The Curriers were incorporated by James I. in April 30, 1606, for a master, two wardens, twelve assistants, and 103 liverymen.

The exact date of the origin of the Company is unknown, but it must have had some sort of existence previous to 1363, for in that year it is recorded that the Company contributed five marks to aid King Edward III. in carrying on his wars with France.

There are no documents in existence referring to the origin of the Company.

Many indications of the antiquity of this Fraternity occur. It was attached to the White Friars’ Church in Fleet Street. The Curriers settled in Soper Lane; they asked for ordinances in 1415; they were authorised to appoint the City scavengers.

Their Hall is the third erected on the same site; it was founded in 1874. The first Hall perished in the Fire. The quarter where the curriers lived and worked was in the north facing London Wall, where they built their Hall.

Of Addle Street Stow says: “The reason of which name I know not.” It may have been derived from “Ethel,” meaning noble. In it is the Brewers’ Hall.

In the year 1445 the Brewers were first incorporated. Like many other trades, they had been associated long before. Thus in 1345 the Brewers (Riley’s Memorials, p. 225) are treated as a body, being ordered not to use the water of the Chepe conduit for making beer and ale, seeing that it was wanted for the supply of the citizens. (Fishmongers at the same time were forbidden to use the water for washing their fish.)

The original charter of February 22, 1445, granted by Henry VI., after citing the Brewers Company as one of the ancient mysteries, incorporates the Company into one body and perpetual community.

The charter granted 11th November, 2 Elizabeth, and the charter of August 29, 1563, confirm the previous charter of Henry VI.

The charter of July 13, 21 Elizabeth, appears to have been granted owing to the great increase of persons engaged in and practising the trade of brewing. The charter incorporates all persons in or about the City of London or the suburbs, or within two miles of the City.

The charter of 6th April, 15 Charles I., recites previous charters, but increases the jurisdiction of the corporation over the brewing trade in or about the City of London to a limit of four miles.

This charter of Charles I. confers a great deal of power on those in authority over the trade. It allows them to make rules and ordinances, and generally to exercise supervision over all members of the trade in and about the City, and within a four-mile radius.

Byelaws on the strength of this charter were framed for the Company on July 9, Charles I., 1641.

The charter of 18th March, 1 Charles II., after reciting the charter of 22nd February, 16 Henry VI., the confirmation of the said charter by Queen Elizabeth on August 29, 1563, and a surrender of the right to elect master, warden, or assistant, incorporates the Company again, nominates William Carpenter to be master till June 24, 1686, further nominates wardens and assistants; provides for the institution of search and quarterage, and for the binding of apprentices; gives the corporation the right to inspect brew-houses within certain limits, and to inflict penalties; orders that every assistant elected shall be a communicant, and allows the commonalty to distil aqua-vitÆ or spirits.

The deed of July 1, 1684, surrenders the Company’s charter and all rights appertaining to it.

The charter of 18th March, James II., after reciting the charter of 16 Henry VI., and 4 Elizabeth, 1563, and the surrender of their charter by the Company, orders all brewers within eight miles of the City or suburbs of London to be of the corporation; establishes search and quarterage payments according to the number of servants employed; gives the Company power to make laws or set penalties; grants a licence in mortmain to purchase lands up to the value of £60; orders every master, warden, assistant, and clerk to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration; orders each person elected to be a communicant.

The Company have a copy of byelaws drawn up in the year 1714, and signed by all the members of the court.

The present constitution, orders, rules, and conditions, as drawn up by the master, wardens, and assistants, were made on July 13, 1739. They provide for the holding of the courts; the election of masters, wardens, and assistants; for certain penalties for refusing to serve; for the auditing of accounts, for the election to the livery and freedom; for binding apprentices; for making the search and quarterage; for certain restrictions in the case of freemen; for power for the master and wardens to sue for penalties; for the taking of the oaths, and the signing of the declarations.

In February 13, 1857, the byelaws were altered under the Act of 6 William IV., as far as regards the taking of oaths, and an order was made that a declaration should be substituted for the oath.

The Company is governed by a master, three wardens, and twenty-six assistants.

This Company is one of the richest of the City Companies; it has an annual income of £2500 and administers Trusts and charities to the extent of £25,000 more; it has a livery of 47; it admits none but members of the trade. The Company has always, as might be expected, been rich and flourishing.

The first charter of the Company of Broderers, or embroiderers, is dated in 1561, and this is the earliest definite evidence now in the possession of the Company of the date of its existence as a Company, though the association existed long before incorporation. In an indenture of conveyance of certain of the Company’s property in Gutter Lane, dated 5 Henry VIII., one Thomas Foster (the grantee) is described as a citizen and broyderer, and “The wardens of the mystery of broyderers within the city of London” are described as a definite body in the will of the same Thomas Foster.

25th October, 3 Elizabeth, 1561.—Original charter of Queen Elizabeth.

Incorporates the freemen of the mystery or art of the broderers of the City of London and the suburbs by the name of Keepers or Wardens and Society of the Art or Mystery of the Broderers of the City of London, to have perpetual succession and a common seal, to bring and defend actions, and especially in the City of London to hold lands of the annual value of £30, for the assistance and support of poor men and women of the mystery.

