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LONDONIANA.

VOL. IL

LONDONIANA.

EDWARD WALFORD, M.A.,
?0IIMEELX SCIIOLAK OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
AUTHOR OF
' THE COUNTY FAMILIES," " OLD AND NEW LONDON,'
" TALES OF CUE GKBAT FAMILIES," ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. n.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GEEAT MABLBOEOTJGH STEEET.
1879.
AU rights reserved.

CONTENTS

THE SECOND VOLUME.

Page
A Chapter on the Thames .... 1
London eeom Eitzstephen's Point oi? View . 18
A Steoll Bound Hampstead and Highoate 35
Maoattlat the- Londoner . . 46
Modern Babylon . . 57
Bull and BEAB-BAiTiNa in London . . .76
The Plague in London . . .87
A Walk Bound the Savoy ... 95
Chbsteeeield House , . . Ill
The Heemit of Q-rub Street . . 125
Ely Chapel, Holboen . . . 132
The Tabaed Inn, Southwark . . . 143
MisLBTOE in Covent G-aeden . . 157
Heralds' College . . . 173
The Last of Ceemoene G-aedens 186
The Benedictine Convent at Hammersmith . 197

IV

CONTENTS.

Messes. Coutts' and Messrs. Drummonds'
A BoMANCE OP Berkeley Square
A Chapter on London Signs .
The Two-Fold Eomanoe op the Strand
The Holbein Gateway, Westminster
The King's Head in the Poultry .
The Great Fire of London .
Stray Thoughts on London ,

Bank

210
230 237248
262
270
282
395

LONDONIANA.

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES.
(1869.)
IF the statue of Father Thames who sits in the
courtyard of Somerset House could but speak,
what tales might it not tell us of the past, even
if it went no further back than the time when our
ancestors, in their gaudy-coloured suits, fished in
its waters, and their wives and daughters wan
dered along its banks. How much could it not
tell us of those halcyon days when the Romans
made their way up the rivei', and compelled the
Britons eighteen centuries ago to labour on its
embankment. Coming down to later times, it
might tell of splendid pageants and of much
merry-making in those days when great men and
rich citizens kept their barges and boats along its
banks, and their sons and apprentices had their
water tournaments, in which the antagonists
VOL. II, B

Z LONDONIANA.
stood upright in separate wherries, and strove
with their lances to upset each other into the
river, or else ran at a shield attached to a post,
with the result, probably, of being thrown back
wards into the river, iu case of missing aim.
Those must have been fine times for the water
men, as to the number of whom in his time Stow
says that they exceeded forty thousand.
The Thames in those days, and long subse
quently, was, in fact, the great highway of
London. All great processions from the City were
made in the state-barges which were kept, one
or more, by each Company from the end of the
thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century.
When the proud and happy Anne Boleyn em
barked at Greenwich to proceed to the Tower for
her coronation, she was attended b^' the Mayor
and Corporation in their barges, a circumstance
that must have recurred to her memorv and
caused her many a bitter tear when she found
herself floating downwards to her last place of
residence, previous to her entrance into that nar
row home to which neither her ¦ friends nor her
foes could hope to avoid following her.
In a map on a large scale the tip of the iinger
could not be placed on any part of the river from
Greenwich to Chiswick Ait without coverino- a
spot respecting which an interesting anecdote

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. '6
could be related. Kings have descended its stream
to share in joy and feastings ; and at least one
King has embarked on it with a heart filled with
sadness, and who never expected to see it again.
All along its banks are to be seen memorials of
individuals who once dwelt on them. Steel-clad
men have walked upon them discoursing of wars
and bloodshed, and men of more peaceful pursuits,
but whose names make a much greater figure in
history. The locality of York House is still shown by
the Water-gate, commonly attributed to Inigo
Jones. It seems, however, from an entry in an
old book of works in the Soane Museum, to have
been erected by Nicholas Stone, masler-mason to
King Charles, of whom it is said : — " The Water
gate at York House bee dessiued and built; and
y'= right-hand lion hee did, fronting y"* Thames.
Mr. Kearne, a Jarman, his brother, by marrying
his sister, did y'= shee lion."
Here Lord Bacon lived, and hoped to end his
days ; but he was disappointed, for, being within
the verge of the court, it lay within the boundaries
inside of which he was forbidden to take up his
abode. His successor was the Duke of Bucking
ham murdered by Felton, who purchased the
weapon with which he did the murder within
sight of the Thames, and beneath the walls of the
B 2

4 LONDONIANA.
Tower, within which lie, between two queens, the
remains of one who once lived in Lord Bacon s
immediate vicinity, the Duke of Northumberland.
The Thames was, in fact, the great highway to
the Tower, and many who were more deserving of
pity than the anibitiousDuke just mentioned, were
conveyed thither by it.
Time after time has old Thames been frozen over,
and fairs been held on it. Sore, indeed, was
the frost on these occasions, as old chroniclers
phrase it, that produced such a result. Still there
were thousands ou each occasion who gladly seized
the opportunity to indulge in a merrj'-making on
its hardened surface. Oxen were roasted whole ;
targets were established, whereat men and ap
prentices exhibited the skill they had acquired at
the butts at Finsbury and Islington, and which
many among them had probably exercised on
battle-fields, where Saxons, Normans, or French
men were the living butts, and who could venture
— like the gentleman of York who slew Sir An
drew Barton— to stake their lives on striking a
silver shilling at twelve score yards. Every other
diversion practised in the days when they occur
red was played with increased zest in this novel
arena. Nor were stalls and tents wanting to
supply the brisk demand of the passengers, nor
hackney-coaches to give them what Sam Weller

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 5
called "a mile of danger," though at a price by no
means so low as that paid by Mr. Pickwick. Bears
were hunted on the ice, bulls were baited, and
dogs and cocks fought for their own satisfaction
and the amusement of the spectators. Nor was
the opportunity lost of establishing a printing-
press on the ice, a gainful speculation as it seems,
for, from the lowest to the highest, all wished to
have a record of their having been present at such
a novel gathering. There was once such a record
of Charles I. having visited the Thames in com
pany with James, his successor. Queen Katherine,
the Duchess Mary, Princess Anne, Prince George,
and " Hans in Kelder," meaning a little Prince or
Princess then unborn. The end of these tents
and of all their contents was destruction, for the
ice generally broke up suddenly, and everything
upon it was carried awaj, crushed between the
blocks of ice, or finding its way to the bottom of
the river. Nor was the destruction always con
fined to inanimate objects : the thaw was some
times so sudden, and the inundations occasioned
by the floods were so extensive, that very many
lives were lost.
There was a time when the Thames was a clean
and wholesome river far below Somerset House ;
where London citizens, a-wearied with the toils of
business, might take a boat and enjoy the plea-

b LONDONIANA.
sures of angling, with the chance of catching
a salmon ; for, as Fitz Stephen says, the Thames
was once " a fishful river," and the privilege of
sitting at the table of the Prior of Westminster
was claimed by the fishermen in return for the
tithe of salmon which they presented at the high
altar of St. Peter's. It would seem that the
salmon even then required protection, for it is
nearly five hundred years since an Act was passed
for the preservation of salmon and salmon fry.
In our days it is more common to see porpoises
rolling about off Somerset House— than to catch
a fish of the salmon species anywhere in the river.
Those who in these days have only seen the
Thames under the muddy aspect which it presents
everywhere below Putney have no idea of the
beautifully transparent character of its waters
nearer its source, notwithstanding all the pollu
tion to which it is subjected iu its long course,
of more than two hundred miles from its rise in
Trewsbury mead to its estuarJ^ In the intervals
between the two hundred and seventeen cities,
towns, parishes, and hamlets whicli line its banks,
what beautiful pictures of green meadows may
now be seen glowing with a rich yellow, which
gives it in places, when the sun is shining upon
it, the appearance of a river of crystal set in a
broad frame of gold ; and if a thing of beauty is

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 7
a joy for ever, the many "thousands who dwell
on its banks ought to be grateful for the ever
lasting joys it has conferred.
One cause of the neglect with which the river
has been treated, at all events in that part of it
which flows above the City stone near Staines
Bridge, has no doubt been the multiplicity of
persons whose duty it is to take care of it.
" What is everybody's business is nobody's."
The list of the commissioners upon whom this
duty rests comprises the representatives in Parlia
ment of Wilts, Gloucester, Bucks, Berks, Middle
sex, Surrey, and Oxford University, and of the
cities and boroughs in these counties. To these
must be added the Lord Mayor and aldermen of
London, the Vice-Chancellor and heads of colleges
and halls, in the University of Oxford, the dean
and canons of Christchurch and Windsor, the
provost and fellows of Eton College, the rectors
and incumbents of the parishes which border on
the Thames and Isis on both sides from Staines
to Cricklade: the mayors tod recorders of Oxford,
Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Henlej', Wind
sor, and Maidenhead ; the senior bridge-warden
of Great Marlow, and the clerk of the works at
Windsor Castle. As if these were not enough to
ensure the utter neglect of the river, the various
Acts of Parliament which conferred powers on

0 LONDONIANA.
them gave also equal rights and duties to every
person having an estate of ^£100 annual value in
either of the counties through which it runs down
to Staines ; to the heir-apparent of every person
in these counties who has an estate of the annual
value of .£200 ; and to every person residing in
those counties who owns anywhere in Great
Britain land of the yearly value of £100, or his
heir-apparent to a person who owns land of
twice that value, or possesses £3000 personalty,
or is a bondholder upon the navigation to the
amount of £500.
Excess of care has not in this instance proved
particularly advantageous to the welfare of the
river. The total number of persons qualified
to act as its guardians under the above
heads amounts to between six and seven
hundred. Practicallj', it is left to fifteen com
missioners chosen out of the five districts, three
from each, whose proceedings are supposed to be
controlled by general meetings of the commis
sioners. The powers of the Conservancy Board
are more extensive, and stretch down the river
as far as Yenleete, or Yantlett Creek. It is com
posed of the Lord Mayor, two aldermen, four
members of the Common Council, the deputy
master of the Trinity House, two members ap
pointed by the Admiralty, one by the Board of

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 9
Trade, one by the Trinity House, two elected by
owners of shipping, one by owners of steamers,
two by owners of lighters and steam-tugs, and
one by occupiers of docks.
How the commissioners deal with their trust
may be gathered from the Report of the commis
sioners appointed to inquire into the best means
of preventing the pollution of rivers. They say
that, owing to decay and neglect, the condition of
the weirs and locks is ruinous ; that the rough
manner in which the navigation is worked is ex-
ti-emely injurious ; that large areas of land are
saturated with water, owing to the retention of
great heads of water at the weirs, wliich also
cause floods of great extent at Oxford, Windsor,
and other places. Weeds are cut or left uncut,
just as suits the interests of individuals; and if
the person who causes them to be cut does not
want them, he lets them float away down the
stream, where they collect in places, form ob
structions, and do other mischief The dredging
is carried on without any system, and parts of
the channel are silted up; so that the river,
which is generally said to be navigable as far up
as Lechlade, really is scarcely accessible to barges
above Oxford.
But this neglect of the Thames is of small
importance in comparison with the injury inflicted

10 LONDONIANA.
upon it by the vile usage to which it is subjected
,by the inhabitants of the places situated on its
banks and on the banks of its tributaries near
the points of junction. The number of these is
close upon 900,000, but very many more would
be added to this number if the people who live in
places higher up these streams, and who equally
assist in polluting it, were taken into account.
The extent of this pollution is frightful, and no
language we could venture to use could do more
than faintlj' shadow forth the horrors which met
the gaze of the commissioners, or were described
by the witnesses who gave evidence before the
commission. All these things existing, be it re
membered, above the point from which the water
is pumped for the supply of a large portion of the
population of London, the wonder is, that, under
the circumstances described, the water is so good
as it is, and not that it should possess the pecu
liarity of becoming pure in the vessels in which it
is taken to sea.
Compared with this kind of pollution, that
arising from trades carried on on the banks of
streams is of very small importance. Probably
in the case of the Thames and its tributaries the
worst is that caused by the paper-makers : for
not only do they let in the filthy water which
washes the rags and other substances used in the

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 11
manufacture, but they pour in the bleaching
liquid, which is absolutely dangerous to health,
and, which, if it were not diluted with an im
mense quantity of water, would render the con
tinued existence of fish anywhere near an im
possibility. This fouling of the stream has
given rise already, to much litigation in certain
localities, on account of the supposed destruction
of the fish ; and at this time, when such strenu
ous efforts are being made to induce salmon to
return to the Thames, it is to be hoped something
will be done to prevent its continuance. That
the sewage matter actually injures the fish when
it is first poured in, is very doubtful ; but its
subsequent putrefaction may give rise to gases
which have that effect. As to re-stocking the
river with salmon, we might manage to do with
out these if we could get an abundance of such
Thames trout as were picked up dead by a
fisherman who gave evidence before the com
mission ; one of which was two feet four inches
in length, another two feet nine, and would have
weighed, if it had been whole and sound, some
fifteen pounds.
We have already given an account of the
constitution of the Board of Conservancy. We
will now proceed to give a sketch of what has
been done in recent years for the improvement

12 LONDONIANA.
of the navigation of that portion of the river
which falls within the control of the Board.
So long ago as 1836, a committee was
appointed to inquire into the administration of
the conservancy of the Thames. The evidence
given before it induced this committee to recom
mend that a Bill should be prepared, under the
authority of Government for consolidating,
enlarging, and amending the laws and regula
tions affecting the port of London. The labours
of the committee of 1836 were, however, in
the end thrown away — at least nothing was
done in pursuance of their i-ecommendations.
Years rolled on, and another committee was
appointed in 1854 to make the same inquiries.
They reported that the Lord Mayor was Con
servator of the Thames from Staines to Yantlet
Creek— that is to say to Southend — as his prede
cessors had been from time immemorial; that
there were two classes of powers, one affecting
the Thames above London Bridge, the other
below it; and that the committee of Common
Council entrusted with the administration of
these powers was incompetent to do its work
properly. They recommended, instead of the
common councilmen, a Board of Navigation,
composed of the Lord Mayor, the First Lord
of the Admiralty, the President of the Board of

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 13
Trade, the First Commissioner of Woods and
Forests, and the Deputy Master of Trinity House.
This board to appoint properly-qualified officers.
and pay them out of the funds arising from
tonnage-rates and interest on stock, which two
years previously had amounted to £19,476, but
which in 1854, owing to the decreased duties
levied on shipping, was considered insufficient
for the purpose. At the time of this inquiry
litigation was going on between the Crown and
the Corporation with respect to the ownership
of the bed of the river between high and low
water-mark. This litigation had been raging
since 1844, and in 1854 the Cown offered to
abandon its claim on condition that the money
derived from the sale of this land, or for allowing
erections upon it, should be expended in the
improvement of the navigation. A compromise
was effected, by which the Corporation bound
itself to keep an account of rents and purchase-
money, to pay one-third to the Crown, and to
expend the rest on navigation purposes. This
compromise was effected shortly after the com
mittee had made its report, and the arrangement
was confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed
in 1857, which modelled the Conservancy Board
as it exists at present, less the representatives
of the shipping interest, wh.o have been added

14 LONDONIANA.
subsequently, and in this Board are vested the
whole of the funds. It likewise gave the Board
full powers to deal with the Thames and manage
the traffic as it thought fit, except that the
consent of the Admiralty was to be obtained
for erections below high-water mark, and the
Crown reserved its right to the bed of the
Thames in front of its own lands. When the
receipts exceeded the expenditure, the surplus was
to be applied, first, in payment of debts ; secondly,
in reduction of tolls ; and in the highly improbable,
if not impossible, event of a surplus remaining
after this, it was to be disposed of by Parliament.
The powers conferred by the Act sound very com
plete, but they are in reality curtailed to an extent
which nobody seems able to estimate by saving
clauses, which guarantee the rights of a host of
boards, companies, and private individuals.
The Conservancy Board appears to be wholly
irresponsible. But judging from the evi
dence, the Board of Conservancy does its work
in a way which leaves little ground for com
plaint, and we see no reason to believe 'that
its yearly income could be expended more bene
ficially than at present. This opinion is con
firmed by the report of a committee, based on
that evidence, which states, " The Board have,
in the course of five years, entirely removed or

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 15
greatly diminished all the shoals between London
Bridge and Barking Creek, which narrowed the
water-way and obstructed the navigation of the
river ; they have laid down in well-chosen
stations, secure and commodious moorings for
vessels riding in the stream, which has greatly
facilitated its immense and complicated traffic;
they have done something towards the rectifica
tion of the channel; they have, as far as possible,
protected the river from the practices of those
who would make its bed the receptacle of mud
and rubbish, and who poisoned its water with
impurities. Finall}', out of the capital fund at
their disposal they have erected, at various points
on the river banks, improved piers and landing-
places, which have not only afforded great accom
modation to the thousands of passengers who
daily crowd the highway of the Thames, but
have opened to the lighters and small craft
plying on the river an inshore passage, obstructed
or blocked up by the former landing-places."
For all of these services the committee is of
opinion that the Board deserves the thanks of
all who are interested in the Thames.
This committee, though it pronounced the
complaints against the Conservancy Board on
the whole to be ill-founded, nevertheless thought
that some changes would be beneficial.

16 LONDONIANA.
The Bill under discussion in Parliament pro
poses to place the control of the upper part of the
river in the hands of the same body which go
verns the lower, so that the Conservancy Acts,
instead of being operative only as far up as
Staines, will extend to its source. The weirs
and locks established from time to time by private
persons will no longer be suffered to remain in
their hands ; and the pollution of the river will,
as far as possible, be prevented by the prohibition
of the construction of any more sewers with out
lets into the Thames, or within three miles of the
mouth of either of its tributaries. In the case of
existing sewers, the Conservancy Board will have
power to stop them under certain conditions.
All these regulations for the better working and
management of the traffic on the Thames are good
in their way ; but if the improvement of the river
by embankments and so forth is to be accom
panied with a serious diminution of its volume,
that will be a much more important matter. The
river is fed by tributaries which, singularly
enough, are equal in number on the north and
south banks— seven on either side— and which
contribute to supply the metropolis, and eight
others, which flow in below the pumping stations
of the water companies; and it is to be hoped
that, when the Board get the power into their

A CHAPTER ON THE THAMES. 17
hands, they will speedily make the river navi
gable much higher up than at present, and, at the
same time, purify and increase the volume of its
water. One word, in conclusion, respecting the people
who spend their working days and nights on the
Thames. These are as different from each other
as the flags which fly from the almost innumer
able vessels that lie in the docks and the Pool.
Apart from the honest population, who earn their
living by the hardest work, there are thousands
who live either entirely or partly by work which
is not open and above-board. Various names are
applied to the different classes of operators, but it
would be difficult to draw a sharp line between
their operations. The man who lets his boat
drift alongside a vessel to receive the plunder of a
confederate on board would be as ready, if the
opportunity offered, to steal the anchor, or creep
on board and carry off the captain's chronometer ;
and the same man who drags diligently for hours
for a dropped chain is often the same who prowls
up and down among the shipping in search after
dead bodies, or creeps along shore in the forbidden
operation of " boning and crumping," the meaning
of which is understood by members of the Board
of Works and Thames Conservators to be, in
plain English, " picking and stealing."
VOL. II. c

18

LONDON FROM EITZSTEPHEN'S POINT
OF VIEW.

THE most casual observer cannot fail to be
struck at times, as he wanders through our
great Metropolis, with the thought how, year by
year, the face of London is gradually becoming
changed. It is true that we have not now any
Protector Somerset to demolish churches, or to
threaten us with the destruction of the Abbey,
nor are we likely to have any great relic of old
London wilfully swept away. Still, what are
called the " exigencies of civilisation," are slowly
yet surely overlaying, aud iu a measure hiding
much of what is left to remind us of what London
has been. Indeed many changes are going on
which might lead to an over-zealous and unprac
tical antiquary to doubt whether " civilisation" is
quite the proper term by which to characterise

EITZSTEPHEN'S VIEW OF LONDON. 19
the process. But whether the Old World pre
judices of antiquaries are to be considered or not,
there are not wanting in Thames Embankments,
and railways overhead and underfoot, indications
of a change appreciable by the most unprejudiced
utilitarian. It is interesting to watch the development of
any great town, but most interesting of all to
Englishmen must it be to look back upon pictures
of what their leviathan capital was in days gone
by. We therefore propose to set before our
readers such a picture of London in the reign of
Henry IL, as given us by a learned writer of the
time. Our author is William Fitzstephen, a
monk of Canterbury, and a biographer of Arch
bishop Thomas a Becket, and who, according to
his own account, was the Archbishop's sub-
deacon, and held other offices about his person.
And here we feel sure that it is not necessary
for us to urge upon our readers the caution which
Strype, writing about A.D. 172(\ thopght fit to
impress upon the readers of his day, viz. : " That
no modern ears may be offended with this lan
guage, remember by whom it was writ, a monk,
the Pope's sworn creature ; and when, namely,
about five hundred years ago, in the very depth of
Popery." It would puzzle the most ingenious to
discover any point in which the author's allegi-
c 2

20 LONDONIANA.
ance to the Pope can detract from the value of
his description. We should rather be tempted to
retort upon Strype his own words, and to beg
our readers to " remember " when " it was writ."
Our author's sketch bears upon its face the stamp
of authenticity, which indeed seems scarcely to be
disputed ; it is written iu the quaintest Latin,
and is full of most amusing touches and details
which will well repay perusal.
Our monk, who is well versed in his classics,
has in his mind, in his desci'iption of the City,
the model of Plato and of Sallust ; and as the
latter gives a sketch of Africa in his account of
the Roman Wars there, so in the life of St.
Thomas there would be a description of London,
where the Saint was born. In proof of the high
antiquity of London — which is said to boast a
greater age than Rome itself — appeal is made to
the Chroniclers. By the " Chroniclers," Geoffry
of Monmouth seems especially to be meant, who
derives the foundation of the City from Brute the
son of ^neas, who is said to have called it
Trinovantum or New Troy. Some remnant of
this tradition is supposed to remain even to this
day in our " troy-weight," which was a weight of
great antiquity in London. Caesar also always
speaks of the City and its district as " Civitas
Trinovantum," and it is not until the time of

FITZSTEPHEN'S view OP LONDON. 21
Tacitus that we hear of the name Londinium.
From this fanciful derivation of the Cities of
London and Rome from a common Eastern stock,
is deduced a most curious and amusing analogy
between their institutions. The annually elected
Sheriffs of the one answer to the Consuls of the
other; both have a Senatorial order and lesser
magistrates ; both have aqueducts and sewers ;
in both are separate courts for the different kinds
of causes, and stated days for public assemblies.
It would not, of course, require much penetra
tion to upset such analogies as these, which are
as mythical as the theory on which they are built,
though they certainly deserve the praise of great
ingenuity. Our credulity, however, is not taxed
to such an extent, whatever we may think of the
London of to-day, .vhen we are called upon to
acquiesce ia the praise which our author thought
London deserved before all other cities for its
good laws, its religious observances, its jovial
hospitality. " The only pests of London," it is said, " are
the immoderate drinking of fools, and frequent
fires." It is to be feared that our daily police
reports forbid us to boast in these days much
improvement in the former of these points ; and
as to the latter, though considering the enormous
growth of London, the average may be thought

22 LONDONIANA.
to have improved, yet the experience of late
years still leaves much to be desired. A suspicion
would force itself upon us, as perhaps it may have
Occurred to the Monk of Canterbury, that there is
a more intimate relation between these two
" pests" than that of mere juxtaposition.
Fitzstephen singles out several points in
which he thought the London of his day specially
deserving of commendation. Such were the
salubrity of its air, its diligent cultivation of the
Christian religion, the great strength of the forti
fications, the natural situation of the town, the
Sabine morality of its matrons, and the jovial
character of its sports. We are favoured with
some interesting particulars which seem to war
rant this commendation.
On the point of ecclesiastical dignity, we are
informed that London may vie with Canterbury,
This question we know was practically raised by
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, the great
antagonist of Thomas a Becket. Fitzstephen
does not attempt to solve the diflSculty ; but,
allowing that London was formerly the Metropo
litan See, and may perhaps become so again, he
is inclined to believe that the glory shed by St.
Thomas's martyrdom over Canterbury should
give the latter, for the present at least, the pre
eminence. Yet in compensation, as it were, for

eitzstephen's view OF LONDON. 23
this depreciation, he allows that something may
be urged on the side of London, as being the
birth-place of the martyr. We learn that in
London and its suburbs there were in Eitz
stephen's time thirteen greater conventual
churches, and one hundred and twenty-six parish
churches. Of the former, the chief would seem to
have been St. Paul's, the origin of which was
by the old chroniclers carried back to a very re
mote period, and which was said to have been
built on the site of the old temple of Diana; St.
Mary Overye (over the rie or water) in South
wark, St. Martin's-le-Grand, the Priory of Holy
Trinity within Aldgate, St. Bartholomew's Priory,
and St. Peter's at Westminster. Attached to
three of the principal churches there were cele
brated schools. It is a matter of doubt which
should be selected as the three chief schools at
this time, since by the piety of their founders
most of the greater churches had endowments for
schools. But the balance of testimony inclines
to yield the palm to the schools of St. Paul, St.
Mai-y Overye, and St. Peter at Westminster.
The attainments of the pupils of these schools
were of no mean order ; and we are not sure that
London schoolmasters of the present age could
afford more creditable or entertaining programmes

24 LONDONIANA.
for " Speech days " than we have here presented
to us by our author.
On festival-days the scholars had dialectic con
tests, in which the more straightforward dispu
tants, whose object was the attainment of truth,
fought with the legitimate weapons of syllogism
and enthymeme, while the more subtle geniuses
used the side-blows of paralogism and "verbal
inundation." These exhibitions, we may believe,
were confined to the older scholars, who would
more resemble the undergraduates of our univer
sities at the present day. But the younger pupils
were not without their trials of strength, for we
learn that the boys of the different schools had
sets-to " with verses on the rudiments of gram
mar, or the rules of preterites and supines." But
lest the spectators should fancy these feats, how
ever improving, to be somewhat dull, a more
lively entertainment was provided to follow.
Logical subtleties and grammatical puzzles were
discarded, and a Fescennine licence prevailed.
Under fictitious names the foibles of their fellow-
pupils and even of the authorities were lashed
with Socratic wit, and invectives of a fiercer kind,
taking vent in "bold dithyrambics." Perhaps in
the annual hits in the epilogue to the play at
Westminster School we have a remnant of this
old playful satire. We may feel assured that

FTTZSTEPHEN'S view op LONDON. 25
" sound learning " was not less promoted by these
exercises than by the modern recitation ad nau
seam of stock passages of Byron or Sheridan.
The fortifications of London were such as to
excite the admiration of all. Chief of these was
the Tower, the foundation of which is said to be
of a marvellous depth, and its walls cemented
with mortar tempered with the blood of animals.
On the western side of the city also were two
towers of exceeding strength, while at intervals
along the walls were turrets and fortified gates.
Our author tells us that originally— probably in
the Saxon times— there was also a southern wall
running along the northern bank of the Thames,
which, with a pang of regret, we hear was then
full of fish ; but the influx and reflux of the tide
had gradually washed away the foundations, so
that in his time there were uo traces of the wall
remaining. Stow, in his " Survey of London,"
made in Henry VIII.'s time, says that the walls
of London, according to Fitzstephen, must have
been in the shape of a strung bow, the wall along
the river bank representing the string. In these
walls we leai'n there were seven double gates, in
which number, besides the four original gates —
Aldgate, Aldersgate, Ludgate, and Bridge Gate-
were probably included a gate by the Tower,
Bishopsgate, and Cripplegate. The royal palace

26 LONDONIANA.
was also a building of great strength. It was
situated on the river two miles west of the City,
though connected with it by a populous suburb
extending the whole way. This was, of course,
the Palace of Westminster, where, as we learn,
from Ingulphus, Edward the Confessor held his
court, and entertained the high and mighty
William, Duke of Normandy, when on a visit to
England. Here, too, the Norman kings seem to
have occasionally dwelt when they could be en
ticed from Winchester and the pleasures of the
chase. For Roger of Wendover and Matthew
Paris tell us that William Rufus built the great
Hall in 1097, and that on one occasion, on return
ing from Normandy, he kept his feast of Whit
suntide right royally in it, and that when he
heard his guests admiring its grandeur, he boast
fully exclaimed : " This hall is not big enough by
half, and is but a bed-chamber in comparison of
that which I mean to make." Notwithstanding
William II.'s boast, the palace seems soon after
this to have been allowed to fall into decay, for
early in the reign of Henry IL, Fitzstephen tells
us that the Chancellor Becket found it almost a
ruin, and repaired it in an incredibly short time
— between Easter and Whitsuntide. With an
amusing detail, which reminds us that carpenters
and bricklayers are the same in all ages, we are

eitzstephen's view OF LONDON. 27
also told that the clatter which the workmen
made was so great that people who came near
could not hear each other speak.
The salubrity of the air of London, we are told,
was most remarkable, insomuch as to have a per
ceptible effect in producing kindliness and liber
ality in the inhabitants — an effect which may
probably have evaporated after so many centuries.
Dwellers in our overgrown London of to-day are
mocked with glowing accounts of citizens' gardens
in the suburbs, spatiosi as well as speciosi. To
the north were green fields and pastures, and
a broad expanse of meadows, intersected with
numerous running bi'ooks. Aud, what is more, a
little beyond there— about what is now Islington,
Pentonville, and Kentish Town — stretched a vast
forest, the lurking-place of deer, boars, and wild
cattle. Among the chief natural features of these
pleasant places towards the north were the many
springs or fountains of " sweet, wholesome, and
clear water, trickling over glistening pebbles."
To these, in summer-time, resorted merry pic-nic
parties of old and young. The principal springs
seem to have been the Fons Sacer, Clerken-well,
and St. Clement's-well, or Holy-well. To the
first of these a strange fatality, seems to have
attached, for even in Heni-y VIII.'s time we read,
" it was much decayed and spoiled with filthiness

28 LONDONIANA.
purposely laid there." St. Clement's-well, on the
contrary, says Stow, " is yet fair and curbed
square with hard stone, and is always kept clean
for common use. It is always full, and never
wanteth water." It is the water of this well, in
all probability, that still feeds the Roman bath in
the Strand. Clerkenwell was near the west end
of Clerkenwell Church, to which it gave its name.
It derived its appellation from the custom of
the clerks or clergy of London assembling there
annually and acting plays, the subjects of which
were scenes from Holy Scripture, or the miracles
and martyrdom of saints. This custom continued
down to later times ; for we find that, in 1390, the
clerks acted plays, which lasted three days, in the
presence of Richard II. and his queen and nobles ;
and in 1409 they represented a play on the Crea
tion of the World, which lasted eight days, and
at which most of the nobles and gentry of the
kingdom were present.
But to return to Fitzstephen. The population
of the City in the reign of Henry II. may be
reckoned, according to our author, at about 350,000,
For, in the wars of Stephen, we are told that, at
the King's command, the citizens mustered 20,000
horse and 60,000 foot. All these are said to
have been soldiers of the highest efficiency, and
consequently made London a great power in the

eitzstephen's view OF LONDON. 29
State, as indeed it was shown to be when it
almost held in its own hands the balance between
Stephen and Matilda, The consciousness of their
corporate importance seems to have been reflected
in the persons of individual citizens, for we are
told that the citizens of London were remarkable
above all others for the polish of their manners
and the richness of their dress. It would seem,
too, that civic magnificence, even in those days,
vented itself in sumptuous dishes, which might
fairly vie with the turtle and venison of to-day.
For not only did rich profusion reign in private
houses, but epicurean appetites were catered for
on a grander scale at a magnificent restaurant
ou the river-bank. Here were to be had every
variety of fish, flesh, and fowl, roast, fried, and
boiled ; here, for more refined appetites, were all
the Horatian delicacies of sturgeon, "Afra avis,!'
and " attagen lonicus," and many besides. Most
convenient must such an establishment have
been, aud a boon to be highly prized by house
wives, for to it were the citizens accustomed to
send to supply any want in their housekeeping on
the sudden arrival of guests. Perhaps, too, we
shall have no diflSculty in subscribing to our
" author's quaint remark, that this establish
ment tended to the progress of civilization,
such civilization as— according to Plato —

30 LONDONIANA,
brings the doctor close upon the heels of the
cook. The national love for out-door sports was in
full vigour under the first Plantagenet, and is
thought by our author worthy of special notice;
" for," as he says, " it is not right that a city should
be addicted only to useful and grave pursuits,
but it should be also pleasant and jovial ;" and he
supports this opinion by the customs of old Rome,
where the public games were held to be a state
duty as important as any other. Let us follow
in his steps and glance at the sports of the boys
first, " for we were all boys once," And here, we
are sorry to say that one of the chief sports of
the schoolboy of Henry IL's reign, can in no wise
be approved, for we learn that cock-fighting
was a common practice; each boy brought his
own bird for the fray, and, what was worst of all,
this was done with the sanction of the masters.
But we are glad to find that they had more
rational sports than these. At certain times the
whole youth of the city betook themselves to the
suburban fields, where they had animated contests
at ball, school being pitted against school, and
craft against craft. These contests were so at
tractive as to bring the elder citizens on horse
back to witness them. On the Sundays in Lent
there were sham fights on horseback, in which

eitzstephen's view OF LONDON. 31
the sons of the greatest nobles in the land took
part; and during the Easter holidays there were
representations of naval engagements on the
river. Throughout the summer there were various
games of running, leaping, wrestling, shooting
with the bow, or slinging stones. The girls, too,
with Arcadian simplicity, enjoyed themselves in
the moonlit evenings with dancing, in the open
air, to the music of the harp. In winter, skating
was a favourite sport of young and old. It is
curious to observe that this skating took place
" on that great lake which washes the northern
walls of the city." This was what is now Moor
fields, concerning which Strype tells us that " this
Morefield was, in ancient writings, called Magna
Mora, because of the great extent of the more, or
mere. To which also belonged a fishery for the
use of the city ; both, from ancient times, in the
possession of the city," And another coutinuator
of Stow says that, " formerly these fields were
impassable, but for causeways purposely made for
that intent. Now, the walks are no mean cause
of preserving health and wholesome air to the
city ; and such an eternal honour thereto as no
iniquity of time shall be able to deface.'' Alas,
for his prediction ! What shall we say of it now?
"Moorfields are fields no more." The marshes
were first built upon towards the end of Charles IL's

32 LONDONIANA.
reign. The swampy character of the ground is
still indicated in the names of Finsbury {Fenshury)
aud Moorfields.
But we are forgetting our sports. Having gone
through the catalogue of boyish amusements, we
come now to those of the elders. And here, as
in the case of the boys, our modern notions are
shocked by exhibitions of barbarity which seem
to have grown with the ages of those who indulged
in them. Instead of cock-fighting, we are now
introduced to baiting of bulls and bears, and the
bloody conflicts of boars, with which the citizens
used to enliven their winter holidays. We hear
of other sports which, by common consent, are
considered more fit for gentlemen. Such were
hunting, hawking, and falconry, in which
A'Becket, in his more worldly days, was a great
adept. The huntsmen must have had a splendid
time, for the citizens had the right of hunting
over Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and part of the
adjacent counties, the woods of which were
peopled with stags and wild boars, to say nothing
of an abundance of smaller game. Of these
privileges we may well believe our bold citizens,
not yet entirely engrossed with the pursuit of
wealth, amply availed themselves.
There was yet another source of amusement
which seems to have been eagerly looked forward

eitzstephen's view op LONDON. 33
to both by old and young. This was the great
fair, principally for horses, held at stated inter
vals outside the city walls, on a plain which, as
we are told, was smooth re et nomine. In this we
recognise the fViir of Smithfield (Smoothjield),
known in later times as St. Bartholomew's Fair.
Here were to be purchased horses of all descrip
tions, from the knightly charger to the humble
sumpter-horse. We have, in our author, a very
animated description of the process of trying the
paces of these animals, in which the " vulgar
horses" had to stand aside and give place to the
nobler steeds, when the latter were required to
exhibit their powers. Here might be seen the
various devices of that crafty animal, the horse-
dealer, to ensnare his deluded customers. Here
everything is life and bustle. The horses them
selves are infected by the excitement of their
masters, and cannot rest, but prick up their ears,
eager for the excitement of the race. So full of
motion is all around that a philosopher might
dream that here at length Heraclitus' "perpetual
flux" was destined to be realised.
Such were the jocund sports in which, while
London was still .young, her citizens engaged.
In these more practical days, the grave amuse
ment of volunteering bids fair to supplant almost
all of them ; and cricket itself, a serious business,
VOL. II. D

34 LONDONIANA.
to be left almost the sole representative of our
old out-door games.
Here we must take leave of our author. On a
calm review of this and other like pictures of
mediaeval life, the reflection forces itself upon us,
how great a change has come over, not only the
face of our great towns, but the very habits
of our people, since the days when our land was
" merrie England." The grave responsibilities
of our increased wealth and influence have had a
corresponding effect upon our spirits. Moreover,
the earnest, eager faces which throng our streets
would seem to indicate that our very counten
ances have undergone a change. For we cannot
imagine such faces to have belonged to the reck
less pleasure-seekers of old, a good share of whose
time was spent in jollity and amusement. Of
course, there is uo ground for surprise, and per
haps very little for regret, in this. The spread
of education has in great measure substituted in
tellectual for physical amusements ; aud in strik
ing the balance between a dyspeptic body and an
unfurnished mind, every man will follow his own
personal predilections. There can be no question
as to their respective influences on the welfare of
mankind, so long as, though rude health may be
the attendant of the one, sovereign knowledge is
the reward of the other.

35

A STROLL ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND
HIGHGATE,
(1871.)

