XXXV. THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON (continued)…

XXXV. THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON (continued)

John Wilkes: his Birth and Parentage--The North Briton--Duel with Martin--His Expulsion--Personal Appearance--Anecdotes of Wilkes--A Reason for making a Speech--Wilkes and the King--The Lord Mayor at the Gordon Riots--"Soap-suds" versus "Bar"--Sir William Curtis and his Kilt--A Gambling Lord Mayor--Sir William Staines, Bricklayer and Lord Mayor--"Patty-pan" Birch--Sir Matthew Wood--Waithman--Sir Peter Laurie and the "Dregs of the People"--Recent Lord Mayors.

In 1774 that clever rascal, John Wilkes, ascended the civic throne. We shall so often meet this unscrupulous demagogue about London, that we will not dwell upon him here at much length. Wilkes was born in Clerkenwell, 1727. His father, Israel Wilkes, was a rich distiller (as his father and grandfather had been), who kept a coach and six, and whose house was a resort of persons of rank, merchants, and men of letters. Young Wilkes grew up a man of pleasure, squandered his wife's fortune in gambling and other fashionable vices, and became a notorious member of the Hell Fire Club at Medmenham Abbey. He now eagerly strove for place, asking Mr. Pitt to find him a post in the Board of Trade, or to send him as ambassador to Constantinople. Finding his efforts useless, he boldly avowed his intention of becoming notorious by assailing Government. In 1763, in his scurrilous paper, the North Britain, he violently abused the Princess Dowager and her favourite Lord Bute, who were supposed to influence the young king, and in the celebrated No. 45 he accused the ministers of putting a lie in the king's mouth. The Government illegally arresting him by an arbitrary "general warrant," he was committed to the Tower, and at once became the martyr of the people and the idol of the City. Released by Chief-Justice Pratt, he was next proceeded against for an obscene poem, the "Essay on Woman." He fought a duel with Samuel Martin, a brother M.P., who had insulted him, and was expelled the House in 1764. He then went to France in the height of his popularity, having just obtained a verdict in his favour upon the question of the warrant. On his return to England, he daringly stood for the representation of London, and was elected for Middlesex. Riots took place, a man was shot by the soldiers, and Wilkes was committed to the King's Bench prison. After a long contest with the Commons, Wilkes was expelled the House, and being re-elected for Middlesex, the election was declared void.

Eventually Wilkes became Chamberlain of the City, lectured refractory apprentices like a father, and tamed down to an ordinary man of the world, still shameless, ribald, irreligious, but, as Gibbon says, "a good companion with inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge." He quietly took his seat for Middlesex in 1782, and eight years afterwards the resolutions against him were erased from the Journals of the House. He died in 1797, at his house in Grosvenor Square. Wilkes' sallow face, sardonic squint, and projecting jaw, are familiar to us from Hogarth's terrible caricature. He generally wore the dress of a colonel of the militia--scarlet and buff, with a cocked hat and rosette, bag wig, and military boots, and O'Keefe describes seeing him walking in from his house at Kensington Gore, disdaining all offers of a coach. Dr. Franklin, when in England, describes the mob stopping carriages, and compelling their inmates to shout "Wilkes and liberty!" For the first fifteen miles out of London on the Winchester road, he says, and on nearly every door or window-shutter, "No. 45" was chalked. By many Tory writers Wilkes is considered latterly to have turned his coat, but he seems to us to have been perfectly consistent to the end. He was always a Whig with aristocratic tastes. When oppression ceased he ceased to protest. Most men grow more Conservative as their minds weaken, but Wilkes was always resolute for liberty.

A few anecdotes of Wilkes are necessary for seasoning to our chapter.

Horne Tooke having challenged Wilkes, who was then sheriff of London and Middlesex, received the following laconic reply: "Sir, I do not think it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his life; but as I am at present High Sheriff of the City of London, it may shortly happen that I shall have an opportunity of attending you in my civil capacity, in which case I will answer for it that you shall have no ground to complain of my endeavours to serve you." This is one of the bitterest retorts ever uttered. Wilkes's notoriety led to his head being painted as a public-house sign, which, however, did not invariably raise the original in estimation. An old lady, in passing a public-house distinguished as above, her companion called her attention to the sign. "Ah!" replied she, "Wilkes swings everywhere but where he ought." Wilkes's squint was proverbial; yet even this natural obliquity he turned to humorous account. When Wilkes challenged Lord Townshend, he said, "Your lordship is one of the handsomest men in the kingdom, and I am one of the ugliest. Yet, give me but half an hour's start, and I will enter the lists against you with any woman you choose to name."

Once, when the house seemed resolved not to hear him, and a friend urged him to desist--"Speak," he said, "I must, for my speech has been in print for the newspapers this half-hour." Fortunately for him, he was gifted with a coolness and effrontery which were only equalled by his intrepidity, all three of which qualities constantly served his turn in the hour of need. As an instance of his audacity, it may be stated that on one occasion he and another person put forth, from a private room in a tavern, a proclamation commencing--"We, the people of England," &c., and concluding--"By order of the meeting." Another amusing instance of his effrontery occurred on the hustings at Brentford, when he and Colonel Luttrell were standing there together as rival candidates for the representation of Middlesex in Parliament. Looking down with great apparent apathy on the sea of human beings, consisting chiefly of his own votaries and friends, which stretched beneath him--"I wonder," he whispered to his opponent, "whether among that crowd the fools or the knaves predominate?" "I will tell them what you say," replied the astonished Luttrell, "and thus put an end to you." Perceiving that Wilkes treated the threat with the most perfect indifference--"Surely," he added, "you don't mean to say you could stand here one hour after I did so?" "Why not?" replied Wilkes; "it is you who would not be alive one instant after." "How so?" inquired Luttrell. "Because," said Wilkes, "I should merely affirm that it was a fabrication, and they would destroy you in the twinkling of an eye."

During his latter days Wilkes not only became a courtier, but was a frequent attendant at the levees of George III. On one of these occasions the King happened to inquire after his old friend "Sergeant Glynn," who had been Wilkes's counsel during his former seditious proceedings. "My friend, sir!" replied Wilkes; "he is no friend of mine; he was a Wilkite, sir, which I never was."

He once dined with George IV. when Prince of Wales, when overhearing the Prince speak in rather disparaging language of his father, with whom he was then notoriously on bad terms, he seized an opportunity of proposing the health of the King. "Why, Wilkes," said the Prince, "how long is it since you became so loyal?" "Ever since, sir," was the reply, "I had the honour of becoming acquainted with your Royal Highness."

Alderman Sawbridge (Framework Knitter), mayor in 1775, on his return from a state visit to Kew with all his retinue, was stopped and stripped by a single highwayman. The swordbearer did not even attempt to hew down the robber.

In 1780, Alderman Kennet (Vintner) was mayor during the Gordon riots. He had been a waiter and then a wine merchant, was a coarse and ignorant man, and displayed great incompetence during the week the rioters literally held London. When he was summoned to the House, to be examined about the riots, one of the members observed, "If you ring the bell, Kennet will come in, of course." On being asked why he did not at the outset send for the posse comitatus, he replied he did not know where the fellow lived, or else he would. One evening at the Alderman's Club, he was sitting at whist, next Mr. Alderman Pugh, a soap-boiler. "Ring the bell, Soap-suds," said Kennet. "Ring it yourself, Bar," replied Pugh; "you have been twice as much used to it as I have." There is no disgrace in having been a soap-boiler or a wine merchant; the true disgrace is to be ashamed of having carried on an honest business.

Alderman Clarke (Joiner), mayor in 1784, succeeded Wilkes as Chamberlain in 1798, and died aged ninety-two, in 1831. This City patriarch was, when a mere boy, introduced to Dr. Johnson by that insufferable man, Sir John Hawkins. He met Dr. Percy, Goldsmith, and Hawkesworth, with the Polyphemus of letters, at the "Mitre." He was a member of the Essex Head Club. "When he was sheriff in 1777," says Mr. Timbs, "he took Dr. Johnson to a judges' dinner at the Old Bailey, the judges being Blackstone and Eyre." The portrait of Chamberlain Clarke, in the Court of Common Council in Guildhall, is by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and cost one hundred guineas. There is also a bust of Mr. Clarke, by Sievier, at the Guildhall, which was paid for by a subscription of the City officers.

Alderman Boydell, mayor in 1790, we have described fully elsewhere. He presided over Cheap Ward for twenty-three years. Nearly opposite his house, 90, Cheapside, is No. 73, which, before the present Mansion House was built, was used occasionally as the Lord Mayor's residence.

Sir James Saunderson (Draper), from whose curious book of official expenses we quote in our chapter on the Mansion House, was mayor in 1792. It was this mayor who sent a posse of officers to disperse a radical meeting held at that "caldron of sedition," Founders' Hall, and among the persons expelled was a young orator named Waithman, afterwards himself a mayor.

1795-6 was made pleasant to the Londoners by the abounding hospitality of Sir William Curtis, a portly baronet, who, while he delighted in a liberal feast and a cheerful glass, evidently thought them of small value unless shared by his friends. Many years afterwards, during the reign of George IV., whose good graces he had secured, he went to Scotland with the king, and made Edinburgh merry by wearing a kilt in public. The wits laughed at his costume, complete even to the little dagger in the stocking, but told him he had forgotten one important thing--the spoon.

In 1797, Sir Benjamin Hamet was fined £1,000 for refusing to serve as mayor.

1799. Alderman Combe, mayor, the brewer, whom some saucy citizens nicknamed "Mash-tub." But he loved gay company. Among the members at Brookes's who indulged in high play was Combe, who is said to have made as much money in this way as he did by brewing. One evening, whilst he filled the office of Lord Mayor, he was busy at a full hazard table at Brookes's, where the wit and dice-box circulated together with great glee, and where Beau Brummel was one of the party. "Come, Mash-tub," said Brummel, who was the caster, "what do you set?" "Twenty-five guineas," answered the alderman. "Well, then," returned the beau, "have at the mare's pony" (twenty-five guineas). The beau continued to throw until he drove home the brewer's twelve ponies running, and then getting up and making him a low bow whilst pocketing the cash, he said, "Thank you, alderman; for the future I shall never drink any porter but yours." "I wish, sir," replied the brewer, "that every other blackguard in London would tell me the same." Combe was succeeded in the mayoralty by Sir William Staines. They were both smokers, and were seen one night at the Mansion House lighting their pipes at the same taper; which reminds us of the two kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay. (Timbs.)

1800. Sir William Staines, mayor. He began life as a bricklayer's labourer, and by persevering steadily in the pursuit of one object, accumulated a large fortune, and rose to the state coach and the Mansion House. He was Alderman of Cripplegate Ward, where his memory is much respected. In Jacob's Well Passage, in 1786, he built nine houses for the reception of his aged and indigent friends. They are erected on both sides of the court, with nothing to distinguish them from the other dwelling-houses, and without ostentatious display of stone or other inscription to denote the poverty of the inhabitants. The early tenants were aged workmen, tradesmen, &c., several of whom Staines had personally esteemed as his neighbours. One, a peruke-maker, had shaved the worthy alderman during forty years. Staines also built Barbican Chapel, and rebuilt the "Jacob's Well" public-house, noted for dramatic representations. The alderman was an illiterate man, and was a sort of butt amongst his brethren. At one of the Old Bailey dinners, after a sumptuous repast of turtle and venison, Sir William was eating a great quantity of butter with his cheese. "Why, brother," said Wilkes, "you lay it on with a trowel!" A son of Sir William Staines, who worked at his father's business (a builder), fell from a lofty ladder, and was killed; when the father, on being fetched to the spot, broke through the crowd, exclaiming, "See that the poor fellow's watch is safe!" His manners may be judged from the following anecdote. At a City feast, when sheriff, sitting by General Tarleton, he thus addressed him, "Eat away at the pines, General; for we must pay, eat or not eat."

In 1806, Sir James Shaw (Scrivener), afterwards Chamberlain, was a native of Kilmarnock, where a marble statue of him has been erected. He was of the humblest birth, but amassed a fortune as a merchant, and sat in three parliaments for the City. He was extremely charitable, and was one of the first to assist the children of Burns. At one of his mayoralty dinners, seven sons of George III. were guests.

Sir William Domville (Stationer), mayor in 1814, gave the great Guildhall banquet to the Prince Regent and the Allied Sovereigns during the short and fallacious peace before Waterloo. The dinner was served on plate valued at £200,000, and the entire entertainment cost nearly £25,000. The mayor was made baronet for this.

In 1815 reigned Alderman Birch, the celebrated Cornhill confectioner. The business at No. 15, Cornhill was established by Mr. Horton, in the reign of George I. Samuel Birch, born in 1787, was for many years a member of the Common Council, a City orator, an Alderman of the Ward of Candlewick, a poet, a dramatic writer, and Colonel of the City Militia. His pastry was, after all, the best thing he did, though he laid the first stone of the London Institution, and wrote the inscription to Chantrey's statue of George III., now in the Council Chamber, Guildhall. "Mr. Patty-pan" was Birch's nickname.

Theodore Hook, or some clever versifier of the day, wrote an amusing skit on the vain, fussy, good-natured Jack-of-all-trades, beginning--

"Monsieur grown tired of fricassee, Resolved Old England now to see, The country where their roasted beef And puddings large pass all belief."

Wherever this inquisitive foreigner goes he find Monsieur Birch--

"Guildhall at length in sight appears, An orator is hailed with cheers. 'Zat orator, vat is hees name?' 'Birch the pastrycook--the very same.'"

He meets him again as militia colonel, poet, &c. &c., till he returns to France believing Birch Emperor of London.

Birch possessed considerable literary taste, and wrote poems and musical dramas, of which "The Adopted Child" remained a stock piece to our own time. The alderman used annually to send, as a present, a Twelfth-cake to the Mansion House. The upper portion of the house in Cornhill has been rebuilt, but the ground-floor remains intact, a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the last century; and here are preserved two doorplates, inscribed "Birch, successor to Mr. Horton," which are 140 years old. Alderman Birch died in 1840, having been succeeded in the business in Cornhill in 1836, by Ring and Brymer.

In 1816-17, we come to a mayor of great notoriety, Sir Matthew Wood, a druggist in Falcon Square. He was a Devonshire man, who began life as a druggist's traveller, and distinguished himself by his exertions for poor persecuted Queen Caroline. He served as Lord Mayor two successive years, and represented the City in nine parliaments. His baronetcy was the first title conferred by Queen Victoria, in 1837, as a reward for his political exertions. As a namesake of "Jemmy Wood," the miser banker of Gloucester, he received a princely legacy. The Vice-Chancellor Page Wood (Lord Hatherley) was the mayor's second son.

The following sonnet was contributed by Charles and Mary Lamb to Thelwall's newspaper, The Champion. Lamb's extreme opinions, as here enunciated, were merely assumed to please his friend Thelwall, but there seems a genuine tone in his abuse of Canning. Perhaps it dated from the time when the "player's son" had ridiculed Southey and Coleridge:--

SONNET TO MATTHEW WOOD, ESQ., ALDERMAN AND M.P.

"Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic Wood! Regardless what the player's son may prate, St. Stephen's fool, the zany of debate-- Who nothing generous ever understood. London's twice prætor! scorn the fool-born jest, The stage's scum, and refuse of the players-- Stale topics against magistrates and mayors-- City and country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to soothe the superficial ear Of drunken Pitt, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish orgies they did sit, Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, Till England and the nations reeled with pain."

In 1818-19 Alderman John Atkins was host at the Mansion House. In early life he had been a Customs' tide-waiter, and was not remarkable for polished manners; but he was a shrewd and worthy man, filling the seat of justice with impartiality, and dispensing the hospitality of the City with an open hand.

In 1821 John Thomas Thorpe (Draper), mayor, officiated as chief butler at the coronation feast of George IV. He and twelve assistants presented the king wine in a golden cup, which the king returned as the cup-bearer's fees. Being, however, a violent partisan of Queen Caroline, he was not created a baronet.

In 1823 we come to another determined reformer, Alderman Waithman, whom we have already noticed in the chapter on Fleet Street. As a poor lad, he was adopted by his uncle, a Bath linendraper. He began to appear as a politician in 1794. When sheriff in 1821, in quelling a tumult at Knightsbridge, he was in danger from a Life-guardsman's carbine, and at the funeral of Queen Caroline, a carbine bullet passed through his carriage in Hyde Park. Many of his resolutions in the Common Council were, says Mr. Timbs, written by Sir Richard Phillips, the bookseller.

Alderman Garratt (Goldsmith), mayor in 1825, laid the first stone of London Bridge, accompanied by the Duke of York. At the banquet at the Mansion House, 360 guests were entertained in the Egyptian Hall, and nearly 200 of the Artillery Company in the saloon. The Monument was illuminated the same night.

In 1830, Alderman Key, mayor, roused great indignation in the City, by frightening William IV., and preventing his coming to the Guildhall dinner. The show and inauguration dinner were in consequence omitted. In 1831 Key was again mayor, and on the opening of London Bridge was created a baronet.

