The ward to which this street gives its name is unquestionably the richest in the City of London, containing within its limits, extending from Cornhill Ward on the south to Bishopsgate Ward on the north, and from Bishopsgate Ward on the east to Coleman Street Ward on the west, some of the most wealthy and important commercial establishments of the metropolis. Within its boundaries are the Bank of England, and a multitude of other high-class banks, the Royal Exchange, the Stock Exchange, several Insurance offices, Consulates, the South Sea House, the Inland Revenue Office, Drapers' Hall, Merchant Taylors' Hall, Carpenters' Hall, and an infinite number of merchants' offices, where mercantile transactions of incalculable magnitude take place daily. It comprehends within its area several of the most important commercial and financial streets of the City—Threadneedle Street, Lothbury, Throgmorton Street, Great Winchester Street, Princes Street, Moorgate Street, Austin Friars, with other smaller streets, courts, and alleys, all full of life, bustle, and active commercial life. It comprehends six parishes—those of Allhallows-on-the-Wall, St. Martin Outwich, St. Bene't Fink, St. Bartholemew-by-the-Exchange, St. Peter-le-Poor, and St. Christopher, Threadneedle Street. Besides these are the Dutch Church, of the Austin Friars, and the Walloon or French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street.

Old Broad Street is a wide spacious thoroughfare extending from the end of Throgmorton Street to London Wall and Wormwood Street, whence it is continued northward to Liverpool Street by New Broad Street; at the south end, by Throgmorton Street, it diverges at a slight angle to the end of Threadneedle Street, this portion having formerly been called Little Broad Street.

In the time of Charles I. it was one of the most fashionable streets in London, the place of residence of several aristocratic families, including, amongst others, those of the Earls of Shrewsbury, the Careys, Barons Hunsdon, and Earls of Dover, and the Westons, Barons Weston, and Earls of Portland, extinct 1688. The most important house, however, was Winchester House, which, with its gardens, occupied the site of Great and Little Winchester streets. The mansion was built by Sir William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, one of the foremost men of his age, and a remarkable man in many respects. He was born in the year 1475, and lived to the age of 97, holding various offices of state during two-thirds of that period, and at his death left upwards of a hundred descendants. In 1539 he was created, by patent, Baron St. John of Basing, to which title, by writ of summons, 1299, he was eldest co-heir. In 1549 he was created Earl of Wiltshire, and in 1551 Marquis of Winchester. He was Comptroller of the Household to Henry VIII., an executor of his will, and guardian of the young king, Edward VI., and afterwards became Lord Treasurer, and was made Knight of the Garter. He died in 1572, having witnessed all the changes of religion, and the turmoils and troubles attendant thereupon. On being asked how he managed to maintain his position, and an unbroken flow of prosperity, amid all the religious and political fluctuations of his time, he replied that "he was made of the pliable willow, not of the stubborn oak." He was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London, who was mother of his heir, the second marquis. At the dissolution of the Augustine Friary, the house and grounds were granted by Henry VIII. to Lord St. John, who pulled down a portion of the friary, built a mansion which he made his town residence, and laid out the grounds afresh which extended to the City wall, with a footway across, leading to Moorgate. This footpath had gates at each end, which were kept locked during the night, and no one allowed to pass along it. The Marquis was also the builder of Basing House, Wiltshire, memorable for the siege it sustained in the subsequent civil war.

In modern times Sir Astley Cooper, the celebrated surgeon, resided in Broad Street, in a house at the corner of the paved court leading to St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate Street, where he held a morning levÉe of City patients. His fees, the first year he commenced, amounted to five guineas, and it was not until the 5th that they reached £100 and the 9th, £1,000. After that they rose rapidly to £1,500, and one year he received the sum of £21,000. Afterwards he removed to the West-End, but he found a sensible diminution of his receipts from those derived from the City millionaires. The abbot of St. Alban's also had his town house opposite St. Augustine's Gate. Even in the time of the Romans, this part of the City would appear to have been inhabited by the aristocratical section of the community, as in 1854 a magnificent tesselated floor, 28-feet square, was discovered, such as must have belonged to a large and high-class house. Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in 1243, founded on a plot of land extending westward from Broad Street, a priory for begging Friars of the order of St. Augustine, which flourished until the dissolution, when the house and grounds were granted to Lord St. John and the church, appropriated by King Edward VI., in 1551, to "John Alasco, and a congregation of Germans and other strangers fled hither for the sake of religion," the church to be called "the temple of the Lord Jesus," and in the hands of the Germans, or rather Dutch it still remains.