IN spite of the efforts of the Wilson family, as
Lords of the Manor, to enclose it, Hampstead
Heath still remains essentially the " people's '
heath, thanks to the generous spirit of the inhabi
tants of our " Middlesex Oberland," and the efforts
of Mr. Le Breton, by whose strenuous exertions
that lovely spot has been spared from sharing the
fate of some of the other open spaces round
London, which, having for many years been the
healthy resort of the working classes, are now-
being rapidly and cruelly encroached upon for
building purposes.
Anyone at all familiar with the Metropolis is
probably acquainted with the situation of Hamp
stead Heath, occupying, as it does, one of what
D 2

36 LONDONIANA.
Mr. W. Howitt so well calls the "Northern Heights
of London," and to whose very interesting book
bearing this title we are largely indebted for the
information contained in this paper
There are two routes by which the Londoner
may make the journey to this suburban retreat,
the one by way of Tottenham Court Road and
Haverstock Hill, the other by the Metropolitan
(or Underground) Railway to Swiss Cottage
Station. The former road passed the wooden cot
tage once tenanted by Sir Richard Steele, whose
name it bore, but recently pulled down, and where
Steele was visited by Addison and other familiar
friends. The latter route, from the Swiss Cottage,
lay till even a more recent date over the pleasant
upland meadows so much admired by Leigh Hunt,
having on the right old Belsize, formerly cele
brated for its holy fountain of never-failing clear
water, concerning the merits of which the monks
of Westminster had many a pleasant tale to tell
some three centuries and a half ago. It is a mile's
walk from either Haverstock Hill or the Swiss
Cottage to the parish churchyard of Hampstead ;
but the fatigue of accomplishing it on a clear day
will be well repaid by the splendid view to be
obtained from this spot, which comprises the
Crystal Palace and the Sui-rey Hills as far as
Epsom. The present church of Hampstead— a

ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE. 37
modern unsightly edifice— was built, in 1747, in
place of the old parish church, of which a view
may be seen in Park's " History of Hampstead."
Another five minutes' walk will take the visitor,
by any one of a dozen devious paths, up a second
ascent to the Heath, where he will have reached
an altitude equivalent to the cross of St. Paul's
Cathedral, or some four hundred feet above the
level valley of the Thames. Here the panorama
includes, on the one side, an expansive survey of
the Metropolis, with the huge dome of St. Paul's
looming out above a dense cloud-vest of smoke ;
the Knockholt Beeches, near Sevenoaks ; Brent
wood Hill and the Laindon Hills, in Essex ; the
Grand Stand at Epsom and Richmond Hill, in
Sm-rey ; the steeple of Hainslop Church, in North
amptonshire ; and the regal towers of Windsor ;
the most distant object visible, however, is said
to be a church just on the borders of Bucking
hamshire and Oxfordshire ; and at our feet the
undulating plain, rich and verdant, stretches away
over Willesden and Hendon to Harrow-on-the-
Hill. Well may the Londoner be proud, and justly
so, of these " Northern heights ;" and a song, very
popular a year or two ago, enunciated an un
doubted truth when it said that, of all the suburbs
of this great Metropolis, —

38 LONDONIANA.
" Hampstcad's the place to ruralize.".
The loveliness of the scenery of Hampstead
Heath, the beauty of its view, the freshness and
salubrity of its air, drew thousands to its breezy
brow long before London could count its popula
tion by millions. Its green hollows, its shady
lanes, its gorse and heather, its sandpits and
weird pine-trees, its long avenues of limes and
beeches, its fishless ponds and rugged turf, have
for ages been visited and admired. It is a spot
sacred to popular pastime and popular taste for
the beautiful — a spot that has been virtually the
people's for generations past, and which is now
happily secured to the people for all generations
to come.
The entrance to the Heath, by way of
Hampstead Church, is through a pleasant avenue
of shady limes, where may be noticed a rustic
seat in what is still called Judges' Walk, or
Kiug's Bench Avenue. It is said that, during
the time when the plague was raging in London,
the Courts of Law were temporarily transferred
hither from Westminster, and that " the Heath
was tenanted by wig and toga- bearing gentlemen,
who were forced to sleep under canvas, owing to
the want of accommodation in the village of
Hampstead. Prior to the year 1701, when that
honour was transferred to Brentford, as a more

ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE. 39
central spot, the elections of knights of the shire
for Middlesex were held on Hampstead Heath ;
and in the western part of the Heath, behind
Jack Straw's Castle, Hampstead races were held
in the last century. These races, as we learn
from various sources, drew together so much low
company that they were put down on account of
the mischief that resulted from them. The very
existence of a race-course on Hampstead Heath
seems now entirely forgotten, and the uneven
character of the ground, which has been excavated
ffu- gravel and sand, is such as would render a
visitor almost disposed to doubt whether such
could ever have been the case. The breezy
slopes of Hampstead Heath are far better suited
for the purposes of a military review, and a
prettier sight cannot easily be imagined than
a sham fight here on a Volunteer field day.
At the farther end of the Heath, adjoining-
Lord Mansfield's property of Caen Wood, and
overlooking Hendon and Fincliley, stands a well-
known inn, called The Spaniards, from the fact
of its having been once inhabited by a family
connected with the Spanish Embassy ; it has
been a place of entertainment for a century, or
even more. Leaving the open Heath, and the
unceasing touting of the donkej'-drivers, and
passing back townwards in a southern direction,

40 LONDONIANA,
by a broad road, which seems to have been
artificially raised along the ridge of the hill, we
arrive at Jack Straw's Castle, where we get a
fine view of St. Paul's, with the whole of the
eastern part of the metropolis spread out at our
feet, and the valley of the Thames stretching
away in the hazy distance, as far as Gravesend.
The private residence which we pass on the left,
on quitting the Heath, is the well-known Upper
Flask, formerly the place of meeting in the
summer months for the members of the Kit-Kat
Club, and noted by Richardson in his novel of
" Clarissa Harlowe," as the place to which the
fashionable villain, Lovelace, under the promise
of marriage, lured away the heroine from her
tyrannical family, George Steevens, the cele
brated commentator of Shakespeare, lived and
died at the Upper Flask,
In the beginning of the eighteenth century,
owing to the discovery of a chalybeate spring,
Hampstead had gained the reputation of a
" watering place,"' and was fast rivalling the
glories of Epsom and Tunbridge AVells ; but even
prior to this it had grown gradually into a place
of fashionable resort, on account of its healthy
and invigorating air. As early as 1698, "The
AVells" were spoken of by that name ; and two or
three years afterwards the virtues of the " chaly-

ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE, 41
beate waters of Hampstead" were loudly trum
peted by a physician of eminence and local
celebrity, Dr, Gibbons, as well as by one Dr,
John Soame ; they were also duly advertised in the
Post-hoy of the period. The " quality" flocked
to " Well Walk" to drink the waters, to flirt,
and to gamble ; and, according to Howitt, even
dice and cards were not the worst or most ob
jectionable of the dissipations there offered to the
youth of both sexes, for " houses of amusement
and dissipation now started up on all sides, and
the public papers teemed with advertisements of
concerts at the ' Long-room,' raffles at the ' Wells,'
races on the Heath, and ' private marriages at
Sion Chapel.' " The character of Hampstead and
its fashionable adjunct, Belsize, however, may
be even more accurately'' gathered from Baker's
comedy, entitled " Hampstead Heath," brought
out at Drury Lane Theatre about the period of
which we have just spoken, as the following
passage will show: —
" Act I. Scene 1. — Hampstead.
" Smart. Hampstead for awhile assumes the day. The
lively season o' the year ; the shining crowd assembled at
this time, and the noble selection of the place, gives us the
nearest show of Paradise.
" Bloom. London now indeed has but a melancholy aspect,
and a sweet rural spot seems an adjournment o' the nation,
where business is laid fast asleep, variety of diversions feast

42 LONDONIANA.
our fickle fancies, and every man wears a face of pleasure.
The cards fly, the bowls run, the dice rattle ; some lose their
money with ease and negligence, and others are , well pleased
to pocket it. But what fine ladies does the place afibrd ?
¦' Smart. Assemblies so near the town give us a sample of
each degree. "We have city ladies that are over dressed and
no air ; court ladies that are all air and no dress ; and country
dames with broad brown faces like a Stepney bun ; besides an
endless number of Fleet Street sempstresses, that dance minuets
in their furbeloe scarfs, and their clothes hang as loose about
them as their reputation.
***** " [^JEnter Driver."]
" Smart. Mr. Deputy Driver, stock-jobber, state-botcher,
the terror of strolling women, and chief beggar-hunter, come
to visit Hampstead !
"Driver. And d'you think me so very shallow, Captain, to
leave the good of the nation, and getting money, to muddle
it away here 'mougst fojjs, fiddlers, and furbeloes, where
everything's as dear as freeholder's votes, and a greater impo
sition than a Dutch reckoning. I am come hither, but 'tis to
ferret out a frisking wife o' mine, one o' the giddy multitude
that's rambled up to this ridiculous assembly.
" Bloom. I hope, Mr. Deputy, you will find her in good
hands : coquetting at the "Wells with some Covent Garden
beau ; or retired to picquet with some brisk young Templar."
The Wells continued to be more or less a place
of resort for invalids, real and imaginary, down to
the early part of the present century; but the
visit of George III. and the Court to Cheltenham
set the tide of fashion in a different direction.
The chalybeate waters of Hampstead soon after

ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE. 43
lost their medicinal reputation, and now merely
serve to supply a public drinking fountain in what
still bears, as though in mockery, the name of
" Well Walk."
But we must now pass across the fields by way
of the "Ponds," and, skirting Caen Wood, to
Highgate, which almost adjoins Hampstead on its
eastern side. Around this spot, as around Hamp
stead, there are many houses which have an his
toric interest. Such are Caen Wood, the noble
residence of Lord Mansfield, whither Guy Faux's
comrades are said to have retreated upon the
failure of their attempt to blow up the Houses of
Parliament ; Cromwell House, once the home of
Ireton ; Andrew Marvel's house, which once be
longed to the rapacious Earl of Lauderdale ; and
Arundel House, once the suburban residence of
the Earls of Arundel, and afterwards of the noble
family of Cornwallis. The walls and timbers of
each of these houses are redolent of the history of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
associated with names which will never die out of
history, such as Arabella Stuart, Lord Bacon,
and poor Nell Gwynne. In the Grove at
Highgate is still pointed out the house where
Samuel Taylor Coleridge resided and died, and
long will the pleasant walks round Highgate be
connected with his memory.

44 LONDONIANA.
The story of Dick AVhittington, "thrice Lord
Mayor of London," is known to every one, but
his connection with Highgate will be a suflScient
excuse for quoting from Mr. Howitt's work, by
way of conclusion, the following paragraph relat
ing to " Whittington Stone :"—
"Descending the hill from Lauderdale House
towards Holloway, and not far before we come to
the ' Archway Tavern,' we arrive at a massive
stone, standing on the edge of the footpath, which
seems to give reality to the tales of our nurseries.
It bears this inscription : —
"Whittington Stone.
Sir Richard "Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.
1397 .... Eichard IL
1409 .... Henry IV.
1419 . . Henry V.
If this stone speaks the truth, Dick Whittington
was a real man of flesh and blood, flourishing in
an historic period, and not the creation of some
old story-teller who delighted to amuse children.
Here he really sat and listened to ' Bow Bells,'
which rang him back to be ' thrice Lord Mayor of
London.' Whatever of fable has wreathed itself
like ivy round this old story, there was a bona. fide
substantial tree for it to twine round. Here Dick
sat on a stone (which appears to have been the
base of an ancient cross) and listened to that

ROUND HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE. 45
agreeable recall. The stone, we are told, is not
the actual one on which Dick sat. That had been
thrown down aud broken to pieces in an age
which ignored the worship of relics, and its frag
ments were removed years ago, and placed as
kerb-stones against the posts at the corner of
Queen's Head Lane. But this stone was erected
on or near the spot as a proper memorial of the
fact that the hero of this story — no longer plain
Dick, but Sir Richard Whittington — loved to ride
out in this direction, and to dismount, in order to
walk up the hill, at this stone, and by it to re
mount his horse again —a very characteristic trait
of Whittington's humanity."

46

MACAULAY THE LONDONER.
(1876.)

JT may sound strange to our readers' eyes and
ears, but still it is an undoubted fact that,
although he came of Scottish, and indeed High
land extraction and parentage, and though, as a
matter of fact, he was born in a quiet Leicester
shire manor house, yet in heart and soul Thomas
Babington Macaulay was a " Londoner of the
Londoners." AVe do not mean to say that he
had a small and scanty stock of sympathies with
the country, fine scenery, foreign lands, and
scenes of travel ; for the truth is that for all that is
divine and Godlike, or historically great and
grand, he had a most appreciative eye and heart ;
but still he was eminently cut out for the life of a
Londoner, a denizen of the Metropolis ; fitted to
shine in society, and beloved and admired in
London circles ; and he devoutly believed with

MACAULAY THE LONDONER. 47
Dr. Johnson that " the full tide of human life and
interest " is to be seen nowhere so truly as in the
great thoroughfares of Loudon. The Doctor
fixed its centre in the Strand, as is known to
every reader of Boswell. Macaulay would have
fixed it in Pall Mall or St, James's Sreet, the
clubs of the nineteenth century having migrated
from the neighbourheod of Temple Bar to that of
old Carlton House,
But over and above being a Londoner in sen
timent, Macaulay was very largely a Londoner by
actual residence. It was in Lambeth, then com
paratively a thinly peopled and not a vulgar
suburb, that his parents, Zachary Macaulay and
his wife Selina Mills, took up their abode on
their marriage ; and there it was doubtless their
intention that their first-born child shouhl have
been born, only he came rather suddeulj' into the
world while his mother was on a visit at Rothley
Temple, Mr. Babington's seat in Leicestershire,
from which in after-life ' he took the title that
opened to him the doors of the House of Lords,
and so made the philanthropist's son and the
Scottish minister's grandson the " peer " of the
bluest blood in all the land.
Little Tommy Macaulay was scarcely out of
arms when his parents were forced to migrate
from the fresh air of suburban Lambeth into

48 LONDONIANA.
Birchin Lane, Zachary Macaulay having been
appointed secretary of a company for the im
provement of the condition of the slaves in
Western Africa, and for the development of the
British settlements on that coast.
In Birchin Lane he spent two years, " The
only place," writes his nephew and biographer,
Mr. Trevelyan, " where the child could be taken
for exercise and for what might be called air, was
the garden attached to Drapers' Hall, which,
already under sentence to be covered with bricks
and mortar at an early date, lies behind Throg-
morton Street and w^ithin a hundred yards of the
Stock Exchange. To this dismal yard, contain
ing as much gravel as grass, and frowned upon
by a board of rules and regulations almost as
large as itself, his mother used to convey the
nurse and her little boy through the crowds that
towards noon swarmed along Cornhill and
Threadneedle Street; and thither she would
return after a due interval to escort them back to
Birchin Lane." Nor did Macaulay in later life
forget the spot ; on the contrary, " so strong was
the power of association upon his mind that in
aftei'-years the Drapers' garden was among his
favourite haunts. Indeed, his habit of roaming
for hours through and through the heart of the
City (a habit that never left him as long as he

MACAULAY THE LONDONER. 49
could roam at all) was due in part to the recollec
tion which caused him to regard that region as
almost native ground."
His reminiscences of this abode as he grew up,
if they were few, were at all events vivid and
melancholy, perhaps even morbid, as will appear
to such of our readers as will refer to the earlier
part of his " Life " lately published.
The change from Birchin Lane to Clapham
Common, which was the home of his boyhood,
must have been delightful to his sensitive and
poetic nature, Mr. Trevelyan identifies the house
as facing the Common, a few doors beyond the
" Plough Inn," in the part now called " The
Pavement ;" and he describes it as a roomy
dwelling with a garden behind it ; and adds that
it is now inhabited by a Mr. Heywood. But the
garden, though it would have been a God-send
before, was of less consequence to him now, for
he had the free range of the open Common, with
its sand and gravel pits, its wilderness of wild
gorse and furze-bushes, its poplar groves, and its
ponds, both large and small. This became, if not
an enchanted ground to little Tommy Macaulay,
at all events, " a region of inexhaustible romance
and mystery." In it he was supremely happy.
" He explored its recesses ; he composed and
almost believed its legends, and he invented for
VOL, II, E

50 LONDONIANA.
its different features a nomenclature which has
been faithfully preserved by two generations of
children. A slight ridge, intersected by deep
ditches towards the west of the Common, the very
existence of which no one above eight years of
age would recognise, was dignified with the title
of the Alps ; while the elevated island, covered
with shrubs, that gives a name to the Mount-
pond, was regarded by him with infinite awe, as
being the nearest approach within the circuit of
his observation to a conception of the majesty of
Sinai." Being a quick and clever child, he had almost
taught himself to read at so early an age as
almost passes the bounds of belief. For the
sam e reason, it does not appear that his mother
thought it wise to give him many lessons as a
child. But when he grew strong and healthy,
thriving on the pure air of the breezy Common,
it was necessary, or at least desirable, to procure
for him some regular instruction, and so he went
by day to a Yorkshireman with a turn for
science, who had been brought to Clapham to
teach a few African youths who had been sent
over from Sierra Leone to be civilized.
As he grew up, young Macaulay found himself
brought into contact, at the house of his father's
neighbour and friend. Lord Teignmouth, with the

MACAULAY THE LONDONER. 51
AVilberforces, Stephens, Thorntons, and other
leaders of the Evangelical party, both Churchmen
and Nonconformists, who are generally known
as the " Clapham Sect." From their conversation
the quick boy learnt at an early age to interest
himself in the "religious politics" of the day;
and to the end of his life he showed proofs of the
great influence which these well-known persons
had exercised over him as as child. His intimate
acquaintance with the text of the Holy Scriptures
and with the details of modern religious con
troversies, no doubt, may be dated from the time
of his residence at Clapham, AVhilst here, he
showed another proof of his bent for the work of
his after-life, by commencing to write a " Com
pendium of Universal History," in which " he
really contrived to give a tolerably connected
view of the leading events, from the Creation to
the present time.'' He also wrote a paper, which
a young friend had agreed to translate into
Malabar, "in order to persuade the people of
Travancore to embrace the Christian religion."
To these must be added the first three cantos of
a poem, " The Battle of Cheviot," and the plot
and plan, at least, of an heroic poem to be called
"Olaus the Great; or the Conquest of Mona,"
and two out of twelve books of a still more
ambitious Epic, entitled " Fingal." Pretty
E 2

52 LONDONIANA,
well this, for a boy who had not yet completed
his twelfth year.
At this date it was in the contemplation of his
parents to send him as a day-scholar to West
minster School ; but public schools were not
much to the taste of the " Clapham Sect," and,
accordingly, he was entrusted to the care of an
Evangelical clergyman, at first near Cambridge,
and afterwards in Hertfordshire, with whom he
remained until ready to be entered at Trinity
College, Cambridge. His university career was
brilliant, in classics at least, and though he made
no figure in the mathematical tripos, he had the
satisfaction of being elected a Fellow of Trinity,
an honour which he prized most highly through
life. We need not follow him through his course at
Cambridge, nor during his first few years at the
Bar, for though he " went circuit," he never picked
up more than one stray guinea as a fee, and he
might have been a mere briefless barrister, if it
had not been for Lord Lansdowne, who, taking
notice of his strong AVhig opinions and his power
of enforcing them in articles in the Edinburgh
Revieio, offered, in 1830, to bring him into Parlia
ment as M.P, for Calne. Up to this time he
nominally occupied chambers in Gray's Inn,
though he spent most of his time in Great Or-

MACAULAY THE LONDONER. 53
mond Street, near the Foundling Hospital, where
his parents and his brothers and sisters lived
after removing from Clapham, and from the
neighbourhood of Sloane Street. AVhilst residing
here, he contrived to make himself acquainted
with almost every street, alley and lane in Lou
don, and rifled the old book-stalls of many a
ballad and pamphlet of more than passing value.
During the short residence of his family at Sloane
Street, he tells us how he used to walk with his
brothers and sisters on Sundays across " The
Five-Acre Field" — now Belgrave Square — to at
tend the services of the Lock Chapel ; and subse
quently, when in Bloomsbury, how he used to
" sit under the ministry" of Daniel Wilson, at
St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row. He does not,
however, appear to have been, even in his youth,
a staunch supporter of the " Evangelicals," for we
find him, during a long vacation in Wales, declin
ing on principle to support the establishment of
a branch af the Bible Society in the Principality,
His first public speech, we may here remark— ex
cepting those delivered by him in the Union
Debating Club, at Cambridge— was delivered at
Freemasons' Tavern, on behalf of Negro Emanci
pation. Before entering the House of Commons, he had
already established his fame as an excellent and

54 LONDONIANA,
powerful speaker, and as the most successful
essayist of his time. The few speeches which he
delivered in St, Stephen's did but confirm the
reputation with which he entered the House. So
it is not to be wondered at that, when he exchanged
the small borough of Calne for the great and
newly-enfranchised constituency of Leeds, he
should have been marked out by the Whig
Ministry for promotion. Hence — though he had
not made much of a figure as a barrister — he was
sent to India to reform and systematise our code
of legislation. He performed his task with great
ability, and returned to England in 1838, to be
elected M.P. for Edinburgh, to be sworn a member
of the Privy Council, and to hold an ofBce in Lord
Melbourne's Cabinet,
The rest of Macaulay's career is known to all
the world. In 1847, the bigoted and narrow-
minded citizens of Edinburgh rejected him, but
five years later were glad to ask him to come
back to them on his own terms. He did so ; but
he was in bad health, and rarely spoke in the
House, though he did not neglect the interests of
his constituents. Tn 1856, soon after resigning
his seat, he was raised to the peerage.
After his return from India in 1838, he lived
first in lodgings in Clarges Street, and subse
quently, for a short time, shared a house in Great

MACAULAY THE LONDONER. 55
George Street, Westminster, with his favourite
sister Hannah and her husband. Sir Charles
Trevelyan. He then took chambers in the Albany,
which he occupied for nearly fifteen years,
making them as nearly like a set of college-rooms
as he possibly could, and attaching himself to
them with all the affection of youth. Here he
wrote the first four volumes of his " History of
England," the work by which hereafter he will be
judged by posterity. We do not intend to
criticize it here; but as a proof of its immediate
popularity we may record the fact that he received
on one occasion from Messrs. Longman a cheque
for £20,000 in payment of a portion only of its
profits ! This, we believe, is the largest sum
ever cleared by an author out of a single
transaction. Macaulay lived on at the Albany almost down
to the end of his career in the Commons, when
he migrated to Carapden Hill. Though he
delighted in London society, in which he shone
as the wittiest of the witty, yet he always liked
rural scenes and flowers and forests ; and so here
he made himself happy with his garden and with
a few choice friends. Here he loved to entertain
his 3'outhful nephews and nieces, of whose com
pany he never tired, even when weary of the coii-
versazioni of Holland and Lansdowne Houses.

56 LONDONIANA.
Here he penned the fifth volume of his " History"
which was given to the world after his death by
his sister. Lady Trevelyan, whose son was
destined to become his biographer. He died sud
denly — literally with his pen and his book in his
hand, in his study at Campden Hill — on one of
the last evenings of the year 1859, and was
buried near Addison and other worthies in the
old Abbey of Westminster. Requiescat in pace.
He was a boy of only fourteen when he tiius
expressed himself with respect to the great Metro
polis : "London is the place for me. Its smoky
atmosphere and muddy river charm me more
than the pure air of Hertfordshire and the crystal
currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to
the splendid varieties of London life, the 'fine
flow of London talk,' and the dazzling brilliancy
of London spectacles." No wonder that the boy
who could write thus became afterwards an orna
ment of London society ; for in his case " the
child w-as father of the man."

57

MODERN BABYLON.
(1867.)

THE immense and rapid overgrowth of our huge
Metropolis has been a fertile theme for dis
cussion for these many years past ; but, in spite
of all public and private remonstrances, London
has increased and is increasing yearly, and, as we
have every reason to believe, will go on steadily
increasing for many a long year to come.
It is well, then, occasionally to take a breath
and pause, and look this ever-growing monster
fairly in the face, and to " take stock " of him
before he has grown out of all proportion, and
become as unamenable to the measurement of us
pygmies of the every-day stamp as the great giants
of Brobdingnag were to Gulliver.
We are tempted to make this remark by a perusal
of the last annual Report of the Registrar-General,

58 LONDONIANA.
who tells us plainly, and without reserve, that
London is growing greater every day, and that
within its present bounds, extending over one
hundred and twenty-two square miles of territory)
the population amounts by computation to three
millions and a half souls. In its midst is the
ancient City of London, inhabited at night by
about one hundred thousand people; while around
it, as far as a radius of fifteen miles stretches from
Charing Cross, an ever-thickening ring of people
extends within the area over which the Metro
politan Police watches, making the whole number,
on an area of six hundred and eighty-seven square
miles round- St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey,
four millions.
Four millions of souls ! Why, it is more than
the population of half-a-dozen German principali
ties, more than half that of the Kingdom of Ire
land, and equal to that of all Scotland put together.
Four millions of souls within the Suburban Postal
districts ! within what used to be termed the Bills
of Mortality. What a contrast does this present
to the London, we will not say of Henry or Eliza
beth, or even of Charles or of Anne, but of the
early part of the reign of George IIL, the London
of Dr. Johnson and Horace AValpole.*
* It is well known that, in the eighteenth century, no cen
sus was taken of the population of Great Britain, and that the

MODERN BABYLON, 59
These remarks arise naturally from the simple
fact that we have lying on our table a large and
attractive volume, bound in red, which has reached
us from Messrs. Kelly's printing office — the " Post
Office London Directory " for the current year ;
while, on looking up at our shelves of choice and
valuable books, which we have picked up at
second-hand bookstalls at prices varying (let us
plead guilty to the extravagance) from one penny
to sixpence, we see a little dingy book of duo
decimo size in a dingy brown cover, and printed
on dingy brown paper — a book, however, which is
the lineal ancestor of the handsome huge octavo
which we have already introduced, and which, on
opening it at the title-page, we find entitled " The
New and Complete Guide to all Persons who have
any Trade or Concern with the City of London
total of the then inhabitants of London must for ever remain
a matter of inference. One means of help is to be found in the
records of the total of baptisms for each year within " the bills
of mortality ;" for the infants baptised may be considered to
represent five-sixths of those born at a time when baptism was
made a condition of admission to nearly every post and office,
aud when both Dissenters and Papists were forced to bring
their infants to the parish church. Now it so happens that
" Sylvanus Urban " gives the total of London christenings in
in 1767 at 15,980, which rise gradually to 17,916 in 1772, and
five years later again to 18,300, though that number is not
again even approximately attained until after 1787, when the
total stands at 17,508 .

60 LONDONIANA,
and the Parts adjacent." It claims to be " The
exactest piece of the kind hitherto published,"
and also to be " Designed for the Use of Persons
of all Degrees, as well Natives as Foreigners,"
It was apparently "published by 'the book
sellers ;' " at all events, it bears the names of T,
Longman, J, Rivingtop, R. Baldwin, and of other
houses now no longer represented in Paternoster
Row or elsewhere ; and it appears to have been
sold at eighteenpence in " marble paper," and at
two shillings half bound, with the plates, or one-
and-eightpence without them.
Our copy is full bound, and, fortunately, has
two plates, of which the one is a ground plan of
the Royal Exchange, showing the several " walks
for merchants traders," &c. ; and the other is "A
Correct Plan of the Cities of London and West
minster, and the Borough of Southwark, including
the Bills of Mortality." There is no date
upon the title-page, but the date of the map is
1765 ; and, as the latest date mentioned in the
book is 1771, in all probability we have in this
little book, for which we recently gave the price
of two-pence sterling, the " Post Office London
Directory," or, at all events, its equivalent, for
the year 1772,
This little book is quite a multum in parvo of
City information. It has little or nothing of ex-

MODERN BABYLON, 61
traneous matter; nolistsof His Majesty's Ministers.
or of the Houses of Lords and Commons, or of the
"Reigning Sovereigns" of Europe ; no almanac or
table of eclipses; no prophecies of "Zadkiel" or
" Old Moore ;" but it gives, or professes to give,
the names of " all the streets, squares, &c. in the
City, and within the Bills of Mortality ; the names
and situations of all the Companies' Halls ; the
new rates for carmen, as settled by the Lord
Mayor, &c., on the Uth of July, 1757 ; the rates
of watermen, hackney coachmen, chairmen, and
porters ; the rates of the General and Penny Post
Offices ; an account of all the coasting vessels that
sail from the port of London ; an account of all
the stage coaches, with the fares of passengers,
carriers, &c. ; where .they ' inn,' and when they
' go out ;' a whole chapter on the forms of proce
dure in entering goods at the Custom House;
and lists of the names and places of abode of the
most eminent merchants and traders in the City ;
of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of the
City, with their Wards ; and, finall^r, of the Direc
tors of the Bank of England, South Sea and India
Companies, of the Royal Exchange Assurance, the
Sun Fire Office, the London Assurance, and the
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, of the
Excise, and the Customs.''
Each part of the book would afford the subject

62 LONDONIANA.
of a separate article ; but it is clear that for our
purposes the " Map of London " and the " List of
eminent merchants and traders " are likely to be
the most useful and interesting portions.
The map ends westward near the present site
of the Marble Arch. What is now Oxferd Street
is called " Tyburn Road " from Bond Street west-
"ward, and Park Lane is " Tyburn Lane." Apsley
House does not appear at all ; and there is appar
ently an opening in a slanting direction from the
lower end of " Tyburn Lane," behind what is now
the Duke of Cambridge's residence, near Hamilton
Place, and the Duke of AA'^ellington's, to Hyde
Park Corner. This piece of information may
possibly interest those worthy individuals who
advocated or opposed the recent opening of a
thoroughfare through Hamilton Place, The site
of Buckingham "Palace" is occupied by Buck
ingham " House," to the south of which the road
forks off, apparently among open fields, into two,
the "Coach road for Ranelagh House," and the
" Footway to Chelsea." The land around Tothill
Fields and Horseferry Road is really a field,
Marylebone and Marylebone Gardens stand
quite away from all houses, aud Marylebone Lane
appears to pass on a curve between hedgerows.
What is now the British Museum was the site of
Montagu House and Bedford House, both clear of

MODERN BABYLON. 63"
surrounding buildings, and commanding a clear
view northwards to Highgate. There were a few
large mansions on either side of the southern end
of Tottenham Court Road, parallel to which ran,
across what now is Fitzroy Square, an inviting
looking pathway marked as " The Green Lane,"
At the junction of the New Road aud Tottenham
Court Road stood, not the giant establishment of
Messrs. Moses, but " Tottenham Court," quite
isolated, and in the midst of pleasant fields, which
reached eastwards to Lamb's Conduit Fields,
" Black Mary's Hole," and the New River Head.
Hoxton appears on this map as a village quite by
itself; and across the water scarcely a house is
standing round St. George's Fields and Lambeth
Road. Eastwards, there is not the same difference
perceptible, for the rows of streets extend beyond
AA^'hitechapel Church nearly to Mile End; and we
all know that it is in an easterly direction that all
largecities — and London amongthem— are slowest
in making progress by the operation of some law,
the reason of which it is difficult to explain.
In the list of streets and squares there are, of
course, great differences to be noted. Fleet Street
is there, and the Strand, and Piccadilly, and Hol
born, and Oxford Street (at least, half of it) ; but
Regent Street is not there, of course, Leicester
" Square " is Leicester " Fields ;" Farringdon

64 LONDONIANA.
Street is " Fleet Market ;" Pimlico is one short
row of houses near the Palace. Between Temple
Bar and St. Clement's Danes stands " Butchers'
Row." AA''aterloo, and Southwark, and Hunger-
ford Bridges are not ; and Whitefriars is a nest of
tiny streets and alleys.
Again, the list of merchants, principal trades
men, &c., which answers to about five hundred
and fiftj- large pages in Kelly's " Post Office
Directory," here occupies just one hundred and
twenty small pages, containing between fifty and
sixty names in each, though in the " &c." we find
included not only merchants, but attorneys-at-law,
notaries public, managers of insurance offices, and
men of other professions.
The well-known names of Longman, Rivington,
and Dodsley appear among the publishers. The
bankers are represented by the names of Biddulph)
Cocks, Child, Coutts, Dimsdale, Drummond, Glyn,
Gosling, Grote, Hanbury, Hankey, Hoare, Lad-
broke, Prescott, Smith and Payne ; while the
Barings, N eaves, Goldsmids, Lubbocks, and
Bosanquets figure conspicuously among the mer
chants. The Rothschilds and the Gurneys appa
rently were not yet commercially' born, but were
only in the womb of time.
And now let us turn from the lesser to the
larger object, and, gazing on the Directory of the

MODERN BABYLON. 65
present, let us lose ourselves in wonder at the
enormous change which little more than a century
has worked upon the face of London.
The little infant of two hundred and ninety-eight
pages has expanded into a giant of nearly three
thousand large pages, exclusive of nearly three
hundred more devoted to advertisements. As
we handle its Herculean frame, the pages seem
to be bursting into a standing protest against
the cruelty of keeping so full-grown a body fast
bound within two covers, aud to demand leave to
shift for itself, and expand itself into two or three
portable volumes ; but, at present, Messrs. Kelly
have no idea of gratifying this desire, and, as the
City continues to grow, so, we suppose, will the
book which serves as the record of its growth and
its life. What would not an antiquary give for a
pocket-guide to Verulam, or Colchester, or Sil-
chester, in the days when the Roman legions were
quartered in this island, or even of Winchester in
the old days of the Heptarchy 1 And we may be
sure that if ever Macaulay's " New Zealander "
should be found in reality contemplating the ruins
of London from the piers of its shattered bridges,
he will find no record more instructive or more
useful than that which Messrs. Kelly can afford
him of the state of London in the fortieth year of
Victoria. Na}'^, even if one should be neither au
VOL. II. F

66 LONDONIANA.
antiquary nor a New Zealander, what would he
give to learn a hundred years hence where AVel-
lington, and Lord Palmerston, aud Lord Beacons-
field, and Gladstone lived; in what street and at
what number Alfred Tennyson lodged when a
bachelor ; where the Grotes, and the Froudes, the
Carlyles, the Thackerays, the Charles Dickenses,
and Robert Brownings of this day most frequently
did collect and congregate t
Nothing need be said about the value of such a
book to business men ; but it is also not without
some general interest. If anybody is curious to
know the relative importance of each trade in
London, judged by the numbers of those who
follow it, you can get this information without
much difficulty from the " Trades Directory."
The publicans appear to be far and awaj' the
most numerous. This volume contains the names
of about four thousand seven hundred, not in
cluding three hundred hotels, taverns, or coffee
houses of a superior class, which are rauged by
themselves, and one hundred private hotels not
licensed. Of beer-retailers there are not less than
one thousand seven hundred ; of wine merchants
an equal number. Even this estimate by no means
exhausts the list of those whose business it is to
supply London with stimulants more or less
gentle. Some one hundred and fifty brewers are

MODERN BABYLON. 67
in the list; and then the brewers' agents, the
distillers and spirit merchants, the dealers in
liqueurs, cider, and perry, have to be reckoned.
It is probably below the mark to say that ten
thousand persons in this " Directory " are shown
to be engaged, either wholly or partially, in what
teetotallers call " the liquor traffic." Of course,
this does not include a whole army of brewers'
men, draymen, waiters, barmen and barmaids,
tapsters, cellarmen, potboys, and hangers-on of
all sorts whose interests are also bound up in this
traffic. We do not venture to estimate their num
bers ; the Alliance may do so, and tremble.
After the publicans, the bootmakers take rank
Of these there are over three thousand— all, we
presume, keeping semething like a shop — and two
hundred wholesale makers. The grocers and tea-
dealers are less numerous by a hundred or so.
Next come the tailors, two thousand six hundred;
the bakers, one thousand eight hundred and fifty:
the butchers, one thousand seven hundred and
fifty ; the tobacconists, one thousand five hun
dred ; and the milliners, one thousand four hun
dred, as numerous a body as the greeu-grocers.
The lodging-house keepers own to a strength of
one thousand three hundred and fifty, but must
really be a much more imposing body. AVith
these the dairymen and the builders take the
E 2

68 LONDONIANA.
same rank. The linendrapers muster only some
one thousand one hundred ; but then the haber
dashers four hundred, the hosiers five hundred,
and the outfitters two hundred and fiftj' strong,
march in separate companies. The Squeers tribe
is well represented, for of private schools there are
nearly one thousand two hundred.
These items show a vast increase upon the
number of names entered in the little "Directory"
of a hundred years ago, for there we find that the
wine merchants comprise only about two hundred,
and the brewers and distillers about three hundred
and fifty names — ^or, iu other words, about a twen
tieth part of those which appear in the '¦Directory"
of to-day. The grocers and tea-dealers might be
put down at six hundred strong, whilst no notice
whatever is taken of the bakers, butchers, or
greengrocers. The linendrapers have increased
about four-fold, five hundred names serving to
denote the persons engaged in that branch of
industry in the last century, whilst about another
five hundred figure as haberdashers and hosiers.
The familiar names of " Smith," " Brown,"
" Jones," and " Robinson" preponderated as much
in 1767 as in 1877, for of the former we find
ninety-one entries, and of the Browns we have
fortj'-five, Joneses twenty-eight, and Robinsons
sixteen. It is hardly necessary to say that the

MODERN BABYLON, 69
great family of Smith is still in 1877 represented
in its due proportion. In the " Commercial Direc
tory " of to-day, where the names are entered in
alphabetical order, more than one thousand five
hundred Smiths are registered. The curious
may like to know that above one hundred and
thirty answer to the Christian name of John, and
be it remembered that these are all householders
and heads of families. If we add the women and
children, the lodgers, and working men of the
same clan all over London, whose names do not
appear in Directories, we shall have a population
of Smiths equal to that of many considerable
towns which return their two members to Parlia
ment. The Joneses are only half the number of
the Smiths. Next to them come the Browns,
who, however, fall short of seven hundred. The
Johnsons and the AA'illiamses muster some five
hundred each, while the hardly less familiar name
of Robinson is borne by onlj' about two hundred
and fifty persons.
There is much matter of antiquarian interest to
be found even in the apparently dull and dry
pages of the eight or ten alphabets which go to
make up Messrs. Kelly's Directory. For instance,
take the public-house signs, in which the curious
reader can read so much of the history both of man
ners and opinions, aud also of his country. As

70 LONDONIANA,
might naturally be expected among Englishmen,
the emblems of loyalty, or at least of royalty, are
by far the most numerous of all. The " King's
Arms " head the list; there are eighty-seven such
signs in London. The "Queen's Arms" number
only twenty-three. Delicacy seems to have sug
gested to mine host the choice of Her Majesty's
Head, and, accordingly, there are forty-nine
Queen's and sixty King's Heads. The Royal
Oak stands for twenty-six signs; the Royal Stan
dard for twelve. The Crown gives a name to
seventy-three houses, let alone eighteen Crowns
and Anchors, six Crowns and Cushions, ten Crowns
and Sceptres, fortj'-six Roses and Crowns, and
seventeen houses where this emblem of royalty is
found in more questionable society, such as the
Crown and Anvil, the Crown and Appletree, the
Crown and Barley-mow, and the Crown and Can.
To Prince Albert twenty-three public-houses are
dedicated ; to the Prince of AA'^ales, forty-nine; to
the Princess of AA'ales, eight; to the Princess
Royal, eight ; to Prince Alfred, ten ; to Prince
Arthur, three ; to Princess Alice, two ; and to
Princess Beatrice, one. Among our national
heroes, the Duke of Wellington has twenty-six ;
Lord Nelson, twenty -two; next to whom in popu
larity comes the Marquis of Grauby with sixteen.
Strangely enough, after satisfying the demands

MODERN BABYLON, 71
of loyalty, the animal creation seems to stand
next in order of popularity ; but, on reflection,
the fact may be accounted for by remembering
that most of these beasts are taken not from the
Zoological Gardens, but from the fair and gentle
science of heraldry. The King of Beasts, the
British Lion, of one colour or another, is
naturally the favourite with the British public.
Seventy-four signs bear the proud emblem of
the Red Lion ; there are seventeen Golden Lions,
and twenty-six AA'hite Lions, to say nothing of
Blue Lions, and other varieties. Next in number
comes the AA^hite Hart, of which we find sixty-
two. There are fifty Georges and fifteen George
and Dragons, fifty-three Coach and Horses, forty-
eight Grapes, forty AA''hite Horses, thirteen AA^hite
Bears, thirty-six Bulls and Bulls' lieads, seven
teen Black Bulls, twenty-eight Black Horses,
thirty AVhite Swans, thirty-one Globes, thirty-
two Bells, twenty-one Feathers, fifteen Green
Dragons, twenty-five Green Mans, twenty-one
Swans, thirteen Spread Eagles, eleven Turks'
Heads, and two Saracens' ditto, twentj'-six Two
Brewers, twenty-two Three Compasses, seven
teen Blue Anchors, thirteen Blue Posts, four Blue
Lasts, one Blue Pump (whatever that may mean),
aud one Blue-eyed Maid. Three seems to be
reckoned a lucky number, for there are twenty-

72 LONDONIANA.
two Three Compasses, nineteen Three Tuns,
and nine Three Crowns. The number is found
joined with almost everything animate and inani
mate — Castles, Cranes, Cups, Kings, Kiugdoms,
Mariners, Goats' Heads, Spies, Jolly Butchers,
Sugar Loaves, Horseshoes, Loggerheads, and
Red Herrings. As befits so great a port as Lon
don, the Ship serves for seventy signs, to say
nothing of such odd additions as the Ship and
Shears, the Ship and Blue Ball, the Ship and
Shovel, and — a somewhat more classical sign —
the Ship Argo. Naval heroes are greatly favoui-ed,
and Dutchmen may like to know that respect is
paid to Van Tromp, if that sign, indeed, refers
directly to thefamousadmiral, and notto the famous
horse named after him. The Sun, whether rising,
setting, or iu mid-day splendour, shines from
forty-one signs ; and he also has queer allies, or
satellites, in the shape of Swords, Horseshoes,
Lasts, Swiss Cantons, aud Apple Trees.
The appearance of new trades, and the dis
appearance of old ones, in the Annual " Directory,"
is another feature on which it would be easy
to moralise, if space permitted us. Like the race
of man, or of words, or, indeed, of everything
human, is the succession of trades in London: —
" Ut folia auctumno pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima cadunt ; ita verborum vetus interit aetas,
Etjuvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.

MODERN BABYLON. 73
Our readers will be surprised to learn that in
each annual volume as it appears figure from
twenty to fifty new trades which had no place in
the publication for the previous year. As a
writer in the Times remarks, " The search after
' new things ' never ends, and from year to year a
Beckmann might gather in these pages materials
for a new historj- of invention. Sometimes it is
science that gives birth to a trade, sometimes it
is a passing caprice. In either case, the want
brings the supply. London traders take care that
no one shall long be able to say with a clear con
science that he cannot get all that money will
procure. AVhen the want has thus been met, it is
for the Directoiy-maker to record the fact in his
register of new trades." The list as it stands is
a curiosity in itself It includes aluminium
agents, anti-friction powder manufacturers, arti
ficial plant and bouquet makers, brimstone refiners,
church vestment warehouses (Roman Catholic),
dolls' boot and shoe makers, earth closet manu
facturers, esparto merchants, gazogene manu
facturers, graphotypers, paper-fastener makers,
parkesine manufacturers, school and exhibition
decorators, sodium and (patent) sodium amalgam
manufactui-ers, and stay-fastening manufacturers.
It is only reasonable to suppose that, as new
trades are born, so old ones die out ; but they pass

74 LONDONIANA.
away unnoticed and unsung; carent quia vate
sacro. So with the changes which each year sees
among the people whose names, dwellings, and
avocations such a book undertakes to chronicle.
" An old inhabitant possessing the requisite local
knowledge can read no sadder volume than an
old Directory. To him the register of his street
or quarter must call up painful recollections of
men who one by one have been struck down in
the hard battle of life, and whose places are now
filled by a new crowd of busy, struggling, success
ful workers. But the book itself deals neither
with success nor failure, with ruin nor death. If
you answer to the yearly muster-roll, well aud
good ; if not, your name is blotted out, your place
knows you no more, and there, for the ' Post
Office Directory' purposes, is an end of you."
Of course, no sooner is this annual publication
complete and brought down to the date of its
appearance, than the work of destruction, or at
at all events of alteration, and therefore of im
perfection, commences. It is not subject to all
the changes which are incident to some publica
tions— Burke's or Lodge's "Peerage" for example,
—from births and marriages; but deaths and ap
pointments and promotions in the several paths
of professional life, are working a constant change

MODERN BABYLON. 75
in its contents. The attorney of last year has
resolved to follow the higher branch of his profes
sion, and is called to the Bar. The City alder
men of yesterday, who lived at Streatham or
Clapham, now writes M.P. after his name, and
resides in Tyburnia or Belgravia. That great
firm of bankers, or railway contractors, has come
to grief, or bankruptcy, or both, and has made
way for a new Insurance Society ; or the old
house has been swept away possibly to give
place to some new club or monster hotel.
But let no one imagine that even in this huge
volume he sees before him the whole of even
commercial London. Some thousands of London
merchants live in and around Croydon, and
Reigate, and Bromley, and Chislehurst, and
Hampstead, and Hendon, and Highgate, to say
nothing of Brentwood and Epping Forest, or of
Brighton, which has come to be styled colloquially
" London-super-Mare." If he wishes to know
where the real wealth of London lives, and
moves, and has its being, he must shut up this
volume and consult two other publications of a
like kind, compiled by Messrs. Kelly, and in
their way scarcely less valuable and important,
— we mean their " Suburban Directory," and their
" Directory of the Six Home Counties," Middle
sex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, Herts, and Sussex.

