in London, the place of residence of several aristocratic families,
including, amongst others, those of the Earls of Shrewsbury, the
Careys, Barons Hunsdon, and Earls of Dover, and the Westons, Barons
Weston, and Earls of Portland, extinct 1688. The most important house,
however, was Winchester House, which, with its gardens, occupied the
site of Great and Little Winchester streets. The mansion was built by
Sir William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, one of the foremost
men of his age, and a remarkable man in many respects. He was born in
the year 1475, and lived to the age of 97, holding various offices
of state during two-thirds of that period, and at his death left
upwards of a hundred descendants. In 1539 he was created, by patent,
Baron St. John of Basing, to which title, by writ of summons, 1299,
he was eldest co-heir. In 1549 he was created Earl of Wiltshire, and
in 1551 Marquis of Winchester. He was Comptroller of the Household to
Henry VIII., an executor of his will, and guardian of the young king,
Edward VI., and afterwards became Lord Treasurer, and was made Knight
of the Garter. He died in 1572, having witnessed all the changes of
religion, and the turmoils and troubles attendant thereupon. On being
asked how he managed to maintain his position, and an unbroken flow of
prosperity, amid all the religious and political fluctuations of his
time, he replied that "he was made of the pliable willow, not of the
stubborn oak." He was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of
Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London, who was mother of his heir,
the second marquis. At the dissolution of the Augustine Friary, the
house and grounds were granted by Henry VIII. to Lord St. John, who
pulled down a portion of the friary, built a mansion which he made his
town residence, and laid out the grounds afresh which extended to the
City wall, with a footway across, leading to Moorgate. This footpath
had gates at each end, which were kept locked during the night, and
no one allowed to pass along it. The Marquis was also the builder of
Basing House, Wiltshire, memorable for the siege it sustained in the
subsequent civil war.
In modern times Sir Astley Cooper, the celebrated surgeon, resided
in Broad Street, in a house at the corner of the paved court leading
to St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate Street, where he held a morning
_levée_ of City patients. His fees, the first year he commenced,
amounted to five guineas, and it was not until the 5th that they
reached £100 and the 9th, £1,000. After that they rose rapidly to
£1,500, and one year he received the sum of £21,000. Afterwards he
removed to the West-End, but he found a sensible diminution of his
receipts from those derived from the City millionaires. The abbot of
St. Alban's also had his town house opposite St. Augustine's Gate. Even
in the time of the Romans, this part of the City would appear to have
been inhabited by the aristocratical section of the community, as in
1854 a magnificent tesselated floor, 28-feet square, was discovered,
such as must have belonged to a large and high-class house. Humphrey
de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in 1243, founded on a plot of
land extending westward from Broad Street, a priory for begging Friars
of the order of St. Augustine, which flourished until the dissolution,
when the house and grounds were granted to Lord St. John and the
church, appropriated by King Edward VI., in 1551, to "John Alasco, and
a congregation of Germans and other strangers fled hither for the sake
of religion," the church to be called "the temple of the Lord Jesus,"
and in the hands of the Germans, or rather Dutch it still remains.
There is but one church in the street—St. Peter's, originally St.
Peter the Apostle, but now St. Peter-the-Poor, a mean edifice, with
an ungainly tower, and might well be designated "the poor" from its
poverty of architectural merit. Maitland says that it "received the
appellation from the mean condition (as is supposed) of the parish in
ancient times. If so that epithet may at present be justly changed
to that of rich, because of the great number of merchants and other
persons of distinction inhabiting there." The probability seems to be
that it derived that name from its proximity to the house of Begging
Friars, who made a merit of their poverty, and this came to be called
St. Peter by the Poor Friars, to distinguish it from St. Peter's,
Cornhill, and others of the name. We have no knowledge of when or by
whom it was built, but it is a very ancient foundation, as there is
documentary evidence showing it to have been in existence in 1181.
Among the rectors of St. Peter's have been some notable men. Richard
Holdsworth, D.D., educated at St. John's, Cambridge, where he won a
name for proficiency in arts and theology, became master of Emanuel
College, and vice-chancellor of the university, who was preferred to
the rectory in 1636. He was a zealous loyalist, and ejected from his
living in 1642, his house plundered, and he imprisoned in the Tower.
