Old and New London Part 12

"For this act Did Brownrigge swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed."

In Castle Street (an offshoot of Fetter Lane), in 1709-10 (Queen Anne), at the house of his father, a master tailor, was born a very small poet, Paul Whitehead. This poor satirist and worthless man became a Jacobite barrister and protege of Bubb Doddington and the Prince of Wales and his Leicester Fields Court. For libelling Whig n.o.blemen, in his poem called "Manners," Dodsley, Whitehead's publisher, was summoned by the Ministers, who wished to intimidate Pope, before the House of Lords. He appears to have been an atheist, and was a member of the infamous h.e.l.l-Fire Club, that held its obscene and blasphemous orgies at Medmenham Abbey, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir Francis Dashwood, where every member a.s.sumed the name of an Apostle. Later in life Whitehead was bought off by the Ministry, and then settled down at a villa on Twickenham Common, where Hogarth used to visit him. If Whitehead is ever remembered, it will be only for that splash of vitriol that Churchill threw in his face, when he wrote of the turncoat,--

"May I--can worse disgrace on manhood fall?-- Be born a Whitehead and baptised a Paul."

It was this Whitehead, with Carey, the surgeon of the Prince of Wales, who got up a mock procession, in ridicule of the Freemasons' annual cavalcade from Brooke Street to Haberdashers' Hall. The ribald procession consisted of shoe-blacks and chimney-sweeps, in carts drawn by a.s.ses, followed by a mourning-coach with six horses, each of a different colour. The City authorities very properly refused to let them pa.s.s through Temple Bar, but they waited there and saluted the Masons.

Hogarth published a print of "The Scald Miserables," which is coa.r.s.e, and even dull. The Prince of Wales, with more good sense than usual, dismissed Carey for this offensive buffoonery. Whitehead bequeathed his heart to Earl Despenser, who buried it in his mausoleum with absurd ceremonial.

At Pemberton Row, formerly Three-Leg Alley, Fetter Lane, lived that very indifferent poet but admirable miniature-painter of Charles II.'s time, Flatman. He was a briefless barrister of the Inner Temple, and resided with his father till the period of his death. Anthony Wood tells us that having written a scurrilous ballad against marriage, beginning,--

"Like a dog with a bottle tied close to his tail, Like a Tory in a bog, or a thief in a jail,"

his comrades serenaded him with the song on his wedding-night. Rochester wrote some vigorous lines on Flatman, which are not unworthy even of Dryden himself,--

"Not that slow drudge, in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins."

We find Dr. Johnson quoting these lines with approval, in a conversation in which he suggested that Pope had partly borrowed his "Dying Christian" from Flatman.

"The chapel of the United Brethren, or Moravians, 32, Fetter Lane," says Smith, in his "Streets of London," "was the meeting-house of the celebrated Thomas Bradbury. During the riots which occurred on the trial of Dr. Sacheveral, this chapel was a.s.saulted by the mob and dismantled, the preacher himself escaping with some difficulty. The other meeting-houses that suffered on this occasion were those of Daniel Burgess, in New Court, Carey Street; Mr. Earl's, in Hanover Street, Long Acre; Mr. Taylor's, Leather Lane; Mr. Wright's, Great Carter Lane; and Mr. Hamilton's, in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell. With the benches and pulpits of several of these, the mob, after conducting Dr. Sacheveral in triumph to his lodgings in the Temple, made a bonfire in the midst of Lincoln's Inn Fields, around which they danced with shouts of 'High Church and Sacheveral,' swearing, if they found Daniel Burgess, that they would roast him in his own pulpit in the midst of the pile."

This Moravian chapel was one of the original eight conventicles where Divine worship was permitted. Baxter preached here in 1672, and Wesley and Whitefield also struck great blows at the devil in this pulpit, where Zinzendorf's followers afterwards prayed and sang their fervent hymns.

