Cannon Street.]

In the Company's books (says Herbert) is a receipt "For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at ye Feste of Chrystemasse" (17th Richard II., A.D. 1394). A pie so made by the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced meats, and egg balls, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms.

Salters' Hall was long one of the head-quarters of Nonconformity; the original congregation as sembled at Buckingham House, College Hill. The first minister was Richard Mayo, who died in 1695. He was so eloquent, that it is said even the windows were crowded when he preached. He was one of the seceders of 1662. Nathaniel Taylor, who died in 1702, was latterly so infirm that he used to crawl into the pulpit upon his knees. "He was a man," says Matthew Henry, "of great wit, worth, and courage ;" and Doddridge compared his writings to those of South for wit and strength. Tong succeeded Taylor at Salters' Hall in 1702. He wrote the notes on the Hebrews and Revelations for Matthew Henry's "Commentary," and left memoirs of Henry, and of Shower, of the Old Jewry. The writer of his funeral sermon called him "the prince of preachers." In 1719 Arianism began to prevail at Salters' Hall, where a synod on the subject was at last held. The meetings ended by the non-subscribers calling out, "You that are against persecution come up stairs:" and Thomas Bradbury, of New Court, the leader of the orthodox, replying, "You that are for declaring your faith in the doctrine of the Trinity stay below." The subscribers proved to be fifty-three; the "scandalous majority," fifty-seven. During this controversy Arianism became the subject of coffee-house talk. John Newman, who died in 1741, was buried at Bunhill Fields, Dr. Doddridge delivering a funeral oration over his grave. Francis Spillsbury, another Salters' Hall minister, worked there for twenty years with John Barker, who resigned in 1762. Hugh Farmer, another of this brotherhood, was Doddridge's first pupil at the Northampton College. He wrote an exposition on demonology and miracles, which aroused controversy. His manuscripts were destroyed at his death, according to the strict directions of his will.

When the Presbyterians forsook Salters' Hall, some people came there who called the hall "the Areopagus," and themselves the Christian Evidence Society. After their bankruptcy in 1827, the

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Baptists re-opened the hall. The congregation has now removed to a northern suburb, and their chapel bears the old name, "so closely linked with our old City history, and its Nonconformist associations."

In April, 1866, a mysterious murder took place in Cannon Street. The victim, a widow, named Sarah Millson, was housekeeper on the premises of Messrs. Bevington, leather-sellers. About nine o'clock in the evening, when sitting by the fire in company with another servant, the street bell was heard to ring, on which Millson went down to the door, remarking to her neighbour that she knew who it was. She did not return, although for an hour this did not excite any suspicion, as she was in the habit of holding conversations at the street door. A little after ten o'clock, the other woman-Elizabeth Lowes-went down, and found Millson dead at the bottom of the stairs, the blood still flowing profusely from a number of deep wounds in the head. Her shoes had been taken off and were lying on a table in the hall, and as there was no blood on them it was presumed this was done before the murder. The housekeeper's keys were also found on the stairs. The evidence taken by the coroner showed that the instrument of murder had probably been a small crowbar used to wrench open packing-cases; one was found near the body, unstained with blood, and another was missing from the premises. The murder belongs to the list of undetected crimes.

Cannon Street, widened and flanked on either side by lofty and sumptuous buildings, forms now a spacious thoroughfare connecting Fleet Street and the Strand with London Bridge, Eastcheap, and the crowded district about the Tower and the Custom House. On its south side are two railwaystations. On the north side is the Hall of the Salters' Company.

St. Martin Orgar, a church near Cannon Street, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. It had been used, says Strype, by the French Protestants, who had a French minister, episcopally ordained. There was a monument here to Sir Allen Cotton, Knight, and Alderman of London, some time Lord Mayor, with this epitaph—

"When he left Earth rich bounty dy'd,
Mild courtesie gave place to pride;
Soft Mercie to bright Justice said,
O sister, we are both betray'd.
White Innocence lay on the ground,
By Truth, and wept at either's wound.
"Those sons of Levi did lament,
Their lamps went out, their oyl was spent.

Heaven hath his soul, and only we Spin out our lives in misery.

So Death thou missest of thy ends,
And kil'st not him, but kil'st his friends."