There is but one church in the street—St. Peter's, originally St. Peter the Apostle, but now St. Peter-the-Poor, a mean edifice, with an ungainly tower, and might well be designated "the poor" from its poverty of architectural merit. Maitland says that it "received the appellation from the mean condition (as is supposed) of the parish in ancient times. If so that epithet may at present be justly changed to that of rich, because of the great number of merchants and other persons of distinction inhabiting there." The probability seems to be that it derived that name from its proximity to the house of Begging Friars, who made a merit of their poverty, and this came to be called St. Peter by the Poor Friars, to distinguish it from St. Peter's, Cornhill, and others of the name. We have no knowledge of when or by whom it was built, but it is a very ancient foundation, as there is documentary evidence showing it to have been in existence in 1181. Among the rectors of St. Peter's have been some notable men. Richard Holdsworth, D.D., educated at St. John's, Cambridge, where he won a name for proficiency in arts and theology, became master of Emanuel College, and vice-chancellor of the university, who was preferred to the rectory in 1636. He was a zealous loyalist, and ejected from his living in 1642, his house plundered, and he imprisoned in the Tower. In 1645, he was nominated to the deanery of Worcester and elected Bishop of Bristol, but declined the dignity. He was permitted to attend King Charles at Hampton Court and Carisbrook Castle, but he suffered much by deprivation, sequestration, and several imprisonments. He died in 1649, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. Benjamin Hoadley, D.D., afterwards successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, who held the living from 1704 to 1720. He was eminent as a controversialist, and held views which would now be termed Rationalistic, approaching closely to Unitarianism, which were developed especially in his Plain Account of the Sacrament, and his Discourses on the Terms of Acceptance. When Bishop of Bangor, he published a sermon on "The True Nature of the Kingdom that Christ came upon Earth to Establish," from the text, "My kingdom is not of this world," which gave rise to the celebrated and long-protracted "Bangorian Controversy." He published a multitude of works, chiefly of a controversial character, and died in 1761.

John Scott, D.D., 1677-91, afterwards rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and canon of Windsor, a learned divine, author of Cases of Conscience, 1683; Texts Cited by the Papists Examined, 1688; The Christian Life, 1683; ninth edition, 1702; and other works, which passed through successive editions, and some translated into foreign languages. His entire works were published in two vols., fol., in 1718, and in six vols., 8vo., in 1826.

In the fifteenth century Venice held the secret and the monopoly of glass making. The works were situated on the island of Murano, and many attempts were made by other nations to learn the secret, but the Venetians asserted and spread abroad the report that it was impossible to make glass elsewhere equal to that of Murano, even with the same materials, the same workmen, and the same method of working, as there was something in the air of the island which imparted a lucidity and lustre, rendering the glass of the island superior to anything that could be produced in any other part of the world.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the manufacture was introduced into England, and works established in the Savoy and Crutched Friars. Early in the following century a company of noblemen and courtiers, with Sir Robert Mansell at their head, formed an association for the manufacture of glass, and built works for that purpose in Broad Street, near Austin Friars. At that time it was not deemed derogatory to the dignity of a nobleman to engage in the glass trade. In Venice the manufacture was held in such high esteem that those engaged in the profession ranked as gentlemen, and in France a decree was issued that glass-working should not lessen the dignity of a noble.

In 1615 the company employed as their manager or steward James Howell, afterwards Historiographer Royal to Charles II., whom they sent abroad to obtain information for the improvement of their processes, and to employ skilful workmen. He obtained from the Lords of Council a warrant to travel for three years, on condition that he did not visit Rome or St. Omer, and he started off in 1619, returning in 1621.

He tempted the best workmen, by a promise of a high rate of wages, especially Signor Antonio Miotti, from Lealand, who had been a master manufacturer, and was reckoned the ablest workman in Christendom, and from Venice "two of the best gentlemen workmen that ever blew crystal."

Howell was a remarkable man, and led a somewhat varied life of vicissitude. After his continental tour he threw up his situation, not being able to bear the heat of the glass works, was elected a fellow of his college, and in 1626 became secretary to the council of the North, at York, and the next year was elected to represent Richmond, Yorkshire, in Parliament. In 1632 he went to Denmark as secretary to a special embassy, and on his return went to Ireland to seek employment under Wentworth, but failed in consequence of the recall and execution of that nobleman. In 1640 he obtained a clerkship in the council at Whitehall, but lost it on the breaking out of the Civil War, and in 1643 was committed to the Fleet for his loyal predilections, where he remained until the death of the king. On his release he found himself not only penniless, but in debt. He contrived, however, to maintain himself during the Protectorate by writing for the press, and at the restoration was appointed Historiographer Royal, which office he held until his death in 1666.

