Some fourteen or fifteen centuries ago what is now Bishopsgate Street Within was a fashionable suburb of the Roman Londinium, the Belgravia or South Kensington of the period, where the aristocracy and wealth of the City located itself and built magnificent mansions after the fashion of Rome, with columns, frescoes, and tesselated pavements, such as we see in the disinterred city of Pompeii. In the streets might then be seen charioteers driving rapidly along to contend in the chariot race; fair ladies going to witness the gladiatorial displays in the amphitheatre; bronzed soldiers from many a distant province of the empire; slaves groaning beneath heavy burdens or employed in laborious occupations—all mixed up with the ordinary traffic of a considerable city. Northward, stretching eastward and westward, ran the City wall, a portion of which may still be seen in the street call London Wall, adorned with stately towers and bastions, one of the latter having been exposed to public view by the opening of a pathway through St. Giles's Churchyard. There was, however, no gateway in this part of the wall, as beyond lay an untraversable morass, and beyond that a forest extending to and up the heights of Highgate, Muswell Hill, etc., those who wished to go northward from the city having to go eastward to Aldgate or westward to Aldersgate. This probably was the reason why the rich selected this portion of the environs of the City for their residence, as being more retired and quiet than in the vicinity of a thoroughfare leading to a City outlet.

Of these mansions of the patricians of Londinium several vestiges have been found. On the site of St. Helen's, the foundations of large edifices have been laid bare. In 1707, at the corner of Camomile Street, a fine tesselated pavement was found; in 1752 another at the side of St. Helen's Gateway; in 1761 another in Camomile Street; and in 1836 a splendid specimen, in red, white, and grey, at the north-west angle of Crosby Square, besides fragments elsewhere.

This, however, was only in the later period of the Roman rule. When they had subdued the Trinobantes, they found the capital of the country, although a place of commercial importance, merely a scattered collection of round huts with trackways in the midst, extending from Tower Hill to the Fleet River and from the Thames to Cheapside and Cornhill, defended on the north by earthworks, felled trees, and a ditch; and in midst of these huts they erected more substantial houses, with towers at the eastern and western extremities, and probably a temple to Diana, where St. Paul's Cathedral now stands. The northern outskirts, now Bishopsgate Street Within was appropriated as a burial-place, as they never buried their dead in the midst of the living; but in process of time the exigencies of the increasing population demanded an extension of the City boundaries, and they built over the old grave-yard, making a new cemetery on the site of the modern Bishopsgate Street Without, Shoreditch, and the fenlands lying eastward and westward of these. In 1576, when digging for clay near where Christ Church, Spitalfields, now stands, a great number of cinerary urns were found, containing burnt human remains, and in each a piece of coin, wherewith to pay Charon for ferrying the defunct across the Styx; also, as Stow says, "divers vials and other old-fashioned glasses most cunningly wrought, such as I have not seen the like of, all which had water in them, differing from spring water" (lachrymatories), "cups and dishes of red earthenware and three or four images of white earth, about a span long, one of Pallas." Under the Camomile tesselated pavement, found in 1706, lay two feet of rubbish, and beneath that several funeral urns. Stone and timber coffins have also been found, or rather the nails of the latter, a quarter of a yard long, the wood having perished, and a Roman vault in St Botolph's Churchyard, all these, with skeletons or decayed bones in them, indicating burial after Christianity had become the religion of the empire, when the custom of burning the dead was abandoned.

The Saxons despised the effeminacy of decorated architecture and luxurious appliances in the way of household furniture, hence when they came into possession of London they allowed the sumptuous dwellings of the Romans to fall into decay and crumble to dust, preferring their own rough and uncomely habitations built of wood, but afterwards built their churches, monasteries, and public buildings generally of stone, and thus Roman London passed away.

The Saxons found it necessary to have another exit from the city northward between Aldgate and Aldersgate Street, and pierced the wall at the end of the street running from the river, whatever it may then have been called, and erected there a new gate. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, 679-97, has been credited with the work, but as this is only based upon the discovery, near by, of the statue of a mitred bishop, which it was presumed represented St. Erkenwald, the tradition may be doubted, but it was unquestionably this supposition which gave it the name of Bishops' Gate.

There are four churches in London dedicated to St. Botolph "the Briton," all situated by gates, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Billingsgate, and Bishopsgate. The latter lays claim to having been founded by the ancient British Christians, but, more probably, was built by the Saxons and dedicated to the British monk St. Botolph. It has been rebuilt no doubt several times since then. It escaped the ravages of the fire of 1666, but having become very much dilapidated, an Act of Parliament was obtained at the beginning of the last century for rebuilding it, by means of a rate of two shillings in the pound upon all household property in the parish, payable by the landlords, but this proving insufficient a parish rate was laid to supply the deficiency. It was commenced in 1725, and re-opened in 1728, having cost (there is nothing like precision) £10,444 1s. 8½d.

