Chapter V: Preface (5)

The Company is governed by a Master, an Upper Warden and a Renter
Warden, with eighteen assistants, and, together with the livery, now
number 91. The Hall is at 81 Coleman Street. Stow mentions the Hall
on the north end of Coleman Street and on the east side of it. “The
Company of Armourers were made a Fraternity or Guild of St. George
with a Chantry in the Chapel of St. Thomas in Paul’s Church in the
1st of Henry VI.”

On the north side of King’s Arms Yard extends the elaborate and very handsome building of the Metropolitan Life Assurance Society, which has its entrance at the corner of Moorgate Street. This has deeply recessed windows, and the corner is finished off by an octagonal turret which begins in a projecting canopy over the door, and is carried up to the roof. In niches here and there are small stone figures. This building is the work of Aston Webb and Ingress Bell in 1891. Opposite, in great contrast, are oldish brick houses, very plain in style. Round the northern corner into Coleman Street is carried a building which is chiefly remarkable for the amount of polished granite on its surface. On the west, a little higher up, is another entrance of the Wool Exchange from which a large projection overhangs the street. There is a lamb in stonework over the door.

=Basinghall Street= (or Bassishaw Street) runs from London Wall to Gresham Street. The street used to contain the Masons’, Weavers’, Coopers’, and Girdlers’ Halls. Only the Girdlers’ and Coopers’ Halls now remain. The names Basinghall and Bassishaw are frequently supposed to have the same origin. Riley, however, quotes a passage in which (A.D. 1390) there is mention of the “Parish of St. Michael Bassishaw in the Ward of Bassyngeshaw,” which he considers indicates that the word Basseshaw is Basset’s haw, and Bassyngeshaw is Basing’s haw, referring to two families and not one. There is a great number of references to Basings and to Bassets. Yet the names seem to refer to the same place. Thus in 1280 and 1283 we hear of houses in Bassieshaw. In 1286 we hear of houses in Bassinge haw. Basinghall was the hall or house of the Basings, an opulent family of the thirteenth century. Solomon and Hugh Basing were sheriffs in 1214; Solomon was mayor in 1216; Adam Basing was sheriff in 1243. Basinghall passed into the hands of a family named Banquelle or Bacquelle. John de Banquelle, Alderman of Dowgate, had a confirmation and quit claim to him of a messuage in St. Michael, Bassieshawe, in 1293.

At the south-west corner of Basinghall Street was a fine stone house built by a “certain Jew named Manscre, the son of Aaron.” Thomas Bradberry (d. 1509) kept his mayoralty there.

THE GIRDLERS COMPANY

The Girdlers Company traces its existence to a very early period,
and cannot, in the strict sense of the word, be said to have been
founded. It is believed to have been a fraternity by prescription,
which owed its origin to a lay brotherhood of the order of Saint
Laurence, maintaining themselves by the making of girdles and
voluntarily associating for the purpose of mutual protection and for
the regulation of the trade which they practised, and the
maintenance of the ancient ordinances and usages established to
ensure the honest manufacture of girdles with good and sound
materials.

The earliest public or State recognition of the Company of which it
now possesses any evidence consists of Letters Patent of the first
year of King Edward III., A.D. 1327, addressed to them as an
existing body, as “les ceincturiers de notre Citée de Loundres,” by
which the “ancient ordinances and usuages” of the said trade are
approved and their observance directed. The King also grants licence
to the girdlers that they shall have power to elect one or two of
their own trade to seek out false work and present it before the
mayors or chief guardians of the places where found, who shall cause
the same to be burnt and those who have worked the same to be
punished; all amercements resulting therefrom to belong to the
mayors of the places where the false work is found.

Some ten years later we find the girdlers presenting a code of laws
for the governance of their trade to the mayor and aldermen;
therefore, though their charter enabled them to search into and
discover bad work, it gave them no power to make laws for the
safeguarding of the trade. Moreover, the charter gave them no power
over wages, nor did it compel the workers of the trade to join the
Fraternity, nor did it empower them to hold land, to sue or to be
sued. Considering these omissions, the document quoted by Riley
ought not, strictly speaking, to be considered a charter.

The said Letters Patent were confirmed in 1 Richard II. (1377) and 2
Henry IV. (1401), and the Company was incorporated in 27 Henry VI.
(1448) by the Master and Guardians of the Mystery of Girdlers of the
City of London.

Further confirmations were made in 2 Edward IV., 10 Elizabeth, 15
Charles I., and 1 James II.

No important change in the original constitution of the Company was
made by any of the charters prior to that of 10 Elizabeth, which
directed that the three arts or mysteries called Pinners,
Wyerworkers, and Girdlers should be joined and invited together into
one body corporate and polity, and one society and company for ever,
and did incorporate them by the name of the Masters and Wardens or
Keepers of the Art and Mystery of Girdlers, London.

It does not appear that the Pinners and Wyerworkers brought any
accession of property to the Girdlers.

The Hall has always been in Basinghall Street. Here it is mentioned
by Stow along with Masons’ Hall and Weavers’ Hall.

No. 1 on the east of Basinghall Street was probably built early in the nineteenth century; the buildings which follow it are chiefly modern. The whole street is rather fine, though too narrow for much effect. There are in it many great “houses,” “chambers,” and “buildings” occupied in floors. Gresham Buildings are faced with dark-coloured stone and rise comparatively high. The ground-floor walls on the exterior are covered with the most elaborate stonework representations of flowers and foliage. The City of London Court in the passage known as Guildhall Buildings is picturesquely built in a perpendicular style of Gothic. A great square stone building opposite was built in 1890, and next to it a plain Portland stone edifice contains the Lord Mayor’s court office. The City Library and Museum form a picturesque group of buildings in the west of Basinghall Street.