When Monk came to London to effect the restoration of monarchy, he halted with his army in Finsbury Fields, had a conference with the Lord Mayor and aldermen, who coincided with him in his views, which were professedly the maintenance of a free Parliament. He quartered his men in the Broad Street Glass House, and passed himself into the City, amid the acclamations of the people, to the Bull's Head, Cheapside, where he took up his quarters. The glass works, despite the monopoly, was not a success, the manufacture was discontinued, and the house, or a portion of it, taken by the Pinmakers' Company.

The Pinmakers, or Pinners as they were usually called, were neither a numerous or a rich company. Indeed, Stow says that they met in Plasterers' Hall originally, and in his time the house had gone to decay, as "they were not worth a pin." The company was formed in the reign of James I., and was incorporated 2nd Charles I. (1636). The arms presented a crowned half figure of Queen Elizabeth, with the motto, "Virginitas et unitas nostra fraternitas." Towards the end of the 17th century they held their quarterly courts of assistants in Cutler's Hall, Cloak Lane, Dowgate. In the Guildhall Library is preserved the minute-book of the quarterly meetings from 1698 to 1723, some portions of which are engrossed. It commences with a list of members in 1698; then gives the minutes of the meetings in succession. The chief business appears to have been fining the members of the court 1s. for being late, binding and unloosing apprentices, and voting donations to the widows of members. The company has now entirely disappeared.

St. Augustine's passed through some strange mutations before it finally disappeared. Originally the home of a fraternity of begging friars, it became the stables and outhouses of the mansion of a nobleman. Then it was converted into a glass factory; a soldiers' barracks for a short time; after which it was appropriated by a City company, and finally became a great centre of Protestant Dissent, from whose pulpit were enunciated principles of theology at which, in the olden time, friars would have stood aghast. In the reign of Charles II., Anthony Palmer, who had been ejected from Bourton-on-the-Water, and who suffered much under the Act of Uniformity, an able and learned man, author of The Tempestuous Soul calmed by Jesus Christ, and other esteemed works, collected a congregation here, took a lease of the building, and fitted it up with two tiers of galleries, and died in 1678. He was followed by a long succession of ministers who preached Calvinistic doctrines, amongst the more notable of whom were George Townes, M.A., who had been apprehended in the pulpit at Bristol on a charge of having being implicated in the "Presbyterian Plot," was removed by habeas corpus to King's Bench Prison, and eventually acquitted. He suffered much persecution, and died of the stone, aggravated by his imprisonment, in 1685. Richard Wavel, famous for his pulpit oratory, who died in 1707. Joseph Hunt, D.D., a learned divine, who occupied the pulpit 37 years. He is highly panegyrised by Dr. Lardner for his erudition, strength of mind, and wonderful memory. Joseph Foster, D.D., born 1697, pastor of Pinners' Hall Church 1774-1753, author of The Usefulness, Truth, and Excellency of the Christian Revelation, written in reply to Christianity as Old as Creation. He was buried in Bunhill Fields. Caleb Fleming, D.D., born at Nottingham, 1698; pastor, 1753-1778, having been previously minister of a congregation in Bartholomew Close. Author of a multitude of pamphlets—some published anonymously—quaint and obscure in style. He held opinions verging on Socinianism, and "set down as fools all who held different opinions," including Watts, Bradbury, Pike, Wesley, Whitefield, and Sherlock. This congregation only occupied the chapel in the mornings, and at the expiration of the lease, in 1778, the church was dispersed. In the afternoons an Independent Church, commenced by Thomas Cole, who died in 1697, rented the chapel. He was followed by Dr. John Singleton, who in 1704 removed with the church to Lorimer's Hall.

In that year (1704) Dr. Isaac Watts preached here in the afternoons until 1708, when he removed to the new meeting house in Duke's Place.

