Old and New London Part 61

It was after this verdict that Cowper wrote the following beautiful lines:--

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Imbibe our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

That's n.o.ble, and bespeaks a nation proud And jealous of the blessing. Spread on, then, And let it circulate through every vein Of all your empire, that where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too."

It was in this Compter that Boyse, a true type of the Grub Street poet of Dr. Johnson's time, spent many of the latter days of his life. In the year 1740 Boyse was reduced to the lowest state of poverty, having no clothes left in which he could appear abroad; and what bare subsistence he procured was by writing occasional poems for the magazines. Of the disposition of his apparel Mr. Nichols received from Dr. Johnson, who knew him well, the following account. He used to p.a.w.n what he had of this sort, and it was no sooner redeemed by his friends, than p.a.w.ned again. On one occasion Dr. Johnson collected a sum of money[8] for this purpose, and in two days the clothes were p.a.w.ned again. In this state Boyse remained in bed with no other covering than a blanket with two holes, through which he pa.s.sed his arms when he sat up to write. The author of his life in Cibber adds, that when his distresses were so pressing as to induce him to dispose of his shirt, he used to cut some white paper in slips, which he tied round his wrists, and in the same manner supplied his neck. In this plight he frequently appeared abroad, while his other apparel was scarcely sufficient for the purposes of decency.

In the month of May, 1749, Boyse died in obscure lodgings near Shoe Lane. An old acquaintance of his endeavoured to collect money to defray the expenses of his funeral, so that the scandal of being buried by the parish might be avoided. But his endeavours were in vain, for the persons he had selected had been so often troubled with applications during the life of this unhappy man, that they refused to contribute anything towards his funeral.

Of Boyse's best poems "The Deity" contains some vigorous lines, of which the following are a favourable specimen:--

"Transcendent pow'r! sole arbiter of fate!

How great thy glory! and thy bliss how great, To view from thy exalted throne above (Eternal source of light, and life, and love!) Unnumbered creatures draw their smiling birth, To bless the heav'ns or beautify the earth; While systems roll, obedient to thy view, And worlds rejoice--which Newton never knew!

Below, thro' different forms does matter range, And life subsists from elemental change, Liquids condensing shapes terrestrial wear, Earth mounts in fire, and fire dissolves in air; While we, inquiring phantoms of a day, Inconstant as the shadows we survey!

With them along Time's rapid current pa.s.s, And haste to mingle with the parent ma.s.s; But thou, Eternal Lord of life divine!

In youth immortal shalt for ever shine!

No change shall darken thy exalted name, From everlasting ages still the same!"

Dunton, the eccentric bookseller of William III.'s reign, resided in the Poultry in the year 1688. "The humour of rambling," he says in his autobiography, "was now pretty well off with me, and my thoughts began to fix rather upon business. The shop I took, with the sign of the Black Raven, stood opposite to the Poultry Counter, where I traded ten years, as all other men must expect, with a variety of successes and disappointments. My shop was opened just upon the Revolution, and, as I remember, the same day the Prince of Orange came to London."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "The sum," said Johnson, "was collected by sixpences, at a time when to me sixpence was a serious consideration."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

OLD JEWRY.

The Old Jewry--Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford--Bad Times for the Israelites--Jews' Alms--A King in Debt--Rachel weeping for her Children--Jewish Converts--Wholesale Expulsion of the Chosen People from England--The Rich House of a Rich Citizen--The London Inst.i.tution, formerly in the Old Jewry--Porsoniana--Nonconformists in the Old Jewry--Samuel Chandler, Richard Price, and James Foster--The Grocers' Company--Their Sufferings under the Commonwealth--Almost Bankrupt--Again they Flourish--The Grocers'

Hall Garden--Fairfax and the Grocers--A Rich and Generous Grocer--A Warlike Grocer--Walbrook--Bucklersbury.

