VARIOUS CRESTS AND COATS OF ARMS.
‘Coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.’
Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream.
A VAST amount of property in London is owned by the City Companies, and houses which belong to them are as a rule marked by their arms or crest. These were formerly carved in stone, and a few fine old specimens still remain, similar in style to the ordinary sculptured house signs. Sometimes, no doubt, a citizen put up on his own house, as a sign, the arms of the guild of which he was a member; and this seems to have been the case with the stone bas-relief of Adam and Eve, which was formerly imbedded in the front wall of No. 52, Newgate Street, a house now rebuilt. Eve appeared handing the fatal apple to Adam, the tree in the centre, round its stem the serpent twining; at the upper corners were the initials l s, below the date 1669. It represented the arms of the Fruiterers’ Company, but I have not been able to discover that the house had ever belonged to them. At Milton next Sittingbourne, on a public-house formerly the Fruiterers’ Arms, now misnamed the Waterman’s Arms, is a similar carved sign, one of the few I have found out of London. Beneath is inscribed ‘The Fruiterers.’ The design appears on a seventeenth-century trade-token issued from Rosemary Lane. The arms of the Fruiterers’ Company, as blazoned in Hatton’s ‘New View of London’ (1708), are: azure, on a mount in base vert, the tree of Paradise environed with the serpent between Adam and Eve, all proper. Motto, ‘Deus dat incrementum.’ What Ruskin calls the ‘fig-tree angle’ of the Doge’s Palace, Venice, is adorned by a famous piece of sculpture representing this subject.
The Elephant and Castle is the crest of the Cutlers’ Company. A stone bas-relief representing it is to be seen on the east side of Bell Savage Yard, Ludgate Hill, having been placed there nearly thirty years ago, some time after the famous old inn was levelled with the ground. It formerly stood over the gateway below the sign of the Bell. In 1568 John Craythorne gave the reversion of this inn, and after his death the house called the Rose in Fleet Street, to the Cutlers’ Company for ever, on condition that two exhibitions to the Universities, and certain sums to poor prisoners, should be paid to them out of the estate. A portrait of Mrs. Craythorne hangs in Cutlers’ Hall. In mediÆval times the elephant was commonly depicted with a castle on its back. It was then the heraldic emblem of Rome, and appears as such on the floor of the cathedral at Siena.
The Bell Savage Inn which came to be thus associated with the Elephant and Castle, was one of the oldest and most famous hostelries in London. As long ago as 31 Henry VI. it is described in a deed as Savage’s Inn, otherwise the Bell on the Hoop, thus proving the origin of the sign, which from the time of Stow to that of Addison had caused so many ingenious but faulty surmises. Here plays were performed, and Bankes showed his wonderful horse Marocco. Lambarde, in his ‘Perambulation of Kent,’[52] tells us that ‘none who go to Paris Garden, the Bel Savage, or Theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence-play, can account of any pleasant spectacle, unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for a quiet standing.’ It was ‘upon a stall’ over against the Bell Savage gate that Sir Thomas Wyat ‘stayd and rested him awhile,’ when foiled in his ill-advised rebellion; as related by Howe, the continuator of Stow’s ‘Annals.’ And Grinling Gibbons once occupied a house in the yard, where, as Horace Walpole says, ‘he carved a pot of flowers which shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that passed by.’ I have a quaint little book in Hudibrastic rhyme, ‘The delights of the Bottle, or the Compleat Vintner,’ attributed to Ned Ward. The third edition is ‘printed for Sam. Briscoe at the Bell-Savage on Ludgate-Hill, 1721.’
The Cutlers’, though not one of the twelve great City Companies, is still of considerable importance, and as early as the 49th year of Edward III. is said to have elected two of the Common Council; its first charter dated from the time of Henry V. A good sculptured specimen of the arms is to be seen on the front of a house in Houndsditch, at the corner of Cutler Street. They were granted by Thomas Holme. Clarencieux in 1476, and have been blazoned thus: gules—three pair of swords, in saltier, argent, pommelled and hilted or, viz., two pair in chief and one in base. The crest should have by rights pennons displayed from the castle; it was granted by Robert Cook, Clarencieux. Supporters; two elephants or; motto: ‘Pour parvenir a bonne foy.’ The carving referred to above was put up in the year 1734 to mark property belonging to the Company, as may be gathered from the tablet on the west front of the same house, which is inscribed ‘cuttlers’ street, 1734.’ The hall of the Cutlers’ Company, rebuilt after the Great Fire in Cloak Lane, Cannon Street, was destroyed for the Inner Circle Railway. A new hall has lately been erected in Warwick Lane.
