Old and New London Part 76

Decker and Ben Jonson furnished the speeches and songs for this pageant.

June 7, 1607, was one of the grandest days the Company has ever known; for James I. and his son, Prince Henry, dined with the Merchant Taylors.

It had been at first proposed to train some boys of Merchant Taylors'

School to welcome the king, but Ben Jonson was finally invited to write an entertainment. The king and prince dined separately. The master presented the king with a purse of 100. "Richard Langley shewed him a role, wherein was registered the names of seaven kinges, one queene, seventeene princes and dukes, two dutchesses, one archbishoppe, one and thirtie earles, five countesses, one viscount, fourteene byshoppes, sixtie and sixe barons, two ladies, seaven abbots, seaven priors, and one sub-prior, omitting a great number of knights, esquires, &c., who had been free of that companie." The prince was then made a freeman, and put on the garland. There were twelve lutes (six in one window and six in another).

"In the ayr betweene them" (or swung up above their heads) "was a gallant shippe triumphant, wherein was three menne like saylers, being eminent for voyce and skill, who in their severall songes were a.s.sisted and seconded by the cunning lutanists. There was also in the hall the musique of the cittie, and in the upper chamber the children of His Majestie's Chappell sang grace at the King's table; and also whilst the King sate at dinner John Bull, Doctor of Musique, one of the organists of His Majestie's Chapell Royall, being in a cittizen's cap and gowne, cappe and hood (_i.e._, as a liveryman), played most excellent melodie uppon a small payre of organes, placed there for that purpose onely."

The king seems at this time to have scarcely recovered the alarm of the Gunpowder Plot; for the entries in the Company's books show that there was great searching of rooms and inspection of walls, "to prevent villanie and danger to His Majestie." The cost of this feast was more than 1,000. The king's chamber was made by cutting a hole in the wall of the hall, and building a small room behind it.

In 1607 (James I.), before a Company's dinner, the names of the livery were called, and notice taken of the absent. Then prayer was said, every one kneeling, after which the names of benefactors and their "charitable and G.o.dly devices" were read, also the ordinances, and the orders for the grammar-school in St. Laurence Pountney. Then followed the dinner, to which were invited the a.s.sistants and the ladies, and old masters'

wives and wardens' wives, the preacher, the schoolmaster, the wardens'

subst.i.tutes, and the humble almsmen of the livery. Sometimes, as in 1645, the whole livery was invited.

The kindness and charity of the Company are strongly shown in an entry of May 23, 1610, when John Churchman, a past master, received a pension of 20 per annum. With true consideration, they allowed him to wear his bedesman's gown without a badge, and did not require him to appear in the hall with the other pensioners. All that was required was that he should attend Divine service and pray for the prosperity of the Company, and share his house with Roger Silverwood, clerk of the Bach.e.l.lors'

Company. Gifts to the Company seem to have been numerous. Thus we have (1604) Richard Dove's gift of twenty gilt spoons, marked with a dove; (1605) a basin and ewer, value 59 12s., gift of Thomas Medlicott; (1614) a standing cup, value 100 marks, from Murphy Corbett; same year, seven pictures for the parlour, from Mr. John Vernon.

In 1640 the Civil War was brewing, and the Mayor ordered the Company to provide (in their garden) forty barrels of powder and 300 hundredweight of metal and bullets. They had at this time in their armoury forty muskets and rests, forty muskets and headpieces, twelve round muskets, forty corselets with headpieces, seventy pikes, 123 swords, and twenty-three halberts. The same year they lent 5,000 towards the maintenance of the king's northern army. In the procession on the return of Charles I. from Scotland, the Merchant Taylors seem to have taken a very conspicuous part. Thirty-four of the gravest, tallest, and most comely of the Company, apparelled in velvet plush or satin, with chains of gold, each with a footman with two staff-torches, met the Lord Mayor and aldermen outside the City wall, near Moorfields, and accompanied them to Guildhall, and afterwards escorted the king from Guildhall to his palace. The footmen wore ribands of the colour of the Company, and pendants with the Company's coat-of-arms. The Company's standing extended 252 feet. There stood the livery in their best gowns and hoods, with their banners and streamers. "Eight handsome, tall, and able men"

attended the king at dinner. This was the last honour shown the faithless king by the citizens of London.

