Chapter XII: Preface (12)

The copyright registry was first established by the Company at the
commencement of the sixteenth century or even earlier. It would
appear from the ancient records that a register of copies had
existed previous to the incorporation. In 1565 rules were made by
the Company regulating the transmission of copies upon the decease
of the owner, and requiring them to be entered in the books of the
Company. In 1584 the Privy Council (through the Lord Mayor) ordered
that all copies should be entered in the Company’s register, and
copyrights were from time to time transferred by entries in these
registers. Between 1580 and 1615, there are letters from the Lords
of the Council and the Lord Mayor calling attention to the
publication of certain books of a traitorous or mischievous
tendency. There is no mention of any power or authority belonging to
the Stationers Company for the suppression of these books. On one
occasion the Wardens of that Company are ordered to produce the
printer of a certain pamphlet with the person who was circulating
it. Various orders were from time to time issued by the Lords of the
Privy Council and High Commissioners, regulating printing. In 1660 a
committee of the House of Commons was appointed to prepare a Bill
regulating printing, and in 1662 the Bill was passed, and was known
as the Licensing Act. It required all printed works to be registered
at Stationers’ Hall. This Act expired in 1681, and in 1710 the first
copyright Act was passed, which has been superseded by the Act of
1842. The Act of 1710 required copies to be entered at Stationers’
Hall before publication, and the Act of 1842 makes entry at
Stationers’ Hall a condition precedent to the title to sue for
protection against infringements. As a printer, not as a novelist,
Samuel Richardson was a member.

The most ancient hall stood in Milk Street, Cheapside, but in 1553
the Company moved to St. Peter’s College, near the Deanery of St.
Paul’s, and in 1611 they purchased Abergavenny House in Stationers’
Court. This was burnt in the Great Fire. The present building was
erected in 1670, and in 1805 the exterior was cased in Portland
stone, according to a design by the Company’s architect, Robert
Mylne, F.R.S.

The present livery is 284; the Corporate Income is but small, and
the Trust Income £1200.

The Company formerly published almanacks, primers, “A.B.C.’s,”
psalters, and school books, in which they maintained a valuable
monopoly until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was
declared illegal.

The Company established a school at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, in
1861; this is now at Ridge Road, Hornsey. The school has
accommodation for more than three hundred boys.

This corner of London to the south of Ludgate Hill was covered with narrow lanes and courts into which light was admitted by the construction of Queen Victoria Street. It is the site of the =Blackfriars’ Precinct=. This house was in the hands of the Dominicans. See _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p. 354.

Church Entry marks the site of

=St. Anne, Blackfriars=, standing adjacent to the walls of
Blackfriars’ Monastery; it was consecrated in 1597 by Edmund
Stanhope, Doctor of Laws, by virtue of a commission from the Bishop
of London. It was enlarged on the south side in 1613, which was
consecrated by the Bishop of London in 1617. The church was burnt
down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, but the parish was annexed
to St. Andrew by the Wardrobe. The earliest date of an incumbent is
1597.

The patronage was in the hands of the Crown and parishioners
alternately, since the Great Fire when it was burnt down, and the
parish was annexed to St. Andrew by the Wardrobe; before this the
parishioners presented.

Isaac Oliver, miniature painter, was buried here.

STATIONERS’ HALL (INTERIOR)
]

The charities and reliefs recorded in this parish were few. John
Bobhurst was a donor of £2 per annum, also Edward Corbet and Mrs.
Miller. The greatest benefactor was Peter Jorge, who founded a free
school, appointing Sion College trustees.

Forty boys and thirty girls were to be taught reading and writing,
and some useful work besides. All were to be given clothing once a
year and two to be put out as apprentices. The school was endowed
with £150 a year, and salaries for teachers. As there were many
tailors among the foundation, the children of such were to have
preference of admission (Stow and Strype).

St. Anne’s had some notable vicars, among them William Gouge (or
Goughe), D.D., forty-six years minister of the parish. In November
1633 “Mr. William Goughe, Doctor of Divinity, prayed to be admitted
freeman of the Society of Apothecaries, and was so.”

On the west is an open space fairly wide, with asphalt centre and scrubby bushes round. This is jealously guarded by iron rails and wall from all intruders. It was sacred ground, the churchyard, though there are no monuments or stones left to bear testimony. Close beside the churchyard in a carpenter’s shop are certain old arches belonging to the Dominicans’ Buildings.

Westward there is a small court, called Fleur-de-Lys, on the west side of St. Anne’s churchyard, which escaped the Fire, though here the Fire had raged most hotly. A little consideration will show the reason. An open space called Church Entry lay between the backs of the Fleur-de-Lys Houses and St. Anne’s Church and churchyard. Now the church stood high, and during the continuance of the Fire the wind blew steadily from the east. The view of the City after the Fire shows that the walls of the churches and of many houses were still standing. Therefore, even though the roof was burned, the flames blew _over_ this court, while, when the roof had fallen, the walls of the church sheltered the little court on the other side. I dare say that, had we a more exact account of the Fire, it would be found that many houses or courts escaped in the same way.

