Chapter XLIII…

Chapter XLIII

The Second Exchange on Fire--Chimes Extraordinary--Incidents of the Fire--Sale of Salvage--Designs for the New Building--Details of the Present Exchange--The Ambulatory, or Merchants' Walk--Royal Exchange Assurance Company--"Lloyd's"--Origin of "Lloyd's"--Marine Assurance--Benevolent Contributions of "Lloyd's"--A "Good" and "Bad" Book.

The second Exchange was destroyed by fire on the 10th of January, 1838. The flames, which broke out probably from an over-heated stove in Lloyd's Coffee-house, were first seen by two of the Bank watchmen about half-past ten. The gates had to be forced before entrance could be effected, and then the hose of the fire-engine was found to be frozen and unworkable. About one o'clock the fire reached the new tower. The bells chimed "Life let us cherish," "God save the Queen," and one of the last tunes heard, appropriately enough, was "There's nae Luck aboot the Hoose." The eight bells finally fell, crushing in the roof of the entrance arch. The east side of Sweeting's Alley was destroyed, and all the royal statues but that of Charles II. perished. One of Lloyd's safes, containing bank-notes for £2,500, was discovered after the fire, with the notes reduced to a cinder, but the numbers still traceable. A bag of twenty sovereigns, thrown from a window, burst, and some of the mob benefited by the gold. The statue of Gresham was entirely destroyed. In the ruins of the Lord Mayor's Court Office the great City Seal, and two bags, each containing £200 in gold, were found uninjured. The flames were clearly seen at Windsor (twenty-four miles from London), and at Roydon Mount, near Epping (eighteen miles). Troops from the Tower kept Cornhill clear, and assisted the sufferers to remove their property. If the wind had been from the south, the Bank and St. Bartholomew's Church would also have perished.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1838, giving power to purchase and remove all the buildings (called Bank Buildings) west of the Exchange, and also the old buildings to the eastward, nearly as far as Finch Lane. The Treasury at first claimed the direction of the whole building, but eventually gave way, retaining only a veto on the design. The cost of the building was, from the first, limited to £150,000, to be raised on the credit of the London Bridge Fund. Thirty designs were sent in by the rival architects, and exhibited in Mercers' Hall, but none could be decided upon; and so the judges themselves had to compete. Eventually the competition lay between Mr. Tite and Mr. Cockerell, and the former was appointed by the Committee. Mr. Tite was a classical man, and the result was a quasi-Greek, Roman, and Composite building. Mr. Tite at once resolved to design the new building with simple and unbroken lines, like the Paris Bourse, and, as much as possible, to take the Pantheon at Rome as his guide. The portico was to be at the west end, the tower at the east. The first Exchange had been built on piles; the foundations of the third cost £8,124. In excavating for it, the workmen came on what had evidently been the very centre of Roman London. In a gravel-pit, which afterwards seemed to have been a pond (perhaps the fountain of a grand Roman courtyard), were found heaps of rubbish, coins of copper, yellow brass, silver, and silver-plated brass, of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, &c., Henry IV. of England, Elizabeth, &c., and stores of Flemish, German, Prussian, Danish, and Dutch money. They also discovered fragments of Roman stucco, painted shards of delicate Samian ware, an amphora and terra-cotta lamps (seventeen feet below the surface), glass, bricks and tiles, jars, urns, vases, and potters' stamps. In the Corporation Museum at the Guildhall, where Mr. Tite deposited these interesting relics, are also fine wood tablets, and styles (for writing on wax) of iron, brass, bone, and wood. There are also in the same collection, from the same source, artificers' tools and leather-work, soldiers' sandals and shoes, and a series of horns, shells, bones, and vegetable remains. Tesselated pavements have been found in Threadneedle Street, and other spots near the Exchange.

The cost of enlarging the site of the Exchange, including improvements, and the widening of Cornhill, Freeman's Court, and Broad Street, the removal of the French Protestant Church, and demolition of St. Benet Fink, Bank Buildings, and Sweeting's Alley, was, according to the City Chamberlain's return of 1851, £223,578 1s. 10d. The cost of the building was £150,000.

The portico, one of the finest of its kind, is ninety-six feet wide, and seventy-four feet high. That of St. Martin's Church is only sixty-four wide, and the Post Office seventy-six. The whole building was rapidly completed. The foundation-stone was laid by Prince Albert, January 17th, 1842, John Pirie, Esq., being Lord Mayor. A huge red-striped pavilion had been raised for the ceremonial, and the Duke of Wellington and all the members of the Peel Cabinet were present. A bottle full of gold, silver, and copper coins was placed in a hollow of the huge stone, and the following inscription (in Latin), written by the Bishop of London, and engraved on a zinc plate:--

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM, Knight, Erected at his own charge A Building and Colonnade For the convenience of those Persons Who, in this renowned Mart, Might carry on the Commerce of the World; Adding thereto, for the relief of Indigence, And for the advancement of Literature and Science, An Almshouse and a College of Lecturers; The City of London aiding him; Queen Elizabeth favouring the design, And, when the work was complete, Opening it in person, with a solemn Procession. Having been reduced to ashes, Together with almost the entire City, By a calamitous and widely-spreading Conflagration, They were Rebuilt in a more splendid form By the City of London And the ancient Company of Mercers, King Charles the Second commencing the building On the 23rd October, A.D. 1667; And when they had been again destroyed by Fire, On the 10th January, A.D. 1838, The same Bodies, undertaking the work, Determined to restore them, at their own cost, On an enlarged and more ornamental Plan, The munificence of Parliament providing the means Of extending the Site, And of widening the Approaches and Crooked Streets In every direction, In order that there might at length arise, Under the auspices of Queen Victoria, Built a third time from the ground, An Exchange Worthy of this great Nation and City, And suited to the vastness of a Commerce Extended to the circumference Of the habitable Globe. His Royal Highness Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Consort of Her Sacred Majesty, Laid the First Stone On the 17th January, 1842, In the Mayoralty of the Right Hon. John Pirie. Architect, William Tite, F.R.S. May God our Preserver Ward off destruction From this Building, And from the whole City.

At the sale of the salvage, the porter's large hand-bell, rung daily before closing the 'Change (with the handle burnt), fetched £3 3s.; City griffins, £30 and £35 the pair; busts of Queen Elizabeth, £10 15s. and £18 the pair; figures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, £110; the statue of Anne, £10 5s.; George II., £9 5s.; George III. and Elizabeth, £11 15s. each; Charles II., £9; and the sixteen other royal statues similar sums. The copper-gilt grasshopper vane was reserved.

The present Royal Exchange was opened by Queen Victoria on October 28, 1844. The procession walked round the ambulatory, the Queen especially admiring Lang's (of Munich) encaustic paintings, and proceeded to Lloyd's Reading-room, which was fitted up as a throne-room. Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Sale, and other celebrities, were present. There the City address was read. After a sumptuous déjeuner in the Underwriters' room, the Queen went to the quadrangle, and there repeated the formula, "It is my royal will and pleasure that this building be hereafter called 'The Royal Exchange.'" The mayor, the Right Hon. William Magnay, was afterwards made a baronet, in commemoration of the day.

A curious fact connected with the second Exchange should not be omitted. On the 16th of September, 1787, a deserted child was found on the stone steps of the Royal Exchange that led from Cornhill to Lloyd's Coffee-house. The then churchwarden, Mr. Samuel Birch, the well-known confectioner, had the child taken care of and respectably brought up. He was named Gresham, and christened Michael, after the patron saint of the parish in which he was found. The lad grew up shrewd and industrious, eventually became rich, and established the celebrated Gresham Hotel in Sackville Street, Dublin. About 1836 he sold the hotel for £30,000, and retired to his estate, Raheny Park, near Dublin. He was a most liberal and benevolent man, and took an especial interest in the Irish orphan societies.

The tower at the east end of the Exchange is 177 feet to the top of the vane. The inner area of the building is 170 feet by 112, of which 111 feet by 53 are open to the sky.

The south front is one unbroken line of pilasters, with rusticated arches on the ground floor for shops and entrances, the three middle spaces being simple recesses. Over these are richly-decorated windows, and above the cornice there are a balustrade and attic. On the north side the centre projects, and the pilasters are fewer. The arches on the ground floor are rusticated, and there are two niches. In one of them stands a statue of Sir Hugh Myddelton, who brought the New River to London in 1614; and another of Sir Richard Whittington, by Carew. Whittington was, it must be remembered, a Mercer, and the Exchange is specially connected with the Mercers' Company.

On the east front of the tower is a niche where a statue of Gresham, by Behnes, keeps watch and ward. The vane is Gresham's former grasshopper, saved from the fire. It is eleven feet long. The various parts of the Exchange are divided by party walls and brick arches of such great strength as to be almost fire-proof--a compartment system which confines any fire that should break out into a small and restricted area.

West of the Exchange stands Chantrey's bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington. It was Chantrey's last work; and he died before it was completed. The sculptor received £9,000 for this figure; and the French cannon from which it was cast, and valued at £1,500, were given by Government for the purpose. The inauguration took place on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, 1844, the King of Saxony being present.

On the frieze of the portico is inscribed, "ANNO XIII. ELIZABETHÆ R. CONDITVM; ANNO VIII. VICTORIA R. RESTAVRATVM." Over the central doorway are the royal arms, by Carew. The keystone has the merchant's mark of Gresham, and the keystones of the side arches the arms of the merchant adventurers of his day, and the staple of Calais. North and south of the portico, and in the attic, are the City sword and mace, with the date of Queen Elizabeth's reign and 1844, and in the lower panels mantles bearing the initials of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria respectively. The imperial crown is twelve inches in relief, and seven feet high. The tympanum of the pediment of the portico is filled with sculpture, by Richard Westmacott, R.A., consisting of seventeen figures carved in limestone, nearly all entire and detached. The centre figure, ten feet high, is Commerce, with her mural crown, upon two dolphins and a shell. She holds the charter of the Exchange. On her right is a group of three British merchants--as Lord Mayor, Alderman, and Common Councilman--a Hindoo, a Mohammedan, a Greek bearing a jar, and a Turkish merchant. On the left are two British merchants and a Persian, a Chinese, a Levant sailor, a negro, a British sailor, and a supercargo. The opposite angles are filled with anchors, jars, packages, &c. Upon the pedestal of Commerce is this inscription, selected by Prince Albert: "THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S, AND THE FULNESS THEREOF."--Psalm xxiv. I. The ascent to the portico is by thirteen granite steps. It was discussed at the time whether a figure of Gresham himself should not have been substituted for that of Commerce; but perhaps the abstract figure is more suitable for a composition which is, after all, essentially allegorical.

The clock, constructed by Dent, with the assistance of the Astronomer Royal, is true to a second of time, and has a compensation pendulum. The chimes consist of a set of fifteen bells, by Mears, and cost £500, the largest being also the hour-bell of the clock. In the chime-work, by Dent, there are two hammers to several of the bells, so as to play rapid passages; and three and five hammers strike different bells simultaneously. All irregularity of force is avoided by driving the chime-barrel through wheels and pinions. There are no wheels between the weight that pulls and the hammer to be raised. The lifts on the chime-barrel are all epicycloidal curves; and there are 6,000 holes pierced upon the barrel for the lifts, so as to allow the tunes to be varied. The present airs are "God save the Queen," "The Roast Beef of Old England," "Rule Britannia," and the 104th Psalm. The bells, in substance, form, dimensions, &c., are from the Bow bells' patterns; still, they are thought to be too large for the tower. The chime-work is stated to be the first instance in England of producing harmony in bells.

The interior of the Exchange is an open courtyard, resembling the cortile of Italian palaces. It was almost unanimously decided by the London merchants (in spite of the caprices of our charming climate) to have no covering overhead, a decision probably long ago regretted. The ground floor consists of Doric columns and rusticated arches. Above these runs a series of Ionic columns, with arches and windows surmounted by a highly-ornamented pierced parapet. The keystones of the arches of the upper storey are decorated with the arms of all the principal nations of the world, in the order determined by the Congress of Vienna. In the centre of the eastern side are the arms of England.

The ambulatory, or Merchants' Walk, is spacious and well sheltered. The arching is divided by beams and panelling, highly painted and decorated in encaustic. In the centre of each panel, on the four sides, the arms of the nations are repeated, emblazoned in their proper colours; and in the four angles are the arms of Edward the Confessor, who granted the first and most important charter to the City, Edward III., in whose reign London first grew powerful and wealthy, Queen Elizabeth, who opened the first Exchange, and Charles II., in whose reign the second was built. In the south-east angle is a statue of Queen Elizabeth, by Watson, and in the south-west a marble statue of Charles II., which formerly stood in the centre of the second Exchange, and which escaped the last fire unscathed.

In eight small circular panels of the ambulatory are emblazoned the arms of the three mayors (Pirie, Humphrey, and Magnay), and of the three masters of the Mercers' Company in whose years of office the Exchange was erected. The arms of the chairman of the Gresham Committee, Mr. R.L. Jones, and of the architect, Mr. Tite, complete the heraldic illustrations. The Yorkshire pavement of the ambulatory is panelled and bordered with black stone, and squares of red granite at the intersections. The open area is paved with the traditional "Turkey stones," from the old Exchange, which are arranged in Roman patterns, with squares of red Aberdeen granite at the intersections.

On the side-wall panels are the names of the walks, inscribed upon chocolate tablets. In each of the larger compartments are the arms of the "walk," corresponding with the merchants'. As you enter the colonnade by the west are the arms of the British Empire, with those of Austria on the right, and Bavaria on the reverse side; then, in rotation, are the arms of Belgium, France, Hanover, Holland, Prussia, Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, Sweden and Norway, the United States of America, the initials of the Sultan of Turkey, Spain, Saxony, Russia, Portugal, Hanseatic Towns, Greece, and Denmark. On a marble panel in the Merchants' Area are inscribed the dates of the building and opening of the three Exchanges.

"Here are the same old-favoured spots, changed though they be in appearance," says the author of the "City" (1845); "and notwithstanding we have lost the great Rothschild, Jeremiah Harman, Daniel Hardcastle, the younger Rothschilds occupy a pillar on the south side of the Exchange, much in the same place as their father; and the Barings, the Bateses, the Salomons, the Doxats, the Durrants, the Crawshays, the Curries, and the Wilsons, and other influential merchants, still come and go as in olden days. Many sea-captains and brokers still go on 'Change; but the 'walks' are disregarded. The hour at High 'Change is from 3.30 to 4.30 p.m., the two great days being Tuesday and Friday for foreign exchanges."

A City writer of 1842 has sketched the chief celebrities of the Exchange of an earlier date. Mr. Salomon, with his old clothes-man attire, his close-cut grey beard, and his crutch-stick, toddling towards his offices in Shooter's Court, Throgmorton Street; Jemmy Wilkinson, with his old-fashioned manner, and his long-tailed blue coat with gilt buttons.

On the south and east sides of the Exchange are the arms of Gresham, the City, and the Mercers' Company, for heraldry has not even yet died out. Over the three centre arches of the north front are the three following mottoes:--Gresham's (in old French), "Fortun--à my;" the City, "Domine dirige nos;" the Mercers', "Honor Deo."

Surely old heraldry was more religious than modern trade, for the shoddy maker, or the owner of overladen vessels, could hardly inscribe their vessels or their wares with the motto "Honor Deo;" nor could the director of a bubble company with strict propriety head the columns of his ledger with the solemn words, "Domine dirige nos." But these are cynical thoughts, for no doubt trade ranks as many generous, honourable, and pious people among its followers as any other profession; and we have surely every reason to hope that the moral standard is still rising, and that "the honour of an Englishman" will for ever remain a proverb in the East.

The whole of the west end of the Exchange is taken up by the offices and board-rooms of the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, first organised in 1717, at meetings in Mercers' Hall. It was an amalgamation of two separate plans. The petition for the royal sanction made, it seems, but slow way through the Council and the Attorney-General's department, for the South Sea Bubble mania was raging, and many of the Ministers, including the Attorney-General himself (and who was indeed afterwards prosecuted), had shares in the great bubble scheme, and wished as far as possible to secure for it the exclusive attention of the company. The petitioners, therefore (under high legal authority), at once commenced business under the temporary title of the Mining, Royal Mineral, and Batteries Works, and in three-quarters of a year insured property to the amount of nearly two millions sterling. After the lapse of two years, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, eager for the money to be paid for the charter, and a select committee having made a rigid inquiry into the project, and the cash lodged at the Bank to meet losses, recommended the grant to the House of Commons. The Act of the 6th George I., cap. 18, authorised the king to grant a charter, which was accordingly done, June 22nd, 1720. The "London Assurance," which is also lodged in the Exchange, obtained its charter at the same time. Each of these companies paid £300,000 to the Exchequer. They were both allowed to assure on ships at sea, and going to sea, and to lend money on bottomry; and each was to have "perpetual succession" and a common seal. To prevent a monopoly, however, no person holding stock in either of the companies was allowed to purchase stock in the other. In 1721, the "Royal Exchange Assurance" obtained another charter for assurances on lives, and also of houses and goods from fire. In consequence of the depression of the times, the company was released from the payment of £150,000 of the £300,000 originally demanded by Government.

At the close of the last, and commencement of the present century, the monopolies of the two companies in marine assurance were sharply assailed. Their enemies at last, however, agreed to an armistice, on their surrendering their special privileges, which (in spite of Earl Grey's exertions) were at last annulled, and any joint-stock company can now effect marine assurances. The loss of the monopoly did not, however, injure either excellent body of underwriters.

"Lloyd's," at the east end of the north side of the Royal Exchange, contains some magnificent apartments, and the steps of the staircase leading to them are of Craigleath stone, fourteen feet wide. The subscribers' room (for underwriting) is 100 feet long, by 48 feet wide, and runs from north to south, on the east side of the Merchants' Quadrangle. This noble chamber has a library attached to it, with a gallery round for maps and charts, which many a shipowner, sick at heart, with fears for his rich argosy, has conned and traced. The captains' room, the board-room, and the clerks' offices, occupy the eastern end; and along the north front is the great commercial room, 80 feet long, a sort of club-room for strangers and foreign merchants visiting London. The rooms are lit from the ceilings, and also from windows opening into the quadrangle. They are all highly decorated, well warmed and ventilated, and worthy, as Mr. Effingham Wilson, in his book on the Exchange, justly observes, of a great commercial city like London.