Tradition says that it was the burial-place of a brother of King Lud. The present building contains the tombs of Sir Paul Pinder; Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College; William, Earl of Devonshire, from whom Devonshire Square takes its name; and in the churchyard lies Hodges Shoughshware, "the chiefest servant of the King of Persia, who came from the King of Persia and died in his service, 1626, and Maghmote, his wife." The epitaph is in Persian, and entreats that all Persians who may read it will pray for their souls.

The Rev. Stephen Gorson, author of The School of Abuse, was rector of St. Botolph.

The venerable church of St. Helen is situated on the eastern side of the street, standing back and approached by an archway. Popular tradition ascribes its origin to the Emperor Constantine in honour of his mother, which is doubtless an error, but it unquestionably dates from the Saxon age, as in 1010 the relics of King Edmund the Martyr were temporarily deposited within its walls, when brought from East Anglia, to prevent their desecration at the hands of the Danes. In the twelfth century the advowson appears to have been held by one Ranulph, as in the reign of Henry II., circa 1180, he and his son, Robert Fitz-Ranulph, made a grant of it to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral. About half a century later, circa 1212, William Fitz-William, a London goldsmith, and ancestor of the extant Earls Fitzwilliam, founded in connection with it a priory for nuns of the order of St. Benedict, which was dedicated to the Holy Cross and St. Helen, the prioress on her election to swear fealty to the Dean and Chapter, who transferred to the priory the advowson of the church.

The church seems originally to have had simply a chancel and nave, without transepts or aisles, but when the priory was attached, it was duplicated by building another nave, and thus presented the appearance of a double-aisled church without an intermediate nave. A wall of division ran along the middle, one of the aisles being appropriated to the parishioners and the other to the nuns. It is to be feared that the fair inmates of the nunnery were not always very strict in their devotional exercises and seclusion from the outer world, and were even sometimes so naughty as to be subjected to punishments, one of which was being shut up in the crypt, which still exists, with the gratings, through which they could hear the service of the church without being present. Reginald Kentwode, dean of St. Paul's, in his periodical visitations, found so many "defautes and excesses" that he felt constrained to draw up a fresh code of rules for the regulation of the house, the original of which is amongst the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum.

Willyam Basynge, Sheriff of London, 1309, added considerably to the buildings, and came to be regarded as the second founder.

The seal of the priory was an oval, representing the Empress Helena standing by the cross (which she found in the Holy Land and brought to Europe) with the nails in her hand, and on the opposite side worshippers in the act of adoration. An impression of it is pendant from a deed in the possession of the Leathersellers' Company, and an engraving of it is given in Malcolm's London Rediv., vol. iii., p. 548.

At the dissolution of the priory the site was given to Richard Williams, one of the visitors of the monasteries, in exchange for certain lands in Huntingdonshire. He assumed the name of Cromwell, being a kinsman of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and was ancestor of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The dividing wall in the church was taken down and the whole of the space appropriated to the use of the parishioners. The Leathersellers purchased the nuns' hall, and made it the hall of their company. The priory buildings remained, but in a ruined state, until 1799, when they were cleared away, and St. Helen's Place built on the site. A view of the ruins is given in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, and a picturesque view of the church and the Leathersellers' Hall in Malcolm's London Rediv., 1803.

The church contained more "altar" tombs with recumbent and kneeling effigies than any other church in the City, but they suffered terrible mutilation from the iconoclastic zeal of the Puritans, many of them having been altogether destroyed. Sir Thomas Gresham had promised to build a tower, which unhappily he was prevented doing by death, and it was not until 1699, that it was furnished with a steeple. The church has undergone many repairs and restorations, notably by Inigo Jones, 1623-4, and frequently in the plaster and whitewash style of decoration. The last and most judicious restoration was carried out in 1867-8, and the venerable old church may now be seen, after weathering so many storms, with its graceful Gothic arches, its groupings of tombs and monuments, the nuns' grating in the crypt, its grotesque heads, and over one of the doors the black figure of St. Helena, for which hundreds of pounds have been offered by foreign Catholics, and refused; with many of the same features that were looked at by the Greshams, the Crosbys, and other old parishioners of the Norman, Plantagenet, and Tudor ages, with the addition of some modern stained windows and an organ built in 1742, and rebuilt in 1868. The rectory was sold by Queen Elizabeth to Michael and Edward Stanhope, with the proviso of paying a stipend of £20 per annum to a vicar. Amongst the tombs are those of Sir Thomas Gresham, a splendid monument; Sir John Crosby, in full armour, and his wife, one of the oldest remaining; Sir John Lawrence, the noble Lord Mayor of the Plague year; Sir John Spencer, "Rich Spencer," whose daughter and heiress eloped with her lover, Compton, in a baker's basket.

St. Ethelburga is a small and very ancient church, squeezed almost out of sight by intervening parasitic shops; when or by whom founded not known, but most probably in the Saxon age. In an old print it is represented with a spire similar to that in Langham Place. It escaped the fire of 1666, was repaired and "beautified" in 1694, and again in 1701. St. Ethelburga was the daughter of Ethelbert, the first Christian king of Kent, and patron of St. Augustine; she married Eadwine, King of Northumbria, the convert of St Paulinus, after whose death, in battle at the hands of Penda, the Pagan king of Mercia, she fled with her children and Paulinus to her brother, who had succeeded to the kingdom of Kent, and who nominated Paulinus to the see of Rochester.