Then followed, in 1708, a congregation under the oversight of James Maisters, who came hither from Joiners' Hall, who, with his successor Thomas Richardson, removed in 1723 to Devonshire Square. About 1741 Mr. Weatherley's congregation of General Baptists came here from Artillery Place, Spitalfields, and continued until the expiration of the lease, when they removed to Berry Street. A sect of Seventh Day Baptists also occupied the chapel on Saturdays, under the pastorate of Thomas Bampfield, "who died a martyr in Newgate in 1684." The church afterwards removed to Curriers' Hall.

In 1779 a lease was taken of the chapel by Anthony Cole, a seceder from the Countess of Huntingdon's connection, who gathered together a numerous congregation, who assembled here until the expiration of the lease in 1799, when they removed to Founders' Hall.

Shortly after this the building was taken down, and all traces of it are now obliterated.

But that which rendered Pinners' Hall so conspicuous and celebrated in the annals of Nonconformity was the establishment of the Merchants' Lecture within its walls. In 1672, the Dutch war commenced, and Charles II. and his advisers, thinking it desirable that there should be peace at home in the religious world whilst there was war abroad, issued the memorable Declaration of Indulgence, in the preamble to which it was stated, "that there was very little fruit of all those forcible methods which had been used for seducing erring and dissenting persons, etc. His Majesty therefore, by virtue of his supreme power in matters ecclesiastical, took upon him to suspend all penal laws about them, declaring that he would grant a convenient number of public meeting places to men of all sects that did not conform, provided they took out licences, etc." This was welcomed by the Dissenters generally as a gracious act of toleration, but there were those amongst them who looked upon it as a stepping-stone to the re-introduction of Popery. Taking advantage of the indulgence, the Presbyterians and Independents who agreed in the fundamental principles of the Reformation, and in a desire to tear away from the Anglican Church the shreds of Popery which still adhered to it, met together, under the patronage of the merchants of London, and agreed to establish in Pinners' Hall a weekly lecture, to be preached on Tuesday mornings.

At first four Presbyterian and two Independent ministers, the most eminent of their day, were appointed to preach in turn. They were Drs. Bates, Manton, and Owen, and Messrs. Baxter, Collins, and Jenkyn, and for a time the lectures were continued with success and acceptance, and with tolerable unanimity, despite some little bickering on the questions of Predestination and Reprobation, occasioned by a sermon preached by Baxter, who defended his sermon in a tract entitled An Appeal to the Light, when Dr. Manton came forward and partially suppressed the clamour, but Baxter seceded.

A succession of distinguished ministers continued the lecture until 1694, when the Calvinistic question again cropped up, arising out of the reprinting of the works of Dr. Tobias Crisp, which were published under the editorship of his son in 1690, and written against by Mr. Williams, one of the lecturers. Discord sprung up, and an attempt was made to exclude him from the lectureship, upon which four of the lecturers,—Dr. Bates, and Messrs. Williams, Howe, and Alsop,—sent in their resignations, and set up an opposition lecture at Salters' Hall, at the same day and hour.

At the expiration of the lease the lecture was removed to Little St. Helen's, and afterwards to the chapel in New Broad Street, about 1780, but was very thinly attended.

The Independent Chapel in New Broad Street, to which the Merchants' lecture migrated, was built in 1728, for Dr. Guyse and a congregation who separated with him from Miles Lane. Dr. Guyse was a learned man and Merchant lecturer at Pinners' Hall, and was author of A Paraphrase on the New Testament, 1739, a voluminous and valuable work, as well as of some other works.

He was followed by John Stafford, D.D., who died in 1800, and was buried in Bunhill-fields; author of The Scripture Doctrine of Sin and Grace, Twenty-five Sermons on the Seventh Chapter Romans, etc.

A writer in Knight's London says: "If a stranger from any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, however remote, were to pause in the midst of Broad Street, and enquire to what purpose that large pile of buildings opposite to him were appropriated, he would, ten to one, on learning that it was the Excise Office, have a livelier idea of the operations of the Board of Revenue, which has its seat there, than the inhabitant of London, provided that neither had been brought into direct contact with its officers by the nature of his business." In 1626, King Charles I. attempted to introduce the excise, but a unanimous vote of the Houses of Parliament compelled him to renounce the scheme. Nevertheless, in 1643, Parliament itself levied an excise, for the maintenance of the forces raised by them; the first articles on which the duty was laid were ale, beer, cider, and perry. The Commissioners of Excise sat in Haberdashers' Hall. An account of its establishment was given by Prynne, in a tract published in 1654, entitled, "A Declaration and Protestation against the Illegal and Detestable and oft-contemned New Tax and Extortion of Excise in General, and for Hops, a native and uncertain commodity in particular." An excise office was built in Smithfield, which was burnt down by the populace, and many riots took place in London in opposition to the tax, especially when salt and meat and other of the common necessaries of life were subjected to it; and a multitude of pamphlets, some of a very scurrilous character, appeared in opposition to it. The Excise office was afterwards removed to the mansion of Sir J. Frederick, in Ironmonger Lane, and remained there until 1768, when the trustees of the Gresham estates let the ground on which Gresham College and Almshouses stood, extending from Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street, to Government for £500 per annum, the City and Mercers' Company further agreeing to pay out of the Gresham funds the sum of £1,800 towards the demolition of the college and the building of the Excise Office. The architect was the elder Dance, who erected a plain but spacious and commanding looking brick building, which served the purpose of the commissioners until 1848, when the office was removed to Somerset House.