Another heraldic charge of a City Company is the Leopard, a carving of which was formerly let into the front of a house in Budge Row, No. 28. It was rebuilt about twelve years ago, when the sign was placed in the passage of the new structure. The owner has kindly allowed a sketch to be taken, which is here reproduced. I believe that the property at one time belonged to the Skinners’ Company, having been part of a bequest of John Draper, in 1496. The Leopard, though not supported by a wreath, therefore represents their crest. The word ‘budge,’ whence Budge Row takes its name, formerly signified the dressed skin or fur of lamb, and would seem to indicate that furriers carried on their business in this quarter, near to the Hall of the Skinners’ Company, which was devoted to the protection of their craft. In 1338, and again in 1358, the City authorities ordered that women of inferior rank should not be arrayed in budge or wool.
One of the commonest London sculptured signs is that of the Maiden’s Head, which indicates property belonging to the Mercers’ Company. I will mention one which is to be seen above the first-floor window of No. 6, Ironmonger Lane, with the date 1668, as it is the only specimen of any antiquity known to me which is dated, and being somewhat more florid in treatment than usual, it is characteristic of the time at which it was put up. The arms of the company, granted in 1568 and confirmed in 1634, are: gules, a demi-virgin, with her hair dishevelled, crowned, issuing out of and within an orle of clouds, all proper. One may presume from the date that they were chosen in honour of Queen Elizabeth. Strype says: ‘When any of this company is chosen mayor, or makes one of the triumph of the day, wherein he goes to Westminster to be sworn, a most beautiful virgin is carried through the streets in a chariot, with all the glory and majesty possible, with her hair all dishevelled about her shoulders, to represent the maidenhead which the company give for their arms, and this lady is plentifully gratified for her pains, besides the gift of all the rich attire she wears.’ The Maiden’s Head also appears on the arms of the Pinners’ Company, with the motto, ‘Virginitas et unitas nostra Æternitas.’ It was assumed as a badge of the Parr family, previous to the marriage of Catherine Parr with Henry VIII. They derived it from the family of Ros of Kendal.
The Mercers’ Company is very ancient; it was incorporated in the year 1393 (17 Rich. II.);[53] but long before that the mercers had been associated voluntarily for purposes of mutual aid and comfort. They came to light first as a fraternity in the time of Henry II., for Gilbert À Becket, father of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is said to have been a mercer; and in 1192, Agnes de Helles, sister of St. Thomas, and her husband Thomas Fitz-Theobald de Helles, in founding the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which is distinctly stated to have been built on the spot where the future archbishop was born, constituted the fraternity of mercers patrons of the hospital. The present Mercers’ Hall, in Cheapside, is built on part of this site. It was only by degrees that the merchant adventurers became detached from the mercers. The last link between the two companies was severed as late as the year 1666, when the Great Fire destroyed the office held by the Merchant-Adventurers under Mercers’ Hall. The Haberdashers’ Company was a branch of the Mercers’, which broke off from them in the time of Henry VI. The word ‘mercer’ would seem to imply merchant only, being derived, through the French ‘mercier,’ from the Latin word ‘mercator.’ It is probable that those who were called mercers dealt at first in most commodities, except food and the precious metals. Herbert, however, considers that in ancient times ‘mercer’ was the name for a man who dealt in small wares; and that ‘merceries then comprehended all things sold retail by the little balance, in contradistinction to things sold by the beam, or in gross, and included not only toys, together with haberdashery and various other articles connected with dress, but also spices and drugs; in short, what at present constitutes the stock of a general country shopkeeper.’ He goes on to say that the silk trade, which in later ages formed the main feature of the mercers’ business, is stated in the Act of 33 Henry VI., c. 5, to have been carried on by ‘the silkwomen and throwsteres of London,’ who, in petitioning for that Act, pray that the Lombards and other strangers may be hindered from importing wrought silk into the realm, contrary to custom, and to the ruin of the mystery and occupation of silk-making and other virtuous female occupations.