Sir Peter Laurie, in 1832-3, though certainly possessing a decided opinion on most political questions, which he steadily, and no doubt honestly carried out, frequently incurred criticism on account of his extreme views, and a passion for "putting down" what he imagined social grievances. He lived to a green old age. In manners open, easy, and unassuming; in disposition, friendly and liberal; kind as a master, and unaffectedly hospitable as a host, he gained, as he deserved, "troops of friends," dying lamented and honoured, as he had lived, respected and beloved. (Aleph.)

When Sir Peter Laurie, as Lord Mayor of London, entertained the judges and leaders of the bar, he exclaimed to his guests, in an after-dinner oration:--

"See before you the examples of myself, the chief magistrate of this great empire, and the Chief Justice of England sitting at my right hand; both now in the highest offices of the state, and both sprung from the very dregs of the people!"

Although Lord Tenterden possessed too much natural dignity and truthfulness to blush for his humble origin, he winced at hearing his excellent mother and her worthy husband, the Canterbury wig-maker, thus described as belonging to "the very dregs of the people."

1837. Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty, was born at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster Row, for £10 a year wages. He slept under the shop-counter for the security of the premises. He was reported by his master to be "too slow" for the situation. Mr. Hogg, however, thought him "a bidable boy," and he remained. This incident shows upon what apparently trifling circumstances sometimes a man's future prospects depend. Mr. Kelly succeeded Mr. Hogg in the business, became Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Within, and served as sheriff and mayor, the cost of which exceeded the fees and allowances by the sum of £10,000. He lived upon the same spot sixty years, and died in his eighty-fourth year. He was a man of active benevolence, and reminded one of the pious Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney. He composed some prayers for his own use, which were subsequently printed for private distribution. (Timbs.)

Sir John Cowan (Wax Chandler), mayor in 1838, was created a baronet after having entertained the Queen at his mayoralty dinner.

1839. Sir Chapman Marshall, mayor. He received knighthood when sheriff, in 1831; and at a public dinner of the friends and supporters of the Metropolitan Charity Schools, he addressed the company as follows:--"My Lord Mayor and gentlemen,--I want words to express the emotions of my heart. You see before you a humble individual who has been educated at a parochial school. I came to London in 1803, without a shilling, without a friend. I have not had the benefit of a classical education; but this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you witness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest industry; and I trust that my example may induce others to aspire, by the same means, to the distinguished situation which I have now the honour to fill." Self-made men are too fond of such glorifications, and forget how much wealth depends on good fortune and opportunity.

1839. Alderman Wilson, mayor, signalised his year of office by giving, in the Egyptian Hall, a banquet to 117 connections of the Wilson family being above the age of nine years. At this family festival, the usual civic state and ceremonial were maintained, the sword and mace borne, &c.; but after the loving cup had been passed round, the attendants were dismissed, in order that the free family intercourse might not be restricted during the remainder of the evening. A large number of the Wilson family, including the alderman himself, have grown rich in the silk trade. (Timbs.)

In 1842, Sir John Pirie, mayor, the Royal Exchange was commenced. Baronetcy received on the christening of the Prince of Wales. At his inauguration dinner at Guildhall, Sir John said: "I little thought, forty years ago, when I came to London a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed, that I should ever arrive at so great a distinction." In his mayoralty show, Pirie, being a shipowner, added to the procession a model of a large East Indiaman, fully rigged and manned, and drawn in a car by six horses. (Aleph.)

Alderman Farncomb (Tallow-chandler), mayor in 1849, was one of the great promoters of the Great Exhibition of 1851, that Fair of all Nations which was to bring about universal peace, and wrap the globe in English cotton. He gave a grand banquet at the Mansion House to Prince Albert and a host of provincial mayors; and Prince Albert explained his views about his hobby in his usual calm and sensible way.

In 1850 Sir John Musgrove (Clothworker), at the suggestion of Mr. G. Godwin, arranged a show on more than usually æsthetic principles. There was Peace with her olive-branch, the four quarters of the world, with camels, deer, elephants, negroes, beehives, a ship in full sail, an allegorical car, drawn by six horses, with Britannia on a throne and Happiness at her feet; and great was the delight of the mob at the gratuitous splendour.

Alderman Salomons (1855) was the first Jewish Lord Mayor--a laudable proof of the increased toleration of our age. This mayor proved a liberal and active magistrate, who repressed the mischievous and unmeaning Guy Fawkes rejoicings, and through the exertions of the City Solicitor, persuaded the Common Council to at last erase the absurd inscription on the Monument, which attributed the Fire of London to a Roman Catholic conspiracy.

Alderman Rose, mayor in 1862 (Spectacle-maker), an active encourager of the useful and manly volunteer movement, had the honour of entertaining the Prince of Wales and his beautiful Danish bride at a Guildhall banquet, soon after their marriage. The festivities (including £10,000 for a diamond necklace) cost the Corporation some £60,000. The alderman was knighted in 1867. He was (says Mr. Timbs) Alderman of Queenhithe, living in the same row where three mayors of our time have resided.

Alderman Lawrence, mayor in 1863-4. His father and brother were both aldermen, and all three were in turns Sheriff of London and Middlesex. Alderman Phillips (Spectacle-maker), mayor in 1865, was the second Jewish Lord Mayor, and the first Jew admitted into the municipality of London. This gentleman, of Prussian descent, had the honour of entertaining, at the Mansion House, the Prince of Wales and the King and Queen of the Belgians, and was knighted at the close of his mayoralty.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVI. THE POULTRY

The Early Home of the London Poulterers--Its Mysterious Desertion--Noteworthy Sites in the Poultry--The Birthplace of Tom Hood, Senior--A Pretty Quarrel at the Rose Tavern--A Costly Sign-board--The Three Cranes--The Home of the Dillys--Johnsoniana--St. Mildred's Church, Poultry--Quaint Epitaphs--The Poultry Compter--Attack on Dr. Lamb, the Conjurer--Dekker, the Dramatist--Ned Ward's Description of the Compter--Granville Sharp and the Slave Trade--Important Decision in favour of the Slave--Boyse--Dunton.

The busy street extending between Cheapside and Cornhill is described by Stow (Queen Elizabeth) as the special quarter, almost up to his time, of the London poulterers, who sent their fowls and feathered game to be prepared in Scalding Alley (anciently called Scalding House, or Scalding Wike). The pluckers and scorchers of the feathered fowl occupied the shops between the Stocks' Market (now the Mansion House) and the Great Conduit. Just before Stow's time the poulterers seem to have taken wing in a unanimous covey, and settled down, for reasons now unknown to us, and not very material to any one, in Gracious (Gracechurch) Street, and the end of St. Nicholas flesh shambles (now Newgate Market). Poultry was not worth its weight in silver then.

The chief points of interest in the street (past and present) are the Compter Prison, Grocers' Hall, Old Jewry, and several shops with memorable associations. Lubbock's Banking House, for instance, is leased of the Goldsmiths' Company, being part of Sir Martin Bowes' bequest to the Company in Elizabeth's time. Sir Martin Bowes we have already mentioned in our chapter on the Goldsmiths' Company.

The name of one of our greatest English wits is indissolubly connected with the neighbourhood of the Poultry. It falls like a cracker, with merry bang and sparkle, among the graver histories with which this great street is associated. Tom Hood was the son of a Scotch bookseller in the Poultry. The firm was "Vernor and Hood." "Mr. Hood," says Mrs. Broderip, "was one of the 'Associated Booksellers,' who selected valuable old books for reprinting, with great success. Messrs. Vernor and Hood, when they moved to 31, Poultry, took into partnership Mr. C. Sharpe. The firm of Messrs. Vernor and Hood published 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' 'The Mirror,' Bloomfield's poems, and those of Henry Kirke White." At this house in the Poultry, as far as we can trace, in the year 1799, was born his second son, Thomas. After the sudden death of the father, the widow and her children were left rather slenderly provided for. "My father, the only remaining son, preferred the drudgery of an engraver's desk to encroaching upon the small family store. He was articled to his uncle, Mr. Sands, and subsequently was transferred to one of the Le Keux. He was a most devoted and excellent son to his mother, and the last days of her widowhood and decline were soothed by his tender care and affection. An opening that offered more congenial employment presented itself at last, when he was about the age of twenty-one. By the death of Mr. John Scott, the editor of the 'London Magazine,' who was killed in a duel, that periodical passed into other hands, and became the property of my father's friends, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. The new proprietors soon sent for him, and he became a sort of sub-editor to the magazine." Of this period of his life he says himself:--

"Time was when I sat upon a lofty stool, At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen, Began each morning, at the stroke of ten, To write to Bell and Co.'s commercial school, In Warneford Court, a shady nook and cool, The favourite retreat of merchant men. Yet would my quill turn vagrant, even then, And take stray dips in the Castalian pool; Now double entry--now a flowery trope-- Mingling poetic honey with trade wax; Blogg Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope, Bristles and Hogg--Glynn, Mills, and Halifax-- Rogers and Towgood--hemp--the Bard of Hope-- Barilla--Byron--tallow--Burns and flax."

The "King's Head" Tavern (No. 25) was kept at the Restoration by William King, a staunch cavalier. It is said that the landlord's wife happened to be on the point of labour on the day of the king's entry into London. She was extremely anxious to see the returning monarch, and the king, being told of her inclination, drew up at the door of the tavern in his good-natured way, and saluted her.

The King's Head Tavern, which stood at the western extremity of the Stocks' Market, was not at first known by the sign of the "King's Head," but the "Rose." Machin, in his diary, Jan. 5, 1560, thus mentions it:--"A gentleman arrested for debt: Master Cobham, with divers gentlemen and serving men, took him from the officers, and carried him to the Rose Tavern, where so great a fray, both the sheriffs were fain to come, and from the Rose Tavern took all the gentlemen and their servants, and carried them to the Compter." The house was distinguished by the device of a large, well-painted rose, erected over a doorway, which was the only indication in the street of such an establishment. Ned Ward, that coarse observer, in the "London Spy," 1709, describes the "Rose," anciently the "Rose and Crown," as famous for good wine. "There was no parting," he says, "without a glass; so we went into the Rose Tavern in the Poultry, where the wine, according to its merit, had justly gained a reputation; and there, in a snug room, warmed with brush and faggot, over a quart of good claret, we laughed over our night's adventure. The tavern door was flanked by two columns twisted with vines carved in wood, which supported a small square gallery over the portico, surrounded by handsome iron-work. On the front of this gallery was erected the sign. It consisted of a central compartment containing the Rose, behind which the artist had introduced a tall silver cup, called "a standing bowl," with drinking glasses. Beneath the painting was this inscription:--

"This is THE ROSE TAVERN, Kept by WILLIAM KING, Citizen and Vintner.

This Taverne's like its sign--a lustie Rose, A sight of joy that sweetness doth enclose; The daintie Flow're well pictur'd here is seene, But for its rarest sweets--come, searche within!"

About the time that King altered his sign we find the authorities of St. Peter-upon-Cornhill determining "That the King's Arms, in painted glass, should be refreshed, and forthwith be set up (in one of their church windows) by the churchwarden at the parish charges; with whatsoever he giveth to the glazier as a gratuity."

The sign appears to have been a costly work, since there was the fragment of a leaf of an old account-book found when the ruins of the house were cleared after the Great Fire, on which were written these entries:--"Pd. to Hoggestreete, the Duche paynter, for ye picture of a Rose, wth a Standing-bowle and glasses, for a signe, xx li., besides diners and drinkings; also for a large table of walnut-tree, for a frame, and for iron-worke and hanging the picture, v li." The artist who is referred to in this memorandum could be no other than Samuel Van Hoogstraten, a painter of the middle of the seventeenth century, whose works in England are very rare. He was one of the many excellent artists of the period, who, as Walpole contemptuously says, "painted still life, oranges and lemons, plate, damask curtains, cloth of gold, and that medley of familiar objects that strike the ignorant vulgar." At a subsequent date the landlord wrote under the sign--

"Gallants, rejoice! This flow're is now full-blowne! 'Tis a Rose-Noble better'd by a crowne; All you who love the emblem and the signe, Enter, and prove our loyaltie and wine."

The tavern was rebuilt after the Great Fire, and flourished many years. It was long a depôt in the metropolis for turtle; and in the quadrangle of the tavern might be seen scores of turtle, large and lively, in huge tanks of water; or laid upward on the stone floor, ready for their destination. The tavern was also noted for large dinners of the City Companies and other public bodies. The house was refitted in 1852, but has since been pulled down. (Timbs.)

Another noted Poultry Tavern was the "Three Cranes," destroyed in the Great Fire, but rebuilt and noticed in 1698, in one of the many paper controversies of that day. A fulminating pamphlet, entitled "Ecclesia et Factio: a Dialogue between Bow Church Steeple and the Exchange Grasshopper," elicited "An Answer to the Dragon and Grasshopper; in a Dialogue between an Old Monkey and a Young Weasel, at the Three Cranes Tavern, in the Poultry."

No. 22 was the house of Johnson's friends, Edward and Charles Dilly, the booksellers. Here, in the year 1773, Boswell and Johnson dined with the Dillys, Goldsmith, Langton, and the Rev. Mr. Toplady. The conversation was of excellent quality, and Boswell devotes many pages to it. They discussed the emigration and nidification of birds, on which subjects Goldsmith seems to have been deeply interested; the bread-fruit of Otaheite, which Johnson, who had never tasted it, considered surpassed by a slice of the loaf before him; toleration, and the early martyrs. On this last subject, Dr. Mayo, "the literary anvil," as he was called, because he bore Johnson's hardest blows without flinching, held out boldly for unlimited toleration; Johnson for Baxter's principle of only "tolerating all things that are tolerable," which is no toleration at all. Goldsmith, unable to get a word in, and overpowered by the voice of the great Polyphemus, grew at last vexed, and said petulantly to Johnson, who he thought had interrupted poor Toplady, "Sir, the gentleman has heard you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him." Johnson replied, sternly, "Sir, I was not interrupting the gentleman; I was only giving him a signal proof of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent."

Johnson, Boswell, and Langton presently adjourned to the club, where they found Burke, Garrick, and Goldsmith, the latter still brooding over his sharp reprimand at Dilly's. Johnson, magnanimous as a lion, at once said aside to Boswell, "I'll make Goldsmith forgive me." Then calling to the poet, in a loud voice he said, "Dr. Goldsmith, something passed to-day where you and I dined; I ask your pardon."

Goldsmith, touched with this, replied, "It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill"--became himself, "and rattled away as usual." Would Goldy have rattled away so had he known what Johnson, Boswell, and Langton had said about him as they walked up Cheapside? Langton had observed that the poet was not like Addison, who, content with his fame as a writer, did not attempt a share in conversation; to which Boswell added, that Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his cabinet, but, not content with that, was always pulling out his purse. "Yes, sir," struck in Johnson, "and that is often an empty purse."

In 1776 we find Boswell skilfully decoying his great idol to dinner at the Dillys to meet the notorious "Jack Wilkes." To Boswell's horror, when he went to fetch Johnson, he found him covered with dust, and buffeting some books, having forgotten all about the dinner party. A little coaxing, however, soon won him over; Johnson roared out, "Frank, a clean shirt!" and was soon packed into a hackney coach. On discovering "a certain gentleman in lace," and he Wilkes the demagogue, Johnson was at first somewhat disconcerted, but soon recovered himself, and behaved like a man of the world. Wilkes quickly won the great man.

They soon set to work discussing Foote's wit, and Johnson confessed that, though resolved not to be pleased, he had once at a dinner-party been obliged to lay down his knife and fork, throw himself back in his chair, and fairly laugh it out--"The dog was so comical, sir: he was irresistible." Wilkes and Johnson then fell to bantering the Scotch; Burke complimented Boswell on his successful stroke of diplomacy in bringing Johnson and Wilkes together.

Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness, that he gained upon him insensibly. No man ate more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. "Pray give me leave, sir--it is better there--a little of the brown--some fat, sir--a little of the stuffing--some gravy--let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter--allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest." "Sir--sir, I am obliged to you, sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a look for some time of "surly virtue," but, in a short while, of complacency.

But the most memorable evening recorded at Dilly's was April 15, 1778, when Johnson and Boswell dined there, and met Miss Seward, the Lichfield poetess, and Mrs. Knowles, a clever Quaker lady, who for once overcame the giant of Bolt Court in argument. Before dinner Johnson took up a book, and read it ravenously. "He knows how to read it better," said Mrs. Knowles to Boswell, "than any one. He gets at the substance of a book directly. He tears out the heart of it." At dinner Johnson told Dilly that, if he wrote a book on cookery, it should be based on philosophical principles. "Women," he said, contemptuously, "can spin, but they cannot make a good book of cookery."

They then fell to talking of a ghost that had appeared at Newcastle, and had recommended some person to apply to an attorney. Johnson thought the Wesleys had not taken pains enough in collecting evidence, at which Miss Seward smiled. This vexed the superstitious sage of Fleet Street, and he said, with solemn vehemence, "Yes, ma'am, this is a question which, after five thousand years, is yet undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding."

Johnson, who during the evening had been very thunderous at intervals, breaking out against the Americans, describing them as "rascals, robbers, and pirates," and declaring he would destroy them all--as Boswell says, "He roared out a tremendous volley which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantic," &c.--grew very angry at Mrs. Knowles for noticing his unkindness to Miss Jane Barry, a recent convert to Quakerism.