Count Zinzendorf, the poet, theologian, pastor, missionary, and statesman, who first gave the Moravian body a vital organisation, and who preached in Fetter Lane to the most tolerant cla.s.s of all Protestants, was born in Dresden in 1700. His ancestors, originally from Austria, had been Crusaders and Counts of Zinzendorf. One of the Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest converts to Lutheranism, and became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith.

For a long time there was a close kinsmanship maintained between Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the Moravians; but eventually Wesley p.r.o.nounced Zinzendorf as verging on Antinomianism, while Zinzendorf objected to Wesley's doctrine of sinless perfection. In 1722 Zinzendorf gave an asylum to two families of persecuted Moravian brothers, and built houses for them on a spot he called Hernhut ("watched of the Lord"), a marshy tract in Saxony, near the main road to Zittau. These simple and pious men were Taborites, a section of the old Hussites, who had renounced obedience to the Pope and embraced the Vaudois doctrines.

This was the first formation of the Moravian sect.

"On January 24th, 1672-73," says Baxter, "I began a Tuesday lecture at Mr. Turner's church, in New Street, near Fetter Lane, with great convenience and G.o.d's encouraging blessing; but I never took a penny for it from any one." The chapel in which Baxter officiated in Fetter Lane is that between Nevil's Court and New Street, once occupied by the Moravians. It appears to have existed, though perhaps in a different form, before the Great Fire of London. Turner, who was the first minister, was a very active man during the plague. He was ejected from Sunbury, in Middles.e.x, and continued to preach in Fetter Lane till towards the end of the reign of Charles II., when he removed to Leather Lane. Baxter carried on the Tuesday morning lecture till the 24th of August, 1682. The Church which then met in it was under the care of Mr.

Lobb, whose predecessor had been Thankful Owen, president of St. John's College, Oxford. Ejected by the commissioners in 1660, he became a preacher in Fetter Lane. "He was," says Calamy, "a man of genteel learning and an excellent temper, admir'd for an uncommon fluency and easiness and sweetness in all his composures. After he was ejected he retired to London, where he preached privately and was much respected.

He dy'd at his house in Hatton Garden, April 1, 1681. He was preparing for the press, and had almost finished, a book ent.i.tuled 'Imago Imaginis,' the design of which was to show that Rome Papal was an image of Rome Pagan."

At No. 96, Fetter Lane is an Independent Chapel, whose first minister was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, 1660-1681--troublous times for Dissenters.

Goodwin had been a pastor in Holland and a favourite of Cromwell. The Protector made him one of his commissioners for selecting preachers, and he was also President of Magdalen College, Oxford. When Cromwell became sick unto death, Goodwin boldly prophesied his recovery, and when the great man died, in spite of him, he is said to have exclaimed, "Thou hast deceived us, and we are deceived;" which is no doubt a Cavalier calumny. On the Restoration, the Oxford men showed Goodwin the door, and he retired to the seclusion of Fetter Lane. He seems to have been a good scholar and an eminent Calvinist divine, and he left on Puritan shelves five ponderous folio volumes of his works. The present chapel, says Mr.

n.o.ble, dates from 1732, and the pastor is the Rev. John Spurgeon, the father of the eloquent Baptist preacher, the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon.

The disgraceful disorder of the national records had long been a subject of regret among English antiquaries. There was no certainty of finding any required doc.u.ment among such a ma.s.s of ill-stored, dusty, uncla.s.sified bundles and rolls--many of them never opened since the day King John sullenly signed Magna Charta. We are a great conservative people, and abuses take a long time ripening before they seem to us fit for removal, so it happened that this evil went on several centuries before it roused the attention of Parliament, and then it was talked over and over, till in 1850 something was at last done. It was resolved to build a special storehouse for national records, where the various collections might be united under one roof, and there be arranged and cla.s.sified by learned men. The first stone of a magnificent Gothic building was therefore laid by Lord Romilly on 24th May, 1851, and slowly and surely, in the Anglo-Saxon manner, the walls grew till, in the summer of 1866, all the new Search Offices were formally opened, to the great convenience of all students of records. The architect, Sir James Pennethorne, has produced a stately building, useful for its purpose, but not very remarkable for picturesque light and shade, and tame, as all imitations of bygone ages, adapted for bygone uses, must ever be. The number of records stored within this building can only be reckoned by "_hundreds of millions_." These are Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy's own words. There, in cramped bundles and rolls, dusty as papyri, lie charters and official notices that once made mailed knights tremble and proud priests shake in their sandals. Now--the magic gone, the words powerless--they lie in their several binns in strange companionship.