The mercers were not the first incorporated company; in this the goldsmiths, skinners, and merchant tailors may claim precedence; they, however, have long ranked the first, as exemplified in the following stanzas from a song addressed to Sir John Peakes, mercer (who was elected Lord Mayor in 1686), after a dinner given in his honour:
‘Advance the Virgin, lead the van,
Of all that are in London free,
The Mercer is the foremost man
That founded a society.
Cho. Of all the trades that London grace,
We are the first in time and place.
‘When Nature in perfection was,
And virgin beauty in her prime,
The Mercer gave the nymph a gloss,
And made e’en beauty more sublime.
Cho. In this above our brethren blest,
The Virgin’s since our coat and crest.’
More or less analogous to the arms of the City companies are the arms of the Inns of Court and Chancery. The interesting and highly picturesque gatehouse of Lincoln’s Inn, facing Chancery Lane, has on it the date 1518, and three shields. That in the centre represents the royal arms of England; to the spectator’s right are the arms of Sir Thomas Lovell, K.G., who was son of the executor of King Henry VII., had been reader to the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, and gave most of the money required for building the gatehouse.[54] To the left are the arms of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, namely, or, a lion rampant purp., placed there by the builder; which reminds one of the historic fact that Lincoln’s Inn stands on the site of the Earl’s mansion and grounds, once possessed, in part at least, by the Black or Preaching Friars. Here he had a fine garden—so productive that, besides supplying his table, it yielded, says Mr. Hudson Turner,[55] apples, pears, large nuts, and cherries, sufficient to produce by their sale in one year (24 Edward I.) ‘the sum of £9 2s. 3d. in money of that time, equal to about £135 of modern currency.’ The Earl of Lincoln died without male issue in 1312, but bequeathed his name to the property, which passed into legal hands. His arms are still retained by the honourable society, though it has been said that Sir James Lea at one time proposed another device.
The Winged Horse, or Pegasus, representing the arms of the Society of the Inner Temple, ornaments the well-known gatehouse in Fleet Street, which dates from 1607, and has in front the feathers of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I. A little west is the gatehouse to the Middle Temple, built in 1684, from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren. It has sculptured on it, the Lamb and Flag, or Agnus Dei:
‘As by the Templars’ haunts you go,
The Horse and Lamb display’d
In emblematic figures show
The merits of their trade;
‘That clients may infer from thence
How just is their profession,
The lamb sets forth their innocence,
The horse their expedition.’
The Winged Horse is supposed by some to be a corruption of the ancient seal of two Knights Templars riding on one horse, indicative of their original poverty; for here they had their headquarters in England ‘till they decayed through pride.’ The two designs, however, resemble each other to a very slight extent, and in point of fact have no connection. It seems that in the fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Society of the Inner Temple adopted, as a heraldic charge, the Pegasus with the motto ‘Volat ad Æthera virtus,’ at the suggestion of Gerard Leigh, one of its Benchers, a pedantic student of heraldry, the idea being that the knowledge which might be gained at this seat of learning would raise its possessor to the highest pinnacle of fame. Sir George Buc,[56] master of the revels, appears to be responsible for the lamb and flag. He tells us that in 1615, more than fifty years after the adoption of the Pegasus by the twin society, the authorities of the Middle Temple had neither arms nor seal, and to supply the want he suggested either ‘two armed knights riding upon one horse, or a field argent charged with a cross gules, and on the nombril thereof a Holy Lamb;’ the first having been, as I have said, the ancient seal of the Knights Templars, and the second what they appear to have assumed later, when they became prosperous. This at least is Sir George Buc’s statement, on the authority of an illuminated manuscript containing the statutes of their order, which belonged to Lord William Howard of Naworth. Mr. Barrington thought that the Holy Lamb, as a representation of Christ, should be encircled by a nimbus. To confirm this view and to prove that the Templars did use the device, he gives a quotation from Blomefield’s MS. collections for Cambridgeshire, wherein the Holy Lamb, with its nimbus and banner, appears on the seal of a deed dated 1273, by which Guido de Foresta, ‘magister militiÆ Templi in Anglia et fratres ejusdem militiÆ,’ leased out certain lands in Pampesworth, Cambridgeshire, the rent to be paid, ‘domino Templi,’ at Dunworth of the same county. Round the seal is the following inscription, ‘? sigillvm templi.’ From the fact that Sir George Buc suggested to the Society of the Middle Temple the two devices which had been used by the Templars, it is evident that the Pegasus, already adopted by the Inner Temple, was not considered in his time to have any connection with the original seal of the Knights Templars.