Grants powers to the keepers or wardens from time to time to make good and salutary statutes and ordinances for the good regulation and government of the mystery and the freemen thereof, which shall be inviolably observed.

Grants to the keepers or wardens power to overlook and govern the art and all using the same in the City and suburbs thereof, the City of Westminster, Saint Katherine’s in Middlesex, and the borough of Southwark, and to punish all men for not truly working or selling.

20th April, 7 James I., 1609.—Original charter of James the First.

Contains only a recital and confirmation of the charter of Queen Elizabeth without any alteration or addition.

The above is an abstract of the subsisting charter of the Company.

It was the Broderers who produced the palls used by many Companies at the funerals of their members. They also made the pulpit cloths and altar cloths of the churches, the vestments of the clergy, the caparison of horses, and the decoration of arms and armour.

The livery in 1900 was 28. Their Trust Income about £32: 9s. The beautiful art of embroidery is encouraged by this Company by scholarships at the Royal School of Art Needlework, Decorative Needlework Society, and Clapton and Stamford Hill Government School of Art.

Milton Street, one of the dreariest and dullest of thoroughfares, deserves some comment, having originally been that Grub Street for ever associated with starveling authors. In 1600 it was inhabited by bowyers, fletchers, bowstring-makers and such occupations. There were many bowling alleys and dicing houses. Andrew Marvell speaks of the Puritans of Grub Street.

It was in the eighteenth century that the poorer sort of literary men seem to have lived here.

Swift and Pope both ridiculed Grub Street writers; and Swift’s advice to Grub Street verse-writers is worth quoting:

Let us commemorate some of the Grub Street poets and a few others of the same obscure kind. The names of those selected justify my assertion that the miseries of poets fell only on those who were profligate, indolent, or incapable.

Samuel Boyse, a colonist, so to speak, of Grub Street, since he evidently belonged to that and no other quarter, was not a native of London, but of Dublin, where his father was a dissenting minister of great name and fame. The young man was sent to Glasgow University, where he brought his university career to a close by marrying a wife at the age of nineteen. As he had no means of his own, he was obliged to take his wife, with her sister, to Dublin, where his father supported them, selling an estate he had in Yorkshire to defray his son’s debts. On his father’s death Samuel Boyse removed to Edinburgh, where he published a volume of poems and wrote an elegy on the death of Lady Stormont.

He had many introductions, but his natural indolence forbade his taking advantage of them. He seems to have been unable to converse with persons in higher life, and when letters failed he made no further effort to win their favour. Like all the poets of Grub Street, he was of a grovelling habit, and loved to make friends with men of low life and habit; at the same time he was selfishly extravagant, and would feast upon a casual guinea while his wife and child were starving at home. The casual guinea he mostly got by writing begging letters.

At one time he was so far reduced that he had no garment of any kind to put on; all, including his shirts, were at the pawnbrokers; he sat up in bed with a blanket wrapped round him through which he had cut a hole for his arm, in which condition he wrote his verses. He died in 1749 in a lodging in Shoe Lane. A friend endeavoured to get up a subscription to save him from a pauper’s funeral. It was in vain; the parish officers had to take away the body.

The man was a hopeless tenant of Grub Street, without foresight, without prudence, without care, except for the present, without dignity or self-respect; his poetry was third-rate, yet there are fine passages in it; he had scholarly tastes, especially for painting and music, and in heraldry he was well skilled. In a word, Samuel Boyse is quite the most illustrious example of the poetaster who has failed to reach even the lower levels of genius; whose life was utterly contemptible; who would have brought, had such a man been worth considering, discredit by his sordidness and his want of principle, morals, and honour, upon the profession of letters.

Another case is that of Thomas Britton. He was born about the year 1650 at Higham Ferrers. He was apprenticed to a small coalman in Clerkenwell and followed the same trade. He walked the streets carrying his sack on his back, dressed in the blue frock of his profession. When he had disposed of his coal he walked home, looking at the book-stalls and picking up bargains. It was a splendid time for picking up bargains. There were still the remnants of the old Monastic libraries and MSS. together with the old books which had escaped the Great Fire.

Many collectors used to search about among the same book-stalls. Britton became known to them and was employed by them. The Earls of Oxford, Pembroke, Sunderland, and Winchelsea, and the Duke of Devonshire, were among those collectors.

Presently it was discovered that the small coalman, besides being an excellent hand at discovering an old book, was also a very good musician. Then the wonderful spectacle was to be seen of the great ones of the earth—the aristocracy, the wits, the musicians—assembling in an upper room of an itinerant pedlar of small coals to hear a concert of music. Handel played the harpsichord here; Dubourg played the violin. These concerts were begun in 1678 and continued for many years. Britton himself played the viol de gamba. But he was not only a musician and a bibliophile, he was also an antiquarian; he was a collector of music; in addition to all these things, he was also a chemist and had a laboratory of his own. He died in 1714, aged about sixty-four. He was buried in Clerkenwell Churchyard.