Near at hand is the Coopers’ Hall with a narrow frontage.

THE COOPERS COMPANY

The Coopers Company was incorporated in 1501 by charter of King
Henry VII., dated 29th April, in the sixteenth year of his reign.
There is no record, however, of any anterior charter. There is no
doubt that the Coopers were one of the early mysteries or
brotherhoods of the City of London, though it is difficult to assign
a correct date of their origin. The Company’s archives, however,
show that the Company had existed for a considerable period prior to
the date of its incorporation. A subsequent charter was granted on
the 30th August, in the thirteenth year of King Charles II. This is
the governing charter, and its provisions regulate the management of
the Company to the present day. Under the statute of 23 Henry VII.
cap. 4, power is given to the wardens of the Company with one of the
mayor’s officers to gauge all casks in the City of London and the
suburbs, and within two miles’ compass without the suburbs, and to
mark such barrels when gauged. By a subsequent Act, 31 Elizabeth,
cap. 8, “for the true gauging of vessels brought from beyond the
seas, converted by brewers for the utterance and sale of ale and
beer,” brewers were prohibited from selling or putting to sale any
ale or beer in any such vessels within the limits before mentioned
before the same should be lawfully gauged and marked by the master
and wardens of the Coopers Company. The Company do not now exercise,
and have not for a considerable period exercised, any control over
the trade of coopers.

It is quite certain that a craft so technical and so useful as that
of the cooper must have been constituted as a guild as soon as
craftsmen began to work together at all. In the year 1396 (Riley, p.
541), “the goodmen of the trade of Coopers” presented a code of
ordinances for the regulation of the trade. They complained that
certain persons of the trade were in the habit of making casks out
of wood which had been used for oil and soap casks, so that ale or
wine put into these casks was spoiled. Therefore it is certain that
their guild did not possess authority over the trade at that time.
This is shown again in 1413, when certain Master Coopers again
complained to the mayor that one Richard Bartlot, fishmonger, had
made 260 vessels called barrels and firkins of unseasoned wood and
of false measure. These vessels were ordered to be destroyed.
Perhaps in order to prevent similar practices, it was decreed that
every cooper should mark his work by his own trade-mark.

The Corporate Income of the Company is given in 1898 as £2400; the
Trust Income as £5000; the number of the livery as 200. Their Hall
is 71 Basinghall Street, on the site of two previous halls.

Close by is the “Wool Exchange and Colonial Office” with an open entry supported by polished granite pillars, whose capitals are carved as rams’ heads. This is rather a fine building, with segmental windows set closely all across the frontage. Bevois House, just completed, takes a good line of curvage and is of white stone. Before Guildhall Chambers there is an old house built of narrow red bricks, with semicircular pillars on each side of the centre window frame, and above, on a slab of stone, the date 1660. The site of =St. Michael’s Church= is here. A row of straight ordinary business houses succeeds. On the east are =Guildhall Chambers=, plastered houses built round an asphalt court. The centre one has a small portico with Ionic columns; the rest of the court is plain and severe, but not ineffective.

=The Church of St. Michael, Bassishaw=, was situated on the west
side of Basinghall Street. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century,
but destroyed by the Great Fire, and again rebuilt, by Wren, between
1676 and 1679. In 1895 the church was closed, a commission having
been issued in 1893 by the Bishop of London to inquire into the
expediency of uniting this with the parishes of St. Lawrence, Jewry,
and St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street. The earliest date of an
incumbent is 1286.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and
Canons of St. Bartholomew’s about 1140, given by the Bishop of
London; Henry III.; Thomas de Bassinges, 1246, who left it to his
wife by will dated 1275; Henry Bodyk, 1327, who left it to Johanna
his wife; Nicholas de Chaddesdon, who sold it in 1358 to Sir John de
Beauchamp, brother to the Earl of Warwick; Dean and Chapter of St.
Paul’s, 1435, in whose successors it continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 500.

The present church measures 70 feet in length, 50 feet in breadth,
and 42 feet in height, and includes a nave and two side aisles
separated by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is divided into panels,
and is pierced with openings to admit the light. The tower, which
rises at the west, contains four stories concluded by a cornice and
parapet; above this is a lead-covered octagonal lantern in two
stages surmounted by a short spire with ball, finial, and vane. The
total height is 140 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By John Hannem, citizen, before 1326;
by John Asche, whose endowment, “called the bell on the hope,”
fetched £3 : 6 : 8; by James Yardeford, Knt., whose endowment
yielded £16 in 1548.

A considerable number of monuments are recorded by Stow, the most
notable of which are those of Sir John Gresham (d. 1556), Lord Mayor
of London, uncle to the more famous Sir Thomas Gresham; and Dr.
Thomas Wharton (d. 1673), a physician who gained great glory from
his labours during the Plague of 1665.

The parish received a large number of gifts and charities, some of
which were as follows: £9 from Lady Anne Vaughan, for lectures; £10
from Sir Wolstan Dixey, for lectures; £20 from Lady Anne Bacon; £70
from Sir Robert and Lady Ducie.