“Eminent inhabitants—(of Blackfriars), Isaac Oliver, the miniature-painter. He died here in 1617, and was buried in St. Anne’s, Blackfriars. Lady Ayres, wishing to have a copy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s picture to wear in her bosom, went ‘to Mr. Isaac the painter in Blackfriars, and desired him to draw it in little after his manner.’—Cornelius Jansen, the painter (d. 1665). He lived in the Blackfriars for several years, and had much business, but left it a little before Van Dyck’s arrival. Sir Anthony Van Dyck, from his settlement in England in 1632, to his death in 1641. The rent of his house, ‘at a moderate value,’ was estimated, in 1638, at £20, and the tithe paid £1 : 6 : 8. His daughter Justina was born here December 1, 1641, and baptised in St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, December 9, 1641, the day of her father’s death. Ben Jonson, who dates his dedication of Volpone or The Fox ‘from my house in the Blackfriars, this 11th day of February, 1607.’ Here he has laid the scene of The Alchemist. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were living in the Blackfriars when Overbury was murdered. The precinct no longer exists, but is now a part of the ward of Farringdon Within. I have not been able to trace any attempt to assert its privileges later than 1735, when in the July of that year the Court of Common Council brought an action against Daniel Watson, for opening a shop and vending shoes in the Blackfriars without being free of the City. The court of King’s Bench gave it in favour of the City. The sheriffs could arrest here many years before” (Cunningham).

Note that the Earl of Northumberland had a town house in 1612 in the unfashionable precinct of Blackfriars.

FLEUR-DE-LYS COURT
]

Within the precinct were—and are—several places of interest. The Blackfriars Theatre was built in 1576. It was rebuilt or extensively repaired in 1596 when Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were sharers. In 1633 it was let by Cuthbert and William Burbage for a rent of £50. The building was pulled down in 1655 and tenements put up in its place. Playhouse Yard preserves the memory of the theatre.

Standing at the western end of Queen Victoria Street and taking a general view we see St. Paul’s Station of the L.B. and S.C. Railway. =Water Lane= runs by the railway. Here is the Apothecaries’ Hall.

THE APOTHECARIES COMPANY

Two opposite forces acted upon the City Companies: one separating
them and multiplying Companies for different parts of the same trade
or craft; the other uniting in one Company crafts which were related
chiefly by using the same material. Thus the Barbers divided into
Barbers and Surgeons; the Grocers into Grocers and Apothecaries;
while at one time the Weavers included in their body all those
trades which had to do with woven stuffs, and were so powerful that
they threatened to rule the whole City. It happened sometimes that
some trades were injured by the inability of the Company to look
after them. Thus it was quite natural that the Grocers who imported
drugs and spices and oils used by Apothecaries should include these
persons in their own livery. But, the wardens not being skilled in
the use of medical prescriptions and preparations, could not look
after their own people. Consequently complaints became general of
the ignorance and incompetence of Apothecaries for want of proper
supervision. Towards the end of the sixteenth century these
complaints were brought forward categorically. It took time for the
matter to be understood, and it was not until 1617 that James
bestowed a separate charter upon the Apothecaries in spite of the
remonstrances of the Grocers.

The objects of this charter, concisely stated, are to restrain the
Grocers (the former associates of the Apothecaries) or any other
City Company from keeping an apothecary’s shop or exercising the
“art, faculty, or mystery of an apothecary within the City of London
or a radius of seven miles.” To allow no one to do so unless
apprenticed to an apothecary for seven years at least, and at the
expiration of such apprenticeship such apprentice to be approved and
allowed by the master and wardens and representatives of the College
of Physicians, before being permitted to keep an apothecary’s shop,
or prepare, dispense, commix, or compound medicines. To give the
right of search within the City of London or a radius of seven miles
of the shops of apothecaries or others, and “prove” the drugs, and
to examine within the same radius all persons “professing, using, or
exercising the art or mystery of apothecaries.”

It also confers the power to burn “before the offender’s doors” any
unwholesome drugs, and to summon the offenders before the
magistrates.

And to buy, sell, or make drugs. Up to the passing of the
Apothecaries Act, 1815, so far as the prescribed radius extended,
the three first-stated objects of the charter and the existence of
the society in relation to its members were identical. A member of
the Society of Apothecaries and an apothecary of the City of London
or within seven miles were convertible terms.

As regards the fourth object prescribed by the charter, the Society,
doubtless from its want of means, has never itself until the present
time bought, sold, or made drugs, but owing to the great difficulty
of its members obtaining pure drugs it allowed them to raise money
themselves and create stock or shares for that purpose, and to carry
on such trade in the name of the Society for their own personal
profit as a private Company or partnership under various titles.
Owing to such trade having ended in a loss, this private partnership
was dissolved in 1880, and the Society is now itself carrying on the
trade at its own risk.

As regards the three first-stated powers of the charter, the Society
(by means of the Apothecaries Act of 1815) extended them so greatly
as to effect not only a revolution in their own sphere of
operations, but also in the medical profession and in the relations
subsisting between the latter and the general public.

This Act (after placing the right of search referred to in the
third-stated power of the charter on a more precise and practical
basis, but to which it is unnecessary to allude as having fallen
into necessary desuetude by the various Pharmacy and Poisons Acts)
created a court of 12 examiners to be appointed by the master,
wardens, and court of assistants, who were to examine all persons in
England and Wales as to their skill and ability in the science and
practice of medicine, and five examiners to examine assistants for
the compounding and dispensing of medicine. It authorised the
Society to receive fees for granting the respective licences, and
(saving the rights of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons) it
empowered the Society to recover penalties for practising or
compounding without such licences.

The Apothecaries Act, 1815, contained, however, two restrictions
which were removed by the Apothecaries Act Amendment Act, 1874,
namely, (_a_) the obligation of the 12 examiners being members of
the Society of Apothecaries, and being of at least 10 years’
standing, and (_b_) of candidates for examination having served an
apprenticeship of five years to an apothecary.

The Act of 1874 also contains other provisions which relate more to
questions of medical legislation than this present inquiry. Shortly
the effect of the Act of 1815 was to make the Society of
Apothecaries one of the three great medical licensing bodies for
England and Wales [the number of its present licentiates is between
8000 and 9000], and of the Act of 1874 was to throw open the
Society’s examinerships, and to confer on it a freedom in reference
to future medical reform to an extent not exceeded by any other
body.

