The Reading Machine
Is removed from the Three Kings, Piccadilly, to the George
Inn, Snow Hill, London; sets out from the Broad Face,[6]
Reading, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at seven
o’clock in the morning, and from the George Inn,
Snow Hill, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,
at seven o’clock in the morning; carries passengers to
And from Reading, at 6s. each; children in lap
and outside passengers at 3s.
| Performed by | { | Thomas Moore and Richard Mapleton. |
N.B.—Takes no charge of Writings, Money, Watches, or Jewels, unless entered and paid for as such.
A second representation of the subject of the George and Dragon was formerly to be seen on Bennet Hill, opposite the Heralds’ College, and stood over the entrance to a small court, to which it gave a name. On it were the initials p r m, and date 1667. In ‘Remarks on London,’ by W. Stow, 1722, mention is made of ‘George Court, against the Heralds’ Office at Paul’s Chain.’ The ‘Constitutions of the Order of the Garter’ (c. iii.) ordain that ‘the Sovereign shall put upon his (the knight elect’s) neck a collar, or little chain or lace, having pendant therefrom a massive golden image of an armed knight (i.e., St. George) sitting on horseback.’
A relic of a most interesting old building is the figure of Gerard the Giant,[7] ‘carved from a twisted block of timber, distorted and ill at ease,’ which stood in the niche between the first-floor windows of Gerard’s Hall Hotel, on the south side of Basing Lane. It is about 6 feet high, and painted more or less to imitate life. Gerard’s Hall is described by Stow as ‘one great house, of old time built upon arched vaults, with gates of stone from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerrardes Hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the wars to run withal.—John Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and Sir John Gisors, mayor and constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family since that time, owned it.—So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall, of late time by corruption, hath been called Gerrard’s Hall.’ The upper part of the building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but the crypt remained,[8] and on this was built a brick house, with no remarkable feature except the above-named grotesque wooden figure, by way of sign. This house was destroyed in April, 1852, when the new Cannon Street was being formed. For some months the crypt—a fine specimen of thirteenth-century Gothic—continued in existence; but as the crown of the arched roof stood 2 feet or more above the roadway, it was also pulled down. Mr. Wheatley tells us that the stones were carefully numbered, and presented to the Crystal Palace Company, with a view to its re-erection. After a time, however, they were used in making the foundations for a new engine-house. Some of the stones are even said to have found their way to Kensington, to be broken up for mending the roads. There is a good view of the crypt of Gerard’s Hall in Burn’s ‘Catalogue to the Beaufoy Trade Tokens,’ and a descriptive article in the Builder for April 10, 1852, which also gives drawings of several devices of the nature of merchants’ marks, and an unfinished inscription, cut on the wall of the entrance.
A curious sculptured sign, representing King Charles I.’s gigantic porter and dwarf, used to stand over the entrance to Bull Head Court, Newgate Street, but disappeared some years ago on the widening of King Edward Street, formerly Butcher Hall Lane. This part of Newgate Street was in Strype’s time named Blowbladder Street, and before that Stinking Lane, on account of the smell which arose from slaughter-houses and poultry-shops there. Pennant has an illustration of the sign, but wrongly describes it as being over Bagnio Court, farther east, which was afterwards Bath Street, and has now been ridiculously called Roman Bath Street, though the ‘Royal Bagnio,’ whence the court derived its name, was not erected till 1679. The house to which the bas-relief belonged was No. 80, occupied in 1816 by Mr. Payne, a hatter; at that time the figures were painted, their coats being red, the King’s livery, and their waistcoats white. Not unlikely, the sign may still be in existence.
The two persons represented were William Evans and Jefferey Hudson. Evans, the porter, a Monmouth man, was 7 feet 6 inches high. On one occasion, at a Court masque, he drew the dwarf out of his pocket, ‘to the amazement and amusement of all present.’ There is an allusion to him in the contemporary ballad of ‘The Little Barleycorn.’ Jefferey Hudson, the dwarf, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father, a butcher, kept and baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. At nine years of age he was scarcely 18 inches high, and, according to Fuller, ‘without any deformity, wholly proportionable.’ Having entered the service of the Duchess of Buckingham, at an entertainment given by her husband to Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, he was brought to table concealed in a large pie, from which he emerged before the company. The Queen took a fancy to him, so he became her page, and in 1630 was sent to France to fetch a midwife for his royal mistress, but fell into the hands of a Flemish pirate, and was taken to Dunkirk. By this misfortune he was said to have lost about £2,500. Sir William Davenant makes a supposed combat between the dwarf and a turkey-cock the subject of a burlesque poem called ‘Jeffreidos,’ published in 1638, the scene of which is laid at Dunkirk. How Hudson bore the insult is not recorded; but we shall see that he was quite capable of holding his own. During the Civil Wars the dwarf appears to have been a captain of horse, and he followed the Queen into exile. One of his adventures in France is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in ‘Peveril of the Peak.’ This was his duel with Crofts, a young gentleman of the Court, who had provoked him. The duel was fought on horseback with pistols. Crofts came on the ground armed with a syringe only; but a more serious weapon being substituted, he was killed at the first discharge. It seems to have been later that Hudson was again taken prisoner at sea, this time by Turkish pirates, and brought to Barbary, where he was sold as a slave. He asserted that his sufferings in captivity made him grow taller. After many vicissitudes he found his way back to England, probably before the year 1658. In 1679, being a Roman Catholic, he was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster, for supposed complicity with the Popish Plot. Mr. Inchbold points out, in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ that he did not die there, as Scott and others have affirmed; for, ‘in June, 1680, and April, 1681, “Captain” Jefferey Hudson received respectively £50 and £20 from Charles II.’s secret service fund.’ He died in 1682. Three portraits of him were painted by Mytens, and he also figures in a portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke, at Petworth. His waistcoat, breeches and stockings are, it is said, preserved.
The sculptured stone sign of the Three Morris Dancers was formerly in front of a public-house numbered 36, Old Change, which is said to have been pulled down about the year 1801. An illustration of the sign exists: the central figure is a woman. A seventeenth-century trade-token issued from here reads thus: