TWO OLD CITY MANSIONS.
‘The crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are
the honourable of the earth.’
_Isaiah_ xxiii. 8.
BEFORE the summer of 1892 a large and interesting old mansion was
destroyed in the City. This, known as Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s,
Bishopsgate Street, was situated on the south side of the churchyard.
It was of brick, having engaged pilasters, which were furnished with
stone bases and capitals; they also had bands, on two of which,
composed, however, of cement, appeared in relief the initials A L I and
the date 1646. The projecting sills or cornices, and the deep keystones
of the first-floor windows, gave a striking character to the house. It
was also memorable as an early specimen of brickwork in London, and as
dating from a period before the formal conclusion of the Civil War,
when building operations were almost at a standstill. No. 9 had, in a
room on the first-floor, a wooden seventeenth-century mantelpiece,[92]
behind which, on its removal, were found traces of an older mantelpiece
of marble, and evidence of the former existence of a large open
fireplace.
[Illustration: NOS. 8 AND 9, GREAT ST. HELEN’S.]
There was a beautiful staircase, quite Elizabethan in style; a
blocked-up window with wooden transoms for casements was also
discovered; so it seems likely that some years after the building of
the house considerable alterations took place. The façade has often
been attributed to Inigo Jones,[93] but it had not his classic
symmetry, and looked like the work of a less-instructed native
genius. Besides, Inigo Jones, a Royalist and Roman Catholic, was
taken prisoner in October, 1645, at the storming of Basing House,
having been there during the siege, which had lasted since August,
1643. He was apparently not free to return to his profession until
July 2, 1646, when, after payment of a heavy fine, his estate, which
had been sequestrated, was restored to him, and he received pardon by
an ordinance of the House of Commons, to which the Lords gave their
assent. It is difficult to believe that, whilst he was passing through
such a crisis, or in the few months succeeding it, he should have been
superintending a work in the Puritan City. At the time of his release
the great architect was seventy-four years of age, and, as far as we
know, he hardly practised his profession afterwards. Aubrey tells us
that in 1648, the south side of Wilton House having been destroyed, it
was restored by his advice, ‘but he being then very old could not be
there in person, but left it to Mr. Webb,’ his pupil and executor.
The division of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s into two took place
in the course of last century, probably about 1750, to judge from the
style of the fanlights and projecting hoods to the front-doors, and
from the staircase of No. 8, the upper part of which, however, was
much more archaic, and may have served as part of the back-staircase
to the original house. At the time of these later alterations a new
brick front was put to the top story, the windows being protected by
high iron railings, which showed that these upper rooms were used as
nurseries. Before this there was, I should imagine, a high-pitched
roof, perhaps hipped, with dormer windows. There must also have been
an appropriate cornice and frieze, which would have balanced the heavy
projecting window-sills below. That the house always had a fourth story
is proved by the fact that both the old staircases extended to the top.
The accompanying illustration of part of the front is from a beautiful
measured drawing by Mr. H. O. Tarbolton, who studied the house very
carefully just before its demolition.
[Illustration: PART OF THE OLD HOUSE IN GREAT ST. HELEN’S, FROM A
MEASURED DRAWING.]
In Allen’s ‘History of London,’ vol. iii., p. 157, I find a statement
that this brick mansion (identified by mention of its initials and
date) was ‘formerly the residence of Sir J. Lawrence, Lord Mayor in
1665.’ This appears to be the origin of the idea that the house was
built for him, and that he kept his mayoralty there, which has of late
been usually accepted as a fact. There is no doubt that Nos. 8 and 9,
Great St. Helen’s was his property in 1665, but he was living in a
house of totally different appearance--an illustration of which, by
T. Prattent, published in 1796, forms the frontispiece to vol. xxix.
of the _European Magazine_. As there shown, it had elaborate plaster
decorations in front, with the City arms and the arms of Lawrence, and
last, though not least, the inscription S^r JL--K & A. 1662. Sir John
Lawrence’s residence is marked by name in the map of Bishopsgate Street
Ward accompanying Strype’s Stow, where a slight sketch of it is also
given; the present Jewish synagogue in Great St. Helen’s is a little
bit west of the site.
Having looked up the history of the Lawrence family, and its connection
with this parish, I think I can show that the initials on the pilaster
of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s were not those of Sir John Lawrence
and his wife Abigail, but of his uncle Adam and his uncle’s wife. The
Lawrences, like many other eminent mercantile families, were originally
Dutch or Flemish. The name was spelt in various ways, as Laurens,
Laureijns, Laurents, etc., until, when its possessors became thoroughly
anglicized, it took the English form. Le Neve, the herald, says that a
Marcus Lawrence, from Flanders, who had married Gertrude Huesen, came
and settled in London. He had, among other children, a son Abraham and
a son Adam. The latter was baptized at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars,
September 8, 1584;[94] and one may fairly assume that it was he who
there married, May 28, 1610, Judith Van den Brugghe, of Norwich, where
there was then a strong settlement of people from the Low Countries. He
was appointed deacon of the Dutch Church in 1628, and became an elder
in 1632. Eleven years later he had taken up his residence in Great St.
Helen’s, as we learn from an entry in the parish register,[95] which
suggests the forlorn condition of the homeless poor in those days. On
the 23rd of April, 1643, ‘a female infant, found dead at the dore of
Mr. Adam Lawrence, merchant, was buried in the churchyard’ there. What
house he was then living in I am not able to determine; but in the year
1646 the house just now destroyed was doubtless either built or altered
for his own residence, and on it was placed an inscription, according
to the custom of the country whence he sprang.
I have previously pointed out that in inscriptions of this kind the
initial of the husband’s Christian name is almost invariably on the
left, the wife’s on the right, and that of the surname above. The
letters in question would therefore have stood for ‘Adam and Judith
Lawrence.’ In 1650 came the inevitable ending to their long married
life. On the 9th of April it is recorded that Judith ‘Laurents’[96]
was buried in the church of Great St. Helen’s. Adam died in October,
1657. His will describes him as a merchant, and he seems to have been
a very prosperous one. He desires to be buried near his wife, in Great
St. Helen’s, and leaves £100 to the poor of the Dutch congregation in
Austin Friars, and £100 towards the maintenance of the ministry there;
also similar legacies for the parish of Great St. Helen’s, and £100 to
the poor children of Christ’s Hospital. Amongst numerous nephews, he
singles out for special favour John, who seems to have been a son of
his brother Abraham. To him he leaves several houses and gardens in
the parish, amongst others his ‘now dwelling-house, with the yards,
garden edifices, appurtenances, and hereditaments whatsoever thereunto
belonging.’ This, no doubt, was Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s, unless
after his wife’s death he had shifted into another residence. Adam
also left to his nephew John his share in the ‘sister’s thread trade,’
whatever that may mean, which he had in partnership with Abraham
Cullen,[97] the elder, and Philip Van Cassole; and £1,500 to Abigail,
his nephew’s wife, who died in 1681, and whose monument still exists
in Great St. Helen’s Church, where it is recorded that she was ‘the
tender mother of ten children. The nine first, being all daughters,
she suckled at her own breasts; they all lived to be of age. Her
last, a son, died an infant. Shee lived a married wife 39 years, 23
whereof she was an exemplary matron of this Cittie,[98] dying in the
59th year of her age.’ This lady was eldest daughter of Abraham Cullen,
who appears to have been nearly related to the Lawrence family. One
paragraph of Adam’s will is worth quoting, because it seems to indicate
that pretentious public funerals were then not uncommon in the City,
and that he, at any rate, was free from a taste for vulgar display.
He says: ‘Lastly, my desire is that my funerall be decently performed
without anie pompe or ceremonie of mourners, and that my corps be
carried from my own dwelling house, not troubling any publique hall.’
John Lawrence, the nephew, seems to have been a pattern City merchant.
He had begun life as a Bluecoat boy, hence, perhaps, his uncle’s
legacy. In 1658 he served the office of Sheriff. On June 16, 1660, he
was knighted by Charles II., when that monarch, accompanied by his
brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, and some of the nobility,
was entertained at supper by the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Alleyne. In
1662 Sir John Lawrence appears to have built a new house for himself,
the one before alluded to, which was drawn by Prattent, not unlikely
on a ‘garden plot’ mentioned in his uncle’s will. In 1664 he was
elected Lord Mayor, and Evelyn speaks of a ‘most magnificent triumph
by water and land’ on that occasion. Evelyn also attended the Lord
Mayor’s banquet, and tells us that it was said to have cost £1,000.
He dined at the upper table with the Lord Chancellor, the Dukes of
Albermarle, Ormonde and Buckingham, the French Ambassador and other
great personages. The Lord Mayor twice came up to them, ‘first drinking
in the golden goblet his Majesty’s health, then the French King’s as a
compliment to the Ambassador’; they ‘returned my Lord Mayor’s health,
the trumpets and drums sounding. The cheer was not to be imagined
for the plenty and rarity, with an infinite number of persons at the
tables in that ample hall.’ Sir John Lawrence showed both courage and
liberality whilst the Great Plague was raging in the following year. He
stuck to his post, ‘enforced the wisest regulations then known,’ and,
when multitudes of servants were dismissed through fear of contagion,
he is said to have ‘supported them all, as well as the needy who were
sick; at first by expending his own fortune, till subscriptions could
be solicited and received from all parts of the nation.’ Dr. Erasmus
Darwin, in his ‘Loves of the Plants,’ canto ii., devotes a few lines to
‘London’s generous Mayor.’ Five deaths only are recorded in Great St.
Helen’s during the year 1665, which suggests that those connected with
the Church showed less courage than the chief parishioner, and that the
register was neglected.