George Gardiner (d. 1589), chaplain to Queen Elizabeth and
Chancellor of Norwich, was rector here; also George Lavington
(1684-1762), Bishop of Exeter 1746-47.

_Drawn by G. Shepherd._

ST. MARY, ALDERMANBURY, IN 1814
]

=Aldermanbury= is another ancient City street. The name, according to Stow, is derived from the Court of Aldermen formerly held in the first Guildhall, the ruins of which, on the east side of the street, were standing in his day. They had then been converted into a carpenter’s shop. Here, in 1383, Sir Robert Tressilian, Lord Chief Justice, had his residence. At the north end of this street, before the memory of men living in 1415, a postern had been built leading from the City to the moor. In Riley’s _Memorials_ there is a full account of a crowded meeting of citizens in the Guildhall, July 2, 1415, to consider the state of the moor and certain nuisances outside the postern and within Bishopsgate. It was resolved to lay out the moor, then a waste place, in gardens to be allotted to citizens at a certain rental. The street is frequently mentioned from the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century the street had become a place of residence for the better sort. “Here be divers fair houses on both sides meet for merchants and men of worship.”

ST. MARY, ALDERMANBURY

This church is of very ancient date, as appeared from a sepulchral
inscription, said to have been in the old church, dated 1116. The
building was destroyed by the Great Fire, and re-erected by Wren in
1668-76. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1200.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul’s, who, June 1113, appropriated it to Elsing
Spital, with certain restrictions. The living is now in the gift of
the parishioners.

Houseling people in 1548 were 371.

The church measures 72 feet in length, 45 feet in breadth, and 38
feet in height, and includes two aisles separated by six Corinthian
columns from the nave. Externally, the church is rather imposing.
The east front has a handsome cornice and pediment, with carved
scrolls and figures. The steeple, which rises at the west, consists
of a tower completed by a cornice and parapet. This is surmounted by
a square turret in two stages, and a concave roof tapering to a
point, with a finial and vane; the total height is about 90 feet.
There is a churchyard on the south side, open to the public for
several hours daily.

Chantries were founded here: By William Estfelde, augmented by
Stephen Bockerell, at the Altar of St. George, for Stephen, Isabella
his wife, and William his son, before 1363; by Henry Bedeyk—the
advowson thereof was released to Sir John de Beauchamp by John de
Bovenden and Katherine his wife, in 1359; by Adam de Bassyng.

A considerable number of citizens of repute were buried in the old
church, amongst whom the two most interesting to posterity are Henry
Condell (d. 1627) and John Heminge (d. 1630), the fellow-actors of
Shakespeare and editors of the folio of 1623. The celebrated divine
Edmund Calamy (the elder) was rector here for some years, and was
buried in 1666 beneath the ruined building with which he had been so
long connected. In the register of the church the marriage of Milton
with his second wife Katherine Woodcock, 1656, is entered. The
remains of Judge Jeffreys, interred in the Tower after his death
there in 1689, were removed here and deposited in a vault beneath
the communion table in 1693.

According to Stow, there were no legacies or bequests to the church,
but a legacy to the poor, by the Lady Gresham, of £3 per annum, paid
by the Mercers Company.

Among other celebrated rectors are Edmund Calamy the younger, and
Dr. Kennett (d. 1728), author of Kennett’s Register, afterwards
Bishop of Peterborough.

ST. ALPHAGE

At the north end of Aldermanbury at the corner of London Wall, is
the Church of St. Alphage. This parish church originally stood on
the other side, against the Wall. It is dedicated to St. Alphage,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was canonised in 1012. Its old
churchyard may still be seen. It is built on part of the site of the
hospital and priory founded by William Elsing in 1329 and 1332. The
priory harboured one hundred poor blind men, and suffered
suppression along with the rest at the Dissolution. Under Henry
VIII. a remnant of the priory church became parochial and was
extensively repaired and rebuilt in 1624, 1628, and 1649. It escaped
the Great Fire, but was taken down in 1774 and the present building
erected by Sir William Staines and opened in 1777. Part of the
original structure may still be seen in the porch. The earliest date
of an incumbent is 1137.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Deans and
Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand before 1324, from whom it passed to
the Abbot and Convent of Westminster from 1505; the Bishop of
Westminster by grant of Henry VIII., January 20, 1540; the Bishop of
London by gift of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Mary, March 3,
1553-54, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 345.

The present church possesses two fronts, an eastern and
north-western; the north-west door leads into a porch, the pointed
arches of which show it to have once formed part of the old priory
church. This is the only relic of past times. The interior is plain,
the ceiling flat, and there are no aisles.

A chantry was founded here by John Graunte, whose endowment yielded
£15 : 10 : 8 in 1548.

The church contains a handsome monument on the north wall to Sir
Rowland Hayward, Lord Mayor in 1570 and 1591; it was placed on the
south side of the old church. On the same wall, farther east, a
marble monument commemorates Samuel Wright, who at his death in 1736
left charitable bequests to the extent of £20,950.

PORCH OF ST. ALPHAGE, LONDON WALL, 1818.
]

Some of the donors of gifts were Sir Rowland Hayward, 20d. for bread
every Sabbath day for the poor, 1591, and John Brown, £30 for church
repairs, 1629.

There was a school for fifty boys and twenty-five girls, who were
clothed and educated and put out to trades and service at the charge
of the ward. There were also ten almshouses for ten men and ten
women, each of whom was allowed £4 per annum, founded by the Rev.
Dr. Thomas White. Part of the almshouses in Monkwell Street belonged
to this parish.