"We remained," says Boswell, writing with awe, like a man who has survived an earthquake, "together till it was very late. Notwithstanding occasional explosions of violence, we were all delighted upon the whole with Johnson. I compared him at the time to a warm West Indian climate, where you have a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxurious foliage, luscious fruits, but where the same heat sometimes produces thunder, lightning, and earthquakes in a terrible degree."

St. Mildred's Church, Poultry, is a rectory situate at the corner of Scalding Alley. John de Asswell was collated thereto in the year 1325. To this church anciently belonged the chapel of Corpus Christi and St. Mary, at the end of Conyhoop Lane, or Grocers' Alley, in the Poultry. The patronage of this church was in the prior and canons of St. Mary Overie's in Southwark till their suppression. This church was consumed in the Great Fire, anno 1666, and then rebuilt, the parish of St. Mary Cole being thereunto annexed. Among the monumental inscriptions in this church, Maitland gives the following on the well-known Thomas Tusser, of Elizabeth's reign, who wrote a quaint poem on a farmer's life and duties:--

"Here Thomas Tusser, clad in earth, doth lie, That some time made the points of husbandrie. By him then learne thou maist, here learne we must, When all is done we sleep and turn to dust. And yet through Christ to heaven we hope to goe, Who reads his bookes shall find his faith was so.

Among the curious epitaphs in St. Mildred's, Stow mentions the following, which is worth quoting here:--

"HERE LIES BURIED THOMAS YKEN, SKINNER.

"In Hodnet and London God blessed my life, Till forty and sixe yeeres, With children and wife; And God will raise me Up to life againe, Therefore have I thought My death no paine."

A fair monument of Queen Elizabeth had on the sides the following verses inscribed:--

"If prayers or tears Of subjects had prevailed, To save a princesse Through the world esteemed; Then Atropos In cutting here had fail'd, And had not cut her thread, But been redeem'd; But pale-faced Death; And cruel churlish Fate, To prince and people Brings the latest date. Yet spight of Death and Fate, Fame will display Her gracious virtues Through the world for aye, Spain's Rod, Rome's Ruine, Netherlands' Reliefe; Heaven's gem, earth's joy, World's wonder, Nature's chief. Britaine's blessing, England's splendour, Religion's Nurse, the Faith's Defender."

The Poultry Compter, on the site of the present Grocers' Alley, was one of the old sheriff's prisons pulled down in 1817, replaced soon after by a chapel. Stow mentions the prison as four houses west from the parish of St. Mildred, and describes it as having been "there kept and continued time out of mind, for I have not read the original hereof." "It was the only prison," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "with a ward set apart for Jews (probably from its vicinity to Old Jewry), and it was the only prison in London left unattacked by Lord George Gordon's blue cockaded rioters in 1780." This may have arisen from secret instructions of Lord George, who had sympathies for the Jews, and eventually became one himself. Middleton, 1607 (James I.), speaks ill of it in his play of the Phoenix, for prisons at that time were places of cruelty and extortion, and schools of villainy. The great playwright makes his "first officer" say, "We have been scholars, I can tell you--we could not have been knaves so soon else; for as in that notable city called London, stand two most famous universities, Poultry and Wood St., where some are of twenty years standing, and have took all their degrees, from the master's side, down to the mistress's side, so in like manner," &c.

It was at this prison, in the reign of Charles I., that Dr. Lamb, the conjurer, died, after being nearly torn to pieces by the mob. He was a creature of the Duke of Buckingham, and had been accused of bewitching Lord Windsor. On the 18th of June Lamb was insulted in the City by a few boys, who soon after being increased by the acceding multitude, they surrounded him with bitter invectives, which obliged him to seek refuge in a tavern in the Old Jewry; but the tumult continuing to increase, the vintner, for his own safety, judged it proper to turn him out of the house, whereupon the mob renewed their exclamations against him, with the appellations of "wizard," "conjuror," and "devil." But at last, perceiving the approach of a guard, sent by the Lord Mayor to his rescue, they fell upon and beat the doctor in such a cruel and barbarous manner, that he was by the said guard taken up for dead, and carried to the Compter, where he soon after expired. "But the author of a treatise, entitled 'The Forfeiture of the City Charters,'" says Maitland, "gives a different account of this affair, and, fixing the scene of this tragedy on the 14th of July, writes, that as the doctor passed through Cheapside, he was attacked as above mentioned, which forced him to seek a retreat down Wood Street, and that he was there screened from the fury of the mob in a house, till they had broken all the windows, and forced the door; and then, no help coming to the relief of the doctor, the housekeeper was obliged to deliver him up to save the spoiling of his goods.

"When the rabble had got him into their hands, some took him by the legs, and others by the arms, and so dragging him along the streets, cried, 'Lamb, Lamb, the conjuror, the conjuror!' every one kicking and striking him that were nearest.

"Whilst this tumult lasted, and the City was in an uproar, the news of what had passed came to the king's ear, who immediately ordered his guards to make ready, and, taking some of the chief nobility, he came in person to appease the tumult. In St. Paul's Churchyard he met the inhuman villains dragging the doctor along; and after the knight-marshal had proclaimed silence, who was but ill obeyed, the king, like a good prince, mildly exhorted and persuaded them to keep his peace, and deliver up the doctor to be tried according to law; and that if his offence, which they charged him with, should appear, he should be punished accordingly; commanding them to disperse and depart every man to his own home. But the insolent varlets answered, that they had judged him already; and thereupon pulled him limb from limb; or, at least, so dislocated his joints, that he instantly died."

This took place just before the Duke of Buckingham's assassination by Felton, in 1628. The king, very much enraged at the treatment of Lamb, and the non-discovery of the real offenders, extorted a fine of £6,000 from the abashed City.

Dekker, the dramatist, was thrown into this prison. This poet of the great Elizabethan race was one of Ben Jonson's great rivals. He thus rails at Shakespeare's special friend, who had made "a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face upon it. Thou hast forgot how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.

Dekker thus delineates Ben:--"That same Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet apple, when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon water next my heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate--to see his face make faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets."

Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite, Horace's--"You staring Leviathan! Look on the sweet visage of Horace; look, parboil'd face, look--has he not his face punchtfull of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan?"

Ben Jonson's manner in a playhouse is thus sketched by Dekker:--"Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests stolen from the Temple's revels; not to sit in a gallery where your comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants, to make all the house rise and cry--'That's Horace! That's he that pens and purges humours!'"

But, notwithstanding all his bitterness, Dekker could speak generously of the old poet; for he thus sums up Ben Jonson's merits in the following lines:--

"Good Horace! No! My cheeks do blush for thine, As often as thou speakest so; where one true And nobly virtuous spirit for thy best part Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart! I make account, I put up as deep share In any good man's love, which thy worth earns, As thou thyself; we envy not to see Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy. No, here the gall lies;--we, that know what stuff Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk On which thy learning grows, and can give life To thy one dying baseness; yet must we Dance anticks on your paper. But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould, I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold."

Charles Lamb, speaking of Dekker's share in Massinger's Virgin Martyr, highly eulogises the impecunious poet. "This play," says Lamb, "has some beauties of so very high an order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them. His associate, Dekker, who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pictures of this play, like Satan among the sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raciness, and a glow in them, which are beyond Massinger. They are to the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda."

Ned Ward, in his coarse but clever "London Spy," gives us a most distasteful picture of the Compter in 1698-1700. "When we first entered," says Ward, "this apartment, under the title of the King's Ward, the mixture of scents that arose from mundungus, tobacco, foul feet, dirty shirts, stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcases, poisoned our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room. The ill-looking vermin, with long, rusty beards, swaddled up in rags, and their heads--some covered with thrum-caps, and others thrust into the tops of old stockings. Some quitted their play they were before engaged in, and came hovering round us, like so many cannibals, with such devouring countenances, as if a man had been but a morsel with 'em, all crying out, 'Garnish, garnish,' as a rabble in an insurrection crying, 'Liberty, liberty!' We were forced to submit to the doctrine of non-resistance, and comply with their demands, which extended to the sum of two shillings each."

The Poultry Compter has a special historical interest, from the fact of its being connected with the early struggles of our philanthropists against the slave-trade. It was here that several of the slaves released by Granville Sharp's noble exertions were confined. This excellent man, and true aggressive Christian, was grandson of an Archbishop of York, and son of a learned Northumberland rector. Though brought up to the bar, he never practised, and resigned a place in the Ordnance Office because he could not conscientiously approve of the American War. He lived a bachelor life in the Temple, doing good continually. Sharp opposed the impressment of sailors and the system of duelling; encouraged the distribution of the Bible, and advocated parliamentary reform. But it was as an enemy to slavery, and the first practical opposer of its injustice and its cruelties, that Granville Sharp earned a foremost place in the great bede-roll of our English philanthropists. Mr. Sharp's first interference in behalf of persecuted slaves was in 1765.

In the year 1765, says Clarkson, in his work on slavery, a Mr. David Lisle had brought over from Barbadoes Jonathan Strong, an African slave, as his servant. He used the latter in a barbarous manner at his lodgings, in Wapping, but particularly by beating him over the head with a pistol, which occasioned his head to swell. When the swelling went down a disorder fell into his eyes, which threatened the loss of them. To this a fever and ague succeeded; and he was affected with a lameness in both his legs.

Jonathan Strong having been brought into this deplorable condition, and being therefore wholly useless, was left by his master to go whither he pleased. He applied, accordingly, to Mr. William Sharp, the surgeon, for his advice, as to one who gave up a portion of his time to the healing of the diseases of the poor. It was here that Mr. Granville Sharp, the brother of the former, saw him. Suffice it to say that in process of time he was cured. During this time Mr. Granville Sharp, pitying his hard case, supplied him with money, and afterwards got him a situation in the family of Mr. Brown, an apothecary, to carry out medicines.

In this new situation, when Strong had become healthy and robust in his appearance, his master happened to see him. The latter immediately formed the design of possessing him again. Accordingly, when he had found out his residence, he procured John Ross, keeper of the Poultry Compter, and William Miller, an officer under the Lord Mayor, to kidnap him. This was done by sending for him to a public-house in Fenchurch Street, and then seizing him. By these he was conveyed, without any warrant, to the Poultry Compter, where he was sold by his master to John Kerr for £30. Mr. Sharp, immediately upon this, waited upon Sir Robert Kite, the then Lord Mayor, and entreated him to send for Strong and to hear his case. A day was accordingly appointed, Mr. Sharp attended, also William M'Bean, a notary public, and David Laird, captain of the ship Thames, which was to have conveyed Strong to Jamaica, in behalf of the purchaser, John Kerr. A long conversation ensued, in which the opinion of York and Talbot was quoted. Mr. Sharp made his observations. Certain lawyers who were present seemed to be staggered at the case, but inclined rather to re-commit the prisoner. The Lord Mayor, however, discharged Strong, as he had been taken up without a warrant.

As soon as this determination was made known, the parties began to move off. Captain Laird, however, who kept close to Strong, laid hold of him before he had quitted the room, and said aloud, "Then now I seize him as my slave." Upon this Mr. Sharp put his hand upon Laird's shoulder, and pronounced these words, "I charge you, in the name of the king, with an assault upon the person of Jonathan Strong, and all these are my witnesses." Laird was greatly intimidated by this charge, made in the presence of the Lord Mayor and others, and fearing a prosecution, let his prisoner go, leaving him to be conveyed away by Mr. Sharp.

But the great turning case was that of James Somerset, in 1772. James Somerset, an African slave, had been brought to England by his master, Charles Stewart, in November, 1769. Somerset, in process of time, left him. Stewart took an opportunity of seizing him, and had him conveyed on board the Ann and Mary, Captain Knowles, to be carried out of the kingdom and sold as a slave in Jamaica. The question raised was, "Whether a slave, by coming into England, became free?"

In order that time might be given for ascertaining the law fully on this head, the case was argued at three different sittings--first, in January, 1772; secondly, in February, 1772; and thirdly, in May, 1772. And that no decision otherwise than what the law warranted might be given, the opinion of the judges was taken upon the pleadings. The great and glorious issue of the trial was, "That as soon as ever any slave set his foot upon English territory he became free."

Thus ended the great case of Somerset, which, having been determined after so deliberate an investigation of the law, can never be reversed while the British Constitution remains. The eloquence displayed in it by those who were engaged on the side of liberty was perhaps never exceeded on any occasion; and the names of the counsellors, Davy, Glynn, Hargrave, Mansfield, and Alleyne, ought always to be remembered with gratitude by the friends of this great cause.

It was after this verdict that Cowper wrote the following beautiful lines:--

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Imbibe our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall. That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud And jealous of the blessing. Spread on, then, And let it circulate through every vein Of all your empire, that where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too."

It was in this Compter that Boyse, a true type of the Grub Street poet of Dr. Johnson's time, spent many of the latter days of his life. In the year 1740 Boyse was reduced to the lowest state of poverty, having no clothes left in which he could appear abroad; and what bare subsistence he procured was by writing occasional poems for the magazines. Of the disposition of his apparel Mr. Nichols received from Dr. Johnson, who knew him well, the following account. He used to pawn what he had of this sort, and it was no sooner redeemed by his friends, than pawned again. On one occasion Dr. Johnson collected a sum of money[8] for this purpose, and in two days the clothes were pawned again. In this state Boyse remained in bed with no other covering than a blanket with two holes, through which he passed his arms when he sat up to write. The author of his life in Cibber adds, that when his distresses were so pressing as to induce him to dispose of his shirt, he used to cut some white paper in slips, which he tied round his wrists, and in the same manner supplied his neck. In this plight he frequently appeared abroad, while his other apparel was scarcely sufficient for the purposes of decency.

In the month of May, 1749, Boyse died in obscure lodgings near Shoe Lane. An old acquaintance of his endeavoured to collect money to defray the expenses of his funeral, so that the scandal of being buried by the parish might be avoided. But his endeavours were in vain, for the persons he had selected had been so often troubled with applications during the life of this unhappy man, that they refused to contribute anything towards his funeral.

Of Boyse's best poems "The Deity" contains some vigorous lines, of which the following are a favourable specimen:--

"Transcendent pow'r! sole arbiter of fate! How great thy glory! and thy bliss how great, To view from thy exalted throne above (Eternal source of light, and life, and love!) Unnumbered creatures draw their smiling birth, To bless the heav'ns or beautify the earth; While systems roll, obedient to thy view, And worlds rejoice--which Newton never knew!

* * * * *

Below, thro' different forms does matter range, And life subsists from elemental change, Liquids condensing shapes terrestrial wear, Earth mounts in fire, and fire dissolves in air; While we, inquiring phantoms of a day, Inconstant as the shadows we survey! With them along Time's rapid current pass, And haste to mingle with the parent mass; But thou, Eternal Lord of life divine! In youth immortal shalt for ever shine! No change shall darken thy exalted name, From everlasting ages still the same!"

Dunton, the eccentric bookseller of William III.'s reign, resided in the Poultry in the year 1688. "The humour of rambling," he says in his autobiography, "was now pretty well off with me, and my thoughts began to fix rather upon business. The shop I took, with the sign of the Black Raven, stood opposite to the Poultry Counter, where I traded ten years, as all other men must expect, with a variety of successes and disappointments. My shop was opened just upon the Revolution, and, as I remember, the same day the Prince of Orange came to London."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "The sum," said Johnson, "was collected by sixpences, at a time when to me sixpence was a serious consideration."

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XXXVII. OLD JEWRY

The Old Jewry--Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford--Bad Times for the Israelites--Jews' Alms--A King in Debt--Rachel weeping for her Children--Jewish Converts--Wholesale Expulsion of the Chosen People from England--The Rich House of a Rich Citizen--The London Institution, formerly in the Old Jewry--Porsoniana--Nonconformists in the Old Jewry--Samuel Chandler, Richard Price, and James Foster--The Grocers' Company--Their Sufferings under the Commonwealth--Almost Bankrupt--Again they Flourish--The Grocers' Hall Garden--Fairfax and the Grocers--A Rich and Generous Grocer--A Warlike Grocer--Walbrook--Bucklersbury.

The Old Jewry was the Ghetto of mediæval London. The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, in his interesting "History of the Jews in Great Britain," has clearly shown that Jews resided in England during the Saxon times, by an edict published by Elgbright, Archbishop of York, A.D. 470, forbidding Christians to attend the Jewish feasts. It appears the Jews sometimes left lands to the abbeys; and in the laws of Edward the Confessor we find them especially mentioned as under the king's guard and protection.

The Conqueror invited over many Jews from Rouen, who settled themselves chiefly in London, Stamford, and Oxford. In London the Jews had two colonies--one in Old Jewry, near King Offa's old palace; and one in the liberties of the Tower. Rufus, in his cynical way, marked his hatred of the monks by summoning a convocation, where English bishops met Jewish rabbis, and held a religious controversy, Rufus swearing by St. Luke's face that if the rabbis had the best of it, he would turn Jew at once. In this reign the Jews were so powerful at Oxford that they let three halls--Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall--to students; and their rabbis instructed even Christian students in their synagogue. Jews took care of vacant benefices for the king. In the reign of Henry I. the Jews began to make proselytes, and monks were sent to several towns to preach against them. Halcyon times! With the reign of Stephen, however, began the storms, and, with the clergy, the usurper persecuted the Jews, exacting a fine of £2,000 from those of London alone for a pretended manslaughter. The absurd story of the Jews murdering young children, to anoint Israelites or to raise devils with their blood, originated in this reign.