The system of marine assurance seems to have been of great antiquity, and probably began with the Italian merchants in Lombard Street. The first mention of marine insurance in England, says an excellent author, Mr. Burgon, in his "Life of Gresham," is in a letter from the Protector Somerset to the Lord Admiral, in 1548 (Edward VI.), still preserved. Gresham, writing from Antwerp to Sir Thomas Parry, in May, 1560 (Elizabeth), speaks of armour, ordered by Queen Elizabeth, bought by him at Antwerp, and sent by him to Hamburg for shipment (though only about twelve ships a year came from thence to London). He had also adventured at his own risk, one thousand pounds' worth in a ship which, as he says, "I have caused to be assured upon the Burse at Antwerp."

The following preamble to the Statute, 43rd Elizabeth, proves that marine assurance was even then an old institution in England:--

"Whereas it has been, time out of mind, an usage among merchants, both of this realm and of foreign nations, when they make any great adventures (specially to remote parts), to give some considerable money to other persons (which commonly are no small number) to have from them assurance made of their goods, merchandize, ships, and things adventured, or some part thereof, at such rates, and in such sorts as the parties assurers and the parties assured can agree, which course of dealing is commonly termed a policy of assurance, by means of which it cometh to pass upon the loss or perishing of any ship, there followeth not the undoing of any man, but the loss lighteth rather easily upon many, than heavy upon few; and rather upon them that adventure not, than upon them that adventure; whereby all merchants, specially the younger sort, are allowed to venture more willingly and more freely."

In 1622, Malynes, in his "Lex Mercatoria," says that all policies of insurance at Antwerp, and other places in the Low Countries, then and formerly always made, mention that it should be in all things concerning the said assurances, as it was accustomed to be done in Lombard Street, London.

In 1627 (Charles I.), the marine assurers had rooms in the Royal Exchange, as appears by a law passed in that year, "for the sole making and registering of all manners of assurances, intimations, and renunciations made upon any ship or ships, goods or merchandise in the Royal Exchange, or any other place within the City of London;" and the Rev. Samuel Rolle, in his "CX. Discourses on the Fire of London," mentions an assurance office in the Royal Exchange, "which undertook for those ships and goods that were hazarded at sea, either by boistrous winds, or dangerous enemies, yet could not secure itself, when sin, like Samson, took hold of the pillars of it, and went about to pull it down."

After the Fire of London the underwriters met in a room near Cornhill; and from thence they removed to a coffee-house in Lombard Street, kept by a person named Lloyd, where intelligence of vessels was collected and made public. In a copy of Lloyd's List, No. 996, still extant, dated Friday, June 7th, 1745, and quoted by Mr. Effingham Wilson, it is stated: "This List, which was formerly published once a week, will now continue to be published every Tuesday and Friday, with the addition of the Stocks, course of Exchange, &c. Subscriptions are taken in at three shillings per quarter, at the bar of Lloyd's coffee-house in Lombard Street." Lloyd's List must therefore have begun about 1726.

In the Tatler of December 26th, 1710, is the following:--"This coffee-house being provided with a pulpit, for the benefit of such auctions that are frequently made in this place, it is our custom, upon the first coming in of the news, to order a youth, who officiates as the Kidney of the coffee-house, to get into the pulpit, and read every paper, with a loud and distinct voice, while the whole audience are sipping their respective liquors."

The following note is curious:--"11th March, 1740.--Mr. Baker, master of Lloyd's Coffee-house, in Lombard Street, waited on Sir Robert Walpole with the news of Admiral Vernon's taking Portobello. This was the first account received thereof, and, proving true, Sir Robert was pleased to order him a handsome present." (Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1740.)

The author of "The City" (1845) says: "The affairs of Lloyd's are now managed by a committee of underwriters, who have a secretary and five or six clerks, besides a number of writers to attend upon the rooms. The rooms, three in number, are called respectively the Subscribers' Room, the Merchants' Room, and the Captains' Room, each of which is frequented by various classes of persons connected with shipping and mercantile life. Since the opening of the Merchants' Room, which event took place when business was re-commenced at the Royal Exchange, at the beginning of this year, an increase has occurred in the number of visitors, and in which numbers the subscribers to Lloyd's are estimated at 1,600 individuals.

"Taking the three rooms in the order they stand, under the rules and regulations of the establishment, we shall first describe the business and appearance of the Subscribers' Room. Members to the Subscribers' Room, if they follow the business of underwriter or insurance broker, pay an entrance fee of twenty-five guineas, and an annual subscription of four guineas. If a person is a subscriber only, without practising the craft of underwriting, the payment is limited to the annual subscription fee of four guineas. The Subscribers' Room numbers about 1,000 or 1,100 members, the great majority of whom follow the business of underwriters and insurance brokers. The most scrupulous attention is paid to the admission of members, and the ballot is put into requisition to determine all matters brought before the committee, or the meeting of the house.

"The Underwriters' Room, as at present existing, is a fine spacious room, having seats to accommodate the subscribers and their friends, with drawers and boxes for their books, and an abundant supply of blotting and plain paper, and pens and ink. The underwriters usually fix their seats in one place, and, like the brokers on the Stock Exchange, have their particular as well as casual customers.

"'Lloyd's Books,'" which are two enormous ledger-looking volumes, elevated on desks at the right and left of the entrance to the room, give the principal arrivals, extracted from the lists so received at the chief outposts, English and foreign, and of all losses by wreck or fire, or other accidents at sea, written in a fine Roman hand, sufficiently legible that 'he who runs may read.' Losses or accidents, which, in the technicality of the room, are denominated 'double lines,' are almost the first read by the subscribers, who get to the books as fast as possible, immediately the doors are opened for business.

"All these rooms are thrown open to the public as the 'Change clock strikes ten, when there is an immediate rush to all parts of the establishment, the object of many of the subscribers being to seize their favourite newspaper, and of others to ascertain the fate of their speculation, as revealed in the double lines before mentioned."

Not only has Lloyd's--a mere body of merchants--without Government interference or patronage, done much to give stability to our commerce, but it has distinguished itself at critical times by the most princely generosity and benevolence. In the great French war, when we were pushed so hard by the genius of Napoleon, which we had unwisely provoked, Lloyd's opened a subscription for the relief of soldiers' widows and orphans, and commenced an appeal to the general public by the gift of £20,000 Three per Cent. Consols. In three months only the sum subscribed at Lloyd's amounted to more than £70,000. In 1809 they gave £5,000 more, and in 1813 £10,000. This was the commencement of the Patriotic Fund, placed under three trustees, Sir Francis Baring, Bart., John Julius Angerstein, Esq., and Thomson Bonar, Esq., and the subscriptions soon amounted to more than £700,000. In other charities Lloyd's were equally munificent. They gave £5,000 to the London Hospital, for the admission of London merchant-seamen; £1,000 for suffering inhabitants of Russia, in 1813; £1,000 for the relief of the North American Militia (1813); £10,000 to the Waterloo subscription of 1815; £2,000 for the establishment of lifeboats on the English coast. They also instituted rewards for those brave men who save, or attempt to save, life from shipwreck, and to those who do not require money a medal is given. This medal was executed by W. Wyon, Esq., R.A. The subject of the obverse is the sea-nymph Leucothea appearing to Ulysses on the raft; the moment of the subject chosen is found in the following lines:--

"This heavenly scarf beneath thy bosom bind, And live; give all thy terrors to the wind."

The reverse is from a medal of the time of Augustus--a crown of fretted oak-leaves, the reward given by the Romans to him who saved the life of a citizen; and the motto, "Ob cives servatos." By the system upon which business is conducted in Lloyd's, information is given to the insurers and the insured; there are registers of almost every ship which floats upon the ocean, the places where they were built, the materials and description of timber used in their construction, their age, state of repair, and general character. An index is kept, showing the voyages in which they have been and are engaged, so that merchants may know the vessel in which they entrust their property, and assurers may ascertain the nature and value of the risk they undertake. Agents are appointed for Lloyd's in almost every seaport in the globe, who send information of arrivals, casualties, and other matters interesting to merchants, shipowners, and underwriters, which information is published daily in Lloyd's List, and transmitted to all parts of the world. The collection of charts and maps is one of the most correct and comprehensive in the world. The Lords of the Admiralty presented Lloyd's with copies of all the charts made from actual surveys, and the East India Company was equally generous. The King of Prussia presented Lloyd's with copies of the charts of the Baltic, all made from surveys, and printed by the Prussian Government. Masters of all ships, and of whatever nation, frequenting the port of London, have access to this collection.

Before the last fire at the Exchange there was, on the stairs leading to Lloyd's, a monument to Captain Lydekker, the great benefactor to the London Seamen's Hospital. This worthy man was a shipowner engaged in the South Sea trade, and some of his sick sailors having been kindly treated in the "Dreadnought" hospital ship, in 1830, he gave a donation of £100 to the Society. On his death, in 1833, he left four ships and their stores, and the residue of his estate, after the payment of certain legacies. The legacy amounted to £48,434 16s. 11d. in the Three per Cents., and £10,295 11s. 4d. in cash was eventually received. The monument being destroyed by the fire in 1838, a new monument, by Mr. Sanders, sculptor, was executed for the entrance to Lloyd's rooms.

The remark of "a good book" or "a bad book" among the subscribers to Lloyd's is a sure index to the prospects of the day, the one being indicative of premium to be received, the other of losses to be paid. The life of the underwriter, like the stock speculator, is one of great anxiety, the events of the day often raising his expectations to the highest, or depressing them to the lowest pitch; and years are often spent in the hope for acquisition of that which he never obtains. Among the old stagers of the room there is often strong antipathy expressed against the insurance of certain ships, but we never recollect its being carried out to such an extent as in the case of one vessel. She was a steady trader, named after one of the most venerable members of the room, and it was a most curious coincidence that he invariably refused to "write her" for "a single line." Often he was joked upon the subject, and pressed "to do a little" for his namesake, but he as frequently denied, shaking his head in a doubtful manner. One morning the subscribers were reading the "double lines," or the losses, and among them was the total wreck of this identical ship.

There seems to have been a regret on the first opening of the Exchange for the coziness and quiet comfort of the old building. Old frequenters missed the firm oak benches in the old ambulatoria, the walls covered with placards of ships about to sail, the amusing advertisements and lists of the sworn brokers of London, and could not acquire a rapid friendship for the encaustic flowers and gay colours of the new design. They missed the old sonorous bell, and the names of the old walks.

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XLIV. NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BANK:--LOTHBURY

Lothbury--Its Former Inhabitants--St. Margaret's Church--Tokenhouse Yard--Origin of the Name--Farthings and Tokens--Silver Halfpence and Pennies--Queen Anne's Farthings--Sir William Petty--Defoe's Account of the Plague in Tokenhouse Yard.

Of Lothbury, a street on the north side of the Bank of England, Stow says: "The Street of Lothberie, Lathberie, or Loadberie (for by all those names have I read it), took the name as it seemeth of berie, or court, of old time there kept, but by whom is grown out of memory. This street is possessed for the most part by founders that cast candlesticks, chafing dishes, spice mortars, and such-like copper or laton works, and do afterwards turn them with the foot and not with the wheel, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scratching (as some do term it), making a loathsome noise to the by-passers that have not been used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully called Lothberie."

"Lothbury," says Hutton (Queen Anne), "was in Stow's time much inhabited by founders, but now by merchants and warehouse-keepers, though it is not without such-like trades as he mentions."

Ben Jonson brings in an allusion to once noisy Lothbury in the "Alchemist." In this play Sir Epicure Mammon says:--

This night I'll change All that is metal in my house to gold; And early in the morning will I send To all the plumbers and the pewterers, And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury For all the copper.

Surly. What, and turn that too?

Mammon. Yes, and I'll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies.

And again in his mask of "The Gipsies Metamorphosed"--

Bless the sovereign and his seeing.

* * * * *

From a fiddle out of tune, As the cuckoo is in June, From the candlesticks of Lothbury And the loud pure wives of Banbury.

Stow says of St. Margaret's, Lothbury: "I find it called the Chappel of St. Margaret's de Lothberie, in the reign of Edward II., when in the 15th of that king's reign, license was granted to found a chauntry there. There be monuments in this church of Reginald Coleman, son to Robert Coleman, buried there 1383. This said Robert Coleman may be supposed the first builder or owner of Coleman Street; and that St. Stephen's Church, there builded in Coleman Street, was but a chappel belonging to the parish church of St. Olave, in the Jewry." In niches on either side of the altar-piece are two flat figures, cut out of wood, and painted to represent Moses and Aaron. These were originally in the Church of St. Christopher le Stocks, but when that church was pulled down to make way for the west end of the Bank of England, and the parish was united by Act of Parliament to that of St. Margaret, Lothbury (in 1781), they were removed to the place they now occupy. At the west end of the church is a metal bust inscribed to Petrus le Maire, 1631; this originally stood in St. Christopher's, and was brought here after the fire.

This church, which is a rectory, seated over the ancient course of Walbrook, on the north side of Lothbury, in the Ward of Coleman Street (says Maitland), owes its name to its being dedicated to St. Margaret, a virgin saint of Antioch, who suffered in the reign of Decius.

Maitland also gives the following epitaph on Sir John Leigh, 1564:--

"No wealth, no praise, no bright renowne, no skill, No force, no fame, no prince's love, no toyle, Though forraine lands by travel search you will, No faithful service of thy country soile, Can life prolong one minute of an houre; But Death at length will execute his power. For Sir John Leigh, to sundry countries knowne, A worthy knight, well of his prince esteemed, By seeing much to great experience growne, Though safe on seas, though sure on land he seemed, Yet here he lyes, too soone by Death opprest; His fame yet lives, his soule in Heaven hath rest."

The bowl of the font (attributed to Grinling Gibbons) is sculptured with representations of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the return of the dove to the ark, Christ baptised by St. John, and Philip baptising the eunuch.

In the reign of Henry VIII. a conduit (of which no trace now exists) was erected in Lothbury. It was supplied with water from the spring of Dame Anne's, the "Clear," mentioned by Ben Jonson in his "Bartholomew Fair."

Tokenhouse Yard, leading out of Lothbury, derived its name from an old house which was once the office for the delivery of farthing pocket-pieces, or tokens, issued for several centuries by many London tradesmen. Copper coinage, with very few exceptions, was unauthorised in England till 1672. Edward VI. coined silver farthings, but Queen Elizabeth conceived a great prejudice to copper coins, from the spurious "black money," or copper coins washed with silver, which had got into circulation. The silver halfpenny, though inconveniently small, continued down to the time of the Commonwealth. In the time of Elizabeth, besides the Nuremberg tokens which are often found in Elizabethan ruins, many provincial cities issued tokens for provincial circulation, which were ultimately called in. In London no less than 3,000 persons, tradesmen and others, issued tokens, for which the issuer and his friends gave current coin on delivery. In 1594 the Government struck a small copper coin, "the pledge of a halfpenny," about the size of a silver twopence, but Queen Elizabeth could never be prevailed upon to sanction the issue. Sir Robert Cotton, writing in 1607 (James I.), on how the kings of England have supported and repaired their estates, says there were then 3,000 London tradesmen who cast annually each about £5 worth of lead tokens, their store amounting to some £15,000. London having then about 800,000 inhabitants, this amounted to about 2d. a person; and he urged the King to restrain tradesmen from issuing these tokens. In consequence of this representation, James, in 1613, issued royal farthing tokens (two sceptres in saltier and a crown on one side, and a harp on the other), so that if the English took a dislike to them they might be ordered to pass in Ireland. They were not made a legal tender, and had but a narrow circulation. In 1635 Charles I. struck more of these, and in 1636 granted a patent for the coinage of farthings to Henry Lord Maltravers and Sir Francis Crane. During the Civil War tradesmen again issued heaps of tokens, the want of copper money being greatly felt. Charles II. had halfpence and farthings struck at the Tower in 1670, and two years afterwards they were made a legal tender, by proclamation; they were of pure Swedish copper. In 1685 there was a coinage of tin farthings, with a copper centre, and the inscription, "Nummorum famulus." The following year halfpence of the same description were issued, and the use of copper was not resumed till 1693, when all the tin money was called in. Speaking of the supposed mythical Queen Anne's farthing, Mr. Pinkerton says:--"All the farthings of the following reign of Anne are trial pieces, since that of 1712, her last year. They are of most exquisite workmanship, exceeding most copper coins of ancient or modern times, and will do honour to the engraver, Mr. Croker, to the end of time. The one whose reverse is Peace in a car, Fax missa per orbem, is the most esteemed; and next to it the Britannia under a portal; the other farthings are not so valuable." We possess a complete series of silver pennies, from the reign of Egbert to the present day (with the exception of the reigns of Richard and John, the former coining in France, the latter in Ireland).

Tokenhouse Yard was built in the reign of Charles I., on the site of a house and garden of the Earl of Arundel (removed to the Strand), by Sir William Petty, an early writer on political economy, and a lineal ancestor of the present Marquis of Lansdowne. This extraordinary genius, the son of a Hampshire clothier, was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society. He studied anatomy with Hobbes in Paris, wrote numerous philosophical works, suggested improvements for the navy, and, in fact, explored almost every path of science. Aubrey says that, being challenged by Sir Hierom Sankey, one of Cromwell's knights, Petty being short-sighted, chose for place a dark cellar, and for weapons a big carpenter's axe. Petty's house was destroyed in the Fire of London. John Grant, says Peter Cunningham, also had property in Tokenhouse Yard. It was for Grant that Petty is said to have compiled the bills of mortality which bear his name.