76

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON.

NOAA'^ADAYS if any of our countrymen or
countrywomen want to see a bull-fight, they
will doubtless find no difficulty in wending their
way to Spain, and so timing their visit to Madrid
as to make it fall in with a bull-feast, or Fiesta
de Toros, as the Spaniards term it. But had the
same fit seized them three hundred years ago,
when Queen Elizabeth sat on the throne, they
would uot have had to travel so far in order to
gratify their taste for blood. They would have
found all that they wanted here in this City of
London, and the furthest that they need trudge
in search for such excitement would have been
just across old London Bridge. The existence in
England of the breed of bull-dogs, coupled with
the name of the " Bear Garden," still to be found
on Bankside, Southwark, is a standing proof of

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON. 77
the prevalence of this sport in " Merrye England,"
yes, and in " Merrye London," in the olden time.
It is well known to every reader of Mediaeval
chronicles that the Continental Sovereigns of
those times used to rear and train bulls, bears,
horses, and other animals for the purpose of
having them baited by dogs ; and even fair
queens and ladies of female courts did not scruple
to countenance the cruel pastime by their presence
any more than their Spanish sisters in this year
of grace 1879, Fitzstephen, who lived in the
reign of Henry IL, tells us that in the forenoon
of every holyday during the winter season the
youthful Londoners were amused with shows of
" boars opposed to each other in battle," or with
" bulls and full-grown bears baited by dogs ;"
and again, "in winter, on every holyday, before
dinner, the boars prepared for brawn are set to
fight, or else bulls and bears are baited," I am
happy to say that Stow, who records this fact,
makes no mention of horses, so that there is
reason to believe that this noble animal was uot
often subjected to such indignity, or made to
share the dangers of the arena here.
The Sovereign, it would seem, always had a
"Bearward" as well as a Chancellor, forming
part of his court. There were several places in
the neighbourhood of the metropolis set apart for

78 LONDONIANA:
the " baiting " of wild beasts, and especially a
district in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark,
called the " Paris Garden." This garden con
tained two such baiting grounds, rude circular
structures, which figure in the map of Ralph
Aggas and in other contemporary prints, and
were said to have been the first set up near
London. Inside these, if we may trust the words
of honest John Stow, were erected scaffolds for
the spectators to stand upon, an indulgence for
which they had to pay in the following manner :
"Those who go to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage,
or Theatre to behold bear-baiting enterludes, or
fence-play, must not account of (i.e., reckon on)
any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one
penny at the gate, another at the entrie of the
scaffold, and a third for quiet standing."
" There were in Southwark," says Stow, " two
bear-gardens, the old and the new: places wherein
were kept bears, bulls, and other beasts to be
baited ; as also mastives in their several kennels
are there nourished to bait them. These bears
and other beasts are there baited in plots of
ground scaffolded round for the beholder to stand
safe." He adds, " For the foulness of these rude
sights, and for that these beastly combats were
usually performed on Sundays, and that so much
money was idly thrown away that might have

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON. 79
been better given to the poor, a Poet in the latter
time of Henry VIII. made and printed these
homely verses, more commendable for his zeal
than for his poetry."
" What folly is this to keep with danger
A great mastiff dog, and foul ugly bear,
And to this aneut to see these tv^o fight
"With terrible tearing, a full ugly sight.
And methinks these men are most fools of all
"Whose store of money is but very small,
And yet every Sunday they will surely spend
A penny or two, the bear- ward's living to mend.
" At Paris Garden, each Sunday, a man shall not fail
To find two or three hundred for the bear-ward's vale ;
One half-penny a piece they use for to give
"When some have not more in their purses, I believe.
"Well, at the last day their conscience will declare
That the poor ouglit to have all that they may spare.
If you therefore go to witness a bear-fight,
Be sure, God His curse will upon you alight."
The learned Erasmus, who visited our shores
in the reign of Henry VIII., tells us that there
were many herds of bears maintained in the
Court for the purpose of being baited. Again,
when Queen Mary visited her sister, the Princess
Elizabeth, during her confinement at Hatfield
House, the next morning, after Mass was over,
a grand exhibition of bear-baiting was made for
the amusement of the two royal ladies : and it is

80 LONDONIANA.
added that " their highnesses were well content"
with the display. Again, when Queen Elizabeth
in May, 1559, gave an entertainment to the
French Ambassadors, they were afterwards
entertained at AVhitehall with the baiting of bulls
and of bears, the Queen herself standing with her
guests, and looking at the pastime until six at
night. The day following, we are told, these
same Ambassadors were conducted by water to
Paris Gardens, where they saw " another baiting
of bulls and bears." And to show that it was
not only in the heyday of youth that Queen Eliza
beth condescended to such sports, twenty-seven
years later, in 1586, when the Queen received
the Danish Ambassador at Greenwich, she treated
him with the sight of a bull and bear being
baited, " tempered," says Hollingshed in his own
quaint manner, " with other merry disports."
And for the diversion of the populace there was
a horse with an ape on his back, which so highly
pleased them that they expressed " their inward-
conceived joy and delight with shrill shouts and
a variety of gestures." Towards the end of her
reign the Queen indulged another set of Ambas
sadors with a bear-bait at the Cockpit near St.
James's, after which followed dancing.
Laneham, speaking of a bear-baiting which
was exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in 1575,

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON. 81
tells us that no less than thirteen bears were pro
vided for the occasion, and that the brutes were
baited with great " ban-dogs." It is curious that
in these and other notices of such sports we find
no mention made of the ring which was usually
put in the nose of the bear when he was baited,
and which certainly came to be the general
practice afterwards ; hence the Duke of Newcastle
in his play of The Humorous Lovers, printed in
1617, exclaims, "I fear the wedlock-ring more
than the bear does the ring in his nose."
It may interest our readers to learn that Ed
mund AUeyn, the founder of Dulwich College,
was a long time a part owner of the Southwark
Bear Gardens ; not, however, exactly by his own
choice, it would seem ; for, in order to make good
his position as a player and to carry out his
theatrical designs, he found himself obliged to
purchase the patent office of ' Beare-ward " or
" Master of the King's Beares." Alleyn's bear
garden appears to have been well-stocked, for on
one occasion, Avhen Sir John Dorrington, the
" Chief Master " of Queen Elizabeth's " Games of
Bulls and Bears," was required at a short notice
to furnish a display of bear-baiting for the grati
fication of Her Majesty, he found it necessary to
apply to AUeyn and his partner for assistance.
VOL. II. G

82 LONDONLiNA.
Hence on his tomb at Dulwich Alleyne figures as
" Regiee Theromachiae Prsefectus."
But it must not be supposed that Southwark
was the only part of London where such diver
sions found a home. On the contrary, it is clear
from advertisements and other public notices that
there were gardens for " beare-baits " and " boll-
baits " in other parts of the metropolis ; at Hors-
leydown, for instance, at Hockley-in-the-Hole,
near Clerkenwell, at Tyburn Road (now Oxford
Street), at Ball's Pond, near Kiugsland, and at
Tuttle (or Tothill) Fields, at AVestminster,* to
say nothing of the courtly region of Whitehall.
Accordingly, in the The Humorous Lovers above
quoted, mention is made of a famous bear, known
as " Tom of Lincoln ;" and one of the characters,
pretending to be a "bear-ward," says: — "I'll set
up my bills, that the gamesters of London,
Horsleydown, and Southwark may come in and
bait him here before the ladies ; but first, boy,
go fetch me a bag-pipe ; we will walk the streets
in triumph, and give the people notice of the
sport." This serves to show the way in which
public notice was given of such sports. Mr.
Horatio Smith, in his amusing book on Festivals,
* Here the grounds containing the bear garden covered
nme or ten acres, which now form part of Vincent Square
The grounds ceased to exist iu 1793.

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON. 83
Games, ^c, informs us that on these occasions
the bear not was onl}'^ preceded by a minstrel or
two, or a band of music, but also carried on his
back a monkey or baboon by way of advertise
ment. It may be added that the time when
these sports were celebrated was generally a
Sunday afternoon.
The "Bear Garden" would appear from Pepys'
Diary to have been the regular place also for
prize-fights ; and, on three out of the four occa
sions on which he visited it, that was the sport
he saw. On one occasion he saw a bull baited
by dogs, which he candidly owns to be " a very
rude and nasty pleasure," Even the staid and
excellent John Evelyn visited the place once at
the least. He writes, under date of June 16th,
1670, " I went with some friends to the Bear
Garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting,
beare and bull baiting, it being a famous day for
all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous
cruelties. The bulls did exceeding well ; but
the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall
greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat
a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a large
dog full into a lady's lap, as she sat in one of
the boxes at a considerable height from the arena.
Two poor dogs were killed ; and all ended with
the ape on horseback ; and I, most heartily
G 2

84 LONDONIANA.
wearied of the rude and dirty pastime, which
I had not seen, I think, for twenty years
before." It seems to have been generally owned by our
best writers that these sports were indefensible
both in theory and practice, and that they must
havehelped to brutalise and demoralise the appren
tices of London. Even Strutt, the author of
" Sports and Pastimes," speaks of them as among
the more " vulnerable parts of the characters of
our ancestors," and as " manifesting a degree of
barbarism which will admit of no just defence."
Sir Richard Steele, also, whilst censuring the
cruelty of "throwing at cocks," remarks : —
" Some French writers have represented this
diversion of the common people much to our dis
advantage, and imputed it to a natural fierceness
and cruelty of temper, as they do some other
entertainments peculiar to our nation ; I mean
those elegant diversions of bull-baiting and prize
fighting, with the like ingenious recreations of
the bear-garden. I wish I knew how to answer
this reproach which is cast upon us, and excuse
the deaths of so many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs,
and bears as have been set together by the ears,
or died an untimely death only to make us sport,"
The two following advertisements, both of the
reign '-of Queen Anne, will serve to show that

BULL AND BEAR-BAITING IN LONDON, 85
these cruel sports lasted down to a much more
recent date : —
"At the bear-garden in Hockley-in-the-Hole,*
near Clerkenwell Green, this present Monday,
there is a great Match to be fought, by two dogs
of Smithfield Bars against two dogs of Hamp
stead, at the ' Reading Bull,' for one guinea to be
spent ; five let-goes out of hand : which goes
fairest and furthest in wins all. Likewise there
are two bear-dogs, to jump three jumps apiece at
the bear, which jumps highest, for ten shillings
to be spent. Also variety of bull-baiting and
bear-baiting ; it being a day of general sport by
all the old gamesters, and a bull dog to be drawn
up with fireworks. Beginning at three o'clock,"
"At William AA''ells' bear-garden in Tuttle
fields, AVestminster, this present Monday, there
will be a green bull baited, and twenty dogs to
fight for a collar, and the dog that runs furthest
and fairest wins the collar ; with other diversions
of bull and bear-baiting. Beginning at two of
the clock,"
Whilst regretting the loss of some of the sports
of "merry England in the olden time," we may,
perhaps, congratulate ourselves that the " bait-
* In C. Knight's " London," Vol. I. there is a view of the
interior of the bear-garden in Clerkenwell, with a bear throw
ing a dog high up into the box seats.

86 , LONDONIANA,
ings" with which our ancestors amused themselves
under Queens Elizabeth and Anne are no longer
patronised by any respectable member of society
under the reign of Queen Victoria ; and we may
trust that they have long since passed away into
the domain of history.

87

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON,
(1879.)

M

ANY of our readers, doubtless, experienced
somewhat of a " scare" when they read
that the plague had found its way from Asia into
Astrachan and other parts of Russia, and that
its course, like that of most diseases, was decidedly
westward. The Times and other papers devote
long columns to the calculation of the chances of
its finding its way to England, assuring us, how
ever, that whatever can be done in the way of
prevention will be accomplished ; and we are
somewhat comforted by a notice in the London
Gazette to the effect that Her Majesty's Goveru'-
ment and our consular representatives have " got
their eye" upon the advance of the monster, whose
presence among us would be so little welcome
were he to reach our shores. It is often sup
posed that the visitation in 1665, rendered so

88 LONDONIANA.
familiar in the pages of Defoe, was the only ap
pearance of the plague in England, at all events
within historic times. But it is to-be feared that
such a supposition is very far from the truth. In
fact, as Dr. Lardner remarks in his "Cabinet
Cyclopaedia," "no city in Europe, except Constan
tinople, has suffered so severely from its visita
tions as London.''
The first notice of the plague in London is found
in the chronicles of "honest" John Stow, who
tells us that it appeared here in the reign of
Edward HI., when, if he is to be believed, it
devastated the kingdom, " leaving scarce a tenth
person living" But even if we understand him
to mean that it carried off " one person in every
ten," his words must be a gross exaggeration ;
and they are entirely unsupported by the testi
mony of contemporary annalists.
In the reign of Henry IV., early in the four
teenth century, we are told that the plague carried
off 30,000 persons in England. After the lapse
of a century it would seem to have re-appeared
here; for HoUnshed tells us that "in A.D. 1500,
there was a great plague, which showed its viru
lence chiefly in London, where 30,000 persons
are said to have perished within a short space
of time." Apparently this last pestilence differed
in some of its symptoms from its predecessors ;

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 89
for one writer who mentions it calls it " a new
and curious epidemy, which carried off its victims
within twenty-four hours." It is, however, not
a Uttle singular, unless there is some confusion
between the two visitations, that the estimate of
the loss of life in this country was the same on
both occasions.
In 1562-3, according to Heckman's "Epidemics
of the Middle Ages," London and Westminster
were visited by the plague in a modified form.
In 1581 the plague-marks again appear. During
this sickly season, the poor were taken with such
extraordinary fits of perspiration that it was feared
that the " sweating sickness" was about to return ;
and during the three following summers the
disease was still more virulent and fatal.
Another outbreak of the plague occurred in the
summer of 1592, and lasted for the best part of
two years. In 1603 a frightful plague visited
Westminster, the deaths of those buried at the
public expense amounting to 451 in that city
alone. In 1603-4-5 the plague re-appeared in
London, but few details are recorded. The
disease hovered about London for the best part
of two years, but it seems to have been by no
means so fatal as previously. It only, however,
held in reserve its full strength to be used in the
course of time.

90 LONDONIANA.
The culminating ravages of the plague, which
in 1 625 swept away in the metropolis upwards of
41,000 persons, and again more than 100,000 iu
1665, would seem to have arisen mainly from
the narrowness of the streets and the badness of
the drainage. The fact of many families Uving
crowded in a single dwelUng, where a proper cir
culation of free air was impossible, was considered
so serious an evil that it elicited an order of Lord
Burleigh, in March, 1563, prohibiting the resi
dence of more than one family in a single house ;
and we find that at this time the disaster was
generally spoken of as " the poor man's plague."
The physicians of the day considered that the
poor were largelj' predisposed to its attacks by
eating unripe fruit and tainted food ; and recom
mended the constant burning of resinous woods
and fragrant spices, in order to purify the air.
In Westmiuster the effects of bad drainage were
increased by the crowded state of the church
yards, the sewers above ground, and the garbage
which was allowed to accumulate in the streets,
and also by the noisome exhalations from ditches
and marshy grounds, promoted by the overflow
ings of the Thames. These produced, it is said,
a constant dampness and a cloud of unwholesome
temperature, which hung brooding in the atmos
phere. Another cause which helped to spread

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON, 91
the infection is said to have been the wearing of
woollen stuffs, which imbibe infection more
readily, and retain it longer, than clothes of cotton
or linen.
The state of London during this awful season
has been so minutely described before that we
need only allude to it here. Terrible indeed,
though the sun shone bright in the sky above, as
if in mockery, must have been the sight of the
metropolis. It was not only the lazar house that
was the abode of sickness and. death, but the rude
pallet, with its ghastly burden, the tainted at
mosphere that might " almost be felt," the des
pairing sob and frenzied shriek of the sick — these
were everywhere ; and on all sides the Destroying
Angel held his course along forlorn streets and
deserted alleys. Though large fires were lighted
to purify- the air, the smoke wreaths, unable to
rise, formed a sable pall, and the noisome con
tagion continued to spread. The gloomy watch
man stood at the close-guarded door marked with
the foot-long cross of blue paint, and with the
penitential verse above it — "Lord, have mercy
upon us !" And ever and anon the profound
silence, like that of a charnel-house, was broken
by the toll of the funeral bell, and vigilant
searchers, with red .wands in their hands, paced
to and fro, and through the long night the death-

92 LONDONIANA.
cart rolled past heavily-laden towards the plague-
pit, already surfeited with corruption, and the
doleful cry of the burier was heard on all sides
as he called out, "Bring out your dead."
The plague has left some abiding memorials
of its presence among us. It is well-known to
antiquaries that on the ruins of one of the
Parliamentary forts at Westminster was erected
a lazaretto called the " The Five Houses " or
" The Seven Chimneys," abutting on what is
now the VauxhaU Bridge Road, for the reception
of persons attacked by the plague; and these
" pest houses " were not removed till our own day.
They were not mere temporary barracks, but sub
stantial structures of red brick, and they were
built in 1644, more than twenty years before the
last visitation of the plague. Another of the
plague pits of London was dug to the east of
what is now Regent Street, a little to the north
of Golden Square. Mr. Mackenzie AA'"alcott tells
us, in his " Memorials of Westminster," that the
general bills of mortality for 1665, show that
4,710 persons were buried in that year in St.
Margaret's parish alone, and that of these no less
than 3,742 died of the plague. He also identifies
the site of the plague pits in AA''estminster with
Harding's stoneyard in Earl Street. Pepys writes
in his " Diary," under date 1665 :— "I was much

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 93
troubled to hear at Westminster how the officers
do bury the dead in the open Tuttle Fields, pre
tending want of room elsewhere, whereas the
New Chapel Yard was walled in at the public
charge in the last plague time merely for want
of room ; and now none but such as are able to
pay dear for it can be buried there." The " new"
Chapel is now the Church of St. Anne's, on the
north side of Victoria Street, not far from Queen
Anne's Gate.
It seems to be agreed on all hands, nowadays,
that our chief protection against the plague is to
be sought, not in strict quarantine regulations, but
in improved sanitary arrangements. It is not a
little singular, though recorded as a fact in evi
dence taken just sixty years ago before a Com
mittee of the House of Commons, that none of the
officers of our quarantine establishments, though
constantly brought into contact with articles im
ported from infected regions, have ever been
attacked by the plague. Generated and born
from the miasma of low and swampy localities,
the plague finds its congenial home in crowded
streets and ill-ventilated courts and alleys. Most
of these have been swept away from Loudon and
Westminster by the action of the Metropolitan
Board of Works ; but some vile plague-spots re
main, especially about Gray's Inn Lane, AVhite-

94 LONDONIANA.
chapel, Lambeth, and Tothill Fields. The
exemption of Oxford, in 1665, from the plague
which caused such havoc in London is a plain
proof of our assertion that good sanitary arrange
ments are the plague's real foes and best preven
tives ; for that city enjoyed a complete immunity
from its attacks, notwithstanding that the Royal
Court, the Parliament, and the courts of law were
all held there; and this result is ascribed by Dr.
Plot and other writers to the excellent system of
drainage carried out a century and a half before
by Bishop Fox. Now, what was then done in
Oxford to remedy its unhealthiness has since
been done, to a great extent, by most of the lead
ing cities of England and of Continental Europe.
Accordingly, we find that the plague has not
visited us since the days of Charles IL, and Hol
land has experienced an exemption precisely
parallel to our own country. Paris has not been
attacked by the plague since 1668 ; and nearly a
century and a half has elapsed since the plague
of Marseilles, in spite of the constant intercourse
of its citizens with the Levant and the ports of
Eastern Europe.

95

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY.

DOWN a narrow street leading from the
Strand to the river, just before you reach
the approach to Waterloo Bridge, going eastward
from Charing Cross, you may see through the
railings a small church standing in a well-
ordered churchyard, whose scattered headstones
are shadowed by the foliage of a few trees.
From the old-world aspect of the place, its odd,
irregular outline, and its air of quaint seclu
sion, the passer-by will at once see the building
belongs to a period long antecedent to the present
day. The architectural traditions of this out-of-the-
way nook go far back into the Plantagenet times,
when the Strand was a wild track, with savage
wastes or wildernesses stretching away into the
open country, before Covent Garden was laid

96 LONDONIANA.
out and enclosed, or Lincoln's Inn built; whUe
the bank of the Thames, from Charing to
the Temple, was covered with the inns or
palaces of such great people as peers, bishops,
anbassadors, off-shoots of royalty, and occasionally
even royalty itself. Hence the epithet "luxurious
Strand," which came to be applied to the tho
roughfare thus richly inhabited on one side. In
those ages the suburbs were considered dangerous,
having neither lights, nor patrols, nor roads, and
indeed hardly any population, except at wide and
dreary intervals; consequently most of the noble
men and persons of estate dwelt within or near
the city walls for security. To this circumstance
may be ascribed the remarkable strength of these
water-side structures, which were no less distin
guished by their size and magnificence. The
general effect of this succession of noble water
side residences, whether regarded from the north
or the south, was picturesque and imposing ; and
what with their lofty walls, their court-yards and
gardens extending to the brink of the " Silent
Highway," their stately roofs, towers and water-
gates, they realised that vision of power and
splendour which one of the old chroniclers tells
us was the prominent characteristic of ancient
London. Among those princely houses upwards of six

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY. 97
hundred years ago stood the Palace of the Savoy,
so called after its possessor, Peter, Earl of Savoy,
and uncle of Queen Eleanor, the wife of Henrj^
III. The site of the palace had been bestowed
upon the earl by the king; and the earl iu
turn bestowed the palace upon one of those
religious fraternities into whose laps wealth
and power rained down so bountifully in those
times. But Queen Eleanor was not willing to lose the
pleasant demesne on the water-side, so she pur
chased it back again for her second son, Edmund,
Earl of Lancaster. This was in 1295, some fifty
years after the palace was built. At a later date
the old pile was repaired and almost rebuilt by
Henry, first Duke of Lancaster. This creation
led to the Savoy being erected into a Duchy, and
the Jura Regalia of a County Palatine were fully
vested in the duke, who had power to appoint his
own chancellor and justices for pleas, together
with fines and forfeitures, and pardons of life and
members, and other liberties and rights belonging
to a county palatine. Thus, as the place origi
nally acquired the title of the Savoy, or the Pre
cinct of the Savoy, from its first possessor, it
now became known as the Liberty of the Duchy
of Lancaster; and to this day the name is
preserved in the surrounding district, the
VOL. II. H

98 LONDONIANA.
office of the Duchy being in Lancaster Place,
close by.
It was here that John, King of Frauce, was
held in captivity after he and his son Philip
surrendered at the battle of Poictiers to Edward
the Black Prince, But, although nominally a
captive, he was reaUy regarded as a guest of
distinction. His entry into London was a sort
of triumph. In the sumptuous chambers of the
Savoy the King and Queen would frequently
come and feast with him; and his "cousin" and
conqueror, the Prince of AA^'ales, would wait upon
him at table. He was touched by this generous
treatment; and, after he had been released by
treaty, and had re-occupied his throne for three
years in the midst of intestine discords, he
returned to the Savoy to die.
The contemporary Ufe of this old Lancastrian
Palace is an indispensable element in its literary
restoration. The England of the thirteenth and
fourteenth century, which witnessed its building
and its destruction, was marked by traits widely
contrasted with those of our more advanced era.
The upper classes spoke Norman and lived as
Normans in their habits and fashions; the middle
classes had not yielded extensively to the foreign
influence which the Conquest had established
at Court; and the lower classes were still strongly

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY, 99
Saxon, The word "comfort," originally Norman,
and afterwards englished, and now generally but
erroneously believed to have been always English,
had not yet practically found its way into the
homes of the people. The architecture of dwell
ing-houses was still primitive, showing, here and
there, signs of struggling out into new forms and
more elaborate designs. The material of which
houses were built was generally timber ; the win
dows were principally protected by lattices or
shutters ; glass was the costly monopoly of great
establishments ; the hall, as the chamber of ren
dezvous and festival, was still the most important
apartment in houses of pretension, which were
sometimes constructed of stone ; the Anglo-Nor
man parlour, adopted from the parloir, or talking
room of the monastic establishments, was begin
ning to be introduced into counti-y houses ; and
minstrels also held their place of prominence in
all wealthy households. The denizens of the
West End in the nineteenth century have turned
the night of our ancestors into day, and assigned
to the four-and-twenty hours a series of functions
that entirely reverse the old order of the domestic
life. In the time when the Savoy flourished,
people rose at five o'clock, and dined at nine or
ten. Even later, in the Elizabethan age, the
dinner hour had not advanced beyond eleven, and
H 2

100 LONDONIANA.
in the comedies of the Restoration we find the
jaded appetites of the fashionable rakes summon
ing them to the " ordinaries" about noon. Tlie
Savoy Palace never knew the luxury of a fork.
There, as under humbler roofs, the guests ate
with their fingers, a custom which imposed upon
them the necessity of washing before and after
meals ; and so much stress was laid on this purify
ing process that it always took place on a signal
from trumpeters or minstrels. Whatever may be
thought of the habit of eating with the fingers,
there was a rude grandeur at least in the notion
of washing them to a burst of trumpets. On
stepping out of the house into the streets, the
visitor of that time would have beheld a spectacle
of which we occasionally obtain gUmpses nowa
days through some very careful stage representa
tions. " The fagades of the houses are everywhere
fantastical and dissimilar ; large sign boards pro
ject many feet into the causeway ; there is no
footway, and no rule of the pedestrian road ; and
you are compelled to make way by dint of force
or stratagem, and to avoid contests for the wall as
well as you can. Carriages are unknown to this
great city in those early times ; Flemish barbs
and royal coaches have not yet come into vogue ;
and the only people who are conveyed through

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY. 101
the streets are the mounted horsemen, who prance
and curvet amongst the crowd at considerable risk
of mischief. The prevailing aspect of the people
in the streets is that of a frateraity of lay monks.
Everybody is dressed very nearly alike, the cos
tume of the men consisting, for the most part, of
a long loose gown, reaching to the heels, and fas
tened round the waist, the head being covered by
a hood, variously shaped, according to the whim
of the wearers. The hood is common to both
sexes, the women wearing a capacious gown un-
confined at the waist, and trailing far behind
them in the mire, with a wimple round the neck,
fastened up under the chin and above the ears, as
if there were some ailment in the throat or jaws
which it is desirable to conceal."
Lancaster, or Savoj', Palace, as it may be in
differently called, was not destined to enjojf a
long tenure of security. Blanche Plantagenet,
daughter of the first Duke of Lancaster, married
her cousin, John Plantagenet, fourth son of Ed
ward IIL, better known to historical legend as
John of Gaunt ; and by this marriage the Lan
caster coronet, carried by the lady to her husband,
continued to reign in the SavoJ^ It was in the
time of the Duchess Blanche that the acquaintance
began, which afterwards ripened into the most
intimate friendship, between John of Gaunt and

102 LONDONIANA.
the poet Chaucer, who had served in the expedi
tion to France, and been made prisoner there;
circumstances which helped materially to recom
mend him to the protection of the Duke. Sir
Payne Roet, a native of Hainault, who came over
to England in the retinue of Queen Philippa, had
two daughters, one of whom, Katharine, entered
the service of the Duchess Blanche, while the
other, who bore the then popular name of Philippa,
was taken into the Royal household as one of the
maids of honour. To the latter lady Chaucer was
married. His poem of " The Dream" is supposed
to veil, under an elaborate allegory, allusions not
only to his own courtship, but to the courtship
and marriage of the Lady Blanche and the Duke,
then Earl of Richmond, and only nineteen years
old; and, if some of the interpretations which
have been put upon " The Dream " be correct,
Chaucer must have known the Duke before his
marriage. But it is certain that their close rela-
. tions grew up afterwards, when Philippa's sister
was resident in the Savoy, and, subsequently,
when Philippa, having left the Royal household,
became attached to the person of the Duchess
Constance, the second consort of John of Gaunt.
Chaucer, therefore, may be presumed to have lived
for some years in the Savoy, and not merely to
have been received by the Duke as a frequent

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY. 103
guest; and the tradition which tells us that he
wrote several of his poems here is, consequently,
all the better entitled to credit.
The Duke married the Duchess Constance in
1371. Sis years afterwards John of Gaunt, who
had made himself obnoxious by his patronage of
AA^'ickliffe, had his palace attacked by the mob ;
and four years later, during the tumults of AVat
Tyler's rebellion, the place underwent a short but
violent siege. The palace was gutted and burned
to the ground, its plate and other valuables were
either destroyed or flung into the river, and
several of the neighbouring houses, forming part
of the Duchy, were blown up. The magnificent
structure, which had been all throughout con
nected with the names and fortunes of kings, was
thus in a few hours reduced to a heap of ruins, in
which state, desolate and neglected, the Savoy
continued to remain for upwards of one hundred
and twenty years.
Of the vicissitudes through which the Duchy-
passed during that dreary interval it is hardly
necessary to speak at large. Upon the death of
John of Gaunt, the Duchy devolved on his son
Henry, who afterwards became King of England
under the style of Henry IV,, when the estates of
which the Duchy consisted were merged in the
Cro'wn. They were subsequently, by Act of Par-

104 LONDONIANA.
Uament, separated from the Crown ; and, upon
the union of the houses of York and Lancaster by
Henry VII., they passed into a new phase.
On the site of the palace, the King, in 1505,
erected an hospital, dedicated to St. John the
Baptist, to receive and lodge nightly one hundred
poor people. The buildings, left unfinished by
the Royal projector, were completed by Henry
VIII. The hospital was in exterior structure in
the shape of a cross, with double rows of mul-
lioued windows and embattled parapets, lozenged
with flints, a friary on the north, and a guard
house at the west end, used as a receptacle for
deserters, with quarters for thirty men and un
commissioned officers. According to old accounts,
the building must have stood close upon the river,
and the views which have been preserved of it
show that it combined some pictorial effects with
considerable solidity and strength.
The chapel, which was close to it, had more
pretensions in the way of architectural beauty,
and appears to have undergone no material revo
lutions either in itself or its immediate accessories
since it was built, upwards of three hundred and
fifty years ago. The little bur.al-ground, raised
several steps above the floor of the chapel ; the
small tower, on the east side, at which a sentinel
used to mount guard ; and the diminutive trees

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY, 105
overshadowing the consecrated walls, aud giving
rather a picturesque character to the place, may
still be seen pretty much as they existed in ages
long past. The decorations of the interior, the
rich and noble altar-piece, the delicate embellish
ments on the eastern and western sides of the
great window, supposed to be the work of Sir
Reginald Bray, and the exquisite roof, with its
hundreds of quatrefoils, enclosing carved eaiblems
on shields in endless variety, perished at the Re
formation, and it is only of late that their glories
have been revived.
The chapel survived the hospital, which, in
1553, was given up to Edward VL, who trans
ferred its revenues to the then newly-erected
Bridewell and Christ's Hospital, Subsequent
attempts were made by Mary and Elizabeth to
restore the original uses of the building, but
without much success. The place had suffered
an utter change in its character, and had become
a nursery of rogues and refugees from justice,
who took shelter within the precinct that they
might claim the protection of the master of the
hospital. This mastership of the Savoy was an
office much sought after as one of those "easy
cushions " reserved for the repose of men of merit
or favourites of the great, Cowley, the poet, had
long sought the appointment, which was promised

106 LONDONIANA.
to him by Charles I., but the Restoration called
into existence a new class of candidates, and
Killigrew was nominated to the post. To this
disappointment we owe Cowley's " Complaint,"
and the epithet of "Savoy-missing Cowley," which
has come to us from the State poems.
At different times the hospital, although falling
into rapid decadence, was found available for use.
During the Dutch war, sung by Dryden, it was
thrown open to receive the sick and wounded ;
but about that period, or shortly after, a great
portion of it was injured by fire. The hospital
was finally dissolved in 1702, and its last relics
were swept away in order to make room for the
building of Watei-loo Bridge,
Early in the last century the old Savoy House,
as the remains of the hospital were called, was in
a ruinous condition. It was tenanted by tailors
and cobblers and other handicraftsmen, who plied
their various avocations in its spacious apart
ments, a not altogether inappropriate purpose to
convert them to, for here in this old Savoy House,
in 1552, was established the first manufactory of
glass set up in England, The west end was used
as a prison for deserters, impressed men, convict
soldiers and other military offenders ; and the
gateway to that quarter bore up to the last the.
arms of Henry VII., and the badges of the rose.

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY. 107
fleur-de-lis, and portcullis. The place in its latter
days gained a different kind of celebrity, for here
the Independents met in 1658 to frame their
famous declaration of faith, and here, in 1661,
the Savoy Conference was held for the revision of
the Liturgy.
The precinct of the Savoy, notwithstanding the
decUiie and fall of the hospital, its chief structure,
contained many commodious houses, and held a
busy population. The King's presses were for
many years maintained here, and here all Procla
mations, Acts of Parliament, and Gazettes were
issued. Here, too, the books of the Royal Society,
and other contributions to popular and scientific
literature, were produced, as we learn from the
title-page of the " Anglise Notitia," now lying
before us, which informs us that the work was
" printed in the Savoy by T. N. for John Martyn,
printer to the Royal Society, at the Bell in St.
Paul's Churchyard, in the year 1671."
Besides the Royal chapel, which was assigned
to the parish of St. Mary-le-Strand on the de
struction of the old church by the Protector
Somerset, there were churches, or congregations,
established for the Dutch, High Germans, French,
and Lutherans, and also Protestant dissenters.
But the chapel of the Savoy alone possessed the
privilege of sanctuary, and this circumstance drew

108 LONDONIANA.
into the place the worst characters, and often led
to serious consequences. AVhenever an attempt
was made to follow a debtor or other offender
into the precinct, the mob assembled and executed
summary vengeance, in accordance with the wild
customs of the locality. In 1696 a creditor went
into the Savoy to demand a debt from one who
had taken sanctuary there. The population im
mediately poured out from every nook and corner,
seized the unfortunate creditor, tarred and fea
thered him, and in that condition conveyed him
in a wheelbarrow into the Strand, and bound him
to the maypole, where they left him.
The chapel did not entirely escape the con
tagion of the moral atmosphere by which it was
surrounded. The clergymen who officiated here
little more than a hundred years ago, emulated
the traffic in contraband marriages which, about
that time, as we have seen, was being profitably
carried on in May Fair and the Fleet. These
marriages were duly advertised in the newspapers ;
and intending runaways were informed that
lovers were united, not only with privacy, but
with decency and regularity ; that there were no
less than five private ways by land and two by
water to this secret temple of Hymen ; and that
this imposing ceremony, which no man could put
aside, was performed at the small charge of one

A WALK ROUND THE SAVOY. 109
guinea, including a five-shUling stamp. This
nefarious trade was ultimately put down by Act
of Parliament, but not till some examples were
made of parsons who persisted in violating the
law. One of the last transgressors was the father
of Tate AA^lkinson, afterwards a theatrical manager
of renown. The reverend gentleman, his father,
pursuing his illicit practices at the Savoy, was
informed against by Garrick, tried, and trans
ported. But the Savoy bequeaths to us pleasanter
memories than these. Fuller was a lecturer in
the chapel, and may possibly have written some
part of his " Worthies " on this spot ; Alexander
Cruden, the author of the " Concordance," lived
here ; and here Jacob Tonson had a warehouse.
Many persons of distinction are buried within
and without the walls, and had monuments in the
chapel, which are now destroyed. Amongst them
occur the names of Douglas, Dalhousie, Chaworth,
and Rokeby ; Wither, the poet, who sleeps be
tween the east door and south end of the church ;
Anne Killigrew, poet and painter, " born to the
spacious empire of the Nine," whose father, the
facetious Tom Killigrew, was Master of the
Savoy, and with whose memory a gentleman is
said to have fallen in love from merely seeing her
picture and reading her poems ; Gavin Douglas,

110 LONDONIANA,
who translated A^rgil ; and D, Cameron, the last
person who suffered for the RebelUon of 1745,
and to whom a monument was erected one hun
dred years after the battle of CuUoden,
Her Majesty Queen Victoria has always shown
a zealous interest in the Savoy Chapel, In 1843
she put it into thorough repair, and when it was
burned down, in 1864, she restored it and beauti
fied it without regard to cost.

P.S. — Since the above paper was in type I have seen
" Memorials of Savoy,'' by its chaplain, the Kev. Henry
"White, too late to avail myself, however, of its guidance — a
disappointment which I deeply regret. — E. W.

Ill

CHESTERFIELD HOUSE,
(1869.)