A notable rector of this church was Philip Stubbs (1665-1738),
Archdeacon of St. Alban’s.

Just opposite to Philip Street is still preserved the old churchyard of St. Alphage, a rectangular railed-in space with ivy growing over the old wall that forms the backbone. On a slab near the centre is the inscription:

The burial ground of St. Alphage containing part of the old Roman
City wall. Closed by Act of Parliament 1853. Laid out as a garden
1872.

To the west of the churchyard once stood Sion College. This was built in 1623 with almshouses attached, according to the will of Dr. Thomas White, vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. It stood on the site of Elsing Spital (see _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p. 248).

SION COLLEGE, LONDON WALL, 1800

From an original drawing in the possession of the President and
Fellows of Sion College.
]

Sion College had a fine library left by the will of Dr. John Simson, rector of St. Olave, Hart Street, and a third of these books was burnt in the Great Fire, which almost destroyed the College. Up to 1836 the College enjoyed the privilege of receiving a gratuitous copy of every published book. The City clergy were Fellows of the College. In 1886 a new building on the Embankment was opened to take the place of the old one, and now the ancient site is covered by business houses.

THE CURRIERS COMPANY

The Curriers were incorporated by James I. in April 30, 1606, for a
master, two wardens, twelve assistants, and 103 liverymen.

The exact date of the origin of the Company is unknown, but it must
have had some sort of existence previous to 1363, for in that year
it is recorded that the Company contributed five marks to aid King
Edward III. in carrying on his wars with France.

There are no documents in existence referring to the origin of the
Company.

Many indications of the antiquity of this Fraternity occur. It was
attached to the White Friars’ Church in Fleet Street. The Curriers
settled in Soper Lane; they asked for ordinances in 1415; they were
authorised to appoint the City scavengers.

Their Hall is the third erected on the same site; it was founded in
1874. The first Hall perished in the Fire. The quarter where the
curriers lived and worked was in the north facing London Wall, where
they built their Hall.

Of =Addle Street= Stow says: “The reason of which name I know not.” It may have been derived from “Ethel,” meaning noble. In it is the Brewers’ Hall.

THE BREWERS COMPANY

In the year 1445 the Brewers were first incorporated. Like many
other trades, they had been associated long before. Thus in 1345 the
Brewers (Riley’s _Memorials_, p. 225) are treated as a body, being
ordered not to use the water of the Chepe conduit for making beer
and ale, seeing that it was wanted for the supply of the citizens.
(Fishmongers at the same time were forbidden to use the water for
washing their fish.)

The original charter of February 22, 1445, granted by Henry VI.,
after citing the Brewers Company as one of the ancient mysteries,
incorporates the Company into one body and perpetual community.

The charter granted 11th November, 2 Elizabeth, and the charter of
August 29, 1563, confirm the previous charter of Henry VI.

The charter of July 13, 21 Elizabeth, appears to have been granted
owing to the great increase of persons engaged in and practising the
trade of brewing. The charter incorporates all persons in or about
the City of London or the suburbs, or within two miles of the City.

The charter of 6th April, 15 Charles I., recites previous charters,
but increases the jurisdiction of the corporation over the brewing
trade in or about the City of London to a limit of four miles.

This charter of Charles I. confers a great deal of power on those in
authority over the trade. It allows them to make rules and
ordinances, and generally to exercise supervision over all members
of the trade in and about the City, and within a four-mile radius.

Byelaws on the strength of this charter were framed for the Company
on July 9, Charles I., 1641.

The charter of 18th March, 1 Charles II., after reciting the charter
of 22nd February, 16 Henry VI., the confirmation of the said charter
by Queen Elizabeth on August 29, 1563, and a surrender of the right
to elect master, warden, or assistant, incorporates the Company
again, nominates William Carpenter to be master till June 24, 1686,
further nominates wardens and assistants; provides for the
institution of search and quarterage, and for the binding of
apprentices; gives the corporation the right to inspect brew-houses
within certain limits, and to inflict penalties; orders that every
assistant elected shall be a communicant, and allows the commonalty
to distil aqua-vitæ or spirits.

The deed of July 1, 1684, surrenders the Company’s charter and all
rights appertaining to it.

The charter of 18th March, James II., after reciting the charter of
16 Henry VI., and 4 Elizabeth, 1563, and the surrender of their
charter by the Company, orders all brewers within eight miles of the
City or suburbs of London to be of the corporation; establishes
search and quarterage payments according to the number of servants
employed; gives the Company power to make laws or set penalties;
grants a licence in mortmain to purchase lands up to the value of
£60; orders every master, warden, assistant, and clerk to take the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration;
orders each person elected to be a communicant.

The Company have a copy of byelaws drawn up in the year 1714, and
signed by all the members of the court.

The present constitution, orders, rules, and conditions, as drawn up
by the master, wardens, and assistants, were made on July 13, 1739.
They provide for the holding of the courts; the election of masters,
wardens, and assistants; for certain penalties for refusing to
serve; for the auditing of accounts, for the election to the livery
and freedom; for binding apprentices; for making the search and
quarterage; for certain restrictions in the case of freemen; for
power for the master and wardens to sue for penalties; for the
taking of the oaths, and the signing of the declarations.

In February 13, 1857, the byelaws were altered under the Act of 6
William IV., as far as regards the taking of oaths, and an order was
made that a declaration should be substituted for the oath.