Defoe, who, however, was only three years old when the Plague broke out, has laid one of the most terrible scenes in his "History of the Plague" in Tokenhouse Yard. "In my walks," he says, "I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screeching of women, who in their agonies would throw open their chamber windows, and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried, 'Oh! death, death, death!' in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with horror, and a chilliness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, nor could anybody help one another. Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window; but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms like distracted; when a garret window opened, and somebody from a window on the other side the alley called and asked, 'What is the matter?' upon which, from the first window it was answered, 'Ay, ay, quite dead and cold!' This person was a merchant, and a deputy-alderman, and very rich. But this is but one. It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day. People in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was, indeed, intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, oftentimes laid violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief, as a passion; some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and lunacy, others into melancholy madness."

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XLV. THROGMORTON STREET.--THE DRAPERS' COMPANY

Halls of the Drapers' Company--Throgmorton Street and its many Fair Houses--Drapers and Wool Merchants--The Drapers in Olden Times--Milborne's Charity--Dress and Livery--Election Dinner of the Drapers' Company--A Draper's Funeral--Ordinances and Pensions--Fifty-three Draper Mayors--Pageants and Processions of the Drapers--Charters--Details of the present Drapers' Hall--Arms of the Drapers' Company.

Throgmorton Street is at the north-east corner of the Bank of England, and was so called after Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, who is said to have been poisoned by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favourite. There is a monument to his memory in the Church of St. Catherine Cree.

The Drapers' first Hall, according to Herbert, was in Cornhill; the second was in Throgmorton Street, to which they came in 1541 (Henry VIII.), on the beheading of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, its previous owner; and the present structure was re-erected on its site, after the Great Fire of London.

Stow, describing the Augustine Friars' Church, says there have been built at its west end "many feyre houses, namely, in Throgmorton Streete;" and among the rest, "one very large and spacious," builded, he says, "in place of olde and small tenements, by Thomas Cromwell, minister of the King's jewell-house, after that Maister of the Rolls, then Lord Cromwell, Knight, Lord Privie Seale, Vicker-Generall, Earle of Essex, High Chamberlain of England, &c.;" and he then tells the following story respecting it:--

"This house being finished, and having some reasonable plot of ground left for a garden, hee caused the pales of the gardens adjoining to the north parte thereof, on a sodaine, to bee taken down, twenty-two foote to be measured forth right into the north of every man's ground, a line there to be drawne, a trench to be cast, a foundation laid, and a high bricke wall to be builded. My father had a garden there, and an house standing close to his south pale; this house they loosed from the ground, and bore upon rollers into my father's garden, twenty-two foot, ere my father heard thereof. No warning was given him, nor other answere, when hee spoke to the surveyors of that worke, but that their mayster, Sir Thomas, commanded them so to doe; no man durst go to argue the matter, but each man lost his land, and my father payde his whole rent, whiche was vjs. viijd. the yeare, for that halfe which was left. Thus much of mine owne knowledge have I thought goode to note, that the sodaine rising of some men causeth them to forget themselves." ("Survaie of London," 1598.)

The Company was incorporated in 1439 (Henry VI.), but it also possesses a charter granted them by Edward III., that they might regulate the sale of cloths according to the statute. Drapers were originally makers, not merely, as now, dealers in cloth. (Herbert.) The country drapers were called clothiers; the wool-merchants, staplers. The Britons and Saxons were both, according to the best authorities, familiar with the art of cloth-making; but the greater part of English wool, from the earliest times, seems to have been sent to the Netherlands, and from thence returned in the shape of fine cloth, since we find King Ethelred, as early as 967, exacting from the Easterling merchants of the Steel Yard, in Thames Street, tolls of cloth, which were paid at Billingsgate.

The width of woollen cloth is prescribed in Magna Charta. There was a weavers' guild in the reign of Henry I., and the drapers are mentioned soon after as flourishing in all the large provincial cities. It is supposed that the cloths sold by such drapers were red, green, and scarlet cloths, made in Flanders. In the next reign English cloths, made of Spanish wool, are spoken of. Drapers are recorded in the reign of Henry II. as paying fines to the king for permission to sell dyed cloths. In the same reign, English cloths made of Spanish wool are mentioned. In the reign of Edward I., the cloth of Candlewick Street (Cannon Street) was famous. The guild paid the king two marks of gold every year at the feast of Michaelmas.

But Edward III., jealous of the Netherlands, set to work to establish the English cloth manufacture. He forbade the exportation of English wool, and invited over seventy Walloon weaver families, who settled in Cannon Street. The Flemings had their meeting-place in St. Lawrence Poultney churchyard, and the Brabanters in the churchyard of St. Mary Somerset. In 1361 the king removed the wool staple from Calais to Westminster and nine English towns. In 1378 Richard II. again changed the wool staple from Westminster to Staples' Inn, Holborn; and in 1397 a weekly cloth-market was established at Blackwell Hall, Basinghall Street; the London drapers at first opposing the right of the country clothiers to sell in gross.

The drapers for a long time lingered about Cornhill, where they had first settled, living in Birchin Lane, and spreading as far as the Stocks' Market; but in the reign of Henry VI. the drapers had all removed to Cannon Street, where we find them tempting Lydgate's "London Lickpenny" with their wares. In this reign arms were granted to the Company, and the grant is still preserved in the British Museum.

The books of the Company commence in the reign of Edward IV., and are full of curious details relating to dress, observances, government, and trade. Edward IV., it must be remembered, in 1479, when he had invited the mayor and aldermen to a great hunt at Waltham Forest, not to forget the City ladies, sent them two harts, six bucks, and a tun of wine, with which noble present the lady mayoress (wife of Sir Bartholomew James, Draper) entertained the aldermen's wives at Drapers' Hall, St. Swithin's Lane, Cannon Street. The chief extracts from the Drapers' records made by Herbert are the following:--

In 1476 forty of the Company rode to meet Edward IV. on his return from France, at a cost of £20. In 1483 they sent six persons to welcome the unhappy Edward V., whom the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, preparatory to his murder, had brought to London; and in the following November, the Company dispatched twenty-two of the livery, in many-coloured coats, to attend the coronation procession of Edward's wicked hunchback uncle, Richard III. Presently they mustered 200 men, on the rising of the Kentish rebels; and again, in Finsbury Fields, at "the coming of the Northern men." They paid 9s. for boat hire to Westminster, to attend the funeral of Queen Anne (Richard's queen).

In Henry VII.'s reign, we find the Drapers again boating to Westminster, to present their bill for the reformation of cloth-making. The barge seems to have been well supplied with ribs of beef, wine, and pippins. We find the ubiquitous Company at many other ceremonies of this reign, such as the coronation of the queen, &c.

In 1491 the Merchant Taylors came to a conference at Drapers' Hall, about some disputes in the cloth trade, and were hospitably entertained with bread and wine. In the great riots at the Steel Yard, when the London 'prentices tried to sack the Flemish warehouses, the Drapers helped to guard the depôt, with weapons, cressets, and banners. They probably also mustered for the king at Blackheath against the Cornish insurgents. We meet them again at the procession that welcomed Princess Katherine of Spain, who married Prince Arthur; then, in the Lady Chapel at St. Paul's, listening to Prince Arthur's requiem; and, again, bearing twelve enormous torches of wax at the burial of Henry VII., the prince's father.

In 1514 (Henry VIII.) Sir William Capell left the Drapers' Company houses in various parts of London, on condition of certain prayers being read for his soul, and certain doles being given. In 1521 the Company, sorely against its will, was compelled by the arbitrary king to help fit out five ships of discovery for Sebastian Cabot, whose father had discovered Newfoundland. They called it "a sore adventure to jeopard ships with men and goods unto the said island, upon the singular trust of one man, called, as they understood, Sebastian." But Wolsey and the King would have no nay, and the Company had to comply. The same year, Sir John Brugge, Mayor and Draper, being invited to the Serjeants' Feast at Ely House, Holborn, the masters of the Drapers and seven other crafts attended in their best livery gowns and hoods; the Mayor presiding at the high board, the Master of the Rolls at the second, the Master of the Drapers at the third. Another entry in the same year records a sum of £22 15s. spent on thirty-two yards of crimson satin, given as a present to win the good graces of "my Lord Cardinal," the proud Wolsey, and also twenty marks given him, "as a pleasure," to obtain for the Company more power in the management of the Blackwell Hall trade.

In 1527 great disputes arose between the Drapers and the Crutched Friars. Sir John Milborne, who was several times master of the Company, and mayor in 1521, had built thirteen almshouses, near the friars' church, for thirteen old men, who were daily at his tomb to say prayers for his soul. There was also to be an anniversary obit. The Drapers' complaint was that the religious services were neglected, and that the friars had encroached on the ground of Milborne's charity. Henry VIII. afterwards gave Crutched Friars to Sir Thomas Wyat, the poetical friend of the Earl of Surrey, who built a mansion there, which was afterwards Lumley House. At the dissolution of monasteries, the Company paid £1,402 6s. for their chantries and obits.

The dress or livery of the Company seems to have varied more than that of any other--from violet, crimson, murrey, blue, blue and crimson, to brown, puce. In the reign of James I. a uniform garb was finally adopted. The observances of the Company at elections, funerals, obits, and pageants were quaint, friendly, and clubable enough. Every year, at Lady Day, the whole body of the fellowship in new livery went to Bow Church (afterwards to St. Michael's, Cornhill), there heard the Lady Mass, and offered each a silver penny on the altar. At evensong they again attended, and heard dirges chanted for deceased members. On the following day they came and heard the Mass of Requiem, and offered another silver penny. On the day of the feast they walked two and two in livery to the dining-place, each member paying three shillings the year that no clothes were supplied, and two shillings only when they were. The year's quarterage was sevenpence. In 1522 the election dinner consisted of fowls, swans, geese, pike, half a buck, pasties, conies, pigeons, tarts, pears, and filberts. The guests all washed after dinner, standing. At the side-tables ale and claret were served in wooden cups; but at the high table they gave pots and wooden cups for ale and wine, but for red wine and hippocras gilt cups. After being served with wafers and spiced wine, the masters went among the guests and gathered the quarterage. The old master then rose and went into the parlour, with a garland on his head and his cup-bearer before him, and, going straight to the upper end of the high board, without minstrels, chose the new master, and then sat down. Then the masters went into the parlour, and took their garlands and four cupbearers, and crossed the great parlour till they came to the upper end of the high board; and there the chief warden delivered his garland to the warden he chose, and the three other wardens did likewise, proffering the garlands to divers persons, and at last delivering them to the real persons selected. After this all the company rose and greeted the new master and wardens, and the dessert began. At some of these great feasts some 230 people sat down. The lady members and guests sometimes dined with the brothers, and sometimes in separate rooms. At the Midsummer dinner, or dinners, of 1515, six bucks seem to have been eaten, besides three boars, a barrelled sturgeon, twenty-four dozen quails; three hogsheads of wine, twenty-one gallons of muscadel, and thirteen and a half barrels of ale. It was usual at these generous banquets to have players and minstrels.

The funerals of the Company generally ended with a dinner, at which the chaplains and a chosen few of the Company feasted. The Company's pall was always used; and on one occasion, in 1518, we find a silver spoon given to each of the six bearers. Spiced bread, bread and cheese, fruit, and ale were also partaken of at these obits, sometimes at the church, sometimes at a neighbouring tavern. At the funeral of Sir Roger Achilley, Lord Mayor in 1513, there seem to have been twenty-four torch-bearers. The pews were apparently hung with black, and children holding torches stood by the hearse. The Company maintained two priests at St. Michael's, Cornhill. The funeral of Sir William Roche, Mayor in 1523, was singularly splendid. First came two branches of white wax, borne before the priests and clerks, who paced in surplices, singing as they paced. Then followed a standard, blazoned with the dead man's crest--a red deer's head, with gilt horns, and gold and green wings. Next followed mourners, and after them the herald, with the dead man's coat armour, checkered silver and azure. Then followed the corpse, attended by clerks and the livery. After the corpse came the son, the chief mourner, and two other couples of mourners. The swordbearer and Lord Mayor, in state, walked next; then the aldermen, sheriffs, and the Drapery livery, followed by all the ladies, gentlewomen, and aldermen's wives. After the dirge, they all went to the dead man's house, and partook of spiced bread and comfits, with ale and beer. The next day the mourners had a collection at the church. Then the chief mourners presented the target, sword, helmet, and banners to the priests, and a collection was made for the poor. Directly after the sacrament, the mourners went to Mrs. Roche's house, and dined, the livery dining at the Drapers' Hall, the deceased having left £6 15s. 4d. for that purpose. The record concludes thus: "And my Lady Roche, of her gentylness, sent them moreover four gallons of French wine, and also a box of wafers, and a pottell of ipocras. For whose soul let us pray, and all Christian souls. Amen." The Company maintained priests, altars, and lights at St. Mary Woolnoth's, St. Michael's, Cornhill, St. Thomas of Acon, Austin Friars, and the Priory of St. Bartholomew.

The Drapers' ordinances are of great interest. Every apprentice, on being enrolled, paid fees, which went to a fund called "spoon silver." The mode of correcting these wayward lads was sometimes singular. Thus we find one Needswell in the parlour, on court day, flogged by two tall men, disguised in canvas frocks, hoods, and vizors, twopennyworth of birchen rods being expended on his moral improvement. The Drapers had a special ordinance, in the reign of Henry IV., to visit the fairs of Westminster, St. Bartholomew, Spitalfields, and Southwark, to make a trade search, and to measure doubtful goods by the "Drapers' ell," a standard said to have been granted them by King Edward III. Bread, wine, and pears seem to have been the frugal entertainment of the searchers.

Decayed brothers were always pensioned; thus we find, in 1526, Sir Laurence Aylmer, who had actually been mayor in 1507, applying for alms, and relieved, we regret to state, somewhat grudgingly. In 1834 Mr. Lawford, clerk of the Company, stated to the Commissioners of Municipal Inquiry that there were then sixty poor freemen on the charity roll, who received £10 a year each. The master and wardens also gave from the Company's bounty quarterly sums of money to about fifty or sixty other poor persons. In cases where members of the court fell into decay, they received pensions during the court's pleasure. One person of high repute, then recently deceased, had received the sum of £200 per annum, and on this occasion the City had given him back his sheriff's fine. The attendance fee given to members of the court was two guineas.

From 1531 to 1714, Strype reckons fifty-three Draper mayors. Eight of these were the heads of noble families, forty-three were knights or baronets, fifteen represented the City in Parliament, seven were founders of churches and public institutions. The Earls of Bath and Essex, the Barons Wotton, and the Dukes of Chandos are among the noble families which derive their descent from members of this illustrious Company. That great citizen, Henry Fitz-Alwin, the son of Leofstan, Goldsmith, and provost of London, was a Draper, and held the office of mayor for twenty-four successive years.

In the Drapers' Lord Mayors' shows the barges seem to have been covered with blue or red cloth. The trumpeters wore crimson hats; and the banners, pennons, and streamers were fringed with silk, and "beaten with gold." The favourite pageants were those of the Assumption and St. Ursula. The Drapers' procession on the mayoralty of one of their members, Sir Robert Clayton, is thus described by Jordan in his "London Industre:"--

_"In proper habits, orderly arrayed, The movements of the morning are displayed._ Selected citizens i' th' morning all, At seven a clock, do meet at Drapers' Hall. The master, wardens, and assistants joyn For the first rank, in their gowns fac'd with Foyn. The second order do, in merry moods, March in gowns fac'd with Budge and livery hoods. In gowns and scarlet hoods thirdly appears A youthful number of Foyn's Batchellors; Forty Budge Batchellors the triumph crowns, Gravely attir'd in scarlet hoods and gowns. Gentlemen Ushers which white staves do hold Sixty, in velvet coats and chains of gold. Next, thirty more in plush and buff there are, That several colours wear, and banners bear. The Serjeant Trumpet thirty-six more brings (Twenty the Duke of York's, sixteen the King's). The Serjeant wears two scarfs, whose colours be One the Lord Mayor's, t'other's the Company. The King's Drum Major, follow'd by four more Of the King's drums and fifes, make London roar."

"What gives the festivities of this Company an unique zest," says Herbert, "however, is the visitors at them, and which included a now extinct race. We here suddenly find ourselves in company with abbots, priors, and other heads of monastic establishments, and become so familiarised with the abbot of Tower Hill, the prior of St. Mary Ovary, Christ Church, St. Bartholomew's, the provincial and the prior of 'Freres Austyn's,' the master of St. Thomas Acon's and St. Laurence Pulteney, and others of the metropolitan conventual clergy, most of whom we find amongst their constant yearly visitors, that we almost fancy ourselves living in their times, and of their acquaintance."

The last public procession of the Drapers' Company was in 1761, when the master wardens and court of assistants walked in rank to hear a sermon at St. Peter's, Cornhill; a number of them each carried a pair of shoes, stockings, and a suit of clothes, the annual legacy to the poor of this Company.

The Drapers possess seven original charters, all of them with the Great Seal attached, finely written, and in excellent preservation. These charters comprise those of Edward I., Henry VI., Edward IV., Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, and two of James I. The latter is the acting charter of the company. In 4 James I., the company is entitled "The Master and Wardens and Brothers and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Mystery of Drapers of the City of London." In Maitland's time (1756), the Company devoted £4,000 a year to charitable uses.

Aggas's drawing represents Cromwell House almost windowless, on the street side, and with three small embattled turrets; and there was a footway through the garden of Winchester House, which forms the present passage (says Herbert) from the east end of Throgmorton Street, through Austin Friars to Great Winchester Street. The Great Fire stopped northwards at Drapers' Hall. The renter warden lost £446 of the Company's money, but the Company's plate was buried safely in a sewer in the garden. Till the hall could be rebuilt, Sir Robert Clayton lent the Drapers a large room in Austin Friars. The hall was rebuilt by Jarman, who built the second Exchange and Fishmongers' Hall. The hall had a very narrow escape (says Herbert) in 1774 from a fire, which broke out in the vaults beneath the hall (let out as a store-cellar), and destroyed a considerable part of the building, together with a number of houses on the west side of Austin Friars.

The present Drapers' Hall is Mr. Jarman's structure, but altered, and partly rebuilt after the fire in 1774, and partly rebuilt again in 1870. It principally consists of a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by a fine piazza or ambulatory of arches, supported by columns. The quiet old garden greatly improves the hall, which, from this appendage, and its own elegance, might be readily supposed the mansion of a person of high rank.

The present Throgmorton Street front of the building is of stone and marble, and was built by Mr. Herbert Williams, who also erected the splendid new hall, removing the old gallery, adding a marble staircase fit for an emperor's palace, and new facing the court-room, the ceiling of which was at the same time raised. Marble pillars, stained glass windows, carved marble mantelpieces, gilt panelled ceilings--everything that is rich and tasteful--the architect has used with lavish profusion.

The buildings of the former interior were of fine red brick, but the front and entrance, in Throgmorton Street, was of a yellow brick; both interior and exterior were highly enriched with stone ornaments. Over the gateway was a large sculpture of the Drapers' arms, a cornice and frieze, the latter displaying lions' heads, rams' heads, &c., in small circles, and various other architectural decorations.

The old hall, properly so called, occupied the eastern side of the quadrangle, the ascent to it being by a noble stone staircase, covered, and highly embellished by stucco-work, gilding, &c. The stately screen of this magnificent apartment was curiously decorated with carved pillars, pilasters, arches, &c. The ceiling was divided into numerous compartments, chiefly circular, displaying, in the centre, Phaeton in his car, and round him the signs of the zodiac, and various other enrichments. In the wainscoting was a neat recess, with shelves, whereon the Company's plate, which, both for quality and workmanship, is of great value, was displayed at their feasts. Above the screen, at the end opposite the master's chair, hung a portrait of Lord Nelson, by Sir William Beechey, for which the Company paid four hundred guineas, together with the portrait of Fitz-Alwin, the great Draper, already mentioned. "In denominating this portrait curious," says Herbert, "we give as high praise as can be afforded it. Oil-painting was totally unknown to England in Fitz-Alwin's time; the style of dress, and its execution as a work of art, are also too modern."

In the gallery, between the old hall and the livery-room, were full-length portraits of the English sovereigns, from William III. to George III., together with a full-length portrait of George IV., by Lawrence, and the celebrated picture of Mary Queen of Scots, and her son, James I., by Zucchero. The portrait of the latter king is a fine specimen of the master, and is said to have cost the Company between £600 and £700. "It has a fault, however," says Herbert, "observable in other portraits of this monarch, that of the likeness being flattered. If it was not uncourteous so to say, we should call it George IV. with the face of the Prince of Wales. Respecting the portrait of Mary and her son, there has been much discussion. Its genuineness has been doubted, from the circumstance of James having been only a twelvemonth old when this picture is thought to have been painted, and his being here represented of the age of four or five; but the anachronism might have arisen from the whole being a composition of the artist, executed, not from the life, but from other authorities furnished to him." It was cleaned and copied by Spiridione Roma, for Boydell's print, who took off a mask of dirt from it, and is certainly a very interesting picture. There is another tradition of this picture: that Sir Anthony Babington, confidential secretary to Queen Mary, had her portrait, which he deposited, for safety, either at Merchant Taylors' Hall or Drapers' Hall, and that it had never come back to Sir Anthony or his family. It has been insinuated that Sir William Boreman, clerk to the Board of Green Cloth in the reign of Charles II., purloined this picture from one of the royal palaces. Some absurdly suggest that it is the portrait of Lady Dulcibella Boreman, the wife of Sir William. There is a tradition that this valuable picture was thrown over the wall into Drapers' Garden during the Great Fire, and never reclaimed.

The old court-room adjoined the hall, and formed the north side of the quadrangle. It was wainscoted, and elegantly fitted up, like the last. The fire-place was very handsome, and had over the centre a small oblong compartment in white marble, with a representation of the Company receiving their charter. The ceiling was stuccoed, somewhat similarly to the hall, with various subjects allusive to the Drapers' trade and to the heraldic bearings of the Company. Both the (dining) hall and this apartment were rebuilt after the fire in 1774.

The old gallery led to the ladies' chamber and livery-room. In the former, balls, &c., were occasionally held. This was also a very elegant room. The livery-room was a fine lofty apartment, and next in size to the hall. Here were portraits of Sir Joseph Sheldon, Lord Mayor, 1677, by Gerard Soest, and a three-quarter length of Sir Robert Clayton, by Kneller, 1680, seated in a chair--a great benefactor to Christ's Hospital, and to that of St. Thomas, in Southwark; and two benefactors--Sir William Boreman, an officer of the Board of Green Cloth in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., who endowed a free school at Greenwich; and Henry Dixon, of Enfield, who left land in that parish for apprenticing boys of the same parish, and giving a sum to such as were bound to freemen of London at the end of their apprenticeship. Here was also a fine portrait of Mr. Smith, late clerk of the Company (three-quarters); a smaller portrait of Thomas Bagshaw, who died in 1794, having been beadle to the Company forty years, and who for his long and faithful services has been thus honoured. The windows of the livery-room overlook the private garden, in the midst of which is a small basin of water, with a fountain and statue. The large garden, which adjoins this, is constantly open to the public, from morning till night, excepting Saturdays, Sundays, and the Company's festival days. This is a pleasant and extensive plot of ground, neatly laid out with gravelled walks, a grass-plot, flowering shrubs, lime-trees, pavilions, &c. Beneath what was formerly the ladies' chamber is the record-room, which is constructed of stone and iron, and made fire-proof, for the more effectually securing of the Company's archives, books, plate, and other valuable and important documents.

Howell, in his "Letters," has the following anecdote about Drapers' Hall. "When I went," he says, "to bind my brother Ned apprentice, in Drapers' Hall, casting my eyes upon the chimney-piece of the great room, I spyed a picture of an ancient gentleman, and underneath, 'Thomas Howell;' I asked the clerk about him, and he told me that he had been a Spanish merchant in Henry VIII.'s time, and coming home rich, and dying a bachelor, he gave that hall to the Company of Drapers, with other things, so that he is accounted one of the chiefest benefactors. I told the clerk that one of the sons of Thomas Howell came now thither to be bound; he answered that, if he be a right Howell, he may have, when he is free, three hundred pounds to help to set him up, and pay no interest for five years. It may be, hereafter, we will make use of this."

The Drapers' list of livery states their modern arms to be thus emblazoned, viz.--Azure, three clouds radiated proper, each adorned with a triple crown or. Supporters--two lions or, pelletted. Crest--on a wreath, a ram couchant or, armed sables, on a mount vert. Motto--"Unto God only be honour and glory."

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XLVI. BARTHOLOMEW LANE AND LOMBARD STREET

George Robins--His Sale of the Lease of the Olympic--St. Bartholomew's Church--The Lombards and Lombard Street--William de la Pole--Gresham--The Post Office, Lombard Street--Alexander Pope's Father in Plough Court--Lombard Street Tributaries--St. Mary Woolnoth--St. Clement's--Dr. Benjamin Stone--Discovery of Roman Remains--St. Mary Abchurch.

Bartholomew Lane is associated with the memory of Mr. George Robins, one of the most eloquent auctioneers who ever wielded an ivory hammer. The Auction Mart stood opposite the Rotunda of the Bank. It is said that Robins was once offered £2,000 and all his expenses to go and dispose of a valuable property in New York. His annual income was guessed at £12,000. It is said that half the landed property in England had passed under his hammer. Robins, with incomparable powers of blarney and soft sawder, wrote poetical and alluring advertisements (attributed by some to eminent literary men), which were irresistibly attractive. His notice of the sale of the twenty-seven years' lease of the Olympic, at the death of Mr. Scott, in 1840, was a marvel of adroitness:--

"Mr. George Robins is desired to announce To the Public, and more especially to the Theatrical World, that he is authorised to sell By Public Auction, at the Mart, On Thursday next, the twentieth of June, at twelve, The Olympic Theatre, which for so many years Possessed a kindly feeling with the Public, And has, for many seasons past, assumed An unparalleled altitude in theatricals, since It was fortunately demised to Madame Vestris; Who, albeit, not content to move at the slow rate Of bygone time, gave to it a spirit and a Consequence, that the march of improvement And her own consummate taste and judgment Had conceived. To crown her laudable efforts With unquestionable success, she has caused To be completed (with the exception of St. James's) THE MOST SPLENDID LITTLE THEATRE IN EUROPE; Has given to the entertainments a new life; Has infused so much of her own special tact, That it now claims to be one of the most FAMED OF THE METROPOLITAN THEATRES. Indeed, It is a fact that will always remain on record, That amid the vicissitudes of all other theatrical Establishments, with Madame at its head, success has Never been equivocal for a moment, and the Receipts have for years past averaged nearly As much as the patent theatres. The boxes are In such high repute, that double the present low Rental is available by this means alone. Madame Vestris has a lease for three more seasons at only one Thousand pounds a year," &c.

The sale itself is thus described by Mr. Grant, who writes as if he had been present:--"Mr. Robins," says Grant, "had exhausted the English language in commendation of that theatre; he made it as clear as any proposition in Euclid that Madame Vestris could not possibly succeed in Covent Garden; that, in fact, she could succeed in no other house than the Olympic; and that consequently the purchaser was quite sure of her as a tenant as long as he chose to let the theatre to her. He proved to demonstration that the theatre would always fill, no matter who should be the lessee; and that consequently it would prove a perfect mine of wealth to the lucky gentleman who was sufficiently alive to his own interests to become the purchaser. By means of such representations, made in a way and with an ingenuity peculiar to himself, Mr. Robins had got the biddings up from the starting sum, which was £3,000, to £3,400. There, however, the aspirants to the property came to what Mr. Robins called a dead stop. For at least three or four minutes he put his ingenuity to the rack in lavishing encomiums on the property, without his zeal and eloquence being rewarded by a single new bidding. It was at this extremity--and he never resorts to the expedient until the bidders have reached what they themselves at the time conceive to be the highest point--it was at this crisis of the Olympic, Mr. Robins, causing the hammer to descend in the manner I have described, and accompanying the slow and solemn movement with a 'Going--going--go----,' that the then highest bidder exclaimed, 'The theatre is mine!' and at which Mr. Robins, apostrophising him in his own bland and fascinating manner, remarked, 'I don't wonder, my friend, that your anxiety to possess the property at such a price should anticipate my decision; but,' looking round the audience and smiling, as if he congratulated them on the circumstance, 'it is still in the market, gentlemen: you have still an opportunity of making your fortunes without risk or trouble.' The bidding that instant re-commenced, and proceeded more briskly than ever. It eventually reached £5,850, at which sum the theatre was 'knocked down.'"

St. Bartholomew's behind the Exchange was built in 1438. Stow gives the following strange epitaph, date 1615:--

Here lyes a Margarite that most excell'd (Her father Wyts, her mother Lichterveld, Rematcht with Metkerke) of remarke for birth, But much more gentle for her genuine worth; Wyts (rarest) Jewell (so her name bespeakes) In pious, prudent, peaceful, praise-full life, Fitting a Sara and a Sacred's wife, Such as Saravia and (her second) Hill, Whose joy of life, Death in her death did kill.

Quam pie obiit, Puerpera, Die 29, Junii, Anno Salutis 1615. Ætatis 39.

From my sad cradle to my sable chest, Poore Pilgrim, I did find few months of rest. In Flanders, Holland, Zeland, England, all, To Parents, troubles, and to me did fall. These made me pious, patient, modest, wise; And, though well borne, to shun the gallants' guise; But now I rest my soule, where rest is found, My body here, in a small piece of ground, And from my Hill, that hill I have ascended, From whence (for me) my Saviour once descended.

Margarita, a Jewell. I, like a Jewell, tost by sea to land, Am bought by him, who weares me on his hand.

Margarita, Margareta. One night, two dreames Made two propheticals, Thine of thy coffin, Mine of thy funerals. If women all were like to thee, We men for wives should happy be.

The first stone of the Gresham Club House, No. 1, King William Street, corner of St. Swithin's Lane, was laid in 1844, the event being celebrated by a dinner at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street, the Lord Mayor, Sir William Magnay, in the chair. The club was at first under the presidency of John Abel Smith, Esq., M.P. The building was erected from the design of Mr. Henry Flower, architect.

After the expulsion of the Jews, the Lombards (or merchants of Genoa, Lucca, Florence, and Venice) succeeded them as the money-lenders and bankers of England. About the middle of the thirteenth century these Italians established themselves in Lombard Street, remitting money to Italy by bills of exchange, and transmitting to the Pope and Italian prelates their fees, and the incomes of their English benefices. Mr. Burgon has shown that to these industrious strangers we owe many of our commercial terms, such, for instance, as debtor, creditor, cash, usance, bank, bankrupt, journal, diary, ditto, and even our £ s. d., which originally stood for libri, soldi, and denari. In the early part of the fifteenth century we find these swarthy merchants advancing loans to the State, and having the customs mortgaged to them by way of security. Pardons and holy wafers were also sold in this street before the Reformation.

One of the celebrated dwellers in mediæval Lombard Street was William de la Pole, father of Michael, Earl of Suffolk. He was king's merchant or factor to Edward III., and in 1338, at Antwerp, lent that warlike and extravagant monarch a sum equivalent to £400,000 of our current money. He received several munificent grants of Crown land, and was created chief baron of the exchequer and a knight banneret. He is always styled in public instruments "dilectus mercator et valectus noster." His son Michael, who died at the siege of Harfleur in 1415, succeeded to his father's public duties and his house in Lombard Street, near Birchin Lane. Michael's son fell at Agincourt. The last De la Pole was beheaded during the wars of the Roses.

About the date 1559, when Gresham was honoured by being sent as English ambassador to the court of the Duchess of Parma, he resided in Lombard Street. His shop (about the present No. 18) was distinguished by his father's crest--viz., a grasshopper. The original sign was seen by Pennant; and Mr. Burgon assures us that it continued in existence as late as 1795, being removed or stolen on the erection of the present building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker--a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon). After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, where he built Gresham House. It was a vulgar tradition of Elizabeth's time, according to Lodge, that Gresham was a foundling, and that an old woman who found him was attracted to the spot by the increased chirping of the grasshoppers. This story was invented, no doubt, to account for his crest.

During the first two years of Gresham's acting as the king's factor, he posted from Antwerp no fewer than forty times. Between the 1st of March, 1552, and the 27th of July his payments amounted to £106,301 4s. 4d.; his travelling expenses for riding in and out eight times, £102 10s., including a supper and a banquet to the Schetz and the Fuggers, the great banks with whom he had to transact business, £26 being equal, Mr. Burgon calculates, to £250 of the present value of money. The last-named feast must have been one of great magnificence, as the guests appear to have been not more than twenty. On such occasions Gresham deemed it policy to "make as good chere as he could."

He was living in Lombard Street, no doubt, at that eventful day when, being at the house of Mr. John Byvers, alderman, he promised that "within one month after the founding of the Burse he would make over the whole of the profits, in equal moities, to the City and the Mercers' Company, in case he should die childless;" and "for the sewer performance of the premysses, the said Sir Thomas, in the presens of the persons afore named, did give his house to Sir William Garrard, and drank a carouse to Thomas Rowe." This mirthful affair was considered of so much importance as to be entered on the books of the Corporation, solemnly commencing with the words, "Be it remembered, that the ixth day of February, in Anno Domini 1565," &c.

Gresham's wealth was made chiefly by trade with Antwerp. "The exports from Antwerp," says Burgon, "at that time consisted of jewels and precious stones, bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks, cloth of gold and silver, gold and silver thread, camblets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton, cummin, galls, linen, serges, tapestry, madder, hops in great quantities, glass, salt-fish, small wares (or, as they were then called, merceries), made of metal and other materials, to a considerable amount; arms, ammunition, and household furniture. From England Antwerp imported immense quantities of fine and coarse woollen goods, as canvas, frieze, &c, the finest wool, excellent saffron in small quantities, a great quantity of lead and tin, sheep and rabbit-skins, together with other kinds of peltry and leather; beer, cheese, and other provisions in great quantities, also Malmsey wines, which the English at that time obtained from Candia. Cloth was, however, by far the most important article of traffic between the two countries. The annual importation into Antwerp about the year 1568, including every description of cloth, was estimated at more than 200,000 pieces, amounting in value to upwards of 4,000,000 escus d'or, or about £1,200,000 sterling."

In the reign of Charles II. we find the "Grasshopper" in Lombard Street the sign of another wealthy goldsmith, Sir Charles Duncombe, the founder of the Feversham family, and the purchaser of Helmsley, in Yorkshire, the princely seat of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham:

"Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight, Yields to a scrivener and a City knight."

Here also resided Sir Robert Viner, the Lord Mayor of London in 1675, and apparently an especial favourite with Charles II.

The Post Office, Lombard Street, formerly the General Post Office, was originally built by "the great banquer," Sir Robert Viner, on the site of a noted tavern destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Here Sir Robert kept his mayoralty in 1675. Strype describes it as a very large and curious dwelling, with a handsome paved court, and behind it "a yard for stabling and coaches." The St. Martin's-le-Grand General Post Office was not opened till 1829.