The Old Jewry was the Ghetto of mediaeval London. The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, in his interesting "History of the Jews in Great Britain,"

has clearly shown that Jews resided in England during the Saxon times, by an edict published by Elgbright, Archbishop of York, A.D. 470, forbidding Christians to attend the Jewish feasts. It appears the Jews sometimes left lands to the abbeys; and in the laws of Edward the Confessor we find them especially mentioned as under the king's guard and protection.

The Conqueror invited over many Jews from Rouen, who settled themselves chiefly in London, Stamford, and Oxford. In London the Jews had two colonies--one in Old Jewry, near King Offa's old palace; and one in the liberties of the Tower. Rufus, in his cynical way, marked his hatred of the monks by summoning a convocation, where English bishops met Jewish rabbis, and held a religious controversy, Rufus swearing by St. Luke's face that if the rabbis had the best of it, he would turn Jew at once.

In this reign the Jews were so powerful at Oxford that they let three halls--Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall--to students; and their rabbis instructed even Christian students in their synagogue. Jews took care of vacant benefices for the king. In the reign of Henry I. the Jews began to make proselytes, and monks were sent to several towns to preach against them. Halcyon times! With the reign of Stephen, however, began the storms, and, with the clergy, the usurper persecuted the Jews, exacting a fine of 2,000 from those of London alone for a pretended manslaughter. The absurd story of the Jews murdering young children, to anoint Israelites or to raise devils with their blood, originated in this reign.

Henry II. was equally ruthless, though he did grant Jews cemeteries outside the towns. Up till this time the London Jews had only been allowed to bury in "the Jews' garden," in the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In spite of frequent fines and banishments, their historian owns that altogether they throve in this reign, and their physicians were held in high repute. With Richard I., chivalrous to all else, began the real miseries of the English Jews. Even on the day of his coronation there was a ma.s.sacre of the Jews, and many of their houses were burnt. Two thousand Jews were murdered at York, and at Lynn and Stamford they were also plundered. On his return from Palestine Richard established a tribunal for Jews. In the early part of John's reign he treated the money-lenders, whom he wanted to use, with consideration. He granted them a charter, and allowed them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture and put to death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had a.s.sisted the barons. Can we wonder that it is still a proverb among the English Jews, "Thank G.o.d that there was only one King John?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: RICHARD PORSON. (_From an Authentic Portrait._)]

The regent of the early part of the reign of Henry III. protected the Jews, and exempted them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, but they were compelled to wear on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s two white tablets of linen or parchment, two inches broad and four inches long; and twenty-four burgesses were chosen in every town where they resided, to protect them from the insults of pilgrims; for the clergy still treated them as excommunicated infidels. But even this lull was short--persecution soon again broke out. In the 14th of Henry III. the Crown seized a third part of all their movables, and their new synagogue in the Old Jewry was granted to the brothers of St. Anthony of Vienna, and turned into a church. In the 17th of Henry III. the Jews were again taxed to the amount of 18,000 silver marks. At the same time the king erected an inst.i.tution in New Street (Chancery Lane) for Jewish converts, as an atonement for his father's cruelty to the persecuted exiles. Four Jews of Norwich having been dragged at horses' tails and hung, on a pretended charge of circ.u.mcising a Christian boy, led to new persecution, and the Jews were driven out of Newcastle and Southampton; while to defray the expense of entertaining the Queen's foreign uncles 20,000 marks were exacted from the suffering race. In the 19th year of his reign Henry, driven hard for money, extorted from the rich Jews 10,000 more marks, and several were burned alive for plotting to destroy London by fire. The more absurd the accusation the more eagerly it was believed by a superst.i.tious and frightened rabble. In 1244, Matthew of Paris says, the corpse of a child was found buried in London, on whose arms and legs were traced Hebrew inscriptions. It was supposed that the Jews had crucified this child, in ridicule of the crucifixion of Christ.