In 1645, he was nominated to the deanery of Worcester and elected
Bishop of Bristol, but declined the dignity. He was permitted to attend
King Charles at Hampton Court and Carisbrook Castle, but he suffered
much by deprivation, sequestration, and several imprisonments. He
died in 1649, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. Benjamin
Hoadley, D.D., afterwards successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford,
Salisbury, and Winchester, who held the living from 1704 to 1720. He
was eminent as a controversialist, and held views which would now be
termed Rationalistic, approaching closely to Unitarianism, which were
developed especially in his _Plain Account of the Sacrament_, and
his _Discourses on the Terms of Acceptance_. When Bishop of Bangor,
he published a sermon on "The True Nature of the Kingdom that Christ
came upon Earth to Establish," from the text, "My kingdom is not of
this world," which gave rise to the celebrated and long-protracted
"Bangorian Controversy." He published a multitude of works, chiefly of
a controversial character, and died in 1761.
John Scott, D.D., 1677-91, afterwards rector of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, and canon of Windsor, a learned divine, author of
_Cases of Conscience_, 1683; _Texts Cited by the Papists Examined_,
1688; _The Christian Life_, 1683; ninth edition, 1702; and other works,
which passed through successive editions, and some translated into
foreign languages. His entire works were published in two vols., fol.,
in 1718, and in six vols., 8vo., in 1826.
In the fifteenth century Venice held the secret and the monopoly of
glass making. The works were situated on the island of Murano, and
many attempts were made by other nations to learn the secret, but the
Venetians asserted and spread abroad the report that it was impossible
to make glass elsewhere equal to that of Murano, even with the same
materials, the same workmen, and the same method of working, as there
was something in the air of the island which imparted a lucidity and
lustre, rendering the glass of the island superior to anything that
could be produced in any other part of the world.
About the middle of the sixteenth century the manufacture was
introduced into England, and works established in the Savoy and
Crutched Friars. Early in the following century a company of noblemen
and courtiers, with Sir Robert Mansell at their head, formed an
association for the manufacture of glass, and built works for that
purpose in Broad Street, near Austin Friars. At that time it was not
deemed derogatory to the dignity of a nobleman to engage in the glass
trade. In Venice the manufacture was held in such high esteem that
those engaged in the profession ranked as gentlemen, and in France a
decree was issued that glass-working should not lessen the dignity of a
noble.
In 1615 the company employed as their manager or steward James Howell,
afterwards Historiographer Royal to Charles II., whom they sent abroad
to obtain information for the improvement of their processes, and to
employ skilful workmen. He obtained from the Lords of Council a warrant
to travel for three years, on condition that he did not visit Rome or
St. Omer, and he started off in 1619, returning in 1621.
He tempted the best workmen, by a promise of a high rate of wages,
especially Signor Antonio Miotti, from Lealand, who had been a master
manufacturer, and was reckoned the ablest workman in Christendom, and
from Venice "two of the best gentlemen workmen that ever blew crystal."
Howell was a remarkable man, and led a somewhat varied life of
vicissitude. After his continental tour he threw up his situation, not
being able to bear the heat of the glass works, was elected a fellow
of his college, and in 1626 became secretary to the council of the
North, at York, and the next year was elected to represent Richmond,
Yorkshire, in Parliament. In 1632 he went to Denmark as secretary to a
special embassy, and on his return went to Ireland to seek employment
under Wentworth, but failed in consequence of the recall and execution
of that nobleman. In 1640 he obtained a clerkship in the council at
Whitehall, but lost it on the breaking out of the Civil War, and in
1643 was committed to the Fleet for his loyal predilections, where he
remained until the death of the king. On his release he found himself
not only penniless, but in debt. He contrived, however, to maintain
himself during the Protectorate by writing for the press, and at the
restoration was appointed Historiographer Royal, which office he held
until his death in 1666.
When Monk came to London to effect the restoration of monarchy, he
halted with his army in Finsbury Fields, had a conference with the Lord
Mayor and aldermen, who coincided with him in his views, which were
professedly the maintenance of a free Parliament. He quartered his men
in the Broad Street Glass House, and passed himself into the City, amid
the acclamations of the people, to the Bull's Head, Cheapside, where he
took up his quarters. The glass works, despite the monopoly, was not a
success, the manufacture was discontinued, and the house, or a portion
of it, taken by the Pinmakers' Company.
