The town : its memorable characters and events : St. Paul's to St. James's

Front matter

it

=1^ winrMi.N ,: ., i

Hutchinson s Popular Classics

Contents

PAGE

CHAFTKK

11. 6T. HAULS, AXD THE if ElGnBOURROOD:— THE CHVTiCH OK 8T. KAITH. BOOKSELLERS OF THE CHCRCH- TAKD. MK JOHNSON'S. MB NEWBERBY's. CHILD- UEN's BOOKS. OLEBICAL NAMES OK STBEETS NEAR ST. PAUL'S. SWIFT AT THE TOP OF THE CATHEIJRAL. DB JOHNSON AT ST. PAUL's. PATER- NOSTER ROW. panyer's alley. stationers'

Chapter I

ST. PAUL'S, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

As St. Paul's Churchyard is probably the oldest ground built upon in London, we begin our perambulations in that quarter. The cross which formerly stood north of the cathedral, and of which Stowe could not tell the antiquity, is supposed by some to have originated in one of those sacred stones which the Druids made use of in worship ; but at least it is more than probable that here was a burial-ground of the ancient Britons ; because when Sir Christopher Wren dug for a foundation to his cathedral, he discovered abundance of ivory and wooden pins, apparently of box, which are supposed to have fastened their winding-sheets. The graves of the Saxons lay above them, lined with chalk-stones, or consisting of stones hollowed out : and in the same row with the pins, but deeper, lay Roman horns, lamps, lachrymatories, and all the elegancies of classic sculpture. Sir Christopher dug till he came to sand and sea-shells, and to the London clay, which has since become famous in geology ; so that the single history of St. Paul's Churchyard carries us back to the remotest periods of tradition ; and we commence our book in the proper style of the old Chroniclers, who were not content, unless they began with the history of the world.

The Romans were thought to have built a Temple to Diana on the site of the modern cathedral, by reason of a number of relics of horned animals reported to have been dug up there. Sir Christopher Wren asserts that there was no ground for the supposition. There was a similar iitory of a temple of Apollo at Westminster, built on the

THE ROMAN TEMPLE OF DIANA

site of the present abbey, and said to have been destroyed by an earthquake. "Earthquakes," observed Sir Christopher, " break not stones to pieces ; nor would the Picts be at that pains ; but I imagine that the monks, finding the Londoners pretending to a Temple of Diana, -where now St Paul's stands (horns of stags and tusks of boars having been dug up in former times, and it is said also in later years), would not be behindhand in antiquity ; but I must assert, that having changed all the foundations of old St. Paul's, and \ipon that occasion rummaged all the ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find some footsteps of such a temple, I could not discover any, and therefore can give no more credit to Diana than to Apollo." 1

Woodward, on the other hand, insisted on the Temple of Diana. He asserted, that a variety of the relics alluded to, in his own possession, were actually dug up on the spot, together with sacrificing vessels sculptured with beasts of chase, and with figures of Diana. In digging between the Deanery and Blackfriars a small brass figure of the goddess has also been found. -

Woodward was an enthusiast, eager to find what he fancied. Wren was willing to find also, but with cooler eyes. It is at the same time worth observing, that though Sir Christopher appears to have rejected the Pagan story with reason, he could not find it in his heart to refuse credit to the gratuitous traditions of ohl writers in favour of a Christian church " planted here by the Apostles themselves."^ He calls the traditions "authentic testimony."

It is barely possible that the relics mentioned by Woodward might have been all dug up by the time Sir Christopher set about his inquiry ; but let them have been what they might, they would have proved nothing in

1 Parentidia, p. 290, quoted in the work next mentioned.

2 Brayley's lAmdon and ^fiddlescx, vol. i., p. 87. ■' Parental ja, p. 27.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH

favour of a Roman Temple, because the Romans never buried under their temples ; neither did their legions remain long enough in this country to see the character of the place altered. It was sufficiently remarkable, that proofs had been discovered even of their burying there at all ; for, at Rome, none but very extraordinary persons were suffered to be buried within the walls ; and the Roman cemeteries in England are proved to have been without them. It can only be accounted for on the supposition that, as no great men are so great as the great men of colonies, the Prefects and their officers at London decreed themselves an honour, which Avas to be attained at Rome by nothing short of the merits of a Fabricius or a Publicola.