Walter Brune, citizen, and Rosia, his wife, in 1235, founded a priory of canons and hospital for the sick and needy, dedicated to our blessed Mary, called St. Mary Spital Without, Bishopsgate. It was suppressed in 1539, at which time it made up 180 beds, and supplied the sick occupants with all necessaries at a cost of £478 per annum. Outside was the pulpit where the famous Spital sermons were preached at Easter before the Mayor and Corporation, and sometimes royal personages, by the most eminent City divines. After the dissolution they were preached at St. Paul's, then in St. Bride's Church, and now in Christ Church, Newgate Street. The pulpit stood on a site that now forms the north-east corner of Spital Square. There existed for 120 years in the precincts of Bishopsgate, near Camomile Street, a curious fraternity called The Papey, a religious house of St. John and St. Charity, sometimes called St. Augustine's Papey, consisting of threescore priests, governed by a master and two wardens. Its objects were to supply the necessities of the poorer clergy by providing them with lodgings, coals, bread, and ale. Near by stood the church of St. Augustine-in-the-Wall, the patronage of which was vested in the rich Priory of the Holy Trinity, who presented to the living four rectors from 1321 to 1375, but after that no one could be found to accept the incumbency in consequence of the stinginess of the Priory—the stipend not being sufficient to live upon—who therefore in 1430 gave the church to the Papey guild. The fraternity was not rich in funds, and in order to improve their exchequer they practised the singing of dirges and attended funerals as professional mourners and dirge singers. The house was suppressed 2 Edwd. VI.

From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century a conspicuous feature in the line of road leading northward from Bishopsgate was the Priory of Bethlehem, with its square-towered church, its gabled houses for the brethren and sisters' habitations, and its gardens, situated at the eastern edge of the moorland of Fensbury, a little beyond St. Botolph's Church, and facing what are now New Street and Devonshire Place. It was then built quite in the country, with the fens behind, fields in front, and no houses beyond it. The roadway in front was nothing more than a beaten trackway, almost impassable in winter, which when houses came to be built along it, and it assumed the semblance of a street, was called Bedlam Gate. There is no view extant of the priory, excepting the bird's-eye view in Aggas' Map, temp. Elizabeth, where there is a continuous line of houses along Bedlam Gate and onward to St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, where the road apparently terminated; eastward is the Spittel Fyeld, with archers and cattle; and westward, Finsburie Fyeld, with windmills, bowmen practising at the butts, and women spreading out linen to dry.

The priory was founded in 1246 by Simon Fitz-Marie, sheriff of London in the same year, for brethren and sisters, canons of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem, subject to the Bishop of Bethlehem, to whom they had to pay one mark yearly at Easter. Their habit was a black gown with a star embroidered on the breast. When it became a hospital for lunatics is not known, but there are records of sick persons being nursed there in 1330, and of insane patients in 1403, when six of the latter and three of the former were maintained in the house. Weaver tells us that at one time there was "a house for distraught and lunaticke people" at Charing Cross, and that some king, he did not know who, not liking to have an establishment of people of that class so near his palace, packed them off to Bethlem Priory, which was probably the beginning of its career as a hospital for the insane.

The Hospital-Priory does not appear to have been very amply provided with funds, as in 1403 some of the houses were alienated, for the purpose seemingly of raising money, and the brethren had to go abroad collecting alms for the sustenance of the inmates. In 1523, one Stephen Gunnings, a merchant tailor, left £40 in trust to the Corporation for purchasing the house, to be continued as a receptacle for lunatics, and the Mayor took some steps for that purpose; but before they were carried out it was granted to the Corporation, after the Dissolution, by King Henry VIII., who placed it in charge of the governors of Christ's Hospital in 1556, and the following year transferred it to the governors of Bridewell. In 1555 the income, arising chiefly out of rents, amounted to £43 4s. 8d. per annum, and by 1632 they were valued at £470, which, not being all forthcoming, was inadequate for the support of the house, and the Spital preachers were directed to appeal to their hearers on its behalf, there being then forty-four lunatics within the walls, the revenues paying only two-thirds of the cost of their maintenance. Besides, there were so many pressing cases for admission, that it became necessary to discharge many of the half-cured and less violent patients, to whom were granted licences for begging, and they went abroad, dressed fantastically, singing "mad songs," and imploring food or money. They went by the name of "Tom o' Bedlams," and are alluded to by Shakespeare in King Lear, where he says—

In the reign of Elizabeth the church and chapel were taken down, and houses built on the site; and in the following century, the buildings having become ruinous and much too small for the constantly increasing patients, it was resolved to build a new and larger hospital. The Corporation made a grant of land on the southern margin of Finsbury Moors, where the Liverpool Street railway stations now stand, and the public contributed £17,000 towards its erection. It was commenced in 1644, and completed in 1676; and in 1732 two wings were added, which made the entire length of the building 540 feet, with a depth of forty feet. The style adopted was that of the Tuileries in Paris, which so offended Louis XIV. that he caused some out-offices of a more useful and less dignified character to be built in the style of St. James's Palace, London. It was adorned with figures of raving and melancholy madness from the chisel of Caius Cibber, which are now in the hall of the present hospital.