Let us not forget the famous Tom Brown. Though most of his life was spent in London, he was a native of Shifnal in Shropshire. He was sent to Christ Church, Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a linguist, a scholar, and a writer of pieces which were certainly witty whatever else they might be. He was so brilliant as a wit that he found it necessary to exchange Oxford for London, where he nearly starved. However, he obtained, just in time to save him, the school of Kingston-on-Thames, which he held for a while, giving it up after a very short tenure of office. Once more he came to London, and became poet, satirist, descriptive writer, and libeller. He was one of the earliest authors by profession, having, in fact, no other means of livelihood than the proceeds of his writings. There is very little known concerning his life; he is said to have been deficient in the courtliness which was necessary in the society of Addison and the wits of society; indeed, he belonged to a somewhat earlier time. He had no patron among the nobility, though it is related that he was once invited to dinner by the Earl of Dorset, who placed a bank-note for £50 under his plate. This was the solitary exception, however. Nothing is known as to his private circumstances, though it would be extremely interesting to learn what sums he received for his Dialogues, Letters, and Poems. He closed a short, merry, godless, waggish life at the early age of forty-one, a fact which suggests drink and good living, with other easy ways of shortening life. He is said—which one readily believes—to have died in great poverty, and he was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey.

An unfortunate poet named William Pattison belongs to Grub Street. He was the son of a farmer in Sussex. By the kindness of Lord Thanet he was sent to school and to Cambridge. He quarrelled, however, with the tutor of this College, and took his name off the boards. He then went up to London intending to live by his pen. It was a very bad time for living by the pen, and the boy, for he was no more, arrived with a very slender equipment of experience and knowledge. He began by soliciting subscriptions for a volume of poems; he seems to have had no friends; but he made some impression at the coffee-house by clever talk. When he had brought out his poems and spent all the subscription money, he fell into absolute indigence and was forced to accept a post as assistant in the shop of the notorious Curll. Before he did that, he wrote to Lord Burlington a poem called Effigies Authoris, in which he said that he was destitute of friends and money, half-starved, and reduced to sleeping on a bench in St. James’s Park. To another person he writes, “I have not enjoyed the common necessaries of life these two days.” He did not long continue in this post of bookseller’s assistant, because small-pox attacked him and he died. He was not yet twenty-two years of age.

says Pope in “The Dunciad.”

Among others who lived in Grub Street was Foxe the martyrologist. General Monk is said to have had a house in a court off Grub Street. As to the origin of the later name of the street, it is in doubt, some asserting it was from a builder named Milton, and others that it was so called from Milton’s many residences in the neighbourhood. The latter explanation sounds probable; Milton lived at different times in Aldersgate Street, in Jewin Crescent, in Little Britain, and in Bunhill Fields, all within the district.

Eastward is Moorgate Street Station, and not far from it St. Bartholomew’s Church, founded in 1850 to meet new demands. Northward in White Street is the City of London College. This is a very large building occupying all the space between White’s Court and Finsbury Street. The lower part is red brick and above is glazed white brick. The character of the building changes just before the corner, having stone facings and a turret angle, which springs from above the first floor. This institution was founded in 1848 and was first established at Crosby Hall. It removed to Sussex Hall, Leadenhall Street, in 1881, and the present building was opened in 1884. In 1895 the secondary portion in White Street, connected with the main building by means of a bridge, was added. The institution was first established as Metropolitan Evening Classes. In 1891 it became, under a scheme of the Charity Commissioners, one of the constituent Institutes of the City Polytechnic. It is in union with the Society of Arts, the Science and Art Department, and the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute. The number of individual students in attendance during the session 1894-95 was 2257 (College Calendar, 1895-96). Besides languages, sciences, and arts, the curriculum includes a practical knowledge of technical subjects. There is accommodation for 4000 students.

In Redcross Street the long line of wall bounding the yard of the Midland Railway goods station occupies much of the east side. Beyond this is a grey brick house partly stone faced, and very ugly, with “Lady Holles’ School for Girls, founded 1702,” running across the front. The west side of the street is all composed of manufactories and warehouses in various styles.

There is a tree-covered space in the middle of Bridgewater Square. Along the south side is Tranter’s Temperance Hotel, a dingy building, in the same style as the houses in the street just mentioned. On the west near the south end are one or two old tiled houses. On the north the new building of the Cripplegate Without Boys’ School rises high, with narrow frontage and projecting bow window in the centre resting on a bracket. Up near the roof is the figure of a boy in a long coat standing in a niche. At this school there is accommodation for 260 boys; of these 150 are clothed by Trust, and an outfit on leaving and a situation found for all who pass the VIIth Standard.

The houses on either side of the school are of recent date, but from that on the west, to the west corner, stretches a long row of old houses with windows under the tiles on the roof. The west side of the square is almost wholly eighteenth century, in the usual style. The staircases are panelled, and have spiral balusters. The rooms are all completely wainscotted, and have heavily recessed fireplaces. The entrance ways are completely panelled, and many door lintels and window frames are perilously askew.