In 1684 the house of late numbered 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s was in
the occupation of one William Moses. That year Sir John Lawrence,
who so far had not handed over his uncle’s legacy for the poor of
the parish, agreed to discharge his obligation by payment of £250,
and to give £100 in addition for leave to make a family vault in the
church. In 1690 Sir John was living in Putney, as appears from the
churchwardens’ accounts.[99] He died January, 1691-2, and was buried on
the 29th of that month, in the family vault which had been constructed
for him under the church of Great St. Helen’s, but no monument to his
memory exists. The Rev. J. E. Cox, D.D., in his ‘Annals of St. Helen’s’
tells us that at the church restoration of 1865-8 ‘a quaint piece of
carved work, which had been set up to sustain the Lord Mayor’s sword
and mace, was removed to the pillar dividing the choir from the Chapel
of the Holy Ghost.’ The following is a description of it taken almost
verbatim from Allen: ‘It consists of two twisted Corinthian columns,
supporting an entablature highly enriched, and an attic panel. The
shafts of the columns are set off with a wreath of foliage running
round them. On the frieze are the arms of Sir John Lawrence, in the
attic are the City arms, and the whole structure is crowned with the
arms of Charles II., supported by two gilt angels, and surmounted with
the royal crown.’ I hope that this interesting memento of a great City
worthy, though not ‘Gothic’ in style, will be carefully preserved
during the far more wholesale restoration which is now in progress.
Sir John Lawrence’s arms were: argent, a cross raguly gules, a
canton ermine.[100] Peter le Neve says that they were granted to
him September 18, 1664, and to his brothers James and Abraham, sons
of Abraham Lawrence deceased; but it must have been earlier, as they
appear on his house associated with the date 1662. Faulkner, in his
‘History of Chelsea,’ no doubt deceived by the fact that their arms
were identical, assumes that Sir John Lawrence belonged to the ancient
English family of the same name, whose memory is perpetuated by various
monuments at the end of the north aisle of Chelsea old church. Both he
and Dr. Cox[101] go so far as to say that Sir John was buried there;
but his namesake, ‘Sir John Lawrence, Knight and Baronet,’ to whose
memory a tablet was placed against the east wall of Chelsea Church,
belonged to Iver, in the county of Bucks, and died in 1638, aged fifty
years, as appears by the inscription. For several generations the
descendants of the famous Lord Mayor continued to own the house which
became Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s. It afterwards passed into the
hands of the Guise family, from whom it was inherited by an ancestor of
the last possessor, Mr. John Cosens Stevens. Peace be to its memory!
The passage from Great St. Helen’s into Bishopsgate Street passes
under old gabled buildings which date from before the time of the
Great Fire. On the left is the northern front of Crosby Hall, part of
a Gothic mansion unrivalled in its day, though little of the original
structure remains. This side was almost entirely rebuilt more than
fifty years ago. The oriel window, weathered by London atmosphere, has
a very picturesque effect; it is surmounted by the arms of Sir John
Crosby, the eminent citizen who built and first possessed the mansion,
and who lies buried in the adjoining church, where there is a rich
altar-tomb to his memory, with the recumbent figures of him and his
first wife, Anneys. On this tomb also are the Crosby arms, namely:
sable, a chevron ermine between three rams trippant argent, armed
and hoofed or. Sir John, a keen supporter of the House of York, was
knighted by Edward IV. in the year 1471; he served as Sheriff of London
in 1470, and held the important post of Mayor of the Staple of Calais.
Opposite to Crosby Hall, on the northern side of Great St. Helen’s
Passage, there stood till September, 1892, a structure which, though
unpretentious, had an air of quaintness, with its iron railings in
front and broad white window-frames. The inscription on a tablet above
the door of this building ran as follows: ‘These alms-houses were
founded by Sir Andrew Judd, Kt., Citizen & Skinner and Lord Mayor of
London, Anno Dom. 1551. For six poor men of y^e said Company. Rebuilt
by y^e said Company Anno Dom. 1729.’ The original alms-houses are
supposed to have been further east.
Sir Andrew Judd was a native of Tunbridge in Kent, near which town he
inherited considerable estates. Having entered commercial life, he made
a large fortune by trading in furs, and, as Stow tells us, he kept
his mayoralty in a ‘fair house’ in Bishopsgate Street, which had been
before used for a similar purpose by Sir William Holles, the ancestor
of the Earls of Clare. It was during Judd’s mayoralty, in 1550,
that the City of London obtained from the King by charter lands in
Southwark, forming now so important a property, and to which I alluded
in my account of the Dog and Duck, St. George’s Fields. Sir Andrew was
also buried in the church of Great St. Helen’s, which has been a sort
of Westminster Abbey for great citizens. A quaint Elizabethan monument
marks his resting-place. The inscription gives quite a little biography
of him; as was remarked by one of our Transatlantic cousins, ‘it
states all the facts, and rhymes in some places.’ In the ‘Historical
Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish, Holles, Vere, Harley
and Ogle,’ ed. Lond. 1752, compiled by Arthur Collins, it is asserted
that, in building the alms-houses, Judd was only acting as executor
to his cousin ‘Elizabeth, widow of Sir William Holles of St. Helen’s,
Alderman,’ and this seems to be shown by her will, which was proved
March 28, 1544. Stow, however, does not mention her name in connection
with the charity. It was augmented by Sir Andrew Judd’s daughter,
Alice Smyth, of Westenhanger, Kent. Sir Andrew had also been executor
to the Holles family. His original alms-houses were nearer the church
than those the site of which the Skinners’ Company has now, I believe,
disposed of. He also founded and endowed Tunbridge Grammar School.
Great St. Helen’s is being so rapidly ‘improved’ that it will soon
become quite commonplace and uninteresting. A piece was shorn off
the churchyard some years ago, no one exactly knew why, and several
picturesque plastered houses, immediately west of Nos. 8 and 9, have
been pulled down within my memory. At the corner, opposite to the
pretty south porch of the church, attributed by the Rev. Thomas Hugo
to Inigo Jones, a quaint and very old building still remains, which
actually touched the house of the Lawrences. No. 10 is constructed of
wood and plaster, with projecting upper stories and massive timbering;
it dates from long before the Great Fire; the inside, however, has been
modernized. Tradition boldly asserts that Anne Boleyn’s father, Sir
Thomas, afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, at one time
lived here. It is an undoubted fact that one of the name was intimately
connected with St. Helen’s, for ‘on the 24th December, 26th Hen. VIII.,
1534, the Prioress and Convent appointed Sir James Bolleyne, knt., to
be steward of their lands and tenements in London and elsewhere, the
duties to be performed either by himself or a sufficient deputy, during
the life of the said James, at a stipend of forty shillings a year,
payable at Christmas. If in arrear for six weeks the said James might
enter and distrain.’ Query: was this Sir Thomas Boleyn’s elder brother?
There was a right of way hereabout from very early times, for Dugdale
tells us that in the Hundred Roll of 3rd Edward I. several entries
occur relating to an attempt which the nuns made to stop up the lane or
passage through the court of their nunnery from Bishopsgate Street to
St. Mary Axe, sometimes called St. Helen’s Lane. If, as is possible,
the house dates from before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it
first saw the light there must have been few buildings near the even
then venerable Church of St. Helen and the adjoining priory. Crosby
Place, indeed, stood hard by, on land leased from the nuns for a term
of ninety-nine years, but much open space yet remained. Even as late
as the end of last century there was a considerable field or garden
immediately to the east of the church, as shown in a view by Malcolm
dated 1799.
The buildings and grounds of Crosby Place seem to have extended at
first almost to Leadenhall Street. The houses[102] in Crosby Square
are said to have been built about the year 1678, on the site of some
of the offices which had been destroyed by fire. I cannot say how it
happened that in the early part of the seventeenth century a house of
considerable size had already been erected on part of Crosby Place,
or could it have been just outside the precincts? This was latterly
known as No. 25, Bishopsgate Street Within, or Crosby Hall Chambers.
It succumbed to the pickaxe of the builder as nearly as possible at
the same time as Adam Lawrence’s old residence in Great St. Helen’s.
The part facing Bishopsgate Street had no sign of antiquity except
two carved festoons of flowers, much blocked up with paint, between
the first-floor windows. Up a passage,[103] however, one could see
something of the north side or front, which showed architectural
features of merit. It rested on round arches composed of rustic work,
and above were pilasters furnished with capitals. On the first-floor,
looking out on this passage, there was a room adorned by a very
beautiful chimney-piece, with the initials G B and the date 1633 in
the centre panel. The lower part is of stone, the over-mantel of oak,
in very fine condition, all the delicacy of the carving having been
preserved by thick layers of paint, which have just been removed. On
the ceiling of the same room there was also a fragment of original
plaster decoration, which has been presented to the South Kensington
Museum. The site of Crosby Hall Chambers will be occupied by the Bank
of Scotland. It is proposed to put up the chimney-piece in their new
premises.
In 1857 the Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A., wrote an interesting itinerary
of the Ward of Bishopsgate for the journal of the London and Middlesex
Archæological Society. His paper was republished in book form five
years later; it contains valuable illustrations of Nos. 8 and 9, Great
St. Helen’s and of Crosby Hall Chambers, besides other houses which
have passed away. The letterpress is inspired by a fine enthusiasm; but
his architectural judgment is, I think, not altogether to be relied on.
He considers that both the above-named buildings were designed by Inigo
Jones.
