Temple Bar.] THE ASSOCIATIONS OF TEMPLE BAR. Venice, executed Cowley's monument in West minster Abbey, and the statues of Charles I., Charles II., and Gresham, in the old Exchange. The slab over the eastern side of the arch bore the following inscription, which was all but obliterated by time :— "Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel Starling, Mayor; continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard Ford, Lord Mayor; and finished in the year 1672, Sir George Waterman, Lord Mayor." All these persons were friends of Pepys. 23 The earliest known documentary and historical notice of Temple Bar is in 1327, the first year of Edward III. ; and in the thirty-fourth year of the same reign we find, at an inquisition before the mayor, twelve witnesses deposing that the commonalty of the City had, time out of mind, had The upper part of the Bar was flanked by scrolls, free ingress and egress from the City to Thames but the fruit and flowers once sculptured on the and from Thames to the City, through the great pediment, and the supporters of the royal arms gate of the Templars situate within Temple Bar. over the posterns, had crumbled away. In the This referred to some dispute about the right of centre of each façade was a semi-circular-headed, way through the Temple, built in the reign of ecclesiastical-looking window, that cast a dim Henry I. In 1384 Richard II. granted a licence light into a room above the gate, which was held | for paving Strand Street from Temple Bar to the of the City by Messrs. Childs the bankers, as a Savoy, and collecting tolls to cover such charges. sort of muniment-room for their old account books. The historical pageants that have taken place at There was here preserved, among other costlier Temple Bar deserve a notice, however short. On treasures of Mammon, the private account-book the 5th of November, 1422, the corpse of that of Charles II. The original Child was a friend of Pepys, and is mentioned by him as quarrelling with the Duke of York on Admiralty matters. The Child who succeeded him was a friend of Pope, and all but led him into the South Sea Bubble speculation. There is no extant historical account of Temple Bar in which the following passage from Strype (George I.) is not to be found embedded like a fossil; it is, in fact, nearly all that London topographers know of the early history of the Bar :— "Anciently," says Strype, "there were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the view of London in the British Museum, 1620 (James I.), and in Hollar's sevensheet map of London (Charles II.). The date of the erection of the "wooden house" is not to be ascertained; but there is the house plain enough in a view of London to which Maitland affixes the date about 1560 (the second year of Elizabeth); so we may perhaps safely put it down as early as Edward VI. or Henry VIII. Indeed, if a certain scrap of history is correct-i.e., that bluff King Hal once threatened, if a certain Bill did not pass the Commons a little quicker, to fix the heads of several refractory M.P.s on the top of Temple Bar-we must suppose the old City toll-gate to be as old as the early Tudors. brave and chivalrous king, the hero of Agincourt, Henry V., was borne to its rest at Westminster Abbey by the chief citizens and nobles, and every doorway from Southwark to Temple Bar had its mournful torch-bearer. In 1502-3 the hearse of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., halted at Temple Bar, on its way from the Tower to Westminster, and at the Bar the Abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey blessed the corpse, and the Earl of Derby and a large company of nobles joined the sable funeral throng. After sorrow came joy, and after joy sorrow—Ita vita. In the next reign poor Anne Boleyn, radiant with happiness and triumph, came through the Bar (May 31, 1534), on her way to the Tower, to be welcomed by the clamorous citizens, the day before her ill-starred coronation. Temple Bar on that occasion was new painted and repaired, and near it stood singing men and children-the Fleet Street conduit all the time running claret. The old gate figured more conspicuously the day before the coronation of that wondrous child, Edward VI. Two hogsheads of wine were then ladled out to the thirsty mob, and the gate at Temple Bar was painted with battlements and buttresses, richly hung with cloth of Arras, and all in a flutter with "fourteen standard flags." There were eight French trumpeters blowing their best, besides "a pair of regals," with children singing to the same. In September, 1553, when Edward's cold-hearted half-sister, Mary Tudor, came through the City, according to ancient English custom, the day before her coronation, she did not ride on horseback, as Edward had done, but sat in a chariot covered with cloth of tissue and drawn by six horses uraped with the same. Minstrels piped and trumpeted at Ludgate, and Temple Bar was newly painted and hung. Old Temple Bar, the background to many historical scenes, figures in the rash rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt. When he had fought his way down Piccadilly to the Strand, Temple Bar was thrown open to him, or forced open by him; 25 God solemnly at St. Paul's. The City waits stood in triumph on the roof of the gate. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen, in scarlet gowns, welcomed the queen and delivered up the City sword, then on her return they took horse and rode before her. The City Companies lined the north side of the street, the lawyers and gentlemen of the Inns of Court the south. Among the latter stood a person afterwards not altogether unknown, one Francis Bacon, who displayed his wit by saying to a friend, "Mark the courtiers! Those who TEMPLE BAR, WEST FRONT, IN 1710. (From Mr. Crace's Collection.) but when he had been repulsed at Ludgate he was hemmed in by cavalry at Temple Bar, where he surrendered. This foolish revolt led to the death of innocent Lady Jane Grey, and brought sixty brave gentlemen to the scaffold and the gallows. On Elizabeth's procession from the Tower before her coronation, January, 1559, Gogmagog the Albion, and Corineus the Briton, the two Guildhall giants, stood on the Bar; and on the south side there were chorister lads, one of whom, richly attired as a page, bade the queen farewell in the name of the whole City. In 1588, the glorious year in which the Armada was defeated, Elizabeth passed through the Bar on her way to return thanks to bow first to the citizens are in debt; those who bow first to us are at law!" In 1601, when the Earl of Essex made his insane attempt to rouse the City to rebellion, Temple Bar, we are told, was thrown open to him; but Ludgate being closed against him on his retreat from Cheapside, he came back by boat to Essex House, where he surrendered after a short and useless resistance. King James made his first public entry into his royal City of London, with his consort and son. Henry, upon the 15th of March, 1603-4. The king was mounted upon a white genet, ambling through the crowded streets under a canopy held by eight gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, as representatives of the Barons of the Cinque Ports, and passed under six arches of triumph, to take Queen Victoria, Sir Peter Laurie, picturesque in his leave at the Temple of Janus, erected for the scarlet gown, Spanish hat, and black feathers, preoccasion at Temple Bar. This edifice was fifty-sented the City sword to the Queen at Temple seven feet high, proportioned in every respect like Bar; Sir Peter was again ready with the same a temple. weapon in 1844, when the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange; but in 1851, when her Majesty once more visited the City, the old ceremony was (wrongly, we think) dispensed with. In June, 1649 (the year of the execution of Charles), Cromwell and the Parliament dined at Guildhall in state, and the mayor, says Whitelocke, delivered up the sword to the Speaker, at Temple Bar, as he had before done to King Charles. At the funeral of Lord Nelson, the honoured corpse, followed by downcast old sailors, was met at the Bar by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation; and the Great Duke's funeral car, and the long train of representative soldiers, rested at the Bar, which was hung with black velvet. Philips, Milton's nephew, who wrote the continuation of Baker's Chronicle, describes the ceremony at Temple Bar on the proclamation of Charles II. The old oak gates being shut, the king-at-arms, with tabard on and trumpet before A few earlier associations connected with the him, knocked and gravely demanded entrance. present Bar deserve a moment or two's recollection. The Lord Mayor appointed some one to ask On February 12th, when General Monk-"Honest who knocked. The king-at-arms replied, that if George," as his old Cromwellian soldiers used to they would open the wicket, and let the Lord call him-entered London, dislodged the "Rump" Mayor come thither, he would to him deliver Parliament, and prepared for the Restoration his message. The Lord Mayor then appeared, of Charles II., bonfires were lit, the City bells tremendous in crimson velvet gown, and on horse-rung, and London broke into a sudden flame of back, though not a good rider, the trumpets joy. Pepys, walking homeward about ten o'clock, sounding as the gallant knight pricked forth to says: "The common joy was everywhere to demand of the herald, who he was and what was his message. The bold herald, with his hat on, answered, regardless of Lindley Murray, who was yet unknown, "We are the herald-at-arms appointed and commanded by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, and demand an entrance into the famous City of London, to proclaim Charles II. King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, and we expect your speedy answer to our demand." An alderman then replied, "The message is accepted," and the gates were thrown open. When William III. came to see the City and the Lord Mayor's Show in 1689, the City militia, holding lighted flambeaux, lined Fleet Street as far as Temple Bar. The shadow of every monarch and popular hero since Charles II.'s time has rested for at least a passing moment at the old gateway. Queen Anne passed here to return thanks at St. Paul's for the victory of Blenheim. Here Marlborough's coach ominously broke down in 1714, when he returned in triumph from his voluntary exile. George III. passed through Temple Bar, young and happy, the year after his coronation, and again when, old and almost broken-hearted, he returned thanks for his partial recovery from insanity; and in our time that graceless son of his, the Prince Regent, came through the Bar in 1814, to thank God at St. Paul's for the downfall of Bonaparte. On the 9th November, 1837, the accession of be seen. The number of bonfires-there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge, east of Catherine Street, I could at one time tell thirty-one fires." On November 17, 1679, the year after the sham Popish Plot concocted by those matchless scoundrels, Titus Oates, an expelled naval chaplain, and Bedloe, a swindler and thief, Temple Bar was made