That portion of the grounds of the Gresham estate which faced Broad Street, was occupied by the almshouses founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1575, and bequeathed by him in trust to the Lord Mayor and Commonalty of the City of London. They consisted of eight tenements for eight poor men, with an annual allowance of £6 13s. 4d. and a load of coals, and a new gown every two years. On their demolition to make room for the Excise Office, they were removed to the City green-yard, in Whitecross Street.

Another Government office which stood in Broad Street was the Pay Office for the Navy. It was situated in a portion of Winchester House at the north-west corner of Great Winchester Street, has since been removed, and is now located in Somerset House.

The South Sea House formerly extended from Threadneedle Street to Broad Street, with a frontage in both streets; now it is confined to the former street in a more modern building. The company was incorporated in 1710 by Queen Anne, for the purpose of paying off a sum of ten millions due to the seamen who had been engaged in the French wars. In 1720 they obtained an Act of Parliament giving them a monopoly of trading to the South Seas. By a series of iniquitous frauds and deceptions they raised the shares to a fictitious value of 1,000 per cent., and caused the nation to fall into a sort of financial madness in their eagerness to get shares, which resulted in the "South Sea Bubble." The panic on its bursting caused the ruin of innumerable families, whilst a few clever rogues realised large fortunes. The company has long ceased to be a trading body, and the remnant of the stock, converted into annuity stock, is managed by Government, under the provisions of an Act of Parliament passed in 1753.

The district northward of Old Broad Street was formerly called Petty France, on which New Broad Street has been built. Seymoor in his edition of Stow writes: "Petty France; the greatest part of this is new built, and called New Broad Street. It is a most regular building; the houses are after the manner of those by Hanover Square and Burlington Gardens, and are the most elegant buildings in the City."

In New Broad Street, besides the Independent Chapel, mentioned supra, a Presbyterian chapel was erected in 1729, for a congregation which removed hither from Hand Alley, Bishopsgate, where a Church had been formed early in the reign of Charles II. by Thomas Vincent, who rendered himself famous by his labours amongst the sick during the Plague. Dr. John Evans, a pious and eminent man, was minister of the Church at the time of the removal, and was author of a great number of published sermons, and other works, including "Two sermons preached at the opening of a new meeting place, in New Broad Street, Petty France, December 14th and 21st, 1730." John Allen, M.D., was a subsequent minister of the chapel, author of several sermons which were printed; and another was John Palmer, a controversial writer, and opponent of Dr. Priestley. At the expiration of the lease in 1780 the chapel was taken down and the church dispersed.

An illustration of the primitive mode of stopping the ravages of fire occurred in 1314, when permission was asked by the officials of Broad Street ward to cut down an elm tree standing by London Wall and sell it, to enable them to purchase a new cord for their "wardhoke," a hook which was kept in each ward of the City for the purpose of pulling down houses to prevent the spreading of fires.

In 1500 an inquisition was held to ascertain the liability of the ward to maintain two bridges over the Wall Brook running from "Vynesbury," now broken, and to replace the hinges of Bishopsgate, when it was found that the Prior of Holy Trinity was bound by his charter to keep one of the bridges in repair, and the Prior of the New Hospital without Bishopsgate and Broad Street ward the other jointly, and that it devolved on the Bishop of London to maintain the hinges of the gate, as he claimed a stick from every load of wood that passed through the gateway.

Broad Street of late years has become a thoroughfare of immense traffic, especially in the mornings and evenings, of cabs and pedestrians going from and to the half-dozen railways which have erected stations and termini in Liverpool Street, so much so as to render it at certain times of the day one of the most thronged streets of the City.