FLEET STREET--GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Frays in Fleet Street--Chaucer and the Friar--The Duchess of
Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft--Riots between Law Students
and Citizens--'Prentice Riots--Oates in the Pillory--Entertainments
in Fleet Street--Shop Signs--Burning the Boot--Trial of Hardy--Queen
Caroline's Funeral.
Alas, for the changes of time! The Fleet, that little, quick-flowing
stream, once so bright and clear, is now a sewer! but its name remains
immortalised by the street called after it.
Although, according to a modern antiquary, a Roman amphitheatre once
stood on the site of the Fleet Prison, and Roman citizens were certainly
interred outside Ludgate, we know but little whether Roman buildings
ever stood on the west side of the City gates. Stow, however, describes
a stone pavement supported on piles being found, in 1595, near the Fleet
Street end of Chancery Lane; so that we may presume the soil of the
neighbourhood was originally marshy. The first British settlers there
must probably have been restless spirits, impatient of the high rents
and insufficient room inside the City walls and willing, for economy, to
risk the forays of any Saxon pirates who chose to steal up the river on
a dusky night and sack the outlying cabins of London.
There were certainly rough doings in Fleet Street in the Middle Ages,
for the City chronicles tell us of much blood spilt there and of many
deeds of violence. In 1228 (Henry III.) we find, for instance, one Henry
de Buke slaying a man named Le Ireis, le Tylor, of Fleet Bridge, then
fleeing to the church of St. Mary, Southwark, and there claiming
sanctuary. In 1311 (Edward II.) five of the king's not very respectable
or law-fearing household were arrested in Fleet Street for a burglary;
and though the weak king demanded them (they were perhaps servants of
his Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston, whom the barons afterwards
killed), the City refused to give them up, and they probably had short
shrive. In the same reign, when the Strand was full of bushes and
thickets, Fleet Street could hardly have been much better. Still, the
shops in Fleet Street were, no doubt, even in Edward II.'s reign, of
importance, for we find, in 1321, a Fleet Street bootmaker supplying the
luxurious king with "six pairs of boots, with tassels of silk and drops
of silver-gilt, the price of each pair being 5s." In Richard II.'s reign
it is especially mentioned that Wat Tyler's fierce Kentish men sacked
the Savoy church, part of the Temple, and destroyed two forges which had
been originally erected on each side of St. Dunstan's church by the
Knight Templars. The Priory of St. John of Jerusalem had paid a rent of
15s. for these forges, which same rent was given for more than a century
after their destruction.
The poet Chaucer is said to have beaten a saucy Franciscan friar in
Fleet Street, and to have been fined 2s. for the offence by the
Honourable Society of the Inner Temple; so Speight had heard from one
who had seen the entry in the records of the Inner Temple.
In King Henry IV.'s reign another crime disturbed Fleet Street. A Fleet
Street goldsmith was murdered by ruffians in the Strand, and his body
thrown under the Temple Stairs.
In 1440 (Henry VI.) a strange procession startled London citizens.
Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, did penance through Fleet Street
for witchcraft practised against the king. She and certain priests and
necromancers had, it was said, melted a wax figure of young King Henry
before a slow fire, praying that as that figure melted his life might
melt also. Of the duchess's confederates, the Witch of Ely, was burned
at Smithfield, a canon of Westminster died in the Tower, and a third
culprit was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The duchess was
brought from Westminster, and landed at the Temple Stairs, from whence,
with a tall wax taper in her hand, she walked bareheaded to St. Paul's,
where she offered at the high altar. Another day she did penance at
Christ Church, Aldgate; a third day at St. Michael's, Cornhill, the Lord
Mayor, sheriffs, and most of the Corporation following. She was then
banished to the Isle of Man, and her ghost they say still haunts Peel
Castle.
And now, in the long panorama of years, there rises in Fleet Street a
clash of swords and a clatter of bucklers. In 1441 (Henry VI.) the
general effervescence of the times spread beyond Ludgate, and there was
a great affray in Fleet Street between the hot-blooded youths of the
Inns of Court and the citizens, which lasted two days; the chief man in
the riot was one of Clifford's Inn, named Harbottle; and this
irrepressible Harbottle and his fellows only the appearance of the mayor
and sheriffs could quiet. In 1458 (in the same reign) there was a more
serious riot of the same kind; the students were then driven back by
archers from the Conduit near Shoe Lane to their several inns, and some
slain, including "the Queen's attornie," who certainly ought to have
known better and kept closer to his parchments. Even the king's meek
nature was roused at this, he committed the principal governors of
Furnival's, Clifford's, and Barnard's inns, to the castle of Hertford,
and sent for several aldermen to Windsor Castle, where he either rated
or imprisoned them, or both.
