CHAPTER VII.

ALDERSGATE AND CRIPPLEGATE.

ET us now return to St. Martin's-le-Grand and turn to the left down Aldersgate Street, so called from the northern gate, one of the three original gates of Anglo-Norman London. Some derive its name from the Saxon Aldrich, its supposed founder; others, including Stow, from the alder trees which grew around it. The gate (removed in 1761) as restored after the Fire was rather like Temple Bar, with the addition of side towers, and was surmounted by a figure of James I. It was inscribed with the words of Jeremiah"Then shall enter into the gates of this city kings and princes, sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city shall remain for ever." The rooms over the gate were occupied by the famous printer John Day, who printed the folio Bible, dedicated to Edward VI., in 1549, as well as the works of Roger Ascham, Latimer's Sermons, and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs." In the frontispiece of one of his books, he is represented in a room into which the sun is shining, arousing his sleeping apprentices with a whip, and the words" Arise, for it is day."

On the right of Aldersgate Street, behind the Post-office, is an ugly Church, built by Wren, called St. Anne in the Willows-a name very inappropriate to it now. The curious monuments in this church were removed at the end of the last century. One to Peter Heiwood, 1701, recorded the fate of his grandfather, the Peter Heiwood who arrested Guy Fawkes, and, in revenge, was stabbed to death in Westminster Hall by John James, a Dominican friar, in 1640. St. Anne's Lane is the scene of Sir Roger de Coverley's adventure

"This worthy knight, being but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane; upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering the question, called him a young popish cur, and asked him who made Anne a saint? The boy being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and, instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. Upon this,' says Sir Roger, 'I did not think fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the name of that place;' by which ingenious artifice he found out the place he inquired after, without giving offence to any party."-Spectator, No. 125.

On the left is Bull and Mouth Street (Boulogne Mouth) curiously commemorating, in its corrupted name, the capture of Boulogne Harbour by Henry VIII., in 1544. The Bull and Mouth Inn was one of the great centres from which coaches started before the time of railways. It was here that George Fox, founder of the Quakers, preached during the Commonwealth. After the Restoration the inn became celebrated in the story of Quaker persecutions: it was there that (August 26, 1662) Ellwood was seized and carried to Bridewell, afterwards to Newgate.

On the left of Aldersgate Street, the branches of a planetree waving over a small Gothic fountain will draw attention to the Church of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, of 1796, which contains the monument of Dame Anne Packington, supposed to have written "The Whole Duty of Man." A brotherhood of the Holy Trinity was attached to this church. The Palmer in John Heywood's "Four P's," describing his pilgrimages in different parts of the world, says that he has been—

"At Saint Botulphe and Saint Anne of Buckstone,

Praying to them to pray for me,
Unto the blessed Trinitie."

Little Britain (commemorating the mansion of John, Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond, temp. Edward II.), a tributary of Aldersgate Street on the left, was as great a centre for booksellers in the reigns of the Stuarts as Paternoster Row is now. It is the place where, according to Richardson, the Earl of Dorset was wandering about on a book-hunt in 1667, when, coming upon a hitherto unknown work called "Paradise Lost," and dipping into it here and there, he admired it rather, and bought it. The bookseller begged him, if he approved of it, to recommend it, as the copies lay on his hands as so much waste paper. He took it home, and showed it to Dryden, who said at once, "This man cuts us all out and the ancients too." The street has still much of the character, though it has lost the picturesqueness, described by Washington Irving.

"In the centre of the great City of London lies a small neighbourhood, consisting of a cluster of narrow streets and courts, of very venerable and debilitated houses, which goes by name of Little

Britain. Christ Church School and St. Bartholomew's Hospital bound it on the west; Smithfield and Long Lane on the north; Aldersgate Street, like an arm of the sea, divides it from the eastern part of the City; whilst the yawning gulf of Bull and Mouth Street separates it from Butcher's Hall Lane and the regions of Newgate. Over this little territory, thus bounded and designated, the great dome of St. Paul's, swelling above the intervening houses of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly protection.

"This quarter derives its appellation from having been, in ancient times, the residence of the Dukes of Brittany. As London increased, however, rank and fashion moved off to the west, and trade, creeping on at their heels, took possession of their deserted abodes. For some time Little Britain became the great mart of learning, and was peopled by the busy and prolific race of booksellers; these also gradually deserted it, and emigrating beyond the great strait of Newgate Street, settled down in Paternoster Row and St. Paul's Churchyard, where they continue to increase and multiply even at the present day.

"But though thus fallen into decline, Little Britain still bears traces of its former splendour. There are several houses ready to tumble down, the fronts of which are magnificently enriched with oaken carvings of hideous faces, unknown birds, beasts, and fishes; and fruits and flowers which it would puzzle a naturalist to classify. There are also, in Aldersgate Street, certain remains of what were once spacious and lordly family mansions, but which have in latter days been subdivided into several tenements. Here may often be found the family of a petty tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing amongst the relics of antiquated finery, in great rambling time-stained apartments, with fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and enormous marble fire-places. The lanes and courts also contain many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, but, like your small gentry, sturdily maintaining their claims to equal antiquity. These have their gable ends to the street; great bow windows, with diamond panes set in lead; grotesque carvings, and low-arched doorways.* Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the City; the stronghold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions."-The Sketch Book.

A little beyond, on the right of Aldersgate, Falcon Street leads into Silver Street, which contains one of the pretty quiet breathing-places bequeathed by the Fire to the City. A • There are still such houses in the neighbouring Cloth Fair.

stone tells "This was the parish church of St. Olave, Silver Street, destroy'd in the dreadfvll fire in the yeare, 1666." No. 24, Silver Street, is the Hall of the Parish Clerks Company, incorporated 1232. Amongst their portraits of benefactors is one of William Roper, son-in-law of Sir Thomas More.

On the left of Silver Street is Monkwell Street, containing (left, No. 33) the Barber-Surgeons' Court-Room (their Hall is destroyed, and their Company consists neither of Barbers nor Surgeons), approached by an old porch of Charles II.'s time. Here are several good pictures—the Countess of Richmond (with a lamb and an olive-branch) by Sir Peter Lely; Inigo Jones by Vandyke; and a grand Holbein of Henry VIII. giving a charter to the Barber-Surgeons.* The Company have refused offers of £12,000 for this picture in later years, though Pepys somewhat contemptuously says

66

29th Aug. 1668. Harris (the actor) and I to the Chyrurgeons' Hall, where they are building it now very fine; and thence to see their theatre, which stood all the Fire, and (which was our business) their great picture of Holbein's, thinking to have bought it, by the help of W. Pierce, for a little money: I did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1000; but it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and it is not a pleasant, though a good picture."

The picture is a noble one and most minutely finished, even to the details of the ermine on the king's robe and the rings on his fingers. Henry, seated in a chair of state, is giving the charter to Thomas Vicary, the then master, who was sergeant-surgeon to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, and is said to have written the earliest work

In that time and long afterwards, barbers officiated as surgeons in bleeding, as still in Italy. The well-known staff which sticks out above a barber's door commemorates this, as it was customary for the patient about to be bled to hold a staff at full length to keep his arm upon the stretch during the operation.