Bygone London

by Frederick Ross

In the time of Charles I. it was one of the most fashionable streets in London, the place of residence of several aristocratic families, including, amongst others, those of the Earls of Shrewsbury, the Careys, Barons Hunsdon, and Earls of Dover, and the Westons, Barons Weston, and Earls of Portland, extinct 1688. The most important house, however, was Winchester House, which, with its gardens, occupied the site of Great and Little Winchester streets. The mansion was built by Sir William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, one of the foremost men of his age, and a remarkable man in many respects. He was born in the year 1475, and lived to the age of 97, holding various offices of state during two-thirds of that period, and at his death left upwards of a hundred descendants. In 1539 he was created, by patent, Baron St. John of Basing, to which title, by writ of summons, 1299, he was eldest co-heir. In 1549 he was created Earl of Wiltshire, and in 1551 Marquis of Winchester. He was Comptroller of the Household to Henry VIII., an executor of his will, and guardian of the young king, Edward VI., and afterwards became Lord Treasurer, and was made Knight of the Garter. He died in 1572, having witnessed all the changes of religion, and the turmoils and troubles attendant thereupon. On being asked how he managed to maintain his position, and an unbroken flow of prosperity, amid all the religious and political fluctuations of his time, he replied that "he was made of the pliable willow, not of the stubborn oak." He was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London, who was mother of his heir, the second marquis. At the dissolution of the Augustine Friary, the house and grounds were granted by Henry VIII. to Lord St. John, who pulled down a portion of the friary, built a mansion which he made his town residence, and laid out the grounds afresh which extended to the City wall, with a footway across, leading to Moorgate. This footpath had gates at each end, which were kept locked during the night, and no one allowed to pass along it. The Marquis was also the builder of Basing House, Wiltshire, memorable for the siege it sustained in the subsequent civil war.

In modern times Sir Astley Cooper, the celebrated surgeon, resided in Broad Street, in a house at the corner of the paved court leading to St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate Street, where he held a morning levée of City patients. His fees, the first year he commenced, amounted to five guineas, and it was not until the 5th that they reached £100 and the 9th, £1,000. After that they rose rapidly to £1,500, and one year he received the sum of £21,000. Afterwards he removed to the West-End, but he found a sensible diminution of his receipts from those derived from the City millionaires. The abbot of St. Alban's also had his town house opposite St. Augustine's Gate. Even in the time of the Romans, this part of the City would appear to have been inhabited by the aristocratical section of the community, as in 1854 a magnificent tesselated floor, 28-feet square, was discovered, such as must have belonged to a large and high-class house. Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in 1243, founded on a plot of land extending westward from Broad Street, a priory for begging Friars of the order of St. Augustine, which flourished until the dissolution, when the house and grounds were granted to Lord St. John and the church, appropriated by King Edward VI., in 1551, to "John Alasco, and a congregation of Germans and other strangers fled hither for the sake of religion," the church to be called "the temple of the Lord Jesus," and in the hands of the Germans, or rather Dutch it still remains.

There is but one church in the street—St. Peter's, originally St. Peter the Apostle, but now St. Peter-the-Poor, a mean edifice, with an ungainly tower, and might well be designated "the poor" from its poverty of architectural merit. Maitland says that it "received the appellation from the mean condition (as is supposed) of the parish in ancient times. If so that epithet may at present be justly changed to that of rich, because of the great number of merchants and other persons of distinction inhabiting there." The probability seems to be that it derived that name from its proximity to the house of Begging Friars, who made a merit of their poverty, and this came to be called St. Peter by the Poor Friars, to distinguish it from St. Peter's, Cornhill, and others of the name. We have no knowledge of when or by whom it was built, but it is a very ancient foundation, as there is documentary evidence showing it to have been in existence in 1181. Among the rectors of St. Peter's have been some notable men. Richard Holdsworth, D.D., educated at St. John's, Cambridge, where he won a name for proficiency in arts and theology, became master of Emanuel College, and vice-chancellor of the university, who was preferred to the rectory in 1636. He was a zealous loyalist, and ejected from his living in 1642, his house plundered, and he imprisoned in the Tower. In 1645, he was nominated to the deanery of Worcester and elected Bishop of Bristol, but declined the dignity. He was permitted to attend King Charles at Hampton Court and Carisbrook Castle, but he suffered much by deprivation, sequestration, and several imprisonments. He died in 1649, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. Benjamin Hoadley, D.D., afterwards successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, who held the living from 1704 to 1720. He was eminent as a controversialist, and held views which would now be termed Rationalistic, approaching closely to Unitarianism, which were developed especially in his Plain Account of the Sacrament, and his Discourses on the Terms of Acceptance. When Bishop of Bangor, he published a sermon on "The True Nature of the Kingdom that Christ came upon Earth to Establish," from the text, "My kingdom is not of this world," which gave rise to the celebrated and long-protracted "Bangorian Controversy." He published a multitude of works, chiefly of a controversial character, and died in 1761.

