuse its repetition is told of a daily visitor in the early years of the last century who was known as " The White Lady of Threadneedle Street." A inteHects. brother of hers, a clerk at the Bank, had been hanged in 1809 for forgery, and his ignominious end affected her mind, until she believed that he was still alive and still in the Bank's service. So every day, at noon, she would cross the Rotunda to the pay-counter, and ask, " Is my brother, 182 LONDON TOWN Mr. Frederick, here to-day ? " " No, miss, not to-day," the clerk would respectfully say. Then she would stand aside, and after a little while would leave, but never without saying, " Give my love to him when he returns. I will call to-morrow." From a much more recent visitor of de ranged mind, the then Secretary of the Bank, Mr. Kenneth Grahame, had a very narrow escape. On the 24th of November, 1903, a well dressed young man presented himself and asked to see the Governor, Sir Augustus Prevost. As the Governor was out, the visitor was shown into a room where he was seen by the Secretary. After a few words of conversation the man drew a formid able revolver and pointed it at Mr. Grahame, who, in his own words, " naturally did not wait to see any more but rushed out of the room." As he did so the man fired several shots, and two bullets were afterwards found in the woodwork of the ceiling. The visitor then turned his weapon upon other officials, and finally locked himself in the library, and was only reduced to sub mission by a well-directed volley of water from the fire hose, and after a violent struggle in which he was quieted by a knock on the head. When brought to trial at the Central Criminal Court it was made clear by medical evidence that the poor fellow was not accountable for his actions, and he was ordered to be detained during the King's pleasure. s PAYABLE IN THE POfi DRAWING OFFICE J, ,/¦/,;/ >n.\ Sc K. /Vc/ff 0),( ,.) /, /^JLA' II tftlllHIII:; ;'fs ~ "~ - ' - jSP UNI "¦Y«j«i«iui «, JIMS 1! «-lj.| |fTJf;|7f - !( >i - h 0 rS'i' • »l ;r,«ft^'-'iiS CORNHILL ABOUT 1630, WITH THE TUN (ON THE RIGHT), AND THE TOWER OF THE FIRST ROYAL EXCHANGE. CHAPTER XVI II AROUND THE BANK (Concluded) Cornhill — Birch's— Where Gray was Born — The First Round House — The Standard — St. Peter's— St. Michael's — The "Jerusalem" Coffee-house — Garraway's — A Duel in Pope's Head Alley Birchin Lane — Macaulay — Lombard Street — Jane Shore — Goldsmiths who were Ruined by Charles II. St. Edmund's— All Hallows'— Plough Court and Pope— Clement's and Abchurch Lanes — King William Street — St. Mary Woolnoth and John Newton — The Subways AT Cornhill we come across another of time the street was the haunt of drapers ; old John Stow's mistaken derivations, now it is mostly occupied by handsome The ward and street of this name, he tells us, offices of assurance companies and banks, were so called from " a corn market time out prominent among the former beincr the of mind there holden." But though there was Commercial Union Assurance Company's in ancient times a general market in this thoroughfare, and a corn market at its east end, in Gracechurch Street, Riley's researches have made it clear that the name comes from a family that in early times held land in this part of the City. At one ;ME^!!^"r ill \ n THE STANDARD, WITH THE TOWER OK ST. PETER'S, in 1599 {p. 196). 194 offices, the lower stage rusticated, the upper adorned with Corinthian columns and pilasters, and, at the western end, where the street effects its junction with Lombard Street, those of the Liverpool, London, and Globe Com pany, completed in CORNHILL: THE FIRST ROUND HOUSE 195 1904. The latter, designed by Mr. J. Macvicar Anderson, with one facade to Cornhill, another to Lombard Street, and between them a rounded front looking along Cheapside, occupies the site where Thomas Guy com menced business as a stationer. But it was not in this branch of trade that he made the fortune with which he founded the hos pital that bears his name, but largely out of speculations in the South Sea Company's shares. Close to this western end of Cornhill (No. 15) is the quaint little confectioner's shop, famous for its turtle soup, which is still known as Birch's, and still displays two door-plates — inscribed, in letters barely de cipherable, " Birch, successor to Mr. Horton " — which are a cen tury and three-quarters old. The business was established by a Mr. Horton early in the reign of George I., and was acquired by the Samuel Birch who, born " birch's. in 1787, was Lord Mayor in 181 5, was something of an orator, and even had pretensions to poetry. He died in 1 840, having four years before this disposed of his business to Ring and Brymer, the name under which the business is still carried on. This firm it is which caters for the City banquets. Near the western end of Cornhill (No. 65), Messrs. Smith and Elder had their offices before they moved westwards. Here it was that the Cornhill Magazinewas started, with Thackeray for editor, and that Char lotte Bronte had her first interview with the Mr. Smith of those days. Nor is this the only literary association of Corn hill. In 1 7 16 the house which used to KEYBOARD OF THE ORGAN IN ST. PETERS, CORNHILL {p. I97). be numbered 41, just west of St. Michael's church, was oc cupied by an Exchange broker of the name of Gray, and here was born to him, on the 26th of December, the future author of the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." The house was destroyed by fire in 1748, and was rebuilt by the poet, who, in a letter to Wharton, shows rather ruefully that, though the building was insured, he lost £165 by the transaction. The number has now disappeared from Cornhill, this and the ad joining house having been pulled down and replaced in 1890 by a single building which occupies the site of both. Cornhill has associations also of a less dignified kind. Just at the eastern end of the Royal Exchange is a disused pump with an inscription setting forth that it was built in 1799 over an old well that had been discovered and much enlarged. On this spot was reared in 1282, by Henry de Waleys, Mayor, a prison which, from its being circular, was called the Tun, and Riley records the interesting suggestion that because of the shape of this building, prisons came to bear the name of " round house." Close by were stocks for beggars, and a pillory for fraudulent dealers, which was not seldom mis used for the punish ment of those who were misguided enough to be in ad vance of their time. Thus, in January, 1703, the House of Commons, having in its wisdom sentenced Defoe's " Shortest Way with the Dis senters " to be burned by the common hangman, issued a proclamation for the 196 LONDON TOWN 8 Photo: Pictoria I . I <• author's arrest, describing him, not ungraphically, as "a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown com plexion, and dark brown coloured hair, but wears a wig ; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." Pre sently Defoe was arrested, and on the 29th of July, as the London Gazette records, he " stood in the pil lory before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill." But, as John Forster says, " other missiles than were wont to greet a pillory reached Defoe ; and shouts of a different temper. His health was drunk with acclamations, as he stood there, and nothing harder than a flower was flung at him." Defoe himself has left record of the reception he had from the populace. " The people," he says, " were expected to treat me very ill, but it was not so. On the contrary they were with me, wished those who had set me there were placed in my room, and ex pressed their affection by loud shouts and acclamations when I was taken." Adjoining the prison in Cornhill was a conduit, also built by Mayor de Waleys, and rebuilt in 1401. And at the east end of the street, where it joins Leadenhall Street, was erected in 1582 the celebrated Standard, a conduit with four spouts that gushed - -- ^ forth water which Peter Morris the Dutchman had brought by means of leaden pipes from the Thames at London Bridge. After a few years the water ceased to flow, but the Stan dard was long used j\VWj)l ""* :m }Ma JEE IT f. WNE 10 AJ.L MEK THAT IN TH1Z YZW% i'F ovf 1 csta Gob ^ Lvavi the hi^t i hw-h I ¦ 3F mis Land then called Britaine Fovw GivftrH in London that is to say, y Chvrch of ^Peter VPON CORNEHILL AND HEP FOVNDEp THERE AN ARCJiBIV HOPS "IT. AND MAM. THAT fhrtUH Y METROPOLITANS AND J cheife Chvrch of this d so it rMnvjJxtj i SPACE OF 400 YEAREo AND MUKE VfflO THE COMING OF ST AVSTIN THE ApOSTTX QF'EnCLAND THE WHrCH WAS SENT into this Land by STGREocmiE.YOorr,o!i of y Chvrch in the time of Kino Ethelbert AWO THEN WA6 THC Ahchc bishops See « Pall remove^? fhom t foresaid Chvriw of Sr Peter vpon Cornehjll vnto Dorobernu th^t NijW 15 CALLED CaNTER5VR(E,. tA THERE tTRf.MAlNETH TO THIS DAY. AND 'Mil. LET A MONK £ Wffitfi CAME InTO THIS LAND WITH 5T Av^TlN. HXE WAS MADE PHE FlMi Bishop of London and his ^ee Was mad* rw Pavls Chvrch. and this LUCiUS King was the firs fovnder or ST Peters Chvrch vpon Corn t hill HEE REIONED KlNC IN TH1& L.AND AFTER BRVTi iX + y. YEaRES. AND IN THE YEARE OF OVR LoBD 1x4 lucius wa5 crowned klnc and thl yeares of his re1cne were. "77 yeare^ and heewab bv ried (after some Chronicled at London andafter'; some Chronicles hee was bvried at Glocester in that piace where y Order of 5T Francis standeth now. .'"; h a\» »ti* >« oT jfcvtr; as a centre from which distances were measured, and in the suburbs one may still see mile stones giving the number of miles " from the Stan dard in Cornhill." This Standard, with its four faces looking respec tively towards Cornhill, Leaden hall Street, Bish opsgate Street, and Gracechurch Street, would appear to have been the " Car- fukes," just as in the city of Ox ford is the Car fax, so called from a four-sided fountain. Cornhill's two churches are both on the south side of the street. For that of St. Peter, the less conspicuous of the two, St. Peter's, at the eastern extremity of Corn hill, with a shallow shop built right up against its stuccoed wall, and with a brick tower rising into a leaden cupola and spire, topped by a huge key, the patron saint's emblem, the claim is made that it is older than St. Paul's, the oldest Christian church in London, in fact. " There remaineth in this church," says Stow, " a table whereon it is written, I know not by what authority, but of a late hand, that King Lucius founded the same church to be an Archbishop's see, metropolitan and chief church of his kingdom, and that it so endured the space of four hundred years, until THE TABLET IN ST. PETER S, CORNHILL. ^m^pr^WMi the coming of -JsCt/ir-li Cm/t^ MM%> Augustin the monk." The tablet, which escaped the Great Fire and is preserved in the vestry-room, sets out the claim in detail, and gives the year 179 as that in which King Lucius — Mendelssohn's autograph in st. peter's. whoever he may have CORNHILL: ST. PETER'S AND ST. MICHAEL'S 197 been — founded the church. St. Peter's has lost no opportunity of asserting its seniority, and its 1700th anniversary was duly cele brated ; and though Bishop Stubbs was disposed to accept the Romano-British arch bishopric as having existed in London, the weight of authority is against the claim. turreted tower, St. Michael's, Cornhill, also has on its south side its little garden, fringed with trees and shrubs. The St. Michael's, ambitious porch, deeply recessed and heavily moulded, which faces Cornhill, was added in 1857 by Sir Gilbert Scott, who did his best to mediaevalise ,/•- .";«¦ — " " >¦ ' 3d -¦ fit* > i '¦ :'™* .. ttnu'!-_- BBI!: - J&-. J, M linn:' :\;V; «,-g, , Jul'- <: itiSi ¦* fit. >'-¦;- Ui ..' 1 ''.i.'HBS W: " . I'nra ^li'^r, ¦[• '^S,, ; 'PF, 'ERE »r;fcJ ,m it«F ¦flora '«=(¦!,.«¦. dbe nt: pa mm? w^ Pope's "Hooser.^-C "POPE'S HOUSE" IN PLOUGH COURT, LOMBARD STREET, IN i860. But the church, in origin, is undoubtedly one of great antiquity. St. Peter's, rebuilt by Wren in 1680-8 1, is not remarkable architecturally, but it has some interesting features besides the tablet spoken of by Stow. In the vestry is an old Bible dated 1290, illuminated by a monk attached to the church. Here, too, are the original keyboard and stops of Father Smith's fine organ, doubly worth preserving, since they were used by Mendelssohn, whose framed autograph, dated September 30th, 1840, hangs above them. The churchyard, on the south side of the church, has been converted into a little garden, agreeably shaded in summer by the buildings that surround it. Much more prominent than St. Peter's, by reason of its lofty Perpendicular, heavily- the Italian interior, with a result that, rich as is the effect, can hardly please the shade of Sir Christopher if he ever revisits the build ing. Mr. Birch* justly remarks that " beauti ful as some of the work is, and sensible as one must be of the spirit in which it was carried out, in order that everything should be of the best and richest that money and talent could procure, one cannot but deplore that all this should have been wasted in giving us an interior which is neither Gothic nor Classic, neither Italian nor Wrennian, but merely a compound of painted and gilded, carved and bedizened incongruity." Every one of the windows is filled with coloured glass of the deepest tones, and of the little light that is * " London Churches of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." By George H. Birch, F.S.A. LONDON TOWN admitted some is absorbed by the polychrome decoration of the walls. The old pews have given place to benches carved to represent Scriptural emblems, and the foliage of the Holy Land as well as of these islands, the patient and skilful work of the late Mr. Thomas Rogers, who copied specimens col- beauty of its steeple, which, not wholly de stroyed in 1666, was repaired, and not replaced by the present tower till 1722. It is said that the tower was designed by Wren in imitation of the Magdalen Tower at Oxford, but there is very little resemblance between the two structures, and it is not necessary to suppose 14 GARRAWAY'S " SHORTLY BEFORE DEMOLITION {p. 1 99). lected by members of his family during their residence in Palestine ; and the ends of those in the middle aisle show, in colour, the arms of the City and of various of the Livery Com panies, including the Drapers', in whose gift the rectory has been since early in the sixteenth century. Pity it is that with so much that is worth seeing there is not enough light to see it ! A gilded pelican beneath the tower at the west end is said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. Old St. Michael's, which perished in the Fire, is described by Stow as '' a fair and beautiful church " with " a proper cloister and a fair churchyard " on the south side, and a pulpit cross " not much unlike to that in Paule's Churchyard." Here in 1513 was buried Alderman Fabian, the chronicler. Old St. Michael's was noted for the height and the that Wren was thinking of anything but the loftily pinnacled tower of old St. Michael's. In St. Michael's Alley, on the west side of the church, was opened, about the year 1652, the first of the coffee-houses which were to play so large a part not only in the social but also in the business life of London. The innovator was one Pasqua Rosee, a Levantine who is said to have been brought to this country by a Turkey merchant. In Cowper's Court, a little to the east — named after a family founded by John Cowper, Sheriff in 1 55 1, whose descendant, Lord Chancellor under Queen Anne, became the first Earl Cowper, and was great-uncle of the poet — ¦ was one of the most famous of the coffee houses, the " Jerusalem," transferred hither from Bishopsgate Street a full two cen turies ago. It was for long a subscription FAMOUS COFFEE-HOUSES 199 The *' Jeru salem." house frequented by merchants and others con nected with the shipping interests, who after wards met at the Shipping Exchange in Billiter Street, and now at The Baltic in St. Mary Axe. It was rebuilt after a fire which ravaged Cornhill in 1748, and again in 1879, and the building which occupies the site is styled the Jerusalem Chambers. In this coffee-house, in 1842, was arrested John Tawell, the pseudo-Quaker who had murdered a woman near Slough, a case which is memorable because it was the first time that the elec tric telegraph was employed in the pursuit of a crim inal. In 'Change (Ex change) Alley, another Cornhill tributary, with five entrances, two from Cornhill, two from Lombard Street, and one from Bir- A JOVIAL ALDERMAN : EDWARD BACKWELL. chin Lane, was Jonathan's Coffee-house, referred to in the Tatler as " the general mart for stock-jobbers." Of a still more famous 'Change Alley Coffee-house, " Garra- way's," something has been said " Garraway's.- in our account of the Stock Ex change (p. 164). Opened about the time of the Restoration by Thomas Gar- way or Garraway for the sale of tea, it came to be one of the chief resorts of merchants in the City, at different times a place of sale, exchange, auction and lottery. It was burnt down in 1666, and again in 1748, and was finally destroyed in 1874, according to a tablet which may be seen on the offices that have taken its place. Pope's Head Alley, a little westward of 'Change Alley, named after a very old tavern which was in existence at Ajfey*11*8"1 leaSt ES early SS the relSn °f Edward IV., was once, as Stow conjectures, a royal palace, since the ancient arms of England were incised on the stone walls, was rebuilt after the Great Fire, and had 'not ceased to be in the year 1756. In 1 7 18 this famous inn was the A Duel. scene of an informal but tragic duel between Quin the comedian and another actor of the name of Bowen, an Irishman. In a fit of mad jealousy Bowen sent for Quin, and when he came in drew his sword, planted his back against the door, and insisted, in spite of Quin's expostulations, up on a combat. In trying to disarm his furious assailant Quin inflicted a wound to which Bowen succumbed three days later, but not before he had confessed that the blame was entirely his own. In George Yard, running from Corn hill to Lombard Street, was the academy of one Dr. Pinches, where the late Sir Henry Irving had two years' schooling, beginning in 1849. Birchin Lane, also running from Cornhill to Lombard Street, is said by Stow to be a corruption of Birchover Lane, after " the first builder and owner thereof." But in the earliest references to it that have been discovered it appears as Bercheneres and Bercherners Lane, and later as Berchers Lane. From the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a haunt of dealers in second-hand clothes. Here was Tom's Coffee-house, where Garrick occasionally showed himself, and of which Chatterton, writing to his sister on the 30th of May, 1770, says, " There is such a noise of business and politics in the room that my inaccuracy in writing here is highly excusable. My present profession," the poor boy pathetically adds, " obliges me to frequent places of the best resort." In Birchin Lane two years of Macaulay's Birchin Lane. 200 LONDON TOWN infancy were passed, his father living at the office of the Sierra Leone Company, of which he was secretary. The future historian, as we learn from Sir George Trevelyan's " Life," Drapers' Gardens were as this writer describes them. Lombard Street is named after the Longo- bards, those merchants of Genoa, Lucca, was daily carried to bask in the sunshine of Florence and Venice who settled in London Photo : Pictorial Agency. ALTAR OF ST. MARY ABCHURCH. Drapers' Gardens, at the back of Drapers' Hall. Our author is a good deal less than just to the Gardens when he dubs Macaulay. them •' a dismal yard, containing as much gravel as grass, and frowned upon by a Board of Regulations almost as large as itself." He might have suspected that he had obtained a wrong impression of the Gardens, for he goes on to say that in after years they were one of Macaulay's " favourite haunts." The force of association surely could no further go, if as moneylenders and bankers after the expulsion of the Jews in the reign of Ed ward I. But they in turn succumbed strTet!"' to tlle prejudice against aliens, and, unable to compete with English merchants such as Gresham, they were extinct before the end of Elizabeth's reign. It was not until after the Great Fire, however, that Lombard Street became the headquarters of the goldsmiths, now beginning to develop into bankers. In 1566, for example, out of 107 goldsmiths whose names are recorded in GOLDEN LADS AND GIRLS." 20 1 Jane Shore. the Court Book of the Goldsmiths' Company, seventy-six dwelt in Chepe, and the remaining thirty-one in " Lamberde " Street. Gresham's shop, where he lived until he built for himself a mansion in Bishopsgate, stood on the site of the present banking house of Messrs. Martin and Co., Limited (No. 68), and had for sign the grasshopper, his father's crest. The shop perished in the Great Fire, and the building which took its place was rebuilt in 1795, when the original sign was stolen or lost sight of. Of recent years there has been yet another rebuilding. An early Lombard Street goldsmith was the husband of that Jane Shore who became the mistress of Edward IV. and was compelled to do pen ance in the streets of London by Richard III. Drayton the poet gives an alluring description of this beautiful woman from a portrait extant in his day. " Her stature was mearie ; her haire of a dark colour ; her face round and full ; her eye grey, delicate harmony being between each part's proportion and each pro portion's colour ; her body fat, white, and smooth ; her countenance cheerful, and like to her condition. The picture I have seen of her was such as she rose out of bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich mantle cast under one arme over her shoulder, and sitting on a chair on which her naked arm did lie." She was still living in the reign of Henry VI II., and Sir Thomas More tells us on the authority of those who remembered her in her youth that " proper she was and fair." But " now is she old, lean, withered, and dried up — nothing left but shrivelled skin and hard bone." What a contrast ! But according to More she had graces of the mind and spirit as well as physical charms. Men delighted " not so much in her beauty as 14 THE REV. JOHN NEWTON {p. 204). in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry in company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble." Small won der that as the poor woman walked to St. Paul's to do penance, downcast with shame, even' heart was moved to pity. The tyrant had commanded that no man should relieve her, but a curb upon their compassion he could not put. In the reign of Charles I. the two lead ing Lombard Street merchants were Sir Robert Vyner and Alderman Backwell. The Post Office, at the west end of Lombard Street, occupies, with the Guardian Assur ance Office, the site of the house which Vyner built for himself, and in which he kept his Mayoralty in 1675, and the shop of Alderman Backwell, his great rival, was nearly op posite. Backwell was ruined by the dis honesty of Charles II. in closing the Exchequer in 1672, at which time the King owed him £300,000. A broken man, he withdrew to the Low ~u.'Ped... Countries, and died seven years Goldsmiths. ' J later. Vyner also, who had supplied the new regalia for the Coronation, the old regalia having been destroyed, was a heavy sufferer from the King's bad faith, for there was owing to him when the Exchequer closed the sum of £416,724 13s. ijd., which may have included his charges for the regalia. It is of Vyner that the story is told in the Spectator, that when Charles, who had attended the inaugural feast of his Mayoralty in 1674, had quitted the table, grown bold with wine he pursued the merry monarch and taking him familiarly by the hand, cried out with a big oath, " Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle." The king " looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and A Jovial Lord Mayor. 202 LONDON TOWN graceful air . . . . repeated the line of the old song, ' He that is drunk is as great as a king,' and immediately turned back and complied with his host's request." The Post Office off Lombard Street stands on part of the site of the old General Post Office. Not a fragment now remains of the building which served as the headquarters of our postal system for many years until 1829, when the business of the Post Office was transferred to St. Martin's-le-Grand. So much of the site only as is now occupied by the branch Post Office was retained, the rest being sold or thrown into King William Street, then being formed. Lombard Street has on its north side two churches. That of St. Edmund the King and Martyr, dedicated to the Edmund King of East Anglia who was killed by the Danes at Bury St. Edmund's, and standing 5*j .,„ near the site of the ancient Grass £#atnuna s. Market, also serves the parish of St. Nicholas Aeon, the church of which stood on the west side of Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street — where, on the east side, a part of the old churchyard may still be seen — and was not rebuilt after the Fire. Why " Aeon," by the way, no man knoweth ; but Stow tells us that he had seen it written " Hacon." When Wren rebuilt the church of St. Edmund he was obliged by the shape of the site to make it run north and south, the altar being at the north end. According to Mr. George Birch, this is the only church in which Wren de parted from the usual custom of the Church of England. St. Edmund's most memorable association is with Addison, who was married within its walls to the Dowager Countess of Warwick and Holland. The other Lombard Street church, All Hallows', stands near its eastern end, a little way back from the thoroughfare. „ .. , Also rebuilt by Wren, it was not Hallows . J completed till 1694, the old church having been at first patched up. All Hal lows' has a very plain interior, an effect to which the poor stained glass makes its con tribution. Within the porch is the massive oak gateway, rudely carved with hour-glasses and skulls and other gruesome emblems, which until 1865 gave entrance from Lom bard Street. The bit of graveyard which remains on the south side of the church presents no refreshing greensward or foliage, as do most of these City burial-grounds. As in so many other City churches, there is in All Hallows' a great deal of fine woodwork, of which the chief feature is the altar-piece. Lombard Street is in these days lined with imposing offices of banks and insurance com panies, though at its eastern extremity on the north side there are still a few shops. In his " London Signs and Inscriptions " Mr. Philip Norman quotes from Heywood's Edward LV., published in 1600, a reference to the signs of the Phcenix and the Pelican : — " Here's Lombard Street, and here's the Pelican ; And here's the Phcenix in the Pelican's nest." It is a curious coincidence, as he points out, that at the present time there should be in this street two insurance offices that display these signs, the Pelican and the Phcenix. The house occupied by the latter, he adds, was built for Sir Charles Asgill, Lord Mayor in 1757, from designs by Sir Robert Taylor, who was architect to the Bank of England. We must not leave Lombard Street with out noting that here was born John Henry Newman, his father being a partnet Newman's jn thg firm of Ramsbottom. New- Birthplace. man, Ramsbottom and Co., who carried on business at No. "J2. The father is believed to have been of Dutch extraction, and the name is said to have been spelt Newmanns, or perhaps Newmann. The future Cardinal's mother belonged to a Huguenot family which settled in London as engravers and paper manufacturers. Of the streets and courts tributary to Lombard Street on. the south, Plough Court must be mentioned because here the father of Pope carried on the business of a linen mer chant, in a house at the bottom of the court which survived till 1872, and it is not improbable that here, in 1688, the poet was born. In Clement's Lane was the bank in which Rogers the poet was for many years a partner. The lane is named after the church of St. Clement, Eastcheap, which, since its rebuilding by Wren after the Fire, has served also the parish of St. Martin Orgar, in Martin's Lane. St. Clement's numbers great names among its clergy. Quaint old Thomas Fuller was lecturer here in 1646, and in 1650 Pearson was appointed to the same office, and preached in St. Clement's those sermons on Pope's. Photo: Pictorial Agency. A MASSIVE CITY CHURCH : ST. MARY WOOLNOTH. 204 LONDON TOWN the Creed which were published as the " Ex position," and were dedicated " to the right worshipful and well-beloved the parishioners of St. Clement's, Eastcheap." These divines are commemorated by the west window, to gether with Bishop Bryan Walton, compiler of the Polyglot Bible, who was rector of St. Martin Orgar until dispossessed by Parlia ment. But the most eminent of the names associated with St. Clement's is that of Plenry Purcell, first of English composers, who was once organist here. In Abchurch Lane, running from Lombard Street to Cannon Street, is the church of St. Mary Abchurch, a name which is Lane.UrCh conjectured by Maitland, with small probability, to be a variant of Upchurch, because the church stands on slightly rising ground. It was rebuilt in 1686 of red brick by Wren, who gave the tower a poor spire. The roof is in cupola form, and was painted by Sir James Thornhill ; the altar-piece is enriched with some of the most exquisite of Grinling Gibbons' carvings. King William Street, which runs from Adelaide Place, London Bridge, to the Man sion House, is almost wholly strneetWi"iam occupied with insurance offices, and is the most monotonous of the thoroughfares around the Bank. At its junction with Gracechurch Street is a statue of the sailor-king, William IV., looking riverwards ; it is plentifully garnished with nautical emblems. At the north-west end of the street, where it joins Lombard Street, is the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, beneath which is one of the stations of the City and South London Railway. A most massive and vigorous piece of work, unlike anything else in London, the church was built by Nicholas Hawksmoor, Wren's assistant, in 1727, the old church, repaired by Wren after the Fire, having survived till 17 16, when it had to be demolished to prevent it from fall ing down. The ponderous western front, with its double tower, faces the open space bounded by the Bank, the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House, and, commanding as it is, it is not unworthy of so conspicuous a position. Hawksmoor, we may here note, was born in the year of the Great Fire, and was apprenticed to Wren in 1683. In old St. Mary Woolnoth was buried, St. Mary Woolnoth with his three wives, Sir Martin Bowes, the famous goldsmith who died in 1 566. A later goldsmith, Sir Robert Vyner (p. 201), con tributed so handsomely towards the cost of renovating the church after the Fire that the part of the building which fronted his house was embellished with carvings of vines. With the present church is associated the memory of the Rev. John Newton, the friend of Cowper the poet, and collaborator with him in the production of the Olney Newton Hymns, to which he contributed " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," and " Glorious things of thee are spoken." A tablet on the north wall bears a touching inscription from his own pen : "John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy." Born in London on the 24th of July, 1725, at the age of eleven he went to sea with his father, the captain of a merchantman, presently drifted into the slave trade, living a wild and reckless life and abandoning the faith of his childhood. But the perils of a dreadful storm through which he had to steer his ship gave him food for reflection, and he became converted, and turned away from his evil courses, though not from the slave trade, as to which his con science became enlightened only in later years, when he became an ally of Wilber- force's. Taking holy orders, he was for years curate of Olney, and there formed his intimate friendship with Cowper. In 1780 he became incumbent of St. Mary Woolnoth, and so remained until his death on the 21st of December, 1807, being buried in his own church, in the vault which already held the remains of the wife whom he had loved, as he feared, almost to idolatry. The year before his death, being urged to respect the infirm ities of age and give up preaching, he ex claimed, " What ! Shall the old" African blasphemer stop ? I cannot stop ! " In 1893, when from sanitary considerations the church was cleared of human remains, the ashes of this good man and his wife were removed to Olney and there re-interred. The church's qualifying name has been conjectured to be a variant of Wulfnoth. But it may possibly have reference to the SUBWAYS 205 wool trade, an hypothesis which finds some support in Stow's statement that the church of St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, which stood still nearer to the old Stocks Markets, on the site now occupied by the Mansion House, and was not rebuilt after the Fire, was named after a beam in the churchyard used for the weighing of wool at the wool wharf on the Wall Brook. Mr. Loftie's suggestion is that Woolnoth is a contraction of Woollen Hithe, the wool wharf just referred to. We have now completed our circuit and returned to the heart of the City, where the traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, is thicker probably than at any other spot on the face of the globe. For the accommodation of pedestrians and their safety, it may be added, subways have been provided which afford communication between the thoroughfares that radiate from this centre. Though these subways are not much used by those who are sightseeing, they are an inestimable boon to City men in a hurry ; and it is a curious commentary on our national slowness to accept innovations that at first very little use was made of them and that up to the time of writing they should be the only subways in London constructed to provide facilities for crossing busy streets. They give access also to the two tube rail- Suhways. ways which meet at this point, the Central London Railway, whose trains run beneath Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, Oxford Street, and Bayswater Road to Shepherd's Bush, and the Waterloo and City Railway, which brings the London and South -Western terminus into touch with the City ; and it was at the cost of these companies that the subways were made. Close by, is the City and South London Railway, which extends from Clapham Com mon to Islington and Euston. This line, which was opened in the first tube railway country, or indeed in soon followed by the Electric Railway, and once found a host of imitators in America and elsewhere. It should be added that in the con struction of the stations at this spot the workmen came across some of the founda tions of the first of the Royal Exchanges. A more serious obstacle was presented by certain old vaults of the Bank of England, which, when they were disused, were for security's sake filled with concrete. It not being possible, for obvious reasons, to blow them up, the concrete had to be dislodged bit by bit. the year 1890, was constructed in this any other. It was Liverpool Overhead these two lines at Photo ; Pictorial Agency. THE BANK SUBWAYS. THE EAST INDIA HOUSE IN 1 648. CHAPTER XIX LEADENHAlL STREET AND FENCHURCH STREET Manor of Leadenhall — The Market — The "Ship'' — "John Company" — Charles Lamb at East India House — St. Katherine Creechurch — Sir John Gayer and the "Lion" Sermon — St. Andrew Under shaft — Stow's Monument — St. Mary Axe — The Baltic — Fenchurch Street — Insult to an Ambassador — The Ironmongers — Churches — Why Rood Lane is so called — The Clothworkers — Samuel Pepys — All Hallows Staining — Mark Lane — Lloyd's Register — Theft of a Ship THE street of the great shipping offices is named after the old manor of Leaden Hall, which in 1309 was the property of Sir Hugh Neville, and in 1408 was acquired by Sir Richard Whittington, whose connection with this part of London is kept in mind by Whittington Avenue, one of the approaches to Leadenhall Market. The house Han!"1 or " hal1 " of the manor> however, appears to have been in the hands of the City early in the fourteenth century. Riley shows that as early as 1302 it was occasionally used as a Court of Justice, and that in October, 1326, after the flight of Edward II., the Commons of London met here to make terms with the Constable of the Tower. Here, too, were stored the arms and accoutrements of those whose business it was to protect the City. Leadenhall Market, established on a part of the manor, possibly as an adjunct to the Hall, also carries us back to MarKet t'le beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1357 poultry was ordered to be sold here. It developed into a great meat market, and about 1662 the Spanish Ambassador, after a visit to it, told Charles II. that he believed more meat was sold here than in the whole of Spain. In these days the trade carried on is mainly in poultry, living as well as dead, and more retail than wholesale, but business is done also in meat and provisions. The present market, of which the unsymmetrical form was dictated to the architect, the late Sir Horace Jones, by the site, was opened in 1881, and was reared at a cost of £99,000, and an additional sum of £148,000 was expended in the formation of new avenues and ap proaches. In Leadenhall Street, on the south side, are the New Zealand Chambers, built by Mr. Norman Shawin 1873, and remarkable, accord ing to Wheatley and Cunningham's " London Past and Present," because, though rather Jacobean in character, the structure led the way to the revival of Queen Anne architecture in this country. On the opposite side are the offices of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, the front beautified with water-colours of the Company's boats by Frank Murray, W. Lloyd, and other artists. 206 "JOHN COMPANY ; 207 The" Ship These offices, designed by Mr, T. E. Collcutt, the architect of the Imperial Institute, stand partly on the site of the old " King's Head " Tavern, pulled down to make way for them in 1867. A yet more famous Leadenhall Street tavern, which has occupied a part of its pre sent site ever since the reign of Richard II., having been opened in the year 1377, is still to be seen, though in recent times it has been almost entirely rebuilt and its frontage brought forward to Leadenhall Street. About the middle of the last century its title was added to, for, having up to that time been known as " The Ship," it now became " The Ship and Turtle," the addition being made, no doubt, by way of recognition of the City feasts which take place within its walls. An interesting account of the house is given by Mr. Edward Callow, in his " Old London Taverns." From the very beginning, it appears, the inn has had the same ground landlords, the trustees and wardens of Rochester Bridge, it having been conferred upon them by Sir John de Cob- ham and William Wangford, with other pro perty, in order that they might build and main tain for ever a stone bridge over the Medway at Rochester. The old " Ship," being oppo site the East India House, was a rendezvous for the officers of the East Indiamen. When the Company ceased to be, the tavern lost some of its import ance, but it presently became one of the great centres for Masonic and City festivities. A still more famous feature of Leadenhall Street has now vanished utterly. The East India Chambers, on the south side of the street, The East occupy the site of the India * J Company. East India House, the headquarters of the Company which until the year 1858 administered our pos sessions in the East Indies. " John Company " had its origin at the end of the sixteenth century in a charter granted to 215 merchant adventurers of London, who between them raised a capital of £70,000. The charter was renewed again and again, and the Company grew into the largest trading association the world had ever seen. From time to time Parliament intervened to limit the governing powers of the Company, and after the Indian Mutiny the Company, in a political sense, was disestablished. The change was effected by the Act for the Better Government of India (1858), which trans ferred the entire administration of the Com pany to the Crown, the Company's naval and military forces being absorbed in those of the State. The East India House was sold in 1 86 1, and taken down in 1862, but the Company continued to exist as a medium for distributing stock until 1873. Of the eminent men who exercised their gifts in the Company's service, from Clive onwards, time would fail to tell. But we must not pass on without recalling the fact that Charles Lamb, that most loyal Charles Qr LonrJon's sons, spent thirty years of his life at a desk in East India House. How his soul rebelled against the routine of office work he has whimsically recorded. " Thirty years have I served the Philistines," he wrote to Wordsworth in 1822, " and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease PLAN OF THE LEADENHALL STREET AND FENCHURCH STREET REGION. 208 LONDON TOWN or interposition." On another occasion he wishes that he might be kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity. " The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips and ramble about purposeless as an idiot." When at last in April, 1825, he was allowed to retire with a pension equal to two-thirds of his salary, his joy knew no bounds. " I came home Inigo Jones's da)', between the years 1628 and 1630. The steeple is older, for it was built early in the sixteenth century, there having up to that time been no tower. Tradition likewise associates the church with another great artist, for Strype says he had been told that Hans Holbein was buried within its walls. However this may be, St. Katherine Creechurch does contain the ashes of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton* who died on the THE THROCKMORTON MONUMENT IX ST. KATHARINE CREKCHORCH. for ever on Tuesday in last week," he wrote to Wordsworth. " The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me ; it was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three — to have three times as much real time — time that is my own — in it ! " On its north side Leadenhall Street has two interesting churches. St. Katherine Creechurch (Christ Church), so named because it was built in the churchyard of the Priory of Holy Trinity, Christ Church, Aldgate, is said to have been designed by Inigo Jones, but the tradition may have originated in the fact that it is a mixture of Gothic and Classical work, and that the body of the church was rebuilt in St. Katherine Cree. 1 2th of February, 1570, and is commem orated by a handsome monument on the south wall, and of a City worthy of some note, Sir John Gayer, Lord Mayor in 1646, whose descendants, in 1888, marked his burial-place, just inside the chancel, with a brass plate. In 1647, in the troubles between Parliament and the City, Gayer was deposed as Mayor and committed to prison with his brother Aldermen. They were kept in durance for more than six months without trial, but when at last Articles of Impeach ment were drawn up it was seen that Gayer's spirit was by no means broken. Brought before the Lords and ordered to kneel at the bar as a delinquent, he stoutly refused. * See an'e, p. 187. ST. MARY AXE 209 His brother Aldermen were equally unyield ing, and they were all mulct in heavy penalties for their recusancy. Two months later, in the critical condition affairs had reached in June, 1648, the Commons con sidered it prudent not further to quarrel with the City, and the proceedings were allowed to lapse. But Sir John Gayer is of interest to us mainly as the founder of the " Lion " Sermon, still preached in this church annually on the 1 6th of October. By will dated Sermon!0"" the x9th of December, 1648, he be queathed the sum of £200 to the parish, partly for eleemosynary purposes and partly for the preaching of an annual sermon as an expression of his gratitude to Provi dence for deliverance from a lion which he encountered in Arabia, and which made no attempt to molest him. Here, too, is preached every Whit Monday or Whit Tues day the " Flower Sermon," when every child makes gift of a nosegay. Leadenhall Street's other church, a Late Perpendicular structure, rebuilt early in the sixteenth century, is St. Andrew Undershaft, so called, says Stow, from " a high or long shaft or Maypole higher than the church steeple," which until his own day was wont to be set up and festooned with flowers opposite the south door of the church on the morning of May Day. After " Evil May Day," in the reign of Henry VIII., the May pole of St. Andrew's was never reared again, and in the reign of Edward VI. the curate of St. Katherine Cree denounced it, poor thing, as an idol. The same afternoon the people dwelling in Shaft Alley, " after they had dined to make themselves strong," as Stow rather bitterly says, " gathered more help, and with great labour raising the shaft from the hooks whereon it had rested two-and-thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking for his share so much as had lain over his door and stall, the length of his house." The division has about it a look of equity, whatever one may think of the bigotry which prompted the act of destruction. Of the memorials in St. Andrew's one of the most recent is that of Dr. Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield (died 1897), who from 1879 to 1888 was rector of this parish. But by far the most interesting monument here Stow's Monument. St. Androw Undershaft. is that of Stow, affixed to the north wall, and erected at the charges of his widow. It is said by writer after writer to be of terra cotta, but the material is really a very beautiful variety of alabaster, and there are several other monu ments in the church of the same stone and dating from the same period. In 1904 the Merchant Taylors' Company, which did nothing for Stow during his life, though he was a member of the fraternity, carried out a judicious renovation of the monument, but Jj'y permission of the Lord Bishop oj Worcester. SIR JOHN GAYER. From a Portrait at Hai.lebury Castle, attributed to Vaiulyck. care was taken to leave the face untouched. According to Maitland, the remains of the man whose labours were so scantily rewarded during his life were " howked " out of their grave to make room for another tenant! St. Andrew Undershaft stands at the corner of the street known as St. Mary Axe, which runs north to Houndsditch. Axe. ary ^n it once stood the parish church of St. Mary the Virgin, St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, which about the year 1565, according to Stow, was converted into a warehouse, the parish being united to that of St. Andrew Undershaft. Stow also tells us that the church was called St. Mary Axe from a shop opposite the east end of it which had that sign. There may very well have been here at one time a shop with such a sign, but if so it borrowed the 2IO LONDON TOWN sign from, instead of lending it to, the church, which gained its distinctive name from a sacred relic — one of the three axes with which the Eleven Thousand Virgins were beheaded. St. Mary Axe, the street, was once a part of Jewry, but now is mostly occupied by offices, and mainly by those of merchants engaged in the shipping trade. Here, on the east side, are the handsome new quarters of the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Ex change. The Baltic, composed of merchants engaged in the trade with Russia, used to for gather in the Baltic Coffee-house The Baltic in Threadneedle Street, and after wards in South Sea House ; and when the old premises of the South Sea Company were demolished they found tem porary accommodation at an hotel while, in conjunction with the Shipping Exchange, established in Billiter Street in 1892, they were building their new quarters. The foundation stone was laid by one Lord Mayor, the late Sir Frank Green, in 1901, and the building was opened by another. Sir Marcus Samuel, in 1903. The architect was Mr. T. H. Smith, who in the facade has made an effective use of polished granite. The large hall, on the ground floor, is a marble palace, and is surrounded by saloons and offices ; the upper storeys are divided into private offices. Fenchurch Street, though other derivations have been suggested, was perhaps named after the marshy ground about SterneetUrCh the Lan? Bourne> a brook which ran down this street and Lombard Street to the west end of St. Mary Wool noth Church, where, turning south and break ing up into small rills, it found its way into the Thames. Even in Stow's time the Lang: Bourne was only a memory, but the name survives to this day as that of one of the City wards. Fenchurch Street is now mostly known by reason of the terminus (which lies a little way back from it on the south east) of the London and Blackwall and the London, Tilbury and Southend Railways. In the reign of James I. Fenchurch Street was the scene of an insult offered to Gondomar, the Spanish Ambas- AmbaVsUor. Sad°r> which «"*«! in one of the offenders being much too well whipped. As Gondomar was being borne along the street, an apprentice standing at his master's door said to some companions, " There goeth the devil in a dung cart." Nettled by the guffaw with which this rough sally was received, one of the Ambassador's servants threatened the apprentice with Bride well. " What," said one of the youth's com panions, " shall we go to Bridewell for such a dog as thou ? " and dealt him a box on the ear which knocked him down. The Ambassador, says Dr. Sharpe, in " London and the King dom," " laid a complaint before the Mayor, who somewhat reluctantly sentenced the offending apprentices to be whipped at the cart's tail. That any of their number should be flogged for insulting a Spaniard, even though he were the Spanish king's Ambassador, was intoler able to the minds of the apprentices of London, who were known for their staunchness to one another. The report spread like wildfire, and soon a body of nearly three hundred apprentices had assembled at Temple Bar, where they rescued their comrades and beat the City Marshals. Again Gondomar com plained to the Mayor, who, sympathising at heart with the delinquents, testily replied that it was not to the Spanish Ambassador that he had to give an account of the govern ment of the City. The matter having reached the King's ears at Theobalds, he suddenly appeared at the Guildhall and threatened to place a garrison in the City and to deprive the citizens of their charter if matters were not mended. His anger was with difficulty appeased by the Recorder, and he at last contented himself with privately admonish ing the aldermen to see the young fellows punished. The end of the affair was tragical enough. The original sentence was carried out, with the result that one of the apprentices unhappily died." The account of the affair given by the City records differs in some details from that which Dr. Sharpe extracted from contemporary letters, but it confirms the story that one of the apprentices died from his whipping. Of its old taverns, Fenchurch Street has pre served but one, and that was rebuilt in 1877, when it changed its name. There is a tradi tion that at the " King's Head," now the " London Tavern," at the corner of Mark Lane, the Princess Elizabeth, on her release from the Tower, dined. A very specific tradition it is, too, for it declares that the piece de resistance was pork, garnished with peas. IRONMONGERS' HALL !II If one requires proof, one may see the metal dish and cover which the Princess used ! Nearly opposite the " London Tavern " is the stone-fronted Hall, solid and severe in character, of the Ironmongers, the tenth in order of civic precedence of the twelve great 1587. The second Hall escaped the Fire, but in 1748-50 was in its turn rebuilt, from the designs of T. Holclen, whose name appears on the front. In the interior, remodelled in 1847 and renovated in 1886, one sees a fine portrait of Admiral Lord Hood, by Gains- Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT. Livery Companies, which was incorporated by charter of Edward IV. in 1463, but had existed as a voluntary fraternity long Ironmongers' beforej there bdng mention of it as a guild in 1330. In early days the Ironmongers appear to have been both wholesale and retail dealers in hard ware. At least as early as 1497 the Company had a Hall of its own, which was rebuilt in borough, presented to the Company in 1783 when that gallant sailor received its freedom ; another of Admiral Lord Exmouth, by Sir William Beechey ; and yet another of Isaak Walton — a copy of the one in the National Portrait Gallery — which occupies the position of honour above the Ladies' Gallery at the east end of the Livery Hall. Walton was warden of the Company in 1637-39. On the 2i: LONDON TOWN landing of the staircase is a marble statue from Fonthill of Alderman Beckford, the champion of the Corporation in the reign of George III. Of late years the Hall has been threatened with rebuilding, but in 1904 the scheme was abandoned — for the time being, at any rate. The Company's crest displays two scaly lizards, erect, and in the arms, with two other lizards for supporters, are three swivels between three steel gads. The church of St. Dionis Backchurch stood to the north of Fenchurch Street, at the - south-west corner of Lime Street. St. Dionis Dedicated to Dionysius the Areo- DLcKchurch. J pagite, one of St. Paul's converts at Athens, who became the patron saint of France (St. Denisj, it is said to have been called Backchurch because it stood a little way back from Fenchurch Street, and by way of distinction from St. Gabriel Pore- church, which stood in the middle of the street, and of which a piece of the graveyard may still be seen in P"en Court. St. Gabriel's was not rebuilt after the Fire, the parish being united ecclesiastically with that of St. .Margaret Pattens. St. Dionis' was rebuilt by Wren, or under his supervision, but in 1X77-78 it was sacrificed, and the parish united with that of All Hallows', Lombard Street, to which church the bells and monuments were re moved. The church of St. Katherine Coleman, on the south side of Fenchurch Street, has as much right to be called Backchurch as had St. Dionis', for it is shut off from the street by a line of buildings and is very apt to be missed unless one knows where to look for it. It is not one of Wren's churches, and in its present form it dates only from 1734, when it was rebuilt ; and it need not detain us, except to note that, according to Stow, it was named after a yard or garden which was styled " Coleman-haw." As he does not tell us why the " haw " was named Coleman he helps us but little. Of the northern tributaries of Fenchurch Street, only two need be named. Lime Street, which gives its name to one of the City wards, is said by Stow to be so called from the making or selling of lime Y"*et here. On the west side is the Hall Street. of the Pewterers' Company, which dates from the Fire. The Company itself was incorporated by Edward IV. in 1473, its chief function being to fix the standard assays of such wares as pewter. The arms show three crossbars of pewter ; the crest two arms, the hands holding a pewter dish. Billiter Street (formerly Billiter Lane), the other northern tributary of Fenchurch street' Street, is said by Stow to have been originally Belzettar's Lane, after the first owner or builder, but Professor Skeat's opinion was that it was rather Bell-zeter's Lane, the lane of the bell-founders. Among streets opening into Fenchurch Street from the south, Phil pot Lane is named after Sir John Philipot, Mayor in 1378, of whose exploits as a pirate-taker something has already been said (p. 10). Rood Lane is so called, says Stow, from a rood DU'waVtons. which was Placed in the church yard of St. Margaret Pattens in 1 S3S, while the church itself was being re built, and the offerings to which were appro priated to what in these days would be called the building fund. But the exposure of the cross proved to be too much for some zealous reformer, for one morning it was found broken all to pieces, together with the tabernacle in which it had been placed. As this event is assigned to Stow's own time The was born in I525J, we may accept this derivation without question. St. Margaret Pattens, so called, he says, from the patten-makers who dwelt here about, is notable chiefly because its steeple is exceeded in height, among Wren's spires, only by those of St. Bride and St. Mary-le-Bow, it being 200 feet high. But it has in the uppermost stage of the altar-piece a small picture ascribed to a Roman painter of the Restoration period, Carlo Maratti, besides several other paintings. In Stow's day, Mincing Lane, now the headquarters of the tea trade, was called Minchcon Lane, from houses there belonging "to the Minchens or Nuns of St. Helen's in Bishopsgate Street." Here is Ha0itihWOrherS' the Hal1 of the Clothworkers, the last in order of civic pre cedence of the twelve great Livery Companies, formed in the reign of Henry VIII. by fusion of the Shearmen with the Fullers, the united fraternity being incorporated as Clothworkers. These two trades were originally branches of the guild of Weavers, and the Shearmen, who, in the reign of Edward IV., separated them selves from the Drapers and Taylors, were so MARK LANE— LLOYD'S AVENUE 213 called, not because they had anything to do with the shearing of sheep, but from the process of clipping the nap in the manufacture of cloth. The Clothworkers is one of the wealthiest of the Livery Companies, and its income is largely employed in the cause of education, and especially of technical educa tion, the Company having contributed £12,000 to the building and estab lishment fund of the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, besides giving it an annual subsidy, and having also by sub stantial benefactions pro moted technical education in the provinces. It is, too, the governing body of the Mary Datchelor's Girls' School at Cambenvell. The Company's crest is a ram ; the arms show two habicks and a tezel, the herb known as " fuller's teasel." The Hall, built in 1 598, was partly destroyed by the Fire, and was then restored or rebuilt. In 1856-57 it was pulled down, and replaced by the present Hall, with a Renas cence front of Portland stone, from designs by Mr. Samuel Angell. In the Livery Hall are gilt statues of James I. and Charles I., which in 1679 replaced contemporary figures that had perished in the Fire. The first of these monarchs elected himself a free- Jo^a? Moioda man of the Company in a royally informal fashion. " Wilt thou make me free of the Clothworkers ?" he asked Sir William Stone, the Master of the Com pany, during a visit to the Hall. " Yea," quoth loyal Sir William, " and think myself a happy man that I live to see this day." " Stone, give me thy hand," rejoined the King. " And now I am a Clothworker." The windows of the Livery Hall glow with the arms of Masters of the Company, among them those of our lively friend Pepys, who was Master in 1677, and in the following year presented a loving cup which is still carefully treasured, and on festive occasions is displayed in a glass case behind the Master's chair. The Company is with good reason proud of its connexion with the prince of Samuel Pepys, Clothworker. STOW S .MONUMENT IN ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT. All Hallows Staining. diarists, and on the 1st of De cember, 1903, a Pepys Club was inaugurated by a banquet in the Hall. Long may it flourish ! It were too much to hope that the speeches at its dinners will never be less vivacious than the written word of its patron saint. His portrait hangs on one of the walls ; and in the Court-room are to be seen portraits of some eminent Masters in recent days, Lord Cross, who was Master in 1895-6, and the late Lord Kelvin, who held the office in 1900- 1. In the Committee- room is a tablet com memorating William Thwaites, who, beginning life in a grocer's shop in Fenchurch Street, throve so well that he was able to leave £20,000 to the Com pany for pensions to the blind, and another £20,000 for the Company's general purposes. The Clothworkers' pro perty in the City includes the former site of the church and graveyard of All Hallows Staining, at the back of the Hall. The tower, a very ancient looking structure, is still standing, and is kept in good repair by the Company, who also carefully tend the pleasant little garden in which it is enclosed ; the rest of the site has been built over. All Hallows Stain ing dated only from 1675, the church, except the tower, having fallen down a few years after it had been spared by the Great Fire. It is supposed by Stow to have been "com monly called Stane Church " because, unlike other churches of the same dedication in London, it was not built of timber. He has the same conjecture about Staining Lane, and the reader must take it for what it is worth. In a document of the year 1276, quoted by Riley in the " Memorials," Mark Lane appears 214 LONDON TOWN as Marte Lane, and in another of 1369 as Mart Lane, and it is believed to have been so called because a market or fair was held Mark Lane. here. In these days Mark Lane is famous for its Corn Exchange, which presents to it a very heavy and sombre Doric portico. The old Exchange was origin- of about 40 feet, it has a length of 440 feet, and connects Fenchurch Street with Crutched Friars. It is now lined by large blocks of imposing offices in stone, one of them, known as Coronation House, being completed in 1904, while adjoining it, with its chief facade looking down upon Fenchurch Street, is the handsome Photo : Pielorial Agency. THE BALTIC : THE MARBLE HALL. ally built in 1747, and in 1827, as the pro prietors refused to extend it, there was built beside it what is still known as the New Corn Exchange, chiefly used by seed merchants. Now, however, the New Exchange is the older of the two, for in 1881 the Old Exchange was rebuilt by Mr. Edward I'Anson, on so much larger a scale that the new structure was reared around the one which it was to replace, the latter not being removed until the former was completed. Lloyd's Avenue, the last of the southern tributaries of Fenchurch Street which we have to notice, was constructed by the City Cor poration and opened in 1899. With a breadth structure in which is carried on the work of Lloyd's Register of British and Foreign Ship ping. This body, as we learn from Raster. the " Annals of Lloyd's Register," published in 1884, its jubilee year, was established in White Lion Court, Cornhill, in 1834, by the amalgamation of "The Green Book " and " The Red Book," two rival regis ters of shipping, dating respectively from 1760 and 1799, the one started by a committee of underwriters, the other by a committee of shipowners. In White Lion Court it re mained from 1834 until December, 1901, when it was transferred to its present habita tion, designed by Mr. T. E. Collcutt, and LLOYD'S REGISTER siS embellished with a frieze of sculpture by Mr. George Frampton, R.A. The four bronze figures between the double columns on the ground floor, typifying ancient and modern shipping, are the work of the same artist. The interior contains fine decorative work by Lloyd's Register, through the reports of its surveyors, established in all the chief shipping centres of the world, and numbering about three hundred, not only classifies shipping, both British and foreign, but is the official authority for testing anchors and chains, and Photo : Pictorial Agency. LIVERY HALL OF THE CLOTHWORKERS COMPANY. the Messrs. Pegram and others, while much of the furniture and of the fittings was de signed by Mr. Collcutt. The chief business of Lloyd's Register is the classification of ships, in the exercise of which it enjoys the co-operation of a body of experts, fourteen in number, selected by the chief institutions in the United Kingdom which have to do with marine architecture and engineering and the iron and steel industries. One of its formulas, which are made up of a combination of letters of the alphabet and figures, with other symbols, has come into universal use, for A^ which originally denoted the highest class of wooden vessels, soon came to mean the best of anything and everything. The formula for the highest class of iron and steel vessels, by the way. is 100 Ai. determining load lines, and it conducts the testing of steel used in the construction of vessels and machinery. It also What it does, issues annually a separate register of yachts of all nations, and publishes in New York another register of yachts belonging to the United States and Canada, besides making period ical returns of vessels building, and of vessels lost all over the world. Its business is conducted by a committee of fifty-nine members, shipowners, underwriters and mer chants, who are elected at the great shipping centres of the United Kingdom. It should be understood that there is no compulsion upon shipowners to have their vessels classified, but it is so obviously to their advantage to do so that the State is content to leave the matter 2l6 LONDON TOWN to their voluntary action. The institution is not able, of course, to do its work without imposing fees, but it is carried on not for the purpose of making a profit but for the benefit of the interests connected with the shipping trade. It is a separate institution from the the agent of one Smith. Stores having been taken in, which were paid for by a bill that was afterwards dishonoured, she was taken to Cardiff, where Smith and his wife came on board. A fresh crew having been shipped, she started for Marseilles, as was Photo: Pictorial .-/gutty. OFFICES OF LLOYD S REGISTER. Lloyd's which has its headquarters at the Royal Exchange, but the Chairman of that Corporation is a member of the Committee. Numerous have been the frauds upon underwriters, but it is not often that a ship is actually stolen. So recently as 1880, however, such a theft was perpetrated, and it was the absence Lloyd's Register ' of a vessel of the specified tonnage bearing the new name of the stolen vessel that led to the detection of the crime. In September, 1880, a man who gave the name of Walker chartered the Ferret, a steamer of 346 tons, from the High land Railway Company for a six months' yachting cruise, representing himself to be Tbeft of a Ship. from " given out. But Gibraltar passed, her white funnel was painted black, her blue boats were painted white, and at night she slipped back through the Straits showing no lights. Then everything bearing the boat's name was flung overboard, and the wondering crew were threatened with death if they offered opposi tion. At the Cape Verde Islands, fresh stores, paid for by another fraudulent bill, were shipped, and, after leaving, the name of the vessel was changed to the Benton. At Santos a cargo of coffee was got by false pretences, and at Cape Town, the vessel having been re-named the India between the two places, this cargo was sold for upwards of £13,000. At Melbourne, the conspirators sought to THEFT OF A SHIP 217 dispose of the steamer to a Mr. Duthie, who, being a man of caution, searched Lloyd's Register, with the result that he found there was no India of the tonnagre of this vessel. Then a num ber of suspicious circum stances were observed. It was noticed, for example, that neither the captain nor the crew came ashore. Alto gether it became evident that something was wrong, and at last the Commissioner of Customs determined upon the seizure of the ship. A search at once revealed the true state of the case. In a box were found the articles of the Ferret, the disappearance of which had, of course, been reported to all Lloyd's agents. There also came to light a secret code of telegrams, which showed how care fully the nefarious scheme had been worked out. The code provided for such messages pepys's loving cup {p. 213). attempt to br ship-stealing frauds. in cipher as " Sell ship for most you can get and come home " ; " Ship is fully in sured : destroy her some way " ; " Game is up, all dis covered. Destroy or hide everything and make your self scarce." The officers and crew were glad enough to be released from the embarrassing position into which they had been forced, and readily gave informa tion of the efforts that had been made to procure their collusion ; and it ap peared that, to the chief engineer, Smith had repre sented himself as a political exile from the United States who had reasons of his own for travelling incognito. Smith and Walker, with the captain, were arrested, and, having failed in a desperate eak prison, were convicted of as well as of various other ARMS OF THE CLOTHWORKERS COMPANY. 15 CHAPTER XX ALDGATE, CRUTCHED FRIARS AND THE MINORIES Meaning of Aldgate — Duke Street and the Jews — Bevis Marks — The Disraelis — Houndsditch — Jewry Street — The Sir John Cass Institute — Crutched Friars— St. Olave's, Hart Street — Where Pepys is Buried — Seething Lane — The Minories w ALDGATE PUMP. TTH Ald- gate, which gives its name to one of the City wards, we come to the eastern boun dary of the City. The street which bears the name of Aldgate be gins at the junc tion of Fen church Street and Leadenhall Street and is continued east ward by Aldgate High Street un til, passing the City boundary, it becomes Whitechapel High Street. But Aldgate High Street is not in the ward of Aldgate but in that of Portsoken, a name signifying the soc without the port or gate of Aldgate. Aldgate, which stood just at the spot at which Duke Street and Jewry Street meet, is said to have been indebted for its Aid3" t ? name to its antiquity, but this is not likely, for in a document of the year 1334, quoted by Riley in the '" Memorials," it figures as Alegate, and in another document of the later part of the same century, as Algate. Mr. Loftie suggests that the proper form of the name is Algate, and the meaning, " free to all." * Through this gate entered the barons in 121 5 when they joined hands with the City to wrest Magna Charta from King John. It was then dilapidated, and was presently rebuilt, and to such good pur pose that more than two hundred and fifty * Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. xii. , p. 161. The Bastard Falconbridge, years later (1471) it did the City good service when the Bastard Falconbridge, in the reign of Edward IV., sought to force en trance to the capital with some five thousand followers. The defenders of the City waited until some of the intruders had got inside, and then, letting down the portcullis, caught them as in a trap- Now Robert Bassett, Alderman of Aldgate, made a sally and forced the invaders back as far as St. Botolph's, and the arrival of reinforcements under the Constable of the Tower turned the defeat into a rout. When Queen Mary at her accession (1533) entered the capital through Aldgate, and was met at this point by the Princess Elizabeth, the gate had again become ruinous, and in 1606 it was taken down and replaced by a new one, which survived until 1761, when it was demolished in order that the street might be widened. Early in this same century the rooms over the gate were occupied by one of the Lord Mayor's carvers. The rooms above the Aldgate which was destroyed in 1606 were able to boast a more famous tenant. In the " Memorials " is cited the lease which in 1374 the City granted to Geoffrey Chaucer — whom Riley identifies with the poet — of " the dwelling- mhA?dga"te. house above the Sate of Aldgate," for " the whole life of him," sub ject to his keeping it in good repair. He was prohibited from sub-letting any part of it, and the Corporation reserved to itself the right of using the house for the defence of the City, should occasion arise. Probably the poet took the house in view of his appointment in June, 1374, as Controller of the Customs of the port. Here he lived for some twelve years, until, in fact, he was deprived of his controllership, probably as the result of political intrigues. 218 ST BOTOLPH'S WITHOUT, ALDGATE 219 Aldgate Pump. longer The gate, then, has vanished, but one may still see at the beginning of Aldgate the pump which Stow speaks of as standing above " a fair well." It was alleged against the well about the middle of the last century that it was no fair," and a few years ago its spout was choked up ; but water has been laid on from another source, and in 1908 the City magistrates were called upon to adjudicate be tween the Metropolitan Water Board and some Aldgate tradesmen who preferred to resort to the historic pump. St. Botoiph's Without, at the corner of Aldgate High Street and Hounds- ditch, is one of four St. Botoiph's, churches near as many of the City gates which were dedicated to the East Anglian saint of the seventh century after whom the town of Boston (Botoiph's Town) is named, the others being St. Botoiph's Without, Aldersgate Street, St. Botoiph's, Bishopsgate, and St. Botoiph's, Billingsgate, the last of which was not rebuilt after the Fire. St. Botoiph's Without, Aldgate, appears to have belonged originally to the burgesses of the Knighten Guild, the successors of thirteen knights to whom land in this part of the City was granted by King Edgar in the tenth century, and by these burgesses it was transferred in 1 1 1 5 to the Prior of the Holy Trinity, Aldgate, by whom it was rebuilt in or just before Stow's time. The church so rebuilt was in 1741-44 replaced by the present struc- Street and Mitre Street. Henry VIII. bestowed it upon Sir Thomas Audley, after wards Lord Chancellor, who died here in 1554, but not until, having failed to sell the " very fair and large " church of the Priory, as Stow calls it. he had pulled it down. As anim MtH>.tX4T£ /irc/uWy £at!-£aa arc >/// '//. f/l-t/lff.o'//t'a/l<, tf — nvu /wiVcS i/cJ/cn 4C1/1 S //iW'j /r/tti/t'M .«" /u'//',!/tfr;//i .{>// {/£//? &£, /in./ /?//7eviffcineaM tfuJ tf/t/cn/ic'ic'/i. tfcnalus ?opidufq'LoE wllich St°°d at itS south-eastern end, where it joins Hart Street, on ground now occupied by the BIT OF THE ROMAN WALL IN ROMAN WALL HOUSE, JEWRY STREET. ST. OLAVE'S, HART STREET 223 warehouses of the East and West India Dock. It was founded by Ralph Hosiar and William Sabernes about the year 129S, and at the Dissolution was granted to Sir ending in a turret, and a light and well- proportioned interior. In its present form it was rebuilt, probably, during the fifteenth century, but there was a church here at m->. 1 . Photo ; Pictorial Agency. PEPYS'S CHURCH : ST. OLAVE'S, HART STREET. Thomas Wyatt. The church was pulled down, and Stow found the site used as a carpenter's yard, a tennis court, and the like, while the friar's house was converted into a glass factory, which was destroyed by fire in 1575- At the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane is the Perpendicular church of St. Olave, of stone, with a large brick tower least as early as the year 13 19, dedicated to that King of Norway, Olaf by name, who helped Ethelred against the Danes. Hartstreet. There were three other dedications to this royal saint in London — St. Olave's, Southwark, St. Olave's, Jewry, and St. Olave's, Silver Street, the third and fourth of which have ceased to be. This church, which has several times been repaired and is in LONDON TOWN admirable preservation, is exceptionally rich in monuments and carvings, some of them from All Hallows Staining, while the pulpit, attributed to Grinling Gibbons, is that of St. Benet Gracechurch. But all its other associa tions, noteworthy as some of them are, are overshadowed by St. Olave's connection with the inimitable Pepys, who worshipped here during the years he lived Where Pepys ¦ g th_ is Buried. ining Lane, MONUMENT OF MRS. HART and was buried here in l7°3 (June 4), beside his wife, who had died many years before, in 1669, and his brother, who had died in 1664. His account of his brother's funeral is one of the most character istic passages of his diary, delightful — de spite the solemnity of the occasion — in its candid analysis of his own feelings, which, as usual, were of a very mixed description. He comes to St. Olave's to choose the grave, and is struck by the readiness of the sexton to ''justle" together the bodies in the middle aisle in order to make room for the newcomer. " To see how a man's tombes are at the mercy of such a fellow ! " he reflects. There was a large funeral party at his brother's house: 120 guests had been bidden, and those who came numbered nearer 1 50. They were regaled with " six biscuits apiece, and what the)' pleased of burnt claret." Always impres sionable where women were concerned, he could not help recording his gratitude to one Mrs. Holden, " who was most kind, and did take mighty pains, not only in getting the house and everything else ready, but this day in going up and down to see the house filled and served, in order to mine and their great content, I think." Then comes the funeral service. " And so I saw my poor brother laid into the grave ; and so all broke up ; and I and my wife, and Madam Turner and her famih', to her brother's." By and by he and a boon companion adjourned to a sepa rate room, and " fell to a barrel of oysters, cake and cheese." It struck him, when he came to write it down, as " too merry for so late a sad work." But he comforts himself with the reflection that it is the way of the world to make ''nothing of the memory of a man an hour after he is dead ! " The comfort, however, does not hold out. " Indeed," he adds, " I must blame myself, for though at the sight of him, dead and dying, I had real grief for a while, while he was in my sight, yet pre sently after, and ever since, I have had very little grief indeed for him. At the beginning of 1666 we find Pepys paying his first visit to St. Olave's after his return to the City which he had left to Under date the 30th of 1 Home, finding the town PEPYS IX ST. OLAVE S, STREET. avoid the Plague. January, he writes keeping the day solemnly, it being the day of the King's murther ; and they being at church, I presently into the church. This is the first time I have been in the church since I left London for the Plague ; and it frighted me indeed to go through the church, more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the church yard where people have been buried of the Plague. I was much troubled at it, and do not think to go through it again a good while." A few months later, however (the 6th of June), Pepys is at St. Olave's again, this time enjoying himself to his heart's content. News had just arrived of Monk's victory over De Ruyter, and Pepys's ingenuous SEETHING LANE 225 vanity was immensely tickled. " To our church, it being the Common Fast-day, and it was just before sermon ; but Lord ! how all the people in the church stare upon me, to see me whisper the news of the victory over the Dutch to Sir John Minnes and my Lady Pen ! Anon I saw people stirring and whispering below, and by-and-by comes up the sexton from my Lady Ford, to tell me the news which I had brought, being now sent into the church by Sir W. Batten, in writing, and passed from pew to pew." The Sir John Minnes to whom Pepys com municated the tidings with which he was no doubt bursting was Vice-Admiral under Charles I., and after the Restoration Chief Comptroller of the Navy and Master of Trinity House. He died at the Navy Office in Seething Lane, of which we shall presently speak, and was buried in St. Olave's, where he is commemorated by a mural tablet. Pepys himself reared a monument here, in the chancel, on the north side, with a Latin inscription of his own composing, to his beautiful wife, who was the daughter of Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, a Huguenot gentleman who had come to this country as a member of the household of Queen Henrietta Maria. A beautiful monu ment it is, the sculptor of the bust A charming having- represented the lady as Monument. t> 1 J bending slightly forwards to look down upon the worshippers in the middle of the church — a most engaging pose, suggestive of the keenest interest. Of Pepys himself there was no monument until the year 1883, when the omission was quite handsomely repaired, a memorial in the form of a medallion in low relief, enclosed in a lovely alabaster shrine with pilasters and pediment, the whole de signed by the late Sir A. Blomfield, being erected by public subscription against the south wall, just where hung a small gallery for the use of the Navy Office, in which gallery the Diarist was wont to sit. It was unveiled on the 18th of March, 1884, by the late James Russell Lowell, the American Ambassador, acting as a substitute for Lord Northbrook, the then First Lord of the Admiralty. Be neath the medallion is the inscription : Samuel Pepys Born Feb. 23, 1632 Died May 26, 1703 Below are figured, in colour, his family arms. In Seething Lane Pepys was living from 1660 the year after his diary opens, until 1673, four years after its close, in Lane.'"8 a nouse adjoining the Navy Office, in which he held the post of Clerk of the Acts. In the latter year he became Secretary of the Admiralty, and he continued pepys's monument in st. olave's. to be the most important figure in the Administration of the Navy until the Revo lution (1688), when, unable to serve under those who had driven out James II., for whom he cherished a regard which no doubt had its origin in their common interest in the Navy, he retired. The Navy Office, removed in 1788, stood on the east side of Seething Lane, with the chief entrance in Crutched Friars. The lane was spared by the Fire, but Pepys's house has not survived, and the buildings which now line it are mostly corn and wine offices and warehouses of modern erection, though there are still some older houses of brick, with carved oak porches, left. In Stow's day the name appears to have been spelt Sything, and he alleges it to be a corruption of Sidon Lane. But Riley cites a document of the year 1309 in which is a reference to Synethene Lane, which he interprets as " probably " The Name WHITTINGTON S HOUSE IN HART STREET. Drawn and Engraved by J. T. Smith. THE MINORIES 227 Hart Street referring to this street, and in a document of 1 38 1 it appears as Synenden Lane. This is a step nearer to " Sidon," but the latter can hardly have been, as Stow thought, the original form. Hart Street, which continues Crutched Friars to Mark Lane, must be mentioned, because here stood, until 1801, a mansion said to be that of Richard Whittington, sketched by J. T. Smith in 1792, whose drawing is here repro duced (p. 226). An engraving of the house appeared in the Gentleman' s Magazine for July, 1796, and, according to Wheatley and Cunningham (" London Past and Present "), the correspondent who sent the drawing asserted that in old leases the house was expressly declared to be Whittington's Palace. Of Whittington's connection with the house, however, there is no direct evidence, and as he ceitainly lived on College Hill the legend is not antecedently probable, though it is possible, of course, that at one time he dwelt here in Hart Street. The last occupant of the house was a carpenter. Let us hope that he had the grace to appreciate the carved oak of which the whole front of the house was composed. The Minories, leading from Aldgate to Tower Hill, is so called from the Minoresses, or Nuns of the Order of St. Clare, who in 1293 were established in a house here, just without the City wall, by Edmund Earl of Lancaster, brother of Edward I. The pro perty was surrendered to Henry VIII. M^nori *n IS39' anc* tne house was replaced by buildings for the manufacture and storage of arms and armour, and when Strype wrote (1720) the Minories was still the haunt of gunsmiths. The church of the abbey became a parish church — that of the Holy Trinity, Minories — for those who dwelt in the precincts, and it survived until 1706, when it was rebuilt. Its successor remained in use until 1898, when it was closed, and soon afterwards taken down, the benefice being united with that of St. Botoiph's, Aldgate. In 1849 was discovered in its vaults a head which was believed to be that of the Duke of Suffolk (father of Lady Jane Grey), executed in the Tower hard by. The head, says Daniell, the author of " London City Churches," was preserved from decay by having been cast into sawdust ; " the skin has very much the appearance of leather, and the features are perfectly clear and distinct. At its first discovery the teeth were entire, but since then several have dropped or been pulled out. The hair of the top of the head has fallen off, but some of a reddish colour remains about the chin." The gruesome relic is now kept under lock and key in the vestry of St. Botoiph's, Aldgate, and those whose taste runs that way may see it on application to the vicar. iT.'~ ^wfir^pr 8iim»K,-|i!Bl JI'--4! yi<%«g;-" < laa aa iHfriijT ~rL - - ni^—in ¦'¦ m ij iliw THE OLD NAVY OFFICE, SEETHING LANE. CHAPTER XXI THE TOWER Plan of the Tower — Beginnings and Growth — Lions' Gate — Bell Tower: Bishop Fisher's Prison-house — The King's House — Lord Nithsdale's Escape — Traitor's Gate — Bloody Tower— Wakefield Tower — The Regalia — Colonel Blood's Attempt upon the Crown Jewels — The Keep — Little Ease — The Murdered Princes — St. John's Chapel — The Council Chamber — Arrest of Lord Hastings— The Armoury — Implements of Torture — Beauchamp Tower and its Mural Inscriptions — Anne Boleyn's Execution — St. Peter-in-Chains — Tower Hill and its Great Memories — Officials of the Tower — The Locking-up Ceremony— Recent Additions THE exact relation of the Tower of London to the City is a question not easy of determination. In Coke's " In stitutes " it is stated that the City wall ex tended through the Tower, and that so much of the Tower precinct as lay towards the west of the wall was in the Tower ward, while that part to the east of the wall was situated in the county of Middlesex; but it does not appear that the civic authorities have ever exercised any jurisdiction within the Tower except when the Constable of the Tower happened to be also Sheriff of London, as in the case of Geoffrey de Mandeville in the 1 2th century, or on other extraordinary occa sions. As, however, the association of the Tower with the City has from the beginning been of the most intimate kind, we shall give some account of it here, before making our way along the river-side to London Bridge. In plan the Tower is an irregular pentagon, about twelve acres in extent, the whole space within the garden rails, however Plan, measuring about eighteen acres. It is surrounded by a double line of circumvallation, enclosing the Outer and the Inner Ward, the former flanked by six towers on the river face and by three semi circular bastions on the north face, the latter by thirteen towers, and the whole enjoyed the further protection of a deep and broad moat, until in 1843 this was partly filled up and gravelled as a campus martius for the garrison. The Tower was designed primarily as a fortress, and this purpose it still serves. But from the time of the Con queror onwards until James I.'s reign it was also a royal residence. After the feudal era, however, our kings were glad to live in more commodious and luxurious palaces. James I. only occupied the Tower as a preliminary to the opening of his first Parlia ment, and Charles II. was the last sovereign to sleep here on the night before the corona tion. At first the Keep, more familiar to us as the White Tower, was the royal residence, but afterwards a separate Palace was built, in the Inner Ward, to the south of the Keep. This was destroyed during the Protectorate, and a buttress of an old archway adjoining the Salt Tower is the only vestige of it now to be seen. Yet a third purpose has the Tower served in its long history — that of a State prison, and it is this office that gives it Prison* 'ts umque place of interest among our national buildings. The first to be confined within its walls was Randulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham in the reign of Henry I., and though after the Revolution of 1688 its involuntary inmates became fewer and fewer, it was not until the reign of George III. that it ceased to be used as a prison, the Cato Street conspirators being the last offenders against the State to be held in durance within its walls. The Tower traces its origin to William the Conqueror, who, says G. T. Clark, the author of " Mediaeval Military Architecture," Origins, immediately after his coronation, directed the actual commencement of the works, which at first consisted of a deep ditch and a strong palisade ; the Keep apparently was not begun until twelve or fourteen years later. But there were fortifications here long before the 228 TRACES OF THE ROMANS 229 Conqueror determined to build a great castle to overawe the citizens of London. Here stood the old Roman wall, a section of which, with a couple of bastions, William had to de molish, as well as to make some encroach ment upon the City boundaries, in order to make room for his fortress. It is probable, indeed, that at this point the Romans strength ened the wall with a fort, for in 1898-99, in the course of excavations made close to the south-west angle of the Keep, a fragment of such a structure, built of the same materials as the ancient walls, was laid bare. Long be fore this, in 1777, was found a double wedge of silver — now in the British Museum — inscribed " Ex offi[cina] Honorii," together with Roman coins, and this discovery suggests that in their fort on this site — the Arx Palatini it has been called — the Romans had a mint. Shakespeare, therefore, was probably substantially right when, in Richard III. (Act iii., sc. 1) he makes Buckingham tell Prince Edward that Julius Caesar "did begin that place, which since succeeding ages have re-edified," though Julius Caesar himself may have had nothing to do with it. It was to Gundulf, a monk of Bee, who in 1077 became Bishop of Rochester, that the Conqueror entrusted the task of building the castle, and to him is to be oT'the1 Ketp' ascribed the great Keep, as well as the wall of the Inner Ward. In the reign of Richard I. the moat was excavated and barbicans were built to strengthen the walls. But it was in the reign of Henry III. that the work of com pleting the Tower was most vigorously prosecuted, and among the additions now made was that of St. Thomas's Tower, with the Traitor's Gate, the chief of the water gates, that commanding the passage between the river and the moat. Connected with the building of this tower, which was dedicated to the martyr of Canterbury, an incident occurred which soon became invested with a supernatural significance. On the night of St. George's Day, 1240, when the tower was in course of construction, the gateway and the PLAN OF THE TOWER. 230 LONDON TOWN adjacent wall suddenly collapsed. The work was done over again, but only to meet the same fate on the same night of the following year, and Matthew Paris tells us that on this second occasion, just before the collapse, a priest saw a robed archbishop, cross in hand, gazing sternly upon the Apparition. walls- The archbishop asked, " Why build ye here ? " at the same time striking the wall, and at the blow wall and gateway came tumbling down. The archbishop was attended by a clerk, and of him the priest inquired who the prelate was. " St. Thomas the Martyr," was the answer, " by birth a citizen, who resents these works, undertaken in scorn, and to the prejudice of citizens, and destroys them beyond the power of restoration." If the story was told to the King, he regarded it, no doubt, as simply a picturesque expression of the disapproval with which the strengthening and extension of the Tower were regarded by the citizens. At any rate the work was done once again, and this time no St. Thomas appeared to bring it to nought. Perhaps his shade was appeased by the dedication to him of the new tower, when at last it was finished. About the same time the Keep was newly white washed, and it is believed to have been on this occasion that it was dubbed the White Tower, the name by which it has ever since been popularly known. By the end of Henry III.'s reign the vast work, with its walls of tremendous thickness, was virtually finished, but it was reserved for Edward III. to build the Beauchamp Tower, and, as is believed, to add to the defences of the Inner Ward the Salt Tower, and probably the Bowyer Tower. Having thus briefly sketched the growth of the Tower, let us speak of its most salient features, taking them virtually in the order in which they are seen by visitors. The public entrance is at the south-west corner, known as the Lions' Gate, from the Lions' Gate, royal menagerie which was kept here from the reign of Henry I. until in 1834 the few wild beasts of which it then consisted were transferred to the Zoological Gardens. The site of the menagerie is marked by the refreshment- room near the ticket office. Access to the Outer Ward is won through a gateway be neath the Byward Tower. Passing through this we have on our left the Bell Tower, named from an alarm bell which used to hang in a little turret above the Bell Tower, roof, and now does duty in the chapel of St. Peter - ad - Vincula. It is in this tower that the Princess Elizabeth is believed to have been kept when she fell under her sister's displeasure, and to this day the parapet walk is called " Queen Elizabeth's Walk." Whether or not Elizabeth was interned here, there is no doubt that this was the prison-house of one of the chief of her father's victims, the aged Bishop Bishop Fisher, who in the winter of 1 5 34-3 5 Prison.8 wrote to Thomas Cromwell a piteous house. letter detailing his sufferings from cold and hunger and insufficient clothing, and begging him to intercede with the King on his behalf. The news of his sad plight was carried to Pope Clement, who did him the ill service of making him a cardinal and sending him the red hat. At this Henry was furious, and sent to Fisher to examine him about it ; " but," says Bishop Burnet, " he protested that he had used no endeavour to procure it, and valued it so little that if the hat were lying at his feet he would not take it up. It never came nearer to him than Picardy," adds Burnet, " yet did this pre cipitate his ruin." For the tyrant swore that though the Pope might send his captive a red hat, he should have no head to put it on, and such an oath he found it mighty easy to keep. A few steps further and we come to the King's House — why so called no one knows — a many-gabled building which Houst1"8'9 with its flagged court fringed by sycamores, looks, as Lord Ronald Gower observes* " a place of ancient peace, and seems rather to be a portion of some venerable college than of a mediaeval fortress." For all that, it has no lack of gruesome associations. For here is the Council Chamber in which (1606) Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were examined by Cecil and the Council of State and condemned, though the torture was applied not here but in the dungeons below the White Tower. Here, too, the Duke of Monmouth spent the last miserable days of his wasted life. Here, again, is preserved * "The Tower of London." By Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, F.S.A. (George Bell & Son.) 232 LONDON TOWN one of the most interesting of the Tower's relics, the axe which was carried before State prisoners by the Gentleman Warder to and from their trial, its edge turned away from the prisoner until he had been sentenced, when it was turned towards him. It is now, says Lord Ronald Gower, kept in the study of the Lieutenant of the Tower, and is only used on such occasions as the installation of a new Constable. But the King's House is still more memor able from its association with Lord Nithsdale, one of the rebels of 171 5, and with his devoted and daring wife. When George I. had made it clear that her hopes of a reprieve were vain she came up from Dumfriesshire, Lord hired lodgings at a house in Drury Nithsdale's T i 1* i i ¦ Escape. Lane, and elaborated an ingenious scheme for snatching her husband from the gallows, in which she prevailed upon a Mrs. Mills and a Mrs. Morgan to help her. On the 24th of February, 1 7 16, the three women started for the Tower in a coach, hardly ven turing, one would think, to hope for a success ful issue to their audacious plan. But their resourcefulness was rewarded with success, and not only did they get the prisoner without the walls, but all three women also succeeded in getting clear away. For three days the husband and wife lived in a garret, and then Lord Nithsdale escaped across the Channel in the livery of the Venetian Ambassador. When the news of his prisoner's escape reached the King's ears he flew into a passion, and a warrant was instantly issued for Lady Niths dale's arrest. But she evaded arrest, and be fore leaving these shores posted to Scotland and possessed herself of the family papers. On hearing of this second feat, the King, half admiringly, perhaps, exclaimed that she was a woman who did exactly as she pleased, and that she had given him more trouble than any other woman in the whole of Europe. As we proceed, we have on our right St. Thomas's Tower, which was rebuilt in the reign of Henry VIII., and renovated in 1866. Beneath this tower is the Traitor's Gate, through which State prisoners entered the Tower when they came hither by water. This way came Anne Boleyn on Gate!"'8 the 2nd of May. 1536. on,y three short years after her triumphant progress to the Tower the day before her coronation. As soon as she landed she went down upon her knees in prayer, and, having protested her innocence, asked the Constable where she was to be lodged, and was told that she would have the same room as she occupied at the time of her coronation. " It is too good for me," she mournfully said. Then, says Knighton, she began "weeping a great pace, and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing, and so she did several times afterwards." To the Traitor's Gate also came Anne Boleyn's daughter, on the 18th of March, 1554, under suspicion of being privy to VVyatt's conspiracy. The Princess was averse from entering the Tower by this ill-omened gateway, and as she set her foot on the steps she exclaimed, " Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed on these stairs, and before Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friends but Thee." Then, in the heavy rain, she sat herself down on a stone, and the Lieutenant pressing her to pass in, she exclaimed, " Better sit here than in a worse place, for God knoweth whither you will bring me." Though nothing was proved against Elizabeth, she was kept in the Tower in rigorous confinement for two months, being released on the 19th of May and taken to Woodstock. When four years later Elizabeth, in fulfil ment of custom, spent the night before her coronation within the Tower, her mind could not but be impressed with the contrast between then and now. As she emerged from the gateway to make her triumphant progress to Westminster she raised her shining eyes to heaven and exclaimed, " O Lord, Almighty and Everlasting God, I give Thee most humble thanks, that Thou hast been so merciful unto me as to spare me to behold this joyful day ; and I acknowledge that Thou hast done wonderfully and mercifully with me. As thou didst with Thy servant Daniel the prophet, whom Thou deliveredst out of the den from the cruelty of the raging lions, even so was I overwhelmed, and only by Thee delivered. To Thee, therefore, only, be thanks, honour, and praise for ever." Nor could Elizabeth have failed to see the strangely complete contrast between her case and her mother's. Anne Boleyn came to the Tower in triumph and returned to it to endure a shameful death ; her daughter came to it a prisoner and returned to it in triumph. BLOODY TOWER 233 In Hare's " Walks in London " it is stated that in the restorations carried out in modern times the old stone steps were torn up, together with the stone upon which the Princess rested. The gates themselves, ac cording to the same authority, though they were strong and durable as ever, were sold to a Whitechapel tradesman for 15 s. ! Barnum, he adds, gave the man £50 for them and added them to his exhibition. Opposite Traitor's Gate, and forming one of the defences of the Inner Ward, is the Bloody Tower, which has undergone a restoration that ended in 1900. Until the reign of Elizabeth it was styled the Garden Tower, from a garden on its western side belonging to the House, or, as it was then called, the Constable's Lodging. It was in this garden, now partly built upon and partly thrown into the parade ground, that Sir Walter Raleigh found solace, during his in carceration in the Bloody Tower, by tending his flowers, or distilling essences in a little garden house which he had built with his own hands. According to tradition, the Bloody Tower was the scene of the murder of the two young Princes, the sons of Edward IV., by the agents of their uncle, Richard Crook- BloodyTower. King's back, and to that tradition it is sometimes said to owe its present evil name, though the epithet is also ascribed to other dark deeds which its walls have witnessed. Here were lodged Dudley, Duke of Northumber land, father-in-law of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, Archbishop Cranmer, and Sir Thomas Overbury, the murder of whom, at the instigation of the wicked Countess of Somerset, differs from many other crimes per petrated in the Tower only in the sense that it had no legal sanction. It was from the window over the gateway on the north side that Archbishop Laud, himself a prisoner, gave Strafford his blessing as the latter was led to his doom. A later tenant of the Bloody Tower was the infamous Jeffreys, who here died of drink and fright. Here, again, in 1663, Lucy Hutchinson, who had been born in the Tower, shared her hus band's imprisonment, the two, as she writes, occupying " a room where it was said the two young Princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered ; the room that led to it was a great dark room with no window, where the portcullis to one of the inner gates was drawn up and let down." This portcullis, like that of the Byward Tower, is still in working order. The chamber in which the THE TOWER MENAGERIE. From u Print in the Gardner Collection. 16 234 LONDON TOWN little Princes are believed to have been smothered has been divided into two, " but," says Lord Ronald Gower, " there is nothing to show that the walls and the ceiling are not the same as those which were there when the murderers entered, having presumably passed through a window at the end of a passage the detention of Yorkist prisoners after the battle of Wakefield, in 1460, but known also as the Record Tower, because, Wakefield until 1 856, it was one of the places Tower. , J ' , , ,. where were stored the public records, now preserved in the Record Office in Fetter and Chancery Lanes. Another Photo : Pictorial .Ivyncy. traitor's gate, looking RIVKKWARDS. which opens out on to the terraced wall over looking the river." In these days, the same writer records, the only prisoner the Bloody Tower can claim is a small bird, whose cage hangs out from a window. So the times change ! Next to the Bloody Tower, and indeed forming part of the same block, is the Wake field Tower, perhaps named from its use for name by which this tower has been known is that of the Hall Tower, from its nearness to the Great Hall of the royal palace, in which hall the Court of Common Pleas long sat. The most memorable association of the Wakefield Tower is with Henry VI., who was lodged here, and here died, or was put to death (May 22, 147 1). To the present generation the Wakefield Tower is familiar THE REGALIA 23:- as the place where are stored the objects form ing the regalia of England. The Crown jewels have been kept in the jewels. Tower of London almost without intermission since 1253, though not in their present quarters. In the reign of Charles I. they were stored in a small building at the south side of the White Tower ; then, for greater safety, they were transferred to a strong chamber in the Martin Tower, which thus came to be called the Jewel Tower. This tower was much damaged by fire in 1841, and the present room in the Wakefield Tower was then fitted up for their reception. After the execution of Charles I., when it was supposed that it would never again be wanted, the ancient regcdia of England was dispersed or broken up. At the Restoration the task of providing the new regalia was entrusted to Vyner, the City banker and goldsmith, whose charges are believed to have amounted to £31,978. It is doubtful whether he ever received more than £5,500. In designing the present regalia, Vyner took the greatest care to follow the old patterns as far as they could be remembered, and though he was not able to complete his task by the 7th of February, 1661, the date first fixed for the coronation, some eight months after Charles's entry into his capital, he had everything ready by the festival of St. George, the 23rd of April, when the corona tion actually took place. Of the old regalia, broken up and dis persed, as we have seen, shortly after Charles I.'s execution, one of the few rem nants is the Anointing Spoon, of silver, heavily gilt. Its great antiquity is indis putable, and a leading authority Spoon! * on tne subject, Henry Shaw, con cludes from its ornamentation that it was made in the twelfth century, and that it has most probably been used in the coronation of our monarchs since that age. The Ampulla, also, the vessel that con tains the consecration oil used in the anoint ing at coronations, is believed to be in part at least very ancient, and it was probably restored and re-chiselled in 1661. Of gold, it takes the form of a bird — which may be intended for a pelican, an eagle, or a dove — with outstretched wings ; and the head is unscrewed to receive the oil, Ampulla. which flows into the Anointing Spoon through the beak. Of the crowns in the regalia the most interesting is that known as St. Edward's, which was made by Vyner for Charles II., to take the piace of the crown with which it was believed all our monarchs had **¦ ,. been crowned from Edward the Edward s Crown. Confessor onward, and which was made away with by Parliament in 1 66 1. The present St. Edward's Crown has since the time of Charles II. been used as a kind of official pattern of the State Crown, or "Crown Imperial," though on various occasions it has been slightly altered. It is believed to be as close an imitation as was possible of the old Crown of St. Edward. This crown it is which the late Archbishop of Canterbury placed on King Edward's head in the ceremony of the crowning at Westminster Abbey, and which his Majesty wore until the coronation was completed, when, having retired to St. Edward's Chapel, he replaced it by the Imperial or State Crown. But it is the latter, the State Crown, which by its dazzling splendour and its position at the summit of the stand upon which the regalia is arranged, first catches and holds the eye. The present State Crown was made Crowf**6 hY AIessrs- Rundell and Bridge for Queen Victoria, and was some what enlarged and re-embellished for King Edward, who wore it on his way to and from the Abbey to be crowned. Three of its stones, the great ruby and two large sapphires, all of them from the State Crown made for Charles II. (not to be confused with St. Edward's Crown), are at least as ancient as the Anointing Spoon, and may be of much greater antiquity. The ruby, which has been valued at £110,000, was given to his brother- in-law, the Black Prince, by Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, and was set in the helmet worn by Henry V. at Agincourt. When the State Crown is required for any such ceremonial as the opening of Parliament, the Lord Chamberlain of the Household comes to the Tower, and in his presence, and that of the Keeper of the Jewels and other officials, the case is opened and the Crown placed in a velvet-lined box, which is carried by a sworn Waterman, in plain clothes, to the Lord Chamberlain's carriage. The ceremony over, no time is lost in returning it to the safe 236 LONDON TOWN custody of the Jewel House. When King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra were crowned the crowns and such other objects of the regalia as were required for the ceremony were taken back to the Wakefield Tower the next day. Other crowns to be seen here are the Queen Consort's Crown, made for Mary of Modena, Consort of James II., the Queen's Diadem, made for Queen Mary II., and the Prince of Wales's Crown ; and the other objects that make up the regalia include St. Edward's Staff, carried before the monarch in the Coronation ceremony ; the Royal Sceptre, which the Archbishop of Canterbury places in the Sovereign's right hand ; the Sceptre of the Dove, placed in his left hand ; the Swords of Mercy (yclept Curtana) and Justice ; and the Coronation Bracelets and Spurs. There is also the gold and silver-gilt table plate vvhich in earlier days was used at the Coronation banquets, with the dish used at the annual distribution of the royal alms on Maundy Thursday.* It was not the Wakefield Tower, but the earlier Jewel House in the Martin Tower, that was the scene of the infamous Colonel Blood's attempt to carry off the regalia on the 9th of May, 1673. Blood, who is said to have been the son of a blacksmith, had contrived to in gratiate himself with Talbot Edwards, the Keeper of the Jewels, and going to the Tower on the day named with three confederates, all of them armed, on a sudden he, or one of them, threw a cloak over the old man's head and gagged him. They then told him that they would take the crown, the orb, and the sceptre, and would not harm him if he sub mitted quietly. But Edwards made a brave resistance, until they knocked him on the head with a mallet and stabbed him. Having as they supposed made an end of him, they helped themselves, Blood taking the State Crown under his cloak, while one of his confederates stuffed the orb into his pocket, and another began to file the sceptre in two. But now, most unexpectedly, help appeared in the person of the Keeper's son, a soldier from the Low Countries. Running upstairs, eager to see his parents, he broke in upon the * For more detailed iniormation as to the regalia, see ' ' The Coronation Book of Edward VII." By W. J. Loftie, B.A., F.S.A. ColonelBlood. robbers, who, leaving the sceptre, fled with the crown and the orb. The plucky old Keeper, managing to get the gag out of his mouth, was able to explain the situation, and young Edwards and another started off in pursuit. A warder tried to stop the fugitives and was shot for his pains ; the sentinel at the drawbridge was less alert and suffered them to pass, but Blood was overtaken and seized with the crown in his grasp, and though the others contrived to get away on horseback, one with the orb in his possession, they were all captured and the globe was recovered. The sequel was still more extraordinary than the incident itself. Neither of the four ruffians was ever brought to book, Aes^r*nge and Blood himself was presently pensioned. The reason for this leniency from a sovereign who was little inclined to mercy where offences against himself were in question is not known, but the most diverse conjectures have been made — among them that Charles, in dire need of money, had himself instigated the theft as a means of raising funds ! He would be a bold man who should denounce this theory as incredible. As for Edwards, to whose loyalty and courage it was owing that the precious scheme missed fire, he was promised a reward of £200, but after long waiting he had to sell the order at half price for ready money. A merry monarch, indeed ! And now we come to Gundulfs mighty Keep. Standing foursquare* in the middle of the Inner Ward, it grimly dominates the whole fabric, and though it was modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, who inserted Italian windows in its walls, it still gives to the Tower a look not merely of strength but also of loftiness and dignity. In a paper by G. T. Clark read at the Congress of the Archaeo logical Institute in 1866, and printed in the volume entitled " Old London," the immense defensive strength of the Keep in the days before Gundulfs plan had been modified is well brought out. " The main door . . opened upon a very gloomy first floor from which a turnpike stair led downwards to the base ment, and upwards to the second floor. To this the way from the stairs was along a bent and narrow mural passage and from the inner * The keep is not a perfect square, the western side measuring 107 feet, and the south side 118 feet. The Keep. COLONEL BLOOD'S ATTEMPT UPON THE CROWN JEWELS IN THE TOWER. THE WHITE TOWER 7-37 room by two staircases to the upper storey and battlements. Having attained the upper storey, the entrance to the State rooms was again only by mural galleries, admitting but one person abreast. For purely military purposes all this was advantageous. Sup posing a score of resolute men to garrison the Keep, they could hold the main door and room so large, and with so many lateral openings, must have been serious draw backs." The height of the Keep is 90 feet, and its walls are of immense thickness, which varies from twelve to fifteen feet. The basement is a little below the level of the ground on the north side, and is just flush with it on the Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE REGALIA. postern against an army ; or supposing them, by surprise, to have lost the lower stories, they could still defend the passage to the second floor without fear of being outflanked ; while above there was easy access from the State floor to the battlements, whence the enemy could be assailed to most advantage." But the Keep was intended for occasional residence and the holding of Councils, and not merely as a fortress, and Clark goes on to point out " that for purposes of state the altitude of the Council-chamber, its excessive coldness, the difficulty of access, the incon venience of the frequent posts, probably necessary for the support of its roof, and finally the entire absence of privacy in a south. The great dungeon which it con tains, 47 feet long by 15 feet broad, was formerly in total darkness, and little more air than light could have found entrance to it. Opening into it is the cell known popularly as Little Ease, where, according to tradition, Guy Fawkes spent his last fifty days on earth. Very miserable days must they have been, if the tradition is correct, for the cell is little more than a hole in the wall shut in by a door, and of such dimensions that a man could neither lie down in it nor stand upright. A cross wall divides the Keep into an eastern and a western portion. Above the basement is the chapel of St. John, with the Little Ease. 238 LONDON TOWN Banqueting Hall, in these days filled with stands of arms ; and on the floor above this is the Council Chamber, which with the adjoining room is occupied with a collection of old armour. Access to the various floors is gained by a Norman staircase in the south wall, through a doorway cut in Tudor times. Just inside this doorway, in July, 1674, were discovered the remains of children who were believed to death, which was very shortly after, no one knew it." It would not be safe to say more than that the remains discovered in 1674 may very well have been those of the young princes, but one would like to believe that the marble urn, designed by Sir Chris topher Wren for their reception, and deposited in Henry VI I.