The Company consists of about 400 members including the court, the
livery, and the yeomanry or freemen.

The hall, which stands on the eastern side of Water Lane, formerly
consisted of the town house of Lady Howard of Effingham. It was, of
course, destroyed by the Fire, but the buildings which were erected
after the Fire have a delightful air of quiet and peace, such as
belongs very fitly to a scientific society. The hall stands behind a
small paved court; on the left hand is the shop, at the north end of
the hall are the offices, the library and the court rooms. The
Physic Gardens at Chelsea also belong to the Apothecaries on certain
conditions, especially that the Company should every year present to
the Royal Society fifty dried specimens of plants growing in these
gardens, till the number of 2000 was reached. As this was in 1731,
that number has long since passed and the Company’s debt is paid.

Among the more eminent members of this Company have been William and
John Hunter, Jenner, Smollett, Humphry Davy, Dr. Sydenham, Erasmus
Wilson, and Sir Spencer Wells. Oliver Goldsmith and Keats were also
members.

=Printing House Square= contained the King’s Printing House.

“The first I have discovered was John Bill, who, ‘at the King’s Printing House in Black Friars,’ printed the proclamations of the reign of Charles II., and the first London Gazette, established in that reign. Charles Eyre and William Strahan were the last King’s printers who resided here, and in February, 1770, the King’s Printing House was removed to New Street, near Gough Square, in Fleet Street, where it now is. The place still continues to deserve its name of Printing House Square, for here every day in the week (Sunday excepted) _The Times_ newspaper is printed and published, and from hence distributed over the whole civilized world. This celebrated paper, finding daily employment on the premises for between 200 and 300 people, was established in 1788,—the first number appearing on the 1st of January in that year.” (Cunningham.) _The Times_ office is a very notable feature in Queen Victoria Street by reason of its great height and conspicuous clock. Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street gradually diverge at a very acute angle. The former is on a lower level than the latter, and is divided from it for about seventy yards by a low wall only, with an open space crossed by steps. In Queen Victoria Street on the left is the square tower of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, outlined in white stone, and thrown into relief by a rather ornamental red-brick building which stands in front.

=St. Andrew’s Hill= was sometimes called Puddle Dock Hill. In Ireland Yard stood the house bought by Shakespeare in 1612, and bequeathed by him to his daughter Susanne Hall. In Green Dragon Court there stood, until a year or two ago, one of the oldest of the London taverns from which the court took its name.

=The Wardrobe.=—On the north side of St. Andrew’s church stands a small square which, with its trees and the absence of vehicles or shops, is one of the most quiet spots in the whole City. This square was formerly the court of the town house built by Sir John Beauchamp (d. 1359), whose tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral was commonly called Duke Humphrey’s tomb. Before his death the house became the property of King Edward III. who made it a Royal Wardrobe House, and so it remained until the Great Fire. James I. gave the collection of dresses—called by Fuller a “Library of antiquaries wherein to read the fashion and mode of garments in all ages”—to the Earl of Dunbar, by whom they were all sold and dispersed. The wardrobe was taken after the Fire to the Savoy and then to Buckingham Street, Strand. The last keeper was Ralph, Duke of Montagu (d. 1709).

When Charles V. came to England in 1522, among the lodgings assigned to his suite was the house of Margaret Hanley, “under the Wardrobe side, having two chambers and two beds.”

=Wardrobe Place= is a delightful spot with an air of brooding quietness. The houses are nearly all old “post fire,” dating from about 200 years ago. That on the east side of the entry is black with age, and the lines in the brickwork waver as they cross its front. Next to it on the east side of the court is a plaster-fronted one, and then a row of three dark-brick houses with the so-called “flat arch” of brighter red bricks glowing above the rectangular windows. Nearly a dozen twisted plane trees, all young, and measured by inches only in circumference, straggle irregularly from the cobblestones of the courtyard. On the west side there are charming houses in the same style as the above-mentioned. The largest of these, No. 2, is wainscotted from floor to ceiling, and has in many rooms great projecting fireplaces forming recesses on either side half the width of the rooms. From the south-east corner there is a covered-in passage leading to the back of the Old Bell Hotel, and with Wardrobe Chambers opening into them.

ST. ANDREW BY THE WARDROBE

The church derived its title from its proximity to the
King’s Wardrobe above described. It was formerly called St.
Andrew-juxta-Baynard’s Castle. After the Great Fire, the church was
rebuilt by Wren and completed in 1692, and the parish of St. Anne,
Blackfriars, was united with it. The earliest date of an incumbent
is 1261.

The patronage of this church was in the hands of: The family of
Fitzwalter, Lords of Woodham, 1361, which becoming extinct, it
passed to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, then to Richard, Earl Warwick, who
married Berkeley’s daughter; the three daughters of the Countess of
Warwick, viz. Lady Talbot, afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury; Lady
Ross; and Lady Latimer, afterwards Countess of Dorset in 1439; and
the Crown, since St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, was annexed to it.

Houseling people in 1548 were 450.

_Pictorial Agency_.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY HOUSE
]

This church measures 75 feet in length, 59 in breadth, and 38 feet
in height, and contains two side aisles divided from the nave by
square pillars, encased in wood to the height of the top of the
galleries. The ceiling is exceptionally fine, with beautifully
moulded wreaths. The exterior is of red brick with stone dressings.
The tower, which is square and of four stories, rises at the
south-west; the two lower ones contain windows, the third a clock,
and the highest has square-headed openings with louvres. A cornice
and balustrade complete the tower, which is about 86 feet in height.