Austin Friars, another region in the heart of the City perhaps as
interesting as that which I have just described, is, like it, rapidly
being transformed. Not long ago it still maintained a distinctive
character. Something of monastic calm seemed to linger about the old
home and grounds of the begging friars, crowned by part of their
church, which since Edward VI.’s time has been handed over to the Dutch
congregation of London. Outside, in Broad Street, there was the roar
and confusion of a mighty traffic; within the sacred precinct there was
peace: wheeled vehicles seldom entered the very foot passengers, I have
thought, used to slacken their pace, and relax for a moment the grim,
determined look which, as a rule, characterizes the man whose mind is
bent on business.
Passing round what remains of the old church, one may still see a
house--No. 10--which is an excellent example of the real Queen Anne
style; to judge from the date on a rainpipe, it was probably completed
in the year 1704. The porch has a flight of steps; ascending this,
one finds before one a spacious staircase panelled throughout, and
especially noticeable on account of its fine painted ceiling, one of
the last to be met with in a City mansion. No. 11 forms part of the
same block of buildings.
Retracing our steps, we see standing back somewhat from the main
roadway, to the right of a new passage just opened into what is called,
in mockery, Drapers’ Gardens, a tall new structure occupying the site
of another old brick mansion the associations of which were very
remarkable. The house in question, No. 21, Austin Friars, had been
built during the latter part of the seventeenth century, possibly even
before the Great Fire, which did not extend so far north; it seems
to be marked in Ogilby’s map of 1677. About the early possessors,
Richard Young and others, nothing is known of any special interest.
In the year 1705 it came into the hands of Herman Olmius, merchant,
whose name occurs in the ‘Little London Directory’ for 1677, where he
is described as of Angel Alley, Bishopsgate Street Without. He was
descended from an ancient family of Arlon, in the duchy of Luxemburg,
and was naturalized by Act of Parliament, 29th Charles II. Here he
lived and carried on his business, and here, having made and inherited
a large fortune, he died in the year 1718. His will shows that he was
a member, not of the Dutch congregation of the neighbouring church in
Austin Friars, but of the French Church in Threadneedle Street, to
which he left £150 for the benefit of the poor. At the time of his
death he possessed four other houses in Austin Friars, ‘with yards,
gardens, and appurtenances,’ a shop called the Crane in the Poultry,
and another with the sign of the Plough in Bucklersbury. He also
had much real property in Essex and elsewhere. Herman was the son of
Johannes Ludovicus or John Lewis Olmius, and of his wife Margareta
Gerverdine. He married Judith, daughter and heiress of John Drigue, who
also appears to have been living in Angel Court or Alley in 1677, and
who had also married an heiress, the daughter of John Billers. Herman
Olmius and his wife Judith had no less than ten children, but only two
of them left offspring. These were his younger daughter Margaret, wife
of Adrian Lernoult, who had predeceased him, and to whose descendants
the City property was bequeathed; and John Olmius,[104] born in 1670.
This gentleman became High Sheriff of Essex in 1707, a justice of
the peace, and Deputy-Lieutenant of the county. He died December 20,
1731, being then Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. His wife was
Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Clarke, a descendant of
the Clarkes of St. Ives, Huntingdon, and probably her husband’s cousin.
Their son, also named John, was many years member of Parliament, and
received an Irish peerage under the title of Lord Waltham. He married
Anne, daughter of Sir William Billers, Lord Mayor in 1733, and left a
son and a daughter. The former died without issue in 1787, when the
family became extinct in the male line; the latter having married John
Luttrell, who was brother of the Duchess of Cumberland,[105] and who
became third Earl of Carhampton, had a daughter, Frances Maria, from
whom is descended Sir Simeon Henry Stuart, Bart. The Olmius family
possessed much land in Essex, and a large country seat at Boreham,
now used as a convent. At the Saracen’s Head Hotel, Chelmsford,
their fleeting dignity is still represented by two fine hall-chairs
emblazoned with the Olmius crest, namely a demi-Moor in armour between
laurel branches, surmounted by a baron’s coronet. My friend Mr. Francis
Galton would doubtless tell us that the failure of the family in the
male line resulted naturally from marriage with heiresses and from
intermarriage. Its rapid rise had also, no doubt, been in part owing to
the former cause.
The house in Austin Friars continued for several generations to belong
to the descendants of the younger daughter of Herman Olmius. In 1783
Hughes Minet came to live here, and in 1802 he bought a sixth share
from three brothers named Clarke, great-grandsons of Margaret Lernoult.
He was a merchant and banker, of Huguenot descent, and his family had
long carried on a prosperous business at Dover. His descendant, Mr.
William Minet, has just written a very interesting account of them. The
Minets lived in Austin Friars for many years, though they never owned
more than a sixth of the property. In 1838 Mr. Isaac Minet, the then
representative of the family, sold his share of the freehold, and we
find Messrs. Thomas, Son, and Lefevre established here, the last-named
being a brother of the late Lord Eversley. The final owner was Mr. John
Fleming, by whose courtesy I had the privilege of visiting the house on
almost the last day that it remained intact.
In point of fact, No. 21, Austin Friars was by no means a striking
specimen of architecture, but having remained from the beginning
practically unchanged, there were points about it worthy of record.
Externally it was a plain four-storied brick structure, the only piece
of decoration being a carved hood to the doorway which formed the chief
entrance from Austin Friars. Passing through this, the visitor found
himself in a hall, looking up a broad winding staircase with twisted
balusters. To the right was the counting-house, panelled throughout
with South Carolina pine. It had an old Purbeck marble mantelpiece, on
the upper line of which appeared in white marble the Olmius arms,[106]
quartered with those of the foreign families of Gerverdine, Cappré,
Drigue, and Reynstein. The double panes above was worthy of remark as
characteristic of the time of Wren. Under an arch at the end of the
counting-house was a strong-room lined throughout with Dutch tiles.
Mounting the staircase, one came upon the dining-room, with its
ingeniously contrived cupboard, and the drawing-room, which looked out
on what was, till within the last few years, the pleasant and ample
garden of the Drapers’ Company, now covered, all but a fragment, with
bricks and mortar. A view of this garden is given in Cassell’s ‘Old
and New London,’ vol. i., p. 517, with No. 21, Austin Friars showing
itself beyond the trees in the middle distance; but no reference to it
is made in the letterpress. On the first-floor also, above the chief
office, was a small warehouse or sample-room, an indispensable adjunct
to the old merchant’s dwelling,[107] Above were capital bedrooms, while
a narrow staircase gave access to the tiled roof, surrounded by a
stone parapet. Retracing one’s steps to the hall, one found, flanking
a passage on the side opposite to the counting-house, a lofty kitchen
still furnished with smoke-jack, spit-racks, and iron caldron-holders,
and adjoining the range an oven lined with blue and white Dutch tiles,
no doubt a legacy of the Olmius family. Formerly, also, most of the
chimneypieces in the house were fitted up with Dutch tiles, blue and
white or red and white; but these in course of time had disappeared.
In the basement were cellars, and close to them an old surface well,
which still contained water, analyzed at the time of its destruction
and found to be little better than sewage. A door in the passage was
prettily carved. Through this one passed to the outer offices, a
brewery, wash-house, coach-house and stables; and thence again there
was access by the side-entrance into the garden,[108] a quiet spot
some half acre in extent, which no doubt had originally formed part of
the friars’ grounds. It was connected by steps with a narrow terrace
running along the back of the house. Here in the summer of 1888 I saw
fig-trees still flourishing while the work of destruction had already
begun.
The boundary at the end of this garden was formed by another
interesting house, No. 23, Great Winchester Street, which has also
lately been improved out of existence. It occupied a good deal of
ground, being approached through a paved yard with a lodge on each side
of the entrance. Externally its chief characteristics were a somewhat
high-pitched roof and wings projecting forward. Inside the chief
reception-room was finely proportioned, with capital mouldings and
cornices, and there was an old kitchen range of portentous size.
Close to this house, and also adjoining Drapers’ Garden, was formerly
the garden attached to the Carpenters’ Hall, so that a few years ago
this neighbourhood was a paradise of open spaces. At the dissolution
the house and gardens of the Augustine Friars had been bestowed by
Henry VIII. on William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, who there
built his town residence, traces of which existed as late as the year
1844: after this mansion Winchester Street was named. From a date
carved on a grotesque bracket formerly to be seen at the north-east
corner, it appears that the street was constructed, partly at least,
in the year 1656, during Cromwell’s government. Strype says that here
was ‘a great messuage called the Spanish Ambassador’s House, of late
inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Knight and Alderman, and other fair
houses.’ Even down to our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen
of a London street. Now nothing but the name is left, to mark its
connection with antiquity.
It may here be noted that even till comparatively recent times almost
every house in the City had a garden, or at any rate some open space,
belonging to it, as may be proved by reference to old maps and views.
Horwood’s map, published in 1799, shows how much garden ground still
remained at the end of last century. Besides this, before the days
of lifts, high pressure of water, and gas or electric light laid on,
the inconvenience of very high houses prevented their being built to
any great extent. The comparative sparseness of the population should
undoubtedly have given our ancestors a great advantage over us with
regard to health, but it was more than counterbalanced by drawbacks
resulting from ignorance--for example, the use of impure water, and
the inability to grapple with diseases which are now comparatively
innocuous.
The disappearance of these open spaces, and the erection of enormously
high buildings on every available spot, is, I believe, a great evil,
not only from the picturesque, but from the sanitary point of view.
Writers on sanitary subjects are agreed that, of dangers to health,
overcrowding is one of the greatest, and that, other things being
equal, the death-rate regularly increases in proportion to the density
of the population. Dr. G. V. Poore[109] has recently pointed out that
every new set of offices adds its quota to the sewage in the river;
while ‘the absence of green plants entails a great loss of nascent
oxygen or ozone which gives to air its peculiar quality of freshness.’
