Nooks and Corners of Old London Part 4

In the church of St. Michaels on College Hill, built by Sir Christopher Wren, there is a memorial window to d.i.c.k Whittington who was buried in the old church on this site--a church that was destroyed by the Great Fire.

St. James Garlickhithe in Thames Street, erected in 1683, came by its name because in earlier times garlic was usually sold close by along the waterside. Steele has recorded that it was in this church he first really came to understand the Common Prayer. For here he "heard the service read so distinctly, so emphatically, and so fervently, that it was next to an impossibility to be inattentive."

Of the church of St. Mary, Somerset, in Upper Thames Street, only the tower of the original structure remains, that being spared by a special Act of Parliament when the old church was demolished in 1868.

Where the red brick church of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, is now, used to be an earlier church, destroyed in the Great Fire. In the older church Inigo Jones was buried in 1652, and his tomb was not restored when the present structure was set up by Wren in 1682.

By the riverside just to the east of where the Fleet stream flowed into the Thames and in the district south of the present Queen Victoria Street stood Bayard's Castle, where the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., lived. Here the crown of England was offered him, and here he with pretence of humility at first refused it. The remains of the castle were swept away in the Great Fire. This was the second castle of the name on this site, the first having been that of Robert Fitz Walter a malcontent Baron who fled after refusing allegiance to King John, who in return destroyed his castle. It was here that King John made violent but unsuccessful love to the Baron's daughter, Maud Fitz Walter.

Close by where the Victoria Embankment ends at Blackfriars Bridge and extending broadly to the north was the Black Friars Monastery, dating from 1276. This Monastery grew in time to great importance because of the favours bestowed upon it by Edward I. Here this king deposited the heart of his beloved queen Eleanor although her body was placed in Westminster Abbey. And it was here, in 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio gave judgment against Catherine of Aragon in her divorce.

Playhouse Yard covers the site of the first theatre set up in the Blackfriars neighbourhood. The larger part of the Monastery was demolished by Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the King's Revels, when it was granted to him by Edward VI. Cawarden's executor, Sir William More, continued the demolition, granting a bit of the site for the Blackfriars Theatre to James Burbage the actor. Burbage conducted the Blackfriars Theatre as a private playhouse, in contrast to the public theatres of the time. n.o.bility supported it almost entirely. Unlike the other playhouses the pit as well as the galleries was entirely roofed over.

Also in the pit there were seats, an unusual feature. In ordinary theatres the pit was filled with persons who ate, drank and made merry while the play went on as best it could, but at the Blackfriars nothing of the sort was permitted. There was, too, an unusually good orchestra, the musicians paying for the privilege of performing here where they were sure of attracting the attention of the n.o.bility.

Famous Bridewell Prison, founded by King Edward VI., stood on what is now the westerly side of New Bridge near by Tudor Street. Fleet Brook occupied the s.p.a.ce which is now New Bridge Street, extending as far as to the Holborn Viaduct of this day. The prison got its name from the holy spring of St. Bride's in this neighbourhood, the waters of which were supposed to effect miraculous cures. Before the prison was built, the site was occupied by the Palace of the Bridewell. Here the Lords of Court together with the Mayor and Aldermen were summoned by Henry VIII.

when he was smitten with love for Anne Boleyn, to hear of the scruples that tormented him because of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. It was here, too, that Shakespeare places an act of his play of Henry VIII.

The wonderful City of London was once a cl.u.s.ter of huts on a wooded slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate.

This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. The old Lud Gate stood about three parts of the way down Ludgate Hill and the name was derived from the legendary king, Lud. It was removed in 1760.

St. Martin's Church on Ludgate Hill was built by Wren, but an older church stood there before the Great Fire, and in this Cadwallo, King of the Britons was buried in 677. The tall and simple spire of the present structure contrasts strangely with nearby St. Paul's, and it is with St.

Martin's partly in mind that one poet wrote:

Lo, like a bishop upon dainties fed, St. Paul's lifts up his sacredotal head; While his lean curates, slim and lank to view, Around him point their steeples to the blue.

On the west side of Old Bailey the second house south of Ship Court, numbered 68, is where Jonathan Wild world-famed thief and receiver of stolen goods, lived. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725 and true to himself to the last stole the pocket-book of the parson who accompanied him in the cart on the way to the gallows. Henry Fielding wrote of the career of this noted criminal in his novel "Jonathan Wild."