The converted Jews of New Street were called in to read the Hebrew letters, and the canons of St. Paul's took the child's body, which was supposed to have wrought miracles, and buried it with great ceremony not far from their great altar. In order to defray the expenses of his brother Richard's marriage the poor Jews of London were heavily mulcted, and Aaron of York, a man of boundless wealth, was forced to pay 4,000 marks of silver and 400 of gold. Defaulters were transported to Ireland, a punishment especially dreaded by the Jews. A tax called Jews' alms was also sternly enforced; and we find Lucretia, widow of David, an Oxford Jew, actually compelled to pay 2,590 towards the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. It was about this time that Abraham, a Jew of Berkhampstead, strangled his wife, who had refused to help him to defile and deface an image of the Virgin, and was thrown into a dungeon of the Tower; but the murderer escaped, by a present of 7,000 marks to the king. Tormented by the king's incessant exactions, the Jews at last implored leave to quit England before their very skins were taken from them. The king broke into a fit of almost ludicrous rage. He had been tender of their welfare, he said to his brother Richard. "Is it to be marvelled at," he cried, "that I covet money? It is a horrible thing to imagine the debts wherein I am held bound. By the head of G.o.d, they amount to the sum of two hundred thousand marks; and if I should say three hundred thousand, I should not exceed the bounds of truth. I am deceived on every hand; I am a maimed and abridged king--yea, now only half a king. There is a necessity for me to have money, gotten from what place soever, and from whomsoever."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR R. CLAYTON'S HOUSE, GARDEN FRONT. (_From an Old Print._)]

The king, on Richard's promise to obtain him money, sold him the right which he held over the Jews. Soon after this, eighty-six of the richest Jews of London were hung, on a charge of having crucified a Christian child at Lincoln, and twenty-three others were thrown into the Tower.

Truly Old Jewry must have often heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her children. Their persecutors never grew weary. In a great riot, encouraged by the barons, the great bell of St. Paul's tolled out, 500 Jews were killed in London, and the synagogue burnt, the leader of the mob, John Fitz-John, a baron, running Rabbi Abraham, the richest Jew in London, through with his sword. On the defeat of the king's party at the battle of Lewes, the London mob accusing the Jews of aiding the king, plundered their houses, and all the Israelites would have perished, had they not taken refuge in the Tower. By royal edict the Christians were forbidden to buy flesh of a Jew, and no Jew was allowed to employ Christian nurses, bakers, brewers, or cooks. Towards the close of Henry's life the synagogue in Old Jewry was again taken from the Jews, and given to the Friars Penitent, whose chapel stood hard by, and who complained of the noise of the Jewish congregation; but the king permitted another synagogue to be built in a more suitable place. Henry then ordered the Jews to pay up all arrears of tallages within four months, and half of the sum in seventeen days. The Tower of London was naturally soon full of grey-bearded Jewish debtors.

No wonder, with all these persecutions, that the Chancery Lane house of converts began soon to fill. "On one of the rolls of this reign," says Mr. Margoliouth, probably quoting Prynne's famous diatribe against the Jews, "about 500 names of Jewish converts are registered." From the 50th year of Henry III. to the 2nd of Edward I., the Crown, says c.o.ke, extorted from the English Jews no less than 420,000 15s. 4d.!

Edward I. was more merciful. In a statute, however, which was pa.s.sed in his third year, he forbade Jews practising usury, required them to wear badges of yellow taffety, as a distinguishing mark of their nationality, and demanded from each of them threepence every Easter. Then began the plunder. The king wanted money to build Carnarvon and Conway castles, to be held as fortresses against the Welsh, whom he had just recently conquered and treated with great cruelty, and the Jews were robbed accordingly. It was not difficult in those days to find an excuse for extortion if the royal exchequer was empty. In the 7th year of Edward no less than 294 Jews were put to death for clipping money, and all they possessed seized by the king. In his 17th year all the Jews in England were imprisoned in one night, as Selden proves by an old Hebrew inscription found at Winchester, and not released till they had paid 20,000 of silver for a ransom. At last, in the year 1290, came the Jews' final expulsion from England, when 15,000 or 16,000 of these tormented exiles left our sh.o.r.es, not to return till Cromwell set the first great example of toleration. Edward allowed the Jews to take with them part of their money and movables, but seized their houses and other possessions. All their outstanding mortgages were forfeited to the Crown, and ships were to be provided for their conveyance to such places within reasonable distance as they might choose. In spite of this, however, many, through the treachery of the sailors, were left behind in England, and were all put to death with great cruelty.

