[60] The gatehouse had only been finished in the year 1728, having replaced a previous one damaged by a great fire on the bridge in 1725. Mist’s Weekly Journal, for Saturday, September 11, tells us that about sixty houses were consumed on that occasion.
[61] Burke’s ‘Armory General.’ This seems correct; but Burke’s ‘Extinct Peerages’ gives it, ‘gules, a chevron between three cross crosslets or.’
[62] From early days, however, the fair had increased beyond church limits, and the City had acquired certain rights. In the fourth edition of Stow, 1633, we are told how, on Bartholomew Eve, the Aldermen in their violet gowns met the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs at the Guildhall chapel, and how they rode into Cloth Fair, and made a proclamation, riding back through the churchyard and home to the Lord Mayor’s house.
[63] In Allen’s ‘History of London,’ published in 1827, vol. iii., p. 658, we are told that the district called Cloth Fair was still chiefly occupied by clothiers, tailors, etc.
[64] Stow’s ‘Survey of London,’ edited by W. J. Thoms, p. 141.
[65] The rebus was invented before Prior Bolton’s time; as early as 1443 the White Friars had a grant of the ‘Hospitium vocatum Le Bolt en ton,’ in Fleet Street. This became a great coaching inn; the site is marked by a railway office. The tun occurs in the rebus of Beckington, of Castleton, and of Bishop Langton in Winchester Cathedral.
[66] They were drawn and described for Nelson’s ‘History of Islington,’ 2nd edition, 1823.
[67] I have not been able to find proof positive that a Fowler owned this property. The house, though of respectable antiquity, is much more modern than the arms. By a lease dated 1722, a messuage called the Bell, with its stables, etc., and two other messuages or tenements on either side, adjoining and fronting High Street, Holborn, ‘formerly one capital mansion or messuage called the Bell or Blue Bell Inn, together with all shops, stables, and other appurtenances,’ were bought by Christ’s Hospital for £2,113 15s. Together with the adjoining house, it still belongs to the Hospital. There is a rent-charge of 45s. (originally 30 sacks of charcoal) on the Blue Bell Inn, for the use of the poor of St. Andrews, in which parish the houses are situated; it was bequeathed by Richard Hunt, who died in 1559.
[68] Named after the Berners family, who held the estate from the Conquest till 1422, when it passed by marriage to John Bourchier, created Lord Berners.
[69] In Nelson’s ‘History of Islington,’ 2nd edition, 1823, facing p. 260, there is an illustration of the building.