"I have," says "Aleph," in the City Press, "a vivid recollection of Lombard Street in 1805. More than half a century has rolled away since then, yet there, sharply and clearly defined, before the eye of memory, stand the phantom shadows of the past. I walked through the street a few weeks ago. It is changed in many particulars; yet enough remains to identify it with the tortuous, dark vista of lofty houses which I remember so well. Then there were no pretentious, stucco-faced banks or offices; the whole wall-surface was of smoke-blacked brick; its colour seemed to imitate the mud in the road, and as coach, or wagon, or mail-cart toiled or rattled along, the basement storeys were bespattered freely from the gutters. The glories of gas were yet to be. After three o'clock p.m. miserable oil lamps tried to enliven the foggy street with their 'ineffectual light,' while through dingy, greenish squares of glass you might observe tall tallow candles dimly disclosing the mysteries of bank or counting-house. Passengers needed to walk with extreme caution; if you lingered on the pavement, woe to your corns; if you sought to cross the road, you had to beware of the flying postmen or the letter-bag express. As six o'clock drew near, every court, alley, and blind thoroughfare in the neighbourhood echoed to the incessant din of letter-bells. Men, women, and children were hurrying to the chief office, while the fiery-red battalion of postmen, as they neared the same point, were apparently well pleased to balk the diligence of the public, anxious to spare their coppers. The mother post-office for the United Kingdom and the Colonies was then in Lombard Street, and folks thought it was a model establishment. Such armies of clerks, such sacks of letters, and countless consignments of newspapers! How could those hard-worked officials ever get through their work? The entrance, barring paint and stucco, remains exactly as it was fifty years ago. What crowds used to besiege it! What a strange confusion of news-boys! The struggling public, with late letters; the bustling redcoats, with their leather bags, a scene of anxious life and interest seldom exceeded. And now the letter-boxes are all closed; you weary your knuckles in vain against the sliding door in the wall. No response. Every hand within is fully occupied in letter-sorting for the mails; they must be freighted in less than half an hour. Yet, on payment of a shilling for each, letters were received till ten minutes to eight, and not unfrequently a post-chaise, with the horses in a positive lather, tore into the street, just in time to forward some important despatch. Hark! The horn! the horn! The mail-guards are the soloists, and very pleasant music they discourse; not a few of them are first-rate performers. A long train of gaily got-up coaches, remarkable for their light weight, horsed by splendid-looking animals, impatient at the curb, and eager to commence their journey of ten miles (at least) an hour; stout 'gents,' in heavy coats, buttoned to the throat, esconce themselves in 'reserved seats.' Commercial men contest the right of a seat with the guard or coachman; some careful mother helps her pale, timid daughter up the steps; while a fat old lady already occupies two-thirds of the seat--what will be done? Bags of epistles innumerable stuff the boots; formidable bales of the daily journals are trampled small by the guard's heels. The clock will strike in less than five minutes; the clamour deepens, the hubbub seems increasing; but ere the last sixty seconds expire, a sharp winding of warning bugles begins. Coachee flourishes his whip, greys and chestnuts prepare for a run, the reins move, but very gently, there is a parting crack from the whipcord, and the brilliant cavalcade is gone--exeunt omnes! Lombard Street is a different place now, far more imposing, though still narrow and dark; the clean-swept roadway is paved with wood, cabs pass noiselessly--a capital thing, only take care you are not run over. Most of the banks and assurance offices have been converted into stone."

In Plough Court (No. 1), Lombard Street, Pope's father carried on the business of a linen merchant. "He was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands wholesale," as his widow informed Mr. Spence. His son claimed for him the honour of being sprung from gentle blood. When that gallant baron, Lord Hervey, vice-chamberlain in the court of George II., and his ally, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, disgraced themselves by inditing the verses containing this couplet--

"Whilst none thy crabbed numbers can endure, Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;"

Pope indignantly repelled the accusation as to his descent.

"I am sorry (he said) to be obliged to such a presumption as to name my family in the same leaf with your lordship's; but my father had the honour in one instance to resemble you, for he was a younger brother. He did not indeed think it a happiness to bury his elder brother, though he had one, who wanted some of those good qualities which yours possessed. How sincerely glad should I be to pay to that young nobleman's memory the debt I owed to his friendship, whose early death deprived your family of as much wit and honour as he left behind him in any branch of it. But as to my father, I could assure you, my lord, that he was no mechanic (neither a hatter, nor, which might please your lordship yet better, a cobbler), but, in truth, of a very tolerable family, and my mother of an ancient one, as well born and educated as that lady whom your lordship made use of to educate your own children, whose merit, beauty, and vivacity (if transmitted to your posterity) will be a better present than even the noble blood they derive from you. A mother, on whom I was never obliged so far to reflect as to say, she spoiled me; and a father, who never found himself obliged to say of me, that he disapproved my conduct. In a word, my lord, I think it enough, that my parents, such as they were, never cost me a blush; and that their son, such as he is, never cost them a tear."

The house of Pope's father was afterwards occupied by the well-known chemists, Allen, Hanbury, and Barry, a descendant of which firm still occupies it. Mr. William Allen was the son of a Quaker silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. He became chemical lecturer at Guy's Hospital, and an eminent experimentalist--discovering, among other things, the proportion of carbon in carbonic acid, and proving that the diamond was pure carbon. He was mainly instrumental in founding the Pharmaceutical Society, and distinguished himself by his zeal against slavery, and his interest in all benevolent objects. He died in 1843, at Lindfield, in Sussex, where he had founded agricultural schools of a thoroughly practical kind.

The church of St. Edmund King and Martyr (and St. Nicholas Acons), on the north side of Lombard Street, stands on the site of the old Grass Market. The only remarkable monument is that of Dr. Jeremiah Mills, who died in 1784, and had been President of the Society of Antiquaries many years. The local authorities have, with great good sense, written the duplex name of this church in clear letters over the chief entrance.

The date of the first building of St. Mary Woolnoth of the Nativity, in Lombard Street, seems to be very doubtful; nor does Stow help us to the origin of the name. By some antiquaries it has been suggested that the church was so called from being beneath or nigh to the wool staple. Mr. Gwilt suggests that it may have been called "Wool-nough," in order to distinguish it from the other church of St. Mary, where the wool-beam actually stood.

The first rector mentioned by Newcourt was John de Norton, presented previous to 1368. Sir Martin Bowes had the presentation of this church given him by Henry V., it having anciently belonged to the convent of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. From the Bowes's the presentation passed to the Goldsmiths' Company. Sir Martin Bowes was buried here, and so were many of the Houblons, a great mercantile family, on one of whom Pepys wrote an epitaph. Munday particularly mentions that the wills of several benefactors of St. Mary's were carefully preserved and exhibited in the church. Strype also mentions a monument to Sir William Phipps, that lucky speculator who, in 1687, extracted £300,000 from the wreck of a Spanish plate-vessel off the Bahama bank. Simon Eyre, the old founder of Leadenhall Market, was buried in this church in 1549.

Sir Hugh Brice, goldsmith and mayor, governor of the Mint in the reign of Henry VII., built or rebuilt part of the church, and raised a steeple. The church was almost totally destroyed in the Great Fire, and repaired by Wren. Sir Robert Viner, the famous goldsmith, contributed largely towards the rebuilding, "a memorial whereof," says Strype, "are the vines that adorn and spread about that part of the church that fronts his house and the street; insomuch, that the church was used to be called Sir Robert Viner's church." Wren's repairs having proved ineffectual, the church was rebuilt in 1727. The workmen, twenty feet under the ruins of the steeple, discovered bones, tusks, Roman coins, and a vast number of broken Roman pottery. It is generally thought by antiquaries that a temple dedicated to Concord once stood here. Hawksmoor, the architect of St. Mary Woolnoth, was born the year of the Great Fire, and died in 1736. He acted as Wren's deputy during the erection of the Hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich, and also in the building of most of the City churches. The principal works of his own design are Christ Church, Spitalfields, St. Anne's, Limehouse, and St. George's, Bloomsbury. Mr. J. Godwin, an excellent authority, calls St. Mary Woolnoth "one of the most striking and original, although not the most beautiful, churches in the metropolis."

On the north side of the communion-table is a plain tablet in memory of that excellent man, the Rev. John Newton, who was curate of Olney, Bucks, for sixteen years, and rector of the united parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch twenty-eight years. He died on the 21st of December, 1807, aged eighty-two years, and was buried in a vault in this church.

On the stone is the following inscription, full of Christian humility:--

"John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy."

Newton's father was master of a merchant-ship, and Newton's youth was spent in prosecuting the African slave-trade, a career of which he afterwards bitterly repented. He is best known as the writer (in conjunction with the poet Cowper) of the "Olney Hymns."

The exterior of this church is praised by competent authorities for its boldness and originality, though some critic says that the details are ponderous enough for a fortress or a prison. The elongated tower, from the arrangement of the small chimney-like turrets at the top, has the appearance of being two towers united. Dallaway calls it an imitation of St. Sulpice, at Paris; but unfortunately Servandoni built St. Sulpice some time after St. Mary Woolnoth was completed. Mr. Godwin seems to think Hawksmoor followed Vanbrugh's manner in the heaviness of his design.

St. Clement's Church, Clement's Lane, Lombard Street, sometimes called St. Clement's, Eastcheap, is noted by Newcourt as existing as early as 1309. The rectory belonged to Westminster Abbey, but was given by Queen Mary to the Bishop of London and his successors for ever. After the Great Fire, when the church was destroyed, the parish of St. Martin Orgar was united to that of St. Clement's. The parish seem to have been pleased with Wren's exertions in rebuilding, for in their register books for 1685 there is the following item:--"To one-third of a hogshead of wine, given to Sir Christopher Wren, £4 2s."

One of the rectors of St. Clement's, Dr. Benjamin Stone, who had been presented to the living by Bishop Juxon, being deemed too Popish by Cromwell, was imprisoned for some time at Crosby Hall. From thence he was sent to Plymouth, where, after paying a fine of £60, he obtained his liberty. On the restoration of Charles II., Stone recovered his benefice, but died five years after. In this church Bishop Pearson, then rector, delivered his celebrated sermons on the Creed, which he afterwards turned into his excellent Exposition, a text-book of English divinity, which he dedicated "to the right worshipful and well-beloved, the parishioners of St. Clement's, Eastcheap."

The interior is a parallelogram, with the addition of a south aisle, introduced in order to disguise the intrusion of the tower, which stands at the south-west angle of the building. The ceiling is divided into panels, the centre one being a large oval band of fruit and flowers.

The pulpit and desk, as well as the large sounding-board above them, are very elaborately carved; and a marble font standing in the south aisle has an oak cover of curious design. Among many mural tablets are three which have been erected at the cost of the parishioners, commemorative of the Rev. Thomas Green, curate twenty-seven years, who died in 1734; the Rev. John Farrer, rector (1820); and the Rev. W. Valentine Ireson, who was lecturer of the united parishes thirty years, and died in 1822.

In digging a new sewer in Lombard Street a few years ago (says Pennant, writing in 1790), the remains of a Roman road were discovered, with numbers of coins, and several antique curiosities, some of great elegance. The beds through which the workmen sunk were four. The first consisted of factitious earth, about thirteen feet six inches thick, all accumulated since the desertion of the ancient street; the second of brick, two feet thick, the ruins of the buildings; the third of ashes, only three inches; the fourth of Roman pavement, both common and tessellated, over which the coins and other antiquities were discovered. Beneath that was the original soil. The predominant articles were earthenware, and several were ornamented in the most elegant manner. A vase of red earth had on its surface a representation of a fight of men, some on horseback, others on foot; or perhaps a show of gladiators, as they all fought in pairs, and many of them naked. The combatants were armed with falchions and small round shields, in the manner of the Thracians, the most esteemed of the gladiators. Some had spears, and others a kind of mace. A beautiful running foliage encompassed the bottom of this vessel. On the fragment of another were several figures. Among them appears Pan with his pedum, or crook; and near to him one of the lascivi Satyri, both in beautiful skipping attitudes. On the same piece are two tripods; round each is a serpent regularly twisted, and bringing its head over a bowl which fills the top. These seem (by the serpent) to have been dedicated to Apollo, who, as well as his son Æsculapius, presided over medicine. On the top of one of the tripods stands a man in full armour. Might not this vessel have been votive, made by order of a soldier restored to health by favour of the god, and to his active powers and enjoyment of rural pleasures, typified under the form of Pan and his nimble attendants? A plant extends along part of another compartment, possibly allusive to their medical virtues; and, to show that Bacchus was not forgotten, beneath lies a thyrsus with a double head.

On another bowl was a free pattern of foliage. On others, or fragments, were objects of the chase, such as hares, part of a deer, and a boar, with human figures, dogs, and horses; all these pieces prettily ornamented. There were, besides, some beads, made of earthenware, of the same form as those called the ovum anguinum, and, by the Welsh, glain naidr; and numbers of coins in gold, silver, and brass, of Claudius, Nero, Galba, and other emperors down to Constantine.

St. Mary Abchurch was destroyed by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1686. Maitland says, "And as to this additional appellation of Ab, or Up-church, I am at as great a loss in respect to its meaning, as I am to the time when the church was at first founded; but, as it appears to have anciently stood on an eminence, probably that epithet was conferred upon it in regard to the church of St. Lawrence Pulteney, situate below."

Stow gives one record of St. Mary Abchurch, which we feel a pleasure in chronicling:--"This dame Helen Branch, buried here, widow of Sir John Branch, Knt., Lord Mayor of London, an. 1580, gave £50 to be lent to young men of the Company of Drapers, from four years to four years, for ever, £50. Which lady gave also to poor maids' marriages, £10. To the poor of Abchurch, £10. To the poor prisoners in and about London, £20. Besides, for twenty-six gowns to poor men and women, £26. And many other worthy legacies to the Universities."

The pulpit and sounding-board are of oak, and the font has a cover of the same material, presenting carved figures of the four Evangelists within niches. On the south side of the church is an elaborate monument of marble, part of which is gilt, consisting of twisted columns supporting a circular pediment, drapery, cherubim, &c, to Mr. Edward Sherwood, who died January 5th, 1690; and near it is a second, in memory of Sir Patience Ward, Knt., Alderman, and Lord Mayor of London in 1681. He died on the 10th of July, 1696. The east end of the church is in Abchurch Lane, and the south side faces an open paved space, divided from the lane by posts. This was formerly enclosed as a burial-ground, but was thrown open for the convenience of the neighbourhood.

The present church was completed from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1686. In the interior it is nearly square, being about sixty-five feet long, and sixty feet wide. The walls are plain, having windows in the south side and at the east end to light the church. The area of the church is covered by a large and handsome cupola, supported on a modillion cornice, and adorned with paintings which were executed by Sir James Thornhill; and in the lower part of this also are introduced other lights. "The altar-piece," says Mr. G. Godwin, "presents four Corinthian columns, with entablature and pediment, grained to imitate oak, and has a carved figure of a pelican over the centre compartment. It is further adorned by a number of carved festoons of fruit and flowers, which are so exquisitely executed, that if they were a hundred miles distant, we will venture to say they would have many admiring visitants from London. These carvings, by Grinling Gibbons, were originally painted after nature by Sir James. They were afterwards covered with white paint, and at this time they are, in common with the rest of the screen, of the colour of oak. Fortunately, however, these proceedings, which must have tended to fill up the more delicately carved parts, and to destroy the original sharpness of the lines, have not materially injured their general effect."

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XLVII. THREADNEEDLE STREET

The Centre of Roman London--St. Benet Fink--The Monks of St. Anthony--The Merchant Taylors--Stow, Antiquary and Tailor--A Magnificent Roll--The Good Deeds of the Merchant Taylors--The Old and the Modern Merchant Taylors' Hall--"Concordia parvæ res crescunt"--Henry VII. enrolled as a Member of the Taylors' Company--A Cavalcade of Archers--The Hall of Commerce in Threadneedle Street--A Painful Reminiscence--The Baltic Coffee-house--St. Anthony's School--The North and South American Coffee-house--The South Sea House--History of the South Sea Bubble--Bubble Companies of the Period--Singular Infatuation of the Public--Bursting of the Bubble--Parliamentary Inquiry into the Company's Affairs--Punishment of the Chief Delinquents--Restoration of Public Credit--The Poets during the Excitement--Charles Lamb's Reverie.

In Threadneedle Street we stand in the centre of Roman London. In 1805 a tesselated pavement, now in the British Museum, was found at Lothbury. The Exchange stands, as we have already mentioned, on a mine of Roman remains. In 1840-41 tesselated pavements were found, about twelve or fourteen feet deep, beneath the old French Protestant Church, with coins of Agrippa, Claudius, Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, and the Constantines, together with fragments of frescoes, and much charcoal and charred barley. These pavements are also preserved in the British Museum. In 1854, in excavating the site of the church of St. Benet Fink, there was found a large deposit of Roman débris, consisting of Roman tiles, glass, and fragments of black, pale, and red Samian pottery.

The church of St. Benet Fink, of which a representation is given at page 468, was so called from one Robert Finck, or Finch, who built a previous church on the same site (destroyed by the Fire of 1666). It was completed by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1673, at the expense of £4,130, but was taken down in 1844. The tower was square, surmounted by a cupola of four sides, with a small turret on the top. There was a large recessed doorway on the north side, of very good design.

The arrangement of the body of the church was very peculiar, we may say unique; and although far from beautiful, afforded a striking instance of Wren's wonderful skill. The plan of the church was a decagon, within which six composite columns in the centre supported six semi-circular vaults. Wren's power of arranging a plan to suit the site was shown in numerous buildings, but in none more forcibly than in this small church.

"St. Benedict's," says Maitland, "is vulgarly Bennet Fink. Though this church is at present a donative, it was anciently a rectory, in the gift of the noble family of Nevil, who probably conferred the name upon the neighbouring hospital of St. Anthony."

Newcourt, who lived near St. Benet Fink, says the monks of the Order of St. Anthony hard by were so importunate in their requests for alms that they would threaten those who refused them with "St. Anthony's fire;" and that timid people were in the habit of presenting them with fat pigs, in order to retain their goodwill. Their pigs thus became numerous, and, as they were allowed to roam about for food, led to the proverb, "He will follow you like a St. Anthony's pig." Stow accounts for the number of these pigs in another way, by saying that when pigs were seized in the markets by the City officers, as ill-fed or unwholesome, the monks took possession of them, and tying a bell about their neck, allowed them to stroll about on the dunghills, until they became fit for food, when they were claimed for the convent.