John Scott, D.D., 1677-91, afterwards rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and canon of Windsor, a learned divine, author of Cases of Conscience, 1683; Texts Cited by the Papists Examined, 1688; The Christian Life, 1683; ninth edition, 1702; and other works, which passed through successive editions, and some translated into foreign languages. His entire works were published in two vols., fol., in 1718, and in six vols., 8vo., in 1826.

In the fifteenth century Venice held the secret and the monopoly of glass making. The works were situated on the island of Murano, and many attempts were made by other nations to learn the secret, but the Venetians asserted and spread abroad the report that it was impossible to make glass elsewhere equal to that of Murano, even with the same materials, the same workmen, and the same method of working, as there was something in the air of the island which imparted a lucidity and lustre, rendering the glass of the island superior to anything that could be produced in any other part of the world.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the manufacture was introduced into England, and works established in the Savoy and Crutched Friars. Early in the following century a company of noblemen and courtiers, with Sir Robert Mansell at their head, formed an association for the manufacture of glass, and built works for that purpose in Broad Street, near Austin Friars. At that time it was not deemed derogatory to the dignity of a nobleman to engage in the glass trade. In Venice the manufacture was held in such high esteem that those engaged in the profession ranked as gentlemen, and in France a decree was issued that glass-working should not lessen the dignity of a noble.

In 1615 the company employed as their manager or steward James Howell, afterwards Historiographer Royal to Charles II., whom they sent abroad to obtain information for the improvement of their processes, and to employ skilful workmen. He obtained from the Lords of Council a warrant to travel for three years, on condition that he did not visit Rome or St. Omer, and he started off in 1619, returning in 1621.

He tempted the best workmen, by a promise of a high rate of wages, especially Signor Antonio Miotti, from Lealand, who had been a master manufacturer, and was reckoned the ablest workman in Christendom, and from Venice "two of the best gentlemen workmen that ever blew crystal."

Howell was a remarkable man, and led a somewhat varied life of vicissitude. After his continental tour he threw up his situation, not being able to bear the heat of the glass works, was elected a fellow of his college, and in 1626 became secretary to the council of the North, at York, and the next year was elected to represent Richmond, Yorkshire, in Parliament. In 1632 he went to Denmark as secretary to a special embassy, and on his return went to Ireland to seek employment under Wentworth, but failed in consequence of the recall and execution of that nobleman. In 1640 he obtained a clerkship in the council at Whitehall, but lost it on the breaking out of the Civil War, and in 1643 was committed to the Fleet for his loyal predilections, where he remained until the death of the king. On his release he found himself not only penniless, but in debt. He contrived, however, to maintain himself during the Protectorate by writing for the press, and at the restoration was appointed Historiographer Royal, which office he held until his death in 1666.

When Monk came to London to effect the restoration of monarchy, he halted with his army in Finsbury Fields, had a conference with the Lord Mayor and aldermen, who coincided with him in his views, which were professedly the maintenance of a free Parliament. He quartered his men in the Broad Street Glass House, and passed himself into the City, amid the acclamations of the people, to the Bull's Head, Cheapside, where he took up his quarters. The glass works, despite the monopoly, was not a success, the manufacture was discontinued, and the house, or a portion of it, taken by the Pinmakers' Company.