Fleet Street often figures in the chronicles of Elizabeth's reign. On
one visit it is particularly said that she often graciously stopped her
coach to speak to the poor; and a green branch of rosemary given to her
by a poor woman near Fleet Bridge was seen, not without marvellous
wonder of such as knew the presenter, when her Majesty reached
Westminster. In the same reign we are told that the young Earl of
Oxford, after attending his father's funeral in Essex, rode through
Fleet Street to Westminster, attended by seven score horsemen, all in
black. Such was the splendid and proud profusion of Elizabeth's nobles.
James's reign was a stormy one for Fleet Street. Many a time the ready
'prentices snatched their clubs (as we read in "The Fortunes of Nigel"),
and, vaulting over their counters, joined in the fray that surged past
their shops. In 1621 particularly, three 'prentices having abused
Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, as he passed their master's door in
Fenchurch Street, the king ordered the riotous youths to be whipped from
Aldgate to Temple Bar. In Fleet Street, however, the apprentices rose in
force, and shouting "Rescue!" quickly released the lads and beat the
marshalmen. If there had been any resistance, another thousand sturdy
'prentices would soon have carried on the war.
Nor did Charles's reign bring any quiet to Fleet Street, for then the
Templars began to lug out their swords. On the 12th of January, 1627,
the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went
out late at night into Fleet Street to collect his rents. At every door
the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast
the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, "Give
fire, gunner," and a sturdy smith burst the pannels open with a huge
sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived,
attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven
o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare
Alley (now Hare Court). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to
him, but Palmer, omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply
round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to
the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two
days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen
monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the
king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule
had, nevertheless, to refund all the five shillings' he had exacted, and
repair all the Fleet Street doors his too handy gunner had destroyed.
The very next year the quarrelsome street broke again into a rage, and
four persons lost their lives. Of the rioters, two were executed within
the week. One of these was John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the
other Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about politics, and the
courtiers seem to have been the offenders.
In Charles II.'s time the pillory was sometimes set up at the Temple
gate; and here the wretch Titus Oates stood, amidst showers of unsavoury
eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see the horror of his
crimes. Well said Judge Withers to this man, "I never pronounce criminal
sentence but with some compassion; but you are such a villain and
hardened sinner, that I can find no sentiment of compassion for you."
The pillory had no fixed place, for in 1670 we find a Scotchman
suffering at the Chancery Lane end for telling a victualler that his
house would be fired by the Papists; and the next year a man stood upon
the pillory at the end of Shoe Lane for insulting Lord Ambassador
Coventry as he was starting for Sweden.
In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the
"Mohocks," seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken
desperadoes--the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the
Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers--used
to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen
and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de
Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the
old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the
emperor and his black men," who had followed him half-way down Fleet
Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk
Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet
lodgings.
From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of
showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with great
industry, collected the following curious enumeration:--
"Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, "in _Every Man in his Humour_,
speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the
whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street mandrakes' were to
be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock
caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their
temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders
of Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a model of Amsterdam,
thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which had taken twelve years in
making, was exhibited in Bell Yard; a child, fourteen years old, without
thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen 'at the "Eagle
and Child," a grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane;' a great Lincolnshire ox,
nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was
on view 'at the "White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;' and
'between the "Queen's Head" and "Crooked Billet," near Fleet Bridge,'
were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous
creatures--an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long,
lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest
rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In
1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' in Fleet Street (by Shoe
Lane), was exhibited the 'moving picture' mentioned in the _Tatler_; and
here, in 1711, 'the great posture-master of Europe,' eclipsing the
deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London. 'He
extends his body into all deformed shapes; makes his hip and
shoulder-bones meet together; lays his head upon the ground, and turns
his body round twice or thrice, without stirring his face from the spot;
stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half
a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a
foot below his heels, having nothing to balance his body but his feet;
with several other postures too tedious to mention.'
"And here, in 1718, De Hightrehight, the fire-eater, ate burning coals,
swallowed flaming brimstone, and sucked a red-hot poker, five times a
day!