THAT London is growing is an obvious truth ;
and, alas, equally true is it that old London
is dying, for everywhere around us we see proofs
of its decay, though, phcenix-like, new buildings
spring up on the ashes of the old. We need not
recapitulate the palaces of the vanished past, for
such names as the Savoy and Whitehall are as
household words, but we linger with regret on
those which pass before our very eyes ; land
marks in the streets, whose names connect them
selves with the proud families of the earth, and
with pages of history recorded in the closed
volumes of bygone times. Amongst these we
tremble to hear the possible doom of Chesterfield
House, so rich in the associations of the past
hundred years, built by the great Earl of Chester
field only twenty years or so after the creation of

112 LONDONIANA.
South Audley Street, where before had lain " the
land of Mr. Audley." There were open fields,
with gates and hedges, in close proximity to the
Hay Market, and May Fair, and the house
stood between a court and a garden, which, as its
builder remarked, was " very rare in London."
There was room enough too for his tomb close at
hand, for the body of the worthy Earl lies interred
in a vault of the neighbouring " Grosvenor
Chapel." Philip Dormer Stanhope was the son of Philip,
the third Earl of Chesterfield, and Lady Elizabeth
Savile, daughter of the Marchioness of Halifax,
who superintended her grandson's education till
his eighteenth year, when he went to Cambridge.
After his university career he spent a few years
in foreign travel, mixing freely with the best
society of the chief continental towns, and at the
Hague, adding to his many accomplishments the
pernicious habit of gaming. While at Paris he
received his final polish under the tuition of the
beauties of that place, and no doubt gained much
of the experience which forms the groundwork of
the advice in his Letters, which he afterwards
transcribed for the very questionable benefit of
his son.
Before the death of his father he sat in the
House of Commons as the representative of two

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 113
Cornish towns, St. Germans and Lostwithiel.
After the year 1726 he distinguished himself iu
the House of Lords by his great eloquence,
which. Dr. Maty says, " though the fruit of study
and imitation, was in great measure his own.
Equal to most of his contemporaries in elegance
and perspicuity, perhaps surpassed by some iu
strength, he could have no competitors in choice
of imagery, taste, urbanity, and graceful irony,"
His Court favour varied greatly. During the
life of George I: he was appointed gentleman of
the bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales ; but on
that prince's accession as George II, in 1727, he
was greatly disappointed by the absence of that
royal favour which he conceived he had a right to
expect. He was, however, in the following year
appointed Ambassador to Holland, where he
greatly distinguished himself by his diplomatic
talent ; and it was at the expiration of his four
years' service there that, on his return to Eng
land, he joined a strong opposition against Wal
pole, and afterwards, incurring the decided enmity
of the King, he was dismissed from his situation
of Lord High Steward with marks of strong re
sentment. There are various stories as to the
radical cause of the King's dislike to the brilliant
statesman, but probably any one of them would
have been sufficient to create at the least a decided
VOL, n. I

114 LONDONIANA.
coldness. Archdeacon Coxe's version of it is con
firmed by Walpole, who was concerned in it, in
his memoir of George II, ; but there is a dis
crepancy as to dates, and a tone of improbability
about some of the details, which throw more than
a shadow of doubt over the whole. Briefly, it
runs to the following effect; that Chesterfield had
ardently desired the post of Secretary of State,
and an arrangement had been made in his favour ;
that upon this he had an audience of the Queen,
to which he was introduced by AA'alpole, and that
immediately after he paid a longer visit to Lady
Suffolk, the then reigning favourite, than was
approved of by the Queen, who thereupon pro
cured that his appointment should not take place.
Here it may be remarked that Chesterfield had
been intimately acquainted with Mrs. Howard
long before she had attracted the notice of Queen
Caroline or George II. ; and further that, having
been created Countess of Suffolk in 1731, and
thus set at her ease as to money matters, she was
well disposed to leave the Court, but did not do so
till 1735, three years after the dismissal of
Chesterfield, to which Archdeacon Coxe represents
her retirement as the ominous preliminary !
AValpole agrees in his account of the indiscre
tion of Chesterfield, and it appears that it was not
till two years before the Earl's death that he was

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 115
informed by Horace Walpole himself that the
cause of his disgrace was his having offended the
Queen by paying court to Lady Suffolk. Be this
as it ma}', there was another and more probable
cause for the Royal dislike, which lay in his mar
riage with the daughter .of George I. and the
Duchess of Kendal, Melosina de Schulenberg,
created in her own right Countess of AValsingham,
and considered, as long as her father lived, one of
the wealthiest heiresses in the kingdom. George
I. himself opposed the inclinations of his tall,
fair-haired, and graceful daughter, in consequence
of Chesterfield's notorious addiction to gambling;
but a very few months after Chesterfield's dis
missal from Court, on his return from Holland,
saw Lady Walsingham become Lady Chesterfield.
Her husband's house in Grosvenor Square was
next door to that of the Duchess of Kendal, whose
society he much frequented ; and it was she who
suggested legal measures respecting a will of the
late King, which George II, was said to have
suppressed and destroyed, and by which, as the
Duchess alleged, a splendid provision had been
made for Lady Walsingham ; and at last, rather
than submit to a judicial examination of the affair,
George II, compromised the suit by a payment of
^620,000 to the Earl and Countess of Chesterfield,
These things were not likely to smooth the way
I 2

116 LONDONIANA,
for the return of the ex-Lord Steward to St,
James's, nor was it facilitated by his inveterate
habit of ridiculing and disparaging the Electorate
and all its concerns, which he continued to prac
tise down to his dying day.
His marriage took place in 1733; fourteen
years after, in 1747, he commenced building the
" rather fine house," as he describes it, in South
Audley Street, which still perpetuates his name.
When the famous boudoir of blue damask and
gold, of which so much has been said, and more
hinted, was finished, and to which Madame de
Monconseil contributed two magnificent bras de
porcelaine, which stood for more than a century
on each side of the costly mantelpiece, the lordly
owner took possession of the house, a year before
the other rooms were finished, their slow progress
greatly vexing him. In this same year (1748)
he retired from the office of principal Secretary
of State, to which the King had been constrained
by his undoubted talent to appoint him, and thus,
at the early age of fifty-four, resigned finally the
cares of official life. It was during this last brief
tenure of the seals that Dr, Johnson's eagerly-
sought introduction to him took place. The then
unknown author, whose Dictionarj'^, now a great
fact, was then merely an idea floating in the brain
of an apparently ordinary mortal, waited in the

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 117
ante-room of the Secretary of State ; and when,
having seen CoUey Cibber preferred before him,
he was at last admitted to his Lordship's presence,
he received, besides an approval of his plan, a
donation uf ten guineas. Not many months be
fore he had received fifteen guineas for "The
Vanity of Human Wishes." And many years
after, he remarked to Boswell, " Sir, ten pounds
were to me at that time a great sum." His re
mark on Lord Chesterfield's " Letters to his Son "
is well known — " Take out the immorality, and
the book should be put into the hands of every
young gentleman."
What was thus wanting in both Lord Chester
field's writing and character — morality — was well
supplied by his wife ; for this daughter of a Dutch
woman and a Hanoverian king was a devoted fol
lower of the Countess of Huntingdon's sect, and
an ardent admirer of AA'^hitefield, a preacher in
whom she delighted, and in whose " Tabernacle "
she often sat. Her exemplary conduct to her
husband during his Ufe, even when he preferred
the blue boudoir and its guests to the Calvinistic
preachings at Moorfields or Tottenham Court
Road, was continued through the infirmities of
old age, through which she tended him with un
wearied devotion ; and after his death she showed
the most anxious concern for his memory, whilst

118 LONDONIANA.
Dr. Maty's eulogistic memoir remains the monu
ment of her tenderness. She also showed almost
maternal regard to her husband's son, whose use
less life would have caused his memory to perish
long ere now, but for the Letters addressed to him.
It was this son of Madame de Bouchet who pro
voked from an unknown pen the following lines,
which, from the little known that is known of
Mr. Philip Stanhope, we may hope are unjustly
severe : " Vile Stanhope — Demons blush to tell —
In twice two hundred places,
Has shown his son the road to H 
Escorted by the Graces.
But little did th' ungenerous lad
Concern himself about them ;
Eor base, degenerate, meanly bad.
He sneaked to H  without them."
The original design of Chesterfield House was
made by Isaac Ware, the editor of " Palladio."
The interior of it was embellished by its owner
with elaborate taste, and amongst the historic
relics which it contains may be mentioned a
lantern of copper gilt for eighteen candles, which
Lord Chesterfield bought at the sale at Houghton
(Sir Robert AValpole's seat in Norfolk), and " the
canonical pillars " alluded to in his Letters, mean
ing the fine marble columns which came from that

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 119
wonder of short-lived splendour. Canons,* which
Pope has so keenly satirised as " Timon's Villa."
After the death of his son in 1763, the infirmi
ties of age increased rapidly, and the remainder
of Lord Chesterfield's life wore a cast of melan
choly, almost of despondency. In March, 1773,
he departed this Ufe, at the age of seventy-nine,
and was succeeded in title and estates by his god
son, a distant cousin, Philip Stanhope, descended
from Arthur, the youngest son of the first Earl.
From him descends the present Earl, who, how
ever, has never inhabited this fine house; but,
having till recently let it to the Duke of Abercorn,
has lately sold it to Mr. C. Magniac, who, whilst
carefully preserving the house, has given up the
garden behind it and the land on either side for
building other mansions almost equal to it in
splendour. Chesterfield House itself has many fine points,
and in others, it must be owned, it is sUghtly
disappointing. Passing from the porter's lodge
across a noble court paved with stones, and enter-
* Canons was huilt by James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, at
the village of Edgeware, eight miles from London, at an ex
pense of £250,000, in the early part of the eighteenth century,
only to be taken down after his death in 1774, and sold piece
meal. "We may mention, in passing, that the equestrian statue
of George I., now decorating Leicester Square, came from
thence. ¦

120 LONDONIANA.
ing the hall, the visitor cannot fail to be struck
by the grand marble staircase, up and down which
the great Duke of Chandos must have walked
when it stood beneath his own palatial roof at
Canons. And, apart from historical traditions, it
is really a staircase for ideas to mount, especially
when one is met on its first landing, not only by
busts of Pitt and Fox, but by a lofty clock, ap
parently of antique French construction, and
which looks as though it had at some time or
other chimed out the hours at Versailles, long ere
gay courtiers there perceived the shadow of the
scaffold cast by the coming event of the " Great ''
Revolution. Entering the music-room by means of this same
staircase, we confess to some sense of disappoint
ment. Not of course that we had expected to be
greeted by any harmony of sweet sounds, any
music from the spheres ; but that the symbolism
of decoration on the walls, on the ceiling, and the
mantel- piece, might on the whole have been more
graceful and more appropriate than it is, consider
ing that the two fiddles in bas-relief, gilt and
crossed one over the other, are scarcely to be
compared in appearance with harps, lyres, &c.,
the usual metaphorical tributes to the Muse of
Melody, the Muse of Apollo, of Orpheus, and of
Sappho ; and that one is more reminded of the

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 121
violinists who played prominent parts at the
Court of France in the reign of Louis XIV. and
at the beginning of that of Louis XV. than of
the divine origin of music itself, which such a
room ought to suggest. More pleasingly re
minded, however, of that same Court is the
visitor on descending to the reception rooms on
the lower floor, and entering the drawing-room,
which is especially called the French room.
There, not only do the panelling of the walls
and the construction of the various pieces of
furniture transport one back to the glories of
the ancien regime of the time when Chesterfield
enjoyed its society ; but the looking-glasses, one
over the fire-place and another facing it, appear
as though they had mirrored that society, and
not only mirrored but multiplied it ; for these
looking-glasses, being severally formed of various
panels, fit, mosaic-like, one into another ; and, as
the divisions of these panels are ornamented by
wreaths of painted flowers, the beholder is i-e-
produced again and again, and, iu many a fan
tastic form, may judge of himself under various,
not to say versatile, aspects.
In one of the apartments— another drawing-
room to which this French salon leads us —
hangs a large chandelier, formed of pendent
crystal, which once belonged to Napoleon I.

122 LONDONIANA.
Historically this chandelier is so luminous in
interest that it requires a narrative to itself; but
the effect of it is somewhat heavy owing to the
large size of the crystal drops. The mantel-shelf
in this room is classically beautiful ; and amongst
the pictures on the walls is a flue copy of Titian's
Venus, the original of which — if we remember
aright — hangs in the Uffizii Gallery at Florence.
But, perhaps, the most interesting apartment
in the whole house is the library. There, where
Lord Chesterfield used to sit and write, still stand
the books which it is only fair to suppose that he
read — books of wide-world and enduring interest,
and which stand in goodly array one row above
another by hundreds. High above them, in sepa
rate panels, are " kit-cat " sized portraits of all
the great English poets and dramatists down to
the time of Chesterfield, and around the cornice
of the ceiling runs the Horatian motto
" Nunc veterum libris nunc somno et inertibus horis
Ducere solicitae jucunda oblivia vitas."
In another room, not far from the library, one
seems to gain an idea of the noble letter-writer's
daily life, for it is a room which has not only its
ante-chamber, iu which the aspirants for his
lordship's favour were sometimes kept waiting*
* The ante-room is immortalized in Mr. E. M. Ward's pic-

INSIDE CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 123
— aspirants to favour who afterwards in various
paths of life achieved fame far transcending that
of their then patron— but on its garden-side a
stone or marble terrace, overlooking the large
garden stretching out in lawn and flower-beds
behind the house. Upon this terrace Chesterfield
doubtless often walked snuff-box in hand, and in
company with some choice friends — let us say
from France — friends with whom he might gossip
of matters connected with the courts, aud camps,
and cabinets of his day. Where are they now ?
And how long will the nineteenth century be
still reminded of their traditions by a visit to
Chesterfield House? Is this house doomed after
all to perish and to pass away, like Canons? or
will it stand till the west end of London has
migrated to Kensington ?
The house itself, it may be added, stands on
land which originally belonged to the Dean and
Chapter of Westminster, and who granted to
Lord Chesterfield a long lease on terms which he
probably thought hard. At all events when he
ture, " Dr. Johnson in the ante-room of Lord Chesterfield." In
this picture the Canons staircase is well shown in the back
ground. Mr. P. Cunningham, in his " Hand Book for Lon
don," expresses a doubt as to the identity of the room with the
transaction mentioned above, supposing that Lord Chesterfield
did not reside here in 1749, which we have shown above to be
a mistake.

124 LONDONIANA.
drew up his will he added to it a clause to the
effect that if he should at any time keep or be
concerned in keeping race-horses or hounds, or
should spend a night at Newmarket, " that in
famous seminary of ill manners," during race
time, or should " resort '' to the said races, or
lose in any one day by gaming or betting as
much as d£500, he should forfeit £5,000 out of
his inheritance to the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster ! " This last sentence," writes
Lord Mahon, in his " History of England,"
"contains a lively touch of satire. The Earl
had found or believed he had found the Chapter
of Westminster of that day exorbitant and grasp
ing in their negotiations with him for the land
for building Chesterfield House ; and he declared
that he now inserted their names in his will,
because he felt sure that, if the penalty should be
incurred, they would not be remiss in claiming
it."

125

THE HERMIT OF GRUB STREET,

AMONG the many eccentric characters who
have made their abode in the "crowded
loneliness" of this great metropolis was one who,
though no miser, lived for many years the hidden
life of a recluse or secular hermit in Grub Street,
Cripplegate, His name was Henry Welby, and
he was a member of one of the best famiUes of
Lincolnshire, that of the Welbies of Denton, near
Grantham, now represented by Sir William
Welby-Gregory, Bart.
This "noble and virtuous gentleman" must
have been born at the end of the reign of King
Edward VL, for in 1592, when he settled in
London, he is said to have been about forty years
of age. It appears that he had studied at one of
the universities, and been made a student of one
of the Inns of Court; had spent some years,

126 LONDONIANA.
according to the prevailing fashion, in foreign
travel ; and had married and settled down in his
native country, where he lived in comfort on an
income of about ^SIOOO a-year in the exercise of
hospitality, as became a country squire, until his
only daughter grew up to womanhood, and had
become the wife of a Yorkshire gentleman. Sir
Christopher Hilliard. It is said, and probably
with truth — though I fear it would be impossible
at the interval of three centuries to verify the
statement — that he was universally esteemed and
beloved among his neighbours, and especiallj'"
among his poorer tenantry, when the whole
course and manner of his life was changed
by a casual occurrence which, however, took such
an entire possession of his mind, that he resolved
to fly from society once and for ever.
The occurrence is thus told in the Mirror : "A
younger brother, a mere lad, with whom he had
some difference of opinion, waylaid him in a field
and snapped a pistol at him, as he at first be
lieved, only as a boyish protest, and without any
intention of killing him or of doing him any real
bodily harm. Indeed Mr. Welby did not at first
'believe that the weapon was loaded, and so con
tented himself with taking it away from his an
tagonist, and dropping it carelessly into his
pocket. On reaching home, however, he found in

THE HERMIT OF GRUB STREET. 127
the pistol a couple of bullets. He appears imme
diately on this to have formed the resolution of
ceasing all familiar intercourse with mankind in
general. He at once became the tenant of a good-
sized house at the lower end of Grub Street, now
known as Milton Street, at that time rather a
famous thoroughfare, but afterwards still more
noted as having given birth to the author of
Paradise Lost. Three rooms of the house he
had furnished plainlj' for his own sole use, as
bed-room, dining-room, and study respectively,
the rest of the dwelUng being left to the servants,
for it appears that he had lost his wife before the
marriage of his daughter. As the three rooms
led into each, other, he was able to keep entirely
out of sight and out of hearing, even while his
meals were being laid or his bed made by an
ancient maid or waiting-woman named Elizabeth
— the only person who was privileged to see him
for forty-four years."
The story goes on to describe his mode of life
in detail, and especially his vegetarian diet:
"MrAVelby abjured all animal food during the
whole of this period, living principally on oatmeal
porridge, with a salad of green herbs in the sum-
njer time, and on high festivals the yolk of an
egg, with a slice out of the middle of a loaf and a
little jam or a few sweetmeats. His drink was

128 LONDONIANA,
table beer, and occasionally ' red cow's milk ;' but,
though he observed this simple mode of Uving, a
liberal table was kept by him for his domestics,
and entertainment was provided for any tenant or
other visitor who had business to transact at his
house." In the midst of his hermit life, however, he was
not wholly the " world forgetting," for we are
told that he kept up his acquaintance with the
literature of the age, reading every new work that
was published, except such as related to contro
versy. These he laid aside unread, considering,
doubtless, that the squabbles and wranglings of
schoolmen and casuists were beneath the notice
of one who had abjured all intercourse with man
kind. Yet he had a due sense of respect for
religion, and would appear to have been a sound
Churchman at heart, though he never darkened
the door of Cripplegate Church, for he " faithfully
observed all the holy days." In this respect, no
doubt, his house was managed on a different plan
from that of his Puritan neighbours, the Miltons,
scriveners, across the way, for " he ordered the
dishes appropriate to those festivals to be carried
into his dining-room along with a goodly
quantity of wine." On such occasions, after
reverently saying grace, he would tie his napkin
under his chin, draw on a pair of clean holland

THE HERMIT OF GRUB STREET, 129
sleeves, and carving brawn, beef, goose, and
capon in succession, he would send dinners to his
poorer neighbours till the dishes were emptied.
This done, he returned thanks, took off his sleeves
again with all due form and ceremony, and gave
orders for the tables to be cleared against supper-
time, when the process was repeated, but without
tasting or touching anything himself.
Such being the case, we may be sure that the
"Hermit of Grub Street" was a very popular
man in his neighbourhood, and was perhaps all
the more wondered at because of the mysterious
loneliness in which he shrouded his existence.
Beggars and worthless vagrants indeed, hearing
of his charity, flocked iu numbers around his
doors and clamoured for relief, but they did not
always obtain what thej^ wanted; indeed, if the
truth must be told, they were often " sent about
their business " rather summarily. But, looking
down from a private window in a nook of his
lonely bedroom, he would frequently watch for
the sick, weakljf, and lame, as objects of his
charity. These were often surprised by a mes
sage sent after them inviting them to come to his
house, where they were not only fed but clothed,
and sometimes taken care of by the old house
keeper for two or three days, at the end of which
time they were sent on their way rejoicing, with
VOL. II. K

130 LONDONIANA.
money in their pockets for their journey. If a
poor labouring man in his neighbourhood had a
larger famUy than he could well support in com
fort, somehow or other the unseen and mysterious
benefactor was sure to hear of the case ; and he
was so well informed of the real circumstances of
matters going on in the outer world, that a
proper distinction was observed between the idle
and the industrious, the latter alone being re
lieved, and all without ostentation or wounding
their proper pride.
" Mr, Welby," writes the author before-men
tioned, " was no exception to the ordinary rule
which seems to ordain that those who retire from
the ordinary duties of society live on for lingering
years in the monotony of their own conipany.
Happily for himself, he had not neglected the
higher duties and responsibilities of humanity
and religion; so that when he died at last at
eighty-four years of age, and was carried from the
house, over the threshold of which he had never
stepped for nearly half a century, there were not
wanting some sincere mourners in his neighbour
hood." This, it must be owned, is a high testi
mony to his character and work. During the
whole time of his long seclusion, Mr, Welby's
hair and beard had been allowed to grow at their
own will — a great mark of eccentricity at that

THE HERMIT OP GRUB STREET, 131
time ; so that, as Grainger remarks in his
Biographical History of England, " his plain
garb, his long and silver beard, his mortified and
venerable aspect, bespoke him an ancient in
habitant of the desert or hermit of the wilder
ness, rather than a gentleman of fortune in a
populous City,"
If any of our readers should wish for further
information respecting Mr. Welby's personal
biography, they will find it quaintly recorded in a
scarce pamphlet, published shortly after his
death, and entitled, " The Phoenix of these Late
Times ; or, the History of Henry Welby, Esq,,
who lived at his House in Grub Street Forty
Years, and in that space was never seen by any,
and there died, October 29th, 1636, aged 84."
It only remains to be added that Mr. Welby's
bones repose in the churchyard of St. Giles,
Cripplegate. There is a likeness of Mr, Welby in the
" Phoenix," to which it serves as a frontispiece ;
but it would be difficult to prove its authenticity,
seeing that Mr. AVelby never sat for his portrait,
at all events during his later years. It is pro
bable that it was from the biographical pamphlet
which I have quoted above that the author of the
" Fool of QuaUty " drew one of his leading
characters,
R 2

132

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN.

AT the eastern extremity of Holborn, nearly
opposite to St. Andrew's Church, is a
quaint enclosure — for it is scarcely a street —
known as Ely Place. An imposing beadle, like
a second Cerberus, guards its portals, for not only
is it extra-parochial, but it is exempt from the
jurisdiction of the City or Metropolitan police;
and it possesses, or possessed till lately, the privi
lege of " sanctuary " and freedom from arrest for
debt. And this, not because it was ever a royal
palace, but as being in old times the town-house
of the Bishops of Ely, who resided here for some
five centuries, down to the early part of the reign
of George III.
It would seem that the connection of this spot
with the wealthy and important see of Ely dates
nearly six hundred years back, for it was John de

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN. 133
Kirkby, Bishop of Ely, who, at his death in 1290,
bequeathed this property to his successors, iii
order to build themselves a new hostel or hostelry,
instead of one which they had occupied nearer
to Lincoln's Inn. VA'^ho actually built the first
Episcopal palace here, is uncertain ; but we know
that the very next Bishop of Ely, one AA'illiam de
Luda, erected the exquisite chapel which still
stands to the present day, as if to remind us that,
whilst homes and hearths perish, things divine
alone are eternal. The chapel was erected about
the same time as Westminster Hall, to which it
bears many points of resemblance.
Another Bishop of Ely, named Hotham, added
to the messuage and hostel an orchard and vine
yard ; and in the course of the next two centuries
the palace was much beautified and improved,
one of its chief benefactors being Archbishop
Arundel, who erected a gate-house in front, look
ing southwards to Holborn, in the stone work of
which Stow tells us that his arms were to be seen
iu his day. Camden also describes Ely Palace as
" well beseeming a bishop to live in."
The Reformation does not seem to have wrought
any great change in this place ; but in the reign
of Queen Elizabeth it was torn rather rudely
from the see of Ely, and handed over by the
" Virgin Queen," on a long lease, to Sir Christo-

134 LONDONIANA.
pher Hatton, who contrived to fix his own name
on the estate to the extent of calling its garden
after his own name, Hatton Garden.
However, in due course the Church claimed its
own successfully, though no one exactly knows
how it came to succeed in the claim. But in
1772 the then Bishop of Ely transferred to the
Crown his rights, and those of his successors, in
Ely Place, on condition of a new palace being
built for them in the more courtly neighbourhood
of Dover Street, Piccadilly.
Ely Palace is rich in its historic reminiscences.
Here John of Gaunt, " time-honoured Lancaster,"
spent the last years of his life, and here he died,
as is well known to every reader of Shakespeare.
Here lived Henry Radclyffe, Earl of Sussex, for
he writes to his Countess from Ely Place to tell
her of the death of Henry VIII. It was after-
"wards the residence of the Earl of Warwick (sub
sequently Duke of Northumberland) ; and here,
as Mr, Walter Thornbury tells us, " the Council
met and planned the conspiracy which resulted
in the execution of the Protector Somerset," The
readers of Shakespeare will remember another fact
in connection with Ely Place, namely, that its
gardens were remarkable for the fineness of their
strawberries. Witness the speech of the Duke of
Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. : —

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN, 135
" My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw some good strawberries in your garden there ;
I do beseech you, send for some of them."
After the death of Sir Christopher Hatton,
Elizabeth's dancing Chancellor, Ely Palace was
tenanted by his widow, who here was courted by
Sir Edward Coke and Lord Bacon. The rich
prize was carried off by the former ; but it proved
anything but a satisfactory match, and so the
couple separated. Ladj' Hatton, who bore the
character of a very " strange " lady, died here in
1646. During her tenancy, part of the extensive
buildings composing the palace were let to the
Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, who continued
to use the chapel for Mass, as being a CathoUc.
During the war between King Charles and the
ParUament, Ely Palace was turned to account as a
hospital, and a prison as well. The gate-house,
however, was taken down, and the crypt of the
chapel used as a drinking rendezvous.
The great hall, when it still stood entire in all
its majesty and state, was frequently lent to the
ruling powers of the Inns of Court, for the per
formance of masques, mysteries, and other festivi
ties, such as those with which the elections of
new sergeants-at-law were celebrated, especially
in the days of the Tudors. On one occasion an
entertainment here was witnessed by Henry VIII.

136 LONDONIANA.
and Queen Catharine of Arragon, Stow describes
at length the various courses of the feast, and
indeed gives us the menu entire. The last
" mystery " performed in Ely Palace is worthy
of note, as having been also the last " miracle
play " that was publicly exhibited in England.
It was " Christ's Passion," and was performed
one Good Friday evening in the reign of James I.,
whilst Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, was
tenant of the place.
The chapel, as said above, is all that now re
mains of the once proud palace of the Bishops of
Ely. It is a very perfect specimen of the Geo
metric Decorated style, and is dedicated to St.
Etheldreda, a Saxon saint, daughter of a king
of the West Angles — the same who is regarded
as the foundress of Ely Cathedral, She died
whilst presiding as Abbess over a religious house
at Ely in 679. When the Bishops of Ely sold
this estate to the Crown, the chapel was regarded
as a somewhat useless bit of lumber, and re
mained empty for some years. It was then let to
the National Society as a school-room, and after
wards, in 1843, to the Welch Episcopalians as
a chapel. By the agency of this body it was
stuffed full of lofty and unsightly pews, with a
" three-decker " pulpit desk, and hideous gaUeries,
which blocked up the exquisite tracery of its

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN. 137
windows and the covering of its canopied sedilia,
though happUy they left the walls of the fabric
uninjured. The chief beauty of the chapel is in its in
terior. There are no external buttresses, and the
window-tracery is nearly flush with the external
walls; by this means the full thickness of the
wall is realised from the interior of the building,
and a wonderful effect of solidity and massive-
ness is obtained ; this, so to speak, is artistically
toned down by a veU of delicate columns, with
carved capitals and rich mouldings. These
columns are in the first case applied to the
window-tracery, and again on the inner angle of
the window-reveal they form themselves into a
cluster, which above, on its carved caps, supports
the window-arches and crocketed gablets, uniting
the window-arches in a continuous arcade, and
below stands on a boldly projecting string-course
which runs round the building. At the floor-
level was a stone base, also running round the
building, which is being restored from old frag
ments found on the site. On the piers between
the window-clusters and under the crocketed
gablets or canopies projected broadly-carved
corbels, which from their position and size indi
cate that they once carried life-sized statues —
probably of the Twelve Apostles. Immediately

138 LONDONIANA,
above the window-arcade is placed the roof wall-
plate. The east and west ends of the chapel are
pierced by splendid tracery windows, both of five
lights; the west window is remarkably pure in
style, and very bold in conception ; the east
window, if less effective, is more ingenious in its
design. It is a curious feature in this window
that, whether we take only one or two, three or
four, of the whole five lights, we find that each,
taken separately and with its attendant tracery,
forms a perfect window. In the south-east
corner are remains of the sedilia, and at the
north-west and south-west ends are doors simply
perfect in their purity of design. At this west
end no doubt a screen formerly existed, forming a
sort of ante-chapel, and shutting off the outer
entrances from the body of the church. Exter
nally we find that four octagonal turrets fortified
the angles, and that the wall-veil (as Mr, Ruskin
calls it) consisted of a continuous arcade formed
by the window-arches and the intervening gabled
canopies ; these canopies taking the place almost
invariably occupied by buttresses in mediaeval
buildings ; probably statues, supported on short
columns, stood under them.
The building has many original features. As
the ground on which it is built sloped down
towards the Fleet river, an undercroft was first

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN, 139
constructed about seven feet in height ; by this
expedient the western floor of the edifice was
brought to a level with the highest point of the
surrounding ground, and the eastern end was
raised to a corresponding extent. The floor of
the chapel was supported by a Une of oaken posts,
which carried a great central beam running from
east to west; upon this were placed the oak
joints, about a foot square, which, resting on
the set-off the noi-thern and southern walls, met
in the centre. The walls of the undercroft are
upwards of seven feet in thickness.
From this slight description an idea may per
haps be formed of the simplicity, originality, and
power which guided the erection of the buildings.
It may be mentioned that an old engraving shows
a bold cornice and pierced parapet as crowning
the building; the roof was originally covered
with lead. To show how one mind carried
out its conception in every minor detail, varying
the rhythm but not the motive (to borrow a
musical expression) of the mouldings; to show
how delicacy alternated with boldness of feature
where art and nature required it — would need
many illustrations and sectional drawings ; and
to appreciate the skill of the old " art workman "
in technical points a visit to the building itself is
needful. The restoration aims at being thoroughly

140 LONDONIANA.
conservative in all that is architectural and artistic.
The crypt has been deepened in order to be made
serviceable as a second church"; and the eastern
end of the upper church is slightly changed
from what must have been its original appear
ance by the necessary presence of an organ and
choir-stalls. It may be noted that no bottom
was found to the foundations at ten feet below
the crypt-floor.
In 1874, the chapel, and the adjoining house,
were ordered to be sold under the authority of
the Court of Chancer^', on account of a lawsuit
among the heirs of the individual who had bought
it from the Crown just a century before ; and it
was purchased by the Fathers of the Order of
Charity, who at once commenced the work of
restoration, in order to fit it once more for
Catholic services. The crypt, which was filled
with earth and manure and beer barrels, was
presently excavated and fitted up for service ; the
roof of the chapel above was restored timber by
timber and tUe by tile ; the walls were scraped
from their coats of whitewash; the pews were
pulled down and turned out of doors ; the vvin-
dows were filled with tracery of the same pattern
as that executed in the reign of Edward IIL; and
painted glass, the gift of the Duke of Norfolk,
was inserted in the eastern window, the tracery

ELY CHAPEL, HOLBORN. 141
of which had never been destroyed ; and before
many months are over, probably on the twelve-
hundredth anniversary of St. Etheldreda's death.
High Mass will be sung within its walls,
Mr, Walter Thornbury records an amusing
incident which occurred in Ely Chapel a century
and a-half ago, on the arrival of the news of the
defeat of the young Chevalier by the Duke of
Cumberland, at CuUoden. " The clerk allowed
his loyalty to overcome his devotion, and struck
up a Uvely ditty in praise of the reigning family."
Cowper thought this incident worth recording in
his Task: —
" So in the chapel of old Ely House,
When wandering Charles, who meant to be the Third,
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh.
The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce,
And eke did roar right merrily two staves.
Sung to the praise and glory of King George."
Evelyn in his " Diary" twice mentions having
been present in Ely Chapel at public services ;
firstly, at the consecration of Dr. Williams, as
Bishop of Chester, and secondly, at the marriage
of his own daughter Susanna, when the ceremony
was performed by Dr. Tenison, afterwards Arch
bishop of Canterbury,
In the crypt under the chapel were found in
1874, the bones of several persons, apparently.

142 LONDONIANA.
ten or a dozen. Some of these, in all probabiUty,
were the remains of people killed at the " fatal
vespers " in Blackfriars, by the fall of the flooring
of a Roman Catholic Chapel, in Hunsdon House
in that precinct, in 1623. These bones were
collected, and decently re-interred elsewhere.

143

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK.

BY the demoUtion of the famous " Tabard," in
the Borough, one of the most picturesque
and interesting relics of old London, another of
the rusty and time-worn links which connected the
past .with the present has been swept away.
For ages, Southwark, and particularly that part
of it known as the High Street, has been very
naturally celebrated for its inns. After the
Norman Conquest, the great ecclesiastics appear
to have become partial to the suburbs on the
south side of the river. The proud Bishop Odo,
of Bayeux, had, in the time of the Domesday
survey, " one monastery and one harbour " here,
which had previously belonged to the Anglo-
Saxon kings, and which probably implied that
he had a residence here also. The Bishops of
Rochester and Winchester, had each a palace

144 LONDONIANA.
close by St. Saviour's Church ; the Prior of
Lewes and the Abbots of St. Augustine and of
Battle occupied houses in the same neighbour
hood ; whilst the Abbots of Hyde, or Hide, near
AVinchester, had a hostel by the side of the High
Street, or great road. In those far-off times, old
London Bridge was the only entrance into the
City for traffic and travellers from the south of
the Thames ; and as in the middle ages, strangers
visiting a large city like London, especially if
they arrived late in the day, used to take up
their lodgings outside the gates— to say nothing
of the pilgrims, of whom we shall make mention
hereafter — some of the principal inns for the
accommodation of travellers were built along
the line of approach.
Accordingly, on both sides of the High Street
of Southwark, a thoroughfare wide for the older
ages of street-building, aud lined on each side
with venerable-looking houses, most of which
turned their gables to it, stood many of these
ancient hostelries ; whilst the locality has held a
reputation for strong ale from very remote ages.
An old couplet, which we have somewhere met
with, runs thus —
" The nappy strong ale of Southwark
Keeps many a gossip from the ku-ke."

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK. 145
That there were breweries here as far back as
the fourteenth century we have evidence enough
in the fact that Chaucer speaks of the " ale of
Southwark" in his time; and readers of that
poet will not have forgotten, among the inhabi
tants of this part —
" The miller that for drenken was all pale,
So that unethes upon his hors he sat."
Chaucer's host of the " Old Tabard," no doubt,
drank freely of the ale that was brewed here, and
so did the " Knight " and the " Franklin," and
perhaps the " mincing Nonne " herself.
Stow, in his " Survey," published at the close of
the sixteenth century, tells us that there stood
in this locality " many fair inns for receipt of
travellers," among which he enumerates by
their signs "The Spurre," "The Christopher,"
"The Bull," "The Queene's Head," "The
Tabarde," " The George," " The Hart," " The
Kinge's Head," and others. Of these inns men
tioned by the old chronicler, some few remain to
this day, with their quaint and picturesque
balconies surrounding the old-fashioned yards ;
whilst most of the buildings connected with
them have been converted into warehouses or
booking-offices for the goods department of
different railway companies, &c. In the reign
VOL. II. L

146 LONDONIANA.
of Henry ATIL, the "George" is mentioned in
the records of the "Tabard," to which it adjoined,
as the " St. George," — no doubt so named after
the patron saint of England. The " AA'hite
Hart," which is one of the inns enumerated by
Stow, possesses a still earlier celebrit}% having
been the head-quarters of Jack Cade and his
rebel rout during their attack on London in
1450. Fabyan, in his " Chronicles," under date
of Julj' 1st. 1450, has this entry : " Jack Cade
ai-rived in Southwark, where he lodged at the
' Hart ;' for he might uot be suffered to enter the
City." Shakespeare, in the second part of King
Henry VL, makes a messenger enter iu hot haste,
announcing to the King :^
" The rebels are in Southwark. Fly, my lord !
Jack Cade proclaims himself Lord Mortimer,
Descended from the Duke of Clarence's house,
And calls your grace usurper openly,
And vows to crown himself in AVestminster."
And again, another messenger enters and
exclaims —
" Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge ;
The citizens fly and forsake their houses."
Afterwards Cade thus addresses his followers : —
" "Wdl you needs he hanged with your pardons about

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK, 147
your necks P Hath my sword therefore broke through London
gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart iu South
wark." But it is not one of these old inns in general,
but of " The Tabard" in particular, that we are
about to treat. This old hostelry retained most
of its ancient features down to the time of its
recent demolition ; but its name had many years
ago become changed for that of the " Talbot,"
The old inn stood on the east side of the High
Street, about midway between St. George's
Church and London Bridge. The first founda
tion of the inn would appear to be due to the
abbots of Hyde, and to the hostel referred to
above. The land on which it stood was pur
chased by the Abbot of Hyde in the year 1307,
and it is recorded that he built on it not only a
a hostel, or town-house, for himself and his
brethren, but also an inn, with the view of
furnishing accommodation for the numerous
pilgrims resorting from all parts of the kingdom
to the famous shrine of St. Thomas of Canter
bury, for it stood just between the Pilgrim's AVay
from the west aud south of England and the
much better known continuation of the Pilgrim's
AVay onward to Canterbury, so that it would be
exactly the spot where they would be glad to find
a halting- place,
L 2

148 LONDONIANA,
To his list of signs quoted above, old Stow
adds that " the most ancient is the ' Tabard,' so
called of the sign, which, as we now term it, is of
a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open on
both sides, with a square collar, winged at the
shoulders : a stately garment of old time, com
monly worn of noblemen and others, both at
home and abroad in the wars ; but then (to wit,
in the wars) their arms embroidered, or other
wise depict, upon them, that every man by his
coat of arms might be known from others. But
now these tabards are only worn by the heralds,
and be called their coats of arms in service."
There can be no doubt that by the end of the
fourteenth century the " Tabard " had become one
of the inns most frequented by the pilgrims, ere
they started off along the old AVatling Street to
Canterbury, the " holy, blissful martyr for to
seeke." Every reader of our old literature will
remember how the poet Chaucer selected this
ancient hostelry as the place of assembling of his
pilgrims in the " Canterbury Tales," The time
was the month of April : —
" Byfel that, iuthat sesoun on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabbard as I lay,
Eedy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canturbury with devout corage.
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nyne and twenty iu a companye,

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK, 149
Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle.
In felaschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle
That toward Canturbury wolden ryde.
The chambres and the stables weren wyde.
And wel we weren esud atte beste.''
Macaulay tells us that "It was a national as
well as religious feeling that drew multitudes to
the shrine of A'Becket, the first Englishman who,
since the Conquest, had been terrible to the
foreign tyrants," Here it was, then, that the
genial poet has depicted to us the assembling of
nine and twenty of these pilgrims, preparatory to
setting out on their journey, and tells us how
they agreed to enliven their pilgrimage by the
recital of " tales," No one possessing any know
ledge of the literature of the middle ages would
for a moment suppose that Chaucer's meeting of
the pUgrims was intended for the description of
a real event, that all the arrangement about the
telUng of tales was really made, and that each
pilgrim told the story which the great father of
English poetry has ascribed to him. There can be
no doubt, however, that when Chaucer lived— that
is, towards the close of the fourteenth century—
the " Tabard " was the usual resort of pilgrims, or
at least that it was the most frequented hostelry
in Southwark, or he would not have introduced it
in that character.
The host of the "Tabard" whom Chaucer has in-

1 50 LONDONIANA,
troduced to us was one "Herry Baillif," or Henrj'"
Bailly, of whom John Timbs, in his account of
this inn in the City Press, writes :—" Henrj'^
Bailly, the host of the ' Tabard,' was not im
probably a descendant of Henry Tite or Martin,
of the borough of Southwark, to whom King
Henry III., in the fifteenth year of his reign, at
the instance of AA^lUam de la Zouch, granted the
customs of the town of Southwark during the
King's pleasure, he paying to the Exchequer the
annual fee and farm rent of ,£10 for the same.
By that grant Henrj' Tite or Martin was consti
tuted bailiff of Southwark, and he would, there
fore, acquire the name of Henry the Bailiff, or Le
Bailly, Be this as it maj'", it is a fact on record
that Henry Bailly, the hosteller of the ' Tabard,'
was one of the burgesses who represented the
borough of Southwark in the Parliament held at
AA''estminster, in the fiftieth Edward IIL, A,D.
1376 ; and he was again returned to the Parlia
ment held at Gloucester in the second of Richard
IL, A.D. 1378."
Chaucer's description of "Herry Baillif" has
the appearance of having been drawn from life : —
" A semely man oure ooste was withalle,
Eor to han been a marchal in an halle ;
A large man was he with eyghen stepe,
A fairere burgejs is ther noon in Chepe :

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK. 151
Bold of his speche, and wys and well i-tauglit,
And of manliede lakkede he right naught.
Eke therto he was right a mery man."
The original "Tabard" was in existence down
to the commencement of the seventeenth century ;
it was an ancient timber house, and accounted to
be at least as old as Chaucer's time. Speght, who
pubUshed an editon of Chaucer's poeins in 1602,
tells us : — " AVhereas through tim.e it hath been
much decayed, it is now by blaster J. Preston,
with the abbot's house thereto adjoining, newly
repaired, and with convenient rooms much in
creased for the receipt of many guests." AVhat
were the character and extent of Preston's repairs
we have no means of forming a judgment: but
perhaps they did not materiallj' change the
general appearance of the old edifice. He seems
to have added the private house of the abbot to
the public buildings of the hostelry.
About half a century after this date, the
"Tabard" was exposed to destruction from another
cause, and one which must have been much more
disastrous, though we have still no means of
ascertaining to what extent it suffered. In 1676
Southwark was the scene of a terrible conflagra
tion, second only in its greatness to the well-
known fire of London ten years before. Nearly
six hundred houses were burnt, or blown up for

152 LONDONIANA.
the purpose of arresting- the progress of the fire,
and the " Tabard " must have been almost in the
centre of the danger. AVhen it was rebuilt, the
old associations of this inn seem to have been so
far forgotten, popularly, that even the name of the
sign was changed, and, in the appropriate lan
guage of the well-known antiquary, John Aubrey,
"the ignorant landlord or tenant, instead of the
ancient sign of the ' Tabard,' put up the ' Talbot,
or dog." Aubrey tells us, further, that before the
fire it was an old timber house, " probably coeval
with Chaucer's time." It was probably this old
part, facing the street, which was burnt. In
Urry's edition of Chaucer, pubUshed in 1721,
there is a view of the " Tabard" or " Talbot," as
it then stood, the yard apparently open to the
street, if the drawing be correct. The sign was
then suspended to the middle of a beam extend
ing across the street, and supported by a timber
post at each end. It appears then to have be
come at that time a great inn for carriers and for
posting, and a well-known place of accommoda
tion for visitors to London from distant parts of
the country.
The " Tabard " (or, rather " Talbot ") of our
own day must have been a very different looking
place from the one with which Chaucer was ac
quainted. AA^e entered the yard from the High

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK. 153
Street under a wide square passage. On our
right, with the words "The Talbot" written
above the door, was what chiefly constituted the
inn, a bar of no great dimensions, and adjoining
a small room for drinking and smoking. Before
us appeared the more ancient parts of the old
" Tabard," but all in a state of great neglect. A
very old-looking balustrade ran round flie first
story, and against this, in front of us, was the
sign, which was so defaced and covered with dirt
that its subject could hardly be distinguished. It
represented the court-yard of the old inn, with a
number of Canterbury Pilgrims preparing to start
on their journey into Kent, and is said to have
been painted by Blake. The figures of the pil
grims were copied from the celebrated print by
Stothard. On the beam of the gateway facing
the street was formerly inscribed, " This is the
inn where Sir Jeffrey Chaucer and the nine-and-
twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canter
bury, anno 1383," This was painted out in
1831 ; it was originally inscribed upon a beam
across the road, from which the old sign-board
was suspended. The beam was removed in 1763,
as interfering with the traffic.
The ground floor of the old buUding was let
out as luggage offices of carmen and raUways,
On the left, an old wooden staircase presented

154 LONDONIANA,
itself to our view, by which access was obtained
into the gallery behind the balustrades. This
was continued round two sides of the building, at
right angles to each other, and contained the
doors leading into the chambers. All this part
of the building might belong to the close of the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, or even to that of
James I. The old chambers had been so much
cut up, and divided and subdivided, to turn them
into modern bed-rooms, that they presented but
few features of interest. Those which opened
upon the gallerj^ to the left, which was at right
angles to the gallery facing the street, are said to
have been formed out of the ancient hall, the
room of public entertainment of the hostelry, or,
as it was popularly called, " The Pilgrims' Room,"
because it had become a favourite conjecture that
this, in its original state, was the room in which
Chancer's pUgrims met together and supped.
Here, then, according to the modern notion, the
" seemly" host is presumed to have proved his
title to the character of " right a mery man,"
given to him by the poet : —
" And after soper playen he began,
And spak of myrthe among othur thinges,
"Whan that we hadde maad onre reckonynges ;"
and to have laid out that splendid plot which
Chaucer lived not long enough to complete.

THE TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK. 155
Mr. Corner, as we learn from his account of the
old inn which appears in the Collections of the
Surrey Archaeological Society (vol, ii, part 2),
was of opinion, from personal examination, that
there was nothing at all in the remains of the
" Tabard," as they existed at the time of its
demolition, earlier than the Southwark fire of
1676; after which was built the "Pilgrims' Room,"
its fireplaces being of this date.
Outside, and looking towards the court, the
buildings of the old " Tabard " were sadly
covered and obscured with modern inventions.
The appearance of the structure, however, with
its high, steep-tiled roof, and its antiquated gable-
windows, was still striking and picturesque. To
the right, the yard extended to some distauce,
and then turned at right angles into a sort of
long back court, the buildings on each side of
which communicated by a light wooden bridge
thrown across it.
All, alas ! is now changed. The old and pictu
resque gatewaj'"— through which passers-by could
obtain a glimpse of the wooden galleries and
balconies of the quaint old building, and which
remained down to the close of last year — has
now been removed altogether. On the left, as
we now enter the yard, we pass a bran new ale
house, which, with its gaudy colouring, and

156 LONDONIANA,
brilliant gas-lamps, somewhat approaches the
modern gin-palace in appearance, and which, as
if in mockery, has been dubbed " Ye Old Ta
bard ;" the antique guest-chambers and galleries,
too, have been levelled with the ground ; and iu
their place are now many high brick-built ware
houses and offices, such as we are now accustomed
to meet with in any of the busy thoroughfares of
Loudon.