The first authentic account of the existence of a Christian church on this spot is that of Bede, who attributes the erection of it to King Ethelbert, about the year 610, soon after his conversion by St. Ai;gustine. The building, which was probably of wood, was burned down in 961, but was restored the same year — a proof that, notwithstanding the lofty terms in which it is spoken of by the old historian, it could not have been of any great extent. This second church lasted till the time of William the Conqueror, when it, too, was destroyed by a conflagration, which burned the greater part of the city. Bishop Maurice, who had just been appointed to the see, now resolved to rebuild the cathedral on a much grander scale than before, at his own expense. To assist him in accomplishing this object, the King granted him the stones of an old castle, called the Palatine Tower, which stood at the mouth of the Fleet River, and which had been reduced to ruins in the same conflagration. The Bishop's design was looked iipon as so vast, that "men at that time," says Stowe, "judged it wold never haVe bin finished ; it was then so wonderfull for length and breadth."^ This was in the year 1087 ; and the people

• Survey of London, p. 262. First edition. 30

INIGO JONES'S PORTICO

had some reason for their astonishment, for the building was not completed till the year 1240, in the reign of Henry the Third. Some even extend the date to 1315, which is two hundred and twenty-eight years after its foundation ; but this was owing rather to repairs and additions than to anything wanting in the original edifice. The cathedral thus patched, altered, and added to, over and over again, with different orders and no orders of architecture, and partially burned, oftener than once, remained till the Great Fire of London, when it was luckily rendered incapable of further deformity, and gave way to the present.

It was, indeed, a singular structure, and used for singular purposes.

"The exterior of the building," says an intelligent writer, himself an architect, " presented a curious medley of the architectural style of different ages. At the western front Inigo Jones had erected a portico of the Corinthian order ; thus displaying a singular example of that bigotry of taste, which, only admitting one mode of beauty, is insensible to the superior claims of congruity. This portico, however, singly considered, was a grand and beautiful composition, and not inferior to anything of the kind whicli modern times have produced : fourteen columns, each rising to the lofty height of forty -six feet, were so disposed, that eight, with two pilasters placed in front, and three on each flank, formed a square (oblong) peristyle, and supported an entablature and balustrade, which was crowned with statues of kings, predecessors of Charles the First, who claimed the honour of this fabric. Had the whole front been accommodated to Roman architecture, it might have deserved praise as a detached composition ; but though cased with rustic work, and decorated with regular cornices, the pediment retained the original Gothic character in its equilateral proportions, and it was flanked by barbarous obelisks and ill-designed turrets.

OLD ST. PAUL'S

"The wliole of the exterior body of the church had been cased and reformed in a similar manner, through which every detail of antiquity was obliterated, and the general forms and proportions only left. The buttresses were converted into regular piers, and a complete cornice crowned the whole : of the windows, some were barely

/vv mi '

il.

ornamented apertures, whilst others Avero decorated in a heavy Italian manner, with architrave dressings, brackets, and cherubic heads. The transepts presented fronts of the same incongruous style as the western elevation, and without any of its beauties." ^

In its original state, liowever, old St. Paul's must have been an imposing building. Its extent at least was very

* Fine Arts of the Kn^^lish Hchool, i|uute(l in Braylci/, vol. ii. p. 217.

I

OLD ST. PAUL'S

great. The entire mass measured 690 feet in lengtli, by 1.30 in breadth, and it was surmounted by a spire 520 feet high. The spire was of timber. It bore upon its summit not only a ball and cross, but a large gilded eagle, which served as a weathercock. But the church having been nearly burned to the ground in Jime, 1561, owing to the carelessness of a plumber who left a pan of coals burning near some wood-work while he went to dinner, it was hastily restored without the lofty spire ; so that in Hollar's engraving, given by Dugdale, of the building as it appeared in 1656, it stands curtailed of this ornament. Only the square tower, from which the spire sprang up, remains. "The old cathedral," says Mr Malcolm, on the authority of a note with which he was furnished by the Rev. Mr Watts, of Sion College, " did not stand in the same direction with the new, the latter inclining rather to the south-west and north-east ; and the west front of the Ohl Church came much farther towards Ludgate than the present."^

It is of the Cathedral, as thus renovated, that Sir John Denham speaks in the following passage of las Cooper's Hill :—

" That sacred pile, so vast, so high, That whether it's a part of earth or sky, Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud ; Paul's, the late name of such a muse whose flight Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy heiglit ; Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire, Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire, Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings, Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings."

" The best of poets," is his brother courtier Waller, who had some time before written his verses " Upon his Majesty's repairing of St. Paul's," in which he compares

^ Loixdinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 134. D 33

VERSES OX ITS UEXOYATION

King Charles, for his regeneration of the Cathedral, to Aniphion and other " antique minstrels," who were said to have achieved architectural feats by the power of music, and who, he says,

" Sure were Charles-like kings, Cities their lutes, and subjects' hearts their strings ; On which with so divine a hand they strook. Consent of motion from their breath they took."

Jones's first labour, the removal of the various foreign encumbrances that had so long oppressed and deformed the venerable edifice, Waller commemorates by a pair of references to St. Paul's history, not mihappily applied : he says the whole nation had combined with his majesty

" to grace The Gentiles' great Apostle, and deface Those state-obscuring sheds, that like a chain Seem'd to confine and fetter him again ; "Which the glad Saint shakes off at his command. As once the viper from his sacred hand."

Denham's prediction did no credit to the prophetic reputation of poetry. Of the fabric which was to be unassailable by zeal or fire the poet himself lived to see the ruin, begun by the one and completed by the other ; and he himself, curiously enough, a short time before his death, was engaged as the King's surveyor-general in (nominally at least) presiding over the erection of the new Cathedral — the successoi of the "sacred pile," of which he had thus sung the immortality.

When Jones began the repairs and additions of which his i)ortico formed a part, in 163.3, the rubbish that was removed was carried, Mr Malcolm informs us, to Clcrkenwell fields, where, he suggests, "some curious fragments of antiquity may still remain." ' The very beauty of this

1 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 81. 34

STUANGE USAGES OF FORMER TIMES

portico, surmounted with its strange pediment and figures, and dragging at its back that heap of deformity, completed the monstrous look of the whole building, like a human coimtenance backed by some horned lump. But this was nothing to the moral deformities of the interior. Old St. Paul's, throughout almost the whole period of its existence, at least from the reign of Henry the Third, was a thoroughfare, and a "den of thieves." The thoroughfare was occasioned probably by the great circuit which people had been compelled to make by the extent of the wall of the old churchyard — a circumference a great deal larger than it is at present. There is a principle of familiarity in the Catholic worship which, while it excites the devotional tenderness of more refined believers, is apt to produce the consequence, though not the feelings, of contempt among the vulgar. Fear hinders contempt ; but when license is mixed with it, and the fear is not in action, the liberties taken are ai)t to be in proportion. We have seen, in a Catholic chapel in London, a milkmaid come into the passage, dash down her pails, and having crossed herself, and applied the holy water with reverence, depart with the same air with which .she came in. The next thing to setting down the pails, under the circumstances above mentioned, would have been to creep with them through the churcli. Porters and loiterers would follow ; and by degrees the place of worship would become a place of lounging, and marketing, and intrigue, and all sorts of disorder. In the reign of Edward the Third, the King complains to the bishop that the "eatingroom of the canons " had " become the office and workplace of artisans, and the resort of shameless women." The complaint turned out to be of no avail ; nor had the mandate of the bishop a better result in the time of Richard the Third, though it was accompanied with the penalty of excommunication. An act was passed to as little purpose in the reign of Philip and Mary ; and in the time of Elizabeth the new opinions in religion seem to have left

STRANGE USAGES OF FORMER TIMES

the place fairly in possession of its chaos, as if in derision of the old. The toleration of the abuse thus became a matter of habit and indifference ; and a young theologian, afterwards one of the witty prelates of Charles the Second (Bishop Earle), did not scruple to make it the subject of what we should now call a "pleasant article."

" It must appear strange," says a note in Brayley's London and Middlpi^ez (vol. ii. p. 219), "to those who are acquainted with the decent order and propriety of regulation now observed in our cathedral churches, and other places of divine worship, that ever such an extended catalogue of improper customs and disgusting usages as are noticed in various works, should have been formerly admitted to be practised in St. Paul's church, and more especially that they should have been so long habitually exercised as to be defended on the plea of prescription.

"These nuisances had become so great, that in the time of Philip and Mary the Common Council found it necessary to pass an act, subjecting all future ofifenders to pains and penalties. From that act, the church seems to have been not only made a common passage-way for all — beer, bread, fish, flesh, fardels of stuffs, etc., but also for mules, horses, and other beasts. This statute, however, must have proved only a temporary restraint (excepting, probably, as to the leading of animals through the church); for in the reign of Elizalieth, we learn from Londiniuin Redivirum (vol. iii. p. 71), that idlers and drunkards were indulged in lying and sleeping on the benches at the choir door ; and that other iisages, too nauseous for description, were also frequent."

Among the curious notices relating to the irreverend practices pursued in this church in the time of Elizabeth, collected l)y J\lr Malcolm from the manuscript presentments on visitations preserved at St. Paul's, are the following : —

" In the upper quier wher the conion [communion]

ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CATHEDRAL

table dothe stande, there is much unreverente people, walkmg with their hatts on their heddes, conionly all the service tyme, no man reproving them for yt."

" Yt is a greate disorder in the churche, that porters, butchers, and water-bearers, and who not, be suffered (in special tyme of service) to carrye and recarrye whatsoever, no man withstandinge them, or gainsaying them," etc.

"The notices of encroachments on St. Paul's, in the same reign, are equally curious. The chantry and other chapels were completely diverted from their ancient purposes ; some were used as receptacles for stores and lumber ; another was a school, another a glazier's shop ; and the windows of all were, in general, broken. Part of the vaults beneath the church was occupied by a carpenter, the remainder was held by the bishop, the dean and chapter, and the minor canons. One vault, thought to have been used for a burial-place, was converted into a wine-cellar, and a way had been cut into it through the Avail of the building itself. (This practice of converting church vaults into wine-cellars, it may be remarked, is not yet worn out. Some of the vaults of Winchester Cathedral are now, or were lately, used for that purpose.) The shrowds and cloisters under the convocation house, ' where not long since the sermons in foul weather were wont to be preached,' were made ' a common lay-stall for boardes, trunks, and chests, being lett oute unto trunkmakers, where, by meanes of their daily knocking and noyse, the church is greatly disturbed.' More than twenty houses also had been built against the outer walls of the cathedral ; and part of the very foundations was cut away to make oitices. One of those houses had literally a closet dug in the wall ; from another was a way through a window into a wareroom in the steeple ; a third, partly formed by St. Paul's, was lately used as a play-house ; and the owner of the fourth baked his bread and pies in an oven excavated within a buttress." ^

1 Loivdinium Rcdivivum, \ol. iii., pp. 71, 73. 37

PAUL'S WALKEES

The middle of 8t. Paxil's was also the Bond-Street of that period, and remained so till the time of the Common- "wealth. The loungers were called Paul's Walkers.

" The young gallants from the inns of Court, the western and the northern parts of the nietroiDolis, and those that had spirit enough," says our author, "to detach themselves from the counting-houses in the east, used to meet at the central point, St. Paul's ; and from this circumstance obtained the a[)pellations of Paid't; Walkers, as we now say Boiid-dreet Loungers. However strange it may seem, tradition says that the great Lord Bacon used in his youth to cry, Easticard ho ! and was literally a Paul's Walker."!