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, really enshrines the hapless children's bones. The chapel of St. John, as we have seen, is SPOT WHERE THE REMAINS OF THE PRINCES WERE FOUND. ThePrinces be the murdered princes, the sons of Ed ward IV. The record of the event sets out that as workmen " were taking away the stairs going from the King's Lodging into the chapel of the White Tower, [they] discovered, about 10 feet deep in the ground, some small human bones in a wooden chest ; which bones being nicely examined are found to have been those of two boys, the one of thirteen, the other of eleven years of age." Sir Thomas More had written that their uncle was not pleased that, being a king's sons, the children had been buried where they died, and " would have them buried in a better place. Where upon," he adds, " a priest of Sir Robert Brakenbury's took them up and buried them in such secrecy as by the occasion of his on the second floor, but it rises through the upper floor to the roof of the Keep. Of the most massive construction, and John- effective though simple in plan, it Chapel. is one of the most complete and most impressive specimens of Nor man architecture to be seen in this country. It is plain to baldness, the arches being relieved neither by moulding nor by order, and the walls being of coarse masonry, while the barrel vaulting of the roof and the groining of the aisles are rougher than the walls. When the Tower was a royal residence, St. John's was the chapel of the Court, the royal party generally, it is believed, occupy ing the triforium, which they entered from the Council Chamber on the floor above. After the Civil Wars the chapel became a mere A STATE CRIME 239 receptacle for papers and lumber, and in due course was whitewashed and plastered. But happily it was impossible for neglect and misuse to do permanent mischief to a build ing of such solid construction, and now that it has been cleaned and restored and fitted up his destruction. " Surely, my lord," said Hastings, " they are worthy to be punished as traitors, whosoever they be." Then the Duke, denouncing his brother's widow, the Queen, and Jane Shore as sorceresses, charged them with having by their unholy acts BLOCK, AXE, AND SCAVENGER'S DAUGHTER. for service there is nothing in its aspect to call to mind the debasement which long it suffered. The Council Chamber was the scene of Richard I I.'s abdication and of a much more dramatic event— the arrest, by the next Richard, of Lord Hastings, brother-in-law of the king- making Earl of Warwick, and Lord Cham berlain of the Household. The story has been told by Sir Thomas More. On the 13th of June, 1483, Richard, his mind full of schemes for getting rid of those Arrest wno were not likely to become his of Lord Hastings, tools, re-entered the Council Cham ber after a short absence, and sat himself down, and after gnawing at his lips for a while in moody silence, asked what they were worthy of who compassed and imagined wasted his body, and, turning up the doublet sleeve of his left arm to the elbow, showed a small withered arm. Everyone knew that the arm had always been so, and all perceived that the Duke was bent upon picking a quarrel with someone. At last Hastings re marked, " Certainly, my lord, if they have so heinously done, they be worthy of heinous punishment." " What ! " rejoined Gloucester, " thou servest me, I ween, with ifs and ans ; I tell thee they have done so, and that I will make good on thy body, traitor." At this he smote the table with his hand, and a cry of " Treason " being raised in the adjoining chamber he went to the door and in rushed a body of armed men, who seized Hastings. " I arrest thee, traitor ! " exclaimed the Protector. " Me, my lord ? " said Hastings, 240 LONDON TOWN thunderstruck. ' Gloucester, " and I for, by St. Paul, I seen thy head off." Lord Chamberlain Yea, thee ! " shouted would have thee shrive ; will not dine till I have Immediately the hapless was hurried down and taken outside, and there his head was smitten away, and most of this was never returned, but if in these days the collection is not what it was before the reign of Charles I., it has, at any rate, thanks to the learning and industry of Sir Samuel Meyrick, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. J. R. Planche, and more recently of Lord Dillon, Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE WHITE TOWER. off upon a log of timber, Richard grimly looking on. Happily the annals of this country, stained as they are with noble blood) are disgraced with few acts of tyranny so flagitious as this, which set at defiance every maxim of law as well as of justice. Even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Tower was famous for its collection of arms and armour, which moved to won der Paul Hentzner, the German traveller. Eight or nine men, em ployed by the year, he records, were scarce sufficient to keep all the arms bright. In the Civil War much of the armour was carried TheArmoury. who has entirely re-arranged and re-catalogued it, been so disposed as to have an interest and an informative value such as it can never before have possessed. In the Ban queting Hall are kept the more modern weapons, and the Oriental armour ; on the floor above, the earlier weapons, and the suits of foot and horse armour. But to most of those who visit the Tower none of the objects preserved in the upper floors of the Keep are so interesting as the implements of death and torture. " Here,'- writes Lord Ronald Gower, " are the thumb-screws, the bilboes, and the Scavenger's ABHORRED RELICS 241 Daughter — in the last the victim was almost bent double in its iron embrace. Here, too, is an iron collar, very massive, Abhorred -2.1 r ¦ ., ... Relics. Wltn a row °* lron spikes within its ring, which, when fastened round the sufferer's neck, must speedily have caused death. This horrible instrument is axe. The latter was kept here so far back as the year 1687, so it is uncertain whether it is the axe that was used for the execution of the Duke of Monmouth and William Lord Russell, but it is probable that it was the one used for beheading the rebel lords after the two Jacobite risings in Scotland, and it was un- Photo • Pictorial Agency. ST. JOHN S CHAPEL. incorrectly stated to have been taken in one of the ships of the Armada, but Lord Dillon vouches for its having been used in the Tower long before the Spanish ships were seen in the Channel. Here, too, is a small model of the rack, the most general form of torture employed in the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when even women were cruelly torn almost limb from limb by its cords and pulleys. This toy rack does not give so vivid an impression of the torture as does a small woodcut from Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs.' Here is also the block, with the doubtedly used for decapitating Lord Lovat in 1747." Lord Ronald Gower adds, with regard to the block, that it appears to have been the custom for a new one to be made for each State execution, and that, although there is more than one mark made by the axe on the top of this block, it does not follow that it was used for more than one execution. Next in interest to the White Tower, in spite of the drastic renovation its exterior suffered some half-century ago, is the Beau- champ Tower, in the middle of the eastern curtain wall of the Inner Ward. Named 242 LONDON TOWN after Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who was held in durance here in 1397, prior to his banishment to the Isle of Man, it has pro bably had a greater number of T*ew1s and abutting upon Great Tower Street — the church of Allhallows' Barking, the second name denoting that the vicarage belonged to that convent at Barking, in Essex, a few miles down the river, which is said to have been founded by the great Bishop Erkenwald at the end of the seventh century (p. 27). Richard I. added to Allhallows' a chapel of St. Mary, which was enlarged by Edward I. and rebuilt by the pious Richard III., who founded in connexion with it a college for priests. Both chapel and college were pulled down in 1 548, and the site of them was appropriated to mundane purposes. All hallows' escaped the Fire, but only very narrowly, as Pepys narrates in his Diary (September 5th, 1666) : — " About two in the morning my wife calls me up and tells me of new cryes of fires, it being come to Barking church, which is at the bottom of our lane [Seething Lane] . But going to the fire I find by the blowing up of houses, and the great help given by the workmen out of the King's yards, sent up by Sir W. Penn, there is a good stop given to it . . . ; it having only burned the dyall of Barking church, and part of the porch, and was then quenched. I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw." The " steeple " of which the Diarist speaks was the present tower, which at that time was a new structure, the old one A Gunpowder havjn„ had to be taken down in Explosion. 0 1659, in consequence of damage done to it by an explosion of twenty-seven barrels of gunpowder at a ship-chandler's shop close by, in 1649 (January 4th). An extraordinary freak of this explosion is described by a contemporary, one Mr. Ley- born. " The next morning," he says, " there was found upon the upper leads of Barking Church a young child lying in a cradle, as newly laid in bed, neither the child nor the cradle having the least sign of any fire or other hurt." In an earlier age the incident would have been regarded as a miracle. " It was never known," Leyborn adds, " whose child it was, so that one of the parish kept it for a memorial ; for in the year 1666 I saw the child, grown to be then a proper maiden, and came to the man that had kept her all that time, where he was drinking at a tavern with some other company then present, and he told us she was the child that was so found in the cradle." The explosion destroyed some fifty or sixty houses, besides ruining the tower of Allhallows'. " The number of persons destroyed by this blow," says Ley- born, " could never be known, for the next house but one was the Rose Tavern, a house never at that time of night but full of com pany ; and that day the parish dinner was in that house. And in three or four days after digging, they continually found heads, arms, legs, and half bodies, miserably torn and scorched, besides many whole bodies, not so much as their clothes singed. ... In the dig ging . . they found the mistress of the house of the Rose Tavern, sitting in her bar, and one of the drawers standing by the bar's side with a pot in his hand, only stifled with dust and smoke ; their bodies being preserved whole by means of great timbers falling cross one upon another." Altogether a very singular as well as tragic explosion. GREAT TOWER STREET 251 We must not leave the church of All hallows, which has recently undergone a careful restoration, without noting Associations that it was the scene of the wltn America. baptism (October 23rd, 1644) of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, as the register records, and that here John Quincy Adams, afterwards President of the United States, was married. The entry in the marriage register runs Peterthe Great. ledge of Court secrets. Of Peter the Great's connexion with the street we are reminded by the public-house which still bears the name of the " Czar's Head," though it has been re built since the time when the " royal savage," after his day's labours in the dockyards to acquire the art of shipbuilding, would repair to it and refresh himself with copious draughts of ale and brandv. The landlord had Photo : Pictorial Agency. TRINITY HOUSE. thus : " John Quincy Adams, Esq., of Boston, in North America, and Louisa Catherine Johnson, spinster, of this parish, by licence." Adams, whose father was at this time President of the United States, was on his way to assume a diplomatic appointment at Berlin.* The street which runs beside Allhallows' Church, Great Tower Street, has associations with the dissolute Earl of £rea* c. , Rochester and with Peter the Tower Street. Great. The former, when in disgrace at Court, and obliged, as Bishop Burnet says, " to keep out of the way," took lodgings next door to the '' Black Swan " in this street, and, disguising himself as an Italian quack, surprised his patients with his know- * London Argus, May 13, 1905. the Czar's head painted and put up for a sign, and here it remained until 1808, when it came into the possession of one Waxel, who painted a new one in exchange for it. This, too, has now disappeared, and only the title of the house remains. In Harp Lane, running out of Great Tower Street on the south, is the Hall of the Bakers' Company, which was rebuilt after a fire in 17 15, and renovated about the year 1825 by James Elmes, Sir Christopher Wren's biographer. The building which perished in 171 5 was an ciently the dwelling of John Chicheley, Chamberlain of London, and a relative of the Archbishop of Canterbury of this name. The Bakers' Company was incorporated in 1509, in the first year of the reign of Bakers'Hall. !52 LONDON TOWN Henry VIII., and in a later charter granted by James II. (1686) it was invested with the right to test the weight and quality of bread sold within the City and for twelve miles around. These regulations remained in force until 1822, when they were cancelled by Act of Parliament. Running south from Little Tower Street to Lower Thames Street is St. Dunstan's Hill, in which stands the church of St. Dunstan's-in- the-East, so called by way of distinction from St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, in Fleet Street. It is rather curious that both churches should be remarkable for their uncommon Gothic Photo ¦ Pictorial Agency ALLHALLOWS BARKING. Water Lane, another turning out of Great Tower Street on the south, was once called Sporier or Spurrier Lane, but bore Water its present name in Stow's day. Here stood the earlier Trinity House (p. 250), rebuilt for the second time after fire in 17 18, the site now indicated by a group of offices which bears the name of Old Trinity House. In Little Tower Street, which prolongs Great Tower Street westwards to Eastcheap, Thomson, the poet of " The The Seasons," composed his " Summer," Seasons. ' " ' published in 1727. In a letter to Aaron Hill, dated May 24th, 1726, he says, " I go on Saturday next to reside at Mr. Watt's academy, in Little Tower Street, in quality of tutor to a young gentleman there." steeples. That of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East is the work of Wren, and is built in imita tion of the steeple of St. fn:theU.Easat?'S" Nicholas', Newcastle upon - Tyne, now the cathedral church of that city. The tower, in four stages, has at each angle a tall pinnacle, and from behind these spring four arched ribs which meet at the centre to support a lantern and spire. In this uncommonly graceful structure Wren took special pride, and though it gives an impression of fragility, he had the utmost confidence in its stability. When, after a great storm, one came to him with a long face to tell him that all the steeples in London had suffered — an absurd exag geration, by the way — he replied, " Not St Dunstan's, I am sure " ; and he was right. ST. DUNSTAN'S-IN-THE-EAST 253 The body of the church, in which Wren departed from the Gothic, was built less solidly, and in 18 17-21 it was rebuilt, in the Gothic, from plans by David Laing, the architect of the Customs House, who was assisted by Tite, the future builder of the Royal Exchange. The wood-carvings by " Absalom and Achitophel." The poet tells us how "... Ziloah's royal labours so prevailed, That faction at the next election failed ; When ev'n the common cry did justice sound, And merit by the multitude was crowned." This was the Sir John Moore who, at a cost of Photo: Pictorial Agency. ST. DUNSTAN S-IN-THE-EAST Grinling Gibbons disappeared when Wren's church was taken down, save for the arms of Archbishop Tenison, which are preserved in the vestry-room ; nor were Father Smith's organ and the old font deemed to be worth preserving. Of the monuments in St. Dunstan's, the most noteworthy is one to Lord Mayor Sir John Moore (died 1702), who was a loyal supporter of the Court policy in the reign of Charles II., and appears as Ziloah, the ruler of Jerusalem, in Dryden's £5,000, built the writing school of old Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street. Among the monuments in old St. Dunstan's which perished in the Fire was one to the memory of Sir John Hawkins. This gallant sailor was buried at sea, but he was a parishioner of St. Dunstan's and the monument was erected by his widow. Thomas Fuller, also, is associated with St. Dunstan's, by a pleasant exercise of his wit. In writing of his wonderful memory, he 254 LONDON TOWN denies that he had ever pretended to an art of memory, and goes on to recall how once when he came out of the Fuiier" Wit. PulP[t of St Dunstan's he was accosted in the presence of others by one who claimed to have taught him the art of memory in Sidne}' College. Fuller challenged the claim, and successfully as he considered, for he declared that he could not remember ever having seen his in terlocutor before ! The Tower Ward, in which we now find ourselves, was originally known as the ward of W i 1 1 i am de Hadestoke. So it appears in a docu ment of the year 1 276, cited by Riley in the "Memorials," and concerned with a dispute between one Gervase le Noreys and Wil liam de Lindeseye, which had a fatal termination, for, whipping out his knife, William twice stabbed Ger vase, and then fled for refuge to Allhallows'Church.In those early days penalties were less afterwards became, presence of the abjured the THE " BOAR'S HEAD," EASTCHEAP. From a Drawing in the Guildhall Library. A Manslayer's Punishment. ferocious than they and having in the Chamberlain and Sheriffs realm, the manslayer had the port of Dover assigned to him as his place of embarkation and was allowed to depart from the City unmolested. His possessions con sisted of a short coat (a tabard), valued at tenpence, a hatchet, a bow and three arrows, and a sheet, and London, one may con jecture, considered itself well rid of a citizen whose property was so incommensurate with his temper. Eastcheap, so called to distinguish it from Westcheap, the present Cheapside, was formerly divided into Little Eastcheap and Great Eastcheap, but the western Eastcheap. portion of the street was ab sorbed in the improvements made when the present London Bridge was built. The market from which the street derives its name was, according to Stow, removed to Leadenhall Street. But in the histor ian's day there was still carried on here a butchers' market, and there also flourished at East- cheap, he tells us, cooks " and such others as sold victuals ready dressed of all sorts." " For of old time," he adds, " such as were disposed to be merry met not to dine and sup in taverns (for they dressed not meats to be sold), but to the cooks, where they called for meat what them liked." Stow goes on to narrate a brawl at Eastcheap in which two of the sons of Henry IV. took part. "In the year 1410, the nth of Henry IV., upon the even of St. John Baptist, the king's sons, Thomas and John, being in Eastcheap at supper (or rather at breakfast, for it was after the watch was broken up, betwixt two and three clock after midnight), a great debate happened between their men and other of the Court, which lasted one hour, till the mayor and sheriffs with other citizens appeased the same ; for the which afterwards the said mayor, aldermen and sheriffs were called to answer before the king, his sons, and divers lords, being highly moved against the city. At which time William Gascoigne, chief justice, required the mayor and aldermen, RoyalBrawlers of the THE "BOAR'S HEAD" AND THE FAT KNIGHT 255 for the citizens, to put them in the king's grace ; whereunto they answered that they had not offended, but (according- to the law) had done their best in stinting debate and maintaining of the peace ; upon which answer the king remitted all his ire and dis missed them." The historian has left the affair in some obscurity, but it would seem that in " stinting the debate," to employ their euphemism, the City officers used the young princes with some violence : hence the royal anger. However this may be, it is pleasant to find them making so bold a stand for themselves. May it not be that this incident is the foundation of the popular legend that Chief Justice Gascoigne committed Prince Hal to prison for striking him on the Bench ? If so, the facts were very curiously twisted. And may it not have been this brawl which led Shakespeare to represent the Prince and Falstaff as enjoying their carouses at East- cheap ? The famous " Boar's Head " tavern, where Dame Quickly dispensed her hospitality to the Prince and his boon corn- stood on or close to the pamons, The Head." site of the statue of William IV., at what is now the junction of Eastcheap, Gracechurch Street, King Wil liam Street and Cannon Street. Mention of it has been traced back to the year I537- After the Fire it was rebuilt, and it survived until 1831, when it was made away with in the construction of the approaches to the new London Bridge, the sign, however, a boar's head cut in the stone, with the initials of the landlord and the date (1668), being preserved in the Guildhall Museum. Before this the house had ceased to be a tavern, and at the time of its de struction was in the occupa tion of a gunsmith. In its later days the mem ories called up by the " Boar's Head " were as stimulating as Mistress Quickly's sack. It is easy to forgive Gold smith for assuming, in " A Reverie," that the walls in which he indulges his day dreams were the very walls which resounded with the fat knight's laughter ; for what could be more characteristic than the inspired ? Goldsmithon " the Fat Knight." SIGN OF THE BOAR S HEAD, GUILDHALL MUSEUM. reflections with which he was " The character of Falstaff, even with all his faults," he ingenu ously writes in one of his works, " gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wis dom. I here behold an agreeable old fellow forgetting age, and showing me the way to be young at sixty-five. Surely I am well able to be as merry, though not so comical as he. Is it not in my power to have, though not so much wit, at least as much vivacity ? Age, care, wisdom, reflection, begone ! I give you to the winds. Let's have t'other bottle. Here's to the memory of Shakespeare, Falstaff, and all the merry men of East- cheap ! " Washington Irving, again, when he was shown a sacramental cup ¦ from St. Michael's Church, hard by, pretended immediately to recognise in it " the identical Washington parcel-gilt goblet on which Falstaff Eulogy. made his loving but faithless vow to Dame Quickly " that he would make her his wife. In this passage the author of " The Sketch Book " has been, one ventures to think, interpreted much too seriously ; but if he had been ever so earnest in his identification, who would blame him after his eulogy of the hero of " The Boar's Head " ? "I would not give up fat Jack," he declares, " for half the great men of ancient chronicles. What have the heroes of yore done for me or men like me ? They have conquered countries of which I do not enjoy an acre ; or they have gained laurels of which I do not inherit a leaf ; or they have furnished examples of hare-brained prowess which I have neither the opportunity nor the inclina- tion to follow. But old Jack Falstaff ! — kind Jack Falstaff! — sweet Jack Falstaff ! — has enlarged the boundaries of human en joyment ; he has added vast regions of wit and good humour, in which the poorest man may revel ; and has bequeathed a never-failing inheritance of jolly laughter, to make mankind merrier and better to the latest posterity." Trie Cuftom Hotife THE CUSTOMS HOUSE BUILT BY WREN AFTER THE GREAT FIRE. CHAPTER XXIII LOWER THAMES STREET Past and Present — The Customs House — Cowper at Tower Wharf — Billingsgate, and its Market — Fish-fags — The Porters — The Coal Exchange — St. Mary-at-Hill and the Church Army — Watermen's Hall — Love Lane and the King's Weigh House — Botolph Lane — Pudding Lane — The Great Fire — A False Confession — The Monument — Fish Street Hill— St. Magnus-the-Martyr and its Lovely Steeple — Miles Coverdale— Weigh House Chapel THE street which runs beside the river from the Tower to Blackfriars, once known simply as Thames Street, is now divided into Lower Thames Street and Upper Thames Street, the point of division being marked by London Bridge, under one of the arches of which the road passes. In these days, when the river is bordered by an unbroken line of uncouth wharves and warehouses, it is not easy to realise that once this was a favourite quarter of the nobility, who here had their mansions, as they also had them further west- Past, wards along the Strand. But so it was ; and a glance at Visscher's View of London (1616), is enough to see how brave a show the City made, looked at from the Southwark side. As for Lower Thames Street, though no longer a narrow thorough fare, it has lost none of its riverside Present. character, and any who have no tolerance for " fish-like smells " may give it a wide berth. Those of less delicate sensibilities will find it to be one of the most interesting quarters in the whole of the City. Near the eastern end of the street is His Majesty's Customs House, " The King's Toll- bar" as it has been called, which HouiTe?8 presents to the street a sufficiently dingy face, but shows on the river side a pillared front looking down upon a broad quay. The first Customs House in London of which history has anything to say was, ac cording to Stow, rebuilt by John Churchman, Sheriff of London, in 1385, a little eastward of the present building. It was succeeded in the reign of Elizabeth by a larger structure, which perished in the Great Fire, and was replaced by one designed by Wren. This was much damaged by fire in 17 14, and, repaired by Ripley, finally went the way of its predecessor in 18 14. For the present building, designed by David Laing, a number of quays which occupied the space between Ripley's building and Billingsgate Market were added to the site. Excavations showed that 256 THE CUSTOMS HOUSE— BILLINGSGATE 25; this had once formed part of the bed of the river; they also brought to light three distinct lines of wooden embankments, which no doubt formed part of the river rampart mentioned by Fitzstephen, who, writing in the twelfth century, tells us that " the City formerly had walls and towers " on the south as well as on its other sides, but that " that most excellent river the Thames . . . runs on that side, and has in a long space of time washed down, undermined, and subverted the walls in that part." The new Customs House was opened in 1 8 17 (May 12th), but insufficient attention had been paid to the foundations, and though many thousands of pounds were spent in rec tifying the defects, there was a serious subsid ence in 1852, and the present facade, designed by Sir Robert Smirke, was substi tuted for Laing's. The great feature of the Customs House is the " Long Room," a noble apartment 185 feet by 66 feet, and 55 feet in height, which has given its name to all the " long rooms " in other Customs Houses. Round it, on all four sides, runs a continuous counter at which scores of clerks may be seen plying their busy pens. It is to this room that masters of ships coming up the Thames repair to give account of their cargoes, so that the report may be compared with that of the consignee and dues be levied upon the goods if they are of a dutiable character. After the " Long Room," the most interesting part of the Customs House is the huge warehouse, on the ground floor, where are stored confiscated A Reminiscence of Cowper. goods until the time comes for the annual sale in Mincing Lane. The Customs House Quay is memorable as the scene of one of the many attempts at self-destruction to which the poet Cowper was goaded by melancholia. " Not knowing where to poison myself," he has himself recorded, " I resolved upon drowning. For that pur pose I took a coach, and ordered the man to drive to Tower Wharf, intending to throw myself into the river from the Custom House Quay. I left the coach upon the Tower Wharf, intending never to return to it ; but upon coming to the quay I found the water low, and a porter seated upon some goods there, as if on purpose to prevent me. This passage to the bottomless pit being mercifully shut against me, I returned back to the coach." Happily, the gentle poet was not a very determined suicide, or he would scarce have needed to come to the Customs House Quay to throw himself into the river. Billingsgate, which almost adjoins the Customs House and gives its name to one of the City Wards, was a wharf, with a fortified river-gate to keep out intruders. Geoffrey of Monmouth derives the name from Belin, a king of the Britons, who some four hundred years before the Christian era built here a gate ; but Stow sternly rejects so fanciful a theory. " It seemeth to me," he says, " not to be so ancient, but rather to have taken that name of some later owner of the place, happily [haply] named Beling or Biling." The question must Billings gate. LOWER THAMES STREET IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. From Aggas's Map. !58 LONDON TOWN be left undetermined ; but from a document cited by Riley in the " Memorials," it is clear that the name in virtually its present form (" Billingesgate ") has been in use at least since the year 1282. At that time Billingsgate, as a wharf, was in active rivalry with Queenhithe, above London Bridge, and here boats landed their cargoes, not merely of fish, but of all sorts of produce, which were sold in the neighbouring streets. The dangers involved in " shooting " the narrow arches of London Bridge to get to Queenhithe told strongly to the advantage of Billingsgate, and gradually it outdistanced its above-bridge competitor, which when Stow wrote was " almost for saken." The sales in the streets around Billingsgate Wharf gradually crystallised into a market, which received legal recognition in the reign of William III. (1699) as a free and open market for the sale of fish on weekdays, and on Sundays, before Divine service, for mackerel alone. Until the middle of the last cen tury, however, the market was badly housed in mere sheds. " The open space on the north of the well-remembered Billingsgate Dock," wrote Horace Jones in 1874, describing the market as it was prior to 1850, "was dotted with low booths and sheds, with a range of wooden houses with a piazza in front on the west, which served the salesmen and fishmongers as shelter, and for the pur poses of carrying on their trade." In 1830 the City Corporation provided what was considered to be a suitable building, from the designs of its architect, J. B. Bunning ; but the trade of the market grew so rapidly that in 1874-77 Bunning's building was superseded by the present much larger structure, of Italian design, the work of Sir Horace Jones. Billingsgate is still a daily market, and business is still done on Sundays — not in mackerel, however, as in the time of William III., but in shrimps, which are distributed by costermongers in the working-class quarters in time for tea. Still, too, does the market tend to grow. In 1891 the quantity of fish that passed through Billingsgate annually was returned at 144,000 tons ; now it is about 170,000 tons. Of this about 70,000 tons is brought from the fishing-fleets in the North Sea by the long, swift steamers that steal up the Thames during the night ; the other two-thirds of the produce is railway borne, and is brought from the termini by the vans that throng the surrounding streets. In these days of swift transit Billingsgate is more than a fish market for the metropolis. A much larger quantity of the harvest of the sea comes to Billingsgate than is required to satisfy the needs of London, and by mid-day the surplus is being whirled along by train into the provinces to figure in the menu of the evening dinner in remote country places. Billingsgate is both a wholesale and retail market, and much the greater part of the fish which is displayed here is sold by auction. But the auctions are much less lively affairs than they were in the days when the Billings gate fish-fags were the chief bidders, and an auctioneer ran the risk of being Fish-fags. floored by a fair bidder unless he knocked down the fish to her. The fish-fag and her "debates," to borrow Addison's delicate expression, have disappeared ; a " Billingsgate " has ceased to mean, as it meant when Bailey's English Dictionary was published (1736), "a scolding, impudent slut"; and no one would think now of cracking on the Variety stage such a joke as Morton intro duced into his Speed the Plough, in which one %'fA M E S ?'\\ REFERENCE. 1 01 raiytifn. ¦;, CH. 5 SKINNERS'HALL 9G.R0.S0UTH 2 MERCERS' SCHOOL. 6 PAINTERS* HALL 10 COLLEGE OF ARM 3 ST. JAMES'S CH 4 Overs' H 7B.dF. Bible Sottf 11 St. Nicholas' Ch. B London Stone 12 St Swithin's Ch PLAN OF THE RIVERSIDE STREETS FROM THE TOWER TO BLACKFRIARS. BILLINGSGATE PORTERS 259 of the characters, asked about the temper and manners of his wife, replies by asking, " Were you ever at Billingsgate in the sprat season ? " But it will be long before Billings gate ceases to suggest a vigorous vernacular, as it did, for example, in the days of Lord North, who, when one of the City aldermen presented to the House a petition from Billingsgate against the Government, and heart from the strain of the heavy loads which the men have to handle. Many of them, too, go bald at an early age as a result of carry ing their burdens on their heads. Opposite Billingsgate, at the corner of the steep street styled St. Mary-at-Hill, is the Coal Exchange, built at the charges of the City Corporation from the designs of Mr. Bunning, the first stone being laid on Decem- OLD BILLINGSGATE FISH MARKET IN 1 8 20. From a Drawing by S. Owen. backed it up with coarse vituperation, said he could not deny that the hon. gentleman spoke " not only the sentiments, but the very language of his constituents." Yet the burly porters of Billingsgate, in their dirty white smocks and with their well- lined hats, are not racier or more Porters vigorous in their diction than their fellows in other markets. They are licensed, for a small fee, by the Corpora tion, and they number somewhere about a thousand ; and altogether some thirteen hundred persons earn their daily bread at Billingsgate. The porters, as is set out in the Right Hon. Charles Booth's " Life and Labour of the People in London," are paid by the piece, and a sturdy, industrious man often makes as much as ^3 a week. Their work, hard as it may be, is not unhealthy, though it has a tendency to produce affections of the Coal Exchange ber 14th, 1847, and the Exchange being opened by the Prince Consort on October 30th, 1849. It replaces an Exchange built in 1805. Plain as to the ex terior, a Roman-Doric storey below, an Ionic storey above, the building is rather elaborately, though not very effectively, decorated within. A rotunda, 60 feet in diameter, and 70 feet in height, with a dome like roof resting on eight piers, is surrounded by three series of galleries giving access to offices of merchants. The floor is composed of thou sands of pieces of inlaid wood of many varieties arranged in the form of a mariner's compass. The walls and galleries, the panels and niches, are embellished with allegorical and emble matic figures in a variety of colours ; and there are illustrations of the plants found in the coal measures, of collieries, of mining implements, and so forth. 26o LONDON TOWN The church of St. Mary-at-Hill stands between the street of this name and Love Lane. The body of old St. Mary's perished in the Fire, but the tower escaped and survived until 1780, when it was replaced by the present tower of brick. The church, built by Wren in 1672-77, and extensively renovated in 1892-94, rises into a cupola, resting on four St Mary. at-Hill. must not leave St. Mary's without recalling that it was the scene of the marriage between Edward Young, the author of the lugubrious " Night Thoughts," and the Lady Elizabeth Lee, the widowed daughter of the Earl of Lichfield. In the street of St. Mary-at-Hill is the Hall of the Watermen and Lightermen, one of the minor City Companies. The Water- rlioto : Pictorial Agency. BILLINGSGATE PORTERS. Doric columns, which form two side aisles. It is not the least interesting of Wren's churches ; but the curious passer-by who turns into it between one and two o'clock on a week-day will perhaps find himself plunged into dense darkness, and not until he has become accustomed to the gloom does he find that he forms one of a congregation of riverside workers who have come to gaze upon devotional pictures thrown upon the screen and to listen to good music. For the rector of St. Mary's is Prebendary Carlile, the founder and honorary chief secretary of the Church Army, and the church is one of the centres of operations of that body. We men held their first Court in 1555, and in 1667 the Lightermen were added to the Com pany. At one time it was of much Han?rmenS Sreater consequence than it is now. Strype (1643-1737) tells us that in his day there were forty thousand watermen upon its rolls, and that upon occasion they could furnish twenty thousand men for the fleet. Even now none but freemen of the Company are eligible for licences to act as watermen or bargemen or pilots on the Thames between Tcddington Lock and five miles below Gravesend. The Company's first Hall was at Coldharbour, near the " Three Cranes " in the Vintry, and was THE KING'S WEIGH HOUSE 261 more than once rebuilt ; the present hall dates from 1780. Adjoining Watermen's Hall is the building formerly used as the hall of the Fellowship Porters' Company, which was dissolved and disbanded by the Common Council in 1894, at the request of the mem bers, among whom the pro ceeds of the property were divided. This fellowship was incorporated in 11 55 and reincorporated in 161 3, and the business of its members was to carry or house corn, salt, coals, fish and fruit. In Love Lane, once, ac cording to Stow, called Roape Lane, and then, after the owner of a part of it, Lucas Lane, a name which by the historian's time had been corrupted into its present form, there stood the church of St. Andrew Hubbard, which was not rebuilt after the Fire, the parish being annexed to that of St. Mary-at-Hill. On the site of the church was built the King's Weigh parishes, the only church within the City of London dedicated to England's patron saint, was rebuilt by Wren, but, after having been closed for some years, was sold by auction and demolished in 1904. In this lane, until recently, was a fine BotolphLane. says btrype, weighed merchandizes Photo : Pietorial Agency. House, where werebrought from beyond seas to the King's Beam," a function which had formerly been performed at Cornhill. In a large upper room of the Weigh House was estab lished, early in the eigh teenth century, a Pres byterian chapel, by Samuel Slater and Thomas Kentish, two divines who had been ejected by the Act of Uniformity from St. Katharine's in the Tower. A few years later the congregation removed to a chapel which they built in Fish Street Hill, under the name of the Weigh House Chapel (p. 264). Botolph Lane derives its name from the church of St. Botolph, which stood on the south side of Thames Street, opposite Botolph Lane, and was not rebuilt after the Fire, the parish being joined to that of St. George, in the Lane itself. The church of the united THE COAL EXCHANGE. seventeenth-century house which tradition avers to have been the residence of Sir Chris topher Wren what time the Monument was being built. There is no documentary proof of the legend, but if the house was not Sir Christopher's it well deserved to have been. Pudding Lane, the next of these thorough fares between Lower Thames Street and Eastcheap, was once, says Stow, called Rother Lane, or Red Rose Lane, its name being changed " because the butchers of Eastcheap have their scalding-houses for hogs there, and their puddings with other filth of beasts are voided down that way to 262 LONDON TOWN Where the Great Fire Began. their dungboats on the Thames." This street is memorable because it was here, at the shop of Farryner, the King's baker, that the Great Fire of 1666 began. When the house was re built there was placed upon it this inscription : " Here, by the permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose upon this Protestant City, from the malicious hearts of barbarous priests, by the hand of their agent Hubert, who confessed and on the ruins of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged — viz., that here began that dreadful fire which is de scribed on and perpetuated by the neighbouring pillar [the Monument], erected anno 1 68 1, in the mayoralty of Sir Patience Ward, Kt." This amiable inscription, set up by order of the Common Council in 1681, was taken •down in the reign of James II., replaced in the next reign, and finally removed about the middle of the eighteenth century " on ac count of the stoppage of passengers to read it." The stone which bore it was buried in the cellar of the house, and was unearthed when the house was demolished in 1786, and it is now preserved in the Guildhall Museum. Hubert was a Frenchman of about five-and-twenty, the son of a watchmaker at Rouen. Either he was already crazy or his brain was turned by the great catastrophe which visited London, and he de nounced himself as the author of the calamity and alleged that he had been instigated to it in Paris, and had had confederates in the wicked deed. Clarendon testifies that " neither the judges nor any present at the trial did believe him guilty, but that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it this way." But the public mind was only too ready to lay the Fire at the door of the Roman THE MONUMENT. Hubert's Confession Catholics, and so the wretched fellow was hanged, and for generations his co-religionists had to bear the odium of having destroyed the capital. " The Monument," which commemorates the Fire, stands between Pudding Lane and Fish Street Hill, in Monument Yard, which was once the churchyard of St. Margaret's, Fish Street Hill, and which has associa tions with Goldsmith, who here, in 1756, on his return from his foreign tour, got em ployment in the shop of a chemist of the name of Jacob, but soon left to set up as a physician at Bankside. Wren's fluted column, of the Doric order, is 202 feet high, and as his son records in the " Parentalia," his first inten tion was that it should be surmounted by a colossal statue of Charles II. as the restorer of the City, or by " a figure erect of a woman crowned with turrets holding a sword and cap of mainten ance, with other ensigns of the City's grandeur and re- erection." He also thought of having flames of gilt brass coming out of every loophole, and on the top a phcenix, also in gilt brass, rising from the flames ; but in the end the present vase of flames — which, it must be confessed, are not very flame-like — was decided upon. The bas- relief on the pediment, setting forth in allegory the destruction of the City and its restoration, was carved by Caius Gabriel Cibber, the Danish sculptor, and the four dragons at the angles by Edward Pierce ; the Latin inscriptions were from the pen of Dr. Gale, Dean of York, that on the north face describing the havoc wrought by the Fire, and that on the south the means taken to repair the scathe, all the glory being loyally ascribed to Charles II. ; while that on the east side enumerates the Lord Mayors, under whose auspices the Monument was erected, in the years 1671-77. The west side, now A LOVELY STEEPLE 262 blank, once bore a libel attributing the Fire to "the treachery and malice of the Popish faction." It was not the work of Dr. Gale, and was not inscribed until 168 1. Obliterated under James II., it was restored under William III., and remained for nearly a century and a half to justify Pope's couplet — " Where London's Column, point ing to the skies, Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies." In the year 1831, when the current of Liberalism was running strong, it was finally removed by order of the City Corporation. The pillar, though loftier than the columns of Trajan and Antoninus at Rome, is of a diameter that gives a sense of magnitude rather than of height. It encases a stair case of black marble of 345 steps leading to a platform — a favourite vantage point of sightseers — which is covered by an ugly cage, added in 1842 to keep suicidally - disposed persons out of temptation. The im mediate cause of this addition was the suicide of a girl of seventeen, who flung herself down from the platform in August of that year ; but there had been five earlier cases of the kind, the first being that of William Green (June 25th, 1750), whom a highly charitable coroner's jury declared to have suffered accidental death ! Fish Street Hill, the most westerly of the streets communicating between Lower Thames Street and Eastcheap, FUh street wag the thoroughfare that led to old London Bridge. Stow records that the Black Prince once lived here, in a house which in the historian's day had become a hostelry known as the " Black Bell." STEEPLE OF ST. MAGNUS THE-MARTYR. thirty-five which were not rebuilt after the Fire. At the lower end of Fish Street Hill stands the church of St. Magnus- fhe-Martyr." the-Martyr, named after a saint who, according to Newcourt, suffered in Cappadocia under Aurelian, in the year 276. It is distinguished by perhaps the most chastely beautiful of Wren's steeples, which so good a judge as Mr. Loftie prefers to the steeple of Bow Church in Cheapside. It is not necessary to set the two in rivalry, and one need only say that those who in the Gothic prefer the austere beauty of the Early English to the more luxuriant charms of the Decorated will probably share Mr. Loftie's preference. The church is so hemmed in by other buildings and is so close to the Monument that it is not easy to find a good point from which to view the spire, but it may be seen to advantage from the top of the steps at the south-east corner of London Bridge, and also from Grace- church Street. The old church having perished in the Great Fire, the body of the present church was completed in 1676, but the steeple, which rises to a height of 185 feet, was not added till 1705. The lowest stage of the tower, as left by Wren, was open on the west side only, but it was opened out on the north and about 1760, in order that foot might have easier access to south sides passengersOld London Bridge, which lay in a direct line with it. Wren, most practical and most far-seeing of architects, had antici pated that this change would one day be required, and had so built his arches that no difficulty was experienced in making the passage. Of the rectors of St. Magnus' the most famous is Miles Coverdale, the Reformer, At the Eastcheap corner is the churchyard of and translator of the Scriptures, who, dispos- St. Leonard, the church itself being one of sessed of his bishopric by Queen Mary, was 264 LONDON TOWN presented to this rectory in 1563, but held it for two years only. When he died, in 1568, he was buried in the church of St. Bartholomew - by - the - Exchange, and on the destruction of that building, in 1840, his remains were re-interred in St. Magnus', where three years Miles Coverdale Hall said, " He was the most favoured man I ever saw or heard of." His successor was the Rev. Thomas Binney, who, born at Newcastle- upon-Tyne in 1798, was elected to this pastorate in 1829, and held it for forty years, retiring in 1869. A man of powerful intellect and fine presence, he was long the most *Pr =^.-. « « f,Uijh & -.ir., „„«,„/ ,J, ,„JI fm M„„,„ t - "' ?>'"«'" * J. ftir „ l,,,,Jr, „ ,U „u, Jif.Mi.ii.^^o,,^ e... .1. ,„... ? "*»"* ¦able jTo/m Go/r Lord Mayor of ^ >Bnd«0rTimb«. B.----< . ¦ - " «¦ -~ ¦ ¦ * — .-.. .. tabeih, tu/ /£? /'Ajiv .- ffcf 10. jrwrev .«*«*/«, orf dttahtd iy a Ptrfin, l.Ii ofhtt vnhvamt, ad I. 11 f ITM/7 Arfflftt /f? t,.,wt,ril.l. , t I. . r .r . . _ , ,, " ,. . 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' 'i""""K,-*"'"U':W»'* F FACSIMILE OF NORPEN'.S ENGRAVING OF LONDON BRIDGE, SHOWING THE EASTERN SIDE (p. 266). 268 LONDON TOWN our chapter on the Guildhall (p. 105), had known how to take advantage of the respite by winning over the City to her side ; but whatever hope of success might ' still have remained vanished when on reaching London Bridge he found it strongly held against him. How he explored the bridge to see if he could capture it by a sudden dash is graphically told by Froude. Premising that the gate was at the Southwark extremity nor skill could effect the passage of London Bridge, Wyatt was obliged to march up river to Kingston and there cross the river. It was a roundabout way of getting to the dungeons of the Tower. Two incidents of a personal character may also be mentioned. In a fit of depression Sir William Temple's only son, who held the office of War Secretary, jumped from a boat as it was " shooting " the bridge, having Howard NONSUCH HOUSE ON OLD LONDON BRIDGE (/. 266). From a Drawing by Fred. S. Howard. and the drawbridge near the middle, he describes how Wyatt " scaled the leads of the gatehouse, climbed into a window, and descended the stairs into the lodge. The porter and his wife were nodding over the fire. The rebel leader bade them on their lives be still, and stole along in the darkness to the chasm from which the drawbridge had been cut away. There, looking across the black gulf where the river was rolling below, he saw the dusky mouths of four gaping cannon, and beyond them in the torchlight Lord Howard himself, keeping watch with the guard." Convinced that neither force " made siccar " by filling his pockets with stones, and sank. He left in the boat a note which ran thus : " My folly in Suicides, undertaking what I could not perform, whereby some mis fortunes have befallen the king's service, is the cause of putting myself to this sudden end." And in 1737, on the 4th of May, Eustace Budgell, the minor poet, jumped from a boat with the same intent and met the same fate. He was one of the victims of the South Sea Bubble, and was also a sufferer from litigation, for a will in which Tindal, the freethinker, had left him a legacy of £2,000, A GREAT BRIDGE-BUILDER Peter Morris's Water- worKs. in recognition of help received in the publi cation of one of the legator's works, was successfully challenged. Pope's reference to this circumstance was particularly galling : — ¦' Let Budgell charge even Grub Street on my bill, And write whate'er he please, except my will." Even this couplet is hardly more cruelly barbed than one in which Budgell himself satirised some persons who danced uncouthly to good music : — " But ill the motion with the music suits ; So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes." One curious feature of London Bridge has not yet been touched upon. In the year 1582 waterworks were erected under the arches of London Bridge by Peter Morris, a Dutchman, who utilised the force of the current as it rushed beneath the narrow arches, and pumped it by leaden pipes over the steeple of St. Magnus' Church into Thames Street, New Fish Street, and Gracechurch Street. At the north-west corner of Leadenhall Street, as we have already seen (p. 196), the main was conveyed into a standard which ran four ways, towards Bishopsgate, Aldgate, the Bridge, and the Stocks Market. In the course of time four wheels were fixed in the stream for the purpose of raising water, and these antiquated waterworks, says Mr. Welch in the work already referred to, existed till the year 1822, when their removal was effected by Act of Parliament, the proprietors being compensated with a sum of £10,000, and the machinery, buildings, etc., being transferred to the New River Company. Long before this — in 1757-60— the houses which lined the bridge had for safety's sake been removed. They had long been in a rickety condition, and Pennant could re member that they overhung the road so as almost to shut out the daylight. At the time of their removal the bridge was greatly altered, and a new arch, much larger than the others, was provided in the centre ; but still the need for repairs was constant, and though much money was from time to time spent upon the structure, its stability was gravely open to question. In 1823 an Act was passed for rebuilding London Bridge, and the first pile was driven on the 15th of John Rennie March, 1824. The design of John Rennie, F.R.S., who had died in 1821, had been accepted, and the execution of his plans was superintended by his sons, John and George Rennie, the former of whom was presently knighted. A noble design it is, approached in harmonised grace and strength by no other bridge over the Thames except Waterloo Bridge, the work of the same architect, who by these two magnificent erections well won his place of Photo: Emery li'alkcr, Clifford's Inn, B.C. JOHN RENNIE, THE DESIGNER OF LONDON BRIDGE. From a Drawing by George Dance, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. honour in the crypt of St. Paul's. " The magnitude and flatness of the arches," as Sir John Rennie has written, " demanded unusual care in the selection of the materials, which were of the finest blue and white granite from Scotland and Devonshire." The work of building the bridge, rendered difficult by the soft alluvial nature of the bottom, and by the presence of the old bridge, with its effect upon the velocity of the current, occupied seven years five months and thirteen days, although there were engaged upon it upwards of 800 men, of whom forty lost their lives by accident. It was not therefore until August 1st, 1831, that the bridge was opened, by King William IV. and Queen Adelaide, who came by water to per form the ceremony, having embarked at Somerset House. When the old bridge was 270 LONDON TOWN removed, in the following year, the bones of Peter of Colechurch were discovered in the foundations of his chapel of St. interesting Thomas, and, incredible as it may Discovery. J seem, they were simply flung into a barge and cast as rubbish to the void ! The cost of the new bridge was £680,232 ; the net cost of the approaches and im provements was close upon a million and a quarter, and the money was provided by the Bridge House Estates, of which the income is applied to the provision and maintenance of City bridges by the City EUSTACE BUDGELL {p. 268). izt! J Corporation, and by a Parliamentary grant, supplemented by the coal and wine: dues. The street improvements included, on the north side Upper Thames Street, Fish Street Hill, Eastcheap, King William Street, Prince's Street, Lothbury, Gresham Street, Moorgate Street, and a part of Threadneedle Street, and on the south side Borough High Street to the Town Hall, and a portion of Tooley Street. The improvement scheme was thus one of the largest ever undertaken in the City. In 1902, the traffic over the bridge having almost continuously grown, in spite of the relief afforded by the Tower widening Bridge, the footways were widened Footways, from 9 feet each to 15 feet each, the extra breadth being carried by large corbels of granite, in accordance with a plan of Mr. Andrew Murray, at that time the City Surveyor. The work occupied about two years, the footways being publicly opened on the 28th of March, 1904, by the Lord Mayor, Sir James Ritchie, Bart, who broke a silken cord as a symbol that the broadened pavements were no longer closed. The widening was no doubt inevitable, for at morning and evening the footways are thronged with hurrying passengers as are no other pavements in London, and a few years ago it was calculated that in the course of twelve hours the daily average of pedestrians crossing the bridge was 95, 330, one-third as many again as used Blackfriars Bridge, and about four times as many as used Southwark Bridge, more too than the passers-by in Cheapside, who numbered 91,190. To rail at what cannot be helped were childish, and even the untechnical eye can see that the alteration was devised with great ingenuity and skill ; but all the same it would be idle to maintain that the proportions of Rennie's work have not been impaired. It was not until 1749 that the capital found itself provided with a second bridge across the Thames. In that year the ferry which had from time immemorial been the means of communication between Lambeth and West minster was supplanted by a bridge, which will be noticed in another section of this work. In 1760 the City began to build its second bridge, at Blackfriars, from designs by Robert Mylne, a young Scottish BridgeT13" architect fresh from a tour' of Europe, who afterwards, accord ing to Mr. Welch, built for himself a handsome residence at the northern end of the bridge, on the site upon which Ludgate Hill Station now stands. The bridge began to be used by foot passengers in 1766, and was opened to vehicular traffic in 1769. The tolls were not abolished until 1875 ; but before this the bridge had been replaced by the present structure, the work of Joseph Cubitt, con sisting of five iron arches which rest on monstrous piers of brickwork faced with granite. It was begun in 1865, and finished at the end of 1870. In 1907 the widening of the bridge was begun in order that the London County Council's trams might be brought across it and so be linked up with those which run along the Victoria Em bankment from Westminster Bridge and from Aldwych and the Strand, and it is SOUTHWARK BRIDGE 271 now the broadest of the Thames bridges. It has for companion the dismal bridge of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, which at first took in vain the name of the present Queen by styling itself the Alexandra Lattice Bridge. We may here pause to note that to a walk over Blackfriars Bridge may be traced the laid by Admiral Lord Keith on April 23rd, 18 1 5, and the bridge, illuminated with lamps, being declared open as St. Paul's clock tolled the hour of midnight on March 24th, 18 19. Consisting of three cast-iron arches, a larger one in the centre and a smaller one on either side, it embodied a new Southwark Bridge. OLD BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE. From a Drawing by E. Dayes, engraved by J. Walker. origin of the Young Men's Christian Asso ciation. Two young clerks, George Williams and Edward Beaumont, were crossing it one evening on their way home when the one asked the other if he would make a sacrifice for his religion. "Yes, George," was the reply; "if you lead, I'll follow." It was then agreed that they should call a meeting of their fellow clerks to help each other to lead the better life, and in spite of ridicule they persevered. One of the young men, George Williams, lived to be knighted, and when he died he was buried in St. Paul's, and the organisation which he founded has branches all over the world, and a membership of over eight hundred thousand. The City bridge which bears the name of Southwark was built for a private company by the elder Rennie, the first stone being principle in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and so far is to be reckoned one of the architect's successes, though it does not enter into rivalry on aesthetic grounds with Rennie's two other bridges over the Thames. In 1864, by arrange ment between the Corporation and the proprietors, the Southwark Bridge Com pany, the tolls were abolished, and in 1868 the bridge ceased to be private property, being acquired for the public at a cost of £200,000. The Tower Bridge, which spans the river at the eastern boundary of the Tower, was begun on the 22nd of April, 1886, Bridge. tne wor^ having been entrusted to Mr. (now Sir) J. Wolfe Barry, son of the architect of the Houses of Parlia ment, and to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Jones, the City Surveyor. The memorial stone 2J2 LONDON TOWN was laid by the present King, on behalf of Queen Victoria, on the 2istofJune in that year, and the bridge was opened by him on the 30th of June, 1894. Sir J. Wolfe Barry's part in the undertaking was much more important than that of Sir Horace Jones, who died in 1887, before he had been able to work out his architectural appearance of the bridge is approved, we may forget " that the towers have skeletons as much concealed as that of the human body, of which we do not think when we contem plate examples of manly or feminine beauty." That the bridge is a handsome structure, which forms an impressive portal to London on the seaward side, is not to be gainsaid, but Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE TOWER BRIDGE. sketches. The bridge, moreover, is of steel, the Gothic towers which advertise them selves as its chief feature being nothing but masks for the metal piers that bear the weight of the structure. In the chapter on the design and construction of the bridge which the engineer has contributed to Mr. Welch's volume on the City bridges, he describes the tower as •' steel skeletons clothed with stone," and defends the ar rangement on the grounds that in an aesthetic sense stone is preferable to cast iron, and is also better from a practical point of view, since a covering of brickwork or masonry effectually preserves iron or steel from corro sion ; and he ingeniously tells us that if the the act of forgetfulness to which Sir J. Wolfe Barry invites us is perhaps less easy to many minds than he supposes. The Tower Bridge, upon which, with its approaches, more than a million and a half of money has been spent, has a central span 200 feet long between the towers, and there are two side spans on the suspension principle, each of them 270 feet in length. The carriageway, with footways, consists of twin bascules, each of them 100 feet long, which are raised to give passage to large vessels. At a height of H2i feet above the carriage way is a footway for the use of pedes trians who do not care to wait until the bascules are lowered. CHAPTER XXV UPPER THAMES STREET Fishmongers' Hall — Sir William Walworth's Dagger — Old Swan Stairs — Sir John Poultney's House — Suffolk Lane — Cold Harbour Lane — Allhallows' the Great — The Hanse Merchants — Dowgate — The Skinners — The Dyers — The Vintners — College Hill — The Story of Dick Whittington — St. Michael's Paternoster Royal — Garlick Hill — Garlickhithe and Queenhithe — Bringing Moselle Wine to London in Ancient Times — The Painter Stainers — St. Mary Somerset — Quaint Names — St. Benet's — Inigo Jones A DAGGER WITH WHICH WAT TYLER WAS SLAIN. By permission of the Fishmongers Company. T the north-west corner of Lon don Bridge, forming the eastern end of Upper Thames Street, is the Hall of the Livery Com pany which stands fourth in the order of civic precedence — the Fishmongers. Of this Company the origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, but it was in exist ence at least as early as the middle of the 1 2 th century. Originally there were two Com panies connected with the trade in fish, the Salt Fishmongers and the Stock Fishmongers. In the reign of Henry VI. (i"433) they coalesced, but they parted in the reign of Henry VII. (1508), and were finally fused together under the next Henry (1537). The Company has not ceased to exercise its ancient functions, and its officers still see to the condition of the fish exposed for sale at Billingsgate and other City fish markets, and prosecute offenders under various Fisheries Acts. One of the richest of the City Com panies, only a small proportion of its income is of a fiduciary character ; and it employs its revenues chiefly in maintaining almshouses at Wandsworth and elsewhere, and a grammar school at Holt, in Norfolk, in exhibitions to universities and colleges, in benefactions to members who have fallen upon evil days, and in loans to young freemen. The first Hall of the combined Fishmongers, in Thames Street, close to where the present Hall stands, was bought of Lord Fanhope in 1434, and subsisted until the Fire of 1666. It was rebuilt in 1668-71 by Edward Jerman, the City Surveyor, and continued to be the local habitation of the Company until 1831, when it was taken down in connexion with the building of the present London Bridge. The Hall which succeeded it, designed by Mr. H. Roberts in a semi-classical style, and built 1831-35, stands upon a basement encased with granite, and presents to the river a balustraded terrace and an Ionic hexastyle and pediment. The entrance hall is separated from the great staircase by a screen of columns of polished Aberdeen granite. The scene of the banquets for which the Fishmongers are famous is a room of magnificent proportions, richly decorated, and the Court Dining Room and the Drawing Room are also very fine apartments. Among the treasures of the Company is a funeral pall temp. Henry VIII., in three pieces. A statue by Pierce of the most famous of the Fishmongers, Sir William Walworth, shows that fiery Lord Mayor dagger in Walworth"" hand- and formerly it held what is said to be the actual dagger with which Wat Tyler was struck down in Smith- field. This weapon, which has lost its guard, is jealously preserved by the Company. The statue is thus inscribed : — " Brave Walworth, Knight, Lord Mayor, y1 slew Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes ; The King, therefore, did give in Hew The dagger to the City armes, In the 4th year of Richard II., Anno Domini 1381." This doggerel is worth quotation because of its effect in propagating the blunder that the 273 274 LONDON TOWN dagger in the City arms originated in the shrewd blow Walworth struck for Richard 1 1., whereas it is of much more ancient origin, and represents, as we saw in an earlier chapter (p. 129), the sword of St. Paul, the Cor poration's patron saint, to whom the City's cathedral is dedicated. At the Old Swan Stairs, a little to the east of Fishmongers' Hall, folk in descending the he built for himself, adjoining the church of St. Laurence, just south of Candlewick (Cannon) Street, founded a college Pouttney. that was suppressed in the reign of Edward VI. The church was not rebuilt after the Fire, but a bit of the grave yard may still be seen ; the parish was annexed to that of St. Mary Abchurch. A crypt of the mansion survived under No. 3, Photo: Pictorial Agency FISHMONGERS' HALL. river in former days used to land to avoid the perils of "shooting" the narrow arches of old London Bridge, re-embark- sta'ir3sWan ing, as a rule, at Billingsgate, as Johnson and Boswell did on their way to Greenwich in 1763. The stairs are named after " Ye Olde Swanne," which, already in 1323 "a tenement of olde time," was destroyed in the Great Fire, but was rebuilt. The present inn of this name, in Old Swan Lane, occupies the same site as its predecessors. Laurence Pountney Lane and Laurence Pountney Hill, running from Upper Thames Street, are named after Sir John Poultney, a Draper who was Lord Mayor in the reign of Edward III., and who in the house which on the west side of Laurence Pountney Hill, until 1894. Sir John Poultney's house, called by Stow the Manor of the Rose, was successively the possession of several noble families, and by Henry VIII. was presented to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of the Suffolk family we are reminded also by Suffolk Lane, as well as by Duck's Foot Lane, which was not improbably Duke's Foot Lane, a narrow way leading to the mansion. A part of the Manor of the Rose, in Suffolk Lane, was acquired by the Merchant Taylors' Com pany for the purposes of a school in 1561, and was so used until it perished in the Great Fire. It was rebuilt in 1675, and here the famous school remained for just two hundred Suffolk : Lane. THE HANSE MERCHANTS AND THE STEELYARD 275 Cold HarbourLane. years, when it was removed to the Charterhouse, the old building being acquired for the purposes of the District Railway. Cole or Cold Harbour Lane, which has now dis appeared, and which led out of Upper Thames Street south wards, a little to the east of Suffolk Lane, recalls another of the stately mansions which in past days gave to Thames Street a dignity it has long lost. Cold Harborough, as it was once called — for a reason which is not cer tainly known — is first men tioned, according to Stow, in the 13th year of Edward II. In the reign of the next Edward it was acquired for his own use by Sir John Poultney, and was then styled Poultney's Inn. In 1410 it was conferred upon Prince Hal by his father, and by Edward VI. it was given to Francis, 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, who changed its name to Shrewsbury House, and whose successor in the title demolished it and covered the site with a number of mean tenements. The site is now in part occupied by the City of London Brewery. The church of Allhallows' the Great, at the corner of Allhallows Lane, is to be numbered among the churches of Wren's building that have disappeared. The tower was demolished % :;BI5iai! £ n STATUE OF WALWORTH IN FISHMONGERS' HALL. in 1876 in connexion with the widening of Upper Thames Street, and the site of the church itself was put up to auction in 1894, and demolished in the following year, the parish being annexed to that of St. Michael's Pater noster Royal. The Hanse Merchants had their headquarters in the Steelyard, or the Dutch Guildhall, which faced the river hard by Allhallows' the Great on a part of the site now occupied by the Cannon Street Rail way Station. Of the Steel yard, the name by which their Guildhall came to be known in the fourteenth century, many derivations have been given. One is that it refers to the King's Steel yard, or beam for weighing the tonnage of imported goods, which stood here until its removal to Cornhill, and which from Cornhill was trans ferred to Weigh House Yard in Eastcheap. A less obvious but not less probable derivation is that of Lambecius, quoted by Herbert in his work on the Livery Companies — that it is a corruption of Stapelhof, softened into Stafelhof, " and synonymous with the English word Staple, which is in the civil law Latin style of Edward III. termed Stabile emporium, a fixed port depot." The merchants of the Steelyard, a branch of the Hanseatic League, were already established in London by the «w & *r < ARMS OF THE FISHMONGERS' COMPANY ARMS OF THE VINTNERS COMPANY. 276 LONDON TOWN Photo : Pictorial Agency. SKINNERS' HALL : THE BANQUETING HALL. middle of the 10th century, for in 967 King Ethelred declared them to be '' worthy of good laws." At first, according to Price, the historian of the Guildhall, these traders from Germany and Flanders were not a homogeneous body. There were the Easter- lings, who had their factories and ware houses in the vicinity of the Steelyard, and there were the merchants of Cologne, who congregated in Dowgate hard by, and between the two bodies there were constant disputes until they amalgamated as " the merchants of Almaigne." They flourished exceedingly, and at one time had a monopoly of the foreign trade of London, but the privileges which they succeeded in obtaining from successive monarchs were always re garded with jealousy by their English rivals, and in the reign of Edward VI. these aliens were deprived of all their monopolies. But they still throve too well for the peace of mind of the citizens, and in 1597-98 Queen Elizabeth expelled them the country and their Hall became a storehouse for Navy provisions. The Steelyard stood in the ward of Dow gate, a contraction possibly of Downegate, though Riley unearthed a reference Dowgate. to Douuegate in a document dated 1 3 12, and Mr. Lethaby quotes from a charter of 1 1 50-5 1 in which the name appears in the same form. From the fact that the Wall Brook joined the Thames at this dock or Watergate, Dowgate has been derived from the Celtic Dwr, water, which, as Mr. Lethaby drily remarks, " would be a very interesting fact if there were any certainty in it." Dowgate was a port of the Normans, and Mr. Horace Round shows that in 11 50-51 it was confirmed by Henry Duke of the Normans, afterwards our Henry II., to the citizens of Rouen, by whom it had been held from the days of the Confessor. In the street known as Dowgate Hill are the Halls of three of the City Livery Companies — the Skinners, the Dyers, and the Tallow Chandlers. The Skinners, alternatively with the Merchant Taylors the sixth and seventh in civic precedence of the twelve great Com- THE SKINNERS AND DYERS 277 panies, at one time formed two brother hoods, which were afterwards amalgamated. Their earliest charter was granted Skinners. *n ^a-e ^rst year °^ Edward III (1327). The quarter in which they congregated was not always the same, but for hundreds of years their Hall has occupied the present site. It was rebuilt after the Fire. The Ionic front, with the Com pany's arms in the pediment, was added by Jupp, the Company's Architect, in 1790, and from the more ancient building, which is of brick, this is separated by a small paved court. The Banqueting Hall is an elegant cham ber, and the drawing-room with its wains- cotting of odorous cedar and its beautiful carved ceiling, is also much admired. Sir Andrew Judd, who was Lord Mayor in 1 551, and founded the great school at Ton- bridge, was sixteen times Master of the Company. Three other schools are under the governance of this Company — Sir Andrew Judd's Commercial school at Tonbridge, opened in 1888 ; a school for boys at Tunbridge Wells, opened in 1887 ; and a day- school for girls at Stamford Hill. Another benefactor of the Company was Peter Blundell, founder of the celebrated Grammar school at Tiverton, who by will dated June gt 1599, left a sum of £150 to be invested in land primarily for the benefit of poor prisoners in the Wood Street Compter, of which some account has been given in an earlier chapter (p. 91). The Dyers were incorporated by Edward IV. (1472), and their Hall, before the Fire, stood a little to the west of Old The Dyers. Swan Pier, where the fact is commemorated by Dyers' Hall Wharf and Pier. Their Hall at Dowgate was built about 1770, and was rebuilt in 1839-40, the architect being Dyer by name ; and it was enlarged in 1856-57. With their near neighbours the Vintners they enjoy the privilege of keeping swans on the Thames, from London Bridge to a considerable distance above Windsor, and once a year the swan-markers of these two Companies, with those of the Crown, go up the Thames to take stock of the birds Photo : Pictorial Agency. VINTNERS' HALL : THE COURT ROOM. 278 LONDON TOWN SILVER GILT SALT-CELLAR AT VINTNERS' HALL. The Tallow Chandlers trace as a Company back to the early years of the fifteenth century, when they were Minor invested with power to search for Companies, and destroy all bad and adul terated oils. Their Hall, rebuilt by Wren in 1672 after the Fire with a Tuscan colonnade, was restored in 1871, and mark the young ones. The marks are made upon the upper mandible, and each of the proprietary au thorities has its own sign. In 1878 the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prosecuted the swan-herds, alleging that the marks were of such a character as to inflict need less cruelty, and though the summonses were dismissed the marks were changed. The royal mark now consists of two diamonds, that of the Dyers of one nick on the right side of the mandible, and that of the Vintners of two nicks, one on either side of the mandible. The double nick is, no doubt, the origin of the tavern-house sign, " The Swan with Two Necks." their origin and again THE " MILKMAID CUP AT VINTNERS' HALL. in 1900. Close by, in College Street, leading westwards from Dowgate Hill to College Hill, is the Hall of the Innholders, who were incorporated by Henry VI. in 15 1 5, and in early days were known as " hostillars." The present Hall dates from 1886, when it superseded the one built after the Fire by Wren and Jerman. HEARSE CLOTH AT VINTNERS' HALL. THE VINTNERS AND THEIR TREASURES 279 A little further along Upper Thames Street, as one goes westward, at the corner of Queen Street, is the stuccoed Hall Vintners. °*" tlle Vintners, the eleventh of the twelve great Livery Companies, and much the least wealthy of them. As mentioned above, they have rights of owner ship in the swans on the Thames. Composed of two branches, the vinetarii, importers and merchants, and the tavernarii, retailers or tavern-keepers, this fraternity was incor porated by Henry VI. in 1427, but it is mentioned as early as 1256. The Vintners have given their name to the Ward — the Vintry — in which their Hall stands, and it was hereabouts that the Bordeaux merchants unloaded their lighters and sold their wines. The Company, says the " City of London Directory," formerly enjoyed the sole right of landing and loading wines and spirits im ported into or exported from the City, and its members and their widows still possess the right to sell foreign wines in cer tain places in England without a licence. Its arms show a chevron between three tuns. The ancient Hall, which was in existence in 1352, perished in the Fire; of its successor, a work of Wren's, only the Council chamber remains, the rest being rebuilt in 1820-23. The Vintners are proud of their drinking vessels, which include a double " milkmaid cup," of about a century later, which, when inverted, has a double cavity, a good deal of address being required to drink the wine in the larger vessel without spilling that in the smaller ; and a quaint flagon of stone mounted in silver gilt, presented to the Company in 1653, and of which a facsimile fetched as much as 1,450 guineas at Christie's. Others of their treasures are a large beautifully chased and embossed silver-gilt salt-cellar, dated 1569, and valued by experts at £5,000, and a hearse cloth of cloth of gold, with purple velvet pile. At one end it shows St. Martin on horseback dividing his cloak with a at the other end he beggar is seen as Bishop of Tours giving alms to a beggar. In the centre of each of appears the Virgin Mary the side borders our Lady of as RICHARD WHITTINGTON. After an Engraving by Elstrack. Pity. Among Vintner Lord Mayors is to be reckoned the Sir Thomas Bludworth who cut so poor a figure at the time of the Fire (p. 15). Pepys came across him again some months after the Fire, and describes him con temptuously as the Lord Mayor " under whom the City was burnt." " Lord ! " he exclaims, " the silly talk that the silly fellow had! ... A very weak man he seems to me ! " Blud worth has the further distinction of being father-in-law of the brutal Jeffreys. An earlier Vintner than Lord Mayor Bludworth was John Chaucer, the father of the earliest of our greater poets. John Chaucer carried on business in Thames Street, at or near the foot of Dowgate Street, and there it may well have been that Geoffrey was born, about the year 1340. The fact has never been properly established, but the probabilities are that the father of English poetry was born somewhere in London, at any rate. College Hill takes its name from the College of St. Spirit and St. Mary, founded by the great Richard Whittington, Hill*8* and dissolved by Henry VIII., though the " hospital " connected with it was allowed to continue, and here it remained until 1808, when the inmates were transferred to new quarters at the foot of Highgate Hill, and the site was covered with the school of the Mercers' Company, removed, in turn, in 1894 to Barnard's Inn, Holborn. On the east side of the hill are two fine sculptured seventeenth century gateways, 28o LONDON TOWN giving access to houses of which one was the abode of Sir Samuel Pennant, kinsman of the antiquary. According to tradition, the building between the gate ways and the church of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal occupies the site of Whitting ton's mansion. St. Michael's Paternoster Royal, rebuilt by Whitting ton, takes its subsidiary names from two streets close by — Paternoster Lane and La Reole, the latter so called from the merchants of La Reole, a town near Bordeaux, who settled here in the reign of Edward I., if not earlier. When Whit tington died he was fittingly buried in the chancel, under a marble tomb which perished in the Fire. The present St. Michael's, built under Wren's superintendence by Edward Strong, his master mason, contained nothing to remind one of Whittington until 1866, when one of the windows was filled with stained glass in his memory. Now, too, there is an inscription on the exterior setting forth his connexion with the church. The Whittington legend, most popular of London legends, pic tures a poor ill-treated orphan of the West of England coming to London because he be lieved its streets were paved with gold. He becomes a scullion in the kitchen of a rich merchant in Leaden hall Street, is treated harshly by the cook, but wins the pit)7 of his master's pretty daughter, the Mistress Alice. Now it was the merchant's custom when sending out a ship to let each of his sen-ants take some part in the venture. When the Unicorn set sail Whittington could only con tribute to her freight his cat, but this was bought for ten times the value of all the cargo besides by a king of Barbary whose palace was overrun with rats. Mean while Whittington, unable longer to endure the cook's tyranny, left his master's house early on the morning of Allhallows Day intending no more to return, but as he lay resting at the foot of Highgate Hill he heard Bow bells ringing out an alluring peal which seemed to say — ¦ " Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London." THE " WHITTINGTON STONE IN GUILDHALL MUSEUM. REPUTED PORTRAIT OF PETER BLUNDELL, AT BLUNDELL'S SCHOOL, TIVERTON. So he found his way back, and when the Unicorn re turned to port and made him rich, he married Mistress' Alice, and lived to be thrice Lord Mayor of London, and, at a feast to Henry V. at Guildhall in cele bration of the conquest of France, to throw into the fire the King's bonds for thirty-seven thousand marks. Who would not believe this pretty story if he could ? Small blame to Lysons, or to Sir Walter Besant, for try ing to prove that the incident of the cat, at any rate, is true. But even the cat, it is to be feared, must be drowned. True, in the Guildhall Museum is a piece of sculpture — found in an old house at Gloucester that is said to have once belonged to the Whittingtons — which shows a small boy carrying, as some be lieve, a cat. But Tait, the author of the article on Whittington in the Dictionary of National Biography THRICE MAYOR OF LONDON 281 sees in it nothing but a boy and "a nondescript small animal," nor will he admit that there is any satisfactory evidence for attributing the stone to the fifteenth century. As to the legend as a whole, it is not known, he says, to have been narrated until 1605, well nigh two hundred years after Whit- STEEPLE OF ST. MICHAELS PATERNOSTER ROYAL. tington's death. During his life Whittington's reputation does not seem to have ex tended beyond the City. And his name would not have been a household word with Lon doners of the fifteenth century but for the fact that he rebuilt Newgate, London's chief prison, and founded here in College Hill London's chief almshouses, the Whittington Hospital. Putting aside, then, the legend, with the equally mythical tale of the burnt bonds and the conferred knight- 19 STEEPLE OF ST. JAMES S GARLICKHITHE. hood, let us in a few sentences record the bare facts of this great citizen's life. The son of Sir William Whittington, a Gloucestershire knight, and born about 1359, he is first heard of in London in 1379, when he contributes five marks to a City loan. In 1385 he is elected to the Common Council bv TOWER OF ST. MARY SOMERSET. VANE OF ST. MICHAEL S QUEENHITHE. Coleman Street Ward, in 1393 he becomes Alderman for Broad Street Ward, in 1393-4 he serves as Sheriff, and is appointed Lord Mayor in 1397 by the King, to succeed Adam Bamme, who had died during his year of office. In the following October he was duly elected to the office, for which he was again chosen in 1406, and for a third time (the fourth if his first appoint ment by the King to succeed Bamme be reckoned) in 14 19. A prosperous mercer, he lent 282 LONDON TOWN large sums successively to Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V. He married Alice, daughter of Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn, but died childless (1423), as another great citizen — Sir Thomas Gresham — was destined to do in the next century. Public-spirited in a rare degree, he built almost at his own charges the new library of the Greyfriars, afterwards the north side of the great in that year of gaol fever (typhus) caught at the Old Bailey. And above Grinling Gibbons' oak altar-piece is a picture of Mary Magdalene Anointing the Feet of Christ, from the brush of William Hilton, R.A., presented in 1820 by the directors of the British Institution. St. Michael's also serves the parish of St. Martin in the Vintry, of which the church was not rebuilt after the Fire, Photo : Pictorial Agency. PAINTERS HALL : THE BANQUETING HALL. cloister of Christ's Hospital, and joined with others in handing over Leaden Hall to the Corporation. But his posthumous bene factions were yet more extensive. Under the powers of his will his executors rebuilt Newgate, contributed to the repair of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the restoration of the Guildhall, made collegiate the parish church of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal, and founded, adjoining his house on College Hill, the almshouses for thirteen poor men which came to be known as Whittington's Hospital. St. Michael's Church has other claims to notice besides its Whittington associations. It contains a monument of Sir Samuel Pennant, Lord Mayor in 1750, who died though a bit of the graveyard may be seen at the corner of Upper Thames Street and Queen Street. St. Martin was the patron saint of the Vintners, who, as we have seen, have given their name to the ward. Hard by, on Garlick Hill, is the church of St. James's Garlickhithe, with a steeple which has more resemblance to hTu!1** that of St. Michael's, though it is but a general resemblance, than is usual with Wren's spires. Above the clock, suspended from the tower, and dated 1682, is a gilded figure of the patron saint, who is turning his back on Thames Street. It was in this church that Steele was so BRINGING WINE TO LONDON IN OLDEN DAYS 283 affected by the reading of the liturgy. In No. 147 of the Spectator he relates how he heard it read " so dis tinctly, so emphatically, and so fervently that it was next to an impossibility to be in attentive. My eyes and my thoughts could not wander as usual, but were confined to my prayers . . . My mind was really affected, and fervent wishes accompanied my words. The Confession was read with such a resigned humility, the Absolution with such a com fortable authority, the Thanks givings with such a religious joy, as made me feel these affections of the mind in a manner I never did before." The reader who won this fine tribute was the Rev. Philip Stubbs, rector of the parish, and afterwards Archdeacon of St. Alban's. According to Stow, Garlick- hithe was so called because anciently garlick was sold here, hithe"" near St. James's Church. Close by was another hithe or quay, Queenhithe, so called, it is said, because it belonged to the Queen. Its history is obscure and confused, but Riley thinks that most probably " Queen " is a corruption of " quern " (corn), for in documents of the 1 2th century Queenhithe is called Cornhith, from the corn and flour which were landed at this quay. Probably, too, it was at Queen hithe that the fleets laden with wine from CAMDEN'S LOVING CUP. the Moselle moored. Riley, in the Liber Custumarum, has set out the regulations to which the French ships had to con form. At Yantlet Creek they had " to arrange themselves in due order and raise their ensign," and having passed beneath London Bridge they had " to remain at their moor ings two ebbs and a flood ; during which period the mer chants were to sell no part of their cargo, it being the duty of one of the Sheriffs and the King's Chamberlain to board each vessel in the meantime." Then, the officials having made such purchases as they pleased, the Frenchmen were able to dispose of their tuns of wine under certain conditions " to such merchants as might present themselves as customers, those of London having the priority and those of Winchester coming- next.'' The church of St. Michael Queenhithe, which stood on the north side of Upper Thames Street, was destroyed in 1876, the parish being annexed to that of St. James Garlickhithe. The gilded vane, which takes the form of a ship with a hull large enough, so it is said, to hold a bushel of corn — a reference to the trade to which Queenhithe very probably owes its name — is still to be seen, surmounting a miniature spire, on the rectory, which stands on the site of the church, at the corner of Huggin Lane. ARMS OF THE PAINTERS COMPANY. 284 LONDON TOWN In Little Trinity Lane is the Hall of the St. Luke's Day. Down to the foundation Painters' Company, dating from three years of the Royal Academy this company after the Fire, and enlarged in 1880. The numbered among its members the chief Company itself, styled the Paynter Stayners painters; and in 1784 it conferred its freedom — a picture on canvas being anciently called upon Sir Joshua Reynolds. Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. BENET S, PAUL S WHARF. a stained cloth — existed as a fraternity as early as the 14th century, and was incor porated by Edward IV. in 1467. As one would expect, the Hall is embellished with a good many paintings, among them one of Camden the historian, who left in his will a sum of £16 for the purchase of a loving cup which is still brought out every Close by the site of St. Michael's Queen hithe there stands all that is left of yet another of Wren's works, the church somerset. of St MaiT Somerset. When in 1 87 1 it was taken down and the parish united to that of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, the tower was spared, the City Corporation becoming its custodian. Forlorn NARROW LANES WITH CURIOUS NAMES 285 enough it looks in its solitude and dinginess, and almost it seems to be lamenting its severance from the human life around it. How different from the tower of Allhallows Staining, off Fenchurch Street, which, care fully tended by the Clothworkers' Company, forms an ornament of the pleasant garden into which the graveyard has been trans formed. " Somerset," by the way, is con- the north side 01 Upper Thames Street by Lambeth Hill, which should be Lambert Hill, after the owner. On old Fish Street Hill, where was London's fish market before Billingsgate was appropriated to that pur pose, stood the church of St. Mary Magda lene, rebuilt by Wren after the Fire, and so seriously damaged by the same enemy in December, 1886, that it was pulled down to Photo : Pictorial Agency. JUNCTION OF UPPER THAMES STREET AND QUEEN VICTORIA STREET. jectured by Stow to be a corruption of Summer's Hithe, a quay belonging to a man of that name. East of the tower of St. Mary Somerset is Fye Foot Lane, known in Stow's day as Five Foot Lane, because at one end it was but five feet in breadth. Another narrow street with a curious name, a little to the westward, is Trig Lane, so called from one John Trigge, who in the reign of Edward III. owned stairs that led down to the water. It is continued on QuaintNames avoid the cost of repair, the parish being amalgamated with that of St. Martin, Lud gate. Yet another of Wren's churches, that of St. Benet, Paul's Wharf, abutting on the north side of Upper Thames Street, though it still exists, has ceased to be paro- st. Benet's. chial, for the parish to which it belonged was annexed to that of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey in 1867, and since then the church has been used for services in Welsh. The most famous association of 286 LONDON TOWN old St. Benet's was with Inigo Jones, greatest but one of British architects, if not greatest of all, who, in the later years of his imgo long life — he was nearly eighty Jones. & J b J at the time of his death — found himself, as a Royalist, fallen on evil days. He died in the year after the Battle of Wor cester, on the 2 1st of June, 1652, and by his own directions was buried in the chancel here, close to the dust of his father and mother. His monument of white marble perished with the church. Wren, who was as fortunate in his opportunities as Inigo Jones was unfortunate, appreciated his great predecessor's genius, and spoke of the portico which he added to Old St. Paul's as an " exquisite piece in itself." In the present St. Benet's, built of red brick, which the years have turned to a venerable tinge, Henry Fielding married his second wife, on November 27th, 1747. In those days, says Mr. Austin Dobson in his Life of the great novelist, St. Benet's was much in request for private unions. INIGO JONES. From the Portrait by Vandyck. REMAINS OF THE BLACKFRIARS MONASTERY, UNEARTHED 1 872. From a Painting by R, Rushen. CHAPTER XXVI CASTLE BAYNARD AND BLACKFRIARS Castle Baynard — The Castellan — The Second Baynard's Castle — The Black Friars — The Wall Extended to include their Monastery — Aristocratic Residents in Blackfriars — A Tragic Incident at Hunsdon House— Vandyck and Shakespeare — Blackfriars Theatre — Printing House Square — The Greatest of British Newspapers — An Incident in its History — The Apothecaries — Feud with the Physicians — Carter Lane — The " Bell " — Doctors' Commons Castle Baynard. who has study, as THE part of the City to which our pil grimage has led us is known as Castle Baynard Ward, and the name has survived also in Castle Baynard Wharf. Castle Bay nard, named after Ralph Bainard, one of William the Conqueror's followers, is defined by Mr. Loftie,* made it a subject of special " a tower or bastion of the [first] City Wall, which was situated at its south west corner," overlooking the river, and near the present Puddle Dock ; and a little to the north of it was a smaller tower named after another Norman, Montfichet. In mi Baynard's Castle was forfeited to the Crown by William Bainard, to whom it had descended. Soon afterwards it was conferred upon Robert, a younger son of Richard Earl of Clare, and from him it passed in due course to his son Walter, and next to the Fitzwalter who incurred the enmity of King John. By this monarch Castle Bay nard was dismantled and destroyed, and ?"London" (Historic Towns Series)/ By W. J. Loftie, B. A., F.S.A. (Longmans, Green and Co. ) though before his death Fitzwalter was restored to his possessions, Mr. Loftie could find no evidence that the castle was ever rebuilt, though many writers have assumed that it was. In 1276 the Lord Fitzwalter of that day presented the site of the castle to the Black Friars for the new monastery which they were building for themselves at this south-western corner of the City, and with the site he gave also Montfichet's Tower, which had for some time been in the posses sion of the Fitzwalters, having come to them before the death of the last of the Mont- fichets. By virtue of their possession of Baynard's Castle, " the key to the City," as Mr. Wheat- ley terms it in his " Story of Castellan London," the Fitzwalters held of the ' City. the office of Castellan and Bannerer of the City. A pic turesque account of the duties of the office, as exercised by the Lord Fitzwalter who surrendered the site of Castle Baynard to the Dominicans, was drawn up by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald in the reign of 2S7 288 LONDON TOWN Elizabeth. In time of war he was " to ride upon a light horse, with twenty men-at-arms on horseback, their horses covered with cloth or harness, unto the great dore of St. Paul's church, with the banner of his arms carried before him ; and being come in that manner thither, the Mayor of London, together with the sheriffs and aldermen, to issue armed out of the church unto the same dore on foot, with a banner in his hand, having the figure of St. Paul depicted with gold thereon, but the feet, hands, and head of silver, holding a silver sword in his hand. And as soon as he shall see the Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen come on foot out of the church, carrying such a banner, he is to alight from his horse, and salute him as his companion, saying : ' Sir Mayor, I am obliged to come hither to do my service, which I owe to this city.' To whom the Mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen are to answer, ' We give to you, as our banner- bearer for this city, this banner by inheritance of the City, to bear and carry, to the honour and profit thereof to your power.' Where upon the said Robert and his heirs shall receive it into their hands, and the Mayor and sheriffs shall follow him to the dore, and bring him an horse worth twenty pounds. Which horse shall be saddled with a saddle of his arms and covered with silk, depicted likewise with the same arms ; and they shall take twenty pounds Stirling and deliver it to the chamberlain of the said Robert, for his ex penses that day." It was on a vacant plot of ground over against the west door of St. Paul's that this ceremony was enacted. To the Lords Fitzwalter sundry privileges appertained, which they continued to exer cise until 1347, when the City declared against them, provoked by Sir John Fitz- walter's setting up stocks in Castle Baynard Ward and claiming to make deliverance of men there imprisoned. The Mayor, Alder men and commonalty thereupon agreed, as appears from Riley's " Memorials," that Sir John " had no franchise within the liberty of the City aforesaid, nor is he in future to inter meddle with any plea in the Guildhall of London, or with any matters touching the liberties of the City." But there was a second Baynard's Castle, which has sometimes been confused with the one held by the Barons Fitzwalter, though, as Mr. Loftie has shown, it was not even in the same parish. In 1428 Humphrey Duke of Gloucester built on the river bank a little to the east of the site of BaynCardts Baynard's Castle, near the present Castle. St. Paul's Wharf, a house which came to be known by that de signation. It was in the court of this second Baynard's Castle that, after the death of Edward IV., the Crown was offered to Richard Crookback, as depicted in one of the frescoes in the Royal Exchange. After Bosworth Field the mansion fell to the Crown, and re mained in the royal possession till Queen Elizabeth leased it to the Earl of Pembroke. In 1648, during the War of the Rebellion, it was garrisoned by Parliament, and thereafter its career was but short, for it perished in the Fire eighteen years afterwards, and when Strype wrote in 1720 nothing remained of it but a tower, which has long since vanished. The monastery of the Dominican friars which absorbed both Baynard and Montfichet Castles was, as we have seen, established in this part of London in 1276. The order was of recent origin, for it had been founded early in that same century by St. Dominic, the Spaniard, and the brethren were called Preaching Friars because they made it their business to preach the faith, especially to heretics, and Black Friars from bi * k their garb. In London they Friars. settled first at Holborn, near Lincoln's Inn, a house being founded for them, in 1221, by Hubert de Burgh. When, fifty-five years later, they left Holborn, the Mayor, Gregory de Rokesly, gave them a site in the ward of Castle Baynard. Edward I. and Queen Eleanor contributed liberally to the endowment of the house, and the King allowed them to pull down the City wall and take in all the land lying between it and the Fleet, besides conveying to the City authorities his wish that the new wall should be built at their expense. The church, rather larger than St. Saviour's, South wark, as appears from the Loseley MSS., was " a very notable structure, and must have had a most imposing effect, standing as it did on the steep northern bank of the Thames. . . The cloister, on the south side, was comprised in a square, each side of which measured no feet. The chapter-house lay west of the cloister, and was 44 feet long by 22 broad." And the friars enjoyed in fullest degree all ROBERT FITZWALTER, CASTELI.AX OF LONDON IX THE REIGN OF HENRY III., RECEIVING FROM THE LORD MAYOR THE CITY'S BAXXER. From the Painting by Richard Beavis, at Guildhall, BLACKFRIARS MONASTERY 289 the privileges and immunities accorded to such establishments. "Having a very large extent of ground within its liberty," says Stevens, the monastic historian, " the same was shut up with four gates, and all the inhabi tants within it were subject to none but the King ... so that neither the Mayor nor the sheriffs, nor any other officers of the City of London, had the least jurisdiction or authority therein." Nor did these privileges and im- Earthquake Council, because while it was sitting the City was visited by an earthquake. Charles V of Spain was lodged here when he visited this country as the guest of Henry VIII. Here in Henry's reign sat the Black Parliament, so called because it began here and ended at the house of the Black Friars at Westminster ; and here, too, was opened the Parliament that condemned Wolsey. Still more memorably. Blackfriars was the scene of BAYNARD S CASTLE. From an Engraving by A . Birrell. munities cease at the Dissolution. Soon after the friars were sent packing the Lord Mayor sought vainly to secure the abolition of the right of sanctuary, and a similar attempt in the reign of Mary was equally unsuccessful. The precinct was eventually merged in the Ward of Farringdon Within, and so recently as 1735 a man named Watson, proceeded against by the City authorities for selling shoes in Blackfriars without being free of the City, pleaded the privileges of the pre cinct, but the decision was against him. But we have anticipated. Before the mon astery of the Black Friars went the way of other religious houses some not- Associations aD]e things happened within Monastery, its walls. In the great hall, in 1382, was held the Council convened by Archbishop Courtenay to con demn the teaching of Wycliff, and called the the trial, presided over by Cardinal Cam- peggio, which issued in the divorce of Kath arine of Aragon. It was in 1538 that the monastery was surrendered to the King who had with it associations so intimate. In the year of his accession Edward VI. sold the hall and the site of the Prior's lodgings to Sir Francis Bryan, and two years later he granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden, his Master of the Revels, the rest of the property, of which the annual value was estimated at £19. The church, however, was spared, and became the parish church of St. Anne's, and so re mained until the Great Fire, after which the parish was annexed to that of St. Andrew- by-the-Wardrobe. St. Anne's stood south of Ireland Yard, St. Andrew's Hill, and dingy and dismal fragments of the graveyard may still be seen in Church Entry and Ireland 290 LONDON TOWN Yard, the one accessible from Carter Lane, the other from St. Andrew's Hill. The precinct of Blackfriars, both before and after the ejection of the monks, was an aristo cratic quarter, and was especially affected by noblemen not ambitious to play a part in statecraft, and who therefore lived here " private " instead of building for themselves houses beside the river nearer Westminster. Here Lord Herbert, son of the fourth Earl of Worcester, was honoured with a visit from Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter and heiress of John Lord Russell. Her Majesty was met by the bride at the waterside and was borne in a conveyance by six knights to the bride groom's house, where she dined, afterwards supping with Lord Herbert's neighbour, Lord Cobham. In Blackfriars, again, were living the Earl and Countess of Somerset when Sir Thomas Overbury was murdered in the Tower. One of the mansions of the great at Blackfriars, Hunsdon House, named after Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, Queen Eliza beth's cousin and Lord Chamberlain, was in 1623 (Sunday, October 26th) the scene of a tragic accident. At this time it was in the occupation of Count de Tillier, the French Ambassador, and in a long garret on the third and topmost storey a con- " The greg-ation of about three hundred Fatal ° ° Vespers." Roman Catholics had assembled to hear a sermon from Father Drury, a famous Jesuit preacher. When Father Drury had been discoursing for about half-an-hour the main beam of the floor gave way and many of the congregation were precipitated to the floor below, which also gave way. No fewer than ninety-five per sons lost their lives, among them Father Drury himself, and another priest who was in the room below the garret. Some mar vellous escapes were recorded. A Mistress Lucie Penruddock fell between Lady Webb of Southwark and a servant, who were both killed, while she was saved by her chair falling over her head. Lady Webb's daughter was found alive near her dead mother ; a girl named Sanders was saved by the door, which fell and covered her ; and a Protestant student, though one of the under most, escaped by the timbers arching over him and some of them slanting against the wall. He tore his way out through the laths of the ceilings by main strength, then crept between two joists to a hole where he saw light, and was drawn through a door by one of Count Tillier's family. He at once re turned to rescue others. " Oh, my mother ! — oh, my sister ! — they are down under the tim ber ! " exclaimed to him a girl of ten. He told her to be patient and by God's grace they would soon be got forth. " This will be a great scandal to our religion," remarked the child, with a reflectiveness beyond her years. And the extreme Protestants were not slow to point the moral, while some Roman Catholics on their part did not scruple to accuse the enemy of having caused the calamity by drawing out the tie-pins or partly sawing through the beams. " The Fatal Vespers " was the name by which the tragic day was long known among Roman Catholics in England. Blackfriars was affected also by the aristo cracy of talent as well as by the aristocracy of birth. Vandyck, who lived VandycK. here, in his own house, from the year he settled in this country until his death (1632-41), was but one of many painters who pitched their tents in this quarter, others being Isaac Oliver, the cele brated miniaturist, who died in 1617 and was buried in St. Anne's Church, and Cornelius Jansen, who died in 1665. Ben Jonson dated the dedication of his Volpone from his house in the Blackfriars, and Shakespeare, though he may not have lived here, in 1613, after his return to Stratford-on - Avon, bought a house from one slfelre! Heniy Walker for £140, and con veyed it by will to his daughter, Susannah Hall. It was situated on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, in or close to the spot still known as Ireland Yard, pro bably after the William Ireland, a haber dasher by trade, who occupied the house at the time Shakespeare bought it. The house perished in the Great Fire, and the precise spot where it stood cannot now be determined, but the deed of conveyance is among the treasures preserved at the Guildhall. But Blackfriars has other associations also with Shakespeare, for he became part pro prietor of the theatre established here in 1596-97 by James Burbage, who transformed into a playhouse a large portion of a PLAYERS AND PURITANS IN BLACKFRIARS 291 mansion that had formerly belonged to the Sir Thomas Cawarden to whom the greater part of the precinct was granted by Edward VI. The Blackfriars Theatre had no long life. So early as 1619 the City authorities, set in motion by Blackfriars residents who masked their Puritanic dislike of playhouses under Blackfriars Theatre. hundred. Most appropriately this interesting " find " was communicated to the world through the great journal which is printed on the site of the theatre. In Blackfriars the players found them selves in the midst of Puritans. Many of these were feather-makers, and the dramatists of the day were fond of twitting Photo : Pictorial Agency. APOTHECARIES HALL. a complaint that the thoroughfares were obstructed, ordered the theatre to be closed, but the decree was evaded under the pretext that the theatre was a private house. In 1642 the performance of stage plays was forbidden by Parliament, and in 1655 the Blackfriars Theatre was demolished. No trace of it now remains save the name of Playhouse Yard, which indicates the site. Not long ago (1906) an American student of our antiquities, Professor Wallace, of the University of Nebraska, discovered at the Public Record Office four ancient suits at law relating to this theatre, which he estimates to have had a seating capacity, in pit, galleries, and private boxes, of about five them with their inconsistency in ministering to the gaieties which they condemned. Thus Ben Jonson makes one of the Puritans, characters of his Bartholomew Fair ask another, "What say you to your feather-makers in the Friars that are of your faction of faith ? Are they not, with their perukes and their puffs, their fans and their huffs, as much pages of Pride, and waiters upon Vanity ? " Another industry that flourished here was the manufacture of glass, of which the name Glasshouse Yard has survived as a reminder. Printing House Square, long associated with the greatest of newspapers, com memorates also the office of the King's 292 LONDON TOWN printers, which was situated here from at least the reign of Charles II. until in 1770 it was transferred to Little New Printing Street, off Shoe Lane, where it still Square. remains. The Times was started in 1785 (January 1) by John Walter, a printer, as the Daily Universal Register, and it first appeared under its present name on January 1, 1788, though it did not drop the earlier name out of its title until the 1 8th of March of that year. Its founder died in 1812, and his son, of the same name, whose genius brought the paper into the first place among our journals, died in 1847. There was a third John Walter, who was the chief proprietor of the paper until his death in 1894, and was succeeded by his son, Mr. Arthur F. Walter. In 1908 the Times was registered under the Joint Stock Companies Acts, the capital being three quarters of a million, and at the head of the list of signatories of the memorandum of association appeared the name of Arthur F. Walter. The conductors of the Times have always been quick to adopt the mechanical improve ments which have revolutionised the art of printing. About the year 1856 they sub stituted printing from stereotype plates for printing from movable type ; in 1 869 they in stalled the Walter press, which printed from a continuous web of paper on both sides of the sheet ; in 1879 they introduced the system of setting type by machinery instead of by hand. Of late years they have associated themselves with book-publishing and cognate enterprises, but there has been no indication that the paper has suffered from this diver sion of their energies, and in spite of vigorous competition of spirited rivals, the Times still holds its place as the first of our news papers, and indeed a national institution. The great organ is worthily housed in spacious and digni fied buildings of red brick which extend from Playhouse Yard to Queen Victoria Street. Of the many mem orable incidents in the career of the ARMS OF THE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES. Times, one at least must be recalled, because of the public demonstration of approval which it elicited. In 1841, t theS "Times!" during the regime of John Walter the second, the Paris correspondent of the paper, Mr. O'Reilly, at the risk of assassination, exposed the great Bogle fraud, by which a gang of astute swindlers hoped to sweep in something like a million of money. The exposure brought the nefarious scheme to naught, and the Times having triumphantly vindicated its action in a court of law, its proprietors received the thanks of a public meeting of the mercantile classes of the City held in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House on the ist of October, 1841, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor. A sum of ,£2,625 was raised as a testimonial, but the proprietors of the Times declining to accept any pecuniary compensation for the expense which they had incurred, the money was appropriated to the provision of Times scholarships at Christ's Hospital and the City of London School, and tablets setting forth the circum stances were erected in those institutions and in the Royal Exchange. In Water Lane, hard by Printing House Square, is the Hall of the Society of Apothecaries, one of the most interesting of the City Livery Companies. The Apothecaries split off from the Grocers' Company in 16 17 and received a charter of incorporation from James I., which set forth that the object aimed at was " that the ignorance and rashness of presumptuous empirics and ignorant and unexpert men may be restrained, whereby many discommodities, inconveniences, and perils do daily arise to the rude and incredu lous people." The arms of the Company, which show Apollo in his glory holding bow and arrow and bestriding Python the serpent, with two unicorns for sup porters and a rhi noceros for crest, are said to have been sug gested by the King himself. Towards the end of the same %e*: APOTHECARIES AND PHYSICIANS 293 century, in 1687, began the historic con troversy between the College of Physicians and the Company of Apothecaries. The apothecaries had begun to prescribe, as well as to compound drugs, and by way of retaliation, the College of Physicians, at that time established in Warwick Lane, off New gate Street, set up a dispensary of their own at which they undertook to supply medicines apothecaries and their assistants, but it is also one of the medical licensing authorities for England and Wales. In 1886 the powers already enjoyed by the Court of Examiners were enlarged and they were empowered to issue licences in surgery as well as in medicine and midwifery, which licences entitle the holders to compete for medical appointments in the Navy, Army, and India Service, as well ADVOCATES' COLLEGE, DOCTORS1 COMMONS, IN 1 8 54. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd. at cost price. A war of words ensued, in which the wits and poets, from Dryden and Pope downwards, arrayed themselves on the side of the physicians. The most notable literary product of the controversy was that of a physician who was also a wit, Dr. Garth. In " The Dispensary " he wields with vigour and skill a very keen-edged scalpel, and though one can feel only an historic interest in the conflict, his description of Apothecaries' Hall and its situation may be quoted : — " Near where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams, To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames, There stands a structure on a rising hill Where tyros take their freedom out to kill." The victory, however, did not in the end rest with the Physicians. The conviction they obtained against an apothecary of the name of Rose for attending a patient was upset by the House of Lords in 1703, and to-day not only does the Company issue licences to all CarterLane. as for Civil, Colonial, and Poor Law appoint ments. The Company's Hall, to which is attached a retail dispensary, was founded in 1623, and rebuilt after the Fire. Water Lane leads round to Carter Lane, which runs eastward a little to the south of St. Paul's Churchyard. Here, near its western end, is Bell Yard, com municating between Carter Lane and Knightrider Street to the south, and running beside the Post Office buildings which stretch down to Queen Victoria Street. This yard commemorates the " Bell " Inn, which stood on the exact spot indicated by a tablet erected on the western wall of the Post Office Telephone building by per mission of the Duke of Norfolk. " Upon this site," runs the inscrip tion, " formerly stood the Bell, Carter Lane, from whence Richard Quiney wrote the letter to William Shakespeare, dated the 25th of The " Bell 294 LONDON TOWN October, 1598. This is the only letter extant addressed to Shakespeare, and the original is preserved in the museum at his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. This tablet was placed upon the present building by leave of the Postmaster-General, 1899." A stone's-throw away, at the western end of Knightrider Street, is a modern tavern of the same name, which is said to have been often visited by Dickens when he was making notes for " David Copperfield." In Knightrider Street, at No. 67, there used to be another " Bell " tavern, of which the keystones of the windows bore the date 1668, and when it was demolished in 1890 the sign, in high relief, was transferred to the Guildhall Museum. In Carter Lane we find ourselves in the region which used to be known as Doctors' Commons, after the college or Doctors' « common house " provided for Commons. . . , , . ., , , ecclesiastical and civil lawyers early in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Until this time they had been lodged in Paternoster Row, at the " Queen's Head." The college, called until it was acquired for the lawyers Mountjoy House, after Lord Mountjoy, perished in the Fire of 1666, but was rebuilt, with its front in Knightrider Street and its garden in what is now Queen Victoria Street, while the proc tor's offices stood where now stands the Cathe dral Choir School (p. 54). With the reform of the judicature effected by the Court of Probate Act, 1857, Doctors' Commons found its occupation gone, the College being dis solved and the Courts removed elsewhere. In 1861 the College library was sold, the building itself was disposed of in the follow ing year, and in 1867 it was demolished. The Courts comprised by Doctors' Commons were five in number — the Court of Arches, the Prerogative Court, the Court of Faculties and Dispensations, the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London, and the High Court of Admiralty. The most important of the functions which resided in these Courts are now exercised by the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice ; but the proving of wills and testa ments, which formerly was the business of the Prerogative Court, is now carried on in the Will Office at Somerset House. SIGN OF THE " BELL " TAVERN, KNIGHTRIDER STREET. CHAPTER XXVII QUEEN VICTORIA STREET AND CANNON STREET Construction of Queen Victoria Street — St. Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe — The Bible Society — The Salvation Army — The General Post Office South— College of Arms— St. Nicholas Cole Abbey— A Broad-minded Cleric — St. Mary Aldermary — Knightrider Street — Linacre— Cannon Street— The Cordwainers — Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's Ancestors — London Stone — St. Swithin's — Salters' Hall— The Founders— Walbrook— One of Sir Christopher's Masterpieces— A Fatal Mischance— Bucklersbury THE Bill promoted by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the construction of Queen Victoria Street, to complete the mag nificent new line of communication between the heart of the City and West- The minster of which the Victoria Ma ng Embankment forms the western of a street. portion, became law in 1863. But, as is set out in the London County Council's " History of London Street Improvements," compiled by Mr. Percy J. Edwards, it was not until October, 1869, that the eastern extremity, from the Mansion House to Cannon Street, was opened. The stretch from St. Andrew's Hill westwards to Blackfriars Bridge was opened in January, 1 87 1 ; that from St. Andrew's Hill eastwards to Bennet's Hill in May of the same year ; and the final portion, from Bennet's Hill east wards, in the following November. The piecemeal opening of the street is explained by delay in the construction of the Metro politan District Railway, which runs beneath it from St. Andrew's Hill to the Mansion House station. In 1870, after, as we have seen, the eastern extremity of the new street had been completed, the Company promoted a Bill for extending their line to the Mansion House, their intention being to build a terminus under that end of the new street. The Bill was thrown out, but the Company received power to construct their terminus under the then unformed part of the new street, and it was not till this had been done that the final section of Queen Victoria Street could be finished. The Victoria Embankment is noticed in another chapter, but here it may be men tioned that the fine thoroughfare from West minster to the Mansion House which the Victoria Embankment and Queen Victoria Street combine to form is two miles in length, or one-third of a mile less than the old route by way of Whitehall, the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, and Cheapside. It avoids also the ascent of Ludgate Hill, where the gradient is 1 in 26, as well as the summit level at the top of Cheapside and that between Wellington Street and Somerset House, with a dip of 23 feet between them. The worst gradient along the new route, that at the Blackfriars end of the Embankment, is not more than 1 in 40, and for more than a mile the road runs on a dead level. Everyone passing along Queen Victoria Street must have noticed how steeply the tributary streets on both sides ascend and descend — on the one hand towards Cannon Street and Ludgate Hill, on the other hand towards Upper Thames Street. To form a convenient connexion with these streets was a matter of no small difficulty. In some cases the gradients were so steep that if one side of Queen Victoria Street had been made level with the crossing street, the other side would have been five or six feet below it. In some cases a good connexion could only be obtained " by diverting the north-and- south streets, and so giving additional length over which to distribute the difference of level." The gross cost of the street was £2,300,520 ; but the surplus land realised £1,224,233, so that the net cost was not much more than a million. The comely church of red brick, with a square tower, standing high above the street near its western end, is that of St. Andrew- by-the- Wardrobe, rebuilt by Wren, who 295 296 LONDON TOWN finished it in 1692. It contains a monument by John Bacon the elder to the Rev. William Romaine, the famous preacher of the second half of the eighteenth century, who was for many years its rector. In olden days it was distinguished from other City churches dedicated to the same saint by the awkward designation of St. St. Andrew's' by*the- Wardrobe Churches of the Reformation throughout Christendom. The service at St Paul's was attended by Queen Alexandra and her son and daughters, and the King was only kept away by sickness. In that year also appeared the two first volumes of Mr. Canton's centenary history of the Society. From this monumental work it appears The BibleSociety. Photo : Pictorial Ag, ST. ANDREW'S-BY-THE-WARDROBE. Andrew's-juxta-Baynard's-Castle, but after the death of Sir John Beauchamp, in 1359, his mansion here was bought by Edward III., converted into a receptacle for the royal apparel, and re-named Wardrobe Court, and then or later the church received its present title. The mansion perished in 1666, and was not rebuilt, the royal Wardrobe being transferred to the Savoy, and, later, a little further westwards to Buckingham Street, Strand. Next to St. Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe as we move eastwards comes the stately house of the British and Foreign Bible Society, an institution which celebrated its centenary in March, 1904, when a " Universal Bible Sunday " (March 6th) was observed by the that the formation of the Society was due to the scarcity of the Welsh version of the Scriptures, which sorely troubled the spirit of the Rev. Thomas Charles, of Bala, who had set himself to the task " of enlighten ing the spiritual darkness which enveloped North Wales." As the result of steps taken by him in co-operation with such men as William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, Charles Grant, Zachary Macaulay, Lord Teignmouth, and Henry Thornton, a public meeting was held at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street on Wednesday, the 7th of March, 1804, at which resolutions were adopted establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society. Such was the origin of an organisation which, in Mr. Canton's words " has brought the Word THE BIBLE SOCIETY— THE SALVATION ARMY 297 of Life within reach of the poorest at home, and at an expenditure of £13,937,000 has dis tributed 180,000,000 copies of Scripture in languages spoken by seven - tenths of the population of the planet. Sanguine as he was," adds Mr. Canton, " William Wilberforce thought £10,000 the highest point in annual income that the Society could ever possibly reach. In its fourth year the revenue ex ceeded £ 12,000, in the sixth £27,000, in the ninth £70,000 ; with fluctuations it rose to more than £100,000 in 185 1, and since 1883 it has not fallen so low as £200,000." The old Bible House stood a little to the west of the present one, in what was then known as Earl Street, now forming part of Upper Thames Street. The front of the building looked towards the river ; at the back, a flight of steps led into Printing House Square. In the dig nified building in which the Society now carries on its work, designed by Edward I'Anson and completed in 1 868, is preserved an interesting collection of the versions of the Bible which the Society has published. Nearly opposite Bible House are the International Headquarters of another great religious agency, the Salvation Army, the rise and progress of which form one of the marvels of these later days. It repre sents the organising genius and the burning enthusiasm for Christ and humanity of a very remarkable family. William Booth, " the General," to give him the title by which he is so widely known, was born at Nottingham in 1829 and was brought up in the Church of England, but presently associated himself with branches of the Methodist Communion. His career as a preacher began at the age of 20 The Salvation Army Head quarters. fifteen in the streets of Nottingham. After some years of revival work under Methodist auspices he became an independent evange list. He had definitely abandoned business in 1852, on the 23rd anniversary of his birthday. Three years later he married Catherine Mumford, who was to prove herself one of the great spiritual forces of the century. She began her public ministry at Gateshead in i860, and during the remaining thirty years of her life she was her husband's true helpmate in his great work. In July, 1865, he started the Christian Mission for evangelistic work in East London. In 1878 this was trans formed into the Sal vation Army, which in thirty years has spread well-nigh over the habitable globe. It " occupies" some fifty colonies and countries, it preaches in over thirty lan guages, it has some fifteen thousand officers and cadets, besides fifty thousand local officers who give to it their spare time, and its period icals have an aggre gate circulation of a million for each issue. But it is by its social work, its thoroughly practical and extraordinarily successful efforts not merely to relieve distress but to reclaim the vicious and those who from whatever cause have " gone under," that the Salvation Arm)- has conquered prejudice and won the sympathy of all, from the King and Queen (who in 1904 summoned General Booth to Buckingham Palace to wish him godspeed) to the humblest of their subjects. It feeds the hungry and shelters the home less by the million, it carries on scores of workshops and farms which form an avenue to a life of usefulness and comfort for those who but for its help would continue to swell the ranks of the unemployed and the hopeless. At the beginning of 1905 the Army received REV. THOMAS CHARLES, OF BALA From a Portrait at Bible House. 298 LONDON TOWN what must have been most welcome re cognition from the greatest living authority on life and labour in London, the Right Hon. Charles Booth, in the form of a sub stantial donation and a letter in which this eminent statistician and social reformer avowed his confidence in the Army. In October of the same year the freedom of the City was conferred upon General Booth at the Guildhall. On the northern side of the street, adjoining Bible House, is another stately structure of stone, the General Post Office Ih1 ™?eral South, so called because of its Post Office ' South. position relatively to the General Post Office buildings at St. Martin's-le-Grand. It was designed by Mr. James Williams, of H.M. Office of Works and Public Buildings, and was opened in 1880 as the Savings Bank Department, but in 1903 the Savings Bank was removed to West Kensington, and the General Post Office South is now divided between the Central Telephone Exchange and the Money Order Department, with which the Postal Order Branch has been amalgam ated. Beyond Godliman (properly Godal- ming) Street is the College of Arms.8 ° Arms, or Heralds' College, an admirable structure of red brick, enclosing a quadrangular courtyard which is no longer proportionate to the building, a considerable slice having been taken for the formation of Queen Victoria Street. The alteration, unavoidable no doubt, was none the less unfortunate, for the effect of it is to give the building too great an elevation. The present College, completed in 1683, succeeded Derby House, the mansion of the Stanleys, built by the first Stanley who bore the title of Earl of Derby, and who married the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. In 1555, by gift of Queen Mary, Derby House became the College of Arms, to the end, in the words of Stow, that " the king of arms, heralds, and pursuivants of arms, and their successors, might at their liking dwell together, and at meet times to congregatei speak, confer, and agree among themselves for the good government of their faculty, and their records might be more safely kept." So it remained until it was burnt in the Fire of 1666. Derby House, however, of which the escutcheons on the eastern wing of the present building — the arms (or legs) of the Isle of Man and an eagle's claw, both of them ensigns of the Stanleys — are a reminiscence, was not the original College of Arms, for the officers who make up this , institution were installed first in Cold Harbour House, Poultney (Pountney) Lane, and then, in the reign of Henry VII., at Ronceval Priory, Charing Cross, afterwards Northumberland House. The present structure was built largely from fees paid to the College, but Sir William Dugdale,whowas Garter King-at-Arms at that time, took upon himself the charge of the rooms to be occupied by himself at the north east corner. Fortunately the records and books escaped when Derby House was burnt, and the treasures of the College include many precious volumes of genealogy and the like. Here also are preserved the sword and dagger of James IV. of Scotland, who fell on Flodden Field, together with the turquoise ring which the Queen of France is said to have sent to him begging him to ride a foray in England ; and a portrait of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, from his tomb in Old St. Paul's. The College, whose business it is to deal with all matters of heraldry, consists of three kings - at - arms — Garter, Clarenceux, and Norroy ; six heralds — Somerset, Richmond, Lancaster, Windsor, Chester, York ; and four pursuivants — Rouge Dragon, Blue Mantle, Portcullis, and Rouge Croix. All these officers are appointed by the Duke of Norfolk in his capacity of Earl Marshal. This hereditary office has been held by the Dukes of Norfolk of the Howard family since 1483, when it was conferred upon John, the first Duke. His mother was a co-heiress of the Mowbrays, Dukes of Norfolk, the last of whom, John Mowbray, was hereditary Earl Marshal by descent from Thomas of Brotherton, a younger son of Edward I. The church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, abutting both upon Queen Victoria Street and upon Knightrider Street, serves Cole Abbey8 ^ve Pai"ishes besides its own. Cole Abbey would appear to be a corruption of Cold Abbey, which name, as Dr. Reginald Sharpe has shown, appears as early as 1278 ; but why Cold Abbey no one knows. The present church, finished by Wren in 1677, and thoroughly renovated in 1873, when a new entrance from Queen Victoria Street was formed, A GREAT CITY PARSON 299 but now spoilt, as to its exterior, by having tacked on to its Queen Victoria Street front a building intended for commercial purposes, is intimately associated with the memory of Henry Shuttleworth, who as shuttieworth. rector here carried on with great spirit and activity and abounding success a many-sided work, educational and social as wrell as religious, and attracted Stow, who perhaps was indulging in one of his charming guesses, because it was older than any other church of St. Al'dettnlry. Mary in the City- lt WaS rebuilt early in the sixteenth century by Sir Henry Keble, grocer, who was Lord Mayor in 16 10, and in it, three years before the Fire, Milton was united to his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, by his friend Dr. Robert Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE COLLEGE OF ARMS. crowded congregations when most of the City churches were empty. Shuttleworth had affinities with both the High Church and the Broad Church schools (" I am a Maurician to the finger-tips," he once said to the present writer) ; and his superiority to convention may be gauged by the fact that in 1888 he headed a deputation to the Common Council in support of a petition of the National Sunday League that the Guildhall Library and Museum and the Art Gallery might be thrown open on Sundays. This broad-minded parson died in 1900, at the early age of fifty, having held the incumbency sixteen years. At the Queen Victoria Street corner of Bow Lane is another church with a curious name, St. Mary Aldermary, so called, says Gell, the incumbent. The present church, built by Wren in 1681-82, is a reproduction of Keble's, in accordance with a stipulation of the widow and executrix of one Henry Rogers, who had left a sum of £5,000 for the rebuilding. The tower, not entirely destroyed by the Fire, rises into four rather ponderous pinnacles, and is scarcely entitled to the praises which some writers have bestowed upon it. In the chancel itself is a sculptured tablet by one of the Bacons with no inscription, and a cynic has suggested that it was ordered by a widow who married again before it was finished and forgot all about it. Another tablet commemorates Percivall Pott, the celebrated surgeon of St. Bartholomew's, who was buried here in 1788. 300 LONDON TOWN Between Queen Victoria Street and Cannon Street runs Knightrider Street, a name which gave Stow the opportunity Knightrider gQr another 0f his ingenuous de- Street. ° rivations — that it is due, " as is supposed," to the practice of " knights well armed and mounted at the Tower Royal* riding from thence through that street west to Creed Lane, and so out at Ludgate towards Smithfield " to tourneys and jousts. Those who think that any derivation is better than none at all may be grateful to the old topographer. In this street was the house of Linacre, the Court physician who founded the Royal College of Physicians incorporated in 1 518. From that time until the year 1560 the College met in Linacre's house, and the site and the build ings upon it are still the property of that learned body, though in the year named it migrated to Amen Corner. Cannon Street was originally styled Candle- wick Street, from the candle makers who dwelt here, and the earlier name is sare"tn still borne by one of the wards of the City. Anciently it was much shorter than it is now, for its western ex tremity terminated at Watling Street, but in 1853-54 it was not only widened but extended westwards to St. Paul's Churchyard. Near its western end (No. 7) is the Hall of the Cordwainers' Company, built in 1788 by Sylvanus Hall, with a stone front by one of the Adams. The Cordwainers, who were engaged in the various trades in which leather is used, have given * See ante, p. 85. STEEPLE OF ST. NICHOLAS COLE ABBEY. The Cord. wainers. their name to a City ward. They were incor porated by Henry VI. in 1439, but they existed as a fraternity long before, and the first of their three halls was built in the early years of the fourteenth century. Of this Company several members of the family to which the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain belongs have been Masters. The first of The . , . them was William Chamber- Chamberlains. lain, who in the eighteenth century established in Milk Street the business of a cordwainer, which was carried on by his descendants for nearly 150 years, the succession ending with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's father.* Besides William Cham berlain, two of his sons and three of his grandsons held the position of Master of the Company, one of the grandsons being Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's father. In 1896 Mr. Chamberlain was presented with an address by the Company, to commemorate the asso ciation with it of his family. Of Cannon Street much the most interest ing feature is London Stone, a rounded mono lith, built, with its case, also of London stone, into the street wall of the atone, ' church of St. Swithin, and pro tected from meddling and mischievous hands by iron bars. Concerning this relic of ancient days Stow is rather uncharacteristic ally nescient. Describing it as standing " on the south side of this high street (Candlewick Street), near unto the channel," and as " fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set that if carts do run against it through negligence the wheels be broken and the stone itself unshaken," he adds that " the cause why this stone was set there, the time when, or other memory hereof is none." In his " Britannia," Camden, writing about the same time, propounded the theory, based on its situation " in the centre of the longest diameter of the City," that it was "a miliary, like that in the Forum at Rome, from whence all the distances were measured," and this hypothesis has been generally accepted by later writers. Wren, who had made a careful study of Roman remains in the City, and whose opinion is entitled to great weight, agreed with Camden that the stone was of Roman origin, but as his son tells us in the " Parentalia," he believed, " by reason of the * See ante, p. 92. LONDON STONE AND ST. SWITHIN'S 301 large foundation, it was rather some more considerable monument in the Forum, for in the adjoining ground on the south side, upon digging for cellars after the Great Fire, were discovered some pavements and other exten sive remains of Roman workmanship and buildings." Sir Christopher, one ventures to think, went as far as the evidence warrants ; but it may be added that the late Grant Allen conjectured the stone to be an early Celtic monument preserved by the Romans. In representing Jack Cade as striking his staff on the stone and sitting upon it, mean while declaring himself to be " Lord of this City," Shakespeare, in King Henry VI, follows Holinshed's Chronicle. It would appear that this stone played a part in municipal procedure, proclamations being made and other business transacted before it, and Mr. Coote, in a paper published by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, has suggested that it formed part of the house of FitzAylwin, London's first Mayor. Mr. Lethaby is unable to accept this view, but acutely suggests that the civic importance of the monument may have originated in its proximity to Fitz- Aylwin's house, which was close by, though on the other (the north) side of the street. It was on the 13th of December, 1742, that London Stone was moved to the north side of Cannon Street — not just where it is now to be seen, but close to the south-west door of St. Swithin's. In 1798 it was again disturbed, as an obstruction, but instead of being made away with, as was threatened, it was, thanks to the efforts of a local antiquary, Mr. Thomas Maiden, a printer in Sherbourne Lane, whose name is ever to be held in grateful memory, incorporated with St. Swithin's Church. Now, having come down to an age which is able to distinguish between petrified history and mere common stone, it will no doubt continue, unless it should be swallowed up by an earthquake, to be an object of interest to Londoners as long as there are Londoners to be interested in it. The church of St. Swithin-by-London- Stone, dedicated to the Saxon Bishop of Winchester (d. 862) who in obedience to his own directions was so buried in that city that passers-by might tread on his grave and that the rain from the eaves of the cathedral might fall upon it, was rebuilt by Wren in 1678, but was a good deal altered as to its interior in 1869 and 1879. On a column on the north side of the church is a tablet com memorating Michael Godfrey (nephew of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey), the first deputy- governor of the Bank of England, who, going to the camp of William III. outside Namur, was reproved by the King for needlessly exposing himself to danger, and immediately afterwards was slain by a cannon-ball. It is St.Swithin's, LONDON STONE. not often that those who indulge in warnings have the mournful satisfaction of seeing them so promptly justified. In old St. Swithin's, on December 1st, 1663, three years before it came to its end in the Fire, Dryden was married to the Lady Elizabeth Howard, by licence issued the day before. Dryden, at this time about thirty, was living in the parish of St. Clement Danes, and the lady in that of St. Martin-in- the-Fields, and why the marriage was cele brated here is not known. St. Swithin's serves also the parish of St. Mary Bothaw (or Boathaw, perhaps as Stow suggests from a boat-yard), of which the church, to the south of Candlewick Street, near Dowgate Hill, was not rebuilt after 1666. A little way back from St. Swithin's is the 302 LONDON TOWN Hall of the Salters' Company, the ninth in order of civic precedence of the twelve great Livery Companies, who ob- Saiters' tained a licence from Richard II. Hall. in 1394 and were incorporated by Queen Elizabeth in 1559. Their trade was that of salting food for winter use, and it would appear that salt provisions were more used in the past than they have been in more recent days. In the Salters' arms appear three covered salts, and the crest con sists of an arm erect holding another covered salt, while the legend is Sal Sapit Omnia. Their first Hall, in Bread Street, was burnt down in 1533, and the second, on the same site, shared the same fate in 1598. Then they bought the mansion of the Prior of Tortington Suffolk, close to St. Swithin's Church, called Oxford House after John de Vere, sixteenth Earl of Oxford. This their third Hall perished in the Fire of 1666 ; the fourth, built in 1668-72, was a small building of brick, which was taken down in 1 821, to make way for the present Hall, built in 1823-27 from designs by Henry Carr. At the same time was demol ished Salters' Hall Chapel, adjoining, which had long been one of the principal Noncom- formist places of worship in the City, the congregation removing to a northern suburb, to a chapel bearing the old name. The elaborate iron gates at the entrance to the court of the present Salters' Hall commem orate the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Close by, in St. Swithin's Lane, is the Hall of one of the lesser Livery Companies, the Founders, whose trade was that of J.he , metal founding, and who, enrolled Founders. fa* ' by the Mayor and Aldermen in 1365, and incorporated by James I. in 1614, had the power to seize, within the City and for three miles around, all brass weights which were incorrect or did not bear the Company's stamp, and all false brass and copper wares. The Company is one of those which have not ceased to fulfil some at least of their olden functions, and some twenty thousand weights have its stamp impressed upon them in the course of the year. The present Hall dates only from 1878 ; from 1532 to 1854 the Company had its head quarters in Founders' Hall Court, Lothbury. Walbrook, the street which ascends steeply from Cannon Street to the Mansion House, is named after what in early days, as Stow tells us, was "a fair brook of sweet water, which came out from the north fields, Waibrooh. through the wall and midst of the City, into the River Thames." He turns an incredulous ear to Geoffrey of Mon mouth's legend that the stream was named after Gallus, by the Britons, but insists that it was called the Wall Brook because it ran through the City wall. It entered the City opposite Finsbury Circus, where a Roman arch has been discovered, ran right through the City from north to south, dividing the eastern wards from the western, and flowing beneath St. Margaret's Lothbury, which stood above it on vaults, to Elbow Lane (now Little College Street) and so into the Thames. As early as 1288 complaint was made of the pollution to which it was subjected, and by the time of Queen Elizabeth it was entirely vaulted over. The stream has given its name to a ward of the City as well as to a street. In Walbrook, almost adjoining the Mansion House, with a bookshop built sheer up against one of its walls, is the One of sir church of St. Stephen, built in Christopher's , . ... , , Masterpieces. 1 672-79 by Wren, who here con centrated his genius upon the interior, with a result of which the critical Fergusson says that it is " the most pleasing interior of any Renaissance church which has yet been erected." Its great feature is the large dome, resting on an octagonal base supported by eight pillars, and rising not from a drum but directly from the roof. By giving a barrel vault to the intercolumnar sections which cross in the centre of the dome a cruciform plan is indi cated. The church has won the praise of the severest critics. One merit it has which cannot be gainsaid : its composition is such as to make the building appear much larger than it really is. It was renovated in 1850, and again in 1888, when the pews, which with the wainscotting had been presented by the Grocers' Company, the patrons of the living were replaced by benches. On this occasion, too, a mosaic pavement was laid down. On the north wall hangs Benjamin West's " Martydom of St. Stephen." Several of the windows are filled with stained glass as a memorial of Dr. Croly, the author of " Salathiel," who was rector of the parish Photo Tutorial Agency. ST. STEPHEN S, WALBROOK. 3°4 LONDON TOWN (d. i860), and of whom also there is a bust on the north wall, by Behnes. Another writer associated with St. Stephen's, and who was also, in one sense at least, a great architect, since he built Blenheim and Castle Howard and other huge structures, is Sir John Vanbrugh, who was buried here in the family vault in 1726 ; but the curious visitor will look in vain for the epitaph — " Lie heavy on him, earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee." As an architect, Vanbrugh has had to endure many flouts, but his shade may per haps find some compensation in the splendid compliment paid him by Disraeli, who styles him " an imaginative artist, whose critics I wish no bitterer fate than not to live in his splendid creations." In Riley's " Memorials " is cited the record of an inquest held upon the body of one William le Clarke, who met with his death in old St. Stephen's in the year 1278. On the last Sunday in April of that year this driver of the quill, it appears, had nothing better to do than to clamber about the beams of the vestry in search of a pigeon's nest, and " his feet and limbs failing him," he fell on to one of the lower beams and was mortally hurt. A Fatal Mischance. Apprised of what had happened, the Chamber lain and Sheriffs called together the good men of the ward — at that time known as the Ward of John Adrien — and of the neigh bouring Ward of Chepe, who satisfied them selves that the death was the result of simple accident. Between Walbrook and Queen Victoria Street, and on to Cheapside, runs the narrow street known as Bucklersbury — bury!1*"* not named, as Stow would have us believe, after one Buckle, owner of the manor, for Riley (" Memorials ") shows that the original form of the name was Bokerelesberi, the " bury " of the Bokerels, an opulent family to which belonged An drew Bukerel, Mayor from 1231 to 1236. In Stow's day the street was given up to apothecaries and grocers ; and here Richard Quiney, the friend of Shakespeare, whose letter to the poet is preserved at the Guild hall, carried on business. In the Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff contrasts himself with the perfumed gallants " who smell like Bucklersbury in simple time." Ben Jonson also has references to Bucklersbury ; and here Sir Thomas More was living when his daughter Margaret, whose name was to be come a synonym for filial affection, was bom. JOHN DRYDEN {p. 301). {From the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Knellet in the National Portrait Gallery. ) CHAPTER XXVIII GRACECHURCH STREET AND BISHOPSGATE STREET The Name of Gracechurch Street — Bishop Gardiner's Wrath — The Horse and the Clown — Bishops gate — St. Helen's and its Tombs — Francis Bancroft and His Bequest — St. Ethelburga's — The Leathersellers — Gresham's Mansion — Crosby Hall — The Mutiny at the " Bull " — The London Tavern — St. Botoiph's — " Hang-Theology " Rogers — The Bishopsgate Street Institute — Sir Paul Pindar — The Friends — Devonshire Square — The City Merchant and the Stuarts — A Great Railway Centre — Bethlehem Priory — Liverpool Street : the Name TO say that the euphonious name of Gracechurch Street is a corruption were almost abusive. Yet one must admit that the street has no just title to its appellation. Stow writes of it as Grasse Gracechurch : Street and traces the name to the Name. ' the herb market — at one time the great corn market of the City — which was held here. This market gave its name to the church of St. Benet in the street, which church came to be known as Grasse Church. So from market and church the street came to be known as Gracious Street and Grace church Street, and since its rebuilding after the Great Fire it has borne the latter name, with its double suggestion of sanctity. St. Benet's Church, rebuilt by Wren after the Fire, at the junction of Grace church Street and Fen church Street, was de stroyed in 1867 and the parish annexed to that of Allhallows' Lombard Street. In olden days Grace church Street had its conduit, and in connex ion therewith a curious incident is recorded. In the procession of Queen Mary and her Spanish husband through the City after their luckless marriage, Bishop Gar diner noticed that on the conduit, which had been newly painted and gilded, appeared a pre- BISHOP S GATE 3°5 sentment of Henry VIII. carrying a sceptre in one hand and — horrible heterodoxy ! — a book inscribed with the words Verbutn Dei in the other. In his wrath Bishopery ne sent f°r tne Pamter, denounced him as knave, traitor, and heretic, and threatened to commit him to the Fleet. The painter, who either had no theology or was frightened out of it, protested that he had erred in innocence, and, erasing the Bible from the picture, painted in— a pair of gloves ! Like most of the City streets, Gracechurch Street was not lacking in ancient taverns. At one of these, the " Saba," otherwise the Queen of Sheba, dwelt Tarleton, the favourite clown of Shakespeare's day, probably in order to be near another inn, the " Cross Keys," in the yard of which plays were acted. Here Banks exhibited the talents of his horse Marocco, and in the quarto entitled "Tarleton's Jests" (161 1) it is said that on one occasion the showman, addressing his horse as Signor, bade him " go fetch the veriest fool in the company." " The jade," as the story goes, "comes immediately and with his mouth draws Tarleton forth. Tarleton, with merry words, said nothing but ' God a mercy, horse.' Ever after it was a bye - word throughout London, 306 LONDON TOWN ' God a mercy, horse,' and is to this day." Other Gracechurch Street taverns were the " Spread Eagle," which only vanished in 1865, and the " Tabard," which is com memorated by Talbot Court, near the south end of the street, on the eastern side. A little farther north, on the western side, is White Hart Court, no doubt named after have been identified with those prelates. More than once rebuilt, it came to its end in 173 1, for although it was then replaced by a structure which carried the same name, the new gate bore little resemblance to the old, and there is little need to regret that some forty years later it in turn was demolished. The site is indicated by a mitre carved in Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE " WESTMINSTER ABBEY OF THE CITY ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE. another tavern, and here was the meeting house of the Society of Friends after that body had left the " Bull and Mouth," Aiders- gate Street. For preaching in this meeting house George Fox was arrested by the Lord Mayor's officers in 1670 ; and in White Hart Court, twenty years later (January 19th, 1690), at the house of Henry Goldney, he died. Bishopsgate Street, which continues Grace church Street northwards, is divided into two : Bishopsgate Street Within [the old Bishops- City Walls], and Bishopsgate Street Without, and each portion gives its name to a ward of the City. The gate was named after Erkenwald, Bishop of London in the seventh century, and son of Offa, king of Mercia, and was restored by Bishop William the Norman, in the reign of the Conqueror. It was embellished with effigies, of which two stone on the house at the south-east corner of Bishopsgate Street Without. Bishopsgate Street Within, which escaped the Fire of 1666, still possesses a number of relics of antiquity, in spite of the rebuild- ings of the last fifty years. Of these the most famous is the church of St. Helen, standing a little way back from the street on the eastern side in Great St. Helen's, St. Helen's, and memorable not only because of its opulence in monuments of City magnates, which has led to its being called the Westminster Abbey of the City, but also because it was the church of St. Helen's Priory for Benedictine nuns, founded in the reign of King John by William Fitz- william. The priory included a hall, hospital, dormitories and cloisters, and it grew so wealthy that at the Dissolution its income, it is ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE 307 Two Naves said, was equal to £10,000 of present money. The buildings were conferred by Henry upon one of his favourites, but in 1542 they were acquired by the Leathersellers' Company, and the nuns' refectory remained their Common Hall until 1799, when this and all the rest of the conventual buildings that then survived were destroyed to make way for the buildings now to be seen in St. Helen's Place. The peculiar construction of St. Helen's Church, the body of it divided into two virtually equal naves, is explained by the fact that it was shared with the parishioners by the nuns of St. Helen's Priory, who used the northern nave. The two naves were divided by a screen, which at the Dissolution, when the church became wholly parochial, was abolished. On the south side is a transept, and tacked on to this are two eastern chapels, that of the Holy Ghost and that of the Virgin, which were added about the middle of the fourteenth century, while the body of the church, as we know it, dates from the following century. Enough has been said of its plan to show that it can have no pretension to archi tectural balance, nor with its mean little tower and its uneven western front, each nave with its separate door, and the doors in different styles, does its exterior convey any impression of dignity. The church was thoroughly re paired by Inigo Jones in 163 1, and dis figured with pews, and in 1744 it was further uglified by a western gallery resting upon a screen. In 1865 these various excrescences were done away with, and in 1874-76 the two chapels were restored at the charges of the Merchant Taylors' Company, the patrons of St. Martin Outwich (p. 308), who had a good deal to do also with extensive renovations carried out in 1891-93 under the superintendence of the late Mr. J. L. Pearson. In these recent works many of the monuments have undergone much-needed repair, and the church has been enriched with a good deal of stained glass. On the north side is a Shakespeare memorial window, the gift of an American gentleman who com mitted this act of generosity in the amiable belief that the William Shakespeare whose name has been discovered in the parish books under the year 1598 was none other than the poet. Of the monuments the most notable, from the eminence of its subject, is that of Sir Thomas Gresham, the famous Monumlt. f°Under °f the 0riginal R°yal Exchange and of the college which bears its name, who was buried here as a parishioner, having built for himself a fine mansion in Bishopsgate Street (p. 309). It takes the form of an altar-tomb of Sienna marble, carved with Gresham's arms, in cluding of course the familiar grasshopper. Gresham's funeral was one of great pomp, involving an expenditure of £800, and there followed him to the grave two hundred poor men and women, all clad in black gowns. He had had the tomb constructed during his life, and it is curious that after all the trouble he SIR THOMAS GRESHAM'S ALTAR-TOMB IN ST. HELEN S. 3o8 LONDON TOWN took about his obsequies, his tomb should never have been completed, and that the bald inscription now to be seen on the slab of black marble above it, and copied from the parish register — " Sir Thomas Gresham, Knight, buried December 15 th, 1579" — was not cut until after Pennant wrote in 1790 Other famous men of the same century commemorated here are Sir Andrew Judd, Lord Mayor in 1550, founder of the great school at Tonbridge ; Sir John Monuments. Spencer, Lord Mayor in 1594, " rich Spencer," as he was styled, whose daughter and heiress married the second Lord Compton, ancestor of the present Marquis of Northampton ; Sir William Pickering, soldier and diplomatist ; and Alderman William Bond, a merchant adventurer, whose son Martin, Captain of the City Trained Bands at Tilbury in 1588, is also represented by a monument. Memo rials belonging to the fifteenth century are that of Alderman Sir John Crosby, founder of Crosby Hall ; and that of John Oteswich, one of the founders of St. Martin Outwich, in Threadneedle Street, the effigies being removed hither, with many other monu ments, when in 1874 that church was taken down and the parish annexed to St. Helen's. Among seventeenth century monuments in St. Helen's is that of Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls under James I., who by a curious fancy dropped his surname of Adelmare — he was the son of Queen Mary's Italian physician — not fearing to provoke comparisons with the great Roman. Many other distinguished men have been buried either in St. Helen's itself or in the grave yard, among them the Italian jurist Albericus Gentilis, author of " De Jure Belli," who was buried in the graveyard beside his father in 1608, and is now commemorated in the church by a tablet set up by a memorial committee in 1877. Quite the most curious of the monuments in St. Helen's was that of Francis Bancroft (descendant of the Archbishop), an ^n eccentric person who died in 1727, Testator. and whose story is vivaciously told by Mr. Ross in " Bygone London." A summoning officer in the Lord Mayor's Court, he made a large fortune by issuing false summonses and accepting bribes to cancel them ; and so detested was he that at his funeral the coffin was nearly jostled off the shoulders of the bearers, and the joy-bells were set ringing. It seems that he had a notion that after a while he would return to this life and to his duties in the City, and so he had his tomb in St. Helen's constructed with folding doors and panelled with glass, while the coffin was fitted with hinges and was not to be screwed down. He left in trust to the Drapers' Company the sum of £27,000 for the erection of the Drapers' Alms houses in the Mile End Road and of a school for 100 boys, subject to the condition that every May " for ever " the trustees should visit his tomb and look upon his body. The condition has long since been disregarded. In the last restoration the tomb, which was at once ugly and in the way, was removed, an in scription being affixed to the wall above the spot where it stood. The almshouses in the Mile End Road also have gone, and Ban croft's money is now used in the maintenance of a large school built at Woodford, Essex, in 1888. Between St. Helen's and St. Ethelburga's, dedicated to the daughter of Ethelbert, the first Christian King of Kent, and of St- his French wife Bertha, a bond may be traced in the circumstance that anciently the living of St. Ethel burga's was in the gift of the Prioress and nuns of St. Helen's. St. Ethelburga's is struc turally Early English, though it appears to have been a good deal altered about the end of the fourteenth century. But its antiquity and quaintness are its only claims to attention ; and it is so hustled by neighbouring houses that, although its archway abuts upon the eastern side of Bishopsgate Street, it escapes the notice of such passers-by as are not on the look-out for London's hidden treasures. The archway is flanked on either side and surmounted by a shop, and nothing of the church can be seen from the street but a bit of the west wall and a poor little turret. Only about fifty-four feet long, and about half that width, it consists of nave and south aisle, and no traces of a north aisle have ever been discovered. At the east end of St. Helen's Place, ap proached from Bishopsgate Street Within through gates erected in 1899, is the Hall of the Leathersellers, by far the richest of the minor Livery Companies. First mentioned Ethel- burga's GRESHAM'S HOUSE— CROSBY HALL 309 about 1372, the Leathersellers were incor porated by Richard II. in 1397, and it became one of their functions to seek out ?he4. and confiscate bad leather. Their Leather- Sellers, ancient Hall, part of the Priory of St. Helen's, was, as we have seen, bought by them soon after the Dissolution, and, spared by the Great Fire, was de molished in 1799. Its successor was replaced in 1878 by the present Hall, a much finer struc ture in the Eliza bethan style, de signed by Mr. G. A. Wilson, Sur veyor to the Com pany. The arms of the Company show three bucks, with a demi-buck for crest, and a buck and a ram for supporters. Sir Thomas Gres ham's fine man sion, which with its gardens extended from the western side of Bishopsgate Street Within to Broad Street, was built by him in 1563, and here he died suddenly in 1579. After the death of Lady Gresham, in 1596, the house became available for the work of Gresham College, and here also, for a time, after the havoc wrought by the Great Fire, the Lord Mayor lived and the Law Courts were held, while the quadrangle was used by the merchants of the City as a temporary Exchange. The mansion continued to be used as Gresham College until 1768, when it was taken down, the ground upon which it stood being made over to the Crown for a perpetual rent of £500. The site is now marked by the block of offices styled Gresham House. Crosby Hall, which until 1908 stood on the eastern side of the street, was built about 1470 by the Sir John Crosby who rests Crosby Hall. ST. ETHELBURGA S, BISHOPSGATE. in St. Helen's Church, and who was a grocer and woolstapler, and one of the sheriffs and aldermen, and was knighted by Edward IV. Stow speaks of it as "very large beautiful," and says that at the time of its erection it was " the highest . . in London." At his death, in 1470, his widow sold it to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and here, says Sir Thomas More, Richard " lodged himself, and little by little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protec tor's Court was crowded and King Henry's left desolate." Shakes peare thrice refers to Crosby House in Richard III. (Act I., Scenes ii. and iii., and Act III., Scene i.). Richard left it in 1483 for his palace at Westminster. About 15 18 Sir Thomas More ac quired Crosby House, selling it in 1523 to his " dear friend " An tonio Bonvici, who presently leased it to William Roper, More's son-in-law. In 1 566 Alderman William Bond, the merchant adventurer who is buried in St. Helen's, bought Crosby House, and repaired and enlarged it, and by his sons it was sold to " rich Spencer," who here kept his mayoralty in 1594. In 1609 the Dowager Duchess of Pembroke, " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," was living here. In the Great Fire a large part of the mansion perished, and further destruction was wrought by a fire six years later, but the hall and its fine timber roof, with a " throne room " on the ground floor and a " council room " above, escaped both hazards. From 1672 to 1769 Crosby Hall was a Nonconformist chapel. In the early years of the nineteenth century (1810-31) it was 3io LONDON TOWN occupied by a firm of packers and was much mutilated. About 1831 the lease ran out, and a public subscription for the pre servation of the building was started, the interior was restored, and the part which fronts Great St. Helen's rebuilt. The re storation was begun in 1836, and the Hall was re-opened by Lord Mayor Copeland in 1842, with a banquet in the old English style, the floor being carpeted with rushes. From for its re-erection as a university hall of residence on land adjoining More House at Chelsea, with the stipulation that the public also should enjoy access to it. No more suitable site could have been chosen, for Crosby House, as we have seen, was once the habitation of Sir Thomas More, who is the genius loci of Chelsea ; but an ancient building cannot be taken to pieces and rebuilt else where without losing the greater part of its OLD GRESHAM COLLEGE, FORMERLY SIR THOMAS GRESHAM S HOUSE. 1842 to i860 the building was occupied as the Crosby Hall Literary Institute ; then it became a wine merchant's office ; finally, in 1868, it became a restaurant, the proprietor of which made the most of the antiquity of the building, even the waitresses being so garbed as to be " in the piece." In July, 1907, Crosby Hall ceased to be used as a restaurant, and a few months later, in spite of efforts for its preservation which had the countenance of the King and the Government, it was taken down. So difficult is it for the richest city in the world to keep the few relics of ancient days which have survived ! A guarantee fund was raised, but the few thousands more that were required were not forthcoming, and the City tamely allowed its most interesting piece of domestic archi tecture to be taken down. Arrangements were made by the London County Council interest and charm, and its rebuilding can be regarded as little more than an anodyne for an uneasy conscience. Among the old inns which Bishopsgate Street Within formerly boasted, one of the most famous was the " Bull," the ""buII " s'te °f which is now occupied by Palmerston Buildings. It is asso ciated with Anthony Bacon, brother of Sir Francis, for when in 1594 he quitted Gray's Inn for Bishopsgate his mother was con cerned lest he should succumb to the attrac tions of the " Bull," and especially to the plays which were acted by Burbage and Tarleton and others. Here it was that old Hobson, the Cambridge carrier whom Milton has immor talised, used to put up, and according to the " Spectator," a fresco of him was at that time to be seen on one of the walls. Here, too, took place the mutiny of which Carlyle tells the OLD BISHOPSGATE TAVERNS 3n story in the " Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell." On Thursday, the 26th of April, 1649, a troop of Whalley's regiment quar tered at the inn refused to obey orders. " They want this and that first ; they seize their colours from the cornet, who is lodged of excellent parts and much beloved ; but with hot notions as to human freedom, and the rate at which the Milleniums are attain able, poor Lockyer ! He falls shot in Paul's Churchyard on Friday, amid the tears of men and women." Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. BOTOLPH S, BISHOPSGATE. AMutiny, at the ' Bull ' there. The General and the Lieutenant-General have to hasten thither ; quell them ; pack them forth on their march ; seizing fifteen of them first, to be tried by court- martial. Tried by instant court-martial, five of them are found guilty, doomed to die, but pardoned ; and one of them, Trooper Lockyer, is doomed and not pardoned. Trooper Lock yer is shot, in Paul's Churchyard, on the morrow. A very brave young man they say ; though but three-and-twenty, he has served seven years in these wars. . . Religious, too ; TheLondon Tavern. Of more recent fame than the " Bull " was the " London Tavern," long renowned for its banquets for benevolent purposes, its public meetings and its auctions, as well as for its wines and turtle soup, until in 1876 it was pulled down. It stood on the west side of the street, a little north of Cornhill, on the site where now stands the Royal Bank of Scotland, a fine structure which, however, is quite outshone by the head office of the National Provincial Bank of England, at the corner of Thread needle Street. In the Classical style, with 312 LONDON TOWN statues above the columns and with bold re liefs over the doors and windows, it was built in 1866, but even in these days of splendid banks it still holds its place as perhaps the handsomest office of the kind in the City. Until a few years ago it was faced, on the eastern side of the street, by another Classical building, the Wesleyan Centenary Hall. That building, originally the City of London Tavern, acquired by the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1839 or 1840, and adapted for its purposes, was rebuilt in the early years of the present century, and while the lower part of the new structure is in the occupation of the National Bank of India, the upper part remains in the hands of the Trustees of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. As soon as we pass to Bishopsgate Street Without — which is within the City boundary, be it understood — we come to the Bishops- church of St. Botolph, a saint to |*te whom reference has already been without, made. It dates only from 1729, old St. Botoiph's, which escaped the Fire, having to be taken down in 1725 because it had become ruinous. Designed by James Gold, of whom otherwise little is known, it is a comely and not undignified building of red brick, with a stone steeple that abuts upon the main street. St. Botoiph's still has, as it had in Stow's day, " a fair churchyard," and divided from it by a passage leading to New Broad Street is a pleasant and shady strip of greensward given to the parish by the Common Council in 1760, and now provided with seats for tired wayfarers. On the north side of the chancel of St. Botoiph's is the monument of Sir Paul Pindar, who lived in the parish for twenty-six years. St. Botoiph's has few other distinguised asso ciations, but Edward Alleyn, the actor, who founded Dulwich College, was baptised here (1566), his father being the landlord of an inn close to Devonshire House in this parish ; here, too, was baptised John Keats (October 31st, 1795). And among those who are buried here are Edward Allein (1570), " poete to the Queene," and the William Earl of Devon shire (1628) who gave his name to Devon shire House (see below). Among the rectors of St. Botoiph's was Prebendary Rogers, known among his intimates, from an expression once used by himself, as " Hang Theology Rogers," who died in 1896. Humanist and humorist, Prebendary Rogers has left many pleasant memories, and the parish possesses a permanent memorial of his en lightened activities in the form of the Bishops gate Institute, the handsome stone front of which dignifies the eastern side of Bishops gate Street Without. Founded by him, and built and equipped at a cost of some £70,000, with money derived from the Bishopsgate Charities, supplemented by grants from the City Parochial Foundation, it was opened by his friend the Earl of Rosebery in 1894. The Sir Paul Pindar whose monument adorns the chancel of St. Botoiph's was a great City merchant in the reign of Sir Tames I., who in 161 1 sent him to Paul J , ' . , Pindar. Turkey as his Ambassador, an office which he filled for nine years. A man of great public spirit, he contributed £10,000 to the repair of Old St. Paul's, but his devotion to Charles I., whom he supplied with money which he could not recover, brought him to ruin, and when he died, in 1650, at the age of eighty-four, his affairs were so tangled and embarrassed that his executor, one Wm. Toomer, in despair made away with himself. Pindar's fine old mansion, on the west side of the street, was converted into a public-house known as the "Sir Paul Pindar's Head." Rebuilt about 1871, it finally disappeared in 1890 in the course of extensions of Liverpool Street Station ; but some relics of it may still be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In Bishopsgate Street Without, on the eastern side, are the appropriately plain and drab buildings which form the Fhit d headquarters of the Society of Friends, who in 1744 removed hither from White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street. It is curious, by the way, how many of our great banking firms have been founded by members of this Society, which has won so fair a renown for essential spirituality and good works. The Gurneys, the Barclays, the Hoares, the Hanburys, the Lloyds, the Dimsdales, are names which the pen almost automatically writes. The Friends' Meeting House abuts upon the prim little square which bears the name of Devonshire, after a mansion which, from 1620 to 1670, was the town house of the Dukes of Devonshire, but which was built by one Jasper Fisher, a clerk in Chancery, and came CITY MERCHANT AND BAPTIST MINISTER 313 to be known as Fisher's Folly, because his means were insufficient to keep up so large a house. In part of Devonshire Square. ' House was installed, in 1638, a Baptist Church said to be the oldest but one in England, consisting of se- ceders from a church at Wapping who wished describes it as " inhabited by gentry and other merchants," says that " here was formerly a seat of the Earls of Devonshire." The Baptist church which settled first in Devonshire House built for itself in 1653 a chapel which in 1870 was acquired by the Metropolitan Railway, a new chapel, bearing SIR PAUL PINDAR'S HOUSE {p. 3 1 2). From a Drawing by G. Shepherd. to practise close communion. About the close of the seventeenth century there was set up in the former mansion of the Cavendishes a Bank of Credit, where, on deposit of goods and merchandise, they were " fur nished with bills of current credit at two- thirds or three-fourths of the value of the said goods." Soon after this Devonshire House must have reached the end of its career, for writing of the square in 1708, Hatton, who 21 the same name — Devonshire Square — being reared with the proceeds at Stoke Newing- ton. As early as 1643 the church Famous bad for its minister William Kiffin, Baptist a City merchant,of whom Charles II. Church. once wanted to borrow £40,000. Kiffin made him a present of £10,000, and congratulated himself upon having saved £30,000 by this act of munificence. Who can doubt that the congratulations were well 314 LONDON TOWN Kiffin andJames II. merited ? Two of Kiffin's grandsons were among the victims of Jeffreys' Bloody Assize, and Kiffin offered £3,000 for their acquittal, but he " missed the right door " and they were hanged. He ought to have gone to Jeffreys himself, who said to one of the young men, " You have a grandfather who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." Unfortunately for the young men, their grandfather did not take the hint. In his efforts to make tools of the Noncom- formists in order to serve the interests of the Roman Catholics, James II., after the issue of the Declaration of In dulgence (1687) thought it possible he might win over Kiffin, who had great influence in commercial circles. When the King sent for him and told him in gracious terms that he had nominated him an alderman, the old man — he was over seventy — answered, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, that the death of his grandsons had given a wound to his heart which was still bleeding, and would never close but in the grave. At this James was taken aback, but, recovering himself, coarsely replied that he would find " a balsam for that sore." Kiffin still held out, but at last, to avoid persecution, consented to accept the nomination, and was well received in his ward — that of Chepe. He and his brother aldermen were expected to see that the Livery Companies ejected their members by the hun dred — for no other reason than that they were Protestant mem bers of the Church of England. In nine months Kiffin contrived to get relieved of an office which in the cir cumstances was utterly odious to him. He re signed the pastorate of the Devonshire Square Church in 1692, died in his eighty-sixth year in 1701, and was buried in Bun hill Fields. PfrOrV ARMS OF THE LEATHERSELLERS1 COMPANY. A large part of Bishopsgate Ward Without is now occupied by railway stations — the Bishopsgate Street Station of the Metro politan Railway, Broad Street Station, the terminus of the North London Railway, which shares it with the London and Nortn- Western Railway, and finally the Liverpool Street Station, the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway, which has been extended and extended until it is said to PHoryhem have become the largest station in London. The Liverpool Street and Broad Street Stations stand upon ground which once formed part of a priory of canons of the Order of the Star of Beth lehem, with brothers and sisters, founded in 1246 by Simon Fitz-Mary, a Sheriff of London. At the Dissolution Henry VIII. bestowed the priory upon the City of London, for conversion into a hospital for lunatics, and so originated the famous Beth- lem Hospital. The hospital was transferred to Moorfields in 1675, and to St. George's Fields, Lambeth, in 18 15, but the Bishopsgate site long continued to be known as Old Bethlehem. The name of Liverpool Street dates only from 1829, when this part of Old Bethlehem was so styled after the Minister Liverpool W11Q J^ JJgJ j-^g y£ar Defbre. Street. . . . ' By his opposition to Catholic emancipation and other reforms, Lord Liver pool, who was as pre judiced as he was honest, had made himself one of the most hated of Prime Ministers, but the two last years of his life were passed in a state of imbecility, and it may possibly be looked upon as a sign of reaction in the minds of a popu lace never disposed to cherish rancour that in the year after his death this new street should have been named after him. CHAPTER XXIX FROM BISHOPSGATE TO ALDERSGATE Broad Street— St. Peter's-le-Poor— Austin Friars and the Dutch Church— Winchester House and the Paulets— Pinners' Hall and the Independents— Finsbury and Moorfields— A Riot — A Fight between Butchers and Weavers— Finsbury Circus— South Place— The London Institution— City of London College — Finsbury Pavement and John Keats — Moorgate Street — London Wall and its Churches — Fore Street — Grub Street and its Hermit — Cripplegate — St. Giles's— Miltonic and other Associations— The Bastion — Monkwell Street and the Barbers — Redcross and Whitecross Streets— The Fortune Theatre — Barbican and its Famous Residents BROAD STREET, which gives its name to one of the City wards, is now divided into Old Broad Street and New Broad Street. New Broad Street may be dismissed at once with the remark that it was street. formed about 1730 out of a region known as Petty France, " of Frenchmen dwelling there," says Stow, and that its chief personal association is with Sir Astley Cooper, the famous surgeon, whose income for a series of years while living here exceeded £15,000 a year. As late as the reign of Charles I., Old Broad Street was one of the most fashion able parts of the City, where were houses of several members of the nobility. These have all long since disappeared. On the eastern side of the street stood until 1908 the ugly circular church of St. Peter-le- Poor, interesting from its curious u-Po'or''8" name> which Stow thought might have originated in the poverty of the parish, though in his day it con tained " many fair houses, possessed by rich merchants and others." Daniell, how ever, in his " London City Churches," states that in ancient documents the church is styled " Parvus," a circumstance which sug gests a more probable derivation. Old St. Peter's escaped the Great Fire, but wras taken down in 1788 and rebuilt by Jesse Gibson farther back. An incomparably more interesting church than was St. Peter's-le-Poor is the Dutch Scale of 220 Yards REFERENCE 1 City of London College. 2 London Wall Buildings, 3 Electra House, 4 Salisbury House. 5 Great Winchester direct Buildings. 6 Chartered Accountants' Hall PLAN OF THE STREETS BETWEEN BISHOPSGATE AND ALDERSGATE. 315 316 LONDON TOWN Church in Austin Friars, the region which lies between Old Broad Street and Throgmorton Avenue. This formed the nave £"stln and aisles of the Church of the Friars. Priory of Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine, the great-souled Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. The Austin Friars made their way to England from Italy about 1250, and in 1253 a Priory was founded for them in this part of London by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex. Their usual garb was a white gar ment and scapulary, but out of doors, and in the chapel, they wore a black cowl and large hood. At the Dissolution Henry VIII. reserved the church, and by his son, Edward VI., it was set apart for the use of refugees who fled to this country chiefly from the Netherlands to escape their persecutors, and it has been used for services in the Dutch tongue ever since. But the church, though still a spacious and noble structure, is not what it was when Edward VI. handed it over to the Dutch community. It then had choir and transepts, and a lofty spire of which Stow speaks admiringly, and it contained many sumptuous tombs. William Paulet, afterwards Marquis of Winchester and Lord High Treasurer, upon whom the Priory was conferred by Henry VIII. , appears to have had some rights over the church also, in spite of its having been granted to the Dutch, for when the spire came to need repair he pulled it down, besides barbarously demolishing the choir and transepts ; and after his death, in 1 571, the second Marquis, a worthy son of such a sire, disposed of the glorious monu ments for £100, "made fair stabling for horses in place thereof," as Stow records, " and sold the lead from the roof and laid it anew with tile." In 1862 what was left of the church, the nave and aisles, was burnt out, but happily the walls of the structure and the columns dividing the nave from the aisles were left standing, and in the follow ing year a restoration was begun which, finished in 1865, cost some £12,000. Sir Gilbert Scott considered the nave " a perfect model of what is most practically useful in the nave of a church '' ; and no one who visits it can fail to be struck by the venerable aspect of its exterior, or by the spaciousness and dignity of its interior. Bare it looks, certainly, in the absence of memorial and of stained glass, but this, while in keeping with the simple form of service of which it is the scene, serves but to emphasise its noble proportions. Though the tombs have gone, there are some thirty-six monumental slabs, many of them incised with figures and with shields. The Priory, as we have seen, was presented to the Marquis of Winchester, who either converted it into or, as Stow says, House.eSter built uPon the site a town house known as Paulet and as Winchester House, of which the memory is preserved by Great and Little Winchester Streets and by Great Winchester Street Buildings, a little to the north of the Dutch Church. The first Marquis treated the Priory church badly enough, as we have seen, but he was a remarkable and interesting man, who lived under nine sovereigns, and at his death, in his ninety-seventh year, could count a hundred and three descendants. He would appear to have combined with a time-serving disposition some latent capacity for candour, for when asked how he had contrived to keep in the good graces of so many sovereigns he replied, " By being a willow, not an oak." By none of the Paulets was their acquisition regarded in the light of a trust, and it is no matter for regret that in 1602 the fourth Marquis had to part with the whole of the estate, which was acquired by John Swinnerton, afterwards Lord Mayor. Winchester House did not finally disappear until 1839. Now almost all the old houses of Austin Friars have vanished. The house styled Pinners' Hall, accessible from Broad Street through Pinners' Hall Court, and dating from about the Hal"6" enc^ °f tne eighteenth century, has associations with St. Austin's, for the building which preceded it, and whose name it bears, was a part of the Priory. In the reign of Elizabeth this older building became a factory for the making of Venetian glass, and while so used James Howell, the letter-writer, was its steward. Then it became a soldiers' barracks ; next, the hall of the Pin- makers, a City Company which was incorpor ated by Charles I. and has now ceased to exist ; and then an Independent chapel, where Baxter, Owen, and Howe, and later Isaac Watts, preached. Here was established, AUSTIN FRIARS— MOORFIELDS 3i7 immediately after the Declaration of Indul gence (1672), the Merchants' Lecture, a Tuesday lecture to merchants by Noncon formist divines, afterwards delivered at the Weigh -house Chapel, Fish Street Hill, and now at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. The present Pinners' Hall — the older building was taken down in 1798 — is divided up into offices. Austin Friars has not been without James the First, you are James the Second ; you must abdicate." In our pilgrimage westwards towards Aldersgate we come next to Finsbury and Moorfields, lying immediately to the north of the old City walls, but long since partly included within the bounds of the City. In olden time this region, stretching from Bishopsgate Street to Cripplegate, and extending a con- Finslrury and Moorfields Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE DUTCH CHURCH, AUSTIN FRIARS. eminent residents. In 15 13 Erasmus lodged here, and took his meals in the Convent itself, where he found it difficult to get good wine. In 1608-9 the Lady Anne Clifford was married in her mother's rooms in Winchester House to her first husband, the Earl of Dorset. In later times there lived here, at No. 18, James Smith, one of the authors of the " Rejected Addresses." When he had long been resident in Austin Friars there settled here another James Smith, and a good deal of confusion resulting, the new comer waited upon his namesake and sug gested that one of them should leave, at the same time hinting that he would prefer to stay. " No," was the witty reply, " I am siderable distance northwards, was marshland, variously known at different periods as The Moor, and Moorfield, and Vynesbury Moor. The name Finsbury, however, has nothing to do with fen land, but is derived from the Finnes, Fynes, or Fiennes family, who here had their bury or manorial residence* It was first drained in 1527, was laid out in pleasant walks in the reign of James I., and began to be built upon after the Great Fire. Until it was drained it must have been a dismal region — " a waste and unprofitable ground " Stow calls it — yet at least as early as the reign of Henry II. it was put to festive uses. * See communication from Colonel Prideaux to Notes and Queries, 8th Series, Vol. XII., p. 310. 3iS LONDON TOWN Fitzstephen the monk describes it as at that time a place of amusement for young Londoners. It was especially frequented, he says, in winter, and he gives a graphic de scription of a primitive form of skates used here. " Others there are," he says, " still more expert in these amusements; they place certain bones, the leg bones of animals, under the soles of Primitive Skating. MOORGATE {p. 320). their feet, by tying them round their ankles, and then taking a pole shod with iron into their hands they push themselves forward by striking it against the ice, and are carried on with a velocity equal to the flight of a bird, or a bolt discharged from a cross-bow." The common lands on the north side of London were encroached upon from time to time by the dwellers at Islington, Hoxton, and Shoreditch, who enclosed them with hedges and ditches, so that, in the words of Grafton the chronicler, " neyther the yonge men of the City might shoot, nor the ancient persons might walk for their pleasure in the fields, except eyther their bowes and arrows were broken or taken away, or the honest and substantiall persons arrested or indicted, saiving that no Londoner should goe out of the City but in the high wayes." For a time the grievance was borne with more or less patience, but suddenly, in the year 1514 (Henry VIII.), the citizens took the law into their own hands. One wearing a a Riot. fool's coat ran about the City streets crying, "Shovels and spades." " So many of the people followed," says Stow, " that it was a wonder to behold, and within a short space all the hedges about the City were cast down, and the ditches filled up, and everything made plain, such was the diligence of these workmen." The King's Council sent for the Lord Mayor and invited explanations, but contented them selves with admonition that no more violence was to be attempted. When, in 1666, the Fire had rendered thou sands homeless, crowds of them dwelt in this region, " as far as Highgate, and several miles in circle," says Evelyn ; " some under tents, some under miserable huts and hovels ; many without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who from delicateness, riches and easy accommodations, in stately and well- furnished houses, were now reduced to extremest poverty and misery." No wonder that this humane observer returned to his own house " with a sad heart." Two years later the other diarist of that age, Samuel Pepys, describes a fray that took place here in Moor fields between the butchers and the weavers, " between whom there hath ever been an old competition for mastery. . . At first the butchers knocked down all the weavers that had green or blue aprons, till they were fain to pull them off and put them in their breeches. At last the butchers were fain to pull off their sleeves, that they might not be known, and were soundly beaten out of the field, and some deeply wounded and bruised ; till at last the weavers went out triumphing, calling ' £100 for a butcher.'" Finsbury Circus is just within the City limits, while Finsbury Square is just without them, and Finsbury Pavement is partly on one side and partly on the other. Finsbury — to speak of the district generally — was until far on in the last century the great haunt of doctors, until they followed their richer patrons towards the setting sun, and even in these days the plates of not a few well-known members of the faculty are to be seen by the observant pedestrian. Finsbury Circus occupies the site of the second Butchers andWeaversat War. SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL— THE LONDON INSTITUTION 3i9 Bethlehem Hospital, over against which stood the first St. Luke's Hospital, founded in the eighteenth century to relieve the Circu".1'5' pressure on that earlier house of re fuge for the insane, and transferred in 1784 to Old Street. Finsbury Circus was built about 181 5, when Bethlehem was de molished, but during the last few years it has been largely rebuilt, many of the private houses of which it was composed having been swept away to make room for magnificent blocks of offices — Salisbury House, London Wall Buildings, and the rest. With these changes the garden in the centre of the Circus, containing an unusually varied selection of trees, has become a public pleasaunce under the control of the City Corporation, by whom it was formally taken over in 1901. Among the buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Circus that have disappeared are the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary and Finsbury Chapel, which faced each other at opposite corners of East Street, leading into the Circus from Blomfield Street. The former, built in 1817-20, was constituted by Cardinal Wiseman the pro-Cathedral of the diocese of Westminster in 1852. A new St. Mary's has sprung up in Eldon Street, close by. The site of the older church realised upwards of £200,000. The Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital also, the first hospital of the kind established in England, founded in 1804, has disappeared. In South Place, however, which borders the Circus on the north side, there South Place, still stands the South Place In stitute, a gloomy building of Ionic design, which from its erection has been a centre of Unitarian and yet more advanced teaching, and is now the habitation of the South Place Ethical Society. It was built for W. J. Fox, the orator and publicist, in 1824, and here he ministered until his death in 1864, when he was succeeded by Dr. Moncure D. Conway, who held the lectureship for twenty-one years. Dr. Conway, who was born in Virginia in 1832 and took a leading part in the Abolitionist movement, for which he made great sacrifices, is best known by his biographical works, and his own singu larly interesting Memoirs appeared in 1904. Next to South Place Chapel stands the London Institution. Founded, as we have seen (p. 138), in the Old Jewry in 1805, in corporated there in 1807, and a few years later removed to King's Arms Yard, Coleman Street, it migrated in 1819 to a building on this site, reared at a cost of £31,000. It carries on its work, " the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful know ledge," mainly through the agency of its library, which is particularly rich in topo graphical works, and by means of lectures CRIPPLEGATE. delivered in the winter season by men eminent in science and in other walks of life. In 1908 arrangements were made for re building the structure on the same site. On the other side of Finsbury Pavement, in White Street, Moorfields, is another impor tant educational agency, the City of London College, which originated at doncone^ Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, in 1848, in evening classes for young men — the first of their kind in London — founded by two clergymen, the Rev. C. Mackenzie and the Rev. R. Whittington. In i860 the institution was transferred to Sussex Hall, in Leadenhall Street, as the City of London College. Its present house, in White Street, a very plain building, reared at a cost of £16,000, and furnishing accommodation for some four thousand students, was opened in 1883, and in 1904 was built, at a cost of £25,000, the Mitchell 320 LONDON TOWN Annexe, at the rear of the college, in Rope- maker Street, an addition which was made with a special view to purely commercial edu cation. At the debating class of the College the Right Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., who now fills the office of President, fledged his elocutionary wings. Ropemaker Street, which forms the City boundary, was formerly styled Ropemakers' Alley, and at his lodgings in this alley died Daniel Defoe (April 26th, 173 1). The street ends at Moor Lane, where was the church of BIT OF THE CITY WALL IN ALLHALLOWS CHURCHYARD. St. Bartholomew, interesting because it was built — by Cockerill, in 1849-50 — as an exact imitation of the St. Bartholomew's-by-the- Exchange (p. 187) which was destroyed in 1841. Here were to be seen the organ and pulpit, and some of the woodwork and masonry, of the older St. Bartholomew's. But the new St. Bartholomew's has now gone the way of the old, and its place has been taken by warehouses. We have passed over Finsbury Pavement in a flying leap, but we must note the hand some specimens of commercial Pavement. architecture which now it pre sents to the eye, among them Electra House, the entrance dignified by sculptures by Sir George Frampton, R.A. Nor must we omit to speak of its associa tion with John Keats, who was born here at large liver)' stables styled " The Swan and Hoop," on that part of the Pavement which is opposite the entrance to Finsbury Circus. The proprietor of the John Keats, livery stables was one John Jen nings, whose daughter presently married her father's head ostler, Thomas Keats. According to the register of St. Botoiph's Bishopsgate, the date of the poet's birth was October 31st, 1795, but the family tradition, and apparently Keats's own belief, dated the birth two days earlier. Thomas Keats is described as a man " of lively, energetic counten ance," and was es teemed for his " re markably finecommon sense and native re spectability." His wife is said to have been a woman of " uncom mon talents," lively, impulsive, imprudent, " passionately fond of amusement," and yet " of a somewhat sat urnine demeanour." Until 1 80 1, when they removed to Craven Street, City Road, the family lived at the livery stables, of which Jennings left the management to his son-in-law. Thomas Keats died as the result of a fall from his horse on the night of April 15-16, 1804 Within a year his widow had married a William Rawlings, who is conjectured by Mr. Sidney Colvin, the author of the article on Keats in the Dictionary of National Biography, to have succeeded him in the conduct of the stables. The marriage turned out unhappily, and before long the poet's mother and her second husband had parted. Moorgate Street, of which Finsbury Pave ment is the continuation northwards, is named after the postern in the streef *e City wal1 which> as Stow records, was built in 141 5 by Thomas Falconer, Mayor, " for ease of the citizens, that way to pass upon causeys into the field (Moorfields) for their recreation." Restored in 1472, it was rebuilt exactly two hundred years later, and was afterwards described as LONDON WALL AND ITS CHURCHES ,21 LondonWall.Street "one of the most magnificent gates of the City." It was finally taken down in 1762, and the stones were used to strengthen the sterlings of the central arch of Old London Bridge. It stood at the northern end of the present Moor- gate Street, where it joins Finsbury Pavement. To the east of the street, ap proached by a narrow passage, is the new Char tered Accountants' Hall, designed by Mr. John Belcher, A.R.A., and em bellished with sculptures by the late Harry Bates and with a frieze by Mr. Hamo Thornycroft. The straight street which bears the name of London Wall, and runs from Old Broad to the northern end of Wood Street, is interesting as indicating the line of the ancient City wall, which formed its northern side, and of which two fragments are to be seen, one in the church yard of St. Alphage, and the other and smaller one in the churchyard of All- hallows'-on-the-Wall. The present church of St. Alphage stands on the south side of si-^1; the street, but phage s. ' it dates only from 1777, and the older St. Alphage, which es caped the Fire, stood on the north side. But even this was not the original church of St. Alphage, which was in existence as far back as 1068. By the reign of Henry VIII. this first church of St. Alphage had become so ruinous that the parishioners wished to rebuild it, but instead of allowing them to do this the King sold to them for £100 the chapel of the dissolved priory of St. Mary Elsing, and so the old parish church was pulled down, and some of the materials were used in repairing St. Mary Elsing's chapel. The priory, to which was attached a hospital for a hundred blind men, was founded by William Elsing, mercer, early in the fourteenth century. In the grounds of the Priory in the seventeenth century Photo : Pictorial Age ncy. A PALACE OF COMMERCE : ELECTRA HOUSE, FINSBURY PAVEMENT. (1630) was built Sion College, of which we must give some account when we come to the Victoria Embankment. Allhallows'-on-the-Wall, near the eastern extremity of the street, was built about the same time as St. Alphage's ™Twl; (1765-67), by George Dance the younger, old Allhallows', which had escaped the Fire, having by that time become ruinous. Of brick, with a quite curiously ugly stone steeple, the church is 322 LONDON TOWN Grub Street perhaps the most unlovely, as to its exterior, in the City, presenting to London Wall a blank wall of dingy brick, with an apsidal termination on the east which is unrelieved by a single window ; within, however, it is well-lighted and not at all unpleasing. The fragment of the ancient City wall has been incorporated with the wall of the church yard. Running parallel with London Wall, on the north side, is Fore Street, no doubt so called because it was " before," or st°reet Just outside, the City wall. Here James Foe, the father of Daniel Defoe, carried on the business of a butcher. Leading out of it northwards, and partly within and partly without the City, is Milton Street, which until 1830 was the Grub Street which has furnished an ill-sounding phrase to literature. The street was re-christened after the great Puri tan poet for no better reason than that he lived and died in Artillery Walk, Bun- hill Fields. When Stow wrote, it was largely occupied by lawyers, fletchers, bow-string makers and the like, who were thus near to Finsbury, where, as we have seen, archery and other sports and exercises were wont to be carried on. Andrew Marvell is said to have been the first to make Grub Street a synonym for contemptible literary work ; but it is to Dr. Johnson, of course, that we are indebted for that very significant definition of Grub Street as " the name of a street in London much inhabited by writers of small histories, dic tionaries, and temporary poems ; whence any mean production is called Grub Street." Perhaps the most eminent of Grub Street residents was Foxe, the martyrologist, who was "' vicar " of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and appears to have dwelt here continuously from 1571 to his death in 1587. Grub Street has also had its hermit, in the person of Henry Welby, a Lin- The Hermit colnshire gentleman who here of Grub 111,. street. secluded himself for forty-four years, dying in 1636, and being buried in St. Giles's. He was believed to have retired from the world in horror and disgust at an attempt made upon his life by a profligate younger brother or some other relative ; but such romantic ways of accounting for eccentricity are always open Cripplegate. to suspicion. Setting apart for himself three rooms, one for living, a second for sleeping, the third for study, he was never seen except by an old female attendant, and rarely by her. His diet was bread, oatmeal, water-gruel, milk, and vegetables, and as a special indulgence the yolk of an egg, and his time was spent in study and in meditation and prayer. But to his faith he did not for get to add works of charity, upon which he expended a large part of his income of over a thousand a year. His old servant died six days before her master. Cripplegate, which has given its name to one of the City Wards, divided into two parts, Cripplegate Within and Cripple gate Without (the walls), was a postern-gate leading to the Barbi can, a fortified watch-tower a little in advance of the City walls. The gate received its name, according to Stow, from cripples who here sat begging, while according to another tradition, glanced at by Ben Jonson in Every Man Out of His Humour, the founder was a cripple : " as lame as Vulcan, the founder of Cripplegate," the allusion runs. These theories have now been generally discarded in favour of one presented by the Rev. W. Denton in his " Records of St. Giles's, Cripplegate," which identifies the first part of the name with the Anglo-Saxon crepel, cryfele,or crypele, a den or passage underground, a burrow ; and the second part with geat, a gate, street, or way. " The road between the postern and the burgh-kenning [Barbican] ran necessarily between the two low walls — most likely of earth — which formed what in fortification would be described as a covered way." Presently the postern became a prison for debtors and common trespassers. Rebuilt in 1244, and again in 1491, and renovated and beautified in the reign of Charles II., it was pulled down in 1760, having been sold to a carpenter for the sum of £91. The church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, at the west end of Fore Street, is a good specimen of the Perpendicular, consisting of st. Giles's, nave, chancel, and two side aisles — the whole battlemented — with a tower capped by a bell - turret. Founded about 1090 by Alfune, afterwards first hos pitaller of St. Bartholomew's, it was rebuilt towards the end of the fourteenth century. In the interval there was attached to it a Photo : Pictorial Agency. WHERE MILTON IS BURIED : ST. GILES S, CRIPPLEGATE. 324 LONDON TOWN brotherhood or guild of St. Mary and St. Giles, by Matilda, consort of Henry I. In 1545 it was burnt out, the massive walls, however, remaining intact, and now we see the church virtually as it was reconstructed after the fire ; and though it has been a good deal altered at various times, the extensive restorations carried out in 1869 and in 1880 have undone some of the mischief wrought by hands less regardful of architectural veracity. In 1904 the removal of the old " Quest House " and " the Four Shoppes " for the widening of Fore Street disclosed JOHN FOXE. From a Drawing by G. Glover. that the north wall of the church was much dilapidated, and its restoration was carried out with a good deal of vigour and rigour. The raising of the necessary funds was largely due to the exertions of Mr. Deputy (afterwards Sheriff) Baddeley, the historian of the ward, who himself bore the cost of a statue of Milton which stands in front of the north wall of St. Giles's, and was the work of Mr. Horace Montford. This statue, the first which the City had raised to its most famous son, represents the poet in the days when the plan of " Paradise Lost " was more and more occupying his mind, and on the pedestal, designed by Mr. E. A. Richards, is inscribed the invocation from that work : " 0 Spirit. . . . what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support ; That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.'' The statue was unveiled on the 2nd of November, 1904, in presence of a distin guished company which included Lord Rose- bery and Lord Mayor Ritchie, by the Lady Alice Egerton, a descendant of Milton's patron, the Earl of Bridgewater, whose town house was in the parish, almost on the site of the Cripplegate Institute. At that Institute the poet's " Comus," which he wrote for the Earl of Bridgewater, and in which the part of the lady was taken by the Lady Alice Egerton of that day when the masque was performed at Ludlow Castle, was presented by the Mermaid Society. Few City churches are so rich in associa tions as St. Giles's. Here on the 22nd of August, 1620, Oliver Cromwell, at the age of twenty-one, was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier. But the church has an interest stronger still in its possession of Milton's sacred dust. On the 1 2th of November, 1674, the poet, who had died four days before at his house in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, was laid to rest in the grave — in the chancel — to which twenty-eight years before (1646) his father had Milton's b committed. John Milton the elder had gone to live with his son in Aldersgate Street in 1643, and had accompanied him to the poet's new house in the Barbican in 1645, and dying in 1646 had, as a parishioner, been buried in St. Giles's. Thus it was that the poet himself, though he died so close to Bunhill Fields Cemetery, was interred not in that campo santo of Dissenters, but in St. Giles's, according to the rites of the Church of England. " All his learned and great friends in London," says Toland, " not without concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the Church." The precise spot in the chancel where father and son were buried cannot now be determined, but it cannot have been far from the stone which is now to be seen, inscribed — " Near this spot was buried John Milton, Author of Paradise Lost. Born 1608, Died 1674." The stone, however, is now outside the chancel, for in 1790-91 a part of the chancel was thrown into the nave. In the year 1790, ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE 3-?5 in the course of the alterations, an attempt was made by the churchwardens and vestry clerk to fix the exact spot of the interment by digging up and opening the coffin. That a disgusting outrage was perpetrated there can be no doubt, but it is at Desecration, least possible that the victim of it was not the poet. The story of the sacrilege rests upon the authority of P. Neve, who wrote a '' Narrative of the Disinterment of Milton's Coffin," but to this architect who superintended the work of restoration then carried out. Another great man who rests in St. Giles's is Sir Martin Frobisher, the bold sea-king who in a mere fishing-boat of five-and- ^av-IV twenty tons fared into the Arctic Frobisher. J regions in quest of the North- West Passage, who added to his laurels by the part he took in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588, and who six years later (November 22nd, 1594) died of wounds Photo: Pictorial Agency. BASTION OF THE CITY WALL IN ST. GILES'S CHURCHYARD. there was an immediate reply in the St. James's Chronicle by a writer who urged a number of reasons for believing that the coffin which was so profanely disturbed was not that of Milton. The report is discredited also by Mr. C. M. Ingleby, the author of " Shake speare's Bones" (1883), who recalls the fact that George Steevens, the editor of Shake speare, satisfied himself that the corpse which was taken out of its grave was that of a woman, of fewer years than Milton. Three years after this deplorable occurrence, Samuel Whitbread, the founder of the great brewery in the northern part of this parish, set up on the north side of the nave a bust of the poet, which he had commissioned from the elder Bacon ; but since 1862 this bust has stood near the west end of the south aisle, in the central niche of a canopy of carved Caen stone, designed by Edmund Woodthorpe, the received in an action off Brest. But he was committed to a nameless grave, and not until 1888, the tercentenary of the defeat of the Armada, was there anything in St. Giles's to commemorate him. Then a fine monument of marbles was reared by the vestry of the parish on the eastern part of the south wall. A little west of this is the monu- John Speed, ment of another Elizabethan worthy, John Speed, the topo grapher (1555-1629), who, like his contem porary John Stow, was a tailor by trade. Yet another eminent man of the spacious days who lies buried in St. Giles's, where he is commemorated by a tablet on the west wall, is John Foxe, the martyrologist, who, as we have seen, for many years lived in Grub Street, in this parish, is often spoken of as its vicar, and is in fact so designated in an inscription The Mar tyrologist. 326 LONDON TOWN appended to his Latin epitaph. But Mr. Daniell, in " London City Churches," points out that his name does not appear in the list of vicars, and as he is known to have declined all preferment except a prebendal stall at Salis bury, from ecclesiastical or theological scruples, the probability is, as Mr. Daniell conjectures, that he did nothing more than assist the vicar, Robert Crowley, probably being on that account designated " minister " of St. Giles's. Born in 15 17, Foxe was expelled from his fellowship at Magdalen College and had a hard time of it until appointed family tutor to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote Hall, whose deer Shakespeare has been accused of poaching. When Lucy's children had grown up, Foxe again found himself in distress until that happened which his son interprets as " a marvellous accident and great example of God's mercy." He was sitting one day in St. Paul's, pale with fasting, Hei,ely when a stranger put into his hands a sum of money and assured him that new means of subsistence were at hand. The prophecy was amply fulfilled, for within three days Foxe was taken up by the Duchess of Richmond as tutor to her nephews and niece, the children of the poet Earl of Surrey. In the Marian persecution he found it necessary to flee to Switzerland, but on the accession of Elizabeth he returned, and was made a prebend of Salisbury, and there can be no doubt that, with his learning and in dustry, he might have risen high in the Church but for his scruples. Not a few other interesting monuments are there in St. Giles's, but we can only pause to note that the window at the west end of the south aisle commemorates by its crude stained glass Edward Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich College, who with Philip Henslowe was the owner of the Fortune Theatre in Golden Lane, Barbican. We must not, how ever, fail to record the fact that in this church Mr. Holman Hunt — born, as we have seen, in Wood Street — was christened in 1827. Of the vicars of St. Giles's, the most famous was the eloquent Lancelot Andrewes, who held the living from 1588 until 1605, when he became Bishop of Winchester. A later vicar was the learned Dr. Annesley, who, unable to accept the Act of Uniformity, founded a Presbyterian Church at Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, in 1672, and ministered to it until his death in 1694. His pious daughter, Anne, married the Rev. Samuel Wesley, the vicar of Epworth, and so became the mother of the founders of Methodism. In the churchyard of St. Giles's is a bastion of the old City wall — the most perfect frag ment of that structure now to be seen. Until 1803 there was attached to it a of fhTwaii. battlemented piece of the wall, but this, having become ruinous, was taken down, which was no doubt less trouble some than it would have been to repair it. The bastion was damaged by the great fire which raged in Cripplegate in 1897 (November 19th), but the scathe was skilfully repaired under the direction of the City Lands Com- mitteeof the Corporation in 1900. The church itself was only saved by the spirited efforts of some of the parishioners, who mounted the roof and with buckets of water quenched the sparks as they alighted upon it. Running south from St. Giles's towards Cheapside is Monkwell Street, a name which Stow explains by a " monks' well " MonUweii at « trie north end thereof" belong- Street. & ing to a house or cell of the Abbot of Garendon. This is one of the old his torian's pleasant little romances. In the " Memorials " Riley cites a document of the year 1303 in which the street appears as Mogwelle Street, and Monkwell is no doubt simply a softening of that ugly name. In Monkwell Street is the entrance to so much as is left of the Hall of the Barbers' Company, the carved gateway and Tno > court-room, resting in part on a Company, tower of the old wall of London. The hall, rebuilt by Inigo Jones in 1636, included a theatre of anatomy, and while the hall was destroyed by the Great Fire, the theatre was saved, to be barbar ously pulled down in 1783, in spite of its being, in Horace Walpole's words, " one of the best of Inigo's works." The hall, again rebuilt in 1668, after the Fire, was taken down in 1863-64 to make room for warehouses, with which a part of the dining-room was in corporated. The present court-room was rebuilt in 1752, under the supervision of the Earl of Burlington, the architect of Burlington House, Piccadilly. The Company's pictures include two Vandycks, one a full-length portrait of the Countess of Richmond, her right hand resting HENRY VIII. PRESENTING TO THE BARBER-SURGEONS THEIR CHARTER. From the Painting at Barbers' Hall. 328 LONDON TOWN upon a lamb, the other a portrait of Inigo Jones, of whom, also, there is a bust over the entrance to the Hall. This bust, of marble, was discovered in a lumber closet some time in the last century, and was invested with a coating of bronze by order of the Master of that day ! But the great treasure of the Barbers is the picture, painted on oak panels, showing Henry VIII. presenting pi{^mous the charter of incorporation to the Company in 1541. It con tains nineteen life-size figures, among them Dr. John Chambre, who attended Anne Boleyn in her confinement with Elizabeth. believed by Wornum to be that now in the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. At one time Pepys thought of buying the original, not because he liked it, for he thought it " not a pleasant though a good picture," but because it was held to be worth a thousand pounds, and he hoped he might buy it for two hundred and so get a good bargain. But when he went to see it he found it " so spoiled " that he had " no mind to it." When the Barbers were first incorporated, by charter of Edward IV. (1461), the THE NURSERY, GOLDEN LANE {p. 330). The King himself is shown twice as large as life. The attribution of the picture to Holbein, who died of the plague in the year 1543, has been much discussed, and the conclusion arrived at by Wornum, in his " Life and Works " of the painter, seems to be justified by the evidence. " In its foundations," he holds, " there can be no doubt of its genuineness." " I am disposed to think," he adds, " that Holbein never did finish the picture, and from the great inferiority of the second series of heads on the left hand of the King I think that these must have been added later." In the possession of the Company is a letter of James I., written from Newmarket in 1617, requesting the loan of the picture in order that it might be copied. The copy then taken was mystery of " barbery " included, besides shaving and hairdressing, the art and's'urger °^ surgery. By an Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. the barbers and surgeons were amalgamated, and yet the statue shows that the process of differentiation was at work, for, as quoted in the City of London Directory, it provided that " no one who used barbery or shaving should do anything belonging to surgery but the draw ing of teeth," and that surgeons, on the other hand, " should not occupy the craft of barbery or shaving." The amalgamation was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1745, but traces of the former union of crafts that have grown so widely apart are to be seen in the pole still affected by barbers, and in the arms of the Com pany, which show chevrons and fleams, spatulas WHITECROSS AND REDCROSS STREETS 329 and double roses, crowned, with lynxes for supporters, and an opinicus for crest. Ac cording to the authority just quoted, this is a combination of the arms of the two crafts, the spatulas and the roses crowned belong ing to the surgeons, and the fleams and chevrons to the barbers. the Lord Mayor in 1906. On the opposite, the western side of the street, where is now a large goods depot of the Midland strtet.°SS Railway, st°od a large debtors' prison, capable of holding 500 per sons and dating from 1813-15. In Redcross Street, running parallel with Whitecross Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE CRIPPLEGATE INSTITUTE. In Whitecross Street, running northwards from St. Giles's, and named after a stone cross which is mentioned as far Street?"** back aS I275> is the City Green" yard, which is used as a " pound " for stray livestock and vehicles, and also for the storage of the Lord Mayor's state coach. Here stood the Gresham Almshouses until in 1883 they were removed to Brixton. Ad joining the Greenyard are the City Weights and Measures Offices, designed by the City Surveyor, Mr. Sidney Perks, and opened by 22 Street, and named after a cross which stood near its junction with Golden Lane was established, in 1724 Dr. Williams's Library, which now has its habitation in University Hall, Gordon Square. On the east side of Golden (formerly Golding) Lane, the continuation of Redcross Street, was built, in 1601, for Edward Alleyne and Philip Henslowe, the Fortune Theatre, named after a figure of Fortune with which it was ornamented. It was burnt down in 162 1 (December 9th) ; was rebuilt in circular form 33Q LONDON TOWN The Fortune Theatre. and of brick and tile, instead of lath, plaster and timber; was almost wrecked by soldiers in the days of the Puritan as cendency ; and in 1661 the ground was advertised to be let. A passage communicating between Upper Whitecross Street and Golden Lane, outside the City boundary, still bears the name of Playhouse Yard. In Golden Lane stood the Nursery, a seminary founded in the reign of Charles II., at which children were educated for the stage. Close to the site of the Fortune Theatre there now stands the Cripplegate Institute and Free Library, a spacious and hand some building of red brick and stone, of which the foundation stone was laid by the present Prince of Wales in 1894, and which was opened by the Lord Mayor in 1896. The ground was acquired at a cost of £17,500, and altogether the expenditure amounted to £50,000. The Institute is embellished with statues of Milton, Cromwell, Defoe and Bunyan. The connexion of the three first of these great men with Cripplegate has already been indicated. That of Bunyan, less obvious, arises from his being buried at Bunhill Fields cemetery, which was in the parish of St. Giles until 1732, when a part of the parish was erected into the separate parish of St. Luke. Of the Barbican, the watch tower which has given its name to the street leading Barbican. fr°m Golden Lane to Aldersgate Street, we have already spoken in connexion with St. Giles's, Cripplegate (p. 322). It was in a state of ruin in 1682, but did not finally disappear until towards the end of the eighteenth century. In the reign of Queen Mary the Barbican was in the keeping of the Lady Catherine Willoughby d'Eresby, baroness in her own right, and widow of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who lived in a mansion close by, known as Barbican House. This lady gave great offence to Bishop Gardiner by calling her lap-dog after him and dressing it up in episcopal garb,. and she and her second husband, Richard Bertie, ancestor of the Duke of Ancaster, presently found it discreet to retire to the Continent. Milton, as we have seen, settled in Barbican in 1645. In 1647 the poet removed to Holborn.. His house (No. 17) survived until 1864, when it was pulled down to make way for a ware house. Barbican has had other distinguished residents as well, among them Gondomar, the- Spanish Ambassador. Bridgewater Square, a little to the north of Barbican, marks the site of the mansion of the Egertons, Earls of Bridgewater, destroyed by fire in 1687, during the occupancy of John, third Earl, when his two eldest sons, Charles and Thomas, were burnt in their beds. In Beech Street, formerly Beech Lane, the eastward continuation of Barbican, lived, in his old age, Prince Rupert, in Drury House, named after Sir Drew Drury, of Drury Lane, and once belonging to the Abbots of Ramsey. The lane was conjectured by Stow to be named after Nicholas de la- Beech, Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign. of Edward III. ARMS OF THE BARBERS COMPANY. CHAPTER XXX ALDERSGATE STREET AND ST. MARTIN'S-LE-GRAND The Gate — St. Botoiph's — Postmen's Park and the Watts Cloister — Aldersgate Street — Shaftesbury House — London House — Bacon House — Westmorland House — " Shakespeare's House " — Milton's — Where " Paradise Lost " was Printed — John Wesley's Conversion — The Cooks' Company — Famous Taverns — Jewin Street — St. Martin's-le-Grand — The French Protestant Church — The Postal System — Origin and Growth — The Buildings ALDERSGATE, which gives its name to a t ward of the City, divided, like several others, into two, Aldersgate Within and Aldersgate Without (the City wall), stood just at the junction of St. Martin's-le- TheGate. Grand and Aldersgate Street, the exact spot being marked by the shop numbered 62, on the eastern side of St. Martin's-le-Grand. Less ancient than Bishopsgate, which it was constructed to relieve, it was in existence, as Riley shows, in the Introduction to the "Memorials," in 1243, when it appears as Aldrichegate, while in 1289 it was spelt Aldredesgate. Stow, re jecting other derivations, tells us that its name was determined by its antiquity, " as being one of the first four gates of the City " ; but this was not the fact, and the inference drawn from it is open to ques tion. It is much more probable, as Mr. Loftie holds, that it was named after one Aldred, who was a silversmith at the time when Henry of London Stone was Mayor* Having be come ruinous, it was rebuilt in 16 17, and as James I. had through this gate made his first entry into London the outer front presented an equestrian figure of the King in high relief, flanked by effigies of the prophets Samuel and Jeremiah, with extracts from the Book of Samuel "'"v^''^\W;-: ¦ :^-:.... r...: ^~ * Notes and Queries, 8th Series, XII. 161. ALDERSGATE : THE OUTER FRONT. 331 and the Prophecies of Jeremiah appropriate to the royal entrance into the capital. On the City front was a low relief of the King in his royal robes. In Queen Elizabeth's reign the rooms over the gate were occupied by John Day, the printer of the folio Bible dedicated to Edward VI. in 1 549, and also of the " Actes and Monuments " of Foxe, the martyrologist, who in 1567 was living here as Day's guest. Renovated after the Great Fire, the gate was sold in 1 761 for £91 and at once demolished. St. Botoiph's, Aldersgate, just outside the site of the Gate, is one of the least interesting of the City churches. Dedicated to ?*• , the East Anglian saint after whom Botoiph's. to three others of the City churches, all of them near City gates, were named, it was repaired and in part rebuilt in 1627. It was not much harmed by the Great Fire, but by 1790 had fallen into decay, and was entirely rebuilt, at a cost of some £10,000. Its church yard, now a pleasant garden, leads into the Postmen's Park, a strip of land between Aiders- gate Street and King Edward Street, within the shadow of the most northerly and most re cent of the great Post Office buildings in St. Martin's-le-Grand. In 1900 this tiniest but not least pretty of public parks (formed in part of the graveyard of St. Leonard's, Foster Lane, a church which 33- LONDON TOWN was not rebuilt after the Great Fire) was enlarged, and though but a few square yards — one -fifteenth of an acre — were added to it, a sum of £12,000 had to be paid for the new ground, so precious is land in this part of the City. Here The Watts jn a cloister — which was the Cloister. gift of the late George Frederick Watts, most public-spirited of the great Victorian painters — are tablets recording the the wall a small memorial bearing a full- length statuette of the painter, surmounted by his noble motto, " The Utmost for the Highest." The ceremony of unveiling was fittingly entrusted to another idealist in art, Sir William Richmond, R.A. In these days Aldersgate Street, extending from St. Martin's-le-Grand to the City boun dary at the beginning of Goswell Road, where stood Aldersgate Bars — now marked by two Photo : Pictorial Agency. POSTMEN'S PARK, ALDERSGATE STREET. gallantry of those who, mostly in humble walks of life, have lost their lives in the service of their fellows — not amid the pomp and circumstance of war, but in the course of prosaic duty. The first of the tablets bears this inscription : — " Thomas Griffin, fitter's labourer. April 12th, 1899. In a boiler explosion at a Battersea sugar re finery was fatally scalded in returning to search for his mate." The idea of thus com memorating heroes of London and the region round about who have made the supreme sacrifice in circumstances which surround it with no glamour and invoke for it little ad miration occurred to Mr. Watts at the time of Queen Victoria's first Jubilee, but among more ambitious projects it fell upon men's ears unheeded, and not until 1898 was a be ginning made with the pious scheme. Since Mr. Watts's death it has been continued by his widow, and further tablets are added from time to time. In 1905 there was affixed to granite obelisks — is prosaic enough, with nothing but a few names to remind one of the stately mansions and picturesque, Aldersgate gallery-surrounded inns in which Street. ° J formerly it abounded. Howell, in his " Londinopolis " (1657), speaks of it as more resembling an Italian street than any other street in London, by reason of the largeness and uniformity of its buildings and the ample spaces between them. On the east side, where now is the block of buildings numbered 35 to 38, stood until 1882 Shaftes bury House, formerly known as Thanet House, it having been built, by Inigo Jones, for the Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, from whom it passed into the family of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, that brilliant and changeable politician of whom both Dryden and the author of " Hudibras " have drawn such unflattering portraits. Here, as Shaftesbury's guest, lived John Locke, the philosopher, and here, too, the Duke of Mon- ALDERSGATE STREET MANSIONS 333 mouth at one time lay in hiding. In 1708 Thanet House was re-acquired by its old owners the Tuftons ; twelve years later it was converted into an inn, and between that date and its demolition it was put to a variety of uses. Close to Shaftesbury House stood Bacon House, the residence of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper in the reign of Elizabeth, and father of Francis Bacon, who, however, was succeeded London or Petre House after the fire of 1768 was made, in 18 14, the cradle for the Messiah to whom Joanna Southcott was to give birth, and for a time Aldersgate Street was daily thronged by the crowds who from a medley of motives flocked to see it. The woman had no lack of disciples, and was able to spend £500 upon the cradle and another £500 upon the baby-linen. Westmorland Buildings, on the same (west) Photo: Pictorial A c- POSTMEX's PARK : THE WATTS CLOISTER {p. 332). not born here. The Lord Keeper had a shrewd wit, and it is said that when a thief of the name of Hogg begged for leniency on the plea of kindred between the Hoggs and the Bacons, he replied, " Ah, you and I can not be of kin until you have been hanged." Nearly opposite Shaftesbury House there stood, until 1768, when it was destroyed by fire, Petre House, the residence of London the Petre family in Elizabethan House. times. When the Great Fire had destroyed the palace of the Bishops of London in St. Paul's Churchyard, Petre House was acquired as the episcopal resi dence, and it continued so to be used, with change of name to London House, until 1749. At the Revolution Bishop Compton brought the Princess Anne to London House in a hackney coach when, finally breaking with her father, James II., she fled at night from W nitehall Place. In the building which side of the street, a little nearer St. Botoiph's, indicate the site of Westmorland House, the London residence of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmorland, which disappeared about the middle of the eighteenth century ; and Nos. 57 to 60, on the eastern side, show where stood Lauderdale House, the town mansion of one of the five statesmen who in the reign of Charles II. formed the Cabal. Other noble residents of Aldersgate Street were the Countess of Pembroke, " Sidney's sister, Pem broke's mother," who died here in 162 1, and Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the friend of Swift, who celebrated him as shining "... In all climates like a star, In senates bold, and fierce in war ; A land commander and a tar." In Aldersgate Street also lived the Earl's contemporary, the Duke of Montagu, whom Swift did not love, declaring him to be " as arrant a knave as any in his time." 334 LONDON TOWN Aldersgate Street has made an altogether spurious claim to have numbered Shake speare among its residents, for on a couple of old shops about half-way along the street on the western side, which were taken down in 1879, there used to hang a board bearing the legend, " This was Shakespeare's house." The claim was of recent origin, and was never taken seriously. Aldersgate Street should have been content with the honour of having given harbourage to Milton. The poet, soon LONDON HOUSE, ALDERSGATE STREET, IN 1808. From a Drawing by G. Shepherd. after his return from his Continental tour in 1639, had settled in St. Bride's Churchyard, but after a while he came here to Milton. Aldersgate Street, to " a pretty garden house," to use the expres sion of Philips, his biographer, at the lower end of Lamb Alley, now Maidenhead Court, on the east side of the street. " As soon as I was able," to use his own words, " I hired a spacious house in the City for myself and my books, where I again with rapture renewed my literary pursuits, and where I calmly awaited the issue of the con test (the Civil War), which I trusted to the wise conduct of Providence and to the courage of the people." It was just before he left Aldersgate Street for the Barbican (p. 330) that he was reconciled to his first wife, Mary Powell, whom he had married in 1643, and who left him after a month of mutual discontent. She was to have returned the following Michaelmas, but did not do so, and when the messenger whom he sent for her was treated contumeliously by her royalist family he resolved never to take her back, and relieved his indignation by inditing his tract advocating the right of divorce on such grounds as incompatibility of temper or disposition. With the ruin of the royal cause the Powells became anxious to see Mary reconciled to her husband, and in July, 1645, they introduced her to the house of a Mr. Blackborough, a relative and neighbour of Milton's, and when one day he came to the house she suddenly appeared before him and besought his pardon on her knees. Not over- readily he forgave her, and it was arranged that she should return to him as soon as he was settled in the Barbican. Nor is this Aldersgate Street's only associa tion with Milton. Next door to the " Golden Lion" Inn was the printing press of Samuel Simmons, who in 1667 bought the copyright of " Paradise Lost " for an immediate pay ment of £5 and further payments of £5 each as first, second, and third editions, each of 1,300 copies, were exhausted. It was impos sible, therefore, for the author to receive more than £20 — say £50 in present money ; and in point of fact he was paid only £10, and soon after his death his widow assigned all further rights for a cash payment of £8. Compare this £18 for England's great epic with the fabulous sums which in these days some writers of third-rate fiction can com mand ! Aldersgate Street has intimate association with another name which all men hold in reverence. It was at a house which Mr. Ross, in " Bygone London," identifies with Trinity Hall, the place of assembly of the last non-juring congregation in London, which stood at the corner of Little Britain, that John Wesley " found salvation." In Wesley. n's Journal> under date May 24th, 1738, he writes : — " In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the changes which God makes in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation ; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins — THE "BULL AND MOUTH 335 The Cooks Company. even mine — and saved me from the law of sin and death." Opposite St. Botoiph's Church there stood until 1 77 1, when it was destroyed by the enemy it had escaped in 1666, the Hall of the Cooks' Com pany, a brotherhood which is still in existence, but of which little is heard in these days. It is " nearly as ancient as good living," and was incorporated by Edward IV. in 1482. In its arms the supporters are a buck and a hind, and for crest there is a cock pheasant. Since 1771 its business has been transacted at the Guild hall. The Albion Tavern, on the west side of the street, the scene of so many City din ners, was the last of the inns for which Aldersgate Street was long famous — the " Half-moon," the " Cock," the " Bell," the " George," and the rest — to survive, for it was only dismantled in 1908. The " Half-moon," which vanished in 1881, was the house of which Ben Jonson sings in the lines in which he recounts how, on one occasion finding it closed, he repaired to the " Sun " in Long Acre : — " Since the ' Half-moon ' is so unkind To make me go about, The ' Sun ' my money now shall have, The ' Moon ' shall go without." Gone also has the " Bull and Mouth," in St. Martin's-le-Grand. Rebuilt after the Fire of 1666, it was again rebuilt in IS Mo»t".» l83° as the "Queen's," and sur- vived under that name until 1886, when its site was acquired for the extension of the Post Office buildings. But the old sign, a large tablet of sandstone, carved with a huge grotesque face with an open mouth, within which is a bull, is preserved in the Guildhall Museum. It is surmounted by the arms of Christ's Hospital and a bust of Edward VI., and at the base is this inscrip tion : — " Milo the Crotonian An ox slew with his fist ; And ate it up at one meal. Ye gods, what a glorious twist ! " The original name of the inn is said to have been " Boulogne Mouth," in allusion to the town and harbour of Boulogne, to which Henry VIII. laid siege. But another theory is that " Bull and Mouth " is a corruption of " Bowl and Mouth." The "Bowl" was certainly an inn sign, and at St. Giles's, Bloomsbury, ..«^r-JEgHP^3}HrFTSB^Rv- HO VSR . .. goJ.' 4.1 fiP't-^J^'t l} :^^*{£.^r7ff'''~K'^T'- SHAFTESBURY HOUSE, ALDERSGATE STREET (/. 