The estates belonging to the hospital afterwards rapidly increased in value, and at the beginning of the present century the governors found themselves in a position to build a larger and better-planned building, and purchased a large plot of land in St. George's Fields, which with the new hospital cost £100,000. The total income is now about £20,000 per annum.

Until towards the end of the last century the insane were treated in a most barbarous way. Nakedness, chains, scourgings, and solitary confinement were their lot, calculated rather to intensify than alleviate their aberration of intellect, without any of the modern appliances of modern asylums—music, flowers, prints, books, amusements, cheerful society, and comparative liberty—which are now found to be essential towards their recovery. A good idea of the old style of madhouse may be obtained from the eighth plate of Hogarth's series of "The Rake's Progress," which represents a scene in the Moorfields Bedlam.

A few years ago a skeleton of a dwarf with fetters on the legs was dug up near Bishopsgate, supposed to be that of a patient of Bedlam. The road in front of the second hospital was formerly called "Old Bethlem" and was changed to Liverpool Street in honour of Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister 1812-27.

The Hon. Artillery Company, which originated here, removed to the present Artillery Ground in City Road in 1622, and has numbered amongst its officers Charles II., when Prince of Wales; James II., when Duke of York, after the Restoration; and George IV., when Prince of Wales, as Captain in Command. The old Artillery Ground in Bishopsgate Street has left reminiscences of its existence in the names of Artillery Lane, Artillery Passage, Gun Street, and Fort Street.

From a very remote period has the company of Leathersellers been connected with Bishopsgate Street and its vicinity. In the Norman age the tanners, curriers, and leather dressers clustered about Cripplegate and further eastward, where the stream of Walbrook entered the City, that locality being the Bermondsey of the period. The Company is supposed to have been formed in the Saxon times, but little or nothing is known of it until 1372, when the wardens and seniors presented a petition to the Corporation praying that stringent measures might be put in force against fraudulent craftsmen who used inferior dyes for staining their skins. They were incorporated in 1397-8, and were re-incorporated by Henry VI. in 1444, with power to elect four wardens and fifteen members of the court, and to use a seal with arms. The charter is a magnificent specimen of penmanship, and beautifully illuminated. There is a picture extant of the king presenting the charter to the four kneeling wardens in livery dresses of red and blue, furred at the edges, descending to the knees, and fastened at the waist with a girdle garnished with white metal. By this charter they were empowered to regulate the mystery in London, which powers were enlarged by Henry VII., who extended their supervision of the trade throughout the kingdom. In 1604 James I. granted them a new charter, which, like that of Henry VI., is a wonderfully fine specimen of art, with an emblazonry of the company's arms and an illumination of eight liverymen in their robes of office—black gowns trimmed with "foins," hoods of scarlet, and black flat caps.

The first hall of the company was built in 1445, in the parish of All Saints' by the Wall, south of the present Finsbury Circus, where now stand Leathersellers Buildings. A century after it became too small, and a portion of the site and buildings of the dissolved priory of St. Helen was purchased in 1543, and the nuns' hall converted into that of the company, which, with alterations and embellishments, came to be for a long time the finest livery hall in London. The ceiling was enriched with beautiful pendants, and at the end was a splendid Elizabethan screen, elaborately decorated. In the courtyard was a pump with the figure of a mermaid, from whose breast issued wine on gala occasions. It was the work of Cibber, who gave it in 1679, in payment of his admission fee to the membership of the company.

In 1799 the hall was sold along with other of the priory buildings, to clear the site for the building of St. Helen's Place. A new hall was built on the same site, but with new fittings, all the antique decorations of the old hall having been disposed of. This, the third hall, was destroyed by fire in 1819, the valuable collection of records being fortunately saved, and the present hall, occupying the north-east corner of St. Helen's Place, was built 1820-22.

The first record book of the company commences November 12th, 1472, with the following as the earliest entry:—

There are almshouses of the company in Clarke's Court, St. Helen's; White's Alley, Coleman Street; and Hart Street, Cripplegate.

Excepting the Borough High Street, perhaps no street in London had so many famous old inns, with galleried court-yards, cross-timbered walls, quaint gables, and latticed windows, as Bishopsgate Street, established for the accommodation of carriers and travellers from the north-eastern towns. Amongst them were the White Hart; formerly the Magpie, which stood by the gateway of Bethlem Priory, supposed to have been originally the hostelry of the priory, afterwards an inn for travellers who arrived after the gate was shut for the night. It seems, from a date on the wall, to have been rebuilt in 1480, and was standing in 1810, when a view was taken representing it with a double range of bay windows. It was again rebuilt in 1829, and stood at the corner of Liverpool Street. The Bull, where Burbage and his companions obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth for the performance of theatricals in the quadrangle, the spectators occupying the surrounding galleries. This was the inn to which old Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, resorted, from whom came the saying of "Hobson's choice"—that or none. On a wall of the inn was his effigy, in fresco, clutching a money bag, with an inscription—"The fruitful mother of a hundred more."