The fourth of the great Inns of Court—Gray’s Inn—derived its name from the noble family of the Greys of Wilton, having been originally their dwelling, just as Lincoln’s Inn had been the dwelling of an Earl of Lincoln, and several of the Inns of Chancery were originally the homes of other well-known personages. The society seems first to have used the arms of the Grey family; afterwards they adopted the Griffin’s Head[57] as their device, and it still adorns the pillars of the gateway from Field Court into those delightful gardens which were first planted, it is thought, under the direction of no less a man than Francis Bacon. Once they were the resort of fine ladies, but fashion has long since deserted them. The trees, however, are still fine, the aspect of the place ‘reverend and law-abiding.’ Here there is, or was, a rookery, which has given pleasure to generations of Londoners. Early last summer (1892) the Benchers, anxious to utilize so eligible a site, erected a corrugated iron structure some 90 feet long, at the south-west corner of the gardens. They have tried to make it look beautiful by partly covering it with trellis-work, and by having the wooden roof painted tile colour. The rooks, however, showed their resentment by flying off in a body, and it remains a question whether they will again make the gardens their permanent home; for now I hear that this erection, which has the negative merit of being easily removable, is to be replaced by a chapel ‘in the Elizabethan or late Tudor style,’ the windows to be fitted—or misfitted—with glass from the present chapel, which will be turned to secular use. A little more than a century ago Gray’s Inn was quite on the outskirts of London,[58] ‘with an uninterrupted prospect of the neighbouring fields as far as Highgate and Hampstead.’
Centuries before the Great Fire, carved shields of arms were doubtless common in London on public buildings and the houses of great people, as decorations, and as guides to the unlettered class, which then formed a vast majority of the population. Sometimes—at any rate, in the earlier days—these arms were not carved in stone, but painted and hung out, as we learn from the evidence of the poet Chaucer[59] in the Scrope and Grosvenor dispute, which also gives us an interesting glimpse of the early history of one of our noble families. He says that, in walking up Friday Street, he once saw a sign hung out with ‘arms painted and put there by a knight of the County of Chester, called Sir Robert Grosvenor’; and that was the first time he ever heard of Sir Robert Grosvenor, or his ancestors, or anyone bearing the name of Grosvenor.
The first armorial shield to which I shall refer under this heading is from a public building, and though comparatively modern it should be specially interesting to all citizens of London. I allude to the Royal Arms[60]—a well-executed piece of sculpture—which is used as the sign of a public-house rebuilt quite recently, on the south side of Newcomen Street, late King Street, Southwark. This was taken from the gatehouse at the Southwark end of old London Bridge, which was pulled down in 1760, in consequence of an Act of Parliament passed four years previously, for the destruction of the buildings on London Bridge and the widening of the roadway.
King Street was then being made from High Street to Snow Fields, through the former Axe and Bottle Yard, and these arms, having been bought by Mr. Williams, a stonemason who was employed in the construction of King Street, were placed by him more or less in their present position. In a view of the bridgegate engraved for Noorthouck’s ‘History of London’ (p. 543), the arms appear with the inscription, g ii r, afterwards changed to g iii, as we now see it.
There are still a few carved shields of arms in London, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which marked the property of private individuals. Until quite recently the district known as Cloth Fair and Bartholomew Close, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, was distinguished by its air of picturesque antiquity. Some quaint old houses still remain; on one of them—No. 22, Cloth Fair—is to be seen a relic which carries us back almost to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. This is the armorial shield of Richard Rich, who was made a peer in 1547; or more likely, perhaps, of one of his immediate descendants. It is surmounted by a coronet, and has been blazoned thus: gules, a chevron between three crosses botonnÉe or.[61] The founder of the Rich family was a mercer in the City, and Sheriff in the year 1442; it was his great-grandson Richard who, temp. Henry VIII., became Solicitor-General, Speaker of the House of Commons, and who took so scandalous a part in the trial and conviction of Sir Thomas More. In 1544 the site of St. Bartholomew’s Priory was granted by the King to his favourite, there described as Sir Richard Rich, knight, in consideration of the sum of £1,064 11s. 3d., as appears from the original deed; and here he is said to have lived in the Prior’s mansion as Lord Chancellor. The tolls of the fair[62] were also granted to him. It was provided that the church within the Great Close was to be a parish church for ever, and vacant ground adjoining it on the west side, 87 feet in length by 60 feet in breadth, where the destroyed nave had stood, was to be taken for a churchyard, the site of the fair being no longer used as a burial-ground.