In his opinion, it is hardly conceivable that a high level of health
can be maintained in a spot where vegetable life languishes, animal and
vegetable life being complementary to each other.
Some will no doubt console themselves with the notion that, the City
being now to a great extent merely a place of business, those who spend
the day there (considerably more than a million, according to the last
calculation) can throw off the ill effects while they are away. To
this I reply that, if one includes the outlying parts, many thousands
still make it their home, and that, in any case, to spend a quarter
of one’s existence under most unhealthy conditions must tend to cause
illness and to shorten life. In these times of popular government, the
great City Guilds are more or less on their probation. If I am right,
the Drapers’ Company, whatever the temptation may have been, committed
a fatal mistake when they covered their garden with huge blocks of
offices, a mistake which can never be atoned for by any amount of
charitable donation. Their example has been quickly followed, and soon,
I fear, hardly one breathing-space will remain in the City except the
ground about St. Paul’s and the Tower, and here and there a bit of a
disused graveyard hemmed in by lofty offices and warehouses.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INDEX.
Adam and Eve, Newgate Street, sign, 121
Addle Street; derivation of name, 47
Aggas’s, Ralph, map, 139
Aldermanbury, sign in, 94
Alleyne, Sir Thomas, Lord Mayor, 209
Altitude, highest in City, 7
Ancaster, Duke of, 153
Anchor, signs, 106
Angel Alley, 221
Angel, Islington, 180, 182
Ape, carving of, 46
Aquarium Tavern, 166
Artillery Street, Bishopsgate Without, 167
Ashburnham, Lord, 35
Ashby-Sterry, J., 158
Ashwell’s Place, site of, 179
Austin Friars, 220
house in, 220
Axe and Bottle Yard, 136
Bacon, Francis, 134
Bagnigge House, 192, 195, 196
Bagnigge Wells, 191-196
Bagnio Court, 20
Baker and Basket, sign, 6
Baltassar, one of the Three Kings, 32
Barrington, Hon. D., on arms of Inner Temple, 132
Bartholomew Close, 137
Basing House, 202
Bath Street, 20
Battle Bridge, 198
Bear, Brown, Cheapside, sign, 48, 49
chained and muzzled, signs, 47, 49
White, sign, 48
with collar and chain, sign, 47
Bear Quay, 49
Beare Lane, 49
Beauty in distress, sign, 71
Beer Lane, 49
Bel and the Dragon, sign, 50
Bell, the, sign, 106
Bell on the Hoop, sign, 123
Bell Savage Inn, the, 123
Ben Jonson Tavern, 169
Berners, Ralph de, 141
Berriman, Dr. W., 146
Bethlehem Hospital, 67, 71
Bevis, Dr. John, 193, 195
Bible and Crown, sign, 110
Billers, Sir William, Lord Mayor, 222
Birch, W. de Gray, 74
Bishopsgate Street, 214
Bishopsgate, Ward of, 219
Black Boy, advertisement, _temp._ 1695, 25
Black Friars, 130
Black Jack, sign, 157
Black Mary’s Well, or Hole, 191
Black Spread Eagle Court, 93
Blackamore Street, 25, 148
Blackfriars Road, 158
Blackmore Street, 25, 148
Bloomfield’s MS., 132
Blowbladder Street, 19
Boar’s Head, sign, 51, 119
Tavern, 52-60
Body-snatchers, resort of, 9
Boleyn, Sir Thomas, 217
Bottle, Golden, sign, 157
Boulting Mill, 178
Bow Churchyard, sign in, 118
Bowl and Mouth, signs, 64
Boy and Panyer, sign, 4
Braynes Row, 191
Brewers’ Company, 5, 165
Bridge House, the, 76
estate, 71, 75
Brook Place, 191
Browne, Sir Thomas, 43
Bryanston Street, 169
Buc, Sir George, 132
Bucklersbury, 26
Buckingham, Duke of, 20
Buckingham, Earl of, 147
Bucks’ Heads, Three, sign, 13
Budge Row, origin of name, 126
Bull, Bishopsgate Street Within, 61
Bull and Mouth Inn, Aldersgate, 63-66
sale of, 65
sign, 63
Bull Head Court, 19
Bull Inn, mutiny at, 62
Burrup, Miss, 177
Busby’s Folly, 85
Butcher Hall Lane, 19
Byrons, badge of, 61
Canon Alley, St. Paul’s, 111
Canonbury, Islington, 141
Place, 141
Tower, 142
Caps of burgesses, 175
Carhampton, Earl of, 223
Carpenters’ Hall, 227
Cateaton Street, 14
Cavendish, Lady Margaret, 151
Chambers, James, goldsmith, 157
Chancery Lane, 129
Chapel Street. _See_ Great Chapel Street
Chaplin, W., coach proprietor, 99
Charles I.’s porter and dwarf, 19
Charles Street, Leather Lane, 157
Charlet, Gregory, 145
Charlotte Street, 158
Chaucer, poet, 135
Cheapside Cross, 97
Chesterfield, Lord, 152
Cheyne Walk, 159
Childs and Co., bankers, 156
Chimneypiece, Bishopsgate Street, 219
Cibber, Colley, actor, 187
Civet cat, carving, 66
Clare, Earl of, 147, 215
Market, 24, 146
Street, 24
Clement’s Inn, 147
Clement’s Inn Fields, 148
market held in, 149
Cloth Fair, 137, 139
Coach and Horses, sign, 170
Cock Inn, 166
and Bottle, sign, 176
Court, 47
sign, 103
with snake, sign, 101
Coffee-house sign, 176
Compton family, 143
Compton Street, Clerkenwell, 146
Coopers’ Company, 157
crest, 91
Coppice Row, 191
Corbyn and Co.’s Poultry, sign at, 50
Coutts, Lady Burdett, 55
Cow and Co., Messrs., 47
Cox and Hammond’s, Messrs., sign at, 49
Cox, Rev. J. E., 212
Crane, sign, 89
in the Poultry, 221
Cranes, Three, in the Vintry, sign, 90
Crescent moon, 43
Cromer Street, 196
Crosby Hall, 214
Hall Chambers, 218
Place, 217
Square, 218
Crosby, Sir John, arms, 214
Cross Street, Islington, 145
Crown and Magpie, sign, 104
Crowns, Three, sign, 27
Cumberland, Duchess of, 223
Duke of, 169
Cutler, Sir John, 172
Cutlers’ Company, arms of, 122, 124
Danvers Street, Cheyne Walk, 161
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 210
Dennys, Sir Walter, arms of, 142
Denzil Street, 150
Dering Street, Oxford Street, 161
Devereux, Lady Penelope, 140
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 151
Doctor’s signboard, 160
Dog and Duck, sign, 67, 215
Dog’s Head in the Pot, sign, 158
Dorrington Street, 164
Doves, Four, sign, 90
Drapers’ Company, 230
Gardens, 221, 227
Drury Lane, 148
Ducking ponds, 68
Dugdale, Sir William, 130
Duke Street, 162
Dyers’ Company, 100
Eagle with two Heads, sign, 91
Eldernesse Lane, 12
Elephant and Castle, 122
Epiphany or Twelfth Day, 39
Epitaph on drawer at Boar’s Head, 56
Essex, Earl of, arms, 98
Evans, William, giant, 20
Falstaff, drawing of, 58
Fastolfe, Sir John, 60
Field Court, 133
Fire at Southwark, 42, 79
Fire of London, memorial of, 9
Fishmongers’ Company, arms of, 61
Fleet, banks of the, 192
Fleet Street, 131
Fleming, Mr. John, 224
Fortune of War Inn, 8
Four Doves, sign, 90
Fowler, Thomas, 144
Fowler family, 180
Fowler of Islington, arms of, 144, 145
Fox, sign, 77
Foxes, Three, sign, 77
Friday Street, 135
Fruiterers’ Company, arms of, 122
Galton, Francis, 223
Gaming House and Shaver’s Hall, 163
Garden produce, _temp._ Edward I., 130
Gardens to City houses, 228
Gardiner’s Lane, 15
Gaspar, 31
George Inn, 79, 80
advertisement of, _temp._ 1762, 16
Gerard the Giant, 17
Gerrard Street, 162
Gerrardes Hall, 18
Gilbert Street and Passage, 149
Gisor’s Hall, 18
Goat in Boots, sign, 168
Gog and Magog, 17 _note_
Golden Bottle, sign, 157
Golden Lion, house and sign, 83
Goldsmiths’ Company, 129
Goose and Gridiron, sign, 114
Gosling, Messrs., sign, 156, 157
Grasshopper, sign, 157
Gray’s Inn, 133
Gray’s Inn Lane, 199
Gray’s Inn Road, 196
Great Chapel Street, Westminster, 161
Great James Street, Bedford Row, 163
Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, 200, 203 _et seq._
Church, 207
Passage, 214
right of way, 217
Great Ormond Street, 153
Great Queen Street, 152, 155
Great Winchester Street, No. 23, 227
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 157
Grey family, arms of, 133
Greys of Wilton, 133
Griffin’s Head, sign, 77, 133
Grosvenor, Sir Robert, 135
Guildhall Museum, 146, 171, 173
Guy of Warwick, 11
Gwynne, Nell, 192
Haberdashers’ Company, 128
Half Moon, sign, 40
Inn Yard, Borough, 41
Passage, 45
Hare and Stirrup, sign, 80
and Three Pigeons, tenements called, 79
in combination with the Sun, 78
Running, sign, 78
Harris, Roger, bequest of, 86
Harrison Street, 196
Hatchett’s Hotel, 169
Hats, Three, sign, 69
Hawkins, Sir John, 25
Hays’ Mews, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, 167
Heathcock, sign, 90
Helmet, sign, 112, 113
Henry, Prince of Wales, 131
Herne, or Heron, family, 146
Hicks Hall, Middlesex Session House, 48
Hoare, Messrs., their sign, 157
Hobson, portrait of, 62
Hogarth’s picture of Evening, 181;
of Southwark Fair, 42
Holland, Earl of, 140
Holles family, 147