A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the erection of a church for the French Protestants in the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire, the parishioners offered reasons to the Parliament against it; declaring that they were not against erecting a church, but only against erecting it in the place mentioned in the Bill; since by the Act for rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St. Martin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the parish.

The tame statue of that honest but commonplace monarch, William IV., at the end of King William Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr. Nixon. It cost upwards of £2,000, of which £1,600 was voted by the Common Council of London. It is fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twenty

tons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site of the famous "Boar's Head" tavern.

The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Railway, September, 1866, provided a communication with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The bridge across the Thames approaching the station has five lines of rails; the curves branching east and west to Charing Cross and London Bridge have three lines, and in the station there are nine lines of rails and five spacious platforms, one of them having a double carriage road for exit and entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the Cannon Street station extends from one side of the bridge to the other, and has a range of over eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and green for safety and going out. The hotel at Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, was erected after the design by Mr. Barry. It has been largely used for public meetings since the demolition of the "London Tavern."

BUDGE ROW derived its name from the sellers of budge (lamb-skin) fur that dwelt there. The word is used by Milton in his "Lycidas," where he sneers at the "budge-skin" doctors.

Cordwainers' Hall, No. 7, Cannon Street, is the third of the same Company's halls on this site, and was built in 1788 by Sylvanus Hall. The stone front, by Adam, has a sculptured medal lion of a country girl spinning with a distaff, emblematic of the name of the lane, and of the thread used by cordwainers or shoemakers. In the pediment are their arms. In the hall are portraits of King William and Queen Mary; and here is a sepulchral urn and tablet, by Nollekens, to John Came, a munificent benefactor to the Company.

The Cordwainers were originally incorporated by Henry IV., in 1410, as the "Cordwainers and Cobblers," the latter term signifying dealers in shoes and shoemakers. In the reign of Richard II., "every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on Sunday was to pay thirty shillings." Among the Company's plate is a piece for which Camden, the

antiquary, left £16. Their charities include Came's bequest for blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and clergymen's widows, £1,000 yearly; and in 1662 the "Bell Inn," at Edmonton, was bequeathed for poor freemen of the Company.

The church in Cannon Street dedicated to St. Swithin, and in which London Stone is now encased, is of a very early date, as the name of the rector in 1331 is still recorded. Sir John Hind, Lord Mayor in 1391 and 1404, rebuilt both church and steeple. After the Fire of London, the parish of St. Mary Bothaw was united to that of St. Swithin. St. Swithin's was rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire. The Salters' Company formerly had the right of presentation to this church, but sold it. The form of the interior is irregular and awkward, in consequence of the tower intruding on the north-west corner. The ceiling, an octagonal cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. 1839 Mr. Godwin describes an immense soundingboard over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved oak, guarded by two wooden figures of Moses and

In

Aaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen Winmill, twenty-four years parish clerk; and a tablet commemorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two wives, with the following distich :

"Life makes the soul dependent on the dust;
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres."

The angles at the top of the mean square tower are bevelled off to allow of a short octagonal spire and an octagonal balustrade.

The following epitaphs are quoted by Strype:

JOHN ROGERS, DIED 1576.

"Like thee I was sometime,

But now am turned to dust;

As thou at length, O earth and slime,
Returne to ashes must.

Of the Company of Clothworkers
A brother I became ;

A long time in the Livery

I lived of the same.

Then Death that deadly stroke did give,

Which now my joys doth frame.

In Christ I dyed, by Christ to live;
John Rogers was my name.

My loving wife and children two

My place behind supply;
God grant them living so to doe,
That they in him may dye."

George Bolles, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, DIED 1632.

"He possessed Earth as he might Heaven possesse ;
Wise to doe right, but never to oppresse.

His charity was better felt than knowne,
For when he gave there was no trumpet blowne.
What more can be comprized in one man's fame,
To crown a soule, and leave a living name?"

Founders' Hall, now in St. Swithin's Lane, was formerly at Founders' Court, Lothbury. The Founders' Company, incorporated in 1614, had the power of testing all brass weights and brass and copper wares within the City and three miles round. The old Founders' Hall was noted for its political meetings, and was in 1792 nicknamed "The Cauldron of Sedition." Here Waithman made his first political speech, and, with his felloworators, was put to flight by constables, sent by the Lord Mayor, Sir James Sanderson, to disperse the meeting.