Sir Richard Rich was made a baron in 1547. Queen Mary revoked the grant in his favour, and placed here a convent of Preaching Friars, who under Father Person began to rebuild the nave of the church, but they were turned out when Elizabeth came to the throne, and the following year there was a fresh grant to the purchaser, by the title of Richard Lord Rich, and his heirs, ‘in free socage.’ The monastery with its precincts had been enclosed by a wall which contained, besides the numerous monastic offices, a large garden and court, fifty-one tenements, a mulberry garden (one of the first planted in this country), and the famous churchyard wherein had been held, since the time of Henry I., the great annual gathering for clothiers and drapers. This began to fall off, as a cloth fair,[63] towards the end of the sixteenth century, but continued to be more or less of a London carnival, and in some sort lingered on as late as the year 1855. The first Lord Rich died in 1560; during his lifetime little building seems to have taken place, for in Ralph Aggas’s map, which is considered to be of about this date, the space north of the church has no houses upon it, and the priory wall abutting on Long Lane still exists. Very soon, however, the land was turned to more profitable account, and we find Stow[64] writing at the end of the century: ‘Now notwithstanding all proclamations of the prince, and also the Act of Parliament, in place of booths within this churchyard (only let out in the fair time, and closed up all the year after), be many large houses built, and the north wall towards Long Lane taken down, a number of tenements are there erected for such as will give great rents.’ The houses in the street now called Cloth Fair probably followed the old line of booths. The first Lord Rich’s grandson Robert, who made such an ill-assorted marriage with Lady Penelope Devereux, Sidney’s ‘Stella,’ was raised to the dignity of Earl of Warwick in 1618. His second son Henry was created Baron Kensington and Earl of Holland. The titles were merged in the next generation, and became extinct in the year 1759, when the tolls of the fair descended to the Edwardes family, cousins of the Riches, in whose favour the Kensington title was revived. Lord Kensington sold these tolls to the Corporation of London in 1839.
Before we quit this quaint neighbourhood let us peep into the venerable Church of St. Bartholomew the Great. What an idea it gives one of the splendour of the old priory church, of which it formed but a part, little more than the choir remaining! Much ‘restoration’ is in progress here, and it is difficult at a glance to distinguish between the genuine Norman work and the ingenious nineteenth-century Norman which has lately been added. Fortunately the fine perpendicular oriel on the south side of the triforium has so far escaped intact. It was probably inserted by Prior Bolton (who died in 1532), and has on it, carved in stone, expressive of his name, a tun pierced by a bird-bolt, or arrow. The rebus occurs again on the spandrel of a Tudor doorway which leads into the modern vestry. This Prior seems to have taken pleasure in building, and in seeing his name thus perpetuated.[65] He reconstructed the manor-house of Canonbury, Islington, north of the parish church, which had been given to the convent by Ralph de Berners, and as early as the year 1253 is enumerated among his possessions. Here is also to be found the Prior’s rebus, on a doorway inside No. 6, Canonbury Place, which, with No. 7, is now used for a girls’ school. It also formerly appeared cut in stone on two parts of the wall originally connected with the old brick tower, which is so picturesque and so full of interesting associations.
It is, however, generally thought that the tower, as we see it, was built under the direction of Sir John Spencer, the wealthy merchant, afterwards the purchaser of Crosby Hall, who bought this place from Thomas Lord Wentworth in 1570. Eleven years afterwards Queen Elizabeth visited him here, and towards the end of the century he made great alterations in the building. Two of the rooms attached to Canonbury Tower are finely panelled from floor to ceiling; the very handsome carved chimney-piece in the upper room bears the arms of Sir John Spencer. Canonbury House is now occupied by a Constitutional Club. Parts of the building have been modernized of late years, but the panelled rooms are still much in their original state. The pretty strip of garden at the back contains fruit-trees which Goldsmith may have seen, when he lodged here in the summer of 1767.
We must not forget that the original building occupied a considerable part of Canonbury Place. We have evidence of this in Prior Bolton’s rebus at No. 6; and traces of Sir John Spencer’s work are to be seen in this and the adjoining houses, where there are no less than five richly-stuccoed ceilings, two of them with the date 1599. Here also, inside the entrance, are the arms[66] of Sir Walter Dennys, carved in oak. They were formerly over a fireplace, and when moved to their present position, many years ago, the following inscription was placed underneath:
‘These were the arms of Sir Walter Dennys of Gloucestershire, who was made a Knight by bathing at the creation of Arthur, Prince of Wales in Nov. 1489, and died Sept. 1, 21 Henry VII., and was buried at the church of Olviston in Gloucestershire. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir Rich Weston, Knt., to which family Canonbury House formerly belonged. The carving is therefore 280 years old.’
The latter part of the inscription is clearly erroneous, as the manor-house was not in lay hands till after the dissolution. Mr. Nelson thought that these arms were placed here by some descendant of the Dennys or Weston family, who might afterwards have lived at Canonbury—perhaps one of the Comptons, Joan, a daughter of Sir Walter, having married into that family. The Comptons did not come into possession till 1610, when William, the second lord, succeeded Sir John Spencer, having married Elizabeth, his daughter and sole heiress. I need hardly say that they were the direct ancestors of the present Marquis of Northampton, who still owns the property.
A famous galleried inn, the Old Bell,[67] Holborn, now almost unique of its kind, has, imbedded in the front, the sculptured arms of Fowler of Islington, namely, azure, on a chevron argent, between three herons or, as many crosses formÉe gules. They are surmounted by an esquire’s helmet, with a crest, which seems to be an eagle’s head with a sprig of some sort in its beak. The first man of this family who made any mark was Thomas Fowler, lord of the manor of Bernersbury[68] or Barnsbury, Islington, in 1548. From him descended Sir Thomas Fowler, knight, Deputy Lieutenant of the county of Middlesex, and apparently one of the jurors at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, at Winchester, in 1603. If the tradition of Sir Walter’s residence at Islington is true, they must have lived within a stone’s throw of each other at one time. Before being knighted, Thomas Fowler had married Jane, daughter of Gregory Charlet, citizen and tallow-chandler, who bore him two sons. His second wife, to whom he was married at St. James’s Church, Clerkenwell, on March 17, 1604, was Mary, widow of Sir John Spencer, of Althorp—not to be confused with his neighbour the rich merchant of Crosby Place and Canonbury, who lived on till 1609. His elder son, also Thomas, was made a baronet, but the title died out with him in 1656.
The Fowlers dwelt in a house in Cross Street, Islington, a little beyond the church, which still existed a generation ago. The ceiling of a room on the first-floor was decorated with the arms and initials of Queen Elizabeth, also the initials f t i. At the end of the garden, which had been of considerable extent, there was a small brick building,[69] intended, perhaps, for a summer-house or porter’s lodge. It had on the west side, cut in stone, the Fowler arms, bearing an esquire’s helmet, apparently similar in all respects to those I have described, except that no mention is made of a crest. In another part of the building were the arms of Sir Thomas Fowler the younger, with his initials and the date 1655. They were distinguished by having an escutcheon charged with a sinister hand, couped at the wrist—the arms of Ulster and ensign of baronetcy. It is curious that the daughter and heiress of this Sir Thomas Fowler married a Fisher, to whom descended the manor of Barnsbury, and that the first Fowler who settled in Islington had married a Herne or Heron. The arms of that family appeared in a window of the old house in Cross Street.
When visiting the Guildhall Museum, not long since, I was reminded of another Islington family, not distinguished, but still perhaps worthy of mention. A stone tablet, said to be from an old house in Upper Street, Islington, has on it the inscription: nri rvffords bvildings 1688, and a similar inscription is still to be seen on No. 1a, Compton Street, Clerkenwell. The fact is, there were two groups of houses thus named, both of which were built by Captain Nicholas Rufford, who was churchwarden at Islington in 1690, and died in 1711, aged seventy-one. Nelson mentions inscriptions to him and several of his family in the churchyard. In the Islington Rufford’s Buildings Dr. W. Berriman lived for some years. He was a famous divine, and became Fellow of Eton College. His death took place in 1749-50.
