THERE are few things more striking by way of contrast in London that the sudden change which one may almost everywhere obtain from the noise, bustle, and apparent confusion of the narrow and crowded streets of the city, to the serene quiet of some fine old edifice lying close beside them, utterly undisturbed by the eternal roar of the great Babel. And to all those who feel, whether as a passing mood or as a more enduring sentiment, that consciousness of solitude in populous places which Byron has so beautifully described, what can be more refreshing than to come unexpectedly upon these green spots in the desert-what more delightful than to step out of the whirl and the throng into some peaceful place where the echo of your own footsteps is the loudest sound you may hear, and the rush of interesting recollections, which people the silent but most eloquent walls, the only crowd that can arrest your wanderings? No happier example of this contrast between the fancy-stirring Past and the matter-of-fact Present, which London so frequently and so forcibly presents, can perhaps be found than in the instance of the subject before us. Crosby Place is certainly one of the most interesting edifices in London; and little as its history or even its existence is known to the thousands who pass daily through Bishopsgate Street, yet does it stand within a very few yards of the busiest part of that most

busy of thoroughfares. Pass those few yards, and you will soon forget the locality of Crosby Place. It appears itself too absorbed in the remembrance of its past glories, and of the great men who have lived within its sheltering arms, to heed the tumult without; and as to the visitor, the antique impressive air of the place soon subdues his thoughts to its own colour.

Crosby Place derives its name from Sir John Crosby, its reputed builder, an alderman of London during the reign of Edward IV. He held also the offices of Sheriff, Warden of the Grocers' Company, and the Mayoralty of the Staple of Calais; in 1461 he represented the city in Parliament. He appears to have distinguished himself among the party attached to the House of York, and was one of those whom Edward knighted on his approach to London, after the landing at Ravenspur in 1471. In the following year a most delicate commission was given to him, in common with Sir John Scott, Marshal of Calais, Watcliffe, the King's Secretary, Dr. John Russell, Archdeacon of Berkshire, and other eminent persons. Their chief ostensible object was to arrange various matters then in abeyance between the Duke of Burgundy and the King of England, and, we presume, to form a treaty of alliance against France, which Edward then meditated attacking. From thence they passed to the court of the Duke of Brittany, where, besides concluding a similar treaty, they were, says Stow, "to have gotten there the two Earls of Pembroke and of Richmond." Had they succeeded in this object, in what very different channels might not the history of this country have run! Soon after the defeat of the Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury, the Earl of Pembroke had fled with his young charge to seek refuge in France. A storm drove his vessel on the coast of Brittany, and the two nobles were detained by Francis, the reigning Duke. Edward now claimed them as enemies and fugitive traitors, but in vain; he could get no other assurance than that they should never be allowed to disturb his government. This was far from satisfactory; hence the secret mission given to Sir John Crosby and his companions, who, by profession of friendship for the exiles, succeeded at last in persuading both them and the Duke of the propriety of returning to England. The future conqueror of Bosworth Field was already at St. Malo on the point of embarkation, when Landois, the minister of the Duke, suddenly arrived, and prevented his sailing on various pretexts, till Richmond took the alarm, and fled from the agents of the man who had probably the same fate in store for him that had awaited Henry VI. The lease of the site of Crosby Place, with a great tenement then standing on it, formerly in possession of Cataneo Pinelli, a merchant of Genoa, was granted to Sir John by Alice Ashfield, prioress of the Convent of St. Helen's, adjoining this tenement was most probably pulled down to make way for the magnificent erection that soon appeared upon its site, and of which there is no reason to doubt but the more ancient parts of the present structure are the genuine remains. Sir John Crosby died in 1475, so that he could have enjoyed but for a short time the splendour of Crosby Place, then noticed as the highest domestic building in London. A beautiful tomb in the church of St. Helen's marks the last resting-place of his and his wife's remains.

The well-known passage in Shakspere will occur to all readers, where the Duke of Gloster, at the conclusion of his successful wooing of the Lady Anne, thus addresses her :

"And if thy poor devoted servant may
But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,
Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.
Anne.-What is it?

Glo. That it may please you leave these sad designs
To him that hath most cause to be a mourner,
And presently repair to Crosby House ;*
Where, after I have solemnly interr'd
At Chertsey monastery this noble King,
And wet his grave with my repentant tears,
I will with all expedient duty see you."

This passage is of great importance; for the preservation of Crosby Hall, through all the vicissitudes of its fortunes, is attributable to the popularity it derived from it. What its own intrinsic beauty and historical character might not have accomplished for it, has been done by a mere incidental notice in the great poet's writings. Richard's residence here, however, at the time of his marriage, 1473, is very doubtful, as Sir John Crosby was then alive. But a much more important event than the poet refers to unquestionably did take place in this building in connexion with Richard. It was in the hall of Crosby Place that he determined upon the deposition, perhaps the death, of the young King, Edward V., and it was here that all the plans were concocted for his own elevation to the vacant throne. When Edward IV. died, on the 9th of April, 1483, his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was with his maternal uncle, the Earl of Rivers, at Ludlow Castle, and the younger with his mother, Elizabeth, in London. Richard Duke of Gloster was at the same moment at the head of an army devoted to his service in the marches of Scotland. He immediately marched upon York, where he caused his nephew to be proclaimed King, and from thence proceeded towards London. The Prince or King was also, by his mother's directions, advancing towards the metropolis. The Duke, aware of his movements, so well timed his own that they met at Stony Stratford, without any appearance of intention on the part of the uncle. There the unsuspicious youth and his guardians were seized, the former being conveyed with all outward marks of respect and allegiance to London, and the latter to Pontefract, where they were almost immediately beheaded. The news of these events preceded the chief actor in them. Elizabeth withdrew with the Duke of York to the sanctuary at Westminster, and great was the commotion among the citizens. But the Lord Hastings, another of Richard's destined victims, quieted their minds by assuring them that the Duke was faithful to his Prince, and that the Earl Rivers and his companion had merely been arrested for matters attempted by them against the Duke and the Duke of Buckingham. A curious kind of proof was displayed to the populacebarrels filled with arms, which their conductors said the traitors had privately got together to destroy the two noble lords. "It were alms to hang the traitors!" was the exclamation, as the spectators turned away perfectly satisfied with this species of optical logic. Such was the state of things when Richard arrived in London, and, having lodged the young King in the Tower, took up his own residence for a short time at Crosby Place. For what follows we are indebted to the graphic pen of Sir Thomas More.