332). Jewin Street. was a tavern of this name, which may have had reference to the practice of presenting malefactors with a bowl of ale on their way to Tyburn. Both derivations appear to be sufficiently dubious. Jewin Street, leading out of Aldersgate Street eastwards, was " the burying-place of the Jews of London," as Stow records : hence no doubt its change of name from Leyrestow. But when Stow wrote, the cemetery had been con verted into " fair garden plots and summer houses for pleasure." In this street we come across another Milton association. On regaining his liberty after the Restoration, the poet came to live here (1661), and here he remained until 1663, when he moved to the house in Artillery Walk in which he was to die. It was in this house in Jewin Street that much of " Paradise Lost " was written, and it was while living here that he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. ztf LONDON TOWN Jewin Street, with several neighbouring streets, was in November, 1897, the scene of a destructive fire, which destroyed or damaged over a hundred buildings, and ravaged four and a half acres — from Nichol Square on the south to Australian Avenue on the north, from Edmund Place on the west to St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on the east. It is said to have been the largest conflagration that had raged in London since the Fire of 1666. Of the collegiate church and sanctuary of St. Martin-le-Grand the origin is involved in obscurity. It is said to have been fe'c^nd."'8" founded about the middle of the eighth century ; if so, it was enlarged in 1056 by Ingelric, Earl of Essex, and his brother Girard. It was confirmed in 1068 by a charter of William the Conqueror, who endowed it with all the moorland with out Cripplegate. As Sir Walter Besant points out in his " London," it is not easy to understand why St. Martin, a French saint, was so popular in this country. In London alone, besides this monastic foundation, there were dedicated to him five parish churches —St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, St. Martin Outwich, St. Martin Orgar, St. Martin Pomary, and St. Martin Vintry, and of these, St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, is the only one that has survived Though within the City walls, St. Martin's- le-Grand, a house of secular canons, formed a liberty by itself, and claimed privileges of sanctuary which were naturally very obnox ious to the citizens. In the reign of Henry VI. (1442), as Stow relates, a soldier, on his way from the Newgate Compter to the Guild hall, was rescued by comrades and dragged into St. Martin's, and though the Sheriffs of the City promptly haled him out and locked him up in the Compter they had to return him to St. Martin's. So late as the reign of Henry VII. the Dean and Chapter successfully vindicated the right of sanctuary when it was violated by the Sheriffs, who were " grievously fined." Even at the Dissolution, when the collegiate buildings were destroyed, the " liberty " retained its privileges of sanctuary, and though these were abolished in the reign of James I. St. Martin's-le-Grand continued to be a refuge for debtors until the reign of William III. No trace of the college now remains above ground, but The Huguenots. when the site was cleared for the first of the General Post Office buildings in 1818 an Early English crypt and a range of vaults were discovered, of which the former had served as the cellar of the " Bull and Mouth " Tavern, afterwards the Queen's Hotel (p- 335)- When the hotel was taken down there disappeared with it the French Protestant Church, built in 1842-43 for the accommodation of the congrega tion to which Edward VI. had assigned the church of St. Anthony's Hospital in Threadneedle Street. The French Protestants, after the Great Fire, worshipped in so much as was left of the church of St. Martin Orgar, in St. Martin's Lane, Eastcheap, and there they remained until 1820, when for a space (1820-43) they returned to Threadneedle Street, to St. Mary's Chapel. In these days they worship in Soho Square. Of the postal system, which has grown and grown until St. Martin's-le-Grand became much too small for its headquarters, Office°St tne °bscure beginnings have been traced out by Mr. Herbert Joyce,* who shows that until the reign of Henry VIII., or a little earlier, there was no regular system of posts in England, and that for some considerable time afterwards such posts as there were existed for the sole use of the Sovereign. Even at the beginning of the seventeenth century there were only four posts — to Scotland, to Ireland, to Plymouth, and to Dover. The present postal system may be said to have been Beginnings, founded in 1 63 5 by Thomas Witherings, who drew up a scheme for the establishment of trunk lines of post between London and the principal towns of the kindom, with branch posts to the smaller towns, and proposed to make the institution self-supporting by levying for every letter a charge varying from 2d. to 9d., according to size and distance. In 1637 Witherings, already in charge of the foreign post, was appointed head also of the inland post, but three years later he was deprived of his office on a charge of abuses and mis demeanours, and so, in Mr. Joyce's words, " ended the career of one who had the sagacity to project and the energy to carry out a * "The History of the Post Office." By Herbert Joyce, C.B, 1S93. STORY OF THE POST OFFICE 337 system the main features of which endure to the present day." In 1644 the direction of was entrusted to Edmund a man of great organising fulfilment of his predecessor's scheme, set about establishing a weekly post to all parts of the kingdom. Five years after he became the Post Office Prideaux, M.P., abilitv, who, in During the Commonwealth, as Mr. Joyce shows, the Post Office was largely used as an instrument of police, and foreign mails were stopped for weeks at a time, and the letters, or such of them as came under suspicion, opened and read. The Venetian Ambas sador was among those whose letters were thus tampered with, and on one occasion fmMm. OLD VIEW OF THE CITY BOUNDARY, ALDERSGATE STREET {t>. 2>32)- From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd. master of the posts the Common Council of the City started a post of its own along the road from London to Edinburgh, and having done so much, proceeded to establish posts in other directions as well, until Parliament took action for the preservation of its mono poly and suppressed the City posts. In 1657, during the Commonwealth, was passed an Act which gave a statutory basis to the postal system, hitherto resting upon Pro clamation or Order in Council — an Act establishing a General Office to be called the Post Office of England, and to be under the control of an officer to be styled the Post master-General and Comptroller of the Post Office. This statute, re-enacted at the Restoration, has been styled the Post Office Charter, and it remained in force until 17 10. he was moved to a protest in which it is curious to see his just indignation mastering his sense of diplomatic pro priety. " He could not persuade himself," he protested, " that the Government of Eng land, so noble and generous, should have so inferior a mind as to open the letters of an ambassador, and by this means to violate the laws and to give an example to the world so damnable, and of so little respect towards the minister of the Most Serene Republic." Up to the year 1680 there was no post between one part of London and another It was Wm. Dockwra, a City merchant who had been a sub- A Post for London. searcher in the Customs, who set himself to provide the London area not merely with a postal service, but with a 338 LONDON TOWN postal service at the rate of one penny, and on the ist of April, 1680, London found itself possessed of a service " in comparison with which even the post of our own time was cast into the shade." Between four and five hundred post offices were opened in a single morning, and the letters received at these offices were delivered at places of business in London and at the Inns of Court virtually once an hour during the day, and at other SIGN OF THE " BULL AND MOUTH." {Guildhall Museum.) places, according to distance, from four to eight times a day. The service included also parcels, which, if they were not more than 1 lb. in weight or £10 in value, were de livered in the London district at the same rate as letters. Moreover, the charge of one penny covered the insurance of the letter or parcel up to the value of £10. To the same bold innovator is also to be traced the origin of post-marks. To Dockwra came the reward which is so often the lot of reformers and inventors. So long as he carried on his penny post Reward*'8 at a ^oss ^e was ^e^ undisturbed, but no sooner did his scheme begin to yield him a profit than the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), upon whom the revenues of the General Post Office had been settled, went to law in defence of his monopoly, Dockwra was cast in damages, and in less than five years from its foundation, his penny post was annexed by the General Post Office. During James's reign he received no recognition of the service he had done the capital, but under William and Mary he was pensioned, and in 1697 was appointed Comp troller of the penny post at a salary of £200. But soon afterwards he was dismissed by the Lords of Treasury, on complaint made by subordinates, and both salary and grant came to an end. His penny post for London sur vived until 1801, when a step backwards was taken and it was made a twopenny post. The uniform penny postage which we now enjoy was established in 1840 by Sir Row land Hill, and since then the busi- The ness of the Post Office has ad- Pos"y vanced by leaps and bounds until now, within the United Kingdom, the Post Office effects some five thousand million deliveries each year, representing an average of over a hundred and twelve to each inhabitant of the British Isles. The foreign and colonial mail service, too, is constantly expanding, thanks in part to the reductions that are from time to time made in the charges. Thus in 1907 the unit of weight for outward mails was raised from half an ounce to an ounce, and on the ist of October, 1908, the penny post to the United States came into operation. The Money Order Office, like the London Penny Post, was originally a private specu lation, and so it remained from 1792 until 1838, when it was incorporated with the General Post Office. To it has been added the Postal Order Branch, which has greatly outdistanced it in popularity. Thrm."81*18 The Savings Bank Department, which has done so much to en courage thrift among a people not naturally in clined to it, was established in 1 860, and there now stands to the credit of depositors the enormous sum of over £150,000,000. An extensive business in annuities and life in surance is carried on by this department, which also has upon its books the names of over 1 50,000 holders of Government stock. In 1870 the General Post Office, which in this instance did a bad stroke of business, took over the telegraph system of the country, except the wires of the railway companies. THE POST OFFICE: MODERN DEVELOPMENTS 339 The number of home telegrams that passed over the Post Office wires during the year 1907-8 numbered close upon 86 Telegraphs millions, a decrease of about three and Telephones, millions and a half compared with the year before, which is attributable to the growing popularity of the telephone system, the latest of the regards working arrangements, and competi tion is limited to the quality of service and not extended to the charges. At first the General Post Office was in Cloak Lane, Dowgate Hill, and then at the " Black Swan " in Bishopsgate Street. After the Fire of 1666 it was transferred to premises in Abchurch Lane, Lombard Street, which, COURTYARD OF THE "BULL AND MOUTH," ST. MARTIN's-LE-GRAND. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd. fruits of private enterprise to be absorbed by the Post Office. In the Postmaster- General's annual report for 1895 - 96 it was announced that during that year a new agreement with the National Telephone Company had been executed, and that in future the operations of the Company would be restricted to local areas, the trunk wires having been taken over by the Post Office. In 1899 was passed a Bill authorising the Post Office to provide a telephone service for London by way of breaking down the monopoly of the National Telephone Com pany, and in pursuance of this Act an agreement was entered into with the Com pany by which its plant in London is to be purchased on the expiration of the licence in 191 1 ; meanwhile there is co-operation as though again and again extended, were never able to keep pace with the growth of the business for which they were re- Buiidi quired. In 1824 was laid the first stone of the first of the General Post Office buildings in St. Martin's-le-Grand, for which designs were furnished by Sir Robert Smirke, and it was opened five years later. Standing on the east side of the street, and styled the General Post Office East, it is of the Ionic order, with a bold central portico surmounted by a pediment. Opposite is the next in order of the buildings, the General Post Office West, built in 1869-74 from designs by Mr. James Williams, of H.M. Office of Works and Public Build ings, and now mainly occupied by the Tele graph Department. In 1880 the business of 34° LONDON TOWN the Savings Bank was transferred to a build ing in Queen Victoria Street, also designed by Mr. Williams, and now known as the General Post Office South. In 1903 the Savings Bank was again removed, this time to new quarters at West Kensington, to make way for the Central Telephone Exchange, and for the chief Money Order Office. In 1907 a fifth storey was added to the Carter commissioned officers and men of the Post Office Army Corps who lost their lives in the South African War (1899- 1902), and are thus commemorated by their comrades. Those who remember by sight the late Cecil Raikes, who was Postmaster-General when this block was built, will recognise his features in the sculptured keystone of the arch which forms the chief entrance. Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE EARLIEST OF THE POST OFFICE BUILDINGS IN ST. MARTIN S-LE-GRAND. Lane block of the General Post Office South to provide further accommodation for the London telephone service. In spite of the relief afforded by the removal of the Savings Banks Department to Queen Victoria Street, further accom modation at St. Martin's-le-Grand was soon found to be necessary, and in 1889 the Government acquired a site to the north of the General Post Office West, where was built (1890-95), in the Italian style, the General Post Office North, for the accom modation of the Postmaster-General, the Secretary, and the Administrative Staff. The front of this structure now bears a tablet " in honour and remembrance " of the non- In 1 90 1 the pressure upon the accommo dation of the buildings in St. Martin's-le- Grand was further relieved by transferring the Country Mails to Mount Pleasant, where the Parcels Post, established in 1883, was already installed. But still the cry of the Post Office was for " more room," and when in 1903 Christ's Hospital, off Newgate Street, was demolished, three and a half acres of the site were acquired, and two' years later (October 1 6th) the foundation stone of a new block, to be called King Edward's Building, was laid by his Majesty. It needs no prophetic gift to foresee that before that has long been in use, another building scheme will have become necessary. CHAPTER XXXI LITTLE BRITAIN AND SMITHFIELD Little Britain— A Publishers' and Printers' Quarter — Smithfield — Brave Tournaments— William Walworth and Wat Tyler — Executions — William Wallace and Roger Mortimer— The Marian and Elizabethan Martyrs— Bartholomew Fair and the Court of Piepoudre— The Cattle Market— The Central Markets TO get from Aldersgate Street to Smith- field we may take the street bearing the curious name of Little Britain, which winds round St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Anciently, says Maitland, it was o1"16, designated Britain Street from the Britain. ° City mansion of the Duke of Bretagne ; and it has absorbed the street which used to be known as Duck Lane. In the 17th and to the end of the 18th century Little Britain was known for its printing offices and booksellers' shops, and it was here, according to Richardson, the author of " Remarks on Milton " (1734), that A Learned th Earl of Dorset, "beating Quarter. ' a about for books to his taste, lighted upon ' Paradise Lost,' was struck with some passages in it, and sent it to Dryden, from whom it elicited the famous comment, ' This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.' " It is fitting that Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the Library at Oxford, should have lived in this region, and that Dr. John son also should be associated with it, though in his case the connexion was not of a voluntary kind, for he was "but thirty months old," as he himself says, when his mother, bringing him to London to be touched by Queen Anne for the Evil, put up " at Nicholson's, the famous bookseller of Little Britain." " I always retained some memory of this journey," he says. It was but natural, too, that when Benjamin Franklin, at the age of eighteen, came to London in 1724 with a mind ravening for knowledge he should have taken lodgings in Little Britain, where he was in the midst of books and close to the printing office where he worked as a compositor. Smithfield, more properly Smoothfield, a level space a little under six acres in extent, without the old City walls, has been the scene of jousts and tournaments, of duels and ordeals by combat, of hangings field!"0*1" ano^ burnings, of the coarse re- vellings associated with Bartholo mew Fair, and of London's great cattle market, and now it is given up to the ordered business of the Central Markets of the City Corporation. Of the jousts and tournaments, Stow de scribes several, among them the joust held here in 1374 by Edward III. in the Jousts. forty-eighth year of his long reign, when Alice Perrers, his mistress, rode hither from the Tower of London decked out as Lady of the Sun, and accompanied by many lords and ladies also on horseback, " every lady leading a lord by his horse- bridle." " Then began a great joust," the historian adds, " which endured seven days after." In 1390 Richard II. held here a tournament, of which Stow, following Frois sart, gives a brave account. " At the day appointed there issued forth of the Tower . . sixty coursers, apparelled for the jousts, and upon every one an esquire of honour, riding a soft pace; then came forth sixty ladies of honour, mounted upon palfreys, riding on the one side, richly apparelled, and every lady led a knight with a chain of gold ; those knights, being of the king's party, had their harness and apparel garnished with white harts,* and crowns of gold about the harts' necks ; and so they came riding through the streets of London to Smithfield, with a great number of trumpets and other instruments of music before them. The king and queen, who were lodged in the bishop's palace of London, were come from thence, with many great estates, and placed in chambers to see the * Richard II. 's badge. 341 342 LONDON TOWN jousts ; the ladies that led the knights were taken down from their palfreys, and went up to chambers prepared for them. Then alighted the esquires of honour from their coursers, and the knights in good order mounted upon them ; and after their helmets were set on their heads, and being ready in all points, proclamation made by the heralds, the jousts began, and many Photo : Pictorial Agency. LITTLE BRITAIN, WITH THE TOWER OF ST. BOTOLPH's, commendable courses were run, to the great pleasure of the beholders. These jousts con tinued many days, with great feasting." Nine years before this joust Richard had come to Smithfield on very different business. On the night of the 12th of June, 1381, Wat Tyler had led into the City a horde of rebels from Essex and Kent who had made up their minds to do away with taxes and landlords and all such intolerable evils. The next day the Duke of Lancaster's palace of the Savoy was sacked and burnt, and after this they paid their attention to the Templars, and to the Knights WatTyler. Hospitallers of Clerkenwell. On the even ing of the 15th, the King, accompanied by Walworth and a large retinue, rode to Smith- field to parley with the rebels. A dispute arose between Tyler and one of the royal suite, the King ordered the former's arrest, and Walworth, having been struck by the rebel leader, smote him down with his dagger. He was as prompt in fleeing from the ven geance of the infuriated mob as he had been to provoke it, but he was soon back again with enough force to bring the rebels to sub mission. To prevent further bloodshed the King interposed with promises of clemency, and then, on the spot, as is noted in our Introduction, he knighted Walworth, and with him other City magistrates who had borne themselves bravely in a dangerous crisis. As for Wat Tyler, when he fell from his horse he was taken with scant ceremony with in the gate of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and there died. The body was laid in the Master's Chamber, but Walworth had it dragged out and decapitated, and the head was exposed on London Bridge, on the spike which had borne the head of one of the dead man's victims, Archbishop Sudbury. Long before the reign of Richard II. that part of Smithfield which was known as the Elms, " for that here grew many elm- trees," had become the place for executions of a more judicial character, and so it remained until, in the reign of Henry IV., the gallows was removed to Tyburn. In 1222, for ex- Executions, ample, a riot was caused by Con- stantine Fitz-Athulf, or Olaf, a former Sheriff of the City, and a member of the party of Louis the Dauphin, who had been invited over by the barons to undertake the government of the land in the place of King John, and had returned to his own country in 1 2 17. This Fitz-Athulf raised the Dau phin's battle-cry of " Mountjoy " at a tourna ment, and there was some disorder, but Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, acting with M 3 £ o «s a: O *v O 5f X ¦= a ts 344 LONDON TOWN prompt decisiveness, arrested the ringleader and had him and two of his followers taken straight to the Elms and hanged. Summary With the halter round his neck, Punishment. . . . T , Fitz-Athulf, anticipating Johnnie Armstrong the Border freebooter when in similar case, offered 15,000 marks of silver for his life. But De Burgh thought the bargain a bad one. That there should have been a party in London in favour of having a French Twenty-five years later there suffered here one who richly deserved his fate. After Queen Isabella had entered into Roger her guilty intrigue with Roger Mortimer. ° ¦* & °. Mortimer, Edward II. fled, and in 1327 the Queen's favourite was master of the situation. For nearly four years the precious pair carried things with a high hand ; but at last the young King, Edward III., flung off the intolerable yoke, Mortimer was surprised THE SMITHFIELD CATTLE MARKET. From a Drawing by James Pollard. prince for ruler may seem strange ; but, as is pointed out by Dr. Sharpe in " London and the Kingdom," at this time the land was swarming with foreigners. At the Elms also, on St. Bartholomew's Eve, 1305, was executed Sir William Wallace, the Scottish hero. For seven years William after his defeat by Edward I. at Wallace. Falkirk (July 22, 1298) he was lost sight of, and was thought by some to be on the Continent, though more probably he was roaming the wilds of his native land. Then, betrayed into the hands of his enemies at Glasgow by his false friend Sir John Menteith, he was brought to London, tried at Westmin ster, dragged from the Tower to the Elms by horses, and here put to a barbarous death, being hanged and, while still conscious, quartered. in Nottingham Castle, brought to trial for the murder of Edward II. and the Earl of Kent, and hanged at the Elms amid universal execrations. Of the executions for heresy of which the memory still clings to Smithfield the earliest was that of William Chatris, priest of the church of St. Osyth,* who was burnt here in 1401. The next victim was John Badley, a tailor in the diocese of Rochester, who (1410) disputed the doctrine of Transubstantiation and was burnt, though Prince Hal tried hard to induce him to turn from his heresy, and had the fire quenched to give him a chance of thinking better of it. In the reign of Henry VIII. there was some show of impartiality about the executions for heresy, * See p. 84. MARTYRDOMS AT SMITHFIELD 345 for on one and the same day (July 28th, 1540) three Papists were hanged, drawn, and quar tered for denying the royal supremacy, and three divines, Barnes, Garrett, and Jerome, were burnt for going too far on the Protes tant side. Of Mary's 277 victims — what an appalling number ! — the first was Us" John Rogers, burnt on the 4th of Marian J„ . fa ' . , . . , ^. , Martyrs. February, 1555, within sight of the tower of his own church of St. Sepulchre, Holborn. When, says Foxe in a familiar and beautiful passage, the fire " had taken hold both upon his legs and shoulders, he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flame as though it had been in cold water. And after lifting up his hands unto heaven, not removing the same until such time as the devouring fire had consumed them, most mildly this happy martyr yielded up his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father. . . . His wife and children, being eleven in number, and ten able to go, and one sucking on her breast, met him by the way as he went towards Smithfield. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death, with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of Christ's Gospel." In Elizabeth's day Anabaptists suffered at the stake at Smithfield, and it was not until the next reign that burnings for heresy ceased, the last victim being Bartholomew Legate, who in spite of his name was an Arian and died for his faith in 161 2. Burn ings, however, for crimes of peculiar atrocity, for which hanging was thought too good, continued at Smithfield for some time longer. Rogers and others of the Marian martyrs are now commemorated by a memorial of red and grey granite let into the wall of St. Bartholomew's Hospital opposite the site of the stake, which was just over against but some few yards distant from the present en trance to the church of St. Bar tholomew - the - Great. The spot was discovered in 1849, when, three feet below the surface, were found ashes and charred human bones, with unhewn stones, blackened as though by fire. 23 Of Bartholomew Fair the origin is to be traced to Rahere, the founder of St. Bartholo mew's Priory in the reign of Barthoio- Henry t As the iate Henry mew Fair. J J Morley shows in his history of the fair, such institutions generally originated in the assembling of pilgrims at Church festivals, and so it was with this fair at Smithfield, for at the same time that he obtained from the King a charter to found the Priory, Rahere secured the privilege of holding a three days' fair on the Feast of Bartholomew, the day before (Bartholomew Eve), and' the day after. At first, and for some hundreds of years, Bartholomew Fair was the great Cloth Fair of the country, and this was held within the Priory Gates, on the site of what to this day is known as Cloth Fair, an ancient but dingy rather than picturesque thoroughfare running eastwards from Smithfield towards Aldersgate Street. The fair being thus much more than an occasion for revelling, there was a special tribunal, the Court of Pie-poudre, set up within the Priory gates to see that debts were paid and bargains properly carried out, and generally to deal with offences arising out of the fair. Blackstone, in his " Com mentaries," praises these pie-poudre courts as " the oldest and at the same time most expeditious courts of justice known to the law of England," as they certainly must have been seeing that punishment was inflicted, in the form of a whipping or a sojourn in the stocks, before the sun went down upon the offence. Blackstone derives the name of the court from " the dusty feet of the suitors," but gives, on the authority of Sir Edward /GENERAL MARKET Poultry and /Provision luizry ana r--* sion Section POU LTRY & ™ "P R O V I S I O N c, MARKET LONG LAN PLAN OE THE CENTRAL MARKETS. 346 LONDON TOWN Coke, an alternative derivation, " because justice is there done as speedily as dust can fall from the feet." So early as 1445 the City claimed to be joint lord of the fair with the Prior of St. Bartholomew's, and when the Priory was dissolved the profits and privileges of the fair were shared by the Corporation and Lord Rich, ancestor of the Earls of Warwick and of September, 1815, forty-five cases of felony, misdemeanour and assault arising out of the revellings were dealt with at Guildhall. In 1830 Lord Kensington sold to the City his interest in the fair, and at last, as the result of restrictions imposed by the Corporation and of the pressure of public opinion, it dwindled to a few gingerbread stalls. In 1850, when Lord Mayor Musgrove, in ac- Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE CENTRAL MARKETS. Holland. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Cloth Fair began to wane and the revellings to wax, until they grew into a fourteen days' saturnalia. Many are the references in the dramatic and other litera ture of Elizabethan and later days to this carnival of vice and vulgarity, with its rope- dancers and merry-andrews, its learned pigs and calculating horses and dancing bears, its freaks and monstrosities, its cutpurses and tricksters. Presently it became such an in tolerable nuisance that in Queen Anne's decorous days (1708) the fair was again limited to three days. But the fun continued to be as fast and furious though not so long- drawn-out as ever. As it grewolder the fair did not become more seemly, and in one morning cordance with ancient custom, went to the gateway of St. Bartholomew's to open the fair he found that there was no fair to open, and in 1855 it was formally suppressed. But for many years a more serious because a daily nuisance had to be borne with by those who dwelt in this part of London. In 161 5 the Cor poration, as may be read in Howes, reduced Smithfield, hitherto a "rude, vast place," into " a faire and comely order," paved it all over and effected other improve ments, moved thereto by the expectation that it might prove " a faire and peaceable market place," to the relief of Newgate Market, Cheapside, Leadenhall Street, and Grace church Street, which were " unmeasur- The CattleMarket. THE CENTRAL MARKETS 347 ably pestered with the unimaginable increase and multiplicity of market-folkes." Smithfield did indeed become the scene of a greater market than Howes or any of his contem poraries ever imagined, but it was anything but " faire and peaceable." A vivid picture of London's Cattle Market as it existed in 1838 is drawn by Dickens in " Oliver Twist " in a passage which we need not quote over again. That in the middle of the nineteenth century the City authorities should have allowed two million animals to be driven through the streets of the City in the course of the year on their way to Smithfield says much for their regard for ancient institutions and for the tolerance of the public. At last, though the Corporation was in favour of letting things alone, the public would have no more of it, and in 1855, under the powers of an Act of 1852, the Cattle Market was removed to Copenhagen Fields, Islington. A part of the site was used for the erection, by the Corporation, of the Meat Market, and when in 1868 the building thus designated was opened, Newgate Market, which had been London's great Meat Market, was superseded. The rest of the site was preserved as an open space, with a garden and drinking fountain in the centre ; and in this open space is still held one of those hay-markets which are still carried on in certain thoroughfares of the metropolis. The great group of market buildings in and The around Smithfield is known as the London Central Markets. The earliest and much the largest of them, the Meat Market, designed by Sir Horace Jones, and completed, as we have seen, in 1868, is an enormous and well - proportioned structure of red brick and stone, cover ing an area of three and a half acres, with an under ground railway depot fur- Central Markets. the martyrs stone in the wall of st. Bartholomew's hospital. nished with cellars where meat and provisions are stored, and traversed by the lines which bring to the market the traffic of several great railways. To the south-west of it is the Poultry- and Provision Market, in the same style and by the same architect, completed in 1872, and supplemented three years later by other blocks — (1) a Poultry and Provision section adjoining the one just mentioned, and originally intended as a Fruit, Flower, and Vegetable Market, then converted into a Fish Market, and finally adapted to the sale of meat, poultry and provisions ; (2) a Fish, Fruit, Vegetable and Flower section, on the north side of Charterhouse Street ; and (3) an annexe abutting upon Snow Hill, opened as a Fish Market, but now used for the sale of chilled and frozen meats {see the plan on p. 345). The meat and provisions sold at the Central Markets in the course of a year, mostly though not exclusively in a wholesale way, amount to considerably over four hundred thousand tons. But a better notion of the volume of trade may be gathered from the fact that, including the market staffi about a hundred strong, between six and seven thousand men here earn their daily bread, of whom about a thousand are licensed porters and meat-carriers. At Smithfield business begins very early, earlier even than at Billingsgate. The market gates are opened about the time when the votaries of fashion begin to think of going to bed. At four o'clock business has begun, and as six approaches it is in full swing, and so remains until about eight. Though during the last decade there has been a considerable growth in the business transacted, the buildings were planned on so ample a scale that there is no overcrowding, and the Central Markets are among the best-ordered in the world. OLD VIKW OF ST. BARTHOLOMEWS HOSPITAL. From a Print in the.Crace Collection. CHAPTER XXXII ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S— PRIORY AND HOSPITAL Apparition of St. Bartholomew — Smithfield a Morass — Rahere's Priory — St. Bartholomew's Hospital — Royal and Noble Benefactors — The Hospital Refounded — Rebuilding in the Eighteenth Century — Hogarth's Donation — The Present Rebuilding — " Bart's " First Surgeon — Abernethy — St. Bartholo- mew's-the-Less — St. Bartholomew's-the-Great — Degradation — Restoration — Monuments — Picking up Sixpences — The Close — Cloth Fair AS we saw in the last chapter, the Priory and the Hospital dedicated to St. Bartholomew were founded by Rahere, in the year 1123. How he came to put his hand to this great work is not known, but a beautiful legend, which appears to have grown up not long after his death, tells how, in or about 1 1 20, after years of gaiety in royal palaces and great houses, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was there smitten with malarial fever, of which he seemed like to die. Repenting of his follies, he vowed that if it should please God to spare his life he would build '' an hospital in recreation of poor men, and to them, so there gathered, necessaries minister after his power." One night he had a vision in which he seemed to be v^ion"'8 carried up on high by a strange winged beast with four feet, and then there appeared to him one of majestic mien who announced himself as the Apostle Bartholomew, by whom he had unwittingly been succoured in his anguish. " Know me truly," proceeded the saint, " by the will and commandment of the Holy Trinity, and the common favour of the celestial Court and Council, to have chosen a place in the suburbs of London, at Smithfield, where in my name thou shalt found a church, and it shall be the house of God." When Rahere returned, in 1123, he sought to secure the land thus indicated, but though the City authorities approved of his Draining design, it was necessary to get the Swamp. King's permission, since the land was within the royal market. At that time Smithfield was a mere swamp, and as soon as Rahere had obtained a grant of the land he set about draining it and then began to build a Priory and a Hospital for the sick. The Priory was for the Order of the Black Canons of St. Augustine, of which 348 PRIORY AND HOSPITAL 349 he had become a member, and its church, as we shall presently see, was built on a scale of veritable magnificence. How he contrived to raise the money for his vast undertaking we know not, but tradition says that, feigning to be half-witted, he drew idlers together and got them to help him in preparing the site, and that he wrought many miracles, which proved, as always, to be a rich source of revenue. It is certain that the power of his patron, Richard Bishop of London, at the Court of Henry I., stood him in good stead. He was the first Prior of the house which he had founded, and in the twelfth year of his office he obtained leave to institute and appropriate to the Priory the profits of the Fair of which some account was given in the last chapter. For four-and-twenty years he presided over the Priory, and then (September 20th, 1 143) " the clay house of this world forsook and the house everlasting he entered," and was succeeded by Thomas, a canon of the church of St. Osyth. At the time of Rahere's death there were thirteen canons on his foundation, a number which un der Prior Thomas was increased to thirty-five. In the reign of Henry IV. the Prion', though not its glorious church, was rebuilt. The precincts were of generous dimen sions, as the reader will see if he turns to a map of the City and notes that the north wall ran from Smithfield along the south side of Long Lane to within about thirty yards of Aldersgate Street, that the west wall extended from the south-west corner of Long Lane along Smithfield to what is now the chief entrance to Bar- THE SMITHFIELD GATE OF ST. HOSPITAL. tholomew Close, that the south wall stretched from this spot to Aldersgate Street, and that the east wall ran parallel with Aldersgate Street at a distance of about six-and-twenty yards until it joined the north wall. When the Dissolution came (1536) the value of the Priory was assessed at .£653 15s. a year, and the dispossessed canons were left to draw what consolation they could from annuities of £6 13s. 4d. apiece. The Priory became the property of Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Rich, ancestor of the Earls of Warwick and Holland, who, having won Henry the Eighth's favour by the part he had taken in the trial of Sir Thomas More, was able to purchase it for the sum of .£1,064 1 is. 3d. The grant was revoked by Queen Mary, who transferred the church to the Black Friars in 1556, but it was renewed to Rich and his heirs " in free socage " in the year after Queen Elizabeth's accession (1559). Scarce anything now remains of Rahere's Priory except a part of its church. Of this something will be said when we have told the story of his other foundation, which happily has survived to the present day, and with the process of the years has vastly extended its beneficent activ ities. St. Bartholo mew's Hospital had a constitution in dependent of the Priory and a separ ate estate, though to a strictly limited extent it was sub ject to the control of the Prior. The relations between the two institutions were at various times revised, but in some form they subsisted until the Priory was dis solved. The foun dation consisted of a master, eight BARTHOLOMEW S 350 LONDON TOWN brethren, and four sisters, who were subject to the rule of St. Austin ; and from the first it was not a mere almshouse but a hospital for the sick, who were tended in a large hall. According to Dr. Norman Moore,* Rahere's Hospital occupied the site of the present one, and like it had a principal gate in Smithfield and a gate in Little Britain, besides two others. There were several chapels, with lodgings for the chaplains, within the en closure, as well as many private houses. As time went on the Hospital attracted Exchange, with the Aldermen and Com monalty of the City, petitioned the King that they might have the control of the revenues of the Spitals of St. Bartholomew, St. Mary, and St. Thomas, and the new Abbey at Tower Hill, and after some years had sped by, and a second appeal had been Refounding made by the citizens, Henry was the i , / \ • Hospital. pleased (1544) to enter into a covenant refounding the Hospital for a hundred persons and endowing it with 500 marks a year, on condition that the Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE QUADRANGLE, ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL. the charitable interest of opulent citizens and others, and on the roll of its benefactors appear the names of Thomas Becket, Henry FitzAylwin, first Mayor of London, Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, Henry III., who gave two oak trees from Windsor Forest to provide fuel, and Richard Whittington. When the Priory was dissolved, Henry VIII. appropriated the lands of the Hospital, and for a short space Rahere's work of charity was suspended. But in 1538, two years after the dissolution, the Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Gresham, father of the builder of the Royal * " A Brief Relation of the Past and Present State ... of St. Bartholomew's Hospital." By Norman Moore, M.D., F.R.C.P. 1895. citizens provided a similar amount, bringing up the revenue to a thousand marks, or £666 13s. 4d. The King, however, was not so good as his word, and after his death the governing body felt themselves at liberty to tell the truth about his share in the foun dation. According to " The Ordre of the Hospital of St. Bartholomewes, in West Smythfelde, in London," published in 1552 by the governors, the houses from which the King's 500 marks were to come were in decay, and some of them " rotten ruinous," and so much had to be spent in repairing them that only enough funds were left to maintain three or four harlots lying in childbed. To carry on the Hospital on the scale intended, the citizens ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL 35i had, therefore, to find about four times as and here and elsewhere are portraits of dis- much money as they had undertaken to tinguished physicians and surgeons whose furnish forth — a draft upon their generosity fame is bound up with the Hospital — Dr. which, we may be sure, did not make their Radcliffe, by Kneller ; Percivall Pott, by loyalty more enthusiastic. Reynolds ; Abernethy, by Sir Thomas Law- At this time St. Bartholomew's had seven rence ; Sir James Paget and Mr. Luther grades of paid officers : (1) the Hospitaller, Holden, by Millais ; Sir William Savory, (2) the Renter Clerk, (3) the Butlers, (4) the Porter, (5) the Matron, (6) the Sisters, (7) the Beadles. Then there were, says the " Ordre," "' as in a kynde by them selves, three chirurgeons in the wages of the Hospitall, gevyng daily attendaunce upon the cures of the poore." The " Ordre " exhorts the officers to accept no gifts and to admit none from whom they had received money, while to the Sisters the follow ing counsel of perfection, qualified out of regard to feminine infirmity, is addressed: "And so muche as in you shall lie, ye shall avoyde and shonne the conver- sacion and company of all men." The buildings reared when the Hospital was refounded in the reign of Henry VIII. were pulled down in 1730, and re placed by a quadrangular structure, designed by James Gibbs, the archi tect of St. Martin's-in- the-Fields, and of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford. The work was completed in 1760, and the cost defrayed by public Gibbs's subscription, but the accomplished Buildings. , 1 architect, it is pleasant to record, did his work gratuitously. There are twenty- eight wards, each with its own name painted on the doorway, the name of a benefactor, of a virtue, or of an example of virtue. In the Great Hall, on the upper floor of the Photo : Pictorial Agency. st. Bartholomew's : the new out-patients' department (in the foreground), the school of medicine, and the patho logical DEPARTMENT. north wing, is a painting of St. Bartholomew, by Ouless ; and others, besides Her- komer's portrait of the late Sir Sydney Waterlow, the treasurer to whom the Hospital owes the idea and first establish ment of a Convalescent Home. There is also a portrait of King Edward VII., sub scribed for by the Governors to commemorate his Majesty's presidency of the Hospital, which at the time of his resignation, on his accession to the throne, had extended over a period of thirty-four years. On 35; LONDON TOWN Hogarth'sGift. the grand staircase are two paintings, the gift of Hogarth, who was made a life governor in recognition of his generosity. He has himself recorded how at that time (1736) he entertained hopes of " succeeding in what the puffers in books call 'the great style of history paint ing. ' ' So, he proceeds, " without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted small por traits and familiar conversations, and, with a smile at my own temerity, com menced history painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, ' The Pool of Bethesda ' and ' The Good Samari tan,' with figures seven feet high." Hogarth appears to have gone to work in the Pathological t Fidelity. mustrealistic manner, for of "The Pool of Bethesda " Dr. Norman Moore remarks that '' phy sicians will admire . ... the accurate representation of the distribution of psoriasis on the well-rounded limbs of one patient, the contrast of hypertrophy and atrophy on the left of the picture, the gouty hand, the wasted figure with malignant disease of the liver, and the rickety infant." The painter had his models close at hand. The gate which gives entrance to the Hospital from Smithfield is rather older than the quadrangle itself, having been built in 1 702. Above the pediment, which shelters a statue of Henry VIII., are figures personify ing Lameness and Sickness. The earliest of the additions which have been made since the completion of Gibbs's buildings was a laboratory, built by George Dance in 1793. Other extensions from time to time became necessarv. In 1881 the former School of DR. ABERNETHV. From the Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Medicine was replaced by a handsome struc ture of granite and Portland stone, built by Mr. E. I'Anson, at a cost of ^50,000, with a classical facade looking down upon Gilt- spur Street. Spacious as is the present School of Medicine, with its Museum, Library, laboratories, and class-rooms, it is none too large to accommodate the five hundred stu dents who flock to " Bart's " for their medical training. — - In 1903 the Governors felt that the time had come to undertake the rebuilding of the older part of the Hospital. There were those who considered that the institution should be transferred to a less valuable site outside the City boundaries, and the question was can vassed with some warmth, but the Governors were in disposed to remove the Hospital from its historic site and sever its time- honoured con nexion with the City, and they were supported by a large and influential body of opinion in the City, which found expression at a meeting at the Mansion House, con vened by the Lord Mayor. In the end a part of the adjoining site of Christ's Hospital was acquired, at a cost of .£255,325, and on the 6th of July, 1904, King Edward, who was accompanied by Queen Alexandra, laid the foundation-stone of the first block of the new buildings, designed by Mr. E. B. I'Anson, son of the architect of the School of Medicine. It comprises the Out-patients' and Casualty Departments, with a frontage to Giltspur Street, in continuation of the facade of the School of Medicine, and it was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on the 22nd of July, 1907. This block is on the south side of the School of Medicine, and stretches J.Ccdirni^J RECONSTRUCTION 353 almost to Newgate Street ; on the other, or northern, side is the yet more recent Patholo gical Department. The three buildings, all faced with stone, are in the same general The reconstruction of the Hospital as a whole is a vast undertaking which will involve an outlay of half-a-million. But the Governors were able to make out a strong case for their Photo : Pictorial Agency. hogarth's POOL OF BETHESDA, IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW S HOSPITAL. style, and the most southerly of them har- appeal to the public. They could point to the monises with the new Sessions House, which facts that St. Bartholomew's had not asked for is in alignment with it on the other side of money for more than a hundred and fifty Newgate Street. years ; that it had 740 beds, and every year 354 LONDON TOWN gave its beneficent help to some 7,000 in-patients and 130,000 out-patients ; that a thousand patients were annually admitted to the Convalescent Home at Swanley, in Kent ; and that during the preceding half- century 300,000 in-patients and as many as seven million out-patients had enjoyed its benefits. The address of the Governors to King Edward and Queen Alexandra at the founda tion-stone function was read by the Prince of Wales, who had succeeded his father PERCIVALL POTT. as President of the Hospital, and the cere mony was made the more interesting and memorable by the induction of Queen Alex andra as the first lady Governor. The historic connexion of the Hospital with royalty is further emphasised by the fact that when the King ceased to be its President he became its Patron. All the Aldermen of the City are ex-officio Governors, and formerly the Presi dent was always chosen from the aldermanic body, but in 1866 it was legally decided that the Governors were free to elect their own President, and their choice fell upon the then Prince of Wales. The first medical officer of St. Bartholo mew's was Thomas Vicary, Serjeant Surgeon to Henry VIII., whose position The First jlas been described by Dr. Norman Surgeon J at," Bart's." Moore * as intermediate between that of the Master of older times and that of the surgeons subsequently ap pointed. The first physician was Dr. * St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, 1882. Roderigo Lopez, a native of Portugal, who was hanged (June 17, 1594) for participation in a plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. In the next century Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and the most illustrious of all the great names associated with the Hospital professionally, was physi cian for the long period of thirty-four years (1609-43). A few others of the famous sur geons and physicians who have been asso ciated with '' Bart's " have been mentioned incidentally, but we must not omit to recall that among those who attended the lectures of Percivall Pott, who has given his name to a fracture of the leg which he himself suffered as the result of a fall from his horse, and to a form of spinal disease of which he made a special study, was the distinguished anatomist John Hunter. Of all the great men who have taught at the Hospital none, perhaps, has excelled Aber- nethy in lucidity and attractiveness. And scarcely any of them, not even Dr. Radcliffe — who, it must be noted, was a Abemethy. generous benefactor to the Hospital, bequeathing to it ^500 a year for the improvement of the general diet and ^100 a year for the purchase of linen — has had attributed to him a larger number of caustic sayings, many of them at the expense of patients who owed their ailments to excesses at the table. It is pleasant to recall that in his encounters with patients this rough-tongued though not inhumane surgeon did not always have things his own way. Nothing could have been neater than the rebuke he received from a gentleman who came to him with a painful affection of his shoulder. Before he could enter into his case Abernethy gruffly said, " Well, I know nothing about it." " I do not know how you should," was the quiet reply ; " but if you will have patience till I tell you, perhaps you may." Of the three chapels of St. Catherine, St. Nicholas, and the Holy Cross, which stood within the circuit of the fhoiomew' - °"g'nal Hospital, only that of the the-Less. Holy Cross has survived, under the name of St. Bartholomew's-the- Less ; and since the Dissolution it has been the parish church of those residing within the Hospital precincts. No part of the present church except the tower has any claim to anti- ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S-THE-GREAT 355 quity ; the rest of the building was converted into an octagon of timber by George Dance in 1789. In 1823 Thomas Hardwick rebuilt it in the same form, but of stone, and since then the church has been drastically " restored." Most of the old monuments and brasses have been made away with, but there is still to be of the baptism of Inigo Jones, the architect, whose father, of the same name, was a cloth worker living in or near Cloth Fair. We come now to the incomparably more interesting church of St Bartholomew-the- Great, just outside the Hospital walls — the noble remnant, as we have seen, of the ST. BARTHOLOMEW S-THE-GREAT BEFORE RESTORATION. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd. seen a tablet to Lady Bodley, erected by her husband, Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Library at Oxford which bears his name, who lived within the Hospital enclosure. Among recent tablets is one which com memorates Sir James Paget, the great sur geon (d. 1899), piously inscribed — "The righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God." In the parish register, under the date July 19, 1573, is an entry glorious church of Rahere's monastery. It consists of the choir and ambulatory and transepts of the church — which Church!"^ were granted to the parishioners as their parish church when the Priory was sold to Sir Richard Rich — the Lady Chapel and a day-lighted crypt beneath it, a bit of the cloisters, and a red brick tower of venerable tinge, built in 1628, and altered in the early years of the nineteenth century. 35^ LONDON TOWN The tower is a mean enough structure in itself, but in it are swung five ancient bells, dating from about the beginning of the sixteenth century. There is also a graceful Early English gateway, with dog tooth ornamentation, giving access from Smithfield. The dimensions of the church of which these are the remains may be gauged from the fact that the nave extended from the choir to this gateway, over what at the dissolution of the Priory became ¦ the parish grave yard. St. Bar tholomew's was mostly built in the Norman and Transitional Nor man and Early English periods, but in the fifteenth century a good deal of Perpendic- ular work was added, and the whole of the tri- forium and clere story of the apse, with its two centre piers, was pulled down, and out of the materials wras built a straight wall, which made the eastern ter mination square instead of round. This barbarous proceeding appears to have been carried out in order to insert two east windows of stained glass. As time went on the church suffered still worse things from callous neglect and hideous misuse, and in 1830 it was much Hon damaged by fire. The north tran sept had become a blacksmith's forge, the Lady Chapel a fringe factory, the refectory a tobacco factory, the remnant of the cloisters a stable ; and the condition of the whole fabric was deplorable. In 1863 the work of restoration was begun, and has been prosecuted at intervals ever since. The upper part of the apse has been rebuilt on the model of the old one, from a design by Sir Aston Webb, who has carried out all the more what Restora tion. opened as RAHERE S MONUMENT. recent restorations ; and the whole of is left to us of the building has now been restored to its pristine state. The re-opening of the north tran sept, in 1893, was the occasion of a remarkable demonstration of the interest which, after ages of neglect and desecration, is now felt in this magnificent memorial of the distant past. In 1895 the crypt was a mortuary chapel ; the re- opening of the Lady Chapel, after restoration, f o 1 - lowed in 1897. In 1904 the reversion of the freehold of what is left of the cloisters — three bays adjoining the south wall, and leading to a Nor man entrance that had long been walled up ¦ — was purchased, and funds were raised t o acquire the leasehold interest and restore this interesting adjunct of the church. With the opening of the restored fragments of the cloister, and the Norman en trance just referred to, the work of restoration was completed. Captain Phillips, the patron of the benefice, had already restored the floor of the sanctuary in memory of his father. From first to last a sum of thirty thousand pounds has been spent in repairing the injuries inflicted upon the noble fabric by time and by man's stupidity. The first impression which the visitor to St. Bartholomew's-the-Great receives is one of massiveness — a massiveness, however, happily mated with grace. Having enjoyed the general effect, and the play of light and shade on the majestic Norman columns and in the recesses of the arches, he will observe the elaborate canopied tomb of the founder of the Priory, on the north side of the choir. The recumbent effigy of Rahere is believed MEMORIALS IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S 357 to have been carved under the direction of his immediate successor, Prior Thomas, and is much older than the rest of the Memorial. structure> which belongs to the Per pendicular period. Beside Rahere kneel two brothers of the Priory, each with a Bible open at the 51st chapter of Isaiah, south triforium, is an oriel window believed to have been built by Prior Bolton, so that watch might be kept over the tomb, for beneath it is carved his rebus, a bolt transfix ing a tun. The Prior was not the first to employ this petrified pun, for Mr. Philip Norman, the author of " London Signs and Photo: Pictonal Ag OLD HOUSES IN CLOTH FAIR. which contains the beautiful passage, so applicable to a church built on a marsh, " The Lord shall comfort Zion : he will com fort all her waste places ; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord ; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." Some five-and-twenty years ago the tomb was opened and the skeleton of Rahere found within it, with a part of a sandal, now carefully preserved in a glass case. Over against the tomb, in the Inscriptions," points out that in 1443 the White Friars, who had settled beside the Thames, received a grant of the " Hospitium vocatum Le Bolt en ton," in Fleet Street, which became a great coaching inn, as we shall see in a later chapter. Of the other monuments in St. Bartholo- mew's-the-Great, much the most striking is that, in the south aisle, of Sir Walter Mildmay and Mary his wife. To Sir Walter, who was Chancellor and Sub-Treasurer of the Ex chequer in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 358 LONDON TOWN Other Monu. ments. Emmanuel College, Cambridge, owes its exis tence, and the Master and Fellows of that College have borne no insignificant part in the restoration of the church in which their founder lies buried. Near Mildmay's sumptuous tomb is a bust of James Rivers, a descendant of the Sir John Rivers who was Lord Mayor in 1573 ; it is noticeable as probably the work of Hubert Le Sueur, the French artist to whom we owe the fine equestrian statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross, and who lived in Bartholomew Close and is believed to have been buried in the church. The name of a greater artist than Le Sueur is associated with St. Bartholomew's-the-Great, for here (November 28th, 1697) William Hogarth was baptised. An ancient custom is still kept up in the churchyard. Every Good Friday, after the rector's sermon, twenty-one six pences are dropped near the spot where the founder of this curious charity lies, and are picked up by as many previously selected women. The original fund has long since been lost sight of, but the churchwardens continued to provide the sixpences until a few years ago, when a sum of money was set aside by the Rev. J. W. Butterworth for the per petuation of the old custom. Bartholomew Close, the old Close of the Priory, is now represented only by a small square and a winding street leading out of it on several sides. Here lived Dr. Caius, the physician who founded Caius College at Cam bridge, and Le Sueur, A Quaint Custom. SHIELD ON HOUSE IN CLOTH FAIR (NO. 22). the sculptor of whom we have just spoken ; and here John Milton lay hidden in a friend's house from May to August, 1660, while waiting for the Act of Oblivion. Here, too, in 1725, Benjamin Franklin worked in one of the printing offices which at that day, and long afterwards, abounded in the Close, Palmer's printing office, carried on in the Lady Chapel of the Priory, which Lord Rich had converted into a dwelling-house. In the square is the modern hall (1884-85) of one of the most ancient of the Livery Companies, the Butchers, who when their ancient quarters in Butcher Hall Lane (now King Edward Street) perished in the Great Fire, settled in Pudding Lane, and remained there until the present Hall was built. Though only incor porated in 1605, the Butchers' Guild was in existence at least as early as 11 80. Cloth Fair, where was held the business part of St. Bartholomew's Fair, has already been mentioned in this chapter. Many of the old houses still stand, and above the shop numbered 22 may be seen the armorial shield, surmounted by a coronet, of the Sir Richard Rich who bought the Priory at the Dissolution, or of one of his immediate descen dants. "Ye Olde Dick Whittington " has been said to be the oldest licensed house in London. Old it undoubtedly is as a building, but Mr, Philip Norman dis covered that, when drawn by T. H. Shepherd in 1850, it was a hairdresser's shop. An earlier print in the same collection — that of Mr. Crace — shows that before this it was a butcher's shop* * Notes and Queries, 9th Series, Oct. 27, 1900. Photo: Pictorial Agency. ST. BARTHOLOMEWS-THE-GREAT AFTER RESTORATION. BLUECOAT BOYS OFFICIATING IN A STATE LOTTERY AT GUILDHALL IN 1765. CHAPTER XXXIII CHRIST'S HOSPITAL Points in Common with " Bart's " — The Franciscan Monastery beside the Tower Ditch — A Home for Foundlings — Edward VI. — Bishop Ridley — Converted into a School — The Children put to Base Uses — The School Uniform — Rebuilding after the Fire — The " Suppings in Public" — Ties between the City and the School — Removal to Horsham— Jeremiah Boyer — Charles Lamb's Recollections — Christ Church BETWEEN Christ's Hospital and St. Bartholomew's, which forms one of the subjects of the preceding chapter, there is in timate connexion. Both the one and the other have grown out of institutions which were suppressed by Henry VIII. at the Reforma tion, and both were refounded by him, at one and the same time, in response to the appeal which was made by Sir Richard Gresham, on behalf of the poor of London. The indenture of 1546, which granted to the City "the late Hospitall of St. Bartholomewe in West Smythfield, nigh London," also conveyed to it the Church and site of the house " of The Grey the late Gray Freyrs," the Fratry, the Library, the Dortos, and the Chapter House, " all the land soile called the greate Cloyster and the littel Cloyster," together with various buildings. It was further decreed that the church of the con vent, under the name of Christ Church, should serve for the parish formed out of the par ishes of St. Nicholas and St. Ewen, and so much of the parish of St. Sepulchre as was within Newgate ; and that the vicar of Christ Church should receive his stipend from the Corporation, the advowson to be in the hands of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, as the Governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The rather intricate history of Christ's Hos pital, as the new foundation came to be called, can only be briefly outlined here, and readers who ask for more must be referred to the " Annals " of the Rev. E. H. Pearce * formerly " Grecian " and Assistant - Master of the school, and still incumbent of Christ Church, who brought to his task a scholarly mind and patient industry. * "Annals of Christ's Hospital." By E. H. Pearce, M.A. 2nd Edition, 1908. (Methuen & Co.) 359 3<5o LONDON TOWN In 1224, to begin at the beginning, four brethren of the order recently founded by Francis of Assisi came to Lon- A Franciscan cJorl) ancJ after a short Stay in the Dominican house at Holborn, and in a hired dwelling at Cornhill, estab lished themselves in the following summer at Stynkyng Lane, in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles at Newgate, where a property was made over to them by John Iwyn or Ewen, a citizen and mercer, who shortly afterwards himself joined the order. The very names, as Mr. Pearce remarks, with their possibilities of sickness and smells, must have made the Franciscan mouth water, and the lane no doubt richly deserved its title, for here ran the Town Ditch, which was simply an open sewer that was not arched over till three hundred years later. The sympathetic citizens followed Ewen's example, and within five years the Francis cans found themselves possessed of all the essentials of a monastery — church, chapter house, dormitories, refectory, infirmary, library. Then royal and noble personages rallied to the convent. Margaret, second wife of Edward I., Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II., " the she-wolf of France," and Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., gave of their bounty, and by Stow's time the monastery boasted one of the most magnificent churches in the land, which was double the length of its successor, the Christ Church of to-day. Another benefactor of the house was Richard Whittington, who in 1429, besides building for the brethren a spacious library that escaped the Fire and survived till about the year 1832, spent a further ^400 upon books to fill it. So the house prospered until it and all such houses fell upon the hostile days of the Reformation. In November, 1538, it was surrendered to Henry VIII., and for a while the church was shut up or used as a storehouse, while Richard Grafton, afterwards the Treasurer of Christ's Hospital, set up in it his printing press. But in 1547 it was re-opened as " Crystys churche of the foundacion of Kynge Henry the viij." The next year, as we have seen, this and other monastic houses in the City were refounded as Royal Hospitals, for the benefit of the sick and destitute who had formerly looked for help to the monasteries. A few months afterwards Henry died, and, for some reason which cannot now be ex plained, it was not until the end of 1552 that the house of the Grey Friars was ready for occupation as a hospital or home for orphans and other poor children. The ready sym pathy of Edward VI. had been enlisted by Bishop Ridley and others, and a Home eleven days before his death forFoundlings. (1553) the young king signed the charter of incorporation which is still the Hospital's most treasured possession. It gives the City leave to take, in mortmain or otherwise, lands to the yearly value of four thousand marks, and the amount, which had been left blank by those who drew up the document, is filled in in the King's own hand writing. Then, it is said, the dying King ex claimed with pious fervour, " Lord, I yield Thee most hearty thanks that Thou hast given me life thus long, to finish this work to the glory of Thy name." The scheme for the new hospital was drawn up by the Mayor, Sir Richard Dobbes, six Aldermen, and a number of citizens nominated by the City. They gave liberally themselves and zealously pressed the cause upon their fellow-citizens, and " the worke was so gen erally well lyked " that soon the governors found themselves with ample funds. It was, in fact, as Mr. Pearce remarks, less to royal gifts that Christ's Hospital owes its start and its continuance in well-doing than to the generosity of the citizens of London, who even to this day, when the school is no longer in their midst, take in it an interest greater than that which they feel in any other City school. The part which pJuTFounder. BishoP Ridley had played in the foundation of this and the other City charities yielded him comfortable thoughts in the evil days that presently came upon him. " Oh, Dobbes," he wrote while lying in prison awaiting his fiery ordeal, to the Lord Mayor who had zealously promoted these benevolent enterprises. " Oh, Dobbes, Dobbes, Dobbes, Alderman and Knight, thou in thy year didst win my heart for evermore, for that honourable act, that most blessed work of God, of the erection and setting up of Christ's Holy Hospitals and truly Religious Houses which by thee and through thee were begun." The number of children who were received into Christ's Hospital at the beginning was PROFITABLE FUNERALS 361 380, and in John Howes' " Contemporaneous Account " we are told that many of them, "being taken from the dunghill, when they came to swete and cleane keping and to a pure dyett, dyed downe righte ! " By Christ mas of that same year (1552) such of them as survived the trying change had been brought into good order, and in their " livery of russet cotton " were ready to line the procession of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to St. Paul's from Lawrence Lane westward. Within a few months of its beginning Christ's Hospital became a school, instead of the mere home for foundlings which a School, it was at first intended to be. And it is interesting to note that provision was at once made for the teaching of music, for included in the staff of seven for the management and teaching of some three hundred children was " the schoole-master for music," otherwise the " teacher of Pricksonge," the other officers being a Grammar Master and his Usher, a Writing Master and two elementary teachers, and a Matron to look after the " mayden-children." In those days, however, music was thought meanly enough of as a profession, for in 1569 the Court of Governors ordained that " from henceforthe none of the children harbored and kept in this Hospitall be put apprentis to aney Musis- sioner othere than suche as be blinde or lame, and not able to be put to other Trades." About the same time began the practice — gruesome enough, no doubt, to the poor children — of sending batches of them to swell the pomp of funerals of persons of conse quence. At first, it would seem, Mutes at the attention was paid in the case Funerals. * of persons who had " mentioned " the Hospital in their wills ; afterwards it became possible for anyone to secure it by paying or guaranteeing such-and-such sums of money. In the twenty-six years between 1622 and 1648 the unfortunate children played the part of mutes at one thousand funerals. Then the odious custom appears to have begun to decline, for in the hundred and five years between 1649 and 1754, when it finally ceased, the funerals so attended num bered only about five hundred and fifty. It is roughly calculated that, by the presence of the children at these fifteen hundred and fifty funerals, the Hospital benefited to the extent of about .£75,000 ; " of the sums contributed CHRIST'S HOSPITAL AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD IN QUEEN ELIZABETH S DAY. From Aggas's Map. 24 362 LONDON TOWN by corpses before 1622," as our Annalist grimly puts it, " no account remains." It was a happy day, he adds, when the Clerk could no longer reckon, as did this officer in 1690, upon " Buryalls and other Casualties" as a source of income. Another highly undesirable use to which the Bluecoat boys were put, as orphan should be closely buttoned, their pockets sewn up and their hands examined, and that while on duty they should keep the left hand in the girdle behind them and the right hand open with the fingers extended ; and in this attitude one of the boys in the print repro duced on p. 359 is seen. The costume of the boys, so familiar to CHRIST S HOSPITAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, SHOWING THE STEEPLE OF CHRIST CHURCH BEFORE THE PINNACLES WERE REMOVED FROM THE TOPMOST STAGE. Drawing Lottery Tickets. children still are at certain places on the Con tinent, was that of drawing tickets in the public lotteries. This practice began about 1694, and the boys selected for the function usually numbered a dozen. In 1775 (December 5th), when a man was charged at the Guildhall with tampering with a lottery, it was shown that, having insured a certain ticket seventy- nine times for one day, he had, by dint of " several half-guineas " and a breakfast at a coffee-house, bribed one of the boys to secrete the ticket in question and pretend to take it from the wheel at the right moment. The boy was expelled the school, and instead of directing that the " Blues " should no longer be employed for this ignoble purpose, the authorities contented themselves with decree ing that before they were allowed to touch the wheel, "the bosoms and sleeves " of their coats The Costume. passers-by in Newgate Street until a few years ago, has undergone little change from the be ginning, but until 1865 there used to be worn under the blue coat in winter, and in earlier times in summer as well, a long yellow smock. And the breeches were not introduced until 1736, and at first were confined to " sick and weakly children," and were made of leather ; but by 1760 they became general, and the material was changed, it being decreed that the boys should have " each yearly two pairs of Breeches made of Russia drab." This, says Mr. Pearce, may serve to describe the breeches still worn by the rank and file. Concerning the yellow stockings the records are silent. It is only since about the middle of the last century that the Bluecoat boys have braved the elements with unprotected heads. In 1553, as Stow records, they IN THE GREAT FIRE 3^3 wore red caps, but afterwards the colour was changed to blue. They could have been of little practical use, for even Tommy Atkins, in the old days, would hardly have cared to perch upon his head a cap so much too small as were those worn by the Blues at the time the headgear was abolished. The of Scots, their eldest daughter, wife of David Bruce. Here, too, was buried Isa bella's paramour, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, hanged at Tyburn when Edward III. made up his mind to govern as well as reign, and left swinging there for two days. The old tombs and monuments, many of Christ's hospital shortly before its demolition, with the tower of christ church after the removal of the pinnacles. bands were at first a part of the skirt, but presently acknowledged the law of differ entiation. They have always, within living memory, been fastened with pins, which in Newgate Street can never have been a drug in the market. A propos of pins, it is curious to note that in 1736 the matron of the school was charged with " embezelling," among other stores, " 207,082 pins," valued at £10 7s. The Great Fire wrought much havoc both with the monastic buildings of the Grey Friars, now used as the school, and with The Great their magnificent church, in which Fire. ° were buried many royal and noble personages, among them Queen Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II., in whose grave was placed her husband's heart, and Joan, Queen them stately and sumptuous, were sold in 1545 by Sir Martin Bowes, the Mayor, for a paltry ^50 ! After the Fire, church and school buildings alike were rebuilt, in part by Sir Christopher Wren, and so it is that in the buildings which Rebuilding, were demolished in 1903 there was little that was very ancient except the cloisters, which had behind them a life of about six hundred years. It is true that the Hall, seen from Newgate Street across the playground, had the look of a building dating from the Perpen dicular period, but, like the King Edward Grammar School at Birmingham, which attempts the same deception, it was a mere thing of yesterday, being built in 1825-29, by John Shaw, to replace the one built about 1680 at the sole charge of Lord 364 LONDON TOWN Mayor Sir John Frederick. Here were hung some of the Hospital's celebrated pic tures — the great canvas, formerly attributed to Hol bein, showing Edward VI. granting the charter of in corporation ; Verrio's paint ing of James II., seated on his throne, receiving mathe matical pupils at their annual presentation ; and full - length portraits of several of our monarchs, among them the late Queen Victoria. In the hall, on four Thursday evenings in Lent, took place the " Suppings in Public." " This interesting ceremony," wrote an eye witness some twenty years ago, " commences by the steward rapping a table three times with a hammer. STATUE OF EDWARD VI. ON OLD Christ's hospital {p. 366). followed by a short grace. The ' amen ' at the end of the prayers, pronounced by nearly 800 voices, has an electrical effect. The visitors walk between the tables, and mark the happy, excited faces and the com mensurate appetite of youth. After supper, about which there is no ' coy, reluctant, amorous delay,' an anthem is sung, and the boys then pass before the President's chair in procession, bow, and retire." Among other usages of the school must be men tioned the attendance of the boys at the Mansion House on Easter Tuesday and at the preaching of the Spital sermon in Christ Church — the church of the school until it was removed to St. Matthew's Day, the The story of the The first stroke is for taking places, the Horsham — on second for silence, the third is the signal 21st of September. for a Grecian to read the evening lesson Spital (Hospital) sermons will be told from the pulpit, which lesson is followed in another section of this work : here it by appropriate prayers. The Lord Mayor, must suffice to say that they were preached as President, is seated in a state chair in very early days at Paul's Cross, and at made of oak from old St. Katherine's the pulpit Cross of St. Mary's, Spitalfields, Church. A psalm is then sung, which is afterwards at St. Bride's, and since 1797 at BIT OF THE OLDER PART OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, NEWGATE STREET. EDWARD VI. GRANTING THE CHARTER OK INCORPORATION TO CHRIST S HOSPITAL AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS. From the Picture now at Hoi sham. 366 LONDON TOWN Christ Church, and that the " Blues " made their first appearance at the service in 1553. When the school was removed to Horsham it was feared that the participation of the Bluecoat boys in both these customs, which emphasise the connexion between it and the City, would cease, but in 1904 the Council of Almoners announced that they had arranged for the boys to attend the Spital sermon as before on St. Matthew's Day, and that the Lord Mayor had consented to receive them at the Mansion House annually on that day instead of on Easter Tuesday. Now, therefore, on the 21st of September the boys, in their hundreds, are brought by special train from Horsham to London, and then march in procession through the City streets to Christ Church. The service over, they proceed to the Mansion House, and as each passes the Lord Mayor he receives from his lordship's hands a new coin of gold or silver. Now, also, the two plum buns given to each of the boys is supple mented by a substantial tea in the Egyptian Hall. Since 1906 the Christ's Hospital girls at Hertford have been received at the Mansion House on the day after St. Matthew's Day. The preparatory school of the Christ's Hos pital foundation was located at Hertford from about 1683 until it accompanied the main school to Horsham, leaving its building at Hertford for the girls' school, which had long been carried on in that town. It was under a scheme issued by the Charity Commis sioners in 1880 that the removal of both boys' schools has been effected. In pur suance of this scheme the Gover- Removai nors purchased of the Aylesbury Country. Dairy Company the extensive estate of Stammerham, at Horsham. The stone of the new buildings was laid by the present King, on the 23rd of October, 1897, the anniversary of the birthday of his Majesty's namesake who founded the school, and the new buildings were opened in 1902. The cloisters and some other features of the Newgate Street building have been incor porated with its successor at Horsham, including the statue of King Edward which looked down upon Christ Church Passage, where it was placed in 1682 by Alderman Sir Robert Clayton, one of the benefactors to whom Christ's Hospital owed its rebuilding after the Fire. Part of the site of the old school, as we have seen, has been appro priated to the extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which sets up another bond of con nexion between the two institutions ; on another part of the ground is being reared an addition to the buildings of the General Post Office* The special interest which Londoners feel in Christ's Hospital is to be explained even more by the moving accounts which Lamb and Coleridge and Leigh Hunt have left of their alma mater than by the ties which bound, and in measure still bind, the school to the City. In former days, it must be confessed, she was not a tender-hearted mother. The discipline in Coleridge's time was declared by him, in the " Table-Talk," to be more than Spartan. " All domestic ties," he says, " were to be put aside. ' Boy ! ' I remember Boyer saying to me once, when I was Boyer. crying, the first day of my return after the holidays, ' Boy ! the school is your father ; boy ! the school is your mother ; boy ! the school is your brother ; the school is your sister ; the school is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations. Let's have no more crying ! ' No tongue can express good Mrs. Boyer. Val Le Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some domestic mis deed, and Boyer was thundering away at us by way of prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in, and said, ' Flog them soundly, sir, I beg ! ' This saved us. Boyer was so nettled at the interruption that he growled out, 'Away! woman, away ! ' and we were let off." Of this Boyer — Jeremiah was his Christian name, and he was the upper master — Coleridge wittily says that " it was lucky the cherubim who took him to heaven were nothing but faces and wings, or he would infallibly have flogged them by the way." That Coleridge was betrayed into no ex aggeration in the picture he drew of the severities which marked the regime at Christ's Hospital in his day is evident from familiar passages in the writings of Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb. But " Elia " gives us also the other side of the medal, which it is more pleasant to recall. " I must," says he, writing of the delights of the school, " crave leave to remember our transcending superiority in those invigorating sports, leapfrog and basting the * See ante, p. 340. A BLUECOAT BOY'S DELIGHTS 3^7 bear ; our delightful excursions in the summer holidays to the New River, near Newington, where like otters we would live the long day in the water, never caring for dressing ourselves when we had once stripped ; our savoury meals afterwards, when we came home almost famished with staying out all day without ¦' Elia's " Reminis cences. reckon up among those who had done honour to our school, by being educated in it, the names of those accomplished critics and Greek scholars, Joshua Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel they left out Camden, while they were about it). Let me have leave to remember our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ ; the doleful tune of the Photo : Pictorial Agency. CHRIST CHURCH, NEWGATE STREET. our dinners ; our visits, at other times, to the Tower, where, by ancient privilege, we had free access to all the curiosities ; our solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with the festive questions and civic pleasantries of the dispensing aldermen, which were more to us than all the rest of the banquet ; our stately suppings in public, when the well-lighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who came to see us, made the whole look more like a concert or assembly than a scene of a plain bread and cheese collation ; the annual orations upon St. Matthew's Day, in which the senior scholar, before he had done, seldom failed to burial anthem, chanted in the solemn cloisters upon the seldom-occurring funeral of some schoolfellow ; the festivities at Christmas, when the richest of us would club our stock to have a gaudy-day, sitting round the fire, replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless and he that could contribute nothing partook in all the mirth and some of the substantialities of the feasting ; the carol sung by night at that time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake to hear, from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it in their rude chanting till I have been transported in fancy to the fields 368 LONDON TOWN angels' voices of Bethlehem which was : season by the shepherds." Much more is the same sense, must forbear passage more, and the song at that to there in but we One however, must we cull, often as it has been quoted — the beautiful apostrophe to the author of " The Ancient Mariner " : " Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope, like a fiery column, before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, meta physician, bard ! How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with ad miration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandola), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus even in those years thou waxedest pale at such philosophic draughts) reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy ! Many were the ' wit-combats ' (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le Grice, ' which, too, I behold, like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and in vention.' " Charles Lamb left Christ's Hospital not long before Leigh Hunt entered it, and the younger writer remembered him " coming to FIGURE OF BLUECOAT BOY, CAP IN HAND, FROM OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. (for not or see the boys, with a pen sive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait ad vancing with a motion from side to side, between in voluntary consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been owing to a visit in the country ; his air of un easiness, to a great burden of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like plain ness. I did not know him as Lamb ; I took him for a Mr. ' Guy,' having heard somebody address him by that apellative, I suppose in jest." Christ Church, where successive generations of the Bluecoat boys wor shipped, need not detain us. The body of it was built by Wren in 1687, and the steeple, which has been spoilt by the removal of the upper range of pinnacles, giving the spire a look of feebleness and inconse quence, was not added until seventeen years later. Christ Church serves also the parish of St. Leonard, Foster Lane, the church of which was not rebuilt after the Fire, and the patronage is exercised alternately by the Governors of St. Bartholomew's, as repre senting Christ Church parish, and by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster as repre senting St. Leonard's. To many, the most interesting personal association of the present church is to be found in the fact that it shelters the dust of Richard Baxter, the author of " The Saints' Everlasting Rest," who lived hard by in Charterhouse Lane, at the east end of the present Charterhouse Street, and was buried in the chancel in 1691, ten years after his wife had been laid to rest here. He is commemorated by no memorial, nor is there anything to denote that in the older Christ Church was buried Laurence Sheriff, the founder of Rugby School. SURGEONS HALL, OLD BAILEY. CHAPTER XXXIV NEWGATE AND THE OLD BAILEY The Name of Newgate — A Roman Gate — The Prison — The Gordon Rioters — A Word Picture by Crabbe — Lord George Gordon and his Fate — An Overcrowded Prison — Reform — Demolition — Executions in Front of Newgate — The Case of Holloway and Haggerty — Execution of Michael Barrett the Fenian — The First Private Execution — The First Old Sessions House — Surgeons' Hall — Abortive Exe cutions — Maria Fenning — John Thurtell's Eloquence — The Fowler and Milsom Scene — The New Sessions House — Jonathan Wild — Oliver Goldsmith in Green Arbour Court THE old view, which Stow accepted, was that Newgate was so called because it was " latelier built than the rest " of the City gates, and that there was no gate at this spot until, in the reign of Henry I., the Newgate: highway from Chepe to Ludgate was Name. so blocked up by the rebuilding of St. Paul's that the citizens had to go round by Paternoster Row or the Old Exchange to get to Ludgate. This theory is no longer held by the best authorities. There can be no doubt that in mediaeval days the chief western approach to the City was through Newgate and not through Ludgate. And now it is indisputable that there was a gate here even so far back as the Roman period, for the excavations made on the site of the present Sessions House brought to light fragments not merely of the a Roman 0fo Roman wall, but also of a Roman gate. This, indeed, as Mr. Loftie has said* is the only Roman gate of which we can be quite sure. It is true * Notes and Queries, 8th Series, Vol. XII., p. 162. that in the Pipe Roll for 1188 the gate is called Newgate, but earlier in the same century it was in existence under the name of Chamberlain's Gate, and this name is probably explained by an entry in Domesday relating to property at Holeburn (p. 390) outside the gate, held by William the Chamberlain. In an eleventh century text of a charter dated A.D. 889, there is a reference to " Westgetum," by which in all probability is meant the Gate afterwards known as Newgate. We may take it, therefore, that the name Newgate was bestowed upon the gate when it was rebuilt, in the reign of Henry I. It stood athwart the present Newgate Street, a little on the City side of the point at which the Old Bailey joins Giltspur Street. Newgate was used as a gaol at least as early as 1190. It was a prison for the County of Middlesex as well as for the City of London, and it was in charge of the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who appointed the Keeper or Jailer. It was not long in acquiring an evil 369 370 LONDON TOWN reputation by reason of overcrowding, and it is recorded that in 1414 the keeper and sixty- four of his unfortunate charges died Prison °^" Prison plague — that is, typhoid fever. " The place," to quote from the late Major Griffiths,* " was full of horrors ; the jailers rapacious and cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the jail, and some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. Prisoners de tained on minor charges were cast into deep dun geons, and there associated with the worst crimi nals. All were alike threatened, many tortured, till they yielded to the keepers' extortions, or con sented to turn approvers and swear away the lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the charity and goodwill of the benevolent for food and raiment." Not a few humane citizens, among them Sir William Walworth, the hero of Smithfield hard by, left be quests for the mitigation of the hard lot of the captives. In 1 38 1 Newgate was much damaged by Wat Tyler's horde, and early in the next cen tury rebuilding had become necessary. The work was undertaken by the executors of Richard Whittington, not, it is true, in accor dance with the specific terms of his will, but probably, as Dr. Reginald Sharpe suggests,t * " Chronicles of Newgate." By Major Arthur Griffiths. t " Memorials of Newgate Gaol and Sessions House, Old Bailey." Printed by Authority of the Corporation of London. 1907. in fulfilment of his privately expressed wishes. Though more than once damaged by fire — in 1556, and again in 1666 — Whittington's prison and gate — still, it would seem, a single structure — survived, much altered, no doubt, until about 1770. The gate, which was felt to be an obstruction to traffic, now formed no part of the rebuilding scheme. The architect of the new prison was George Dance the younger, whose father retired just as the work was entered upon, and the first stone was laid by Alderman Beckford on the 3 ist of May, 1770. The work pro ceeded but slowly, and ten years later, when the Gordon rioters applied the brand to it to prove the vigour of their Protestantism, it was still some distance from completion. We must pause count of that event, and we can not do better than follow the story told by Crabbe, who had just come to London • from his native newgate. Aldeburgh to try his fortunes as a poet. On the evening of Tuesday, the 6th of June, 1780, between six and seven o'clock, the rioters came pouring down Holborn to de mand the release of four of their number who were under lock and key here. Akerman, the governor, begged for time to send to the Sheriff, but the rabble were in no waiting mood, and straightway set fire to his house, broke in and flung all the furniture into the street, where it was made a bonfire of. " As I was standing near the spot," Crabbe pro ceeds, in the journal he wrote for his Myra, THE BURNING OF NEWGATE 37i " there approached another body of men — I suppose five hundred — and Lord George Gordon in a coach drawn by the mob, towards Alderman Bull's, bow ing as he passed along. He is a lively- looking young man in appearance, and nothing more, though just now the reign ing hero. By eight o'clock Akerman's house A Poet as Re porter. their chains. Three of these were to be hanged on Friday. You have no conception of the frenzy of the multitude. This being done, and Akerman's house now a mere shell of brickwork, they kept a store of flame there for other purposes. It became red-hot, and the doors and windows appeared like the entrance to so many volcanoes. With some OLD VIEW OF NEWGATE. From a Drawing by T. Malton. was in flames, I went close to it, and never saw anything so dreadful. The prison was . . . a remarkably strong building ; but, deter mined to force it, they broke the gates with crows and other instruments, and climbed up the outside of the cell part, which joins the two great wings of the building, where the felons were confined ; and I stood where I plainly saw their operations. They broke the roof, tore away the rafters, and having got ladders descended. Not Orpheus himself had more courage or better luck. Flames all around them, and a body of soldiers expected, they defied and laughed at all opposition. The prisoners escaped. I stood and saw about twelve women and eight men ascend from their confinement to the open air, and they were conducted through the street in difficulty they then fired the debtors' prison, broke the doors, and they, too, all made their escape. " Tired of the scene, I went home, and returned again at eleven o'clock at night. I met large bodies of horse and foot soldiers, coming to guard the Bank and some houses of Roman Catholics near it. Newgate was at this time open to all ; anyone might get in, and, what was never the case before, anyone might get out. I did both, for the people were now chiefly lookers-on. The mischief was done, and the doers of it gone to another part of the town. But I must not omit what struck me most ; about ten or twelve of the mob getting to the top of the debtors' prison, whilst it was burning, to halloo, they ap peared rolled in black smoke mixed with 37: LONDON TOWN sudden bursts of fire — like Milton's infernals, who were as familiar with flame as with each other." The next day (Wednesday) Dr. Johnson came to Newgate, and found it, to quote his own words, from a letter to Mrs. Thrale, " in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by," he proceeds, " the Protestants were plundering the Sessions House at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hun dred ; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepi dation, as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place." LORD GEORGE GORDON. On the evening of the 9th Lord George Gordon, the leader of the movement, was arrested and laid by the heels in Lord George th Tower. He was indicted in Gordon. the following February, before Lord Mansfield, whose house had been burnt by the rioters, and whose impartiality in the conduct of the trial was the theme of general admiration. The prisoner was defended by Thomas Erskine, who sought to show that the misguided man ought not to be held respon sible for the violence of his followers, whom he had exhorted to abstain from all violence, and that all he had intended was to secure the repeal of the Act of Toleration by legal means. In the result Lord George was acquitted. But he was destined to have more to do with Newgate. Six years after the riots, having in the interval embraced the Jewish faith, he published a pamphlet pro fessing to be a petition from the prisoners in Newgate which was held to be a libel, and for this he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in the jail, while in respect of another publication, attacking Marie Antoin ette and the French Ambassador, he was adjudged to pay a fine of ^500, to undergo a further term of imprisonment, and to give security and find sureties for his future good behaviour. The rest of his days were spent in Newgate, and he died there of jail fever in 1793. The havoc wrought by the Gordon rioters at Newgate was vigorously repaired, and before long Dance's prison was finished. Major Griffiths, no mean judge of a prison, for he was for long a prison inspector, and himself superintended the erection of the gaol at Wormwood Scrubbs, declares that while the facade was a marvel of strength and solidity, its interior was a confined space, dark and ill-ventilated. Before long it was grossly overcrowded. In 18 13 no less than 340 prisoners were lodged in the debtors' side, which was built for a hundred, and into the female felons' ward, intended for sixty, a hundred and twenty hapless wretches were crammed. A few years later a still more shocking state of things prevailed, and on occasion as many as twelve hundred persons were huddled together in the prison, which at such times must have been a veritable Black Hole. And the management of the prison was oppressive to a degree. There was no discipline, and no restraint upon the sale of strong drink or upon intercommunication between the prisoners, and the grossest extortion was practised by the Governor and his subor dinates. But a better day had begun to dawn. In 18 14 a Parliamentary inquiry was held, and about the same time Mrs. Fry began her memorable visits to New- Reform, gate. The reformers, however, found their task one of immense difficulty. In 1850 Colonel (afterwards Sir Joshua) Jebb declared before a Select Committee on Prison Discipline that he considered Newgate, from its defective construction, one of the worst prisons in England. The simple fact was there was not room at Newgate to bring the prison up to the modern standard, and it was not until the City authorities had built in the north of London the Holloway THE END OF NEWGATE 373 prison, which was opened in 1852, that Newgate could be reformed. It was now used only for the custody of prisoners com mitted for trial at the Old Bailey, and for those awaiting execution. The interior was re modelled (1857) on the separate cell system. In 1861-62 a new block was built for the use of female prisoners. In 1880 it ceased to be tional difficulty, so massive and firmly com pacted were the walls. The section of the Roman wall which was unearthed in 1903, in the course of the excavations, was sixty-eight feet long and eight and a half feet thick, and besides this and the remains of the Roman gate, there cropped out fragments of the me diaeval gate, a little to the west of the other. 1. The Under Turnkey. 2. The Executioner. 3. John Thurtell. 4. Mr. Wilson, the Gaoler. 5. Mr. Micholson, the Under Sheriff. 6. Dr.Buruett, the Phrenologist. 7. One of the Reporters to the Morn ing Chronicle. 8. A Javelin Man beating down an indecorous Rcportef. 9. A person well kuown id the Sport ing circles. THE EXECUTION OF JOHN THURTELL. used as a prison except during the actual sittings of the Central Criminal Court, and in 1902 its demolition was begun, to make way for the new Sessions House with Demolition, which the City Corporation had determined to replace the mean and utterly inadequate Court-house that adjoined the prison on the south. Although the stones of which the walls were built have been worked into the lower stages of the Old Bailey front of the new Sessions House, from the granite base up to the springing of the rusticated arches, and into the tower, many lovers of London cannot but regret the disappearance of a structure which in its grim and sombre strength was so fitting an embodiment of what a prison should be. Its demolition proved to be a task of excep- In 1880, as we have said, Newgate ceased to be a prison proper. But it continued until the last to be a place of execution. The last execution at Tyburn took place on the 7th of November, 1783, and the first execu tion at Newgate on the 3rd of the next month when ten persons were hanged upon a scaffold, hung with black, immediately in front of the gaol, in the Old Bailey. For some time, however, Newgate had no monopoly of this dread function, for occasionally it was directed that the penalty should be paid on the scene of the crime, as in 1786, when one John Hogan, who had murdered a Mr. Odell, an attorney, was executed on a gibbet in front of his victim's house, in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. But gradually it became the custom for executions to take 374 LONDON TOWN place here, and when the crime was one of peculiar atrocity, or had some feature of special interest, enormous crowds would Worship Street police court, in which the prisoners were confined, and swore that he overheard conversation which implied their Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE " GRAVEYARD,' NEWGATE, WHERE EXECUTED CRIMINALS WERE BURIED. assemble. At the execution of Holloway and Haggerty, in 1807, it was estimated that forty thousand persons " assisted." Holloway The case was certainly one of andHaggerty. exceptional interest. On Satur day, the 6th of November, 1802, a Mr. Steele, the proprietor of a lavender water warehouse in Catherine Street, Strand, was robbed and bludgeoned to death on Houns- low Heath. Four years went by, and then a scoundrel named Hanfield, who had just been sentenced at the Old Bailey to seven years' transportation, informed against Hollo way and Haggerty. The three of them, he declared, waylaid Steele and were in the act of robbing him when he began to resist, and Holloway struck him several blows on the head. The mere statement of such a man as Hanfield was obviously worth little enough, and substantially the only confirma tion the prosecution put forward was the statement of a police officer who had secreted himself near the adjacent rooms in the guilt. Influenced, no doubt, by this evidence, unsatisfactory as it must be to anyone who realises how easily things uttered in con versation can be unconsciously distorted, especially wrien the eavesdropper has strong preconceptions, the jury had little hesi tation in finding the prisoners guilty. The night before the execution the men, who shared the same condemned cell, never slept, but spent the quick-footed hours in the most solemn protestations of inno cence. " Gentlemen," said Holloway in the Press-yard, on the way to the scaffold, " I am quite innocent of this affair. I never was with Hanfield, nor do I know the spot. I will kneel and swear it " ; and he knelt down, imprecating the curses of Heaven upon his own head if he were guilty of the crime for which he was about to suffer. It was the long immunity which the mur derers, if murderers they were, had enjoyed and the stratagem by which their conviction was obtained that brought together so EXECUTIONS IN FRONT OF NEWGATE 375 enormous a crowd to see the hangman do his awful work. The spectators had more than they bargained for. At one point a pieman with his basket was upset, at another a cart laden with sightseers broke down, and these almost simultaneous accidents led to a scene of indescribable confusion and a Panic, horror. What would have been a stampede, could the terrified people have got away, became a mad fight for life, in which twenty-eight persons were killed and nearly seventy more or less seriously injured. If Holloway and Haggerty were indeed innocent, amply were they avenged upon those who came to be regaled with their death agony ! It is a wonder that such tragedies were not more frequent at executions, so huge were the crowds and so indecorous and unre- to the more thoughtful members of the com munity ; but the prejudice in favour of public executions, as tending in the direction of deterrence, died hard, and not until 1868 were they abolished. The last public execution in front of New gate was that of Michael Barrett, the Fenian, convicted of complicity in the ex- The Last plosion at the Clerkenwell House of Public r Execution. Detention, in the autumn of 1867. In connexion with this event an extraordinary incident, the like of which prob ably never happened before, is recorded in the Memoirs of the late Sir Wemyss Reid, who had been present at the trial of Barrett and four other men at the Old Bailey, and was now " on duty " as a reporter at the exe cution. Shortly after the scaffold had been placed in position he was startled to see the Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE NEW SESSIONS HOUSE. strained was their behaviour. Such an four men who had been tried with him and exhibition of some of the ugliest aspects of acquitted forcing their way through the crowd. human nature became growingly distasteful Not knowing what their object might be, for 376 LONDON TOWN the authorities had been warned that an at tempt at rescue might be made, he pointed them out to the chief inspector. " He was greatly disturbed," writes Sir Wemyss Reid, " and quickly pushed his way through the crowd towards the place I had indicated to him. I followed close at his heels until we reached the front of the scaffold. As we did so he quickly put his hand upon my shoulder to stop me, and at the same time uncovered his head. It was a strange sight that we saw in the middle of that obscene and blasphe mous mob. The four men who had so narrowly escaped the fate of Barrett were kneeling, bare-headed, on the stones of the Old Bailey, in front of the scaffold on which their friend was about to die, praying silently but earnestly. For several minutes they continued to kneel and pray, and then, sud denly rising, they hurriedly left the crowd and disappeared." As for Barrett, the same writer records that he faced death " like a hero, with undaunted mien, and a smile upon his pallid lips." Reid noticed that the man's trousers were all frayed and worn at the knees, and commented upon this to one of the warders, who replied, " Yes, he has been on his knees, praying, ever since he was sentenced." The first private execution within the walls of Newgate was that of Alexander Mackay, hanged on the 8th of September, F,rst 1868, for the murder of his mistress Private Execution, at Norton Folgate. "A more marked change from the old scene," says Major Griffiths, " can hardly be conceived. Instead of the roar of the brutalised crowd, the officials spoke in whispers ; there was but little moving to and fro. Almost absolute silence prevailed until the great bell began to toll its deep note, and broke the stillness with its regular and monotonous clangour, and the ordinary, in a voice trembling with emotion, read the Burial Service aloud. Mac- kay's fortitude, which had been great, broke down at the supreme moment before the horror of the stillness, the awful impressive ness, of the scene in which he was the prin cipal actor. No time was lost in carrying out the dread ceremony ; but it was not completed without some of the officials turn ing sick, and the moment it was over all who could were glad to escape from the last act of the ghastly drama at which they had assisted." The origin of the name Old Bailey is in volved in obscurity, and it would tend little to the reader's profit to recapitulate the The speculations with which Stow and Bailey, others have amused themselves. The name is still that of the street in which the new Sessions House stands, but when one speaks of the " Old Bailey " one thinks first of the most famous of our Criminal Courts. This Court, the Central Criminal Court, The Central nas jurisdiction over all treasons, Criminal . r , t • j Court. murders, felonies, and misdemean ours committed within the City of London and the counties of London and Middlesex, and certain portions of the counties of Essex, Kent, and Surrey, as well as over offences committed on the high seas, within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court. His Majesty's Judges attend to take the most important cases, others being taken by the Recorder, the Common Serjeant, or the judge of the Sheriffs' Court, and it is necessary that in each Court at least one Alderman should be present, as representing the City — for the Central Criminal Court is still a City Court, and his Majesty's judges come to assist the Lord Mayor and the City judges. The sittings of the Court are held monthly year in, year out, and, since the criminal classes know no close time, the only vaca tion it has is the interval, sometimes no long one, between one Sessions and another. The first Sessions House in the Old Bailey was built in 1539. When the younger Dance rebuilt Newgate he also rebuilt the The First Sessions House, and on a larger House. scale than before, additional ground being acquired for the purpose from the College of Physicians, then established in Warwick Lane, and the College of Surgeons, who settled in the Old Bailey in 175 1, and remained there until 1800, when, having sold their Hall to the City authorities, they migrated to Lincoln's Inn Fields. Pen nant remarks that it was by a sort of second sight that they installed themselves in the Old Bailey some years before the gallows was transferred from Tyburn to this quarter, for here, when that transfer had been made, they were on the spot to carry out the provisions of the Act of 1752, ordaining that the bodies of executed murderers should be dissected in the theatre of Surgeons' Hall. Now and again it happened that the hang- THE OLD BAILEY DOCK 377 man had only half done his work. So it was in the case of one William Duell, hanged in 1740. While the body, after being tatf^ns1.1" carried into Surgeons' Hall, was being washed, prior to dissection, a ser vant perceived signs of life: the man was bled, and in two hours was able to sit up in his chair. The same evening he was sent back twenty, was found guilty of having attempted to poison the family in whose service she had been, she uttered a frightful scream, and was carried out of court in convulsions, though after a while she quietened down sufficiently to be brought back to hear her doom pronounced by " Black Jack," as Sir John Sylvester, the Recorder of Maria Kenning Photo : Pictorial .-/ ocncy. NEW SESSIONS HOUSE : THE CENTRAL HALL. to Newgate, and afterwards his sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Much more remarkable was the sequel to a case of resuscitation in the reign of Queen Anne. Sir William Petty was about to anatomise the body for the edification of his class when he noticed symptoms of life, and by dint of bleeding and the application of restoratives the woman was brought round. The students thereupon started a fund for her benefit, and she presently married, and survived her exe cution fifteen years. To give a mere list of the famous or in- famous persons who have stood their trial at the Old Bailey would take up more space than can be spared. Many a stirring scene has been enacted here. When, on the nth of April, 181 5, Maria Fenning, a girl of 25 that day, was called. But never, perhaps, was so profound an impression made by the bearing of a prisoner in the Old Bailey dock as that which was produced by John Thurtell, a sporting man who in October, 1823, had decoyed one William Weare, a boon com panion, into a lonely Hertfordshire lane and brutally murdered him for the sake of the cash — about ^20 — which he had upon him. Thurtell, the son of a Norwich alderman, had served in the Peninsular War as an officer. His address to the jury was a rhetorical masterpiece. " I hope your ver dict this day," he said in his per oration, " will be such as you may ever after be able to think upon with a composed conscience, and that you will also reflect upon the solemn declaration A Rhetor ician at Bay. 578 LONDON TOWN CELL IN NEWGATE. which I now make. I am innocent ! So — help — me — God ! " One who was present recorded that " the solemn, slow and appalling tone in which he wrung out these last words can never be imagined by those who were not auditors of it. He clung to every separate word with an earnestness which cannot be described. The final word was thrown up with an almost gigantic energy, and he stood after its utterance with his arms extended, his face protruded, and his chest dilated, as if the spell of the sound were yet upon him. . . He then drew his hands slowly back, pressed them firmly to his breast, and sat down, half-exhausted, in the dock." The proofs against the man were too cogent to be neutralised even by such dramatic eloquence as his, and within twenty minutes from the close of the summing up the foreman of the jury, with tears in his eyes, delivered a verdict of guilty. Thurtell listened to his doom with unshaken reso lution, and two days later took his place on the drop without a tremor. Never, perhaps — to come closer to the present day — did the old Sessions House witness such an outburst of brutal ferocity as that which occurred in 1896 during the trial of two men, named Fowler and Milsom, for the murder during the night of February 13-14 of Mr. Henry Smith, an elderly gentleman who lived alone at Muswell Hill. The murderers had left behind them a small bull's-eye lantern, which was presently discovered to have belonged to a relative of Milsom's, and these and other facts having come to light, diligent search was made for Milsom and his friend Fowler. They were tracked down at Bath, and Fowler, a man of immense strength, fought like a tiger, and was not secured until he had been floored with a blow from the butt end of a revolver. Then Milsom confessed. He represented himself, of course, as having had no hand in the actual murder ; but that in other respects his confession was genuine there could be no doubt, for he told the police that they buried their tools in the centre of Mr. Smith's lawn, and there they were found Fowler's ferocity being well known, pre cautions were taken at Holloway to protect Milsom from his violence, and in the dock at the Old Bailey several stalwart warders were interposed between the two. But as soon as the jury had retired, Fowler made a sudden dash at the man who had betrayed him, and all but succeeded in getting him into his clutches. There was a terrific struggle be tween him and the warders and policemen, and it was some minutes before he was over- Fowler and Milsom CELL IN THE NEW SESSIONS HOUSE. THE NEW CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT 379 powered and dragged or carried down below. Meanwhile Milsom, half dead with terror, had been got out of the way. In the end, Fowler, who bore himself defiantly even on the scaffold, had the satisfaction of knowing that his cowardly comrade had failed to save his own neck, for the two were hanged together. A whole volume might be written about the memories of the Old Sessions House, but we must stay our pen. The last trial within its walls took place on the nth of March, 1907, the magnifi cent new Sessions House having been opened by his Majesty the King on the last day but one of the previous month, and soon afterwards the old building was taken down. The designs of Mr. Edward W. Mount ford, F.R.I.B.A., for the present Sessions House were accep ted in 1900, and the foundation-stone was laid by the Lord Mayor (Sir Marcus Samuel) on December 20th, 1902. Mr. Mountford has claimed for his work that it is entirely English, founded upon the work of Wren and his pupils ; nor can the One of the disciples St. Paul's of whom is Nicholas Hawksmoor, the builder of St. Mary Woolnoth, and of several equally vigorous and original speci mens of ecclesiastical architecture in the East of London. The notes of Mr. Mount- ford's work are dignity and strength. Of the exterior, faced with Portland stone, the chief feature is a bold and lofty tower, rising into a dome and lantern, surmounted by a bronze gilt figure of Justice with out- frriy irt7%y t/,ij licket n'lt/i JONATHAN WILD, UPON claim be gainsaid. of the creator of we are reminded stretched arms holding a sword and scales — after the golden cross of St. Paul's, the most striking landmark in the City. The figure, of which the head is 212 feet above the street level, or 112 feet less than the Cathedral cross, is the work of Mr. F. W. Pomeroy, A.R.A., who also wrought the sculptured figures of Truth, Justice, and the Recording Angel, over the main or Old Bailey entrance, where appears the motto, " Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer." The halls and corridors and domes of the interior are faced with marbles of many colours ; the courts, four in num ber, and the rooms for the judges, for the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffs, as well as other apartments, are lined with oak. The key to the plan of the interior is a splendid Central Hall, approached by a marble staircase and lined with slabs of marble, and sur mounted by a dome ornamented with sculpture and with paintings. The paint ings with which the interior is freely em bellished are from the pencils of Sir William Richmond, R.A., and Professor Gerald Moira. The old Sessions House, squalid and dismal, and altogether inadequate, was little less than a scandal to the administration of justice in the City ; but when the City Corporation set itself to replace it the work was done handsomely, the structure alone costing some .£300,000. There is abundance of accommodation for judges, counsel, and witnesses, and even the jurors — whose comfort, since they are not paid for their services, might well have been dis regarded — have not been overlooked. Nor are the prisoners likely to complain of over- WITH FAC-SIMILE OF HIS EXECUTION. SKIT 38o LONDON TOWN crowding. The docks in the four Courts are of generous dimensions, and there are ninety cells, which are used only during the day, the prisoners being brought from Brixton Prison every morning and taken back at night. The most notorious inhabitant the Old living when at last Justice laid her hand upon him. The sworn information upon which he was arrested set forth that he had formed a sort of corporation of thieves, of which he was the director, and that he had divided the town and country into districts, each with %¦•-"¦" "f?Sx '•'.'¦ ,.