Blackfriars.] THE FATAL VESPERS. 203 Webb, Mistress Udall, and Lady Blackstone's In a curious old pamphlet entitled "Something daughter, were carried to Ely House, Holborn, and Written by Occasion of that Fatall and Memorable there buried under the chapel. In the fore court- Accident in the Blacke-friers, on Sonday, being the yard, by the French ambassador's house, a huge 26th October, 1623, stilo antiquo, and the 5th grave, eighteen feet long and twelve feet broad, November, stilo novo, or Romano," the author rewas dug, and forty-four corpses piled within | lates a singular escape of one of the listeners. it. In another pit, twelve feet long and eight feet "When all things were ready," he says, "and the broad, in the ambassador's garden, were buried prayer finished, the Jesuite tooke for his text the fifteen more. Others were interred in St. Andrew's, gospell of the day, being (as I take it) the 22nd St. Bride's, and Blackfriars churches. The list of Sunday after Trinity, and extracted out of the 18th the killed and wounded is curious, from its topo- of Matthew, beginning at the 21st verse, to the end. graphical allusions. Amongst other entries, we find The story concerns forgiveness of sinnes, and de"John Halifax, a water-bearer" (in the old times scribeth the wicked cruelty of the unjust steward, of street conduits the water-bearer was an important whom his maister remitted, though he owed him person); "a son of Mr. Flood, the scrivener, in 10,000 talents, but he would not forgive his fellow Holborn; a man of Sir Ives Pemberton; Thomas a 100 pence, whereupon he was called to a new Brisket, his wife, son, and maid, in Montague reckoning, and cast into prison, and then the parClose; Richard Fitzgarret, of Gray's Inn, gentle- ticular words are, which he insisted upon, the 34th man; Davie, an Irishman, in Angell Alley, Gray's verse: 'So his master was wroth, and delivered Inn, gentleman; Sarah Watson, daughter of Master him to the jaylor, till he should pay all that was Watson, chirurgeon; Master Grimes, near the due to him.' For the generall, he urged many 'Horse Shoe' tavern, in Drury Lane; John Bevan, good doctrines and cases; for the particular, he at the 'Seven Stars', in Drury Lane; Francis Man, modelled out that fantasie of purgatory, which he Thieving Lane, Westminster," &c. As might have followed with a full crie of pennance, satisfaction, been expected, the fanatics of both parties had paying of money, and such like. much to say about this terrible accident. The Catholics declared that the Protestants, knowing this to be a chief place of meeting for men of their faith, had secretly drawn out the pins, or sawn the supporting timbers partly asunder. The Protestants, on the other hand, lustily declared that the planks would not bear such a weight of Romish sin, and that God was displeased with their pulpits and altars, their doctrine and sacrifice. One zealot remembered that, at the return of Prince Charles from the madcap expedition to Spain, a Catholic had lamented, or was said to have lamented, the street bonfires, as there would be never a fagot left to burn the heretics. "If it had been a Protestant chapel," the Puritans cried, "the Jesuits would have called the calamity an omen of the speedy downfall of heresy." A Catholic writer replied "with a word of comfort," and pronounced the accident to be a presage of good fortune to Catholics and of the overthrow of error and heresy. This zealous, but not well-informed, writer compared Father Drury's death with that of Zuinglius, who fell in battle, and with that of Calvin, "who, being in despair, and calling upon the devil, gave up his wicked soul, swearing, cursing, and blaspheming." So intolerance, we see, is neither specially Protestant nor Catholic, but of every party. "The Fatal Vespers," as that terrible day at Blackfriars was afterwards called, were long remembered with a shudder by Catholic England. "While this exercise was in hand, a gentleman brought up his friend to see the place, and bee partaker of the sermon, who all the time he was going up stairs cried out, Whither doe I goe? I protest my heart trembles;' and when he came into the roome, the priest being very loud, he whispered his friend in the eare that he was afraid, for, as he supposed, the room did shake under him; at which his friend, between smiling and anger, left him, and went close to the wall behind the preacher's chaire. The gentleman durst not stirre from the staires, and came not full two yards in the roome, when on a sudden there was a kinde of murmuring amongst the people, and some were heard to say, 'The roome shakes;' which words being taken up one of another, the whole company rose up with a strong suddainnesse, and some of the women screeched. I cannot compare it better than to many passengers in a boat in a tempest, who are commanded to sit still and let the waterman alone with managing the oares, but some unruly people rising overthrowes them all. So was this company served; for the people thus affrighted started up with extraordinary quicknesse, and at an instant the maine summer beame broke in sunder, being mortised in the wall some five foot from the same; and so the whole roofe or floore fell at once, with all the people that stood thronging on it, and with the violent impetuosity drove downe the nether roome quite to the