the spot for a great mob pilgrimage, on the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth. The ceremonial is supposed to have been organised by that restless plotter against a Popish succession, Lord Shaftesbury, and the gentlemen of the Green Ribbon Club, whose tavern, the "King's Head," was at the corner of Chancery Lane, opposite the Inner Temple gate. To scare and vex the Papists, the church bells began to ring out as early as three o'clock on the morning of that dangerous day. At dusk the procession of several thousand half-crazed torch-bearers started from Moorgate, along Bishopsgate Street, and down Houndsditch and Aldgate (passing Shaftesbury's house imagine the roar of the monster mob, the wave of torches, and the fiery fountains of squibs at that point!), then through Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, by the Royal Exchange, along Cheapside and on to Temple Bar, where the bonfire awaited the puppets. In a torrent of fire the noisy Protestants passed through the exulting City, making the Papists cower and shudder in their garrets and cellars, and before the flaming deluge opened a storm of shouting people. Temple Bar.] "SQUEEZING THE ORANGE." 27 Charles II. had a violent hatred to Armstrong, who had been his Gentleman of the Horse, and was supposed to have incited his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to rebellion. Sir Thomas was hanged at Tyburn. After the body had hung half an hour, the hangman cut it down, stripped it, lopped This procession consisted of fifteen groups of priests, Jesuits, and friars, two following a man on a horse, holding up before him a dummy, dressed to represent Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a Protestant justice and wood merchant, supposed to have been murdered by Roman Catholics at Somerset House. It was attended by a body-guard of 150 sword-off the head, threw the heart into a fire, and divided bearers and a man roaring a political cry of the time through a brazen speaking-trumpet. The great bonfire was built up mountain high opposite the Inner Temple gate. Some zealous Protestants, by pre-arrangement, had crowned the prim and meagre statue of Elizabeth, upon the east side of the Bar, with a wreath of gilt laurel, and placed under her hand, which pointed to Child's Bank, a golden glistening shield, with the motto, "The Protestant Religion and Magna Charta," inscribed upon it. Several lighted torches were stuck before her niche. Lastly, amidst a fiery shower of squibs from every door and window, the Pope and his companions were toppled into the huge bonfire, with shouts that reached almost to Charing Cross. These mischievous processions were continued till the reign of George I. There was to have been a magnificent display in November, 1711, when the Whigs were dreading the contemplated peace with the French and the return of Marlborough. But the Tories, declaring that the Kit-Cat Club was urging the mob to destroy the house of Harley, the Minister, and to tear him to pieces, seized on the wax figures in Drury Lane, and forbade the ceremony. As early as two years after the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, a restless architectural quack and adventurer of those days, wrote a pamphlet proposing a sumptuous gate at Temple Bar, and the levelling of the Fleet Valley. After the Great Fire Charles II. himself hurried the erection of the Bar, and promised money to carry out the work. During the Great Fire, Temple Bar was one of the stations for constables, 100 firemen, and 30 soldiers. Sir John Friend Parkyns was an old The plotters the body into four parts. The fore-quarter (after The unfortunate gentlemen who took a moody pleasure in drinking "the squeezing of the rotten Orange" had long passed on their doleful journey from Newgate to Tyburn before the ghastly procession of the brave and unlucky men of the rising in 1715 began its mournful march.* Sir Bernard Burke mentions, a tradition that the head of the young Earl of Derwentwater was exposed on Temple Bar in 1716, and that his wife drove in a cart under the arch while a man hired The Rye-House Plot brought the first trophy to for the purpose threw down to her the beloved the Golgotha of the Bar, in 1684, twelve years after head from the parapet above. But the story is its erection. Sir Thomas Armstrong was deep in the entirely untrue, and is only a version of the way scheme. If the discreditable witnesses examined in which the head of Sir Thomas More was reagainst Lord William Russell are to be believed, moved by his son-in-law and daughter from London a plot had been concocted by a few desperate Bridge, where that cruel tyrant Henry VIII. had men to assassinate "the Blackbird and the Gold-placed it. Some years ago, when the Earl of finch" as the conspirators called the King and the Duke of York—as they were in their coach on their way from Newmarket to London. This plan seems to have been the suggestion of Rumbold, a maltster, who lived in a lonely moated farm-sides belonging to the Society of Antiquaries there is one house, called Rye House, about eighteen miles from London, near the river Ware, close to a by-road that leads from Bishop Stortford to Hoddesdon. * Amongst these we must not forget Joseph Sullivan, who was executed at Tyburn for high treason, for enlisting men in the service of the Pretender. In the collection of broad between Sir William Perkins and Major Sulliviane, the two of great interest, entitled "Perkins against Perkin, a dialogue loggerheads upon Temple Bar, concerning the present juncture of affaires." Its date is uncertain. |