The Pinmakers, or Pinners as they were usually called, were neither
a numerous or a rich company. Indeed, Stow says that they met in
Plasterers' Hall originally, and in his time the house had gone to
decay, as "they were not worth a pin." The company was formed in the
reign of James I., and was incorporated 2nd Charles I. (1636). The arms
presented a crowned half figure of Queen Elizabeth, with the motto,
"Virginitas et unitas nostra fraternitas." Towards the end of the 17th
century they held their quarterly courts of assistants in Cutler's
Hall, Cloak Lane, Dowgate. In the Guildhall Library is preserved
the minute-book of the quarterly meetings from 1698 to 1723, some
portions of which are engrossed. It commences with a list of members in
1698; then gives the minutes of the meetings in succession. The chief
business appears to have been fining the members of the court 1s. for
being late, binding and unloosing apprentices, and voting donations to
the widows of members. The company has now entirely disappeared.
St. Augustine's passed through some strange mutations before it finally
disappeared. Originally the home of a fraternity of begging friars, it
became the stables and outhouses of the mansion of a nobleman. Then it
was converted into a glass factory; a soldiers' barracks for a short
time; after which it was appropriated by a City company, and finally
became a great centre of Protestant Dissent, from whose pulpit were
enunciated principles of theology at which, in the olden time, friars
would have stood aghast. In the reign of Charles II., Anthony Palmer,
who had been ejected from Bourton-on-the-Water, and who suffered much
under the Act of Uniformity, an able and learned man, author of _The
Tempestuous Soul calmed by Jesus Christ_, and other esteemed works,
collected a congregation here, took a lease of the building, and
fitted it up with two tiers of galleries, and died in 1678. He was
followed by a long succession of ministers who preached Calvinistic
doctrines, amongst the more notable of whom were George Townes, M.A.,
who had been apprehended in the pulpit at Bristol on a charge of
having being implicated in the "Presbyterian Plot," was removed by
_habeas corpus_ to King's Bench Prison, and eventually acquitted. He
suffered much persecution, and died of the stone, aggravated by his
imprisonment, in 1685. Richard Wavel, famous for his pulpit oratory,
who died in 1707. Joseph Hunt, D.D., a learned divine, who occupied
the pulpit 37 years. He is highly panegyrised by Dr. Lardner for his
erudition, strength of mind, and wonderful memory. Joseph Foster,
D.D., born 1697, pastor of Pinners' Hall Church 1774-1753, author of
_The Usefulness, Truth, and Excellency of the Christian Revelation_,
written in reply to _Christianity as Old as Creation_. He was buried
in Bunhill Fields. Caleb Fleming, D.D., born at Nottingham, 1698;
pastor, 1753-1778, having been previously minister of a congregation in
Bartholomew Close. Author of a multitude of pamphlets—some published
anonymously—quaint and obscure in style. He held opinions verging on
Socinianism, and "set down as fools all who held different opinions,"
including Watts, Bradbury, Pike, Wesley, Whitefield, and Sherlock.
This congregation only occupied the chapel in the mornings, and at the
expiration of the lease, in 1778, the church was dispersed. In the
afternoons an Independent Church, commenced by Thomas Cole, who died in
1697, rented the chapel. He was followed by Dr. John Singleton, who in
1704 removed with the church to Lorimer's Hall.
In that year (1704) Dr. Isaac Watts preached here in the afternoons
until 1708, when he removed to the new meeting house in Duke's Place.
Then followed, in 1708, a congregation under the oversight of James
Maisters, who came hither from Joiners' Hall, who, with his successor
Thomas Richardson, removed in 1723 to Devonshire Square. About 1741
Mr. Weatherley's congregation of General Baptists came here from
Artillery Place, Spitalfields, and continued until the expiration of
the lease, when they removed to Berry Street. A sect of Seventh Day
Baptists also occupied the chapel on Saturdays, under the pastorate of
Thomas Bampfield, "who died a martyr in Newgate in 1684." The church
afterwards removed to Curriers' Hall.
In 1779 a lease was taken of the chapel by Anthony Cole, a seceder
from the Countess of Huntingdon's connection, who gathered together a
numerous congregation, who assembled here until the expiration of the
lease in 1799, when they removed to Founders' Hall.
Shortly after this the building was taken down, and all traces of it
are now obliterated.