The Company is governed by a master, three wardens, and twenty-six
assistants.

This Company is one of the richest of the City Companies; it has an
annual income of £2500 and administers Trusts and charities to the
extent of £25,000 more; it has a livery of 47; it admits none but
members of the trade. The Company has always, as might be expected,
been rich and flourishing.

THE BRODERERS COMPANY

The first charter of the Company of Broderers, or embroiderers, is
dated in 1561, and this is the earliest definite evidence now in the
possession of the Company of the date of its existence as a Company,
though the association existed long before incorporation. In an
indenture of conveyance of certain of the Company’s property in
Gutter Lane, dated 5 Henry VIII., one Thomas Foster (the grantee) is
described as a citizen and broyderer, and “The wardens of the
mystery of broyderers within the city of London” are described as a
definite body in the will of the same Thomas Foster.

25th October, 3 Elizabeth, 1561.—Original charter of Queen
Elizabeth.

Incorporates the freemen of the mystery or art of the broderers of
the City of London and the suburbs by the name of Keepers or Wardens
and Society of the Art or Mystery of the Broderers of the City of
London, to have perpetual succession and a common seal, to bring and
defend actions, and especially in the City of London to hold lands
of the annual value of £30, for the assistance and support of poor
men and women of the mystery.

Grants powers to the keepers or wardens from time to time to make
good and salutary statutes and ordinances for the good regulation
and government of the mystery and the freemen thereof, which shall
be inviolably observed.

Grants to the keepers or wardens power to overlook and govern the
art and all using the same in the City and suburbs thereof, the City
of Westminster, Saint Katherine’s in Middlesex, and the borough of
Southwark, and to punish all men for not truly working or selling.

20th April, 7 James I., 1609.—Original charter of James the First.

Contains only a recital and confirmation of the charter of Queen
Elizabeth without any alteration or addition.

The above is an abstract of the subsisting charter of the Company.

It was the Broderers who produced the palls used by many Companies
at the funerals of their members. They also made the pulpit cloths
and altar cloths of the churches, the vestments of the clergy, the
caparison of horses, and the decoration of arms and armour.

The livery in 1900 was 28. Their Trust Income about £32 : 9s. The
beautiful art of embroidery is encouraged by this Company by
scholarships at the Royal School of Art Needlework, Decorative
Needlework Society, and Clapton and Stamford Hill Government School
of Art.

=Milton Street=, one of the dreariest and dullest of thoroughfares, deserves some comment, having originally been that Grub Street for ever associated with starveling authors. In 1600 it was inhabited by bowyers, fletchers, bowstring-makers and such occupations. There were many bowling alleys and dicing houses. Andrew Marvell speaks of the Puritans of Grub Street.

It was in the eighteenth century that the poorer sort of literary men seem to have lived here.

Swift and Pope both ridiculed Grub Street writers; and Swift’s advice to Grub Street verse-writers is worth quoting:

I know a trick to make you thrive:
Oh! ’tis a quaint device:
Your still-born poems shall survive,
And scorn to wrap up spice.

Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried:
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope,
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.

When Pope has filled the margin round,
Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for 50 pound,
And swear they are your own!

Let us commemorate some of the Grub Street poets and a few others of the same obscure kind. The names of those selected justify my assertion that the miseries of poets fell only on those who were profligate, indolent, or incapable.

Samuel Boyse, a colonist, so to speak, of Grub Street, since he evidently belonged to that and no other quarter, was not a native of London, but of Dublin, where his father was a dissenting minister of great name and fame. The young man was sent to Glasgow University, where he brought his university career to a close by marrying a wife at the age of nineteen. As he had no means of his own, he was obliged to take his wife, with her sister, to Dublin, where his father supported them, selling an estate he had in Yorkshire to defray his son’s debts. On his father’s death Samuel Boyse removed to Edinburgh, where he published a volume of poems and wrote an elegy on the death of Lady Stormont.

He had many introductions, but his natural indolence forbade his taking advantage of them. He seems to have been unable to converse with persons in higher life, and when letters failed he made no further effort to win their favour. Like all the poets of Grub Street, he was of a grovelling habit, and loved to make friends with men of low life and habit; at the same time he was selfishly extravagant, and would feast upon a casual guinea while his wife and child were starving at home. The casual guinea he mostly got by writing begging letters.

GRUB STREET HERMIT
]

At one time he was so far reduced that he had no garment of any kind to put on; all, including his shirts, were at the pawnbrokers; he sat up in bed with a blanket wrapped round him through which he had cut a hole for his arm, in which condition he wrote his verses. He died in 1749 in a lodging in Shoe Lane. A friend endeavoured to get up a subscription to save him from a pauper’s funeral. It was in vain; the parish officers had to take away the body.

The man was a hopeless tenant of Grub Street, without foresight, without prudence, without care, except for the present, without dignity or self-respect; his poetry was third-rate, yet there are fine passages in it; he had scholarly tastes, especially for painting and music, and in heraldry he was well skilled. In a word, Samuel Boyse is quite the most illustrious example of the poetaster who has failed to reach even the lower levels of genius; whose life was utterly contemptible; who would have brought, had such a man been worth considering, discredit by his sordidness and his want of principle, morals, and honour, upon the profession of letters.

Another case is that of Thomas Britton. He was born about the year 1650 at Higham Ferrers. He was apprenticed to a small coalman in Clerkenwell and followed the same trade. He walked the streets carrying his sack on his back, dressed in the blue frock of his profession. When he had disposed of his coal he walked home, looking at the book-stalls and picking up bargains. It was a splendid time for picking up bargains. There were still the remnants of the old Monastic libraries and MSS. together with the old books which had escaped the Great Fire.

Many collectors used to search about among the same book-stalls. Britton became known to them and was employed by them. The Earls of Oxford, Pembroke, Sunderland, and Winchelsea, and the Duke of Devonshire, were among those collectors.

Presently it was discovered that the small coalman, besides being an excellent hand at discovering an old book, was also a very good musician. Then the wonderful spectacle was to be seen of the great ones of the earth—the aristocracy, the wits, the musicians—assembling in an upper room of an itinerant pedlar of small coals to hear a concert of music. Handel played the harpsichord here; Dubourg played the violin. These concerts were begun in 1678 and continued for many years. Britton himself played the viol de gamba. But he was not only a musician and a bibliophile, he was also an antiquarian; he was a collector of music; in addition to all these things, he was also a chemist and had a laboratory of his own. He died in 1714, aged about sixty-four. He was buried in Clerkenwell Churchyard.

Let us not forget the famous Tom Brown. Though most of his life was spent in London, he was a native of Shifnal in Shropshire. He was sent to Christ Church, Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a linguist, a scholar, and a writer of pieces which were certainly witty whatever else they might be. He was so brilliant as a wit that he found it necessary to exchange Oxford for London, where he nearly starved. However, he obtained, just in time to save him, the school of Kingston-on-Thames, which he held for a while, giving it up after a very short tenure of office. Once more he came to London, and became poet, satirist, descriptive writer, and libeller. He was one of the earliest authors by profession, having, in fact, no other means of livelihood than the proceeds of his writings. There is very little known concerning his life; he is said to have been deficient in the courtliness which was necessary in the society of Addison and the wits of society; indeed, he belonged to a somewhat earlier time. He had no patron among the nobility, though it is related that he was once invited to dinner by the Earl of Dorset, who placed a bank-note for £50 under his plate. This was the solitary exception, however. Nothing is known as to his private circumstances, though it would be extremely interesting to learn what sums he received for his Dialogues, Letters, and Poems. He closed a short, merry, godless, waggish life at the early age of forty-one, a fact which suggests drink and good living, with other easy ways of shortening life. He is said—which one readily believes—to have died in great poverty, and he was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey.

An unfortunate poet named William Pattison belongs to Grub Street. He was the son of a farmer in Sussex. By the kindness of Lord Thanet he was sent to school and to Cambridge. He quarrelled, however, with the tutor of this College, and took his name off the boards. He then went up to London intending to live by his pen. It was a very bad time for living by the pen, and the boy, for he was no more, arrived with a very slender equipment of experience and knowledge. He began by soliciting subscriptions for a volume of poems; he seems to have had no friends; but he made some impression at the coffee-house by clever talk. When he had brought out his poems and spent all the subscription money, he fell into absolute indigence and was forced to accept a post as assistant in the shop of the notorious Curll. Before he did that, he wrote to Lord Burlington a poem called _Effigies Authoris_, in which he said that he was destitute of friends and money, half-starved, and reduced to sleeping on a bench in St. James’s Park. To another person he writes, “I have not enjoyed the common necessaries of life these two days.” He did not long continue in this post of bookseller’s assistant, because small-pox attacked him and he died. He was not yet twenty-two years of age.

Not with less glory mighty Dulness crowned
Shall take through Grub Street her triumphant round,

says Pope in “The Dunciad.”

Among others who lived in Grub Street was Foxe the martyrologist. General Monk is said to have had a house in a court off Grub Street. As to the origin of the later name of the street, it is in doubt, some asserting it was from a builder named Milton, and others that it was so called from Milton’s many residences in the neighbourhood. The latter explanation sounds probable; Milton lived at different times in Aldersgate Street, in Jewin Crescent, in Little Britain, and in Bunhill Fields, all within the district.

Eastward is Moorgate Street Station, and not far from it St. Bartholomew’s Church, founded in 1850 to meet new demands. Northward in White Street is the =City of London College=. This is a very large building occupying all the space between White’s Court and Finsbury Street. The lower part is red brick and above is glazed white brick. The character of the building changes just before the corner, having stone facings and a turret angle, which springs from above the first floor. This institution was founded in 1848 and was first established at Crosby Hall. It removed to Sussex Hall, Leadenhall Street, in 1881, and the present building was opened in 1884. In 1895 the secondary portion in White Street, connected with the main building by means of a bridge, was added. The institution was first established as Metropolitan Evening Classes. In 1891 it became, under a scheme of the Charity Commissioners, one of the constituent Institutes of the City Polytechnic. It is in union with the Society of Arts, the Science and Art Department, and the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute. The number of individual students in attendance during the session 1894-95 was 2257 (College Calendar, 1895-96). Besides languages, sciences, and arts, the curriculum includes a practical knowledge of technical subjects. There is accommodation for 4000 students.

In Redcross Street the long line of wall bounding the yard of the Midland Railway goods station occupies much of the east side. Beyond this is a grey brick house partly stone faced, and very ugly, with “Lady Holles’ School for Girls, founded 1702,” running across the front. The west side of the street is all composed of manufactories and warehouses in various styles.