157

MISLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN.

I DO not know a pleasanter or more interesting
sight than Covent Garden Market on a
bright fine morning in June between the hours of
four and six a.m,, when its central piazza is one
mass of summer flowers and redolent of early
fruits. The market affords then, indeed, a cu
rious sight. From half-past three to half-past
four there is but little bustle visible, though busi
ness goes on rapidly. "Early risers of both
sexes," observes a writer in the City Press, "a
class of ' higglers,' who indorse the old proverb
that ' the early bird catches the worm,' flock to
the market. They form a medium between the
grower and the small dealer, buying the whole
stock from the former, and seeking to sell por
tions of it to the latter at a higher price. The
crowd and bustle increase from five up to seven

158 LONDONIANA,
or eight. Porters, with baskets, offer their help
to buyers. The piazzas become very lively with
their clamour. Against every post and pillar are
small tables, where coffee, tea, bread and butter
may be purchased. Hawkers parade in every
direction with cakes, buns, knives, and pocket
books for sale. Many customers seek for stimu
lants, and consume gin or hot spirits-and-water
with avidity," Those who wish to see the sight
and smell the scent of fresh flowers in London in
the summer should then pay a visit to Covent
Garden soon after sunrise during the summer;
but the central arcade is a pretty sight, at what
ever season it may be visited,
Mr. Diprose in his " Book about London," tells
us that " The contrast between the Covent Garden
of fifty years ago and the present is as wide a
one as can possibly exist. The old watchman —
helpless for good, and the most corrupt of public
officers— the turbulent and drunken old women,
the porters quarrelling over their morning pota
tions, the jaded and neglected horse dropping be
neath the cart-load of half-rotten turnips, the
London rakes — (fast men of these days) — making,
not the night, but morning, hideous by their
obscene blasphemies, and deeming it conduct
becoming of gentlemen to interrupt honest in
dustry, and to scoff at early labour, — all this has

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN, 159
gone, and so also are the terrible lessons that it
inculcated. Order is now preserved as well as it
can be amongst a rude assemblage of women and
men whose battle for existence begins when the
civilization of the great city slumbers."
Covent Garden, as Charles Kenny writes, " is
a twofold temple, dedicated to Pomona and Flora,
in which daily devotion is paid to the productive
divinities. Here, as in a very temple, all classes
and grades, all denominations and distinctions of
men, jostle each other in the humiUty of a com
mon dependence on the same appetites, the same
instincts, the same organs of taste, sight, and
smell — the fashionable lady who has left her
brougham at the entrance, in quest of some pam
pered nursling of the conservatory, and the wan
needle-woman bent on the purchase of a bundle
of wallflowers, or a root of pale primroses to keep
her pale cheeks iu countenance ; the artisan's
wife purveying for her husband's meal, and the
comfortable housekeeper, primed with the dis
criminating lore of Mrs. Glass, making provisions
for her winter's preserves ; the bloated gourmand,
in search of precious peas, and the sickly hypo
chondriac eager to try the virtue of some healing
herb." It is in the long-continued arch of Covent
Garden Market, as Mr, Diprose puts it in his
work quoted above, " that the bouquets are made

160 LONDONIANA.
for the evening exhibition which do sueh terrible
mischief in Cupid's calendar, at balls, theatre,
opera, concert, and in the private boudoir of my
' ladye-love.' "
The scene presented in the market during what
may be strictly called the " business hours," is
curious in the extreme, aud is one of those phases
of life in which Dickens delighted, and which
would require the pen of a Swift, or Sterne, or
Fielding, to describe adequately and picturesquely,
as it deserves.
But, if less pleasant to the senses, the scene
which Covent Garden presents in its cen
tral and side avenues in the week immediately
before Christmas is certainly not less interesting
to the thoughtful spectator, who has a heart for
home and its pleasures, and has not yet been so
beaten and baffled by the waves of this trouble
some world as to become callous to the innocent
diversions of childhood and youth. Such a one
wUl see some remembrances of his earlier days in
the loads of holly and of misletoe with which the
thoroughfares are crowded. At this season of the
year, when we bring the holly inside our
churches, and the misletoe inside our parlours,
the great London market, we need scarcely re
mark, becomes the principal mart for the vendors
of the mystic bough ; so our readers— especially

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN. 161
our young and fair readers — will pardon us, we
are sure, if we venture on a short account of
this plant and its associations, interwoven as they
are so closely with the history of Covent Garden
at each recurring Christmas-tide,
If we can show that the mistletoe has been
held in high honour in England from the days of
the Britons to our own times, that it has always
been supposed to have certain mysterious pro
perties, and that it has from the earliest ages
been connected with the New Year, a history
will have been traced for it more ancient aud
romantic than any other native plant can boast,
" Its other rivals of Christmas tide, the holly and
the ivy, can scarcely vie with it in ancient fame
and wide-spread honour ; only the oak, on which
it once grew abundantly, and is still occasion
ally found, has associations more venerable and
historic; only the yew carries us back into a more
remote antiquity or more poetic scenes;" and
none of these ha-^o the same homely charm as
that which is involuntai-ily attached by our
" young men and maidens " to the very name of
mistletoe. It is known to every reader of early English
history that the mistletoe was used in the solemn
worship of the Druids, who, it is more than pro
bable, were an offshoot of the Brahmins of India,
VOL, II. -M

162 LONDONIANA.
if there be truth in the close affinity which
modern science has established between the lan
guages of Britain and India, the Celtic and the
Sanskrit, and in the belief of ethnologists in the
extensive migrations of tribes from Central Asia
in pre-historic times into the far west. But we
are not going, at this festive season, to dive so
far back into antiquity ; but instead will deal
briefly with the mistletoe of the present day, as
likely to be a matter of greater interest.
The mistletoe, though found occasionally in
all parts of England, is more rare in the northern
and midland counties than in the south aud west ;
and of all counties its chief home is in Hereford
shire. It is well known that, of all trees, this
dainty and captious parasite likes best to grow
upon the apple ; and in Herefordshire it has an
ample field for choice, taking more kindly, it is
stated, to those trees whose fruit is white-fleshed
than to those which bear yellow-fleshed* apples,
* "Whether the Viscum Album shows any preference for any
particular sorts of apples, is a point requiring further investi
gation. There are certainly some facts which seem to show
that this is the case. Some observers, with much orchard
experience, think it likes best the more acid kinds of fruit, as
the varieties of the Crab, the " Old Bromley," " Skyrme's
Kernal," " Hampton's Delight," &c., &c., and is much less
common on the " Bitter-sweet," the " Royal "Wilding,'' the
Norman, French, and Italian fruits, and on "pot-fruits," in

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN. 163
Curiously enough, too, though found so constantly
on apple-trees, it seldom, if ever, grows on the
pear; and never, spontaneously at least, upon
the beech, the birch, the holly, the walnut, the
elder, the sweet chestnut, or the laurel. Next to
the apple-tree it loves the poplar, the lime, and
the white thorn, and it is also occasionally found
on the maple, the sycamore, and the acacia.
There can be very little doubt that in by far the
majority of instances it is chance-sown, most pro-
general. Mr. Adams has observed, that trees bearing white-
fleshed apples are much more liable to be attacked by mistletoe
tlian those which bear yellow-fleshed apples : the former cor
respond to the acid fi-uits, whilst the latter embraces nearly the
whole of the new and French frnits of recent introduction,
called bitter-sweet apples, and from which tihe best and mildest
cider is made.
I have myself observed, in some orchards I chance to know-
well, that there is scarcely a tree of the " Foxwhelp," " Old
Cowarne red," or " Cowarne Queening," or " Quining," that is
uot inhabited by the mistletoe, and it signifies not whether the
tree may be old or young. This has been confirmed by several
close observers, who have also added that it is the same with the
"Red-streak," the "Old Styre," the "Garter Apple," the
"Woodcock," and indeed with almost all the old Herefordsliire
apples. It is the general opinion that mistletoe is much less
common in the orchards of the French, Norman, and Italian
fruits lately so so much planted ; even here, though, the Vis-
eum seems to make a selection, and will attack young trees of
the "upright Normandy", and "Italian Apple." — "Transac
tions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club." No. V., p. 73.
M 2

164 LONDONIANA,
bably its seeds having been dropped by birds,
but that, from some other cause not as yet under
stood, the wood of all trees is not equally fitted
-to receive it and support it. Where its seed has
once found a congenial home within the bark of
a tree, like a true parasite, it drives the fangs of
its roots deep into the wood whence it draws its
sap and nourishment, growing with its growth,
and strengthening with its strength. At times,
indeed, it would seem as if it maintained a war of
life or death with the tree on which it has fixed
itself. Dr. Harley says, in a paper on the subject read
before the Linnaean Society in March, 1863 : —
" The branch still struggles vigorously with its
enemy, but as fast as one generation of roots are
dying off, a later and more numerous progeny
attack it in another place. The affected branch,
moreover, assumes various contortions, in the
hope of escaping, being twisted sometimes in one
direction and sometimes in another, and fre
quently being bent at right angles to itself.
But it wrestles in vain as with a veritable hydra,
which having killed its centre, spoiled and occu
pied its bark, and invaded anew the living wood
that remains, now gradually completes the work
of destruction." It is to this power of the mistle
toe to seize on one branch of a tree after another,

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN. 165
and to reduce them to a desolate, woe-begone
appearance, with fading leaves and decaying
branches, that Shakespeare is thought to allude,
when he says of the Umes in Datchet Mead—
" The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe."
Tit. Andr., Act ii., sc. 3.
The mysterious origin of the mistletoe was
perhaps one cause of the religious veneration in
which it was held by the ancients, who seem to
have regarded it as a sort of Melchisedek among
plants. Aristotle,* in harmony with the belief
of other writers, declares that its seeds will not
grow unless they have passed through the intes
tines of a bird, a notion which was the source
of an Athenian proverb which it would not quite
do to quote here, though we may go so far as to
say that the mistletoe thrush was laughed at of
old for helping to produce the cause of its own
destruction. It is estabUshed, however, that the seeds of
mistletoe can be artificially propagated. A paper
on the " Transactions of the Herefordshire Natu
ralists' Field Club " gives the following receipt : —
" Raise a considerable piece of the bark by a
sloping incision, nearly an inch long, on the
under side of the branch to be experimented
* De Generat. Animal, i. chap. i.

166 LONDONIANA,
upon : the cut should only be made through the
bark itself, and not into the wood of the branch ;
or, more simply still, a broad notch may be cut
in the bark, then, having chosen some fine well-
ripened berries, open the skin of one of them,
remove the seed with great care, and place it in
the base of the notch thus made, with the embryo
directed towards the trunk of the tree, and re
store the raised bark over it. In this wa)' it is
best secured from the sun and winds that might
dry it up; from the rains that might wash it off;
and from the birds also. The branch experi
mented upon should not be less than five feet
from the ground."
It should be added that the seeds must be
handled careful'ly, as they are very delicate and
tender, and that the best time for trying the ex
periment is January or February. The young
plant is slow of growth, and will often spend two
years in forming roots before sending out any
regular stems. The mistletoe can also be arti
ficially propagated by grafting, or budding, or in
arching. On the Continent M, Du Hamel is said
to have succeeded in making the mistletoe grow
on all trees except the fig, the hazel, the oak, aud
the juniper; and M, Dutrochet has proved that
its seeds do not follow the law of other plants in
germinating, by sending their roots to the centre

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN, 167
of the earth, but always to the centre of the
object to which they become attached as para
sites. The owners of orchards in Herefordshire are
not of opinion that the mistletoe, though appa
rently so destructive to the branches of aged
trees, is an enemy to the fruit which they boar.
Accordingly they do not cut it away, or even
prune it. One Herefordshire naturalist, indeed,
goes so far as to think that the parasite relieves
the over-abundant sap, as cupping relieves a
plethora of blood ; and Dr. Harley, whom we
have already quoted, is of opinion that its pres
ence causes an increased quantity of sap to be
drawn up for its supply from the soil, and thus
the tree is not injured, if the soil be not ex
hausted. It is not a little singular to find that, since the
railway system has been extended into Hereford
shire, the mistletoe has become an article of large
and increasing export from that county to London,
to Birmingham, and to the manufacturing cities
of the north, where famiUes are equally eager to
celebrate Christmas and New Year's Day with
their proper rites as in the west and south. We
take the following statement from an authentic
source. Through the politeness of the traffic
managers of the Great Western Railway we are

168 LONDONIANA.
enabled to give an approximation towards the
correct return of mistletoe actuaUy sent out of
Herefordshire from the various raUway stations
within the county in a recent December. The
exact return is as follows : —

Tons.

Cwts.

Qrs.

Hereford

25

0

0

Withington

7

15

0

Ledbury

15

2

3

Moreton

2

11

1

Dinmore

3

3

0

Leominster

12

14

0

Berrington

0

16

0

VP"oofferton

2

0

0

Ludlow

0

1

3

Boss

15

0

0

Moorhampton

5

0

0

Besides this amount, it must be remembered
that the guards and engine-drivers have allowed
them the privilege of exporting mistletoe to any
extent they please, and that they avail them
selves of their privilege by nearly every train
throughout the first half of the month. The
amount thus exported, and that which crosses
the borders of Herefordshire in carriers' carts, is
estimated by competent judges at twenty-five tons
more. As each ton fetches from £5 to £6 10s., it
is clear that here are the elements of a new traffic

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN. 169
which as yet are only partially developed, and
which must continue steadily to increase, as long
as mistletoe continues in such favour with the
ladies. It is perhaps a sad bathos to the romance
of the Mistletoe to hear that common-place rail
way trucks now carry off to London at so much
per ton that curious plant for which Sir Walter
Scott sent his " merry men " into " the woods ""*
at Christmas. Nearly all of this quantity that
comes to London is dispatched to Covent Garden
Market, whence it finds its way through the retail
dealers into every street in the City and Suburb,
and so eventually into our London homes.
If, however, we would be particular, and not
lump together the festivities of December and
January, we ought to observe here that, properly
speaking, the mistletoe belonged to New Year's
Eve and Day, as the holly belonged to Christmas.
According to a writer in " Notes and Queries "
(First Series, vol. v. p. 208), " the holly owes its
importance in the festivities of Christmas to
Paganism. The Romans dedicated the holly to
Saturn, whose festival was held in Deceniber;
and the early Christians, to screen themselves
from persecution, decked their houses with its
* " Forth to the woods did merry men go
To gather in the mistletoe." Marmion, Cant. vi.

170 LONDONIANA
branches during their own celebration of the
Nativity," The holly then was innocent enough.
But the mistletoe had other associations of its
own. According to many ancient writers, it was sup
posed to have fructifying qualities ; and was
worn as an amulet, or drunk diluted as a potion
by those who desired to obey that precept which
is as old as creation itself, "Be fruitful, and
multiply and replenish the earth." The plant
was cut down by the Druid priests with many
religious ceremonies, and given far and wide as a
charm to ensure fecundity. When the Druidical
religion was overthrown, the Church tried in vain
to set aside the mistletoe as a gross heathen
superstition. The Edicts of Emperors and the
Canons of Councils were unable to put it down ;
and even at the present day, in many parts of
England, it continues to be given by swineherds,
aud shepherds, and cowherds, to help their beasts
through a time of danger, AVith these some
what coarse associations the mistletoe naturally
found a home in the servants' hall, in farm
houses, and mansions; but it occupied too pro
minent a place in the rejoicings of the kitchen to
secure for itself a place permanently in .the
Church.* Even to the present day the idea of
* " Certain it is that mistletoe formerly had place among

MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN. 171
of a kiss under the mistletoe bough has not quite
lost its ancient mystic meaning : for the charm
attached to the mistletoe, when hung up in the
servants' hall, would appear really to be that the
maid who is not kissed under it at Christmas
time will not be married during the year ;* and
if with Mr. Shirley Hibberd, no mean authority,
we refer this association of ideas to the Scandi
navian mythology, in which the mistletoe is
dedicated to Friga, the Venus of the Scandi
navians, the case is much the same.
It is scarcely, then, mere " caprice," as a
writer in the Quarterly Reviewf suggests, "which
has excluded the mistletoe as well from the annual
decorations of our churches at present as from
their ancient sculpture and carvings," of which
the only instance known we believe, is to be seen
in Bristol Cathedral. AA''hat, however, may not
be quite proper for a church may be proper iu
another place. Is there not a place as well as a
time for all things ? And we see no reason why,
Christmas decorations of churches, but was afterwards excluded.
In the earlier ages of the Church many festivities not tending
to edification had crept in — mutual kissing among the number ;
but as this soon led to indecorum, kissing and mistletoe too
were both very properly bundled out of the Church." — " Notes
and Queries." New Series, Vol. vi. p. 523.
* See " Notes aud Queries," New Series, Vol. v. p. 13.
+ Vol. OXIV. p. 220.

172 LONDONIANA.
eighteen hundred years after the extinction of
Druidism, we should not set aside all antiquarian
pedantry, forget the heathen origin of the custom,
and salute our cousins and other fair friends
this and every Christmas-tide, according to ancient
usage and old-established custom, under " The
Mistletoe Bough,"

173

HERALDS' COLLEGE.
(1869.)

A T the present moment, when the recent death
.Lx. of " Garter King of Arms " has drawn
public attention to the subject, a few words upon
the venerable " College of Arms " in Doctors'
Commons, or, as it is popularly termed, " Heralds'
College," may "not be wholly out of place. It is
obvious to remark that such an institution, as it
now stands, is rather an anomaly in the middle
of the nineteenth century, as being at the same
time a public office, aud yet in private patronage,
responsible not to Parliament, but to the head of
the noble house of Howard, in his capacity as
Earl Marshal of England, and administered
wholly and entirely at his Grace's will and
pleasure. The visitor to the " College of Arms," if he has

174 LONDONIANA.
raised his expectations at all high, must, we fear,
make up his mind to be disappointed. The
" College " is no magnificent public building, sur
mounted with linns, or griffins, or " wyverns,"
and splendid with Gothic architecture and painted
windows. Turning out of St. Paul's Churchyard,
a little to the south-east of the Cathedral, you
pass down Godliman Street, and on your left
hand, on St. Bennett's Hill, half way down to the
Thames, you see a heavy, red-bricked building,
apparently of the seventeenth century, with a
round-headed archway and a porter's lodge. You
enter, and you find yourself in a stone-paved
court, which forms a quadrangle, but which is
about to be shorn of its southern side, in order
to make way for the new street from Blackfriars
Bridge to the Mansion House.
It is not a little singular that the lopping off of
this side will bring back the " College " nearly
to its original plan, for, when it first arose out of
the ashes of the great fire two centuries ago, it
was not a quadrangle at aU, but was one of the
regulation mansions of the age, with a front
facing the river, and looking down upon pleasant
slopes and gardens, and flanked by two wings at
each end, which ran at right angles towards the
Thames.* * This arrangement is now altered, the southern side of the

HERALDS' COLLEGE, 175
It must not be thought, then, for a moment
that the original "College of Arms" was buUt or
designed for the Heralds. In the early days of
their corporate existence they were lodged in a
"messuage with appurtenances" in the parish of
All Saints, called Poulteney's, or Pulteney's Inn,
or Cold Harbour; and a picture of that ancient
building as it stood on the banks of the Thames
may be seen in the sixth volume of Mr. Charles
Knight's " London." Originally built by a Sir
John Poulteney, who had been four times Lord
Mayor of London, it had passed through several
hands before it came to the Crown ; and, when it
was bestowed on the " College of Heralds " by
Richard IIL, it is said, by old Stow, to have
been a " right fayre and stately house." Richard
bestowed it on Sir John Wrothe, or AVrythe, or
Wriothesly. " Garter King of Arms," in trust for
the residence and assembling of the Heralds ;
and the College, considering him their founder
(although, as a matter of fact, Richard Champneys
had perhaps a fairer claim to the title), adopted
Sir John's armorial bearings as their official seal.
Henry VII., who was always disposed to wage
war with the establishments of his predecessors,
quadrangle having been removed on the formation of Queen
Victoria Street, so that the house now presents the same ap
pearance as in the " olden time."

160 LONDONIANA,
dispossessed the " College " of their house at Cold
Harbour, and removed them, or caused them to
remove, to the Hospital of Our Lady of Ronceval
at Charing Cross, a spot identical with the site of
what now is Northumberland House. But, as the
Heralds were there only by sufferance of the
Crown, they were glad to accept, under charter
from Philip and Mary, as their home, Stanley or
Dei-by House on St, Bennett's Hill, which had
been purchased by Thomas, Duke of Norfolk and
Earl Marshal of England, and transferred by him
to the Crown. The original house was burnt, of
course, in the Great Fire of London ; and the
present house was erected, after a design by Sir
Christopher AA'"reii, through the munificence of the
"upper ten thousand," assisted by members of
the College, and especially by Sir William Dug-
dale, who built the north-west corner at his own
cost. The present entrance, which pierces the western
wing with a heavy and gloomy arch, destroys the
effect of the building, which ought to be ap
proached up a flight of steps from its southern
front, if it is ever to be seen to advantage. On
the left hand, however, is the entrance into what
is still caUed " the Grand Hall," in which the
Courts of chivalry were held in ancient days. In
the Hall, immediately facing the entrance, is the

heralds' college, 177
judicial seat of the Earl Marshal of England,
surrounded by a heavy wooden balustrade. But
" the chair is empty and the sword unswayed,"
Considering the heavy and tasteless style of the
massive wood-work, it is really very difficult to
draw upon the imagination so far as to picture to
oneself what was the appearance of the Court of
Chivalry, the "Curia Militaris," which held its
session here so lately as 1720, in which year we
are told the Blounts or the Blunts came before it
to decide a question as to the right of bearing a
certain coat of armour; and, in the absence of all
attractions of architecture and decorative furni
ture, it is still more difficult to conceive an idea
of what must have been the Court which sat in
Poulteney's Inn near five centuries ago, to settle
the still more important contest between the
Scropes and the Grosvenors, when John of Gaunt
and the poet Chaucer appeared as witnesses before
the august personage to whom all questions of
"coat armour," and indeed of chivalry, were wont
to be referred, and from whose judgment there
was no appeal.
That the right to hold such a court was not
always in abeyance, and that its decisions were
counted matters of importance, is clear from the
fact that it had the power of degrading unworthy
persons from the Order of Knighthood, and the
VOL. II. N

178 LONDONIANA,
records of the College attest that, three times at
the least in three centuries, its officers publicly
" broke and defaced " the spurs and other insignia
of knighthood belonging to men convicted of
" heinous offences and misdemeanours." The
last instance of such a punishment being inflicted
is to be found in Sir Francis Michell, June 21st,
1621, In 1716 the ceremony of degrading the
Duke of Ormonde, for treason, from the Order of
the Garter, was performed by the Heralds in St.
George's Chapel at Windsor ; and some of us are
old enough to remember the summary removal of
the banner of a Knight of the Order of the Bath '
by the Heralds ; but these acts were done under
order from the Sovereign, and not by authority
of the Heralds themselves, or in reality of the
Earl Marshal,
Three centuries ago the Heralds' College was
the sole public repository of all documents bearing
on the genealogy and pedigree of English gentle
men, using the term in its proper sense as in
clusive of both the titled and the untitled nobility.
Now the great portion of the work which of old
would have fallen to their lot is discharged by
the office of the Registrar-General, at Somerset
House, and by the general system of parochial
registration which prevails. Still there are con
stantly arising questions regarding those changes

heralds' college. 179
of name which are customary, and very venial
matters of pride, when a male Une becomes
extinct, and a property devolves upon a female
heir, oris bequeathed to her on condition that she
and her husband take the name of the former
owners. In all these cases it is still customary,
and it ought to be compulsory, for the family to
have recourse to the Heralds' College, and it is
expedient that the members of that College, if
they have not a veto upon such a transaction,
should at least record it for the benefit of future
generations. No doubt the old Heralds' visita
tions in the seventeenth century were very arbi
trarily, perhaps we might say even offensively,
conducted ; so that Lord Chancellor Hyde was
justified in his denouncement of the doings of the
officers of the College ; but still, as long as we
pay a tax for armorial bearings upon our carriage
panels and our silver spoons, it seems only reason
able that there ought to be some recognized
authority who may decide upon our right to
carry this or that device, and so make the gentle
science a useful handmaid to family history, Mr,
Charles Knight remarks : —
" There can be little doubt that but for the
disinclination of the Government to throw the
patronage into the hands of an independent here-
N 2

180 LONDONIANA.
ditary officer, like the Earl Marshal, the general
registration of births, marriages, and deaths
would have had its head-quarters on St. Benet's
Hill, aud not at Somerset House. The heralds
had a natural right to be the workers of and
gainers by this useful institution, as the genealo
gists of the empire ; and, considering the way in
which their privileges and emoluments have been
lately curtailed, such an arrangement would have
been a mere act of justice towards them."
It may not be generally known that Dallaway
attributes to the heralds of three centuries ago
the merit of haviilg suggested to Cromwell, Lord
Essex, the Vicar-General, the establishment of
registers in every parish in the land ; and it is
rather hard that they should fall short by a feather
from their own wing, and that the extension and
development of the system which they suggested
should be used as an argument for abolishing
the college as an antiquated and therefore useless
institution. For our own parts, we are of the number of
those who can appreciate the honest pride with
which the descendant of a long line of honourable
ancestry points to the shield and the crest and
the motto of his forefathers, and can understand
the natural desire of those who are even remotely

heralds' college. 181
connected with such parents to enjoy the reflected
lustre of their lion passant or regardant, or their
cross potent, pattee, or crosslet. Still we do not
hesitate to say that the vanity which induces
nearly every person who owns a gold seal or a
silver spoon to decorate it with a crest to which
on any recognized principles he can have no pre
tension, is a fair subject for public inquiry and
for taxation, so long as taxes are laid, as they
ought to be, upon luxuries rather than on neces
saries. And it is obvious that if this subject
were taken up seriously in Parliament, and u
commission were issued to inquire into and re
port upon the present state of the College of
Arms, and the best means of rendering it more
effective, the present members of that august
body, whether "Kings of Arms," or "Heralds,"
or "Pursuivants," might be employed with far
greater benefit both to themselves and to the na
tional revenue than is the case at present. Our
two Universities have been, each in its turn, sub
jected to the ordeal of a Parliamentary inquiry ;
our public schools and our local grammar schools,
though most of them arose out of private bene
factions, have undergone a similar course of treat
ment; and there can be no possible reason why
the Heralds' College should not share with our
educational colleges and schools the advantages

182 LONDONIANA.
which must accrue to it from being brought more
nearly into harmony with the requirements of the
age. Existing and vested interests, of course,
could be and would be respected ; but no time
for public action iu the matter, it would seem,
can be more appropriate than now, before a new
head of the college is appointed. In that case,
the new " Garter King of Arms " would receive
his appointment from his Grace of Norfolk, sub
ject to any regulations or alterations which may
be 'recommended hereafter by a committee of in
quiry ; and as the Heralds, one and all, are very
poorly paid as compared with the other officials,
no doubt they will only be too glad to find that
by the interference of Parliament their office is
raised in dignity and importance, and still more
largely in emolument.
The literarj' and artistic treasures contained
within the walls of the Heralds' College, are both
numerous aud interesting, but they are inacces
sible to the public except by the special favour of
" Garter," or of some one or other of his official
brethren. To the right of the grand hall, as you
enter from the court-yard, is the old library, upon
the walls of which apartment hang a few portraits
of heraldic worthies. The most interesting of
these portraits, perhaps, is that of the warrior
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, habited in his

heralds' COLLEGE, 183
tabard, as represented on his tomb in old St,
Paul's ; then there are portraits of Sir William
Dethick, who held the office of Garter King of
Arms in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, ; of
the scholarly Camden, author of " Britannia,"
and of the " Annals of Elizabeth ;" and of the
great and laborious antiquary, Sir William Dug-
dale, who held the post of Garter about the same
period, besides those of many other individuals of
greater or lesser note. From the library, a door
opens into a lofty inner apartment surrounded by
a gallery ; this is denominated the " search room,"
and contains literary treasures of the highest
value to the student of genealogy, archaeology,
and heraldry
Among the most noticeable works here pre
served are the book of emblazonment executed
for Prince Arthur, the brother of Henry VIII., in
order that he might study the science of heraldry ;
the Warwick Roll, which comprises a series of
figures of all the Earls of AVarwick from the
Conquest to the reign of Richard IIL, executed
by Rouse, a Warwickshire antiquary of some
note, at the close of the fifteenth century ; and a
Tournament Roll of the time of Henry VIII., in
which that wife-slaying monarch is depicted in
regal state, surrounded by all the " pomp, pride,
and circumstance of glorious (mimic) war." The

184 LONDONIANA.
records of " Visitations " performed by the heralds
in former times occupy a long series of goodly
volumes on the shelves. " One of the most
useful employments of the heralds," as we learn
from the volume of Knight's " London" above
referred to, " was the registering or recording of
the gentry allowed to bear arms throughout the
country." " A period must arise," says Dallaway,
"when, the immediate inheritors of honours and
estates being no more, collateral claimants have
to be sought, according to the tenures and injunc
tions of the original possession. In the lapse of
years and the confusion of events such relations
become obscure; and, without a regular and
impartial record, where could satisfactory proof
be obtained ? An attention therefore to genea
logical inquiries of such obvious utility was the
chief employment of the heralds after their incor
poration, and though they found precedents and
authorities of their non-privileges, very service
able to themselves, the advantages to be derived
from their institution were evidently those which
result from the confidence with which the public
resorted to their archives and were determined by
their reports. That such investigations might
be as general and extensive as possible, a visita
tion of each county was decreed by the Earl Mar
shal and confirmed by a warrant under the Privy

heralds' COLLEGE. 185
Seal, and a plan was formed by which the inten
tion might be best answered." Then there are
the records of modern pedigrees, that is, since the
discontinuance of the "Visitations," in 1637;
together with a most valuable collection of official
funeral certificates, &c. Many large folio volumes
here preserved are devoted to the " patents of
nobility," grants of armorial bearings, changes of
fafnily surnames, &c., all of which, it need
scarcely be added, are of great value and in
terest. Besides its literary and pictorial treasures, the
College of Arms possesses two or three historical
curiosities. These are the sword and dagger said to
have belonged to the unfortunate James, King of
Scotland, who fell in " harness " at the fight on
Flodden Field. The sword hilt has been en
amelled, and still shows traces of gilding. Another
relic which is here preserved is a turquoise signet
ring, which tradition says the French queen sent
to James, begging him to ride a foray in England.
These trophies are heirlooms of the noble house
of Howard, " whose bend Argent," as Mr. Plauche
tells us, "received the honourable augmentation
of the Scottish lion, in testimony of the prowess
displayed by the gallant soldier who commanded
the English forces upon that memorable occasion."

186

THE LAST OF CREMORNE GARDENS.

LIKE Ranelagh Gardens, at Pimlico — which,
in their palmy days, at the beginning of the
present century, were the favourite haunt of the
"upper ten thousand" — and like VauxhaU, which
kept up its popularity down to a far more recent
date, Cremorne, as a place of public resort and
gaiety, must now be numbered with the past;
and with its departure we have seen the last of
the few public gardens open to Londoners within
anything like an accessible reach of Charing
Cross. The gardens of the Alexandra Palace at
Muswell Hill, and those of the Crystal Palace at
Sydenham, it is true, are still left to us ; as also
are those of North Woolwich and Rosherville ;
but, unfortunately, all these places are too far out
of town ever to become popular in the same de
gree with Ranelagh, VauxhaU, or Cremorne.

THE LAST OF CREMORNE GARDENS. 187
It was in the autumn of 1877, after many years
of tedious and dreary decadence, that Cremorne
Gardens were finally closed; a short retrospect,
therefore, of their career may not be devoid of
interest. The place . lay a few hundred yards
westward of old Battersea Bridge, on the north
side of the river; and it was named after Thomas
Dawson, Lord Cremorne, the site of whose former
suburban residence and estate the gardens covered.
In the early part of the present centtiry, as we
learn from the " Beauties of England and Wales,"
Lord Cremorne's mansion, known as Chelsea
Farm, was often visited by George IIL, Queen
Charlotte, and their son George, then Prince of
Wales. In 1825 the house and grounds passed
into the possession of Mr. Granville Penn, a
cousin of Lady Cremorne, who, after effecting
many improvements in the estate, ultimately dis
posed of it. The natural beauty of the situation
soon afterwards led to the grounds being opened
to the public as a place of entertainment, under
the name of the " Stadium," and a few years later
the Gardens were laid out with great taste ; the
tavern then adjoining it was enlarged, and the
Gardens became the resort of a motley crowd of
pleasure-seekers, being generally well attended.
A quarter of a centurj- ago the place was at the
height of its fortunes. The hours of early closing

188 LONDONIANA.
were then not known, and on fine summer nights,
after the opera and the theatres had finished,
those who enjoyed the fresh cool air and the river
breeze used to drive down to Cremorne for supper,
exactly as their grandfathers and great-grand
fathers used to drive to Ranelagh and VauxhaU.
The Gardens, before they became vulgarised,
were very beautiful, and are thus described by a
writer in the Observer: " Fine old trees remained
in them, relics of the magnificent mansion and
grounds on the site of which they stood. A wide
terrace overlooked the river, up and down which,
under the pallid lustre of the harvest moon, heavy
barges, with a vast expanse of weather-stained
canvas, floated slowly to and fro. The walks
were bounded on each side by thick hedges, in
which thrushes and blackbirds would nest and
sing. The whole place, in a word, was more like
the private grounds of some old mansion than a
public garden open to all who chose to pay."
Down to the very last, the Gardens retained
most of their original features. At night, during
the summer months, the grounds were illuminated
with numberless coloured lamps; and there were
various ornamental buildings, and grottoes, to
gether with a theatre, concert-room, a platform
for dancing, and a dining-hall. The amusements,
in fact, which were provided here were of a similar

THE LAST OF CREMORNE GARDENS. 189
character to those which were presented at Vaux
haU Gardens in its palmy days — such as vocal
and instrumental concerts, balloon ascents, danc
ing, and fireworks. Several remarkable balloon
ascents were at different times made from these
Gardens, or from a spot of ground immediately
adjoining them, and contiguous to Ashburnham
House ; the most notable among them being that
of Mr. Hampton, who, in 1839, ascended with a
balloon and parachute, by which he descended
from a height of about two miles. In 1869 a
monster balloon, nearly 100 feet in diameter,
made daily ascents for some time, and was the
means of drawing large numbers of visitors to
the Gardens. The balloon, appropriately called
the " Captive," was secured by a rope about 2,000
feet long, which was let out and wound in by
steam power. The Captive balloon, however,
one day managed to escape from its moorings,
and the exhibition came to an end. It was from
Cremorne that one of the latest attempts at aerial
navigation was made. A foreigner, named De
Groof, invented an apparatus, which was sus
pended beneath the car of a balloon, and which,
it was assumed, on being liberated, could be made
to pass through the air in whichever direction its
occupant might desire. The ascent was accord
ingly made, and when the aeronaut had reached

190 LONDONIANA.
a considerable height, the machine was liberated,
but, owing to some defect in its construction, it
immediately collapsed, and fell to the ground with
a fearful crash, killing its unfortunate occupant
on the spot.
Originally Cremorne stood in the fields, or
nearly so, and was suiTounded on all sides by
green lanes and hedges. It was indeed practi
cally quite as much in the country as the Crystal
Palace, or Rosherville, or the " Welsh Harp " at
Hendon are now. This rural position was doubly
advantageous to it. On the one hand, there were
no small adjacent householders to complain of
being kept awake at night by the noise and tur
moil of a public entertainment. On the other
hand, the Gardens themselves were frequented by
customers of a superior class, who preferred the
native beauty of the locality itself to those more
ordinary and commonplace amusements which
form the stock-in-trade of the music hall and the
village fair. Unfortunately, Cremorne in course
of time shared the fate of all similar places ; it
became hopelessly changed for the worse. Cheap
amusements were added to its programme, as if
the natural beauty of the place were not in itself
a sufficient attraction. A different class of cus
tomers began to frequent it. The spare ground
round about it began to be built upon, and the

THE LAST OP CREMORNE GARDENS. 191
occupiers of the new semi-detached villas thus
erected objected to Cremorne and to its fireworks
and its music, and to the long string of public
aud private vehicles standing at its gates, as
being more or less a nuisance. For one or two
years a licence was refused, and the place became
a losing speculation. Bad fortune persistently
dogged it, and it is now at last finally closed.
Like VauxhaU and Ranelagh, it is swallowed up
in the growth of London,
The original Ranelagh, which was situated but
a short distance eastward of Cremorne, close by
the grounds of Chelsea Hospital, was swept
away three quarters of a century ago. It was
opened, according to Horace Walpole, on the 24th
of May, in the year 1742, and there were present,
" the prince, princess, duke, much nobUity, and
much mob beside." The price for admission was
" twelve pence," and there were we find, " ridottos
for guinea tickets, the price of which included a
supper and music," Two years later Walpole
assures Conway that he goes to Ranelagh
" every night constantly," that it has " totally
beat VauxhaU," and that " nobody goes anywhere
else." "My Lord Chesterfield," the epistle
adds, "is so fond of it that he says he has
ordered all his letters to be directed thither." Two
years later, in 1748, Walpole speaks of Ranelagh

192 LOADONIANA.
as being " so crowded that, going there t'other
night in a string of coaches, we had a stop of
six-and-thirty minutes," After Ranelagh had
fallen away, VauxhaU took its place, Walpole
has almost as much to tell us of the one garden
as of the other. It is clear, however, that his
preference was for Ranelagh, and that he regarded
VauxhaU as a place to visit now and then for an
evening's amusement.
He, himself, he tells us, went there one evening
with Lady Caroline Petersham, The party was
conveyed by barge, " with a boat of French horns
attending," and amongst them was Lord Granby,
who " had arrived very drunk," The ladies, we
are told, minced seven chickens into a china dish,
aud Lady Caroline stewed them over a lamp,
" with three pats of butter and a flagon of
water;" Betty, the fruit-girl, was present with
hampers of strawberries ; and " the whole of our
party was sufficient to take up the whole atten
tion of the gardens,"
Readers of Hone's " Table Book " will remember
the description of the ideal " Old Gentleman," He
has been induced to look in at A''auxhall again, but
likes it still less than he did years back, and can
not bear it in comparison with Ranelagh ! He
thinks everything looks poor, flaring, and jaded.
' Ah !' says he, with a sort of triumphant sigh.

THE LAST OF CREMORNE GARDENS, 193
' ah I Ranelagh was such a noble place ! Such
taste ! such elegance ! and such beauty ! There
was the Duchess of A  , the finest woman in
England, sir ; and Mrs. B  , a mighty fine
creature ; and Lady Susan what's-her-name, who
had that unfortunate affair with Sir Charles. Yes
indeed, sir, they came swimming by you like
swans. Ranelagh for me !' "
Then there was the magnificent rotunda in
which, seventy-five years ago, the Knights of the
Bath held their installation ball, and of which
Dr, Johnson declared that " the coup d'oeil of the
whole place was the finest thing he had ever
seen "
But even all the taste, elegance, and beauty of
which the place could boast was not sufficient to
insure its continuance for more than a brief span
of years ; for in the end the gardens ceased to be
come attractive, the rotunda and other buildings
were demolished ; and, as a well-known poet
puts it, " like the baseless fabric of a vision
faded, left not a wreck behind." Indeed, so clean
a sweep was made of Ranelagh that Sir Richard
Phillips, who visited the spot a few years after
wards, could but with difficulty trace even the
site of any of the buildings. The picture of ruin
and desolation which the area presented, is thus
VOL. n. 0

194 LONDONIANA.
described by Sir Richard, in his " Walk from
London to Kew ": —
"On entering Chelsea," he writes, "I was
naturally led to inquire for the site of the once
gay Ranelagh. I passed up the avenue of trees,
whicli I remember often to have seen blocked
up with carriages. At its extremity I looked for
the rotunda and its surrounding buildings ; but,
as I could not see them, I concluded that I had
acquired but an imperfect idea of the place in my
nocturnal visits ! I went forward on an open
space, but still could discern no Ranelagh. At
length, on a spot covered with nettles, thistles,
and other rank weeds, I met a working man, who,
in answer to my inquiries, told me that he could
see I was a stranger, or I should have known that
Ranelagh had been pulled down, and that I was
then standing on the site of the rotunda ! Reader,
imagine my feelings, for I cannot analyse them !
This vile place, I exclaimed, the site of the once
enchanting Ranelagh ! It cannot be ! The same
eyes were never destined to see such a meta
morphosis ! All was desolation ! A few inequali
ties appeared in the ground, indicative of some
former building, and holes filled with muddy
water showed the foundation-walls ; but the rest
of the space, making about two acres, was covered

THE LAST OF CREMORNE GARDENS. 195
with clusters of tall nettles, thistles, and docks.
.... I traced too, the site of the orchestra, where
I had often been ravished by the finest perform
ances of vocal and instrumental music. My
imagination brought the objects before me ; I
fancied I could still hear an air of Mara's. I
turned my eye aside, and what a contrast ap
peared ! No glittering lights I no brilliant, happy
company ! no peals of laughter from thronged
boxes I no chorus of a hundred instruments and
voices ! All was death-like stillness I Is such, I
exclaimed, the end of human splendour? Yes,
truly, all is vanity ; and here is a striking
example." Cremorne, in course and by due operation of
time, succeeded to Ranelagh and VauxhaU, The
latter a few years ago was absorbed by a jobbing
builder, and covered with a labyrinth of little
streets. We have seen, in the above quotation
from Sir Richard Phillips' amusing work, the ruin
and desolation that befell the former. And now
Cremorne is in a fair way of meeting a still more
rapid transmutation.
From Ranelagh to Bagnigge AVells, from Vaux
haU to the Red House, all alike have shared the
same fate. The town has overgrown them. Land
in their neighbourhood has increased in value ; and
0 2

196 LONDONIANA,
ultimately they have been absorbed into that vast
desert of bricks and mortar which constitutes the
metropolis, Cremorne was the last oasis of this
kind,

197

THE BENEDICTINE CONVENT AT
HAMMERSMITH.
(1876.)