"Whole rolls full of patents relative to Jewish estates," says Mr.

Margoliouth, "are still to be seen at the Tower, which estates, together with their rent in fee, permissions, and mortgages, were all seized by the king." Old Jewry, and Jewin Street, Aldersgate, where their burial-ground was, still preserve a dim memory of their residence among us. There used to be a tradition in England that the Jews buried much of their treasure here, in hopes of a speedy return to the land where they had suffered so much, yet where they had thriven. In spite of the edict of banishment a few converted Jews continued to reside in England, and after the Reformation some unconverted Jews ventured to return. Rodrigo Lopez, a physician of Queen Elizabeth's, for instance, was a Jew. He was tortured to death for being accused of designing to poison the Queen.

No. 8, Old Jewry was the house of Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor in the time of Charles II. It was a fine brick mansion, and one of the grandest houses in the street. It is mentioned by Evelyn in the following terms:--"26th September, 1672.--I carried with me to dinner my Lord H.

Howard (now to be made Earl of Norwich and Earl Marshal of England) to Sir Robert Clayton's, now Sheriff of London, at his own house, where we had a great feast; it is built, indeed, for a great magistrate, at excessive cost. The cedar dining-room is painted with the history of the Giants' war, incomparably done by Mr. Streeter, but the figures are too near the eye." We give on the previous page a view of the garden front of this house, taken from an old print. Sir Robert built the house to keep his shrievalty, which he did with great magnificence. It was for some years the residence of Mr. Samuel Sharp, an eminent surveyor.

In the year 1805 was established, by a proprietary in the City, the London Inst.i.tution, "for the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful knowledge." This inst.i.tution was temporarily located in Sir Robert Clayton's famous old house. Upon the first committee of the inst.i.tution were Mr. R. Angerstein and Mr. Richard Sharp. Porson, the famous Greek scholar and editor of Euripides, was thought an eligible man to be its princ.i.p.al librarian. He was accordingly appointed to the office by a unanimous resolution of the governors; and Mr. Sharp had the gratification of announcing to the Professor his appointment. His friends rejoiced. Professor Young, of Glasgow, writing to Burney about this time, says:--"Of Devil d.i.c.k you say nothing. I see by the newspapers they have given him a post. A handsome salary, I hope, a suite of chambers, coal and candle, &c. Porter and cyder, I trust, are among the _et caeteras_." His salary was 200 a year, with a suite of rooms. Still, Porson was not just the man for a librarian; for no one could use books more roughly. He had no affectation about books, nor, indeed, affectation of any sort. The late Mr. William Upcott, who urged the publication of Evelyn's diary at Wootton, was fellow-secretary with Porson. The inst.i.tution removed to King's Arms Yard, Coleman Street, in 1812, and thence in 1819 to the present handsome mansion, erected from the cla.s.sic design of Mr. W. Brooks, on the north side of Moorfields, now Finsbury Circus.

The library is "one of the most useful and accessible in Great Britain;"

and Mr. Watson found in a few of the books Porson's handwriting, consisting of critical remarks and notes. In a copy of the Aldine "Herodotus," he has marked the chapters in the margin in Arabic numerals "with such nicety and regularity," says his biographer, "that the eye of the reader, unless upon the closest examination, takes them for print."

Lord Byron remembered Porson at Cambridge; in the hall where he himself dined, at the Vice-Chancellor's table, and Porson at the Dean's, he always appeared sober in his demeanour, nor was he guilty, as far as his lordship knew, of any excess or outrage in public; but in an evening, with a party of undergraduates, he would, in fits of intoxication, get into violent disputes with the young men, and arrogantly revile them for not knowing what he thought they might be expected to know. He once went away in disgust, because none of them knew the name of "the Cobbler of Messina." In this condition Byron had seen him at the rooms of William Bankes, the Nubian discoverer, where he would pour forth whole pages of various languages, and distinguish himself especially by his copious floods of Greek.