There is a tree-covered space in the middle of =Bridgewater Square=. Along the south side is Tranter’s Temperance Hotel, a dingy building, in the same style as the houses in the street just mentioned. On the west near the south end are one or two old tiled houses. On the north the new building of the Cripplegate Without Boys’ School rises high, with narrow frontage and projecting bow window in the centre resting on a bracket. Up near the roof is the figure of a boy in a long coat standing in a niche. At this school there is accommodation for 260 boys; of these 150 are clothed by Trust, and an outfit on leaving and a situation found for all who pass the VIIth Standard.

The houses on either side of the school are of recent date, but from that on the west, to the west corner, stretches a long row of old houses with windows under the tiles on the roof. The west side of the square is almost wholly eighteenth century, in the usual style. The staircases are panelled, and have spiral balusters. The rooms are all completely wainscotted, and have heavily recessed fireplaces. The entrance ways are completely panelled, and many door lintels and window frames are perilously askew.

ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE

By far the most interesting object in the ward without the Walls is
the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, which stands at the south end
of Red Cross Street. It was built about 1090 by Alfure, who became
the first Hospitaller of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; the building
was replaced by a second church, towards the end of the fourteenth
century, and this was burnt down in 1545. It was at once rebuilt,
and escaped the Great Fire of 1666, and has remained substantially
the same up to the present time. It is of exceptional interest in
contrast with the uniformity of Wren’s City churches. In 1791 the
pitch of the roof was raised, and during the latter half of the
eighteenth century there was extensive restoration. The earliest
date of an incumbent is 1181.

The patronage of the church has been in the hands of the Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul’s, who received it from Almund the priest in
1100, or thereabouts, up to the present time.

Houseling people in 1548 were 2440.

This church is in the Perpendicular style and contains a nave,
chancel, and two side aisles separated from the central part by
clustered columns and pointed arches. The total length is 146 feet 3
inches, and the height 42 feet 8 inches; the total height of the
steeple 146 feet 3 inches, that of the four pinnacles rising from
the corners of the parapet of the tower 12 feet 9 inches.

Chantries were founded in the church: By Richard Chaurye, whose
endowment fetched £4 in 1548; by Matthew Ashebye, whose endowment
yielded £9 : 7 : 8 in 1548. The King granted his licence to found
the Fraternity of Our Lady and St. Giles, September 21, 1426; there
were several chantries endowed here by John Bullinger, William Lake,
and William Serle, and by William Grove and Richard Heyworth.

_From a drawing by W. Pearson._

ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE
]

Among the several memorial windows of the church the most
interesting is that at the west of the south aisle, comprising three
subjects, erected in memory of Edward Alleyne, the founder of
Dulwich College. The earliest monument now existing is of Thomas
Busby, who died in 1575. On the west wall, at the end of the north
aisle, is a tablet commemorating the martyrologist John Foxe, who
died in the parish in 1587. Sir Martin Frobisher was buried here,
but it was not till 1888 that a monument was erected to his memory,
on the eastern part of the south wall. On the same wall, farther
west, John Speed is commemorated, author of various works dealing
with the history of Great Britain. The chief interest attaching to
this church is the fact that in it John Milton was buried in 1674;
there is a stone commemorating him. In 1793 a monument in the shape
of a bust was erected to him at the expense of Samuel Whitbread, and
in 1862 a cenotaph designed by Edmund Woodthorpe was placed in the
south aisle. The church contains numerous other monuments, a great
many of which have a considerable degree of interest; many of them
have been erected to the memory of benefactors and vicars. It was
here that the wedding of Oliver Cromwell was solemnised in 1620; the
register also contains entries to another family whose name is also
linked with Milton’s—that of the Egerton’s, Earls of Bridgewater.

The greatest of the benefactors recorded by Stow seems to have been
Throckmorton Trotman, who gave to the parish £547 in all. In later
times, Sir William Staines, Lord Mayor in 1800, was a liberal donor,
founding and endowing four almshouses for decayed parishioners; also
the Rev. Frederick W. Blomberg, D.D., vicar of this church in 1833.

There was a school for 150 boys in the Freedom; also another for 50
girls, supported by the donation of the Lady Eleanor Holles, the
Haberdashers’ Free School. There were six almshouses, founded by Mr.
Allen, also the Lorrimer’s almshouses.

John Buckeridge (d. 1631), Bishop of Rochester, was vicar here; also
William Fuller (d. 1659), Dean of Durham; Lancelot Andrewes
(1555-1626), Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester; John Rogers,
(1679-1729), chaplain to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George
II.); John Dolben (1625-86), Archbishop of York; William H. Hale
(1795-1870), Master of Charterhouse.

The churchyard contains a drinking fountain in the shape of the old Cripplegate, which is neatly laid out and intersected by a public footpath; there is also an interesting relic, a bastion of the old London Wall, 36 feet wide and about 12 feet high, the most perfect fragment of the wall now existing. It is of inconsiderable height, not more than 12 feet, and made of many odd pieces of different kinds of stone, laid in cement. It looks solid enough to last another 400 years. Ivy grows over it and over the adjoining wall, which is a modern addition. Within this bastion was formerly a small religious house called St. James-on-the-Wall (see _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p. 368). The backs of great warehouses and the east side of the box-like vicarage surround the churchyard. Over the entry from =Fore Street= are several very old houses. We are outside the limits of the Fire here, as the date of the entry, 1660, testifies. This entry has a semicircular canopy or pediment containing this date, and the names of the churchwardens of the period, deeply and clearly cut. On either side are the representations of two large hour-glasses. A skull and cross-bones on the one side, and an hour-glass on the other, are carved in relief below, and the whole is covered with plaster. The backs of the houses are covered with overlapping pieces of wood which rise right up to the gable ends. Facing the street, there are projecting bays running up the front containing windows.