The Merchant Taylors, whose hall is very appropriately situated in Threadneedle Street, had their first licence as "Linen Armourers" granted by Edward I. Their first master, Henry de Ryall, was called their "pilgrim," as one that travelled for the whole company, and their wardens "purveyors of dress." Their first charter is dated 1 Edward III. Richard II. confirmed his grandfather's grants. From Henry IV. they obtained a confirmatory charter by the name of the "Master and Wardens of the Fraternity of St. John the Baptist of London." Henry VI. gave them the right of search and correction of abuses. The society was incorporated in the reign of Edward IV., who gave them arms; and Henry VII., being a member of the Company, for their greater honour transformed them from Tailors and Linen Armourers to Merchant Taylors, giving them their present acting charter, which afterwards received the confirmation and inspeximus of five sovereigns--Henry VIII., Edward VI., Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, and James I.

There is no doubt (says Herbert) that Merchant Taylors were originally bonâ fide cutters-out and makers-up of clothes, or dealers in and importers of cloth, having tenter-grounds in Moorfields. The ancient London tailors made both men's and women's apparel, also soldiers' quilted surcoats, the padded lining of armour, and probably the trappings of war-horses. In the 27th year of Edward III. the Taylors contributed £20 towards the French wars, and in 1377 they sent six members to the Common Council, a number equalling (says Herbert) the largest guilds, and they were reckoned the seventh company in precedence. In 1483 we find the Merchant Taylors and Skinners disputing for precedence. The Lord Mayor decided they should take precedence alternately; and, further, most wisely and worshipfully decreed that each Company should dine in the other's hall twice a year, on the vigil of Corpus Christi and the feast of St. John Baptist--a laudable custom, which soon restored concord. In 1571 there is a precept from the Mayor ordering that ten men of this Company and ten men of the Vintners' should ward each of the City gates every tenth day. In 1579 the Company was required to provide and train 200 men for arms. In 1586 the master and wardens are threatened by the Mayor for not making the provision of gunpowder required of all the London companies. In 1588 the Company had to furnish thirty-five armed men, as its quota for the Queen's service against the dreaded Spanish Armada.

In 1592 an interesting entry records Stow (a tailor and member of the Company) presenting his famous "Annals" to the house, and receiving in consequence an annuity of £4 per annum, eventually raised to £10. The Company afterwards restored John Stow's monument in the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft. Speed, also a tailor and member of the Company, on the same principle, seems to have presented the society with valuable maps, for which, in 1600, curtains were provided. In 1594 the Company subscribed £50 towards a pest-house, the plague then raging in the City, and the same year contributed £296 10s. towards six ships and a pinnace fitted out for her Majesty's service.

In 1603 the Company contributed £234 towards the £2,500 required from the London companies to welcome James I. and his Danish queen to England. Six triumphal arches were erected between Fenchurch Street and Temple Bar, that in Fleet Street being ninety feet high and fifty broad. Decker and Ben Jonson furnished the speeches and songs for this pageant. June 7, 1607, was one of the grandest days the Company has ever known; for James I. and his son, Prince Henry, dined with the Merchant Taylors. It had been at first proposed to train some boys of Merchant Taylors' School to welcome the king, but Ben Jonson was finally invited to write an entertainment. The king and prince dined separately. The master presented the king with a purse of £100. "Richard Langley shewed him a role, wherein was registered the names of seaven kinges, one queene, seventeene princes and dukes, two dutchesses, one archbishoppe, one and thirtie earles, five countesses, one viscount, fourteene byshoppes, sixtie and sixe barons, two ladies, seaven abbots, seaven priors, and one sub-prior, omitting a great number of knights, esquires, &c., who had been free of that companie." The prince was then made a freeman, and put on the garland. There were twelve lutes (six in one window and six in another).

"In the ayr betweene them" (or swung up above their heads) "was a gallant shippe triumphant, wherein was three menne like saylers, being eminent for voyce and skill, who in their severall songes were assisted and seconded by the cunning lutanists. There was also in the hall the musique of the cittie, and in the upper chamber the children of His Majestie's Chappell sang grace at the King's table; and also whilst the King sate at dinner John Bull, Doctor of Musique, one of the organists of His Majestie's Chapell Royall, being in a cittizen's cap and gowne, cappe and hood (i.e., as a liveryman), played most excellent melodie uppon a small payre of organes, placed there for that purpose onely."

The king seems at this time to have scarcely recovered the alarm of the Gunpowder Plot; for the entries in the Company's books show that there was great searching of rooms and inspection of walls, "to prevent villanie and danger to His Majestie." The cost of this feast was more than £1,000. The king's chamber was made by cutting a hole in the wall of the hall, and building a small room behind it.

In 1607 (James I.), before a Company's dinner, the names of the livery were called, and notice taken of the absent. Then prayer was said, every one kneeling, after which the names of benefactors and their "charitable and godly devices" were read, also the ordinances, and the orders for the grammar-school in St. Laurence Pountney. Then followed the dinner, to which were invited the assistants and the ladies, and old masters' wives and wardens' wives, the preacher, the schoolmaster, the wardens' substitutes, and the humble almsmen of the livery. Sometimes, as in 1645, the whole livery was invited.

The kindness and charity of the Company are strongly shown in an entry of May 23, 1610, when John Churchman, a past master, received a pension of £20 per annum. With true consideration, they allowed him to wear his bedesman's gown without a badge, and did not require him to appear in the hall with the other pensioners. All that was required was that he should attend Divine service and pray for the prosperity of the Company, and share his house with Roger Silverwood, clerk of the Bachellors' Company. Gifts to the Company seem to have been numerous. Thus we have (1604) Richard Dove's gift of twenty gilt spoons, marked with a dove; (1605) a basin and ewer, value £59 12s., gift of Thomas Medlicott; (1614) a standing cup, value 100 marks, from Murphy Corbett; same year, seven pictures for the parlour, from Mr. John Vernon.

In 1640 the Civil War was brewing, and the Mayor ordered the Company to provide (in their garden) forty barrels of powder and 300 hundredweight of metal and bullets. They had at this time in their armoury forty muskets and rests, forty muskets and headpieces, twelve round muskets, forty corselets with headpieces, seventy pikes, 123 swords, and twenty-three halberts. The same year they lent £5,000 towards the maintenance of the king's northern army. In the procession on the return of Charles I. from Scotland, the Merchant Taylors seem to have taken a very conspicuous part. Thirty-four of the gravest, tallest, and most comely of the Company, apparelled in velvet plush or satin, with chains of gold, each with a footman with two staff-torches, met the Lord Mayor and aldermen outside the City wall, near Moorfields, and accompanied them to Guildhall, and afterwards escorted the king from Guildhall to his palace. The footmen wore ribands of the colour of the Company, and pendants with the Company's coat-of-arms. The Company's standing extended 252 feet. There stood the livery in their best gowns and hoods, with their banners and streamers. "Eight handsome, tall, and able men" attended the king at dinner. This was the last honour shown the faithless king by the citizens of London.

The next entries are about arms, powder, and fire-engines, the defacing superstitious pictures, and the setting up the arms of the Commonwealth. In 1654 the Company was so impoverished by the frequent forced loans, that they had been obliged to sell part of their rental (£180 per annum); yet at the same date the generous Company seem to have given the poet Ogilvy £13 6s. 8d., he having presented them with bound copies of his translations of Virgil and Æsop into English metre. In 1664 the boys of Merchant Taylors' School acted in the Company's hall Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of Love's Pilgrimage.

In 1679 the Duke of York, as Captain-general of the Artillery, was entertained by the artillerymen at Merchant Taylors' Hall. It was supposed that the banquet was given to test the duke's popularity and to discomfit the Protestants and exclusionists. After a sermon at Bow Church, the artillerymen (128) mustered at dinner. Many zealous Protestants, rather than dine with a Popish duke, tore up their tickets or gave them to porters and mechanics; and as the duke returned along Cheapside, the people shouted, "No Pope, no Pope! No Papist, no Papist!"

In 1696 the Company ordered a portrait of Mr. Vernon, one of their benefactors, to be hung up in St. Michael's Church, Cornhill. In 1702 they let their hall and rooms to the East India Company for a meeting; and in 1721 they let a room to the South Sea Company for the same purpose. In 1768, when the Lord Mayor visited the King of Denmark, the Company's committee decided, "there should be no breakfast at the hall, nor pipes nor tobacco in the barge as usual, on Lord Mayor's Day." Mr. Herbert thinks that this is the last instance of a Lord Mayor sending a precept to a City company, though this is by no means certain. In 1778, Mr. Clarkson, an assistant, for having given the Company the picture, still extant, of Henry VII. delivering his charter to the Merchant Taylors, was presented with a silver waiter, value £25.

For the searching and measuring cloth, the Company kept a "silver yard," that weighed thirty-six ounces, and was graven with the Company's arms. With this measure they attended Bartholomew Fair yearly, and an annual dinner took place on the occasion. The livery hoods seem finally, in 1568, to have settled down to scarlet and puce, the gowns to blue. The Merchant Taylors' Company, though not the first in City precedence, ranks more royal and noble personages amongst its members than any other company. At King James's visit, before mentioned, no fewer than twenty-two earls and lords, besides knights, esquires, and foreign ambassadors, were enrolled. Before 1708, the Company had granted the freedom to ten kings, three princes, twenty-seven bishops, twenty-six dukes, forty-seven earls, and sixteen lord mayors. The Company is specially proud of three illustrious members--Sir John Hawkwood, a great leader of Italian Condottieri, who fought for the Dukes of Milan, and was buried with honour in the Duomo at Florence; Sir Ralph Blackwell, the supposed founder of Blackwell Hall, and one of Hawkwood's companions at arms; and Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord High Admiral to Henry VIII., and Earl of Southampton. He left to the Merchant Taylors his best standing cup, "in friendly remembrance of him for ever." They also boast of Sir William Craven, ancestor of the Earls of Craven, who came up to London a poor Yorkshire lad, and was bound apprentice to a draper. His eldest son fought for Gustavus Adolphus, and is supposed to have secretly married the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, whom he had so faithfully served.

The hall in Threadneedle Street originally belonged to a worshipful gentleman named Edmund Crepin. The Company moved there in 1331 (Edward III.) from the old hall, which was behind the "Red Lion," in Basing Lane, Cheapside, an executor of the Outwich family leaving them the advowson of St. Martin Outwich, and seventeen shops. The Company built seven almshouses near the hall in the reign of Henry IV. The original mansion of Crepin probably at this time gave way to a new hall, and to which now, for the first time, were attached the almshouses mentioned. Both these piles of building are shown in the ancient plan of St. Martin Outwich, preserved in the church vestry, and which was taken by William Goodman in 1599. The hall, as there drawn, is a high building, consisting of a ground floor and three upper storeys. It has a central pointed-arched gate of entrance, and is lighted in front by nine large windows, exclusive of three smaller attic windows, and at the east end by seven. The roof is lofty and pointed, and is surmounted by a louvre or lantern, with a vane. The almshouses form a small range of cottage-like buildings, and are situate between the hall and a second large building, which adjoins the church, and bears some resemblance to an additional hall or chapel. It appears to rise alternately from one to two storeys high.

In 1620 the hall was wainscoted instead of whitewashed; and in 1646 it was paved with red tile, rushes or earthen floors having "been found inconvenient, and oftentimes noisome." At the Great Fire the Company's plate was melted into a lump of two hundred pounds' weight.

In the reign of Edward VI., when there was an inquiry into property devoted to superstitious uses, the Company had been maintaining twenty-three chantry priests.

The modern Merchant Taylors' Hall (says Herbert) is a spacious but irregular edifice of brick. The front exhibits an arched portal, consisting of an arched pediment, supported on columns of the Composite order, with an ornamental niche above; in the pediment are the Company's arms. The hall itself is a spacious and handsome apartment, having at the lower end a stately screen of the Corinthian order, and in the upper part a very large mahogany table thirty feet long. The sides of the hall have numerous emblazoned shields of masters' arms, and behind the master's seat are inscribed in golden letters the names of the different sovereigns, dukes, earls, lords spiritual and temporal, &c., who have been free of this community. In the drawing-room are full-length portraits of King William and Queen Mary, and other sovereigns; and in the court and other rooms are half-lengths of Henry VIII. and Charles II., of tolerable execution, besides various other portraits, amongst which are those of Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor in 1553, the estimable founder of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Sir Thomas Rowe, Lord Mayor in 1568, and Mr. Clarkson's picture of Henry VII. presenting the Company with their incorporation charter. In this painting the king is represented seated on his throne, and delivering the charter to the Master, Wardens, and Court of Assistants of the Company. His attendants are Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor, and Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Privy Seal, on his right hand; and on his left, Robert Willoughby, Lord Broke, then Lord Steward of the Household. In niches are shown the statues of Edward III. and John of Gaunt, the king's ancestors. In the foreground the clerk of the Company is exhibiting the roll with the names of the kings, &c., who were free of this Company. In the background are represented the banners of the Company and of the City of London. The Yeomen of the Guard, at the entrance of the palace, close the view. On the staircase are likewise pictures of the following Lord Mayors, Merchant Taylors:--Sir William Turner, 1669; Sir P. Ward, 1681; Sir William Pritchard, 1683; and Sir John Salter, 1741.

The interior of the "New Hall, or Taylors' Inne," was adorned with costly tapestry, or arras, representing the history of St. John the Baptist. It had a screen, supporting a silver image of that saint in a tabernacle, or, according to an entry of 1512, "an ymage of St. John gilt, in a tabernacle gilt." The hall windows were painted with armorial bearings; the floor was regularly strewed with clean rushes; from the ceiling hung silk flags and streamers; and the hall itself was furnished, when needful, with tables on tressels, covered on feast days with splendid table linen, and glittering with plate.

The Merchant Taylors have for their armorial ensigns--Argent, a tent royal between two parliament robes; gules, lined ermine, on a chief azure, a lion of England. Crest--a Holy Lamb, in glory proper. Supporters--two camels, or. Motto--"Concordia parvæ res crescunt."

The stained glass windows of the old St. Martin Outwich, as engraven in Wilkinson's history of that church, contain a representation of the original arms, granted by Clarencieux in 1480. They differ from the present (granted in 1586), the latter having a lion instead of the Holy Lamb (which is in the body of the first arms), and which latter is now their crest.

One of the most splendid sights at this hall in the earlier times would have been (says Herbert), of course, when the Company received the high honour of enrolling King Henry VII. amongst their members; and subsequently to which, "he sat openly among them in a gown of crimson velvet on his shoulders," says Strype, "à la mode de Londres, upon their solemn feast day, in the hall of the said Company."

From Merchant Taylors' Hall began the famous cavalcade of the archers, under their leader, as Duke of Shoreditch, in 1530, consisting of 3,000 archers, sumptuously apparelled, 942 whereof wore chains of gold about their necks. This splendid company was guarded by whifflers and billmen, to the number of 4,000, besides pages and footmen, who marched through Broad Street (the residence of the duke their captain). They continued their march through Moorfields, by Finsbury, to Smithfield, where, after having performed their several evolutions, they shot at the target for glory.

The Hall of Commerce, existing some years ago in Threadneedle Street, was begun in 1830 by Mr. Edward Moxhay, a speculative biscuit-baker, on the site of the old French church. Mr. Moxhay had been a shoemaker, but he suddenly started as a rival to the celebrated Leman, in Gracechurch Street. He was an amateur architect of talent, and it was said at the time, probably unjustly, that the building originated in Moxhay's vexation at the Gresham committee rejecting his design for a new Royal Exchange. He opened his great commercial news-room two years before the Exchange was finished, and while merchants were fretting at the delay, intending to make the hall a mercantile centre, to the annihilation of Lloyd's, the Baltic, Garraway's, the Jerusalem, and the North and South American Coffee-houses. £70,000 were laid out. There was a grand bas-relief on the front by Mr. Watson, a young sculptor of promise, and there was an inaugurating banquet. The annual subscription of £5 5s. soon dwindled to £1 10s. 6d. There was a reading-room, and a room where commission agents could exhibit their samples. Wool sales were held there, and there was an auction for railway shares. There were also rooms for meetings of creditors and private arbitrations, and rooms for the deposit of deeds.

A describer of Threadneedle Street in 1845 particularly mentions amongst the few beggars the Creole flower-girls, the decayed ticket-porters, and cripples on go-carts who haunted the neighbourhood, a poor, shrivelled old woman, who sold fruit on a stall at a corner of one of the courts. She was the wife of Daniel Good, the murderer.

The Baltic Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street, used to be the rendezvous of tallow, oil, hemp, and seed merchants; indeed, of all merchants and brokers connected with the Russian trade. There was a time when there was as much gambling in tallow as in Consols, but the breaking down of the Russian monopoly by the increased introduction of South American and Australian tallow has done away with this. Mr. Richard Thornton and Mr. Jeremiah Harman were the two monarchs of the Russian trade forty years ago. The public sale-room was in the upper part of the house. The Baltic was superintended by a committee of management.

That famous free school of the City, St. Anthony's, stood in Threadneedle Street, where the French church afterwards stood, and where the Bank of London now stands. It was originally a Jewish synagogue, granted by Henry V. to the brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienna. A hospital was afterwards built there for a master, two priests, a schoolmaster, and twelve poor men. The Free School seems to have been built in the reign of Henry VI., who gave five presentations to Eton and five Oxford scholarships, at the rate of ten francs a week each, to the institution. Henry VIII., that arch spoliator, annexed the school to the collegiate church of St. George's, Windsor. The proctors of St. Anthony's used to wander about London collecting "the benevolence of charitable persons towards the building." The school had great credit in Elizabeth's reign, and was a rival of St. Paul's. That inimitable coxcomb, Laneham, in his description of the great visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle, 1575, a book which Sir Walter Scott has largely availed himself of, says--"Yee mervail perchance," saith he, "to see me so bookish. Let me tel you in few words. I went to school, forsooth, both at Polle's and also at St. Antonie's; (was) in the fifth forme, past Esop's Fables, readd Terence, Vos isthæc intro auferte; and began with my Virgil, Tityre tu patulæ. I could say my rules, could construe and pars with the best of them," &c.