arms of, 149
Sir William, 215
Holywell Street, 44
Hood, Robin, 197
Horn of Unicorn, 87
Horsham free school, founding of, 40
Houblon, Sir James, 228
Howard, Lord William, 132
Hudson, Jeffery, dwarf, 20
Thomas, painter, 155
Hugo, Rev. Thomas, 216, 219
Inner Temple, heraldic charge, 131
Inns of Court and Chancery, arms of, 129
Islington, Upper Street, 146
Islington Wells, 180, 188
Jack in the Green, 24
Jackson, William, smuggler, 38
James Street, Haymarket, 163. _See_ Great James Street
Jones, Inigo, 154, 201, 216
Judd, Sir Andrew, Lord Mayor, 214
King of the Fields, 69
King’s Cross Road, 195, 197
King Street, Southwark, 136
Kings, Three, signs, 26-45
King’s White Bear, the, 50
Kenton, Benjamin, vintner, 104
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 155
Knights Templars, 132
Lacy, Henry de, Earl of Lincoln, 130
Lad Lane, 99
Laing, David, 35
Lamb and Flag, 75, 131, 132
Lambeth Hill, 27
Lamb’s Conduit, 196
Lawrence, Adam, 206
will of, 208
family history of, 206 _et seq._
Lawrence, Sir John, Lord Mayor, 205
Mayor’s Banquet, 210
arms of, 212
Lea, Sir James, 131
Leadenhall Street, 218
Leathern Bottle, sign, 157
Leathersellers’ Arms, 13
Leathersellers’ Company, 12
Leigh, Gerard, 132
Lennep, J. Van, 3
Leopard, sign, 125
Lernoult, Margaret, 224
Lincoln’s Inn, 129
Fields, 152, 153, 162
Lindsey, Earl of, 153
House, 152
Lion, stone bas-relief, sign, 83
Golden, sign, 83
White, sign, 83-86
Little Distaff Lane, 110
Lloyd’s Row, 189
London Bridge, 136
Spa, the, 190
Long Lane, 139
Long Melford, Suffolk, 38
Longmans, Messrs., their sign, 111
Lovell, Sir Thomas, 130
Lyons Inn, 45
Lysons, Rev. Canon, 178
Magi, the, 28
Maidenhead Inn, 14
sign, 119
Maiden’s Head, sign, 126
Man in the Moon, sign, 40
Mantelpiece, seventeenth century, 200
from the old Cock Inn, 104
at 21, Austin Friars, 224
Marks, Alfred, 154
Marshall, Julian, 163
Martin and Co., bankers, their sign, 157
Martin, J. B., 157
Mary the Virgin, 29
Marygold, sign, 156
May’s Buildings, St. Martin’s Lane, 162
Melchior, one of the Three Kings, 31
Mercers’ Company, 14
arms of, 126
Merchant Tailors’ Company, 129
Merchants’ trade marks, 74
Merlin’s Cave Tavern, 190
Mermaid, carved in relief, 60
in Bread Street, 61
in Cornhill, 61
sign of at Gravesend, 60
in Holland, 60
Middle Temple, gatehouse, 131
Midshipman, wooden, 157
Miller, Sir John, 81
Milton, John, sign showing birthplace, 92
Mineral spring, St. George’s Fields, 70
Minerva, head of, 12
Minet, Hughes, 223
Minet, Walter, 224
Minories, the, 157
Mitre Court, 116
Mitres, stone bas-reliefs of, 113, 116
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 188
More, Sir Thomas, 138
Morris Dancers, Three, sign, 22
Mount Pleasant, Gray’s Inn Lane, 164
Mouth, sign, Bishopsgate Street, 64
Myddleton, Sir Hugh, 181
Myddleton’s Head Inn, 181, 183
Nag’s Head, Unicorn sign wrongly called, 86
sign, 97
Naked Boy, sign, 11
Narwhal’s horn, 88
Nassau Street, 162
Negroes’ Heads, 24, 146
Newcastle, Duke of, 151
House, 152
Newcomen Street, Southwark, 136
New Market, 149
New River Company, portrait of founder, 181
New River Head, 183
New Tunbridge Wells, 187
New Wells, near London Spa, 186
New White Horse Cellars, signboard, 169
Northampton, Marquis of, 143
Norwich Cathedral, 34
Old Bell Inn, Holborn, 143
Olmius, Herman, merchant, 221
Ormond Street. _See_ Great Ormond Street
Ormonde, Duke of, 169
Ostrich, stone bas-relief, 91
Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 65
Pakenham Street, 195
Panyer Alley, sign in, 4
Parish marks, 166
Peakes, Sir John, Lord Mayor, 129
Pegasus, Inner Temple, sign, 131
Pelham, Thomas, 152
Pelican, as an emblem, 95
sign, 94
and Phœnix, 96
Pepys’ Diary, extract from, 84
Person, Father, 139
Peter Street, Westminster, 166
Phelps, Samuel, actor, 186
Philip Lane, 46
Physicians, College of, 172
Pie, sign, 10
Pie Corner, 9, 10
Pied Bull Inn, 81
Pindar Place, 196
Pinder a Wakefielde, inn, 196
Pinder of Wakefield, 196
Pinder, equivalent to, 197
Plough, sign, Bucklersbury, 222
Poore, Dr. G. V., 229
Pope, Mr. M., F.S.A., 91
Portland, Duke of, 151
Powis, Marquis of, 151
Place, 153
Preaching Friars, 130, 138
Price, Hilton, on bankers’ signs, 156
Prince of Wales’ feathers, 111
Pudding Lane, 9
Queen Street. _See_ Great Queen Street
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 81, 144
Red Lion Tavern, 180
Rich, Richard, 137
River. _See_ New River
Robin Hood Court, Shoe Lane, 167
Roman dress, bust of woman in, 192
Roman temple, site of, 179
Rookery, Gray’s Inn, 134
Rose, the, 92
Rose and Crown, 111
Rose and Fleur-de-lys, 154
Rosebery Avenue, 164, 182
Rosoman Street, 187
Rotten Row, Asschowellys Place, 179
Roxalana’s Head, sign, 14
Royal Arms, 135
Bagnio, 20
Yacht Inn, 150
Rufford, Captain Nicholas, 146
Rufford’s Buildings, 146
Running Footman, sign, 167
Sadler’s mineral springs, 183
Music House, 183
Wells Theatre, 181, 183, 185
St. Anselm and Cecilia, chapel, 162
St. Bartholomew the Great, church, 140
St. Bartholomew’s Priory, 138
St. Bride’s, 167
St. Ceadda, well of, 197
St. Chad’s Road, 197
Row, 197
St. Chad’s Well, 198
St. Dunstan’s Church, 157
St. Ethelreda, chapel of, 116
St. George and the Dragon, 15, 17
St. George’s Fields, 67, 70, 215
St. Giles-in-the-Fields, 167
St. Helen’s. _See_ Great St. Helen’s
St. James’s Palace, 167
St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell, 170
Street Road, 190
St. Martin’s Lane, Upper, 167
St. Mary Axe, 217
St. Michael’s Crooked Lane, 56
St. Pancras Churchyard, 198
Well, 198
Salisbury, 170
Sandys Row, 167
Saracen’s Head Hotel, Chelmsford, 223
Sardinia Street, 154, 162
Savage’s Inn, 123
Seven Stars, sign, 39
Shakespere’s Boar’s Head, 51
Sheffield Street, 161
Shepherd Street, 161
Shiffner family, the, 154
Ship and Black Swan, sign, 110
Shoe Lane, 169
Shoreditch High Street, 78
Sims, F. Manley, sign belonging to, 160
Skates, mediæval, 175
Skinners’ Company, 125, 129, 216
Smith, Payne and Smith, sign discovered at their premises, 102
Somers, Sir John, 153
Soper’s Lane, 48
Southwark Arms, 72
Fire, 42, 79
Spa Field, 189
Spas, suburban, 180-199
Spencer, Sir John, 142, 145
Spread Eagle, 91
Court, 93
Squirrels, Three, sign, 156
Staircase, Elizabethan, 201
Star, sign, 40
Stevens, John Cosens, 213
Stinking Lane, 19
Stuart, Sir Simeon Henry, Bart., 223
Sun, sign, 40
Swan, chained, 87, 96-98
Swan and Harp, sign, 115
upping or nicking, 101
with Two Necks, 98
origin of, 100
Tabard Inn, 79
Tallowchandlers’ Company, 91
Tarbolton, H. O., 205
Tavern scoring, 44
Taylor, Edward, bequest of, 13
Temple, Inner, heraldic charge and sign, 131
Tennis Court, 163
Theatrical Booth, 42
Thomas, Son, and Lefevre, 224
Three Bucks’ Heads, sign, 13
Cranes in the Vintry, 90
Crowns, sign, 27
Hats, Islington, sign, 69
Kings, 26
arms of, 34
in plays, etc., 36
the feast of, 33
Magi, 28
Morris Dancers, sign, 22
Squirrels, sign, 156
Time, statuette of, 178
Tothill Street, Westminster, 166
Tower Hill, 159
Tulips, exhibition of, _temp._ 1779, 198
Tunbridge Grammar School, 216
Wells, New, 187
Turner, Mr. Hudson, 130
Two Brewers, 2
Two Negroes’ Heads, 24, 146
Tyburn, prisoners on the way to, 64
Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company, 165
Unicorn, description of, 87
stone bas-relief of, 86
supporter of Royal Arms, 87
Union Street, Southwark, 165
Upper Street, Islington, 146
Upper St. Martin’s Lane, 166
Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, 171
Vintners’ Company, 100
Waller, J. G., 74
Waltham, Lord, 222
Warwick, Earl of, 140, 147
Warwick, Guy of, stone bas-relief of, 11
Warwick Inn, 12
Lane, 11
Water carnival at Sadler’s Wells, 185
Welbeck, 151
Wentworth, Lord Thomas, 142
Wesley, John, 187
Westgate Street, Gloucester, 159, 178
Weston family, 143
White Bear, 48, 50
Hart Inn, 79
Lion, 83
Islington, 180
Whittington and his Cat, 178
Whistling Oyster, sign, 171
Wilberforce, William, 57
Williams, Mr., and the Royal Arms from old London Bridge, 137
Wilton House, 203
Wiltshire, Earl of, 217
Winchester, Marquis of, 227
Winchester Street. _See_ Great Winchester Street
Winde, Captain William, 152
Winged Horse, the, 131
Winter’s-Low-Hut, 170
Woman’s Head, the, 14
Wooden Midshipman, sign, 157
Wren, Sir Christopher, 115, 131
Wright, Sir Nathan, 153
THE END.