Some pages back, in my description of the sign of the Two Negroes’ Heads, I had occasion to allude to Clare Market. Before that neighbourhood is quite transformed, I should like to say a few words about it and its connection with the Holles family. An old coat of arms and an old inscription will serve as pegs on which to hang my story. In Seymour’s ‘Survey,’ 1754 (written by John Mottley), we are told that Clement’s Inn[70]—the fancied scene of Shallow’s exploits—descended to the Earls of Clare from their ancestor Sir William Holles, or Hollis—as he spells it—Lord Mayor of London in 1539. The name of John, Baron Holles of Houghton, appears as a parishioner of St. Clement Danes in the rate-book for the year 1617. In 1624 he was created Earl of Clare. There seems to have been no concealment about the fact that his titles were bought: the first, obtained through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, had cost him no less a sum than £10,000; for the second he is said to have paid an additional £5,000. It is curious that this latter dignity had some years before been refused to Robert Rich, afterwards created Earl of Warwick, who had set his heart on it (and is said to have also paid money for his earldom), the Crown lawyers having solemnly declared that it was a title peculiar to the Royal Family, and not to be borne by a subject. The princely mansion of John Holles,[71] second Earl, was at the end of Clare Court, or Clare House Court, on the east side of Drury Lane, next to Blackmore Street. In Hatton’s time (1708) it had been turned into tenements. This second Earl founded Clare Market,[72] which stands, or stood, on what was previously called Clement’s Inn Fields. License had already been granted by Charles I. to Thomas York in 1640, and to the antiquary Gervase Holles[73] in 1642, to make streets and to erect houses on this property. One of the provisions in the Act[74] passed in 1657, ‘for the Preventing of the Multiplicity of Buildings in and about the Suburbs of London,’ expressly states that John, Earl of Clare, having erected several new buildings and improved the property, ‘from henceforth for ever hereafter, on every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, in every week, there shall be a common open and free market, held in Clement’s Inn Fields aforesaid, where the said buildings useful for a market are erected, and in the places near unto adjoining, and to enjoy all liberties, customs and emoluments incident usually and of right belonging and appertaining to markets.’ It seems, from the ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ that the City authorities at one time began a lawsuit laying claim to this property, but they failed in their attempt. The market was at first usually called the New Market.
The streets in this neighbourhood are several of them named after the family of the former possessors: as Clare Street, where, on Saturdays, there is still something like a market; Denzell Street, Holles Street, Houghton Street, Vere Street, and Gilbert Street and Passage. On a squalid house at the corner of this narrow opening, and facing the space lately cleared in what was the market, I have observed with interest a fine stone bas-relief of the Holles arms, surmounted by an earl’s coronet, namely, ermine, two piles in point sable, and the motto ‘Spes audaces adjuvat,’ the supporters being a lion and that nondescript beast, a heraldic tiger, which is supposed to have a dragon’s head. The date beneath is 1659, showing that they were put up for John Holles, second Earl of Clare, no doubt on a building in the market-place. Another curious relic is to be seen let into the wall of a public-house called the Royal Yacht, at the corner of Denzell Street and Stanhope Street. This is a stone tablet, the inscription on which is here given, and which speaks for itself.
It was erected by Gilbert, third Earl, in memory of his father’s second brother Denzil—‘a man of great courage and of as great pride,’ says Clarendon, who, during the early troubles between Charles I. and his Parliament, took a leading part on the popular side. On March 2, 1629, when the Speaker was about to adjourn the House in obedience to the King’s order, Denzil Holles helped to keep him in the chair by force, for which conduct he, with five other members, was committed to the Tower and fined 1,000 marks. After many vicissitudes Holles welcomed the restoration of Charles II., was created a peer, and sent as Ambassador to Paris, where his pugnacity and his ignorance of the French language[75] were alike remarkable. Mr. Wheatley tells us that in 1644 he had been living in Covent Garden, under the name of Colonel Holles; in 1666, and after, he was in a house at the west corner of the north piazza, which Sir Kenelm Digby had previously occupied.