By far the most interesting object in the ward without the Walls is the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, which stands at the south end of Red Cross Street. It was built about 1090 by Alfure, who became the first Hospitaller of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; the building was replaced by a second church, towards the end of the fourteenth century, and this was burnt down in 1545. It was at once rebuilt, and escaped the Great Fire of 1666, and has remained substantially the same up to the present time. It is of exceptional interest in contrast with the uniformity of Wren’s City churches. In 1791 the pitch of the roof was raised, and during the latter half of the eighteenth century there was extensive restoration. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1181.

The patronage of the church has been in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who received it from Almund the priest in 1100, or thereabouts, up to the present time.

Houseling people in 1548 were 2440.

This church is in the Perpendicular style and contains a nave, chancel, and two side aisles separated from the central part by clustered columns and pointed arches. The total length is 146 feet 3 inches, and the height 42 feet 8 inches; the total height of the steeple 146 feet 3 inches, that of the four pinnacles rising from the corners of the parapet of the tower 12 feet 9 inches.

Chantries were founded in the church: By Richard Chaurye, whose endowment fetched £4 in 1548; by Matthew Ashebye, whose endowment yielded £9: 7: 8 in 1548. The King granted his licence to found the Fraternity of Our Lady and St. Giles, September 21, 1426; there were several chantries endowed here by John Bullinger, William Lake, and William Serle, and by William Grove and Richard Heyworth.

Among the several memorial windows of the church the most interesting is that at the west of the south aisle, comprising three subjects, erected in memory of Edward Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich College. The earliest monument now existing is of Thomas Busby, who died in 1575. On the west wall, at the end of the north aisle, is a tablet commemorating the martyrologist John Foxe, who died in the parish in 1587. Sir Martin Frobisher was buried here, but it was not till 1888 that a monument was erected to his memory, on the eastern part of the south wall. On the same wall, farther west, John Speed is commemorated, author of various works dealing with the history of Great Britain. The chief interest attaching to this church is the fact that in it John Milton was buried in 1674; there is a stone commemorating him. In 1793 a monument in the shape of a bust was erected to him at the expense of Samuel Whitbread, and in 1862 a cenotaph designed by Edmund Woodthorpe was placed in the south aisle. The church contains numerous other monuments, a great many of which have a considerable degree of interest; many of them have been erected to the memory of benefactors and vicars. It was here that the wedding of Oliver Cromwell was solemnised in 1620; the register also contains entries to another family whose name is also linked with Milton’s—that of the Egerton’s, Earls of Bridgewater.

The greatest of the benefactors recorded by Stow seems to have been Throckmorton Trotman, who gave to the parish £547 in all. In later times, Sir William Staines, Lord Mayor in 1800, was a liberal donor, founding and endowing four almshouses for decayed parishioners; also the Rev. Frederick W. Blomberg, D.D., vicar of this church in 1833.

There was a school for 150 boys in the Freedom; also another for 50 girls, supported by the donation of the Lady Eleanor Holles, the Haberdashers’ Free School. There were six almshouses, founded by Mr. Allen, also the Lorrimer’s almshouses.

John Buckeridge (d. 1631), Bishop of Rochester, was vicar here; also William Fuller (d. 1659), Dean of Durham; Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester; John Rogers, (1679-1729), chaplain to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George II.); John Dolben (1625-86), Archbishop of York; William H. Hale (1795-1870), Master of Charterhouse.

The churchyard contains a drinking fountain in the shape of the old Cripplegate, which is neatly laid out and intersected by a public footpath; there is also an interesting relic, a bastion of the old London Wall, 36 feet wide and about 12 feet high, the most perfect fragment of the wall now existing. It is of inconsiderable height, not more than 12 feet, and made of many odd pieces of different kinds of stone, laid in cement. It looks solid enough to last another 400 years. Ivy grows over it and over the adjoining wall, which is a modern addition. Within this bastion was formerly a small religious house called St. James-on-the-Wall (see MediÆval London, vol. ii. p. 368). The backs of great warehouses and the east side of the box-like vicarage surround the churchyard. Over the entry from Fore Street are several very old houses. We are outside the limits of the Fire here, as the date of the entry, 1660, testifies. This entry has a semicircular canopy or pediment containing this date, and the names of the churchwardens of the period, deeply and clearly cut. On either side are the representations of two large hour-glasses. A skull and cross-bones on the one side, and an hour-glass on the other, are carved in relief below, and the whole is covered with plaster. The backs of the houses are covered with overlapping pieces of wood which rise right up to the gable ends. Facing the street, there are projecting bays running up the front containing windows.

The street, London Wall, until the middle of the eighteenth century, consisted of a south row of houses facing the wall itself. In two places the space before the wall was occupied by churchyards, that of Allhallows-on-the-Wall and that of St. Alphage. Farther to the east, St. Martin Outwich also had a burial-ground beside the wall. The pulling down of the wall, the building of houses upon it and against it on either side, was the work of many years. To this day there are houses on the north side of the street to which access is gained by a step, showing that they were built actually on the wall. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a long piece of wall, where is now the opening to Finsbury Square, was taken down to allow of more sunshine in the front of Bethlehem Hospital. The appearance of the street at that time was very pleasing. Sion College, the churches of Allhallows and St. Alphage, and the Armourers’ Hall, with the venerable wall on the north, gave it a very striking and picturesque character. It is a great pity that the wall was taken down. The distance marked by the length of a lane connecting London Wall with the south side of Fore Street gives the breadth of the wall and of the town ditch beyond.