Chantries were founded here by: John Parraunt, armiger, for himself
and Clemencia his late wife, and for John Loc, alias Foxton, citizen
and fishmonger, and Margaret, his wife (licence was granted December
3, 1409; the endowment fetched £12 : 3 : 4 in 1518 when Thomas Mores
was priest, “aged 54, meanly learned”); Humphrey Talbot, whose
endowment fetched £7 : 6 : 8 in 1548.

There are three pyramidal monuments of white marble to three
successive rectors—the Rev. William Romaine, a celebrated preacher;
the Rev. William Goode, rector in 1795; and the Rev. Isaac Saunders,
who held the living for nearly twenty years.

Some of the donors of charities were: John Lee, of a house and
wharf, leased for £30 per annum; Mrs. Paradine, £3 per annum; Mrs.
Cleve, thirteen penny loaves to be dealt out every Sunday.

There was a free school founded by a private person for the benefit
of the children of poor tailors, where forty boys and thirty girls
were taught and clothed. Also three almshouses maintained by the
rent of an adjoining house, built partly by charity of the Lady
Elizabeth, Viscountess Chomondeley, and partly at the expense of the
inhabitants, in 1679.

Among the most notable of the rectors were: Philip Baker (d. 1601),
Vice-Chancellor Cambridge University; William Savage (d. 1736),
Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; William Romaine (1714-1795),
Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London; William Goode
(1762-1816), President of Sion College; John Harding (1805-74),
Bishop of Bombay.

A little passage, right-of-way to the public, goes round the north and east sides of the church, and at the corner where this joins St. Andrew’s Hill stands the old Rectory House. This is a charming old building, dating from soon after the Fire. There is, curiously enough, no oak in the woodwork, excepting only in the cross-pieces of the window-frames. The fireplace in the study is of interest, fashioned of marble and tiles set in polished wood; and on the overmantel there is a little slab bearing the words, all in capital letters:

Laus Deo per Jesum Christum. Church Missionary Society, Instituted
April 12, 1799, in this room; the committee meetings of the Society
were held from June 17, 1799, to January 3, 1812: and here on
January 2, 1804, its first missionaries were appointed to preach
among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The house betrays its age in all its lines, and though there is no other special feature worthy of comment in it, the tiny garden behind is well worth a visit; it contains a plane-tree, and is a curious little oasis in a wilderness of bricks and mortar.

=Queen Victoria Street= was only begun in 1867-68 as a direct thoroughfare from the embankment to the Mansion House. It was formally opened November 4, 1871.

The headquarters of the British and Foreign Bible Society is solidly designed, with pilasters running up the front between the windows. Over the great door, supported by blocks of polished granite, is a heavy stone balcony, and three smaller balconies project from the windows above. An ornamental cornice runs round the roof. The architect was Mr. Edward l’Anson.

The library contains the Fry collection of English Bibles, the most complete ever made. This was purchased by the Society for £6000. It includes a copy of the earliest edition of _Coverdale_ printed abroad 1535, and one of the earliest editions printed in England two years later. In the cases about the room are many objects of interest—a German Bible printed 1473; Codex Zacynthus, a palimpsest, of which the earlier writing is supposed to date from the fifth or sixth century, the later from the twelfth. The Society was founded in 1804. Its object is simply to “circulate the Bible without note or comment, in all languages and in all lands.”

Since its foundation over 140 million copies of the Bible, whole or in parts, have been issued. The Society now produces the Bible in about 330 languages and dialects. The University Press monopolises the printing of English Bibles, and much of the printing of the Society in foreign languages is done abroad. The only actual printing carried on in Queen Victoria Street is that done by one man, who works with two hand-presses for the blind. But the issue of fresh copies by the Society comes to an average of 13,000 for every working day.

The General Post Office Savings Bank offices, with a frontage of about 250 feet, are next door. The garden belonging to the old Doctors Commons stretched across the roadway at this point, and was only finally cleared away in 1867 at the making of the new street.

The Heralds’ College or College of Arms is a fine old building in deep-coloured brick. The front stands back from the street, and is supported by two wings. The small courtyard resulting is separated from the street front by high iron railings and gates. There are two brick and stone piers at each gateway, with that favourite ornament of the Stuart period—stone balls—on their summits. The back of the eastern wing abuts on Peter’s Hill, and the wide, outside flap shutters of an old-world style give the little hill a quaint aspect. The College was rebuilt after the Fire, and restored at the opening of Queen Victoria Street. It was originally Derby House, built by the first Earl of Derby and presented in 1555 by Queen Mary to the then Garter King-of-Arms; so it has long been devoted to its present use. Returning to Queen Victoria Street we see opposite in enormous gilt letters, each four or five feet long, “Salvation Army International Headquarters” right across the front of a great building.

=Addle Hill=, like Addle Street, is supposed to be derived from the Saxon Adel, _noble_. It has been found written Adling Hill. The whole space between Addle Hill and Bell Yard, and between Queen Victoria Street and Carter Lane, with the exception of Knightrider Street, is now occupied by General Post Office Savings Bank Department. Northward, on the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, near the west end, was the church of St. Gregory mentioned elsewhere.

=Carter Lane= was formerly divided into Great and Little Carter Lane. From the Bell Inn, Bell Yard, in Carter Lane, the only letter addressed to Shakespeare that is known to exist was sent to him by Richard Quiney—“To my loveing good friend and country man, Mr. William Shakespeare, deliver these.” Bell Yard led to the Prerogative Will Office, Doctors’ Commons.