* In the quarto edition of Richard III., printed in Shakspere's lifetime, we have "Crosby Place." In 1623, the date of the folio edition, it is called "Crosby House."

Richard and the Duke of Buckingham now "went about to prepare for the coronation of the young King, as they would have it seem; and that they might turn both the eyes and minds of men from perceiving of their drifts otherwhere, the Lords, being sent for from all parts of the realm, came thick to that solemnity. But the Protector and the Duke, after that they had set the Lord Cardinal, the Archbishop of York, the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, the Lord Stanley, and the Lord Hastings, then Lord Chamberlain, with many other noblemen, to commune and devise about the coronation in one place, in part were they in another place contriving the contrary, and to make the Protector King. To which council albeit there were admitted very few, and they very secret, yet began there, here and there about, some manner of muttering among the people, as though all should not long be well, though they neither wist what they feared, nor wherefore; were it that before such great things men's hearts of a secret instinct of nature misgive them, as the sea without wind swelleth of itself some time before a tempest; or were it that some one man haply somewhat perceiving, filled many men with suspicion, though he showed few men what he knew. Howbeit, somewhat the dealing itself made men to muse on the matter, though the council were close; for, by little and little, all folk withdrew from the Tower, and drew to Crosby's Place, in Bishopsgate Street, where the Protector kept his household. The Protector had the resort, the King in a manner desolate; while some for their business made suit to them who had the doing, some were by their friends secretly warned that it might haply turn them to no good to be too much attendant about the King without the Protector's appointment; who removed also divers of the Prince's old servants from him, and set new about him. Thus many things coming together, partly by chance, partly of purpose, caused at length not common people only who wave with the wind, but wise men also, and some Lords eke, to mark the matter and muse thereon. So far forth that the Lord Stanley, who was afterwards Earl of Derby, wisely mistrusted it, and said with the Lord Hastings that he much misliked these two several councils; for while we,' quoth he, 'talk of one matter in the one place, little wot we whereof they talk in the other place.""

The wily Earl soon perceived that he had not mistaken the meaning of these separate councils, for at the very next meeting of the members of both, Gloster accused Hastings of witchcraft, and sent him instantly to the block; and Lord Stanley himself, in the mêlée, escaped destruction only by bending below the council board to escape a blow aimed at him by one of the Duke's attendants. The murder of the children, the insurrection and death of Buckingham, and Richard's own defeat and death at Bosworth, followed in rapid succession; and Richmond, the young Prince whom Sir John Crosby had so nearly entrapped a few years before, reigned, the universally acknowledged King of England. He married Elizabeth of York, and then the rival roses became once more blended in a common stock. Soon after the death of her son Prince Arthur, in 1502, within a few months of his marriage, the Queen also died. When "Maximilian, the Emperor of Germany, sent into England a solemn embassy, of the which the Lord Casimir, Marquis of Brandenburg, his cousin, accompanied with a Bishop, an Earl, and a great number of gentlemen well apparelled, was principal ambassador, which were triumphantly received into London, and were lodged at Crosby's Place. This embassy

was sent for three causes: one, to visit and comfort the King, being mournful and sad for the death of so good a queen and spouse; the second, for the renovation of the old league and amity; the third, which was not apparent, was to move the King to marry the Emperor's daughter, the Lady Margaret, Duchess Dowager of Savoy." ." The first two objects succeeded, the latter failed. The ambassadors on this occasion were guests of Bartholomew Read, Mayor of London 1501-2, who evidently purchased Crosby Place in order that he might have a home befitting the splendour which he had determined should signalize his mayoralty. Read was a member of, and at his death a great benefactor to, the Goldsmiths' Company; and it was supposed that he had given his inauguration dinner in their Hall. Stow, referring to this supposition, writes, "the Goldsmiths' Hall, a proper house, but not large. And therefore to say that Bartholomew Read, goldsmith, mayor in the year 1502, kept such a feast in this hall as some have fabled, is far incredible, and altogether impossible, considering the smallness of the hall and number of the guests, which as they say were more than 100 persons of great estate. For the messes and dishes of meats to them served, the paled park in the same hall furnished with fruitful trees, beasts of venery, and other circumstances of that pretended feast well weighed, Westminster Hall would hardly have sufficed, and therefore I will over pass it."+ Stow was quite unaware, when he wrote this, that Read was, at the time referred to, master of the largest hall in London, next to Westminster, and therefore all his argument against the truth of the report concerning the magnificence of the feast falls to the ground. We are

sorry to be obliged, like Stow, to "over pass it" with the above short notice; but all our endeavours to discover his authority have been useless. He refers to

* Hall's Chronicles, 1548, fol. lvi.

† Survey, Ed. 1633, p. 321.