At the east end of London Wall is the church of

This church stands on the old Roman wall erected in the third century, and probably marks the site of one of the earliest Christian churches built in this country.

The earliest authentic records give particulars of a church on the present site, which dates from the year A.D. 1300, and there is little doubt that it replaced an earlier structure, which had stood since the Norman Conquest, and had fallen into disrepair. In A.D. 1474 Allhallows Chapel was constructed, probably for the accommodation of the Ankers, or Anchorites, who were closely associated with the church. The most famous of these was Sir Simon, or Master Anker, the author of a devotional book which has been preserved in the British Museum, entitled The Fruits of Redemption, who was a great benefactor to Allhallows.

In A.D. 1527 a new aisle was added to the church. Possibly Sir Simon, when he attached himself to Allhallows, discarded the loft over the chapel, and settled himself in a cell in the bastion of the old Roman wall, which now forms the vestry. If, as is probable, he had taken a vow never to emerge from his retirement, it may be that when the new aisle was added he was persuaded to place his eloquence at the disposal of the parishioners, by consenting to preach on condition that a private passage was made from his cell leading straight into the pulpit. This would explain why, when the present church was built, the conditions were reproduced by which the pulpit is not accessible from the church, but can only be reached by a staircase leading through the vestry.

The list of rectors can only be traced back to A.D. 1335, but there is an interesting record in the Croniques de Londres, which mentions that in A.D. 1320 the priest of Allhallows (whose name is not given) was murdered by Isabel de Bury, who took refuge in the church, but the Bishop of London would not allow her to seek sanctuary there, so she was seized, and was hanged five days afterwards.

The patronage of Allhallows was for many centuries in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. At the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century it passed to the Crown, and since then has belonged to the Lord Chancellor.

The church was fortunate enough to escape destruction during the Great Fire in 1666, but it fell into a ruinous state about a century later, and had to be demolished. The present structure, for the erection of which a special Act of Parliament was passed, was commenced in A.D. 1765, and cost £3000. The architect was George Dance the younger, and it was his brother, Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, R.A., who presented to the church the magnificent painting which hangs over the altar. It was a copy made by himself of the famous picture in the Church of the Conception at Rome by Pietro Berretini di Cortona, a Florentine painter of repute who died in 1669. The subject is the restoration to sight of Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) by Ananias at Damascus. The fifteenth-century monk in the crowd gives a quaint touch of mediÆvalism to the scene.

The architecture of the church deserves a passing notice. The plan is intended to reproduce a modified Roman Basilican church, but the evidences of the Greek revival are shown in the character of the Ionic capitals of the interior columns, as well as in the famous Greek honeysuckle ornament, which appears both in the Roman barrel-vault of the ceiling and in the frieze round the interior walls. The church is almost unique in representing the transition stage between the Italian renaissance and the short-lived introduction of the Greek style.

Among the most famous rectors during the nineteenth century were the Rev. William Beloe, the well-known translator of Herodotus and Aulus Gellius; the Rev. Robert Nares, the Shakespearian glossary writer; and the Rev. George Davys, who was tutor to the late Queen Victoria, and became successively Rector of Allhallows, Dean of Chester, and Bishop of Peterborough.

Returning to our section, from which we have somewhat strayed, we find Wood Street has been already described.

In Noble Street stood the houses of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Sergeant Fleetwood, Recorder of London. This street is dismissed by Stow in a few words; it faced the City Wall westward, and so long as the Wall was preserved there was an open space of twenty feet at least free from buildings, while without there was the City Ditch. It began at the end of Foster Lane, having the Church of St. John Zachary in the east, and on the west, separated by a block of houses, the Church of St. Anne-of-the-Willows. Going up the street we pass Lilypot Lane, Oat Lane, leading to St. Mary Staining Church (see p. 47), and two or three courts.

At the south end of Noble Street was Engain Lane, called also Maiden Lane, Ingelene Lane, or Ing Lane. Here a Roman pavement was found (Proceedings of Soc. Antiq. Series, i. 2. p. 184). Riley, in his Introduction to the Memorials, thinks that this lane is lost. He supposes, however, that the St. Michael “Hoggene Lane” was St. Michael Queenhithe, instead of St. Michael by Huggin Lane, which is adjacent.

A continuation of Maiden Lane is St. Anne’s Lane or Distaff Lane.

In 1339, William de Clif bequeaths tenements in Igene Lane “elsewhere called Ing Lane and Engaynes end, afterwards Maiden Lane” (Prideaux, Goldsmiths’ Company, vol. i. p. 4). In 1560, “Mother Lowndes” had a melting furnace in Maiden Lane. In 1627, Lord Nowell had the lease of a house in the lane. In 1642, Lord Campden wanted to purchase the messuage of which he held a lease, but was refused. In Staining Lane stood the almshouses of the Haberdashers for the men of that Company.