Carter Lane, also called Shoemakers’ Row, is mentioned in the _Calendar of Wills_ in the year 1295. The west end still retains that name in Ogilby’s map of 1677. In 1424 the exchequer paid to John Kyllyngham, master of a house called The Bell in Carter Lane, the sum of £17 : 14 : 8 for costs and expenses of Sir Gilbyn de Lauvoy, knight, and John de la Roe, Esq., and their servants and horses for twenty-eight days. The said Sir Gilbyn and John de la Roe had been sent to the Holy Land by Henry V. “upon certain important causes.” Deeds of the fourteenth century speak of tenements in Carter Lane. In this street were several taverns of note such as the White Horse, the Sun, the Bell, and the Saracen’s Head. Here was a famous meeting-house in which many of the most distinguished of Nonconformist ministers preached.

_Pictorial Agency_.

THE COLLEGE OF ARMS
]

Here is the school for St. Paul’s choir-boys, with a stencilled frieze. The playground is on the roof.

=Creed Lane= was formerly called Sporier Row. An inn in Sporier Row is assigned in the fifteenth century by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to their canons. After the Fire there were differences as to the sites and boundaries of houses destroyed in Creed Lane. The Lane was widened in 1750 as one of the improvements made at that time.

Dean’s Court has now warehouses erected on the north and east sides. The house over the archway was said to have been occupied by Sir Christopher Wren as his office during the building of St. Paul’s. Within this court were also the vicar general’s, the commissary and the consistory courts, and offices for procuring marriage licences.

St. Peter’s College adjoined Dean’s Court on the west side in St. Paul’s Churchyard (see under the Stationers Company, p. 199).

When Charles V. came to London in 1522, Doctors’ Commons among other places furnished for his suite a hall, a parlour, and three chambers with feather beds. Mention is made of the dining-hall of Doctors’ Commons and of the “entre going into the great canonicale House now naymed the Doctors’ Commons with a chamber over the said entre,” and of other parts of the building.

This ancient College or House of Doctors of Law was swept away in 1861-67 in consequence of alterations in legal procedure. The courts were removed, and the business of the proctors was merged in the ordinary work of the High Courts of Justice and the Bar.

The Deanery itself is on the west side standing back behind a high brick wall, painted yellow. It is attributed to Sir Christopher Wren, and was built soon after the Great Fire. The stone piers of the gates are surmounted by cones. The building itself is tiled with three dormer windows standing out from the roof and heavy projecting eaves. In the interior there is no carving or anything of antiquarian interest calling for remark, but the front door has some rich wood-carving in the style of Grinling Gibbons.

Paul’s Chain and the greater part of St. Bennet’s Hill are now Godliman Street. The origin of the name “Godliman” is unknown. Cunningham says that the earliest mention of the name is 1732. It is not found in Ogilby nor in Strype. It has been spelt “Godalmin.”

A little court named Paul’s Bakehouse seems to have been asleep while the rest of the world passed it by. It is true the house immediately fronting the entry is covered with ugly yellow plaster, but it is by no means obtrusively modern, and if we except an iron railing in the corner over an area in the north-east, and the house above it, the remainder of the court has been touched by time alone since it left the builders’ hands in the seventeenth century. The houses on the north and south sides are of brick; the northern ones bulge forward out of the perpendicular, and they have low wooden doorways. That in the south-west corner is supported by grooved pilasters. The northern building claims a better staircase in the interior—a staircase with spiral balusters and carved woodwork, low and substantial.

=Knightrider Street.=—Why this street should be named, as Stow says, “after knights riding” more than any other street, it is impossible to explain. One may, however, suppose that it was named after some branch of the Armourers’ or Loriners’ Craft. Dr. Linacre lived here. Knightrider Street now extends to Queen Victoria Street, but formerly the eastern part from Old Change was called Old Fish Street. Do Little Lane, between Carter Lane and Knightrider Street, now Knightrider Court, is found in many ancient documents called “Dolite,” “Do Lyttle,” “Doelittle” in deeds of Edwards I., II., and III.

DOCTORS’ COMMONS, 1808

From a drawing by Rowlandson and Pugin.
]

ST. NICHOLAS COLE ABBEY

The church stands in Knightrider Street; it has been known by
several other names, Coldenabbey, Coldbey, etc. It was burnt down in
the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren
in 1677, when the parish of St. Nicholas Olave was annexed. In 1873
it was thoroughly repaired. Four other parishes were subsequently
united. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1319.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean of St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, then the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1532.
Henry VIII., who seized it, and so continued in the Crown till Queen
Elizabeth granted it in 1559 to Thomas Reeve and George Evelyn, from
whom it passed to several private persons and at length came to the
Hacker family in 1575, one of whom, Colonel Francis Hacker, was
involved in the beheading of Charles I.; he was finally executed as
a traitor, his estate including this advowson being forfeited and
thus it came to the Crown, and so continued until St. Nicholas Olave
was annexed after the Great Fire, when the patronage was shared
alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 180.

The interior of the church, which contains no aisles, measures 63
feet in length, 43 feet in breadth, and 36 feet in height. The
steeple, which rises at the north-west, consists of a tower of four
stories concluded by a cornice with urns at each angle; above this a
spire rises, completed by a balcony, and supporting a square
pedestal with a finial, ball, and vane. The total height is about
135 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By John Sywarde and Thomas Blode, who
endowed it with lands which fetched £6 in 1548, when Anthony Little
was priest “of 50 years and of mean learning”; by John Tupley, who
left lands and tenements valued at £12 : 8 : 4 in 1548, when Ralph
Jackson was priest “of 30 years of age and very well learned”;
Thomas Barnard, John Saunderash, and William Cogshale, who gave
their lands in Distaff Lane to endow the same, which yielded £7 :
6 : 8 in 1548, when William Benson was priest, “46 years of age, and
a very poor and sickly man.”