The street, =London Wall=, until the middle of the eighteenth century, consisted of a south row of houses facing the wall itself. In two places the space before the wall was occupied by churchyards, that of Allhallows-on-the-Wall and that of St. Alphage. Farther to the east, St. Martin Outwich also had a burial-ground beside the wall. The pulling down of the wall, the building of houses upon it and against it on either side, was the work of many years. To this day there are houses on the north side of the street to which access is gained by a step, showing that they were built actually on the wall. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a long piece of wall, where is now the opening to Finsbury Square, was taken down to allow of more sunshine in the front of Bethlehem Hospital. The appearance of the street at that time was very pleasing. Sion College, the churches of Allhallows and St. Alphage, and the Armourers’ Hall, with the venerable wall on the north, gave it a very striking and picturesque character. It is a great pity that the wall was taken down. The distance marked by the length of a lane connecting London Wall with the south side of Fore Street gives the breadth of the wall and of the town ditch beyond.

LONDON WALL
]

At the east end of London Wall is the church of

ALLHALLOWS, LONDON WALL

This church stands on the old Roman wall erected in the third
century, and probably marks the site of one of the earliest
Christian churches built in this country.

The earliest authentic records give particulars of a church on the
present site, which dates from the year A.D. 1300, and there is
little doubt that it replaced an earlier structure, which had stood
since the Norman Conquest, and had fallen into disrepair. In A.D.
1474 Allhallows Chapel was constructed, probably for the
accommodation of the Ankers, or Anchorites, who were closely
associated with the church. The most famous of these was Sir Simon,
or Master Anker, the author of a devotional book which has been
preserved in the British Museum, entitled _The Fruits of
Redemption_, who was a great benefactor to Allhallows.

In A.D. 1527 a new aisle was added to the church. Possibly Sir
Simon, when he attached himself to Allhallows, discarded the loft
over the chapel, and settled himself in a cell in the bastion of the
old Roman wall, which now forms the vestry. If, as is probable, he
had taken a vow never to emerge from his retirement, it may be that
when the new aisle was added he was persuaded to place his eloquence
at the disposal of the parishioners, by consenting to preach on
condition that a private passage was made from his cell leading
straight into the pulpit. This would explain why, when the present
church was built, the conditions were reproduced by which the pulpit
is not accessible from the church, but can only be reached by a
staircase leading through the vestry.

The list of rectors can only be traced back to A.D. 1335, but there
is an interesting record in the _Croniques de Londres_, which
mentions that in A.D. 1320 the priest of Allhallows (whose name is
not given) was murdered by Isabel de Bury, who took refuge in the
church, but the Bishop of London would not allow her to seek
sanctuary there, so she was seized, and was hanged five days
afterwards.

The patronage of Allhallows was for many centuries in the hands of
the Prior and Convent of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. At the dissolution
of the monasteries in the sixteenth century it passed to the Crown,
and since then has belonged to the Lord Chancellor.

The church was fortunate enough to escape destruction during the
Great Fire in 1666, but it fell into a ruinous state about a century
later, and had to be demolished. The present structure, for the
erection of which a special Act of Parliament was passed, was
commenced in A.D. 1765, and cost £3000. The architect was George
Dance the younger, and it was his brother, Sir Nathaniel Dance
Holland, R.A., who presented to the church the magnificent painting
which hangs over the altar. It was a copy made by himself of the
famous picture in the Church of the Conception at Rome by Pietro
Berretini di Cortona, a Florentine painter of repute who died in
1669. The subject is the restoration to sight of Saul of Tarsus (St.
Paul) by Ananias at Damascus. The fifteenth-century monk in the
crowd gives a quaint touch of mediævalism to the scene.

The architecture of the church deserves a passing notice. The plan
is intended to reproduce a modified Roman Basilican church, but the
evidences of the Greek revival are shown in the character of the
Ionic capitals of the interior columns, as well as in the famous
Greek honeysuckle ornament, which appears both in the Roman
barrel-vault of the ceiling and in the frieze round the interior
walls. The church is almost unique in representing the transition
stage between the Italian renaissance and the short-lived
introduction of the Greek style.

Among the most famous rectors during the nineteenth century were the
Rev. William Beloe, the well-known translator of Herodotus and Aulus
Gellius; the Rev. Robert Nares, the Shakespearian glossary writer;
and the Rev. George Davys, who was tutor to the late Queen Victoria,
and became successively Rector of Allhallows, Dean of Chester, and
Bishop of Peterborough.

Returning to our section, from which we have somewhat strayed, we find Wood Street has been already described.

In =Noble Street= stood the houses of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Sergeant Fleetwood, Recorder of London. This street is dismissed by Stow in a few words; it faced the City Wall westward, and so long as the Wall was preserved there was an open space of twenty feet at least free from buildings, while without there was the City Ditch. It began at the end of Foster Lane, having the Church of St. John Zachary in the east, and on the west, separated by a block of houses, the Church of St. Anne-of-the-Willows. Going up the street we pass Lilypot Lane, Oat Lane, leading to St. Mary Staining Church (see p. 47), and two or three courts.