The Green Dragon, an old Tudor house. The Catherine Wheel still a carriers' house. The King's Head, at the corner of Spital Square. The Wrestlers, a large inn, and the Angel, were in existence temp. Henry VI. The City of London Tavern, with pillared facade, famous in modern times for its public dinners, was converted, in 1839, into the Wesleyan Centenary Hall, established in commemoration of the centennial year of the formation of the Society of Methodists.

On the eastern side of the street, within and near to the gate, were certain tenements belonging to a fraternity of St. Nicholas, which were given (27 Henry VI.) to the Company of Parish Clerks for the maintenance of two chaplains in the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, near the Guildhall, and behind these stood the hall of the Parish Clerks, and seven almshouses for the poor, to one of whom was given sixteenpence and the other six ninepence per week.

The Post-office, which had been in Cloak Lane, Dowgate, was removed after the fire of 1666, to the Black Swan, in Bishopsgate Street, whence it was removed to Lombard Street, and subsequently to St. Martin-le-Grand.

We have noticed the palatial character of the Bishopsgate quarter of Roman Londinum, vestiges of its splendour having been frequently disinterred in recent times, in attestation of the fact. A thousand years afterwards it again became a district of sumptuous mansions—palaces, not of the Roman patricians, but of the merchant princes of the modern metropolis of the world. Most fortunately, the ravages of the great fire of '66 only extended to the borders of the ward, and thus have been preserved to us those precious architectural relics of Crosby House; and the churches of St. Helen and St. Ethelburga. The quaint old house of Sir Paul Pindar, has just been taken down.

Sir John Crosby was born circa 1420, and died in 1475; he was a grocer (a wholesale merchant) and woolman, and at one time Mayor of the Staple at Calais. He was elected an alderman in 1465; served the office of sheriff in 1471, in which year he was knighted by Edward IV., and represented the City in Parliament in the year 1461. He was a zealous Yorkist, in high favour with Edward IV., particularly distinguished himself in the defence of the City against the Lancastrian admiral, the Bastard of Fauconbridge, and is introduced by Heywood, in his drama of King Edward IV. In 1466 he took on lease from the Prioress of St. Helen's certain tenements for a period of ninety-nine years, at a rent of £11 6s. 8d. per annum, which he demolished, and built on the site "ye highest and fairest house in ye citie," which he did not enjoy long, as it was only completed four years before his death. Of its grandeur we may form some conception from what remains of it after the fire of 1674, especially the great hall, fifty-four feet long, twenty-seven and a half feet broad, and forty feet high, with its oriel windows eleven feet in breadth, and extending from the floor to the ceiling, and its timbered roof of surpassing beauty. Around this old mansion many most interesting historical associations have clustered. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, inhabited it for some time, and it figures in Shakespeare's pages as the place where he concocted his plot for the murder of his nephews, his marriage with his niece, which he could not accomplish, and the usurpation of the throne. From 1516 to 1523, it was the abode of Sir Thomas More, where it is supposed he wrote his Utopia.

It has been occupied by several aldermen, some of whom held their mayoralty there, amongst others, Alderman Bond, who added a turret to the building; Sir John Spencer, who built a large warehouse behind it; Sir Bartholomew Read, Lord Mayor, who entertained Catherine of Arragon for two or three days within its walls, previous to her marriage with Prince Arthur. The Emperor Maximilian lodged there when in London in 1502; Queen Elizabeth came there in 1594 to witness a masque by some law students, and the famous Countess of Pembroke made it her residence for some time, where it is probable Shakespeare visited her. During the Civil War it was made a prison for captured Royalists, after which the great hall was converted into a Presbyterian chapel. In 1678 the drawing-room and throne room were used as warehouses by the East India Company, and afterwards as a packer's workrooms, when they sustained a great deal of mutilation. In 1831, it was advertised to be sold for demolition, but some spirited persons came forward and rescued it from that fate, besides restoring and repairing it. From 1842 to 1860 it was a literary institute, and is now a restaurant, the proprietor having with great good taste preserved all the old features, and in the necessary additional buildings has adhered to the same style. It is supposed to have consisted originally of two quadrangles, separated by the great hall, and that it had a facade of 100 feet in length to Bishopsgate Street.

Sir John gave 500 marks towards the restoration of St. Helen's Church, and his arms were placed on the walls and in the windows. He was thrice married, and had an only son, who died without issue, the line thus becoming extinct.