The next entries are about arms, powder, and fire-engines, the defacing superst.i.tious pictures, and the setting up the arms of the Commonwealth.

In 1654 the Company was so impoverished by the frequent forced loans, that they had been obliged to sell part of their rental (180 per annum); yet at the same date the generous Company seem to have given the poet Ogilvy 13 6s. 8d., he having presented them with bound copies of his translations of Virgil and aesop into English metre. In 1664 the boys of Merchant Taylors' School acted in the Company's hall Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of _Love's Pilgrimage_.

In 1679 the Duke of York, as Captain-general of the Artillery, was entertained by the artillerymen at Merchant Taylors' Hall. It was supposed that the banquet was given to test the duke's popularity and to discomfit the Protestants and exclusionists. After a sermon at Bow Church, the artillerymen (128) mustered at dinner. Many zealous Protestants, rather than dine with a Popish duke, tore up their tickets or gave them to porters and mechanics; and as the duke returned along Cheapside, the people shouted, "No Pope, no Pope! No Papist, no Papist!"

In 1696 the Company ordered a portrait of Mr. Vernon, one of their benefactors, to be hung up in St. Michael's Church, Cornhill. In 1702 they let their hall and rooms to the East India Company for a meeting; and in 1721 they let a room to the South Sea Company for the same purpose. In 1768, when the Lord Mayor visited the King of Denmark, the Company's committee decided, "there should be no breakfast at the hall, _nor pipes nor tobacco in the barge_ as usual, on Lord Mayor's Day." Mr.

Herbert thinks that this is the last instance of a Lord Mayor sending a precept to a City company, though this is by no means certain. In 1778, Mr. Clarkson, an a.s.sistant, for having given the Company the picture, still extant, of Henry VII. delivering his charter to the Merchant Taylors, was presented with a silver waiter, value 25.

For the searching and measuring cloth, the Company kept a "silver yard,"

that weighed thirty-six ounces, and was graven with the Company's arms.

With this measure they attended Bartholomew Fair yearly, and an annual dinner took place on the occasion. The livery hoods seem finally, in 1568, to have settled down to scarlet and puce, the gowns to blue. The Merchant Taylors' Company, though not the first in City precedence, ranks more royal and n.o.ble personages amongst its members than any other company. At King James's visit, before mentioned, no fewer than twenty-two earls and lords, besides knights, esquires, and foreign amba.s.sadors, were enrolled. Before 1708, the Company had granted the freedom to ten kings, three princes, twenty-seven bishops, twenty-six dukes, forty-seven earls, and sixteen lord mayors. The Company is specially proud of three ill.u.s.trious members--Sir John Hawkwood, a great leader of Italian Condottieri, who fought for the Dukes of Milan, and was buried with honour in the Duomo at Florence; Sir Ralph Blackwell, the supposed founder of Blackwell Hall, and one of Hawkwood's companions at arms; and Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord High Admiral to Henry VIII., and Earl of Southampton. He left to the Merchant Taylors his best standing cup, "in friendly remembrance of him for ever." They also boast of Sir William Craven, ancestor of the Earls of Craven, who came up to London a poor Yorkshire lad, and was bound apprentice to a draper. His eldest son fought for Gustavus Adolphus, and is supposed to have secretly married the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, whom he had so faithfully served.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUND PLAN OF THE MODERN CHURCH OF ST. MARTIN OUTWICH.

(_From a measured Drawing by Mr. W.G. Smith, 1873._)

A. Monument: Edward Edwards, 1810.

B. Ancient Canopied Monument: "Pemberton," no date.

C. Monument: Cruickshank, 1826.

D. Monuments: Simpson, 1849; Ellis, 1838.

E. Monument: Ellis, 1855.

F. Monument: Simpson, 1837.

G. Monument: Rose, 1821.

H. Monuments: Atkinson, 1847; Ellis, 1838.

J. Monument: Richard Stapler.

K. Monument: Teesdale, 1804.

L, L. Stairs to Gallery above.