Henry II. was equally ruthless, though he did grant Jews cemeteries outside the towns. Up till this time the London Jews had only been allowed to bury in "the Jews' garden," in the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In spite of frequent fines and banishments, their historian owns that altogether they throve in this reign, and their physicians were held in high repute. With Richard I., chivalrous to all else, began the real miseries of the English Jews. Even on the day of his coronation there was a massacre of the Jews, and many of their houses were burnt. Two thousand Jews were murdered at York, and at Lynn and Stamford they were also plundered. On his return from Palestine Richard established a tribunal for Jews. In the early part of John's reign he treated the money-lenders, whom he wanted to use, with consideration. He granted them a charter, and allowed them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture and put to death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had assisted the barons. Can we wonder that it is still a proverb among the English Jews, "Thank God that there was only one King John?"

The regent of the early part of the reign of Henry III. protected the Jews, and exempted them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, but they were compelled to wear on their breasts two white tablets of linen or parchment, two inches broad and four inches long; and twenty-four burgesses were chosen in every town where they resided, to protect them from the insults of pilgrims; for the clergy still treated them as excommunicated infidels. But even this lull was short--persecution soon again broke out. In the 14th of Henry III. the Crown seized a third part of all their movables, and their new synagogue in the Old Jewry was granted to the brothers of St. Anthony of Vienna, and turned into a church. In the 17th of Henry III. the Jews were again taxed to the amount of 18,000 silver marks. At the same time the king erected an institution in New Street (Chancery Lane) for Jewish converts, as an atonement for his father's cruelty to the persecuted exiles. Four Jews of Norwich having been dragged at horses' tails and hung, on a pretended charge of circumcising a Christian boy, led to new persecution, and the Jews were driven out of Newcastle and Southampton; while to defray the expense of entertaining the Queen's foreign uncles 20,000 marks were exacted from the suffering race. In the 19th year of his reign Henry, driven hard for money, extorted from the rich Jews 10,000 more marks, and several were burned alive for plotting to destroy London by fire. The more absurd the accusation the more eagerly it was believed by a superstitious and frightened rabble. In 1244, Matthew of Paris says, the corpse of a child was found buried in London, on whose arms and legs were traced Hebrew inscriptions. It was supposed that the Jews had crucified this child, in ridicule of the crucifixion of Christ. The converted Jews of New Street were called in to read the Hebrew letters, and the canons of St. Paul's took the child's body, which was supposed to have wrought miracles, and buried it with great ceremony not far from their great altar. In order to defray the expenses of his brother Richard's marriage the poor Jews of London were heavily mulcted, and Aaron of York, a man of boundless wealth, was forced to pay 4,000 marks of silver and 400 of gold. Defaulters were transported to Ireland, a punishment especially dreaded by the Jews. A tax called Jews' alms was also sternly enforced; and we find Lucretia, widow of David, an Oxford Jew, actually compelled to pay £2,590 towards the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. It was about this time that Abraham, a Jew of Berkhampstead, strangled his wife, who had refused to help him to defile and deface an image of the Virgin, and was thrown into a dungeon of the Tower; but the murderer escaped, by a present of 7,000 marks to the king. Tormented by the king's incessant exactions, the Jews at last implored leave to quit England before their very skins were taken from them. The king broke into a fit of almost ludicrous rage. He had been tender of their welfare, he said to his brother Richard. "Is it to be marvelled at," he cried, "that I covet money? It is a horrible thing to imagine the debts wherein I am held bound. By the head of God, they amount to the sum of two hundred thousand marks; and if I should say three hundred thousand, I should not exceed the bounds of truth. I am deceived on every hand; I am a maimed and abridged king--yea, now only half a king. There is a necessity for me to have money, gotten from what place soever, and from whomsoever."

The king, on Richard's promise to obtain him money, sold him the right which he held over the Jews. Soon after this, eighty-six of the richest Jews of London were hung, on a charge of having crucified a Christian child at Lincoln, and twenty-three others were thrown into the Tower. Truly Old Jewry must have often heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her children. Their persecutors never grew weary. In a great riot, encouraged by the barons, the great bell of St. Paul's tolled out, 500 Jews were killed in London, and the synagogue burnt, the leader of the mob, John Fitz-John, a baron, running Rabbi Abraham, the richest Jew in London, through with his sword. On the defeat of the king's party at the battle of Lewes, the London mob accusing the Jews of aiding the king, plundered their houses, and all the Israelites would have perished, had they not taken refuge in the Tower. By royal edict the Christians were forbidden to buy flesh of a Jew, and no Jew was allowed to employ Christian nurses, bakers, brewers, or cooks. Towards the close of Henry's life the synagogue in Old Jewry was again taken from the Jews, and given to the Friars Penitent, whose chapel stood hard by, and who complained of the noise of the Jewish congregation; but the king permitted another synagogue to be built in a more suitable place. Henry then ordered the Jews to pay up all arrears of tallages within four months, and half of the sum in seventeen days. The Tower of London was naturally soon full of grey-bearded Jewish debtors.

No wonder, with all these persecutions, that the Chancery Lane house of converts began soon to fill. "On one of the rolls of this reign," says Mr. Margoliouth, probably quoting Prynne's famous diatribe against the Jews, "about 500 names of Jewish converts are registered." From the 50th year of Henry III. to the 2nd of Edward I., the Crown, says Coke, extorted from the English Jews no less than £420,000 15s. 4d.!

Edward I. was more merciful. In a statute, however, which was passed in his third year, he forbade Jews practising usury, required them to wear badges of yellow taffety, as a distinguishing mark of their nationality, and demanded from each of them threepence every Easter. Then began the plunder. The king wanted money to build Carnarvon and Conway castles, to be held as fortresses against the Welsh, whom he had just recently conquered and treated with great cruelty, and the Jews were robbed accordingly. It was not difficult in those days to find an excuse for extortion if the royal exchequer was empty. In the 7th year of Edward no less than 294 Jews were put to death for clipping money, and all they possessed seized by the king. In his 17th year all the Jews in England were imprisoned in one night, as Selden proves by an old Hebrew inscription found at Winchester, and not released till they had paid £20,000 of silver for a ransom. At last, in the year 1290, came the Jews' final expulsion from England, when 15,000 or 16,000 of these tormented exiles left our shores, not to return till Cromwell set the first great example of toleration. Edward allowed the Jews to take with them part of their money and movables, but seized their houses and other possessions. All their outstanding mortgages were forfeited to the Crown, and ships were to be provided for their conveyance to such places within reasonable distance as they might choose. In spite of this, however, many, through the treachery of the sailors, were left behind in England, and were all put to death with great cruelty.

"Whole rolls full of patents relative to Jewish estates," says Mr. Margoliouth, "are still to be seen at the Tower, which estates, together with their rent in fee, permissions, and mortgages, were all seized by the king." Old Jewry, and Jewin Street, Aldersgate, where their burial-ground was, still preserve a dim memory of their residence among us. There used to be a tradition in England that the Jews buried much of their treasure here, in hopes of a speedy return to the land where they had suffered so much, yet where they had thriven. In spite of the edict of banishment a few converted Jews continued to reside in England, and after the Reformation some unconverted Jews ventured to return. Rodrigo Lopez, a physician of Queen Elizabeth's, for instance, was a Jew. He was tortured to death for being accused of designing to poison the Queen.

No. 8, Old Jewry was the house of Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor in the time of Charles II. It was a fine brick mansion, and one of the grandest houses in the street. It is mentioned by Evelyn in the following terms:--"26th September, 1672.--I carried with me to dinner my Lord H. Howard (now to be made Earl of Norwich and Earl Marshal of England) to Sir Robert Clayton's, now Sheriff of London, at his own house, where we had a great feast; it is built, indeed, for a great magistrate, at excessive cost. The cedar dining-room is painted with the history of the Giants' war, incomparably done by Mr. Streeter, but the figures are too near the eye." We give on the previous page a view of the garden front of this house, taken from an old print. Sir Robert built the house to keep his shrievalty, which he did with great magnificence. It was for some years the residence of Mr. Samuel Sharp, an eminent surveyor.

In the year 1805 was established, by a proprietary in the City, the London Institution, "for the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful knowledge." This institution was temporarily located in Sir Robert Clayton's famous old house. Upon the first committee of the institution were Mr. R. Angerstein and Mr. Richard Sharp. Porson, the famous Greek scholar and editor of Euripides, was thought an eligible man to be its principal librarian. He was accordingly appointed to the office by a unanimous resolution of the governors; and Mr. Sharp had the gratification of announcing to the Professor his appointment. His friends rejoiced. Professor Young, of Glasgow, writing to Burney about this time, says:--"Of Devil Dick you say nothing. I see by the newspapers they have given him a post. A handsome salary, I hope, a suite of chambers, coal and candle, &c. Porter and cyder, I trust, are among the et cæteras." His salary was £200 a year, with a suite of rooms. Still, Porson was not just the man for a librarian; for no one could use books more roughly. He had no affectation about books, nor, indeed, affectation of any sort. The late Mr. William Upcott, who urged the publication of Evelyn's diary at Wootton, was fellow-secretary with Porson. The institution removed to King's Arms Yard, Coleman Street, in 1812, and thence in 1819 to the present handsome mansion, erected from the classic design of Mr. W. Brooks, on the north side of Moorfields, now Finsbury Circus.

The library is "one of the most useful and accessible in Great Britain;" and Mr. Watson found in a few of the books Porson's handwriting, consisting of critical remarks and notes. In a copy of the Aldine "Herodotus," he has marked the chapters in the margin in Arabic numerals "with such nicety and regularity," says his biographer, "that the eye of the reader, unless upon the closest examination, takes them for print."

Lord Byron remembered Porson at Cambridge; in the hall where he himself dined, at the Vice-Chancellor's table, and Porson at the Dean's, he always appeared sober in his demeanour, nor was he guilty, as far as his lordship knew, of any excess or outrage in public; but in an evening, with a party of undergraduates, he would, in fits of intoxication, get into violent disputes with the young men, and arrogantly revile them for not knowing what he thought they might be expected to know. He once went away in disgust, because none of them knew the name of "the Cobbler of Messina." In this condition Byron had seen him at the rooms of William Bankes, the Nubian discoverer, where he would pour forth whole pages of various languages, and distinguish himself especially by his copious floods of Greek.

Lord Byron further tells us that he had seen Sheridan "drunk, with all the world; his intoxication was that of Bacchus, but Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most bestial, so far as the few times that I saw him went, which were only at William Bankes's rooms. He was tolerated in this state among the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to write, or rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot; and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser exhibition than this man's intoxication."

The library of the institution appears, however, to have derived little advantage from Porson's supervision of it, beyond the few criticisms which were found in his handwriting in some of the volumes. Owing to his very irregular habits, the great scholar proved but an inefficient librarian; he was irregular in attendance, and was frequently brought home at midnight drunk. The directors had determined to dismiss him, and said they only knew him as their librarian from seeing his name attached to receipts of salary. Indeed, he was already breaking up, and his stupendous memory had begun to fail. On the 19th of September, 1806, he left the Old Jewry to call on his brother-in-law, Perry, in the Strand, and at the corner of Northumberland Street was struck down by a fit of apoplexy. He was carried over to the St. Martin's Lane workhouse, and there slowly recovered consciousness. Mr. Savage, the under-librarian, seeing an advertisement in the British Press, describing a person picked up, having Greek memoranda in his pocket, went to the workhouse and brought Porson home in a hackney coach; he talked about the fire which the night before had destroyed Covent Garden Theatre, and as they rounded St. Paul's, remarked upon the ill treatment Wren had received. On reaching the Old Jewry, and after he had breakfasted, Dr. Adam Clarke called and had a conversation with Porson about a stone with a Greek inscription, brought from Ephesus; he also discussed a Mosaic pavement recently found in Palestrini, and quoted two lines from the Greek Anthologia. Dr. Adam Clarke particularly noticed that he gave the Greek rapidly, but the English with painful slowness, as if the Greek came more naturally. Then, apparently fancying himself under restraint, he walked out, and went into the African or Cole's coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill; there he would have fallen had he not caught hold of one of the brass rods of the boxes. Some wine and some jelly dissolved in brandy and water considerably roused him, but he could hardly speak, and the waiter took him back to the Institution in a coach. He expired exactly as the clock struck twelve, on the night of Sunday, September 25, 1808. He was buried in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eulogies of his talent, written in Greek and Latin verse, were affixed to his pall--an old custom not discontinued till 1822. His books fetched £2,000, and those with manuscript notes were bought by Trinity College. It was said of Porson that he drank everything he could lay his hands upon, even to embrocation and spirits of wine intended for the lamp. Rogers describes him going back into the dining-room after the people had gone, and drinking all that was left in the glasses. He once undertook to learn by heart, in a week, a copy of the Morning Chronicle, and he boasted he could repeat "Roderick Random" from beginning to end.

Mr. Luard describes Porson as being, in personal appearance, tall; his head very fine, with an expansive forehead, over which he plastered his brown hair; he had a long, Roman nose (it ought to have been Greek), and his eyes were remarkably keen and penetrating. In general he was very careless as to his dress, especially when alone in his chamber, or when reading hard; but "when in his gala costume, a smart blue coat, white vest, black satin nether garments, and silk stockings, with a shirt ruffled at the wrists, he looked quite the gentleman."

The street where, in 1261, many Jews were massacred, and where again, in 1264, 500 Jews were slain, was much affected by Nonconformists. There was a Baptist chapel here in the Puritan times; and in Queen Anne's reign the Presbyterians built a spacious church, in Meeting House Court, in 1701. It is described as occupying an area of 2,600 square feet, and being lit with six bow windows. The society, says Mr. Pike, had been formed forty years before, by the son of the excellent Calamy, the persecuted vicar of Aldermanbury, who is said to have died from grief at the Fire of London. John Shower was one of the most celebrated ministers of the Old Jewry Chapel. He wrote a protest against the Occasional Conformity Bill, to which Swift (under the name of his friend Harley) penned a bitter reply. He died in 1715. From 1691 to 1708 the assistant lecturer was Timothy Rogers, son of an ejected Cumberland minister, of whom an interesting story is told. Sir Richard Cradock, a High Church justice, had arrested Mr. Rogers and all his flock, and was about to send them to prison, when the justice's granddaughter, a wilful child of seven, pitying the old preacher, threatened to drown herself if the poor people were punished. The preacher blessed her, and they parted. Years after this child, being in London, dreamed of a certain chapel, preacher, and text, and the next day, going to the Old Jewry, saw Mr. Shower, and recognised him as the preacher of her dream. The lady afterwards told this to Mr. Rogers' son, when the lad turned Dissenter. Like many other of the early Nonconformist preachers, Rogers seems to have been a hypochondriac, who looked upon himself as "a broken vessel, a dead man out of mind," and eventually gave up his profession. Shower's successor, Simon Browne, wrote a volume of "Hymns," compiled a lexicon, and wrote a "Defence of the Christian Revelation," in reply to Woolston and other Freethinkers. Browne was also a victim to delusions, believing that God, in his displeasure, had withdrawn his soul from his body. This state of mind is said by some to have arisen from a nervous shock Browne had once received in finding a highwayman with whom he had grappled dead in his grasp. He believed his mind entirely gone, and his head to resemble a parrot's. At times his thoughts turned to self-destruction. He therefore abandoned his pulpit, and retired to Shepton Mallet to study. His "Defence" is dedicated to Queen Caroline as from "a thing."

Samuel Chandler, a celebrated author and divine, and a friend of Butler and Seeker, and Bowyer the printer, was for forty years another Old Jewry worthy. He lectured against Popery with great success at Salters' Hall, and held a public dispute with a Romish priest at the "Pope's Head," Cornhill. In a funeral sermon on George II., Chandler drew absurd parallels between him and David, which the Grub Street writers made the most of. Chandler's deformed sister Mary, a milliner at Bath, wrote verses which Pope commended.

In 1744 Richard Price, afterwards chaplain at Stoke Newington, held the lectureship at the Old Jewry. Price's lecture on "Civil Liberty," apropos of the American war, gained him Franklin's and Priestley's friendship; as his first ethical work had already won Hume's. Burke denounced him as a traitor; while the Corporation of London presented him with the freedom of the City in a gold box, the Congress offered him posts of honour, and the Premier of 1782 would have been glad to have had him as a secretary. The last pastor at the Old Jewry Chapel was Abraham Rees. This indefatigable man enlarged Harris's "Lexicon Technicum," improved by Ephraim Chambers, into the "Encyclopædia" of forty-five quarto volumes, a book now thought redundant and ill-arranged, and the philological parts defective. In 1808 the Old Jewry congregation removed to Jewin Street.

Dr. James Foster, a Dissenting minister eulogised by Pope, carried on the Sunday evening lecture in Old Jewry for more than twenty years; it was began in 1728. The clergy, wits, and freethinkers crowded with equal anxiety to hear him of whom Pope wrote--

"Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten metropolitans in preaching well."