Lord Bacon had a taste for display, which was afterwards exhibited in a magnificent manner, worthy of the grandeur of his philosophy ; but this, Avheu he was young, might ijrobably enough have been vented in the shape of an exuberance, which did not yet know what to do witli itself. Who Avould think that the late Mr Fox ever wore red-heeled shoes, and Avas a " buck about town ? "

But to conclude with these curious passages : —

"The Walkers in Paul's," continues our author, "during this and the following reigns, were composed of a motley assemblage of the gay, the vain, the dissolute, the idle, the knavish, and the lewd ; and various notices of this fashionable resort may be found in tlie old plays and other writings of the time. Ben Jonson, in his Erenj Man out of Ids Humour, has given a series of scenes in the interior of St. Paul's, and an assemblage of a great variety of characters ; in the course of which the curious piece of information occurs, that it was common to alhx bills, in the form of advertisements, upon the columi'is in the aisles of the church, in a similar manner to what is now done in the Royal Exchange : those bills he ridicules in two affected specimens, the satire of which is admirable.

' Moser, iu the Earojitan Maijaxine, July, 1807. 38

DINING WITH DUKE HUMPHREY

Shakspeare also makes Falstaff say, in speaking of Bardolph, ' I bought him in PauVs, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield : if I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were mann'd, hors'd, and wiv'd.'"

To complete these urbanities, the church was the resort of jjickpockets. Bishop Corbet, a poetical wit of the time of Charles the First, sums up its character, as the " walks

" Where all our Brittaine sinners sweare and talk." ^

Only one reformation had taken place in it since the complaint made by Edward the Third : no woman, at the time of Earle's writing, was to be found there ; at least not in the crowd. " The visitants," he says, " are all men, without exception."- A commonwealth writer insinuates otherwise ; but the visitation was not public. The practice of " walking and talking " in St. Paul's appears to have revived under James the Second, probably in connection with Catholic wishe.s ; for there was an act of the first of William and Mary, by which transgressors forfeited twenty pounds for every otience ; and, what is remarkable, the bishop threatened to enforce this Act so late as the year 1725; "the custom," says Mr Malcolm, "had become so very prevalent."^

A proverb of " dining with Duke Humphrey," has survived to the present day, owing to a supposed tomb of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, which Avas popular with the poorer frequenters of the place. They had a custom of strewing herbs before it, and sprinkling it with water. The tomb, according to Stow, was not Humphrey's, but that of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the house of Warwick. Men who strolled about for want of a dinner, were familiar enough \nth this tomb ; and were therefore said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

1 Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5. - Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant.

3 Anecdotes of tfie Manners and Customs of London during the Kiijhtcvnth Centum, vol. i., p. 281.

CATHOLIC CUSTOMS

While some of tlie extraordinary operations above-mentioned were going on (the intriguing, picking of pockets, etc.), the sermon was very likely proceeding. It is but fair, however, to conclude, that in the Catholic times, during tlie elevation of the host, there was a show of respect. AVe have heard a gentleman say, Avho visited Spain in his childhood, that he remembered being at the theatre during a fandango, when a loud voice cried out ' Dion " (God) ; and all the people in the house, including the dancers, fell on their knees. A profound silence ensued, xifter a pause of a few seconds the people rose, and the fandango went on as before. The little boy could not tliink what had happened, but was told that the host had gone by. The Deity (for so it was thought) had been sent for to the house of a sick man ; and it was to honour him in passing, that the theatre had gone down on their knees. Catholics reform as well as other people, M'ith the growth of knowledge, especially when restrictions no longer make their i)rcjudices appear a matter of duty. We know not how it is in Spain at this moment, with regard to the devout interval of the fandango ; but we know what would be thought of it by thousands of the offspring of those who witnessed it on this occasion ; and certainly in no Catholic church now-a-days can be seen the abominations of old St. Paul's.

The passenger who now goes by the cathedral, and associates the idea of the inside with that of respectful silence and the simplicity of Protestant worship, little thinks what a noise has been in that spot, and what gorgeous processions have issued out of it.