Lord Byron further tells us that he had seen Sheridan "drunk, with all the world; his intoxication was that of Bacchus, but Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most b.e.s.t.i.a.l, so far as the few times that I saw him went, which were only at William Bankes's rooms. He was tolerated in this state among the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to write, or rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot; and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser exhibition than this man's intoxication."

The library of the inst.i.tution appears, however, to have derived little advantage from Porson's supervision of it, beyond the few criticisms which were found in his handwriting in some of the volumes. Owing to his very irregular habits, the great scholar proved but an inefficient librarian; he was irregular in attendance, and was frequently brought home at midnight drunk. The directors had determined to dismiss him, and said they only knew him as their librarian from seeing his name attached to receipts of salary. Indeed, he was already breaking up, and his stupendous memory had begun to fail. On the 19th of September, 1806, he left the Old Jewry to call on his brother-in-law, Perry, in the Strand, and at the corner of Northumberland Street was struck down by a fit of apoplexy. He was carried over to the St. Martin's Lane workhouse, and there slowly recovered consciousness. Mr. Savage, the under-librarian, seeing an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _British Press_, describing a person picked up, having Greek memoranda in his pocket, went to the workhouse and brought Porson home in a hackney coach; he talked about the fire which the night before had destroyed Covent Garden Theatre, and as they rounded St. Paul's, remarked upon the ill treatment Wren had received.

On reaching the Old Jewry, and after he had breakfasted, Dr. Adam Clarke called and had a conversation with Porson about a stone with a Greek inscription, brought from Ephesus; he also discussed a Mosaic pavement recently found in Palestrini, and quoted two lines from the Greek Anthologia. Dr. Adam Clarke particularly noticed that he gave the Greek rapidly, but the English with painful slowness, as if the Greek came more naturally. Then, apparently fancying himself under restraint, he walked out, and went into the African or Cole's coffee-house in St.

Michael's Alley, Cornhill; there he would have fallen had he not caught hold of one of the bra.s.s rods of the boxes. Some wine and some jelly dissolved in brandy and water considerably roused him, but he could hardly speak, and the waiter took him back to the Inst.i.tution in a coach. He expired exactly as the clock struck twelve, on the night of Sunday, September 25, 1808. He was buried in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eulogies of his talent, written in Greek and Latin verse, were affixed to his pall--an old custom not discontinued till 1822. His books fetched 2,000, and those with ma.n.u.script notes were bought by Trinity College. It was said of Porson that he drank everything he could lay his hands upon, even to embrocation and spirits of wine intended for the lamp. Rogers describes him going back into the dining-room after the people had gone, and drinking all that was left in the gla.s.ses. He once undertook to learn by heart, in a week, a copy of the _Morning Chronicle_, and he boasted he could repeat "Roderick Random" from beginning to end.

Mr. Luard describes Porson as being, in personal appearance, tall; his head very fine, with an expansive forehead, over which he plastered his brown hair; he had a long, Roman nose (it ought to have been Greek), and his eyes were remarkably keen and penetrating. In general he was very careless as to his dress, especially when alone in his chamber, or when reading hard; but "when in his gala costume, a smart blue coat, white vest, black satin nether garments, and silk stockings, with a shirt ruffled at the wrists, he looked quite the gentleman."