And Pope's friend, Lord Bolingbroke, an avowed Deist, commended Foster for the false aphorism--"Where mystery begins religion ends." Dr. Foster attended Lord Kilmarnock before his execution. He wrote in defence of Christianity in reply to Tindal, the Freethinker, and died in 1753. He says in one of his works:--"I value those who are of different professions from me, more than those who agree with me in sentiment, if they are more serious, sober, and charitable." This excellent man was the son of a Northamptonshire clergyman, who turned Dissenter and became a fuller at Exeter.

At Grocers' Hall we stop to sketch the history of an ancient company.

The Grocers of London were originally called Pepperers, pepper being the chief staple of their trade. The earlier Grocers were Italians, Genoese, Florentine or Venetian merchants, then supplying all the west of Christendom with Indian and Arabian spices and drugs, and Italian silks, wines, and fruits. The Pepperers are first mentioned as a fraternity among the amerced guilds of Henry II., but had probably clubbed together at an earlier period. They are mentioned in a petition to Parliament as Grocers, says Mr. Herbert, in 1361 (Edward III.), and they themselves adopted the, at first, opprobrious name in 1376, and some years later were incorporated by charter. They then removed from Soper's Lane (now Queen Street) to Bucklersbury, and waxed rich and powerful.

The Grocers met at five several places previous to building a hall; first at the town house of the Abbots of Bury, St. Mary Axe; in 1347 they moved to the house of the Abbot of St. Edmund; in 1348 to the Rynged Hall, near Garlick-hythe; and afterwards to the hotel of the Abbot of St. Cross. In 1383 they flitted to the Cornet's Tower, in Bucklersbury, a place which Edward III. had used for his money exchange. In 1411 they purchased of Lord Fitzwalter the chapel of the Fratres du Sac (Brothers of the Sack) in Old Jewry, which had originally been a Jewish synagogue; and having, some years afterwards, purchased Lord Fitzwalter's house adjoining the chapel, began to build a hall, which was opened in 1428. The Friars' old chapel contained a buttery, pantry, cellar, parlour, kitchen, turret, clerk's house, a garden, and a set of almshouses in the front yard was added. The word "grocer," says Ravenhill, in his "Short Account of the Company of Grocers" (1689), was used to express a trader en gros (wholesale). As early as 1373, the first complement of twenty-one members of this guild was raised to 124; and in 1583, sixteen grocers were aldermen. In 1347, Nicholas Chaucer, a relation of the poet, was admitted as a grocer; and in 1383, John Churchman (Richard II.) obtained for the Grocers the great privilege of the custody, with the City, of the "King's Beam," in Woolwharf, for weighing wool in the port of London, the first step to a London Custom House. The Beam was afterwards removed to Bucklersbury. Henry VIII. took away the keepership of the great Beam from the City, but afterwards restored it. The Corporation still have their weights at the Weigh House, Little Eastcheap, and the porters there are the tackle porters, so called to distinguish them from the ticket porters. In 1450, the Grocers obtained the important right of sharing the office of garbeller of spices with the City. The garbeller had the right to enter any shop or warehouse to view and search for drugs, and to garble and cleanse them. The office gradually fell into desuetude, and is last mentioned in the Company's books in July, 1687, when the City garbeller paid a fine of £50, and 20s. per annum, for leave to hold his office for life. The Grocers seem to have at one time dealt in whale-oil and wool.

During the Civil War the Grocers suffered, like all their brother companies. In 1645, the Parliament exacted £50 per week from them towards the support of troops, £6 for City defences, and £8 for wounded soldiers. The Company had soon to sell £1,000 worth of plate. A further demand for arms, and a sum of £4,500 for the defence of the City, drove them to sell all the rest of their plate, except the value of £300. In 1645, the watchful Committee of Safety, sitting at Haberdashers' Hall, finding the Company indebted £500 to one Richard Greenough, a Cavalier delinquent, compelled them to pay that sum.

No wonder, then, that the Grocers shouted at the Restoration, spent £540 on the coronation pageant, and provided sixty riders at Charles's noisy entrance into London. The same year, Sir John Frederick, being chosen Mayor, and not being, as rule required, a member of one of the twelve Great Companies, left the Barber Chirurgeons, and joined the Grocers, who welcomed him with a great pageant. In 1664, the Grocers took a zealous part with their friends and allies, the Druggists, against the College of Physicians, who were trying to obtain a bill granting them power of search, seizure, fine, and imprisonment. The Plague year no election feast was held. The Great Fire followed, and not only greatly damaged Grocers' Hall, but also consumed the whole of their house property, excepting a few small tenements in Grub Street. They found it necessary to try and raise £20,000 to pay their debts, to sell their melted plate, and to add ninety-four members to the livery. Only succeeding, amid the general distress, in raising £6,000, the Company was almost bankrupt, their hall being seized, and attachments laid on their rent. By a great effort, however, they wore round, called more freemen on the livery, and added in two months eighty-one new members to the Court of Assistants; so that before the Revolution of 1688 they had restored their hall and mowed down most of their rents. Indeed, one of their most brilliant epochs was in 1689, when William III. accepted the office of their sovereign master.

Some writers credit the Grocers' Company with the enrolment of five kings, several princes, eight dukes, three earls, and twenty lords. Of these five kings, Mr. Herbert could, however, only trace Charles II. and William III. Their list of honorary members is one emblazoned with many great names, including Sir Philip Sidney (at whose funeral they assisted), Pitt, Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, the Marquis of Cornwallis, George Canning, &c. Of Grocer Mayors, Strype notes sixty-four between 1231 and 1710 alone.

The garden of the Hall must have been a pleasant place in the old times, as it is now. It is mentioned in 1427 as having vines spreading up before the parlour windows. It had also an arbour; and in 1433 it was generously thrown open to the citizens generally, who had petitioned for this privilege. It contained hedge-rows and a bowling alley, with an ancient tower of stone or brick, called "the Turret," at the north-west corner, which had probably formed part of Lord Fitzwalter's mansion. The garden remained unchanged till the new hall was built in 1798, when it was much curtailed, and in 1802 it was nearly cut in half by the enlargement of Princes Street. For ground which had cost the Grocers, in 1433, only £31 17s. 8d., they received from the Bank of England more than £20,000.

The Hall was often lent for dinners, funerals, county feasts, and weddings; and in 1564 the gentlemen of Gray's Inn dined there with the gentlemen of the Middle Temple. This system breeding abuses, was limited in 1610.

In the time of the Commonwealth, Grocers' Hall was the place of meeting for Parliamentary Committees. Among other subjects there discussed, we find the selection of able ministers to regulate Church government, and providing moneys for the army; and in 1641 the Grand Committee of Safety held its sittings in this Hall.

In 1648 the Grocers had to petition General Fairfax not to quarter his troops in the hall of a charitable Company like theirs. In 1649 a grand entertainment was given by the Grocers to Cromwell and Fairfax. After hearing two sermons at Christ's Church, preached by Mr. Goodwin and Dr. Owen, Cromwell, his officers, the Speaker, and the judges, dined together. "No drinking of healths," says a Puritan paper of the time, "nor other uncivill concomitants formerly of such great meetings, nor any other music than the drum and trumpet--a feast, indeed, of Christians and chieftains, whereas others were rather of Chretiens and cormorants." The surplus food was sent to the London prisons, and £40 distributed to the poor. The Aldermen and Council afterwards went to General Fairfax at his house in Queen Street, and, in the name of the City, presented him with a large basin and ewer of beaten gold; while to Cromwell they sent a great present of plate, value £300, and 200 pieces of gold. They afterwards gave a still grander feast to Cromwell in his more glorious time, and one at the Restoration to General Monk. On the latter feast they expended £215, and enrolled "honest George" a brother of the Company.

The Grocers' Hall might never have been rebuilt after the Great Fire, so crippled was the Company, but for the munificence of Sir John Cutler, a rich Grocer, whom Pope (not always regardful of truth) has bitterly satirised.

Sir John rebuilt the parlour and dining-room in 1668-9, and was rewarded by "a strong vote of thanks," and by his statue and picture being placed in the Hall as eternal records of the Company's esteem and gratitude. Two years later Grocers' Hall was granted to the parishioners of St. Mildred as a chapel till their own church could be rebuilt. The garden turret, used as a record office, was fitted up for the clerk's residence, and a meeting place for the court; and, "for better order, decorum, and gravity," pipes and pots were forbidden in the court-room during the meetings.

At Grocers' Hall, "to my great surprise," says vivacious Pennant, "I met again with Sir John Cutler, Grocer, in marble and on canvas. In the first he is represented standing, in a flowing wig, waved rather than curled, a laced cravat, and a furred gown, with the folds not ungraceful; in all, except where the dress is inimical to the sculptor's art, it may be called a good performance. By his portrait we may learn that this worthy wore a black wig, and was a good-looking man. He was created a baronet, November 12th, 1660; so that he certainly had some claim of gratitude with the restored monarch. He died in 1693. His kinsman and executor, Edmund Boulton, Esq., expended £7,666 on his funeral expenses. He served as Master of the Company in 1652 and 1653, in 1688, and again a fourth time."

In 1681 the Hall was renovated at an expense of £500, by Sir John Moore, so as to make it fit for the residence of the Lord Mayor. Moore kept his mayoralty here, paying a rent of £200. It continued to be used by the Lord Mayors till 1735, when the Company, now grown rich, withdrew their permission. In 1694 it was let to the Bank of England, who held their court there till the Bank was built in 1734. The Company's present hall was built in 1802, and repaired in 1827, since which the whole has been restored, the statue of Sir John Cutler moved from its neglected post in the garden, and the arms of the most illustrious Grocers of antiquity set up.

The Grocers' charities are numerous; they give away annually £300 among the poor of the Company, and they have had £4,670 left them to lend to poor members of the community. Before 1770, Boyle says, the Company gave away about £700 a year.

Among the bravest of the Grocers, we must mention Sir John Philpot, Mayor, 1378, who fitted out a fleet that captured John Mercer, a Scotch freebooter, and took fifteen Spanish ships. He afterwards transported an English army to Brittany in his own ships, and released more than 1,000 of our victualling vessels. John Churchman, sheriff in 1385, was the founder of the Custom House. Sir Thomas Knolles, mayor in 1399 and 1410, rebuilt St. Antholin's, Watling Street. Sir Robert Chichele (a relation of Archbishop Chichele), mayor in 1411-12, gave the ground for rebuilding the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, which his descendant, Sir Thomas (Mayor and Grocer), helped to rebuild after the Great Fire. Sir William Sevenoke was founder of the school and college at Sevenoaks, Kent. Sir John Welles (mayor in 1431), built the Standard in Chepe, helped to build the Guildhall Chapel, built the south aisle of St. Antholin's, and repaired the miry way leading to Westminster (the Strand). Sir Stephen Brown, mayor, 1438, imported cargoes of rye from Dantzic, during a great dearth, and as Fuller quaintly says, "first showed Londoners the way to the barn door." Sir John Crosby (Grocer and Sheriff in 1483), lived in great splendour at Crosby House, in Bishopsgate Street: he gave great sums for civic purposes, and repaired London Wall, London Bridge, and Bishopsgate. Sir Henry Keble (mayor, 1510) was six times Master of the Grocers' Company: he left bequests to the Company, and gave £1,000 to rebuild St. Antholin's, Budge Row. Lawrence Sheriff, Warden 1561, was founder of the great school at Rugby.

"The rivulet or running water," says Maitland, "denominated Walbrook, ran through the middle of the city above ground, till about the middle of the fourteenth century, when it was arched over, since which time it has served as a common sewer, wherein, at the depth of sixteen feet, under St. Mildred's Church steeple, runs a great and rapid stream. At the south-east corner of Grocers' Alley, in the Poultry, stood a beautiful chapel, called Corpus Christi and Sancta Maria, which was founded in the reign of Edward III. by a pious man, for a master and brethren, for whose support he endowed the same with lands, to the amount of twenty pounds per annum."

"It hath been a common speech," says Stow (Elizabeth), "that when Walbrook did lie open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since been called the Old Barge. Also, on the north side of this street, directly over against the said Bucklersbury, was one antient strong tower of stone, at which tower King Edward III., in the eighteenth of his reign, by the name of the King's House, called Cornets Tower, in London, did appoint to be his exchange of money there to be kept. In the twenty-ninth he granted it to Frydus Guynisane and Lindus Bardoile, merchants of London for £20 the year; and in the thirty-second of his reign, he gave it to his college, or Free Chapel of St. Stephen, at Westminster, by the name of his tower, called Cornettes-Tower, at Bucklesbury, in London. This tower of late years was taken down by one Buckle, a grocer, meaning, in place thereof, to have set up and builded a goodly frame of timber; but the said Buckle greedily labouring to pull down the old tower, a piece thereof fell upon him, which so bruised him, that his life was thereby shortened; and another, that married his widow, set up the new prepared frame of timber, and finished the work.

"This whole street, called Bucklesbury, on both sides, throughout, is possessed by grocers, and apothecaries toward the west end thereof. On the south side breaketh out some other short lane, called in records Peneritch Street. It reacheth but to St. Syth's Lane, and St. Syth's Church is the farthest part thereof, for by the west end of the said church beginneth Needlers Lane."

"I have heard," says Pennant, "that Bucklersbury was, in the reign of King William, noted for the great resort of ladies of fashion, to purchase tea, fans, and other Indian goods. King William, in some of his letters, appears to be angry with his queen for visiting these shops, which, it would seem, by the following lines of Prior, were sometimes perverted to places of intrigue, for, speaking of Hans Carvel's wife, the poet says:--

"'The first of all the Town was told, Where newest Indian things were sold; So in a morning, without boddice, Slipt sometimes out to Mrs. Thody's, To cheapen tea, or buy a skreen; What else could so much virtue mean?'"

In the time of Queen Elizabeth this street was inhabited by chemists, druggists, and apothecaries. Mouffet, in his treatise on foods, calls on them to decide whether sweet smells correct pestilent air; and adds, that Bucklersbury being replete with physic, drugs, and spicery, and being perfumed in the time of the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gum, and making perfumes, escaped that great plague, whereof such multitudes died, that scarce any house was left unvisited.

Shakespeare mentions Bucklersbury in his Merry Wives of Windsor, written at Queen Elizabeth's request. He makes Falstaff say to Mrs. Ford--

"What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee, there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time; I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservedst it." (Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. sc. 3.)

The apothecaries' street is also mentioned in Westward Ho! that dangerous play that brought Ben Jonson into trouble:--

"Mrs. Tenterhook. Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it."

And Ben Johnson, in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, says:--

"Nor have my title-leaf on post or walls, Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls For termers, or some clerk-like serving man, Who scarce can spell th' hard names, whose knight less can. If without these vile arts it will not sell, Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well."

That good old Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, also alludes to the herbalists' street in his wonderful "Religio Medico:"--"I know," says he, "most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside."

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XXXVIII. THE MANSION HOUSE

The Palace of the Lord Mayor--The old Stocks' Market--A Notable Statue of Charles II.--The Mansion House described--The Egyptian Hall--Works of Art in the Mansion House--The Election of the Lord Mayor--Lord Mayor's Day--The Duties of a Lord Mayor--Days of the Year on which the Lord Mayor holds High State--The Patronage of the Lord Mayor--His Powers--The Lieutenancy of the City of London--The Conservancy of the Thames and Medway--The Lord Mayor's Advisers--The Mansion House Household and Expenditure--Theodore Hook--Lord Mayor Scropps--The Lord Mayor's Insignia--The State Barge--The Maria Wood.

The Lord Mayors in old times often dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Old Jewry; but in 1739 Lord Mayor Perry laid the first stone of the present dull and stately Mansion House, and Sir Crisp Gascoigne, 1753, was the first Lord Mayor that resided in it. The architect, Dance, selected the Greek style for the City palace.

The present palace of the Lord Mayor stands on the site of the old Stocks' Market, built for the sale of fish and flesh by Henry Walis, mayor in the 10th year of the reign of Edward I. Before this time a pair of stocks had stood there, and they gave their name to the new market house. Walis had designed this market to help to maintain London Bridge, and the bridge keeper had for a long time power to grant leases for the market shops. In 1312-13, John de Gisors, mayor, gave a congregation of honest men of the commonalty the power of letting the Stocks' Market shops. In the reign of Edward II. the Stocks let for £46 13s. 4d. a year, and was one of the five privileged markets of London. It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry IV., and in the year 1543 there were here twenty-five fishmongers and eighteen butchers. In the reign of Henry VIII. a stone conduit was erected. The market-place was about 230 feet long and 108 feet broad, and on the east side were rows of trees "very pleasant to the inhabitants." On the north side were twenty-two covered fruit stalls, at the south-west corner butchers' stalls, and the rest of the place was taken up by gardeners who sold fruit, roots, herbs and flowers. It is said that that rich scented flower, the stock, derived its name from being sold in this market.

"Up farther north," says Strype, "is the Stocks' Market. As to the present state of which it is converted to a quite contrary use; for instead of fish and flesh sold there before the Fire, are now sold fruits, roots and herbs; for which it is very considerable and much resorted unto, being of note for having the choicest in their kind of all sorts, surpassing all other markets in London." "All these things have we at London," says Shadwell, in his "Bury Fair," 1689; "the produce of the best corn-fields at Greenhithe; hay, straw, and cattle at Smithfield, with horses too. Where is such a garden in Europe as the Stocks' Market? where such a river as the Thames? such ponds and decoys as in Leadenhall market for your fish and fowl?"