Where Farringdon Street is now once flowed the Fleet Brook, so wide that ships sailed through it as far as to where Holborn Viaduct is to-day. In its course the Fleet pa.s.sed through a deep cut called the Hole Bourne.

From this came the name Holborn. The Viaduct of to-day bridges the Hole Bourne of old. On the east side of the Fleet Brook lay the notorious Fleet Prison for debtors close by where Fleet Lane is in this day. The main gate house of the prison was on the site of the nearby Congregational Memorial Hall. The clandestine Fleet marriages in this noisome place became notorious, being performed without let or hindrance and with no regard for existing laws, by unscrupulous clergymen among the debt prisoners encouraged by attendants who reaped ill gotten gains for their services. Outside the prison regular "runners" gathered in couples and gave every opportunity and encouragement for quick and illegal marriage. It was not unusual for two hundred marriages to take place in a single day. In this prison Mr. Pickwick of d.i.c.kens'

"Pickwick Papers," was confined after he refused to pay the damages awarded to Mrs. Bardell. In 1846 the Fleet was demolished.

In the narrow pa.s.sageway called Gunpowder Alley, jutting off Shoe Lane to the westward, Richard Lovelace died in a cellar, literally of starvation, in 1658. The house on the north side, second from Shoe Lane, stands on the site. Lovelace was the handsomest and most accomplished of the group of poets who gathered around Queen Henrietta. He was committed to prison in 1646 on account of his rebellious sympathy for Charles I., and on his release went to France to raise a regiment. He wrote to Lucy Sacheverell, to whom he was engaged, the poem containing the lines:

I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more.

But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married when he returned.

Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries, is reminiscent of the literary a.s.sociations of many decades. It takes its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor Cobham, d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his life slowly waste away.

At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell.

He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.

From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of "Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.

Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called "Alsatia" occupying the s.p.a.ce between the river and Fleet Street. This was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or White Friars and was the abode of lawless cla.s.ses. Scott immortalised it in the "Fortunes of Nigel."

Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged, sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.

Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.

At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. Samuel Johnson once lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written and here Mrs. Johnson died.

In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.

Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr.

Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles d.i.c.kens came and through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first ma.n.u.script into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or might not bring back good news.

At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise."

Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern structure erected.

Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.

St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.

In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old c.o.c.k Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now exists in modern form close by on the south side. A c.o.c.k is still the sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":

Oh plump head waiter at The c.o.c.k To which I most resort.

Samuel Pepys went often to the c.o.c.k Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs.

Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made merry until midnight--at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.

Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and industry founded the fortunes of the great inst.i.tution. The present bank stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all degree.

In his day, Oliver Goldsmith was a most conscientious member of the shilling whist that met at the Devil Tavern. Several practical jokers in the club were quite in sympathy one evening when Goldsmith arrived and explained that he had given the cabman a guinea instead of a shilling.

At the next meeting Goldsmith was surprised at being summoned to the door by a cabman who returned the guinea. He was quite overpowered and collected small sums from the other members, contributing heavily himself, and rewarded the cabman. He was still expatiating upon the honesty of the lower cla.s.ses when one of the guests asked to see the returned guinea. It was counterfeit and in reality so was the cabman.

Goldsmith realising that he had been imposed upon by his facetious colleagues retired amid a burst of much laughter.

Two doors to the south of the Devil Tavern towards the east Bernard Lintot had his bookshop. John Gay the poet who wrote "The Beggar's Opera," went himself to impress upon the book man the importance of having his books exposed for sale, and afterwards, in 1711, said in his "Trivia":

Oh, Lintot, let my labours obvious lie Ranged on thy stall for every envious eye.

FIVE

THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT

The Temple lies between Fleet Street and the river, with Ess.e.x Street on the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected open s.p.a.ces and magnificent gardens--a place to wander in if you are fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders.

When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property.

In 1346 it was leased to the professors of common law and since then has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.

There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I.

conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple--two of the Inns of Court.

The Inns of Court are four--the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries called Inns of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle cla.s.ses--the Inns of Court being patronized by the aristocracy.

The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church, the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped, and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular standing place.