The church contained no monuments of any special note. Walter Turke,
mayor in 1349, was interred here.

Barnard Randolph bequeathed £900 to this parish and St. Mary
Magdalene for charities; he died in 1583. No other names are
recorded by Stow.

Herbert Kynaston (1809-1878), High Master of St. Paul’s School, was
rector here. But the most notable among the rectors is the most
recent, Prebendary Shuttleworth, whose death in 1900 left a gap
difficult to fill. Among the most notable of his social schemes was
the foundation of a social club for young men and women who work in
the City (see p. 219).

Old Fish Street, partly wiped out by Knightrider Street, was a row of narrow houses built along the middle of the street like the old houses at Holborn Bars, or like Butchers’ Row behind St. Clement Danes; or like Holywell Street, Strand. Stow says:

“These houses, now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls, set out on market-days to show their fish sold; but procuring license to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses of three or four stories in height, and now are called Fish Street.”

=St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street=, was situated on the north
side of Knightrider Street at the west corner of the Old Change. It
was destroyed by the Great Fire, and subsequently rebuilt and made
the parish church for this and the parish of St. Gregory; but it was
again burnt down in 1886, and has not been rebuilt.

In 1890 these two parishes were united to St. Martin, Ludgate. The
earliest date of an incumbent is 1162.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter
of St. Paul’s, as a vicarage, about 1162, but about 1319 it was a
rectory in the same patronage and has so continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 360.

The church formerly contained a considerable number of monuments,
but the individuals commemorated were of comparatively little note.
Among them was one, Barnard Randolph, common sergeant of the City of
London, and benefactor of the parish. He died in 1583.

Some of the charitable gifts recorded by Stow are: A messuage,
leased at £28 per annum, the gift of Thomas Berry; 40s. per annum,
the gift of Justice Randall; £3 : 18s. per annum, the gift of the
Company of Wax Chandlers.

In St. Gregory’s Parish, in the Ward of Castle Baynard, there was a
school purchased at the cost of Alderman Barber, where thirty boys
and twenty girls were educated. There was one almshouse upon Lambeth
Hill.

John Hewitt was rector here; he was tried by Cromwell’s High Court
of Justice in 1658 and beheaded. Also William Crowe (d. 1743),
Chaplain in Ordinary to George II.

=Sermon Lane.=—According to Stow this was originally Sheremonier’s Lane. The name is found as “Sarmoneres,” “Sarmoners,” “Sarmouneris,” and “Seremoneres” Lane. The most interesting mention of the Street is contained in the Hist. MSS. Comm. Rept. IX., Part I. 26b. (A.D. 1315):

“Whereas a house belonging to the Chapter of St. Paul’s, at the north-east corner of ‘Sarmouneris’ Lane, has been assigned to Sir Nicholas Housebonde, minor canon of St. Paul’s, for his residence, the said Sir Nicholas has complained that it is inconvenient for the purpose on account of the grievous perils which are to be feared by reason of its distance from the cathedral and the crossing of dangerous roads by night, and the attacks of robbers, and other ill-disposed persons, which he had already suffered, and also on account of the ruinous condition of the building and the crowd of loose women who live around it. The Chapter, therefore, assigns to him a piece of ground at the end of the schools upon which to make a house.”

In Sermon Lane is the charity school. It was built in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Two quaint figures of charity children, each perhaps a couple of feet high, project from the first floor. The boy dressed in the long lapelled coat, the girl in panniers, apron, and cap. The house is of brick. The two lower floors have ordinary wide arched windows, but the two upper ones have each a unique display of no less than nine narrow, circular headed windows in a row extending across all the front. These give a curious cloistral aspect to the place. Over the doorway and two ground-floor windows are scrolls fixed up, but on one only is there an inscription, which is clearly readable, as follows:

To the Glory of God and for the benefit of the poor children of this
parish of Castle Baynard Ward this house was purchased at the sole
cost of John Barber, Esq., Alderman of this ward, in the year of our
Lord 1722.

And on an immense plaster slab running all across the story above is “Castle Baynard Ward School, supported by voluntary contributions.”

=St. Bennet’s Hill.=—Strype: “Upon Paul’s Wharf Hill, within a great Gate, and belonging to that gate next to the Doctors’ Commons are many fair Tenements, which in their Leases made from the Dean and Chapter go by the name of _Camera Dianæ_, or Diana’s Chamber. So denominated from a spacious building that in the time of Henry II. stood where they now are standing. In this Camera, an arched and vaulted structure, this Henry II. kept, or was supposed to have kept, that jewel of his heart, fair Rosamund, whom there he called Rosa Mundi; and hereby the name of Diana. To this day are remains and some evident testifications of turnings tedious and windings as also of a passage underground from this House to Castle Baynard, which was, no doubt, the king’s way from thence to his _Camera Dianæ_.”

In 1452 (Hist. Comm. IX.) the “Inn called _Camera Dianæ_,” _alias_ Segrave, in the parish of St. Benet is assigned by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to a Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral. And in 1480 we find the _Camera_ described as a messuage with a garden let at eight marks a year to Sir John Clay; it was formerly occupied by Lord Berners, “but probably belonging to Richard Lichefield, Canon Residentiary, who pays to the Chapter 26s. a year for the obit of Richard Juvenis.