IF there is a spot in the neighbourhood of
London to which an English Roman Catholic
looks with greater veneration than another, just
as the Nonconformist looks to Bunhill Fields
Cemetery, that spot is a range of very plain and
common looking, not to say dreary, edifices
which front the north side of the great western
high road at Hammersmith, a few yards after
leaving the Broadway en route for the metropolis.
And does the reader wish to know why this un
attractive spot is so dear to the Roman Catholics?
It is because it is the only place near London
which has never been in Protestant hands, but
has constantly witnessed, in spite of the penal
laws of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

198 LONDONIANA,
the practice of the unreformed faith. That such
should really be the case, considering the strict
ness with whicli those laws were usually enforced,
especially in the neighbourhood of a large city,
is a fact which, the members of that reUgion
regard as little short of miraculous.
It is certain that there never has been a time,
since the days of Henry VIII. down to the pre
sent moment, during which this place has not
been devoted to the purposes of Roman Catholic
education ; for it was a school for young ladies
for more than three centuries down to 1869,
since which time, as we shall see, it has served
as a training college for the priesthood. But the
tradition is that it existed as a convent even
before the Reformation ; and that subsequently
to that date, though ostensibly it was only a
girls' school, iu reality it was carried on by pro
fessed religious ladies, who were nuns in dis
guise, and who said their office, and recited their
litanies and rosaries in secret, whilst wearing
the outward appearance of ordinary English
women, Faulkner, in his " History of Hammer
smith," mentions this tradition, and adds that it
is supposed " to have escaped the general de
struction of reUgious houses on account of its
want of endowment," If this really -was the case,
then (as is remarked by the author of " Old and

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 199
New London") poverty is sometimes even to be
preferred to wealth.
Be this as it m^ay, however, it is certain that
the great Order of St, Benedict, which had been
founded in the sixth century, had long before
the Middle Ages given birth to convents of nuns,
as well as houses of monks, who professed to
follow the rule of that saint, and were called
Benedictines. On the break-up of the religious
houses in England under Henry VIII., most of
the Benedictines and other sisterhoods retired to
the Continent, where they kept up the practice
of their vows unbroken ; and we find that a body
of Benedictine sisters settled at Dunkirk in 1662,
under their abbess. Dame Mary Caryl, whom
they regarded as the founder of their house, and
who was previously a nun at Ghent. Another
Benedictine house, largely recruited from the
ladies of the upper class in England, and in fact
a colony from the same city, was settled about
the same time at Boulogne, and soon after re
moved to Pontoise, in the neighbourhood of
Paris. As the English Reformation, two centuries
and a half before, had driven this Ghent sister
hood from England, so in 1793 the outbreak of
the first French Revolution wafted its members
back again (not, however, by a very tranquil

200 LONDONIANA.
passage) to the shores which their great-great-
grandparents had been forced to leave. Already,
however, something had been done to prepare
the way for their return. Catharine of Braganza,
the poor neglected Queen of Charles IL, invited
over to England some members of a sisterhood
at Munich, called the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin, and these she settled and supported
during her husband's life in a house in St. Mar
tin's Lane. On the death of the King, finding
their tenure so near to the Court to be rather inse
cure, these ladies were glad to migrate further
afield. The chance was soon given to them,
A certain Mrs. Frances Bedingfeld- a sister, I
believe, of the first baronet of that family —
procured, by the aid of the Queen, the posses
sion of a large house — indeed, the largest house
at that time— in Hammersmith, to the north of
the road, near the Broadway, and with a spacious
garden behind it. This house adjoined the
lady's school which I have already mentioned ;
and in course of time the sub rosa convent and
sisterhood from St. Martin's Lane were merged
into one institution under an abbess, who fol
lowed the Benedictine rule. The Lady Frances
Bedingfeld, as foundress, became the first ab
bess;* and she was succeeded by Mrs. Cecilia
* She left Hammersmith in 1672, in order to found the
convent at Micklegate Bar at York.

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 201
Cornwallis, who was a kinswoman of Queen Anne.
The school — though somewhat foreign to the
scope of a contemplative order — was now carried
on more openly and avowedly, though still in
modest retirement, by the Benedictine sisterhood,
who, adding a third messuage to their two
houses, at once taught the daughters of the
Roman Catholic aristocracy and established a
home in which ladies in their widowhood might
take up their residence en pension, with the
privilege of hearing Mass and receiving the
sacraments in the little chapel attached to it.
Thus the school became absorbed in the con
vent some century and a half ago. In 1680 the
infamous Titus Gates obtained from the authori
ties a commission to search the house as being a
reputed nunnery as well as a well-known home
of Papists and recusants. It is not a little sin
gular that, although there was no Times, and no
cheap daily press in his day, we have two sepa
rate and independent reports of this proceeding
which have come down to us. The first is to be
found in the Domestic InteUigencer, or News both
from City and Country, for January 13th, 1679-
80; the account runs as follows :
" Information being given to Dr. Oates that at
a house in Hammersmith, near London, several
suspicious persons did usually meet, he went

202 LONDONIANA.
immediately thereupon and acquainted the Lords
of the Council with it, upon which they issued
out a warrant to one of His Majesty's messengers,
who, taking to his assistance one of the justices
of the peace of the county of Middlesex, and as
many other officers as was thought convenient,
and, accompanied by Dr. Oates and his servants
well armed, they went to Hammersmith ; and
going privately into the town, sent for Justice
Yersley, who, with a head-constable and other
officers, together with Dr. Oates and the messen
gers, went to Mrs. Bedingfeld's house, who is a
kinswoman of Bedingfeld the Jesuit, and upon
search they found divers children of several per
sons of quality, and three or four women to attend
them. Mrs. Bedingfeld did not appear, they
being told that she was gone beyond sea ; but
there was an ancient gentlewoman in the house,
who it seems was left as governess, whom the
justice ordered to appear the next day. Upon
further search, several Popish books were seized
upon, with an altar stone, and some other trinkets
belonging to Popish priests, which were all left
in the hands of justice. They then proceeded to
the top of the house, and there, between two
houses, they found an outlandish person, who said
he was a Walloon, and that he belongs to the
Spanish ambassador. This person, together with

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 203
the governess, were ordered to appear before the
Council, and the justice at the same time to at
tend with the examinations taken before him.
This house went under the name of a boarding-
school ; yet we are told that Dr. Oates, and some
others, have had an account that under that pre
tence there is a private nunnery maintained to
educate the children of several of the Popish no
bility aud gentry in the Romish superstition and
idolatry." The other report, more briefly and tersely
expressed, is to be found in the True Domestic
Intelligencer (jf the same date :
"A house at Hammersmith having been much
frequented by persons whose mien and garb ren
dered them suspected, Dr, Oates was informed
that several Jesuits and priests lay there con
cealed, but on strict search, found no man there
but an outlandish gentleman, who appeared to be
secretary to the ambassador of the Spanish king,
upon the list of his servants in the secretary's
office. It seems the mistress of the house, who
is much admired for her extraordinary learning,
beyond her sex and age, understanding excellently
well the Latin, Greek, and several modern lan
guages, being also very well read in most parts
of philosophy and the mathematics, has been often
visited by ingenious men, foreigners and others.

204 LONDONIANA.
her admirers, which gave occasion to the informa
tion against her; but being examined before his
Majesty's Council, and making oath that she
harboured no such obnoxious persons as had
been suggested by Dr. Oates, she was imme
diately acquitted, and the gentleman was deli
vered to the ambassador, his master."
So ended the inquiry conducted bj' Titus
Oates — triumphantly, indeed, for the sisterhood,
who scarcely could have hoped for an acquittal in
those days, when venal verdicts were often given,
and venal sentences not only uttered but enforced,
and when they must have known that in carrying
out the Benedictine rule in private, they were
breaking the law of the land as it then stood.
Exactly a century passed away, so far as any
records or traditions have been preserved, before
the Benedictine sisters at Hammersmith again
experienced any alarm ; but in June, 1780, the
convent was doomed to destruction by the infu
riated mob whom Lord George Gordon led on to
plunder and burn half the public buildings of
London. It is almost incredible that such events
could have occurred in the lifetime of our fathers
or grandfathers ; or that for nearly a week the
City of London lay at the mercy of a crack-
brained agitator like Lord George. The nuns re
ceived the intelligence without alarm, but simply

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 205
went to their chapel, and spent their days and
nights in prayer, placing their trust and confidence
in Almighty God, The only precaution which
they appear to have taken was to pack up the
sacramental plate in a chest, which the Lady
Abbess entrusted to a faithful friend and neigh
bour who lived on the opposite side of the waj"" —
a Mr. Gomme — and who kindly buried it in his gar
den till the danger had passed away. He then dug
it up again and restored it faithfully to its owners.
The next event recorded in the quiet and
peaceful annals of the convent belongs to the
year 1794, In that year, when the fiend Robes
pierre was at the head of the Revolutionary
government whose hands were still reeking with
the blood of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette,
all the convents of men and women also were
suppressed throughout France, the property of
the religious was sequestered, and the nuns them
selves were thrown adrift upon the world without
resources; and in many cases without friends or
relatives. Amongst the communities of ladies
who were made to feel the bitterness of this bitter
time were the English Benedictines of Dunkirk
and Pontoise, whom I have already mentioned.
The former were placed under arrest and sent by
the tyradt to Gravelines, where they were im
prisoned, and, what was worse, remained for

206 LONDONIANA.
eighteen months exposed to every privation, in
sult, and brutality. Eleven of their number died
under this infliction. At length the happy mo
ment arrived when the death of Robespierre by
the hands of the public executioner at Paris
effected a change in the government ; and not
many weeks elapsed before the English Benedic
tines obtained leave to quit the soil of that
unhappy country and to set sail for England, in
order to find an asylum on British ground. It is
a tradition of the Benedictine community that the
names of the religious ladies, both of Dunkirk
and of Pontoise, were inscribed on a paper found
in the pockets of Robespierre, after his death, as
marked for execution at an early date. The
hand of God, however, working by man's agency,
forestalled the bloody deed.
Twenty-five of the ladies from both these
convents, on reaching England, came to Hammer
smith, and made it their temporary home until
they could obtain admission into other reUgious
houses. In fact, on their arrival, they found only
three aged nuns, including the abbess, who re
joiced at being able to give them the shelter which
they so much needed. The school was accord
ingly carried on by the Abbess of Pontoise (Dame
Prujean), who here revived the school which had
dwindled away ; and for many years it was the

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 207
only Catholic ladies' school near the metropolis.
Dying iu 1812, she was succeeded as abbess by
Dame Mary Placida Messenger, on whose death
that honour fell to Dame Mary Placida Selby.
In this lady's time a generous friend (I believe
Lord Clifford) gave them a beautiful site on the
southern coast of Devonshire, on the high ground
above Teignmouth, where they took possession
of the new abbey, St. Scholastica's, on Sep
tember 8, 1863 ; their chapel was consecrated on
Michaelmas Day in the foUowing year. In
January, 1869, the abbess lived to celebrate the
jubilee or fiftieth anniversary of her election,
which, however, she did not long survive. Her
successor was the present abbess of the Benedic
tines, Mrs. Mary Romana Constable.
It is remarkable that Faulkner gives no list of
abbesses who ruled this convent during the two
centuries of its existence at Hammersmith. I am
able, however, to give it complete from a private
source, a MS. in the possession of a friend, a near
relative of the Markhams, who, at various times
were " professed " within its walls. It runs as
fellows : Francis Bedingfeld (1669), Cicely Corn-
waUis (1672), Frances Bernard (1715), Mary
DeUson (1739), Frances GentU (1760), Marcella
Dillon (1781), and Placida Selby (1812).
The convent at Hammersmith, composed as it

208 LONDONIANA.
was of three private houses, and built in such a
way as to do anything rather than attract the
attention of the pubUc eye, presents anything but
an attractive appearance. A high wall screens it
from the passers-by, and the southern face is
simply a plain brick front, pierced with two rows
of plain sash windows. It looks as if it sadly
wanted painting, and pointing also ; and the red-
tiled roof which covers its attics seems scarcely
water-tight. Inside, the rooms used as dormi
tories and class-rooms have the same heavy and
dreary look as if the place were a cross between
a badly-endowed parsonage and a workhouse
school. But it is on that account all the more
interesting, as a relic of the old times of penal
laws against the Papists,
The chapel, which was built in 1812 by a
friend, Mr, George Gillow, and served for many
years — in fact down to 1852 — as the mission
chapel of Hammersmith and the neighbourhood,
still stands, the lower end of it having been cut
off and made into a library for the use of the
theological students who have been located in a
portion of these buildings since they were vacated
in 1869 by the sisterhood, who quitted them, as
may be imagined, not without many a pang at
leaving a place endeared to them by so many
recollections. At the south-eastern corner.

CONVENT AT HAMMERSMITH. 209
between the house and the road, stood a porter's
lodge and the guest-rooms ; but these have been
pulled down. Here, too, it is said, stood the
original chapel. The head of the Training Col
lege, Bishop Wethers, resides in the western
portion of the most substantial part of the entire
structure, formerly the residence of the Portugese
Minister, the Baron Moncorvo.

Since the above lines were written, the old
house is being gradually demolished, in order to
make way for a handsome structure in the gothic
style.

VOL, n.

210

MESSRS, COUTTS' AND
MESSRS. DRUMMONDS' BANKS.

MOST persons are probably aware that the
original London banker was a goldsmith,
and that the actual business of banking, namely
that of taking charge of cash deposits and trading
with them, dates no further back than the Stuart
era. Readers of Sir Walter Scott's " Fortunes of
Nigel " will not forget one example of such a gold
smith, George Heriot, of Whitefriars and Fleet
Street, who did business with royalty, and not on
a small scale either ; and, if they wish to learn
more as to the steps how the transition from the
goldsmith to the banker came about, we may
refer them to Pennant's " History of London,'
where the subject is treated in a manner worthy
of that antiquary. One such goldsmith at least
appears to have lived to the west of Temple Bar

MESSRS. coutts' BANK. 211
at all events as far back as the reign of AA'^illiam
and Mary.
The early history of the bank known for more
than a century as that of Messrs. Coutts, is in
volved in obscurity ; but, so far as can be ascer
tained, its founder was a Scottish gentleman,
John Campbell (a cadet of the ducal house of
Argyll), who died in 1712, and who lies buried,
along with his wife, in the churchyard of St.
Paul's, Covent Garden. He appears to have been
a man of wealth, substance, and probitj', and at
his death he constituted his " faithful and honest
partner," George Middleton, of Errol, his sole
executor in trust for his four children, William,
Mary, George, and Elizabeth, until such time as
his eldest son should be of age. He also en
trusted to him his whole estate to trade with
during his son's minority, on the condition that a
fourth of the profits accrued to Mr. Middleton,
the rest being added to the shares of his children.
After Mr. John Campbell's death, the business
appears to have been carried on in conformity
with his will by Mr. Middleton, single-handed,
till 1729, when George Campbell, the younger
son of John Campbell, appears as a partner.
Mary Campbell became the wife of George
Middleton ; whilst the other sister, Elizabeth,
married in 1721 Mr. John Peagrum, of Colchester,
P 2

212 LONDONIANA.
of whose only daughter and heiress. Miss Eliza
beth Peagrum, we shall hear more hereafter.
Up to this date the business was carried on in
St. Martin's Lane, then the haunt of artists, and
painters, and sculptors; but in 1737 Mr. Mid
dleton erected in the Strand the house which has
been known to customers and clients for nearly a
century and a half as Messrs. Coutts's bank. It is
described as being the middle house of eleven
which were erected on the site of the building
known as the " New Exchange," or " Britain's
Bourse," — the same in which the Duchess of
Tyrconnell sat and carried on her business as
" the AA'^hite Milliner," in the days of her widow
hood and poverty. Although the firm called
themselves goldsmiths until about 1740, it ap
pears from the ledgers that the business of the
house from the first included very considerable
banking operations, and also embraced an army
and commission agency, and small occasional
mercantUe speculations. It is worthy of note
that, in 1712-13, the firm acted as agents for
Queen Anne's 4th Troop of Guards. All this
time the house was known as the " Three
Crowns," a sign which, ' doubtless, had been
borne by its predecessor in St. Martin's Lane.
About the year 1742, Mr. David Bruce, a
nephew of Mr. Middleton, was admitted a partner.

MESSRS. coutts' BANK. 213
Four years later Mr. Middleton himself died,
dividing his property between his daughter, the
Countess of Stair, and the children of his other
daughter, who had married a Patrick Craufurd.
But how came the name of Mr. Campbell to die
out in the Strand, and to be superseded by that of
Coutts ? AVe will explain, premising that in this
part of the history of the firm we are drawing
largely on a circumstantial narrative by Mr.
Robert Chambers. Much as the ancient Hellenes
and Pelasgi, combined with other tribes, became
the great Achaian or Grecian race, and as the
combination of the Thame and the Isis is said to
be the parent of the Thames, so the union of the
London house with another which had for some
years existed and flourished in the far north re
sulted in the present " Coutts."
The history of this transition and change may
be briefly told. Like hundreds of grand old
commercial estabUshments in England, the house
can be traced to small beginnings, through a long
course of intelligent enterprise, united with care
fulness and scrupulous integrity.
No one probably knows more about the Coutts
familjr and their early mercantile career in Edin
burgh than Mr. Robert Chambers, who tells us in
his Journal (No. 567, November 7, 1874) that
they are sprung from one Coutts, of Auchintoul,

214 LONDONIANA.
a sagacious northern laird, one of whose sons did
not disdain to seek a livelihood by going into
business in the small and prettily situated town
of Montrose, His fourth sou, Patrick, anxious
to push out into the world on his own account,
left Montrose and went to Edinburgh, where he
occupied the position of a general merchant, im
porting and exporting goods as early as 1696 —
just when Mr. John Campbell was founding a
business as a goldsmith in London. The greater
part of the fortune of Patrick Coutts, who died in
1704, ultimately devolved on his son .John, who
also, having served an apprenticeship to business,
set up for himself as a merchant in our Northern
Athens. He was a man of great energy, shrewd
ness, and ability,- and from his establishment as a
merchant at Edinburgh in 1724 may be dated the
rise of the fortunes of the Coutts family,
" The business initiated by John Coutts at
Edinburgh," writes Mr, Chambers, " was a com
bination of general dealing and the negotiation
of foreign biUs of exchange. He also imported
and sold corn, either on his own account or as a
commission-agent. But in proportion as he ad
vanced in business and acquired spare capital, as
well as the confidence of persons who deposited
with him money at interest, he appears to have
laid himself out chiefly as a negotiator of bUls,

MESSRS, coutts' BANK, 215
a species of traffic which as yet had not been
appropriated by banks, and demanded much
knowledge and shrewdness. Whether from
family connections or otherwise, he became ac
quainted with people of good social standing,
through whom he widened his base of operations.
For some time he had for a partner Thomas
Haliburton, of Newmains (who through a daugh
ter became the great grand-father of Sir Walter
Scott) ; next we find him taking as partner
Archibald Trotter, son of Trotter, of Castleshiel ;
then by another change of firm he was associated
with his cousin, Robert Ramsay, brother of Sir
Alexander, of Balmain. As further marking the
esteem in which he was held by the aristocratic
circles of Edinburgh, he formed an intimacy with
Sir John Stuart, of AUanbank, whose sister he
married," This same John Coutts, who lived in
the Parliament Close, served as Lord Provost of
Edinburgh in 1742-43, and at his death (which
happened at Naples in 1750), he left four sons,
Patrick, John, James, and Thomas, all of whom
came into a share of the business.
Soon afterwards, Mrs, Coutts's first cousin, Mr.
Archibald Trotter, joined the Edinburgh firm as
a partner; but, on his retirement after a few
years, the young brothers associated with them
selves their uncle, Mr. John Stephen, a wine-

216 LONDONLA.NA.
merchant at Leith, and the name of the firm was
changed to "Coutts, Brothers, and Co." About
this time they would seem to have established a
London agency in Jeffrey's Square, St. Mary
Axe, John and James continuing to reside at
Edinburgh with Mr. John Stephen, whilst Patrick
and Thomas Coutts, with Thomas Stephen, their
cousin, came up to London ; and the name of the
firm was Coutts, Stephen, Coutts, and Co,
We must now revert to the business in the
Strand, which for sometime after Mr. Middleton's
death was carried on by Messrs. Campbell and
Bruce: from 1751 to July 1755 Mr. George
Campbell was the sole partner ; at the latter date
there comes upon the scene a gentleman of Scottish
extraction, but whose name is hitherto new to
London, though not to Edinburgh, Mr, James
Coutts, who had married Miss Mary Peagrum,
niece of George Campbell, The firm in con
sequence became known as " Messrs. Campbell
and Coutts,"
The death of Mr, Campbell in 1760 left Mr,
Coutts sole partner. Before long he took into
partnership his brother Thomas ; the accession
of these two new partners was marked by various
improvements in the method of keeping the books
of the firm ; and we read no small proof of the
commercial value of a name in the fact that from

MESSRS. coutts' BANK. 217
that day to this, whosoever may from generation
to generation have been admitted into partnership,
the name of " Coutts," and " Coutts " only, has
been adopted by the firm collectively in all its
transactions with the outer world
In the meantime the management of the Edin
burgh house fell under the direction of Sir WUliam
Forbes and a Mr, Hunter (afterwards Hunter-
Blair), both of whom had been apprenticed to the
Messrs, Coutts, and had graduated under their
tuition. They were young, however, and in con
sequence associated with themselves Mr, (after
wards Sir) Robert Herries, a merchant at Bar
celona. From 1768 to 1770 Mr. Herries had been
actively engaged in forming a company for the
issuing of circular notes for the use of travellers
abroad; and Messrs. James and Thomas Coutts
acted as the bankers for their issue. Eventually,
however, the two famiUes separated, and that
branch of the business was transferred by Mr.
Herries to St, James's Street, where he established
the bank now known as that of Messrs, " Herries,
Farquhar, and Co.," and which stUl has a large
Scottish and military connection.
The Coutts brothers appear to have retained
some control over their old firms till 1771, when
Mr. Stephen retired ; and his retirement, speedily

218 LONDONIANA.
followed by his death, seems to have broken the
last link of the Coutts family with their old
business in the north. Four years later the Edin
burgh house and the house of " Herries and Co."
separated, the former under the name of " Sir
WUliam Forbes and Co." This name it retained
tUl 1838, when it became merged in the Union
Bank of Scotland ; the latter stiU thrives under
the shadow of St. James's Palace.
" Outliving all his brothers," writes Mr. Cham
bers in his Journal, " Thomas Coutts became the
first banker in London. Great from his wealth
and munificence, mingling in the highest circles,
and yet never forgetting Edinburgh, which he
visited occasionally ; notablj'^ on one occasion,
when, along with Sir AA'^alter Scott, his friend
(and kinsman through the Stuarts of AUanbank),
he was complimented with the freedom of the city
of Edinburgh." He died at an advanced age in
1822, when the male line of Coutts became ex
tinct. By his first wife, however, he had three
daughters, who in the heyday of their youth were
known as " The Three Graces." The eldest of
them, Susan, married the Earl of Guildford ; the
second, Frances, became Marchioness of Bute ;
whilst the youngest, Sophia, married Sir Francis
Burdett, the veteran hero of reform in the days
when reform was far from popular. The youngest

MESSRS coutts' BANK. 219
daughter of Sir Francis, Miss Angela Georgiana
Burdett, having succeeded to the large property
of her grandfather, Mr. Thomas Coutts, under the
Avill of that gentleman's widow, who had married
as her second husband the Duke of St. Albans,
assumed by royal sign manual the additional
name of Coutts, and, having distinguished herself
in many ways by her philanthropy and muni
ficence, was created in 1871 a Peeress in her own
right by " the name, style, and title " of the
Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
It is related of Mr. Coutts that he used to make
periodical visits to a town iu the vicinity of the
countr}'' seat of one of his married daughters.
On these occasions he had attracted the attention
of a benevolent old gentleman, who, noticing the
neat but somewhat worn apparel of the eminent
banker, imagined that he had most probably seen
better days, but that his actual financial condition
was not very flourishing. The last time they
met was Christmas time ; and the benevolent old
gentleman, no doubt warmed up with the pros
pects of the festivities of the season, dropped a
guinea into the hand of Mr. Coutts as he passed
quickly by him, bidding him get a good dinner.
Having discovered the name of his benefac
tor, Mr. Coutts soon after invited him to his
house, where he made himself known to him.

220 LONDONIANA.
and related the anecdote to his guests, letting
them know how he had had the guinea given to
him, and saying he intended keeping it. The
guinea has been carefully taken care of ever since,
and is at present in charge of the head cashier at
59, Strand, and is called " The Luck Guinea."
For a long time, as stated above, the house
now represented by the name of Coutts enjoyed
the distinction of being the only one outside the
City of London. Thus Pennant writes, referring
to the Stuart era : " To the west of Temple Bar
the only bank was that of Messrs. Middleton and
Campbell, goldsmiths, who flourished in 1692."
The real name of the firm at that time, however,
was not " Middleton and Campbell " but " Camp
bell and Middleton," as stated above.
At a later date, about the time of the Scottish
Rebellion of 1715, the house of Messrs. Drum
mond was founded at Charing Cross. And while
Drummonds long continued to be patronised by
the leading houses of the Tory aristocracy, the
house with which we are now concerned was
largely identified with the AVhig interest, pro
bably in no small degree through the fact of its
founder being of kith and kin to the Dukes of
Argyll, and a member of the powerful and nu
merous sept of the Campbells. And yet, strange
to say, so strong an adherent of the Stuart cause

MESSRS. coutts' BANK. 221
as the Earl of Nithsdale figures in Messrs. Coutts's
books. Among the well known names of gentlemen
who have been partners in the house may be
mentioned Sir Edmund Antrobus, the first baro
net, Sir Edmund Antrobus, the second baronet.
Sir Coutts Trotter, Mr. Edward Marjoribanks,
and Mr. AVm. M. Coulthurst. The present part
ners are Mr. Hugh Lindsay Antrobus, the son of
the late Sir Edmund Antrobus, whose family has
been in the house above a century, and were con
nected by marriage with the family of the earliest
partners — the Hon. Henry Dudley Ryder, a great-
grandson of Mr, Thomas Coutts, Mr. George
Robinson, Mr. Robert Ruthven Pym, Mr. WUliam
Rolle Malcolm, third son of Mr. John Malcolm,
of Poltalloch, Lord Archibald Campbell, second
son of the Duke of Argyll (whose connection
with Mr. John Campbell, the first known part
ner, is recorded above), and Mr, George John
Marjoribanks, The list of distinguished customers of this
Bank is long and curious. We have already
mentioned Lord Nithsdale as having " kept run
ning cashes " here. To him must be added the
names of Pitt, Lord Londonderry, Sir Thomas
Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wel
lington, Lord Bute, Lord North, Lord Chatham,

222 LONDONIANA.
C, J. Fox, Lord Grenville, Lord Macartney,
Alexander Pope, Benjamin AVest, Lord George
Gordon, Dr, Armstrong, Mrs. Fitz Herbert, and
Charles Dickens. Almost all the members of the
Royal Family have banked here from the reign of
George IL, including Kings George III, and IV.,
WiUiam IV,, and her present Majesty and the
Prince of Wales. John Law, the celebrated finan
cier at Paris, who promoted the company called
" Company of the AA''est," afterwards called " The
Company of the Indies," had a large banking ac
count with the house from the earliest periods.
Many of the transactions in 1719 and 1720 were
of a very speculative character, and not very re
munerative to the great adventurer. In one of
these transactions, being a time bargain, he ap
pears to have lost over a quarter of a million of
pounds sterling. His brother, William Law, the
Paris banker, also had a very large account, which
appears in the ledger to come to a very sudden
termination towards the end of 1720, which is
accounted for by his being sent just at that time
to the Bastile.
The books of the house form a perfect and
complete series, showing the transactions of the
firm from 1712. Those of an earlier date
perished some half a century ago, with the excep
tion of one of 1699 and of 1702, through having

MESSRS, coutts' BANK. 223
been deposited in a cellar, where they were out of
sight, and out of light too, and rotted from
darkness and damp. Those which remain of the
seventeenth century are remarkable for careful,
and even beautiful, penmanship, and for the very
lai'ge admixture of names from the north of the
Tweed— Campbells and Mackenzies, Monroes and
Moncrieffs, Forbeses and Mackintoshes, Dal-
garnos and Davidsons, with others too numerous
to mention.
In the early part of the eighteenth centurj'",
and even to a much later date, the ledgers show
that half the members of the Scottish peerage
were among the regular customers of the house ;
and such is the conservatism of the adherents of
this great AVhig house, as it then was, that the
greater portion of the titled names which figured
on the credit side in the reigns of Queen Anne
and the Georges still figure there in the reign of
Victoria, Over the mantel-piece in the " back-parlour,"
which always forms so important an element in
banking-houses of this kind, hangs an engraved
portrait of John Coutts, Lord Provost of Edin
burgh, whose name has been such a tower of
strength to the firm. He is represented in a
flowing wig and the dress of a gentleman of the
time of George II, The original portrait, painted

224 LONDONIANA:
by Allan Ramsay, the son of the poet of the same
name, is in the private collection of Lady
Burdett-Coutts. The banking house of Messrs. Drummonds at
Charing Cross was founded by private enterprise
early in the eighteenth century, and is conse
quently the oldest AVest End bank with the single
exception of that of Messrs, Coutts. The story
of its origin and establishment is very short and
simple. At a day when it was customary for the
younger sons of Scottish, as well as English,
noblemen to seek their fortunes by commercial
enterprise and industry, Andrew Drummond, the
fifth son of Sir John Drummond, the third laird
of Machany, and younger brother of AVilliam,
seventh baron and fourth Viscount Strathallan,
came to London as an agent for some of the
leading Jacobite houses to the north of the
Tweed. This was about the year 1712 or 1713,
just previous to the first Scottish Rebellion. He
estabUshed a house of business on the south side
of Charing Cross, close under the walls of Nor
thumberland House, as a " goldsmith and banker."
It is said that the house was so small and unpre
tending that a sailor who came to it to get some
prize-money, in a fit of generosity, offered to
draw the money which stood to his credit in

MESSRS. drummond's BANK. 225
sums of £5 or £10, leaving the balance in Air,
Drummond's hands, so as to help a struggling
man ! The business was removed a year after
wards to the site which it has ever since occupied
at the corner of Spring Gardens and Charing
Cross. Mr. Andrew Drummond, who purchased the
estate of Stanmore, in Middlesex, died in 1769,
in the eighty-third year of his age. He is repre
sented by Malcolm, in his Genealogical Memoirs
of the House of Drummond, as a man of great
integrity and ability. He married a Miss Strahan,
or Strachan, a daughter of a London banker, by
whom he had a son, to whom he bequeathed his
business ; and it is worthy of note that from that
day to this there has been no partner admitted
into the firm except male descendants of Mr,
Drummond, and bearers of his name — a singular
example of conservatism, in the truest sense of
the word.
Such being the origin of the bank, and such
the position of its founder, it is almost needless
to state here that from the very first Messrs.
Drummond had, like Messrs. Coutts, an extensive
Scottish connection. Scottish and English fami
lies are apt to stick tightly to old friends ; and
generation follows generation in loyalty to the
bank where its fathers have banked before it ;
VOL. II. Q

226 LONDONIANA.
and it is therefore no wonder that this large
Scottish connection still remains.
Mr. Peter Cunningham tells us that the founder
of this bank obtained his position as chief agent
for the Jacobite lairds by advancing money to the
Chevalier James Stuart, the first " Pretender," as
it is the fashion to call him, and by the conse
quent withdrawal of the king's banking account.
This step on the part of the king led — rather
naturally, it must be confessed — to a rush of the
Scottish nobility and gentry with their cash and
their banking accounts to Charing Cross, and so,
in the end, to the advancement of the bank itself
to the high position which it has since main
tained. Very naturally also, whilst Coutts's be
came the great bank of the Scottish AA'^higs,
through its connection with the Campbells of
Argyll, Messrs. Drummond counted most of the
Scottish Jacobites and Tories among their cus
tomers. If it be true of nations that they are most
fortunate whose annals are a blank, in all proba
bility the same thing may be said also of banking
firms. Such being the case, Messrs. Drummond
and Co. may be deemed happy, for their career
has been little chequered by events. There is
current in the House a tradition that Sir Robert
AValpole, in his zeal for the interests of the House

MESSRS. drummond's BANK. 227
of Hanover, wished on one occasion to inspect
the books at Messrs. Drummond's, in order to
make himself acquainted with the financial pros
pects of the adherents of the Stuarts. It is
needless to add that the great Minister found that
his wish could not be gratified. Mr. Drummond
also, to mark his sense of the affront, turned his
back directly upon Sir Robert when he next met
him at St. James's ; and the king, so far from
being offended with him for his apparent rudeness
to Walpole, showed Mr. Drummond, either then
or subsequently, some special mark of personal
favour; what this favour was, however, is not
recorded, or, at all events, remembered. It is
evident that the house did not lose the favour of
either royalty or the Treasury, for a foreigner
named Arckenholz, in the middle of the last
century, teUs us that in his time its partners
" had often in their hands several hundred thou
sand pounds belonging to the (Tovernment."
There is a story, which has often been told,
respecting Drummond's bank and George IV.,
when Prince of Wales. The latter, who was a
customer of Messrs. Drummond, wanted a large
advance, and had no security to offer which that
firm judged satisfactory. Mr. Coutts, however,
stepped forward at this juncture, and offered to
lend the money on the Prince's personal security.
Q 2

228 LONDONIANA,
The consequence was that most of the Royal
Family (except the Duke aud Duchess of Glou
cester) transferred their accounts from Charing
Cross to the Strand,
Another version of the same story runs as
follows : on one occasion, it is said, Messrs.
Drummond refused to advance the sum of ^500
to Caroline, Princess of Wales, when she was
in temporary difficulties. Hence that spirited
lady writes to a friend : " Messrs. Drummond
shall certainly not be bankers to the Queen of
George IV. ; for any historian who should write
the biography of the ex-Princess of Wales would
indeed astonish the world in relating that she
could not procure the sum of .£500, at the rate
of paying ,£500 a- year ^per annum for it." "It
is only fair to add," remarks the author of " Old
and New London," " that this statement, coming
as it does from an angry lady's pen, may very
possibly be mere gossip and scandal after all ;"
and, as a husband and wife who lived on the
terms on which the Prince and Princess of AA'^ales
existed do uot often agree in their actions, it
may be inferred that either the one or the other
version of the story is without foundation.
It is worthy of note that Pope had a banking
account with Drummond's during the last
eighteen years of his life, and that at his death

MESSRS. drummond's BANK. 229
the balance which stood to his credit was paid
over to his executors.
There is in the bank a fine and speaking por
trait of the founder of the bank, painted by
Zoffany, representing him as a gentleman of the
old school, in a long blue coat and wig, and with
a gold-headed cane and snuff-box in his hands,
and a favourite dog by his side. The dog has
long since perished, but the cane and the snuff
box remain in the hands of Messrs. Drummond
to this day, and they are both treasured as
venerable relics at the bank. There is an en
graving of this picture, but copies of it are very
rare.

230

A ROMANCE OF BERKELEY SQUARE,

IT is possible that at all events my lady
readers may take an interest in a little
romance which occurred nearly a centurj' since
to a member of the great firm of Messrs. Child
and Co., who then carried and still carry on
the business of bankers, at the house which
adjoined Temple Bar, under the sign of the
" Marygold." Mr. Robert Child, a grandson of Sir Francis
Child, erst Alderman and Lord Mayor of Lon
don, and at one time M.P. for the City, was
bead partner of this celebrated firm during the
first few years when George the Third was King.
He was a careful and thrifty man, not to say a
trifle penurious ; and he had not only traded, but
had lived till middle age with the sign of the

A ROMANCE OF BERKELEY SQUARE. 231
" Marygold" swinging backwards and forwards
over his head. He was by no means a youth
when he removed with his family into the then
ffishionable quarter of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and
had seen more than fifty summers when, in 1767,
he purchased a house in Berkeley Square, the
same which, till within the last four or five years,
has been the town mansion of his descendants,
the Earls of Jer.sey,
One day Mr, Child asked Sheridan, who was
his neighbour in the country, to write for him u
lay sermon, which Sheridan very kindly pro
mised to do. As it was not money which he had
to paj-, Sheridan kept his promise, and took
for his text a verse iu St L\ike's Gospel, which
speaks of a "certain rich man." In his discourse
he described the personal character and conduct
of Mr. Child with such accuracy that no one
could possibly mistake as to the person whom
" the cap fitted." Mr. Child never quite forgave
the preacher, for the arrow had gone home.
The truth is that he was not only very penurious.
he was also very proud. He had married a
daughter of Paul Jodrell, who was highly con
nected among the county families of her time,
and had relations who, on levee days and draw
ing-rooms, had been used to pay their court to
George II. and his Queen, at Kensington, though

232 LONDONIANA,
she consented to become the wife of the owner
of the " Marygold."
This marriage brought to him one daughter,
who was born about the year 1762, and to whom
he was much attached. He named her Sarah,
after her mother. And in truth he had good
reason to be proud of her, for, for she grew up
to be very pretty and very charming ; and, when
she "came out" in the spring of 1780, she was
looked upon as one of the belles of the season,
and it was prophesied that she would marry a
duke at the very least.
But she was not destined to win the straw
berry leaves of a ducal coronet. For the man
of her choice she was content to look two degrees
lower down among the grades of the peerage,
and to secure an earl was the highest point of
ambition at which she aimed. Her father, how
ever, did not regard her views with satisfaction.
One afternoon a certain noble earl, a customer
of the bank, was dining quietly tete-a-tete with
Mr. Child in the back parlour under the sign of
the " Marygold," no doubt with a view to discuss
some question of a loan or a profitable invest
ment. AVhen the money question had been
•sufficiently considered, and the port had passed
freely round, John Fane, Earl of Westmoreland
— for he was the visitor — turned round some-

A ROMANCE OF BERKELEY SQUARE, 233
what sharply to the old banker and said, ".Mr,
Child, I wish for your candid opinion on the fol
lowing case. Suppose that you were in love with a
young lady, and that her father refused his con
sent to her marriage with you, what would you
think of doing?" "Why, I should run away
with her, of course," was the answer of Mr.
Child, who at the time had no suspicion whatever
that the question was one which had the slightest
reference to himself or to pretty Miss Sarah, who
was just eighteen, and whom Lord AVestmoreland
had met once or twice in society.
The dinner over, Mr. Child returned to his
suburban mansion in the far West, having
dropped Lord Westmoreland en route at his
bachelor lodgings near Leicester Fields, as they
then were called, A few nights afterwards, whilst
the old gentleman was quietly dozing after dinner
in his armchair, a post-chaise and four drew up
under the shadow of the plane trees which had
then been newly planted in Berkeley Square.
At a given signal, a young lady stepped into the
carriage, followed by her lover. The postboys
drove or rode off as fast as the four horses could
carry them along the northern road which led to
wards Scotland, It is said that the young lady
was enabled to make her exit from her father's
house by the maid being bribed to drug the ever

234 LONDONIANA.
watchful duenna, who slept in the outer room of
Miss Sarah's chamber, and who did not awake till
the night-watchman of the Square, one of the old
" Charlies," knocked at the door in the middle of
the night, and communicated the fact that " the
bird had flown."
The next step was to call Air. Child, who, old
and penurious as he was, at once took a post
chaise and pursued the runaways. They had
some hours' start : but whether Mr. Child had the
better horses, or whether he had more relays then
the young people, no one knows ; but certain it is
that he overtook them when they were already
close upon the Cumberland border, and only a
stage short of the famous terminus of Gretna
Green. Finding himself so hotly pursued. Lord
AA^estmoreland, who carried pistols, after the
fashion of the time, and was reckoned a good
shot, stood up iu his carriage, and, looking back
out of the window, shot the leader of Mr. Child's
chaise, and so caused the vehicle to break down
and capsize. This bold measure gave Lord
AA'estmoreland and the fair companion of his
flight time to get safe across the border, where
the accommodating blacksmith was in readiness,
with the Prayer Book open at the matrimonial
service, his wife standing by as clerk and witness
in one. The pair were married and retired to rest

A ROMANCE OF BERKELEY SQUARE. 235
at the inn before Mr. Child could overtake them.
A marriage thus performed in Scotland by a lay
man, it is needless to add, was at that time as
valid as if performed by the Archbishop of Can
terbury in Hanover Square ; and what was done
on May, 20, 1782, could not be undone even by
the House of Lords or by all the Bishops on the
Bench. And what course did Mr. ChUd take ? Instead
of making up his mind that " what can't be cured
must be endured," and reflecting that the holder
of so ancient an earldom as that of AVestmore
land was, after all, an excellent match in a
worldly sense for a plain banker's daughter, he
allowed his pride to overcome his sense, and
threw himself into a furious passion. He vowed
that he would never forgive Lord Westmoreland
for what he had done ; and kept his word.
Within a year he was numbered with the dead,
having never recovered the blow.
He Uved long enough, however, to witness the
birth of a little granddaughter, to whom with
dutiful kindness the young people gave the name
of Sarah, after her mother and her grandmother.
This delicate attention appears to have touched
his feelings, as we may surmise from the fact that
he drew up a will, leaving to the child his large
fortune. The infant, on reaching womanhood.