ground, so that they fell RICHARD BURBAGE. From the Original Portrait in Dulwich College. (See page 201.) "They that kept themselves close to the walls, or remained by the windows, or held by the rafters, or settled themselves by the stayres, or were driven away by fear and suspition, sauved themselves without further hurt; but such as seemed more devoute, and thronged neere the preacher, perished in a moment with himselfe and other priests and Jesuites; and this was the summe of that unhappy disaster." with the daughter and heiress of John, Lord Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The queen was met at the water-side by the bride, and carried to her house in a lectica by six knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped in the same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham, where there was 'a memorable maske of eight ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their attire is this: each hath a skirt of cloth of silver, In earlier days Blackfriars had been a locality a mantell of coruscian taffete, cast under the much inhabited by fashionable people, especially arme, and their haire loose about their shoulders, about the time of Queen Elizabeth. Pennant curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton quotes from the Sydney Papers a curious account | leade. These eight ladys maskers choose eight LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1760. From a Contemporary Print. time the queen was sixty. Surely, as Mr. Walpole | the footsteps of Vitruvius, and gained the first Old Blackfriars Bridge, pulled down some years since, was begun in 1760, and first opened on prize at the Academy of St. Luke. He arrived In the face of this noisy newspaper thunder, Mylne went on, and produced one of the most beautiful bridges in England for £152,640 3s. 10d., actually £163 less than the original estimate-an admirable example for all architects, present and to come. The bridge, which had nine arches, and was 995 yards from wharf to wharf, was erected in ten years and three quarters. Mylne received £500 a year and ten per cent. on the expenditure. His claims, however, were disputed, and not allowed by the grateful City till 1776. The tolls were bought by Government in 1785, and the passage then became free. The bridge was afterwards lowered, and the open parapet, condemned by Johnson, removed. It was supposed that Mylne's mode of centreing was a secret, but in contempt of all quackery he deposited exact models of his system in the British Museum. He was afterwards made surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1811 was interred near the tomb of Wren. He was a despot amongst his workmen, and ruled them with a rod of iron. However, the foundations of this bridge were never safely built, and latterly the piers began visibly to subside. The semi-circular arches would have been far stronger. ments. The committee were, however, just enough loaded will be itself part of the load. The semito be unanimous in favouring the young unknown elliptical arch has one recommendation yet unScotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly examined. We are told that it is difficult of it was known that Mylne's arches were to be execution." elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three letters to the printer of the Gazetteer, praising Gwynn's plans and denouncing the Scotch conqueror. Gwynn had "coached "the learned Doctor in a very unsatisfactory way. In his early days the giant of Bolt Court had been accustomed to get up subjects rapidly, but the science of architecture was not so easily digested. The Doctor contended "that the first excellence of a bridge built for commerce over a large river is strength." So far so good; but he then went on to try and show that the pointed arch is necessarily weak, and here he himself broke down. He allowed that there was an elliptical bridge at Florence, but he said carts were not allowed to go over it, which proved its fragility. He also condemned a proposed castiron parapet, in imitation of one at Rome, as too poor and trifling for a great design. He allowed that a certain arch of Perault's was elliptical, but then he contended that it had to be held together by iron clamps. He allowed that Mr. Mylne had gained the prize at Rome, but the competitors, the arrogant despot of London clubs asserted, were The foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge was only boys; and, moreover, architecture had sunk laid by Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor, on the so low at Rome that even the Pantheon had been 31st of October, 1760. Horace Walpole, always deformed by petty decorations. In his third letter Whiggish, describing the event, says :-"The Lord the Doctor grew more scientific, and even more Mayor laid the first stone of the new bridge yesterconfused. He was very angry with Mr. Mylne's day. There is an inscription on it in honour of friends for asserting that though a semi-ellipse Mr. Pitt, which has a very Roman air, though very might be weaker than a semicircle, it had quite unclassically expressed. They talk of the contastrength enough to support a bridge. "I again gion of his public spirit; I believe they had not got venture to declare," he wrote "I again venture to rid of their panic about mad dogs." Several gold, declare, in defiance of