The street where, in 1261, many Jews were ma.s.sacred, and where again, in 1264, 500 Jews were slain, was much affected by Nonconformists. There was a Baptist chapel here in the Puritan times; and in Queen Anne's reign the Presbyterians built a s.p.a.cious church, in Meeting House Court, in 1701. It is described as occupying an area of 2,600 square feet, and being lit with six bow windows. The society, says Mr. Pike, had been formed forty years before, by the son of the excellent Calamy, the persecuted vicar of Aldermanbury, who is said to have died from grief at the Fire of London. John Shower was one of the most celebrated ministers of the Old Jewry Chapel. He wrote a protest against the Occasional Conformity Bill, to which Swift (under the name of his friend Harley) penned a bitter reply. He died in 1715. From 1691 to 1708 the a.s.sistant lecturer was Timothy Rogers, son of an ejected c.u.mberland minister, of whom an interesting story is told. Sir Richard Cradock, a High Church justice, had arrested Mr. Rogers and all his flock, and was about to send them to prison, when the justice's granddaughter, a wilful child of seven, pitying the old preacher, threatened to drown herself if the poor people were punished. The preacher blessed her, and they parted. Years after this child, being in London, dreamed of a certain chapel, preacher, and text, and the next day, going to the Old Jewry, saw Mr.

Shower, and recognised him as the preacher of her dream. The lady afterwards told this to Mr. Rogers' son, when the lad turned Dissenter.

Like many other of the early Nonconformist preachers, Rogers seems to have been a hypochondriac, who looked upon himself as "a broken vessel, a dead man out of mind," and eventually gave up his profession. Shower's successor, Simon Browne, wrote a volume of "Hymns," compiled a lexicon, and wrote a "Defence of the Christian Revelation," in reply to Woolston and other Freethinkers. Browne was also a victim to delusions, believing that G.o.d, in his displeasure, had withdrawn his soul from his body. This state of mind is said by some to have arisen from a nervous shock Browne had once received in finding a highwayman with whom he had grappled dead in his grasp. He believed his mind entirely gone, and his head to resemble a parrot's. At times his thoughts turned to self-destruction.

He therefore abandoned his pulpit, and retired to Shepton Mallet to study. His "Defence" is dedicated to Queen Caroline as from "a thing."

Samuel Chandler, a celebrated author and divine, and a friend of Butler and Seeker, and Bowyer the printer, was for forty years another Old Jewry worthy. He lectured against Popery with great success at Salters'

Hall, and held a public dispute with a Romish priest at the "Pope's Head," Cornhill. In a funeral sermon on George II., Chandler drew absurd parallels between him and David, which the Grub Street writers made the most of. Chandler's deformed sister Mary, a milliner at Bath, wrote verses which Pope commended.

In 1744 Richard Price, afterwards chaplain at Stoke Newington, held the lectureship at the Old Jewry. Price's lecture on "Civil Liberty,"

_apropos_ of the American war, gained him Franklin's and Priestley's friendship; as his first ethical work had already won Hume's. Burke denounced him as a traitor; while the Corporation of London presented him with the freedom of the City in a gold box, the Congress offered him posts of honour, and the Premier of 1782 would have been glad to have had him as a secretary. The last pastor at the Old Jewry Chapel was Abraham Rees. This indefatigable man enlarged Harris's "Lexicon Technic.u.m," improved by Ephraim Chambers, into the "Encyclopaedia" of forty-five quarto volumes, a book now thought redundant and ill-arranged, and the philological parts defective. In 1808 the Old Jewry congregation removed to Jewin Street.

Dr. James Foster, a Dissenting minister eulogised by Pope, carried on the Sunday evening lecture in Old Jewry for more than twenty years; it was began in 1728. The clergy, wits, and freethinkers crowded with equal anxiety to hear him of whom Pope wrote--

"Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten metropolitans in preaching well."

And Pope's friend, Lord Bolingbroke, an avowed Deist, commended Foster for the false aphorism--"Where mystery begins religion ends." Dr. Foster attended Lord Kilmarnock before his execution. He wrote in defence of Christianity in reply to Tindal, the Freethinker, and died in 1753. He says in one of his works:--"I value those who are of different professions from me, more than those who agree with me in sentiment, if they are more serious, sober, and charitable." This excellent man was the son of a Northamptonshire clergyman, who turned Dissenter and became a fuller at Exeter.

At Grocers' Hall we stop to sketch the history of an ancient company.