ST. BENET, PAUL’S WHARF

St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, is sometimes called St. Bennet Huda, or At
the Hyth, and sometimes St. Benet Woodwharf. The date of the
foundation of the original church is unknown. It was destroyed by
the Great Fire, and the present building, the work of Wren, was
finished in 1683. The neighbouring church of St. Peter was not
rebuilt and after the Fire the parishes were united. This rectory
has ceased to be parochial, its parish having been united with that
of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. In 1879 the church was handed over to
the Welsh congregation by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ratified
by an Order in Council. The patron is the Bishop of London. It is
now used for services for Welsh residents in London. The earliest
date of an incumbent is 1150.

The patronage of the church had always been in the hands of the Dean
and Chapter of St. Paul’s since 1150 up to 1879.

Houseling people in 1548 were 336.

The present church is built of red brick, with stone quoins and
festoons over the windows. It is 54 feet long, 50 feet broad, and 36
feet high. There is one aisle, on the north side, separated from the
nave by two Corinthian columns on lofty bases. The steeple, rising
at the north-west, reaches a height of 115 feet and consists of a
square-based tower, with a cornice, a cupola with oval openings, and
a lantern supporting a ball and vane.

A chantry was founded here at the Altar of Our Lady for Sir William
de Weyland, to which John Love de Canterbury was admitted, April 10,
1334.

This church formerly contained monuments to: Sir William Cheyne,
Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, who died in 1442; Dr. Richard
Caldwell, President of the Royal College of Physicians, who died in
1585; Inigo Jones was buried here in 1652, but his memorial perished
in the Great Fire; there is a marble tablet to his memory on the
north-side wall. Many heralds and dignities of the Ecclesiastical
Courts were buried in this church owing to its contiguity to the
College of Arms and Doctors’ Commons, among whom are John Charles
Brooke, William Oldys, author of the _Life of Raleigh_, who died in
1761, also Mrs. Manley, author of the _New Atlantis_, who died in
1724. Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, was married here.

There was a charity school here for twenty poor boys; also
almshouses, consisting of six tenements for six poor widows. Each
widow received 7s. 4d. per quarter from Christ’s Hospital, 9s. 6d.
at Christmas from the Embroiderers, and 25s. each at Christmas from
the churchwardens. In the event of marriage, the benefit of this
foundation was forfeited.

As this brings us down to Thames Street again, we must retrace our steps and come right along the river-side from the westward limit of our section.

_Photo. York & Son._

QUEEN VICTORIA STREET
]

Puddle Dock was called Waingate in Stow’s time; it was possibly an artificial port constructed like Queenhithe, in the mud of the foreshore. Beside the dock, in the sixteenth century, was a brewery, the first of the many river-side breweries.

Baynard’s Castle has already been mentioned. There was no house in the City more interesting than this. Its history extends from the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire—exactly 600 years; and during the whole of this long period it was a great palace. First it was built by one Baynard, a follower of William. It was forfeited in A.D. 1111, and given to Robert Fitzwalter, son of Richard, Earl of Clare, in whose family the office of Castellan and Standard-bearer to the City of London became hereditary. His descendant, Robert, in revenge for private injuries, took part with the barons against King John, for which the King ordered Baynard’s Castle to be destroyed. Fitzwalter, however, becoming reconciled to the King, was permitted to rebuild his house. It was again destroyed, this time by fire, in 1428. It was rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, on whose attainder it reverted to the Crown. During one of these rebuildings it was somewhat shifted in position. Richard, Duke of York, next had it, and lived here with his following of 400 gentlemen and men-at-arms. It was in the hall of Baynard’s Castle that Edward IV. assumed the title of king, and summoned the bishops, peers, and judges to meet him in council. Edward gave the house to his mother, and placed in it for safety his wife and children before going out to fight the Battle of Barnet. Here Buckingham offered the crown to Richard.

Alas! why would you heap those cares on me?
I am unfit for state and majesty;
I do beseech you, take it not amiss
I cannot, nor I will not, yield to you.

Henry VIII. lived in this palace, which he almost entirely rebuilt. Prince Henry, after his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, was conducted in great state up the river, from Baynard’s Castle to Westminster, the mayor and commonalty of the City following in their barges. In the time of Edward VI. the Earl of Pembroke, whose wife was sister to Queen Catherine Parr, held great state in this house. Here he proclaimed Queen Mary. When Mary’s first Parliament was held, he proceeded to Baynard’s Castle, followed by “2000 horsemen in velvet coats, with their laces of gold and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats with his badge of the green dragon.” This powerful noble lived to entertain Queen Elizabeth at Baynard’s Castle with a banquet, followed by fireworks. The last appearance of the place in history is when Charles II. took supper there just before the Fire swept over it and destroyed it.

Baynard’s Castle is mentioned repeatedly in ancient documents. During a lawsuit heard before the Justices Itinerant at the Tower of London (14 Edward II.) a charter of Henry I. was produced granting permission to the Bishop of London to make a wall over part of the ditch of Baynard’s Castle, and referring back to the possession of the castle by Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, in 1106. In 1307 there were mills “without” Castle Baynard, which were removed as a nuisance. The Brethren of the Papey had a tenement adjoining Baynard’s Castle.

In 1276 Gregory Rokesley, mayor, gave the Archbishop of Canterbury two lanes or ways next the street of Baynard’s Castle. In 1423 a great fire destroyed a part of the castle. In 1501 Henry VII. rebuilt the place or restored it. In 1463 Cicely, Duchess of York, wrote from “our place at Baynard’s Castle.” In 1551 the castle was in the hands of Lord Pembroke, whose wife, Anne Parr, sister of Queen Catherine Parr, died there, February 28, 1552, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The house, as it stood a little before the Fire, was a striking and picturesque palace. The river-front was broken by three towers of unequal height and breadth; the spaces between these were ornamented by tourelles containing the windows; a gateway with a portcullis opened upon the river with a broad stone “bridge” or pier, and stairs. Within, it contained two courts.