Sir Paul Pindar was a notable merchant and diplomatist, minister of James I. in Turkey, who was born about the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century, and died in 1650. On his return from Turkey he brought with him a diamond valued at £30,000, which the king wished to purchase "on tick," but the cautious merchant, not having sufficient confidence in his credit, declined to let him have it on those terms. However, he agreed to lend it to him to flash it in the eyes of his subjects on State occasions. He afterwards sold it to Charles I., but most probably was never paid for it. He was reputed to have been worth a quarter of a million sterling at one time, an enormous sum for that period. He gave £18,000 towards the repairs of St. Paul's Cathedral, and expended other sums on charitable and philanthropic objects, but although so wealthy he lost so much money in bad debts, arising out of loans to Kings James I. and Charles I. that he fell into comparative poverty, and died in debt himself.

He erected for his residence a magnificent house on the western side of the street, without the gate, a portion of whose picturesque frontal remaining in 1890, attracted the notice and admiration of every passer-by. It was a fine specimen of Elizabethan architecture, and richly decorated both without and within. There were rooms with wainscoted walls, sculptured chimney-pieces, and ceilings profusely ornamented, but most of them terribly mutilated; one splendid ceiling represented the sacrifice of Isaac, with a radiation of beautiful ornamentation. Behind the house was a park, with mulberry trees, some of which were only cut down within the present century; and near by, in Halfmoon Alley, stood a house, with sculptural details, which is supposed to have been the gatekeeper's lodge. A small portion with a narrow frontage was converted into a tavern, with the sign of the Sir Paul Pindar, which has just been taken down by the Great Eastern Railway.

Devonshire House.—Built by one Jasper Fisher, around which he laid out extensive pleasure grounds. It was held by the Cavendishes until 1670, but in the interval, during the ascendency of the Puritans, had been taken possession of by them, and made use of as a chapel. Butler, in his Hudibras, describes the Rump Parliament as like—

After this it was opened as a "Bank of Credit," a sort of pawnshop, which did not last long, as by 1708, Devonshire Square was built, described by Hatton as "a pretty, though very small square, inhabited by gentry and other merchants."

Sir Thomas Gresham, the wealthy and munificent founder of the Royal Exchange, was born circa 1519; died, 1579; was knighted, 1559; married Anne, daughter of William Fernley, and relict of William Read, and had issue an only son, Richard, who died v.p. and s.p. 1564.

He was a parishioner of St. Helen's, and in that parish he built his house, which Stow describes as "the most spacious thereabouts, builded of brick and timber," and that is about all he could say in eulogy of it, for it appears, from engravings of it, to have been more remarkable for size than for architectural grandeur. It was built in the Flemish style, chiefly by Flemish workmen, and extended from the west side of Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street. It consisted of a quadrangle of two galleried stories, with gabled attics; a piazza and rows of trees running round, giving it a quiet, collegiate air, and a picturesque aspect, and was surrounded by gardens and pleasure grounds, with trees. It was commenced about the year 1559, and was finished in 1562. Within its walls Sir Thomas entertained Queen Elizabeth, and had the custody of the Lady Mary Grey.

At his death he left it to his widow for life, and at her decease in trust to the Corporation of London and the Mercers' Company, to be converted into a College of Professors, with salaries of £50 per annum, to lecture weekly on divinity, astronomy, music, law, geometry, medicine, and rhetoric, for the gratuitous instruction of the young citizens of London, which were commenced in 1597. Amongst the professors were several eminent men, one of whom was Sir Christopher Wren, who, in conjunction with others, there laid the foundation of the Royal Society. The trustees allotted two rooms to the Society, one for their meetings, the other for their books and philosophical instruments. Pepys tells of King Charles making merry over the people of Gresham House, and Boyle in particular, amusing themselves with the child's play of weighing air. The society met at Gresham House until 1710, when they removed to Crane Court.

After the Great Fire of 1666, when nearly all the public buildings were destroyed, Gresham House became the Mansion House and residence of the Lord Mayor, the Law Courts, and the Exchange, the merchants assembling in the quadrangle, where they remained until their establishments were rebuilt.

The collegiate lectures were not properly appreciated, and became almost sinecures to the professors, until in 1768-70 the Government, wanting an excise office in the City, agreed with the trustees to take a perpetual lease of the site, at the absurdly low rental of £500 per annum, the trustees to take down the buildings, to do which cost them £1,800. The lectures were then removed to a dull, upper room in the Exchange, where they were delivered until the destruction of the Exchange by fire, in 1838, when they were given in the City of London School, until the opening of the New Gresham Lecture Hall, in Basinghall Street, in 1843.

Dashwood House stood westward of St. Botolph's Churchyard, and was the City mansion of the Dashwood family; afterwards it is supposed to have been the residence of Lady Jane Grey. It was subsequently converted into the Ottoman Bank, and Consular and Mercantile Offices; has recently been taken down, and a colossal block constructed for suites of offices.

There are many other fine old houses in the ward, dating from before the Fire, whose fronts have been modernised by building up the space beneath the overhanging upper floors and removing the gables, but which retain many of their olden time features at their backs, and are still adorned in their interiors with fine balustraded staircases, carved chimney pieces, and timber-work ceilings.