^;^^ SJCaf-U.dcl2Sc !,' ^tMous-e t/ic cci/7icro/lixei\k-xxcc]c.Shuis. Crccit l/arbour tcmrt. Old /Jculey. GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY. Bailey— we speak now of the street — has ever known was Jonathan Wild, who lucra tively combined the avocation of wud.than thief and receiver with that of in former. In order, one may suppose, to be " on the spot," he took up residence at No. 68, Ship Court, nearly opposite the old Sessions House, where now one sees railway receiving offices and stables ; and here he was its own gang of robbers, who accounted to- him for their booty ; that he had several warehouses for the reception of the stolen goods, and owned a vessel for carrying off jewellery to Holland ; that he kept in his pay several artists to transform watches, seals, rings, and so forth, out of recognition. There were other allegations against him, and the last of the articles of information alleged that. RESIDENTS OF THE OLD BAILEY 33i " he had often sold human blood by procuring false evidence to swear persons into facts of which they were not guilty." The evidence at the trial (May 15th, 1725) made it clear that to absolute unscrupulousness and callous ness and singular cunning Wild united a rare faculty of organisation. For his defence he relied mainly upon the service he had ren dered to the community in his capacity of thief-taker, and he handed in a list of thirty- five robbers, twenty-two housebreakers, and ten returned convicts whom he had been the means of bringing to the gallows. One of his victims was Blake, popularly known as " Blueskin," an intimate associate of ^lu,T~ Jack Sheppard's. Mad with rage against the man who had betrayed him, Blueskin, when visited by Wild in prison a day or two before his trial, drew a clasp knife and cut his throat, and would probably have made an end of him had the knife not lost its edge. When the jury had given their verdict against him, Blueskin related how Wild had visited him and a fellow-prisoner, one Simon Jacobs, a fewr days before, and having told the latter that he would endea vour to save his life, turned to him (Blueskin) and said, " I believe you must die ; I'll send you a good book or two, and provide you a coffin, and you shall not be anatomised." Who after that could say that the great thief-taker was without bowels of compas sion? Wild's betrayal of so many men who richly deserved the hanging they got did not avail to save him, and he was executed The Thief- at Tyburn on Monday the 24th tatter's End. . - / _ , 7 of May, 1725. On the morning of the execution he swallowed a dose of poison, but it served only to reduce him to a state of semi-insensibility. On the way to Tyburn he was pelted with stones and dirt, and at the foot of the gallows he remained so long drowsy in the cart that the mob howled threats at the hangman, who pro bably did not care to take a mean advan tage of a criminal incapable of feeling the full force of the situation. A curious incident in Wild's career which came to light in 1 84 1, was that, in a letter written two years before his end, he petitioned the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to be admitted a freeman of the City, in recognition of his work in procuring the due punishment of felons. The Old Bailey is, happily, not without more dignified associations. Plere in 1550 was born William Camden, the antiquary, whose father was a paper-stainer ; and in the house of " Mr. Meres the printer " Algernon Sidney is said to have lived. At the corner of Ship Court, William Hone, in 18 17, pub lished his political parodies on the Catechism, the Litany, and the Creed, for which he was three times tried at the Guildhall and acquitted ; and in the same court Richard Hogarth, father of the painter, kept school. In another court leading out of the Old Bailey, Green Arbour Court, which ran down into Seacoal Lane, towards the Fleet, and was destroyed when Holborn Viaduct was formed, Oliver Goldsmith lived for oiwer two years (1758-60). A squalid Goldsmith. J . w J / n place it was, a region of washer women, as Washington Irving described it, when he visited Goldsmith here — the tall houses in the last stages of decay, the throng ing children dirty and neglected, the slip shod women hanging out of their windows to bawl at each other. The poet, says Forster in his " Life," would " compromise with the children for occasional cessation of their noise by occasional cakes or sweetmeats, or by a tune upon his flute, for which all the court assembled ; he would talk pleasantly with the poorest of his neighbours, and was long recollected to have greatly enjoyed the talk of a working watchmaker in the court. Every night he would risk his neck at those steep stone stairs " — the Breakneck Steps, which led into the court ; " every day — for his clothes had become too ragged to submit to daylight scrutiny — he would keep within his dirty, naked, unfurnished room, with its single wooden chair and window bench." Forster also recalls how when Goldsmith was visited here by Dr. Percy, author of the " Reliques," he was found busily writing. There being but one chair in the dirty room, Goldsmith vacated it for his visitor and him self sat in the window. Presently someone gently tapped at the door and " a poor ragged girl of very decent behaviour " entered, and dropping a curtsey, said, " My mamma sends her compliments, and begs the favour of you to lend her a pot-full of coals." CHAPTER XXXV NEWGATE STREET TO HOLBORN CIRCUS Newgate Market — A Reminiscence of Henry Irving — The " Salutation and Cat " — Coleridge and the Apple- woman— Warwick Lane and the Last of the Barons— The Old College of Physicians— The Cutlers— Giltspur Street— The Compter— Pie Corner— Cock Lane and its " Ghost "—Snow Hill and John Bunyan— The "Saracen's Head "—The Holborns— The " Old Bourne" — Titus Oates Climbs Heavy Hill— The Viaduct— St. Sepulchre's and its Associations with Newgate— St. Andrew's, Holborn— The City Temple and Dr. Parker I N Newgate Street, formerly known as Newgate Market, there is nothing of the old left. The City gate disappeared, as we saw in our last chapter, in 1767 ; the jail has now gone the way of the gate ; the ancient market from which the street took its earlier name ceased to be in 1869, being superseded by the Smithfield Meat Market. The site, about midway be tween Newgate Street and Paternoster Row, measuring about 10,000 square feet, was sold by auction (November 8th, 1869) for £20,000, and is now covered by the block of buildings known as Paternoster Square. At first a meal market, it presently became transformed into a wholesale and retail meat market. It was fitting that in this neigh bourhood the Butchers' Company (p. 358) should have had their Hall — in what is now King Edward Street, but formerly styled Butcher Hall Lane, leading from Newgate Street to Little Britain. Near the east end of Newgate Street, adjoining the station of the Central London Railway on the west side, is a building which bears a tablet recording' the association with THE FAT BOY OF PIE CORNER {p. 385). Newsate Market. it of the late Sir Henry Irving. On leaving school in George Yard, Lombard Street, in 185 1,* John Henry Brodribb entered ?enry a lawyer's office in Milk Street, Irving. J . ' and a year later transferred his services to a firm of East India merchants here in Newgate Street (No. 87), where he remained until in 1856 he abandoned commerce for the stage. His home at this time, as appears from Mr. Austin Brereton's biography, was at 65, Old Broad Street, where his father and mother occupied the top floor. By his friend Mr. Edward Russell, who was his companion in those days, a striking picture of the future actor was drawn in a communication to the Westminster Gazette. He is described as " a long, lanky youth, with a striking face, pale and deeply freckled ; he had long hair, a piercing eye, and was fond of fun. . . His gait was curious, a kind of jumpy halting stride, and he stuttered vilely. To modify or cure these imperfections was his constant care. It was his custom to read aloud, pronouncing each syllable slowly and distinctly, and in the course of time he gradually conquered ; but the mannerisms which have been so often alluded to by his critics were due to these natural causes, and few can imagine the care and pains he exercised to remedy these defects — or, at all events, to alleviate them. He was quite aware of his deficiencies, and thus early showed the strength of will and purpose to fight and overcome all and every opposition to his success in the aim of his life." Mr. Russell adds that in those days Irving was wont to stride through the crowded streets " reciting loudly some speech * See ante, p. 199. 382 COLERIDGE IN NEWGATE STREET 383 or poem he was learning, his animated face and long, flowing hair making a weird figure that used to amaze many observers." On the other side of Newgate Street, nearly opposite the site of Christ's Hospital, was the famous inn, " The Saluta- The"Salu- tjon anfj Qat» at whjch Sir Cat." Christopher Wren is traditionally said to have refreshed himself when at work upon St. Paul's. It was cer tainly at a later day the haunt of Coleridge offered the Talker free quarters for life if he would stay and talk ! " It was no doubt somewhere about this spot that Coleridge, when a Bluecoat boy, had the adventure with the old " s. T. c." and apple-woman of Newgate Street the Apple. *~r s woman. which is recorded by S. C. Hall. He was rushing along to be in time for school when he upset her stall, and away the apples went rolling. " Oh, you little devil ! " the old woman exclaimed in her vexa- NEWGATE MARKET IN 1 856. From a Water-colour by T. Hosmer Shepherd. and Lamb. " I imagine to myself that little smoky room at the ' Salutation and Cat,' " writes Lamb, " where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy." He refers also to " that nice smoky little room. . . which is even now continually presenting itself to my recollec tion, with all its associated train of pipes, tobacco, egg-hot, welsh rabbit, metaphysics and poetry." Mr. B. E. Martin, author of "In the Footprints of Charles Lamb," records the tradition that " the wary landlord, to whom Coleridge's rhapsodies were quite unintelligible, yet who fully understood their value in drawing a knot of thirsty listeners, tion. But when the boy ran back and gathered up the fruit and offered his apologies she patted him on the head, and said, " Oh, you little angel ! " At the Newgate Street corner of Warwick Lane is a bas-relief of the legendary Guy, Earl of Warwick, the hero of the fight with the Saracenic giant and the slayer of the dun cow. It bears the date 1668, when no doubt Warwick Lane was rebuilt after the Fire, and is a reminder of the yet more ancient days when the Earls of Warwick had here their town house. The thoroughfare was once known as Eldenesse Lane — Old Dean's Lane— but when the Earls 3^4 LONDON TOWN of Warwick here built for themselves an " inn " It was at his its name was changed BAS-RELIEF AT THE CORNER OF WARWICK LANE. palace in Warwick Lane that the Last of the Barons, when he had king-making work to do in the capital, lived in a state not less than regal. Hither, as Stow tells The King- would he come escorted by as maKer. ' J many as six hundred men-at-arms in all the bravery of red jackets, embroidered back and front with the ragged staff. And here half-a-dozen oxen would be roasted whole for breakfast, while every tavern round about was open to such as had acquaintance with any of the Earl's retainers, all who enjoyed this distinction being allowed to take away as much meat, either roast or boiled, as they could " prick and carry on a long dagger." Near this end of Warwick Lane, and on the west side, occupying part of the site of the mansion of the Earls of Warwick, stood the old College of Physicians, built by Wren in 1674, when the doctors had been burnt out of their house at Amen Corner. It is thus wittily pictured by Garth in " The Dispen sary " : — " Xot far from that most celebrated place Where angry Justice shows her awful face, Where little villains must submit to fate, That great ones may enjoy the world in state, There stands a dome, majestic to the sight, And sumptuous arches bear its oval height ; A golden globe, plac'd high with artful skill, Seems to the distant sight— a gilded pill." The College, as we have seen (p. 300), was founded by Linacre, Henry VI I I.'s physician, at his house in Knightrider Street, The whence it migrated to Amen Physicians Comer m 6q_ jt occupied the in Warwick J L Lane. fine quadrangular habitation built for it by Wren in Warwick Lane until 1825, when it was transferred to its present quarters in Trafalgar Square. When Wren's building was at last pulled down, in 1866, statues of Charles II. and Sir John Cutler, which were one of its fea tures, were removed to the Guildhall, where they ma}' now be seen in the vestibule of the Library. To the statue of Cutler, of whom something has been said in our account of Grocers' Hall (p. 184), there clings a curi ous story. He had expressed a wish to con tribute largely to the building of a statue, the College, was thanked for his promise, and had a statue voted to him at the same time that the like compli ment was paid to the King. But, cursed with a miserly disposition, the knight never got nearer to the fulfilment of his promise than to lend the College money to pay some builders' debts, and in 1699 his executors demanded the sum of £7,000, including the promised donation, which appeared in his accounts as a debt ! The angry physicians paid ^2,000, the money borrowed, and immediately erased from the pedestal of the statue the record of their premature gratitude — " Omnis Cutleri Cedit Labor Amphitheatre." At the " Old Bell " Inn, which formerly stood on the east side of the lane, died Archbishop Leighton, in 1684. As Burnet CirghWonhOPrecords in his History, the Archbishop cherished, and often expressed, the singular wish to die at an inn, " it looking like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it." He held that " the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a THE CUTLERS AND THEIR HALL 3§5 Cutlers' Hall. dying man ; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance." The Archbishop therefore had his wish. On the west side of Warwick Lane is the Hall of the Cutlers' Company, a comely building designed by Mr. T. Tayler, and opened in 1887, superseding the Hall in Cloak Lane built in 1667-68, after the Fire. The building, the front adorned with a characteristic terra-cotta panel by Mr. George Tinworth, contains some stained glass and stone reliefs of arms from the old hall. Among the portraits is one of Mrs. Mary Craythorne, whose hus band, John Craythorne, left to the Company, by will dated the 21st of November, 1568 — the bequest to take effect at her death — the tenement known as the Belle Sauvage. The Company was in existence at least as early as the reign of Edward III., but it received its first charter from Henry V., in 141 5. In olden times, Stow tells us, the Cutlers were divided into three sets of artificers — the smiths, who forged the blades, and were therefore styled bladers ; those who made the hafts, and otherwise garnished the blades ; and those who made sheaths, " for swords, daggers, and knives." It was not till the reign of Henry VI„ he adds, that they were all amalgamated under the name of Cutlers. In the Company's arms figure three pairs of swords, with two ele phants for supporters, and for crest an elephant bearing a castle. Giltspur Street, at the junction of Newgate Street with Holborn Viaduct, leading to Smithfield, was in Stow's day known alternatively as Knightrider Street, " of the knights and others riding that way into Smithfield " to the tournaments. But there was another Knightrider Street in the City, between Cannon Street and the Thames, and this perhaps was why the name of the former was gradually changed to Giltspur Street or, as it appears in Aggas's map (1560), Giltsord Street. In Stow's time it was a very short street, extending only to Cock Lane, the rest of the thoroughfare, as far as Smithfield, being known as Pie Corner, a name now reserved for the corner of Cock Lane. Opposite St. Sepulchre's Church, on the east side of the street, stood the Giltspur Street Compter, a debtors' prison and house GiltspurStreet. of correction appertaining to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex. It was built by George Dance, junior, the architect Com ter °*" Newgate Jail, and was opened in 1 79 1, when it took the place of the Wood Street Compter. After having long been a scandal to the City by reason of frequent overcrowding, it was closed in 1854, and was pulled down in the following year, and on part of the site of the building where miserable wretches experienced the rigours of the law was reared a gymnasium for the jocund boys of Christ's Hospital. Pie Corner, at the top of Cock Lane, may have received its name from the cookshops — " cooks' stalls " Ben Jonson calls them in The Alchemist — which abounded in this region and did a roaring trade at Bartholomew Fair, although Stow traces the name The to a hostelry which stood here. It Fat Boy. . , , , , , is marked by the monument known as the Fat Boy of Pie Corner. The origin of this memorial cannot now be traced. At STATUE OF CHARLES II. FROM THE OLD COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS (A 384)- first the Fat Boy was arrayed in colours, and when Pennant wrote his " History of London," 386 LONDON TOWN about a century ago, this flimsy raiment was eked out with an inscription which even at that time was nearly effaced. " This boy," it ran, " is in memory put up of the late Fire of London, occasioned by the sin of gluttony, 1666 " ; and the last six words, as may be seen from an engraving in J. T. Smith's " Antiquities," appropriately covered that " Fortune of War " became a house of call for the resurrectionists who supplied St. Bar tholomew's Hospital with bodies for dissec tion ; and it was here that Bishop and Williams met before they butchered the Italian boy Ferrari (183 1) to qualify him for the dissecting table. Cock Lane, running from Giltspur Street THE OLD COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS IN WARWICK LANE. part of his anatomy which would give the most obvious evidence of his failing. What ever his age, it would seem that the Fat Boy is the offspring of some hardened wag, who cherished the outrageous conceit that since the Great Fire began at Pudding Lane and ended here at Pie Corner, in its march north westwards, it was a consequence of gluttony ! Possibly he materialised his jest in the form of a boy because he was jealous of the fame of Panyer Alley hard by (p. 58), and was resolved that Pie Corner also should have its boy. The figure has of late years been gilded. The modern building to which it is affixed, a public-house known as the " Fortune of War,' is, according to Mr. Philip Norman (" London Signs and Inscriptions "), the suc cessor of a tavern which was well known at least as long ago as 17 15. Presently the The " Fortune of War." Cock Lane London and its " Ghost. to Snow Hill, has of late years been rebuilt, and now looks little like the street to which in 1762 the gentle and simple of flocked to satisfy their the " Cock Lane Ghost." The affair is usually assumed to have been nothing but a gross imposture ; but after the investigations of the Psychical Research Society, which have brought to light many similar phenomena, it is not easy to be sure of the sufficiency of this explanation. Mr. Andrew Lang has acutely analysed the available evidence in his " Cock Lane and Common Sense," and, without committing himself to any alter native theory, concludes that it is not in accordance with common-sense to believe " that all London was turned upside down, that Walpole, the Duke of York, Lady Mary Coke, and two other ladies, were drawn to STORY OF THE COCK LANE GHOST 337 Cock Lane (five in a hackney coach), that Dr. Johnson gave up his leisure and incurred ridicule, merely because a naughty child was scratching on a little wooden board." The story is a long one, and can only be summarily sketched here. About the year 1758 a Mr. K., a Nor folk gentleman, brought his deceased wife's sister, who went by the name of Miss Fanny, to lodgings in Cock Lane in the house of Parsons, the clerk of St. Sepulchre's, hard by. In Mr. K.'s absence in the country Miss Fanny had Par sons' daughter, Eliza beth, a girl of eleven, to sleep with her, and during the night they were both disturbed by strange scratchings and rappings. The noises continued after Mr. K.'s return, much to his and Miss Fanny's vexation, and at last, after suing Parsons for money lent, he, with his sister-in-law, moved to Bartlet Court, Clerkenwell, where in 1760 Miss Fanny died of small-pox. In 1 76 1 the noises, which had ceased for a year and a half after Mr. K. and Miss Fanny left Cock Lane, were resumed. They seemed to come on Elizabeth's Mr. Lang significant MRS. CRAYTHORNE, WHOSE HUSBAND LEFT LA BELLE SAUVAGE TO THE CUTLERS' COMPANY. From the Portrait at Cutlers' Hall. bed, and quotes a statement that Elizabeth " was always affected with tremblings and shiver- ings at the coming and going of the ghost." Presently a code of sig nals was arranged be tween the " ghost " and the auditors, and then messages were received alleging that Miss Fanny, the professed communicator, had been poisoned by Mr. K. with red arsenic, and wished to see him hanged. When ques tioned, the " ghost," as often happens in such cases, sometimes gave wrong answers and sometimes right. The noises made were chiefly raps, scratchings, and a sound as of whirring wings, which filled the room. News of these strange happenings now got abroad, and by the beginning of 1762 they were the talk of the town. On the ist of February Mr. Aldrich, a Clerkenwell clergyman, induced Parsons to bring the piii- THE GILTSPUR STREET COMPTER IN 1805. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, engraved by R. Aeon. 388 LONDON TOWN girl to his house, to be tested by Dr. John son and others. The child was put to bed by the ladies of the company, and " for rather more than an hour," as Dr. Johnson wrote, nothing happened. Then the ladies reported that they had heard knockings and scratch ings, but when the investigators went to the room and the child was made to hold her hands outside the bed, again nothing happened. Next an adjournment was made to the vault of St. John's, Clerkenwell, where Miss Fanny was buried, the " ghost " ,AG®"1sty, having promised to rap upon the coffin ; but once more nothing happened. ''It is therefore the opinion of the whole assembly," reported Dr. Johnson, " that the child had some art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause." The tests were continued, but still the in P0mt °f situation> by the Viaduct improvement, as St. Sepulchre's was a gainer. It formerly stood well above the road near the top of Holborn Hill, but now that the valley has been exalted, it is considerably below the level of the street. When the first church of St. Andrew was built no man knoweth, but it was in existence at least as early as the year 971. Rebuilt, like St. Sepulchre's, in the fifteenth century, it escaped the Great Fire, but had by this time fallen into such decay that in 1686 Wren took it in hand and reconstructed it, except the tower, which in 1704 he refaced with Portland stone. St. Andrew's, which is the largest of Wren's parish churches, underwent extensive repair in 185 1, and again later, and is now, as to its interior, one of the most dignified and most richly decorated of the City churches. The old organ, much altered from time to time, and almost entirely reconstructed in 1905, had an interesting history. There had been a competition between Renatus Harris and his great rival Father Rival Organ Schmidt jn l6gg for tne honour Builders. of furnishing the Temple Church with an organ. Finding it hard to decide which was the better instrument of the two, the Benchers at last, after a year's dubiety, referred the question to Judge Jeffreys, who had more music than grace in his soul, and his verdict being in favour of Schmidt, Harris divided his organ into two, one of the instruments being installed in St. Andrew's and the other sent to Christ Church, Dublin. Of Harris's work in the organ here in St. Andrew's scarcely anything is now left except the small open diapason and the stopped diapason in the great organ, and a few pipes in the swell organ. The personal associations of St. Andrew's are of unusual interest. It has had one notorious and two eminent rectors. The notorious rector was Henry Sacheverell, who, in 1 7 10, was impeached by the House of Commons and sentenced to three years' suspension, and at the expiration of that period was rewarded by Lord Sacheverell. Bolingbroke with this living. At St. Andrew's he fell into a fitting obscurity from which his not infrequent quarrels with his parishoners failed to rescue him. He held the living until his death, and was buried in the chancel, as is recorded by an inscription on the pavement. Of Sacheverell we have an unflattering portrait drawn for us by Sarah Duchess of Marl borough. " A lewd, drunken, pampered man " she calls him, who " had not learning enough to speak or write true English, but a heap of bombast, ill-connected words at command." Her Grace's English also was not beyond reproach. But then she was a duchess ! The first of St. Andrew's two eminent rectors was John Hacket, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. He Hacket. held the living for a ful1 twenty years (1624-45). In the troubles of the Civil War an opportunity came to him of showing that a manly heart beat beneath his surplice. One Sunday, when he was reading the prayers in St. Andrew's, a soldier of the Earl of Essex came forward, pointed a pistol at him, and bade him cease. Hacket simply said he would do what became a divine and leave the other to do what became a soldier, and proceeded with his reading. Nor was he further molested. After Hacket came the famous Edward Stillingfleet, presently Bishop of Worcester, the great defender of Anglicanism Stunngfieet. against Popery and Noncon formity, who was inducted to the living in 1665, at the age of thirty. As a controversialist, Stillingfleet was remarkable for his courtesy in an age when theological disputants had not learnt to be civil to each other, and of John Howe, one of the great champions of Nonconformity, he significantly said that he wrote " more like a gentleman than a divine ! " It was Stillingfleet who provoked Charles II. to one of the happiest sallies of the royal wit. The King had asked him why he always read his sermons before him, whereas at all other times he preached without MS., and having answered that in the presence of his sovereign he was over awed, Stillingfleet asked as a counter- MARRIAGES AT ST. ANDREW'S, HOLBORN 395 question, " Wrhy does your Majesty read your speeches, when it may be presumed you can have no such reason ? " " Why, truly," Charles rejoined, " I have asked my subjects so often for money that I am ashamed to look them in the face." St. Andrew's has been the scene of several notable marriages. Here, in 1598, Sir Edward Coke, the great lawyer, whose father, Robert Coke, a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, had been bridesmaid. In a letter written seven years afterwards, " Elia," telling Southey that he was going to be godfather, and didn't like the business, since he feared that he would " disgrace the font," added : " I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh. I mis behaved once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. ANDREWS, HOLBORN. buried in St. Andrew's in 1561, wedded the Lady Elizabeth Hatton, widow of Sir William Hatton, and granddaughter of Marriages^ Lord Treasurer Burleigh. The not made in ... , , Heaven. marriage was an ill - assorted one : the lady was a tartar, her husband was no model of amiability, and even the King himself (James I.), when he sought to make the peace between them, achieved but a qualified success. Another ill-starred wedding in St. Andrew's was that, long afterwards, of William Hazlitt and Sarah Stoddart, sister of Dr. Stoddart, the Editor of the Times. It was celebrated on Sunday, the ist of May, 1808, with Charles Lamb for best man and Mary Lamb as feelings. The realities of life only seem the mockeries." One wonders if Lamb had a sense of the incongruity of his friend's assumption of the role of married man. Hazlitt was certainly not made for the part, and in the end he and his wife successfully conspired to get the marriage dissolved in Scotland. Against these luckless weddings may be set that of Colonel Hutchinson and Lucy Apsley, a younger daughter of Sir Allen Hutchinsons. APsley> sometime Lieutenant of the Tower. He had fallen in love with her before seeing her, as the result of what he had heard of her graces, and they were married at St 396 LONDON TOWN Andrew's in 1638. What an ideal union it was is made clear by the " Memoirs " which she wrote after his death. He had fought BenjaminDisraeli. WILLIAM MARSDEN, M.D. From the Painting by H. W. Pickersgill, by permission of the House Committee of the Cancer Hospital. bravely on the side of Parliament, and had been one of Charles I.'s judges, and after the Restoration he was arrested (1663), and died in confinement at Sandown Castle in the following year. His devoted wife had begged in vain that she might be allowed to share his imprisonment. Of the baptisms at St. Andrew's the most famous was that of Benjamin Disraeli, which is thus loosely recorded in the register: — "Baptized, July 31, 1817, Benjamin, said to be about twelve years old, son of Isaac and Maria Disraeli, King's Road, Gentleman. A clergyman named Thimbleby performed the ceremony." With the circumstances under which the boy's father had withdrawn from the Jewish communion we have already dealt (p. 220). An earlier statesman also was baptized in St. Andrew's, in the person of Henry Adding- ton (June 30th, 1757), Prime Minister from 1 801 to 1804, and the subject of Canning's couplet — " Pitt is to Addington As London is to Paddington." In the registers, again, are entries relating to two of our poets. One of them records the baptism of Richard Savage, on January 18th, 1697 i the other, dated August 28th, 1770, reads, " William Chatterton, Brooks Street," and by a later hand have been added the words " the poet," with the Chatterton. signature " F. Mill." The entry no doubt relates to the interment of the boy-poet in the burial-ground of the workhouse in Shoe Lane, after he had ended his misery with a dose of poison in Brooke Street, Holborn (p. 400) ; but not only is the name of the street given incorrectly as " Brooks," but the Christian name also is wrong, " William " having been substituted for " Thomas." The story that Chatterton's remains were exhumed and re-interred in his native city of Bristol is without foundation ; they lay where they were first buried until the graveyard wras required for the Far ringdon Market, when the bones of the paupers, all huddled together, were carted away to a graveyard in the Gray's Inn Road. The last association of St. Andrew's which can be noticed here connects it with one of the most benevolent of modern Dr. Marsden. physicians. Just inside the church, on the west wall, is a tablet erected in 1901 by the Cordwainers' Company to the memory of Dr. William Marsden (1796- 1867). It records how, on his way home one winter night in 1827, he found a poor girl lying ill on the steps of St Andrew's Churchyard, how he conveyed her to one hospital after another, from which she Photo: London Stereoscopic Company. DR. JOSEPH PARKER. was turned away because she had no sub scriber's recommendation, so that he had at last to hire a lodging for her, and how, as the THE CITY TEMPLE 397 result of this experience, he founded two hospitals which should be absolutely free, the Royal Free Hospital in the Gray's Inn Road, and the Cancer Hospital at Brompton. Of both these institutions, it is added, this good man was the guiding spirit up to the time of his death. which was built for a congregation of 2,500, but on occasion can be made to accommo date some five hundred more, was opened a year later to the very day, the Lord Mayor, with the Lady Mayoress, attending in state. The luncheon at the Cannon Street Plotel that followed, presided over by the Lord Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE CITY TEMPLE. In these days St. Andrew's has for next- door neighbour the City Temple, the habita tion of the Congregational church The City which formerly met in the Poultry (p. 140). The change was made early in the London ministry of the late Dr. Joseph Parker, the church, designed by Messrs. Lock- wood and Mawson in a light Italian style, with a substructure consisting of lecture hall, class-rooms, etc., being built on a site ac quired from the City Corporation at a cost of ^"25,000. The memorial stone was laid by Dr. Binney, for many years the famous pastor of the Weigh House Chapel, on the 19th of May, 1873, and the church, Mayor, was made specially notable by a characteristically genial and sympathetic speech from Dean Stanley. The total cost of the City Temple, by the time everything was done, was nearly .£45,000, in addition to the £25,000 for the site ; but the old Poultry Chapel and site had realised £50,200, so that the amount that had to be raised by subscription was only about £"20,000. To the pulpit of Caen marble, which cost three hundred guineas, and was the gift of the City Corporation, a permanent platform has since been added, for use at the public meetings of which the City Temple is fre quently the theatre. 398 LONDON TOWN Dr. Parker, who will long be remembered in the City as the creator of the City Temple, and next to the late Mr. Spurgeon Dr. Parker, the most popular Nonconformist preacher of his day, was born, the son of a stonemason and builder, at Hexham, Northumberland, on the 9th of April, 1830, and there he spent the first twenty-two years of his life. In 1852 he was in London studying at University College. The brilliant young orator was ordained in the following year, and after holding pastorates at Ban bury and at Manchester, took charge of the moribund church of the Poultry in 1869. From the beginning he made himself felt in London as a preacher of excep tional originality and power, and to the end he not only preached to crowded congregations on Sundays, but successfully maintained a noonday service every Thurs day, at which a considerable proportion of the congregation consisted of fellow ministers. A man of wilful eccentricities and blazing indiscretions, as well as of shining gifts, he was long regarded with suspicion by many in his own communion, but he filled the chair of the Congregational Union of Eng land and Wales, as well as of the Lon don Congregational Union, with discretion as well as distinction. His humour may have lacked geniality and refinement, but it was sometimes effective in covering op ponents with confusion, as, for instance, at a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel to support his abortive candidature for the City of London, when one of the audience rudely refused to take off his hat. At last Dr. Parker intervened. " Let him alone, gentlemen, and let his hat alone ; believe me, there is nothing in it," he said, amid roars of laughter. Much neater was the reproof he administered to the seconder of a vote of thanks to himself. The proposer of the vote had made a brief and graceful speech, the seconder spoke at some length, and tempered his gratitude with criticism. In acknowledging the vote the orator said, " I am debtor both to the Greek, and," pointing to the seconder, " to the barbarian." In the later years of his ministry Dr. Parker conciliated the esteem of many who before had been repelled by the extrava gances of a flamboyant personality. Those who knew him best thought of him the most highly, and it is not surprising that Mr. Albert Dawson's little biography, the work of one who had been his private secretary, should breathe a spirit of enthusiastic though not undiscriminating admiration. One en dearing trait of the great preacher's which Mr. Dawson notes was his refusal to permit the ejection of crying children. " I never turn a baby out of church," he said on one oc casion when a child was lifting up its voice. " I don't know what the child was saying," he finely added, " but I know it was all true." Dr. Parker died in 1902, and was succeeded at the City Temple by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., who pre sently became the standard-bearer of what is styled the " New Theology." Under his ministry the City Temple has been not less thronged than it was in Dr. Parker's palmiest days. J9 ARMS OF THE CUTLERS1 COMPANY. CHAPTER XXXVI HOLBORN CIRCUS TO HOLBORN BARS Holborn Circus — Thavie's Inn — Bartlett's Buildings — Barnard's Inn — Furnival's Inn— Brooke Street and Chatterton — St. Alban's — Staple Inn — Holborn Bars IN the centre of Holborn Circus is a bronze equestrian statue of the Prince Consort, by C. Bacon, the gift of an anony mous donor. Unveiled in 1874, it represents the Prince saluting the Viaduct, and Holborn js mounted on a lofty and mas- Circus. J sive pedestal embellished with bas- reliefs illustrating important events in Prince Albert's life and erected partly at the charges of the City Corporation. The passer-by in Holborn will now look in vain for its two most famous inns, the " Old Bell " and the " Black Bull," which adjoined each other on the north side of the street, close to the The former was demolished in 1897, the latter about 1901. Of the "Old Bell" some charming sketches will be found in Mr. Philip Norman's " London Vanished and Vanishing." Among the streets which open into Hol born Circus is Thavie's Inn, the first of the OldTaverns.Circus. so ceased to be an Inn of Chancery. Some time afterwards it was destroyed by fire, and now the site is covered with modern warehouses and offices. We shall set out the difference between these Inns of Chancery and the Inns of Court when we come to the first of the latter institutions that we shall encounter, the Temple. Bartlett's Buildings, also leading into Hol born Circus, on the south side, are named after a Thomas Bartlett, and are Bartlett's mentioned by this name as far Buildings. J back as 1615. In 17 14 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had its offices here, and it still contains some houses belonging to that century. In Bartlett's Passage, leading from the Buildings into Fetter Lane, was the " humble day school," kept by a Mr. William Bird, which Charles and Mary Lamb attended before the former was admitted to Christ's Hospital. The boys, Inns of Chancery to which we have come as Lamb afterwards wrote, were taught reading in our journeyings in the City. The most and writing in the morning, and the girls, "our ancient of the hostels for " apprentices of the law," as law students once were styled, it is named after John Thavie, an armourer of the City, buried in St. Andrew's, who in 1348 left certain property in Holborn for the maintenance of the fab ric of that church. In 1550 the Benchers of Lin coln's Inn acquired the houses standing on this site for the use of law students, but in 1769 Thavie's Inn was sold to a private person, and THOMAS CHATTERTON. From the Portrait by Hogarth. 399 sisters, etc.," in the evening. A few steps further west wards, still on the south side of Holborn, is a pas sage leading to Barnard's Inn, formerly an Inn of Chancery appertaining to Gray's Inn. Originally called Mackworth's Inn, it was at the time of its conversion into an Inn of Chancery in the occupation of one Barnard, whose name it has ever since borne. In 1881 it was bought for £30,000 by the Mercers' Company, who, without destroying the 400 LONDON TOWN Mercers'School. quaint little hall of the Inn, have built upon the site a school capable of ac commodating some three hundred boys. The Mercers' School, one of the four ancient public schools of the City, was originally carried on in a Duilding that formed part of the Mercers' Chapel in Cheapside, and in that part of the City it remained until 1787, when it WHERE CHATTERTON DIED. From a Drawing by J. W. Archer. was removed to Budge Row. After other changes of habitation it was transferred in 1808 to College Hill, whence in 1894 ^ migrated to Barnard's Inn. Among other great names on the roll of the School are those of Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, and one of the pioneers of the New Learning ; Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham College ; and Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, and uncle of Sir Christopher. Furnival'sInn. Almost opposite Barnard's Inn, on the north side, is the site of another of these Inns of Chancery, Furnival's Inn, named after the Lords Furnival, who had property here. It became an Inn of Chancery early in the fifteenth cen tury, and in 1547, the first year of Edward VI., was acquired by the Benchers of Lin coln's Inn, who had formerly held the lease. The greater part of the Inn was rebuilt in the reign of Charles I., but the old Gothic hall, dating from 1588, was still standing when in 1818, the Society of Furnival's Inn having been dissolved, the Inn was once more re built, this time by Mr. Peto, the contractor, uncle of his future partner, Sir Samuel Mor ton Peto. In 1888 the freehold was acquired by the Prudential Assurance Company, and upon it has since been built an extension of their offices, which now form one of the finest com mercial structures in London, and probably the largest and handsomest block of insurance buildings in the world. Designed by the late Alfred Waterhouse and his son, Mr. Paul Waterhouse, of red brick and terra cotta, in the Pointed style, it occupies the whole of that part of Holborn which lies between Brooke Street and Leather Lane, and provides accommodation for nearly seven teen hundred clerks, of whom close upon four hundred are of the gentler sex. Furnival's Inn has associations with Sir Thomas More, who for three years held the office of reader ; with Bishop Ken, whose father was a barber-surgeon and sheriffs attorney accomptant here ; and with Charles Dickens, who here began his married life, and whose eldest son was born here, in Dickens x^37- ^ was during Dickens's resi dence at Furnival's Inn that " Pick wick " was conceived and written. In March, 1837, he removed to Doughty Street, Meck- lenburgh Square. The plaque which marked his house in Furnival's Inn, preserved by the Prudential Assurance Company, has been affixed as nearly as possible to that part of the offices which occupies the site. Brooke Street will always be associated with the unfortunate Chatterton, for it was in a house on the western side Str^r °f the Street> "ear end, numbered 39, longer in existence, that he from misery and want in death. A sum the Holborn and now no sought relief STAPLE INN 401 of more than eleven guineas would presently have come to him for writings accepted but not yet published ; but he had got to the end of his available resources, and had lost hope of being able to make his way as an author in London. Knowing that for three days he had eaten nothing, his landlady, on the 24th of August, 1770, begged him to take some dinner with her, but he assured her the subject of popular agitation and legal proceedings. Nearly opposite the Holborn end of Brooke Street are the ancient half-timbered houses that form the street front staple inn. of Staple Inn, named, according to tradition, from its having been originally an inn or hostel of the merchants of the (wool) staple. With no small pro- Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE HOLBORN FRONT OF STAPLE INN. that he was not hungry. At night he locked himself up in his garret, and the next morning was found dead, an empty arsenic phial still in his hand. So, at the untimely age of seventeen, perished " in his pride " a poet whose genius would have added lustre to our literature. At the northern end of Brooke Street, and just outside the City boundary, is the church of St. Alban, built by St. Alban's. William Butterfield in 1860-63, at the charges of the late Mr. J. G. Hubbard, first Baron Addington, to whom, at the west end, is a tablet setting forth that he endowed the church " free for ever to Christ's poor." The vicarage of St. Alban's was for many years held by the late Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, and the church was one of those in which an advanced ritual formed bability Mr. Lethaby, in " London Before the Conquest," concludes, as had indeed been previously suggested* that Staple Inn was the inn at Holborn Bars or Staples, for the bars which marked the limits of the City liberties were in olden times called " staples " {e.g. in the year 1372 as cited by Riley), and in the Hundred Roll of Edward I. there is a reference to a citizen who had put " stapellos " in front of his house. Mr. E. Williams, however, in a history of the Inn published in 1906, adopts a modified form of the traditional theory, Staple Inn meaning, according to him, a customs house for wool.t His theory is that it originated in Saxon and Norman times as a royal customs house and market place, and that it received its special * Athenaeum, July 8th, 1899. t See also " Memorials of Old London," Vol. I. 402 LONDON TOWN name " in the later half of Plantagenet times, when the tax upon the export of wool was the king's monopoly." However this may be, Staple Inn was purchased in 1529 by the Benchers of Gray's Inn, and remained an appanage of that Inn of Court until 181 1, when it regained its inde pendence. The Society was dissolved in 1884, aspect of the Inn, which, separated by only the row of houses from one of the busiest streets in London, still forms one of the quaintest and shadiest and most secluded nooks in the City. The street front dates from 1586 ; the little turreted hall of the Inn, now leased to the Institute of Actuaries, was built five years earlier. At Staple Inn Dr. P.'totu : Pic tor ui I Agency. HALL OF STAPLE INN. the Antients selling it to a firm of auctioneers, who in 1886 sold the southern portion to the Government for an extension of the Patent Office and the remainder to the Prudential Assurance Company for £68,000. To the credit of that Company be it said, they purchased the Inn with the express intention of preserving it, and at their direction the late Alfred Waterhouse carried out a careful and conservative restoration of the old half- timbered houses which form the street front. Nothing has been done to impair the old-world Johnson was living in 1759, when he published " Rasselas," which he had written in the evenings of one week to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral and discharge some little debts which she had left. Just in front of Staple Inn on the south side of High Holborn, and over against Gray's Inn Road on the north side, are the granite obelisks that mark the site of Holborn Bars, which formed the western boundary of the City. Here for the present must end our pilgrimage westwards. CHAPTER XXXVII FARRINGDON STREET, THE FLEET, AND NEW BRIDGE STREET Farringdon Within and Farringdon Without — The Fleet and its Aliases — From River to Sewer — Fleet and Farringdon Markets— Fleet Prison — Huggins and Bambridge— Irregular Marriages— Married Twice in One Day — Inhabitants of the Fleet — Its Abolition — The Memorial Hall — Fleet and Turn- again Lanes — Bridewell, Palace and Prison— Floggings in Bridewell — City Apprentices— Chatham Place and the Rossettis FARRINGDON STREET, which runs beneath Holborn Viaduct, and extends from Charterhouse Street to Ludgate Circus, whence it is continued to Blackfriars Bridge by New Bridge Street, bears the lo'n wards8" name of two of the City Wards, Farringdon Within and Farring don Without (the City Walls). Farringdon Within is one of the most considerable of the twenty-six wards,* and has as large a representation on the Common Council (four teen members) as the two divisions combined of the Ward of Bishopsgate. But Farringdon Without is much the largest of all the wards, comprising the whole of the City westwards of the wall to Holborn Bars on the north and to Temple Stairs on the south, and it has a much larger representation on the Common Council than any undivided ward. It sends to that body sixteen members, or as many as the two divisions of the Ward of Cripple gate. Both the Farringdon Wards are named after William le Farindone, goldsmith, and Sheriff of London in the year 1281, who purchased of Ralph le Fevre the aldermanry of the Ward of Farringdon Within. Farring don Without was originally known as Fleet Ward, or the Ward of Fleet Street, and afterwards as the Ward of Anketin de Auvergne, its alderman, and its earliest appearance under its present designation, so far as has been traced, is in a Corporation Letter-book of 1416. Farringdon Street passes over the old bed of the Fleet, the river which, rising on the high ground between Hampstead The Fleet, and Highgate, ran by way of Kentish Town, Camden Town, St. Pancras, Clerkenwell, and Holborn, to the * See the Plan of the City Wards, ante, p. 126. Town Ditch at Fleet Lane, and so into the Thames. It was only this lower part of it which anciently bore the name of the Fleet ; the upper part was known as the Hole Bourne (p. 390), and it was also styled, in its Clerkenwell section, the Turnmill Brook ; while yet another name conferred upon it was the River of Wells, from the of Aliases. number of springs which in this part of its course swelled its volume. In his Etymological Dic tionary Professor Skeat defines fleet as " a creek, bay ; in the names North-fleet, Fleet Street, etc.," and adds that the word was used for " any shallow creek, or stream, or channel of water." Mr. Lethaby interprets the name as signifying " a tidal creek," and it would appear that the Fleet was at first the designation of the mouth of the stream, and was afterwards extended to the section of the river between its outlet and Holborn Bridge. A part of the bed of the tidal creek, the true Fleet, was exposed so recently as the year 1900. In Aggas's map (1560) the Fleet is shown crossed by two bridges, the Fleet Bridge, at about the spot where now Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill join, and Holborn Bridge, situated at or close to the spot where Holborn Viaduct now crosses Farringdon Street. In the next century {temp. Charles II.) two others were added, one at Bridewell, between the mouth and Fleet Bridge, the other at Fleet Lane, between the Fleet and Holborn Bridges. Like other London streams in the days when drainage was left to look after itself, the Fleet, as the population along its banks grew, became nothing better than an open sewer, and long before the Great Fire its lower reaches were often called the Bridewell 403 404 LONDON TOWN MOUTH OF THE RIVER FLEET, ABOUT 1793- From a Painting by S. Scott in the Guildhall Art Gallery. Ditch, or the Fleet Ditch. Thomas Fuller, in the "Worthies" (1662) says that it was styled the Fleet because of " its Pollution, former fleetness, though now it creepeth slow enough, not so much for age as the injection of the City refuse wherewith it is obstructed." Decree after decree was issued by the City authorities to save it from pollution and obstruction, but to little purpose, and it could no longer be said of it, as in the thirteenth century, that " ten or twelve ships at once, with merchandise, were wont to come to the bridge of Fleet, and some of them to Holborn Bridge " (Strype). In the time of Cromwell it was pretty thoroughly cleansed, and in the reign of Charles II., after the Fire had cleared its banks of encroaching pig-styes and slaughter-houses, it was deepened from its mouth to Holborn Bridge, so that barges might be borne on the tide so far northwards. It was now known, for a time, as the New Canal, and so appears in Ogilby's map of 1677 ; but though upwards of £27,000 was spent upon the work, the improvement was but temporary. Its purity lasted long enough, however, to enable Lord Chesterfield to make the witty allusion to it which will once more bear quotation. He was asked by a Parisian whether London could show a river like the Seine. " Yes," was the reply, " and we call it the Fleet Ditch." At last the time came when the Fleet, as an open stream, ceased to be. When the Mansion House was begun, a new site had to be found for the dispossessed Stocks Market, and about the year 1733 the Ditch between Holborn and Fleet Street was arched over, and upon the arches was built the Fleet Market for meat, fish, and vegetables. But it was not until the eighth de- Marke'66* cade of the eighteenth century, when the approaches to Black friars Bridge were formed, that the lowest section of the Fleet, between the present Ludgate Circus and the Thames, was covered in. Now the bed of the Fleet is occupied by one of the great sewers of the metropolis, which empties itself into the Low Level sewer, but was so constructed that in time of storm or other emergency its contents could be discharged direct into the Thames. The Fleet Market, opened in 1737 (Sep tember 30th), had an existence of some ninety- two years, and then (1829) the buildings were demolished in order that the thorough fare from Holborn to Blackfriars Bridge might be widened. About the same time was built, just on the western side of the street, between it and Shoe Lane, the Farringdon Market, which ran an inglorious career. A part of it was demolished in the formation of the approaches to Holborn Viaduct, and when a few years afterwards (1874) the Court THE FLEET PRISON AND ITS HORRORS 405 of Common Council considered the desira bility of reconstructing it, it was reported that during several preceding years the receipts had averaged only £225. It dragged on a squalid life for a few years longer, and then its site was used for the formation of new streets. A much more celebrated institution associated with the Fleet was the Fleet Prison, which stood on the Fleet Prison. eastern bank, where now the Congregational Memorial Hall rears its sharp gables. One of the most ancient of the City prisons, it was traced back by Stow as far as the reign of Richard I. It was burnt by the Wat Tyler rebels in 1381, and again, four hundred years afterwards save one, by the Gordon rioters. The deliberation with which Lord George's followers went to work, and their fellow- feeling for the inmates of the Fleet, are quite curious. About one o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, the 6th of June, 1780, says a contemporary " Narrative of the Proceedings of Lord George Gordon," quoted by Mr. John Ashton* " the mob went to the Fleet Prison and demanded the gates to be opened, which the keepers were obliged to do, or they would have set fire to it. They were then proceeding to demolish the prison, but the prisoners expostulating with them and begging that they would give them time to remove their goods, they readily condescended, and gave them a day for that purpose, in consequence of which the prisoners were removing all this day out of that place. Some of the prisoners were in for life." In the evening the rioters returned and set the prison on fire. In 1774, a few years before this event, the prison was visited ;by John Howard, who found it to contain 243 prisoners, mostly debtors, while their wives and children, also accommodated within its walls, numbered 475- He reported that it was clean, though, like all other prisons at that time, ill-managed. Earlier in the same century the abuses connected with its management had reached such a pitch that in 1726 a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to inquire into them. Its report disclosed a system of revolting tyranny and extortion on the part of Huggins, the warden, who farmed the fees, * " The Fleet : its River, Prison, and Marriages." Ashton. 1888. (T. Fisher Unwin.) By John and Bambridge, who at first was his deputy, but afterwards bought his rights and his son's reversion. One of the charges brought against Hug- gins was that of refusing to surrender to their friends the bodies of deceased pri- Extortion. soners until his demands were met, and burying them in "the common burying place for prisoners " if the offers did not come up to his standard. The graceless wretch's reply to this charge was an almost contemptuous admission of its truth. His deputy, he said, informed him " that scarcely a prisoner hath died on the master's side that was not largely indebted to him ; and there fore possibly he might have used endeavours to get what part of the money was due to him, as he could fairly, from the deceased's relations." In the Committee's report account was given of Bambridge's treatment of one of his victims, Jacob Mendez Solas, a Por- Tyranny. tuguese, whom he loaded with irons and flung into a horrible hole used as a mortuary, built over the common sewer, and adjoining the sink and refuse heap. When at last a friend paid five guineas in the captive's behalf he was released from his dungeon, after nearly two months' confinement. " But though his chains were taken off," reported the Committee, " his terror still remained, and the unhappy man was prevailed upon by that terror not only to labour gratis for the said Bambridge, but to swear also at random all that he hath required of him ; and the Committee themselves saw an instance of the deep impression his sufferings had made upon him, for on his surmising, from something- said, that Bambridge was to return again, as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started out of his mouth." The House petitioned the King to prose cute Huggins and Bambridge, and they had to stand their trial at the Old Bailey on charges of having murdered certain of their prisoners. But they were both acquitted. Bambridge was pleased, some twenty years afterwards, to cut his own throat, but Huggins died a natural death at the age of nearly ninety. One of the strangest features of the history of the Fleet Prison was the clandestine and irregular marriages which were celebrated first in its chapel and afterwards, still more 406 LONDON TOWN irregularly, in taverns or in private houses within the " rules " — the district within which debtors who were able to i^b." Fleet ^nc^ sureties and to PaY a percen tage on their debts were allowed to lodge. In 1824, by the way, the rules were so enlarged as to include a region about a mile and a half in circumference. The irregular marriages were celebrated without banns or licence, and when the parties to the ceremony wished them to remain unrecorded the celebrant was ready to oblige them. Acts of Parliament directed against such irregular marriages, here and elsewhere, were passed in 1689 and in later years, but though the weddings no longer took place in the chapel, they went on merrily enough in private houses within the rules. Pennant, writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, relates how, walking along the street next the prison in his youth, he was often met by the question, " Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married ? " " Along this most lawless space was hung up the frequent sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with ' Marriages performed within ' written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in. The parson was seen walking before his shop ; a squalid profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of tobacco." The disgusting pass to which things had come about the time of which Pennant wrote may be seen from this extract from the Whitehall Evening Post, July 24, 1739: — " On Tuesday last a woman . . . came to the sign of the Bull and Garter, next door to the Fleet prison, and was there married to a soldier ; in the afternoon she came again and would have been married to a butcher, but that parson who had married her in the morning refused to marry her again, which put her to the trouble of going a few doors further, to another parson, who had no scruple." Some of the celebrants of the marriages were dissolute clergymen, others of them were nothing but mock parsons. Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, in his " Brides and Bridals," has graphically sketched one of the most striking of these offenders against the canons, one Dr. Gaynam, who " lived for many years in Bride Lane, and never walked down Fleet Street in his silk gown and bands without drawing attention to his commanding figure, and handsome though signifi- Dr. Gaynam. cantly rubicund face. Nothing ever put the doctor out of humour or countenance. He was on several occasions required to bring one of his marriage registers to the Old Bailey, and give evidence in a trial for bigamy ; but no gentleman of the long robe ever disturbed the equanimity of the shameless ecclesiastic, who, smiling and bowing courteously to his questioner, answered, ' Video meliora, deteriora sequor' when an advocate asked him, ' Are you not ashamed to come and own a clan destine marriage in the face of a court of justice ? ' Even when Walter Chandler beat him with a stick, the doctor took his caning with well-bred composure. The popular nick name of the doctor declared him the bishop of an extremely hot diocese, but his manner and language were never deficient in coolness." To put a stop to such abuses as those in the Fleet, Lord Hardwicke's Bill was passed, making banns or licence necessary, and also the consent of parents if the parties were under age. The measure had, however, to encounter opposition. Charles Townshend spoke against it, denouncing it as " one of the most cruel enterprises against the fair sex that ever entered into the heart of man." " If I were concerned in promoting it," he added, " I should expect to have my eyes torn out by the young women of the first country town I passed through, for against such an enemy I could not surely hope for the protection of the gentlemen of our army." And Horace Walpole wrote against it as tending to cramp inclination and discoun tenance matrimony, and thought it amazing that such a piece of legislation should have been brought forward in a country " where liberty gives choice," and where " facility of marriage had always produced populousness" ! On the day before the Act came into opera tion Alexander Keith married nearly a_ hundred couples. Among famous or notorious denizens of the Fleet may be named the young poet Earl of Surrey, who found it " a D„enizi.s noisome place, with a pestilent of the Fleet. r ' v atmosphere ; Thomas Keys, Queen Elizabeth's serjeant porter, who had offended his royal mistress by secretly ASSOCIATIONS OF THE FLEET PRISON 407 marrying the Lady Mary Grey, sister of the Lady Jane ; Dr. Donne, the poet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, who, while a tutor, clan destinely espoused the daughter of his patron, Sir George Moore ; Thomas Nash, the satir ist (1597), for writing the Isle of Dogs ; and Sir Robert Killigrew (161 3), for talking to domitable spirit. He made of the pillory a platform, and when they gagged him harangued the crowd in dumb show by stamping. A contemporary of Prynne's and Lilburne's, James Howell, the letter-writer, came to the Fleet in 1643 for a four years' so journ, as a political suspect. His arrest does THE FLEET PRISON. From a Drawing by Rowlandson & Pugin. Sir Thomas Overbury at the prison gate of the Tower. It was into the Fleet also that some of the Marian martyrs were flung, among them Bishop Hooper, who for bed had " a little pad of straw, with a rotten ¦covering." Hither, too, were brought victims of the Star Chamber, such as Prynne and Lilburne, the former to have his ears cut off and his nostrils slit, the latter to be whipped at the cart's tail to the pillory at Westminster. From Palace Yard, Westminster, where Prynne's barbarous sentence was carried out, he was escorted back to the Fleet by a hun dred thousand sympathisers, who supported him in his agony with their prayers and shouts of encouragement. Nor could the birch tame " free-born John's " fiery and in- not appear to have dimmed his cheerfulness. " As far as I see," he wittily wrote to a friend, " I must be at dead anchor in this Fleet a long time, unless some gentle gale blow thence, to make me launch out." Another man of letters, Wycherley, had a still longer sojourn here, for he spent seven years in the Fleet as a debtor. Here, too, lived for a while Penn, the founder of a State, and Richard Savage, the poet ; and here, in 1797, died Miss Cornelys, of Soho Square, after her long career as a leader of fashion. But most famous of all the denizens of the Fleet was the immortal Mr. Pickwick, and those who would know what sort of a place the prison was in its later days may be referred to his biographer's description of it. 408 LONDON TOWN An Act for the abolition of the Fleet was passed in 1842, such of the prisoners as did not take advantage of the Insolvent The End. Debtors Act being removed to the Queen's Bench Prison. In 1844 the City Corporation acquired the property, and in 1846 the prison was pulled down. In 1864 the site, which had latterly been used as the City stoneyard, was bought by the London, Chatham, and Dover Company for the sum of £60,000, and later a part of it was acquired, at a cost of .£28,000, for the purposes land and Wales, the London Congrega tional Union, and the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches. Of the tributaries of Farringdon Street, one, Fleet Lane, has already been named in connexion with one of the Fleet Fleet Lane, bridges. It descends steeply from the Old Bailey, and winds beside the works where these pages were printed and the Memorial Hall into Farringdon Street. In Stow's day it was " a place of no great account for buildings or inhabitants," 4 ! 1 st '- SET i IBs ; — . — 1 — — * = .J ¦ — -, tffJIPJ m» I -.'¦¦• ( IBM) ¦«• Ban *m«;.- ,»¦¦! Sf. m BRIDEWELL IN I06O. The MemorialHall. of the Congregational Memorial Hall, an admirable stone structure in the French Decorated style, designed by Mr. Tarring, which commemorates the bicentenary of the ejection from the Church of England of the two thousand clergymen who refused obedience to the Act of Uniformity. Under this Act, by the way, which came into opera tion on St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24th), 1662, no fewer than 1 12 clergymen in London came out, so strong was the Puritan tradition in the capital. The Memorial Hall, which was opened in 1874, comprises a large hall, with accommodation for upwards of 1,200 persons, a library for books which had been housed in Blomfield Street, and committee-rooms and suites of offices, occu pied mostly by various religious societies, such as the Congregational Union of Eng- TurnagainLane. and from a reference to it in Massinger's play, The City Madam, it appears to have been, like Pie Corner, a centre of cookshops. Turnagain Lane, nearer the Hol born Viaduct bridge, was in the time of Edward III. called Windagain Lane, because, in Stow's words, " it goeth down west to Fleet Dyke, from whence men must turn again the same way they came." It still deserves its name, for while there is now access from it to Farringdon Street, the other end of it, by way of compensation, has no egress. In New Bridge Street, divided from Farringdon Street by Ludgate Circus, we find opposite the Ludgate Hill station Bridewell, of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway the scanty remains of Bridewell, first a palace, and afterwards a prison. Like Bridewell Dock, one of the THE STORY OF BRIDEWELL 409 docks near the mouth of the Fleet, and St. Bride's parish, it is named after a well dedicated to St. Bride, between Fleet Street and the Thames, and it in turn has lent the name to temporary prisons through out the country. It was a royal residence as early as the reign of Henry III., but little is known of its history until it was renovated or rebuilt by Henry VIII. for the reception of Charles V. of France and his suite in 1522. To Bridewell six years later the King summoned the members of his Council, the lords of his court, and the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and principal citizens of London to confide to them the scruples which, now that he had become enamoured of Anne Boleyn, troubled his conscience concerning his marriage to Queen Katharine, the widow of his deceased brother. His real object was to silence the censorious tongues which had already begun to wag, and he warned his auditors that the proudest among his subjects should know that he was their sovereign, and should answer with their heads for the presumption of their tongues. At this time Bridewell was in the hands of Cardinal Wolsey, but on his fall in 1529 it reverted to the fickle sovereign who had bestowed it upon him. In 1553 Bride well was presented by Edward VI. to the City as a Workhouse and House of Correction, as the result of an of Correction. aPPeal to Cecil from Bishop Ridley, who wrote to the Secretary that the house " would wonderful well serve to lodge Christ in if He might find such good friends in the Court as would procure in His cause." The Mayor and Aldermen entered upon possession in 1555, and levies were made upon the City Com panies for funds to adapt it to its new purposes. Two years later Bethlem and Bridewell were amalgamated, and ever since then the two institutions have had the same Governors and Treasurer. Bride well soon became pretty much of a nuisance to the neighbourhood by reason of the swarms of vagrants whom it attracted. Its importance to the City as a House of Correction may be gathered from the fact that in 1597 no fewer than 5,468 offenders were committed to it within a period of two months. In his lecture on " Old Bridewell," read 27 before the London and Middlesex Archaeo logical Society in 1905, the Rev. R. S. Mylne, one of the Governors, and a great-grandson of the Robert Mylne who built the first Blackfriars Bridge, gives some interesting extracts from the Bridewell and Bethlem records, among them one which relates how Richard Foster, an apprentice of " the good Photo : Pictorial Agency. CELL IN THE PRESENT BRIDEWELL. wife Dean," and another boy of the name of Young, were brought to Bridewell in 1559 for having had " lewd & naughty talk of the Queen's highness, & thereon [one] saying she must live 30 years and the other said but 2 years and having been examined were found to be very asses, & fools and were therefor. here whipped the same day & year & so dis charged." In the same year one Jane Foster was brought in for that she " very naughtily & lewdly took upon her to enchant and as it were to bewitch Margaret Stone, the daughter of John Stone, saddler, without Newgate, & practised the bringing her unto the company of one Foster, a serving man only for lewd or evill purpose." What punishment was meted out to this offender is not stated. Destroyed in the Great Fire, Bridewell was rebuilt in 1668 on an even more consider able scale, in two quadrangles, the larger 4io LONDON TOWN of which fronted the Fleet. About the end of that century Ned W ard, in " The London Spy," describes the flogging vnc* i6'1 ^o which the prisoners were sub jected. Men and women alike were whipped on the naked back before the Court of Governors, the President sitting hammer in hand to knock when the flogging should cease. When women were being flogged they would incessantly implore him to knock, and the supplication, " O, good Sir Robert, knock ! " became a canting reproach to indicate that a woman had been whipped as a harlot at Bridewell. When Madame Creswell, a notorious bawd of Charles IP's reign, died in Bridewell, she left £10 for a sermon to be preached at her funeral, the legacy to be contingent upon the parson saying nothing but what was well of her. A preacher was found who hit upon an ingenious way of fulfilling the condition. Having discoursed on the general subject of mortality, he concluded : — " By the will of the deceased it is expected that I should mention her, and say nothing but what was well 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 of Creswell, she lived in Clerkenwell, and she died in Bridewell." Bridewell yielded to Hogarth the subject of the fourth plate in his " Harlot's Progress," finished in 1733. In a long, dilapidated tiled shed some female prisoners are beating hemp on wooden blocks, and a truculent warder is raising his cane to strike a poor girl who seems scarce able to lift her mallet, while her companions in durance deride her fine apron, laced hood and figured gown. An idle apprentice is standing on tiptoe to reach the pillory, on which is inscribed the admonition, " Better to work than stand thus." According to Maitland, writing in 1739, Bridewell "main tained and brought up in divers arts and mysteries a considerable number of appren tices ; besides a great number of poor indi gent vagrants and strumpets, that are kept at work." In 1832 the number of persons confined here was 714, besides 94 in the House of Occupation in St. George's Fields. The ordinary prisoners were persons of either sex sentenced by the City magistrates to terms of imprisonment not exceeding three months. In i860 a new scheme for the management of Bridewell was sanctioned by which it was superseded as a prison by the new City jail at Holloway ; but the Governors were re quired to continue the use of the House of Occupation in St. George's Fields as a training school for girls and to erect a new House of Occupation for boys. Four years later the prison was demolished, and the chapel dis appeared in 1 87 1, leaving only the hall, court-room, and Governor's house, with some cells for refractory City apprentices, and the gateway, surmounted with the head of Edward VI., which had formed the chief entrance to the Hospital. Among the pictures still preserved in the hall is one showing Edward VI. handing the charter to the Lord Mayor : it was formerly attributed to Hans Holbein, like a similar one at Christ's Hospital, but is now generally acknowledged to be the work of another hand. In these days very few apprentices find their way to Bridewell. The power of the City 'prentices declined in the eighteenth century. Those of recent days, compared with the tribe in mediaeval times, seem to have lost in robustiousness what they may have gained in sharpness, and few of them probably have so much as heard of the place whose name was a sound of evil omen to generations of their predecessors. It should be added that a sentence by the City Chamberlain to deten tion at Bridewell does not count as a criminal conviction, and that out of the funds of the Hospital are now maintained some five hundred boys and girls, who receive a good education and are then put out in the world. Part of the site of Bridewell now forms Bridewell Place, where are the vicarage of St. Bride's, a comely building of red brick, the work of Mr. Basil Champneys, and the offices of the London City Mission. Close by, at the Tudor Street corner of New Bridge Street, is the handsome stone building which forms the headquarters of one of the greatest of our foreign missionary agencies, the London Missionary Society. The foundation- stone was laid by Sir Albert Spicer, M.P., the treasurer of the Society, on the 12th of January, 1904, and the building was opened early in 1905. The Society was founded in 1795 by a band of men which included Episcopalians and Presbyterians as well as Independents, and though it has been most closely identified with the Congregational communion, it has CHATHAM PLACE, BLACKFRIARS 411 never departed from its fundamental principle, to send to the heathen " not Presbyterianism, Independency, Episcopacy, or any other form of Church order and government, but the glorious Gospel of the blessed God." Its first field of labour was the islands of the South Pacific, in which interest had been awakened by the story of Captain Cook's voyages, and in 1796 the Duff sailed from the Thames with thirty missionaries on board for the evangelisation of those parts. It numbers on its roll of missionaries the great names of Moffat, Livingstone, Mor rison, John Williams, William Ellis, James Legge, Chalmers, and John Mackenzie — to speak only of such as have gone to their reward, and it now maintains in the mis sion field some three hundred men and women from these islands, besides thou sands of native agents. When New Bridge Street was created it absorbed Chatham Place which must be mentioned because of its association Tragedy, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his wife. The poet-painter came to dwell here in 1852, and here he was living when, eight years later, he married Miss Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler, herself a milliner, to whom he had been engaged for nine years. At first they took a lodging at Hampstead, but presently settled at Chatham Place, where Rossetti still had his studio. A lady of remarkable beauty, Miss Siddal had for some years suffered in her health, and it did not improve after her marriage. A shrewd and sympathetic physician told her husband that the leading cause of her illness was mental power long pent up and lately overtaxed. In her " Memorials '• of her husband, Lady Burne-Jones explains the meaning of the diagnosis. " This delicately organised creature, who had spent the first sixteen years of her life in circum stances that practically forbade the unfolding of her powers, had been suddenly brought into the warmth and light of Gabriel's genius and love, under which her whole nature had quickened and expanded until her bodily strength way but didso as the MRS. ROSSETTI Rossetti himself not realise this to spare her rcing influ ence, or restrict his demands upon her imagination and sym pathy." At Lady Burne - Jones's first meeting with Mrs. Rossetti, she received " an impression, which never wore away, of romance and tragedy between her and her husband." When the tragedy came she thus wrote of it to a sister : — " I scarcely believe the words as I write them, but yesterday I saw her dead. The evening before she was in good health (for her), and very good spirits — she dined with her hus band and Swinburne, and made very merry with them — Gabriel took her home, saw her prepare for bed, went out to the Working Men's College, and on his return found her insensible from the effects of an overdose of laudanum, which she used to take medicinally. She never knew him or anyone else for a second — four physicians and a surgeon did everything human skill could devise, but in spite of all, she died . . . soon after seven in the morning. ... I went down directly I heard it, and saw her poor body laid in the very bed wrhere I have seen her lie and laugh in the midst of illness." Under the impulse of his agony the bereaved husband laid in the coffin, as a last offering, the MS. volume containing almost all the poems he had then written, and they were buried, but afterwards his friends prevailed upon him to recall the sacrifice and the MSS. were exhumed. AS DRAWN BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. By Permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti. OLD VIEW OF LUDGATE HILL, SHOWING THE CAMBRIDGE COACH LEAVING LA BELLE SAUVAGE. From a Coloured Lithograph in the Biitish Museum. CHAPTER XXXVIII LUDGATE HILL Ludgate : The Name — A City Prison — Last Scene in the Wyatt Rising — The Street widened— The Crippled Children's Alderman — The "London" Tavern — The "Daniel Lambert"— La Belle Sauvage and its Story — Grinling Gibbons— St. Martin's Church — Ludgate Hill Tributaries — Ludgate Circus The Gate THE gate after which this thoroughfare is named stood below the church of St. Martin, between that building and the present London Tavern, and a few yards above the end of the Old Bailey. The tradition recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth is that the gate com memorates its builder, King Lud, a British monarch who flourished six-and-sixty years before the Christian era. There is quite a sheaf of other conjectures, most of them nothing but more or less happy guesses. Even to state them would absorb more space than can here be spared, and it must suffice to say that the most probable derivation, which Mr. Lethaby, one of the best informed and most cautious of our antiquaries, accepts, is that of Lambard, the historian of Kent, that Ludgate is simply Saxon for postern. This derivation finds some slight support in the fact that up to Stow's time the east gate of the City — Aldgate — bore the name of the Postern. Whenever Ludgate was first built, and whatever the name signifies, it was un doubtedly repaired or rebuilt in the year 12 1 5, when the barons under Robert Fitz walter came to London to wring Magna Charta from King John. It 1260 it was again repaired, this time by Henry III., who embellished it with effigies of King Lud and his sons. By the time of Queen Elizabeth it had become so dilapidated that in 1586 it was rebuilt, with figures of Lud and his two sons in Roman costumes on the City side, and a statue of the Queen herself on the west side. Long before this, in the reign of Richard II., it had become a first-class City prison, for freemen of the City and clergymen committed for debts and minor offences, and in 1463 it had been enlarged by Agnes Foster, widow A City Prison. 41- REBELS AT LUDGATE HILL 413 of Stephen Foster, of the Fishmongers' Company, Mayor in 1454. By the generosity of this benevolent woman a chapel was added for the poor prisoners, and leads were provided upon which they might take exercise and breathe fresh air. A prison Ludgate con tinued to be to the end of its career. Gutted, but not structurally destroyed, in the Great Fire, it was repaired, and it remained standing until 1760, when on the petition of the inhabitants of the wards of Farringdon it was taken down as an obstruction to traffic, the prisoners being temporarily transferred to the London Workhouse in Bishopsgate Street. The effigies of King Lud and his sons were presented by the City authorities to Sir Francis Gosling, the banker, whose intention it was to set them up at the east end of St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street. They, however, found their way to the parish bone- house. For the statue of Queen Elizabeth, also presented to Sir Francis Gosling, a niche was found in the wall of St. Dunstan's, and it may still be seen over the entrance to the vestry-room of the present St. Dunstan's. Of all the scenes of turmoil that Ludgate looked down upon, none can have been more exciting than the last act of the Wyatt rising. We have already seen (p. 266) how the rebels failed to gain entrance to the City by way of London Bridge. Thus foiled, Wyatt, as we said, marched up the river to Kingston, crossed the stream there, and then de- scendedupon London. Near Charing Cross, with some three or four hundred men, he was cut off from the rest of his followers. Arriving at Lud Gate he knocked for admission, but the gate was held for Queen Mary by a strong force under Rebuilding. Lord William Howard, and baffled and discomfited, he sat him down to rest on a stall just outside the Bell Savage Inn, a few yards further down the hill. He roused himself, however, and with some forty adherents fought his way back to Temple Bar, but there found further retreat cut off and surrendered himself. He suffered for his presumption on Tower Hill on the nth of the following April. The highway which descends steeply from St. Paul's to Ludgate Circus was formerly only known as Ludgate Hill as far up as the gate, the upper portion, from the gate to St. Paul's, being Ludgate Street, and so it appears in Ogilby's map (1677) ; but the latter name has now disappeared. Of late years the street has been widened, and now permits a better view of the west front of St. Paul's than was formerly to be had, though it is still not in alignment with the cathedral. The widening was completed in the year 1893, at a cost of some £230,000. This great work was brought to a successful issue largely by the efforts of Sir William Treloar, Bart., now Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, who, born on the hill, where his name is to be seen on both sides of the street, has written its history. Sir William Treloar is honourably famous for his interest in crippled children, and his Mayoralty in 1906-7 was dis tinguished by the establishment, out of funds raised mainly by his influence, of a home for such children at Alton, in Hampshire. Every vestige of antiquity except St. Martin's Church has now vanished, but among the buildings which have taken the place of the LUD GATE, THE WEST FRONT. 414 LONDON TOWN older ones are some of architectural merit, and particularly the London City and Mid land Bank, designed in the Renaissance style by Mr. T. E. Collcutt, the architect of the Imperial Institute, and completed in 1892. The London Tavern, referred to as marking the site of Ludgate, is the suc- The London f th London Coffee-house, Tavern. J of some note in its day for its wines, its clubs, its publishers' sales of stocks and copyrights, and from the fact that here juries from the Central Criminal Court hard by were lodged when cases had to be adjourned from one day to another. Opened in 1731, it was closed in 1 867, and on the site, which was acquired by the City Corporation for .£38,500, the present tavern has been built. In the early years of the nineteenth century the " London " was kept by the grandfather and then by the father of John Leech, the caricaturist, who was born within its walls. Nearer the top of the hill, on the same north side, stood, until 1908, the " Daniel Lam bert " hotel and restaurant, which replaced the " King's Head," an old tavern which in the early years of the nineteenth century was kept by one Daniel Lambert, a Leicester shire man, famous for his immense bulk. At his death in 1809 he weighed fifty-three stone, and that there was a liberal proportion of muscle in his composition is evidenced by his ability to carry a burden of more than four hundredweight and a half. In 1806 he exhibited himself in Piccadilly, and was as much the talk of the town as in later years was " General " Tom Thumb. He died three years later, at the age of thirty-nine. But the most famous of the inns of Ludgate Hill was that which bore the name of La Belle Sauvage, for hundreds of years one of the most renowned of the coaching hostelries of the City. Everyone has heard of the charming derivation of the title, suggested, no doubt in pure fancy, by Addison, in the Spectator (No. 28). " As for the Bell-Savage, which is the sign of a savage man standing by a bell," he wrote, " I was formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old romance translated out of the French ; which gives an account of a very beautiful woman who was found in a wilder ness and is called in the French la belle Sauvage ; and is ever)' where translated by La Belle Sauvage, our countrymen the Bell-Savage." Can we accept this pretty theory ? The late Walter Thornbury, in " Old and New London," was too ruthful to handle it with anything but gentleness, though reading between the lines one sees that he had little enough faith in it. The facts, one must sadly admit, are all opposed to it ; nor do they favour the theory to which Thornbury leaned, that once upon a time the inn was kept by a Mistress Isabella or Isabel Savage, who in time came to be confused with the heroine of the French romance. This hypothesis would deserve consideration if it could be shown that the Bell Savage was ever kept by a Mistress Isabel or Isabella Savage. It is true that Samuel Pegge, the author of "Anecdotes of the English Language " (d. 1 800), stated that a friend of his had seen an old lease of the house in which Isabella Savage figured as the tenant ; but J. H. Burn, in his " London Traders, Tavern and Coffee-house Tokens" (pp. 136-37) quotes a deed (cited also by Lysons), dated February 5th, 1453, by which John Frensh confirmed to his mother, Joan Frensh, " totum ten. sive hospi- cium cum suis pertin. vocat Savagesynne, alias vocat le Belle on the Hope ; " — " all that tene ment or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage's Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop," in the parish of St. Bridget in Fleet Street, London. By the phrase " on the hoop " was no doubt implied the ivy-bush, fashioned, as usual, into a garland. Here, then, we have clear proof that in the fifteenth century, long prior to the date of any lease which Pegge's friend is likely to have seen, the tavern was known alternatively as Savage's, probably after an original or an early landlord* and as the Bell. Rather later the two names, instead of being used as alternatives, were occasionally combined, for Lambarde, writing in the six teenth century, mentions " the Bell Savage, or theatre," as a place to which folk re paired " to behold bear-baiting interludes, or fence play " ; and other writers of this and later periods also style it the Bell Savage. In an advertisement in the London Gazette in 1676 (February 15th), it is styled the " Bell Sauvage " Inn, but a few * Riley records that in 1380 one William Lawton was pilloried for attempting to defraud William Savage, of Fleet Street, in the parish of St. Bridget. This shows, at any rate, that a citizen of the name of Savage dwelt in the vicinity. LA BELLE SAUVAGE 415 years later (1683), in the same periodical, it appears once more as the " Bell and Savage." In 1672, as Mr. Hilton Price records in his " Signs of Old London," the landlord issued a token bearing a figure of an Indian woman holding a bow and arrow, and possibly it was this that set Addison's fancy to work. The precise genesis of " La Belle Sauvage " cannot now be traced. Possibly it is to be regarded as a piece of folk-lore, many minds being concerned in the gradual substitution of this more euphonious title, with its sug gestions of romance, for " Savage's" and the "Bell." Early in the nineteenth century this inn which had once borne two names was for a time, at any rate, divided, one part of it being styled the "Bell," and the other the " Belle Sauvage." In 1568 the "Bell Savage" was be queathed by John Craythorne, together with another messuage, that of the " Rose," to the Cutlers' Company, subject to certain con ditions. The site of the inn is still the property of that Company, and in fulfilment of the conditions imposed by the will, exhibitions at Oxford and Cam bridge and gifts to the poor of St. Bride's parish are provided out of the bequest. To dispute Addison's pretty fancy concern ing the derivation of La Belle Sauvage is to the present writer no welcome task, and in what is still left to be said about the old inn we may revert to the musical name by which the place has so long been known, and will no doubt through all future time be known. The Tenement consisted of two courts, the outer entered by an archway from Ludgate Hill, the inner by a second archway. The inn itself, fronted with two tiers of galleries, surrounded / STATUE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH FROM LUDGATE, NOW AT ST. DUNSTAN'S, FLEET STREET. the inner court. In the early days of the drama plays were here rudely performed, the audience occupying the galleries above and the road way below. Here, too, in Queen Elizabeth's time, was a school of fencing. It was at La Belle Sauvage, again, that Banks the showman, whom we came across in Paternoster Row in connexion with Tar- leton, the low comedian, delighted gaping crowds of the ii citizens with the sur prising feats of his horse Marocco, who, with his master, pre sently found his way to Rome, where both were burnt for the sin of witchcraft. In the outer court of La Belle Sauvage were some private houses, in one of which, No. 11, lived Grinling Gibbons, whose inimitable wood-carving graces St. Paul's and many other City churches, as well as the halls of some of the City Companies. In his " Anecdotes " Horace Walpole says that while living here Gibbons " carved a pot of flowers, which shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that passed by." No man, he remarks, had ever before " given to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, or linked together the various productions of the elements with a free disorder natural to each species." With the railway era La Belle Sauvage, like the other coaching inns of the metropolis, found much of its custom gone. The End. Gradually it fell into decay, and at last it was demolished to make way for the older part of the works and offices where " London Town, Past and Present," is printed and published. Two relics of the inn are preserved at the present " Yard " — a china plate of antique pattern, inscribed, in blue 416 LONDON TOWN letters, " La Belle Sauvage Hotel," and a stone bas-relief of the Elephant and Castle, the crest of the Cutlers' Company, which once stood over the gateway of the old inn, below the sign of the Bell, and now looks down upon the Yard from the eastern side. Of the church of St. Martin, Ludgate, on the north side of the street, which serves two other parishes as well, the origin is involved dome of St. Paul's, a fussy mediocrity who was always presuming to interpret Fox's sentiments. Coleridge, one suspects, must have been walking down Fleet Street, on the left hand side, when he was struck with the officiousness of St. Martin's steeple, for it comes into the view of the cathedral almost all the way along that side of the street.. Had the Ludgate Hill railway bridge, which OLD LA BELLE SAUVAGE : THE INNER COURT. in obscurity, and little is known about it before the reign of Henry VI., when it was rebuilt. It perished in the Great Ludgate!"'8' Fire> and was rebuilt by Wren, who is said to have given it the slender spire which is its most distinctive feature as a foil to the dome of St. Paul's- The tradition may be safely accepted, for it is incredible that Wren should have failed to remember that the church would come into the western views of his masterpiece. Unob trusive as is the graceful spire, it was employed by Coleridge for a sinister purpose when he likened to it, from its constantly getting in the way when you wish to see the Thornbury figured as " an enormous flat-iron " lying across " the chest of Ludgate Hill," been in existence in Coleridge's day, he would, by comparison, have felt grateful to St. Martin's spire. But his simile was so felicitous that we may excuse his disrespect to not the least beautiful of Wren's steeples. The names of the tributaries of Ludgate Hill bear witness to their proximity to St. Paul's. Ave Maria Lane, on the Ecclesiastical north side, was so called, ac- Names. cording to Stow, " of text-writers and bead-makers." Creed Lane, facing it on the south, was originally known as Spur riers' Row, from the spur makers who here PILGRIM STREET AND LUDGATE CIRCUS 417 plied their craft ; but it has borne its present designation since the time of Queen Eliza beth. Pilgrim Street, running parallel with Ludgate Hill on the south side, is said to have been named from its being the road whence pilgrims coming by water made their way from the landing-place to the cathedral ; but this is not probable, for in the eighteenth century it appears to have been known as " the Wall," from the fact of its marking the line of the old City wall. It offers one of the few points at which a moderately good near view of the steeple of St. Bride's Church, in Fleet Street, can be had. Ludgate Circus, where Ludgate Hill ends and Fleet Street begins, was constructed during the years 1864-75 as a corollary to the Holborn Valley Improvement. It contains on the south side an obelisk to John Wilkes, who was Alderman for the Ward of Farringdon Without, and on the north side a companion monu- Ludgate ment to Alderman Waithman, whose draper's shop stood on this spot before the Circus was constructed, it being until then the corner house of Fleet Street on the north side. This champion of Queen Caroline, who was Lord Mayor in 1823-24, and was five times sent to Parlia ment by the City, died in 1833. At Ludgate Circus, it may be added, the north and south stream of traffic between Farringdon Street and Blackfriars Bridge crosses the east and west current flowing between the City and Charing Cross, and at no spot in the metropolis is a subway more badly needed. But London, as we have said, takes not kindly to subways. BAS-RELIEF FROM OLD LA BELLE SAUVAGE [p. 4l6). CHAPTER XXXIX FLEET STREET The Name — Taverns : The " Devil "—The Apollo Club and Ben Jonson — Dr. Johnson — The " Cock "— Dr. Johnson and Boswell at the " Mitre"— The " Cheshire Cheese "—The " Rainbow "— " Dick's "— The Finest House in the City — The St. Dunstan's and Whitefriars Clubs — Banks: Child's — Gosling's — Hoare's — A White Bird as Portent — Printers and Booksellers in Fleet Street — Christopher Pinch beck — Hardham's— Famous Residents— " Mr. Punch" — Sothern and the Constable— Newspapers — St. Dunstan's Church — St. Bride's T HE street to which we have The Name. now come, though it was without the City walls, is one of the most ancient and most interesting of all the City thoroughfares. It was named, not from the river which ran at its foot, and separated it from Ludgate Hill, but from the bridge which crossed the one and connected it with the other, for in the thirteenth century, as Riley has shown, it was known among men as Fleetbridge Street. Early in the next century it appears as " Fletestrete, in the suburbs of London," and Fleet Street it has ever since been styled. Famous in past days for its taverns, its print ing and publishing houses, its goldsmiths and bankers, its waxworks and other shows, it has come to be the centre and head quarters of journalism ; and here and in its tributary courts and streets are the offices of several London daily and many weekly papers, together with the London offices of most of the great provincial newspapers. Of all the London streets, none is so bedizened with advertisements as this, a circumstance which suggests that newspaper men have enough faith in their own prescrip tion to take it. None of the Fleet Street taverns, probably, is so well known to fame as the " Devil," which stood on the south side, The " Devil." between Temple Bar and the Middle Temple Gate. Origin ally known as the St. Dunstan Tavern, after St. Dunstan's Church, almost opposite, but a little further down the street, its sign showed St. Dunstan hauling the devil along by the nose, and it was but natural, as is suggested in Wheatley and Cunningham's " London, Past and Present," that it should come to bear " the name of the more popular of the two personages." Let us recall the legend of St. Dunstan's encounter with the devil in connexion with this haunt of roysterers rather than associate it with the church. At the mystic hour of midnight, on certain nights of the year, says Mr. Callow, in his " Old London Taverns," the Evil One " was wont to come and prowl about in search of any belated wayfarer he could find, to carry him off to his sulphurous dominions far down below. One night the good St. Dunstan . . . stepped forth from the vestry or some other door, armed with a strong pair of red-hot tongs or pincers, and seizing the Evil One with them by the nose, held on tight and dragged him to and fro, up and down the street in front of the church and pump, heedless of his roars and screams. . . . After dragging the poor wretch of a devil till the dawn was just about to break, he hauled him near the Temple, and throwing him over the tops of the houses into the domain of the lawyers, there left him, among the only companions the holy saint thought fitted to associate with him. Ever after that the legal fraternity have gone by the name of the Devil's Own." The " Devil " Tavern was the local habita tion of the Apollo Club, the jovial fraternity which is so indissolubly associated ciubApolI° with the fame of Ben Jonson, " big Ben " let us call him, as a variant upon the more familiar "rare Ben." The great room of the tavern was sacred to the Club, and over its portal was a bust of the Sun - god, which is still preserved by Messrs. Child and Co., the bankers, in one of 4.18 THE TEMPLE BAR END OE OLD FLEET STREET. From a Drawing by \V. Capon. 420 LONDON TOWN their corridors, together with the rules of the Club, in Latin of Jonson's own, inscribed in gilt letters on a black board. Here Jonson presided, and drank deep, and capped Ten verses and jests with all who dared to Jonson. J enter the lists with him " of the moun tain bulk and the rocky face," to borrow his own words. Not often, we may be sure, was he worsted in these wit combats ; but once, according to a story which recalls a very similar one that is told of Beethoven and his landowning brother, he came off second best in an encounter with a mere bucolic block head. The man from the country was boast ing of his property, until at last Ben roared out, " What signify to us your dirt and your clods ? Where you have an acre of land I have ten acres of wit ! " " Have you so, good Master Wise-acre ? " retorted the other, to his assailant's confusion. " Why now, Ben, you seem to be quite stung," cried out a merry friend. " In faith, I was never so pricked by a hobnail before," growled Leviathan. In Ben Jonson's day the tavern was kept by Simon Wadloe, in whose honour was written the drinking song " Old Sir Simon the King," the favourite ditty of Squire Western. It continued long after Ben's death to be one of the best known of City taverns ; and here in 175 1 we find that other leviathan of literature, Ben's namesake but for a single letter, giving an entertainment to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, " The Life of Harriet Stuart." The company, with Mrs. Lennox and her husband for chief guests, assembled about eight o'clock. " The supper," writes Sir John Hawkins, one of Johnson's biographers, " was elegant ; John son had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress and had written verses ; and, further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. The night passed, as must be imagined, in pleasant conversation and harmless mirth, intermingled at different periods with the refreshment of coffee and tea. About five a.m. Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade ; but the far greater part of the company had deserted the colours of Bacchus, and were with difficulty rallied to partake of a second refreshment of coffee, which was scarcely ended when the day began to dawn. This phenomenon began to put us in mind of our reckoning ; but the waiters were all so overcome with sleep that it was two hours before we could get a bill, and it was not till near eight that the creaking of the street-door gave the signal for our departure." After this the " Devil " began to degenerate, and in 1776 it was the meeting-place of a Pandemonium Club. In 1787 the freehold was acquired by Messrs. Child, who built upon the site the houses known as Child's Place, which were demolished in 1880, in order that the bank itself might be rebuilt on a larger scale. But the memory of the Apollo Club is still preserved in Apollo Court, across the street, behind the Law Courts branch of the Bank of England. On part of the site of the Bank of England stood the " Cock " Tavern, dating at least from the early part of the seventeenth Tavern. century. In The Intelligencer for July ist, 1665, appeared an advertisement announcing that it was to be temporarily closed — on account of the Plague, though the reason was suppressed. " This is to notify," it ran, "that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock Ale House, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmas next, so that all persons whatsoever who have any accompts with the said master, or Farthings belonging to the said house, are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July, and shall receive satisfaction." It was to this inn, three years later, that the amorous Pepys brought the beautiful Mrs. Knipp, the actress, of whom his wife was exceeding jealous ; and here, as he records, they " drank, eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry." But the associa tion which has immortalised the tavern is that with the author of " Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue." The " plump head waiter " of whom Tennyson sang has long since gone to his rest, and ere this has learnt, one may hope, to forgive the poet's familiarity. The tavern itself also has passed away. It was closed in 1886 and pulled down in the following year, the site having been acquired OLD FLEET STREET TAVERNS 421 BUST OF APOLLO IN MESSRS. CHILD & CO.'S BANK (/. 418). by the Bank of England, who, by award of a jury at Guildhall, had to pay the sum of .£19,698 for the freehold and goodwill. An old tankard was presented to Tennyson as a memento, and the gift elicited from him a letter in which he promised to keep the vessel in his family as an heirloom. Some of the oak fittings and a handsome fireplace were preserved and incorporated with the new restaurant of this name on the other side of the street. The gilded bird which struts on its perch above the entrance to the present " Cock " is sometimes said to be the ancient chanticleer which is attributed to Grinling Gibbons. But this is not so. About the time when the old tavern was demolished, the sign mysteriously disappeared. It was supposed to have been stolen, but its removal turned out to be the work of some practical jokers, who, when they had sufficiently amused themselves, gave up their booty. Since that time the treasure has for safety's sake been kept inside. At least as ancient as the " Cock " was the " Mitre " Tavern, on the south side of the street, dating back to Eliza- " Mitr " bethan dayS" Th'S 'S the " Mitre " of which Boswell has so much to say. Here, in June, 1763, he came to sup with Johnson for the first time, and one can imagine his delight when the great man at last said to him, " Give me your hand ; I A Famous Gibe.you have have taken a liking to you." It was at the " Mitre," on another occasion, that Johnson indulged in the most successful of his gibes at Boswell's compatriots. " I believe, sir," he said to Ogilvie, who had claimed that Scotland had many noble prospects, " I believe, sir, a great many ; Norway, too, has noble, wild prospects, and Lapland is re markable for prodigious noble, wild pros pects ; but, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England." It was at the " Mitre," again, that Johnson paid one of his fine tributes to London : " Sir, the happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." Like the other taverns we have named, the " Mitre " was destined to be swallowed up in a bank. It ceased to be an inn in 1788, and after being put to other uses, was pulled down in 1829, in order that the Messrs. Hoare might extend their banking premises. The present " Mitre " Tavern, in Mitre Court, further down the street, often supposed to have been the " Mitre " frequented by Dr. Johnson, was not known by this name until the " Mitre " had ceased to be a tavern ; before this it was styled " Joe's Coffee-house." " Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese," in Wine Office Court, on the north side of the street, is in OLD SIGN OF THE "COCK" TAVERN. 422 LONDON TOWN aspect the most ancient of all the Fleet Street taverns as we now know them. The present tavern claims to date from "Cheese " l^7> when the house was rebuilt after the Fire. The low-roofed rooms are still furnished with the old straight- back settles, and the floors are still reli giously sanded. " The Cheese," to use the endearing diminutive of its habitue's, is proud to have numbered Charles Dickens among its patrons, and even more so of its tradi tional association with Dr. Johnson; and the corner seat beside the fireplace of the prin cipal room on the ground floor is pointed out as that which he was wont to occupy. Though there is no direct evidence that he frequented the house, the probabilities are quite in favour of his having done so. Wine Office Court is close to Gough Square, where he lived for ten years, and he could have got to the " Cheshire Cheese " without going into Fleet Street at all. And Mr. Percy Fitz gerald recalls that an old solicitor, a Mr. Cyrus Jay, who began his visits to the tavern about twenty years after Johnson's death, has recorded that he met tradesmen there who declared that they well remembered both Johnson and Goldsmith as frequenters of the place. In Wine Office Court, nearly opposite the entrance to the " Cheshire Cheese," stood, until 1903, the house which was believed to be that in which Gold smith wrote " The Vicar of Wakefield." He came to Wine Office Court from Green Arbour Court (p. 381) in 1760, and remained here about two years. The " Bolt-in-Tun," now replaced by a railway receiving office, No. 64, on the south side of the street, was formerly a coaching inn. It was known under that name so long ago as the fifteenth century, when a grant of the property was conferred upon the White Friars. The "Rainbow," No. 15, also on the south side, was origin- "Rainbow ¦¦ a^ a c°ffee"house, and was opened as such, in 1657, by one James Farr, a barber, who was indicted as a nuisance by neighbours whose delicate nostrils were offended by the smell of the roasting coffee. It has also been known as " Nando's " — a contraction probably of Fer- dinando's — which has been confused with the Inner Temple Gate-house. It was while the "Rainbow" bore the title of Nando's that Thurlow, by a lucky display of his argu mentative abilities in the presence of some lawyers, won his first brief. Another tavern which was originally a coffee-house is Peele's, on the north side, at the corner of Fetter Lane. Yet another coffee-house which be came an hotel and restaurant was " Dick's," No. 8, on the south side, over- " DicK's." looking Hare Court in the Temple. It was opened in 1680 by one Richard Turvor, or Turver, and after him was sometimes called " Richard's," though it began to be known as " Dick's " at least as early as 1693. It changed its status, and was a good deal altered structurally, about the year 1875, but it was not finally demolished until 1899. At "Dick's" it was that Cowper, the poet, as is recorded in his own words in the Life by Southey, passed through a crisis in his life. He had resolved upon self-destruction, and fancying that a newspaper letter which he read while at breakfast here was directed at himself, and was written by someone who had divined his purpose, he " flung down the paper in a strong fit of passion " and Tushed from the room to make an end of himself. To this painful episode we shall return in our chapter on the Temple. The oldest surviving house in Fleet Street — and, now that Crosby Hall has gone, the finest specimen of ancient domestic Legacy.°US architecture in the City— is the Inner Temple Gatehouse, just opposite Chancery Lane. Until a few years ago it had a lie printed broad on its face. Its claim to be "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey " is absolutely unsup ported by evidence. It dates from 1610, when it was rebuilt as the " Prince's Arms," and as the design in the centre of the ceiling of the front room on the first floor refers to Henry, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of James I., it was probably the Council-chamber of the Duchy of Cornwall, which, at least as early as 161 7, is known to have been located in Fleet Street. Afterwards the " Prince's Arms " became the " Fountain," and towards the end of the eighteenth century (1795) Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks were installed here, and here remained until about 18 16. The house was acquired by the London County Council in 1900, in order that it might not go the way of other relics of antiquity THE INNER TEMPLE GATE-HOUSE. By permission of the London County Council. THE ST. DUNSTAN'S AND WHITEFRIARS CLUBS 423 in Fleet Street, and the architect of that authority made the interesting discovery that the front visible from the street was a false screen, and that the original front was on the first floor, some twenty inches behind the other. The false front, with its equally false legend, has been now removed, and the whole building restored, and the large room on the first floor, known as the Council - chamber, with an enriched plaster ceiling, is now accessible to the public during certain hours of the day, the City Corporation contributing ,£2,500 towards the purchase money on that under standing. Anderton's Hotel, on the north side, opened in 1880, replaced Anderton's Coffee-house, which was long known as " The Anderton's. Horn " Tavern, left under the title of " The Horn in the Hoop," in 1405, to the Goldsmiths' Company, who are still the owners of the property. It was at Ander ton's in its earlier coffee-house days that the St. Dunstan's Club was started in 1790 by seventeen gentlemen inhabitants of the Ward of Farringdon Without. Two years later John Wilkes was elected a member. Among the early entries in the club book is one under date the 2nd of April, 1794, recording a wager of a gallon of claret that Robespierre's head would be off within a year if he remained in France. On the 8th of October the bet was reported to have been won, the revolutionary having been guillotined on the 28th of July. The club seems to have left Anderton's Coffee-house or to have fallen into desuetude in 1799, but it was revived in 185 1 at the Sussex Hotel, Bouverie Street. It shifted successively to " Dick's," to Peele's, to the "Rainbow," and then to the " Cheshire Cheese," where it forgathered till it ceased to be. At Anderton's are held the pleasant gatherings of the Whitefriars Club, a fraternity composed chiefly of authors and journalists and artists, which was founded in 1868, and first met at Radley's Hotel in Bridge Street, Blackfriars. When that hotel was pulled down, the Club migrated to the " Mitre " and was styled the Whitefriars ; afterwards it removed to Anderton's, where it has its own room, of which the walls bear an interesting collection of the photographs of past and present Friars. In the struggle for existence, as we have seen, some of the old Fleet Street taverns have not been able to hold their Chiirrs3"1"' own against the banks. Of these we must first speak of Child's, at the extreme western end of the street on the south side. The old bank, pulled down in 1880, was in the days of Queen Elizabeth a tavern, with the " Mary- gold " for sign. Then it was taken, early in the reign of Charles I., by William Wheeler, whose ancestors had carried on business as goldsmiths first in Chepe (a reference to John Wheeler, goldsmith of Chepe, has been found as far back as 1559) and afterwards in Fleet Street. In 1676 the name of Wheeler dis appears, the business having come to Robert Blanchard and Francis Child, both of them apprentices to William Wheeler the younger, the son of the William Wheeler who took the "Marygold." In 1681 Blanchard died, and then Francis Child became possessor ROOM IN THE OLD " COCK " TAVERN {p. 420). 