The Town Part 7

What the testifications may in question really have amounted to, we cannot pretend to say; but Diana, not being a family name, as in the case of another royal favourite, Diana of Poitiers, seems a strange one to have been given to the lady already christened by so poetical an appellation as Rosamond, and so different in her reputation from the chaste G.o.ddess. We should, for our parts, rather suppose that the dean and chapter had been moved to call the place Diana's chamber by some tradition, or a conceit of their own, connecting it with the temple of that G.o.ddess, said to have formerly stood on the site of the neighbouring cathedral; or if the name was really a very ancient one, and in popular use, it may perhaps be taken as lending some slight confirmation to the notion of the actual existence of that heathen edifice, and may "help," as Iago phrases it, "to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate thinly." Diana's Chamber, however, may have been so called from its being hung with painted tapestry, representing some story of the G.o.ddess. Inigo Jones, by the way, is said by Lord Orford to be buried in the church of St. Bennet, Paul's Wharf, which stands immediately to the south of the spot where we now are, at the corner formed by the meeting of Thames Street and St. Bennet's Hill.

Another building which formerly existed in this neighbourhood was the Royal Wardrobe. It occupied the site of the present Wardrobe Court, immediately to the north of the church of St. Andrew's and gave to the parish the name of St. Andrew's Wardrobe, by which it is still known.

This building was erected about the middle of the fourteenth century, by Sir John Beauchamp, Knight of the Garter, a son of Guido, Earl of Warwick, by whose heirs it was sold to Edward III. Mr. Malcolm has printed some extracts from the Ma.n.u.script Account Book, since preserved in the Harleian collection, of a keeper of this Wardrobe, from the middle of April to Michaelmas 1481, (towards the close of the reign of Edward IV.), which are interesting and valuable as memorials, both of the prices and of the fas.h.i.+ons of that time. During the period, of less than six months, over which the accounts extend, the sum of 1,174_l._ 5_s._ 2_d._ appears to have been received by the keeper, for the use of his office. Of this the most considerable portion seems to have been expended in the purchase of velvet and silks from Montpellier. The velvets cost from 8_s._ to 16_s._ per yard; black cloths of gold, 40_s._; what is called velvet upon velvet, the same; damask, 8_s._; satins, 6_s._ 10_s._ and 12_s._, camlets, 30_s._ a-piece; and sarcenets for 4_s._ to 4_s._ 2_d._ Feather beds, with bolsters, "for our sovereign lord the King," are charged 16_s._ 8_d._ each. A pair of shoes, of Spanish leather, double soled, and not lined, cost 1_s._ 4_d._; a pair of black leather boots, 6_s._ 8_d._; hats 1_s._ a-piece; and ostrich feathers, each 10_s._ The keeper's salary appears to have been 100_l._ per annum--that of his clerk 1_s._ a-day; and the wages of the tailors 6_d._ a-day each. The King sometimes lodged at the Wardrobe; on one of which occasions the was.h.i.+ngs of the sheets which had been used is charged at the rate of 3_d._ a pair. Candles cost 1_d._ a pound. All the money disbursed by the keeper of the wardrobe, however, was not expended in decorating the persons of his Majesty and the royal household. Among other items we find 20_s._ paid to Piers Bauduyn (or Peter Baldwin, as we should now call him), stationer, "for binding, gilding, and dressing of a book called t.i.tus Livius;" for performing the same offices to a Bible, a Froisard, a Holy Trinity, and the Government of Kings and Princes, 16_s._ each; for three small French books, 6_s._ 8_d._; for the Fortress of Faith, and Josephus 3_s._ 4_d._; and for what is designated "the Bible Historical," 20_s._ So that in those days, we see the binding a book was conceived to be a putting of it into breeches, and the artist employed for that purpose looked upon as a sort of literary tailor.