In the modern Noble Street the new Post Office Hotel is a conspicuous object on the east. Close by is Ye Noble Restaurant. Lilypot Lane is one consecutive series of the less ornamental style of modern brick and stone warehouses. Ye Olde Bell next to Oat Lane is evidently an old house, and, seen in the vista of the street, has a considerable bow forward. It is plastered. The coat-of-arms over the wooden doorway of the Coachmakers’ Hall arrests attention for a moment. Then we see Nos. 16 and 17 on either side over the entry of Fitchett’s Court, which are really old. They are of roughened red brick, dating from the rebuilding after the Fire. Fitchett’s Court is a narrow stone-flagged cul de sac lined on either side with similar houses. At the upper end is a modern glass-roofed building. It is inhabited chiefly by manufacturers’ agents, but is quaint, with a projecting bowed window near the entry, and a dark woodwork doorway with two carved brackets supporting the cornice. The house mentioned above in Noble Street on the north of the Court is The Royal Mail Tavern. The remainder of this street contains no point of interest. The Coachmakers’ Hall stands on the east side of Noble Street, north of Oat Lane.

The Hall stands on the site of Shelley House, owned by Sir Thomas Shelley temp Henry IV. Afterwards it was named Bacon House by Nicholas Bacon. “A plain man, direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness,” who dwelt here till the Queen, Elizabeth, made him Lord Keeper in 1558, when he moved hence. He was the father of Lord Bacon, the philosopher. He sometime rebuilt this house, and was buried in St. Paul’s, where his effigy yet remains. After the Lord Keeper’s departure, William Fleetwood, Recorder of London, lived here between 1575 and 1586, yet he seems to have died in a house of his own building, in Noble Street, to the north of this (1593-94). By continual industry, advanced by natural good parts, he attained to the name of an eminent lawyer. He was a man of a merry conceit, eloquent and very zealous against vagrants, mass-priests, and papists. In 1638, Sir Arthur Savage and others sold the house to one Charles Bostock, scrivener. Now, the Common Scriveners had been a Company of this City by prescription, time out of mind. They made regulations for their profession in 1373; in 1390 they began their Common Paper, a book of ordinances and signatures, still extant. Yet there is no account of any Hall for them. In 1497 they met at the dwelling-place of Henry Woodcock, their warden; in 1557 at Wax Chandlers’ Hall. Their Charter of Incorporation (January 28, 1616-17) ordained a Hall, so in 1631 they bought Bacon House for £810. After the Great Fire of 1666 they rebuilt this.

Afterwards the Coachmakers Company treated for its purchase, and bought it with houses in Oat Lane, for £1600, raised by gift. For though coaches had become common since the seventeenth century began, and the Coach and Coach-Harness Makers had been incorporated in 1677, they had up till then no Hall.

Early in the nineteenth century the Hall had become a warehouse, whose counting-house retained the Coachmakers’ arms and a name-list of their benefactors. In 1841 they rebuilt it; in 1843 furnished it anew by subscription.

In 1870, borrowing money, they built the present Hall.

The date of the first charter is 31st May, 29 Charles II., 1677, and is for the general protection and supervision of the trade of coachmakers and coach-harness makers.

In the early days of the Company, the master, wardens, and assistants used to visit all the workshops within the prescribed limits of the Company’s sphere of action, but that seems to have engendered bad feelings among the various members of the trade, and so gradually fell into desuetude; but in 1864 the Company granted the free use of the hall for the operative Coachmakers’ Industrial Exhibition, which was opened under the auspices of the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Very Reverend Dean Milman, D.D. From that time to the present the Company have continuously offered prizes to those connected with the trade.

At present the number of the livery is 115. The Corporate Income is £970; there is no Trust Income. The Company have of late held exhibitions and offered prizes for the encouragement of coach-building.

St. Olave’s Churchyard is on the south side of Silver Street. A stone inscription tells us that the road was widened 8 feet in 1865 just at this point. The disused graveyard is now open to the public as a recreation ground, and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association have distributed seats about among the old tombs. Low down by the steps at the entrance is a stone slab bearing a heading of a skull and cross-bones, and beneath the following words:

This was the parish church of St. Olave’s, Silver Street, destroyed by the Dreadful Fire in the year 1666.

This church was situated on the south side of Silver Street, in Aldersgate Ward. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Alban’s, Wood Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1343.

The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 130.

No monuments of any interest are recorded.

The parish received two charitable gifts: a messuage purchased for £58, the gift of Roger James; and £5: 10s., to be paid every tenth year, the gift of Bernard Hyde.

In Silver Street, No. 24 is the Parish Clerks’ Hall.