After the Fire the site of Baynard’s Castle lay for a long time neglected. Ogilby’s map shows an area not built upon, approached by a lane from Thames Street, called Dunghill Lane. At the river-edge is a small circle denoting a tower. Strype says that it was all burned down except a little tower. Strype also says that the site was converted into “Buildings and Wharves,” but his map shows neither.

Near Baynard’s Castle, but not marked on the maps, was a place called Butchers’ Bridge, where the offal and blood of the beasts killed in the shambles, Newgate, were thrown into the river. It was ordered (43 Edward III.) that the bridge, a pier or jetty such as at New Palace Yard was called Westminster Bridge, should be taken away, and the offal should be carried out of the City.

Stow speaks of another tower on the west side of Baynard’s Castle, built by Edward II. “The same place,” he says, “was since called Legate’s Inn, where be now divers wood wharves.”

On the east side of the castle stood “a great messuage” belonging to the Abbey of Fécamp. During the wars Edward III. took it, and gave it to Sir Simon Burley, from whom it was called Burley House.

Next came another great house, called Scrope’s Inn, “belonging to Scrope in the 31st of Henry VI.”

Paul’s Wharf, a “common stair,” was very ancient, and may very well mark the site of an early break in the wall. In 1354 Gilbert de Bruen, Dean of St. Paul’s, bequeaths his “tenements and wharf, commonly called ‘Paule’s Wharf,’ to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s and their successors, so that they maintain a chantry in the Chapel of St. Katherine” (in the cathedral) “for the good of his soul and the souls of others.”

In 1344 there was a dispute concerning the right of free access to the river by Paul’s Wharf. The matter was referred to certain wardsmen. “They say that Paul’s Wharf used to be common to the whole city for taking water there, but they say that Nicolas de Tailleur, ‘heymonger,’ tenant by rent service of Dominus William de Hagham, collects the quarterly payments of those who take water there against the custom of the city.”

Paul’s Wharf was also called the Wharf of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Beyond Paul’s Wharf was a great house, formerly—_i.e._ in the fourteenth century—called Beaumont’s Inn, but given by Edward IV. to Lord Hastings. In 1598 it was called Huntingdon House, as belonging to the Earls of Huntingdon.

=St. Peter, Paul’s Wharf=, stood at the south-east corner of St.
Peter’s Hill in Upper Thames Street. It was sometimes called St.
Peter’s Parva. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt,
its parish being annexed to that of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf. Its
burying-ground may still be seen amidst the surrounding warehouses.
The earliest date of an incumbent is 1315.

The church has always been in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter
of St. Paul, since 1181, and continued in their successors up to
1666, when the church was burnt down and the parish annexed to that
of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf.

Chantries were founded here by: William Bernard for himself and
Isabel his wife, to which James Payne was admitted January 22,
1542-43; Walter Kent.

No monuments remained in Stow’s time except that in memory of Queen
Elizabeth.

Fish Wharf was near Queenhithe. In 1343 Thomas Pykeman, fishmonger, bequeathed to his wife the messuage wherein he lived, situate upon “la Fisshewharfs,” with shops, for life. In 1347 Simon de Turnham, fishmonger, ordered the sale of “his shops and solars” at “le Fisshewharfs in the parish of St. Mary Somerset.” In 1374 the Fishwharfs is said to be in the parish of St. Magnus. Now, there are four parishes between St. Mary Somerset and St. Magnus. The latter “Fish Wharf” is probably “Fresh” Wharf in St. Magnus’s parish. In 1291 Thomas Pikeman (father of the above named [?]), Henry Poteman, and John Aleyn, fishmongers of Fishers’ Wharf, pray that they may be allowed to go on selling fish, fresh or salted, in their houses on the above wharf by wholesale or retail, as their ancestors have been accustomed to do. The Fish Wharf of St. Magnus was also called the Fish Wharf at the Hole.

=St. Mary Mounthaw= was situated on the west side, about the middle
of Old Fish Street Hill, and derived its name “Mounthaw” or
“Mounthault” from its having belonged to the family of Mounthaul or
Monhalt who owned a house in the parish. It was destroyed by the
Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mary Somerset, its
site being made into a burying-ground for the inhabitants. The
earliest date of an incumbent is 1344.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The family of
Mounthault, who sold it to Ralph de Maydenstone, about 1234, who
gave it to his successors the Bishop of Hereford, in whose
successors it continued till 1666, when the church was burnt down
and the parish annexed to St. Mary Somerset, who shared the
alternate patronage of that church up to 1776.

A chantry was founded here by John Gloucester, late citizen, before
1345, to which John Whutewey was admitted, February 18, 1381.

Two monuments only are mentioned by Stow, one in memory of John
Gloucester, alderman in 1345, and John Skip, Bishop of Hereford,
1552.

Twenty-four boys and twenty girls were taught and clothed by the
gentlemen of Queenhithe Ward.

The parish, together with others, had a gift of 8s. per annum left
by Randolph Bernard, and 40s. per annum left by Robert Warner.

Boss Alley, now vanished, preserved the memory of a “boss” of water placed there by the executors of Whittington. Beside Boss Alley was a house once belonging to the Abbots of Chertsey in Surrey, as their inn when they came to town. It was afterwards known as Sandie House. “I think the Lord Sands has been lodged there.”

Trig Lane follows, leading down to Trig Stairs:

A pair of stairs they found, not big stairs,
Just such another pair as Trig Stairs.