In Elizabeth's reign "the Anthony's pigs," as the "Paul's pigeons" used to call the Threadneedle boys, used to have an annual breaking-up day procession, with streamers, flags, and beating drums, from Mile End to Austin Friars. The French or Walloon church established here by Edward VI. seems, in 1652, to have been the scene of constant wrangling among the pastors, as to whether their disputes about celebrating holidays should be settled by "colloquies" of the foreign churches in London, or the French churches of all England. At this school were educated the great Sir Thomas More, and that excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, the zealous Whitgift (the friend of Beza, the Reformer), whose only fault seems to have been his persecutions of the Genevese clergy whom Elizabeth disliked.

Next in importance to Lloyd's for the general information afforded to the public, was certainly the North and South American Coffee House (formerly situated in Threadneedle Street), fronting the thoroughfare leading to the entrance of the Royal Exchange. This establishment was the complete centre for American intelligence. There was in this, as in the whole of the leading City coffee-houses, a subscription room devoted to the use of merchants and others frequenting the house, who, by paying an annual sum, had the right of attendance to read the general news of the day, and make reference to the several files of papers, which were from every quarter of the globe. It was here also that first information could be obtained of the arrival and departure of the fleet of steamers, packets, and masters engaged in the commerce of America, whether in relation to the minor ports of Montreal and Quebec, or the larger ones of Boston, Halifax, and New York. The room the subscribers occupied had a separate entrance to that which was common to the frequenters of the eating and drinking part of the house, and was most comfortably and neatly kept, being well, and in some degree elegantly furnished. The heads of the chief American and Continental firms were on the subscription list; and the representatives of Baring's, Rothschild's, and the other large establishments celebrated for their wealth and extensive mercantile operations, attended the rooms as regularly as 'Change, to see and hear what was going on, and gossip over points of business.

At the north-east extremity of Threadneedle Street is the once famous South Sea House. The back, formerly the Excise Office, afterwards the South Sea Company's office, thence called the Old South Sea House, was consumed by fire in 1826. The building in Threadneedle Street, in which the Company's affairs were formerly transacted, is a magnificent structure of brick and stone, about a quadrangle, supported by stone pillars of the Tuscan order, which form a fine piazza. The front looks into Threadneedle Street, the walls being well built and of great thickness. The several offices were admirably disposed; the great hall for sales, the dining-room, galleries, and chambers were equally beautiful and convenient. Under these were capacious arched vaults, to guard what was valuable from the chances of fire.

The South Sea Company was originated by Swift's friend, Harley, Earl of Oxford, in the year 1711. The new Tory Government was less popular than the Whig one it had displaced, and public credit had fallen. Harley wishing to provide for the discharge of ten millions of the floating debt, guaranteed six per cent. to a company who agreed to take it on themselves. The £600,000 due for the annual interest was raised by duties on wines, silks, tobacco, &c.; and the monopoly of the trade to the South Seas granted to the ambitious new Company, which was incorporated by Act of Parliament.

To the enthusiastic Company the gold of Mexico and the silver of Peru seemed now obtainable by the ship-load. It was reported that Spain was willing to open four ports in Chili and Peru. The negotiations, however, with Philip V. of Spain led to little. The Company obtained only the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves for thirty years, and sending an annual vessel to trade; but even of this vessel the Spanish king was to have one-fourth of the profits, and a tax of five per cent. on the residue. The first vessel did not sail till 1717, and the year after a rupture with Spain closed the trade.

In 1717, the King alluding to his wish to reduce the National Debt, the South Sea Company at once petitioned Parliament (in rivalry with the Bank) that their capital stock might be increased from ten millions to twelve, and offered to accept five, instead of six per cent. upon the whole amount. Their proposals were accepted.

The success of Law's Mississippi scheme, in 1720, roused the South Sea directory to emulation. They proposed to liquidate the public debt by reducing the various funds into one. January 22, 1720, a committee met on the subject. The South Sea Company offered to melt every kind of stock into a single security. The debt amounted to £30,981,712 at five per cent. for seven years, and afterwards at four per cent, for which they would Pay £3,500,000. The Government approved of the scheme, but the Bank of England opposed it, and offered £5,000,000 for the privilege. The South Sea shareholders were not to be outdone, and ultimately increased their terms to £7,500,000. In the end they remained the sole bidders; though some idea prevailed of sharing the advantage between the two companies, till Sir John Blunt exclaimed, "No, sirs, we'll never divide the child!" The preference thus given excited a positive frenzy in town and country. On the 2nd of June their stock rose to 890; it quickly reached 1,000, and several of the principal managers were dubbed baronets for their "great services." Mysterious rumours of vast treasures to be acquired in the South Seas got abroad, and 50 per cent. was boldly promised.

"The scheme," says Smollett, "was first projected by Sir John Blount, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility, and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Secretary of State. He answered every objection, and the project was adopted."

Sir Robert Walpole alone opposed the bill in the House, and with clear-sighted sense (though the stock had risen from 130 to 300 in one day) denounced "the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and the general infatuation, which must," he said, "end in general ruin." Rumours of free trade with Spain pushed the shares up to 400, and the bill passed the Commons by a majority of 172 against 55. In the other House, 17 peers were against it, and 83 for it. Then the madness fairly began. Stars and garters mingled with squabbling Jews, and great ladies pawned their jewels in order to gamble in the Alley. The shares sinking a little, they were revived by lying rumours that Gibraltar and Port Mahon were going to be exchanged for Peruvian sea-ports, so that the Company would be allowed to send out whole fleets of ships.

Government, at last alarmed, began too late to act. On July 18 the King published a proclamation denouncing eighteen petitions for letters patent and eighty-six bubble companies, of which the following are samples:--

For sinking pits and smelting lead ore in Derbyshire. For making glass bottles and other glass. For a wheel for perpetual motion. Capital £1,000,000. For improving of gardens. For insuring and increasing children's fortunes. For entering and loading goods at the Custom House; and for negotiating business for merchants. For carrying on a woollen manufacture in the North of England. For importing walnut-trees from Virginia. Capital £2,000,000. For making Manchester stuffs of thread and cotton. For making Joppa and Castile soap. For improving the wrought iron and steel manufactures of this kingdom. Capital £4,000,000. For dealing in lace, Hollands, cambrics, lawns, &c. Capital £2,000,000. For trading in and improving certain commodities of the produce of this kingdom, &c. Capital £3,000,000. For supplying the London markets with cattle. For making looking-glasses, coach-glasses, &c. Capital £2,000,000. For taking up ballast. For buying and fitting out ships to suppress pirates. For the importation of timber from Wales. Capital £2,000,000. For rock-salt. For the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable, fine metal.

One of the most famous bubbles was "Puckle's Machine Company," for discharging round and square cannon-balls and bullets, and making a total revolution in the art of war. "But the most absurd and preposterous of all," says Charles Mackay, in his "History of the Delusion," "and which showed more completely than any other the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled, 'A Company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.' Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was £500,000, in 5,000 shares of £100 each, deposit £2 per share. Each subscriber paying his deposit would be entitled to £100 per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained he did not condescend to inform them at the time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining £98 of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door; and when he shut up at three o'clock he found that no less than 1,000 shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus in five hours the winner of £2,000. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again."

Another fraud that was very successful was that of the "Globe Permits," as they were called. They were nothing more than square pieces of playing cards, on which was the impression of a seal, in wax, bearing the sign of the "Globe Tavern," in the neighbourhood of Exchange Alley, with the inscription of "Sail-cloth Permits." The possessors enjoyed no other advantage from them than permission to subscribe at some future time to a new sail-cloth manufactory, projected by one who was then known to be a man of fortune, but who was afterwards involved in the peculation and punishment of the South Sea directors. These permits sold for as much as sixty guineas in the Alley.

During the infatuation (says Smollett), luxury, vice, and profligacy increased to a shocking degree; the adventurers, intoxicated by their imaginary wealth, pampered themselves with the rarest dainties and the most costly wines. They purchased the most sumptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel, though with no taste or discernment. Their criminal passions were indulged to a scandalous excess, and their discourse evinced the most disgusting pride, insolence, and ostentation. They affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even to set Heaven at defiance.

A journalist of the time writes: "Our South Sea equipages increase daily; the City ladies buy South Sea jewels, hire South Sea maids, take new country South Sea houses; the gentlemen set up South Sea coaches, and buy South Sea estates. They neither examine the situation, the nature or quality of the soil, or price of the purchase, only the annual rent and title; for the rest, they take all by the lump, and pay forty or fifty years' purchase!"

By the end of May, the whole stock had risen to 550. It then, in four days, made a tremendous leap, and rose to 890. It was now thought impossible that it could rise higher, and many prudent persons sold out to make sure of their spoil. Many of these were noblemen about to accompany the king to Hanover. The buyers were so few on June 3rd, that stock fell at once, like a plummet, from 890 to 640. The directors ordering their agents to still buy, confidence was restored, and the stock rose to 750. By August, the stock culminated at 1,000 per cent., or, as Dr. Mackay observes, "the bubble was then full blown."

The reaction soon commenced. Many government annuitants complained of the directors' partiality in making out the subscription lists. It was soon reported that Sir John Blunt, the chairman, and several directors had sold out. The stock fell all through August, and on September 2nd was quoted at 700 only. Things grew alarming. The directors, to restore confidence, summoned a meeting of the corporation at Merchant Taylors' Hall. Cheapside was blocked by the crowd. Mr. Secretary Craggs urged the necessity of union; and Mr. Hungerford said the Company had done more for the nation than Crown, pulpit, and bench. It had enriched the whole nation. The Duke of Portland gravely expressed his wonder that any one could be dissatisfied. But the public were not to be gulled; that same evening the stock fell to 640, and the next day to 540. It soon got so low as 400. The ebb tide was running fast. "Thousands of families," wrote Mr. Broderick to Lord Chancellor Middleton, "will be reduced to beggary. The consternation is inexpressible, the rage beyond description." The Bank was pressed to circulate the South Sea bonds, but as the panic increased they fought off. Several goldsmiths and bankers fled. The Sword Blade Company, the chief cashiers of the South Sea Company, stopped payment. King George returned in haste from Hanover, and Parliament was summoned to meet in December.

In the first debate the enemies of the South Sea Company were most violent. Lord Molesworth said he should be satisfied to see the contrivers of the scheme tied in sacks and thrown into the Thames. Honest Shippen, whom even Walpole could not bribe, looking fiercely in Mr. Secretary Craggs' face, said "there were other men in high station who were no less guilty than the directors." Mr. Craggs, rising in wrath, declared he was ready to give satisfaction to any one in the House, or out of it, and this unparliamentary language he had afterwards to explain away. Ultimately a second committee was appointed, with power to send for persons, papers, and records. The directors were ordered to lay before the house a full account of all their proceedings, and were forbidden to leave the kingdom for a twelvemonth.

Mr. Walpole laid before a committee of the whole house his scheme for the restoration of public credit, which was, in substance, to ingraft nine millions of South Sea stock into the Bank of England, and the same sum into the East India Company, upon certain conditions. The plan was favourably received by the House. After some few objections it was ordered that proposals should be received from the two great corporations. They were both unwilling to lend their aid, and the plan met with a warm but fruitless opposition at the general courts summoned for the purpose of deliberating upon it. They, however, ultimately agreed upon the terms on which they would consent to circulate the South Sea bonds; and their report being presented to the committee, a bill was then brought in, under the superintendence of Mr. Walpole, and safely carried through both Houses of Parliament.

In the House of Lords, Lord Stanhope said that every farthing possessed by the criminals, whether directors or not, ought to be confiscated, to make good the public losses.

The wrath of the House of Commons soon fell quick and terrible as lightning on two members of the Ministry, Craggs, and Mr. Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was ordered, on the 21st of January, that all South Sea brokers should lay before the House a full account of all stock bought or sold by them to any officers of the Treasury or Exchequer since Michaelmas, 1719. Aislabie instantly resigned his office, and absented himself from Parliament, and five of the South Sea directors (including Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian) were ordered into the custody of the Black Rod.

The next excitement was the flight of Knight, the treasurer of the Company, with all his books and implicating documents, and a reward of £2,000 was offered for his apprehension. The same night the Commons ordered the doors of the House to be locked, and the keys laid on the table.

General Ross, one of the members of the Select Committee, then informed the House that there had been already discovered a plot of the deepest villany and fraud that Hell had ever contrived to ruin a nation. Four directors, members of the House--i.e., Sir Robert Chaplin, Sir Theodore Janssen, Mr. Sawbridge, and Mr. F. Eyles--were expelled the House, and taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. Sir John Blunt, another director, was also taken into custody. This man, mentioned by Pope in his "Epistle to Lord Bathurst," had been a scrivener, famed for his religious observances and his horror of avarice. He was examined at the bar of the House of Lords, but refused to criminate himself. The Duke of Wharton, vexed at this prudent silence of the criminal, accused Earl Stanhope of encouraging this taciturnity of the witness. The Earl became so excited in his return speech, that it brought on an apoplectic fit, of which he died the next day, to the great grief of his royal master, George I. The Committee of Secrecy stated that in some of the books produced before them, false and fictitious entries had been made; in others there were entries of money, with blanks for the names of the stockholders. There were frequent erasures and alterations, and in some of the books leaves had been torn out. They also found that some books of great importance had been destroyed altogether, and that some had been taken away or secreted. They discovered, moreover, that before the South Sea Act was passed there was an entry in the Company's books of the sum of £1,259,325 upon account of stock stated to have been sold to the amount of £574,500. This stock was all fictitious, and had been disposed of with a view to promote the passing of the bill. It was noted as sold on various days, and at various prices, from 150 to 325 per cent.

Being surprised to see so large an amount disposed of, at a time when the Company were not empowered to increase their capital, the committee determined to investigate most carefully the whole transaction. The governor, sub-governor, and several directors were brought before them and examined rigidly. They found that at the time these entries were made the Company were not in possession of such a quantity of stock, having in their own right only a small quantity, not exceeding £30,000 at the utmost. They further discovered that this amount of stock was to be esteemed as taken or holden by the Company for the benefit of the pretended purchasers, although no mutual agreement was made for its delivery or acceptance at any certain time. No money was paid down, nor any deposit or security whatever given to the Company by the supposed purchasers; so that if the stock had fallen, as might have been expected had the act not passed, they would have sustained no loss. If, on the contrary, the price of stock advanced (as it actually did by the success of the scheme), the difference by the advanced price was to be made good by them. Accordingly, after the passing of the act, the account of stock was made up and adjusted with Mr. Knight, and the pretended purchasers were paid the difference out of the Company's cash. This fictitious stock, which had chiefly been at the disposal of Sir John Blunt, Mr. Gibbon, and Mr. Knight, was distributed among several members of the Government and their connections, by way of bribe, to facilitate the passing of the bill. To the Earl of Sunderland was assigned £50,000 of this stock; to the Duchess of Kendal, £10,000; to the Countess of Platen, £10,000; to her two nieces, £10,000; to Mr. Secretary Craggs, £30,000; to Mr. Charles Stanhope (one of the Secretaries of the Treasury), £10,000; to the Sword Blade Company, £50,000. It also appeared that Mr. Stanhope had received the enormous sum of £250,000, as the difference in the price of some stock, through the hands of Turner, Caswall, and Co., but that his name had been partly erased from their books, and altered to Stangape.

The punishment fell heavy on the chief offenders, who, after all, had only shared in the general lust for gold. Mr. Charles Stanhope, a great gainer, managed to escape by the influence of the Chesterfield family, and the mob threatened vengeance. Aislabie, who had made some £800,000, was expelled the House, sent to the Tower, and compelled to devote his estate to the relief of the sufferers. Sir George Caswall was expelled the House, and ordered to refund £250,000. The day he went to the Tower, the mob lit bonfires and danced round them for joy. When by a general whip of the Whigs the Earl of Sunderland was acquitted, the mob grew menacing again. That same day the elder Craggs died of apoplexy. The report was that he had poisoned himself, but excitement and the death of a son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, were the real causes. His enormous fortune of a million and a half was scattered among the sufferers. Eventually the directors were fined £2,014,000, each man being allowed a small modicum of his fortune. Sir John Blunt was only allowed £5,000 out of his fortune of £183,000; Sir John Fellows was allowed £10,000 out of £243,000; Sir Theodore Janssen, £50,000 out of £243,000; Sir John Lambert, £5,000 out of £72,000. One director, named Gregsley, was treated with especial severity, because he was reported to have once declared he would feed his carriage-horses off gold; another, because years before he had been mixed up with some harmless but unsuccessful speculation. According to Gibbon the historian, it was the Tory directors who were stripped the most unmercifully.

"The next consideration of the Legislature," says Charles Mackay, "after the punishment of the directors, was to restore public credit. The scheme of Walpole had been found insufficient, and had fallen into disrepute. A computation was made of the whole capital stock of the South Sea Company at the end of the year 1720. It was found to amount to £37,800,000, of which the stock allotted to all the proprietors only reached £24,500,000. The remainder of £13,300,000 belonged to the Company in their corporate capacity, and was the profit they had made by the national delusion. Upwards of £8,000,000 of this was taken from the Company, and divided among the proprietors and subscribers generally, making a dividend of about £33 6s. 8d. per cent. This was a great relief. It was further ordered that such persons as had borrowed money from the South Sea Company upon stock actually transferred and pledged, at the time of borrowing, to or for the use of the Company, should be free from all demands upon payment of ten per cent. of the sums so borrowed. They had lent about £11,000,000 in this manner, at a time when prices were unnaturally raised; and they now received back £1,100,000, when prices had sunk to their ordinary level."

A volume (says another writer) might be collected of anecdotes connected with this fatal speculation. A tradesman at Bath, who had invested his only remaining fortune in this stock, finding it had fallen from 1,000 to 900, left Bath with an intention to sell out; on his arrival in London it had fallen to 250. He thought the price too low, sanguinely hoped that it would re-ascend, still deferred his purpose, and lost his all.