424 LONDON TOWN of the whole fortune of the Wheelers and Blanchards. It was Francis Child, have said, of the we an apprentice, as younger William Wheeler, and afterwards his son - in - law, who converted the concern into a bank his sons after him also were knighted, Robert and Francis, the latter of whom was M.P. for the City and for Middlesex, and Lord Mayor in 1731-32. Until 1874 the accounts of the bank were stored in a room over old Temple Bar, but in that year the arch gave way under Photo: Pictorial Agency. dr. Johnson's room" in the "Cheshire cheese" {p. 422). pure and simple, for prior to the year 1690, as one learns from Mr. F. G. Hilton Price's " Handbook of London Marygoid. Bankers," the old ledgers were full of goldsmiths' and pawn- broking accounts mixed up with bank ing accounts. Sir Francis Child, as he became, was banker for John Dryden and Pepys, for Nell Gwynne, for Prince Rupert, and also for the King himself; and among later customers of the bank were William III. and Queen Mary, and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. A still greater name appears in the books of the bank, that of Oliver Cromwell, but unfortunately the ledger con taining his account was lost sight of some three-quarters of a century ago. Sir Francis Child lived to be Lord Mayor, President of Christ's Hospital, and M.P. for the City, and survived until 17 13. Two of their weight. The old bank, as we have seen, was pulled down in 1880 to make way for a larger and more dignified structure, as solid as the credit of the bank ; but the ancient sign of the house, the " Marygoid," is still dis played just inside the door, and until about the time that the bank changed its habitation the flower continued to embellish its cheques. It should be noted that Elizabeth Childi the first Sir Francis's daughter, married Tyr- ringham Backwell, son of that Alderman Backwell who was ruined by the bad faith of Charles II. (p. 201). Two of their sons were taken into the bank, and both became partners and heads of the house. Child's is the only bank in London which maintains the old rule of taking the clerks into partner ship, in the order of seniority, but it has abandoned its custom of allowing no interest for money on deposit. ^EET STREET BANKS 425 The last of the Childs, Robert, who was head of the bank in 1782, had an only daughter, Sarah Anne. In that year, it is said, the tenth Earl of Westmorland was dining with him one afternoon at Temple Bar, and asked him what he would do if he Jersey, grandson of the Earl who married the Lady Sarah, is still the head of the bank. Unlike Child's, another ancient bank a few doors lower down the street on the same side has undergone that process of amal gamation to which so many London banks THE COUNCIL-CHAMBER IN THE INNER TEMPLE GATE-HOUSE, FLEET STREET (p. 422) By permission of the London County Council. were in love with a girl and her father refused to consent to his marrying her. " Why, run away with her, to be sure," was the reply. That very night, or a few nights afterwards, Lord Westmorland ran away with Child's daughter, with whom he was secretly in love. Why it was that he made no attempt to secure her father's consent is not explained ; but that he had good reason for expecting a refusal is clear from the sequel, for Robert Child posted off after the runaway couple and caught up with them in Cumberland, and the Earl only managed to get across the border to Gretna Green by shooting one of his pursuer's horses. Robert Child never forgave his daughter, and left the whole of his fortune to the first daughter of the union, Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, who became Countess of Jersey, and the present Earl of 28 The Three Squirrels. have of late years submitted themselves. Founded some time before 1650 by Henry Pinckney, with " Three Squirrels " for sign, it presently passed into other hands, and about the middle of the eighteenth century Sir Francis Gosling was taken into partnership, while in 1795, with the advent of Benjamin Sharpe, the bank came to be known as that of Messrs. Goslings and Sharpe. The house was rebuilt after the Great Fire, and again at the latter end of the eighteenth century, and in 1 898-99, the bank having joined forces with Messrs. Barclay and Co., Limited, it was once more rebuilt this time by Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons. But in both rebuildings the original sign, in solid silver, was preserved, and in the semi-circular head of the central window of the Fleet Street front may still be 426 LONDON TOWN seen an ancient duplicate of it. The bank, moreover, has kept its name, for it is known as Gosling's branch of Barclay's. This latter bank, by the wray, was founded at some time — probably a considerable time — prior to 1729 in Lombard Street. The first of the Barclays to enter the firm was James, grand son of Robert Barclay, author of the " Apolo gist," the text-book of the Society of Friends ; and when he joined it in 1736 the style of the firm was changed to Freame and Barclay. In 1768 Silvanus Bevan joined, and in 1776 SIGN OF THE MARYGOLD. the name of Tritton appears as one of the partners. A few steps further down the street and we see in the fanlight of the entrance to Messrs. Hoare's bank a golden Barrel!0lden barre1' The legend that [t represents the leather bottle or flask which the founder of the house brought with him when, a poor country lad, he came to London to seek his fortune, has long been dissipated. But the thing has a true history hardly less interesting than the traditional one. The ledgers of the bank run continu ously from the year 1673. Its founder was James Hore, another of those goldsmiths who also kept running cashes, and his house in Cheapside bore for sign a golden barrel, which he chose by way of keeping in memory the fact that his father was a cooper by trade. Before the seventeenth century had run its course, the business, and with it the sign, was removed to Fleet Street, and when in the year 1820 the house to which they had been transferred was superseded by the present substantial structure, the golden barrel was placed where it is still to be seen by observant passers-by. The handsome Law Courts branch of the Bank of England, the work of the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, at the western end of the street on the north side, occupies the site of a house which in Charles I I.'s time was a tombstone cutter's, and here in 1684 Howell the letter-writer saw a monument to four members of the Oxenhams — a well- known Devonshire family — at whose succes sive deaths a white bird appeared. In recent times the same portent has occurred, for when in 1873 Mr. G. N. Oxenham, then the head of the house, lay dying at 17, Earl's Terrace, Kensington, his daughter and a friend, who were sitting in a room underneath the chamber of death, had their attention sud denly attracted by a shouting outside, " and on looking out they saw a large white bird perched on a thorn tree outside the window, where it remained for several minutes, although some workmen on the opposite side of the road were throwing their hats at it in the vain effort to drive it away." * The friend, it should be added, knew nothing of the family legend. Of Fleet Street printers of note in past days the name is legion. Among the earliest of them was Wynkyn de Worde, Printers. an assistant of Caxton's, who from 1502 to 1534 printed upwards of four hundred books. Falcon Court, on the south side of the street, opposite St. Dunstan's Church, is probably named after the sign under which this industrious craftsman traded. Either he or his contemporary, Richard Pynson, who also had been one of Caxton's assistants, and whose house, the " George," stood beside old St. Dunstan's Church, was the first to supplant the old Gothic letters with Roman type. Other early Fleet Street printers were Robert Copland, yet another of Caxton's assistants ; Richard Bancks, who in 1600, at the sign of the White Hart, opposite St. Dunstan's, printed the first edition of the Midsummer Nights Dream ; Richard Grafton, who printed the first correct folio edition of the Bible, in the reign of Henry VIII., * Murray's "Handbook for Devon." 1887. FLEET STREET "BOOKSELLERS" 427 and was sent to the Fleet for his pains, but lived to be printer to and treasurer of Christ's Hospital ; Richard Tottel and John Jaggard, both of whom lived at the sign of the Hand and Star, at the house which in 181 5 was acquired by the first of the Butter- worths, the law publishers, and survived until 1899, when it was rebuilt. It was Tottel's printing-office — just behind the house — which was presently converted into " Dick's " Coffee house. By Jaggard was printed the first edition of Romeo and Juliet, and in his " Highway of Letters " the late Thomas Archer suggested as not at all unlikely that Shakespeare may have called at the Hand and Star to correct the proof-sheets of the immortal play. It is a coincidence that Tottel should have been printer of the books of common law in his day, and that in the early years of the nineteenth century and onwards to the end of its career the self-same house should once more have been used for the publishing of law books, by the Butter- worths, who appropriately embellished their books with the original colophon used by Tottel. This firm, by the way, still carries on its business hard by, in Bell Yard. Many other Fleet Street printers there have been, whom we must not stop to enumerate. Nor can we do more Publishers, than mention two or three of the cloud of eminent Fleet Street "booksellers." There were, for instance, Jacob Tonson, of Kit-Kat Club fame, whose shop, the Judge's Head, was at or close to the Fleet Street corner of Chancery Lane ; and his rival Bernard Lintot, who paid Pope .£5,000 for the Homer, and carried on business at the Cross Keys and Cushion (No. 16), between the two Temple gates. The two shops almost faced each other, and were indeed in inconvenient propinquity, for Lintot once received from Dr. Young, of the " Night Thoughts," a letter which was meant for Tonson, and the first words he read were, " That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." Even in that day authors were not always in love with their publishers, and Dryden's portrait of Tonson was not precisely a flattering one : " With leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air." It is but just to Dryden to remember that Tonson not only badgered him mercilessly for " copy," but often paid in clipped silver for the MS. when he had got it. Then there was Edmund Curll, who published books at the Dial and Bible, against St. Dunstan's, and was described by the author of " John Buncle " as a tall, thin, awkward man, with goggle eyes and splay feet. With him we need not sympathise, for he TV iK> 'CSw ?ar &!ju£$x SIGN OF THE THREE SQUIRRELS. had an incurable fondness for the publication of fraudulent and scurrilous matter, and he got no more than his deserts when, visiting Westminster School to make some enquiries about one of the masters or officials, he was taken possession of by the boys, well hustled, and tossed in a blanket. Later in the same century Fleet Street numbered among its booksellers a name which belongs to a far different category than that of Curll. In 1762 there came to the " Crown," No. 32, on the south side, next to Falcon Court (the house has since been rebuilt), one John M' Murray, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, who founded the great house which has long been famous throughout the English-speaking world as that of John Murray. Here, in 1809, was started the Quarterly Review, and here, two years later, was published " Childe Harold," the author of which would often stroll in after his fencing 428 LONDON TOWN lesson at Angelo's and demonstrate his pro gress by well-aimed lunges at what he called " the spruce books " on the shelves. In 1812 John Murray the Second removed to Albe marle Street, where the firm, always headed by a John Murray, has ever since had its quarters. On the north side, near Anderton's, there lived in the early years of the eighteenth century Christopher Pinchbeck, PinchbecR. musical-clock maker, whose name was transferred to the copper and zinc alloy, imitative of gold, which he in vented, and so has become synonymous with pretentious unreality. He died in 1732, and was succeeded by his son Edward. The tobacconist's shop at the lower end of the street, on the south side, which from the time of Garrick until it was demolished bore the name of Hardham, as its suc- Hardham's. cessor still does, was rebuilt so recently as 1897. Hardham's " No. 37 " snuff became famous as soon as Garrick had it mentioned in one of his comedies. Why it was so called is a question upon which many have exercised their wits without settling it. Hardham, a native of Chichester, who at one time was Garrick's " numberer," his office being to check the money-takers by counting the audience, or estimating their number, made a good thing out of his tobaccos and snuffs, and at his death, in 1772, left £22,289 to his native town and ten guineas to Garrick, and provided but £10 for his own funeral, since it was only vain fools, he thought, who cared for costly obsequies. But Fleet Street has had much more distinguished residents than the worthy tobacconist. According to Eminent Aubrey, Michael Drayton, the Inhabitants. •" „ , author of the " Polyolbion, lived at " ye baye-windowe house next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church," No. 186, which escaped the Fire and survived until a few years ago. Near the Inner Temple gate lived, at the close of his life, James Shirley, the dramatist, in a house which perished in the Great Fire. He and his wife died within a few hours of each other, and were buried in one grave at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, in which parish they settled after being burnt out of Fleet Street. Another resident of Fleet Street who suffered at the same time was Praise-God Barbon or Bare-bone, the Ana baptist, who here carried on the business of a leather-seller. To the function of a leather- seller he added those of a pamphleteer, Dissenting Minister, and warder of yeomanry. He opposed the restoration of Charles II., and for a while, when that had become a fait accompli, wras imprisoned in the Tower. It was within a few doors of the Inner Temple gate, by the way, that the Fire stopped on the south side, and at St. Dunstan's Church, a few yards lower down, on the north side of the street. Two doors west of Chancery Lane Izaak Walton carried on the business of a linendraper for some years prior to 1632, when he moved into Chancery Lane. His " Compleat Angler " was published next door, at the corner-house, which had been the residence of Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard leader who was " hanged and burnt hanging '' in 1417. In 1659, when the Restoration was simmering in his mind, as well as on other occasions, General Monk was a dweller in Fleet Street. And among natives of Fleet Street were Bulstrode Whitelocke, who was born in the house of his mother's uncle, Sir George Croke, in 1605 ; and Cowley, the poet, whose father was a Fleet Street grocer, at No. 192. Another Fleet Street native of the highest distinction, and still happily alive and flourish ing, is " Mr. Punch," who was "Mr. Punch." born just in front of St. Bride's Church in 1841, and lived there until 1900, when he removed to Bouverie Street. The story of the birth of this great humorist has been authoritatively told by Mr. M. H. Spielmann. It is too long to be given here, but Mr. Spielmann shows clearly enough that — to drop our metaphor — the real founders of the English Charivari were Ebenezer Landells, wood engraver, draughts man, and newspaper projector, and Henry Mayhew. The former it was who conceived the idea of the paper, to the latter belongs the glory of setting the tone of it, so that " from the first it became, or aimed at becoming, a budget of wit, fun and kindly humour, and of honest opposition based upon fairness and justice." Punch has always been able to command the pens and pencils of some of the best wits and humorists of the day. Its first editor was Mark Lemon, who reigned for the long period ivik. fUx\cH" AND HIS MERRY MEN 429 of nine-and-twenty years. His successors have been Shirley Brooks (1870-74), Tom Taylor (1874-80), and Sir Francis Burnand, who received his well-won knighthood in 1902, and in 1906 handed over the reins to Mr. Owen Seaman. We must not leave our national humorist without brightening our pages with one of thought struck Sothern. " Look here," he said to the officer, " put your handcuffs on me, drag me through, and land me at that door, and I'll give you two pounds." The man slipped on the handcuffs, and with a stentorian " Make room there ! " dragged the comedian through the crowd, now in a more accommo dating mood, and landed him panting and lS:Iligf OLD ST. DUNSTAN S-IN-THE-WEST, SHOWING THE CLOCK. From a Drawing by G. Shepherd, etched by W. Wise in 1814. the many good stories whicn enliven Mr. Spielmann's. It has to do with a trick which the members of the staff, or some of them, once played on Sothern the actor. On the occasion of the wedding of the £>Kea°tlCal Present King, Sothern was invited to the office to see the procession go by. The crowd was so dense that he was unable to get across the road to the door. In his predicament he was seen by his friends at the window, who pointed significantly to a policeman. " Get me through," he said to the constable, taking the hint, " and I'll give you a sovereign." The man did his best, but failed, for the crowd showed a disposition to resent such favouritism. Then a happy breathless at Mr. Punch's door. " You'll find the money in my waistcoat pocket," said Sothern. The man helped himself, and then, to Sothern's amazement, made himself scarce, leaving him in possession of the handcuffs, and in that plight he remained throughout the festive day. In the commotion Sothern had failed to notice that just as he reached the door one of his friends had sallied forth and given the constable a tip, in the double sense of the term. Of the newspaper offices in Fleet Street, the most palatial are those of the Daily Tele graph. This great paper was started on the 29th of June, 1855, by the late Colonel Sleigh, as a single sheet, of which the price was 43° LONDON TOWN twopence, and the title the Daily Telegraph and Courier. Failing to make it a success, Colonel Sleigh transferred it to the News- late Mn t M_ L the father of papers. J J ' the present chief proprietor, Lord Burnham. By a bold stroke Mr. Levy re duced the price to a penny, and so the Daily Telegraph, as the paper is now called, became the first London daily penny paper. Then the size was enlarged, and the astonished public found that they could get for a penny a newspaper as large as the Times, then published at fourpence. The boldness and resource exhibited in the early days of the paper have characterised its management ever since. It has engaged in many great enterprises of a public character— such as the commissions it gave to Stanley, the explorer, and to Mr. George Smith, the Assyriologist — and it has reaped the reward of its energy and courage in an enormous circulation. A much older paper than the Daily Tele graph is the Morning Advertiser, whose offices are a little lower down the street, on the same (north) side. Started in 1794 by the Society of Licensed Victuallers, on the mutual benefit society principle, it is still the organ of " the trade." On the opposite side of the street are the advertisement offices of two Liberal and Progressive organs, the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle, whose printing, publishing, and editorial offices are respectively in Bouverie Street and Whitefriars Street. The Daily News first appeared on January 21st, 1846, with Charles Dickens for editor and Douglas Jerrold for assistant editor, and a distin guished staff of contributors. Dickens was out of his element as the editor of a daily paper, and he resigned in the course of the next month, and was soon followed by Douglas Jerrold, who started a weekly news paper of his own. In June, 1846, having come under the management of Mr. Charles Wentworth Dilke, who had been for some years the editor of the Athenmum, the Daily News was issued at twopence halfpenny, but was soon obliged to return to the regulation price for dailies of fivepence, and it was not until June, 1868, that the price was reduced to a penny. In 1904 it was further reduced to a halfpenny. The Daily News has been specially fortunate in its war corres pondents, among the most brilliant of whom were Alexander MacGahan and Archibald Forbes. Under its present management it has distinguished itself by its opposition to all forms of gambling. Established in 1855, the Daily Chronicle gradually developed from a purely metro politan organ into one of the most widely circulated of English newspapers. It has always given special attention to social ques tions ; it is a recognised authority on all matters relating to the government of London ; and, particularly since its price was reduced to a halfpenny simultaneously with the reduction in the price of the Daily News, it has abounded with features which enable it to appeal with success to all sorts and conditions of men — and women. " The Office Window " is a constant joy to multitudes besides Mr. George Meredith. Of the two Fleet Street churches, the one most in evidence in the street itself is that of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, so st- called by way of distinction from Dunstan's the church of St. Dunstan-in-the- East, at the other end of the City. It is curious that each of the St. Dunstan's should have a steeple quite unlike that of any other church in the City, and that both of the steeples should be of exceptional artistic merit. Of the other St. Dunstan's, the work of Wren, we have already spoken (p. 252) ; of this St. Dunstan's, the tower supports a pierced octagonal lantern, which has a very happy effect, especially when seen from a distance, say from Ludgate Circus. The church is modern, having been built in 1831-33, by James Shaw, the architect of the hall of Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street, who is believed to have found his models for the tower in the steeples of St. Botoiph's, Boston, and St. Helen's, York, structures of which, however, it is no servile imitation. Old St. Dun stan's, of which the origin is lost in antiquity, though it must have been in existence in 1237, when it was transferred by the Abbot of Westminster to Henry III., projected into the street, which it greatly narrowed. It escaped the Great Fire, but fell into decay, and had to be taken down in 1829; and its successor was built on what was formerly the graveyard. Attached to old St. Dunstan's was a projecting clock with two large figures armed with clubs, with which they struck the RICHARD BAXTER IN AN EMERGENCY 43i quarter-hours ; it was the work of Thomas Harris, of Water Lane, and dated from 1671. When the church was taken down the figures were bought by the third Marquis of Hertford, one of the founders of what is now known as the Wallace Collection, and were set up at St. Dunstan's Villa, in Regent's Park, where they may still be seen. They had struck his fancy when a child, and he then declared that some day he would buy them. A more inter esting relic of old St. Dunstan's, a contemporary statue of Queen Elizabeth, still surveys Fleet Street from the wall above the entrance to the vestry -room ad joining the church. When Ludgate wras re built in 1586, this effigy of Queen Bess was reared on the west side, looking towards her palace of Whitehall. It survived the Great Fire, and when the gate was made away with, in 1760, it was given by the City, as we have seen, to Sir Francis Gosling, Alderman for the ward of Farring don Without, and by him was presented to the church. The " frame " also was preserved, except that, as old prints show, over the shield were formerly the royal arms (p. 413). Altogether it is a very seemly piece of carv ing, as one might have supposed it would be, seeing that when it was wrought Queen Elizabeth was alive to see that justice was done to her charms. St. Dunstan's has had for its clergy not a few eminent men, among them William Tyn- dale, the translator of the New Testament ; Dr. Thomas White, the founder of Sion College, who died in 1623, and was buried in building tumbling STEEPLE OF THE PRESENT the church ; his successor, Dr. Donne, the poet-dean of St. Paul's, who held the living till his death in 1631 ; and William L'c'umbents. Romaine. the eloquent Evangelical preacher of the eighteenth century. Richard Baxter also is associated with St. Dunstan's, for once when he was preaching here there was a panic owing to a report that the was down. Baxter sat down calmly until the alarm had sub sided, and then continued his sermon, remark ing, " We are in the service of God, to prepare ourselves that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world, when the heavens shall pass away, and the elements melt with fervent heat." Among those who have been baptized in St. Dunstan's were Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and Bulstrode Whitelocke. And of those who have been buried in the church are Thomas Campion, the poet and musician, who died in 1619, and several members of the Hoare family. There is also an ingenuous tablet to one Hobson Judkin, " the Honest Solicitor," as it characterises him, who died in 181 2, and is thus com memorated by grateful clients, who conclude their eulogy with the exhortation, " Go, Reader, and imitate Hobson Judkin." Pity that so excellent a man should not have had a better name ! Nor must we fail to mention St. Dunstan's association with Izaak Walton, who not only, as we have seen, lived close to the church, but was one of its sidesmen, and an overseer of the parish. In his honour the north-west window was filled with stained F«lfiui ST. DUNSTAN' S-IN-THE- WEST. 432 LONDON TOWN glass in 1895, and a tablet to his memory was affixed to the street wall of the church. Since then an insurance office on the west of the church has been built sheer up against the western face of the tower, and now the tablet is to be seen on the eastern side of the porch. Fleet Street's other church, dedicated to St. Bride (St. Bridget), a Scottish or Irish saint of the sixth century, has St. Bride's, an admirably proportioned and richly decorated interior, but is at least as remarkable for its steeple, the loftiest and one of the most graceful of Sir Christopher's. It is 4 feet 3 inches higher than the steeple of Bow Church in Cheapside, and as it left Wren's hands — if tradition is to be believed — it was 8 feet higher still, but in 1764, when it was struck by lightning, 85 feet of its length had to be taken down, and in the rebuilding its height, according to this story, was reduced. Unfortunately, it is so hemmed in by neighbouring buildings that it is not easy to find a point of view from which its whole length, from base to vane (226 feet), can be seen. Perhaps the best places from which to see it are the bridge of Holborn Viaduct and Blackfriars Bridge, but even there the lower part of the tower is invisible. Until the formation of St. Bride's Avenue, in 1825, largely at the expense of Mr. John Blades, the printer, who provided £6,000 of the £10,000 required, it was even worse off in this respect than it is now. Since then it has been possible to see the whole of the steeple, though nothing of the body of the church, from Fleet Street ; but the standpoint is too close for its full beauty to be appreciated. The spire rises from the tower in four octagonal and diminishing stages, topped by an obelisk, and from a distance the form appears to be circular rather than octagonal. To this lovely structure it has been objected that, being shaped like a telescope, it conveys an impression of insecurity — of liability to close in upon itself. Surely it is not necessary to allow the mind to be tyrannised over by a suggestion so remote ! Old St. Bride's, which was consumed in the Great Fire, was in existence in 1222, and thirteen years later we find an alien, one Henry de Battle, fleeing to it for sanctuary after slaying Thomas de Hall on the king's highway. In 1543 a hosier of the name of Eton, probably ani mated by Reforming zeal, attired himself in " fonde fassyon and strutted up and down the church while mass was being celebrated, so creating a tumult." Clad just as he was, he was placed in the cage in Fleet Street and there exhibited until nightfall, when he was removed to the Compter and there detained until sureties were forthcoming to answer for his good behaviour. In the old church Sir John Denham, the poet, married his first wife, and here were buried Wynkyn de Worde, the Fleet Street printer, and Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, who died in 1658. Of old St. Bride's nothing survives but the font, dating only from 16 1 5, and the entrance stone to the vault of the Holdens, dated 1657, and now to be seen outside the church on the Fleet Street side. The present St. Bride's contains the dust of Samuel Richardson, the novelist, who died in Salisbury Court (now Salisbury Square) in 1 76 1, and was buried in about the middle of the centre aisle. In the porch beneath the tower is a tablet to the memory of Alderman Waithman. Among the clergy of St. Bride's are to be numbered Fuller, the witty author of the " Worthies," and Dr. John Thomas, who died Bishop of Rochester in 1793. At that time there were two John Thomases among the City clergy, and both were royal chaplains, both good preachers, both squinted, and both lived to be bishops. In St. Bride's Churchyard, in the house of a tailor named Russell, which may have stood on or close to the site afterwards occupied by the office of Punch, Milton dwelt after his return from Italy in 1639. In his Life of the poet, the late Professor Masson sets out the circumstances under which Milton came to dwell here. His sister Anne, the widow of Mr. Edward Phillips, of the Crown Office, Chancery, had married a second time, and was anxious to commit the education of the two boys of the first marriage to her scholarly brother. The younger boy, John, his god son or nameson, was to live with him, or at any rate to be under his complete control. " The little Johnny Phillips, so made over to his uncle's care, was only eight years of age, and his brother Edward, who was to share his lessons, was not much over nine. For a bachelor, living in lodgings, MILTON IN ST. BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD 433 the arrangement might not seem the most convenient; but, whether for family reasons or on personal grounds, Milton appears to have made no difficulty about it." Masson hints a doubt whether the tailor's house in which the poet took lodgings was actually on the border of the present churchyard. One of the authorities speaks of " St. Bride's Church yard, near Fleet Street," and a portion, at any rate, of the churchyard was in that part of_the present Farringdon Street which lies between Stonecutter Street and Fleet Lane. However this may be, it must have been near the foot of Fleet Street that Milton abode, though it is rather curious to find so scrupu lous a writer as Masson representing the spot as being " in view " of " the whole City region of his native Bread Street." He made no long stay here, for, obliged to look out for more spacious quarters, where he might find room for his accumulating books, he removed, probably in 1641, to Aiders- gate Street, where we have already met with him. Close to the church, in Bride Lane, is the St. Bride's Foundation Institute, an important centre of technical education, especially in the craft of printing : it is, indeed, the largest printing school in the world. Opened in 1894, and costing, in building and equip ment, over £20,000, it embraces a printing school, a technical printer's library of over sixteen thousand volumes, a lending library and reading-rooms, a gymnasium, and swimming and other baths. Here is pre served, in memoriam, a library of books from the press of Mr. William Blades, antiquary as well as printer, who wrote a monumental work on " The Life and Typography of William Caxton," besides other books relating to the printing art. Mr. Blades, who died in 1890, was a son of the generous citizen who, as we have seen, promoted the formation of St. Bride's Avenue. REFERENCE 1 City of London G-irls'School. 4 Nnt Telephone Co. 2 GmhJhalJ School oOIui ' 3 Thames Conservancy. PLAN OF FLEET STREET AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. CHAPTER XL SOME FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES Ye Antient Society of Cogers — Salisbury Square — Samuel Richardson- -Hogarth and Johnson — A Great Journalist — Serjeants' Inn — The Order of the Coif — Poppin's Court — Shoe Lane — Pepys at a Cock fight — The Standard and other Newspapers — Gunpowder Alley and Richard Lovelace — Gough Square — Johnson's Court — Bolt Court — Crane Court and the Royal Society — Fetter Lane — The Public Record Office — The Rolls Chapel — Birkbeck College — The Athenteum — Clifford's Inn — George Dyer IN Bride Lane — to deal first with the southern tributaries of Fleet Street — we come upon the tracks of the famous Cogers' Society, which was founded so long ago as the year 1755 by one David Mason The — 0f whom nothing else is known — Cogers. ° at the "White Bear" Inn, No. 15 in the lane. Its lively debates, as we learn from Mr. Peter Rayleigh's vivacious history of the Society* were held in the front room on the ground floor, and from the beginning it has lived very consistently up to the legend which was at one time blazoned on the walls, " Let us never mistake dulness for wisdom." In 1855 or 1856 the Society migrated to Shoe Lane, to a spacious hall adjoining the " Blue Posts " tavern. When in 1 87 1 this second Cogers' Hall was acquired by the Corporation for the formation of St. Bride Street as one of the approaches to the Holborn Viaduct, the Cogers moved to the " Barley Mow " in Salisbury Square, and there they still were when Mr. Rayleigh's volume was published. But in the following year (1904) they again shifted, this time to the " Rainbow " in Fleet Street, and in 1908, preferring to hold their meetings no longer on licensed premises, they migrated to the hall of Clifford's Inn, hard by. The year after this Society of oratorical Bohemians was founded it chose for its president John Wilkes, who was just the man to strike its keynote of hilarious and irresponsible polemics. Among those who have been enrolled on its list of members, or have taken part in its debates as guests, it is able to number Curran and O'Connell and Keogh, Brougham and Thomas Denman, " * History of Ye Antient Society of Cogers," 1755-1903. By Peter Rayleigh. 1903. (Simpkin, Marshall & Co.) afterwards Lord Chief Justice, Alderman Sir Richard Glyn and Alderman Waithman, Captain Mayne Reid and George Names.* Augustus Sala, George Francis Train and Sir John Bennett, Alexander Cockburn and Charles Russell and Sir Edward Clarke. Once, at any rate, it enjoyed the caustic wit of Bernal Osborne, without knowing at the time who the speaker was. " All they saw," says Mr. Rayleigh, "was a tall dark man of handsome presence with eyes shedding light ; but when he began to speak they noted that the ringing voice was aglow with courage, and that there was a supreme con tempt for conventionality to be observed in his radiant, boisterous personality. They knew that they were in the presence of a king of men, and settled down to listen. . George Augustus Sala, who spoke the same evening, said they had been under the wand of a magician. No wonder that Cogers' rocked to and fro with excitement. . . . No wonder the House, long before he sat down, abandoned itself to a wild and boisterous gaiety." Very interesting are Mr. Rayleigh's sketches of some of the more remarkable members of the Society. There was George George Doring, for example, " an extremely fragile, meek-looking young man," who said the most aggravating things in the sweetest of voices. Angered at his audible asides, an orator, who was protesting his willingness to die for his country, asked him how much blood he was prepared to shed in the sacred cause of his country. " About a quartern," the interruptor replied. " A quartern, a miserable quartern ! " exclaimed the patriot 434 THE COGERS: NAME AND NATURE 435 with withering scorn. " Why, I am prepared to yield up the last drop of mine." " Do it now," was the quick retort, "and I will cheerfully subscribe a guinea towards your funeral." On another occasion Doring fell foul of Sala, who had made a rather poor speech. " It smacks so strongly of the nursery," he said, " that I feel certain, were one that appears to find most favour is that which traces the name to the verb cogito, I think. But the reader who Name accepts this theory must be careful, none the less, to give " Cogers " a long " o," for the one unpardonable sin to members of " Ye Society " is to pro nounce the name as though it were spelt Photo : Pictorial Agency. SERJEANTS' INN, LOOKING TOWARDS FLEET STREET. he to turn out his pockets, we should find. a choice collection of tops, marbles, string, sweetstuffs, and other articles precious to the juvenile mind." At this sally Sala blushed so red that the House called upon him to undergo the test. When he did so and turned out a little packet, which on being opened was found to contain toffee, a perfect yell went up. It is easy to imagine Sala earnestly protesting that the toffee was intended for his wife — the first Mrs. Sala — who was fond of sweets, and still easier to imagine the shouts of incredulity with which the explanation was received. But why " Cogers " ? There are various derivations to choose between, but the " Codgers." When they flitted to Salisbury Square all their records and paraphernalia were lost sight of, but the President's chair and the portraits of past Presidents were preserved. The " White Bear " was re modelled after the Cogers betook themselves and their eloquence elsewhere, and the sign will now be looked for in vain. Salisbury Square, another of the southern tributaries of Fleet Street, was until the second half of the eighteenth Sauare"y century known as Salisbury Court, a name which is now borne by the approach to it from Fleet Street. Salisbury Square is built on the site of the courtyard of Salisbury or Dorset House, the town 436 LONDON TOWN residence of the Bishops of Salisbury, who parted with it in the early years of the seven teenth century. At the lower end of the court of Salisbury House was built in 1629 the Salisbury Court Theatre, destroyed by the Puritans in 1649, but rebuilt in 1660, when the Restoration had brought theatres once more into favour. It perished in the Great Fire, and was not rebuilt. In Salisbury Square, in these days, are the sedate and substantial offices of the Church Missionary Society, which completed its first century in 1899. Here, in a museum of no little interest, is a collection of missionary trophies — charms, idols, savage weapons, and so forth, with a flag bearing the legend " Ichabod," carried on the caravan of Bishop Hannington's followers when tidings reached them that their beloved leader had been murdered on the borders of Uganda. The Society now has about 300 stations and 350,000 native Christian adherents, with 2,500 schools and colleges, and it is able to claim that of its total income of about £400,000, 85 per cent. is spent in the direct service of the missions. In 1634 Bulstrode Whitelocke, who as we have seen was baptized in St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, became a resident of Salisbury Square. From 1673 to 1682 John Dryden lived in or near the square, removing in the latter year to Long Acre, where we shall again meet him ; and here too, lived his successor as Poet Laureate, Thomas Shad- well, who wore the bays from 1688, when "glorious John" died, until 1692, when his turn came to lay down the pen. But Salisbury Square is more intimately associated with Henry Fielding's rival, the creator of Clarissa, than with either Dryden or Shad well. In 1755, says Mrs. Barbauld, in her Life of the printer-novelist, he took here " a range of old houses, JuSardson eignt m number, which he pulled down, and built an extensive and commodious range of warehouses and print ing offices. . „ . The dwelling-house, it seems, was neither so large nor so airy as the one he quitted ; and therefore the reader will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to have been, in accusing his wife of perverseness in not liking the new habitation as well as the old." Richardson was evidently vexed at his wife's want of appreciation of the new house. " Everybody," he remarked, " is more pleased with what I have done than my wife." Such economy of approval in a wife must have seemed shocking to the man upon whom so many women lavished ecstatic admiration. Here Richardson wrote " Pamela," and here for a short time, in 1757, Goldsmith worked for him as a proof-reader. Here too it was that Hogarth and Dr. Johnson met without knowing Jo°hnsonand each other- Hogarth, according to Nichols's " Literary Anecdotes," came one day " to see Richardson, soon after the execution of Dr. Cameron for having taken arms for the house of Stuart in 1745-46; and, being a warm partisan of George II., he observed to Richardson that certainly there must have been some very unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this particular case which had induced the king to approve of an execution for rebellion so long after the time it was committed, as this had the appearance of putting a man to death in cold blood, and was very unlike his Majesty's usual clemency. While he was talking he perceived a person standing at a window in the room shaking his head and rolling himself about in a ridiculous manner. He concluded he was an idiot, whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson as a very good man. To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked forward to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argument, and burst out into an invective against George II. as one who, upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous ; mentioning many instances, particularly that where an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a court-martial, George II. had, with his own hand, struck his name off the list. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence that Hogarth looked at him in astonishment, and actually imagined that this idiot had been at the moment inspired." Johnson, by the way, was never tired of exalting Richardson at the expense of Fielding, whom in a fractious moment he dubbed " a barren rascal." He once declared that there was " more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all ' Tom Jones.' " To an objector, however, he admitted that, " if you were to read Richard son for the story, your impatience would be A GREAT JOURNALIST 437 so great that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." A rather considerable quali fication, to be sure. Let us, as we pass on, remind ourselves that a greater critic — if a smaller man — than Johnson remarked that to read Fielding after Richardson was like emerging from a sick room, heated by stoves, into an open lawn on a breezy May morning ; and the trend of modern criticism has been towards Coleridge's estimate rather than Johnson's. Dorset Street, running out of Salisbury Square southwards, and recalling by its title the later name of the town house The "St. 0f the Bishops of Salisbury, is still James's . . n ... . . Gazette." chiefly associated in many minds with the St. James's Gazette, which had its offices here. This paper was founded by one of the most brilliant and most accomplished journalists of his generation, Mr. Frederick Greenwood. In 1865 he had founded the Pall Mall Gazette, and through its columns, in the seventies, he was one of the ablest champions of Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy. In 1880 the Pall Mall changed hands — and politics, and then it was that Mr. Greenwood and some members of his staff established the St. James's, which he edited with conspicuous ability for some years, being on his retire ment succeeded by Mr. Sidney Low. In 1905, the year in which the paper was amalgamated with the Evening Standard, Mr. Greenwood, then just entered upon his seventy-sixth year, was the guest of many of the most distinguished jour nalists and authors and statesmen and lawyers of the day, who found an eloquent spokesman in Mr. John (now Viscount) Morley, his immediate successor in the editorial chair of the Pall Mall Gazette. The speech was a noble tribute to splendid work done " in the arduous and responsible profession of journalism " by one who, as Mr. George Meredith said, had shown himself to be " at once a states man and a patriot." Serjeants' Inn, further up Fleet Street, on the same side, was one of the two Inns of the judges and serjeants-at-law Serjeants' from t.c? to 1758, when, the Inn- , • ¦ , 1 ¦ 1 j lease expiring, the judges and Serjeants gave up the property to the free holders, the Dean and Chapter of York, and took up their quarters in the other Serjeants' Inn, off Chancery Lane. Thenceforward until the expiration of the " Order of the Coif," in 1876, there was but one Serjeants' THE FLEET STREET DISTRICT IN QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY From Aggas's Map. 433 LONDON TOWN Inn. Before the fifteenth century there may have been other Serjeants' inns also, but these are the only ones about which anything definite is known. When Fleet Street was destroyed in the Great Fire, the Inn was rebuilt from funds supplied by the Serjeants. The present street frontage, occupied by the Norwich Union Fire and Life Offices, and the houses behind, including the Church of England Sunday School Institute, were built when they gave up possession. In one of them, No. 16, lived JohnThadeus Delane, greatest of the Editors of the Times, whose policy he directed from 1841 to 1877. The arms of the Serjeants, a dove and a serpent, sug gesting the guile- lessness of the one united with the wisdom of the other, may still be seen in the iron gate opening on Fleet Street. The Order of the Coif, as the late Serjeant Pulling shows in his his tory of the fratern ity, was of great antiquity. " It was indeed already old before there were either barristers or solicitors. It is very much more ancient than the oldest of our tribunals, for it was called into existence before any large portion of our law was formed." Small as was the order, its number scarcely ever exceeding forty, its privileges were great. For hun dreds of years no one could be made a judge, either of the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas, who was not a member of the order, and when an outsider was chosen for elevation to the Bench he had to be admitted before he could take the oath as judge. Not until 1875 was this rule abrogated, the last judge to be appointed under it being Lord Lindley, who became a judge of the Common Pleas in 1875, and remained on the Bench until 1905. Even after the privileges of the RICHARD LOVELACE. order ceased it numbered many lawyers of high distinction, such as Serjeant Talfourd, Serjeant Shee, Serjeant Byles, and Serjeant Ballantine. The Society, as we have seen, was dissolved in 1876, when its premises in Chancery Lane, put up to auction, realised £57,100 — a nice little sum for division among the members. The twenty-six portraits of eminent serjeants- at-law were presented to the National Por trait Gallery. The last of the Serjeants to practise at the Bar was Serjeant Spinks, who died in 1899. The coif, from which the order took its name, was originally a close- fitting head-cover ing of white lawn or silk, on the top of which the Ser jeants wore a small skull-cap of black silk or velvet. When at the be ginning of the seventeenth cen tury they took to wearing wigs, the coif was at first so worn that it might be seen peeping out at the back of the head. But after a while the perruquier contrived a round patch of black on the crown of the wig as a diminutive representation of the coif and cap. The coif was as much the symbol of rank and dignity as were the coronet and the mitre. New members of the order were solemnly enjoined never to dispense with it when engaged officially or professionally, and it was one of their special privileges to wear it even in the royal presence, and even when " in talk with his Majesty's highness." The only occasion when the coif was required to be hidden, indeed, was when a judge had to pass sentence of death ; and so it was that the " black cap " had its origin, as a token of sorrow to cover up the symbol of his rank and dignity. We have glanced at Serjeants' Inn in GHTING IN SHOE LANE 439 Chancery Lane, but we are still in Fleet Street, and we now pass over to the other side of the " highway of letters," and notice some of the courts and lanes that open into it from the north. Poppin's Court, Court!18 to wmcn we first come, was for merly called Poppinjay (popinjay, parrot) Court, and it is said — one knows not upon what authority — that here the Abbots of Cirencester, whose crest was the popinjay, had their Inn. Betterauthen- ticated is the story which connects with the court Van Mildert, Bishop of Durham from 1826 to 1836, and the last Bishop of the see to enjoy pala tine dignity. In his early days, on the occasion of some public fes tival, he was set upon by some un ruly boys here in Poppin's Court, and made a target for their squibs, but when he good- humouredly re marked, " Ah, here you are, poppin' away in Poppin's Court," they laugh ingly opened a passage for him. " Sic me servavit Apollo" he would observe, in telling the story. Why Shoe Lane is so called the present writer knows not, but the name has nothing to do with shoes, for in ancient Shoe Lane, times it was sometimes written Scolane. In the days following the Restoration there was a cock-pit here, and under date the 21st of December, 1663, Pepys describes the first visit he had ever paid to such a place, from which he received an impression that does credit to his humanity. " Lord," he exclaims " to see the strange variety of people — from Parliament man, by name Wildes, that was Deputy- Governor of the Tower when Robinson was Lord Mayor, to the poorest 'prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen, and what not, and all these fellows one with ^cockfight anotner in swearing, cursing, and betting, and yet I would not but have seen it once." But he proceeds : " I soon had enough of it, it being strange to observe the natures of these poor crea tures ; how they will fight till they drop down dead upon the table and strike after they are ready to give up the ghost, not offering to run away when they are weary or wounded past doing further, whereas when a dunghill brood comes he will, after a sharp stroke that pricks him, run off the stage, and then they wring off his neck without much more ado. Where as the other they preserve, though their eyes be both out, for breed only of a true cock of the game." Even in this sport, where everything might seem to depend upon pluck and activity and strength, there was an ele ment of chance, for the observant diarist notes that " sometimes a cock that has had ten to one against him will by chance give an unlucky " — he might have said a lucky — " blow, and will strike the other stark dead in a moment, that he never stirs more." Another thing that surprised him was, where the money came from. " It is strange to see how people of this poor rank, that look as if they had not bread to put in their mouths, shall bet three or four pounds at one bet and lose it, and yet bet as much the next battle, ... so that one of them will lose £10 or £20 at a meeting." Then at last they had had " enough of it." WILLIAM LILLY, THE ASTROLOGER. 440 LONDON TOWN In Shoe Lane dwelt, a few years before his death in 1679, Praise-God Bar- bon, of whom we have already Literature in spoken (p. 428). The lane has Shoe Lane. r . v r 7 ' , , . , . memories also that link it with literature. Here in 1624 was living John Florio, the compiler of an Italian dictionary, and translator of Montaigne's Essays, in an extant copy of which has been found a sig- songs at such places as " The Cider Cellars " in Maiden Lane, and " The Coal Hole." in the Strand, he was the greatest coiner of catchwords of his day. Even now his song " The Spider and the Fly " is not forgotten, and another, " Jack Robinson," has supplied us with a familiar catchword. As a specimen of his humour let us quote from this song the stave in which Jack's lass, on his return Photo : Pictorial Agency dr. Johnson's house in gough square (marked by a tablet). nature of Shakespeare's. From this trans lation it ' no doubt was that Shakespeare acquired the knowledge of Montaigne shown in the Tempest, where the ideal state of Lord Gonzalo corresponds not only in thought but even in word with Florio's Montaigne. Oliver Goldsmith, again, would seem, from a reference in his " Citizen of the World," to have once lived here ; and poor Chatterton, as we have seen, was consigned to an unknown grave in the burying ground of Shoe Lane Workhouse, on the eastern side of the lane, where afterwards Farringdon Market was built. Nor must we omit Hudson, the song- writer and humorist, who flourished at the beginning of the last century. A professional vocalist, who sang his own from a voyage, explains how she has come to marry someone else. " Says the lady, says she, ' I've changed my state.' ' Why, you don't mean,' says Jack, ' that you've got a mate ? You know you promised me.' Says she, ' I couldn't wait, For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robin son. And somebody one day came to me and said That somebody else had somewhere read, In some newspaper, that you was somewhere dead.' — [ ' I've not been dead at all,' says Jack Robinson." In these days Shoe Lane is known chiefly by reason of the printing and publishing offices of the Standard, which was established JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS 441 as an evening paper in 1827, with Dr. S. L. Giffard, ex-editor of the Morning Chronicle, as editor. Dr. Giffard's principal colleague was Alaric Watts, the poet, who soon gave place to Dr. Maginn, the original of Thack eray's Captain Shandon. In 1857 the paper was acquired by Mr. James John stone, who reduced its price from four- pence to twopence, and added to it a morning paper. The next year, following the lead of the Daily Tele graph, the price of the Standard was reduced to a penny. Under the able and judicious editorship of Mr. W. H. Mudford, the Standard con solidated its posi tion as the very influential organ of a sober and reasoned Conser vatism. Mr. Mud- ford held the sceptre until 1900, and five years afterwards the con trolling interest in the property was acquired by Mr. C. Arthur Pearson, who shortly before had purchased the St. James's Gazette. The Standard and the Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette now have handsome advertisement offices in Fleet Street, but formerly they were in St. Bride Street. Here, too, were the offices of the Echo, which, though it ceased to be in 1905, must be noted in these pages because it was the first of the halfpenny daily papers. It was established so long ago as 1868 by the firm of Cassell, Petter, and Galpin (now Cassell and Co., Limited), under the editorship of Mr. Arthur Arnold, who was knighted in 1895 for his services in connexion with the London County Council, of which he was Chairman in 1895-97. Hard by, in 29 THE OLD HOME OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN CRANE COURT IN 183O {p. 444). From a Drawing by C. J. Smith. St. Bride Street and Stonecutter Street, are the offices of the Morning Leader, the first of the existing halfpenny morning papers, started in 1 892. Associated with it is the Star, founded in 1888 by that brilliant journalist Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., who gathered around him a staff which in- eluded quite a number of men who soon won their way to the front rank, among them Mr. A. B. Walkley, now the accomplished dra matic critic of the Times; Mr. George Bernard Shaw, most humorous, most audacious, and most irrespon sible of writers — critic in general, dramatist, and publicist ; Mr. H. W. Massingham, most strenuous of journalists, w h o succeeded Mr. O'Connor as editor of the Star, was afterwards editor of the Daily Chronicle, and is now editor of the Nation ; and Mr. Clement Shor ter, who was to be come editor of the Illustrated London News and founder and editor of the Sketch, and afterwards to found and edit the Sphere and the Tatler. Mr. O'Connor is also the creator of several other papers, and in all of them he has struck with singular felicity that intimate and per sonal note to which modern journalism has so largely attuned itself. With Gunpowder Alley, which opens out of Shoe Lane on the west side, we turn from journalism to litera- LoveUce. ture- For here> in obscurity and penury, two years before the Restoration, died Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet who wrote some of the choicest lyrics in the English language. He was born 44^ LONDON TOWN at Woolwich in 1618, and at the age of sixteen, when he was presented at Court, is described bv Anthony Wood as " the most amiable and beautiful youth that eye ever beheld. A person also of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but specially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex." In 1642, for having presented to Parliament the Kentish petition in favour of the King, he was immured in the Gate house, Westminster, whence his exultant spirit flew abroad on the. wings of the lovely lyric of which this is one of the stanzas : — " Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.'' In June of the same year he was released on bail in order that he might serve against the rebels in Ireland. Later he joined the King's standard. While he was immured in Petre House; Aldersgate, in 1648-49 he beguiled the weary days in " framing for the press " the collection of pieces which he entitled " Lucasta," Lucasta being, as some think, Lucy Sacheverell, though she may have been simply the creation of his own fancy. His later years were years of misery and melan choly. " Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood, " he grew very Contrast, melancholy, which at length brought him into a consumption ; became very poor in bod}- and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants." So died, in 1658, at the age of forty, one of the most attractive figures on the Royalist side. That his name should have become a synonym for a libertine is, as Mr. Thomas Seccombe points out in the Dictionary of National Biography, due to the accident of his being buried in St. Bride's Church (p. 43 2), for it was probably that circumstance that prompted Richardson, who lived close by, to borrow his name for the lover of Clarissa Harlowe ; and though Lovelace has in this sense been supplanted in England by the older Lothario, it still survives in France. In Gunpowder Alley, in Cromwellian days, lived Evans, the astrologer, and here he initiated into his mysteries the Astrologers, more famous William Lilly, the Sidrophel of " Hudibras." Lilly suffered no lack of eminent patrons, who either believed in the powers to which he laid claim, or found him useful, and in 1670 he received a licence to practise his arts. Among his patrons were the King of Sweden, Lenthal the Speaker, Bulstrode Whitelocke, and Elias Ashmole the antiquary. His Almanac, the forerunner of Moore's and Zadkiel's, was first published in 1644, and thenceforth he issued one every year until his death in 1681. Of Wine Office Court, the next tributary of Fleet Street to which we come, we have already spoken (p. 421). It leads to s°uare Gough Square, where still stands, in the not inappropriate occupation of^a firm of printers, and marked by a tablet put up by the Society of Arts, the house in which Johnson lived and toiled for the press for ten of the busiest years of his life, from 1748 onwards. Thomas Carlyle made pil grimage to it in 1832, and found it " a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house." The occupant was courteous enough, though " in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble and hallucination." He pointed out to his visitor the garden where the great man walked for exercise (" a plot of delved ground somewhat longer than a bedquilt," says Carlyle), and showed him the three great bedrooms where Johnson kept his " pupils." The worthy man supposed that Johnson was a schoolmaster : the pupils were really his copyists, whom he kept hard at work upon his Dictionary. This great work, begun the year before he came to Gough Square, was finished here in 1755. The next year he was arrested for a debt of £5 18s., but his friend Richardson came to his rescue. It was while living here that he carried on the Rambler (1750-52), and began the Idler (1758) ; and here in 1752 his wife died. From Gough Square we may make our way to Fleet Street by way of Johnson's Court, where also Johnson lived, though it is. not named after him. The coincidence, how- JOHNSON AND HIS BIOGRAPHER 443 ever, enabled him to speak of himself, while in Scot land with Boswell, as " Johnson of that ilk." It was in 1765 that he came hither, from Inner Temple Lane, and here he dwelt for eleven years. PI is house was taken down some years ago, and the court has been almost entirely rebuilt, but an in scription on one of the new buildings records the fact of his residence here. Bos well tells us that reaching London late on Friday, the 15th of March, 1776, he hastened next morning to wait upon Johnson but found him gone. " I felt a foolish regret," he writes in his journal, " that he had left a court which bore his name ; but it was not foolish to be affected with some tenderness of regard for a place in which I had seen him a great deal, from whence I had often issued a better and a happier man than when I went in ; and which had often appeared to my imagination, while I trod its pavement in the solemn darkness of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety." Admir able sentiment, admirably expressed ! Bos- count ZINZENDORF. well's service to posterity can never be sufficently acknowledged, and the strain of deep feeling in him — not to speak of his very respectable literary faculty — should save him from the unmeasured mockery which his foibles have provoked. When in 1776 Boswell's hero left Johnson's Court it was to pitch his tent in Bolt Court, which lies be tween Wine Office Court and Johnson's Court, and is probably named after the Bolt - in - tun tavern, opposite its Fleet Street end. He brought with him, besides his faithful negro servant Frank Barber, Miss Williams, the blind old Welsh lady whom he had befriended, and Robert Levett, the odd old surgeon whom he kept to tend his poorer friends. Nor were they the only pensioners to whom this great man " with the coat but not A strange j^e heart of a bear " gave the Menage. shelter of his hospitable roof: there were also Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Stafford shire lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael. At the quarrels of his pen- Photo : Pictorial Agency. THE MORAVIAN CHAPEL, FETTER LANE. 444 LONDON TOWN sioners Johnson felt not more than a seemly measure of amusement. " We have tolerable concord at home, but no love," he wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1778 (November 14th). " Williams hates everybody ; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams ; Desmoulins hates them both ; Poll [Miss Carmichael] loves none of them." And in the following year he writes with a touch of grim humour, " Discord and discontent reign in my humble habitation as in the palaces of monarchs." It was here that Mrs. Siddons paid him the visit which won from him so gallant and witty a compliment. " You see, Madam," he said when his servant could not at once find a chair for her, " where- ever you go there are no seats to be got." In Bolt Court, too, he wrote his " Lives of the Poets," and here he abode until his death, on the 13th of December, 1784. His house is believed to have been destroyed by fire in 18 19, and though it has been said that it was the house next to his that perished, it has certainly long since disappeared. At the end of the court is the London County Council School of Photo-engraving and Lithography. In Crane Court, further up the street and once known as Two Crane Court, the Royal Society dwelt from 17 10, when Crane Court : jt jeft Gresham College — not the Society. present College, but Gresham's house in Bishopsgate Street — until 1782, when it removed to Somerset House in its westward progress. For £1,450 the Society purchased a house which had been built by one of its original members, Sir Christopher Wren, in 1 670, and in which had dwelt Dr. Edward Brown, President of the College of Physicians, and son of the author of the " Religio Medici." After the Royal Society left it the house was rented by the London Philosophical Society, and in it Coleridge delivered his memorable lectures on Shakespeare (1819). Later it was occupied by the Scots Corporation, an institution for the relief of the Scottish poor in and around London, by which it had been acquired from the Royal Society. Burnt down in 1877, it was replaced by the present substantial hall, built by Professor T. L. Donaldson at a cost of over £6,000, and opened in 1880. The Society was incor porated in 1665, but had come into FetterLane. existence in the reign of James I., who, it would seem, was not able to ensure the prosperity of all who accompanied or fol lowed him to his new capital. Fetter Lane was in Stow's days known as Fewter Lane, and was so called, he says, from the idle persons (fewtors) who hung about in it before it was built upon ; but in more ancient docu ments it appears as Faytor or Faiter Lane, and it is suggested with some probability that the name may be derived from the fetters or lance-rests which were worn on the front of the cuirass, Fetter Lane being the headquarters of the armourers, who were con veniently near the Templars and their tilting- ground adjoining Lincoln's Inn. The lane numbers among its residents Hobbes, the author of " Leviathan " ; Praise-God Barbon, whose son or nephew, by the way, was founder of the Phcenix Fire Office ;* and Tom Paine, the revolutionary and deistical writer, who would probably have been guillotined by the French but for Robespierre's downfall. It also claims as residents John Dryden and Thomas Otway, who according to an un supported tradition lived opposite each other, the former in a quaint old house which was made away with in 1 887. A resident whom it would much prefer not to claim was the infamous Elizabeth Brownrigge, midwife to St. Dunstan's Workhouse, who with her husband lived on the east side of the lane, looking into Fleur-de-Lys Cour,t. Here it was that, in 1767, this victim of a lust for cruelty flogged and tortured to death poor Mary Mitchell, her apprentice from the Foundling Hospital — a crime which she expiated on the scaffold. Nor is this Fetter Lane's only gruesome memory. At each end of the thoroughfare criminals were occasionally executed for some two hundred years, and among those who suffered at its Holborn end, near where the first of them lived, were Tomkins and Challoner, who in 1643 were implicated in the plot engineered by Waller, the poet, Tomkins's brother-in-law, to arrest Pym and Hampden and others of the Parliamentary party and take possession of the City for the King. Both the culprits made a very penitent end, but Waller himself contrived to escape with a whole skin, though he had * See Notes and Queries, 9th Series, vol. vi. , p. 35r. THE MORAVIAN CHURCH IN FETTER LANE 445 to pay a fine of £10,000 and endure a year's imprisonment before he was permitted to retire to France. Fetter Lane, until quite recently, wore an aspect of antiquity, but of late years one after another of the low-browed, half-timbered houses has disappeared. The Fetter Lane Independent chapel, too, the habitation of a church founded some time before 1660, will now be looked for in vain. The chapel, how ever, was less ancient than the church, for Queen Elizabeth, was long in the possession of the Independents, and numbers among its ministers Dr. Thomas Goodwin and Thomas Bradbury. In 1732 the Independents moved across the lane to the chapel mentioned above, and in 1738 it was hired for the society out of which the Moravian church was presently formed. The chapel has been more than once rebuilt, the last time in 1748. Nevill's Court, leading from Fetter Lane to New Street, and named after the Ralph Photo : Pictorial Agency. A BIT OF OLD LONDON : NEVILL's COURT, FETTER LANE. it was not built till 1732. Among the pastors of the church was the Rev. John Spurgeon, father of the founder of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, who long survived his distinguished son. The name of the building has been transferred to a chapel at Leyton, opened in the year 1900, as the New Fetter Lane Chapel. The Moravian Chapel, however, with adjacent offices, still continues to carry on in Fetter Lane the excellent work of the stlf-denying community of which Count Zinzendorf became the leader. Exiled from Bohemia and Moravia early in the eighteenth century, they settled on the Count's estate in Saxony in 1722. The chapel, believed to have been originally built in the reign of Nevill who was Bishop of Chichester in the thirteenth century, is still to be reckoned among bits of Old London that have not fallen a prey to the modern builder. It escaped the Great Fire, and it includes some houses with plastered walls which probably date back many years before that event. Between Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane stretches the great block of fire-proof build ings known as the Public Record Office, which we may notice here, although the greater part of the pile is in the Liberty of Rolls, and therefore in the City of Westminster. Until after the middle of the last century the hundreds of millions of documents forming the national records were stowed away 446 LONDON TOWN almost indiscriminately in the Rolls Chapel, the Tower of London, the Chapter-house of Westminster Abbey, the State Paper Office in St. James's Park, and elsewhere. On the 24th of May, 1 85 1, the first stone of a massive building in the Tudor style, of Sir James Pennethorne's designing, was laid on the west side of Fetter Lane by Lord Romilly, but it was not until 1866 that the structure kept under glass cases, are on view the Domesday Book which William I. had compiled mainly in order that he Domesday - ht fi d t h h taxatjon B00K. » the land could bear. The country was divided into districts, and a body of commissioners was appointed to hold inquest in each. The inquiry was of the most searching kind, and was bitterly resented by Photo: Pictorial Agency. MUSEUM OF THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. The Public Record Office. was completed. The greatest pains were taken to make it fireproof, and to this end the architect and Sir Henry Cole had consultations with Superintendent Braid wood, the head of the Fire Brigade. To this has since been added the building of which the facade looks down upon Chancery Lane, the work of Sir John Taylor, who has observed a general harmony with the older building without, how ever, producing the same effect of massiveness. Reading-rooms are provided for the use of the public, and since 1892 there has also been here a public museum, of quite singular interest, though few Londoners, or visitors to London, ever pay it a visit. Here in two volumes, bound in thick board covers, and carefully those who had to supply the information. " It is shame to tell," writes a chronicler, " what he thought it no shame for him to do. Ox nor cow nor swine was left that was not set down upon his writ." And one theory of the origin of the title Domesday .is that the English regarded the inquisition as " the day of judgment," because of the strictness of the examination'. The survey was finished in 1086, and here in these two volumes, written throughout in a beautiful clerkly hand, and in a state of perfect preserva tion, we have the record of it. There were other volumes also, but it is to these two, known more precisely as the Ex chequer Domesday, or, to use the title contained in the book itself, the Liber de THE ROLLS CHAPEL 447 Wintonia, that the term Domesday Book properly belongs. Other treasures to be seen here are the Papal Bull sent to Henry VIII., with the golden seal fabricated by Benvenuto Cellini, the Treaty of the Field of Cloth of Gold, with another of Cellini's gold seals, and the anonymous letter to Lord Mont- eagle which gave the first hint of the Gun powder Plot. The Museum of the Record Office also contains the monu ments from the old Rolls Chapel, which, according to Pennant, was built by Inigo Jones in 1617, and was taken down in 1896 after having undergone a good deal of mutila tion. Connected with it was Rolls House, the official residence of the Master of the Rolls, who held in it his Court until the new Law Courts in the Strand were opened in 1882. The house, however, was less ancient than the chapel, for it was not built until 1717-25. On the site of the Rolls Chapel Henry 1 1 1., in 1233, built a house and chapel for con verted Jews, who there lived under a Christian governor ; but after Edward I.'s expulsion of the Jews the supply of converts ceased, and in 1377 Edward III. annexed house and chapel to the newly-created office of Custos Rotulorum, Keeper of the Rolls. Of the divines who preached from the pulpit of the Rolls Chapel those best known to fame were Burnet, the friend of William of Orange, Atterbury, the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester, and, greatest name of all, Joseph Butler, the profound author of " The Analogy " and of the Sermons on Human Nature. When Archbishop Blackburne lamented to Queen Caroline that this great thinker should be lost to the Church in the obscurity of a small country living she exclaimed, " Why, I thought he had been CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE. From a Miniature in the possession of the Right Hon. Sir Charles Dilhe, Bart., M.P. dead." " No, Madam," he made answer ; " he is only buried." A little to the north of the Record Office, in the street known as Breams Buildings, is Birkbeck College, which has grown out of the Mechanics' Institute founded in 1823 by Dr. Birkbeck in Southampton Buildings, a stone's- throw away on the north-west. The buildings of the college were opened by the then Prince of Wales in 1885. Its work is now mainly of a university character ; and there are some thirteen hundred students attending day and evening classes. On the other side of the street are the exten sive offices of the Field, the Queen, and the Law Times, and beside them are the printing and publishing offices of the Athenceum and Notes and Queries. The latter paper claims recognition in a work on London because of the light which its erudite and industrious correspond ents have thrown on many obscure questions connected with the his tory of the capital ; the former because of its primacy among papers that are specially concerned with literature and the fine arts. The maker, though not the founder, of this influential journal was Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789- 1864), grandfather of the Right Hon. Sir Charles Dilke, Bart, M.P. It had been established by James Silk Buckingham in 1828, had been purchased by John Sterling, and had then been acquired by its printers and a group of men of letters. In 1830 Mr. Dilke became its supreme editor, and under his able and vigorous direction its prosperity was soon assured. Early in 1831 he reduced the price to fourpence, but the change alarmed his co-proprietors, and they left to him and to the printer the whole of the financial responsibility. Gathering around him as contributors Charles Lamb, Barry Cornwall, The " Athenaeum 448 LONDON TOWN and others, and enlisting the aid of Conti nental critics like Sainte-Beuve and Jules Janin, he went his way undaunted. By the forties the Athenceum had become so firmly established that Dilke was able to transfer the editorship to T. K. Hervey and to devote his energies to the Daily News (p. 430). More recently the editorial chair of the Athenceum has been occupied by Mr. Norman MacColl, and on his retirement in 1901, four years before his death, he was suc ceeded by Mr. Vernon Horace Rendall, the assistant-editor since 1896, who is now also Editor of Notes and Queries* A little to the south of the Record Office, behind the church of St. Dunstan's, is Clif ford's Inn, one of those Inns of Clifford's Chancery which, unlike the Inns Inn. of Court, have lost their functions, though the Society to which it belongs still exists. The oldest of the Inns of Chancery, it was originally a town house of the Lords Clifford, ancestors of the Earls of Cumber land, and was first let to students of the law in the eighteenth year of King Edward III. At this time it was an independent school for the study of the law, but afterwards it became an appanage of the Inner Temple. Coke, most bitter and most relentless of prosecutors, and John Selden are among those who have resided at Clifford's Inn, and in its hall, partly rebuilt in 1767, Sir Matthew Hale and seven teen other judges sat to deal with the * For details of the history of these publications, see "John Francis, Publisher of the Athenceuvi," a literary chronicle of half-a-century, compiled by John C. Francis. Vols. I. and II., questions of boundary and ownership that arose out of the Great Fire. The task was one of immense difficulty, and the decisions of the judges fill forty folio volumes, which are preserved at the British Museum. Clifford's Inn numbers among its denizens Samuel Butler, author of " Erewhon," and the George Dyer of whom " Elia " centric. nas mucn tnat is amusing to say. Dyer had all the inno cence and harmless eccentricity of the pedant. He would sometimes charge the tea-pot from his snuff-box, and once when Charles Lamb visited him here in midwinter he found him wearing nankeen pantaloons. They were " four times too big for him " and though, as Lamb says, they were " absolutely ingrained with the accumulated dirt of ages," he " affirmed 'em to be clean. He was going to visit a lady who was nice about those things, and that's the reason he wore nankeen that day ! " To Dyer it was, as Mr. B. E. Martin, the author of " In the Footprints of Charles Lamb," recalls, that " Elia " confided that the secret author of " Waverley " was Lord Castlereagh ; and it was Dyer again whom he sent to Primrose Hill at sunrise to see the Persian Ambassador perform his orisons ! Serjeants' Inn, adjoining Clifford's Inn, has already been mentioned in connexion with the Fleet Street Inn of the Order of the Coif, and here it need only be added that when the Society was dissolved in 1876 and the Chancery Lane Inn disposed of, the hall was not pulled down, but divided into offices. DOMESDAY VOLUMES, PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. CHAPTER XLI WHITEFRIARS The Carmelite Monastery— Alsatia— Theatres in Whitefriars— Lord Sanquhar and the Fencing Master— The Schools of the City Corporation— Sion College— The New and the Older Journalism— The Metropolitan Asylums Board — Felicitous Names OF the three institutions which occupied the space between Fleet Street and the Thames — Bridewell, Whitefriars, and the Temple — we have already given an account of the first (p. 408) ; and now in the two last of our City chapters something must be said about the house of the Carmelites and the domain of the Templars. The Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, who rank last of the four great orders of mendicant friars, are said to have received their rule from Albert, Pat- i^Londcm riarcn °f Jerusalem, in 1205, and to have had it confirmed to them by Pope Honorius III. in 1224. It was no great while after this, in 1241, that their London house was founded for them by Sir Richard Grey, on land given by Edward I., stretching from the eastern wall of the Temple to the present Water Street on the east, and from Fleet Street on the north to the Thames on the south. The church was rebuilt in 1350 by Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and in 1420 Robert Marshall, Bishop of Hereford, enlarged it and added a steeple. At the Dissolution, when the monastery was valued at £62 7s. 3d. per annum, Henry VIII. gave his physician, Dr. Butts, the chapter house for a residence. It was not long before the church was pulled down, and " many fair houses, lodgings for noblemen and others," as Stow says, were built in its place. Parts of the convent, however, were left standing, and presently became the Whitefriars Theatre, and the residence of the Grays, and here lived the widow of the ninth Earl of Kent with the great lawyer who was less than husband and more than friend, Selden. Every visible trace of the monastery has long since vanished, but in 1895 a groined crypt, which was believed by some to be not improbably that of the church, was discovered underneath a house in Britton's Court, almost opposite the offices of the Daily Chronicle. When the house of the White Friars was surrendered, the precinct was not deprived of its right of sanctuary. Under James I., indeed, it was confirmed and extended, and though the immunities legally belonging to the place extended only to debtors, it was overrun with cheats and highwaymen and perjurers and wantons, who christened their place of residence Alsatia, after Alsatia. Alsace, the debatable land of the French and Germans, and were ever ready to make common cause against the officers of justice. " At the cry of ' Rescue ! ' " as Macaulay says in the History, " bullies with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds ; and the intruder was fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pumped upon." Still more graphic is the description of Alsatia which Scott gives in " The Fortunes of Nigel." " The wailing of children," he says, " the scolding of their mothers, the miserable exhibition of ragged linen hung from the windows to dry, spoke the wants and distresses of the wretched inhabitants ; while the sounds of complaint were mocked and overwhelmed by the riotous shouts, oaths, profane songs, and boisterous laughter that issued from the alehouses and taverns, which, as the signs indicated, were equal in number to all the other houses ; and that the full character of the place might be evident, several faded, tinselled, and painted females looked boldly at strangers from their open lattices, or more modestly seemed busied with the cracked flower-pots, filled with mignonette and rosemary, which were disposed in front of the windows, to the great risk of the passengers." In this graceless region 449 45° LONDON TOWN also Shadwell found the characters who figure in his Squire of Alsatia. The be ginning of the end came in 1697, when the right of sanctuary was cancelled by Act of Parliament, but it was not until long after this that the region ceased to be the haunt of bad characters. Of the theatres which flourished in or on the borders of this precinct, the earliest was the Whitefriars, for which, as we have already seen, a part of the conven tual buildings was adapted. It had but a short, though no doubt a merry life, bounded by the years 15 86 and 16 13. A few years after wards (1629) was opened the Salis bury Court Theatre, of which we have ahead}' spoken in our notice of Salisbury Square (p. 436). Finally there was the Dorset Gardens Theatre, built on the site of the gardens of Dor set House, which was formerly, as we have seen (p. 437), the London house of the Bishops of Salisbury, and then of the Earls of Dorset, and was not rebuilt after the Fire. Designed by Wren, and opened in 167 1 with Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all, it had but eleven years of prosperity, for on the death of Tom Killigrew in 1682 the company, known as the Duke's Servants, joined the King's Servants at Drury Lane. Afterwards it descended to the uses of a fencing and wrestling hall, and shortly after 1720, when Strype wrote, it was pulled down and its site used as a timber-yard. Then the New River Company had their offices here, next ( 1 814) the City Gas Works were built over the site, and finally there sprang up the elegant City of London School. Before noticing this and other features of the Whitefriars of to-day, let us recall one THE DORSET GARDENS THEATRE. of its older memories. It was at Whitefriars that, in the reign of James I., Lord Sanquhar, who had followed the King Tragedy.''"13" from Scotland, wreaked his ignoble vengeance upon a fenc ing master of the name of Turner. Five years before, in a bout at the foils, Turner by pure mischance had injured Lord Sanquhar's eye, of which presently ~~ the sight was irre trievably destroyed. The sufferer could not forgive the un intended injury, and hired a couple of ruffians to avenge his imaginary wrong. About seven o'clock one May evening the assassins came upon him as he sat out side a Whitefriars tavern near his fencing school. They saluted him, and he civilly in vited them to drink. For answer one of them fired a pistol point blank at him. The ball pierced the poor fellow's heart, and with the exclamation " Lord have mercy upon me ! I am killed ! " he fell to the ground a dead man. One of the assassins ran into a blind alley and was captured, the other fled to Scotland. But " kings, you know, have long arms," as Sir Francis Bacon, then Solicitor-General, finely said at the trial, and the fugitive was laid by the heels " ere he was warm in his house " across the Tweed. Then Lord Sanquhar, who was strongly suspected of being the instigator of the crime, surrendered to Archbishop Abbot at Lambeth Palace, though solemnly protesting his innocence, But as the case developed he saw the use- lessness of further denial, and, confronted with one of his tools and closely pressed, he admitted that the murder was of his de vising. Brought to trial in the Court of the King's Bench at Westminster Hall, not rfe* LORD SANQUHAR'S CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 45i as Lord Sanquhar — for he was not a peer of the English Parliament — but as plain Robert Creighton, he delivered himself of a long speech which is a curious psychological study. In form it was categorical and imperative, such as might have of a°Crime? been composed by a lawyer or a theologian. As to its spirit, though it abounded in profuse expressions of contrition and a great parade of candour, its author was careful to admit no more than could be proved against him, and all through he abjectly appealed to the clemency of the King. From this point of view the harangue was framed not without skill. It was just such a prelection as would interest and titillate a conceited, pragmatic pedant with a voracious appetite for the coarsest flattery. Great efforts were made by Sanquhar's friends to obtain a commutation of the death sentence, and Archbishop Abbot also used his influence with the King to the same end. But James was obdurate. It has been said that he had a personal grudge against the mis guided nobleman. While Lord Sanquhar was in France, so the tale goes, someone remarked in his hearing that it was no wonder his king was called a Solomon, since he was the son of David (Rizzio) ; and the lord failed to resent the profane witticism. The story is probably apocryphal, and in view of the jealousy with which the King's Scottish followers were regarded by his English subjects it is easy to understand why he refused to exercise his prerogative of mercy. So two days later (June 29th, 161 2) the miser able man was hanged in what is now New Palace Yard, Westminster. His agents had already suffered on gibbets set up in Fleet Street over against the entrance to the pre cinct in which the crime was perpetrated. On the site of Whitefriars there has sprung up an important group of buildings which testifies to the zeal of the City authorities in the cause of educa tion. Chief among them is the City of London School, which, as we have seen, stands on the site of the Dorset Gardens Theatre. Though a modern foundation, it utilises a bequest of John Carpenter, who was Town Clerk of London from 1417 to 1438, was one of Whittington's executors, and com piled the Liber Albus, a collection of City records and ordinances which is one of the Educational Institutions. chief treasures of the Guildhall Library. Carpenter left certain tenements " for the finding and bringing up of four poor men's children, with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the universities, etc.," little thinking, perhaps, that the day would ever come when his bequest would yield an annual income of not far short of a thousand pounds, and would form the nucleus of an endowment for a school numbering over seven hundred boys. The school was established so re cently as 1837, in Milk Street, Cheapside, with the object of supplying a useful and liberal education for the sons of the pro fessional, commercial and trading classes. In 1882 it was transferred to its present much more spacious and dignified premises on the Victoria Embankment. The building, in the style of the French Renascence, enriched with carving and sculpture, and with a fine flight of steps leading up to the chief entrance, was built from the designs of Messrs. Emanuel and Davis, at a cost of about a hundred thousand pounds, and the site, the gift of the Corporation, was estimated to be worth a hundred thousand pounds more. The exterior is of Portland stone, relieved with shafts of red granite, and there are portrait statues of Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton, besides allegorical figures of the Arts and Sciences. The great hall has a hand some open-timbered roof. Among distin guished old boys may be mentioned the late Sir J. R. Seeley, the Rev. E. A Abbott, D.D., afterwards head-master, the late Lord Ritchie, who before his elevation to the peerage had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P., who in 1 90S became Prime Minister. A little way back from the Embankment, in Carmelite Street, is the City of London School for Girls, established by the Corporation on somewhat similar lines in 1873, and adjoining this, with its chief front in John Carpenter Street, is the Guildhall School of Music, founded in 1880, and greatly extended in 1897-98, when a large orchestral saloon was added. Already the Corporation has expended upwards of a hundred thousand pounds upon this admir able institution. Next to the City of London School is the Perpendicular building, of red brick, with a parvised porch, which is known as Sion College, established on the site of Elsing 452 LONDON TOWN Spital in London Wall (p. 321), under the will of Dr. Thomas Whyte, a prebendary of St. Paul's and vicar of St. Dunstan's- 5*°n in-the-West, and founder of the College. ' Whyte Professorship of Moral Phi losophy at Oxford, who died in 1624. The foundation took the form of a guild of the clergy of London and the suburbs, with an in 1886 by the present King. The college still consists of incumbents of City and suburban parishes, but access to the library is as a matter of favour permitted to such students as may wish to avail them selves of its advantages. In Whitefriars are the offices of news papers which stand prominently for what Photo : Pictorial Agency. CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL : THE LARGE HALL. almshouse for ten poor men and as many poor women ; and to it was added by one of Whyte's executors, Dr. John Simson, rector of St. Olave's, Hart Street, the library, which has become the most important feature of the college, now numbering over a hundred thousand volumes, mostly theological. Under an Act of 1884 the almshouse has been abolished, but the number of pensioners was increased, and this part of the foundation is now under separate management. The site of the present college was acquired from the Corporation at a cost of upwards of £31,000, and the building, designed by the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, was opened The New Journalism is known as the new journalism. Carmelite House, in Tallis Street, is the habitation of the Daily Mail (with the Over seas Daily Mail) and the Even ing News, the former founded in 1896 by one whose genius for journalism is beyond question — Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, afterwards Lord Northcliffe — and having for one of its distinctive features a fenilleton, after the French manner ; and close at hand, in Whitefriars Street, is published another paper of the same group, the Daily Mirror. In Tudor Street were formerly the offices of the Daily Express, founded by Mr. C. Arthur Pear son in 1900, as a rival of the Daily Mail,with its THE METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD 453 first page reserved for the most important news of the day to the exclusion of adver tisements — a feature which was destined to find many imitators. The Daily Express has now migrated to St. Bride Street. In Tudor Street also are the advertisement offices of a paper which represents with dis tinction the older traditions of journalism. The Westminster Gazette, founded by Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Newnes in 1893, when the Pall Mall Gazette changed pro prietors and politics, and now published in Salisbury Square, has won deserved fame by the cartoons of its assistant editor, Sir F. C. Gould, keenest and wittiest of contemporary caricaturists, and by the reasoned force and conspicuous fairness with which questions of the day are treated in its columns. In this street, too, is located a corporation which guards the interests alike of the old and the new journalism — the Institute of Journalists, in a building dating from 1902, and standing at the corner of Bridewell Place. The Insti tute, founded as the National Association of Journalists in 1884, and incorporated in 1890, is able to claim that it took an important part in preventing the introduction into this country of seven-day newspapers, that the mitigation of the hardships of the law of libel which has been effected by recent legislation was due in part to its efforts, and that it has secured to journalists, as members of the corporation, the treatment of professional men in respect of allowances in the law courts. It numbers some three thousand members, attached to fifty districts and sub- districts, and including a widely distributed membership in India, the Colonies, and foreign countries. Of late years splendid offices have sprung up along the Embankment — those of the Thames Conservancy, flanking Sion College and harmonising with it in style ; of the Metro politan Asylums Board ; of the Exchequer and Audit Department; of the National Telephone Company, and of the Employers' Liability Assurance Corporation. Of the Thames Conservancy we shall speak in our chapter on " the royal river." The Metro politan Asylums Board, which moved into new offices here in 1900, is one of the most important municipal institutions of the met ropolis, created, under an Act passed in 1867, to undertake the charge of in- Metropolitan foctious hospitals for fever and Board. smallpox and of the ambulance stations subsidiary to them, and to maintain pauper imbeciles. It now has under its control twelve fever hospitals, five imbecile asylums, schools for imbecile child ren and three hospitals for the treatment of smallpox patients, besides homes for defective children. It also maintains in the Thames the Exmouth training ship, where some six hundred workhouse waifs are always in course of transformation into sailors and soldiers, and it carries on three homes for the accom modation of children remanded from the Metropolitan police courts under that admir able statute, the Youthful Offenders Act, 1901. These remand homes are in the Harrow Road, the Pentonville Road, and at Camberwell Green. The Board is composed of fifty-five managers elected triennially by the Guardians of the Metropolitan Poor Law Unions from within or without the boards, and eighteen members nominated by the Local Govern ment Board. The City Corporation has been happy in the names it has given to the new streets that have been cut in Whitefriars. street Carmelite Street is reminiscent of Names. the monastery itself; the street that runs beside the City of London School bears the honoured name of the John Carpenter of whose concern for education that institution is reaping the fruits ; the street which one of the facades of the Guildhall School of Music looks down upon is named after the great Tallis, to whom church music in England is so deeply indebted, and whose setting of " Glory to Thee, my God, this night " is as familiar in our mouths as the Old Hun dredth itself. EFFIGY OF WILLIAM MARESCHALL IN THE TEMPLE CHURCH. CHAPTER XLII THE TEMPLE The Coming of the Templars— The Temple Church — Eighteenth Century "Improvements" — A Drastic " Restoration '' — Monuments — Masters of the Temple — The Templars' Devices — Dissolution of the Order — Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery — Legal Scruples — The Gordon Rioters at Work — ¦ Middle Temple Hall — Fountain Court — Middle Temple Library — Inner Temple Hall and Library — Hare Court— Tanfield Court — Dr. Johnson — Goldsmith — Cowper — Charles Lamb — Samuel Rogers — The Gardens — Temple Bar and the Memorial TPIAT six hundred years after the Order of Knights Templars was swept away two of the four Inns of Court should still be known as the Temple, is but one of many reminders in the story of London that Englishmen have never had the rage for re naming places which has often animated our neighbours across the Channel. It was in 1 128, only two years after the order of soldier- monks was founded by Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to the sacred city, that the Knights Templars settled in London. First they established themselves at Holborn, on the site of Southampton Buildings, rather more than a century and a half ago part of their round church was unearthed. As the years sped they grew rapidly in possessions, and in 1 1 84 they moved southwards to the bank of the Thames, where they built for themselves a vast monastery, flanked by a river terrace for military exercises and religious meditation. The next year their The Templars h in London. new church was consecrated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had come to England to induce Henry 1 1, to give help against Saladin. The history of the Order — the distinguished part it played in successive Crusades, how it waxed in wealth and pride — belongs rather to general history than to the story of London, and we need only say of it further that probably its final suppres sion by the Council of Vienna in 1312 was due as much to the covetousness of its enemies as to their zeal for morality and the Christian graces, as Thomas Fuller suggests when he says that they " could not get the honey unless they burnt the bees." The Temple Church, the only tangible memorial of the Knights Templars which has survived to these days, is one ChuJchmPle of the four existing churches built in this country by Crusading knights after the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, where a dome- shaped building still covers the traditional site of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea. 454 THE ROUND CHURCH 455 The other three churches, by the way, are at Cambridge, Northampton, and Little Maplestead in Essex. The one with which we are concerned here is much the largest and most sumptuous of the four. The Rotunda, or "the Round," its distinguishing feature, built as soon as the Templars settled beside the Thames, marks the transition the choir, which during service is reserved for members of the two Inns and their friends. The choir, by the way, is divided between the two Inns with legal Moieties. precision, the southern half being allocated to the Inner and the northern to the Middle Temple; and the raised seats in the aisles, except those allotted to Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE TEMPLE CHURCH. from Norman to Early English ; the rest of the church, added during the next half- century, is a choice example of the First Pointed or Early English. This par ticular combination of the two styles is exceptionally admirable, and the effect is equally good, whether one looks from the Rotunda into the choir, or from the choir into the Rotunda. After the church had passed into the hands of the lawyers who established themselves in the Temple, they were wont to meet their clients in the Rotunda, just as their brethren did in the nave of Old St. Paul's, and this part of the building is still regarded as more public than the choir, are reserved for the Benchers of the respective Inns. From the Great Fire (1666) the church had a narrow escape, but fortunately the westward progress of the flames was here stayed, though they almost licked its windows. Sixteen years afterwards it was beautified according to the taste of that age, and it passed through several Degradation, such experiences, as, for example, in 1706, when, as set out in " The New View of London," it was " wholly new whitewashed, gilt, and painted within, and the pillars of the round tower wainscoted." The pointed arches connecting the Rotunda 456 LONDON TOWN with the choir were filled up with an oak screen, an organ gallery divided the building into two parts, and at the east end was reared an enormous altar-piece in the same Grecian style as the organ gallery. In 1825, under Sir Robert Smirke, began a renovation which was continued between the years 1839 and 1842, and although the Restoration. " restoration," undertaken, as it was, too earl)' in the Gothic revival, was needlessly drastic, it has left us with a structure of singular interest and beaut)-, not only admirable in its proportions and in its blending of styles, but with the new work now touched by the mellowing years into harmony with the old. Than the clustered columns of polished Purbeck marble, or the interlacing arches of the Rotunda, nothing could be more graceful. In 1908, when the reredos and altar were renovated and enlarged by Mr. Reginald Blomfield, A.R.A., interesting remains of the old altar were brought to light. On the floor of the Rotunda lie some twelfth and thirteenth century effigies of associate knights of the Order and an ornamented stone coffin. One . of the effigies, on the south side, with the pillow resting on a slab enriched with marble in relief, is believed to represent William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, husband of a daughter of Henry I., and Regent during the minority of Henry IIP; another, the earl who in Shakespeare pleads with John on behalf of Prince Arthur ; a third, his son, who was killed at a tournament by a runaway horse, in fulfilment, as men said, of a curse laid upon the house because the father had seized lands belonging to a religious foundation. During the restoration many of the later monuments, because they were in a style not congruous hater , with that of the church, were Monuments. ' bundled into the triforium, and among them those of Edmund Plowden, the jurist (d. 1585), who is said to have been so studious that for three whole years he never went outside the Temple precinct ; Richard Martin (d. 16 18), a Recorder of London, who was thrashed during dinner time in the Middle Temple Hall by Sir John Davis the poet, but to whom a greater than Sir John Davis — Ben Jonson to wit — dedicated his Poetaster ; Howell (d. 1666), the Knights in Stone letter-writer whom we have met in the Fleet prison and elsewhere ; and Edmund Gibbon, an ancestor {temp. James I.) of the historian. Opening into the winding staircase that leads up to the triforium is an exiguous cell in which it is said that offenders against the discipline of the Knights Templars were immured, narrow slits in the wall enabling them to look into the church and avail them selves of the means of grace. A plain slab of black marble on the south side of the communion table marks the burial place of the learned John Selden, who lived in Whitefriars ; a much more ancient monument on the other side is believed to be the tomb of a Bishop of Carlisle ; and in the vestry are memorials of Eldon, Stowell, and Thur- low, the last of whom rests under the south aisle. The preacher at the Temple Church is styled the Master of the Temple ; and for him is provided a dignified dwelling Masters of t th north-east of the church. the Temple. Among the great divines who have held the office may be named Richard Plooker, the profound but simple-natured author of the " Ecclesiastical Polity," who was appointed in 1585, and died in 1600, and Thomas Sherlock, who was Master for fifty years save one (1704-53). While he was Bishop of Salisbury, in 1748, the sees of London and Canterbury both fell vacant, and the popular expectation that he was destined for one or the other found expres sion in the lines — " At the Temple one day, Sherlock taking a boat, The waterman asked him, ' Which way will you float ? ' ' Which way ? ' says the Doctor, ' why, fool, with the stream ? ' To St. Paul's or to Lambeth was all one to him." It was eastwards that the current carried Sherlock, but he had already declined the primacy the year before, as four years before this he had refused the see of York. In our own day the Mastership has been held with dis tinction by Charles John Vaughan, Dean of Llandaff, and by Alfred Ainger, most acute and sympathetic of recent writers upon "Elia," whose intimate connexion with the Temple will presently be touched upon. The Temple Church has always been noted for its admir able music as well as for the high quality of its preaching. Something has already been DEVICES OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 457 said in another connexion (p. 394) of the organ-building competition in the reign of Charles I. between Father Schmidt and Renatus Harris, which, after many trials, was decided in Schmidt's favour by the arbitrament of Judge Jeffreys. Scattered about the Temple Church, as well as about the other Temple buildings, are the devices of the Two Devices. Knights on one Horse, the em blem of the short-lived poverty of the Knights Templars, the Lamb and Flag, which they appear to have afterwards adopted, and which is now the emblem of the Middle Temple, and the Winged Horse (Pegasus), the emblem of the Inner Temple. By Hare, the author of " Walks in London," and other writers, it has been stated Pegasus. that the Pegasus is what is left of the original emblem of the Templars, the Two Knights on one Horse, that the Knights were worn off the shield, and that when it was restored they were taken for wings. This is one of those ingenious and attractive guesses which have every claim to credence except that of truth. The prosaic fact is that, in the fifth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, as Mr. Philip Norman states in his " London Signs and Inscrip tions," the Society of the Inner Temple, at the suggestion of Gerard Leigh, one of its Benchers, an enthusiast in heraldry, adopted as an heraldic charge the Pegasus, with the motto " Volat ad sethera virtus," the sugges tion being that " the knowledge which might be gained at this seat of learning would raise its possessor to the highest pinnacle of fame." In 161 5, more than fifty years after the adoption of the Pegasus, it was suggested by George Buc, master of the revels, that as the authorities of the Middle Temple had neither arms nor seal, they should adopt either " two armed knights riding upon one horse, or a field argent charged with a cross gules, and on the nombril thereof a Holy Lamb." The first of these devices had been the ancient seal of Photo : Pictorial Agency. TEMPLE CHURCH : THE CHANCEL, FROM THE ROTUNDA. 30 45» LONDON TOWN the Knights Templars ; the second, as we have said, they appear to have adopted in the days of their prosperity. Mr. Norman per tinently adds that from the fact that Sir George Buc suggested to the Society of the Middle Temple the two devices which had been used by the Knights Templars, it is clear that in his time the Pegasus, which the Inner continued to dwell in the New Temple, as it was called to distinguish it from the old monastery of the Templars in Holborn, and it remained the headquarters of the Master of that Order right down to the Dissolution. Until then the Temple and the two other Inns of Court (Gray's and P.incoln's Inns) " were held," in this Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE MASTER S HOUSE, TEMPLE. Temple had already adopted, was not con sidered to have any connexion with the original seal of the Templars. When the Order of the Knights Templars was dissolved Edward I. granted their property to Aymer de Valence, Earl of dUsoTye" Pembroke, and at his death, in 1323, it was transferred to the rivals of the Templars, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, by whom the larger part of it was leased at a rent of £10 to certain " apprentices of the law," who came from Thavie's Inn, Holborn, and the remainder — the Outer Temple — to the Bishop of Exeter. For ages, however, the Knights Hos pitallers, as Serjeant Pulling showed,* * "The Order of the Coif." By Alexander Pulling. 1897. (Clowes & Sons.) author's words, " on a somewhat precarious tenure, involving various obligations and liabilities, together with rent and other charges, the real owners having not only the power to evict, but right of residence whenever required, treating the apprentices of the law more as lodgers than ordinary tenants." After the Dissolution, when the Temple reverted to the Crown, the lawyers were still but tenants of their habitation, until James I., by letters patent issued in 1608, conferred it upon the Benchers of the Inner and the Middle Temple — for long before this the Inn had separated into two, which were thus distinguished. When the fission took place is not known, but it was not later than the beginning of the sixteenth century, for from the year 1503 onwards Dugdale gives separate CURIOUS STATUES OF THE INNS OF COURT 459 PEGASUS (/. 457). lists of the Readers and Treasurers of the Inner and Middle Temples. The Inner Temple was so called because it was situated on the eastward or City side of the Middle Temple, and the Middle Temple because it lay between the Inner Temple and the region known as the Outer Temple. Whether the Inner and the Middle Temple are within the City is a moot question, but the Outer Temple is certainly subject to the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. We have already had occasion to speak of some of the Inns of Chancery, as distinct from the four Inns of Court, by inns of Court which alone is exercised the and of . , t» Chancery. function of calling to the Bar. At first, as we learn from Serjeant Pulling's erudite pages, there was no division into greater and lesser between the inns or hostels of the apprentices to the law : all alike were known as Inns of Court. The smaller ones had comparatively humble accommodation, "but ranked equally with Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, and neither in those two learned institutions nor in -the Temple does there seem, until the sixteenth century, to have been any recognised pre eminence or precedence . . . ; but when, in the course of time, the fortunate occupiers of the Temple and the two other great Inns flourished, we find them recognised as 'the four most famous colleges of law,' taking the exclusive title of Inns of Court, and having the lesser Inns subjected to their dominion and control." The Benchers of the Inns of Court seem, however, to have attempted very little interference with the Inns of Chancery, which gradually ceased to be merely legal in stitutions, and became simply the property of private associations. One curious anomaly in the constitution of the Inns of Court is that though in them is vested the control of the TheuTseWe1:. higher _ branch of the legal profession in England, and though they are the recognised guardians of the honour and independence of the English Bar, they are regulated by no prescribed legal provisions, express statute or governing charters. They are, in Serjeant Pulling's words, " practically exempted from the orders, jurisdiction, or interference of the Courts, and allowed to constitute, on all occasions of dissension and irregularity, a sort of domestic forum, whose conduct has in almost every known case been fully acquiesced in as lawful and right." He adds that the decisions of the Courts relating to the Inns have always been based on the presumption that in a legal sense they are voluntary societies, over which the ordinary tribunals have no such jurisdiction as they possess in the case of corporations or colleges. Except the church and Middle Temple Hall there is little in the Temple that is older than the Great Fire. But the gate-house of the Inner Temple, of which we have spoken in an earlier chapter (p. 422), dates from 1 6 10. That of the Middle Temple, at the head of Middle Temple Lane, a little to the THE LAMB AND FLAG (/. 457). 460 LONDON TOWN west, was built from Sir Christopher Wren's designs in 1684, when it replaced one which had been decorated by Sir Amyas Paulet, in 1 5 16, with the arms of Cardinal Wolsey by way of appeasing that prelate, who had flung him as a prisoner into the gate-house. Though the Fire of 1666 spared the Temple Church, it wrought a good deal of havoc among the secular buildings, devouring with the chambers the title-deeds of many a broad- acred estate. In connexion with The Legal ^j event Clarendon has recorded a Mind. singular example of legal pedantry. The Fire happened when many of the lawyers were away from town, and those who were in residence decided not to break open the chambers of absent members and rescue their property lest they should be prosecuted for burglary ! Most of the residential buildings which escaped on this occasion perished in a great fire a few years later (January, 1678-79), and with them the old cloisters and part of the Hall of the Inner Temple. The Thames was frozen over, and in the absence of water the Templars emptied their vessels of beer into the engines, and when this proved to be of no avail they had recourse to gunpowder. Among the buildings thus blown up was the Library of the Inner Temple. It was after this fire that the present quaint cloisters were built by Sir Christopher Wren. In the Gordon Riots (1780) the Temple was again in danger, but it was saved by the gallant jest of a sergeant of the Guards, leader of the armed Templars who assembled be hind their gate to give the rioters a warm reception. When the gate was forced the men of the law were about to retire, but the sergeant cried out in stentorian tones, " Take care no gentleman fires from behind." They were not too frightened to laugh at the jest, and the mob, misliking the laughter and the look of the firearms, fled. For another story relating to this attack we are indebted to Lord Eldon. " We youngsters at the Temple," he says in his " Anecdote Book," " determined that we would not remain in active during such times ; so we introduced ourselves into a troop to assist the military. We armed ourselves as well as we could, and next morning we drew up in the court ready to follow out a troop of soldiers who were on guard. When, however, the soldiers had The Gordon Rioters. passed through the gate it was suddenly shut in our faces, and the officer in command shouted from the other side, ' Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you for your intended assistance ; but I do not choose to allow my soldiers to be shot, so I have ordered you to be locked in.' And away he galloped." The architectural glory of theTemple, after the Round Church, is the Middle Temple Hall, on the west side of Middle Te'mpfeHaii. Temple Lane, built early in Elizabeth's reign, while Plowden, the jurist, was Treasurer of the Inn. It is to be judged not by its exterior, which received its present casing of stone so re cently as 1757, but by its interior, of which the carved oak roof, of the open hammer- beam type, with prominent pendants, is by universal consent one of the best works of the kind in the capital. At the head of the Hall is the dais whereon the Benchers dine, and between their table and the body of the Hall is a smaller one reserved for the Ancients of the Inn, who attain to this distinction by seniority not of age but of call. At the lower end of the Hall is a fine Renascence screen of oak dating from 1575 ; the walls are enriched with armorial bearings of Knights Templars as well as with the shields of readers and lecturers of the Inn ; the windows are blazoned with the arms of members of the Temple who have won their way to the House of Lords ; there are portraits — mostly copies — of royalties, and busts by Behnes of Lords Eldon and Stowell. It is here that are eaten the Term dinners, to which members are still summoned by the strident notes of a horn ; but splendid as are some of the feasts of which the Hall is the scene when distinguished guests are enter tained, they do not vie in sumptuous magni ficence with the masques and revels which were celebrated h&re, as well as in the old Hall of the Inner Temple, in Queen Elizabeth's day and long afterwards, down, in fact, to the reign of George IP, when (1733) the last of such functions was held in the Inner Temple Hall by way of celebrating the acceptance by Mr. Talbot, a Bencher of that Inn, of the Great Seal. In Middle Temple Hall, in February, 1602, probably about six months after its first production at the Globe, Shake speare's Twelfth Night was acted, as we learn from the diary of a barrister of the name of HALL OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE. 462 LONDON TOWN Manningham. In the Benchers' Rooms are portraits of eminent members of the Inn, among them a full length of King Edward VII., showing his Majesty as he was when in 1861 he was elected a Bencher of the Middle Temple. Middle Temple Hall looks out upon Foun tain Court, where is the fountain which holds so renowned a place in litera- Courttain ture- In a physical sense it is not what it was in Queen Anne's day, when Hatton spoke of it as sending its stream " to a vast and almost incredible altitude " — though the phrase certainly smacks of ex aggeration! But what riches of tender association has it acquired since then ! For this was the fountain which " Elia," when a boy, was wont to make rise and fall " to the astonishment of the young urchins," his con temporaries, " who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic." But sweetest of all the fountain's associations are those which link it with Ruth Pinch, who here would meet her lover, John Westlock, her face twinkling with roguish dimples. " The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet " — Dickens seems to have re membered that it leaps up but half that height — " to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the law ; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks as so fresh a little creature passed ; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their bene dictions on her graceful head. . . Anything might have happened that did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth." The fountain is introduced also into " Pendennis," and Miss Landon wrote some pretty lines upon it, of which we must find space for the following : — " Away in the distance is heard the vast sound From the streets of the city that compass it round, Like the echo of mountains or ocean's deep call ; Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all." The Library and Common Room of the Middle Temple, in the garden overlooking the Victoria Embankment, was built from the designs of Mr. H. R. Abraham, and was opened on October 31st, 1 861, by the present King, and it was on this occasion that he was called to the Bar and ad- LibrdarVTemple mitted a Bencher of the Middle Temple. In the Gothic col legiate style, it has a look of lankiness, for the Library itself is superimposed upon two stages of rooms, and the building appears to least advantage, perhaps, from the Embank ment ; but the interior, with its hammer- beam roof, is not without dignity. Close by, bestriding Middle Temple Lane, is a large and richly ornamented block in which the Benchers of the two Inns have their chambers — the Benchers of the Inner Temple on the east, those of the Middle Temple on the west. The old Hall of the Inner Temple, the refectory of the Knights Templars, was much injured by fire and unskilful HaTTemPle renovation. Virtually recon structed in a very poor style in 1 8 16, it was rebuilt in 1870 in the Per pendicular from designs by Sidney Smirke. It has an oak roof of open work and at one end an oriel which glows with heraldic glass. The crypt of the Templars' refectory, and other subterranean features of that building, have been preserved. The Library of the Inner Temple adjoins the Hall on the east. Of the courts and rows and walks of the Temple, some are named after distinguished lawyers. Hare Court, for ex- Hare Court. ample, bears the name of Nicho las Hare, who was Master of the Rolls in the reign of Mary Tudor and died in 1557. The pump of which Garth contemp tuously sings in " The Dispensary," and of which Charles Lamb writes, has disappeared, leaving only a tap behind. Lamb asks his friend Manning : " Do you know it ? I was born near it and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old. Its water," he adds, " is excellent cold, with brandy, and not very insipid without." But though three sides of the court have been rebuilt since " Elia's " day, it still possesses the three trees which he speaks of as standing beside the pump. By Plowden Buildings, Middle Temple, we are reminded again of the great jurist who is buried in the Temple Church ; Harcourt Buildings, Inner Temple, commemorate Simon, first Viscount Har- BOSWELL'S FIRST VISIT TO JOHNSON 463 court, the Tory Lord Chancellor who was the friend of Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift ; Tanfield Court, also in the Inner Temple, overlooked by the Master's house, gets its name from Chief Baron Tanfield, Courtfld who lived here in the reign of James I., before which time the place was known as Bradshaw's Rents, after the Henry Bradshaw who was Treasurer disinterred, and the skeleton was kept, as it still may be, in the Botanic Garden, Cambridge. Other parts of the Temple are named after the men of letters who have lived and worked in its quiet and seclusion, such the Temple. as Goldsmith Building, in the Middle, and Dr. Johnson's Buildings, in the Inner, Temple. The latter were reared on the site of the house in Photo: Mr. A. R. Rollings. LIBRARY OF THE INNER TEMPLE. in the reign of Henry VIII. In February, 1732, this court was the scene of a triple murder committed by Sarah Malcolm, a young laundress, who strangled an old lady named Duncomb and her servant, and cut the throat of a young girl. In Newgate £53 of Mrs. Duncomb's money was found hidden in Mal colm's hair. She was hanged in Fleet Street, opposite Mitre Court, after she had sat to Hogarth for a sketch, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Sepulchre's, Holborn, but was Inner Temple Lane in which Johnson lived from 1760 until in 1765 he removed to the court in Fleet Street which already bore his name (p. 443). It was at Fnner Temple Lane that he had his first call from Boswell (May 24th, 1763). " He received me very cour teously," says Boswell, describing the great event ; " but it must be confessed that his apartments, furniture, and morning dress were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty ; he had on a 464 LONDON TOWN Photo: Pictorial Agency. HARE COURT, TEMPLE. little old shrivelled, unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head ; his shirt neck and the knees of his breeches were loose, his black worsted stockings ill drawn up, and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers." A not less graphic picture of the slovenly giant in his den is drawn by Ozias Humphrey, R.A., in a letter which he wrote in September, 1764. " We passed through three very dirty rooms to a little one that looked like an old counting-house, where this great man was sat at breakfast. The furniture Of this room was a very large deal writing-desk, an old walnut-tree table, and five ragged chairs of different sets. I was very much struck with Mr. Johnson's appearance, and could hardly help thinking him a madman for some time as he sat waving over his breakfast like a lunatic. He is a very large man, and was dressed in a dirty brown coat and waistcoat, with breeches that were brown also (although they had been crimson), and an old black wig ; his shirt collar and sleeves were unbuttoned ; his stockings were down about his feet, which had on them, by way of slippers, an old pair of shoes. . . We had been some time with him before he began to talk, but at length he began, and faith, to some purpose ; everything he says is as correct as a second edition ; it is almost impossible to argue with him, he is so sententious and so knowing." Oliver Goldsmith's connexion with the Temple began early in 1764, when he came to Garden Court, Middle Temple, from Wine Office Court, to humble rooms on the staircase of the Library. In the following year, being in a state of temporary prosperity, he removed to better rooms in the same court, in a house which is no longer to be seen. Then, having cleared £500 by The Good Natured Man, he gave £400 for the lease of three rooms at No. 2, Brick Court, furnished them most sumptu ously, arrayed himself in a suit of Tyrian bloom, with silk breeches, gave dinners to his most aristocratic acquaintances and suppers to young folk of both sexes, whose revellings nearly drove Blackstone, then at work upon his Commentaries in rooms on the first floor, out of his mind. So he scattered abroad his riches until he was once again deep in debt, as he was when in 1774 (April 4th), in his forty-fifth year, he drew his last breath in these rooms in Brick Court, of which he was then anxious to sell the lease. " He died of a fever," wrote Johnson to Boswell, " made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts began to be heavy. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed no less than two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before ? " he asks. Happily this house, associated not only with one of the most lovable figures in English literature and with Blackstone, but with Thackeray, who had rooms here (though not Goldsmith's) in 1855, and with W. Mackworth Praed, who died in it in 1839, is still standing. " I have been many a time," writes Thackeray in the " English Humourists," " in the chambers in MEN OF LETTERS IN THE TEMPLE 465 The " Strichen Deer." the Temple which were his, and passed up the staircase which Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith — the stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door." The funeral was superintended by Burke and Reynolds, and at five o'clock on Saturday, the 9th of April, the poet was laid to rest in the Temple Churchyard, in a grave of which, unfortunately, the site was not marked. The plain stone on the north side of the church, close to the Master's house, inscribed " Here lies Oliver Goldsmith," was not placed there until i860, when it had become impossible clearly to identify the grave. With Cowper also the Temple is linked. In 1752 he took chambers in the Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar in 1754, but in 1759 he bought a set of chambers in the Inner Temple, and there he lived and worked until in 1763, thrown off his balance by an examination which he had to pass in order to qualify for the appointment of Clerk of the Jour nals of the House of Lords, he attempted suicide. He bought laudanum, but by accident, or in a sudden revulsion, threw it out of the window. Then he tried to drown himself in the Thames (p. 257), but again was baffled. At last, here in his chambers in the Temple, he hanged himself with his garter. As he was so suspended he distinctly heard a voice say three times " 'Tis over ! " " When I came to myself again," he writes in a passage of singular psychological interest, " I thought I was in hell ; the sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize upon me passed over my whole body. In a few seconds I found myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about half a minute I re covered my feet, and reeling and struggling, stumbled into bed again." This was the beginning of an attack of acute insanity, and for a time the poet had to be detained in a private asylum at St. Albans. But the name which on the literary side is the Temple's chief glory is that of Charles Lamb, who resembled William "Elia." Cowper in a melancholy liability to mental alienation, as well as in some other things. " Elia " not only spent three-and-twenty years of his life in the Temple, but was born within the precinct, and the numerous references to it in his essays and letters invest it with a tender charm such as it borrows from no other source. He was born (February 18th, 1775) at No. 2, Crown Office Row, now separated from the Thames by a smooth, trim lawn. The house is still standing, but the two other Temple houses in which he lived in after years with his sister Mary have both vanished. The first of them, to which they came in 1801, was No. 16, Mitre Court Buildings. " I live at No. 1 6, Mitre Court Buildings, a pistol Photo: Pictorial Agency. WHERE GOLDSMITH DIED : NO. 2. BRICK COURT. 466 LONDON TOWN shot off Baron Maseres," * he wrote to his friend Manning. " You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor for convenience of the gout. I prefer the attic storey for the air . . . My bed faces the river, so as by perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my neck I can see the white sails glide by the bottom goldsmith's "tomb" in the temple. of the King's Bench Walk as I lie in my bed." From Mitre Court Buildings Lamb moved, in 1809, to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane. To Coleridge he wrote in that year : — " I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on the third floor, and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, etc., for £30 a year. The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going ; just now it is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden." It was here, says Mr. Martin,t that Mary made the memorable find of an empty adjoining garret of four untenanted, unowned rooms. Of these they took possession by degrees, and to them * A Baron of the Exchequer, mathematician as well as lawyer. f " In the Footprints cf Charles Lamb." By B. E. Martin. 1891. Charles could escape from friends who had more leisure than himself. Here he was able to do his literary work undisturbed, " as much alone," as he himself said, as if he were " in a lodging in the midst of Salisbury Plain." Whom these chambers belonged to they never knew. " Here I hope to set up my rest," Lamb wrote to Manning, " and not quit till Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodging for single gentlemen." But this was not to be, for in the autumn of 1 8 17 he and Mary took lodgings in Russell Street, Covent Garden. " I thought we could never have been torn up from the Temple," he wrote to Dorothy Wordsworth in November of that year. " In deed it was an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy ! We can never strike root so deep," he adds, " in any other ground." Just before Lamb came to the Temple, in 1801, Samuel Rogers left it, after a residence in it of five years. " When I lived in the Temple," he relates rather querulously, " Mackintosh and Richard Sharp used to come to my chambers and stay there for hours, talking metaphysics. One day they were so intent on their ' first cause,' ' spirit,' and ' matter,' that they were unconscious of my having left them, paid a visit, and returned. I was a little angry at this ; and to show my indifference about them, I sat down and wrote letters without taking any notice of them." We must not leave the Temple without recalling that it was here, if we may take our history from Henry VI. The Gardens. (Part I., Act ii. Sc. 4), that the red and white roses were plucked which became the badges of the rival houses of Lancaster and York. In these days the Gardens are the scene of the magnificent summer show of the Royal Horticultural Society ; and on summer evenings they are generally thrown open to the children of the neighbourhood, who flock to them to frolic on the soft green grass. In the western part of the gardens, belonging to TEMPLE BAR 467 the Middle Temple, is one of those sun dials which still survive in the Temple and contribute to its air of leisure and seclusion. One in Pump Court, by the way, bears the the legend, " Shadows we are, and like shadows we depart," one of the happiest of all sun-dial inscriptions. Until 1828 an old brick house at the east end of Inner Terrace displayed a which bore the in- : Begone about your said to have been under the house." This Temple Bar, marking the boundary of the liberty of the City west ward of Ludgate, suffered in the Great Fire, and was succeeded in 1670-72 by a shapely gateway of Sir Christopher Wren's designing. Built of Portland stone, its Temple sun-dial junction, business," addressed by a crusty old Bencher to a boy who came from the dial-makers for in structions, and who supposed that this was intended to be the inscription. The Temple precinct is still shut off from the rest of the world by walls and rails, and at ten of the clock every night the various gates are closed. After that hour, therefore, members have to knock for admission. In the wall which separates the Temple gardens from the Vic toria Embankment has been inserted, at the spot where the City of Westminster begins and the City of London ends, a tablet which records Queen Vic toria's last visit to the latter City, in the last year of the century. Until 1878 the City boundary on the north side of the Temple was marked by Temple Bar, the most interesting of all Temple Bar. the London gates and bars, if for no other reason because it is the only one which has survived. The first Temple Bar is mentioned as early as the first year of the fourteenth century, in a grant of land " beyond the bar of the New Temple," and this reference suggests that it may have been put up by the Knights Templars them selves. At'first it was nothing more than an affair, in Strype's words, of " posts, rails, and a chain," but afterwards — when we do not know, but at least as early as the middle of the sixteenth century — the street was bestrid den by " a house of timber," with " a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it TEMPLE BAR IN l800, LOOKING DOWN FLEET STREET. nineteenth front facing the Strand bore statues of Charles I. and Charles II., while from the other front James I. and Queen Elizabeth gazed Citywards. But in times of civil com motion Temple Bar bore ghastlier decorations, in the form of heads or other mutilated remains of unsuccessful rebels. It was in 1684 that Wren's Temple Bar was first put to this use, when Sir Thomas Armstrong was hanged and dismembered at Tyburn in connexion with the Rye House plot ; the last heads to be spiked on the Bar were those of Townley and Fletcher, for their part in the '45. They were executed in 1746, and here their heads remained mouldering until 1772, when they were blown down. These were the heads which figure in the story that Johnson told in April, 1773, at a meeting of the literary club in Gerrard Street, Soho. " I remember,'' he said, " once being with 468 LONDON TOWN Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. Whilst we stood at Poets' Corner I said to him — " ' Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur illis.' " When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, and pointing to the heads upon it, slily whispered — " ' Forsitan et nostrum miscebitur istis.' " Until 1874 Temple Bar served another purpose than that of blocking the traffic between the City and the Strand, for in it were preserved the old ledgers of Child's Bank (p. 423), which were only stored elsewhere when the arch had broken down under their weight. Its inevitable removal, as an intolerable obstruction to traffic, followed four years later, and though it is not to be found in the City, as it should be, it may be seen dignifying one of the entrances to Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, where it was rebuilt by the late Sir Henry Meux at the end of 1888, after the stones of which it is composed had been lying forlorn in a builder's yard for close upon eleven years. Two years after Wren's shapely erection was taken down the Corporation reared upon the site, at a cost of over £10,000, the Temple Bar Memorial, designed by the late Sir Horace Jones, and un- ^mortal" Veiled hY the ^ P^Ce Leo- pold on the 8th of September, 1880, but not completed as to its decorations until the end of 1882. For the prancing bronze dragon on the pedestal, the mark of much cheap and hasty criticism, the late C. B. Birch, A.R.A., was responsible. As one of the supporters of the City arms, it is surely not out of place on the site of the bar which shuts off the City from Westminster. Even to this day the Sovereign on State occasions only enters the City at this point with the permission of the Lord Mayor, indicated by his handing to the monarch the City sword. Among the decorations of the Memorial are low-reliefs of the first and last Temple Bar, of Queen Victoria's first entrance into the City through Temple Bar in 1837 on her way to the Guildhall banquet, and of the procession to St. Paul's on the day of thanksgiving for the Prince of Wales's re covery from illness in 1872, the last occasion on which royalty passed in State through Temple Bar. PLAN OF THE OLD CITY WALL (WITH MODERN NAMES), SHOWING THE EXTENSION TO INCLUDE THE BLACKFRIARS MONASTERY. MACE AND STAVES OF THE OLD COURT OF BURGESSES. Book II— WESTMINSTER AND WEST LONDON CHAPTER XLIII THE CITY OF WESTMINSTER The Bishopric of Westminster — Once more a City — Thorney — A Roman Settlement — Where the River was Crossed — Origin of the Name — The Manor — Its Extent — " City and Liberty " — The Eleven Parishes — The Court of Burgesses IN the reign of Henry VHP Westminster was, for a brief period, a city. When the King dissolved the monastery of St. Peter he erected in its place a bishopric, with a dean and twelve prebendaries, and allotted the whole county of Middlesex, except Fulham, as its diocese. But soon its glory departed, for when its first bishop, Thomas Thirleby, was translated to Norwich in 1550, Edward VI. dissolved the bishopric, and though Westminster continued to be styled a city, it was only so called by courtesy : it had no municipal authority, and a City by nQ corp0rate unity. So things remained until the end of the nineteenth century. By the London Local Government Act of 1899, Westminster be came one of the municipal boroughs of the County of London, and in the following year it was created a city by royal charter. And who will deny its ample title to the dis tinction ? Not to speak of its past glories — its royal palaces of Westminster and Whitehall — or of the venerable abbey which more even than the cathedral of Royaicharter. Canterbury is the church of the nation, it has within its boundaries St. James's Palace and Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and the offices of the Government, the Royal Palace of Justice, the splendid Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, four of the royal parks, a multitude of mansions, and the chief clubs. In extent, it covers an area of almost four square miles, against the one square mile of the adjoining City of London, it is made up of eleven parishes, and it has a population of not far short of two hundred thousand. No longer, then, can it be said of Westminster, as it could be said when the late Sir Walter Besant wrote* that it is a city without citizens. •"Westminster." By Walter Besant, M. A., F.S.A. 1895. (Chatto & Windus. ) 469 47° LONDON TOWN The origins of this city which at last has citizens, and plenty of them, are in volved in hopeless obscurity. Its extreme antiquity is almost the only thing one can be quite sure about. It may possibly be more ancient, it is certainly not much less ancient than the City of London itself. Whensoever it was founded, its site was Thorney, the Isle of Brambles, some 470 yards long and 370 yards broad, washed on the east side * by the Thames, on the west by a kind of moat along the line of Princes and Delahay Streets, on the north by a stream that ran down what came to be known as Gardener's Lane, on the south by a rivulet that fol lowed the descent of the present College Street. That there was a Roman settle ment here can hardly be doubted. For this belief there was nothing but tradition until 1869; but in that year there was dug up, in the north Green of the Abbey, near the door of the Chapter House, the fine Roman sarcophagus, inscribed with the name of Valerius Aman- dinus, which is now to be seen in the vestibule of the Chapter-house of the Abbey. And since then, in various other parts of what was the Isle of Brambles, fragments of Roman buildings have come to light. Nor can it be doubted that it was at this point that the river was crossed by travellers along Watling Street between Dover in the south-east, and Chester in the north-west, until London Bridge was built, when the northern Watling Street was diverted at the bottom of what we now call the Edgware Road, and carried along the present Oxford Street through the City to the bridge. How in those earlier days the river at Westminster was crossed, whether by ford or by ferry, is not quite so clear. Mr. Loftie concludes that the * It should be borne in mind that here the river runs north and south, instead of east and west. LOVING CUP OF THE COURT OF BURGESSES. river was forded, but frankly says that we have no records to fall back upon, no indica tions but chiefly obliterated geographical features and chiefly obsolete local names. Sir Walter Besant is very bold. He has no doubt what ever about this fording of the river, and he pictures the traveller southward as " plunging into the shallow waters " when he reached the edge of the swamp where now Buckingham Palace stands, and, guided by stakes, reach ing the Isle of Thorns. " Here if the tide served he again trusted himself to the guidance of stakes ; and so, breast high it may be, waded through the river till he reached the opposite shore." Sir Walter's enthusiasm for his theories was one of the most engaging of his charac teristics, but it is not easy to feel quite so sure of the readiness of travellers, even in those robust days, to broad rivers in this high- spirited fashion. The breadth and shallow ness of the river at this point, widening as it did into an immense lagoon, which on the north side covered the land long afterwards known as St. James's Park, Tothill Fields, the Five Fields, Victoria, Earl's Court, and part of Chelsea, and on the south side extended from Rother- hithe, over Bermondsey, Southwark, Lam beth, and Vauxhall, to Battersea, do indeed favour the belief that the river was forded here. Yet there certainly was a ferry at Westminster in the Middle Ages, and the memory of it is still preserved in Horseferry Road. This, however, was a little to the south of the Island of Thorns, and it may possibly be the fact, as Mr. Lethaby suggests in his " London Before the Conquest," that after the Palace of Westminster was built, the ferry, if ferry there was at Thorney, was shifted to the site of the present Horseferry Road. In very early days the Isle of Brambles plunge into AREA OF ANCIENT WESTMINSTER 47i was the site both of an abbey and of a royal palace, but which came first, and at what date either was founded, will probably never be known. Tradition has it that Canute built a residence here, and Sir Walter Canute? Besant had no doubt that tradition, which has so much to answer for, is in this instance a true witness. His short and easy method of settling such a question he ingenuously discloses in a couple of sentences. " Since neither tradition nor his tory speaks to the contrary," he writes, " we may suppose that Cnut was the first to build some kind of palace or residence in this place. His buildings are said to have been burned in the time of Edward [the Confessor] ; there fore he must have built something!' * By the end of the paragraph we are carried far indeed from the modest " we may suppose " of the first sentence : " the beginner of the old Palace," we are roundly told, " was the great King Cnut the Dane." Enviable indeed is this faculty of enthusiastic credence. For my part I must be content with saying that if the great King Canute the Dane really had a palace at Thorney, and if he rebuked the servile flattery of his courtiers by showing them that the rising tide was not obedient to his commands, it may well have been here that the parable was acted, as some of the chronicles say. Even of the name of Westminster the origin is not free from doubt, but we may take it that when the monastery of St. Peter was founded here, it was called the * The italics are not Sir Walter's. West Minster as indicating that it lay to the west of the cathedral of St. Paul, or to the west of the City to which that The Name, cathedral belonged, and that this name, supplanting that of Thorney, was gradually extended so as to cover the palace — assuming that the monas tery preceded the palace — and the com munity that grew up around. The creation of the Manor of Westminster has been traced to Offa, the King of Mercia who made the great dyke The Manor, from the mouth of the Wye to the mouth of the Dee, and the grant appears to have been confirmed to the Abbey about the middle of the tenth century by a charter of King Edgar, but the only copy of this document which has survived, preserved in the British Museum, would appear to have been falsified. The early charters of the Abbey as a whole, indeed, are to be regarded with suspicion, and some of the best authorities question the genuineness of all that are earlier than the reign of Henry I.* The original manor appears to have been, roughly speaking, about half the size of the present City of Westminster. It began farther east than the City of Westminster as we now know it, for it included so much of the City of London as lies between Farringdon Street and Temple Bar {see the plan below). But on the western side it was bounded by a line which, beginning a little to the west of * See " Westminster Abbey and the King's Craftsmen." W. R. Lethaby. 1906. (Duckworth & Co. ) By PLAN OF THE ANCIENT MANOR AND OF THE MODERN CITY OF WESTMINSTER. 472 LONDON TOWN the present New Bond Street, ran almost due south to the Thames a little to the west of the Vauxhall Bridge Road. In course of time disputes as to jurisdiction arose between the Abbot of Westminster and the Bishop of London, and in the reign of Henry III. they were referred to the arbitrament of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other great ecclesiastics, who in 1222 issued a decretal exempting abbey and manor from the Bishop's jurisdiction, but compensating him by cutting off from the manor a considerable slice on the London side, depriving it of those portions which are now included in the City of London and the borough of Holborn, as well as of the liberty of the Rolls, the precinct of the Savoy, and the parishes of St. Clement Danes and St. Mary-le-Strand. Now, therefore, the eastern boundary of the manor of Westminster ran about as far west of Temple Bar as up to this time it had run east of that point. At the same time the manor of Paddington was declared to belong to Westminster. The parishes of St. Clement Danes and St. Mary-le-Strand, except the liberty and Duchy of Lancaster, were restored to the manor of Westminster by charter of Richard III. dated 1393. But it was in 1604, in the reign of James I., that it received the great extension westwards which made it practi cally conterminous with the area of the present City of Westminster. The liberty of the Rolls and the precinct of the Savoy, however, were still withheld from it, and these it only recovered when the London Govern ment Act of 1899 was passed. But before the manor had been thus extended by James I., the Abbey had been surrendered to Henry VIII., who first erected it into a college of secular canons and then in 1540 made it a bishop's stool. The bishopric, as we have seen, soon lapsed, and then, in 1560, Queen Elizabeth made the Abbey once more collegiate ; and now the confines of the Abbey constitute the civil parish of the " close of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter." What are we to understand by the " City and Liberty of Westminster," the phrase by which it has been usual to define Libert"'? Westminster ? According to Sayer, whose definition is adopted by Mr. John Hunt, the learned Town Clerk of West minster, the city has been regarded as " the inhabited portion of the manor immediately around the abbey, while the liberty was the uninhabited or sparsely inhabited portion of the manor which lay outside the city." Thus in local Acts the parishes of St. Mar garet and St. John have usually been referred to as within the city, and the other parishes as within the liberty. The parishes of St. Margaret and St. John were for civil purposes united in 1901, so reducing the number of parishes within the city from twelve to eleven, the other ten being — The Liberty of the Rolls. St. Anne. St. Clement Danes. St. George, Hanover Square. St. James. St. Martin-in-the-Fields. St. Mary-le-Strand. St. Paul, Covent Garden. Precinct of the Savoy. Close of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Except the close, which was governed by the Dean and Chapter, the local affairs of these parishes at the time the metro politan boroughs were created were managed by vestries, six of which were grouped into the Strand District Board of Works. All of these authorities were of course abolished, and their duties transferred to the Borough Council, which the next year, as we have seen, was elevated to the dignity of a City Council. For some years before this the great city of Westminster had lost such cor porate unity as it derived from its undivided representation in Parliament. From the reign of Edward VI., until 1884, it had re turned two members to Parliament, but by the Redistribution Act of 1885 the ancient Parliamentary borough was split up into three single-member constituencies — Westminster (that is, the close and the parish of St. Margaret and St. John), St. George's, Hanover Square, and the Strand. One institution which gave it a semblance of unity it still indeed kept, but that had long degenerated into a mere legal fiction. This institution, the Court of Burgesses, was set up in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Court of ancj consisted of sixteen burgesses, Burgesses. and as many assistant-burgesses, representing sixteen wards, and appointed by the Dean of Westminster, either directly, or indirectly through his nominee, the High EVOLUTION OF A TOBACCO-BOX 473 Steward, or through that functionary's deputy. It was neither a highway, nor a sewers, nor a rating authority, and its func tions were rather magisterial than adminis trative. The absence from it of any representative element, consisting as it did of an ecclesiastical dignitary nominated by the Crown and of persons appointed by him or by his nominees, deprived it of authority, and gradually it ceased to fulfil any but ceremonial functions, carried out under the supervision of an official who was styled the Town Clerk of the City of Westminster. The court was at last abolished under the powers of the Local Government Act of 1899, and its powers and liabilities and properties were transferred to the City Council. Its mace, loving cup, High Con stable's staff, and a snuff-box were handed over to the City Council in 1901. The loving cup, an ancient piece of plate pre sented to the Court in 1588 by Maurice Pickering, one of the burgesses, and Joan his wife, was used for the first time by its new owners on the 29th of May, 1902, when the St. Martin's Town Hall, at the junction of the Charing Cross Road and St. Martin's Lane, which had been opened in 1891, was re-opened as the Westminster City Hall, after enlargement and adaptation. A Curious Relic. The famous tobacco-box of the Past Overseers' Society of St. Margaret's parish has also passed into the charge of the City Council. The nucleus of it was an oval - shaped box made of common horn, and small enough to be carried in the pocket, bought by a Mr. Monck, one of the over seers of the poor, for the sum of fourpence in the village of Charlton, near Woolwich, and in 171 3 presented by him to the Society of Past Overseers, who seven years later ornamented the lid with a silver rim in com memoration of the donor. Passed on from one senior overseer to another, it was vari ously enriched and embellished at different periods, and was then provided by successive custodians with cases of silver, lined with crimson and engraved with emblematical and historical subjects, portraits and inscriptions. In 1878 it was furnished with an outer case of panelled oak, three feet in height, and after this further plates were added commem orating such events as the laying of the foundation - stone of the Town Hall in Caxton Street — now Caxton Hall — by the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts in 1882, while in 1887, the year of the first Jubilee, the outermost case was adorned with a silver statuette of Queen Victoria. 1 i/M \ »'lii'|;'" ~ ?y HEAD OF DOORWAY OF THE CHAPTER-HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 31 SEBERT S TOMB. CHAPTER XLIV WESTMINSTER ABBEY : TO THE DISSOLUTION King Sebert— St. Peter and the Fisherman— Edward the Confessor — Another Apparition of St. Peter — The Confessor's Abbey Finished— The First Royal Burial and the First Hallowing— A Panic at the Conqueror's Coronation — Canterbury and York at Variance — Henry III. begins to Rebuild — A New Shrine for the Confessor— A Gift from the East— Sanctuary Violated— Henry IV.'s Death " at Jerusalem '' — Henry V.'s Interest in the Abbey — Henry VII. and His Chapel— Abbot Islip — Surrender — Spoliation — Abbot Feckenham — Relics THE chroniclers of the Abbey of St. Peter, which was to become the British Val halla, gave themselves a good start by going back to a British king of the second century, Lucius by name, who, they say, here built a Christian church on the site of a heathen temple, just as the first St. Paul's, a Heathen according to another legend, sup- Temple. ITT, 1 planted a Roman temple. When the Norman monks, in the eleventh century, brought their imaginations to bear upon the origin of the monastery they traced it back to the seventh century, to that King Sebert who had to do with the foundation of St. Paul's. Even this we cannot accept, unless we are con tent to believe without evidence. True, they show to this day a tomb to which the names of Sebert and his Queen, Ethelgovda, are attached, but there is not the smallest scrap of evidence that this sepulchre, great as its antiquity undoubtedly King Sebert is, contains the bones of the Saxon king and queen, and it has been suggested that it is really the tomb of a London citizen of Edward the Confessor's day which long after wards — early in the fourteenth century — was removed into the Abbey that it might serve as proof of what we may perhaps call the Sebertian theory. We have no right, then, to believe that the Sebert of St. Paul's had anything to do with the foundation of St. Peter's. But we need not ignore the legend which Sulcardus, a Westminster monk of the eleventh century, records of the consecration by St. Peter himself of the church of which the Saxon king is thus made the pious founder. The church, we are told, was ready in the The Legend year gjg for the dedication of St. Peter. Jceremony, which was to be performed by that Mellitus who was Bishop of London when the first cathedral of St. Paul was built. The night before the 474 ¦/tiff* ,-r ?.7?'£~4?-y. ferdfo FUNERAL OE EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. From u. Drawing by H. H. Paget. 10 THE LEGEND OF ST, PETER 475 great day was wild and stormy, but through the howling of the wind Edric, the fisherman, who had for hours been vainly casting his nets from the Isle of Brambles, heard a voice, and, crossing the turbulent waters to the shore, he found there one in foreign garb who offered him rich guerdon if he would ferry him across to Thorney. To Thorney, accordingly, Edric rowed him, and as he waited to take the stranger that St. Peter had already dedicated the church and would often resort to it. And in future he was always to take a tithe of his fish to the Abbot. When the Bishop and the King came to Thorney the next morning they found Edric awaiting them salmon in hand, and having presented the offering to the Bishop he took them into the church and told them his story, which was confirmed by crosses on the wall, by EDRIC WITH THE SALMON. From a Drawing by H. M. Paget. back, lo ! the windows of the new church were flooded with radiance, and the air was filled with music as of a celestial choir. Then Edric saw, as Jacob had seen at Bethel, a ladder which stretched from earth to heaven, and as he gazed upon the angels, who were ascending and descending, the stranger reappeared and revealed himself as St. Peter, who had left the heavens in order with his own hands to consecrate the church. Then he bade him cast his nets again, and doing so Edric found them heavy with salmon, and was charged to take one of the fish to the Bishop when on the morrow he should come to perform the rite of consecration, with the message the presence of holy water, by the Greek alphabet traced upon the sand, by marks of the oil of anointing, and by remains of the candles whose light had streamed through the windows. Good service the legend did the monks of Westminster, for, as Mrs. Murray Smith (E. T. Bradley), a daughter of the late Dean, records in the " Annals of West minster Abbey," it was " so credulously believed in later days that the Abbot was able to exact his tithe of salmon every year long after the Confessor's historic church had swept away all traces of an earlier foundation." Sebert's monastery, we are asked to believe, 476 LONDON TOWN was ruined by the Danes and was refounded in the tenth century by St. Dunstan, who brought hither twelve Benedictine monks from Glastonbury and succeeded in getting a charter from King Edgar. Even this is not certain, for the genuineness of the charter, as we have seen, is not above suspicion, and all that we can feel sure of is that a monas tery, probably of inconsiderable extent, had existed on the Isle of Thorns for some as the site of the religious house which Rahere was intending to found, so to an old monk of Worcester there appeared St. Peter, " bright and beautiful as a clerk." " I have st. Peter place in the west of London," the again. " ' apostle told him, " which I myself chose, and which I love. This, formerly, I consecrated with my own hands, honoured it with my presence, and made it illustrious by divine miracles. The name of the place is CORONATION OF THE CONQUEROR (/. 477). time before Edward the Confessor suc ceeded to the crown in 1042. While in exile in Normandy, whither he had Confessor been driven by the Danes, Edward had vowed to go on pilgrimage to Rome should he ever come to possess the English kingdom, and as soon as he felt secure on his throne he bethought him of his vow. But the Witan would not hear of his leaving the country, and being absolved from his vow by the Pope, and bidden to found or restore a monastery dedicated to St. Peter, he turned his attentions to the little house on Thorney. Why he did so we have another legend to tell us. Just as St. Bartholomew appeared to Rahere and indicated Smithfield Thorney, which once, for the sins of this people, being given to the fury of the bar barians, from being rich is become poor ; from being stately, low ; and from honour is become contemptible. This let the King, by my command, repair and make it a house of monks, adorn it with stately towers, and endow it with large revenues. There shall be no less than the house of God and the gate of heaven." From whatever cause, Edward, about the middle of the eleventh century, began the work of rebuilding on a larger scale the mon astery and its church, in that Norman style that he had learnt to admire during his years of exile. His chief concern was to see the THE FIRST ROYAL BURIAL AND THE FIRST CORONATION 477 church completed before he was gathered to his fathers. But Fate had ordained that he should take no part in its Confessor's consecrati°n- It was ready for the Abhey. ceremony by the end of December, 1065, but when the appointed time, Innocents' Day, the 28th of December, came, he was too ill to leave his bed, and his wife, the Lady Editha — the time had not yet come when the King's consort was styled a queen — had to take his place. For well nigh a week after the consecration Edward lay speechless and unconscious, but roused him self on the sixth day, and having committed his kingdom to his brother-in-law, Harold, and his body to Abbot Edwyn, to be in terred in the new minster, he breathed his last on the 5th of January, 1066. Edward the Confessor's Abbey was no doubt the largest and most elaborate church which up to that time had been built in Britain. Cruciform in plan, with an apsidal termination, it had a central tower above the transept rising into small turrets which were capped by cupolas of wood and lead, and at the western end were two smaller towers, which, however, were probably not finished at the time the church was consecrated, for the building of the nave went on long after Edward's death. The King's interment took place on the day succeeding his RoyaT Funeral. death- . fOT Harald> who had immediately prevailed upon the Witan to recognise him as Edward's successor, could not legally be crowned until his pre decessor was buried. So on the 6th of January Edward was laid upon a bier in royal state, arrayed in a robe which the Lady Editha and her maidens had worked for him. " His beard white as a lily," to quote from Mrs. Murray Smith, " his cheeks fresh as a rose, he was carried on the shoulders of eight of his liege men, in the cold dawn of a January morning, to his new minster, and laid before the high altar. Boys swinging bells and censers, priests bearing lighted tapers, followed by a crowd of ecclesiastics and monks, formed the procession up the dark Norman choir, which was lit by flaring torches and thronged with mourning people. . . . On that morning, and for three hundred days after, funeral masses continued to be said for the dead king's soul, and the poor flocked to his grave to receive the alms left them by his bounty, while tales of miraculous cures soon began to be bruited abroad." Harold's coronation followed almost before the echoes of the burial service had died away, and so an interval of but Hallowing a ^ew h°urs separated the first of the many royal funerals from the first of the many coronations of which the minster in the West was to be the scene. The second coronation, that of Harold's supplanter, took place before a year had gone by — on Christmas Day, 1066. It was the most dramatic of all the coronations which either Edward's Abbey or its successor has ever witnessed. When the haughty Conqueror. Norman had taken his place beside Edward's grave the multitude who thronged the church were asked, both in Saxon and in Norman-French, if they would have him for their king, and so enthusiastic were the assenting shouts and huzzas that the clamour was misunderstood by the Norman soldiery on guard outside. Thinking that their duke was being attacked, some rushed in to rescue him, others flung lighted torches upon the wooden buildings around the church and began to loot them. Then both Saxons and Normans poured out of the church, leaving William with only the Archbishop, Aldred, and some terrified priests of both nations. Greatly agitated, and it is said trembling with fear, William, nevertheless, bade that the ceremony should proceed, and the Archbishop administered to him the ordinary coronation oath of the Anglo-Saxon rite, the Norman adding his own solemn promise that he would treat the English people as well as the best of their kings had done. But as soon as the new crown, which he had had specially made, so that he might not wear the diadem of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, had been set upon his head, the ceremony came to an abrupt end, with no celebration of Mass. Inauspicious as was this crowning, it did not deprive the Abbey of the Conqueror's favour. He confirmed to it the Confessor's grants, and though he induced or compelled Abbot Edwyn to transfer to him Windsor, which had been one of Edward's gifts, he compensated Westminster with a grant of lands in Surrey ana Essex. Moreover, he gave a rich pall as covering for the Confessor's plain tombstone, presented a cloth and caskets 478 LONDON TOWN of gold for the altar, and, according to Matthew of Westminster, attended Mass " most dili gently, and with the simplicity of a child, would never permit himself to be hindered from so doing by the most urgent or perplex ing business, and while so engaged he did never cease to bend his knees and pray devoutly." Nor did he refuse to allow the Lady Editha, when in 1073, after eight years of widowhood, she died, at Winchester, to be laid beside her husband. Canterburie so seated, fairly sits him down in Canterburie's lap (a baby too big to be dandled thereon)." Instantly the bishops of the southern province, with their servants, made for him, dragged him off and hammered him with fists and sticks, his rival striving vainly to shield him from their violence. Roger was forced to flee, and as he fled there rang in his ears such taunts as, " Go, traitor, that did betray that holy man Thomas ; go, get thee hence, thy hands yet HENRY II. BEARING THE CRYSTAL PHIAL TO THE ABBEY {p. 480). From a Drawing by W. Hatherell, R.I. There was tumult again, though not in the Abbey itself, at the crowning of Richard of the Lion-heart in 1189, which was made the occasion of a massacre of the Jews that did not end at Westminster or the neighbour ing City of London, but spread to the provinces. A few years before this, in 1176, at a synod of bishops held in St. Catherine's Chapel, one of the chapels of the Abbey, from lack of a common foe the very militant Churchmen fell out among themselves. The conflict sprang from the rival claims of their Graces of Canterbury and York to precedence. Richard of Can terbury, arriving first, had seated himself in the place of honour, at the Legate's right hand, when, in Thomas Fuller's words, "in springs Roger of York, and finding Rival Archbishops stink of blood." The King (Henry II.) was hearing Mass in the Abbey itself when Roger, with torn vestments, appeared before him hotly demanding redress ; but when Henry was informed of what had happened he only laughed in the outraged archiepiscopal face. The Abbey in which these and many other notable events occurred remained almost unchanged for about two cen turies after its founder's death. With Henry IIP, who succeeded to the throne in 12 16, and was crowned for the second time in 1220, on Whit- Sunday, when the land was more settled than it had been at his accession, a new era began. Of him, indeed, we may speak as the Abbey's second founder, for he it was who began that The Abbey's Second Founder. HENRY III. REFOUNDS THE ABBEY 479 reconstruction of the fabric which has given to us the Abbey as we know it to-day. But it was from no lack of reverence for the Confessor-king that he determined to rebuild the eastern part of Edward's Norman church, with the Chapter-house and the belfry, in holding their services in the Lady Chapel and in the nave. The building of the new choir occupied about four and twenty years, and Henry IIP lived to see it opened; and although he was in constant need of money and had more than once to pawn the precious ¦ .-¦;»,.-". TRANSLATION OF THE CONFESSOR'S BODY TO THE NEW SHRINE [p. 480). From a Drawing by W. Hatherell, R.I. the Pointed style, but rather to provide for the sainted remains a more magnificent rest ing-place, and to satisfy the promptings of the artist within him. He began by build ing a Lady Chapel to the east of the Norman apse ; then, in 1241, he ordered the construction of a sumptuous shrine for Edward's coffin, to replace the simpler one which had been provided by Henry II.; finally the work of pulling down the Nor man choir itself was entered upon, the monks, while the new choir was being built, The New Choir. stones with which St. Edward's shrine was enriched, he yet contrived, such was the en thusiasm with which he prosecuted his great enterprise, to raise enough funds to pay the enor mous cost of the building. With his pas sion for building, the King may very well have influenced the design, but the architect of the present abbey, as Mr. Lethaby shows, was his " mason," Master Henry of West minster, who superintended the work until the year 1253. It was carried on after him 480 LONDON TOWN by Master John of Gloucester (1253-62), and by Master Robert of Beverley (1262-80), but by the time Master Henry's name disappears from the accounts the work was so far advanced that he is to be regarded as the architect of the building as a whole. One of the greatest ceremonies at the Abbey in Henry's reign was the translation of the Confessor's body to the ^^ICiOw!fS0r's new shrine, begun, as we have Newbhrine. ' & ' seen, in 1241, and still not finished in 1269, when the translation took place. It was elevated behind the high altar on a mound of earth believed to have been brought from the Holy Land ; and the base ment consisted of Purbeck marble, porphyry, and glass mosaic fashioned by Italian work men brought over by Abbot Ware, while the shrine itself, the work of English goldsmiths, was of pure gold set with jewels. It was further embellished with many gold and silver statues, one of which, a silver image of the Virgin and Child, glowing with rubies, emeralds and garnets, and valued at £200, was the gift of Henry's Queen. When at last the shrine was ready, though still, as we have said, not quite completed — it was further enriched indeed by the gifts of later monarchs — the Confessor's body was borne into the new choir from Westminster Palace by the King himself, his brother Richard King of the Romans, his sons Edward (afterwards King Edward I.) and Edmund (Crouchback), and as many nobles as could get near enough to touch the sacred burden, in presence of a vast concourse of clergy, nobility, and citizens. The chroniclers say that at sight of the coffin thus borne aloft two men from Ireland who were possessed of devils were cured. The day appointed for the translation was the feast of Edward's canonisation, October 13th (1269), the hundredth anni versary of the transference of the remains to the earlier shrine, provided by Henry II. Another ceremony in which the Abbey's second founder took part was the reception of a most precious gift from the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers. Hearing of the King's offerings to Edward's shrine, they sent him a crystal phial containing, so the Patriarch of Jerusalem attested, some of the Saviour's blood. On St. Edward's Day, 1247, having spent the night in prayer and fasting, the A Gift from Jerusalem King, humbly dressed in a cloak without a hood, with a long procession of clergy and nobles, went on foot to St. Paul's and there received the phial, which he himself bore to St. Peter's Abbey, carrying it with both hands when he came to a rugged part of the road and keeping his eyes steadfastly fixed either on heaven or on the vessel itself. Then he made the circuit of the church and the palace, including his own chambers, and finally, as Matthew of Westminster relates, solemnly offered the gift " to God, the church of St. Peter at Westminster, to his beloved Edward, and the holy brethren who at that place minister to God and the saints." The Abbey indeed was the constant witness of Henry's piety. He was never tired of hearing masses ; as the priest elevated the host the King would hold his hand and kiss it ; and at Christmas he took part in the Abbey festivals wearing his crown — a custom which was discontinued by his son Edward. And since his association with Westminster Abbey is so intimate, we may quote the description of his personal appearance given by his contemporary, Matthew of Westminster, who tells us that he was " of middling stature, and compact in body. The eyelid of one eye hung down so as to hide some of the dark part of the eyeball. He possessed robust strength, and was inconsiderate in his acts, but as they generally came to fortunate and happy results, many thought he was desig nated by the prophet Merlin when speaking of the lynx as penetrating everything with his eye." The work of rebuilding the remainder of the Abbey, including the nave, was continued after his death, though slowly, and it went on in the reigns of his successors until the Dissolution, and even then was not finished, as indeed it is not to this day. In 1298, as Mr. Lethaby shows, a great fire at West minster Palace spread to the monastic buildings, the dormitory, refectory, infirmary, cellars, and the Abbot's hall being either destroyed or damaged, so that they had to be rebuilt — works which were carried out during the fourteenth century. In the reign of the unfortunate Richard II. (1377-99), who had undertaken the comple tion of the new nave, sanctuary was violated three different times, and on one of the occasions, in 1378, the sacred floor was ROBERT DE HAULE AT BAY {p. 482). 482 LONDON TOWN ST"^-? -=e=^-~*. *" *><¦ TOMB OF HENRY V stained with the blood of one of the fugitives. At the Black Prince's victory at Najara in 1367 two squires, Frank de Haule of Bioodin8 and John Schakell, captured a Cas- tilian noble, the Count of Denia, and brought him to England. Presently he was allowed to return to Spain to raise his ransom, leaving as hostage his son, who, his father dying before the ransom was forthcoming, remained in captivity. Then de Haule, one of the captors, died, bequeathing his interest in the captive to his son Robert. When John of Gaunt laid claim to the Casti- lian throne in right of his wife Constance, he wished to conciliate Spain by restoring to his home the young Count, but de Haule and Schakell refused to surrender him, and for their default were committed to the Tower. Thence they fled to the Abbey for sanctuary, but were pursued by Sir Ralph Ferrers and the Constable of the Tower, by order of the Duke, and probably with the approval of Richard, who was but a boy of twelve. The pursuers, numbering some fifty men in armour, including some of the King's servants, arrived at the Abbey (August nth) while Mass was being celebrated, and according to one account, the deacon had just uttered the words of the Gospel of the day — " If the good man of the house had known what time the thief would come " — when the rude clank of arms was heard. " First seizing Schakell," says Holinshed, " they used the matter so with him that they drew him forth of the church and led him straight to the Tower. But when they came to Robert de Haule and fell in reasoning with him, he would not suffer them to come within his reach, and, perceiving they meant to take him by force, he drew out a falchion, or short sword, which he had girt to him, and therewith laid so freely about him, traversing twice round about the monks' choir, that till they had beset him on each side they could do him no hurt. Howbeit, at length, when they had got him at that advan tage, one of them clove his head to the very brains, and another thrust him through the body behind with a sword, and so they murdered him among them ; they slew also one of the monks that would have saved the esquire's life." At this sacrilegious deed there was, of course, a great hubbub. Ferrers and the Constable of the Tower were excommuni cated, were heavily fined, and had to do penance ; Parliament, which held its meetings in the Chapter-house, was suspended so that it might not have to assemble in the polluted precincts, the Abbey itself was shut up for four months and not reopened until it had been plentifully purified and censed, and Abbot Litlington, who was probably an eye-witness of the crime, went on cursing the deed and its doers with great vigour, as did the Bishop of London, who repeated the sentence of excom munication thrice a week at the cross of St. Paul's, and both Abbot and Bishop ignored John of Gaunt's summons to appear before him to answer for their presumption. The angry duke declared that he would gladly go to London to fetch " that disobedient prelate in despite of those ribaulds the Londoners," but he thought better of it. Schakell had, how ever, to give up his captive, and it then turned out that the Count was none other than the groom who had waited upon him in the Tower as a hired servant. The squire had won his captive's affection, and the young nobleman chose rather to act as his body servant than declare his identity and so terminate his long exile. As for de Haule, he was buried where he fell, just before the HENRY VII. AND THE LADY CHAPEL 4§3 Prior's stall, in these days the sub-Dean's, but his remains were afterwards removed to the south transept, where they still lie. After his mysterious death at Pontefract the unfortunate Richard was at first buried at Langley, but later he found Henry iv. sepulture in the Abbey. His supplanter, Henry IV., though he was not buried in the Abbey, died there. Old before his time and weighed down with the burden of ill deeds, he deter mined at the age of forty-six to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; but in the winter of that year (1412), as he knelt before St Edward's shrine, he had a seizure, and died, according to the chroniclers, in the Abbot's drawing-room, the Jerusalem Chamber, which Abbot Litlington had built not many years before, while Richard was on the throne. When he recovered consciousness, according to the story which Shakespeare has made familiar, he asked whether the room in which he was lying had any special name, and being told that it was styled the Jerusalem Chamber, exclaimed, " Praise be to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber according to the pro phecy of me before said that he should die in Jerusalem." And so, says Fabyan, " he made himself ready, and died shortly after (March 20th, 1413)." He was buried near the shrine of St. Thomas in Canterbury Cathe dral, and many suspected that he chose the cathedral rather than the abbey for his resting place because he shrank from being laid near the tomb of his victim. The coronation of Henry V. was celebrated in a snowstorm on the Sunday before Easter (April 9th, 141 3). He gave proof Henry v. of his piety by having the remains of his cousin, Richard IP, brought from Langley and solemnly interred in the Abbey, and providing that tapers "should burn day and night about his grave while the world endureth." His interest in the Abbey he showed by a gift, at the beginning of his reign, of £66 13s. 4d., and he con tinued to find money both from his privy purse and from the treasury so that the rebuilding of the nave might be prosecuted. Within these walls thanksgiving was made for Agincourt; here with great pomp his French queen, Katharine, was crowned ; and when his too short reign was ended (1422) he here received the most glorious burial ever up to that time accorded to an English monarch. On the coffin was Bu9ri Parliament, in 1697, granted a duty on coal to provide the necessary funds, as it had done for the rebuilding of St. Paul's. By this time Richard IP's porch at the north entrance had been swept completely away — no doubt to prevent it from tumbling down. After repairing the south front Wren gave his attention to the north front, though Mr. Lethaby holds that the design was probably made by Dickenson, the surveyor of the Abbey, " under Wren's general advice." De signs were also furnished for the completion of the two western towers, but here again Wren's appears to be a very modified respon sibility, though they are often spoken of without qualification as his towers. When he died this undertaking had not even been begun, and his designs were much altered by those who actually carried out the work — first his pupil Hawksmoor, and after Hawksmoor's death in 1736, Dickenson, and John James, the architect of-St. George's, Hanover Square. The towers were com pleted in 1740, and Dean Wilcocks was so pleased with them that he had them carved upon his monument, reared by his wish beneath the south-west tower. Stiff and formal as the towers are — stiff with rigor mortis, one may perhaps say — they might, in that age, have been worse ; and we may at any rate be thankful that Hawksmoor was not able to give effect to his intention of topping them with spires. Wren's design, it should be added, included the carrying up of the central tower into a lofty spire, but this feature he abandoned because he found, as Abbot Islip had found long before, that the piers were not strong enough to sustain the weight. His design looks not ill, and it is curious to speculate what would have been the result had the opportunity of adding a central spire to the Abbey fallen to this great master of the art of spire building. Before Wren was laid to rest in his own Cathedral of St. Paul, the first of our Hanoverian kings had had his George i. hallowing in the Abbey of St. Peter (October 20th, 17 14). George I. had not condescended to learn the tongue of his future subjects, and, as Dean Stanley says, " the ceremonies had to be explained by the ministers, who could not speak German, to the King, who could not speak English, in Latin which they must both have spoken very imperfectly." The result was, as some one wittily said, that much " bad language " was used. The coronation of George III. (Septem ber 22nd, 1 761) was attended by an omen — the fall of a jewel from the crown ; George iii. and when long years afterwards the American colonies had broken away from the motherland, the true significance of the occurrence was, of course, discerned. The ceremony was also marked by an event which illustrated the King's religious feeling. When he came to the altar to receive the sac rament he asked the Archbishop whether he ought not to lay aside his crown. The Arch bishop referred the question to the Bishop of Rochester, but he also was unable to answer it, and it was left to the King himself to decide the point, which he did by taking off the chief symbol of his sovereignty and laying it aside during this solemn part of the hallowing. In this reign it was (1784) that the first of the Handel Festivals was celebrated, occupying four days. The music FesStiT"f.ndel consisted wholly of Handel's compositions, rendered by an orchestra and choir numbering six hundred, and supported by a temporary organ destined for Canterbury Cathedral. At the east end, in front of the choir screen, thrones had been reared for the King and Queen, who had the bishops on their right and the Dean and Chapter on the left ; and it was the King who, by impulsively starting to his feet, weeping with emotion, initiated the custom, ever since observed, of standing during the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus. The Festivals con tinued to be held in the Abbey until 1790, when they were transferred to St. Margaret's ; but at least on one occasion after that date, in 1834, the celebration took place in the Abbey. Two years after the first Festival (1786) the funeral of the Princess Amelia, the King's aunt, was the occasion of a pi? Atntiauary's gruesome experience to a curi ous antiquary. The day before the funeral, according to a journal of the period, this gentleman, a Mr. Tuffin, by feeing the workmen, was allowed to go QUEEN CAROLINE AND GEORGE IV 495 down into the royal vault in order that he might transcribe some of the inscriptions upon the coffins. " He had procured a wax taper, and in the intentness of his search time passed away unperceived. At length his pursuit was interrupted. A soldier had secreted himself, and in the absence of the workmen was attempting to pull off one of the silver plates from the coffin next him. The gentleman prevented him, and the villain escaped. Soon after this, while the curious visitant was copying the inscrip tion on the coffin of the late Duke of Cumber land, he was alarmed' by the falling noise of the trap-door of the vault, and heard the outer gate of the Abbey ring upon its hinges, the bolts were secured, and he found himself locked in among the dead. Speedily after this his taper went out, and he remained in total darkness. In this unpleasant situation the night at length passed over. Morning, however, released him from the grave, and he walked home, but was immediately taken ill and confined for six weeks to his room." By the end of the eighteenth century the Abbey had once more sunk into a state of melancholy disrepair. The Decay. west front was almost ruinous ; in Henry VI I.'s Chapel many of the windows were broken and the mullions had been barbarously hacked away ; and the spirit in which the Chapter regarded the treasure committed to their charge may be deduced from the fact that they had not scrupled to cut a carriage-way through one of the buttresses of the Chapter-house. In 1803 (July 9th) the endeavours of the Chapter to do their worst for the Abbey were reinforced by a fire which broke out in the lantern, as the result of which the roof of the tower fell in, doing considerable damage to the choir, which had to be closed for two years. The year before this event Dr. Vincent, headmaster of Westminster School, was appointed Dean, and in his thirteen years of office the injury caused by the fire was repaired. Vincent appealed to Parliament to provide funds for the work, and between 1807 and 1 8 14 grants amounting altogether to about £42,000 were allocated to the repair of the fabric. With the burial of George III. at Windsor, the Abbey ceased to be the mausoleum of our kings and queens ; but it did not lose its place as the scene of their hallowing. From the coronation of the first of the Georges his queen was absent because she was in terned in prison ; from that of the fourth of the name (July 19th, 182 1) his queen was kept by physical force. Three Queen times was Caroline repulsed from Carolines ... Repulse. the doors, and her mortification at the absence of any popular demon stration in her behalf was such that she returned to Brandenburg House to die, the end of her wretched life coming less than three weeks afterwards. The coronation had been postponed for a year, because Caroline's trial was not concluded, and because, under the direction of James Wyatt, who happily had not the scope to work the mischief here which he wrought elsewhere, the choir was being refitted. When at last the day came the ceremony was carried out with lavish sumptuousness, the enormous sum of nearly a quarter of a million being spent upon it. From a lively account of the coron ation, quoted by Mrs. Murray Smith from the private letters of a young lady who was present, we may cull two or three sentences. The guards who lined the nave were, she noted, so well chosen that not only their hands but also their shoulders and their knees were all on a precise level. Prince Leopold, who came first in the royal pro cession, looked, she thought, most kingly. " I never saw a more noble, sensible, collected face and deportment ; grave almost to severity, without harshness, he looked a man one must respect and might adore, quite of another race to the thick, heavy, stupid- looking Royal Family who followed him." The King, recorded this very frank young lady, was overloaded with finery. Pie looked fatigued and worn, and as pale as death, and she thought him "wonderfully like an im mense old woman " in his wig " with long flowing curls which hung full a quarter of a yard over his shoulders." As to the Queen's attempts to force an entrance, the writer thought that her violent rage and her burst of tears were " most unfit, most im proper, and unregal. It was a shame, and a disgraceful as well as distressing scene for a queen to exhibit on such a day." Upon the coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide (September 8th, 1831) only Coronationof George IV 496 LONDON TOWN about one-sixth of the sum lavished upon that of George IV. was expended. The Queen was so bent upon the avoidance of waste that she would permit neither the purchase nor the hire of a crown for her self, but had one made up from her own jewels at her own charges. Though in the coronation of Queen Victoria (June 8th, 1838) economy was not carried so far as on that y occasion, the ceremony pro ceeded mainly on the same lines, the walking procession of Commons burst into loud cheers, nine times repeated, and mixed with cries of " God Save Queen Victoria," and the shouts of joy were taken up by the spectators who thronged the galleries and vaulting until the roof and arches of the great fane rang. How the venerable Lord Rolle, in ascending the steps to swear allegiance, stumbled and fell, how the Queen impulsively rose from her seat and amid the ecstatic cheers of the con tended her kiss, a n d gregation e x - hand to him to anxiously hoped VIEW OF THE ABBEY BEFORE THE MODERN RESTORATION, SHOWING THE SPIRE AS DESIGNED BY WREN. From a Drawing by J. James. of " all the estates of the realm " and the banquet in Westminster Hall, with all the attendant feudal services, being dispensed with. To the young Queen there was vouch safed on this great occasion a foretaste of that sympathetic disposition of the elements which in after years came to be spoken of as " Queen's weather." The day so far had been dull ; but as she knelt and the Queen's Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on her brow a ray of sunshine fell upon her, making as it played upon the diamonds in the crown what one witness described as " a kind of halo round her head." The enthusiasm of the multitude for their girl-queen was as pronounced as it was spontaneous. When the peers had rendered homage, the members of the House that he was not hurt, has often been told, and we need not repeat the story. In the years that separated Queen Victoria's coronation from the first of her Jubilees much had been improvements, done for the Abbey. Under Dean Buckland, the high screens which shut off the choir from the transepts, so that not more than six hundred worshippers could be accom modated at the services in the choir, were abolished in 1848. Under Buckland's suc cessor, Richard Chenevix Trench, the first of the services in the nave was held, on the 3rd of December, 1859. But to Dean Stanley, whose tenure of office lasted from 1864 to 1 88 1, it was reserved to exalt the Abbey to its rightful place in the nation's DRASTIC " RESTORATION " 497 life, not merely as the great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation, which it had long been, but also as the church where Stanley. a11 sections of Anglicans might feel themselves at home, and where even the voices of the leaders of Nonconformity might be heard, for though they and distinguished laymen might not preach from the pulpit, they were allowed to lecture in the nave. Another innovation which the Church and the nation owes to Dean Stanley was the performance of Bach's Passion Music, which was sung in the nave for the first time, with orchestral accom paniment, on the 6th of April, 1871. Under this most indefatigable of Deans much else was done, including the restoration of the Chapter-house, which he teahouse.3 found in a dismal state of decay, and blocked up with wooden cases and cupboards stuffed with muniments. Stanley obtained a Parliamentary grant, and under Sir Gilbert Scott this feature of the Abbey was restored to its pristine splendour. The front of the north tran sept too, was taken in hand by the same architect and under the same Dean, but neither lived to see the completion Transept °f the lower stage, the triple porch, which was not finished until 1885. The upper part was then undertaken by the late Mr. J. L. Pearson, who entirely rebuilt it in the original Early English style. We must leave it to others to praise these opera tions. It is true that the transept had been greatly altered by Wren and his assistants and successors, but in the form in which it had come down to us it could boast a very respectable antiquity, and it is difficult to justify so drastic a proceeding as its destruc tion and rebuilding. For the Jubilee service (June 21st, 1887), the Abbey, as at coronations, was tem porarily transferred from the TheFirst charge of the Dean and Chapter to that of the Lord Chamberlain, and for three months, from the 3rd of May to the 30th of July, it was closed to the public, the Abbey services, however, being not wholly discontinued, as had been the case at former coronations, but held in St. Mar garet's. The interval between the beginning of May and Thanksgiving Day was occupied in the erection of galleries and scaffolds The North draped in blue and scarlet, which completely transformed the interior of the building. By noon on the great day it was packed from end to end with ten thousand spectators, representative of all the most important sections and interests of the Empire. Half- an-hour later, welcomed by a fanfare from the silver trumpets in the organ loft and by a stately march of Handel's from the organ, the royal procession entered the west door, headed by the clergy, the Dean (Bradley) ceding his place at the rear of the ecclesiastics only to the Archbishop t. EVELYN. MONUMENT TO HANDEL. of Canterbury (Dr. Benson), the Bishop of the diocese (Dr. Temple) walking in front of him with the Archbishop of York. Next came a long line of officials, then the royal princes, conspicuous among them the tall form of the German Crown Prince, who the next year was to succeed his father as German Emperor, and within a few short weeks was to sink into the grave. In the same group were the present Kaiser, at that time a figure of little interest, the present King, and the Duke of Clarence, his eldest son. Then came Queen Victoria herself, robed in a black dress of which the sombre- ness was relieved by the Star of India and the Order of the Garter, and wearing a white bonnet resplendent with diamonds. Slowly, with bent head, she walked up the nave and choir to the dai's, followed by the present Queen and the other princesses, and when she 498 LONDON TOWN had taken her seat in St. Edward's chair, which was covered with cloth of gold, the service began. The ceremony ended, as the present generation is little likely to forget, in a touching exhibition of family feeling, the Queen embracing ever)' member of her family in turn, beginning with her eldest son. It ing day the service was repeated, but without, of course, the leading actors, in the presence of a less distinguished but not smaller con gregation, which included many working men and women. Even the Jubilee service of 1887 can hardly vie in interest with the coronation of King Edward and Queen Alexandra fifteen THE CHAPTER-HOUSE AS RESTORED. was significant of the spontaneity of this display of affection that she called her two German sons-in-law back, after they had done homage and retired, and kissed them as she had done her own children. Then, turning to the foreign princes grouped before the altar, she made to them a deep obeisance which recalled the statelier manners of an earlier age. Finally, to the strains of Mendels sohn's " March of the Priests," the procession made its way out of the church on its way back to Buckingham Palace. On the follow- years later. The story of the postponement of the ceremony from Thursday the 26th of June (1902) to Saturday the of^ooa""13"0" 9th of August, necessitated by the King's grave illness, need not be told in detail, but we may recall the scene in the Abbey on that black Tues day, but forty-eight hours before the time appointed for the ceremony, when it became known that the King's life was in jeopardy, and that he was even then being prepared for the operating-table. The choir had assembled TIDINGS OF KING EDWARD'S ILLNESS 499 for a complete rehearsal of the music to be performed on the Thursday, with the bishops who were to read the service, the military bands and the bandmasters, and many of those who had to take part in the procession. The trumpeters had just blown their blast of welcome when Lord Esher hurried in with earnestness of the King, and the successive sentences seemed at each response to gather new meaning and to express, as nothing else could have done, the supplications of the people. After the last ' Amen ' of the Litany came the trembling voice of the aged Dean, invoking a blessing on the kneeling throng, THE FUNERAL OF TENNYSON. the news that the coronation was postponed. It was communicated to the assembly by the Bishop of London, and at once a short service was improvised, the Bishop of Bath and Wells kneeling at the lectern where two days later he was to have sung the Litany. " As the words of the great intercessory prayer were poured forth by the Bishop," writes Mr. Loftie in " The Coronation Book of Ed ward VII.," " the choir answering in the grand old music, so impressive, so familiar, so soothing, everyone thought with deep which by this time included many of the workmen engaged in the Abbey, who, when the order was given to cease work, joined in the petitions for succour to the royal sufferer." The preparations to which the finishing touches were being applied, when the news came which brought everything to a sudden stop, included the erection of a Gothic portico of timber before thewest front, to furnish robing and resting rooms for those who were to take part in the ceremony. Upon the hangings 500 LONDON TOWN inside the Abbey itself the greatest care had been bestowed to ensure that the effect should be rich and harmonious. The patterns were chosen the year before, and during the winter the fabrics were being manufactured. The prevailing hues were shades of blue, ranging from purple. The crossing of the transepts, beneath the lantern, was occupied by a platform ascended at seven o'clock in the morning, and long before eleven, when the boom of guns announced that the great State carriage was leaving Buckingham Palace, all but those who were to take part in the procession were in their places. We must not stop to detail the ceremony — the presentation of the King to his people by the aged Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple), and their EDWARD VII. BEING PRESENTED BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY (DR. TEMPLE). by five steps, and upon this was placed the King's throne, with a similar throne for the Queen on a slightly lower level ; and platform and steps were covered with a lovely Persian carpet more than three hundred and fifty years old. In the sanctuary, in front of the altar, was placed the Coronation chair, St. Edward's chair, and beside it the Queen Consort's chair, a replica of the other, made for the coronation of Queen Mary II. The south transept was set apart for peers, the north transept for peeresses, and behind both were the seats allocated to the Commons. Over the side aisles were galleries, and above these, in the triforium, the Westminster boys were to assemble to greet the King and Queen with their shrill acclamations. In this state the Abbey remained from the 26th of June until the 9th of the following August. On that day the doors were opened clamorous greetings in response ; the adminis tration of the oath and the King's declaration, sealed by kissing the Bible, that he would perform and keep the things which he had promised ; the anointing, the girding on of the sword of justice, the investiture with the imperial robe, the reception of the orb and of the sceptre, the crowning, the enthronisation, and the rendering of homage by repre sentative spiritual and temporal peers to the monarch whose hallowing was now fulfilled. The culminating moment of the superb ceremony was that at which the King, seated in the Coronation chair, was endued with St. Edward's crown. As the investiture was performed the sanctuary, which heretofore had been dark — for the day though a glad was not a bright one — was flooded with the electric light, the trumpets blared, the whole The Great Moment. THE CORONATION FULFILLED 501 assembly shouted " God Save the King," and over all the joyous din the clashing of bells and the booming of distant guns made themselves heard. It was with a manifest effort that, on receiving the crown from Dean Bradley and one of the prebendaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury placed it on the King's head, and it was necessary for the King, though in one hand he held the sceptre with the cross say that after her Majesty had been in vested with her crown she moved to her throne near that of the King on the platform, making a deep curtsey to his Majesty as she passed. Finally, the archbishops and bishops, and after them the King and Queen, having received the communion, their Majesties replaced the crowns which they had laid aside during this part of the ceremony THE CROWNING OF QUEEN ALEXANDRA BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK (DR. MACLAGAN"). and in the other the sceptre with the dove, to adjust it himself. This was the first indica tion of failing strength the Primate had be trayed ; but when, leaning on the Bishop of Winchester, who was destined to succeed him in his high office, he knelt to render homage for himself and the other lords spiritual, he had some difficulty in rising until helped by the King. After he had kissed the King's cheek his Majesty once more took him by the hand and commended him to the care of the Bishop of Bath ; but a brief rest sufficed to reinvigorate the Primate, and he was able to continue his part in the ceremony. The anointing and crowning of Queen Alex andra must also be passed over : suffice it to and withdrew to their respective retiring rooms in St. Edward's Chapel. Then a pause, after which choir and congregation joined their voices in the National Anthem. Presently the Queen, having exchanged Queen Edith's crown for her State Crown, emerged from St. Edward's chapel, " a vision of beauty and magnificence not to be for gotten," and passed down the Abbey in procession. Last of all the King appeared, wearing not St. Edward's crown but his Imperial Crown, and walked with stately step to the western doors. So ended the most memorable ceremony which had been enacted within the Abbey for at least two generations. *^?9i|g|lgagiiijiilji^^ CHAPTER XLVI WESTMINSTER ABBEY : DESCRIPTIVE Exterior— Henry VII.'s Chapel— The Interior— General Impressions— The Monuments— Those in the Nave Ben Jonson's Grave — Whigs' Corner — Choir Aisles — Choir — Statesmen's Aisle— Poets' Corner— The Confessors' Chapel — Coronation Chair— Lady Chapel— Chapels, of the Chevet— Cloisters -Chapter-house— Crypt- Chapel of the Pyx— Jerusalem Chamber HAVING hastily sketched the growth of the Abbey through the generations, and described some of the more notable events which its time-honoured walls have witnessed, we may in this chapter attempt some description of it as it now presents itself. Of the exterior, which, though most of the stone has now taken on a venerable tinge, has been almost entirely recased, little need be said. A recent writer has ad- The Western v;secj that the western towers, attributed, as we have seen, on insufficient grounds, to Wren, should be rebuilt, from the roof of the church up wards. So large a work is little likely to be undertaken, for there is much that clamours to be done to the fabric in the way of necessary repair, and now that the Abbey is full of the illustrious dead it will be necessary before long to add to it a tomb-house. But even though the work of rebuilding the towers were practicable, on the whole it is not desirable. They have stood long enough to have established a claim to our interest and regard ; and though from most points of view they do something to mar the impression made by one of the noblest memorials of the great ages of architecture, they are far from being intolerably bad. Better, there fore, make the best of them than commit so violent a breach with the past. Henry VII.'s Chapel. Of the west entrance it is not easy to speak much more approvingly than of the towers by which it is flanked. It has no great dignity, and the great window above it is stiff and featureless. The north front, with its beautiful rose window, its deeply recessed triple portal, its rich mouldings, its canopied figures, has every title to admiration except that of antiquity ; for the south front, which was renovated at the beginning of the last century, before the Gothic revival, much less may be claimed, but it is so hemmed in by the Chapter-house and other structures that only the upper part can be seen. But Henry VII.'s Chapel, with its harmonious propor tions, its elaborate and exquisite sculptures, its turrets and pinnacles and flying buttresses, the whole carved into almost unrivalled richness of beauty, will always delight those who can enjoy the most florid phase of Gothic architecture, without necessarily pre ferring it to the chaster forms by which it was preceded. The usual entrance is through the north porch, but to appreciate the unity of the fabric one should view it from The interior. just inside the western doors, where, with the Tudor Lady Chapel out of sight in the far east, one sees how consistently the Abbey conforms to the 502 INTERIOR OF THE ABBEY 503 early Decorated style. That it should do so is not a little remarkable, seeing that the re building of the nave, only begun in the reign of Henry IIP, was in progress for hundreds of years ; and the fact is that here, as at Canterbury, the later builders had the self- restraint to carry on the work according to the original plan. But even before this impression of essential unity has been received, the eye will have been struck by the exceptional height of the building. The Abbey is not only the loftiest ecclesi astical structure in England, but the loftiest in proportion to its breadth. The orna mentation, too, is carried up to a quite unusual height, the walls being covered with elaborate diapering up to the very base of the clerestory. One judicious critic hints, not without evident reluctance, that the height is almost disproportionate, so that the building looks a little narrow ; and prob ably there are few students of the Gothic, however profound their admiration of the Abbey, who will care to challenge this criticism. In storied windows the Abbey is not rich ; of the ancient stained glass not much is left, and of that which is modern there is little that merits praise. The rose window in the south transept and the twelve lancet lights beneath it were filled with stained glass in 1902 as a public memorial of the late Duke of Westminster, under the superintend ence of Mr. G. F. Bodley, R.A., who in the following year did the same service for another window in the same transept. Structurally the Abbey consists of a nave, with aisles ; a choir that really occupies three bays of the nave, from which it is Plan, divided by a stone screen ; transepts that divide the choir from the sanctuary, or, as it is more usually called, the sacrarium ; the chapel of Edward the Confessor and the chantry of Henry V., east of the sanctuary ; an ambulatory which separates the sanc tuary and the Confessor's chapel from the chapels of the chevet or apse ; and eastward of the ambulatory the chapel of Henry VII. Of the monuments with which the church is crowded one can only speak with mixed The Monuments. feelings. Many of the earlier and some of the later ones are admirable, but most of those that come between the two periods, the monuments of the • later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, are in the worst style of sepulchral art. Nor can we quarrel with the late Oliver Wendell Holmes for saying, in "Our Hundred Days in Europe," that the Abbey produces a distinct sense of being overcrowded. "It appears," he remarks, " too much like a lapidary's store room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for shutting out the heaven above us — at least in an average London day ; look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers ; but do not look around you with the hope of getting any clear, concentrated, satisfying effect from this great museum of gigantic funeral bric-d-brae." M. Taine, it PLAN OF THE ABBEY. 504 LONDON TOWN is true, in his " Notes on England," speaks approvingly of " the numerous graceful sculp tures of the eighteenth century." M.Tainein while he was admiring "this the Abbey. => profusion of delicate sculptures," to use another of his euphemisms, suddenly " the music pealed forth, not the monotonous psalmody of our vespers, the rude and monkish chants, the verses and responses which seem to be the voices of ailing monks, but beautiful pieces in parts, grave and noble recitative, melodious outbursts of harmony, the productions of the best epoch." Then organ and choir sounded forth " a full and rich anthem." Such music, he thought, was the worthy accompaniment of the psalms and the prayers of the Anglican service. " Thus understood," he comments, " worship is the opera of elevated, serious, and believing souls." From this passage it is evident that the Abbey itself and its service had attuned his mind to a mood of rather undiscriminating admiration, and not even his authority can reconcile one to the presence of works which are as ugly as they are incongruous with the spirit of a Christian fane. Of those who sleep in the Abbey, and of the monuments which commemorate them, only a few can be mentioned. in°the Navl! Most illustrious, perhaps, of those who rest in the nave and its aisles is Isaac Newton, who was buried in front of the screen ; but not far off, in the north aisle, lies Charles Darwin, a not unworthy rival either in scientific eminence, in simplicity of character, or in love of truth. Other distinguished men of science who are buried in this part of the church are John Hunter the anatomist, John Herschell the astronomer, Charles Lyell the geologist, and John Woodward, founder of the professorship of geology at Cambridge. Here, too, lie four eminent modern architects, Charles Barry, Gilbert Scott, George Edmund Street and John Loughborough Pearson, two of whom — Scott and Pearson — have left their mark upon the Abbey, while to a third — Barry — West minster owes the Houses of Parliament. In fitting proximity to each other rest Lord Clyde, better known as Colin Campbell, Sir James Outram, and Lord Lawrence, heroes of our Indian empire. David Livingstone sleeps in a grave which was opened, almost in the centre of the nave, in the summer of 1874, to receive his remains, brought to the African coast by affectionate converts and embalmed for transportation to his native land. Robert Stephenson, who is buried in St. Andrew's Chapel, is commemorated here by a life-size brass in the floor, as well as by a poor painted window in the north aisle which sets forth pictorially the fruits of his inventive genius. In the north aisle of the nave a stone marks the spot where " rare Ben Jonson " stands in his narrow grave. How Ben Jonson. he came to be buried in a posture sounsuggestive of rest is not known. One story is that dying, in poverty, he begged of Charles I. " eighteen inches of square ground in the Abbey." Another story is that being rallied by the Dean about being buried in Poets' Corner, he replied, " I am too poor for that, and no one will lay out funeral charges upon me. No, sir," he added, " six feet long by two feet wide is too much for me ; two feet by two will do for all I want." The Dean, the story proceeds, promised that he should have what he asked, and was as good as his word. However it came about, the fact that the poet was buried upright cannot be doubted, for when the floor close by was opened for the burial of John Hunter, in 1793, the skull, with traces of red hair, was seen, and when another grave was dug, in 1849, the clerk of the works saw the leg bones fixed upright in the sand, " and the skull came rolling down the sand from a position above the leg bones to the bottom of the newly made grave. There was still hair upon it, and of a red colour." It is said that on this occasion an over-zealous antiquary carried away some relics of the poet, but restored them when the late Edward Draper, in the Press, hinted a threat of exposure. At the west end of this, the north aisle, under the north-west tower, is Westmacott's huge monument of Charles James Fox, Corner brought hither from the north transept, where the great debater was buried ; and grouped around it are memorials of Earl (Lord John) Russell and other illustrious Liberals, so that this spot has been designated the Whigs' Corner. In the south aisle is the monument erected to Wiliiam Congreve the dramatist, by Henrietta, second Duchess of Marlborough, who was suspected of having been too fond of him while he was MONUMENTS IN THE ABBEY 505 living. That her mother, the widow of the first Duke, thought the connexion a none too innocent one is clear from a remark in one of Horace Walpole's letters. " When the younger Duchess," he writes, " exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph of her own composing and bad spelling to Congreve in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, said, ' I know not what pleasure she might have had in his company, but I am sure it was no honour.' " Near this monument, and in the grave of Dean Atterbury, which was dug close to the door that leads to the Deanery, sleeps George Bradley, who succeeded Arthur Stanley as Dean in 1881, and held the office until the autumn of 1902, when the infirm ities of age compelled him to resign. The small oak gallery above the entrance to the Deanery, known as the Abbot's Pew, was, with the rooms behind it, erected by Abbot Islip earl)- in the sixteenth century. From this point of vantage Royalty has often watched processions in their passage up and down the nave. In the south aisle of the choir is Bird's ludicrous monument of a gallant sailor, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who, as the Choir Aisle inscription sets forth, was ship wrecked on the rocks of Scilly, in his voyage from Toulon, October 22nd, 1707, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The admiral's death was even Sir Cloudesley tragical than would ap- Shovel. => r pear from this inscription, for the fact is that he was murdered, for the sake of an emerald ring upon his finger, by the fisherman's wife who found him lying un conscious on the rocks. Thirty years after wards, when she came to die, she confessed her crime to a clergyman, and handed to him the ring, which he forwarded to Shovel's old friend, the Earl of Berkeley. The monument represents the admiral, in fancy attire, reclining on the ground under a canopy, and beneath the figure, in low relief, is a repre sentation of the wreck of the Association. Nothing could be more just than Addison's criticism of this monument, which had often) he said, given him great offence. " Instead of the brave, rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long 33 periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The in scription is answerable to the monument ; for, instead of celebrating the many remark able actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impos sible for him to reap an)- honour." Of great deeds there certainly was no lack in the story of his life, from the day when as a boy he attracted the notice of his admiral, Sir John Narborough, by swimming with des patches in his mouth to a distant ship during an action, right on to the end of his career. Not far away is Van Gelder's descriptive monument to a gallant soldier, Major Andre, whose ill fate it was to be executed Andr« as a SP^ by ^he American colonists in 1780. The memorial, which was reared at the expense of George III., represents George Washington receiving Andre's petition that he might die a soldier's death. In earlier days the figure of Washington aroused the ire of some spec tators, who resented the doom he dealt out to his prisoner, and three times has the head had to be renewed. Charles Lamb had his jest about the mutilation at the expense of Southey. Writing to his friend, who had long repented of the revolutionary fervours of his youthful days, he says, " The mischief was done about the time you were a scholar there," that is, at Westminster School ; and slyly asks, " Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic ? " Southey misliked the jest, and found it not easy to forgive the jester. Yet another descriptive monument in the south aisle of the choir shows in bold relief the murder of Thomas Thynne of Longleat, " Tom of Ten Thousand," while riding in his coach in Pall Mall in February, 1682, by assassins who were in the pay of Count Koningsmarck. Other memorials in this aisle commemorate great Nonconformists — Dr. Watts, the hymn-writer, and John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism. In one of the aisles of the choir — the north — where they are appropriately placed, are monuments of great musicians, North Choir SQme f them or„anists at the Aisle. & Abbey ; such as Burney and Blow, Croft and Purcell, Sir William Sterndale Bennett and Michael William Balfe. Here, 506 LONDON TOWN too, is the fine altar-tomb, by Armstead, of Lord John Thynne, for forty-six years sub- dean of the Abbe\-, who died in 1881, and who had had opened out, in the south aisle of the choir, the beautiful altar-tomb of his ancestor, Sir William Thynne, a Tudor statesman. Of the choir itself, occupying, as we have seen, three bays of the nave, we need only say that the fittings, though The choir, modern, having been executed in 1858, were designed by Blore in accordance with the style of the reign of Edward III. The marble pavement, dis posed in lozenges of black and white, is more ancient, for it was the gift of the cele brated Dr. Busby, master of Westminster School, who died in 1695. Compared, how ever, with the floor of the sanctuary, separated from it by the transepts, that of the choir is but a thing of yesterday, for the pavement of the sanctuary is an elaborate piece of mosaic, the work of Abbot Ware, who brought workmen from Rome in 1260 to piece it together out of fragments of classical structures. This pavement was shamefully maltreated by the workmen who in 1706 erected a reredos presented to the Abbey by Queen Anne, and only by the intervention of Lord Oxford was it saved from total destruction. In these days the greatest care is taken of this precious feature of the Abbey, and to save the tiles as much as possible from wear and tear they are in part covered with the ancient Persian carpet used at the coronation of King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra. Queen Anne's reredos, an incongruous classical work of marble, was replaced in 1824 by one of lath and plaster, The Reredos. for which, in 1 867, the present chaste structure by Sir Gilbert Scott, glowing with gold and mosaic, was substituted. The figures in the niches, representing Moses, St. Peter, St. Paul, and David, were determined by Dean Stanley, at whose direction the lawgiver of the Hebrew race was placed on the north side looking towards the Statesmen's Aisle, and its sweet singer on the south side looking towards Poets' Corner. Advantage was taken of the erection of the reredos to repair the tesselated pavement, and while this was being done the bases of two of the columns of the Confessor's Abbey were discovered three feet below the present level of the church. On the south side of the sanctuary hangs a panel portrait of Richard II., the first contemporary paint ing of an English monarch which has come down to us ; it was cleaned and restored to what one may assume to have been its original state by George Richmond, while Stanley was dean. Behind it hangs a piece of tapestry, of Elizabethan date, from West minster School, bearing names which are those of Westminster scholars. The north transept, the " Statesmen's Aisle," interesting as it has long been because it enshrines the dust of so many statesmen's illustrious statesmen, has of late Aisle. ' years become specially attractive to visitors to the Abbey from the fact that it contains the grave of William Ewart Glad stone, who was laid to rest nearly in the centre of it on the 28th of May, 1898, at the cost of the nation. To this, the first State funeral in the Abbey since Pitt's, " foreign sovereigns," says Mr. John (afterwards Vis count) Morley in his great "Life" of his leader, " sent their representatives, the Speaker of the House of Commons was there in state, and those were there who had done stout battle against him for long years ; those also who had sat with him in council and stood by him in frowning hours. At the head of the grave was ' the solitary and pathetic figure ' of his wife. Even men most averse to all pomps and shows on the occasions and scenes that declare so audibly their nothing ness, here were only conscious of a deep and moving simplicity, befitting a great citizen now laid among the kings and heroes." Two- years later the grave was opened in order that Mrs. Gladstone might be laid beside her husband, who had stipulated that "wherever he should be buried a place should be reserved for his devoted wife. In 1903 a statue of the great statesman, by Thomas Brock, R.A., representing him in his robes as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was erected, at the charges of Parliament, near the grave, against one of the eastern piers of the tran sept, and next to Gibson's statue of the statesman under whom he first took office, Sir Robert Peel. Close by there already stood Boehm's statue of Gladstone's great rival, Lord Beaconsfield, from whom he is half turning away — an attitude which one may feel sure he would not himself have chosen. Lord WEST.MINSTEK ABHEV : THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST. 5oS LONDON TOWN Photo: Pictorial Agency. STATESMEN'S AISLE, SHOWING THE STATUE OF W. E. GLADSTONE. Beaconsfield, as all the world knows, lies at Hughenden ; but two other rival statesmen, as we must recall, familiar as is the fact, rest here almost side by side : hence the couplet in " Marmion " — " Drop upon Fox's grave the tear, 'Twill trickle to his rival's- bier." Their statues also, as we have seen, are not far apart, at the western end of the church. Lord Chatham, too, is buried here in the Statesmen's Aisle, and so are Grattan, and George Canning, and Canning's son, Vis count Canning, Governor-General of India. The monuments of the Cannings stand side by side, and next to them is that of a third of the name, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, "the great Eltchi," who died in 1880. But we must pass on to a yet more interesting part of the Abbey — that eastern part of the south transept which is so familiar throughout the English-speaking world as Poets' Corner. Here are buried Poets1 many of the chief of our singers, Corner. J b from Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in the precincts of the Abbey in 1400, to Robert Browning and Lord Tennyson, generous rivals who fittingly lie side by side ; among the intermediate names being those of Michael Drayton and Edmund Spenser, John Dryden and Abraham Cowley, Thomas Campbell and John Gay. It was by Gay's special wish, conveyed to his " dear Mr. Pope," that Rysbrach's monument to him, against the door of the little chapel of St. Faith, at the south end of the transept, was inscribed with his own lines — more con temptible than contemptuous — " Life is a jest, and all things show it : I thought so once, and now I know it.'' When Oliver Wendell Holmes came to this monument the thought occurred to him that if he were Dean of Westminster he would be tempted to alter " jest " to " gest," for life, he said, " is a gest, an achievement — or always ought to be." Of the two most eminent Victorian poets, the first to be buried here was Robert Brown ing, who died at Venice on the Robert I2th of December, 1889, on the Browning. . ^ day that his last volume of poems, " Asolando," was published, but not before he had learnt that the book had been suc cessfully subscribed. Two days later the Venetians gave a public funeral to the poet who had loved Italy hardly less than his own country, and on the last day of the month he was buried here, in the presence of a distinguished congregation that packed the Abbey. Even more remarkable was the funeral, two years later (October 12th, 1891), EDWARD THE CONFESSOR'S CHAPEL 509 AlfredTennyson. of the singer who for over forty years had worn the Poet Laureate's wreath, and whose death in a chamber flooded with the radiance of the moon was such as a poet might have chosen for himself. Not only was the Abbey crowded with mourners at the funeral, but for days afterwards there was a continuous stream of pilgrims to the grave. Among others who rest in Poets' Corner are the two most distinguished of our actors, David Gar rick and Henry Irving, who lie near to each other at the foot of the Shakespeare statue. Not far away is the grave of Sir William Chambers, the builder of Somerset House. The western part of the south transept is the " historical " side, and so we find in it the graves of such men of learning as William Camden, Isaac Casaubon, Isaac Barrow, Samuel Johnson, Lord Macaulay, and Bishop Thirlwall. Close to the grave of Johnson is that of Charles Dickens, not far from whom lies George Frederick Handel. In this part of the Abbey, too, is Onslow Ford's bust of Mr. Ruskin, who would have found a grave in the Abbey but that he had expressly desired that he should be buried wherever he might chance to die, and so he was laid to rest at Coniston, among his beloved lakes. Historically, the most interesting part of the Abbey is the chapel of Edward the Confessor, raised considerably above the level of the ambulatory, and separated The from the sanctuary by a screen Confessor's . Chapel. which probably belongs to the fifteenth century. Its most precious possession is the dust of the Confessor-king and of his wife Edith. In the centre of the chapel stands the shrine reared by Henry III. to receive the body of the founder of the Abbey. " Though," as Professor Bonney writes, " though the golden casket which enclosed the coffin has been replaced by a humbler fabric of wood, though the Pur- beck marble of the lower part has crumbled, and the glass mosaic has in many places been chipped away, this is still the most perfect monument of its kind in Britain, for to such as these the Reformation proved exceptionally fatal. . . . 'Longshanks ' lies be neath the third bay to the north, his strange order as to the disposal of his body having been thus violated. Beneath the next arch is the stately tomb of Henry IIP, enriched with slabs of Egyptian and Spartan ' por phyry,' the spoils of Rome. Next comes the monument of Queen Eleanor, ending the line of memorial crosses. Then, beneath a stately chantry, which is extended east ward to overarch the ambulatory, stands Pho.'o : J 'or/c & Sons, Netting Hilt, II '. POETS CORNER. 5io LONDON TOWN the tomb of Henry V., the victor of Agin- court. The body of his wife Katherine, after many vicissitudes, is now placed near. Opposite to Eleanor lies Queen Philippa ; then comes the monument of her husband, Edward IIP, and lastly the ill-fated Richard II. and his queen, Anne. All are memorials of the highest interest, on account of their execution as well as of their antiquity. They have not wholly escaped the bane of the iconoclast or of the relic-hunter. Still, as initials of sightseers, although it no longer gleams with the mosaics and gilding with which it was formerly enriched, it is still recognised as an admirable example of the domestic art of the age to which it belongs. At first it was intended to be cast in bronze, but by command of Edward, though the design was adhered to, oak was substituted for the metal, and the design for the chair was furnished by Master Adam, the King's goldsmith. Then it was painted by Master Photo : York &• Sons, Netting Hill, W. EDWARD THE CONFESSOR'S SHRINE, WITH THE CORONATION CHAIR. a rule, the injuries are comparatively light, and it has been deemed needless, happily, to invoke the aid of the restorer." Nor does this exhaust the interest of Edward the Confessor's Chapel, for we have yet to speak of the historic Coro- Coronation nation chair, made by order of Chair. } Edward P, and first used at the throning of his son. In it every one of our monarchs from that day to this has sat to be crowned About this famous relic of antiquity Pehr Kalm, a Swedish botanist who visited this country in 1748, was very uncomplimentary. " Many a poor old woman with only one room has a better and more handsomely made chair than this," he re marked. The Swedish professor knew more about science than about art. Although the chair has been barbarously defaced with the Walter, the King's painter, and was com pleted on the 27th of March, 1300. In view of the Jubilee celebration at the Abbey in 1887, the Office of Works was misguided enough to set about " restoring " the chair, and though the work of varnishing was stopped, irreparable harm was done, the old surface being destroyed, and the remain ing traces of the carvings and decorations obliterated, while the names and initials which had been cut in the wood were rendered more obtrusive. The feet of the chair take the form of carved lions, one at each corner ; these are modern. Above them is the shelf Destiny' which was made to support the Stone of Destiny, brought by Edward from Scotland in 1296. According to the familiar legend, this block of hard THE STONE OF DESTINY 511 r Mlfiaa ^£$FW ^m*& ;|f? -r^/ -£fc. I'T ..««— «-"*'*^^ ftll. --¦ w^v^L S-fe '** :*%s 4j^'tii*..*r ,1 p.— f| ! :?' Ii»l!-r DETAILS OF SCREEN OF THE CONFESSOR'S CHAPEL. ¦ vmW^-'f^} red sandstone, such as is met with in Argyll shire and elsewhere in Scotland, was the stone which served Jacob as pillow while he had the vision of the ladder which stretched from earth to heaven. From Bethel the legend traces it to Egypt, thence to Sicily, next to Spain, whence it was taken to Ireland, to become the Stone of Fate of the sacred hill of Tara. From Ireland it found its way to Scotland, to Dunstaffnage, and finally to Scone, where Edward found it. This legend has been discussed by antiquaries with a gravity almost portentous, and we need only say of it that the historical evidence warrants us in believing nothing more than that the stone, encased in a chair of wood, was associated at Scone with the coronation of Scottish kings. When it was first so used is not known, but it is certain that John Balliol was crowned upon it in 1292, four years before it was appropriated by Edward. After Bannockburn and the recognition of Scottish independence, the Stone of Destiny was all but sent back to Scotland. Edward IIP, when he came to the throne, actually consented to return it, but there was delay, and when he had asserted his kingship against his mother and her paramour he appears to have changed his mind ; at any rate, the writ which directed the Abbot of Westminster to deliver the Stone to the Sheriffs of London, who were to pass it on to the Queen-mother for transmission to Scotland, was never acted upon. Beside the chair used to stand the copy of it which was made for use at the double coronation of William III. and Mary, and in which the Queen Consort has since been crowned ; but this is now to be found at the extreme east end of Henry VII.'s Chapel. One still sees, however, by the side ot the original chair, the sword and shield of Edward III. The sword, by its immense size, excites, perhaps, more curiosity among visitors to the Abbey than King Edward's Chair and The Consort's Chair. ET EVELYN. TOMB OF PHILIPPA OF HA1NAULT. LONDON TOWN the Stone of Destin)'. Who that has seen it has not wondered how mortal man, even using both his hands, could ever have wielded so monstrous a weapon ? Only less interesting historically, and in personal associations even richer than the Confessor's chapel, is that of Lady Chapel Henry VII. It consists of a nave, with side aisles and choir, and is terminated at the east end by a chevet of four chapels. Both within and without, the chapel is sown about with the emblems with which its royal founder decorated his pretensions : the dragon which symbolises the alleged descent of the Tudors from the British kings ; the portcullis which tells of his connexion with the Beauforts through his mother, and so with the House of Lancaster ; the fetterlock and greyhound of the Nevilles, which point to his marriage with the rival house of York ; the red rose of one house and the white rose of the other, both separ ately and conjoined ; the crown on a bush, that suggests the right derived from the victory won on Bosworth Field ; the root of daisies, his mother's special cognisance, with the lions of England and the fleurs-de-lys of France. After the lovely fan-tracery roof, the eye is caught by the tattered banners and the swords and armorial bearings of the Knights of the Order of the Bath, above the carved oak choir stalls. It was during the reign of George I. that the Lady Chapel became the temporary chapel of this order, which was reconstructed by Sir Robert Walpole in 1725, the Deans of Westminster being appointed deans of the order in perpetuity. The upper stalls were allocated to the knights themselves, the lower ones to their squires. The installations continued to take place here until 18 12, and it is to that date that the banners which one now sees belong. Near the eastern end of the chapel is the sumptuous tomb of Henry VII. and Elizabeth his wife, of marble enriched with alabaster and with copper medallions, while the recumbent figures are of bronze — the whole, as we have seen, the work of Torri giano. The beautiful grille, however, which encloses it, represents the skill of English craftsmen. Beneath the altar at which Masses were to be said until the end of the world for the repose of Henry's soul was interred his grandson, Edward VI. The altar, also the work of Torrigiano, adorned with figures of terra-cotta, was regarded as the boy-king's monument ; but this, when the Puritans had the upper hand, did not save it from destruc tion at the hands of Sir Robert Harley. Under Dean Stanley a restoration of the altar, which embodies two of the original pillars and a carved frieze, was undertaken, and there is now a Latin inscription to this effect : — " In place of the ancient altar, de stroyed in the Civil Wars, to the honour of God and in pious memory of Edward VI., who is buried beneath, this holy table in a gentler age was placed by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster, 1870." This altar was first used on an occasion of singular interest — the administration of Holy Communion to the Revisers of the New Testament, at the beginning of their patient labours, in 1870. Of James I., who was buried in the vault of Henry VIP, there is no monument, but in the south aisle is the magnificent tomb that covers the remains of his mother, which were brought here in 1612 from Peter borough Cathedral, where Mary was buried after her execution at Fotheringhay in 1587. In this tomb also lie three children of Charles I. The first, who died a few hours Charles"^ after his birth (l629). was chris- tened Charles, the name being repeated when another son was born to the King and Queen. Ten years afterwards his little sister Catherine was laid beside him, and presently they were joined by another sister, Anne, who died in her fourth year. Of her Fuller tells a touching little story. " Being minded by those about her to call upon God even when the pangs of death were upon her, ' I am not able,' saith she, ' to say my long prayer' (meaning the Lord's Prayer), ' but I will say my short one, Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of death.' This done the little lamb gave up the ghost." In the same vault also were buried several children of James II., and their uncle Prince Rupert, whose stormy life ended in pecuniary embarrassment. Close to this tomb is another splendid specimen of Torrigiano's work, commemorat ing the saintly Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII. by her marriage with Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and foundress of Christ and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge. DEAN STANLEY'S GRAVE 5i3 In front of Scheemakers' monument of George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, is a vault in which was first buried at dead of night, " with out any manner of pomp," the king whom Monk restored. It afterwards oped its jaws to receive Mary II. and William IIP, Oueen of a multitude that thronged the church from end to end. He had already filled the window above the grave with stained glass as a memorial of his wife, and American visitors note with special interest the setting sun which enters into the design — a poetical HENRY THE SEVENTHS CHAPEL Anne and Prince George of Denmark, her husband. In the south-eastern chapel of the chevet rest Arthur Stanley and his wife, Lady Augusta, who had pre- Dean Stanley, deceased him by five years. The Dean preached in his be loved Abbey for the last time on Saturday, July the 9th, 1 88 1, when he delivered the third of a series of sermons on the Beatitudes. Nine days afterwards he breathed his last, and on the 23rd he was laid to rest in the presence reference to Lad)- Augusta's brother, Sir Frederick Bruce, sometime our Minister at Washington. Stanley himself is now com memorated by an exquisite tomb of Pearson's designing, with a recumbent figure by Boehm. The most easterly chapel of the chevet of the Lad)- Chapel contains the vault from which, as we saw in the last chapter, Crom well and Blake and others of the Puritan leaders were contumeliously cast out. Pre sent!)