_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In November, 1892, this house was demolished.
[2] Hatton’s ‘New View of London,’ 1708, vol. i., p. 59.
[3] In later times there was a cross at the east end of the church of
St. Michael-le-Querne, replaced by a water conduit, in the mayoralty of
William Eastfield, A.D. 1429, as I learn from Stow. The site of this
cross is considerably east of Panyer Alley.
[4] Pye, _i.e._, parti-coloured, as in the bird. It is said to have
been so called because the initial and principal letters of the rubrics
were printed in red, and the rest in black. At the beginning of the
Church of England Prayer-Book, in that section which relates to the
service of the Church, mention is made of ‘the number and hardness
of the rules called the Pie.’ Shakespeare, in the ‘Merry Wives of
Windsor,’ says, ‘By cocke and pie you shall not choose, sir; you shall
not choose, but come.’ In this asseveration cock is supposed to be a
euphemism for God, and pie the above-named ordinal.
[5] On the Holbein gateway at Whitehall there were also medallions of
terra-cotta, as large or larger than life.
[6] The Broad Face, Reading, is noticed by Pepys as an odd sign, when
he visited the town on June 16, 1668.
[7] In style it reminds one somewhat of the Guildhall giants, Gog and
Magog, or, as Fairholt would call them, Corineus and Gogmagog. These
appear to have been made in 1708, by Richard Saunders, a captain
of trained bands and carver in King Street, Cheapside, to replace
giants of pasteboard and wickerwork, which had been carried in City
processions.
[8] Part of a similar crypt is to be seen at 4a, Lawrence Pountney
Hill; it belonged to a house called the Manor of the Rose, built
originally in the reign of Edward III. Such crypts would doubtless be
useful to mediæval merchants for the storage of goods. There are great
cellars under Crosby Hall. I am reminded that in the thirteenth century
houses furnished usually belonged to Kings or the higher nobility--at
least, this is implied by Matthew Paris, in his ‘Lives of the Abbots
of St. Albans.’ His words are: ‘Aula nobilissima picta cum conclavibus
et camino et atrio et subaulâ, quæ palatium regium (quia duplex est et
criptata) dici potest.’
[9] ‘Old Meg of Hereford Towne for a Morris Daunce, or Twelve Morris
Dancers in Herefordshire, of twelve hundred years old.’ Printed for
John Bridge, 1609.
[10] St. Matt. ii. 1.
[11] ‘Roma Sotteranea,’ by the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., and W.
R. Brownlow, M.A., 1869.
[12] Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle suggest that these two figures may
possibly be intended to represent the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.
[13] ‘Historical and Monumental Rome,’ by C. J. Hemans, chap. xv.
[14] ‘Primus dicitur fuisse Melchior, qui senex et canus, barbâ prolixâ
et capillis, aurum obtulit Regi Domino. Secundus nomine Gaspar, juvenis
imberbis, rubicundus, thure quasi Deo oblatione dignâ, Deum honoravit.
Tertius fuscus, integre barbatus, Baltassar nomine, per myrrham Filium
hominis moriturum professus.’
[15] In fourteenth and fifteenth century paintings, especially among
the Germans, Balthazar was often a Moor or negro, the tradition being
that he was King of Ethiopia or Nubia. Ghirlandajo, in a picture at the
Pitti Gallery, gives him, not a black complexion, but a black page. The
difference of race indicated in the representations of the Three Kings
implies the wideness of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. On
this account the three sons of Noah have been looked upon as typical of
them.
[16] Smith’s ‘Dictionary of the Bible.’
[17] Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide, translated by Mossman, vol. i.
Others have extended the period of their arrival at Bethlehem even to
some time in the second year after the birth of Christ, as an inference
from Matt. ii. 16. According to a tradition of the Eastern Church, the
Magi arrived at Jerusalem with a retinue of 1,000 men, having left an
army of 7,000 on the further bank of the Euphrates.
[18] The Milanese afterwards consoled themselves by forming a
confraternity, which showed their veneration for the Three Kings by a
special annual performance.
[19] For these references to the heraldry of the Three Kings, I have to
thank my valued friend, Mr. Everard Green, F.S.A., whose knowledge of
the subject is unique.
[20] Foster’s Chapel, Bristol, founded in 1504, is dedicated to the
Three Kings. In Winchester Cathedral are traces of a painting of the
Adoration.
[21] The names of the Kings are variously spelt.
[22] A pageant was originally the structure on which the performance
took place. Archdeacon Rogers, who saw the performance at Chester
in 1594, says that ‘Every company had its pagiant, or parte, whiche
pagiants weare a high scafolde with 2 roomes, a higher and a lower,
upon 4 wheeles. In the lower they apparelled themselves, and in the
higher they played, being all open on the tope, that all behoulders
mighte heare and see them.’
[23] One is reminded of Falstaff’s words (1 Henry IV. Act i., Scene 2):
‘For we, that take purses, go by the moon and seven stars; and not by
Phœbus,--he, that wandering knight so fair.’ Again, Pistol says; ‘Sweet
knight, I kiss thy nief. What! we have seen the seven stars.’
[24] King Richard II. had two badges: the Sun in splendour, and the
White Hart. The former is shown on the mainsail of the vessel in
which he returned from Ireland, in an illumination to a manuscript
account of Richard, by a gentleman of his suite (Harl. MS. 1319). It
is also mentioned by the poet Gower. The Sun in splendour, encircled
with a cloud distilling drops of rain, is a charge in the arms of the
Distillers’ Company. I may add that the Three Crowns appear in the arms
of the Skinners’ Company, which according to Strype were granted in the
4th year of Edward VI.
[25] ‘Some Account of the Parish of St. Clement Danes,’ by John
Diprose. 1868. Vol. i., p. 257.
[26] Guillim intimates the reason for representing the bear muzzled
in heraldry: ‘The beare by nature is a cruell beast, but this here
demonstrated unto you, is (to prevent the mischief it might otherwise
do, as you may observe) as it were, bound to the good behaviour with a
muzle.’--‘Heraldry,’ sec. iii., chap. xv., p. 199. 1660.
[27] Hicks Hall was a session-house for Middlesex. At the corner of St.
John Street, Clerkenwell, and Peter’s Lane, affixed to the wall of the
Queen’s Head tavern, is a stone tablet with the following inscription:
‘Opposite this Place Hicks Hall formerly stood, 1 mile 1 furlong from
the Standard in Cornhill, 4 furlongs 205 yards from Holborn Barrs down
Holborn, up Snow Hill, Cow Lane and through Smithfield.’
A Jacobean chimney-piece from Hicks Hall, and a portrait of Sir
Baptist, are in the Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green. See an amusing
article on Suburban Milestones, in Knight’s ‘London.’
[28] Whitechapel Mount was an elevation of ground generally thought
to have been composed, in part at least, of rubbish from the Great
Fire: Lysons, however, denies this. Another idea is, that it was a
great burial-place for victims of the Plague of 1665. A fort was built
here in 1642, one of the series then thrown round London. The Mount is
shown in Strype’s map of 1720, and in a view of London Hospital, by
Chatelain. Towards the end of last century it was a place of resort for
pugilists and dog-fighters. Mount Street and Mount Place, immediately
west of the London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, now occupy the ground,
which is still slightly raised.
[29] This letter is among the Remembrancia at the Guildhall, and is
noted on page 355 of the Analytical Index, published in 1878.
[30] ‘Life of William Wilberforce,’ by his son Samuel Wilberforce,
Bishop of Oxford. Revised and condensed from the original edition.
8vo., 1868.
[31] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, January, 1834.
[32] It formed part of his benefactions, through Bishop Waynflete, to
Magdalen College, Oxford.
[33] Pepys, the diarist, on March 27, 1664, writes as follows: ‘Walked
through the Ducking Pond Fields; but they are so altered since my
father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man of the King’s
Head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts), that I did not know
which was the Ducking Pond, or where I was.’ What would he have said
now? There were several ducking-ponds in this neighbourhood; the name
of Ball’s Pond, near Newington Green, still survives. Howes in his
‘Chronicle’ says that the reservoir at the New River head ‘was in
former times an open idell pool, commonly called the Ducking Pond.’
Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, were also called ‘Ducking Pond Fields.’
There was a public-house a little west of the London Spa, with a
ducking-pond attached. It was taken down in 1770, and the Pantheon, in
imitation of the Oxford Street Pantheon, built on its site. This soon
became disreputable, and was eventually turned into Spa Fields Chapel,
demolished 1879. There was a ducking-pond in Mayfair (Hertford Street
is on the site), and another near Mile End.
[34] The ground in St. George’s Fields was not absolutely given, but a
lease was granted for 865 years at the nominal rent of one shilling a
year.
[35] The cross had possibly some connection with the priory of St. Mary
Overy hard by, or with the rich and powerful abbey, originally the
priory of St. Saviour’s, Bermondsey. A chronicle, supposed to have been
written by one of the monks, is among the Harleian MSS. (No. 231). We
are here told that in the year 1117 ‘the cross of the Holy Saviour was
found near the Thames.’ Apparently this was the cross of Bermondsey,
placed in the church, to which pilgrimages were occasionally made. It
was taken down in 1538, during the mayoralty of Sir Richard Gresham,
and in all likelihood destroyed; but Wilkinson, in his ‘Londina
Illustrata,’ gives a view, showing in front of the building, attached
to the chief or north gate of the abbey, a small cross with zigzag
ornament, which some have sought to identify with this holy rood. It
existed with the remains of the building till comparatively recent
times. On the way to the abbey were famous roadside crosses: one north,
the site of which is at the junction of Tooley Street with Bermondsey
Street; the other south, in Kent Street.
[36] From the ‘Archæologia,’ vol. 32, I learn that ‘the seal of
Bartholomew Elys, of Great Yarmouth, 17 Rich. II., is remarkable as
giving the family arms with the substitution of his merchant’s mark in
place of the cinqfoil in base.’ Mr. Waller says that at Standon, in
Herts, is the mark of John Feld, alderman of London 1474; but his son,
on the same brass, an esquire in armour, has his shield of arms.
[37] ‘Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries,’ November 24, 1887.
A highly interesting article in the ‘Archæologia,’ vol. 37, by Mr. B.
Williams, shows that in early times simple marks, not unlike merchants’
marks, were used to distinguish property, both here and in Germany. Our
modern swan marks are a survival.
[38] At a Common Council held July 14, 33 Henry VIII., it was ordered
that the seal of the Bridge House should be changed, because the image
of Thomas à Becket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, was graven
thereon, and it was agreed that a new seal should be made, devised by
Mr. Hall, to whom the old seal was delivered.
[39] But see Mr. Billson’s paper on ‘The Easter Hare,’ in _Folklore_,
vol. iii.--[ED.]
[40] It is told in considerable detail in a ‘Life of Sir Walter
Raleigh,’ 8vo., 1740, p. 152.
[41] ‘I remember one citizen, who having thus broken out of his house
in Aldersgate Street, or thereabout, went along the road to Islington.
He attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the
White Horse, two inns still known by the same signs, but was refused;
after which he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the
same sign.’--‘Journal of the Plague Year,’ by Daniel Defoe, 1722.
[42] This was probably one of the ducking-ponds.
[43] Its site is also marked in Ogilby’s Map of London to Holyhead.
Here is now the Belvidere Tavern.
[44] Peter Cunningham says that Alderman Boydell, before he removed
to No. 90, Cheapside, at the corner of Ironmonger Lane, lived at the
Unicorn, at the corner of Queen Street, Cheapside.
[45] ‘Historic Devices, Badges, and War Cries,’ by Mrs. Bury Palliser.
[46] Another record of him is a stone from Allhallows Church, now
imbedded in the western wall of the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, which
has on it the well-known lines by Dryden, beginning: ‘Three poets in
three distant ages born,’ etc., also the dates of Milton’s birth and
baptism.
[47] Additional MS. in British Museum, 3890.
[48] In a ‘Brief History’ by Eugenius Philalethes, p. 93, we are told;
‘It is a vulgar error that the pelican turneth her beak against her
breast and therewith pierceth it till the blood gush out, wherewith she
nourisheth her young; whereas a pelican hath a beak broad and flat,
much like the slice of apothecaries and chirurgeons wherewith they
spread their plasters, no way fit to pierce, as Laurentius Gerbertus
counsellor and physitian to Henry the Fourth of France in his book of
Popular Errors hath observed.’
[49] The architect was Sir Robert Taylor, R.A. The emblematic figures
on the cornice in front are said to be of artificial stone, executed
at Coade’s factory, Lambeth, where John Bacon, R.A., worked for some
years, and where, later, Flaxman and Benjamin West also modelled. Some
houses on the north side of Westminster Bridge Road were originally
called Coade’s Row, and the name still appears on one of them. The
gallery or showroom stood there, as marked in Horwood’s map. The
factory was further north, between Narrow Wall and the river.
[50] The sign outside is a modern imitation.
[51] In Aubrey’s ‘Natural History,’ p. 277, a manuscript in the library
of the Royal Society, is the following memorandum: ‘This day, May the
18th, being Monday, 1691, after Rogation Sunday, is a great convention
at St. Paul’s church of the Fraternity of the adopted masons, where Sir
Christopher Wren is to be adopted a brother, and Sir Henry Goodric of
the Tower, and divers others. There have been kings that have been of
this sodality.’
[52] Not in edition 1576, but edition 1596, p. 233.--[ED.]
[53] See ‘City of London Livery Companies’ Commission,’ 1884, vol. ii.
[54] Sir William Dugdale, in his ‘Origines Juridiciales,’ records that
the whole cost of this gatehouse was £153 10s. 8d., ‘the brick and
tile used for the same being digged out of that piece of ground then
called the Coneygarth, lying on the west side of the house, adjoyning
to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ This valuable relic is now, I fear, in a
somewhat neglected condition.
[55] T. Hudson Turner in the _Archæological Journal_ for December,
1848, quoting from an account in the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster.
[56] See an interesting article on this subject in the ‘Archæologia,’
vol. ix. (1789), by the Hon. Daines Barrington.
[57] For further details about the armorial bearings, see ‘Gray’s Inn;
its History and Associations,’ by W. R. Douthwaite, 1886, chap. xi.
[58] Dodsley’s ‘London,’ 1761, vol. iii., p. 58.
[59] ‘Scrope and Grosvenor Roll,’ i. 178.
[60] The gatehouse had only been finished in the year 1728, having
replaced a previous one damaged by a great fire on the bridge in 1725.
Mist’s _Weekly Journal_, for Saturday, September 11, tells us that
about sixty houses were consumed on that occasion.
[61] Burke’s ‘Armory General.’ This seems correct; but Burke’s ‘Extinct
Peerages’ gives it, ‘gules, a chevron between three cross crosslets or.’
[62] From early days, however, the fair had increased beyond church
limits, and the City had acquired certain rights. In the fourth edition
of Stow, 1633, we are told how, on Bartholomew Eve, the Aldermen in
their violet gowns met the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs at the Guildhall
chapel, and how they rode into Cloth Fair, and made a proclamation,
riding back through the churchyard and home to the Lord Mayor’s house.
[63] In Allen’s ‘History of London,’ published in 1827, vol. iii., p.
658, we are told that the district called Cloth Fair was still chiefly
occupied by clothiers, tailors, etc.
[64] Stow’s ‘Survey of London,’ edited by W. J. Thoms, p. 141.
[65] The rebus was invented before Prior Bolton’s time; as early as
1443 the White Friars had a grant of the ‘Hospitium vocatum Le Bolt en
ton,’ in Fleet Street. This became a great coaching inn; the site is
marked by a railway office. The tun occurs in the rebus of Beckington,
of Castleton, and of Bishop Langton in Winchester Cathedral.
[66] They were drawn and described for Nelson’s ‘History of Islington,’
2nd edition, 1823.
[67] I have not been able to find proof positive that a Fowler owned
this property. The house, though of respectable antiquity, is much more
modern than the arms. By a lease dated 1722, a messuage called the
Bell, with its stables, etc., and two other messuages or tenements on
either side, adjoining and fronting High Street, Holborn, ‘formerly one
capital mansion or messuage called the Bell or Blue Bell Inn, together
with all shops, stables, and other appurtenances,’ were bought by
Christ’s Hospital for £2,113 15s. Together with the adjoining house,
it still belongs to the Hospital. There is a rent-charge of 45s.
(originally 30 sacks of charcoal) on the Blue Bell Inn, for the use of
the poor of St. Andrews, in which parish the houses are situated; it
was bequeathed by Richard Hunt, who died in 1559.
[68] Named after the Berners family, who held the estate from the
Conquest till 1422, when it passed by marriage to John Bourchier,
created Lord Berners.
[69] In Nelson’s ‘History of Islington,’ 2nd edition, 1823, facing p.
260, there is an illustration of the building.
[70] The pretty garden of Clement’s Inn is now being built over, and
the garden house will soon disappear behind bricks and mortar. The
black kneeling figure supporting a sundial, which formerly decorated
the lawn (having been brought from Italy and presented to the Inn by
one of the Earls of Clare), was sold by the Ancients in 1884 for twenty
guineas, and has now found its way to Inner Temple Gardens.
[71] Lord Clarendon says of this second Earl: ‘He was a man of honour
and of courage, and would have been an excellent person if his heart
had not been so much set upon keeping and improving his estate.’
[72] From Mr. Austin Dobson I learn that Hogarth engraved a view of
Clare Market.
[73] He wrote MS. memoirs of the Holles family, afterwards transcribed
by Arthur Collins.