"At the north end of the market place," says Strype, admiringly, "by a water conduit pipe, is erected a nobly great statue of King Charles II. on horseback, trampling on slaves, standing on a pedestal with dolphins cut in niches, all of freestone, and encompassed with handsome iron grates. This statue was made and erected at the sole charge of Sir Robert Viner, alderman, knight and baronet, an honourable, worthy, and generous magistrate of this City."

This statue of Charles had a droll origin. It was originally intended for a statue of John Sobieski, the Polish king who saved Vienna from the Turks. In the first year of the Restoration, the enthusiastic Viner purchased the unfinished statue abroad. Sobieski's stern head was removed by Latham, the head of Charles substituted, and the turbaned Turk, on whom Sobieski trampled, became a defeated Cromwell.

"Could Robin Viner have foreseen The glorious triumphs of his master, The Wood-Church statue gold had been, Which now is made of alabaster; But wise men think, had it been wood, 'Twere for a bankrupt king too good.

"Those that the fabric well consider, Do of it diversely discourse; Some pass their censure of the rider, Others their judgment of the horse; Most say the steed's a goodly thing, But all agree 'tis a lewd king."

(The History of Insipids; a Lampoon, 1676, by the Lord Rochester.)

The statue was set up May 29, 1672, and on that day the Stocks' Market ran with claret. The Stocks' Market was removed in 1737 to Farringdon Street, and was then called Fleet Market. The Sobieski statue was taken down and presented by the City in 1779 to Robert Viner, Esq., a descendant of the convivial mayor who pulled Charles II. back "to take t'other bottle."

"This Mansion House," says Dodsley's "Guide to London," "is very substantially built of Portland stone, and has a portico of six lofty fluted columns, of the Corinthian order, in the front; the same order being continued in pilasters both under the pediment, and on each side. The basement storey is very massive and built in rustic. In the centre of this storey is the door which leads to the kitchens, cellars, and other offices; and on each side rises a flight of steps of very considerable extent, leading up to the portico, in the midst of which is the door which leads to the apartments and offices where business is transacted. The stone balustrade of the stairs is continued along the front of the portico, and the columns, which are wrought in the proportions of Palladio, support a large angular pediment, adorned with a very noble piece in bas-relief, representing the dignity and opulence of the City of London, by Mr. Taylor."

The lady crowned with turrets represents London. She is trampling on Envy, who lies struggling on her back. London's left arm rests on a shield, and in her right she holds a wand which mightily resembles a yard measure. On her right side stands a Cupid, holding the cap of Liberty over his shoulder at the end of a staff. A little further lolls the river Thames, who is emptying a large vase, and near him is an anchor and cable. On London's left is Plenty, kneeling and pouring out fruit from a cornucopia, and behind Plenty are two naked boys with bales of goods, as emblems of Commerce. The complaint is that the principal figures are too large, and crowd the rest, who, compelled to grow smaller and smaller, seem sheltering from the rain.

Beneath the portico are two series of windows, and above these there used to be an attic storey for the servants, generally known as "the Mayor's Nest," with square windows, crowned with a balustrade. It is now removed.

The Mansion House is an oblong, has an area in the middle, and at the farthest end of it is situated the grand and lofty Egyptian Hall (so called from some Egyptian details that have now disappeared). This noble banquet-room was designed by the Earl of Burlington, and was intended to resemble an Egyptian chamber described by Vitruvius. It has two side-screens of lofty columns supporting a vaulted roof, and is lit by a large west window. It can dine 400 guests. In the side walls are the niches, filled with sculptured groups or figures, some of the best of them by Foley. "To make it regular in rank," says the author of "London and its Environs" (1761), "the architect has raised a similar building on the front, which is the upper part of a dancing-gallery. This rather hurts than adorns the face of the building." Near the end, at each side, is a window of extraordinary height, placed between complex Corinthian pilasters, and extending to the top of the attic storey. In former times the sides of the Mansion House were darkened by the houses that crowded it, and the front required an area before it. It has been seriously proposed lately to take the Poultry front of the Mansion House away, and place it west, facing Queen Victoria Street. In a London Guide of 1820 the state bed at the Mansion House, which cost three thousand guineas, is spoken of with awe and wonder.

There are, says Timbs, other dining-rooms, as the Venetian Parlour, Wilkes's Parlour, &c. The drawing-room and ball-room are superbly decorated; above the latter is the Justice-room (constructed in 1849), where the Lord Mayor sits daily. In a contiguous apartment was the state bed. There is a fine gallery of portraits and other pictures. The kitchen is a large hall, provided with ranges, each of them large enough to roast an entire ox. The vessels for boiling vegetables are not pots, but tanks. The stewing range is a long, broad iron pavement laid down over a series of furnaces. The spits are huge cages formed of iron bars, and turned by machinery.

At the close of the Exhibition of 1851, the Corporation of London, with a view to encourage art, voted £10,000 to be expended in statuary for the Egyptian Hall. Among the leading works we may mention "Alastor" and "Hermione," by Mr. J. Durham; "Egeria" and "The Elder Brother," in "Comus," by Mr. J.H. Foley; Chaucer's "Griselda," by Mr. Calder Marshall; "The Morning Star," by Mr. G.H. Bailey; and "The Faithful Shepherdess," by Mr. Lucas Durrant. In the saloon is the "Caractacus" of Foley, and the "Sardanapalus" of Mr. Weekes.

The duties of a Lord Mayor have been elaborately and carefully condensed by the late Mr. Fairholt, who had made City ceremonies the study of half his life.

"None," says our authority, "can serve the office of Lord Mayor unless he be an alderman of London, who must previously have served the office of sheriff, though it is not necessary that a sheriff should be an alderman. The sheriffs are elected by the livery of London, the only requisite for the office being, that he is a freeman and liveryman of the City, and that he possesses property sufficient to serve the office of sheriff creditably, in all its ancient splendour and hospitality, to do which generally involves an expenditure of about £3,000. There are fees averaging from £500 to £600 belonging to the office, but these are given to the under-sheriff by all respectable and honourable men, as it is considered very disreputable for the sheriff to take any of them.

"The Lord Mayor has the privilege, on any day between the 14th of April and the 14th of June, of nominating any one or more persons (not exceeding nine in the whole) to be submitted to the Livery on Midsummer Day, for them to elect the two sheriffs for the year ensuing. This is generally done at a public dinner, when the Lord Mayor proposes the healths of such persons as he intends to nominate for sheriffs. It is generally done as a compliment, and considered as an honour; but in those cases where the parties have an objection to serve, it sometimes gives offence, as, upon the Lord Mayor declaring in the Court of Aldermen the names of those he proposes, the macebearer immediately waits upon them, and gives them formal notice; when, if they do not intend to serve, they are excused, upon paying, at the next Court of Aldermen, four hundred guineas; but if they allow their names to remain on the list until elected by the livery, the fine is £1,000.

"The Lord Mayor is elected by the Livery of London, in Common Hall assembled (Guildhall), on Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, previous to which election the Lord Mayor and Corporation attend church in state; and on their return, the names of all the aldermen who have not served the office of Lord Mayor are submitted in rotation by the Recorder, and the show of hands taken upon each; when the sheriffs declare which two names have the largest show of hands, and these two are returned to the Court of Aldermen, who elect one to be the Lord Mayor for the year ensuing. (The office is compulsory to an alderman, but he is excused upon the payment of £1,000.) The one selected is generally the one next in rotation, unless he has not paid twenty shillings in the pound, or there is any blot in his private character, for it does not follow that an alderman having served the office of sheriff must necessarily become Lord Mayor; the selection rests first with the livery, and afterwards with the Court of Aldermen; and in case of bankruptcy, or compounding with his creditors, an alderman is passed over, and even a junior put in his place, until he has paid twenty shillings in the pound to all his creditors. The selection being made from the nominees, the Lord Mayor and aldermen return to the livery, and the Recorder declares upon whom the choice of the aldermen has fallen, when he is publicly called forth, the chain put round his neck, and he returns thanks to the livery for the honour they have conferred upon him. He is now styled the 'Right Honourable the Lord Mayor elect,' and takes rank next to the Lord Mayor, who takes him home in the state carriage to the Mansion House, to dine with the aldermen. This being his first ride in the state coach, a fee of a guinea is presented to the coachman, and half-a-guinea to the postilion; the City trumpeters who attend also receive a gratuity. The attention of the Lord Mayor elect is now entirely directed to the establishment of his household, and he is beset by applications of all sorts, and tradesmen of every grade and kind, until he has filled up his appointments, which must be done by the 8th of November, when he is publicly installed in his office in the Guildhall.

"The election of mayor is subject to the approbation of the Crown, which is communicated by the Lord Chancellor to the Lord Mayor elect, at an audience in the presence of the Recorder, who presents him to the Lord Chancellor for the purpose of receiving Her Majesty's pleasure and approbation of the man of the City's choice. This ceremony is generally gone through on the first day of Michaelmas term, previous to receiving the judges. The Lord Mayor elect is attended to the Chancellor's private residence by the aldermen, sheriffs, under-sheriffs, the swordbearers, and all the City officers. In the evening he gives his first state dinner, in robes and full-dressed.

"On the 8th of November the Lord Mayor elect is sworn into office publicly in Guildhall, having previously breakfasted with the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House; they are attended at this ceremony, as well as at the breakfast, by the members and officers of the Court of the Livery Company to which they respectively belong, in their gowns. After the swearing in at Guildhall, when the Mayor publicly takes the oaths, accepts the sword, the mace, the sceptre, and the City purse, he proceeds with the late Mayor to the Mansion House, and they conjointly give what is called the 'farewell dinner;' the Lord Mayor elect proceeding to his own private residence in the evening, a few days being allowed for the removal of the late Lord Mayor.

"The next day, being what is popularly known as 'Lord Mayor's day,' and which is observed as a close holiday in the City, the shops are closed, as are also the streets in all the principal thoroughfares, except for the carriages engaged in the procession. He used formerly to go to Westminster Hall by water, in the state barge, attended by the state barges of the City Companies, but now by land, and is again sworn in, in the Court of Exchequer, to uphold and support the Crown, and make a due return of all fines and fees passing through his office during the year. He returns in the same state to Guildhall about three o'clock in the afternoon (having left the Mansion House about twelve o'clock), where, in conjunction with the Sheriffs, he gives a most splendid banquet to the Royal Family, the Judges, Ministers of State, Ambassadors, or such of them as will accept his invitation, the Corporation, and such distinguished foreigners as may be visiting in the country. At this banquet the King and Queen attend the first year after their coronation; it is given at the expense of the City, and it generally costs from eight to ten thousand pounds; but when the City entertained the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and the allied Sovereigns in 1814, it cost twenty thousand pounds. On all other Lord Mayor's days the expense is borne by the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, the former paying half, and the latter one-fourth each; the Mayor's half generally averaging from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds.

"The next morning the new Lord Mayor enters upon the duties of his office. From ten to twelve he is engaged in giving audience to various applications; at twelve he enters the justice-room, where he is often detained until four in the afternoon, and this is his daily employment. His lordship holds his first Court of Aldermen previous to any other court, to which he goes in full state; the same week he holds his first Court of Common Council, also in state. He attends the first sessions of the Central Criminal Court at Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey; being the Chief Commissioner, he takes precedence of all the judges, and sits in a chair in the centre of the Bench, the swordbearer placing the sword of justice behind it; this seat is never occupied in the absence of the Lord Mayor, except by an alderman who has passed the chair. The Court is opened at ten o'clock on Monday; the judges come on Wednesday; the Lord Mayor takes the chair for an hour, and then retires till five o'clock, when he entertains the judges at dinner in the Court-house, which is expected to be done every day during the sitting of the Court, which takes place every month, and lasts about eight days; the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs dividing the expenses of the table between them.

"Plough Monday is the next grand day, when the Lord Mayor receives the inquest of every ward in the City, who make a presentment of the election of all ward officers in the City, who are elected on St. Thomas's Day, December 21st, and also of any nuisances or grievances of which the citizens may have to complain, which are referred to the Court of Aldermen, who sit in judgment on these matters on the next Court day. In former times, on the first Sunday in Epiphany, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation, went in state to the Church of St. Lawrence, Guildhall, and there received the sacrament, but this custom has of late years been omitted.

"If any public fast is ordered by the King, the Lord Mayor and Corporation attend St. Paul's Cathedral in their black robes; and if a thanksgiving, they appear in scarlet. If an address is to be presented to the throne, the whole Corporation go in state, the Lord Mayor wearing his gold gown. (Of these gowns only a certain number are allowed, by Act of Parliament, to public officers as a costly badge of distinction; the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls are among the privileged persons.) On Easter Monday and Tuesday the Lord Mayor attends Christ Church (of which he is a member), on which occasion the whole of the blue-coat boys, nurses, and beadles, master, clerk, and other officers, walk in procession. The President, freemen, and other officers of the Royal Hospital attend the church to hear the sermon, and a statement of the income and expenditure of each of the hospitals, over which the Mayor has jurisdiction, is read from the pulpit. A public dinner is given at Christ's Hospital on the Monday evening, and a similar one at St. Bartholomew's on the Tuesday. On the Monday evening the Lord Mayor gives the grandest dinner of the year in the Egyptian Hall, at the Mansion House, to 400 persons, at which some of the Royal Family often attend, a ball taking place in the evening. The next day, before going to church, the Lord Mayor gives a purse of fifty guineas, in sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns, to the boys of Christ's Hospital, who pass before him through the Mansion House, each receiving a piece of silver (fresh from the Mint), two plum buns, and a glass of wine. On the first Sunday in term the Lord Mayor and Corporation receive the judges at St. Paul's, and hear a sermon from the Lord Mayor's chaplain, after which his lordship entertains the party at dinner, either on that day or any other, according to his own feeling of the propriety of Sunday dinners.

"In the month of May, when the festival of the Sons of the Clergy is generally held in St. Paul's, the Lord Mayor attends, after which the party dine at Merchant Taylors' Hall. Some of the Royal Family generally attend; always the archbishop and a great body of the clergy. In the same month, the Lord Mayor attends St. Paul's in state, to hear a sermon preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, at which all the bishops and archbishops attend, with others of the clergy; after which the Lord Mayor gives them a grand dinner; and on another day in the same month, the Archbishop of Canterbury gives a similar state dinner to the Lord Mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and the bishops, at Lambeth Palace." In June the Lord Mayor used to attend the anniversary of the Charity Schools in St. Paul's in state, and in the evening to preside at the public dinner, but this has of late been discontinued.

"On Midsummer Day, the Lord Mayor holds a common hall for the election of sheriffs for the ensuing year; and on the 3rd of September, the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs used to go in state to proclaim Bartholomew Fair, now a thing of the past. They called at the gaol of Newgate on their way, and the governor brought out a cup of wine, from which the Lord Mayor drank.

"On St. Matthias' Day (21st September) the Lord Mayor attends Christ's Hospital, to hear a sermon, when a little Latin oration is made by the two senior scholars, who afterwards carry round a glove, and collect money enough to pay their first year's expenses at college. Then the beadles of the various hospitals of which the Lord Mayor is governor deliver up their staves of office, which are returned if no fault is to be attributed to them; and this is done to denote the Mayor's right to remove them at his will, or upon just cause assigned, although elected by their respective governors."

On the 28th of September, the Lord Mayor swears in the sheriffs at Guildhall, a public breakfast having been first given by them at the hall of the Company to which the senior sheriff belongs. On the 30th of September, the Lord Mayor proceeds with the sheriffs to Westminster, in state; and the sheriffs are again sworn into office before the Barons of the Exchequer. The senior alderman below the chair (the next in rotation for Lord Mayor) cuts some sticks, delivers six horse-shoes, and counts sixty-one hob-nails, as suit and service for some lands held by the City under the Crown. The Barons are then invited to the banquet given by the sheriffs on their return to the City, at which the Lord Mayor presides in state.

"The patronage of the Lord Mayor consists in the appointment of a chaplain, who receives a full set of canonicals, lives and boards in the Mansion House, has a suite of rooms and a servant at command, rides in the state carriage, and attends the Lord Mayor whenever required. He is presented to the King at the first levée, and receives a purse of fifty guineas from the Court of Aldermen, and a like sum from the Court of Common Council, for the sermons he preaches before the Corporation and the judges at St. Paul's the first Sundays in term. The next appointment the Lord Mayor has at his disposal is the Clerk of the Cocket Office, whom he pays out of his own purse. If a harbour master, of whom there are four, dies during the year, the Lord Mayor appoints his successor. The salary is £400 a year, and is paid by the Chamberlain. He also appoints the water-bailiff's assistants, if any vacancy occurs. He presents a boy to Christ's Hospital, in addition to the one he is entitled to present as an alderman; and he has a presentation of an annuity of £21 10s. 5d., under will, to thirteen pensioners, provided a vacancy occurs during his year of office. £4 is given to a poor soldier, and the same sum to a poor sailor.