Another house of a somewhat different but very useful character stood in Bishopsgate Street. In 1649 the Corporation of London founded a house called the London Workhouse, "for the entertainment of the greatest objects of commiseration, but likewise to receive a great number of the miserable and unhappy vagrant orphans known by the infamous name of 'blackguard,' the pest and shame of the City, pilfering and begging about the streets by day, and lying therein, almost naked, in all seasons of the year by night." In 1662 a charter of incorporation was granted, under the name of "The President (always the Lord Mayor) and Governors of the Poor of the City of London." In 1700 a large house was built for the reception of these objects of charity, and in 1704 it is recorded that "368 children were fed, clothed, and taught to work and the principles of religion;" besides whom there were "maintained and employed 653 vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and other idle and disorderly persons." It was taken down early in the present century, the Poor law administration rendering it superfluous.

In the Parish of St. Helen's there lived and died a man of eccentric opinions and evil reputation, very different in character from his neighbours, the merchant princes of Bishopsgate. His name was Francis Bancroft, and his vocation that of a summoning officer in the Lord Mayor's Court, in which capacity he made a large fortune by issuing false summonses, "not only pillaging the poor, but likewise many of the rich, who, rather than lose time in appearing before the said magistrate, gave money to get rid of this common pest of the citizens." He was so much detested that at his funeral the populace nearly jostled his coffin off the shoulders of the bearers, and they set the bells ringing "for joy at his unlamented death."

He entertained an eccentric notion that in a certain number of years after his death he should return to life and occupy his original position in the City, and in accordance with this idea had a vault, with folding doors and glass in the panels, constructed in St. Helen's Church, and a coffin with hinges only, not screwed down, so that when he came to life he would have nothing to do but to step out of his coffin, open the doors of the vault, and walk out. His name is remembered by his having bequeathed £27,000 for the foundation of almshouses for twenty-four poor almsmen, a chapel, a school for one hundred poor boys, and houses for two masters. The money was left in trust to the Drapers' Company, who erected the buildings at Mile-end in 1735. There was a proviso in the will that the trustees should visit his tomb and look upon his body, in May every year for ever, failing which the money to be diverted to other purposes. They have long discontinued the custom, but still hold the trust, and although the testator has now lain 150 years in his unfastened coffin, he has not come forth yet to rectify this direliction of duty on the part of the Drapers.

From a very early period has Bishopsgate Street and Ward been a centre of Nonconformity. Maitland, writing 1725-36, refers to three Presbyterian, two Independents, and one Quaker's meeting houses in the parishes of St. Botolph and St. Helen. The Devonshire Square Baptist church was, excepting one in Kent, the oldest in England, and in its early years suffered much from persecution. It migrated hither from Wapping in 1638, and occupied a part of Devonshire House, or, as it was popularly called, Fisher's Folly. The chapel was built in 1653, which was taken possession of by the Episcopalians after the fire, and used for Church of England services until the churches of London were rebuilt. It continued to flourish until, the Metropolitan Railway requiring the site, it was taken down and a new Gothic chapel, with spire, built at Stoke Newington out of the proceeds of the sale, at a cost of £11,000. It has had several notable ministers, the most remarkable being William Kaffin, who made an eminent figure among the Antipoedo-Baptists of the 17th century.

Crosby Hall Independent Church. The Rev. Thos. Watson, whose chief work was "A body of Divinity," consisting of 176 sermons, fol., 1792, posth. Stephen Charnock, B.D. Benjamin Grosvenor, D.D., a very eminent man, who held the pastorate from 1704 to 1749, one of the most popular preachers in London; and was also lecturer in the Old Jewry, at the Weigh House, and at Salters' Hall. Portrait in Dr. Williams' library. Edmund Calamy, B.D., son of Dr. Edm. Calamy, author of the "Nonconformist Memorial." On the expiration of the lease in 1799, the congregation was dispersed, and the chapel was rented by James Relly, a rough and uncultured Welshman, but a powerful preacher, who established a church of Rellyanists or Rellyan Universalists, who held a species of anti-nomian doctrine. He was author of some controversial works, now altogether forgotten.

A Presbyterian meeting-house was erected in Little St. Helen's in 1672, under the Indulgence, which became a place of importance in the annals of Nonconformity. Within its walls the first public ordination of Nonconformist ministers took place, and the Coward Lecture preached there from 1721, till the demolition of the chapel. There was also a seven o'clock morning lecture, preached every Sunday in the summer months, to commemorate the accession of the House of Hanover. The first minister, he who took out the licence and collected the congregation, was the learned and pious Samuel Annesley, LL.D., the ejected of St. Giles's Cripplegate, formerly rector of Cliffe, Kent, and of St. Matthew's, Friday Street, London, lecturer at St. Paul's, and one of the preachers at Whitehall during the Protectorate. He was first cousin to Arthur Annesley, Earl of Anglesey; was a popular preacher, and author of some published sermons and other works. He continued in the pastorate until his death in 1694. Anne, his daughter, a very superior woman in every respect, in piety, intelligence, and sound discretion, was married to the Rev. Samuel Wesley, vicar of Epworth, and bore him nineteen children, amongst whom were John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism.