Many years will elapse before all these records of State and Government doc.u.ments can be cla.s.sified; but the small staff is industrious, Sir Thomas Hardy is working, and in time the Augean stable of crabbed writings will be cleansed and ranged in order. The useful and accurate calendars of Everett Green, John Bruce, &c., are books of reference invaluable to historical students; and the old chronicles published by order of Lord Romilly, so long Master of the Rolls and Keeper of the Records, are most useful mines for the Froudes and Freemans of the future. In time it is hoped that all the episcopal records of England will be gathered together in this great treasure-house, and that many of our English n.o.blemen will imitate the patriotic generosity of Lord Shaftesbury, in contributing their family papers to the same Gaza in Fetter Lane. Under the concentrated gaze of learned eyes, family papers (valueless and almost unintelligible to their original possessors), often reveal very curious and important facts. Mere lumber in the manor-house, fit only for the b.u.t.terman, sometimes turns to leaves of gold when submitted to such microscopic a.n.a.lysis. It was such a gift that led to the discovery of the Locke papers among the records of the n.o.bleman above mentioned. The pleasant rooms of the Record Office are open to all applicants; nor is any reference or troublesome preliminary form required from those wishing to consult Court rolls or State papers over twenty years old. Among other priceless treasures the Record Office contains the original, uninjured, Domesday Book, compiled by order of William, the conqueror of England. It is written in a beautiful clerkly hand in close fine character, and is in a perfect state of preservation.

It is in two volumes, the covers of which are cut with due economy from the same skin of parchment. Bound in ma.s.sive board covers, and kept with religious care under gla.s.s cases, the precious volumes seem indeed likely to last to the very break of doom. It is curious to remark that London only occupies some three or four pages. There is also preserved the original Papal Bull sent to Henry VIII., with a golden seal attached to it, the work of Benvenuto Cellini. The same collection contains the celebrated Treaty of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the initial portrait of Francis I. being beautifully illuminated and the vellum volume adorned by an exquisite gold seal, in the finest relievo, also by Benvenuto Cellini. The figures in this seal are so perfect in their finish, that even the knee-cap of one of the nymphs is shaped with the strictest anatomical accuracy. The visitor should also see the interesting Inventory Books relating to the foundation of Henry VII.'s chapel.

The national records were formerly bundled up any how in the Rolls Chapel, the White Tower, the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, Carlton Ride in St. James's Park, the State Paper Office, and the Prerogative Will Office. No one knew where anything was. They were unnoticed--mere dusty lumber, in fact--useless to men or printers' devils. Hot-headed Hugh Peters, during the Commonwealth, had, in his hatred of royalty, proposed to make one great heap of them and burn them up in Smithfield.

In that way he hoped to clear the ground of many mischievous traditions.

This desperate act of Communism that tough-headed old lawyer, Prynne, opposed tooth and nail. In 1656 he wrote a pamphlet, which he called "A Short Demurrer against Cromwell's Project of Recalling the Jews from their Banishment," and in this work he very n.o.bly epitomizes the value of these treasures; indeed, there could not be found a more lucid syllabus of the contents of the present Record Office than Prynne has there set forth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE SAID TO HAVE BEEN OCCUPIED BY DRYDEN IN FETTER LANE (_see page 102_).]