But that which rendered Pinners' Hall so conspicuous and celebrated in
the annals of Nonconformity was the establishment of the Merchants'
Lecture within its walls. In 1672, the Dutch war commenced, and Charles
II. and his advisers, thinking it desirable that there should be peace
at home in the religious world whilst there was war abroad, issued
the memorable Declaration of Indulgence, in the preamble to which it
was stated, "that there was very little fruit of all those forcible
methods which had been used for seducing erring and dissenting persons,
etc. His Majesty therefore, by virtue of his supreme power in matters
ecclesiastical, took upon him to suspend all penal laws about them,
declaring that he would grant a convenient number of public meeting
places to men of all sects that did not conform, provided they took
out licences, etc." This was welcomed by the Dissenters generally as
a gracious act of toleration, but there were those amongst them who
looked upon it as a stepping-stone to the re-introduction of Popery.
Taking advantage of the indulgence, the Presbyterians and Independents
who agreed in the fundamental principles of the Reformation, and in a
desire to tear away from the Anglican Church the shreds of Popery which
still adhered to it, met together, under the patronage of the merchants
of London, and agreed to establish in Pinners' Hall a weekly lecture,
to be preached on Tuesday mornings.
At first four Presbyterian and two Independent ministers, the most
eminent of their day, were appointed to preach in turn. They were Drs.
Bates, Manton, and Owen, and Messrs. Baxter, Collins, and Jenkyn, and
for a time the lectures were continued with success and acceptance,
and with tolerable unanimity, despite some little bickering on the
questions of Predestination and Reprobation, occasioned by a sermon
preached by Baxter, who defended his sermon in a tract entitled _An
Appeal to the Light_, when Dr. Manton came forward and partially
suppressed the clamour, but Baxter seceded.
A succession of distinguished ministers continued the lecture until
1694, when the Calvinistic question again cropped up, arising out of
the reprinting of the works of Dr. Tobias Crisp, which were published
under the editorship of his son in 1690, and written against by Mr.
Williams, one of the lecturers. Discord sprung up, and an attempt
was made to exclude him from the lectureship, upon which four of the
lecturers,—Dr. Bates, and Messrs. Williams, Howe, and Alsop,—sent in
their resignations, and set up an opposition lecture at Salters' Hall,
at the same day and hour.
At the expiration of the lease the lecture was removed to Little St.
Helen's, and afterwards to the chapel in New Broad Street, about 1780,
but was very thinly attended.
The Independent Chapel in New Broad Street, to which the Merchants'
lecture migrated, was built in 1728, for Dr. Guyse and a congregation
who separated with him from Miles Lane. Dr. Guyse was a learned man
and Merchant lecturer at Pinners' Hall, and was author of _A Paraphrase
on the New Testament_, 1739, a voluminous and valuable work, as well as
of some other works.
He was followed by John Stafford, D.D., who died in 1800, and was
buried in Bunhill-fields; author of _The Scripture Doctrine of Sin and
Grace_, _Twenty-five Sermons on the Seventh Chapter Romans_, _etc._
A writer in Knight's _London_ says: "If a stranger from any part
of England, Scotland, or Ireland, however remote, were to pause in
the midst of Broad Street, and enquire to what purpose that large
pile of buildings opposite to him were appropriated, he would, ten
to one, on learning that it was the Excise Office, have a livelier
idea of the operations of the Board of Revenue, which has its seat
there, than the inhabitant of London, provided that neither had
been brought into direct contact with its officers by the nature of
his business." In 1626, King Charles I. attempted to introduce the
excise, but a unanimous vote of the Houses of Parliament compelled
him to renounce the scheme. Nevertheless, in 1643, Parliament itself
levied an excise, for the maintenance of the forces raised by them;
the first articles on which the duty was laid were ale, beer, cider,
and perry. The Commissioners of Excise sat in Haberdashers' Hall. An
account of its establishment was given by Prynne, in a tract published
in 1654, entitled, "A Declaration and Protestation against the Illegal
and Detestable and oft-contemned New Tax and Extortion of Excise in
General, and for Hops, a native and uncertain commodity in particular."