Benj. Robinson occupied the pulpit from 1701 to 1724, a Derbyshire man, of great reputation, and Merchant Lecturer at Salters' Hall. After him the church gradually dwindled down until 1790, when Mr. Brown preached there for two years, and removed with his congregation to Shoreditch; after whom Christian Frederick Trieber, with a Lutheran congregation, occupied it for two years, and on the expiration of the lease removed to Cheapside. Some other ministers of various denominations preached in the chapel for short periods until 1799, when it was taken down and houses built on the site.

In Hand Alley, on the western side of Bishopsgate Without, stood a large Presbyterian meeting-house. On the site had been a plague pit, and when it was proposed to be built upon it, the bodies, some not entirely decomposed, 2,000 in number, were carted away and buried in another pit, over which is a passage to Rose Alley. The chapel was built soon after Bartholomew Day for Thomas Vincent, famous for his labours amongst the poor during the plague of 1665, who held the pastorate until his death in 1678. After the fire of 1666, his chapel was seized by the clergyman of a City parish, who performed service there until his church was rebuilt. After him came a succession of popular ministers, until the beginning of the 18th century, when the congregation, a wealthy body, removed with their minister, Dr. John Evans, author of "A Discourse on Temper," to a new chapel, which they built in 1727, in New Broad Street, when the old chapel was pulled down.

A Particular Baptist Church, in Great St. Helens, existed during the time of the civil war, when the famous Hansard Knollys was the pastor. He was a Lincolnshire man of great oratorical talent, and gathered about him a congregation of a thousand hearers. His doctrines, however, were deemed irregular and unsound by the Presbyterians, and he was summoned before the Westminster assembly of divines, who prohibited him from preaching. This prohibition appears, however, to have been withdrawn afterwards, as from 1645 to 1691, he preached the doctrines in Curriers' Hall. He was author of "The Smoke of the Temple," "An Exposition of the Book of Revelations," and some other works, including an autobiography written in 1672. His death occurred in 1691, at the age of 93, when he was buried in Bunhill Fields. Portrait in Wilson's "History of the Dissenting Church."

The Society of Friends have a large meeting-house in Bishopsgate Street, which is the head quarters of the society, where the annual meetings are held, when Friends from all parts of England assemble here, giving quite a picturesque aspect to the street, when it is thronged by them in their somewhat grotesque costume. Their first meeting-house was in Bull and Mouth Street, Aldersgate, which was destroyed by the fire of '66, rebuilt and occupied till 1744, when they removed to White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street. Many of the members of this meeting were the originators of some of the most eminent banking firms of Lombard Street, such as the Gurneys, the Barclays, the Hoares, the Hanburys, the Lloyds, the Mastermans, the Jansons, the Osgoods, the Dimsdales, and others; and it was from there that the remains of George Fox were carried to Bunhill Fields for burial, followed by 3,000 Friends. This chapel becoming too small for the congregation, a new one, that now existing, was erected in Bishopsgate Street on the site of the Dolphin Inn.

In 1838 a Jews' synagogue was built in Great St. Helens. It is the largest in London in the Italian style, with a splendid interior.

The Wesleyan Centenary Hall stands in a commanding position opposite the end of Threadneedle Street, with a fine pedimented range of columns.

We have, in our historical retrospect, seen Bishopsgate under various aspects. In the Roman era, when it was a suburb of aristocratic residences, with all the appliances of Roman civilisation, and all the beauties of Roman art; in the Saxon and Norman periods, with its mean habitations and monastic establishments, with cowled monks, and bare-footed friars, conspicuous amongst the wayfarers as they passed along the thoroughfare ankle deep in mud, or blinded by the clouds of dust from the unpaved roads; in the days of the Tudors and Stuarts, when it was lined with picturesque gabled houses, with overhanging upper floors, cross timberings, and latticed windows; with quaint old hostelries and their galleried courtyards, frequently occupied by fashionable crowds of spectators, witnessing the performances of the actors of the Elizabethan drama; and with the noble mansions of the City magnates and merchant princes. In addition to these, there was the City gate and a conduit at each end of the street, one to the north, just within the gate, erected by Lord Mayor Knesworth in 1505; the other at the south end, at its junction with the streets of Cornhill, Leadenhall, and Gracious Church. The street was rendered more passable for pedestrians and vehicles by being paved in 1543, and the sloughs of despond, previously so characteristic of London thoroughfares, and so impedimental to locomotion, got rid of. After this followed the Georgian or dark age of architecture, when the quaint old houses of the past were replaced by the hideous abortions of the last and beginning of the present century.

Now for the third time we see Bishopsgate Street again gradually assuming an aspect of architectural grandeur, which will make it in another fifty years one of the finest streets in London or any other city. Within the last few years there have been erected several blocks of buildings of a palatial character, and this process of transformation is still going on with great rapidity. Among the more notable we may mention the National and Provincial Bank of England, one of the finest buildings of Modern London; the Royal Bank Buildings, the London and Lancashire Life Office, the Capital and Counties Bank, the South Sea Chambers, the Palmerston Buildings, the Devonshire Chambers, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the block of offices at the rear of St. Botolph's Church.