Mayor Robert Large. In 1492 Sir Hugh Clopton, the worthy who built Clopton Bridge at Stratford-on-Avon, kept his mayoralty in the mansion, which, a hundred years afterwards, was turned into a tavern.
The Devil, in Fleet Street, was one of the most famous of the places of entertainment of the time. It is not known when Ben Jonson started the “Apollo” Club here, but it was probably not long before 1616, when the Devil is an Ass was acted.
Herrick, in his well-known ode, mentions several other taverns to which Ben and “his sons” resorted:—
“Ah, Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meal, outdid the frolic wine.”
It was in Jonson’s day that the suburbs, which (as previously referred to) had long been treated with disfavour, were gradually asserting themselves, and the poet was particularly at home in the understanding of their peculiarities. Of the northern suburbs the fullest mention is to be found in A Tale of a Tub, where we read of Totten Court, Kentish Town, Maribone, Kilborne, Islington and Belsize, and the fields near Pancras.
If we look for Hoxton in a modern map of London we shall find it near Old Street, St. Luke’s, not far from the centre of the present London, but in Jonson’s time it was a country place, cut off from the city by Moorfields. Knowell’s house (Every Man in His Humour) was at Hogsden, which was then, according to Stow, “a large street with houses on both sides.” Master Stephen describes his uncle’s property as “Middlesex land,” and he himself is called a country gull, in opposition to Master Matthew, the town gull. Ben had reason to remember Hoxton, for it was in the fields close by that he fought and nearly killed Gabriel Spenser. Moorfields remained for several years in an almost impassable condition, but in 1511 regular dykes and bridges of communication over them were made, in order partially to drain the rotten ground.
In the play so frequently referred to we find Turnbull mentioned by Bobadil, among other disreputable places, as one of the “skirts of the town.” Turnbull, or, more properly, Turnmill Street, was situated near Clerkenwell Green, and was known as the haunt of ruffians, thieves and disorderly persons. Justice Shallow boasted to Falstaff of the wildness of his youth and the feats he had done in Turnbull Street.
On the west the Oxford Road, commencing at the village of St. Giles, was in the country, and where Stratford Place now stands was a cottage among trees and hedges called the Lord Mayor’s Banqueting House, which was used by the city magnates when they hunted at Bayswater and Hyde Park. This is alluded to in The Devil is an Ass:—
“But got the gentlewoman to go with me
And carry her bedding to a conduit-head,
Hard by the place towards Tyburn which they call
My Lord Mayor’s banqueting house.”
“Eastward for Ratcliff!” is a cry in the Alchemist. Ratcliff, which Stow remembered as a highway, with fair elm trees on each side, in later times became the synonym of all that is dangerous and disreputable in London streets.