Dryden and Otway were contemporaries, and lived, it is said, for some time opposite to each other in Fetter Lane. One morning the latter happened to call upon his brother bard about breakfast-time, but was told by the servant that his master was gone to breakfast with the Earl of Pembroke. "Very well," said Otway, "tell your master that I will call to-morrow morning." Accordingly he called about the same hour. "Well, is your master at home now?" "No, sir; he is just gone to breakfast with the Duke of Buckingham." "The d---- he is," said Otway, and, actuated either by envy, pride, or disappointment, in a kind of involuntary manner, he took up a piece of chalk which lay on a table which stood upon the landing-place, near Dryden's chamber, and wrote over the door,--

"Here lives Dryden, a poet and a wit."

The next morning, at breakfast, Dryden recognised the handwriting, and told the servant to go to Otway and desire his company to breakfast with him. In the meantime, to Otway's line of

"Here lives Dryden, _a poet and a wit_,"

he added,--

"This was written by Otway, _opposite_."

When Otway arrived he saw that his line was linked with a rhyme, and being a man of rather petulant disposition, he took it in dudgeon, and, turning upon his heel, told Dryden "that he was welcome to keep his wit and his breakfast to himself."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MEETING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN CRANE COURT (_see p.

106_).]

A curious old book, a _vade mec.u.m_ for malt worms _temp._ George I., thus immortalises the patriotism of a tavern-keeper in Fetter Lane:--

"Though there are some who, with invidious look, Have styl'd this bird more like a Russian duck Than what he stands depicted for on sign, He proves he well has croaked for prey within, From ma.s.sy tankards, formed of silver plate, That walk throughout this noted house in state, Ever since _Englesfield_, in _Anna's_ reign, To compliment each fortunate campaign, Made one be hammered out for ev'ry town was ta'en."

CHAPTER IX.

FLEET STREET (TRIBUTARIES--CRANE COURT, JOHNSON'S COURT, BOLT COURT).

Removal of the Royal Society from Gresham College--Opposition to Newton--Objections to Removal--The First Catalogue--Swift's jeer at the Society--Franklin's Lightning Conductor and King George III.--Sir Hans Sloane insulted--The Scottish Society--Wilkes's Printer--The Delphin Cla.s.sics--Johnson's Court--Johnson's Opinion on Pope and Dryden--His Removal to Bolt Court--The _John Bull_--Hook and Terry--Prosecutions for Libel--Hook's Impudence.

In the old times, when newspapers could not legally be published without a stamp, "various ingenious devices," says a writer in the _Bookseller_ (1867), "were employed to deceive and mislead the officers employed by the Government. Many of the unstamped papers were printed in Crane Court, Fleet Street; and there, on their several days of publication, the officers of the Somerset House solicitor would watch, ready to seize them immediately they came from the press. But the printers were quite equal to the emergency. They would make up sham parcels of waste-paper, and send them out with an ostentatious show of secrecy. The officers--simple fellows enough, though they were called 'Government spies,' 'Somerset House myrmidons,' and other opprobrious names, in the unstamped papers--duly took possession of the parcels, after a decent show of resistance by their bearers, while the real newspapers intended for sale to the public were sent flying by thousands down a shoot in Fleur-de-Lys Court, and thence distributed in the course of the next hour or two all over the town."

The Royal Society came to Crane Court from Gresham College in 1710, and removed in 1782 to Somerset House. This society, according to Dr.