[74] This Act appears to have been a dead letter. In 1580 Queen
Elizabeth had issued an equally vain proclamation to prevent the
erection of new buildings within three miles of the City gates.
[75] M. Jusserand gives amusing instances in his excellent new work on
‘A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.’
[76] There is a view of it in Strype’s Stow (1754), which shows a
sculptured phœnix over the doorway. The phœnix in the porch of No. 40,
Great Ormond Street suggests the possibility of some connection with
this house.
[77] ‘Annals of Tennis,’ 1878.
[78] Some of these servants, however, must have been exceedingly
active. In the _London Evening Post_ for December 31, 1735, we are
told that ‘General Churchill’s Running Footman ran against the Lady
Molesworth’s, from the upper end of St. James’s Street to Edgworth
Gate,’ and won, performing the distance, computed to be about eleven
miles, in an hour and five minutes.
[79] He is Volpone in Pope’s ‘Moral Essay’:
‘His grace’s fate sage Cutler could foresee
And well (he thought) advised him “Live like me.”
As well his grace replied, “Like you, Sir John?
That I can do, when all I have is gone.”’
[80] ‘Some account of London,’ by Thos. Pennant, 3rd edition, pp. 372,
373.
[81] In the _Public Advertiser_ for Wednesday, April 21, 1775, it is
stated that ‘a trout was catched in the New River, near Sadler’s Wells,
which weighed eight pounds and a half.’
[82] This roadway is 1,173 yards in length, and has cost £353,526, but
the amount will be diminished by the sale of unused lands. Running
under it is a subway for the conveyance of electric lighting, etc.,
high enough for a man to walk through.
[83] The parish derived its name from a holy well, at which the parish
clerks of London used annually to perform a miracle play. Its site
was marked by a pump near the south-east corner of Ray Street, an
illustration of which is given in Wilkinson’s ‘Londina Illustrata.’
The well still exists a few feet to the north, covered by a massive
brick arch, under the floor of No. 18, Farringdon Road--formerly the
parish watch-house. This quaint little tenement is now to be let on
building lease. The whole neighbourhood seems in old days to have had a
reputation for holy and medicinal wells.
[84] In the _Post Boy_, and in the _Flying Post_ for June, 1697, we are
told that ‘Sadler’s excellent steel waters at Islington, having been
obstructed for some years, are now opened and current again,’ etc.
[85] At the bar of the Sir Hugh Myddleton tavern there was formerly an
interesting portrait group of frequenters of the old Myddleton’s Head,
Mr. Rosoman being in the centre.
[86] Pinks’s ‘History of Clerkenwell,’ 2nd edition, p. 427.
[87] Both places are alluded to in an advertisement (dated 1747) of the
Mulberry Garden, the site of which, says Pinks, was afterwards covered
by the House of Detention. A print of it exists.
[88] The springs thus named were almost on the site of another
medicinal spring called Black Mary’s Well or Hole. Dr. Bevis makes them
out the same, and suggests that the title by which the latter had been
known was a corruption of ‘Blessed Mary’s Hole.’ Other writers seek to
derive it from Mary Woolaston--a black woman who about 1680 is supposed
to have lived hereabout, by the side of the road, in a circular hut
built of stones, and to have leased and sold the waters. According to
the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1813, part ii., p. 557, this spring
was afterwards enclosed in a conduit by Walter Baynes, Esq., the
gentleman who, in 1697, discovered the famous Cold Bath, and who owned,
in part at least, the Sir John Oldcastle tavern and gardens hard by.
According to a plan of the city and environs of London, as fortified by
Parliament in 1642-3, there was a battery and breastwork ‘on the hill
E. of Blackmary’s Hole.’
[89] See _Notes and Queries_, 3rd series, ii., p. 228.
[90] In Miss Burney’s ‘Evelina’ (chap. xlv.), published January, 1778,
there is an interesting list of places of amusement in the suburbs. The
vulgar members of the Branghton family, and others, dispute as to which
they shall visit in the evening. Miss Branghton votes for Saltero’s
coffee-house; her sister for a party at Mother Red Cap’s; the brother
for White Conduit House; Mr. Brown for Bagnigge Wells; Mr. Branghton
for Sadler’s Wells, and Mr. Smith for Vauxhall. White Conduit House is
at last fixed upon. The site of this is marked by a public-house--No.
14, Barnsbury Road; it was named after an ancient conduit which once
stood hard by.
[91] Stow calls it the River of Wells, from the numerous springs that
overflowed into it.
[92] There was another fairly good mantelpiece on the second-floor.
[93] I do not guarantee the completeness of the following list of work
in the City said to have been by Inigo Jones, but it may be useful for
reference. The Church of St. Catherine Cree, Leadenhall Street, has
been popularly ascribed to him; it was consecrated by Laud, January
16, 1630-31, and is in pseudo-Gothic style. The Classic portico to
old St. Paul’s Cathedral was designed by Jones in 1633. The repairs
under his supervision were begun in April, 1631, and carried on for
more than nine years. The Church of St. Alban’s, Wood Street, may have
been his work; it replaced the old church, pulled down in 1632. This
was destroyed in the Great Fire. The hall, theatre, and court-room of
the Barber-Surgeons’ Company were built by him, apparently in 1636.
The hall was destroyed in the Great Fire; the theatre, which had been
restored by the Earl of Burlington, was pulled down in 1763. It has
been stated that the latter rebuilt the court-room; Mr. Young, however,
in his ‘Annals of the Barber-Surgeons’ (1890), declares positively that
it is the work of Inigo Jones, repaired after the Fire. He is said to
have also built Thanet House, Aldersgate Street, which survived till
1882.
[94] ‘Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers of the Dutch Reformed
Church, Austin Friars, from 1571 to 1874,’ edited by W. V. C. Moens.
[95] On the 15th of April, 1630, occurs the following entry:
‘Petronela Laurence widdowe, a Dutchwoman, was buryed in ye ten
shilling ground, att lower end of ye men’s pewes.’ I am tempted to
add the following curious baptismal entry from the register. ‘Sept.
1, 1611.--Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes, being borne the last of August,
in the lane going to Sir John Spencer’s back gate and there laide in
a heape of seacole asshes, was baptized the first day of September
following and dyed the next day after.’
[96] The old spelling is still retained, as in the entry of Adam’s
baptism at the Dutch Church.
[97] The name is spelt in various ways. He may have been of the family
of Sir John Cullum, Sheriff of London in 1646, on the site of whose
mansion Cullum Street, hard by, is built.
[98] From this I infer that she and her husband came to live in the
parish after Adam’s death. Their son John was born December, 1661, and
died a few months afterwards.
[99] Dr. Cox mentions this. Having searched for Sir John Lawrence’s
will at Somerset House, I find that he died intestate, and that
administration of his estate was granted to his widow Catherine; so
he had married a second time. In this grant he is described as ‘nuper
de Putney.’ It appears from the register of that parish that he had a
young family, and this is confirmed by a Lawrence pedigree which has
been kindly placed at my disposal. Among the children there was another
son John, who married Catherine Briscoe; he died in 1728, leaving
several daughters and a son of the same name. There was also a son
Adam, who left no issue. Catherine, Lady Lawrence, was buried in the
vault at St. Helen’s Church in 1723.
[100] Faulkner gives some verses which he says were written about the
year 1664 on the Lawrence arms. Here is a specimen:
‘The Field is Argent, and the charge a Cross:
Riches without Religion are but dross;
White, like this field, O Lord, his life should be
Who bears thy cross, follows, and fights for thee.’
[101] Dr. Cox says the date of Lawrence’s death was August 23, 1718,
which would be seventy-six years after his first marriage.
[102] At the back of one of these houses is the only private garden
still existing in the City.
[103] This passage, to judge from a restored plan in Hammon’s
‘Architectural Antiquities of Crosby Place’ (London, 1844), was one of
the original courts of Crosby Place; but I am rather doubtful about
it. According to this plan, Crosby Square occupied the site, not of
offices, but of the bowling-green.
[104] I observe that he and his brother Herman were subscribers to
Strype’s Stow, published in 1720.
[105] Anne, daughter of Simon Luttrell, created Baron Irnham of
Luttrelstown, 1768; Viscount Carhampton, 1780; Earl of Carhampton,
1785. She married, first, Christopher Horton, of Colton Hall,
Derbyshire, and secondly, in 1771, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland,
brother of King George III. This so incensed the latter that he
procured the passing of the Royal Marriage Act.
[106] Olmius is merely a Latinized form of the Dutch name Van Olm, the
latter word being equivalent to Elm. The arms are given in Morant’s
‘History of Essex.’ One of the charges is: out of a mount vert, an
elm-tree proper.
[107] In 1778 John Drigue Lernoult and another let the house to Lewis
Miol, and a schedule was then drawn up which I have seen. Everything is
most carefully noted from the arch in the hall ‘with fluted columns and
carved capitals,’ to the ‘battlement wall about 2 feet 6 inches high,
coped with stone cornice.’ At that time there was a warehouse with a
loft over it, and a crane, but its position is not made clear.
[108] The plan of the garden seemed to show that it had been curtailed
when the houses to the east, Nos. 15 to 18, Austin Friars, were
erected. They were formerly called Winckworth Buildings, and on their
water-pipes were T W, 1726. In No. 18, James Smith, one of the authors
of ‘Rejected Addresses,’ lived for a time. These houses are all now
swept away.
[109] ‘London, Ancient and Modern, from the Sanitary and Medical Point
of View,’ by G. V. Poore, M.D., F.R.C.P. London, 1889.
End of Project Gutenberg's London Signs and Inscriptions, by Philip Norman