An excise office was built in Smithfield, which was burnt down by the
populace, and many riots took place in London in opposition to the
tax, especially when salt and meat and other of the common necessaries
of life were subjected to it; and a multitude of pamphlets, some of a
very scurrilous character, appeared in opposition to it. The Excise
office was afterwards removed to the mansion of Sir J. Frederick, in
Ironmonger Lane, and remained there until 1768, when the trustees
of the Gresham estates let the ground on which Gresham College and
Almshouses stood, extending from Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street, to
Government for £500 per annum, the City and Mercers' Company further
agreeing to pay out of the Gresham funds the sum of £1,800 towards
the demolition of the college and the building of the Excise Office.
The architect was the elder Dance, who erected a plain but spacious
and commanding looking brick building, which served the purpose of the
commissioners until 1848, when the office was removed to Somerset House.
That portion of the grounds of the Gresham estate which faced Broad
Street, was occupied by the almshouses founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in
1575, and bequeathed by him in trust to the Lord Mayor and Commonalty
of the City of London. They consisted of eight tenements for eight poor
men, with an annual allowance of £6 13s. 4d. and a load of coals, and
a new gown every two years. On their demolition to make room for the
Excise Office, they were removed to the City green-yard, in Whitecross
Street.
Another Government office which stood in Broad Street was the Pay
Office for the Navy. It was situated in a portion of Winchester House
at the north-west corner of Great Winchester Street, has since been
removed, and is now located in Somerset House.
The South Sea House formerly extended from Threadneedle Street to Broad
Street, with a frontage in both streets; now it is confined to the
former street in a more modern building. The company was incorporated
in 1710 by Queen Anne, for the purpose of paying off a sum of ten
millions due to the seamen who had been engaged in the French wars.
In 1720 they obtained an Act of Parliament giving them a monopoly
of trading to the South Seas. By a series of iniquitous frauds and
deceptions they raised the shares to a fictitious value of 1,000 per
cent., and caused the nation to fall into a sort of financial madness
in their eagerness to get shares, which resulted in the "South Sea
Bubble." The panic on its bursting caused the ruin of innumerable
families, whilst a few clever rogues realised large fortunes. The
company has long ceased to be a trading body, and the remnant of the
stock, converted into annuity stock, is managed by Government, under
the provisions of an Act of Parliament passed in 1753.
The district northward of Old Broad Street was formerly called Petty
France, on which New Broad Street has been built. Seymoor in his
edition of Stow writes: "Petty France; the greatest part of this is new
built, and called New Broad Street. It is a most regular building; the
houses are after the manner of those by Hanover Square and Burlington
Gardens, and are the most elegant buildings in the City."
In New Broad Street, besides the Independent Chapel, mentioned _supra_,
a Presbyterian chapel was erected in 1729, for a congregation which
removed hither from Hand Alley, Bishopsgate, where a Church had been
formed early in the reign of Charles II. by Thomas Vincent, who
rendered himself famous by his labours amongst the sick during the
Plague. Dr. John Evans, a pious and eminent man, was minister of the
Church at the time of the removal, and was author of a great number of
published sermons, and other works, including "Two sermons preached at
the opening of a new meeting place, in New Broad Street, Petty France,
December 14th and 21st, 1730." John Allen, M.D., was a subsequent
minister of the chapel, author of several sermons which were printed;
and another was John Palmer, a controversial writer, and opponent of
Dr. Priestley. At the expiration of the lease in 1780 the chapel was
taken down and the church dispersed.
An illustration of the primitive mode of stopping the ravages of fire
occurred in 1314, when permission was asked by the officials of Broad
Street ward to cut down an elm tree standing by London Wall and sell
it, to enable them to purchase a new cord for their "wardhoke," a hook
which was kept in each ward of the City for the purpose of pulling down
houses to prevent the spreading of fires.
In 1500 an inquisition was held to ascertain the liability of the ward
to maintain two bridges over the Wall Brook running from "Vynesbury,"
now broken, and to replace the hinges of Bishopsgate, when it was found
that the Prior of Holy Trinity was bound by his charter to keep one
of the bridges in repair, and the Prior of the New Hospital without
Bishopsgate and Broad Street ward the other jointly, and that it
devolved on the Bishop of London to maintain the hinges of the gate,
as he claimed a stick from every load of wood that passed through the
gateway.
Broad Street of late years has become a thoroughfare of immense
traffic, especially in the mornings and evenings, of cabs and
pedestrians going from and to the half-dozen railways which have
erected stations and termini in Liverpool Street, so much so as to
render it at certain times of the day one of the most thronged streets
of the City.
Chaucer and the Tabard.