236 LONDONIANA.
married, in 1804, the Earl of Jersey, to whom
she brought as a dowry her partnership in the
banking house of Messrs. Child and Co. The
Lords Jersey themselves and their families have
ever since borne the name of Child in addition to
that of Villiers ; and the present Lord Jersey,
Sarah's grandson, is not ashamed to own himself
a partner in the house, which still rejoices in
the sign of the '¦ Marygold."
It may be added that in the first floor front
room at Messrs. Childs', through which entrance
was gained into the upper chamber of Temple
Bar, there may still be seen a full-length portrait
of Sarah, Lady Jersey, painted by Sir Thomas
Lawrence v/hen she was still in the pride of early
womanhood, and that the portrait will ever be
regarded as one of the chief heirlooms of the
house.

237

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS.

A LITTLE more than a hundred years ago,
before the practice of numbering the houses
in our streets was introduced, nothing would have
struck a visitor to London more forcibly than the
number aud variety of the sign-boards affixed to
the fronts of the houses or swinging on poles
over the footway. If he had been of an intelli
gent turn of mind, he could easily have found, as
he walked along the Strand, Fleet Street, and
Cheapside, a sort of " Memoria Technica " of the
English history which he read as a child. In
deed, nearly all the leading characters and main
facts in the annals of our country must have
been pictorially displayed, in a manner not devoid
of interest. He would have seen on his right
and left hands the " AA^hite and Red Roses " of
York and Lancaster ; the " AA'hite Hart " of

238 LONDONIANA.
Richard II. ; the " AVhite Swan " of Henry V, ;
the "Red Dragon and Greyhound " of the Tudors ;
the " Boar's Head " of Richard III. ; the " Royal
Oak " of Charles : and the " AVhite Horse " of the
House of Brunswick. He would have noticed
also that heads, especially of royal personages,
formed a large percentage of the whole ; though
these he would have found on inquiry were largely
subject to change — there being a strange ten
dency among them to " worship the rising sun "
by substituting a new for an old sovereign. In
like manner, the " Duke's Head," which, in the
time of Blenheim, implied the Duke of Marl
borough, was changed to his Royal Highness of
York, or, at a later date, to his Grace of AVel-
lington. As Byron caustically remarks in Don
Juan : —
" Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, "Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And filled then- sign-posts then, like Wellesley now.''
It must not be supposed that, in the days to
which we refer, the use of sign- boards was confined
to inns and hostelries, as now-a-days it is. The
heads of " Milton " and " Shakespeare " also were
occasionally seen amongst those of kings and
generals. The latter was used by Jacob Tonson,
in the Strand, over against Catherine Street,

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS. 239
Strand, and afterwards by Miller, a Scotchman,
who published the early editions of the works of
Fielding, Thompson, Gibbon, and others, and
who altered his sign to the head of " Buchanan."
The heads of Homer, Horace, ' aud Cicero, were
also adopted as signs, especially by booksellers;
and it was no uncommon practice for publicans
and others, not renowned for modesty, to deco
rate their house fronts by hanging out their own
portraits, as in the case of " Paul Pindar," in
Bishopsgate Street, an instance which the Society
of Antiquaries many years ago considered suffi
ciently authentic to publish. Nor should we here
omit to notice the house of Taylor, the " water
poet," in Phoenix Alley, near Long Acre, the set
ting up of which may be excused in his own
words : — " There's many a head stands for a sign,
Then, gentle reader, why not mine?"
Neither, again, must we forget the " Cuckold's
Head," as characteristic of the time of Henry
VIII. :—
" Here is mary one marchauntes of allgate.
Her husbode dwelleth at ye sygne of ye " Cokeldes pate,"
Nexte house to Robyn renawaye."
The heathen deities and their attributes
were somewhat more rare ; nevertheless we find

240 LONDONIANA.
the " Caduceus of Mercury," probably indicating
expedition. The head of " Esculapius," his
" serpent and staff," or his " cock," were appro
priate signs for professors of the healing art, and
they are still found decorating our modern
druggists, as well as the head of " Galen," or the
" Phoenix " rising from the flames. Dragons,
mermaids, and other nondescripts contributed
largely their share to the departed genius of de
coration of our old city. John Rastell lived in
Cheapside, " at the sign of the ' Mearmayd,'
next to Polly's gate," where he published the
"Pastyme of the People," and in the same loca
lity, at the " Green Dragon," was published the
first edition of the " Merchant of Venice." The
sign of Alderman Boyd ell was the " Unicorn," at
the corner of Queen Street, Cheapside.
In Hey wood's " Rape of Lucrece," is a charac
teristic song, which particularly relates to the
signs of the inns, and the people who resorted
thither in the reign of James I. : —
" The gentry to the King's Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown.
The churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Kose,
To the Drum the man-of-war ;

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS. 241
To the Feathers, ladies, you ; the Globe
The seaman doth uot scorn ;
The usurer to the Devil, and
The townsman to the Horn,
The huntsman to the White Hart,
To the Ship the merchants go.
But you that do the Muses love.
The sign called River Po,
The banquerout to the "World's End,
The fools to the Fortune hie,
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife.
The fiddler to the Pie.
The punk unto the Cockatrice,
The drunkard to the Vine,
The beggar to the Bush, then meet.
And with Duke Humphrey dine."
Even the old theatres, in the Stuart days at
least, were known and conventionally represented
by signs. In want of better reasons for explain
ing the motives which prompted the owners in
the selection of them, we may conclude that the
" Globe " may have had some reference to the
circular form of the building, while the "Fortune"
was as appropriate as in the present day, from the
extremely precarious nature of theatrical specula
tions. The "Red Bull" doubtless referred to the
sort of entertainment to be met with there, when
hears and, bulls were baited to vary the amuse
ments ; and in connection with early plays, it
will not be inappropriate to note that it was at
VOL. II, R

242 LONDONIANA.
the sign of the " Red Bull " that the first edition
of " King Lear " was published.
But though it was made necessary by Act of
Parliament that the houses in London should be
numbered, and though the greater part of the
signs then existing were ordered to be taken down
before George III. had been very long seated ou
his throne, yet many signs escaped the hand
of the ruthless destroyer, and after being kept
perhaps in the kitchen or back cellar for a few
years, were again set up, one by one, as soon as
it was safe to do so ; we "will therefore endeavour
to glean a handful of those signs which still re
main, or, at all events, remained till the days of
Victoria, serving as links in the chain of history
and connecting the present with the past.
It must be owned that westward of Temple
Bar there are now-a-days few signs which
have any claim on our attention on account of
antiquity or originality. Perhaps the most inter
esting of those which survive in these parts are
the " Running Footman," in Charles Street,
Berkeley Square, reminding us of the days of
Sedan chaii-s. At one end of King Street,
AVestminster, until about twenty years ago, there
was to be seen a good specimen of a "Boar's
Head," doubtless the original sign of au inn
which was of note under the Tudors, Of this

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS, 243
house there is extant a token, bearing the legend
"The Bore's head in King's Streete, AVest
minster," and on the reverse, in the field, the
letters "L D, AA^," but without a date. The editor
of the " Magazine of Art," about the j'ear 1850,
thus writes respecting the centre and eastern end
of the Strand : —
" At the corner of Catherine Street is a carving
in stone of a " Lion " leaning on a shield, and at
No. 166 an antique-looking "Lamb," gUt and
suspended by his body over the doorway. (There
are several of these decorations still remaining in
the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, as well as other
parts of London, as signs for hosiers and woollen-
drapers.) At No, 46, in the upper part of an old
house, there is a carved "Lion's Head," which is
worthy of notice on account of its peculiar posi
tion ; it has the appearance of looking out of an
open window of the upper storj' or garret ; but
whether it occupies its original place is a matter
for conjecture. Over an ironmonger's near St.
Clement's Church, there remains the old sign of a
" Gridiron and Bell." Near this locality, in
Holywell Street, there exist several houses, de
cidedly good specimens, if not the best remaining
in London, of its ancient architecture. Over the
doorway of an old book-shop is a noble sign, in
gilt metal, of a " Half Moon," with the face of a
R 2

244 LONDONIANA.
man in the inner side. Adjoining this house is a
fragment of carviug on the post of a narrow pas
sage. An old globe lamp still occupies its place
near it, and together with an abundance of vener
able dirt, forms an exceedingly picturesque
group." Respecting this sign it may be remarked that
it was by no means rare in London, and doubtless
bore a covert allusion to the legend of the Man in
the Moon, a sign which was sometimes painted as
a Crescent with a man standing in a rather un
comfortable position between its horns.
Upon arriving at the spot where Temple Bar
stood we enter upon a new field ; historical asso
ciations crowd upon us in connection with the
haunts of the great authors and literati of the last
two centuries ; but without allowing these to
divert us from our purpose, the first house we
arrive at, Messrs, Child's Bank, contains still the
original sign of the " Marygold," though not dis
played on the exterior, A few doors eastward of
this house is Gosling's Bank, on the front of
which is StiU exhibited the old sign of the " Three
Squirrels." These are represented iu iron, and
attached to the bars on the upper part of the
centre window, are spiritedly executed, and cu
rious specimens. At a few doors beyond, in the
same direction, we arrive at the banking-house

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS. 245
of Messrs. Hoare, over whose doorway they
have fixed the original sign of the " Leather
Bottle.'' Nearer Temple Bar, on the opposite
side of the way, and over the entrance, there is
the sign of the " Cock " tavern. There is reason
to believe that it is the original sign which deco
rated the house when honest Izaak Walton took
his morning draught of ale there. From a notice
issued by the master, in 1665, when the plague
was raging, that he should shut up his house for
several weeks, we learn that it was called the
" Cock and Bottle," the latter of which now forms
no part of the sign. A plausible motive for the
adoption of the sign may have been meant to de
note that the game of throwing at cocks was
played there. A token was issued by William.
Brandon, who kept a house he called " Y" have
at it," on Dowgate Hill ; and on this coin is a
man about to throw a stick at a cock. The
"Mitre" tavern, opposite St, Dunstan's, which
was formerly a resort of the wits of the last
century, exhibits a gilt sign over the lamp. At
the corner of Fetter Lane there stood, till a quarter
of a century ago, the shop in which Cobbett sold
his " AA'eekly Register," over which there was an
enormous gilt gridiron, a sign which was noticed
by the old political economist in his work. The
" Bell " tavern, in Fleet Street, has a good speci-

246 LONDONIANA.
men of the flat sign which was adopted after the
order of Common CouncU for the removal of the
projecting ones. It is a large and bold painting
on a metal plate. The subject of this sign may
'have reference to the saint of the parish church,
St. Bride's.
In pursuing our journey eastwards we shall
find few signs of note. The "Bolt in Tun,"
once a convivial hostelry in Fleet Street, and
afterwards a centre of railway conveyance, has
disappeared within the memory of those who are
stUl young. The line of Ludgate Hill scarcely
boasts a single living sign, though Messrs. Cas-
sell's publishing offices still commemorate the
name of the once famous " Belle Savage," in
whose yard many plays of the Elizabethan days
were acted. The same writer whom I have al
ready quoted, tells us that the sign of the " Gilt
Perches " was removed only a quarter of a cen
tury since from one of the doorways of Messrs.
Rundell and Bridge, the great silversmiths. They
were cast in metal, and were not flat upon the
wall, but projected over the footway. The sign
of the " Daniel Lambert," which at the same date
was to be seen, he tells us, within a few doors of
St. Paul's Churchyard, and was an authentic por
trait of the great man of Maldon in the days of his
obesity, has likewise, like its prototype, gone the

A CHAPTER ON LONDON SIGNS. 247
way of all created things. In London-house Yard,
St. Paul's, the visitors may still see a curious sign,
the " Goose and Gridiron," but there is no reason
for believing that it can claim a greater antiquity
than the reign of George the Second.
It may be added that on the north side of
AVhitechapel High Street, a few doors from Aid-
gate, there is, or was till lately, a curious old inn,
called the " Angel," with a still more curious
sign, representing three women robed in white,
and which, on a close examination, I found to
pourtray three nuns with veUs and whimples. It
was probably as old as the Reformation. But the
nuns had been developed by the fancy of the
AA^'hitechapel drovers into angels, and when the
old sign grew too dirty to be seen except under a
strong light, its real meaning was forgotten, and
the three angels apparently were " rolled into
one."

248

THE TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OF THE
STRAND.
I. — THE DUCHESS TURNED MILLINER.
IL— THE MILLINER TURNED DUCHESS.

IT is not a little singular that the prosaic region
of the Strand should have been the scene of
two romauces, each the opposite of the other,
though in both the prominent part was played by
ladies who were the wives of dukes.
Exeter Change, or, as it was long called, " The
New Exchange," consisted, down to the last cen
tury, of a basement with cellars, a ground floor
level with the street, and forming a public walk,
and an upper story, in which were stalls or
shops, occupied by milliners, sempstresses, and
members of other trades which supplied ladies'
dresses and fashionable articles of attire. From
and after the period of the Restoration — standing

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OF THE STRAND. 249
in a central position between the Court and the
City — it became a fashionable resort, and was so
widely popular that there is scarcely a dramatist
of the reign of Charles II, who has not at least
one reference to the gay character of the place.
The shops and stalls had their respective signs :
one of which, the " Three Spanish Gipsies," was
kept by Thomas Radford and his wife, Mrs,
Radford was the daughter of John Clarges, a
farrier in the Strand, and she eventually figured
in history as Duchess of Albemarle,
But another duchess, very different in character
from the daughter of the common blacksmith and
farrier, is said to have worked as a milliner in a
shop, either in Exeter Change or in its immediate
vicinity ; and it is with her that we have now to
deal. This lady was Frances Jennings, sister to the
celebrated Duchess of Marlborough ; she married,
for her first husband, George, Count Hamilton,
a member of the Abercorn family, and a marechal
de camp in the French service. By him she had
three daughters : Elizabeth, afterwards the wife
of Viscount Ross ; Frances, wife of Viscount
Dillon ; and Mary, wife of Viscount Kiugsland.
When the death of Count Hamilton left his
Countess free to marry again, her hand was
sought by Colonel Richard Talbot, Baron of

250 LONDONIANA.
Talbot's Town, Viscount of Baltinglass, and Earl
of Tyrconnell. The Earl was subsequently, on
March 20, 1689, advanced to the dignity of Mar
quess and Duke of Tyrconnel, by King James IL,
in whose service, as Chief Governor of Ireland,
he died, at Limerick, two years afterwards, of a
broken heart, on the failure of his efforts to re
store his master to his throne. His widowed
duchess was left with two daughters, one of
whom, Charlotte, eventually married a foreign
nobleman — the Prince of Vintimiglia.
No record remains of the length of time which
elapsed after her second widowhood before Frances,
Duchess of Tyrconnell, set up her little milliner's
shop in Exeter Change. Pennant, the antiquary,
speaks of her as " a female suspected of having
been Tyrconnell's duchess ;" adding that she sup
ported herself here for a short time b^^ the trade
of the place ; for she " had delicacy enough not
to w-ish to be detected." She is said to have sat
in her shop attired in a white dress and white
mask, and to have been known as " the AVhite
Milliner;" under which name her story was dra
matised by Douglas Jerrold, and put upon the
stage, at Covent Garden, in 1840.
Now, allowing the anecdote to be true, the
question immediately arises, why did the Duchess
of Tyrconnell choose a mode of life which she evi-

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OE THE STRAND. 251
dently considered a degradation ? She could not
have been wholly without means, when the Duke
of Tyrconnell had been receiving £20,000 per
annum out of forfeited estates in Ireland (in ac
knowledgment of his signal services), in addition
to an income derived from his own large estates.
She had four daughters well married, any or all
of whom, one would think, would have been able
and eager to receive the widowed mother into her
house, if she were in need.
Besides, she clearly had money, for after the
death of the Duke (whose sincere attachment to
his unfortunate sovereign has never been dis
puted), the Duchess applied for, and, in spite of
the penal laws against Roman Catholics, obtained
permission to erect a religious house (still stand
ing) in King Street, Dublin.
AA^hen we consider the use to which the Duchess
of Tyrconnell devoted this house, the problem
seems solved — it was to be a convent for Poor
Clares. The cost of the building may have been
greater than she calculated ; or, at any rate, her
Poor Clares, when settled in the house, would
need food. The Duchess was probably not a
skilful beggar, even for them ; but she could
humble her pride, could engage in a lowly trade
in Exeter Change in order to support her pi'o-
tegees ; and, seen in this light, the act is as brave

252 LONDONIANA.
and self-denying and heroic an example of charity
as may be met with in the life of many a canonized
saint. Burying all the attractions and graces which
once so adorned the Court, she lived among her
Poor Clares in obscure retirement to the great
age of ninetj'-two, and died at her house in Para
dise Row, Dublin (says Horace Walpole), "in
consequence of falling out of bed upon the floor
on a winter's night. Being too feeble to rise or
to call for aid, she was found in the morning so
numbed by the cold that she lived only a few
hours." Horace AA^'alpole adds, wuth his usual piquancy
and ill-nature : " She was of very low stature,
extremely thin, and had not the least trace in her
features of ever having been a beauty." But this
is probably a very false picture.
The Duchess was interred iu St. Patrick's
Cathedral, Dublin, March 9, 1730, and no doubt
was followed to the grave by the blessings of
her Poor Clares.
The Dukedom of Tyrconnell, being conferred
after the abdication of King James, is not
reckoned upon the roll of Ulster King of Arms,
and, indeed, it died with its first holder. But a
fine portrait of the Milliner Duchess of Tyrconnell
is to be seen at Malahide Castle, near Dublin, the

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OP THE STRAND. 253
seat of the Duke's nearest kinsman and represent
ative, Lord Talbot de Malahide. It represents
her, however, not at she appeared in her lowly
guise, as the little white mUliner of the Strand,
nor as the foundress of the house of Poor Clares,
but in the prime of her life, when she shone as
one of the ornaments of the EngUsh Court, as
pure as she was bright— no small credit, it must
be allowed, when we remember that the Court was
that of Charles II.
Readers of the Count de Grammont's amusing
" Memoirs " wUl not have forgotten his mention
of the Duchess as having been eminently graceful
and pretty when she adorned the Court of St.
James's iu her youth, and how the Merry Monarch
found her virtue proof against all temptations,
though she was lively enough to join in the pas
times of the Court, and on one occasion joined
another maid of honour in dressing up as an
orange-wench, in order to have her fortune told in
the neighbourhood of St. James's.
A striking contrast to the White Milliner is to
be found in Anne — or, as she was usually called,
at least in earh' Ufe, " Nan" — Clarges, who event
ually came to be Duchess of Albemarle, as the
wife of General Monk, the restorer of royalty in
England. " Nan'^ had no cause to boast of her

254 LONDONIANA.
parentage, her father, John Clarges, being a
blacksmith and farrier, who lived at his forge,
near the junction of Drury Lane and the Strand ;
while her mother was one of a company of women
who carried ou the trade of barbers in the same
locality, and, it would seem, a person in no re
pute, at all events for morals. A ballad is ex
tant, written upon this woman and four of her
compeers, the burden of which is—
" Did ever you know the like.
Or ever hear the same,
Of the five women barbers
That lived in Drury Lane ?"
Such people as a farrier and a barber, very
naturally, did not gi-ve their daughter much of an
education ; but it was sufficient for the trade to
which she was brought up, that of a milliner ;
and, as habits and manners acquired in early life
are usually difficult to get rid of, however much
circumstances may alter, so Nan retained strong
traces of the blacksmith's daughter, even after
her elevation to a corpnet with strawberry leaves.
In 1632 we find Nan Clarges married to a cer
tain Thomas Ratford, son to another man of the
same name who had been farrier and servant to
Prince Charles, and who resided in the Royal
Mews at Bloomsbury. The young couple lived
at a shop with the sign of " The Three Spanish

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OF THE STRAND, 255
Gipsies," in the New Exchange, in the Strand,
and sold such things as washballs, powder, and
gloves, Mrs. Ratford also teaching girls plain
work, A daughter, who was born to them in
1634, died at four j'ears old. Some twelve or
fourteen years later. Nan Clarges was acting as
sempstress and washerwoman to Colonel Monk,
then confined in the Tower, as a royalist, by the
Parliament; in this capacity she used to carry
his linen, and made herself useful to him to the
utmost of her power. In 1649 she and her hus
band fell out and parted, and thenceforth slie
claimed to rank as a widow, but no certificate
from any parish register could ever be produced
to prove her husband's burial.
It appears that Nan, or Mrs, Ratford, which
ever was her name, went to live with Monk, now
General and Admiral for the Parliament, and,
vulgar woman as she was, and destitute of beauty
and of every charm that might allure a lover, still
Monk married heriu 1652, at St. George's Church,
Southwark. Perhaps he was influenced by grati
tude, or by that need of repose in private life which
frequently accompanies or follows unusual activity
in the business of the world. Another, aud per
haps more likely reason assigned for the marriage
was Monk's anxiety to maintain that devout aud
respectable appearance which was indispensable

256 LONDONIANA,
to fortune under the canting Puritan regime ;
and he therefore thought it expedient to clear his
conduct from any irregularities which might
hinder his advancement. It also appears certain
that Mrs. Ratford used, if not the influences of
religion, at least the discourses of its ministers,
to induce the General to "make an honest woman
of her." " Taking no care for any other part of
herself," says Clarendon, " she had deposited her
soul with some Presbyterian ministers." These
declared the marriage to be a necessity; and
thereupon Monk contracted it. Was he wholly
to blame ! Perhaps not. He had always a high
opinion of his wife's understanding, and often
consulted her on important matters. Though an
ardent Presbyterian and a hater of episcopacy,
she was also a zealous Royalist, and, possessing
and using a freedom of speech on which no one
else would have ventured, she was for ever per
suading the General to return to his old allegiance.
To such a step he was probably well inclined, for
he could not but remember that his murdered king
had sent him dSlOO when a prisoner in the Tower,
although he could then ill spare one penny of
the sum.
In the year 1653 Nan bore him a son, who re
ceived the name of Christopher ; and she after
wards had another son, who died in infancy, to

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OP THE STRAND. 257
the sincere grief of the parents, but especially of
the General.
When Cromwell departed this life and was
succeeded by his son Richard, some suspicion of
disloyalty to the new state of things fell on
Generaf Monk. But his wife ever used to rebut
it by saying, " Mr. Monk is a Presbyterian, and
my son Kit (the boy was then six years old) is
for the Long Parliament and the good cause."
AA^hen the General started for his march from
Scotland to London, Mrs. Monk hastened to him ;
but, assuring her that she was not equal to such
a journey, he sent her to Berwick in order to come
by sea to the capital. Here she was employed to
receive the wives of the Members of ParUament,
who were not a little astonished by their hostess
herself pouring out wine for them, and hurrying
off to fetch the sweetmeats which it was also
customary to offer. She overwhelmed them also
with her talkativeness, even more than with her
vulgar civility, and few could carry away with
them a favourable impression of the great man's
wife. Still her brother Thomas had raised himself
above the station to which he was born. He had
for many years been a commissary for Charles II„
and as such had tried to influence his brother-
in-law, the General. As early as the 5th of May,
VOL. JI. s

258 LONDONIANA.
1660, an address from Monk's army had been
entrusted to Clarges to convey to Breda, and
when he had fulfilled his mission, he returned Sir
Thomas Clarges.
At this time Monk's slightest expressions were
caught up ; so it was soon known and noised
abroad that Mrs. Monk, in her impertinent gaiety,
had asked Hugh Peters, who had grown rich on
confiscated property, " if he was not for the Res
toration ?" and poor little Kit, tormented by
questions, had confessed that one morning, when
in bed, his father and mother had talked about
the King's return.
At last Charles really arrived at Dover, and
all Loudon went out of its wits to greet His
Majesty's return. A maypole, upwards of a
hundred and thirty feet high, was set up in the
Strand, where St. Mary's Church was afterwards
built; and it is said that John Clarges, the black
smith, was the man who caused the pole to be
erected ; but, as he is known to have died in 1648,
it was probably a son of his who signalized him
self over the maypole, at which, we are told, " the
little children did much rejoice, and ancient
people did clap their hands, saying golden days
began to appear."
At the junction of Drury Lane and Wych Street,
close to the Olympic Theatre, is a narrow court

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OF THE STRAND. 259
called Maypole Alley, and near this spot must
have stood the forge of John Clarges. the black
smith, who brought back the old maypole to the
Strand. The merry monarch's friend in need and
restorer was created Duke of Albemarle, but
the manners and habits of his duchess became
the laughing-stock of a witty and jocular court.
Thus Pepys enters in his '' Diary," under date
November 4th, 1666, " The Duke of Albemarle
is grown a drunken sot, and drinks with nobody
but Troutbecke, whom nobody else will keep
company with, of whom he (Mr. Cooling) told me
this story. That once the Duke of Albemarle,
in his drink, taking notice, as of a wonder, that
Nan Hyde should ever come to be Duchess of
York ; ' Nay,' says Troutbecke- ' never wonder at
that, for, if you will give me another bottle of
wine, I will tell you as great, if not greater
miracle. And what was that, but that our dirty
Bess (meaning- his duchess) should come to be
Duchess of Albemarle.' "
Again, April 4th, 1667, Pepys writes: "I find
the Duke of Albemarle at dinner, with sorry
company — some of his officers of the Army — dirty
dishes and a nasty wife at table, and bad meat,
of which I made but an ill dinner," In fact,
Pepys evidently regarded the Duchess with
s 2

260 LONDONIANA.
positive aversion. He has never a good word to
say for her, and calls her a " plain and homely
dowdy," and a "very ill-looked woman,"
Still she met with some appreciation. There
is in the British Museum a curious poem entitled
" The Entertainment of the Lady Monk at Fisher's
Folly, together with an address made to her by
a member of the College of Bedlam, at her visit
ing those Phanatiques." Part of it ran thus : —
" Thrice welcome, noble Lady, to this Place,
Wife to a Person sprung of Royal Kace.
* * * * *
You are a welcome guest
Unto our board, whose presence makes us jolly.
Since you vouchsafe to come to Fisher's Folly."
It is certain, however, that the brave com
mander, who was never afraid of bullets, was
often terrified by his wife's tongue. At one
time, when offered the command of the Navy, he
begged that the transaction might be kept a pro
found secret, " for if," he said, " his wife should
come to know it, before he had prepared her, she
would break out into such passions as would be
very uneasy to him ; but he would soon dispose
her well enough."
The hen-pecked husband soon fell a victim to
dropsy, and the unlovable wife did not long sur-

TWO-FOLD ROMANCE OF THE STRAND. 261
vive him. She was buried by his side in
Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
Their son, Christopher — the boy Kit — became
second Duke, though his legitimacy was not es
tabUshed without great difficulty, and perhaps,
not very satisfactorily after all. He ran through
most of the wealth which his father left him, and
died in 1688, without issue, bequeathing what re
mained of bis property to his cousin. Sir Walter
Clarges, Baronet, son to Nan's brother. Sir
Thomas Clarges, From him Clarges Street, in
PiccadUly, derives its name. The dukedom, of
course, became extinct, and the title of Albemarle
was afterwards conferred by AVilliam the Dutch
man on the head of the house of Keppel, who still
enjoy it.

262

THE HOLBEIN GATEWAY,
AVESTMINSTER,

TTTITH the reign of " Bluf King HaU" com-
V V menced a new era of architecture, in an
artistic sense, at all events so far as this country
is concerned ; and it must not be forgotten that
it was through the reputation which that king had
gained abroad for taste and generosity that Hans
Holbein was induced to settle down in England,
A large number of that painter's works found a
place upon the walls of the house of the good
Sir Thomas More, at Chelsea, where he had been
kept employed for the space of nearly three
years. It was by the instrumentality of Sir
Thomas, as Mr. Peter Cunningham tells us in an
article on this subject in the Gentleman's Maga
zine, that the great German artist was first in
troduced to the King, who had been invited to

THE HOLBEIN GATEWAY. 263
view the pictures. Henry, surprfsed and de
lighted at what he saw, exclaimed : " Is the artist
alive, and is he to be had for money?" Holbein
was accordingly presented to the King, who at
once took him into his service, and, as his bio
graphers inform us, treated him in a very liberal
and handsome manner. A pension was settled
upon him, and apartments were placed at his dis
posal in Wolsey's old palace at Whitehall.
One of the first works which he executed at
the King's request was a design for a magnifi
cent gateway, which was built about the 3'ear
1546, in front of the Palace, opposite the tili-
yard at Westminster. The gateway itself, which
stood across the road leading from Charing Cross
to the Abbey, was flanked on either side by
low brick buildings of a single story in height.
Its position was, as nearly as possible, in front of
the centre of what is now the Treasury, close to
the Banqueting House at AVhitehall. The arch
way through it led to what was then, and now is,
King Street, in the middle of which thoroughfare
was another gateway, called " AA\^stminster Gate,"
The well-known "cock-pit" of the Stuart times
adjoined Holbein's gateway on the west.
The gateway itself was constructed of small
square stones and flint boulders, and altogether
presented a pleasing variety of colour, being

264 LONDONIANA,
glazed and disposed in a tesselated manner. On
each front were four medallions, or busts ; these
were coloured and gilt, aud, as it is asserted, "re
sisted all influences of the weather," They were
composed of terra-cotta, life-sized, or even a little
larger, and represented the chief characters of
the age Among them were those of Henry VII.,
Henry VIII., and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,
These three medallions are strongly believed by
some persons to have been the work of an Italian
artist, Torregiauo,
Mr, J, T. Smith, in his " Antiquities of West
minster," speaks of the gateway in the following
terms : — " It is scarcely to be supposed that, in
the time of Hubert de Burgh's residence here,
there was anything like that noble space which
the width of the street opposite Whitehall now
(1807) affords. On the contrary, the probability
seems to be that there was not, and it is far more
likely that it did not at that time exceed the
breadth of the present King Street, Passing by
AVhitehall, the way was continued along a street
of this same width, which originally had on its
eastern side the wall of part of the garden, or
orchard, or other ground, belonging to White
hall,* as may be seen in the plan made in 1680,
* Strype's Stow, Book VI. p. 5. Stow, 1633, p. 496 ;
1618, p. 841.

THE HOLBEIN GATEWAY, 2 65
by John Fisher, a surveyor at that time, and
which was afterwards engraved bj- Vertue. On
the western side, this street had the wall of that
enclosure since converted into St, James's Park ;
but when Henry VIII, had acquired possession of
Whitehall, in 1531, by exchanging with the abbot
and convent of AVestminster, he procured to him
self this enclosure, part of which he converted
into the before-mentioned park,* and on the rest
he erected a tennis-court, a cock-pit, a bowling-
alley, a long stone gallery — which was for some
time occupied by the late Duke of Dorset, and
subsequently by Lord AA^hitworth — and other
buildings, many of which are wholly, or in part,
stiU (1807) remaining."
Of the two gateways mentioned above, a de
scription is given in the " New View of London,"
printed in 1708. One of them, as already stated,
is styled " Westminster Gate," and is said to be
"an ancient piece of building, opening out of
the cock-pit into King Street, in the north part
of Westminster. This structure," continues the
account, "is old, with the remains of several
figures, the Queen's arms, roses, &c,, whereby it
was enriched. It hath four towers, and the south
side is adorned with pilasters and entablature of
the Ionic order. There are also in Westminster
» Widmore's " History of "Westminster Abbey," p. 123.

266 LONDONIANA,
the gates opening out of New Palace Yard and
and Tuthill (TothUl) Street," There was also
in former times another gateway in Westminster,
of which no mention is made iu the above extract,
aud therefore it is evident that it must have been
removed before the " New View of Loudon" was
written ; this was a gate at the end of King
Street, leading into the Sanctuary of AA''estminster
Abbey. The Cock-pit Gate — that designed by Hol
bein — is said to have been an extraordinarily
beautiful structure ; " it is built of square stone,
with small squares of flint boulder very neatly
set. It has also battlements and four lofty
towers ; and the whole is euriched with bustos,
roses, portculUsses, and Queen's arms, both on the
north and south sides,"
AA^'hen this gate was pulled down, its materials
were granted to AA''illiam, Duke of Cumberland,
then Ranger of AA^indsor Parks and Forests, who
had solicited it with the view of re-erecting it in the
Long AA''alk in the Great Park. The stones of
the gateway were accordingly removed to AA'^ind-
sor ; but the intention for erecting it in the Great
Park seems to have been abandoned, for, as Mr.
J. T. Smith tells us, "a medallion from it is in
one of the fronts of a keeper's lodge, near the
head of the A^irginia AA^ater, near AA^orld's End

THE HOLBEIN GATEWAY. 267
Gate, as it is corruptly called, instead of The
World's End Gate. . . A simUar medaUion, part
of it also, is in another cottage, built about the
year 1790, also in the Great Park, and accessible
from the road from Peascod Street, by the bar
racks. Other stones form the basement as high
as the dado, or moulding, and also the cornice of
the inside of a chapel at the great lodge, which
chapel was begun in the Duke's lifetime, but was
unfinished at his death."
Pennant speaks of Holbein's Gateway as being
"built with bricks of two colours, glazed, and
disposed in a tesselated fashion. The top," he
tells his readers, "as well as that of an elegant
tower on each side, was embattled ; and on each
front were four busts in baked clay, in proper
colours, which resisted to the last every attack
of the weather ; possibly the artificial stone re
vived in this country." These, he adds, he has
been lately informed, were preserved iu a private
hand. The busts had ornamented mouldings
round them, and were composed of baked clay, in
proper colours, and glaze<J in the manner of
Delft ware, which no doubt had been the means
of preserving them.
After the gate was taken down, three of the
busts fell into the hands of a dealer in old iron,
&c., in Belton Street, in the neighbourhood of

268 LONDONIANA.
St. Giles's. This man had them in his possession
for some three or four years, when they were
purchased, rather over a hundred years ago, by a
Mr, Wright, who employed Flaxman, the sculptor,
then a boy, to repair them. The dress of one of
the busts was painted dark red, and it had gilt
ornaments, among which were the Rose and the
letter H, the Crown and R in gold.
In 1866, when Mr. Peter Cunningham wrote,
these busts were in the possession of Mr. AA'^right,
of Hatfield Priory, Essex, great-grandson of the
Mr, Wright mentioned above. This gentleman,
in a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine, a few
years ago, says — "I remember some j'cars ago
(after reading an account of the busts in tbe
' Antiquities of AVestminster'), scraping off some
of the paint, and I found them glazed and
coloured, I suppose the reason why they were
painted over was that a good deal of the enamel
had worn off or was damaged in some way, so
Flaxman thought it better to paint them."
Maitland, in his "History of London" (1739),
speaks of Holbein's Gateway as still standing.
He calls it " the present stately gate, opposite
the Banqueting House," He says that soon after
becoming possessed of Whitehall, Henry, " for
other diversions, erected, contiguous to the afore
said gate, a tennis court, cock-pit and places to

THE HOLBEIN GATEWAY, 269
bowl in ; the former of which only are now re
maining, the rest being converted into dwelling-
houses and offices for the Privy Council, Treasury,
and Secretaries of State."
It is suggested by a writer in the Gentleman's
Magazine that these medallions should be sent
to the Kensington Exhibition, in order that those
who are skilled in such matters maj' decide
whether they are the work of Torregiauo, as
generally supposed, or that of John de Maiano, as
Sir Henry Ellis was inclined to believe. But the
suggestion has not been carried out, so far as I
am aware.
Of Holbein's Gateway several views have been
pubUshed at different times ; that of Hollar is
the best, and it is now exceedingly rare.

270

¦ THE KING'S HEAD" IN THE POULTRY.