M. Very Ancient Effigy of Founder, St. Martin de Oteswich.

N. Reading Desk.

O. Pulpit.

P. Altar.

Q. Font.

R. Vestry.

The hall in Threadneedle Street originally belonged to a worshipful gentleman named Edmund Crepin. The Company moved there in 1331 (Edward III.) from the old hall, which was behind the "Red Lion," in Basing Lane, Cheapside, an executor of the Outwich family leaving them the advowson of St. Martin Outwich, and seventeen shops. The Company built seven almshouses near the hall in the reign of Henry IV. The original mansion of Crepin probably at this time gave way to a new hall, and to which now, for the first time, were attached the almshouses mentioned.

Both these piles of building are shown in the ancient plan of St. Martin Outwich, preserved in the church vestry, and which was taken by William Goodman in 1599. The hall, as there drawn, is a high building, consisting of a ground floor and three upper storeys. It has a central pointed-arched gate of entrance, and is lighted in front by nine large windows, exclusive of three smaller attic windows, and at the east end by seven. The roof is lofty and pointed, and is surmounted by a louvre or lantern, with a vane. The almshouses form a small range of cottage-like buildings, and are situate between the hall and a second large building, which adjoins the church, and bears some resemblance to an additional hall or chapel. It appears to rise alternately from one to two storeys high.

In 1620 the hall was wainscoted instead of whitewashed; and in 1646 it was paved with red tile, rushes or earthen floors having "been found inconvenient, and oftentimes noisome." At the Great Fire the Company's plate was melted into a lump of two hundred pounds' weight.

In the reign of Edward VI., when there was an inquiry into property devoted to superst.i.tious uses, the Company had been maintaining twenty-three chantry priests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCH OF THE ARCHERS (_see page 536_).]

The modern Merchant Taylors' Hall (says Herbert) is a s.p.a.cious but irregular edifice of brick. The front exhibits an arched portal, consisting of an arched pediment, supported on columns of the Composite order, with an ornamental niche above; in the pediment are the Company's arms. The hall itself is a s.p.a.cious and handsome apartment, having at the lower end a stately screen of the Corinthian order, and in the upper part a very large mahogany table thirty feet long. The sides of the hall have numerous emblazoned shields of masters' arms, and behind the master's seat are inscribed in golden letters the names of the different sovereigns, dukes, earls, lords spiritual and temporal, &c., who have been free of this community. In the drawing-room are full-length portraits of King William and Queen Mary, and other sovereigns; and in the court and other rooms are half-lengths of Henry VIII. and Charles II., of tolerable execution, besides various other portraits, amongst which are those of Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor in 1553, the estimable founder of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Sir Thomas Rowe, Lord Mayor in 1568, and Mr. Clarkson's picture of Henry VII. presenting the Company with their incorporation charter. In this painting the king is represented seated on his throne, and delivering the charter to the Master, Wardens, and Court of a.s.sistants of the Company. His attendants are Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor, and Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Privy Seal, on his right hand; and on his left, Robert Willoughby, Lord Broke, then Lord Steward of the Household. In niches are shown the statues of Edward III. and John of Gaunt, the king's ancestors. In the foreground the clerk of the Company is exhibiting the roll with the names of the kings, &c., who were free of this Company. In the background are represented the banners of the Company and of the City of London. The Yeomen of the Guard, at the entrance of the palace, close the view. On the staircase are likewise pictures of the following Lord Mayors, Merchant Taylors:--Sir William Turner, 1669; Sir P. Ward, 1681; Sir William Pritchard, 1683; and Sir John Salter, 1741.

The interior of the "New Hall, or Taylors' Inne," was adorned with costly tapestry, or arras, representing the history of St. John the Baptist. It had a screen, supporting a silver image of that saint in a tabernacle, or, according to an entry of 1512, "an ymage of St. John gilt, in a tabernacle gilt." The hall windows were painted with armorial bearings; the floor was regularly strewed with clean rushes; from the ceiling hung silk flags and streamers; and the hall itself was furnished, when needful, with tables on tressels, covered on feast days with splendid table linen, and glittering with plate.