Old St. Paul's was famous for the splendour of its shrine and for its priestly wealth. The list of its copes, vestments, jewels, gold and silver cups, candlesticks,' etc., occupies thirteen folio pages of the Monasticon. The side aisles were filled with chapels to ditlerent saints and the Virgin ; that is to say, with nooks partitioned off one from another, and enriched with separate altars ; and it

THE BOY BISHOP

is calculated, that, taking the whole establishment, there could hardly be fewer than two hundred priests. On certain holidays this sacred multitude, in their richest copes, together with the lord mayor, aldermen, and city companies, and all the other parish priests of London, who carried a rich silver cross for every church, issued forth from the cathedral door in procession, singing a hymn, and so went through Cheapside and Cornhill to Leadenhall, and back again. The last of these spectacles was for the peace of Guisues, in 1546 ; shortly after which Henry the Eighth swept into his treasury the whole glories of Catholic worship — copes, crosses, jewels, church-plate, etc. — himself being the most bloated enormity that had ever mis-used them.

Among other retainers to the establishment, Henry suppressed a singular little personage, entitled the Boy- Bishop. The Boy-Bishop {EpiscopiLs Pueroi-um) was a chorister annually elected by his fellows U) imitate the state and attire of a bishop, which he assumed on St. Nicholas's day, the sixth of December, and retained till that of the Innocents, December the twenty-eighth.

"This was done," says Bray ley, "in commemoration of St. Nicholas, who, according to the Romish Church, was so piously fashioned, that even when a babe in his cradle he would fast both on Wednesdays and Fridays, and at those times was ' well pleased ' to suck but once a-day. However ridiculous it may now seem, the boy-bishop is stated to have possessed episcopal authority during the above term ; and the other children were his prebendaries. He was not permitted to celebrate mass, but he had full liberty to preach; and however puerile his discourses might have been, we tind they were regarded with so much attention, that the learned Dean Colet, in his statutes for St. Paul's school, expressly ordained that the scholars shall, on 'every Childermas daye, come to Paule's Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's sermon, and after

' 41

THE BOY-BISHOP

be at the hygh masse, and eacli of them offer a penny to tlie chylde bishop ; ami with them the maisters and surveyors of the scole.' Probably," continues Mr Bray ley, "these orations, though affectedly childish, were composed by the more aged members of the church. If the boy-bishop died Avithin the time of his prelacy, he was interred in pontijicalibus, with the same ceremonies as the real diocesan ; and the tomb of a child-bishop in Salisbury Cathedral may be referred to as an instance of such interment." ^

"From a printed church-book," says Mr Hone, "containing the service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of lunocents'-day, the boy-bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles, as they Avalked into the choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons ■went foremost, the chaplains next, and the boy-bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, and the petit-canons the tapers, according to tlie rubrick. Afterwards he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, liis priests all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the boy-bishop repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles ; and in conclusi(jn gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering Deo Gratias." -

The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. K^icholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy

^ London, (Lud MiiJdlcM'x, vol. ii., y. 221). - Ancient Mi/.stcri(S Dcscriicd, rtc, 1S2.S, [). 195. 4-2

ST. PAUL'S SINGING-SCHOOL

among the doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by Dean Colet was in honour of " the child Jesus." There was a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, perhaps, a revival, as far as scholarship Avas concerned. The hoys in the older school were not only taught singing hut acting, and for a long period were the most popular performers of stagel)lays. In the time of Richard the Second, these Boy- Actors petitioned the king to prohibit certain ignorant and " inexpert people from presenting the History of the Old Testament." They beg.'U with sacred plays, but afterwards acted profane ; so that St. Paul's singing-school was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common wherever there were choir-boys ; and it doubtless originated, partly in tlie theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at which they assisted, and jtartly in the delight which the more scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of Terence, still kept up at Westminster School, is supposed by "VVarton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of "Westminster Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth (who took great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as actors, though not so much so as those of St. Paul's. A set of them were incorporated under the title of Children of the Kevels, among whom are to be found names that have since become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare — Field, Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, and others, who were phiyers in the time of Gibber. It appears that children with good voices were sometimes Iddnapited for a supply.^ Tusser, who