A LTHOUGH there is no longer a " King's
Xjl Head" in the Poultry, one need not carry
one's memory very far back in order to recall
the day when I enjoyed a chop or a steak at
a hostelry which flourished under that sign, as
often as business called me eastward of Temple
Bar, As it then appeared it was not an old inn,
certainly ; but it stood on the site of a pre
decessor which could trace up, not its ancestry,
but its actual existence to the days of the Com
monwealth ; for it was alread}' a licensed house
of refreshment when, on Tuesday the 29th of
May, in the year of Grace 1660, between three
and four of the clock in the afternoon, King
Charles II, of blessed memory, as he passed
through the loyal City of London in his Restoration
triumph, here publicly saluted the wife of the

" THE king's head" IN THE POULTRY, 271
host who kept it. The tradition rests on very
respectable authority ; for one Mistress Mary King,
the sister-in-law of the worthy woman thus
royaUy saluted, was the grandmother of WUliam
Bowyer, the printer, who had apprenticed to him
John Nichols, the venerable compiler of " Literary
Anecdotes of the eighteenth century," and the
father and grandfather of successive editors of
the Gentleman's Magazine.
The tavern of which I speak stood during the
Civil AA'ars at the west end of the Stocks Market,
a spot now covered by the Mansion House. Be
fore the Restoration of Charles, of course it did
uot bear the sign of the " King's Head," for the
Commouwealth people had chopped that off
rather summarily. AA''hile the Puritans and
Parliamentarians had the ascendency, it rejoiced
in the neutral and innocent name of " the Rose,"
a device which grew proudly over a stately, but
narrow doorw^ay, which indicated in the main
street the good cheer to be had within, iu the
large and spacious court behind. On this plan.
indeed, nearly all the large City taverns were
constructed, space fronting the street being ex
tremely valuable ; and hence it arose that the
" King's Head" of our own times was approached
through a narrow entrance aud along a narrow
covered passage, which oiiened into a Ught quad-

272 LONDONIANA,
rangle, reminding the poetically-minded traveller
of the Atrium of a house in Pompeii or Her-
culaneum. On the eastern side of this open
square was a sort of colonnade, supporting some
projecting chambers above ; and on the pavement
between the pillars were tubs containing parts
of that "fresh importation of Uvely turtle," for
which the house had been celebrated for several
generations. In the seventeenth century, we are told, one
of the chief expenses of a London tradesman on
first starting in business was the sign of his shop ;
and the sign of the " Rose" appears to have cost
something considerable, especially when we con
sider the change that two centuries have effected
in the value of money ; for when the ruins of the
house were cleared after the Great Fire, there
was saved a fragment of an account book on
which was the following entry :
"Pd. to Hoggestreete, the Duche Paynter,
for y^ picture of a Rose, 4th a Standing Bowie
and Glasses, for a Signe, xxL, besides Diners and
Drinkinges, Also for a large Table of Walnut
Tree, for a Frame, and for Iron Worke and Hang
ing the Picture vl,"
It is clear that the artist who designed this
rose could have been no other than Samuel Van
Hoogstraten, a Dutch painter whose works in

" THE king's head" IN THE POULTRY, 273
England are very rare and valuable. He was
one of the many excellent artists of his time, who,
as Horace Walpole contemptuously remarks,
" painted still life, oranges and lemons, plate,
damask-curtains, cloth of gold, and that medley
of familiar objects that strike the ignorant
vulgar." And doubtless this " Rose," in its
early beauty, was well fitted to throw into the
shade the glories of the rival " Roses" at Temple
Bar, in Covent Garden, and in Southwark. It is
said by an antiquary, who has written the praises
of this hostelry, in a style half playful and half
serious, that under the sign ran the following
inscription :
" This is ' The Rose TaverrC in the Poultry, kept hy William
King, citizen and vintner."
" This Tavern's like its Sign— a lustie Rose,
A sight of joy that sweetness doth enclose ;
The daintie Flowre well piotur'd here is scene ;
But for its rarest sweets, come, search within."
Such was the state of affairs at this place,
down to the time w^hen it became evident to all
men that the King's recall was inevitable ; and
certain of the boldest and most loyal of the
landlords of London cautiously ventured to ex
press something of this in their signs. The
concluding acts of the Restoration, however,
followed so rapidly upon each other that there
VOL. II. T

274 LONDONIANA,
was scarcely time to make even the most hasty
preparations to receive Charles in his triumphal
entry through the city. An open act of the
authorities of the neighbouring parish of St.
Peter-upon-Cornhill soon determined Master
King's course in this respect. On the 10th of
May, 1660, the Vestry " agreed that the King's
Arms, in painted glass, should be refreshed, and
forthwith be set up by the Churchwarden at the
parish charges ; with whatsoever he giveth to
the glazier as a gratuity, for his care in keeping
of them all this while."
In confornuty with such demonstration as this,
the host of " The Rose" resolved at once to add
a Crown to his sign, with the portrait of Charles
wearing it in the centre of the flower, and openly
to name his tavern " The Royal Rose and King's
Head." He effected his design, partly by the
aid of one of the many excellent pencils which
the time supplied, and partly by the inventive
muse of Master Blythe, which soon furnished
him with a new poesy. There is not any farther
information extant concerning the painting ; but
the following remains of an entry on another
torn fragment of the old account-book already
mentioned, seem to refer to the poetical inscrip
tion beneath the picture : — . . . , '¦'¦ ony" Night
when he made y' Verses for my new Signe, a

" THE ring's head" IN THE POULTRY. 275
Soper, and v. Peeces." The verses themselves
were as follows : —
" Gallants, Rejoice ! — This Plow're is now full blowne ;
'Tis a Rose-Noble betterd by a Crowne ;
All you who love the embleme and the Signe,
Enter, and prove our Loyaltie and wine."
Beside this inscription. Master King also
recorded the auspicious event referred to, by
causing his painter to introduce into the picture
a broad sheet, as if lying on the table with the
cup and glasses,— on which appeared the title,
" A Kalendar for this Happy Yeare of Restaura-
tion 1660, now newly Imprinted."
As the time advanced when the King's arrival
in England was expected, every hour seemed
to develop some new feature of the approaching
triumph which was to take place in London.
All the day long the streets were resounding
with the voices of ballad-singers pouring forth
loyal songs, and declaring with the whole
strength of their lungs, that
" The King shall enjoy his own again."
Then there were also to be heard the ceaseless
horns and proclamations of hawkers and flying
stationers, publishing the latest passages or
rumours touching the royal progress; which,
whether genuine or not, were bought and read,
T 2

276 LONDONIANA.
and circulated by all parties. At length, all the
previous pamphlets and broad-sheets were swal
lowed up by a well-known tract, still extant,
which the newsman of the time thus pro
claimed : — ¦
" Here is A true Accompt and Narrative — of
His Majestic' s safe Arrival in England — as 'twas
reported to the House of Commons, on Friday, the
2bth day of this present May, with the Resolutions
of both Houses thereupon : — Also a letter very
lately lorit from Dover — relating divers remarkable
Passages of His Majestic' s Reception there."
On every side the signs and iron-work were
either refreshed, or newly gilt and painted :
tapestries and rich hangings, which had engen
dered moth and decay from long disuse, were
flung abroad again, that they might be ready to
grace the coming pageant. The paving of the
streets was levelled and repaired for the expected
cavalcade : and scaffolds for spectators were in
the course of erection throughout all the liue of
march. Floods of all sorts of wines were con
sumed, as well in the streets as iu the taverns ;
and endless healths were devotedly and energeti
cally swallowed, at morning, noon, and uight.
But my narrative has, hitherto, not supplied
any information concerning Mistress Rebecca
King ; though, but for her, the event which it

" THE king's head" IN THE POULTRY. 277
commemorates never would have happened, and,
consequently the history itself never have been
written. At this time she was about to add
another member to Master King's household,
which already included his widowed sister and
her son, as well as some children of their own.
There were, also, continually to be found in the
tavern several of those sympathising gossips who
appear to be both natural and proper to the cir
cumstances; and aU these, with the many visitors
resorting to such a noted place of entertainment,
amply supplied Mistress King from hour to hour
with full accounts of the public proceedings as
they occurred ; and even with the countless
rumours which were reported by a thousand
tongues. Whether it were from the vivid impres
sion, which these narratives made upon her imagi
nation, or from that mysterious influence which
operates on the desires of females in her condition,
is past all hujnan conjecture ; but, certain it is
that she declared, first to her gossips, and then to
her husband, that she " must see the King pass
the Tavern, or matters might go cross with
her," " And thou shalt see the King, sweetheart,"
exclaimed the host of the Royal Rose, when this
wish was made known to him. " Ask for what
thou wilt inside the City-gates, and thou shalt

278 LONDONIANA,
have it, so it be not too hot or too heavy as they
say." For the due performance of this promise, a kind
of arbour was made for Mistress Rebecca in the
small iron gallery which has been already noticed
as surmounting the entrance to the tavern. This
arbour was constructed of green boughs and
fiowers, hung round with tapestry and garnished
with silver plate : and here, when the guns at the
Tower announced that Charles had entered Lon
don, Mistress King took her seat, with as many
of her children and gossips around her as the
gallery would hold beside. AU the houses in the
main streets from London Bridge to AA'^hitehall,
were decorated like the tavern with rich silks and
tapestries, hung from every scaffold, balcony, and
window ; which, as Herrick says, turned the town
into a park, " made green and trimmed with
boughs." The road through London, so far as
Temple Bar, was lined on the north side by the
City Companies, dressed in their liveries, and
ranged in their respective stands, with their ban
ners ; and on the south by the soldiers of the
trained bands.
It may very well be supposed that, in the nar
row streets of the Metropolis before the Great
Fire, there was but little space left between those
lines for a royal procession to pass in. To this

"THE king's head" IN THE POULTRY, 279
cause of delay, as well as to the triumphal disorder
of some very zealous sections of the cavalcade,
must be attributed the circumstance that the
journey through the City occupied seven hours ;
since the King entered it at two in the afternoon,
and did not reach Whitehall until nine at night.
In the nineteenth century we have but little sym
pathy for those who had to endure the ordinary
street-paving of the seventeenth, when as yet
trottoirs had not an existence, but the whole space
between the houses was filled with those small
spheroidal stones, which rendered both walking
and riding equally vexatious. Hence the unac
commodating causeway — though it was strewn
with flowers — formed occasion of delay. A further
series of stoppages occurred from the conduits
being made to run with wine instead of their
ordinary streams, and from the healths which, in
spite of all attempts to suppress them, were
duly pledged and drunk at each.
It will be remembered that one of these conduits
stood on the south side of the Stock's ilarket,
over which Sir Robert Viuer subsequently erected
a triumphal statue of Charles II. The site of it
was in the centre of the back part of that large
area which is at this time occupied by the Mansion
House, nearly opposite to the eastern end ot
Bucklersbury. About this spot, therefore, the

280 LONDONIANA.
crowd collected in the Market Place, aided by the
fierce loyalty supplied from the conduit, appears
to have brought the procession to a full stop, at
the moment when Charles, who rode between his
brothers the Dukes of York and Gloucester, was
nearly opposite to the newly-named King's Head
Tavern. In this most favourable interval, Master
King, who stood upon a scaffold iu the doorway,
took the opportunity of elevating a silver cup of
wine, and of shouting out a health to His Majesty,
which certainly was far from being the first time
that he had done it on that very same first 29th of
May. It has been affirmed that he delivered him
self in extemporaneous rhyme on the occasion, and
that the verses following formed the two con
cluding lines of his effusion : —
" Hail to thee, Charles ! and may it be tliy bliss
Never to taste less happy cup than this !"
but, in the crowd, shouting, and confusion through
which the King rode, his speech, whether it was
verse or prose, was altogether unheard. His
energetical action, however, as he pointed upwards
to the gallery, was not lost ; and the Duke of
Buckingham, who rode immediately before the
King, with General Monk, directed Charles's at
tention to Mistress Rebecca, saying, " Your
Majesty's return is here welcomed even by a sub-

" THE king's head" IN THE POULTRY. 281
ject as yet unborn," Charles had been most
graciously, though perhaps often most uncon
sciously, bowing to the assembled multitudes all
through his journey ; but after Buckingham's re
mark, as the procession passed by the door of " The
King's Head Tavern," he turned towards it, raised
himself in his stirrups, and gracefully kissed his
hand to Mistress Rebecca. Immediately after
this most amiable act, such a shout was
raised, from all who beheld it or heard of it, as
startled the crowd up to Cheapside Conduit, and
threw the poor woman herself into such an
ecstasy that she was not conscious of anj'thing
more until she was safe in her chamber and all
danger happily over.
" I think, Buckingham," said the King, in a low
tone, " that hereafter yonder tavern will be called
' The Salutation,' if the mistress rules."
" If, Sir, the host is only as wise as his wife is
"fair," replied the Duke, " he will have no change ;
for there could have been no Salutation but for
' The King's Head I' "
And there was no change from that time
to this. It was " The King's Head " until the
Great Fire ; as " The King's Head " it was rebuilt
afterwards; and it still bore the same royal
impress down to at all events the middle' of the
reign of Victoria,

282

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON.
(1877.)

MOST of the following particulars, relative to
the Great Fire of London in 1666, are based
on a very interesting paper on this subject
recently read before the members of the London
and Middlesex Archaeological Society by my kins
man, Mr. Cornelius Walford, whose attention had
been forcibly drawn to the want of something
like a well-written history of that direful calamity,
during the preparation of a series of articles on
"fires," fire-insurances," and "fire-protection" for
his " Insurance Cyclopaedia." A large portion of
the matter collected by my kinsman with such
well-directed industry is not ouly exceedingly
curious in itself, but relates to topics with which
the general public is comparatively unfamiliar.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, 283
I may, therefore, be pardoned for making it the
subject of a separate article.
Strange indeed are the various prophecies, real
or supposed, respecting the conflagration, the
utterances attributed to Mother Shipton on the
subject, and the vague threats contained in " The
Butcher's Blessing, or the Bloody Intentions of
Romish Cavaliers against the City of London,"
published in 1642 : strange also is the follow
ing advertisement issued in the Perfect
Diurnal of AprU 9t*h, 1655, by AVUliam LUly,
the famous astrologer, who, if he had not
made this solemn contradiction, would have
been regarded as the greatest astrologer who
ever lived : —
" Whereas there are several flying reports, and
many false and scandalous speeches in the mouth
of many people in this City, tending unto this
effect, viz,. That I, William Lilly, should predict
or say there would be a great fire in or uear the
Old Exchange, and another in St. John's Street,
and another in the Strand, near Temple Bar, and
in several other parts of the City, These are to
certify the whole City that I protest before Al
mighty God that I never wrote any such thing,
I never spoke any such word, or ever thought of
any such thing, or any or all of these particular
places or streets, or any other parts. These un-

284 LONDONIANA,
truths are forged by ungodly men and women to
disturb the quiet people of this City, to amaze
the nation, and to cast aspersions and scandals
on me. God defend this City and all her inhabi-
tauts, not only from fire, but from the plague,
pestilence, or famine, or any other accident or
mortality that may be prejudical unto her great
ness." The fire broke out on the 2nd of September,
1666. It began in a baker's house in Pudding
Lane, by Fish Street Hill, and continued burning
until the greater part of the City was consumed.
In the "Diaries" of Eyelyn and Pepys may be
read graphic accounts of the horrors caused by
the fire, From these accounts, the progress of
the conflagration may be traced with considerable
minuteness. But there is a reverse side to every medal and
coin. Thus while the burning of the City brought
great distress and even ruin upon many of the
citizens of that period, yet London in itself re
ceived a great and direct benefit. For centuries
previous it had been a continued lurking-place
for the plague. ~ Its narrow streets and alleys, its
dark and unwholesome dwellings, its deficient
water supply and drainage, together with its in
creasing crowds of inhabitants, had rendered it
one of the plague-spots of Europe. During the

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON. 285
preceding year no fewer than 160,000 persons
had fallen victims to this giant pestilence. The
City passed through its purification of fire, and
has since remained free. It has been asserted,
and not without some show of truth, that but for
the fire, London would hardly have been suited
to be the commercial capital of England. The
more indirect results of the Fire were : 1. the
actual adoption of fire insurance in Great Britain;
attempts had been previously made to introduce
the system, but they had all failed. In the year
following the Fire, Dr. Barbon's office for fire in
surance was actually opened. No risks were taken
beyond the limits of the bills of mortality.
2. The more general diffusion of the practice of
fire insurance through the continent of Europe —
I say the more general diffusion, because I have
strong grounds for believing that fire insurances,
as a muicipal institution, was previously in exis
tence in some parts of Europe. In 1667, the
Municipal Fire Casse of the Free City of Ham
burg was first founded.
Some interesting particulars are recorded as to
the loss sustained, and the legislative measures
adopted by the Government and by the Corpora
tion of London to prevent a recurrence of the evil.
Amongst the civic regulations may be noted the
following : —

286 LONDONIANA.
" That the City and liberties thereof shall be
divided and appointed into four equal parts or
quarters, and the east part or quarter to contain
these wards following — viz., Portsoken, Aldgate,
Tower, Billingsgate, Bridge, Langbourne, and
Lime Street. The west part or quarter to con
tain Farringdon AVithin, Farringdon Without,
Castle Baynard, Cheapside, and Aldersgate. The
north part or quarter to contain Cornhill, Bread
Street, Coleman Street, Bassishaw, Bishopsgate,
and Cripplegate, And the south part or quarter
to contain Queenhithe, Broad Street, Vintry,
Cordwainer, Dowgate, Walbrook, and Candlewick
Street, " That every of the said quarters shall be fur
nished and provided at or before the Feast of the
Birth of our Lord God, next ensuing, of 800
leather buckets, 50 ladders, viz., ten 42 ft. long,
ten 32 ft. long, ten 20 ft. long, ten 16 ft. long, and
ten 12 ft. long ; as also of so many hand squirts
of brass as will furnish two for every parish : 24
pickaxe sledges, and 40 shod shovels. (See Art.
XXIV.) '• That every one of the twelve companies pro
vide and keep in readiness thirty buckets, one
engine, six pickaxe sledges, three ladders, and two
hand squirts of brass.
" That every alderman who has passed the

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON. 287
office of shrievalty provide four-and-twenty
buckets and one hand squirt of brass. And all
those who have not been sheriffs, twelve buckets
and one hand squirt of brass, to be kept in their
respective dwellings. And all other principal
citizens and inhabitants, and every other person,
being a subsidy man, or of the degree of a subsidy
man, shall provide and keep in their houses a
certain number of buckets, according to their
quality. " That any householder, upon any cry of fire,
shall place a sufficient man at his door, well
armed, and hang out a light at his door, if in the
night time ; upon default whereof every party
offending shall forfeit 20s,
" That every householder shall, during the time
of any fire, have water in a vessel ready at his
door to quench and suppress all further increase
of the fire.
" That plugs be put into the pipes in the most
convenient places in every street, whereof all in
habitants may take notice ; that breaking of the
pipes in a disorderly manner may be avoided.
" That the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, as also
the deputies and common councilmen of such
ward where any fire shall happen, have speedy
notice thereof by several messengers to be dis
patched from the constables on the first discovery.

288 LONDONIANA.
" That the several Companies of Carpenters
Bricklayers, Plasterers, Painters, Masons, Smiths,
Plumbers, and Paviers, do yearly for each Com
pany elect two master workmen, four journeymen,
eight apprentices, and sixteen labourers, to be
ready upon all occasions of fire to attend the Lord
Maior aud Sheriffs, for quenching the same.
" That yearly there be chosen some able citizen
and skilful engineer to attend the Lord Maior and
Sheriffs, or any of them upon such accident,
AA^ho, by their advice, is to give his assistance,
and to blow up by their direction such houses,
whereby the increase of the fire maj' be most pro
bably prevented ; and that labourers be appointed
to attend such engineer.
" That all persons whose houses shall be blown
up, or otherwise demolished for the prevention of
the increase of fire, shall have such damages as
the Common Council shall award ; and that all
persons labouring therein shall be awarded, as by
order of the Court of Aldermen shall be ap
pointed ; and that a rate laid by the Common
Council on the remaining houses of the City and
liberties, for the satisfying thereof,
" That once a quarter the Deputy and Common
Council of every ward return certificates to the
Lord Maior and Court of Aldermen, of the number
and condition of their buckets, engines, ladders

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON. 289
and all other necessaries of that nature. And the
engineer to examine the same ; tbat on all occa
sions they may be found in readiness ; and that
the certificates at Michaelmas quarter be returned
as well to the Lord Maior elect, as to the Loi-d
Maior. " That no person whosoever be henceforth per
mitted at any time to make or cause to be made
any sort of fireworks ; or to fire, or cause to be
fired, any such fireworks within the City or liberties
thereof; except such persons only as shall be
thereunto appointed by li.M., or any lawful autho
rity under him."
The practice of blowing-up houses by means
of gunpowder to stop the progress of the fire,
which we learn from Pepys was adopted on the
third day of the conflagration, and by which
means it seems the fire was ultimately stopped,
developed afterwards into a system. But, as it
was a practice attended with danger, the " Gun
ners of the Ordnance," i.e , the artillery officers,
were called in to superintend the operation. This
led to a Privy Council minute throwing the charge
upon the insurance offices.
Special announcements were naturally called
forth by the position in which tradesmen found
themselves in consequence of the Fire, aud the
VOL, II, U

290 LONDONIANA,
London Gazette o? October 11-15 this year con
tained the following : —
" Such as have settled in new habitations since
the late fire, and desire for the convenience of
their correspondence to publish the place of their
present abode, or to give notice of goods lost or
found, may repair to the corner house in Blooms
bury, or on the east side of the Great Square
[Bloomsbury Square], before the house of the
Right Hon. the Lord Treasurer, where there is
care taken for the receipt and publication of such
advertisements." "All artificers of the several trades that must
be used in rebuilding the Royal Exchange may
take notice that the committee appointed for
management of that work do sit at the end of the
long gallery in Gresham CoUedge every Monday,
in the forenoon, there and then to treat with such
as are fit to undertake the same."
" These are to give notice that Edward Barlet,
Oxford, carrier, hath removed his inn in London
from the Swan, at Holborn Bridge, to the Oxford
Arms, in Warwick Lane, where he did issue be
fore the Fire. His coaches and waggons going
forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays. He hath also a hearse, with all
things convenient to carry a corpse to any part of
England."* * " History of Advertising," p. 77.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON. 291
It is well-known that the Monument at one
time bore inscriptions which ascribed the Great
Fire to the Papists. " But these offensive para
graphs," says Cunningham, " formed no part of
the original inscription written by Dr. Gale, but
were added in 1681, by order of the Court of
Aldermen, when Titus Oates and his plot had
filled the City with a fear and horror of the
Papists. They were obliterated in the reign of
James IL, recut deeper than before in the reign
of AVilliam III , and finally erased (by an Act of
Common Council) Jauuary 26th, 1831."
The following inscription was placed, by au
thority, upon the house in Pudding Lane in
which the Fire commenced : " Here, by the per
mission of Heaven, Hell brake loose upon this
Protestant City, from the malicious hearts of
barbarous Papists, by the hand of their agent
Hubert. Who confessed, and on the ruines of
this place declared the fact ; for w-hich he was
hanged, viz.. That here began the dreadful Fire,
which is described and perpetuated on and by the
neighbouring pillar (the Monument) erected anno
1681 in the majority (intended for mayoralty) of
Sir Patience Wood, Kt."
The language employed in the above inscrip
tion expresses the popular belief of the period,.
viz., that the Papists had caused the firing of the
u 2

292 LONDONIANA.
City, This belief in process of time died away,
to be followed indeed by another equally, if not
more absurd, namely, that the King and Parlia
ment had secretly ordered the burning of the
City in order to drive out the Plague, and thus to
purify and render it fit to be the commercial capi
tal of the world. The "neighbouring pillar" re
ferred to iu the inscription is the Monument,
which was placed 202 feet — exactly its own
height — west of the spot where the fire com
menced. But this now famous inscription too was only
ordered to be put up by the Court of Common
Council, 17th June, 1681. The stone on which
the inscription was cut was removed in the reign
of James IL, replaced in the reign of AA''illiam
IIL, and finally taken down, probably about 1756,
" on account of the stoppage of passengers to read
it." The stone was placed in the cellar of the
building ; but on the rebuilding of the house
afterwards it was placed in the garden ; and as
recently the year 1876 was again discovered
on pulling down the house, and has now found a
final and appropriate resting place in the museum
of the Corporation at Guildhall.
Regarding Robert Hubert referred to in the
tablet, we have these details in addition to those
given in the report of the Parliamentary Com-

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON. 293
rnittee already quoted. He was a French Papist,
and, being shortly after the Fire arrested in Essex
as a rogue and a vagabond, " made suspicious
haste " to confess that it was he who burned
London down. The man was brought to London,
tried at the Old Bailey, and hanged amidst the
ruins of the conflagration on the site of the
present Monument Yard. His confession, on the
score of its amplitude, was certainly unimpeach
able ; and at the very gallows foot he owned that
he had been suborned at Paris to commit this
dreadful crime, that " there were three more
combined with him to do the same thing," aud
that " he had set the first house on fire,"
Clarendon, however, says, "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 in this way."
The hanging him, while it served to appease the
public wrath, also tended to foster an impression
which no one now seriously believes.
The execution of Hubert incited the stoutly
Protestant authorities to affix that inscription on
the face of London's Column itself, which incited
Pope to liken it to " a tall bully lifting its head
and lying," The offensive legend imputing the
disaster to the fury of the Papists was discouraged
by Sir Christopher Wren, but was added to the

294 LONDONIA.NA,
monument by resolution of the Court of Aldermen
1681, in the midst of the anti-Catholic agitation
caused by the perjuries of Titus Oates,
A list of the " Fire sermons " preached in St.
Paul's from 1667 downwards, and of the various
pamphlets and other publications issued from the
press, all bearing more or less directly on the
Fire, would make au interesting subject for a
paper, for their name was "Legion," and the
destruction of London gave birth to a literature
equally rare and curious.

295

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON.

IF, as there can be little doubt, the " city "
proper of London is identical with the Lon
dinium of Tacitus and Pliny, and with the
" Augusta " of the Romans at a subsequent
period, it must be owned that it presents a strange
compound of the old and new. For London, in
the sense of " that world of stucco which is
bounded by Barnet on the north, aud Croydon
on the south, which touches AA''oolwich in the far
east, and Richmond and Twickenham in the far
west," is certainly a very modern institution ;
although the names of " AA'atling Street," and " the
Tower," and " London Stone," carry us back to
the days of the Caesars, and enable us to see that
Camalodunum and A'erulamium had a formidable
rival on the banks of the " Tamesis," as Caesar
calls our river.

296 LONDONIANA,
The "oldest inhabitant" of Loudon, if invited
to descant on the architectural beauties which
he noted in the great metropolis in his child
hood, but which exist no more, would not have a
very long, or a very interesting tale to tell. AVe
should not expect him to remember— though his
father might easily recall the time — when the
western approach to Fleet Street was blocked up
by Butcher's Row ; when Holbein's gate stood
across AA^hitehall ; when there was a farmhouse
with a dairy, and a village pound at the corner of
Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road ; when
a fair was really held in May Fair, and when all
between Berners Street and " Tyburn Gate" was
a range of open fields. Still an old Londoner,
yet living, might remember when the Haymarket
was actually a market for hay; when the site of
the National Gallery was occupied by " the King's
Mews," and that of the Duke of York's Column
by the screen of Carlton House ; when the mean,
narrow, low-life thoroughfare known as Swallow
Street, now replaced by the broad and fashionable
Regent Street, stretched from Piccadilly to Port
land Place ; when " Exeter 'Change " was to the
Strand what Middle Row was, until a very re
cent date, to Holborn ; when filthy lanes teeming
with felonious inmates covered the area of
Victoria Street ; and when Belgravia and Eaton

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 297
Square were desolate plots of marshy land, in
fested by footpads. To these reminiscences the
" oldest inhabitant " might add the information
that, in the days of his youth, there were no police
men, but only servile and decrepit " Charlies ;"
that short " stages " were the substitute for our
omnibuses and tram-cars, hackney coaches and
sedan chairs for cabs, and the " Bridewell Boys ''
and the '• longshore men " with their buckets, for
the Fire Brigade ; that there were " Bow Street
Runners " in lieu of detectives, and oil-lamps
instead of gas and electric lights; that women
used to be whipped at the cart's tail on Holborn
Hill, and men pilloried in the Poultry, and half
a dozen or so of either sex hanged in the Old
Bailey on most Monday mornings ; that the popu
lace used habitually to seize on the bulls which
were being driven to Smithfield for the purpose
of baiting them ; that Princes of the Royal blood
used to attend prize-fights, and that, when-ever
the mob began to cry out for cheap bread or Par
liamentary Reform, the Lord Mayor used to order
the gates of Temple Bar to be shut. Happily
we are now able to say Nous avons change tout
cela. Let us now pass to another point of view in
our desultory survey. We shall see that it is not
only in respect of its population and the number

298 LONDONIANA,
of its houses that London is great, perhaps we
might add without fear of contradiction, the very
greatest of all the cities in modern Europe. A
Greek poet and a Greek historian have told us
that a city consists not in ships or walls, but in
men; and London has given to the world poets,
philosophers, statesmen, historians, and men of
science, as no other city has done ; and in many
ways it seems to combine in itself every element
that is necessary for a great capital. But let us
content ourselves with regarding its population
as merely an aggregate of units, quite apart from
all idea of intellectual or social eminence. Place
its inhabitants shoulder to shoulder, they would
form a line nearly as long as the whole of
England, from Portsmouth to Berwick-on-Tweed.
Think what a difficulty it must be not only to
govern, but to feed so vast a multitude. Verily
it has been truly said that the greatest wonder
about London is London itself! To realize what
London is, we must picture to ourselves the most
squalid misery and the most gorgeous wealth
existing side by side. Again, it is the emporium
and epitome of British wealth and commerce. It
is for London that the manufacturing districts
toil and spin ; it is for London that our fairest
crops are grown ; and for London that our seas
are plundered of their fish. London is the com-

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 299
mon mart to which all the products of these
islands are brought for the purpose of exchange.
In beauty it cannot be compared with Edinburgh,
or even with Dublin ; and yet it has a busy, mul
titudinous, ever-varying life to which those cities
are comparative strangers. But, though it is
such a centre of commerce, it has next to no
public markets ; all the dealing of man with man
is the result of private enterprize, and we are not
so much a nation of merchants as of " shop
keepers." If Manchester is the capital of pro
ductive labour, and Liverpool of foreign imports,
London is still the capital of distributive labour.
Its wealth is enormous, and we cannot at all
accurately calculate its total ; but at a rough
guess it must exceed a hundred millions sterUng,
" Mein Gott !" remarked Blucher in 1814, " vat un
place for to loot !" But what would he have said
now if he could see Regent Street and Oxford
Street, Bond Street and PiccadUly, or could have
taken a walk down the Strand, It contains,
however, besides these material riches, a wealth
which cannot be estimated by gold and silver,
or, as Wordsworth writes : —
" By nicely calculated less or more ;"
the wealth of human inteUigence; aud in this
respect we think that no other city would venture
to put forward a couiiter-claim against London.

300 LONDONIANA,
" The growth of a great city," observes John
Tirnbs, " must be an interesting study to a larger
number of persons than we may at first imagine ;
its claims upon attention are world-wide when
that city is London. It may seem like national
partiality when we speak thus ; but it is only
philosophic reasoning when we remember that
no citj'" of equal size and importance exists in the
world, or ever did exist, Babylon ' the Great '
was not so large; and imperial Rome was smaller
in its palmiest days; even when mistress of the
world it by no means rivalled modern London."
But in truth, when we speak of " London," we
do not mean so much a city as a collection or
gathering together of cities. Not only is our
metropolis many-handed, like Briareus, and mauj^-
headed, like Cerberus ; it is manifold. It is no
longer singular, but plural ; it consists no longer
of one city, but of many. It has engulphed
gradually many cities, towns, villages, and sepa
rate jurisdictions. Its present surface includes
large portions of four commonwealths or king
doms, those of the Middle Saxons, of the East
Saxons, of the "South Rie" (Surrey) folk, and of
the men of Kent, Taken in its widest ac
ceptation, London now embraces not only the
entire cities of London and Westminster, but
half the county of Middlesex, all the boroughs of

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 301
Southw-ark and Greenwich, the towns of Wool
wich and Wandsworth, the watering places of
Hampstead, Highgate, Islington, Acton, and
Kilburn, the fishing town of Barking, the once
secluded and ancient villages of Hornsey, Syden
ham, Lee, Kensington, Fulham, Lambeth, Clap
ham, Paddington, Hackney, Chelsea, Stoke New-
ington, Newington Butts, Tottenham, Blackheath,
and many others; the jurisdiction and lieuten
ancy of the Tower Hamlets, and of the Hospital
of St. Katherine's, and the Lordship of the Duchy
of Lancaster, or the Savoy, iu Westminster, As
time goes on, no doubt, it will extend even further
aud, like an octopus, grasp within its tentacles the
outlying towns aud villages of Croydon, Finchley,
Twickenham, and even Teddington.
A short summary of the calculations that have
been made by writers from time to time as to the
population of " The Great Wen," may not be out
of place here. Political economists differ widely in
their estimates of the number of inhabitants
which the metropolis contained in the Middle
Ages, and of the progressive ratio of increase.
In 1377, London is said to have contained about
35,000 inhabitants. In 1636-7, they amounted
to 700,000, within the city walls, according to a
census ordered by the Lord Mayor, Sir Edward
Bromfield ; but this calculation is thought to be

302 LONDONIANA.
erroneous. In 1746, an historian calculated the
population at 992,000 ; but, eight years after, Dr,
Brackenbridge fixed it at only 751,812 persons ;
and there is strong reason to believe that this
estimate is the more nearly correct. But, to
come to more certain data, we find that, according
to the census of 1801, London was inhabited by
864,845 persons. In 1811, it had increased to
1,099,104; and in 1821, the population numbered
1,225,964. In another twenty years this number
had almost doubled ; and, according to the last
census returns, in 1871, it had reached the grand
total of 3,266,987 souls, to which — if the average
rate of increase has since been maintained, of
which there can be little doubt — at least another
half million can now be added. Yet, while the
population rapidly increases in every other part
of the metropolis, it decreases in the city proper.
In 1701, it amounted to 139,300; in 1750, to
87,000; and in 1821, the population of the city
did not exceed 75,174 persons. It is calculated
that now, in the year of grace 1879, not above
74,000 souls live in the actual city, reckoning
those only who sleep within its precincts. This
diminution is naturally to be ascribed to the great
superiority of the streets at the w-est-end of the
town over those in the east ; aud to the citizens
turning their dwelling-houses into warehouses,

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 303
and taking their families to some vUlage in the
environs, being too refined to bear any longer the
inconvenience of " Smoky London !"
It may be of interest to note the number of
dwelling-houses in the metropolis which afford
shelter to this large and teeming population. Ac
cording to a recent estimate, as we learn from
the pages of " Old aud New Loudon," the total
length of the streets of London is about 2,500
miles ; whilst the entire number of houses —
" inhabited, uninhabited, and building," — concen
trated, at the time of taking the last census of
1871, within the area of " Loudon according to
Act of ParUament," amounted to rather more than
455,000 ; so that, adding the annual rate of
domiciliary increase (7,500), there must now be
some 53,000 more, or 508,000 dwellings alto
gether. It has been calculated that this large
number of houses, with an average frontage of
five yards, would be more than sufficient to form
one continuous row of buildings round the island
of Great Britain, from the Land's End to John
o' Groat's, from John o' Groat's to the North
Foreland, and from the North Foreland back
again to the Land's End.
As a matter of course, the vast and varied
assemblages of human beings here located must
be clothed and fed— for, as St. Paul tells us,

304 LONDONIANA.
" food and raiment " are the only real necessities
of Ufe.
The supply of food, indeed, is amongst the
most remarkable of the real phenomena of the
great city, AVith a population far outnumbering
the largest armies that were ever brought together
upon the " tented field," the commissariat of Lon
don is one which will well repay a deep and care
ful study. It would be useless to ask by what
central authority, or under what controlling
system, the metropolis is supplied with its daily
food. There is no Commissariat Department,
and consequently no one assumes the responsi
bility of its head ; nobody, in fact, takes care
that a sufficient quantity of food shall find its way
into Loudon day by day and year by year, for
the supply of its three millions and a-half of in
habitants. Yet such a supply does reach London.
Archbishop Whately remarked,— writing about
half a century ago, when the population was not
only less dense than at present, but when many
villages and parishes, which are now included in
the vast area of London, were regarded as extra-
metropolitan — "Let any one propose to him
self the problem of supplying with daily pro
vision of all kinds such a city as our metropolis,
containing above a million of inhabitants. Let
him imagine himself a head-commissary, en-

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 305
trusted with the office of furnishing to this enor
mous host their daily rations. Any considerable
failure in the supply, even for a single day, might
produce the most frightful distress, since the spot
on which they are cantoned produces absolutely
nothing. Some, indeed, of the articles consumed
admit of being reserved in public or private
stores for a considerable time, but many, includ
ing most articles of animal food, and many of
vegetables, are of the most perishable nature. As
a deficient supply of these, even for a few days,
would occasion great inconvenience, so would a
redundancy of them produce a corresponding
waste. Moreover, in a district of such vast ex
tent as this (as it has been aptly called) ' province
covered with houses,' it is essential that the sup
plies should be so distributed among the different
quarters as to be brought about to the doors of
the inhabitants, at least within such a distance
that they may, without an inconvenient waste of
time and labour, procure their daily shares."
The Archbishop points out that the provisions
required, instead of being uniform, as in a gar
rison, must be diversified to admit the almost infi
nitely varying tastes of individuals ; that they
must accommodate themselves to the varying
number of persons residing in London at different
seasons of the year; that they must bear some
VOL, II, X

306 LONDONIANA,
direct relation to the richness or scarcity in the
supply of different kinds of food at different
times; and he then proceeds: — "Now, let any
one consider this problem in all its bearings, re
flecting on the enormous and fluctuating number
of persons to be fed ; the immense quantity and
the variety of the provisions to be furnished ; the
importance of a convenient distribution of them ;
and the necessity of husbanding them discreetly ,
and then let him reflect on the anxious toil which
such a task would impose upon a board of the
most experienced and intelligent commissaries,
who, after all, w-ould be able to discharge their
office but inadequately," The striking feature
here is, that no commissariat department is neces
sary, " This object is accomplished, far better
than it could be by any effort of human wisdom,
through the agency of men who think each of no
thing beyond his own immediate interest ; who,
with that object in view, perform their respective
parts with cheerful zeal, and combine uncon
sciously to employ the wisest means for effecting
an object the vastness of which it would bewilder
them even to contemplate. Each of these watches
attentively the demand of a neighbourhood, or of
the market he frequents, for such commodities as
he deals in. The apprehension, on the one hand,
of not realising all the profit he might, and, on

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 307
the other hand, of having his goods left on his
hands, either by his laying in too large a stock,
or by his rivals' underselling- him — these, acting
like antagonist muscles, regulate the extent of
his dealings and the prices at which he buys and
sells. Au abundant supply causes him to lower
his prices, and thus enable the public to enjoy
that abundance, while he is guided only by the
apprehension of being undersold."*
It will be impossible within the limits of this
article to do more than take a cursory glance at
the supplies of some of the principal articles of
daily consumption in the metropolis. Much
curious information concerning the food supplies
of London in the Tudor times is to be found in
the pages of Stow and many of his contempora
ries. The principal meat markets in those days
appear to have been in the Stocks' Market (where
the Mansion House stands), and at Leadenhall.
Stow informs us that it was at that time ordered
that butchers should not demand more than a
halfpenny a pound for beef, and a halfpenny and
half a farthing per pound for mutton. Smithfield
was, however, the chief market for the " sellers
of oxen, sheep, swine, and such Uke," and such it
continued for another two centuries and a half.
* "Introductory Lectures on Political Economy," Lecture
IV. p. 103. X 2

308 LONDONIANA.
The sale of fish in London during the sixteenth
century remained more or less under the control
of the Companies. Corn, however, was an espe
cial object of protective care on the part of the
State ; and during the dynasty of the Tudors a
multiplicity of rules appeared relating thereto.
The Corporation of London put in force a plan
for establishing public granaries, fiUed-when corn
could be purchased at a low price, and opened at
a moderate price when corn should become dear.
These granaries are now numerous about Ber-
mondsey and ShadweU ; but there are many
granaries on each side of the river from Greenwich
to VauxhaU.
The number of corn vessels which arrive in
the port of London is so great that warehouses,
granaries, and the river itself in many places are
at times completely blocked up ; but the large
quantity suddenly brought into the market de
presses prices, and the cargo may have to remain
for months in the granary. Corn and grain, the
produce of our own soil, is kept in the granary
as well to improve its conditiou as to wait the
chance of favourable markets. By being fre
quently turned and screened it becomes harder
and better adapted for grinding, and, though it
loses in measure, it gains in weight. In 1872 au
Act was passed for abolishing the compulsory

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 3U9
metage on grain imported into the port of London,
aud for commuting the metage dues received by
the Corporation into a fixed due, for the purpose
of creating a fund " to be applied towards the
preservation of open spaces near London, and
for other purposes connected therewith."
The sale of sugar, spices, and simUar commo
dities, was in former times chiefly controlled by
the Grocers' Company, An entry in the books of
this Company, dated 1561, is to the effect that the
" bags and remnantes of certeyne evU and naynte
pepper " were ordered to be conveyed over sea to
be sold ; but the dust of the " evil pepper, syr-
named ginger," was to be burned. In 1571, one
King, a member of the Apothecaries' Company,
and certain others, " makers of comfytes, were
charged before the wardynes for their misde
meanours in minglinge starche with the sugar and
such other thinges as be not tolerated or suffered ;
and the said King having now in his place a
goode quantitie of comfytes made with corse
stuffe, and mingled as aforesaid with starch and
such like, it was ordered that the comfytes should
be put into a tub of water, and so consumed and
poured out." It is clear, therefore, that the art of
adulteration was not left for later years to invent.
Many London trades in the reign of Queen
EUzabeth were made subjects of patent monopo-

310 LONDONIANA,
lies — the patents being granted either to favoured
individuals or in return for a money contribution.
Most of the breweries in the sixteenth century
stood near the banks of the Thames, Stow tells
us that in 1585 there were about twenty-six
brewers in the City and in Westminster,, some of
whom were foreigners, who brought over with them
the art of cultivating hops, and that some of them
brewed chiefly for export to foreign countries.
In the present day, the number of breweries within
the metropolitan area amounts to upwards of 150
in number, whilst the number of public-houses
where thirsty souls of London can be accommo
dated with what they require in the shape of
malt liquor, &c., amounts to upwards of 5,000.
About half that number of grocers and tea-dealers
appears to be sufficient to meet the wants of
London in the present day ; whilst the number of
bakers and butchers may be roughly estimated at
2,500 and 1,500 respectively. Of tailors, clothiers,
and outfitters we have now no less than 3,000.
The water-supply of London is a subject which
has long engaged the attention of the legisla
ture, and official reports are issued monthly, under
the authority of the Local Government Board,
with respect to the quality of the water supplied
by the several Metropolitan water companies.
In the reign of Elizabeth, one Peter Moris, a

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 311
Dutchman, established water-works at the north
end of London Bridge ; these were for some time,
apart from two or three public conduits, the chief
source of the water-supply of London : but in
1619 the New River Water Works were inaugur
ated under the auspices of Sir Hugh Myddelton,
and added very considerably to the quantity of
pure water brought into London for domestic
purposes. For eighteen years after the completion
of the New River, the adventurers received no
dividend whatever, and, in the nineteenth, it
amounted to only ^11 19s. Id. each share. Some
idea of the importance of the New River in the
present day may be gained from the fact that, ten
years ago, a share that was sold by auction
realized about ^£48,000,
" The existing water companies," observes a
writer in the Quarterly Review (about 1850),
¦ " send daily through their pipes, for the use of
the inhabitants of London, a volume of water
sufficient to fill St. Paul's Cathedral three times
over ; one which in four-and-twenty hours would
flood the entire area of St. James's Park with
water more than three feet deep ; or, if left run
ning for a year, would bury the city one mUe
square in water nearly one hundred feet in depth,"
As to the quantity of water used in London at
the present time, we may not be far out when we

312 LONDONIANA.
state that the average daily supply of our homes
for drinking, washing and other domestic purposes,
is no less than a hundred millions of gallons.
On the whole, although London is a place of
business rather than of amusement, it cannot be
said that we are badly off for parks and public
gardens, in spite of the admitted superiority of
Paris in this respect. In Kensington Gardens,
Hyde Park, the Green Park, and St. James's
Park we have an all but unbroken stretch of
greensward three miles in length, extending from
the far west into the heart of the fashionable dis
trict of London. The artizan population of the
East End has its Victoria Park ; and Battersea
Park is another " lung of London " for the South
erners of the transpontine parts, whilst Hamp
stead Heath opens its breezy expanse invitingly
to all who will climb our " Northern Heights."
A writer in the Daily News, indeed, has gone so
far as to assert that "there is no city in Europe
or out of it which has so much health-giving and
pleasure-giving vegetation within its bounds as
London ; and that not in the shape merely of
public parks and promenades, but scattered
throughout the masses of houses ; so that in
thousands and thousands of cases the proprietor
or tenant of an unpretentious and modestly rented
dwelling can watch from his own windows his

STRAY THOUGHTS ON LONDON. 313
own trees and shrubs and plants daUy expanding
to meet the mild influence of the spring." Within
the confines of London there are numbers of
houses not exceeding ^£100 a year in rent, which
have gardens so cunningly contrived as to shut
out all view of stone and brick ; so that the
French windows of the drawing-room open out
on a small lawn surrounded by a grove of shrubs,
and this Uttle circle of green is a domain com
manded by no alien espionage."
This we hold to be a gross exaggeration, and a
considerable addition would have to be made to
our " open spaces" and " recreation grounds"
before our metropolis could challenge comparison
with that of our lively neighbours on the banks
of the Seine. Much, beyond a doubt, could be
done to lessen this deficiency by throwing down
and removing the unsightly iron railings which
enclose almost all our squares, forbidding the
worn and weary labouring man or woman to sit
down and rest. But such an innovation as this
would necessitate a different arrangement of our
squares from that which now prevails ; for a
garden with trees, grass and gravel paths, fringed
with flower-beds, would hardly exist for long in
London if thrown open without reserve to the
gamins of our streets. As Mr. Diprose remarks in
his "Book about London:" "Surely we have

314 LONDONIANA.
already squares enough on the Lincoln's Inn
Fields type. AVhy should we not try the experi
ment oT what the French call a place and the
Italians a piazza ? One such square was pro
jected by the late Duke of Bedford, who planned
the space in Covent Garden where the market
now stands ; but the gardeners came and occupied
it with fruits and flowers until they became too
strong to be resisted. A real piazza, such as is
so common in Paris and Lyons, in Turin and
Florence, would be an agreeable change. In such
a square a few beds of flowers, like those which
may be seen in the space opposite Palace Yard,
would be appropriate ; but the great point is to
set the fashion of dispensing with the ugly iron
rails." Such a. piazza, though on a small scale,
has lately been added, and successfully, to the
west-end — we refer to Leicester Square, the gift
of Mr, Albert Grant,

THE END.

London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.