- the places of these men, who had made Si4 LONDON TOWN TOMB OF HENRY VII. AND ELIZABETH OF YORK. the name of England to shine with a glory as of the noonday sun, were taken by un lawful progeny of the King under whom she had become the washpot of France and the byeword of Europe. In the north aisle of the Lady Chapel interest centres in the monument which commemorates Queen Elizabeth, EHrabeth. wh°> °n the 28th °f April, l6o3, was laid in the vault where the hapless Mary had rested for forty-five years. James I. would no doubt have been glad to save the money, but public opinion de manded a monument to his predecessor, and so this structure of the Corinthian order, handsome though less sumptuous than the monument he had raised to his mother in the south aisle, was reared. It was executed by Maximilian Poutrain (alias Coult), the King's master sculptor, and John de Critz, and in its decoration Nicholas Hilliard, the miniaturist, had a hand. In this aisle also lie two of James I.'s daughters, commemorated by quaint monuments by Poutrain. children The nrst to be la-id here was Sophia, who lived only two days, dying on the 23rd of June, 1606, and being buried with some state. When, eighteen months after wards, her baby sister Mary died the King took her death calmly, " as a wise prince should doe," and, resolved not again to be guilty of extravagance, had her buried here "without any solemnity." Leech, in his funeral sermon, gave a pathetic account of the child's last moments. " For hours and hours," he said, speaking apparently as one who was present at her death, " the child, whose baby lips had not long learned to speak, lay silent. At last, as the end drew near, she sighed out, ' I go, 1 go ! ' and again fastening her eyes upon her nurses, with a contented look she repeated, ' Away I go ! ' And yet a third time, almost immediately before she offered herself, a sweet virgin sacrifice unto Him that made her, faintly cried, '.I go, I go ! ' " Her father, though he buried her without state, commissioned a tomb for her, and so we have, from Poutrain's chisel, a monument with an effigy represent ing her less as a child of two-and-a-half than as a Court lady of the period. Of Poutrain's memorial of her sister, which shows her in her cradle, Thomas Fuller remarks that by it " vulgar eyes, especially of the weaker sex, are more affected . . . than with all the mag nificent monuments in Westminster." In a small sarcophagus in a niche, in this aisle, are the bones which, in 1674, were found at the foot of the stairs of the White Two others. Tower, in the Tower of London, and were believed to be those of the sons of Edward IV., murdered by instiga tion of their uncle in 1483. The elder, proclaimed king as Edward V in succession to his father, was eleven at the time of his death ; the younger, Richard, was nine. In this aisle, also, lies Monk, whose monument, as we have seen, is in the south aisle ; and in the same vault with him rests Addison, who died June 17th, 1719, and was buried by the light of torches borne by Westminster boys, the funeral procession led by Atterbury, " the plotting Dean," who belonged to the other political camp. CHAPELS OF THE ABBEY 5 15 The chapels which form the chevet of the Abbey itself are seven in number. On the left of the gate which gives admis- fh^chevet. sion to tnem and to the ambulatory from the south transept is the tomb reputed to be that of King Sebert, of which we have already spoken (p. 474). The first of the chapels is dedicated to St. Benedict, and between this and the next, St. Edmund's, is a monument to four young children of Henry III. The eldest of the four w-as a little girl of five, ChiidTe"1''8 Catherine by name, "who was dumb and fit for nothing, but possessing great beauty," and her interment in 1257 was the first royal burial to take place in her father's new Abbey. In St. Edmund's Chapel is the tomb of William de Valence, Henry's half-brother ; and here, too, lies Bulwer Lytton the novelist, who, dying in 1873, was, at Dean Stanley's direction, buried near a warrior who lost his life in the Battle of Barnet, so powerfully described in " The Last of the Barons." In the next chapel, dedicated to St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, once the patron saint of children, and now the saint of the Russian Empire, we find one of the stateliest monuments in the Abbey, that erected by Lord Burleigh to the memory of Mildred his wife and their eldest daughter, Anne, Countess of Oxford. It bears a Latin inscription from his pen in praise of their virtues and accom plishments. The chapel of St. Paul — the first to which we come on the north side of the chevet — contains the ashes of Archbishop Ussher, who was buried with great state partly at the charges of the Lord Protector, and a much-admired monument by Chantrey to James Watt, with an eloquent inscription from Lord Brougham's pen setting forth the sen-ice that inventive genius rendered to his country and to mankind by directing his gifts to the improvement of the steam-engine. In the middle of the adjoining chapel of St. John the Baptist is a tomb bearing an effigy of a man with a lady on his right side and a vacant space on his left for an- a Vacancy, other. The figure in the centre is that of Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter ; the lady beside him is his first wife, Dorothy Nevil, daughter and co-heiress of Lord Latimer. The vacant space was intended for his second wife, Frances Bridget, of the noble family of Chandos ; but as the first countess was already installed in the place of honour on the husband's right, she gave orders that no effigy of herself should be placed on his left. She, however, did not disdain to be buried in the same vault with the lady who had preceded her in her lord's affections. On the front of the next chapel, Abbot Islip's, is carved that dignitary's rebus (" I slip"), which fortunately is not very con- . s"n spicuous, for it is possibly owing to this circumstance that it escaped the attentions of the Puritan iconoclasts who demolished the Abbot's tomb. In a chamber above the chapel are shown wax figures of monarchs and others which belong to the days when it was the custom to display in the funeral procession, and afterwards on the tomb, or under a hearse or platform, an effigy of the deceased personage. Although the once fashionable ceroplastic art has fallen upon evil days, these Wax Figures TOMB OF MARGARET, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND. 5i6 LONDON TOWN THE ABBOT'S HOUSE. figures have a verisimilitude which gives to them no slight interest. The earliest of them is a counterfeit presentment of Queen Elizabeth, but this is a restoration effected in 1760, the original effigy being quite worn out by the beginning of that century ; among the later figures are those of the elder Pitt and of Nelson, but these belong to an age when the custom of which we have spoken had fallen into desuetude, and they were added to the Abbey to strengthen its attractions to sight seers, for the benefit of the minor canons and lay vicars. To these particulars of a strange custom it may be added that, up to the reign of Henry V. it was the embalmed body of the Sovereign, and not an effigy, that was exposed upon the funeral car, and that when effigies came into use they were at first made not of wax but of wood, the face being painted. Of these earlier effigies there are some promiscuous relics in a cupboard in this room in Islip's chapel, forming, says the Deanery Guide, " too ghastly a sight to be exposed to view." Only one or two of them can now be identified. Last comes the chapel of St John the Evangelist, St. Michael, and St. Andrew, formerly three distinct chantries, separated from each other by screens which have now been removed. Here is a monument by Roubiliac, and close to it one of Sir Francis Vere, a soldier who fought for Queen Elizabeth. According to Peter Cunningham, when Roubiliac was at work here, he was found one day by Gayfere, the Abbey mason, " standing with his arms folded, and his looks fixed on one of the knightly figures which sup port the canopy over the statue of Sir Francis Vere. As Gayfere approached, the enthu siastic Frenchman laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a whisper, ' Hush ! hush ! sir, he vill speak presently.' " Through doors in the south aisle of the Abbey we pass to the Great Cloister, with its groined arches, surrounding casters1* a larg'e square space covered with greensward. Here were buried some of the abbots, but the memorials of only four of them are now to be seen, the earliest being Vitalis, who died in 1082. The arches on the south and west sides of the Great Cloister were built towards the end of the fourteenth century by Abbot Litlington, whose initials are to be seen on the roof, while his head is carved on the arch that leads to the Cloister from Dean's Yard. To him also we owe the Jerusalem Chamber, much of the present Deanery, and the College Hall of Westminster School ; but the old dwelling-house which is called Litlington's Tower is probably of later date. At the south-eastern corner of the Little Cloister, a square enclosure to the cloister?' south of the Chapter-house, sur rounded by an arcade supported by plain semicircular arches, are the remains of the St. Catherine's chapel which in ancient times was part of the monks' infirmary. The Dark Cloister, by the way, is the gloomy passage that leads southwards past the THE CHAPTER-HOUSE 517 Chapel of the Pyx, of which we shall speak presently. The noble Chapter-house, built by Abbot Ware in the middle of the thirteenth century, is not overpraised by Sir Gilbert Scott when he speaks of it as "a structure perfect in the third and fourth priors on the other, for these five arches are noticeably richer and more deeply set than the others. The monks assembled here at least once a week, possibly ever)- day, to confess their sins and submit to punishment, and to transact business. Photo : Pictorial . /. THE CLOISTERS. itself, of a purely English type as to its plan and outline, and as carrying out the principle of window tracery in a fuller and The Chapter* grander degree than any part of house. ° ° J L the church." As restored it is octagonal in shape, with a large window in each section, and in the centre a Purbeck pillar, and the spaces beneath the windows are arcaded, with five arches in each. Under these arches sat the monks, the Abbot, probably, against the eastern wall, with the prior and sub-prior on one side of him, and " The younger monks were flogged elsewhere," says Dean Stanley, " but the others, stripped wholly or from the waist upwards, or in their shirts girt close round them, were scourged in public here with rods of single or double thickness by the mature brothers who formed the council of the Abbot (but always exclud ing the accuser from the office). . . If flogging was deemed insufficient, the only further punishment was expulsion." For three hundred years, from soon after the separation of the two Houses in the reign 5i8 LONDON TOWN of Edward I. until the end of the reign of Henry VHP, the Chapter-house was the meeting-place of the House of Commons, though the monks still used it for their own assemblies. At the Dissolution, in 1540, it became national property, and the Dean and Chapter in whom the Abbey was now vested probably held their meetings in the Jerusalem Chamber. In 1547 the Chapter-house was set apart as a storehouse for the national records, older belief that the treasures were abstracted from the Chapel of the Pyx, and it is not easy to see why otherwise the door of that chapel was decorated with the robbers' skins. The originator of the scheme was one Richard Podelicote, a merchant, who began by robbing the monks of some of their plate, and then drew certain of them, including the sacrist and the sub-prior — even the Lord Abbot himself is not free from suspicion — into his plan for A MONK BEING SCOURGED IN THE CHAPTER-HOUSE. and then began the long period of neglect and defacement which only ended in our own day, when Dean Stanley induced Parlia ment to provide funds for the restoration of the structure. All but one of the windows have now been filled with stained glass as a memorial of the Dean ; and a few years ago the demolition of the houses which hemmed the building in opened up the view of the exterior from Old Palace Yard. Under the Chapter-house is a crypt, which, in ancient times used as the royal treasury, is thought by some recent writers The Crypt, to have been the scene of the famous robbery that ended in the skins of some of the thieves being nailed to the door of the Chapel of the Pyx, as, with the help of a microscope, may be seen to this day. Sir Walter Besant follows the raiding the royal jewels and plate. The robbery was cleverly planned, and carried out with patience and thoroughness. A grassy space east of the Chapter-house was sown with hemp so that the plants, when they had grown tall, might provide a place of concealment for the booty, and various articles of the regalia were abstracted one by one. Edward I. was away in Scotland, but in the summer of 1303 rumours reached his ears of jewels belonging to his treasury being exposed for sale in the goldsmiths' shops at Westminster. By his orders the Mayor of London and others proceeded to the Abbey to make inquisition, as the result of which forty -eight of the monks and divers other persons, including Podelicote, were put under arrest. Podelicote confessed, and he and his immediate confederates were THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER 519 hanged and their skins made to serve a purpose of warning ; but the brethren were released, the King being anxious to avoid the scandal in which their punishment would have involved the Church. After this robbery there was built, near the Chapter- house, for the safe storage of the regalia, a jewel-house, which was afterwards converted into a Record Office, and in these days has become a museum of weights and measures. In the Chapel of the Pyx, a vaulted chamber of the Norman period, with a stone door furnished with seven locks, in the eastern walk of the Great Cloister, was kept the pyx (box) in which are preserved the gold and silver standards, until this was transferred to the Royal Mint : hence the name by which the chapel has long been known. Since the time Chapel of the Pyx. of the Commonwealth, when the doors of the chamber were forced by officers of the Government because the Dean and Chapter refused to give up the keys, this chapel has been in the custody of the Crown. For some time the Board of Trade was responsible for it, but it is now in the charge of the Office of Works. The Jerusalem Chamber, as we have seen, has probably been used as the Chapter-house since the Abbey gave up its proper Chapter - house to the Crown. It was also the scene of the labours of the Committee appointed by Convocation in 1870 to revise the authorised version of the New Testament, and until 1896, when the Great Hall of the Church House was opened, it was the place of meeting for the Upper House of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. Jerusalem Chamber. MANTELPIECE IN THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER. TZvh-lull =i,-Us TOTHILL FIELDS. CHAPTER XLVII OLD WESTMINSTER St. Peter's College— Origins — Tossing the Pancake— Westminster Boys — A Famous Flogger — Church House — Tufton Street and Henry Purcell — The Architectural Museum — The Horse Ferry — Vincent Square— Tothill Fields — Name and Uses — Rochester Row— Caxton Street — York Street— Milton's House— Queen Anne's Gate — Tothill Street — The Aquarium — Gate House Prison — Lovelace and Raleigh — Elizabeth Woodville in Sanctuary — John Skelton— Westminster Hospital and its Connexion with the Houses of Parliament — The Almonry — William Caxton THE intimate association of Westminster School with St. Peter's Church has already been touched upon. Even at the beginning of the Abbey's authentic history there are traditions of a school ^m"15'" attached to it, and in the reign of School. ' o Edward III. we read of a master appointed " to teach grammar," and paid a regular salary by the Almoner. In early clays the " Master of the novices " sat with his disciples in the western cloister, and this, as Dean Stanley says, was " the first begin ning of Westminster School." At the Dissolution, when he made the Abbey the centre of a bishopric, Henry VIII. added to the foundation two masters to teach forty grammar scholars ; but it is Queen Elizabeth who is always regarded as the foundress of St. Peter's College as now constituted. The number of boys on the foundation was to be fort)-, the same as before ; they were to be known as Queen's scholars, and were to be chosen by pre ference from among the choristers or from the sons of the Chapter tenants ; but provision was also made for some eighty other boys, oppidans, and there was to be right of election annually from among the Queen's or resident scholars to three studentships at Christ Church, Oxford, and the same number of scholarships at Trinity College, Cam bridge. This arrangement continued down to 1874, when the studentships and scholar ships at the Universities were thrown open to the whole school, and to them exhibitions have been added. The School buildings are in the shadow of the Abbey, on the south side. The College Hall, where the King's scholars (as they are called when a king is on the throne) have their meals, adjoins the Jerusalem Chamber, and was originally the refectory 520 A TIME-HONOURED CEREMONY 521 of the Abbot's house. On each side are massive tables which are believed to be relics of the Spanish Armada. The school room, behind the lower end of the eastern cloister, and above the Chapel of the Pyx and other ancient parts of the Abbey, was the monks' dormitory. Here it is that the ceremony of tossing the pancake is fulfilled. After morning school JancaKge.the on Shrove Tuesday a bar is put up across the timber-work roof, and the Abbey beadle ushers in the man-cook, with his frying-pan and a putty pancake. Standing in the middle of the room, the cook takes a preliminary swirl with the pan, and then flings the pancake over the bar. The boys at once scramble to gain possession of it, and if it should survive the melee whole, the boy who secures it is entitled to demand a guinea of the Dean. The Dean, as need hardly be said, is seldom called upon to furnish forth the guinea. In the old days, if the cook missed getting the pancake over the bar, he was " booked " — that is, the boys all threw their books at his head, but that custom was abolished in 1864, when the cook, for missing his aim, was " booked " with such vigour that he lost his temper, flung his pan at the boys and wounded the head of one of them, who, by way of compensation, was presented with the pan as a memento. The dormitory where the King's scholars sleep was built by the architect Earl of Burlington, in the reign of George P, on the west side of the college gardens ; and it is in a part of this building, fitted up for the occasion as a theatre, that a play of Terence or of Plautus is annually represented in the Latin. In 1881 the school came into pos session of the fine old residence known as Ashburnham House, which, though it may not have been built by Inigo Jones, contains a staircase of that architect's designing and some beautiful wood carving. Once used for the storage of the King's Library and the Cottonian MSS., now preserved in the British Museum, it was restored to the Dean and Chapter in 1739, and remained in their possession until the year named, when, in consideration of a fixed sum of money, it was ceded to the school under an arrangement made some thirteen years before and embodied in the Public Schools Act of 1868. Of Westminster boys who lived to become Photo: Pictorial Agenc, WESTMINSTER SCHOOL : COLLEGE HALL. 34 r 22 LONDON TOWN famous the name is legion. To mention but a few, it claims Ben Jonson, Cowley, Dryden, George Herbert, Nathaniel Lee, Famous Prior, Rowe, Giles Fletcher, Westminster ' ' Boys. Churchill, Cowper, and Southey, with Toplady and Charles Wesley the hymnologists ; Camden, Gibbon, and Froude among historians ; Hakluyt among geographers ; John Locke among philosophers, and Christopher Wren among architects ; Sir Harry Vane, the third Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir James Graham, and Earl Russell among statesmen ; Dr. South, Bishop Atterbury, and Archbishop Longley among divines ; the Earl of Mansfield among judges; the first Marquis of Anglesey and Lord Raglan among soldiers ; and Warren Hastings among administrators. Of the headmasters, the one best known to fame is Dr. Busby, who held the position for fifty-seven years, from the reign Dr. Busby, of Charles I. to that of William IIP, and was able at one time to boast that of the bishops at that time on the bench, sixteen had been educated by him. No one ever believed more firmly in the virtues of the rod than Dr. Busby, and they still preserve at the school, besides his old oak chair, the drawer in which he and other headmasters before and after him kept the birches which they knew so well how to wield. There lingers in the school a story of one of Dr. Busby's boys who was so frightened at having torn a curtain that a schoolfellow took upon himself the offence and the flogging. Years after wards, in the days of the Protectorate, the schoolfellows met again, the one as judge, the other as prisoner, charged with complicity in Penruddocke's rebellion. Nothing was said, but as soon as he had sentenced the prisoner the judge saddled horse and sped from Exeter to London to seek out the Lord Protector, whom he prevailed upon to pardon the rebel. The King's scholars still retain their privilege of attending the debates of the House of Commons, and still, as we saw in an earlier chapter, have Westminster boys a recognised part in the coronation ceremony. Still also is the ancient association between school and Abbey preserved, for in St. Peter's Church the boys assemble at half- past nine o'clock in the morning for prayers, and habited in surplices they attend service in the choir on Sundays. They have two playgrounds, one in Dean's Yard, known as the Elms, and a larger one of ten acres a little distance away to the south-west, in what is known as Vincent Square, after the Headmaster and Dean (d. 1815) who pre sented it to the school. The school now numbers about 270 boys. A little to the north of Dean's Yard, in Broad Sanctuary, is a Gothic column of Aberdeen granite, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and reared in 1 86 1 to commemorate Lord Raglan and other " old Westminsters " who laid down their lives for their country in the Crimea. To the south of Dean's Yard, which bounds it on the north, is the site, about an acre in extent, acquired for the Houst? purposes of the Church House scheme, which, intended to provide a group of buildings that should serve as a Parliament House for the Church of England, was started in 1886 as the Clergy Memorial of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. The only parts. of the scheme yet carried out are the Great Hall and the western block, which includes the Henry Hoare Memorial Hall, the meet ing-place of the House of Laymen. The architect was the late Sir Arthur Blomfield ; the style is the Tudor, and the medium red brick. In the Great Hall are chambers in which the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation hold their meetings. The Church House estate is bounded on the west and south by Great and Little Smith Streets, and on the east by Tufton Street, named after its builder, Sir Richard Tufton, who died in 163 1 and was buried in the Abbey. Here in Tufton Street, num bered 23, was the house in which, more than two hundred years ago, lived Henry Purcell. The house was still standing when Pur^Tn *-he Purcell Bicentenary was cele brated in 1895, but it has now vanished. The association of the greatest of English composers with Westminster is of the closest kind, for he is traditionally said to have been born in Old Pye Street, he lived in St. Anne's Street as well as here in Tufton Street, he was organist of the Abbey, he died in Dean's Yard, and, as we have seen, he was buried in the north aisle of the choir which he had often flooded with his music. His life, magnificent as it was in achievement, was but a short ST. JOHN'S CHURCH 523 one. He was born in or about 1658, and died on the 21st of November, 1695, so that his long tale of glorious work was crowded into seven-and-thirty years. In Tufton Street also is the Royal Archi tectural Museum, founded in Cannon Row of steeple at each of its four angles, a feature which has exposed it to much ridicule. This, however, was no part of the st. John's, design, but was added by the architect, Thomas Archer, a pupil of Vanbrugh, and builder also of Cliefden Photo: Pictorial Agency. inigo jones's staircase, ashburnham house (/. 521). The Architec tural Museum. in 185 1 by Ruskin, Sir Gilbert Scott, and other lovers of architecture ; it afterwards formed part of what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, and was transferred to its present quarters in 1869. It includes models of famous architectural works, both English and foreign, as well as casts and actual specimens of architectural details. Between Tufton Street and the river, in Smith Square, is the church of St. John the Evangelist, remarkable in that it has a kind House, to obviate the uneven " settling " of the building, due to the boggy character of the ground. It was finished in 1728. The living is in the gift of the Crown, and since 1894 it has been held by the Ven. Archdeacon Wil- berforce, chaplain of the House of Commons. To the south of Smith Square is the Horseferry Road, named, of course, from the ferry of which we have spoken in our chapter on the City of Westminster (p. 470), and which crossed the river just where it is now spanned Horseferry Road. 5^4 LONDON TOWN by Lambeth Bridge. The only horse ferry allowed on the Thames in London, it brought in a considerable revenue to the Archbishops of Canterbury until the opening of old West minster Bridge in 1750 diverted the traffic, the A.rchbishop of that day receiving a sum of ^"3,000 by way of compensation. The ferry, however, did not wholly cease till Lambeth Bridge was built, in 1862. Tothill Fields. VincentSquare. DR. BUSBY {p. 522). Following Horseferry Road westwards, we diverge from it southwards to Vincent Square, named, as we have seen, after the Dean of Westminster who presented its ten acres to Westminster School as a playground. Here, on the north side, is the new Exhibition Hall of the Royal Horticultural Society, which claims, probably with justice, to be the best- lighted hall in the country. Its opening by the King and Queen in 1904 (July 22nd) coincided with the Society's centenary. Almost adjoin ing it is the comely habitation of the West minster Technical Institute, which was conveyed to the London County Council by the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The technical in struction given here relates mainly to the building trades. The same structure accom modates also the Westminster School of Art. Here at Vincent Square we are in the region known as Tothill Fields — a region so ill- defined that Jeremy Bentham remarked of it that if a place could exist which could be said to be in no neighbourhood it would be this. Mr. Wyke- ham Archer, in the " Vestiges of Old London," speaks of it as part of a marshy tract of land lying between Millbank and West minster Abbey, and with that definition, vague as it is, we must fain be content. Why the place bore the name Tothill is at least as obscure, and the obscurity has been the opportunity of the speculative antiquary. We cannot stop even to state the theories that have been suggested, but the name Toot in various forms is often met with in this country as signifying the highest ground in a neighbourhood, which would be used as the site for a beacon or for a stronghold, or as a place of observation ; and it is sig nificant that in an ancient lease relating to this Tothill, or Toothill, the place is alternatively styled the Beacon Field. Clark supposes that Tothill was a mound used by the Saxons for military purposes ; if so, he concludes, it was a protection overlooking the Watling Street, which here was carried across the river (p. 470), and it may very well have been raised by Alfred in the Danish struggle. But here we are straying into the region of mere conjecture, nor can a much greater degree of certitude be claimed for Mr. G. Laurence Gomme's interesting suggestion that Tothill was the site of the Westminster Folk-moot. Whatever the origin of the name, Tothill Fields in the reign of Henry III. formed a manor in Westminster belonging to one John Mansell, who became Chancellor of England ; and in the same reign the Abbot of Westminster was granted to hold here a weekly market and in St. Margaret's Churchyard an annual three days' fair, which in 1542 was removed to the Fields. Various were the uses to which Tothill Fields were put in the centuries that passed before they were built over. They were to Westminster, as Sir Walter Besant says, what Smithfield and Moorfields were to the City of London. Here were held tournaments and public wagers of battle, and in later days private duels ; here cock-fighting and bear- and bull- baiting and prize-fighting and other sports of THE LAST DUEL IN TOTHILL FIELDS 5^5 the good old times when brutality was rampant were carried on ; here were gar dens with a maze ; here in Pepys's day the dead were buried ; here punishments were inflicted, and in 1655 was built, in Artillery Place, close to the present Victoria Street, a House of Correction which only ceased to be used in 1834, when it was super seded by a new prison in Francis Street, pulled down in 1885. There was a bear- Green last Monday night ; as they stabbed him they bid him remember Sir Cholmley Dering." From Vincent Square we pass to Rochester Row, so called after the bishopric of Rochester, which was held con- Row"*" Jointly witn the Deanery of West minster by several successive Deans, the separation only being effected in the time of Dean Vincent. In Rochester Row Photo : Pictorial Agency. CHURCH HOUSE : THE HENRY HOARE MEMORIAL HALL (p. -,22). garden in Tothill Fields so recently as 1793 ; and the last duel fought here was that of which Swift gives an account to Stella, between Sir Cholmley Dering, a Kentish gentleman, and a Mr. Richard Thornhill. " They fought at sword and pistol DueiLaS* this n10™11? [May 9th, 171 1] in Tuttle Fields," writes Swift; "the pistols so near that the muzzles touched. Thornhill discharged first, and Dering, having received the shot, discharged his pistol as he was falling, so it went into the air." The story had a grim sequel, which Swift gives under date August 21st in the same year. " Thornhill, who killed Sir Cholmley Dering, was murdered by two men at Turnham are the United Westminster Almshouses, a comely block of buildings reared in 1881 under the powers of a scheme of the Charity Com missioners amalgamating three Almshouses, groups of almshouses — Emery Hill's, founded in 1674, the Rev. James Palmer's (1656), and Nicholas Butler's (1667). Emery Hill's almshouses stood on the site of the new buildings, and according to some notes by Mr. W. E. Harland Oxley* they had " long gardens in the rear, and were often very gay in the summer-time from the wealth of flowers ; old-world flowers — marigolds, stocks, pinks, wallflowers and others." The site of Palmer's Almshouses is now * London Argus, Nov. 8th, 1902. 526 LONDON TOWN HENRY PURCELL, FROM THE PAINTING BY J. CLOSTERMAN. By permission of the Royal Society of Musicians. covered by the Hotel Windsor, and Butler's were close by. St. Margaret's Hospital, best known as the Greencoat School, from the long green skirts, with a red girdle, which the boys wore, stood in Artillery Row, where are now some of the buildings of the Army and Navy Stores. Emmanuel Hospital, known also as Lady Dacre's Almshouses, in James Street, founded in 1600, under the will of Ann, widow of Gregory Fiennes, Lord Dacre, for twenty pensioners and twenty children, was demolished in 1892, and the site has been covered by flats. The school was amalgamated with those of St. Margaret's, Palmer's, and Emery Hill's Hospitals under the title of the United Westminster Schools, and on this foundation there is now carried on, under the name of the Westminster City School, a large day school in Palace Street, and a boarding school at Wandsworth. Among its many charities Westminster has — happily we have not here to use the historic tense — a Greycoat and a Greycoats. Bluecoat School. The former, in Greycoat Place, at the north eastern end of Rochester Row, was founded in 1698 for seventy poor boys and forty poor girls, but is now a school for girls alone, of whom there are some four hundred. The original buildings remain, though they have had to be supplemented ; and be hind them are spacious playgrounds. The central building has a clock, turret and bell, above the arms of Queen Anne, flanked on either side by a figure dressed in the former costumes of the children. The Blue coat School, in Caxton Street, Bluecoats. is a quaint, almost square little building of red brick, dating from 1709, and though Sir Walter Besant in 1895 gloomily prophesied its disappearance, because it is beautiful, adorns the street, is sacred to the memory of two hundred years of boys, and is still most useful, it has not yet gone the way of so many other Westminster antiquities. We may make our way back towards the Abbey by way of Strutton Ground, a name which is a corruption of Stourton, after the town house of the Lords Stourton, who were presently succeeded as its occupiers by the Lords Dacre. Old Pye Street, leading out of Strutton Ground eastwards, is named after the Sir Robert Pye who married Anne the daughter of John Hampden. Orchard Street, close by, is so called because it runs across the old orchard of the monastery. On the other side of Victoria Street is Caxton Street, a new thoroughfare named of course after the printer, and here, also Caxton street, bearing his name, is the elegant Caxton Hall, of red brick and stone in the Renascence style, which was built for the parishes of St. Margaret and St. John, and enlarged in 1898. It passed under the control of the Westminster City Council when that authority was created, and is now largely used for public meetings, bazaars, concerts, and similar purposes. In Buckingham Gate, in which Caxton Street terminates on the west, is the large Noncon formist place of w-orship, an adaptation of the Lombardic style, known as Westminster Chapel, long associated with the ministrations of the saintly Samuel Martin, who was Chairman of the Congregational Union in 1862. In 1904 Dr. Campbell Morgan entered upon his very successful pastorate here, and since then a sum of .£8,000 has been raised for the renovation of the chapel. In York Street, formerly known as Petty France, lived John Milton in a house which survived until 1878, when it was Milton *reet: PuHed down to make room for the huge sky-scraping block of flats known as Queen Anne Mansions, the earliest of the large groups of flats now so MILTON IN PETTY FRANCE 527 common in London. The poet came to Petty France on leaving Scotland Yard about the end of 165 1. It was here that (1652), in his forty-fourth year, he became totally blind, that he lost his first wife, Mary Powell, and enjoyed the brief happiness of his second marriage, that he wrote the Defensio Secunda and other pamphlets, and some of the most famous of his sonnets, including the last of the noble series — the tribute to the memory of his " late espoused saint," and that he made a beginning with '' Paradise Lost " ; and here he continued to dwell until at the Restoration, almost if not quite the last of the more promi nent Republicans to see to his own safety, he went into hiding. The house was bought bv Jeremy Bentham, who added the garden to his own adjacent house ; and on the front which faced St. James's Park he placed a tablet inscribed, " Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets." More congruous was the association with the house of William Hazlitt, who rented it of Bentham from 181 1 to 1819. It was the last of the many London houses associated with Milton to survive. York Street ends in Broadway, behind which is Queen Anne's Gate, one of the primmest and staidest spots in the metropolis, w-ith a statue of Queen Anne to add to its impeccable respectability. By Broadway we come to Tothill Street, said to be the oldest Tothill Street. street in Westminster, in olden days lined on both sides by great houses with fair gar dens. On its north side stood until 1 87 1, when it was pulled down to make way for the Westminster Aquarium, the Cock Inn, one of the oldest taverns in London, where in the reign of Henry VII. the workmen who were engaged upon the Abbey used to receive their wages. The Aquarium was built in 1875-76, but was not long in Aquarium, changing its nature and becoming a kind of variety theatre, though it was also used for exhibitions of the Royal Horticultural Society and the like. To whatever uses it was put, it was always an eyesore, and no one could have regretted its disappearance when it was bought by the Wesleyan Methodist Church with part of the proceeds of their Centenary Fund and pulled down, the Imperial Theatre, however, at the western end, being left standing. On a part of the site is being reared the group of buildings which is to be the Church House of the Connexion. At the western end of Tothill Street stood the Gate House prison, dating from the reign of Edward IIP, and once the principal approach to the monas tery. Held under lease granted by the Dean and Chapter, it continued to be Gate House Prison. Photo : Pictorial Agency THE UNITED WESTMINSTER ALMSHOUSES (/. 525). 5^8 LONDON TOWN used as a prison, in its later days mostly for debtors, until 1776, when the Abbey authori ties issued an order for its destruction. One of its walls, however, survived until 1836. It is memorable mainly as the place of detention of Lovelace the Cavalier poet (p. 244), and of Sir Walter Raleigh, who spent here the night before his execution. When his wife took her farewell of him she told him Abbey, where criminals and debtors might enjoy the protection of the Lord Abbot and the monks. Here stood a heavy Sanctuary, structure resembling a square keep, strongly built of stone to resist attack. There was but one door, and on the ground floor but one window ; within were two chapels. This building, which did not finally disappear until the middle of the Photo: Pictorial Agency. THE GREYCOAT SCHOOL {p. 526). that the judges nad granted to her his body. " Well mayst thou, Bess," said he with a smile, ¦' dispose of that when dead which thou hadst not ever the disposing of when alive." And at midnight, when she had gone, he sat him down and wrote the lines — " E'en such is Time ! that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust ; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days." Leaving Tothill Street we find ourselves in Broad Sanctuary, forming part of the precinct, on the west and north sides of the eighteenth century, was the heart, so to speak, of the Sanctuary, but the privileges of immunity from arrest extended to the whole precinct of the Abbey, the church, the mon astery buildings, the close and cloisters and gardens. Twice did Elizabeth Woodville, the queen of Edward IV., seek refuge here — the first time when her husband Woodville. nac* to ^ee tne country and she came here with her three daughters, and in the fortress described above gave birth to her first boy, Edward V. On the second occasion Richard had seized the crown, and, already having Elizabeth's elder boy in safe keeping at the Tower, came here to make sure of the younger son, the Duke of York. CAXTON IN THE ALMONRY 529 Climbing the stair to the upper chapel of the Sanctuary he dragged the boy from the arms of his mother, who passionately kissed him, exclaiming, " God knoweth when we shall kiss one another again." She was still living here when, ten months later, she heard of the death of her boys. Later there fled here to escape the ven geance of Cardinal Wolsey, John Skelton, who had lampooned the proud Churchman — had hurled this among many other barbed darts at him : — "He ruleth all the roste With braggynge and with boste, Borne up on every syde With pompe and with pryde." Skelton never dared to leave the Sanctuary, though possibly he found life here pretty much to his taste ; and here he died in 1529, the year in which his enemy was dis graced. Surviving the Reformation, the rights of sanctuary were not abolished until the end of the seventeenth century, and not till much nearer our own day did this part of West minster acquire the odour of respectability. In these days nothing remains of the old institution but the names borne by two of the streets, Broad Sanctuary and Little Sanctuary ; and now on the very site of the building to which criminals fled to escape the conse quences of their defaults and misdeeds there stands a hall of justice, the Guildhall and Sessions House of Middlesex, "fiff,1 where are held the Quarter Guildhall. ^ Sessions for the county, as well as the meetings of the Middlesex County Council. A comely octagonal structure, it was built in 1805 from the designs of S. P. Cockerell, and was greatly altered and en larged in 1892 by the late Mr. F. H. Pownall, Surveyor of the county. Against its western wall is to be seen the stone gateway of the old Tothill Fields Bridewell. Next to the Guildhall is the Westminster Hospital, dating as a building from 1834, when it was reared by the Inwoods, and as an institution from 17 19, when it was established in Petty France as the Westminster Dispen sary. The hospital is in direct telephonic communication with the Houses of Parlia ment. The Speaker is a member of the Board of Governors, the names of many M.P.'s are to be seen in its list of subscribers, and there is a curious rule under which any article of value which is found in the House of Commons and not claimed is presented to the hospital. Close to the west end of the Abbey Henry VII. built an almshouse for thirteen poor men, whose blue-gowned successors may to this day be seen at the Abbey services, though they no longer live in the precincts. Around this almshouse, in contiguity to which the King's mother reared one for women, grew up other houses, and as the alms of the Abbey were distributed here, the spot came to be known as the Almonry, or the Ambry, and was divided The Almonry, into two parts, the Great and the Little Almonry. At this distance of time it is interesting mainly because here, under the auspices of the Abbot, William Caxton, the father of English printers, set up his printing-press in a house which bore the sign of the Red Pale, where till his death, some twenty years later (1491), he diligently practised his craft. It has often been said by writers who have mis understood Stow, that the press was erected within St. Peter's Church itself, but " in the Abbey " is a phrase that was sometimes used to denote, as Stow no doubt intended it to denote, the whole precinct, and not merely the church. The house in Little Dean Street, on the north side of the Almonry, ascribed by tradition to Caxton, tumbled down in 1845, but there is little doubt that it was of much more recent date than the fifteenth century. Why Caxton chose Westminster as his sphere of operations is convincingly shown by Sir Walter Besant in his volume on " West minster." He could not set up in the City of London, because no trade or craft could be carried on there except under the authority of a Livery Company, and as yet there was no such thing as a printing trade. " He wanted Court favour, a thing which every body wanted at that time ; he wanted the patronage of great lords and ladies ; and he wanted to attract the attention of colleges, monasteries, and places where they wanted books and used books. In short, like every man in trade, Caxton wanted a place which would be convenient for advertising, showing, and proclaiming his business. For all pur poses Westminster was admirably suited for the setting up of his press." CHAPTER XLVIII THE ROYAL PALACE OF WESTMINSTER AND ST. MARGARET'S Founding the Palace — St. Stephen's Chapel— Evolution of Parliament — The Chapter-house its Meeting- place — " St, Stephen's " — The Painted Chamber — The Star Chamber — The Old Palace Destroyed by Fire — Charles Barry's Plans Accepted — A Series of Blunders — The Great Work Completed — The General Plan — First and Second Thoughts — Decoration — The Three Towers — The " Gilded Chamber " — The " Lower House " — The Mace — The Galleries — Disraeli's Retirement from the House — Gladstone's — The Central Hall— St. Stephen's Hall — St. Margaret's Church — The East Window — Memorable Associations — An Attempt upon a Priest — Puritan Divines in the Pulpit CONFINING one's self to history and leaving legend to bolder minds, one may regard Edward the Confessor as the founder of the first of Westminster's royal palaces, as he was the founder Confessor of St Peter's Abbey. In it he entertained the Duke of Normandy, who after he had established himself on the throne is believed to have improved and enlarged the building. William Rufus added to it Westminster Hall, and is said by the chroniclers to have boasted, when his guests admired the grandeur of the hall, that it was not big enough by half, and was but a bedchamber compared to that which he would build. If he indulged in the vaunt, little or nothing came of it, and it was reserved to King Stephen to make the next considerable addition to the Palace — that of a magnificent chapel st. Stephen's dedicated to the proto-martyr whose name he bore, and founded for a dean and canons, no doubt to replace a smaller chapel built by Edward the Con fessor. St. Stephen's Chapel, which stood where now stands the part of the new Palace of Westminster that is styled St. Stephen's Hall, was rebuilt by Edward I. Destroyed by fire in 1298, it was again rebuilt in the reigns of the Second and Third Edwards in the prevalent Decorated style, and this was the building which survived down almost to our own day, though bar barously mutilated by men who had no eyes for its loveliness. Considerable additions were made to the Palace by that great builder Henry IIP, and it was from him that some at least of the chambers re- The Story of Parliament. ceived their fanciful names — perhaps from the character of their decorations — such as Antioch, Heaven, Paradise, Purgatory ; nor was the line drawn even at Hell. Early in the sixteenth century the Palace, with the exception of Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's Chapel, the Painted Chamber and the Star Chamber, was almost destroyed by fire, and so ended its career as a king's house, for Henry VHP, instead of rebuilding it, relieved Cardinal Wolsey of York House, to which the name of White hall was presently given. For the rest of its career the old Royal Palace of Westminster is bound up with the story of Parliament. To find the beginnings of that story we must hark back to the year 1213, two years before Magna Charta, when King John summoned four representatives of each shire to meet in council at St. Albans, and so the most tyrannical, as he was probably the most despicable, of our monarchs became in some sense the founder of our Parlia mentary system. From this time onwards it became no infrequent thing for the Sove reign, when he was in need of money, to call together his leading subjects. The assemblies thus formed were generally known as the Great Council, but by the year 1244 — only one-and-thirty years after the Council summoned by John — it had begun to be spoken of as Parliament. By this time it had learnt to proclaim the grievances of the nation against the monarch with no lack of frankness or vigour. In 1258, for example, Henry III. had to listen to some extremely 53° 1HE BARONS AND HENRY THE THIRD 53* plain speaking from the Parliament which he had summoned to Westminster. The barons gathered at Westminster Hall J^n^amng. ™ no submissive mood. They were all " locked up in steel," and Henry marched into the Hall to an ominous clattering of swords. " What means this ? " he asked, his eye glancing along the mailed ranks. "Am I a prisoner?" "Not also two representatives of certain towns, it was not a representative assembly, since the Earl had been careful to summon to it only his own partisans. To find the first veritable Parliament we must take a flying leap to the year 1295. In the twenty-third year of his reign, threatened on two sides by a league formed between Scotland and France, Edward I. resolved THE OLD HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT IN 1 82 1 so," replied Roger Bigod ; " but your foreign favourites and your own extravagance have involved this realm in great wretchedness, wherefore we demand that the powers of government be entrusted and made over to a committee of bishops and barons, that the same may root up abuses and enact good laws." And when, in the following month, Parliament met again, this time at Oxford, it enacted that in future four knights should be chosen by the votes of the freeholders in each county, to lay before Parliament all breaches of law and justice that might occur. The next stage in the evolution of Parlia ment is associated with the name of Simon de Montfort. But though the Simon de Parliament which he called to gether in 1265, after the Battle of Lewes, comprised not only barons, bishops and abbots and knights of the shires, but to throw himself not upon any one class but upon the nation as a whole. Accordingly he summoned to the Chapter- The house of Westminster Abbey a Parliament. Parliament in which each shire was represented by two knights and each borough by two burgesses. It was attended also by representatives of the parochial clergy and of cathedral chapters, as well as by bishops, abbots, earls, and barons. The writ which summoned this microcosm of the nation laid it down as " a most equitable rule " that " what concerns all should be approved by all " — a doctrine, we may be sure, of which no soul then living perceived the full implications. At first our Parliaments met wherever the King chanced to be, and it was due merel)- to the accident of Edward's presence in London that the Model Parliament, as LONDON TOWN that of 1295 has been called, assembled in the Chapter-house of Westminster Abbey. Thus in the following year Parlia- in the ment was summoned to Bury St. Ed- Chapter= . house. munds, and from time to time .Par liaments were convoked at Lincoln and Northampton and York, and even at the most distant extremity of the realm, at Carlisle. In the next century, however, Westminster, as the seat of the Royal Palace, SITTING OF THE COMMONS IN ST. STEPHEN S CHAPEL IN 1 741. From a Drawing by B. Cole. became the fixed and regular meeting-place of the National Assembly, and so it has ever since continued to be, except when plague was raging in the capital, as was the case, for instance, in 1625, when Charles I. summoned his first Parliament to meet at Oxford. In 1377, Parliament having already separ ated into two Houses, the Abbot of West minster placed the Chapter-house at the service of the Commons, and here for a century and three-quarters they continued to meet. But in 1547, in order to be nearer the House of Lords, they were transferred to one of the remnants of the old Palace of West minster, St. Stephen's Chapel, which had The Painted Chamber. become vacant by the suppression of the collegiate body attached to it ; and here the Lower House met until it q?"k*'. •• was burnt out in 1834. The Stephen s. J^ meeting-place of the Lords was a building which ran at right angles with St. Stephen's Chapel, and has been variously styled the White Hall (not to be confused with the Palace upon which this name was bestowed after Henry VIII. had taken it from Cardinal Wolsey) and the Court of Requests, this last name derived from the sittings once held in it by officers whose business it was to receive petitions for justice or for royal favours. Other parts of the Royal Palace of Westminster which survived until the fire of 1834 were the Painted Chamber and the Star Chamber. The former, sometimes used as a place of meeting for the two Houses when they conferred to gether, was not improbably the room in which Edward the Confessor breathed his last Why it was called the Painted Cham ber had passed out of mind until the year 1800, when the removal of the tapestry and wainscotting to increase its accommodation revealed a series of mural paintings depicting scenes from the Wars of the Maccabees and from Edward the Confessor's life. On the third, fourth, and fifth days of the trial of Charles I., the Court sat in this chamber instead of in Westminster Hall, and here it was that Oliver Cromwell ¦ and the others signed the fatal warrant. The Star Chamber, which stood parallel with the river, on the eastern side of New Palace Yard, rhamber anc* *s believed to have owed its name to stars which spangled the ceiling, was renovated by Queen Elizabeth, whose initials it bore, with the date 1602. It was not long after this, in 1641, that the arbitrary tribunal which held its sittings here was abolished. The room then became a depository for rubbish, and at the time of the fire of 1834 it was blocked up with an accumulation of " tallies," notched sticks that were used for keeping the Exchequer accounts down to the end of the Georgian era. These same tallies were the innocent cause of the fire which consumed the scanty remnants of the Royal Palace of Westmin ster. In order to get rid of them they were used as fuel for a stove in the House of Lords. The fire, it would seem, was stoked THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT DESTROYED 533 too diligently, for the flue became over heated and set fire to the panelling of the Upper House. The outbreak was The Old discovered at six o'clock in the Palace r , Destroyed, evening of October the 16th, 1834, and such means as were in those days available in like emergencies were vigorously employed, members of both Houses lending willing aid and working like navvies to quell the flames. Soon the Thames was crowded with boats, from which the spectacle could be viewed as from reserved seats ; on land the After the fire the Government of the day was plied with all sorts of suggestions. William the Fourth offered the loan of Buckingham Palace, but the Prime Minister would not hear of even a temporary departure from Westminster. " Viscount Melbourne," he responded, " cannot conceal from your Majesty that he would be unwilling to be the Minister who should advise your Majesty, upon his responsibility, to remove the Houses of Parliament from their ancient and established place of assembly at Westminster." But the SITTING OF THE COMMONS IN 1 742. From an Engraving by Pine, after Gravelot. excited multitude was kept in order by a strong force of police, reinforced by regiments of Guards and by troops of horse. Those who fought the flames were foredoomed to failure. Around the ancient buildings of the Palace had been allowed to grow up in modern times a network of flimsy erections of wood and plaster, and only half-a-dozen years before this Parliament had been warned by Sir John Soane, the architect, of the danger which menaced the whole group. The flames, therefore, scarcely needed the stimulus of a brisk breeze from the south-west to accomplish their task with considerable thoroughness. Soon after two o'clock the next morning the Mother of Free Parliaments was homeless. Government acted with decision, and when in the following February the two branches of the Legislature met, as usual, they found themselves furnished with tolerable accommo dation. The chapel of St. Stephen being too much of a ruin to be made habitable, the old House of Lords, which had fared somewhat less badly, was fitted up for the Commons, as the more numerous of the two bodies. For the Lords the Painted Chamber had been patched up. Immediate necessities having thus been provided for, arrangements were entered into for a new set of Parliament buildings, in the Gothic style, and four premiums of £500 each were to be awarded to the competitors whose plans were adjudged the best. That 534 LONDON TOWN among the ninety - seven competitors, in cluding all the leading architects of the day, Charles Barry should have been one of the first four, and that in the end his designs should have won for him the first Barry" place among the first four, is a fact of peculiar significance. For up to this time his fame had rested upon his achievements in the Italian Re nascence. He had, it is true, begun to be sympathetically affected towards the Gothic, but as yet he was only feeling his way, and even to the end of his life, despite his grow ing appreciation of mediaeval work, he never ceased to prefer the purer, more reticent and more harmonious beauty of the Classic. But he had already shown himself to have a singular fertility of resource, an extraordinary faculty for turning things as he found them to the best account, and so it was that having now, in his forty-first year, to work in what may almost be called an alien medium, he triumphed over all his rivals. Among the styles of Gothic, Barry had most admiration for Early English, as was natural in one who liked the pianGeneral Classic better than the Gothic. But for a building intended for secular uses the Perpendicular seemed to him most suitable, and he therefore sup pressed his preference for the simpler graces of the earlier style. Since Westminster Hall was there as a datum of his problem, he would incorporate it with his design and make of it a mighty vestibule. By setting back the south window of the Hall — the one opposite the great doorway — he would get space for a magnificent flight of steps leading up to a porch. From this porch another flight of steps, at right angles with that in Westminster Hall, would lead to St. Stephen's Hall, to be built over St. Stephen's Crypt, and on the site of the old House of Commons. This was to be the approach to the Central Hall, which would form the point of junction between the two Houses. On the left would stretch away in a straight line northwards that part of the Palace which was to belong to the Commons ; on the right, also in a straight line, southwards, the part to be appropriated to the Peers. Parallel with this, the main floor, but separated from it by courts, a corridor and other features, would run the river front, containing the libraries of both Houses, committee rooms, and, in the centre, a Conference Room, with a noble terrace dividing it from the turbid waters of the Thames. The architect's estimate for the buildings themselves, as distinct from fittings and furniture, was, in round numbers, £800,000, and he was sanguine enough to believe that the work could be got through in six years. Though it is true that he gravely under estimated both time and cost, it must be said that no great enterprise was ever more miserably bungled than was this Bungling, by successive Parliaments and Governments, nor has any architect in modern times had greater difficulties to encounter or more vexations to endure than had Barry. The responsibility to the Board of Works which should have been his alone was divided between him and others ; and in the same way the responsibility of the Board of Works to Parliament was shared with committees and commissions which the Legislature in its wisdom thought fit to appoint. Hence a long series of misunderstandings and antagonisms, some of them particularly acrimonious, all of them productive of delay and wasteful of the architect's energy. It was about the middle of 1837 that a start was made with the wall which was to bank in the river. At once a serious phys ical difficulty presented itself. " The soil of the bed of the river," writes Bishop Barry in the Life of his father, " was found to be exceedingly treacherous, in many places little better than a quicksand, and,. unfortunately, the same character attached to the soil under a large portion of the building." Owing to this the wall and terrace were not finished till 1839, and not till the 27th of April, 1840, was the first stone of the superstructure laid. At the beginning of this year the Board of Works had made its first big blunder by with drawing the warming and ventilat- Controi mS arrangements from the control of the architect and placing them under the supervision of Dr. Reid, who had a brand-new system of his own invention which necessitated alterations in every part of the building. Of course, there was friction between inventor and architect, culminating in the cessation of all direct communication THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT FINISHED 535 and in the institution of a law-suit. In the end Barry was re-invested with the control of which he ought never to have been de prived. By no means a good beginning, this, for the system of divided responsibility. But the lesson was lost upon the authorities, who went on to appoint Mr. Beckett Denison, Q.C., afterwards Lord Grimthorpe (d. 1905), to superintend the erection of the clock and bells for the Clock Tower, in co-opera tion with Mr. Airy, the Astronomer-Royal. There was a great deal of friction, at first between Mr. Denison and Barry, and after wards between Mr. Denison and Mr. Airy ; but it is only fair to Lord Grimthorpe and to Mr. Dent, the maker of the clock, to record that it has proved to be a model time-keeper. But Barry was not singular in being unable to work amicably with one who, with many aptitudes and enthusiasms, and abundance of public spirit, was never happier than when engaged in controversy. The questions successively at issue were of a complicated kind, and are not worth revival ; but there could be no better example of how things should not be done than is to be found in the misunderstandings and muddles and animosities which arose out of this setting up of an authority independent of the architect. From these and other causes ten years from the beginning of the work had passed before (in 1847) the House of Lords was ready for occupation, and yet three more years had to go by before the House of Commons was sufficiently advanced for a trial sitting, which was held on the 30th of May, 1850. The first session of Parliament to be opened by Queen Victoria in the new Palace was that of 1852, and the body of the structure being now virtually finished, Completion, her Majesty conferred upon the architect a knighthood. But there was still much to be done, and not until i860, eight years later, had the great Victoria Tower, the last of the towers to be completed, reached its full stature. The work, therefore, had taken three-and- twenty years, virtually four times as long as Sir Charles Barry had allowed for it. And the cost was close upon two millions sterling, not far from a million and a quarter more than the estimate. But of this excess much the greater part was made up either of items excluded from the estimate, or of ex penditure for which the architect was not responsible. As to the remainder, no small share was due to causes not within his control, though some of them might have been anticipated by a prescient mind with nothing else to think about. If the architect spent a good deal of money on alterations made in the vain hope of satisfying an almost tyrannical sense of perfection, and on a more profuse scheme of ornamentation than he had intended, one need not at this dis tance of time find fault with him on that score. SIR CHARLES BARRY. After the Portrait by J. P. Knight, R.A. Highly characteristic is it of the indifference of the England of the mid-nineteenth century to the pageantry of which mediaeval England was so fond, that neither the beginning nor the end of this national enterprise, the greatest of its kind since the building of St. Paul's Cathedral two hundred years ago, should have been marked by any public ceremonial. Had the completion of the work been celebrated by a great national function, as in these days assuredly it would have been, the man of whose genius it was the supreme expression would just have missed it. The Victoria Tower had been finished save for the lantern work and the flagstaff when, on the 1 2th of May, i860, he was seized with sudden illness, and within a few Death S hours had passed away. Fitting it is that he should have been laid to rest among the mighty dead in West minster Abbey, hard by the stately pile 536 LONDON TOWN which will carry down his fame to future generations. Looking at the Palace from the river, or from the opposite bank, one sees at a glance how faithfully the architect Descriptive, observed his self-imposed con dition of building according to a regular and symmetrical plan. On the land side the symmetry of his design is less apparent ; but this arises from the fact that his conception has never been fully carried out. His intention was that New Palace Yard should be built around on all its sides, with a grand gateway at the north-west angle, where is the present entrance. Two of the sides, however, are enclosed with railings only, and now nothing is ever heard of any thought of completing the noble scheme. Although Barry was loyal to his outline, his designs in process of execution underwent an amount of modification for which there can be few parallels in the history of archi tecture. As- first it took shape in his brain, it was castellated in type, with embattled parapets, and the great tower at the south west angle — the Victoria Tower — was to be a huge keep, a hundred feet square. But the Palace, as we see it, has nothing castellated about it. The change seems to Th^hts have followed upon the consider able extension which he was re quired to give to the river front, after the work had been begun, in order to increase the accommodation. Conscious of the necessity of breaking what was now to be an immensely long line, and also of adding to the apparent height, by way of making up for the lowness of the site, he determined to raise the whole centre, to heighten into towers the flanking masses, to introduce turrets, and to make his roofs visible. With these changes, of course, the castellated form disappeared, and with it went the keep-like character of the towers. And everywhere, as the building slowly grew under its creator's eye, he gave greater salience and continuity to the vertical lines, so as to increase the apparent elevation and break the sky-lines. The architectural ornamentation of the Palace, profuse yet not redundant, since it is everywhere kept in strict subor- Omamentation. dination to the main outlines, is one of its most alluring charms. It was a favourite doctrine of Barry's that ornamentation could hardly be excessive if only it were congruous in char acter and the details were kept small, so as not to obtrude themselves upon the eye. How happily he carried out that principle here — with very considerable help, it should be said, from that enthusiast for the Gothic, Augustus Welby Pugin — may be seen at a glance. Regarded symbolically, the scheme is less unexceptionable. It is composed chiefly of effigies and emblems of the various English dynasties, from the Saxon sovereigns down to the House of Hanover, but it RIVER THAMES The Speaker's Court. Royal Court. -,- 1—1 7" I ~1 ''"T J,-/>"'""""'''°rT _| "ffirTllll /..'""' 3 fc IW Crt P — c,u,i. jll1- rw. -t { jl .-- -j-ip J_J |LJ "? |_ J. f^TT Vf^Trx ' »-<— p-\ — I JJ0L18C Of I— I LMlr *T^xf ^Vct'D^*"" °f ?fl I £ \ ....... n.,,.™. II 15 j^r^vijn ,4,-lj.UjouBe I JT lorSs, PLAN OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. iwwlrs uf THE PIOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 537 Ignores the Greater Britain beyond the seas. Even in these days of enthusiastic loyalty, some courage would be needed to maintain that the scheme is not a somewhat exaggerated glorification of that monarchical principle the limitation of which was for centuries one of Parliament's chief functions. The sky-line of the Palace is charmingly broken by a multitude of turrets and by three towers. The greatest of these — the Victoria Tower — is said to be the loftiest tower in the world. Seventy -five feet square, its height to the top of the pinnacles is 336 feet, so that it is much VictoriaTower. turret, to which a low iron door gives access. When the sliding door in the groined roof of the royal archway is drawn back, one who stands on the ground under the centre of the tower can see at a glance, as through a telescope, from the bottom to the top. For many years the flagstaff on the summit was used only when Parliament was opened or prorogued by the Sovereign, the Royal Standard being then flown from it. But of late the Union Jack has been hoisted upon it by day whenever Parliament is actually sitting. Formerly it was only during the hours of darkness that the sittinsr of Parliament was ,MM\\ BM I -\mm amp* v ;¦,;:.>: ¦>: u::k # h \'^$mm®»* f i m - M^M VIEW OF BUILDINGS DESIGNED BV BARRY TO ENCLOSE NEW PALACE YARD (/. 536). From the "Life and Works of Sir Charles Barry." By permission of Mr. John Murray. more than twice the height of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square. From top to bottom it is constructed of brick, stone, and iron, with no admixture of combustible materials. Great care was taken by the archi tect to make the Palace fireproof through out, but in the case of the Victoria Tower the care was redoubled, because it was originally intended that this part of the Palace should be utilised as a repository for State papers. It was accordingly divided into eleven storeys, each of them, except the basement storey and the floor immediately above, containing sixteen fire-proof rooms. Entrance to the staircase which leads to the top of the tower — the longest unbroken spiral stairway ever constructed — is gained from the south octagon 35 Cloch Tower. notified — as it still is — by the beams of a powerful lantern on the summit of the Clock Tower. In height the Clock Tower, beautiful in its proportions and in its delicate tracery, is only a little less than the mightier Victoria Tower, the distance from the base to the top of the exquisite lantern spire being 316 feet. It stands almost on the site of the clock tower of the old Palace of Westminster, built in the reign of Edward I. out of a fine inflicted on Chief Justice Ralph de Hingham for having taken a bribe. The object of the clock, as a Latin inscription on its face set forth, was, by striking the hours, to admonish the judges of the courts in Westminster Hall to administer 538 LONDON TOWN true justice, by delicately reminding them of the circumstances under which the tower was built. " Big Ben," whose deep, solemn voice is familiar to all who know Westminster, is the second of his name. Big Ben the JfBi^Ben. First> s0 called after Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works in 1856 when he came into being, had from the beginning an unfortunate career. Brought to Westminster from Stockton-on- Tees by water, he had a stormy passage, and only just missed sending to the bottom the vessel on which he had been shipped. While being tested at the foot of the tower he was cracked by his own hammer, and, after examination by an expert, was declared to be " porous, unhomogeneous, unsound, and a defective casting." He was therefore con signed to the melting-pot, and if his depravity went so far, richly he deserved his fate. At one time it seemed that the same ignominious end awaited his successor. Hardly had he been elevated to the belfry than he also was found to have a flaw, but it appearing that the crack had no intention of widening, he was put on active service. His weight is about fourteen tons, less by about three tons than Great Paul, whose note, however, is less solemn and impressive. The new Clock Tower, like the old, is not without equivocal associations. In one of its chambers it is that those a Prison- wj1Q mcur the displeasure of house. " Parliament have been imprisoned. But it has seldom been put to this use. When in 1880 the late Mr. Bradlaugh was committed to the Clock Tower for insisting upon taking the oath as one of the lawfully elected members for Northamp ton, he spent but a single night in confine ment. Those who sent him there were only too glad to get him out again ; and in this struggle with a single man, whose advanced views made him unpopular, the House of Commons was in the end very badly beaten. All through that Parliament he was involved in conflict with the Lower House on the subject, was violently expelled, and more than once his seat was declared to be vacant. But in the next Parliament, that elected in 1885, he was allowed to take the oath without question ; in 1888 he succeeded in getting passed a Bill enabling members, what ever their creed, to choose between making- affirmation and taking the oath, and in 1 89 1, as he lay dying, the resolution of 1880, forbidding him either to be sworn or to affirm, was expunged from the journals of the House. The graceful Central Tower, the third of the group, formed no part of the original design, but was added in order Central ^Q catTy out a scheme of ventila- Tower. J tion for which Barry was called upon to make provision. That he should have been able, in meeting an unanticipated demand for a structural alteration, to make this notable addition to the beauty of the fabric is a convincing proof of his singular resourcefulness. As is the new Palace of Westminster without, so is it within. It is in truth a palace of art, a store-house of Interior beauty in many forms. To wan der through its halls and corridors,. embellished with carving and gilding and mosaic, with statuary and fresco and painted glass, is to offer to the eye a perpetual feast of loveliness. Ascending the staircase from beneath the Victoria Tower — which forms the royal entrance — one comes to the Norman Porch, from which access is to be had to the King's Robing Room, enriched with frescoes by Dyce depicting scenes from the Arthurian Legends. Next comes the Royal Gallery, the ceiling decorated with gilding and heraldry, the floor of mosaic, the sides adorned with frescoes by Maclise illustrating the Death of Nelson and the Meeting of Wellington and Bliicher after Waterloo. Between this gallery and the House of Lords is a small room known as the Prince's Chamber, where is a marble group by Gibson showing Queen Victoria on her throne, supported by Justice and Mercy. Then comes the House of Lords,. " the Gilded Chamber," which is- Lord's °f nothing less than a blaze of splen dour. From the first the architect intended that it should be decorated on a lavish scale, for he regarded it as not merely the habitation of the Senate but also the audience-chamber of the Sovereign. At one end — the south — are the thrones ; at the other the Bar, where counsel plead before the House of Lords as the final Court of Appeal, where, too, the Commons stand to hear the: AJ Pnoto . y'or^ £r Sons Netting- Hill, W, THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, FROM THE RIVER. 540 LONDON TOWN Royal Speech at the beginning of each ses sion and on certain other occasions. During the reign of Queen Victoria there was but one throne ; at her death a second — a replica of the other — was made for Queen Alexandra. On either side of the thrones is a State Chair, one (on the right) for the Prince of Wales, the other for the Princess of Wales. In front of the throne is the Woolsack, the seat of the Lord Chancellor who, to borrow a phrase from Lord Chancellor Halsbury, is "a sort of" President of the House of Lords, though seised of powers far more limited than those of the Speaker of the House of Commons. The twelve windows are gorgeous with portraits of our mon archs, the niches between them are filled with statues of the Magna Charta barons, the walls glow with frescoes by Dyce, Horsley, and Maclise illustrating among other subjects the Spirit of Religion, the Spirit of Chivalry, and the Spirit of Justice. Though the Upper House has not lost its right to veto the Bills sent up to it by the Commons, popular interest, except on rare occasions, is now monopolised by the Lower House, and peers who are ambitious to play a leading part in political life take their seats upon its red benches with reluct ance. The sittings of the Lords are usually short and scantily attended ; many of the members are not familiar to the officials, and on exceptional occasions when there is a great muster of peers — as, for instance, in 1893, when by a vote of 491 to 41 they threw out the second Home Rule Bill, or in 1908 when by 272 to 96 they refused a second reading to the Licensing Bill — the doorkeepers are not without a feeling of uneasiness lest intruders should find their way into the sacred pre cincts. Such things have happened, and perhaps the most straying into the curious jnstance of the kind House of Lords. on record is that in which the trespass was committed by a clergy man from Cumberland. In the innocency of his heart Mr. Hervey — for that was his name — walked on to the floor of their lordships' chamber, took a vacant seat, and bestowed his hat on the floor. Having heard enough, he rose to go. But when he would have taken up his hat he found that it was gone, and that in its place was one which had inside the name " Wellington." Not choosing to brave the elements with unprotected head, he wore the substituted hat away, and took it with him to his parish in the wilds of Cumberland, where he was proud to show it as the headgear of the great Duke, who, as he would charitably say, had no doubt " taken the wrong hat in mistake." The House of Lords, as we have said, is in a direct line with the House of Commons, from which it is separated by the House of peers' Lobby and Corridor, the Commons. J ' magnificent Central Hall, the Com mons' Corridor and Lobby. Though less ornate and dazzling than the House of Lords, the House of Commons, with its fine oak panelling and stained windows, has no lack of beauty of a quieter kind. Of the same breadth as the other House but not so long by 15 feet, it is of smaller dimensions than were at first intended. The architect had to decide a delicate and embarrassing question — whether the House should be large enough to furnish sitting accommodation on the ground floor for all the members when, as seldom happens, there is a full muster, or should be of a size suitable for the easy conduct of business on ordinary occasions ; and, under the advice of the officials, he adopted the latter alternative. At the trial sitting (May 30th, i85o)there was naturally a full attendance, and, as many of the members found themselves squeezed into the galleries, a good deal of grumbling was heard. Much the same feeling often finds expression when a new Parliament meets. At this stage members, especially those who are new to St. Stephen's, are more constant in their attendance than they afterwards become, and demand is made for further accommoda tion. But the inconvenience soon disappears, and members are not long in realising the advantage of transacting the everyday busi ness of the House in a chamber in which it is easy to hear and be heard. The inner ceiling of the House of Commons was no part of Barry's original plan. At the trial sitting a member com plained from the end gallery that he could not hear what was going on below, and Joseph Hume grimly suggested that the architect should be called to the Bar and have an opportunity of judging whether he could A Trial Sitting. THE LOWER HOUSE 54i make himself heard. The difficulty of hearing at the first sitting of the House of Lords was politely attributed by Hansard to the crowded attendance and the buzz of con versation. But in the Lower House no such theory was advanced. Members soon con vinced themselves that, however admirable the proportions of the chamber might be aesthetically, they were decidedly unsatis factory in an acoustic sense ; and concluding that the defect was due to its loftiness they forced the reluctant architect to insert this who have offended against the Commons' majesty. In front of the Speaker's chair, which is at the north end of the chamber, is a table for the Clerks and for the Chairman of Committee, and at the south end of this table, when the Speaker is in the chair, lies the mace. The present mace, The Mace, though of respectable antiquity, is not, as is sometimes supposed, the " bauble " to which Cromwell showed such scant respect when he turned the Long Parliament out of doors. The Common- Photo: Pictorial Agency. HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT : THE CENTRAL HALL. inner ceiling, with sloping sides, which cut the side windows in halves. He was greatly distressed at this alteration, and, as Bishop Barry records, would never look at the chamber, or even speak of it, unless from necessity. When the House is crowded members overflow into the side galleries, which are regarded as being technically "within the House," though it is seldom that speeches are delivered from them. On the other hand there are seats on the floor of the House, but technically outside it, for ambassadors and other great personages, the limits of the House being denoted by the Bar, to which the Serjeant-at-Arms brings persons wealth mace was superseded in 1680 by the one now in use, as that had superseded the ancient mace, which was no doubt melted down with the Crown plate in 1649. The present mace terminates at one end in a crown, as of course the Commonwealth mace did not. This symbol of the Speaker's authority is always technically in his custody. It is borne before him when he enters the House and when he leaves it, it lies on the table, as we have said, when he is in the chair, and when the House goes into Committee it is hidden away under the table. When a person comes to the Bar to give evidence or to receive judgment for a breach of the 542 LONDON TOWN privileges of the House he is attended by the Serjeant-at-Arms, who bears the mace on his shoulder ; and since it is not on the table, and yet the House is not in Committee, no member may speak. If, therefore, a member desires to put a question to the person at the Bar, he must write it down and propose it through the Speaker, who on these occa sions justifies his official title by having the sole right of speech. Behind the Speaker's chair is the Press Gallery, and above this is the Ladies' Gallery, jealously screened by a grille, to which some high-spirited ladies chained themselves in the autumn session of 1908 — a convincing bernini's bust of Oliver cromwell {p. 544). demonstration of the fitness of women for the Parliamentary franchise. The gallery over the clock at the opposite end of the chamber is reserved for peers, with a seat in the centre for the Prince of Wales ; above and behind it are the Speaker's and the Strangers' Galleries. The division lobbies are on the eastern and western sides of the chamber. Into these members, with no lack of deliberateness, pass when a division is taken, and when all have gone the doors are locked ; the votes are counted by tellers as members return to the Plouse — the Ayes from the lobby on the Speaker's right, the Noes from that on his left. For this generation the memories most readily suggested by the present chamber are those of Gladstone and Disraeli. It is worth noting, perhaps, that both protagonists retired from the scene of their triumphs without formal leavetaking. Disraeli's last speech was delivered on the 12th of August, 1876, on a phase of the Eastern Disraeli's Ouestion. A poor speech it was, Farewell. ~ . *\ ^ and it contained not the slightest indication that it was to be his last in the Lower House, though it was afterwards recalled that instead of taking the usual Ministerial way out behind the Speaker's chair he walked down the floor of the House and passed into the Commons' Lobby — in the direction of the House of Lords. His secret had been well kept, and when it became known that he had accepted a peerage the announcement came as a complete surprise. Gladstone's re tirement, in 1894, had been preluded by rumour, and his last speech, on Gladstone's, the 1st of March, advising the House of Commons to accept the Lords' amendments to the Parish Councils Bill, but declaring that the relations between the elective and the non-elective Chamber required adjustment, contained a sentence which it was afterwards seen might have been interpreted as a hint that the rumour was to be immediately justified. '' For me," he said, dropping his hands and stepping back from the brass-bound box which had so often resounded to his blows, '' For me my duty terminates in calling the attention of the House to the fact . . . that in con sidering these amendments . . . we are considering a part, an essential and insepar able part, of a question enormously large, a question that has become profoundly acute, a question that will demand a settlement, and must at an early date receive that settle ment from the highest authority." Having stayed for the debate and the divisions, he walked out behind the Speaker's chair — not in the direction of the House of Lords ! But he had remained until the House was nearly empty, and when the clerks had left the table he rose from his place, mounted the step at the side of the Speaker's chair, and looked around on every side. The next morning his resigna tion of office was announced, and though he remained member for Midlothian until the General Election of 1895, a pair being HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT : THE ROYAL GALLERY. 544 LONDON TOWN arranged for him, he never again crossed the threshold of the House. Midway between the House of Commons and the House of Lords is the Central Hall, a spacious and lofty octagon with a stately vaulted roof inlaid with Venetian mosaic represent ing the national emblems, while over two of the doorways are glass mosaics of St. George and St. David, from the designs of Central Hall. of the chapel of St. Stephen — the old House of Commons — and the Speaker's chair was stationed at the east end of the Hall, the end nearest the Central Hall, a few paces in front of the steps that lead up to that Hall, these steps covering the site of the little lobby which was styled " Solomon's Porch." Beneath St. Stephen's Hall is the old crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel, drastically restored by E. M. Barry, and fitted up as ST. STEPHEN S CRYPT. Sir Edward Poynter. Here are statues of Gladstone and other great Parliament arians of these later days. Not far away, in the lobby from which the members' dining- rooms are entered on one side and the smoking-room on the other, is Bernini's bust of Oliver Cromwell, the gift of Mr. Wertheimer to the nation, and exception ally interesting from the fact that it is a contemporary portrait. Leading from the Central Hall to Westminster Hall is St. Stephen's Hall, where are statues of " men who rose to eminence by the eloquence and abilities they displayed in the House of Com mons." It occupies, as we have said, the site St. Stephen's Hall. a place of worship for the residents of the Houses of Parliament. We must not stop to describe the other features of the new Palace of Westminster, notable as they are — the refreshment-rooms of the two Houses, the committee rooms, the libraries, the Speaker's house, and so forth. But the room known as Committee Room No. 15 must be mentioned because in it, in December, 1890, were held the stormy meetings which issued in the break-up of the Irish Parliamentary Party. No other committee room, perhaps, has witnessed such passionate scenes as those in which Mr. Parnell, faced by the defection of the majority of his party, stood at bay and ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 545 sought with ferocious resourcefulness to evade or delay his deposition from the leadership of a party which he appeared to have brought to the very brink of triumph. St. Margaret's Church, though one thinks of it first as a foil to Westminster Abbey, may be noticed here as the official St. Margaret's, church of the Commons, who still on occasion use it as their chapel, as, for example, at the two Jubilee The beautiful east window, which depicts the Crucifixion, has a particularly interesting history. It was presented by An East the town of Dordrecht to Window with . a story Henry VII. for his new Eady Chapel in the Abbey, but the King died before it was ready, and as it shows in two of the lower compartments Prince Arthur, the King's eldest son, and his bride Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII., Photo : Pictorial Agency. ST. MARGARET S, WESTMINSTER, LOOKING EAST. celebrations of Queen Victoria and at her funeral service. Although the present church belongs to the Perpendicular period, it was founded long before, and is said to have been originally built by Edward the Con fessor and to have been rebuilt, except the chancel, under Edward I. In the seventeenth century it was encumbered with galleries, which, happily, were removed in the restora tion carried out by Sir Gilbert Scott and his son in the 'eighties, the ugly pews being at the same time replaced by open benches and other improvements effected. If the exterior has little claim to admiration, the interior is handsomely decorated and en riched with much admirable stained glass. when he had divorced Katharine, was glad to get rid of it by presenting it to the Abbot of Waltham. At the Dissolution it was sent by the last Abbot to his private chapel at New Hall, in the same county of Essex, and then, strange to say, passed into the possession of Anne Boleyn's father. Afterwards it came into the hands of Oliver Cromwell, and then into General Monk's, and in 1758 it was ac quired from the owner of Copt Hall, Essex, by the churchwardens of St. Margaret's for £400. The window over the western door, with an inscription by James Russell Lowell, was inserted by Americans in 1882 in memory of Raleigh, who was buried in the chancel (1618), as was his son Carew (1667). 546 LONDON TOWN Another of the windows commemorates a great American preacher and divine who was well known in English pulpits, Associations Phillips Brooks. Another ¦with America. I association with America is to be found in the Milton window at the west end of the north aisle, for it was a gift from the late Mr. G. W. Childs, of Philadelphia, and bears an inscription from the pen of Whittier. It was in St. Margaret's that, in 1656, the great Puritan married his second wife, who, with her child, was buried in the church. Yet other windows com memorate Admiral Blake, William Caxton, who was buried in the church in 149 1, and some modern celebrities. An elegant new eastern porch is the tribute of Lady Sher- brooke to her husband, the Robert Lowe of the House of Commons. St. Margaret's has an abundance of other memorable associations. Among its many monuments are those to three of the founders of Westminster Almshouses — Emery Hill, James Palmer, and Cornelius Vandun. Here Lord Clarendon married his second wife, Frances Aylesbury, grandmother of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. Here, too, were married Waller the poet, and Pepys the diarist, Jeremy Bentham the utilitarian, Reginald Heber the bishop and hymn-writer, and Thomas Campbell the poet. Pepys, by the way, figures in the register as " Samuel Peps of this parish, Gent.," and it is suggested by Mr. Laurence Hutton that the form in which his name is given, in conjunc tion with the form in which it appears in the register of St. Olave's, Hart Street — Peyps — may settle the question of its proper pronunciation ; but it is not easy to see what conclusion is to be drawn from such pre misses. Within these walls, again, or in the graveyard were buried Skelton the satirist, who spent his last years in sanctuary to escape the vengeance of Cardinal Wolsey (p. 529), Nicholas Udall, author of the first English comedy, James Harrington, author of " Oceana," who lies in the chancel beside Raleigh, Wenceslaus Hollar the en graver, and Sir John Cutler the grocer (p. 184). William Cowper, too, is associated with St. Margaret's, for in the Memoir of his Early Life he tells us how late one evening, when he was a scholar of Westminster, he saw a grave-digger at work by the light of a glimmering lantern, and as he watched the man, to his horror a skull was thrown up, which struck the boy on the leg. " This little incident," he says, " was an alarm to my con science." On the south side of the church, before the restoration, there was a stone which marked the burial place of one John Gilpin, a name which no doubt the poet long afterwards borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, for the most diverting of his poems. The walls of St. Margaret's have witnessed some exciting incidents. In 1555 (April 14th), as the priest, Sir John Cheltan, was holding the sacrament in his hands, a fanatic of the name of Branch drew his knife or hanger and wounded him in the head and hands, a deed of violence which, at Bishop Bonner's merciless decree, he expiated by having his hand cut off and being burnt alive in the churchyard. Here, also, in May, 1642, warning of Waller's plot reached Pym, who whispered it to those around him and then left the church to give the orders which brought the conspiracy to nought. At this time the pulpit of St. Margaret's was occupied in turn by all the leading Puritan divines, among them Calamy, and Owen, and Baxter, and Case, who was not afraid to rebuke Oliver Cromwell to his face, and who, when preaching before General Monk, ex claimed, " There are some who will betray three kingdoms for filthy lucre's sake," at the same time throwing his handkerchief into the General's face. With this very dis agreeable person may be bracketed the yet more offensive Dr. Wilson, who from this pulpit so grossly flattered George III. soon after his accession as to draw from the King the rebuke that he went to church " to hear God praised, and not himself." Among other eminent divines who have regularly ministered at St. Margaret's may be named Henry Hart Milman, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, who made the patron saint of the church the theme of a poem, and Frederic William Farrar, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, whose " Life of Christ " made his name a household word. In the west porch is a medallion of this eloquent divine. reign of Henry III. that the judges, who up to that time had accompanied the monarch in his journeyings to and fro in his realm, settled at Westminster, and for centuries the various courts were held in open Hall until at last the operation of the law of differentiation made the provision of separate courts a necessity. The King's Bench and Chancery Courts sat at the upper or south end of the Hall, the Exchequer Court at the opposite end ; and the King's Bench Courts were named after a marble bench. What memorable scenes have these walls looked down upon ! Not to speak of the trial of William Wallace, who was Famous condemned to his barbarous death Trials. at Smithfield in the original Hall of the Red King, it was here, in 1536, that Anne Boleyn appeared to Boleyn defend herself from the charge of treason against her lord, and to be taken back to the Tower to die. In the previous year (May 7th, 1535) Sir Thomas More had been condemned here for his inability to accept the doctrine of the royal supremacy. As the old man was being led out of the Hall his son forced his way through the guards and, embracing and kissing his father, begged that he might be suffered to share his fate. It is said that when news of the Chancellor's death was brought to him the King looked sombrely at Anne Boleyn, who stood beside his chair, and declaring, " Thou art the cause Thomas More. of this man's death," withdrew to his room and there shut himself up. Among other trials, not less memorable, we must not omit to notice that (1640) of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose Strafford, counsel to his royal master to sacri fice him to the popular indignation is one of the noblest things in our history. The Commons were the accusers, the Peers the judges, and the King and Queen were present to see this most loyal of servants sent to his doom. " And now, my lords," were the Earl's closing words, " I thank God that I have been, by His blessing, sufficiently instructed in the extreme vanity of all temporary enjoyments compared to the importance of our eternal duration. And so, my lords, even so with all humility, and with all tranquillity of mind, I submit, clearly and freely, to your judgments ; and whether that righteous doom shall be to life or death, I shall repose myself, full of gratitude and confidence, in the arms of the great Author of my existence. Te Deum laudamus" It was but a few years afterwards (January, 1648-9) that Charles himself was brought to trial here, the upper part of the Hall Charles i. being hung with scarlet cloth, while above the King's head floated the banners that had been taken from him at Naseby. On the first day of the trial the King entered the Hall under the guard of Colonel Hacker and thirty-two officers, and seated himself, covered, in a chair of velvet pro vided for him, and " with a stern countenance surveyed the commissioners." When, the Attorney-General rising to recite the charges, the King put out his cane and touched him on the shoulder, bidding him " be silent," the gold head fell heavily from the walking- stick to the ground, and Charles, who was not free from superstitious foreboding, picked up the ornament deeply affected, and said no more. The King refused to plead, and main tained his composure to the last, doubting possibly whether his judges would dare to sentence him. But Bradshaw, the President, sternly told him that he was " not permitted to issue out in these discoursings. This Court is satisfied of its authority. No Court will bear to hear its authority questioned in that manner." And at last sentence was formally pronounced. The warrant for the King's execution, dated WESTMINSTER HALL, LOOKING SOUTH. 552 LONDON TOWN January 29th, 1649, addressed to Colonel Francis Hacker, Colonel Huncks, and Lieu tenant-Colonel Phayr, is a docu- Warran^h ment °f such peculiar interest that we may quote it. " Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England," it runs, " is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of Ten in the morning and Five in the after noon, with full effect. And for so doing this shall be your warrant. " And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers and others the good People of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service." Then follow fifty-nine signa- "r/.}f->yrv • STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL OUTSIDE WESTMINSTER HALL (/. 547). of High Treason and other high Crimes ; and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to death by the severing of his head from his body ; of which Sentence execution yet re- maineth to be done : " These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open Street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours tures, the three first being those of John Bradshaw, Thomas Grey, Lord Groby, and Oliver Cromwell. The exact spot occupied by Charles, and that where Strafford so nobly defended him self, were ascertained by the late Sir Reginald Palgrave, Deputy Keeper of the Rolls, and are marked with memorial brasses. Two other great trials in Westminster Hall — that of the Seven Bishops in 1688, and that of Warren Hastings, which began in 1788 WESTMINSTER PIALL 553 and ended seven years later in the great Pro consul's acquittal— we need not stop to recall, for Macaulay has made them among the most familiar incidents in the nation's history. The last public trial in the Hall itself was that of Lord Melville in 1806. Of the trials in the Courts which Sir John Soane tacked on to it the most pro longed was that of the Tichborne claimant. His claim to the Tichborne estates had It was in Westminster Hall that Peter the Great is said to have indulged in his famous outburst against lawyers. When he asked who were the begowned and be- wigged men whom he saw there, he was told that they were lawyers. " Lawyers ! " he ex claimed ; " why I have but two in the whole of my dominions, and I mean to hang one of them as soon as I get back." Westminster Hall served other uses besides THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. From the Portrait by Vandych. already, in 1871-72, occupied the Court of Common Pleas for 103 days, and now that he was charged with perjury and TriairiChb°rne forgery he engaged the atten tion of the Court of Queen's Bench for 188 days more, between the 23rd of April, 1873, and the 28th of February, 1874. Though the case against him was over whelmingly strong there were not a few who continued to believe that he was what he pre tended to be, until in 1895, after he had served his sentence of fourteen years' imprisonment, and not long before his death, in a series of articles in a weekly newspaper, he threw them over and wrote himself down an im postor. This confession, however, was the least of the proofs of his guilt. 36 those that have been mentioned, and in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries booksellers and other tradesmen were allowed to set up their stalls here. Pepys speaks more than once of buying books here, as for instance under date October Shops m west- m 66 ,. T Westminster minster Hall. ' Hall and bought, among other books, one of the Life of our Queen, which I read at home to my wife ; but it was so sillily writ that we did nothing but laugh at it." In Tom Brown's " Amusements," published in 1700, occurs a graphic descrip tion of a visit to the Hall : " men on the one side with baubles and toys, and on the other taken up with the fear of judgment. . . . On your left hand you hear a nimble-tongued 554 LONDON TOWN painted sempstress with her charming treble invite vou to buy some of her knick-knacks, and on your right a deep-mouthed cryer commanding impossibilities, viz., silence to be kept among women and lawyers." In 1898 Westminster Hall was put to a solemn use that sorted well with its dignity. On the 25th of May in that year the coffin containing the remains of the greatest of the Victorian states men was brought hither at midnight, and here, " watched by the piety of relatives and friends," as Morley's Life says, it remained until the funeral in the Abbey on Saturday, the 28th, multitudes filing past each day to pay their meed of reverence to the memory of the mighty dead. The spot where stood the bier now bears an inscription in brass. Palace Yard is not one but two. The open space in front of Guy FawKes. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. enclosed within courtyard to the is styled New the great entrance to Westminster Hall, now railings and forming a Houses of Parliament, Palace Yard, after the new Palace begun by William Rufus when he built West minster Hall ; Old Palace Yard, the space between the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, was the courtyard of the earlier Palace of Edward the Confessor. The latter, marked by Marochetti's eques trian statue of Richard Coeur de Lion, which originally stood in front of the Exhibition Building of 1851 in Hyde Park, was the scene of the execution of four of the Executions. Gunpowder Plot conspirators on the 31st of January, 1605-6 ; and it was through a house which stood in the south-east corner of the Yard, and had at one time been occupied as the Ordnance Office, afterwards serving as the entrance to the House of Lords, that they had carried their barrels of gunpowder into the vault adjacent to the Houses of Parlia ment. We need not tell once again the familiar story of the plot against Parliament, but we may stop to recall what manner of man the chief of the conspirators was. " A stiff bronzed fellow, with sandy beard and fell of auburn hair," is the description given of him by Hepworth Dixon in " Her Majesty's Tower." " His face was good, in some of its aspects fine. His tones were those of gentle life ; his words, though few, were choice ; and his bear ing spoke of both the cloister and the camp." His imperturbability was perfect. " He is no more dismayed," wrote Cecil soon after the arrest, " than if he were taken for a poor robbery on the highway." Nor was he wanting, even in this trying situation, in humour. When, bound hand and foot, he was brought before James I. in Whitehall, and asked what he intended to do with the barrels of gunpowder that had been discovered, he replied, " One of my objects was to blow Scotchmen back into Scotland." Hep- worth Dixon sums him up as neither mer cenary nor heroic, but simply a fanatic, whom fasting and observance had helped to drive mad. Such was the man who, with three of his fellow conspirators, was dragged to Old Palace Yard on a hurdle, hanged, and disembowelled. In Old Palace Yard also (October 29th, 16 1 8), Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded under a sentence passed upon him many years before. Having served twelve years' imprisonment in the Tower, he was released in order that he might lead an expedition to Guiana to seek for gold. He failed to find the gold, but did find Spaniards, whom, when they attacked him, he defeated, and for this outrage upon " his dear brother of Spain " James I. sent him to the scaffold. " A great and very WalterRaleigh. PALACE YARD AND PARLIAMENT SQUARE 555 strange scene," writes Carlyle in his " Crom well " — " the last scene in the life of Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was beheaded in Old Palace Yard : he appeared on the scaffold there about eight o'clock that morning ; an immense crowd, all London, and in a sense all England looking on. A cold hoar-frosty morning." When his old friend Sir Hugh Ceeston was repulsed from the scaffold he exclaimed, " Prithee, never fear, Ceeston ; I shall have a place." And gently touching the axe he said, " This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases." The body, as we have seen, was buried in St. Margaret's Church ; the head was conveyed away by Lady Raleigh in a coach, covered with Sir Walter's gown. By her it was preserved in a case for the twenty-nine years she survived him, and after her death it passed into the care of their son Carew, by whom it is believed to have been buried at West Horsley, in Surrey. Old Palace Yard was also the scene of the barbarous punishment meted out, at the in stance of Laud, to William Prynne, Ear- . Dr. John Bastwick, and the Rev. cropping. -' Henry Burton, minister of the Friday Street Church, London, their ears being cut off and their cheeks branded with the letters S L (Schismatic Libeller). " Their sin," says Carlyle, " was against Laud and his surplices at Allhallowtide, not against any other man or thing." Bastwick's wife re ceived his ears in her lap, and kissed his mutilated face. Prynne's ears were sawn rather than cut off; but the pain only served to bring out the man's fierce obduracy. " Cut me, tear me ! " he cried to the executioner. " I fear thee not. I fear the fire of Hell, not thee ! " Nor was he too much enraged to The Pillory. indulge in a play on words : the letters with which he was branded must, he declared, stand for " Stigmata Laudis," the brands of Laud. New Palace Yard also has been the scene of executions, notably that of Lord Sanquhar for the murder of Turner, the fencing- master, in Whitefriars (p. 450). And here, too, as in Old Palace Yard, were inflicted the pains of the pillory — among others upon Dr. Alexander Leighton, father of the Archbishop, who (1630) for a libel on the bishops was condemned at the instance of Laud to most barbarous treatment, for after he had been whipped his ears were cut off and his nose was slit, and he was branded on the face with the letters S S (Sower of Sedition). Another victim of the pillory in New Palace Yard was Titus Oates, who was nearly stoned to death. The last who stood in the pillory here was John Williams (1765), a Fleet Street bookseller who had republished the North Briton, and who, like Defoe when similarly treated in the City of London, received an ovation from an immense crowd of sympathisers. Separated from New Palace Yard only by the roadway is Parliament Square, adorned with statues of great Parlia- Parhament mentarians — George Canning by Square. ° ° J Westmacott ; Sir Robert Peel and the great Lord Derby by Noble ; Palmerston by Woolner ; and Beaconsfield by Raggi. The last, with his slight stoop, is looking towards the Houses where he won his great triumphs ; Peel, his back turned upon the man who first achieved distinction by his attacks upon his leader, is gazing in the direction of that Charing Cross which he declared to be the finest site in Europe. CHAPTER L OLD WHITEHALL The Royal Palace — York House — Wolsey as its Lord — Henry VIII. takes Possession— His Extensions — Queen Elizabeth — Inigo Jones builds the Banqueting House— Charles I.'s Execution — The Window from which he stepped on to the Scaffold — The Block — Archbishop Usher — How the Body was treated — Horror excited by the Execution — Laud and the King's Jester — Cromwell at Whitehall — His Death — Charles I I.'s Death — The Princess Mary's Behaviour — End of the Palace— The Chapel Royal — The Tilt-yard — The Cockpit — Destruction of the Gateways OF the Palace of Whitehall, which in point of antiquity ranks next to Westminster Palace among the royal palaces of the City of Westminster, not a vestige remains save the noble Banqueting Hall, The Royal ancj f-J^g as we shall see, was no Palace. ' part of the Tudor Whitehall. The history of this older Whitehall may soon be told. We first hear of it in the reign of Henry IIP, when it was the residence of the Justiciary, Hubert de Burgh. By him it was bequeathed in 1221 to the Black Friars, at this time settled in Holborn, and as yet with no thought of migrating to Thames-side. From them it was bought in 1248 by Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, and his town house and that of his archiepiscopal successors it continued to be for nearly three centuries, being known throughout that period as York Place or York House — which, by the way, must not be confused with York House, their later palace in the Strand. Cardinal Wolsey, the last of the Archbishops to hold York Place, greatly added to it. Here the proud Churchman lived in state not less than regal, his following of eight hundred men, including ten PaUcJ'8 Peers °f the realm and fifteen knights, being greater than that of Warwick the King-maker in the preceding century. And here he gave some of those sumptuous masques which flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Henry VIII. was often at Whitehall when Wolsey was its lord, and here he himself took part in masques which the Cardinal provided for his delectation. It was at a masque in this palace, according to Shakespeare, that his voluptuous gaze first fell upon lovely Anne YorK House. Boleyn, and, though there is no proof of this, it is the fact that at Whitehall they were privately married — " in a garret at the eastern end of the Palace," says Lingard, When, having failed to obtain for his lord the divorce which Henry so ardently desired, Wolsey was hurled from his high station, it was at White hall Stairs that, in 1529, he entered his barge to be rowed to Esher. York Place and all that it contained — hangings of cloth of gold and of silver, plate sufficient to cover two great tables, and all manner of Henry viii. 's. rich and beautiful things — were conveyed to Henry by Act of Parliament, and though the statute decreed that it should ever afterwards be known as " the King's Palace at Westminster," it presently came to be known as Whitehall, the official title dying out, perhaps, because it failed to distinguish the new royal palace from the ancient one beside the Abbey of St. Peter. When the King took possession of White hall it was a mansion made up of a succession of courts and galleries, with gardens and bowling-greens and tennis-courts, the estate stretching from near the present Bridge Street as far northwards as Old Scotland Yard, and being bounded on the east by the Thames, to which the palace showed its chief front, and on the west by the public way from Charing Cross to Westminster, which, as it neared West minster, ran right through it. Henry lost no time in extending the palace, and Additions. on the west side of the highway, having obtained land from the Abbot of Westminster by an exchange which was a very poor bargain for St. Peter's, he built a tennis-court, a cockpit, a bowling- 556 WHITEHALL PALACE 557 alley, a long stone gallery, and other structures, connecting them with the older buildings by two gateways across the street, one on the south, known as the King Street Gate, the other on the north, styled Whitehall Gate, but often called the Holbein Gate, Gate.6"" S an;er tne great painter who, in 1546, designed it. Holbein, introduced to the King by Sir Thomas More, had been taken into his service, and had rooms assigned to him in the palace, where, besides designing the gateway, he painted the portraits of the King and his father, and of their queens, as well as his famous " Dance of Death." Bear- daughters Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall. During the reigns of his son and his two Whitehall remained much as Henry had left it, though Queen Elizabeth added to it what Stow speaks of disrespectfully as an " old rotten slight-builded Ban queting House," which her successor ordered to be pulled down in 1606. It was built in 1581 for the reception of the embassy that came to propose a marriage between the Queen and the Duke of Anjou, and the walls were painted externally with what Holinshed styles " rustic work." In Elizabeth's reign there was no lack of tournaments and WHITEHALL PALACE FROM THE RIVER IX THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANXE. ing some general resemblance to the still extant gateway of St. James's Palace, some times attributed to the same artist, Holbein's Gateway, flanked on both fronts by lofty embattled octagonal turrets, was constructed of small square stones and flint boulders, of two distinct colours, " glazed and disposed in a tessellated manner," and on each front were four terra-cotta life-size busts, of Henry VII., Henry VHP, Bishop Fisher and others. The frequent passage of funeral processions from Charing Cross to St. Margaret's at West minster was not to the King's taste, and to rid himself of dolorous sights without offending his subjects he provided a cemetery in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. masques and mummeries , and it was here that in her old age, whenever a messenger arrived from James VI. of Scotland, she always contrived to be found dancing, that her dear cousin at Holyrood might not flatter himself with hopes of an early succession. Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond, but both her sister and her father had drawn their last breath at Whitehall. In the reign of James I. (1619) a large part of the Palace, including the Banqueting Hall, was destroyed by fire, and Inigo Jones, the King's Surveyor, called in to rebuild it, designed a mag nificent palace which, covering an area of twenty-four acres, would have been the largest Inigo Jones 558 LONDON TOWN in Europe. Afterwards, in the reign of Charles I., he made a much smaller design, but even of this no part was ever more than a palace on paper. This great artist was no favourite of Fortune's, and to him was denied the full measure of self-expression which Sir Christopher Wren so abundantly enjoyed. But the Banqueting Hall, begun in The 1619 and finished in 1622, the Hall. master mason being Nicholas Stone, who sculptured the water- gate of York House in the Strand, has survived to prove to later generations by its harmonious proportions and its choice orna mentation that its creator was one of the two greatest of English architects. Mr. Loftie, in his monograph on Whitehall, gives the cost of the Banqueting Hall roughly as .£20,000, and he estimates that two of the courts of the palace alone would have cost over £200,000. But there were to be, in all, seven courts and four fronts. In the next reign Rubens painted the nine compartments of the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall with allegorical scenes in glorification of James I. and Charles I., the central subject, a huge oval, being the apotheosis of the former monarch. The painting has all Rubens's vigour and masterliness, but the self-satisfaction of the King as he is being borne heavenwards is ludicrous. Charles I. also intended to com mission Vandyck to paint the walls of the Banqueting House, but before this could be done he had graver things with which to occupy himself. This was not to be King Charles's chief association w-ith the building. Fate had de creed that from it, on the morning ChariesT °f of January 30th, 1649, he should step on to the scaffold where he was to demean himself in a fashion so kingly. The platform was erected in Whitehall — that is, along the west or street front of the Banqueting House, and not, as some have supposed, along the north or Charing Cross front. On that point the evidence is abundant and con clusive. But whether he emerged through the west wall, and the precise spot at which he was beheaded, are questions much less easy of determination. Ludlow records in his " Memoirs " that the King " was conducted to the scaffold out of the window of the Banqueting House," without mentioning which window. Sir Thomas Herbert, who was in attendance upon Charles, says that " a pas sage was broken through the wall by which the King passed unto the scaffold." There is no necessary contradiction between the two passages, however, for at this time and for long afterwards the windows were blank. When J. H. Jesse inspected the building at a time when it was undergoing renovation and the walls were bare, he saw " between the upper and lower centre windows " a space about seven feet in height and four feet in breadth " the bricks of which presented a broken and jagged appearance, and the brickwork introduced was evidently of a different date from that of the rest of the building. There can be little doubt," he remarks, " that it was through this passage that Charles walked to the fatal stage." The question is discussed at considerable length by Dr. Sheppard* who adopts the view of Sir Reginald Palgrave that though the scaffold was erected against the west street front, it was not the street wall which was broken to give admission to it, but the north wall ; that through the aperture thus made, the King stepped into a small building that abutted upon the north end of the Ban queting Hall, and that through the window of this annexe he passed on to the scaffold, which extended as far as the second window of the street front. This annexe is shown in Tefrason's engraving of the Banqueting House, dated 1713, and in the copy of the engraving which is preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries is a memorandum by Vertue to the effect that, " according to the truest reports," the King stepped out of the window of the annexe on to the scaffold, the frame of the window being taken out for the purpose. Sir Reginald Palgrave's belief was that the precise spot where Charles was beheaded was in front of the second window (from Charing Cross) on the street front of the middle tier. By the custodian of the building, he said, writing to the Times in 1890 (May 17th), that window was known as " King Charles's window," and he had been assured by the late Mr. Thorns, Librarian of the House of Lords, that he had seen in the pavement before that window a memorial stone which had been fixed there to mark * " The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall." By James Edgar Sheppard, D. D. 1902. (Longmans & Co.) •s < w (J ?J ¦