The Parish Clerks were first incorporated by 12 Henry III., 1232, and confirmed by 14 Henry IV., 1412. In 1547, the first year of Edward VI., all lands and properties belonging to fraternities not being mysteries and crafts, were declared Crown possessions; thus the Parish Clerks suffered the loss of their hall in Bishopsgate, which was sold to Sir Robert Chester in 1548. In vain they disputed the King’s claim; in vain obtained powerful support in the City, and hoped to win the day: Sir Robert pulled down their hall, and they were homeless. Then they took quarters at the north-west corner of Broad Lane in the Vintry; the site is now thrown into the roadway of Queen Street Place. Immortal Machyn, in his diary, 1562, records that, after service at the Guildhall chapel and procession, that year the Parish Clerks went to “their own” hall to dine; this was the Broad Lane house. Little enough is known of the premises: the Clerks were paying thirty-one nobles (£10: 6: 8) rent in 1583; in 1592 they commenced publishing the Bills of Mortality; on renewing the lease in 1628, for forty years, they handed to “the superior” £40 as fine. By this time they had been reincorporated by the 8 James I., 1611, and were confirmed by 12 Charles I., 1636. They seem to have covered their rent from 1648 onwards by letting the lower rooms and cellars on lease for £11 per annum. In 1625 the Star Chamber granted them permission to set up a printing-press in this hall for the purpose of issuing the weekly Bills of Mortality. Here also the Company appointed its own joiner, carpenter, and bricklayer, nor omitted to secure the all-important cook. By 1637 the bricklayer had new-tiled the roof; he charged £12: also the joiner had wainscotted the parlour, but the Clerks thought his bill of £13 rather too much; he must include “some convenient work in addition,” to be set up above the three doors in the newly wainscotted room, then they would pay him and appoint him their official joiner. The Great Fire destroyed this hall two years before the lease was up. For some time the Court of the Company wandered from tavern to tavern, but in 1671 ultimately settled at their present hall in Silver Street.

Monkwell Street, anciently written Mugwell, Muggewell, or Mogwell Street, was so called, according to Stow, after a well in the Hermitage of St. James at the north end of the street. The Hermitage was a cell belonging to Garendon Abbey where two or three of the brethren resided as chaplains. There is no doubt about the house or the Hermitage, and very possibly there was a well within its small precinct. At the same time the ancient form of the name, Mugwell, does not suggest the word Monk. It seems probable that the name was originally Mugwell, and that after the Dissolution the memory of the well was kept up by a corruption of the name. The street appears to have been outside the industries of North London. It is mentioned many times in the Calendar of Wills, but never in connection with workshops or trading shops. Between 1277 and 1576 there are the entries of the street. They all speak of rents, tenements, and houses. In the year 1349 we find a brewery in the street. This naturally inclines us to think that there must have been a well—? Mugwell—to supply the brewery. In Riley’s Memorials it is mentioned once only in connection with a tourelle of London Wall near the street. The Hermitage was succeeded by Lamb’s Chapel.

This Fraternity should also be of extreme antiquity. When or why the barbers took upon themselves the practice of surgery I do not know. It was the custom of the Roman Catholic Church to allow ecclesiastics to become physicians on the condition (Council of Tours, 1163) that they abstained from fire and steel; Rabelais, for instance, in the fifteenth century, practised medicine subject to this condition. But some kinds of surgery are necessary: bone-setting, for instance, which was understood and performed by the common people; dentistry, which at first fell into the hands of barbers but afterwards became a separate mystery practised by itinerants; cupping, blood-letting, the dressing of wounds, and amputations also fell into the hands of the barbers. But not of all the barbers. Surgery advanced by degrees; it became a distinct profession before it was recognised.

That the barbers practised blood-letting is proved by an ordinance of 1307 forbidding them to put blood in their windows in view of folks. In 1308, Richard le Barber is presented to the mayor and admitted Master over the trade of Barbers. He swore to make scrutiny among the craft, and if he found any keeping brothels or acting unseemly he would distrain upon them. The oath indicates that barbers were suspected of keeping disorderly houses; in fact they looked after the bagnios, which were always regarded with well-founded suspicion. Barbers were often appointed as gatekeepers. The reason would seem difficult to find, until it is remembered that it was strictly forbidden that lepers should enter the City, and that barbers were better able than other men from their medical knowledge to detect them.

The earliest admission of a surgeon is recorded in the year 1312. John of Southwark is described as “cirurgicus.” Clearly he was that and nothing else; not a shaving man at all.

Some of them were wealthy. For instance, Hamo the Barber in 1340 was assessed at £10 as his contribution towards a forced loan of £5000 to the King.

In the year 1376, the fraternity was ruled by two masters representing the two divisions of barbers—who could also let blood and draw teeth—and surgeons.

In the year 1388, the King sent writs all over the kingdom to inquire into the constitution of the guilds and fraternities then existing in the country. The returns appear to have been lost. But the return sent in by the barbers still exists in a copy preserved at Barbers’ Hall. It is published in extenso in Mr. Sidney Young’s book. It is a long document, and it pours a flood of light upon the guilds and their laws. The original is in Norman French.

Since the barbers were not yet incorporated, they had no authority except over their own members. They could not, therefore, prevent the formation of a Fraternity of Surgeons, who practised without any reference to the barbers. In 1376, the barbers, no doubt because of this rival guild, complained against incompetent persons practising surgery, and prayed that two masters should rule the craft, and that none should be admitted without examination. In 1390, the Surgeons’ Guild obtained powers to appoint five masters for the directing of those practising surgery and of women as well as men. The surgeons thereupon tried to exercise the right of scrutiny over the barbers, who claimed and obtained the protection of the City.