"The powers of the Lord Mayor over the City, although abridged, like the sovereign power over the State, are still much more extensive than is generally supposed. The rights and privileges of the chief magistrate of the City and its corporation are nearly allied to those of the constitution of the State. The Lord Mayor has the badges of royalty attached to his office--the sceptre, the swords of justice and mercy, and the mace. The gold chain, one of the most ancient honorary distinctions, and which may be traced from the Eastern manner of conferring dignity, is worn by him, among other honorary badges; and, having passed through the office of Lord Mayor, the alderman continues to wear it during his life. He controls the City purse, the Chamberlain delivering it into his hands, together with the sceptre, on the day he is sworn into office. He has the right of precedence in the City before all the Royal Family, which right was disputed by the Prince of Wales, in St. Paul's Cathedral, during the mayoralty of Sir James Shaw, but maintained by him, and approved and confirmed by the King (George III.). The gates of the City are in his custody, and it is usual to close the only one now remaining, Temple Bar, on the approach of the sovereign when on a visit to the City, who knocks and formally requests admission, the Mayor attending in person to grant it, and receive the visit of royalty; and upon proclaiming war or peace, he also proceeds in state to Temple Bar, to admit the heralds. Soldiers cannot march through the City, in any large numbers, without the Mayor's permission, first obtained by the Commander-in-chief.

"The Lieutenancy of the City of London is in commission. The Lord Mayor, being the Chief Commissioner, issues a new commission, whenever he pleases, by application to the Lord Chancellor, through the Secretary of State. He names in the commission all the aldermen and deputies of the City of London, the directors of the Bank, the members for the City, and such of his immediate friends and relations as he pleases. The commission, being under the Great Seal, gives all the parties named therein the right to be styled esquires, and the name once in the commission remains, unless removed for any valid reason.

"The Lord Mayor enjoys the right of private audience with the Crown; and when an audience is wished for, it is usual to make the request through the Remembrancer, but not necessary. When Alderman Wilson was Lord Mayor, he used to apply by letter to the Lord Chamberlain. In attending levees or drawing-rooms, the Lord Mayor has the privilege of the entrée, and, in consideration of the important duties he has to perform in the City, and to save his time, he is allowed to drive direct into the Ambassadors' Court at St. James's, without going round by Constitution Hill. He is summoned as a Privy Councillor on the death of the King; and the Tower pass-word is sent to him regularly, signed by the sovereign.

"He has the uncontrolled conservancy of the river Thames and the waters of the Medway, from London Bridge to Rochester down the river, and from London Bridge to Oxford up the river. He holds Courts of Conservancy whenever he sees it necessary, and summons juries in Kent, from London and Middlesex, who are compelled to go on the river in boats to view and make presentments. In the mayoralty of Alderman Wilson, these courts were held in the state barge, on the water, at the spot with which the inquiry was connected, for the convenience of the witnesses attending from the villages near. It is usual for him to visit Oxford once in fourteen, and Rochester once in seven years.[9]

"Alderman Wilson, in 1839, was the last Lord Mayor (says Fairholt, whose book was published in 1843) who visited the western boundary; and he, at the request of the Court of Aldermen, made Windsor the principal seat of the festivities, going no farther than Cliefden, and visiting Magna Charta island on his return. Alderman Pirie was the last who visited the eastern boundary, the whole party staying two days at Rochester. The Lord Mayor is privileged by the City to go these journeys every year, should he see any necessity for it; but the expense is so great (about £1,000) that it is only performed at these distant periods, although Alderman Wilson visited the western boundary in the thirteenth, and Alderman Pirie in the fifth year. A similar short view is taken as far as Twickenham yearly, in the month of July, at a cost of about £150, when the Lord Mayor is attended by the aldermen, the sheriffs, and their ladies, with the same show and attendance as on the more infrequent visits. His lordship has also a committee to assist in the duties of his office, who have a shallop of their own, and take a view up and down the river, as far as they like to go, once or twice a month during summer, at an expense of some hundreds per annum.

"The Lord Mayor may be said to have a veto upon the proceedings of the Courts both of Aldermen and Common Council, as well as upon the Court of Livery in Common Hall assembled, neither of these courts being able to meet unless convened by him; and he can at any time dissolve the court by removing the sword and mace from the table, and declaring the business at an end; but this is considered an ungracious display of power when exercised.

"The Lord Mayor may call upon the Recorder for his advice whenever he may stand in need of it, as well as for that of the Common Serjeant, the four City pleaders, and the City solicitor, from whom he orders prosecutions at the City expense whenever he thinks the public good requires it. The salary of the Recorder is £2,500 per annum, besides fees; the Common Serjeant £1,000, with an income from other sources of £843 per annum. The solicitor is supposed to make £5,000 per annum.

"The Lord Mayor resides in the Mansion House, the first stone of which was laid the 25th of October, 1739. This house, with the furniture, cost £70,985 13s. 2d., the principal part of which was paid from the fines received from persons who wished to be excused from serving the office of sheriff. About £9,000 was paid out of the City's income. The plate cost £11,531 16s. 3d., which has been very considerably added to since by the Lord Mayors for the time being, averaging about £500 per annum.

"Attached to the household is--

£ s. d.

The chaplain, at a salary of 97 10 0 The swordbearer 500 0 0 The macebearer 500 0 0 Water-bailiff 300 0 0 City marshal 550 0 0 Marshal's man 200 0 0 Clerk of the Cocket Office 80 0 0 Gate porter 6 6 0 Seven trumpeters 29 9 0

"These sums, added to the allowance to the Lord Mayor, and the ground-rent and taxes of the Mansion House (amounting to about £692 12s. 6d. per annum), and other expenses, it is expected, cost the City about £19,038 16s. 10d. per annum. There are also four attorneys of the Mayor's court, who formerly boarded at the Mansion House, but are now allowed £105 per annum in lieu of the table. The plate-butler and the housekeeper have each £5 5s. per annum as a compliment from the City, and in addition to their wages, paid by the Lord Mayor (£45 per annum to the housekeeper, and £1 5s. per week to the plate-butler). The marshal's clothing costs £44 16s. per annum, and that of the marshal's man £13 9s. 6d.

"There is also--

£ s. d.

A yeoman of the chamber, at 270 0 0 Three Serjeants of ditto,[10] each 280 0 0 Master of the ceremonies 40 0 0 Serjeant of the channel 184 10 0 Yeoman of the channel 25 0 0 Two yeomen of the waterside, each 350 0 0 Deputy water-bailiff 350 0 0 Water-bailiff's first young man 300 0 0 The common hunt's young man 350 0 0 Water-bailiff's second young man 300 0 0 Swordbearer's young man 350 0 0

"These sums and others, added to the previous amount, make an annual amount of expense connected with the office of Lord Mayor of £25,034 7s. 1d.

"Most of the last-named officers walk before the Lord Mayor, dressed in black silk gowns, on all state occasions (one acting as his lordship's train-bearer), and dine with the household at a table provided at about 15s. a head, exclusive of wine, which they are allowed without restraint. In the mayoralty of Alderman Atkins, some dispute having arisen with some of the household respecting their tables, the City abolished the daily table, giving each of the officers a sum of money instead, deducting £1,000 a year from the Lord Mayor's allowance, and requiring him only to provide the swordbearer's table on state days."

The estimate made for the expenditure at the Mansion House by the committee of the Corporation, is founded upon the average of many years, but in such mayoralties as Curtis, Pirie, and Wilson, far more must have been spent. It is said that only one Lord Mayor ever saved anything out of his salary.

"Sir James Saunderson, Mayor in 1792-3, left behind him a minute account of the expenses of his year of office, for the edification of his successors. The document is lengthy, but we shall select a few of the more striking items. Paid--Butcher for twelve months, £781 10s. 10d.; one item in this account is for meat given to the prisoners at Ludgate, at a cost of £68 10s. 8d. The wines are, of course, expensive. 1792--Paid, late Lord Mayor's stock, £57 7s. 11d.; hock, 35 dozen, £82 14s. 0d.; champagne, 40 ditto, at 43s., £85 19s. 9d.; claret, 154 ditto, at 34s. 10d. per dozen, £268 12s. 7d.; Burgundy, 30 ditto, £76 5s. 0d.; port, 8 pipes, 400 dozen, £416 4s. 0d.; draught ditto, for Lord Mayor's day, £49 4s. 0d.; ditto, ditto, for Easter Monday, £28 4s. 3d.--£493 12s. 3d.; Madeira, 32 dozen, £59 16s. 4d.; sherry, 61 dozen, £67 1s. 0d.; Lisbon, one hogshead, at 34s. per dozen, £62 12s. 0d.; bottles to make good, broke and stole, £97 13s. 6d.; arrack, £8 8s. 0d.; brandy, 25 gallons, £18 11s. 0d.; rum, 6-1/2 ditto, £3 19s. 6d. Total, £1,309 12s. 10d."

"These items of costume are curious:--Lady Mayoress, November 30.--A hoop, £2 16s. 0d.; point ruffles, £12 12s. 0d.; treble blond ditto, £7 7s. 0d.; a fan, £3 3s. 0d.; a cap and lappets, £7 7s. 0d.; a cloak and sundries, £26 17s. 0d.; hair ornaments, £34 0s. 0d.; a cap, £7 18s. 0d.; sundries, £37 9s. 1d. 1793, Jan. 26.--A silk, for 9th Nov., 3-1/2 guineas per yard, £41 6s. 0d.; a petticoat (Madame Beauvais), £35 3s. 6d.; a gold chain, £57 15s. 0d.; silver silk, £13 0s. 0d.; clouded satin, £5 10s. 0d.; a petticoat for Easter, £29 1s. 0d.; millinery, for ditto, £27 17s. 6d.; hair-dressing, £13 2s. 3d. July 6th.--A petticoat, £6 16s. 8d.; millinery, £7 8s. 8d.; mantua-maker, in full, £13 14s. 6d.; milliner, in full, £12 6s. 6d. Total, £416 2s. 0d. The Lord Mayor's dress:--Two wigs, £9 9s. 0d.; a velvet suit, £54 8s. 0d.; other clothes, £117 13s. 4d.; hats and hose, £9 6s. 6d.; a scarlet robe, £14 8s. 6d.; a violet ditto, £12 1s. 6d.; a gold chain, £63 0s. 0d.; steel buckles, £5 5s. 0d.; a steel sword, £6 16s. 6d.; hair-dressing, £16 16s. 11d.--£309 2s. 3d. On the page opposite to that containing this record, under the head of 'Ditto Returned,' we read 'Per Valuation, £0 0s. 0d.' Thus, to dress a Lord Mayor costs £309 2s. 0d.; but her Ladyship cannot be duly arrayed at a less cost than £416 2s. 0d. To dress the servants cost £724 5s. 6d."

Then comes a grand summing-up. "Dr. The whole state of the account, £12,173 4s. 3d." Then follow the receipts per contra:--" At Chamberlain's Office, £3,572 8s. 4d.; Cocket Office, £892 5s. 11d.; Bridge House, £60; City Gauger, £250; freedoms, £175; fees on affidavits, £21 16s. 8d.; seals, £67 4s. 9d.; licences, £13 15s.; sheriff's fees, £13 6s. 8d.; corn fees, £15 13s.; venison warrants, £14 4s.; attorneys, Mayor's Court, £26 7s. 9d.; City Remembrancer, £12 12s.; in lieu of baskets, £7 7s.; vote of Common Council, £100; sale of horses and carriages, £450; wine (overplus) removed from Mansion House, £398 18s. 7d. Total received, £6,117 9s. 8d. Cost of mayoralty, as such, and independent of all private expenses, £6,055 14s. 7d."

That clever but unscrupulous tuft-hunter and smart parvenu, Theodore Hook, who talked of Bloomsbury as if it was semi-barbarous, and of citizens (whose wine he drank, and whose hospitality he so often shared) as if they could only eat venison and swallow turtle soup, has left a sketch of the short-lived dignity of a mayor, which exactly represents the absurd caricature of City life that then pleased his West-end readers, half of whom had derived their original wealth from the till. Scropps, the new Lord Mayor, cannot sleep all night for his greatness; the wind down the chimney sounds like the shouts of the people; the cocks crowing in the morn at the back of the house he takes for trumpets sounding his approach; and the ordinary incidental noises in the family he fancies the pop-guns at Stangate announcing his disembarcation at Westminster. Then come his droll mishaps: when he enters the state coach, and throws himself back upon his broad seat, with all imaginable dignity, in the midst of all his ease and elegance, he snaps off the cut-steel hilt of his sword, by accidentally bumping the whole weight of his body right--or rather, wrong--directly upon the top of it.

"Through fog and glory," says Theodore Hook, "Scropps reached Blackfriars Bridge, took water, and in the barge tasted none of the collation, for all he heard, saw, and swallowed was 'Lord Mayor' and 'your lordship,' far sweeter than nectar. At the presentation at Westminster, he saw two of the judges, whom he remembered on the circuit, when he trembled at the sight of them, believing them to be some extraordinary creatures, upon whom all the hair and fur grew naturally.

"Then the Lady Mayoress. There she was--Sally Scropps (her maiden name was Snob). 'There was my own Sally, with a plume of feathers that half filled the coach, and Jenny and Maria and young Sally, all with their backs to my horses, which were pawing with mud, and snorting and smoking like steam-engines, with nostrils like safety valves, and four of my footmen behind the coach, like bees in a swarm.'"

Perhaps the most effective portion of the paper is the reverse of the picture. My lord and lady and their family had just got settled in the Mansion House, and enjoying their dignity, when the 9th of November came again--the consummation of Scropps' downfall. Again did they go in state to Guildhall; again were they toasted and addressed; again were they handed in and led out, flirted with Cabinet ministers, and danced with ambassadors; and at two o'clock in the morning drove home from the scene of gaiety to the old residence in Budge Row. "Never in the world did pickled herrings or turpentine smell so powerfully as on that night when we re-entered the house.... The passage looked so narrow; the drawing-room looked so small; the staircase seemed so dark; our apartments appeared so low. In the morning we assembled at breakfast. A note lay upon the table, addressed 'Mrs. Scropps, Budge Row.' The girls, one after the other, took it up, read the superscription, and laid it down again. A visitor was announced--a neighbour and kind friend, a man of wealth and importance. What were his first words? They were the first I had heard from a stranger since my job. 'How are you, Scropps? Done up, eh?'

"Scropps! No obsequiousness, no deference, no respect. No 'My lord, I hope your lordship passed an agreeable night. And how is her ladyship, and her amiable daughters?' No, not a bit of it! 'How's Mrs. S. and the gals?' This was quite natural, all as it had been. But how unlike what it was only the day before! The very servants--who, when amidst the strapping, stall-fed, gold-laced lackeys of the Mansion House, and transferred, with the chairs and tables, from one Lord Mayor to another, dared not speak, nor look, nor say their lives were their own--strutted about the house, and banged the doors, and spoke of their missis as if she had been an old apple-woman.

"So much for domestic miseries. I went out. I was shoved about in Cheapside in the most remorseless manner. My right eye had a narrow escape of being poked out by the tray of a brawny butcher's boy, who, when I civilly remonstrated, turned round and said, 'Vy, I say, who are you, I wonder? Why are you so partiklar about your hysight?' I felt an involuntary shudder. 'To-day,' thought I, 'I am John Ebenezer Scropps. Two days ago I was Lord Mayor!'"

"Our Lord Mayor," says Cobbett, in his sensible way, "and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachmen, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and his great sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and girls; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased. And many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach."

"On ordinary state occasions," says "Aleph," in the City Press, "the Lord Mayor wears a massive black silk robe, richly embroidered, and his collar and jewel; in the civic courts, a violet silk robe, furred and bordered with black velvet. The wear of the various robes was fixed by a regulation dated 1562. The present authority for the costumes is a printed pamphlet (by order of the Court of Common Council), dated 1789.

"The jewelled collar (date 1534)," says Mr. Timbs, "is of pure gold, composed of a series of links, each formed of a letter S, a united York and Lancaster (or Henry VII.) rose, and a massive knot. The ends of the chain are joined by the portcullis, from the points of which, suspended by a ring of diamonds, hangs the jewel. The entire collar contains twenty-eight SS, fourteen roses, thirteen knots, and measures sixty-four inches. The jewel contains in the centre the City arms, cut in cameo of a delicate blue, on an olive ground. Surrounding this is a garter of bright blue, edged with white and gold, bearing the City motto, 'Domine, dirige nos,' in gold letters. The whole is encircled with a costly border of gold SS, alternating with rosettes of diamonds, set in silver. The jewel is suspended from the collar by a portcullis, but when worn without the collar, is hung by a broad blue ribbon. The investiture is by a massive gold chain, and, when the Lord Mayor is re-elected, by two chains."

Edward III., by his charter (dated 1534), grants the mayors of the City of London "gold, or silver, or silvered" maces, to be carried before them. The present mace, of silver-gilt, is five feet three inches long, and bears on the lower part "W.R." It is surmounted with a royal crown and the imperial arms; and the handle and staff are richly chased.

There are four swords belonging to the City of London. The "Pearl" sword, presented by Queen Elizabeth when she opened the first Royal Exchange, in 1571, and so named from its being richly set with pearls. This sword is carried before the Lord Mayor on all occasions of rejoicing and festivity. The "Sword of State," borne before the Lord Mayor as an emblem of his authority. The "Black" sword, used on fast days, in Lent, and at the death of any of the royal family. And the fourth is that placed before the Lord Mayor's chair at the Central Criminal Court.