all this contemptuous supe- silver, and copper coins of the reign of George II. riority" (how arrogant men hate other people's (just dead) were placed under the stone, with a arrogance !), "that a straight line will bear no weight. silver medal presented to Mr. Mr. Mylne by the Not even the science of Vasari will make that form Academy of St. Luke's, and upon two plates of tin strong which the laws of nature have condemned-Bonnel Thornton said they should have been to weakness. By the position that a straight line lead-was engraved a very shaky Latin inscripwill bear nothing is meant that it receives no tion, thus rendered into English :strength from straightness; for that many bodies laid in straight lines will support weight by the cohesion of their parts, every one has found who has seen dishes on a shelf, or a thief upon the gallows. It is not denied that stones may be so crushed together by enormous pressure on each side, that a heavy mass may be safely laid upon them; but the strength must be derived merely from the lateral resistance, and the line so On the last day of October, in the year 1760, Sir THOMAS CHITTY, Knight, Lord Mayor, the British Empire in Asia, Africa, and America, and restored the ancient reputation and influence of his country amongst the nations of Europe; the citizens of London have unanimously voted this Bridge to be inscribed with the name of WILLIAM PITT. On this pretentious and unlucky inscription, that reckless wit, Bonnel Thornton, instantly wrote a squib, under the obvious pseudonym of the "Rev. Busby Birch." In these critical and political remarks (which he entitled "City Latin ") the gay scoffer professed in his preface to prove "almost every word and every letter to be erroneous and contrary to the practice of both ancients and moderns in this kind of writing," and appended a plan or pattern for a new inscription. The clever little lampoon soon ran to three editions. The ordinary of Newgate, my lord's chaplain, or the masters of Merchant Taylors', Paul's, or Charterhouse schools, who produced the wonderful pontine inscription, must have winced under the blows of this jester's bladderful of peas. Thornton laughed most at the awkward phrase implying that Mr. Pitt had caught the happy contagion of his own probity and spirit. He said that "Gulielmi Pitt" should have been "Gulielmi Fossa." Lastly, he proposed, for a more curt and suitable inscription, the simple words— "GUIL. FOSSÆ, Patri Patriæ D.D.D. (i.e., Datur, Dicatur, Dedicatur)." Party feeling, as usual at those times, was rife. Mylne was a friend of Paterson, the City solicitor, an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord Bute, who no doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being a Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took pleasure in opposing him, and for the same reason Churchill, in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane ghost, after ridiculing Johnson's credulity, goes out of his way to sneer at Mylne : "What of that bridge which, void of sense, In solemn manner had decreed That, on the other side the Tweed, Art, born and bred and fully grown, To build inscriptions, worthy found 207 In 1766 the bridge was opened for foot passengers, the completed portion being connected with the shore by a wooden structure; two years later it was made passable for horses, and in 1769 it was fully opened. An unpopular toll of one halfpenny on week-days for every person, and of one penny on Sundays, was exacted. The result of this was that while the Gordon Riots were raging, in 1780, the too zealous Protestants, forgetting for a time the poor tormented Papists, attacked and burned down the toll-gates, stole the money, and destroyed all the account-books. Several rascals lost their lives, and one rioter, being struck with a bullet, ran howling for thirty or forty yards, and then dropped down dead. Nevertheless, the obnoxious toll continued until 1785, when, as we have seen, it was redeemed by Government. The bridge, according to the order of Common Council, was first named Pitt Bridge, and the adjacent streets (in honour of the great earl) Chatham Place, William Street, and Earl Street. But the first name of the bridge soon dropped off, and the monastic locality asserted its prior right. This is the more remarkable (as Mr. Timbs judiciously observes), because with another Thames bridge the reverse change took place. Waterloo Bridge was first called Strand Bridge, but it was soon dedicated by the people to the memory of the most famous of British victories. The £152,640 that the bridge cost does not include the £5,830 spent in altering and filling up the Fleet Ditch, or the £2,167 the cost of the temporary wooden bridge. The piers, of bad Portland stone, were decorated by some columns of unequal sizes, and the line of parapet was low and curved. The approaches to the bridge were also designed by Mylne, who built himself a house at the corner of Little Bridge Street. The walls of the rooms were adorned with classical medallions, and on the exterior was the date (1780), with Mylne's crest, and the initials "R. M." Dr. Johnson became a friend of Mylne, and dined with him at this residence at least on one occasion. The house afterwards became the "York Hotel," and eventually was taken down in 1863. The repairs of the Bridge between 1833 and |