In the year 1461, Edward IV. granted the barbers a Charter of Incorporation.

The preamble to the Letters Patent, 1 Edward IV., by which the Company were incorporated, recites that the Freemen of the Mystery of Barbers of the City of London, using the Mystery or Faculty of Surgery, had for a long time exercised and sustained and still continued to exercise and sustain great application and labour, as well about the curing and healing wounds, blows, and other infirmities as in the letting of blood and drawing of teeth, and that by the ignorance and unskilfulness of some of the said barbers, as well freemen of the said City as of others being foreign surgeons, many misfortunes had happened to divers people by the unskilfulness of such barbers and surgeons in healing and curing wounds, blows, hurts, and other infirmities, and that it was to be feared that the like or worse evils might thereafter ensue unless a suitable remedy was speedily provided in the premises.

And it was thereby granted to the freemen of the said mystery of barbers in the said City of London, that the said mystery and all the men of the said mystery, should be one body, and one perpetual community, with power for electing two masters or governors, and that the said masters or governors and commonalty and their successors might make statutes and ordinances for the government of the said mysteries. And that the masters or governors for the time being, and their successors, should have the survey, search, correction, and government of all the freemen of the said City being surgeons, using the mystery of barbers in the said City, and other surgeons being foreigners practising the mystery of surgery within the said City and suburbs thereof, and the punishment of them for offences in not perfectly executing, performing, and using the said mystery, and should have the survey of all manner of instruments, plaisters, and other medicines, and the receipts used by the said barbers and surgeons for the curing and healing of sores, wounds, hurts, and such like infirmities. And that no barber using the said mystery of surgery within the said City or suburbs should be thereafter admitted to exercise the same mystery unless he had first been approved of as well instructed in that mystery by the said masters or governors, or their successors sufficiently qualified in that behalf.

By the Act of Parliament of 32 Henry VIII., after reciting that within the said City of London there were then two several and distinct companies of surgeons exercising the science and faculty of surgery, the one company called the Barbers of London, and the other called the Surgeons of London, and that the former were incorporated by the Letters Patent of 1 Edward IV., but the latter had not any manner of incorporation; it was enacted that the two several and distinct companies, and their successors, should from thenceforth be united and made one entire and whole body corporate, which should thereafter be called by the name of Masters or Governors of the Mystery or Commonalty of Barbers and Surgeons of London.

The Letters Patent of 1 James and 5 Chas. I., granted and confirmed to the united companies: All and singular the manors, messuages, lands, tenements, customs, liberties, franchises, immunities, jurisdictions, and hereditaments of the united companies of barbers and surgeons then held by them and enjoyed under any letters patent of any former kings and queens or by colour of any lawful prescription, with power to make byelaws, annual elections, appoint examiners of surgeons, and that no person should exercise surgery within the cities of London and Westminster or within the distance of seven miles of the said cities, unless previously examined; and by the public letters testimonial of the said company, under their common seal, and admitted to exercise the said art or mystery of surgery under the penalty therein mentioned; and that all persons so examined and admitted as aforesaid might exercise the art in any other places whatsoever of the kingdom of England, with power to appoint lectures for instruction in the principles and rudiments in the art of chirurgery.

By the Act of 18 Geo. 2, cap. 15, after reciting the before-mentioned Acts, and that the barbers had for many years past been engaged in a business foreign to and independent of the practice of surgery, and the surgeons being then become a numerous and considerable body, and finding their union with the barbers inconvenient in many respects, and in no degree conducive to the progress of the art of surgery, and that a separation of the corporation of barbers and surgeons would contribute to the improvement of surgery, it was enacted that the said union and incorporation of barbers and surgeons should, after June 24, 1745, be dissolved, and the surgeons were constituted a separate and distinct body corporate by the name of the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Art and Science of Surgeons of London; and the barbers were thereby constituted a body corporate and commonalty perpetual, which should be called by the name of the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Mystery of Barbers of London.

The Barbers Company, since their separation from the surgeons, have continued to conduct the affairs of the Company.

The Hall of the Company is mentioned by Stow with certain particulars of their history:

“In this west side is the Barbers-Chirurgeons’ hall. This Company was incorporated by means of Thomas Morestede, esquire, one of the sheriffs of London 1436, chirurgeon to the kings of England, Henry IV., V., and VI.: he deceased 1450. Then Jaques Fries, physician to Edward IV., and William Hobbs, physician and chirurgeon for the same king’s body, continuing the suit the full time of twenty years, Edward IV., in the 2nd of his reign, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became founders of the same corporation in the name of St. Cosme and St. Damiane. The first assembly of that craft was Roger Strippe, W. Hobbs, T. Goddard, and Richard Kent; since the which time they built their hall in that street, etc.”

The number of the livery is about 120. There are no particulars as to the Corporate Income of the Company. The Trust Income is about £650 per annum.