Wallis, one of the earliest members, originated in London in 1645, when Dr. Wilkins and certain philosophical friends met weekly to discuss scientific questions. They afterwards met at Oxford, and in Gresham College, till that place was turned into a Puritan barracks. After the Restoration, in 1662, the king, wishing to turn men's minds to philosophy--or, indeed, anywhere away from politics--incorporated the members in what Boyle has called "the Invisible College," and gave it the name of the Royal Society. In 1710, the Mercers' Company growing tired of their visitors, the society moved to a house rebuilt by Wren in 1670, and purchased by the society for 1,450. It had been the residence, before the Great Fire, of Dr. Nicholas Barebone (son of Praise-G.o.d Barebone), a great building speculator, who had much property in the Strand, and who was the first promoter of the Phoenix Fire Office. It seems to have been thought at the time that Newton was somewhat despotic in his announcement of the removal, and the members in council grumbled at the new house, and complained of it as small, inconvenient, and dilapidated. Nevertheless, Sir Isaac, unaccustomed to opposition, overruled all these objections, and the society flourished in this Fleet Street "close" seventy-two years. Before the society came to Crane Court, Pepys and Wren had been presidents; while at Crane Court the presidents were--Newton (1703-1727), Sir Thomas h.o.a.re, Matthew Folkes, Esq. (whose portrait Hogarth painted), the Earl of Macclesfield, the Earl of Morton, James Burrow, Esq., James West, Esq., Sir John Pringle, and Sir Joseph Banks. The earliest records of this useful society are filled with accounts of experiments on the Baconian inductive principle, many of which now appear to us puerile, but which were valuable in the childhood of science. Among the labours of the society while in Fleet Street, we may enumerate its efforts to promote inoculation, 1714-1722; electrical experiments on fourteen miles of wires near Shooter's Hill, 1745; ventilation, _apropos_ of gaol fever, 1750; discussions on Cavendish's improved thermometers, 1757; a medal to Dollond for experiments on the laws of light, 1758; observations on the transit of Venus, in 1761; superintendence of the Observatory at Greenwich, 1765; observations of the transit of Venus in the Pacific, 1769 (Lieutenant Cook commenced the expedition); the promotion of an Arctic expedition, 1773; the _Racehorse_ meteorological observations, 1773; experiments on lightning conductors by Franklin, Cavendish, &c., 1772. The removal of the society was, as we have said, at first strongly objected to, and in a pamphlet published at the time, the new purchase is thus described: "The approach to it, I confess, is very fair and handsome, through a long court; but, then, they have no other property in this than in the street before it, and in a heavy rain a man may hardly escape being thoroughly wet before he can pa.s.s through it. The front of the house towards the garden is nearly half as long again as that towards Crane Court. Upon the ground floor there is a little hall, and a direct pa.s.sage from the stairs into the garden, and on each side of it a little room. The stairs are easy, which carry you up to the next floor. Here there is a room fronting the court, directly over the hall; and towards the garden is the meeting-room, and at the end another, also fronting the garden. There are three rooms upon the next floor. These are all that are as yet provided for the reception of the society, except you will have the garrets, a platform of lead over them, and the usual cellars, &c., below, of which they have more and better at Gresham College."

When the society got settled, by Newton's order the porter was clothed in a suitable gown and provided with a staff surmounted by the arms of the society in silver, and on the meeting nights a lamp was hung out over the entrance to the court from Fleet Street. The repository was built at the rear of the house, and thither the society's museum was removed. The first catalogue, compiled by Dr. Green, contains the following, among many other marvellous notices:--

"The quills of a porcupine, which on certain occasions the creature can shoot at the pursuing enemy and erect at pleasure.

"The flying squirrel, which for a good nut-tree will pa.s.s a river on the bark of a tree, erecting his tail for a sail.

"The leg-bone of an elephant, brought out of Syria for the thigh-bone of a giant. In winter, when it begins to rain, elephants are mad, and so continue from April to September, chained to some tree, and then become tame again.

"Tortoises, when turned on their backs, will sometimes fetch deep sighs and shed abundance of tears.

"A humming-bird and nest, said to weigh but twelve grains; his feathers are set in gold, and sell at a great rate.

"A bone, said to be taken out of a mermaid's head.

"The largest whale--liker an island than an animal.

"The white shark, which sometimes swallows men whole.

"A siphalter, said with its sucker to fasten on a ship and stop it under sail.