The Holles family became extinct in the male line on the death of John, fourth Earl of Clare, who had married Lady Margaret Cavendish, a great heiress, and was created Duke of Newcastle. This nobleman, one of the richest subjects in the kingdom, died in 1711, from the effects of a fall while hunting at Welbeck, leaving an only daughter, from whom is descended the present Duke of Portland. Some years before his death, namely, in May, 1705, still clinging to the neighbourhood with which his family had been so long connected, the last Holles in the male line bought from the Marquis of Powis, for the large sum of £7,000, the house at the north-west angle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now numbered 66 and 67, which touches Great Queen Street, and is still known as Powis or Newcastle House. The Duke left the greater part of his possessions, including this house, to his nephew, Thomas Pelham, the well-known political leader in the time of George II., who took the name of Holles, and was also created Duke of Newcastle. Here he lived and intrigued, and this was the scene of his levees, so graphically described by Lord Chesterfield. If those silent walls could speak, they might tell us many strange tales.
Newcastle House had been built in 1686 by Captain William Winde, or Wynne, as Campbell calls him in the ‘Vitruvius Britannicus’—a pupil of Gerbier, and perhaps also of Webb, who was in his turn a pupil of Inigo Jones. The structure has unfortunately been much altered for the worse since an engraving of it was made for Strype’s Stow (edition of 1754). It replaced an older house which had been burnt to the ground on October 26, 1684, the family escaping with difficulty. William Herbert, first Marquis and titular Duke of Powis, for whom the house was built, suffered severely owing to his attachment to the cause of James II. He accompanied the King into exile, his estates were, in part at any rate, confiscated, and he died at St. Germains in 1696. In some way this house escaped the general wreck; perhaps it was alienated for a few years. Strype says that ‘it was sometime the seat of Sir John Somers, late Lord Chancellor of England’; and Pennant adds, ‘It is said that Government had it once in contemplation to have bought and settled it officially on the great seal. At that time it was inhabited by the Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright.’ Whatever the circumstances may have been, it came into the hands of the second Marquis, who before its sale to the Duke of Newcastle had already built himself another house[76] in Great Ormond Street, on the site of which is Powis Place.
The west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields shows interesting specimens of architecture. Lindsey House, though much altered, is an undoubted work of Inigo Jones. It was built probably about the year 1640, for Robert Bertie, first Earl of Lindsey, who died a hero’s death at the battle of Edgehill. The fourth Earl having been created Duke of Ancaster, it was for a time called Ancaster House. Hatton, in 1708, describes it as ‘a handsome building of the Ionic order, and (in front a) strong beautiful court-gate, consisting of six fine, spacious brick piers, with curious ironwork between them, and on the piers are placed very large and beautiful vases.’ The stone facade is now plastered and painted, the entrance door widened, the house divided into two. Inside, a graceful mantelpiece and an alcove evidently belong to the last century. Mr. Alfred Marks, in a valuable note on the house, ascribes these architectural features to Ware, who was a great admirer of Inigo Jones, and in 1743 published some of his designs. The alcove is adorned by a coat of arms belonging to the Shiffner family, a member of which, as appears from the Gentleman’s Magazine, resided in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the year 1759.
South of Lindsey House, there are other buildings which were probably designed by Inigo Jones. From the house which is over the archway leading into Sardinia Street, one may trace the Rose and Fleur-de-lys of Charles I. and his Queen on the pilasters. They are now mostly plastered and painted, but it may be remarked that in the extreme south-west corner of the Fields, behind other more modern structures, stands a house the upper part of which is outside in its original condition. It is of red brick, the bases, bands and capitals of the pilasters and the architraves being of stone, and it has, like the others, the rose and fleur-de-lys in relief. But the best-preserved specimen, externally, of work of this character now existing in London is the harmonious red-brick building on the south side of Great Queen Street, hard by, which was either designed by Inigo Jones or by Webb under his influence. Let those who wish to study its fine proportions and pleasant details lose no time, for an ominous board has appeared in front, and much I fear that its days are numbered. Can nothing be done to save it? Mr. Wheatley says that Thomas Hudson, the portrait-painter (Reynolds’s master), lived in this house, which is now divided and numbered 55 and 56. It had almost certainly been occupied by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