Watling Street, now laid open by the new street leading from Blackfriars to the Mansion House, is the oldest street in London. It is part of the old Roman military road that, following an old British forest-track, led from Dover to London, and from London to South Wales. The name, according to Leland, is from the Saxon atheling-a noble street. At the north-west end of it is the church of St. Augustine, anciently styled Ecclesia Sancti Augustini ad Portam, from its vicinity to the south-east

55T

gate of St. Paul's Cathedral. This church is described on page 349.

Tower Royal, Watling Street, preserves the memory of one of those strange old palatial forts that were not unfrequent in mediæval Londonhalf fortresses, half dwelling-houses; half courting, half distrusting the City. "It was of old time the king's house," says Stow, solemnly, "but was afterwards called the Queen's Wardrobe. By whom the same was first built, or of what antiquity continued, I have not read, more than that in the reign of Edward I. it was the tenement of Simon Beaumes." In the reign of Edward III. it was called "the Royal, in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster;" and in the 43rd year of his reign he gave the inn, in value £20 a year, to the college of St. Stephen, at Westminster.

In the Wat Tyler rebellion, Richard II.'s mother and her ladies took refuge there, when the rebels had broken into the Tower and terrified the royal lady by piercing her bed with their swords.

"King Richard," says Stow, "having in Smithfield overcome and dispersed the rebels, he, his lords, and all his company entered the City of London with great joy, and went to the lady princess his mother, who was then lodged in the Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where she had remained three days and two nights, right sore abashed. But when she saw the king her son she was greatly rejoiced, and said, 'Ah! son, what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day!' The king answered and said, 'Certainly, madam, I know it well; but now rejoyce, and thank God, for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near-hand lost.'"

Richard II. was lodging at the Tower Royal at a later date, when the "King of Armony," as Stow quaintly calls the King of Armenia, had been driven out of his dominions by the "Tartarians;" and the lavish young king bestowed on him £1,000 a year, in pity for a banished monarch, little thinking how soon he himself, discrowned and dethroned, would be vainly looking round the prison walls for one glance of sympathy.

This "great house," belonging anciently to the kings of England, was afterwards inhabited by the first Duke of Norfolk, to whom it had been granted by Richard III., the master he served at Bosworth. Strype finds an entry of the gift in an old ledger-book of King Richard's, wherein the Tower Royal is described as "Le Tower," in the parish of St. Thomas Apostle, not of St. Michael, as Stow has it. The house afterwards sank into poverty, became a stable for "all the king's horses," and in

Cannon Street Tributaries]

the fire the parish of St. John Baptist, Watling Street, was annexed to that of St. Antholin, the latter paying five-eighths towards the repairs of the church, and the former the remaining threeeighths.

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made a point of attending these early prayers. Lilly, the astrologer, went to these lectures when a young man; and Scott makes Mike Lambourne, in "Kenilworth," refer to them. Nor have they been overlooked by our early dramatists. Randolph, Davenant, and others make frequent allusions in their plays to the Puritanical fervour of this parish. The tongue of Middleton's "roaring girl" was "heard further in a still morning than St. Antlin's bell."

Wren, oddly enough, crowned the spire with a small Composite capital, which looked like the top of a pencil-case. The parish of St. Antholin is now incorporated with that of St. Mary Aldermary, in Bow Lane.

The church was rebuilt by John Tate, a mercer, in 1513; and Strype mentions the erection in 1623 of a rich and beautiful gallery with fifty-two compartments, filled with the coats-of-arms of kings and nobles, ending with the blazon of the Elector Palatine. A new morning prayer and lecture was established here by clergymen inclined to Puritanical principles in 1599. The bells began to ring at five in the morning, and were considered Pharisaical and intolerable by all High Churchmen in the neighbourhood. The extreme Geneva party

habited by the Lord Mayor or one of the sheriffs, situated so near to the Church of St. Antholin that there was a way out of it into a gallery of the church. The commissioners from the Church of Scotland to King Charles were lodged here in 1640. At St. Antholin's preached the chaplains of the commission, with Alexander Henderson at their head; "and curiosity, faction, and humour brought so great a conflux and resort, that from the first appearance of day in the morning, on every Sunday, to the shutting in of the light, the church was never empty."

Dugdale also mentions the church. "Now for an essay," he says, "of those whom, under colour of preaching the Gospel, in sundry parts of the realm, they set up a morning lecture at St. Antho