The Merchant Taylors have for their armorial ensigns--Argent, a tent royal between two parliament robes; gules, lined ermine, on a chief azure, a lion of England. Crest--a Holy Lamb, in glory proper.

Supporters--two camels, or. Motto--"Concordia parvae res cresc.u.n.t."

The stained gla.s.s windows of the old St. Martin Outwich, as engraven in Wilkinson's history of that church, contain a representation of the original arms, granted by Clarencieux in 1480. They differ from the present (granted in 1586), the latter having a lion instead of the Holy Lamb (which is in the body of the first arms), and which latter is now their crest.

One of the most splendid sights at this hall in the earlier times would have been (says Herbert), of course, when the Company received the high honour of enrolling King Henry VII. amongst their members; and subsequently to which, "he sat openly among them in a gown of crimson velvet on his shoulders," says Strype, "_a la mode de Londres_, upon their solemn feast day, in the hall of the said Company."

From Merchant Taylors' Hall began the famous cavalcade of the archers, under their leader, as Duke of Sh.o.r.editch, in 1530, consisting of 3,000 archers, sumptuously apparelled, 942 whereof wore chains of gold about their necks. This splendid company was guarded by whifflers and billmen, to the number of 4,000, besides pages and footmen, who marched through Broad Street (the residence of the duke their captain). They continued their march through Moorfields, by Finsbury, to Smithfield, where, after having performed their several evolutions, they shot at the target for glory.

The Hall of Commerce, existing some years ago in Threadneedle Street, was begun in 1830 by Mr. Edward Moxhay, a speculative biscuit-baker, on the site of the old French church. Mr. Moxhay had been a shoemaker, but he suddenly started as a rival to the celebrated Leman, in Gracechurch Street. He was an amateur architect of talent, and it was said at the time, probably unjustly, that the building originated in Moxhay's vexation at the Gresham committee rejecting his design for a new Royal Exchange. He opened his great commercial news-room two years before the Exchange was finished, and while merchants were fretting at the delay, intending to make the hall a mercantile centre, to the annihilation of Lloyd's, the Baltic, Garraway's, the Jerusalem, and the North and South American Coffee-houses. 70,000 were laid out. There was a grand bas-relief on the front by Mr. Watson, a young sculptor of promise, and there was an inaugurating banquet. The annual subscription of 5 5s.

soon dwindled to 1 10s. 6d. There was a reading-room, and a room where commission agents could exhibit their samples. Wool sales were held there, and there was an auction for railway shares. There were also rooms for meetings of creditors and private arbitrations, and rooms for the deposit of deeds.

A describer of Threadneedle Street in 1845 particularly mentions amongst the few beggars the Creole flower-girls, the decayed ticket-porters, and cripples on go-carts who haunted the neighbourhood, a poor, shrivelled old woman, who sold fruit on a stall at a corner of one of the courts.

She was the wife of Daniel Good, the murderer.

The Baltic Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street, used to be the rendezvous of tallow, oil, hemp, and seed merchants; indeed, of all merchants and brokers connected with the Russian trade. There was a time when there was as much gambling in tallow as in Consols, but the breaking down of the Russian monopoly by the increased introduction of South American and Australian tallow has done away with this. Mr.

Richard Thornton and Mr. Jeremiah Harman were the two monarchs of the Russian trade forty years ago. The public sale-room was in the upper part of the house. The Baltic was superintended by a committee of management.

That famous free school of the City, St. Anthony's, stood in Threadneedle Street, where the French church afterwards stood, and where the Bank of London now stands. It was originally a Jewish synagogue, granted by Henry V. to the brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienna. A hospital was afterwards built there for a master, two priests, a schoolmaster, and twelve poor men. The Free School seems to have been built in the reign of Henry VI., who gave five presentations to Eton and five Oxford scholarships, at the rate of ten francs a week each, to the inst.i.tution. Henry VIII., that arch spoliator, annexed the school to the collegiate church of St. George's, Windsor. The proctors of St.

Anthony's used to wander about London collecting "the benevolence of charitable persons towards the building." The school had great credit in Elizabeth's reign, and was a rival of St. Paul's. That inimitable c.o.xcomb, Laneham, in his description of the great visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle, 1575, a book which Sir Walter Scott has largely availed himself of, says--"Yee mervail perchance," saith he, "to see me so bookish. Let me tel you in few words. I went to school, forsooth, both at Polle's and also at St.