The Duke of Chandos had embarked £300,000 in this project; the Duke of Newcastle strongly advised his selling the whole, or at least a part, with as little delay as possible; but this salutary advice he delayed to take, confidently anticipating the gain of at least half a million, and through rejecting his friend's counsel, he lost the whole. Some were, however, more fortunate. The guardians of Sir Gregory Page Turner, then a minor, had purchased stock for him very low, and sold it out when it had reached its maximum, to the amount of £200,000. With this large sum Sir Gregory built a fine mansion at Blackheath, and purchased 300 acres of land for a park. Two maiden sisters, whose stock had accumulated to £90,000, sold out when the South Sea stock was at 790. The broker whom they employed advised them to re-invest in navy bills, which were at the time at a discount of twenty-five per cent.; they took his advice, and two years afterwards received their money at par.

Even the poets did not escape. Gay (says Dr. Johnson, in his "Lives of the Poets") had a present from young Craggs of some South Sea stock, and once supposed himself to be the master of £20,000. His friends, especially Arbuthnot, persuaded him to sell his share, but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year for life, "which," said Fenton, "will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." This counsel was rejected; the profit and principal were both lost, and Gay sunk so low under the calamity that his life for a time became in danger.

Pope, always eager for money, was also dabbling in the scheme, but it is uncertain whether he made money or lost by it. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was a loser. When Sir Isaac Newton was asked when the bubble would break, he said, with all his calculations he had never learned to calculate the madness of the people.

Prior declared, "I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people are justly put together. It is all wilder than St. Anthony's dream, and the bagatelle is more solid than anything that has been endeavoured here this year."

In the full heat of it, the Duchess of Ormond wrote to Swift: "The king adopts the South Sea, and calls it his beloved child; though perhaps, you may say, if he loves it no better than his son, it may not be saying much; but he loves it as much as he loves the Duchess of Kendal, and that is saying a good deal. I wish it may thrive, for some of my friends are deep in it. I wish you were too."

Swift, cold and stern, escaped the madness, and even denounced in the following verses the insanity that had seized the times:--

"There is a gulf where thousands fell, Here all the bold adventurers came; A narrow sound, though deep as hell-- Change Alley is the dreadful name.

"Subscribers here by thousands float, And jostle one another down; Each paddling in his leaky boat, And here they fish for gold and drown.

"Now buried in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wit's end, like drunken men."

Budgell, Pope's barking enemy, destroyed himself after his losses in this South Sea scheme, and a well-known man of the day called "Tom of Ten Thousand" lost his reason.

Charles Lamb, in his "Elia," has described the South Sea House in his own delightful way. "Reader," says the poet clerk, "in thy passage from the Bank--where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)--to the 'Flower Pot,' to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other shy suburban retreat northerly--didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome brick and stone edifice, to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals, ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out--a desolation something like Balclutha's.[11] This was once a house of trade--a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here--the quick pulse of gain--and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul has long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces--deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers; directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands, long since dry; the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams; and soundings of the Bay of Panama! The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last conflagration; with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight once lay, 'an unsunned heap,' for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal--long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous Bubble.

"Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! Situated as thou art in the very heart of stirring and living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation--with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbour out of business--to the idle and merely contemplative--to such as me, Old House! there is a charm in thy quiet, a cessation, a coolness from business, an indolence almost cloistral, which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spake of the past; the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." (Ossian.)

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XLVIII. CANNON STREET

London Stone and Jack Cade--Southwark Bridge--Old City Churches--The Salters' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History--Oxford House--Salters' Banquets--Salters' Hall Chapel--A Mysterious Murder in Cannon Street--St. Martin Orgar--King William's Statue--Cannon Street Station.

Cannon Street was originally called Candlewick Street, from the candle-makers who lived there. It afterwards became a resort of drapers.

London Stone, the old Roman milliarium, or milestone, is now a mere rounded boulder, set in a stone case built into the outer southern wall of the church of St. Swithin, Cannon Street. Camden, in his "Britannia," says--"The stone called London Stone, from its situation in the centre of the longest diameter of the City, I take to have been a miliary, like that in the Forum at Rome, from whence all the distances were measured."

Camden's opinion, that from this stone the Roman roads radiated, and that by it the distances were reckoned, seems now generally received. Stow, who thinks that there was some legend of the early Christians connected with it, says:--"On the south side of this high street (Candlewick or Cannon Street), near unto the channel, is pitched upright a great stone, called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken and the stone itself unshaken. The cause why this stone was set there, the time when, or other memory is none."

Strype describes it in his day as already set in its case. "This stone, before the Fire of London, was much worn away, and, as it were, but a stump remaining. But it is now, for the preservation of it, cased over with a new stone, handsomely wrought, cut hollow underneath, so as the old stone may be seen, the new one being over it, to shelter and defend the old venerable one."

It stood formerly on the south side of Cannon Street, but was removed to the north, December 13th, 1742. In 1798 it was again removed, as an obstruction, and, but for the praiseworthy interposition of a local antiquary, Mr. Thomas Malden, a printer in Sherborne Lane, it would have been destroyed.

This most interesting relic of Roman London is that very stone which the arch-rebel Jack Cade struck with his bloody sword when he had stormed London Bridge, and "Now is Mortimer lord of this city" were the words he uttered too confidently as he gave the blow. Shakespeare, who perhaps wrote from tradition, makes him strike London Stone with his staff:--

"Cade. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls me Lord Mortimer."--Shakespeare, Second Part of Henry VI., act iv., sc. 6.

Dryden, too, mentions this stone in a very fine passage of his Fable of the "Cock and the Fox:"--

"The bees in arms Drive headlong from the waxen cells in swarms. Jack Straw at London Stone, with all his rout, Struck not the city with so loud a shout."

Of the old denizens of this neighbourhood in Henry VIII.'s days, Stow gives a very picturesque sketch in the following passage, where he says:--"The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now liveth, hath been noted within these forty years to have ridden into this city, and so to his house by London Stone, with eighty gentlemen in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognizance of the blue boar embroidered on their left shoulder."

A turning from Cannon Street leads us to Southwark Bridge. The cost of this bridge was computed at £300,000, and the annual revenue was estimated at £90,000. Blackfriars Bridge tolls amounted to a large annual sum; and it was supposed Southwark might fairly claim about a third of it. Great stress also was laid on the improvements that would ensue in the miserable streets about Bankside and along the road to the King's Bench. We need scarcely remind our readers that the bridge never answered, and was almost disused till the tolls were removed and it was thrown open to general traffic.

"Southwark Bridge," says Mr. Timbs, "designed by John Rennie, F.R.S., was built by a public company, and cost about £800,000. It consists of three cast-iron arches; the centre 240 feet span, and the two side arches 210 feet each, about forty-two feet above the highest spring-tides; the ribs forming, as it were, a series of hollow masses, or voussoirs, similar to those of stone, a principle new in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and very successful. The whole of the segmental pieces and the braces are kept in their places by dovetailed sockets and long cast-iron wedges, so that bolts are unnecessary, although they were used during the construction of the bridge to keep the pieces in their places until the wedges had been driven. The spandrels are similarly connected, and upon them rests the roadway, of solid plates of cast-iron, joined by iron cement. The piers and abutments are of stone, founded upon timber platforms resting upon piles driven below the bed of the river. The masonry is tied throughout by vertical and horizontal bond-stones, so that the whole rests as one mass in the best position to resist the horizontal thrust. The first stone was laid by Admiral Lord Keith, May 23rd, 1815, the bill for erecting the bridge having been passed May 16th, 1811. The iron-work (weight 5,700 tons) had been so well put together by the Walkers of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry by the contractors, Jolliffe and Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about one inch to one and a half inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March 24th, 1819, as the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral tolled midnight. Towards the middle of the western side of the bridge used to be a descent from the pavement to a steam-boat pier."

Mr. Charles Dickens, in one of the chapters of his "Uncommercial Traveller," has sketched, in his most exquisite manner, just such old City churches as we have in Cannon Street and its turnings. The dusty oblivion into which they are sinking, their past glory, their mouldy old tombs--everything he paints with the correctness of Teniers and the finish of Gerard Dow.

"There is," he says, "a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family. And who were they? Jane Comfort must have married young Dowgate, and come into the family that way. Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comfort when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf. If Jane were fond of young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Comfort, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy; and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success as was expected.

"The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then find to my astonishment that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes: the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as death it is! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half-choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him.

* * * * *

"In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.

"The dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! And the old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old master of the old company, on which it drips. His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out."

The Salters, who have anchored in Cannon Street, have had at least four halls before the present one. The first was in Bread Street, to be near their kinsmen, the Fishmongers, in the old fish market of London, Knightrider Street. It is noticed, apparently, as a new building, in the will of Thomas Beamond, Salter, 1451, who devised to "Henry Bell and Robert Bassett, wardens of the fraternity and gild of the Salters, of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Church of All Saints, of Bread Street, London, and to the brothers and sisters of the same fraternity and gild, and their successors for ever, the land and ground where there was then lately erected a hall called Salters' Hall, and six mansions by him then newly erected upon the same ground, in Bread Street, in the parish of All Saints." The last named were the Company's almshouses.

This hall was destroyed by fire in 1533. The second hall, in Bread Street, had an almshouse adjoining, as Stow tells us, "for poore decayed brethren." It was destroyed by fire in 1598. This hall was afterwards used by Parliamentary committees. There the means of raising new regiments was discussed, and there, in 1654, the judges for a time sat. The third hall (and these records furnish interesting facts to the London topographer) was a mansion of the prior of Tortington (Sussex), near the east end of St. Swithin's Church, London Stone. The Salters purchased it, in 1641, of Captain George Smith, and it was then called Oxford House, or Oxford Place. It had been the residence of Maister Stapylton, a wealthy alderman. The house is a marked one in history, as at the back of it, according to Stow, resided those bad guiding ministers of the miser king Henry VII., Empson and Dudley, who, having cut a door into Oxford House garden, used to meet there, like the two usurers in Quintin Matsys' picture, and suggest war taxes to each other under the leafy limes of the old garden. Sir Ambrose Nicholas and Sir John Hart, both Salters, kept their mayoralties here.

The fourth hall, built after the Great Fire had made clear work of Oxford House, was a small brick building, the entrance opening within an arcade of three arches springing from square fluted pillars. A large garden adjoined it, and next that was the Salters' Hall Meeting House. The parlour was handsome, and there were a few original portraits. This hall, the clerk's house, with another at the gate of St. Swithin's Lane, were pulled down and sold in 1821. The present hall was designed by Mr. Henry Carr, and completed in 1827.

As a chartered company there is no record of the Salters before the 37th year of Edward III., when liberties were granted them. In the 50th of Edward III. they sent members to the common council. Richard II. granted them a livery, but they were first incorporated in 1558 by Elizabeth. Henry VIII. had granted them arms, and Elizabeth a crest and supporters. The arms are:--Chevron azure and gules, three covered salts, or, springing salt proper. On a helmet and torse, issuing out of a cloud argent, a sinister arm proper, holding a salt as the former. Supporters, two otters argent plattée, gorged with ducal coronets, thereto a chain affixed and reflected, or; motto, "Sal sapit Omnia." "A Short Account of the Salters' Company," printed for private distribution, rejects the otters as supporters, in favour of ounces or small leopards, which latter, it states, have been adopted by the assistants, in the arms put up in their new hall; and it gives the following, "furnished by a London antiquary," as the Salters' real supporters:--Two ounces sable besante, gorged with crowns and chased gold. The Salters claim to have received eight charters.

The Romans worked salt-pits in England, and salt-works are frequently mentioned in Domesday Book. Rock or fossil salt, says Herbert, was never worked in England till 1670, when it was discovered in Cheshire. The enormous use of salt fish in the Catholic households of the Middle Ages brought wealth to the Salters.

In a pageant of 1591, written by the poet Peele, one clad like a sea-nymph presented the Salter mayor (Webb) with a rigged and manned pinnace, as he took barge to go to Westminster.

In the Drapers' pageant of 1684, when each of the twelve companies were represented by allegorical figures, the Salters were figured by Salina in a sky-coloured robe and coronation mantle, and crowned with white and yellow roses. Among the citizens nominated by the common council to attend the mayor as chief butler, at the coronation of Richard III., occurs the name of a Salter.

The following bill of fare for fifty people of the Company of Salters, A.D. 1506, is still preserved:--

s. d. 36 chickens 4 6 1 swan and 4 geese 7 0 9 rabbits 1 4 2 rumps of beef tails 0 2 6 quails 1 6 2 ounces of pepper 0 2 2 ounces of cloves and mace 0 4 1-1/2 ounces of saffron 0 6 3 lb. sugar 0 8 2 lb. raisins 0 4 1 lb. dates 0 4 1-1/2 lb. comfits 0 2 Half hundred eggs 0 2-1/2 4 gallons of curds 0 4 1 ditto gooseberries 0 2 2 dishes of butter 0 4 4 breasts of veal 1 5 Bacon 0 6 Quarter of a load of coals 0 4 Faggots 0 2 3-1/2 gallons of Gascoyne wine 2 4 1 bottle muscadina 0 8 Cherries and tarts 0 8 Salt 0 1 Verjuice and vinegar 0 8 Paid the cook 3 4 Perfume 0 2 1-1/2 bushels of meal 0 8 Water 0 3 Garnishing the vessels 0 3

In the Company's books (says Herbert) is a receipt "For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at ye Feste of Chrystemasse" (17th Richard II., A.D. 1394). A pie so made by the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced meats, and egg balls, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled up with gravy made from the various bones.

The original congregation of Salters' Hall Chapel assembled at Buckingham House, College Hill. The first minister was Richard Mayo, who died in 1695. He was so eloquent, that it is said even the windows were crowded when he preached. He was one of the seceders of 1662. Nathaniel Taylor, who died in 1702, was latterly so infirm that he used to crawl into the pulpit upon his knees. "He was a man," says Matthew Henry, "of great wit, worth, and courage;" and Doddridge compared his writings to those of South for wit and strength. Tong succeeded Taylor at Salters' Hall in 1702. He wrote the notes on the Hebrews and Revelations for Matthew Henry's "Commentary," and left memoirs of Henry, and of Shower, of the Old Jewry. The writer of his funeral sermon called him "the prince of preachers." In 1719 Arianism began to prevail at Salters' Hall, where a synod on the subject was at last held. The meetings ended by the non-subscribers calling out, "You that are against persecution come up stairs:" and Thomas Bradbury, of New Court, the leader of the orthodox, replying, "You that are for declaring your faith in the doctrine of the Trinity stay below." The subscribers proved to be fifty-three; the "scandalous majority," fifty-seven. During this controversy Arianism became the subject of coffee-house talk. John Newman, who died in 1741, was buried at Bunhill Fields, Dr. Doddridge delivering a funeral oration over his grave. Francis Spillsbury, another Salters' Hall minister, worked there for twenty years with John Barker, who resigned in 1762. Hugh Farmer, another of this brotherhood, was Doddridge's first pupil at the Northampton College. He wrote an exposition on demonology and miracles, which aroused controversy. His manuscripts were destroyed at his death, according to the strict directions of his will.

When the Presbyterians forsook Salters' Hall, some people came there who called the hall "the Areopagus," and themselves the Christian Evidence Society. After their bankruptcy in 1827, the Baptists re-opened the hall. The congregation has now removed to a northern suburb, and their chapel bears the old name, "so closely linked with our old City history, and its Nonconformist associations."

In April, 1866, a mysterious murder took place in Cannon Street. The victim, a widow, named Sarah Millson, was housekeeper on the premises of Messrs. Bevington, leather-sellers. About nine o'clock in the evening, when sitting by the fire in company with another servant, the street bell was heard to ring, on which Millson went down to the door, remarking to her neighbour that she knew who it was. She did not return, although for an hour this did not excite any suspicion, as she was in the habit of holding conversations at the street door. A little after ten o'clock, the other woman--Elizabeth Lowes--went down, and found Millson dead at the bottom of the stairs, the blood still flowing profusely from a number of deep wounds in the head. Her shoes had been taken off and were lying on a table in the hall, and as there was no blood on them it was presumed this was done before the murder. The housekeeper's keys were also found on the stairs. Opening the door to procure assistance, Lowes observed a woman on the doorstep, screening herself apparently from the rain, which was falling heavily at the time. She moved off as soon as the door was opened, saying, in answer to the request for assistance, "Oh! dear, no; I can't come in!" The gas over the door had been lighted as usual at eight o'clock, but was now out, although not turned off at the meter. The evidence taken by the coroner showed that the instrument of murder had probably been a small crowbar used to wrench open packing-cases; one was found near the body, unstained with blood, and another was missing from the premises. The murderer has never been discovered.

St. Martin Orgar, a church near Cannon Street, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. It had been used, says Strype, by the French Protestants, who had a French minister, episcopally ordained. There was a monument here to Sir Allen Cotton, Knight, and Alderman of London, some time Lord Mayor, with this epitaph--

"When he left Earth rich bounty dy'd, Mild courtesie gave place to pride; Soft Mercie to bright Justice said, O sister, we are both betray'd. White Innocence lay on the ground, By Truth, and wept at either's wound.

"Those sons of Levi did lament, Their lamps went out, their oyl was spent. Heaven hath his soul, and only we Spin out our lives in misery. So Death thou missest of thy ends, And kil'st not him, but kil'st his friends."

A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the erection of a church for the French Protestants in the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire, the parishioners offered reasons to the Parliament against it; declaring that they were not against erecting a church, but only against erecting it in the place mentioned in the Bill; since by the Act for rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St. Martin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the parish.

The tame statue of that honest but commonplace monarch, William IV., at the end of King William Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr. Nixon. It cost upwards of £2,000, of which £1,600 was voted by the Common Council of London. It is fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twenty tons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site of the famous "Boar's Head" tavern.

The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Railway, September, 1866, provided a communication with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The bridge across the Thames approaching the station has five lines of rails; the curves branching east and west to Charing Cross and London Bridge have three lines, and in the station there are nine lines of rails and five spacious platforms, one of them having a double carriage road for exit and entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the Cannon Street station extends from one side of the bridge to the other, and has a range of over eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and green for safety and going out. The hotel at Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, is after the design by Mr. Barry. Arrangements were made for the reception of about 20,000,000 passengers yearly.

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