"What will my billiard-loving friends say to the St. Dunstan's Inquest
of the year 1720? 'Item, we present Thomas Bruce, for suffering a
gaming-table (called a billiard-table, where people commonly frequent
and game) to be kept in his house.' A score of years later, at the end
of Wine Office Court, was exhibited an automaton clock, with three
figures or statues, which at the word of command poured out red or white
wine, represented a grocer shutting up his shop and a blackamoor who
struck upon a bell the number of times asked. Giants and dwarfs were
special features in Fleet Street. At the 'Rummer,' in Three Kings'
Court, was to be seen an Essex woman, named Gordon, not nineteen years
old, though seven feet high, who died in 1737. At the 'Blew Boar and
Green Tree' was on view an Italian giantess, above seven feet, weighing
425 lbs., who had been seen by ten reigning sovereigns. In 1768 died, in
Shire Lane, Edward Bamford, another giant, seven feet four inches in
height, who was buried in St. Dunstan's, though L200 was offered for his
body for dissection. At the 'Globe,' in 1717, was shown Matthew
Buckinger, a German dwarf, born in 1674, without hands, legs, feet, or
thighs, twenty-nine inches high; yet can write, thread a needle, shuffle
a pack of cards, play skittles, &c. A facsimile of his writing is among
the Harleian MSS. And in 1712 appeared the Black Prince and his wife,
each three feet high; and a Turkey horse, two feet odd high and twelve
years old, in a box. Modern times have seen giants and dwarfs, but have
they really equalled these? In 1822 the exhibition of a mermaid here was
put a stop to by the Lord Chamberlain."
In old times Fleet Street was rendered picturesque, not only by its many
gable-ended houses adorned with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in
patterns, but also by the countless signs, gay with gilding and painted
with strange devices, which hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry
exhausted all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades. Lions
blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all colours, alternated with heads
of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day
these huge masses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the
terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On
the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane,
Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement,
suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing
four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however,
till 1761 (George III.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to
be placed flat against the walls of the houses.
When Dr. Johnson said, "Come and let us take a walk down Fleet Street,"
he proposed a no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in
London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable
gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches
of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians
who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were
awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the
wall. In 1766, when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and put
up at that humble hostelry the "White Horse," in Fetter Lane, he
describes coming home from Drury Lane with his brother in a sedan.
Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, some rough fellows pushed
against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pass
first. Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post
he passed was cured in 1766, by the laying down of side-pavements. On
that occasion it is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet that
they would pave more in a day than four Scotchmen could. By three
o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a
public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work,
won the wager.
In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the
centre of Fleet Street, in ridicule of Lord Bute; but a more serious
affray took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy Wilkites closed
the Bar, to stop a procession of 600 loyal citizens _en route_ to St.
James's to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition
and uproot the constitution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and
the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud.
Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in "Nando's Coffee House."
About 150 of the frightened citizens, passing up Chancery Lane, got to
the palace by a devious way, a hearse with two white horses and two
black following them to St. James's Palace. Even there the Riot Act had
to be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm fled into "Nando's,"
in his alarm, he sent home his carriage containing the address. The mob
searched the vehicle, but could not find the paper, upon which Mr.
Boehm hastened to the Court, and arrived just in time with the important
document.
The treason trials of 1794 brought more noise and trouble to Fleet
Street. Hardy, the secretary to the London Corresponding Society, was a
shoemaker at No. 161; and during the trial of this approver of the
French Revolution, Mr. John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) was in great
danger from a Fleet Street crowd. "The mob," he says, "kept thickening
round me till I came to Fleet Street, one of the worst parts that I had
to pass through, and the cries began to be rather threatening. 'Down
with him!' 'Now is the time, lads; do for him!' and various others,
horrible enough; but I stood up, and spoke as loud as I could: 'You may
do for me, if you like; but, remember, there will be another
Attorney-General before eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and the king
will not allow the trials to be stopped.' Upon this one man shouted out,
'Say you so? you are right to tell us. Let us give him three cheers, my
lads!' So they actually cheered me, and I got safe to my own door."
There was great consternation in Fleet Street in November, 1820, when
Queen Caroline, attended by 700 persons on horseback, passed publicly
through it to return thanks at St. Paul's. Many alarmed people
barricaded their doors and windows. Still greater was the alarm in
August, 1821, when the queen's funeral procession went by, after the
deplorable fight with the Horse Guards at Cumberland Gate, when two of
the rioters were killed.
With this rapid sketch of a few of the events in the history of Fleet
Street, we begin our patient peregrination from house to house.