How impossible it would now be in a neighbourhood like this, for such nuisances to exist, as a fetid _public_ ditch, and scouts of degraded clergymen asking people to "walk in and be married!" Yet such was the case a century ago. At the bottom of Ludgate Hill the little river Fleet formerly ran, and was rendered navigable. Adjoining the site of Fleet Market is Sea-coal Lane, so called from the barges that landed coal there; and Turnagain Lane, at the bottom of which the unadvised pa.s.senger found himself compelled by the water to retrace his steps.

The water gradually got clogged and foul; and the channel was built over and made a street, as we have noticed in our introduction. But even in the time we speak of, this had not been entirely done. The ditch was open from Fleet Market to the river, occupying the site of the modern Bridge Street; and in the market, before the door of the Fleet prison, men plied in behalf of a clergyman, literally inviting people to walk in and be married. They performed the ceremony inside the prison, to sailors and others, for what they could get. It was the most squalid of Gretnas, bearding the decency and common-sense of a whole metropolis. The parties retired to a gin shop to treat the clergyman; and there, and in similar houses, the register was kept of the marriages. Not far from where the Fleet stood is Newgate; so that the victims had their succession of nooses prepared, in case, as no doubt it often happened, one tie should be followed by the other.

Pennant speaks of this nuisance from personal knowledge.

"In walking along the streets in my youth," he tells us, "on the side next this prison, I have often been tempted by the question, '_Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married_.' Along this most lawless s.p.a.ce was frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with _Marriages performed within_, written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in. The parson was seen walking before his shop; a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid night-gown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of tobacco. Our great chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, put these demons to flight, and saved thousands from the misery and disgrace which would be entailed by these extemporary thoughtless unions."

This extraordinary disgrace to the city, which arose most likely from the permission to marry prisoners, and one great secret of which was the advantage taken of it by wretched women to get rid of their debts, was maintained by a collusion between the warden of the Fleet and the disreputable clergymen he became acquainted with. "To such an extent,"

says Malcolm, "were the proceedings carried, that twenty and thirty couple were joined in one day, at from ten to twenty s.h.i.+llings each;"

and "between the 19th Oct., 1704, and the 12th Feb., 1705, 2,954 marriages were celebrated (by evidence), besides others known to have been omitted. To these neither licence nor certificate of banns were required, and they concealed, by private marks, the names of those who chose to pay them for it." The neighbourhood at length complained; and the abuse was put an end to by the Marriage Act, to which it gave rise.

Ludgate and Fleet ditch figure among the scenes of the Dunciad. It is near Bridewell, on the site of the modern Bridge Street, that the venal and scurrilous heroes of that poem emulate one another, at the call of Dulness, in seeing who can plunge deepest into the mud and dirt.

"This labour past, by Bridewell all descend, (As morning prayer and flagellation end[73]), To where Fleet ditch, with disemboguing streams, Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames; The king of d.y.k.es! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.

Here strip, my children! here at once leap in; Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin; And who the most in love of dirt excel, And dark dexterity of groping well."[74]

This part of the games being over,

"Through Lud's famed gates, along the well-known Fleet, Rolls the black troop and overshades the street; Till showers of sermons, characters, essays, In circling fences whiten all the ways: So clouds replenished from some bog below, Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow."

The "well-known Fleet" is the prison just mentioned, the side of which appears to have been visible at that time in Ludgate Hill, and where it was a joke (too often founded in truth) to suppose authors incarcerated.

"Few sons of Phoebus in the courts we meet; But fifty sons of Phoebus in the Fleet,"

says a prologue of Sheridan's. The Fleet having "rules," like the King's Bench, authors were found in the neighbourhood also. Arthur Murphy, provoked by the attacks of Churchill and Lloyd, describes them as among the poor hacks,

"On Ludgate Hill who b.l.o.o.d.y murders write, Or pa.s.s in Fleet Street supperless the night."

Booksellers' shops were then common as now in Fleet Street and the Strand, in Paternoster Row, and St. Paul's Churchyard. This is pleasant to think of; for change is not desirable without improvement.

One feels gratified, where difference is not demanded of us, in being able to have the same a.s.sociation of ideas with such men as Pope and Dryden, even if it be upon no higher ground than the quant.i.ty of books in Paternoster Row, or the circ.u.mstance that Ludgate Hill still leads into Fleet Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STONE IN PANYER ALLEY.]

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303.

[47] In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827.

[48] Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that _Sermon_ Lane is a corruption of _Sheremoniers_ Lane, that is, the lane of the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in this lane for melting silver, called the _Blackloft_--and the Mint was in the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood.

See Maitland, ii., 880 (edit. of 1756.)

[49] Letters to Stella, in the duodecimo edition of his works, 1775, Letter vi., p. 43.

[50] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv., p. 93.

[51] History of London, vol. ii., p. 925.

[52] The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and critical 8vo. 1797. Vol. iv., p. 206.

[53] Pennant's London, p. 377.

[54] Of William III.

[55] The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxication of Dryden's feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been styled the musical Otway of his time. He was organist at St. Paul's, and shot himself at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. John Reading, organist of St. Dunstan's, who was intimately acquainted with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon entering the house "found his friend and fellow-student in the agonies of death." Another friend of his, one of the lay vicars of the cathedral, relates of him, that a few weeks before the catastrophe, Clarke had alighted from his horse in a sequestered spot in the country, where there was a pond surrounded by trees, and not knowing whether to hang or drown himself, tossed up a piece of money to see which. The money stuck in the earth edgeways. Of this new chance for life, poor Clarke, we see, was unable to avail himself.

[56] See Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949.

[57] Since this was written, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court in Doctors' Commons on matters of divorce has been transferred to a new "Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes," sitting at Westminster.

[58] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 473.

[59] On the authority of Langton, Johnson's friend. See Memoirs, Anecdotes, &c., by Let.i.tia Matilda Hawkins, vol. i., p. 293.

[60] Censura Literaria, vol. iii., p. 254.

[61] Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, by Hamper. Lond. 1827. Our memorandum has omitted the page. The letter was written to Dugdale by Randall Holme, a brother herald.

[62] Another opinion, however, is that the spear had been given to one of his ancestors as having been a magistrate of some description. This supposition seems to be supported by the grant of arms to John Shakspeare in 1599, which has been printed by Mr. Malcolm. But Shakspeares in Warwicks.h.i.+re are as plentiful as blackberries, and perhaps the name originated in the stout arms of a whole tribe of soldiers.

[63] _Vix ea nostra voco_--(as above translated). The effect is stronger if the whole pa.s.sage is called to mind. It is Ovid;

Nam genus, et proavos, et quae non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco.--_Metamor_. lib. 13. v. 140.

For birth, and rank, and what our own good powers Have earned us not, I scarcely call them ours.

Ovid, himself a man of birth, puts this sentiment in the mouth of Ulysses, a king. But then he was a king whose talents were above his royalty.

[64] Life of Gibbon, in the Autobiography, vol. i.

[65] Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, p. 147.

[66] Maitland, vol. i., p. 28.

[67] Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, iv., p. 367.

[68] Spectator, vol. i., No. 28.

[69] Malone, in his Historical Account of the English Stage, has an ingenious parallel between these inn-theatres and the construction of the modern ones. "Many of our ancient dramatick pieces," he observes, "were performed in the yards of carriers' inns, in which, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comedians, who then first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional stage. The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be preserved in our modern theatre. The galleries in both are ranged over each other on three sides of the building. The small rooms under the lowest of these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it is observable, that these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent period expressly for dramatick exhibitions, still retained their old name, and were frequently called _rooms_ by our ancient writers. The yard bears a sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We may suppose the stage to have been raised in this arena, on the fourth side, with its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for admission was taken. Thus in fine weather, a play-house, not incommodious, might have been formed." Reed's Edition of Johnson's and Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 73.

[70] Tatler, No. 127.

[71] Londinium Redivivum, ii., 375.

[72] History of London, ii., 880.

[73] The whipping of the criminals in Bridewell took place after the church service.