The Corporate seal is circular. The second seal, made in the mayoralty of Sir William Walworth, 1381, is much defaced.

"The 'gondola,' known as the 'Lord Mayor's State Barge,'" says "Aleph," "was built in 1807, at a cost of £2,579. Built of English oak, 85 feet long by 13 feet 8 inches broad, she was at all times at liberty to pass through all the locks, and even go up the Thames as far as Oxford. She had eighteen oars and all other fittings complete, and was profusely gilt. But when the Conservancy Act took force, and the Corporation had no longer need of her, she was sold at her moorings at Messrs. Searle's, Surrey side of Westminster Bridge, on Thursday, April 5th, 1860, by Messrs. Pullen and Son, of Cripplegate. The first bid was £20, and she was ultimately knocked down for £105. Where she is or how she has fared we know not. The other barge is that famous one known to all City personages and all civic pleasure parties. It was built during the mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood, in 1816, and received its name of Maria Wood from the eldest and pet daughter of that 'twice Lord Mayor.' It cost £3,300, and was built by Messrs. Field and White, in consequence of the old barge Crosby (built during the mayoralty of Brass Crosby, 1771) being found past repairing. Maria Wood measures 140 feet long by 19 feet wide, and draws only 2 feet 6 inches of water. The grand saloon, 56 feet long, is capable of dining 140 persons. In 1851 she cost £1,000 repairing. Like her sister, this splendid civic barge was sold at the Auction-mart, facing the Bank of England, by Messrs. Pullen and Son, on Tuesday, May 31, 1859. The sale commenced at £100, next £200, £220, and thence regular bids, till finally it got to £400, when Mr. Alderman Humphrey bid £410, and got the prize. Though no longer civic property, it is yet, I believe, in the hands of those who allow it to be made the scene of many a day of festivity."

FOOTNOTES:

[9] A new Act for the conservancy of the Thames came into operation on September 30th, 1857, the result of a compromise between the City and the Government, after a long lawsuit between the Crown and City authorities.

[10] These functionaries carve the barons of beef at the banquet on Lord Mayor's Day.

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XXXIX. SAXON LONDON

A Glance at Saxon London--The Three Component Parts of Saxon London--The First Saxon Bridge over the Thames--Edward the Confessor at Westminster--City Residences of the Saxon Kings--Political Position of London in Early Times--The first recorded Great Fire of London--The Early Commercial Dignity of London--The Kings of Norway and Denmark besiege London in vain--A Great Gemot held in London--Edmund Ironside elected King by the Londoners--Canute besieges them, and is driven off--The Seamen of London--Its Citizens as Electors of Kings.

Our materials for sketching Saxon London are singularly scanty; yet some faint picture of it we may perhaps hope to convey.

Our readers must, therefore, divest their minds entirely of all remembrance of that great ocean of houses that has now spread like an inundation from the banks of the winding Thames, surging over the wooded ridges that rise northward, and widening out from Whitechapel eastward to Kensington westward. They must rather recall to their minds some small German town, belted in with a sturdy wall, raised not for ornament, but defence, with corner turrets for archers, and pierced with loops whence the bowmen may drive their arrows at the straining workers of the catapult and mangonels (those Roman war-engines we used against the cruel Danes), and with stone-capped places of shelter along the watchmen's platforms, where the sentinels may shelter themselves during the cold and storm, when tired of peering over the battlements and looking for the crafty enemy Essex-wards or Surrey way. No toy battlements of modern villa or tea-garden are those over which the rough-bearded men, in hoods and leather coats, lean in the summer, watching the citizens disporting themselves in the Moorfields, or in winter sledging over the ice-pools of Finsbury. Not for mere theatrical pageant do they carry those heavy axes and tough spears. Those bossed targets are not for festival show; those buff jackets, covered with metal scales, have been tested before now by Norsemen's ponderous swords and the hatchets of the fierce Jutlanders.

In such castle rooms as antiquaries now visit, the Saxon earls and eldermen quaffed their ale, and drank "wassail" to King Egbert or Ethelwolf. In such dungeons as we now see with a shudder at the Tower, Saxon traitors and Danish prisoners once peaked and pined.

We must imagine Saxon London as having three component parts--fortresses, convents, and huts. The girdle of wall, while it restricted space, would give a feeling of safety and snugness which in our great modern city--which is really a conglomeration, a sort of pudding-stone, of many towns and villages grown together into one shapeless mass--the citizen can never again experience. The streets would in some degree resemble those of Moscow, where, behind fortress, palace, and church, you come upon rows of mere wooden sheds, scarcely better than the log huts of the peasants, or the sombre felt tents of the Turcoman. There would be large vacant spaces, as in St. Petersburg; and the suburbs would rapidly open beyond the walls into wild woodland and pasture, fen, moor, and common. A few dozen fishermen's boats from Kent and Norfolk would be moored by the Tower, if, indeed, any Saxon fort had ever replaced the somewhat hypothetical Roman fortress of tradition; and lower down some hundred or so cumbrous Dutch, French, and German vessels would represent our trade with the almost unknown continent whence we drew wine and furs and the few luxuries of those hardy and thrifty days.

In the narrow streets, the fortress, convent, and hut would be exactly represented by the chieftain and his bearded retinue of spearmen, the priest with his train of acolytes, and the herd of half-savage churls who plodded along with rough carts laden with timber from the Essex forests, or driving herds of swine from the glades of Epping. The churls we picture as grim but hearty folk, stolid, pugnacious, yet honest and promise-keeping, over-inclined to strong ale, and not disinclined for a brawl; men who had fought with Danes and wolves, and who were ready to fight them again. The shops must have been mere stalls, and much of the trade itinerant. There would be, no doubt, rudimentary market-places about Cheapside (Chepe is the Saxon word for market); and the lines of some of our chief streets, no doubt, still follow the curves of the original Saxon roads.

The date of the first Saxon bridge over the Thames is extremely uncertain, as our chapter on London Bridge will show; but it is almost as certain as history can be that, soon after the Dane Olaf's invasion of England (994) in Ethelred's reign, with 390 piratical ships, when he plundered Staines and Sandwich, a rough wooden bridge was built, which crossed the Thames from St. Botolph's wharf to the Surrey shore. We must imagine it a clumsy rickety structure, raised on piles with rough-hewn timber planks, and with drawbridges that lifted to allow Saxon vessels to pass. There was certainly a bridge as early as 1006, probably built to stop the passage of the Danish pirate boats. Indeed, Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian, tells us that when the Danes invaded England in 1008, in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (ominous name!), they entrenched themselves in Southwark, and held the fortified bridge, which had pent-houses, bulwarks, and shelter-turrets. Ethelred's ally, Olaf, however, determined to drive the Danes from the bridge, adopted a daring expedient to accomplish this object, and, fastening his ships to the piles of the bridge, from which the Danes were raining down stones and beams, dragged it to pieces, upon which, on very fair provocation, Ottar, a Norse bard, broke forth into the following eulogy of King Olaf, the patron saint of Tooley Street:--

"And thou hast overthrown their bridge, O thou storm of the sons of Odin, skilful and foremost in the battle, defender of the earth, and restorer of the exiled Ethelred! It was during the fight which the mighty King fought with the men of England, when King Olaf, the son of Odin, valiantly attacked the bridge at London. Bravely did the swords of the Volsces defend it; but through the trench which the sea-kings guarded thou camest, and the plain of Southwark was crowded with thy tents."

It may seem as strange to us, at this distance of time, to find London Bridge ennobled in a Norse epic, as to find a Sir Something de Birmingham figuring among the bravest knights of Froissart's record; but there the Norse song stands on record, and therein we get a stormy picture of the Thames in the Saxon epoch.

It is supposed that the Saxon kings dwelt in a palace on the site of the Baynard's Castle of the Middle Ages, which stood at the river-side just west of St. Paul's, although there is little proof of the fact. But we get on the sure ground of truth when we find Edward the Confessor, one of the most powerful of the Saxon kings, dwelling in saintly splendour at Westminster, beside the abbey dedicated by his predecessors to St. Peter. The combination of the palace and the monastery was suitable to such a friend of the monks, and to one who saw strange visions, and claimed to be the favoured of Heaven. But beyond and on all sides of the Saxon palace everywhere would be fields--St. James's Park (fields), Hyde Park (fields), Regent's Park (fields), and long woods stretching northward from the present St. John's Wood to the uplands of Epping.

As to the City residences of the Saxon kings, we have little on record; but there is indeed a tradition that in Wood Street, Cheapside, King Athelstane once resided; and that one of the doors of his house opened into Addle Street, Aldermanbury (addle, from the German word edel, noble). But Stow does not mention the tradition, which rests, we fear, on slender evidence.

Whether the Bread Street, Milk Street, and Cornhill markets date from the Saxon times is uncertain. It is not unlikely that they do, yet the earliest mention of them in London chronicles is found several centuries later.

We must be therefore content to search for allusions to London's growth and wealth in Saxon history, and there the allusions are frequent, clear, and interesting.

In the earlier time London fluctuated, according to one of the best authorities on Saxon history, between an independent mercantile commonwealth and a dependency of the Mercian kings. The Norsemen occasionally plundered and held it as a point d'appui for their pirate galleys. Its real epoch of greatness, however ancient its advantage as a port, commences with its re-conquest by Alfred the Great in 886. Henceforward, says that most reliable writer on this period, Mr. Freeman, we find it one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom, and one of the most efficient bulwarks of the realm. There the English character developed the highest civilisation of the country, and there the rich and independent citizens laid the foundations of future liberty.

In 896 the Danes are said to have gone up the Lea, and made a strong work twenty miles above Lundenburgh. This description, says Earle, would be particularly appropriate, if Lundenburgh occupied the site of the Tower. Also one then sees the reason why they should go up the Lea--viz., because their old passage up the Thames was at that time intercepted.

"London," says Earle, in his valuable Saxon Chronicles, "was a flourishing and opulent city, the chief emporium of commerce in the island, and the residence of foreign merchants. Properly it was more an Angle city, the chief city of the Anglian nation of Mercia; but the Danes had settled there in great numbers, and had numerous captives that they had taken in the late wars. Thus the Danish population had a preponderance over the Anglian free population, and the latter were glad to see Alfred come and restore the balance in their favour. It was of the greatest importance to Alfred to secure this city, not only as the capital of Mercia (caput regni Merciorum, Malmesbury), but as the means of doing what Mercia had not done--viz., of making it a barrier to the passage of pirate ships inland. Accordingly, in the year 886, Alfred planted the garrison of London (i.e., not as a town is garrisoned in our day, with men dressed in uniform and lodged in barracks, but) with a military colony of men to whom land was given for their maintenance, and who would live in and about a fortified position under a commanding officer. It appears to me not impossible that this may have been the first military occupation of Tower Hill, but this is a question for the local antiquary."

In 982 (Ethelred II.), London, still a mere cluster of wooden and wattled houses, was almost entirely destroyed by a fire. The new city was, no doubt, rebuilt in a more luxurious manner. "London in 993," says Mr. Freeman, in a very admirable passage, "fills much the same place in England that Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were the two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders, and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local count gradually grew into a national king. London, amidst all changes, within and without, has always preserved more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was merely a military bulwark, the dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign. London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still remains unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before our first introduction to London as an English city, she had cast away her Roman and imperial title; she was no longer Augusta; she had again assumed her ancient name, and through all changes she had adhered to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion. The English conquest may have caused a temporary interruption, but it was only temporary. As early as the days of Æthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned. Ælfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the laws of Æthelstan, none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London, and with the regulation of her earliest commercial corporations. Her institutes speak of a commerce spread over all the lands which bordered on the Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Lüttich, filled her markets with their wares, and enriched the civic coffers with their toils. Thither, too, came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form a considerable element among her own citizens; and, worthy and favoured above all, came the seafaring men of the old Saxon brother-land, the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the north, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom the English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor."

In 994, Olaf king of Norway, and Sweyn king of Denmark, summoning their robber chieftains from their fir-woods, fiords, and mountains, sailed up the Thames in ninety-four war vessels, eager to plunder the wealthy London of the Saxons. The brave burghers, trained to handle spear and sword, beat back, however, the hungry foemen from their walls--the rampart that tough Roman hands had reared, and the strong tower which Alfred had seen arise on the eastern bank of the river.

But it was not only to such worldly bulwarks that the defenders of London trusted. On that day, says the chronicler, the Mother of God, "of her mild-heartedness," rescued the Christian city from its foes. An assault on the wall, coupled with an attempt to burn the town, was defeated, with great slaughter of the besiegers; and the two kings sailed away the same day in wrath and sorrow.

During the year 998 a great "gemot" was held at London. Whether any measures were taken to resist the Danes does not appear; but the priests were busy, and Wulfsige, Bishop of the Dorsætas, took measures to substitute monks for canons in his cathedral church at Sherborne; and the king restored to the church of Rochester the lands of which he had robbed it in his youth.

In 1009 the Danes made several vain attempts on London.

In 1013 Sweyn, the Dane, marched upon the much-tormented city of ships; but the hardy citizens were again ready with bow and spear. Whether the bridge still existed then or not is uncertain; as many of the Danes are said to have perished in vainly seeking for the fords. The assaults were as unsuccessful as those of Sweyn and Olaf, nineteen years before, for King Ethelred's right hand was Thorkill, a trusty Dane. "For the fourth time in this reign," says Mr. Freeman, "the invaders were beaten back from the great merchant city. Years after London yielded to Sweyn; then again, in Ethelred's last days, it resisted bravely its enemies; till at last Ethelred, weary of Dane and Saxon, died, and was buried in St. Paul's. The two great factions of Danes and Saxons had now to choose a king."

Canute the Dane was chosen as king at Southampton; but the Londoners were so rich, free, and powerful that they held a rival gemot, and with one voice elected the Saxon atheling Edmund Ironside, who was crowned by Archbishop Lyfing within the city, and very probably at St. Paul's. Canute, enraged at the Londoners, at once sailed for London with his army, and, halting at Greenwich, planned the immediate siege of the rebellious city. The great obstacle to his advance was the fortified bridge that had so often hindered the Danes. Canute, with prompt energy, instantly had a great canal dug on the southern bank, so that his ships might turn the flank of the bridge; and, having overcome this great difficulty, he dug another trench round the northern and western sides of the city. London was now circumvallated, and cut off from all supply of corn and cattle; but the citizen's hearts were staunch, and, baffling every attempt of Canute to sap or escalade, the Dane soon raised the siege. In the meantime, Edmund Ironside was not forgetful of the city that had chosen him as king. After three battles, he compelled the Danes to raise their second siege. In a fourth battle, which took place at Brentford, the Danes were again defeated, though not without considerable losses on the side of the victors, many of the Saxons being drowned in trying to ford the river after their flying enemies. Edmund then returned to Wessex to gather fresh troops, and in his absence Canute for the third time laid siege to London. Again the city held out against every attack, and "Almighty God," as the pious chroniclers say, "saved the city."

After the division of England between Edmund and Canute had been accomplished, the London citizens made peace with the Danes, and the latter were allowed to winter as friends in the unconquered city; but soon after the partition Edmund Ironside died in London, and thus Canute became the sole king of England.

On the succession of Harold I. (Canute's natural son), says Mr. Freeman, we find a new element, the "lithsmen," the seamen of London. "The great city still retained her voice in the election of kings; but that voice would almost seem to have been transferred to a new class among the population. We hear now not of the citizens, but of the seafaring men. Every invasion, every foreign settlement of any kind within the kingdom too, in every age, added a new element to the population of London. As a Norman colony settled in London later in the century, so a Danish colony settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubtless with great exaggeration, that London had now almost become a Danish city (William of Malmesbury, ii. 188); but it is, at all events, quite certain the Danish element in the city was numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly helped to swell the cry which was raised in favour of Harold."

It seems doubtful how far the London citizens in the Saxon times could claim the right to elect kings. The latest and best historian of this period seems to think that the Londoners had no special privileges in the gemot; but, of course, when the gemot was held in London, the citizens, intelligent and united, had a powerful voice in the decision. Hence it arose that the citizens both of London and Winchester (which had been an old seat of the Saxon kings) "seem," says Mr. Freeman, "to be mentioned as electors of kings as late as the accession of Stephen. (See William of Malmesbury, "Hist. Nov.," i. II.) Even as late as the year 1461, Edward Earl of March was elected king by a tumultuous assembly of the citizens of London;" and again, at a later period, we find the citizens foremost in the revolution which placed Richard III. on the throne in 1483. These are plainly vestiges of the right which the citizens had more regularly exercised in the elections of Edmund Ironside and of Harold the son of Cnut.

The city of London, there can be no doubt, soon emancipated itself from the jurisdiction of earls like Leofwin, who ruled over the home counties. It acquired, by its own secret power, an unwritten charter of its own, its influence being always important in the wars between kings and their rivals, or kings and their too-powerful nobles. "The king's writs for homage," says a great authority, "in the Saxon times, were addressed to the bishop, the portreeve or portreeves, to the burgh thanes, and sometimes to the whole people."

Thus it may clearly be seen, even from the scanty materials we are able to collect, that London, as far back as the Saxon times, was destined to achieve greatness, political and commercial.

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