Antonie's; (was) in the fifth forme, past Esop's Fables, readd Terence, _Vos isthaec intro auferte_; and began with my Virgil, _t.i.tyre tu patulae_. I could say my rules, could construe and pars with the best of them," &c.

In Elizabeth's reign "the Anthony's pigs," as the "Paul's pigeons" used to call the Threadneedle boys, used to have an annual breaking-up day procession, with streamers, flags, and beating drums, from Mile End to Austin Friars. The French or Walloon church established here by Edward VI. seems, in 1652, to have been the scene of constant wrangling among the pastors, as to whether their disputes about celebrating holidays should be settled by "colloquies" of the foreign churches in London, or the French churches of all England. At this school were educated the great Sir Thomas More, and that excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, the zealous Whitgift (the friend of Beza, the Reformer), whose only fault seems to have been his persecutions of the Genevese clergy whom Elizabeth disliked.

Next in importance to Lloyd's for the general information afforded to the public, was certainly the North and South American Coffee House (formerly situated in Threadneedle Street), fronting the thoroughfare leading to the entrance of the Royal Exchange. This establishment was the complete centre for American intelligence. There was in this, as in the whole of the leading City coffee-houses, a subscription room devoted to the use of merchants and others frequenting the house, who, by paying an annual sum, had the right of attendance to read the general news of the day, and make reference to the several files of papers, which were from every quarter of the globe. It was here also that first information could be obtained of the arrival and departure of the fleet of steamers, packets, and masters engaged in the commerce of America, whether in relation to the minor ports of Montreal and Quebec, or the larger ones of Boston, Halifax, and New York. The room the subscribers occupied had a separate entrance to that which was common to the frequenters of the eating and drinking part of the house, and was most comfortably and neatly kept, being well, and in some degree elegantly furnished. The heads of the chief American and Continental firms were on the subscription list; and the representatives of Baring's, Rothschild's, and the other large establishments celebrated for their wealth and extensive mercantile operations, attended the rooms as regularly as 'Change, to see and hear what was going on, and gossip over points of business.

At the north-east extremity of Threadneedle Street is the once famous South Sea House. The back, formerly the Excise Office, afterwards the South Sea Company's office, thence called the Old South Sea House, was consumed by fire in 1826. The building in Threadneedle Street, in which the Company's affairs were formerly transacted, is a magnificent structure of brick and stone, about a quadrangle, supported by stone pillars of the Tuscan order, which form a fine piazza. The front looks into Threadneedle Street, the walls being well built and of great thickness. The several offices were admirably disposed; the great hall for sales, the dining-room, galleries, and chambers were equally beautiful and convenient. Under these were capacious arched vaults, to guard what was valuable from the chances of fire.

The South Sea Company was originated by Swift's friend, Harley, Earl of Oxford, in the year 1711. The new Tory Government was less popular than the Whig one it had displaced, and public credit had fallen. Harley wishing to provide for the discharge of ten millions of the floating debt, guaranteed six per cent. to a company who agreed to take it on themselves. The 600,000 due for the annual interest was raised by duties on wines, silks, tobacco, &c.; and the monopoly of the trade to the South Seas granted to the ambitious new Company, which was incorporated by Act of Parliament.

To the enthusiastic Company the gold of Mexico and the silver of Peru seemed now obtainable by the ship-load. It was reported that Spain was willing to open four ports in Chili and Peru. The negotiations, however, with Philip V. of Spain led to little. The Company obtained only the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves for thirty years, and sending an annual vessel to trade; but even of this vessel the Spanish king was to have one-fourth of the profits, and a tax of five per cent. on the residue. The first vessel did not sail till 1717, and the year after a rupture with Spain closed the trade.

In 1717, the King alluding to his wish to reduce the National Debt, the South Sea Company at once pet.i.tioned Parliament (in rivalry with the Bank) that their capital stock might be increased from ten millions to twelve, and offered to accept five, instead of six per cent. upon the whole amount. Their proposals were accepted.