There were also two Medalets of the halfpenny size, executed by P. Skidmore, of Coppice Row, Clerkenwell, which are likewise mentioned by Conder, in volume i., pages 103, 106.
No. 267. A Bronzed or Copper Medalet: Obverse, a view of a church,—Legend,—‘St. Magnus London Bridge. 1676.’—Reverse, a cypher, ‘P.S.Co.,’ in a circle, Legend,—‘Dedicated to collectors of Medals and Coins.’
No. 300. A Bronzed or Copper Medalet: Obverse, an ancient gateway,—Legend,—‘Bridge Gate, Bt. 1728:’ within the Archway the name of ‘Jacobs.’—Reverse, as before.
“I am inclined to think, Mr. Barnaby Postern, that there have been several traditional mistakes perpetuated, as to persons supposed to have dwelt upon London Bridge; for, upon investigating the subject, I can find no authority to support my recording them as inhabitants of that part of London. The author of an exceedingly amusing work, entitled ‘Wine and Walnuts,’ London, 1823, octavo, in which are contained many witty scenes and curious conversations of eminent characters in the last century, has entitled the seventh chapter of his second volume ‘Old London Bridge; with portraits of some of its inhabitants.’ In this article, on page 81, we are told that ‘Master John Bunyan, one of your heaven-born geniuses, resided, for some time, upon London Bridge;’ though I cannot discover any such circumstance in either of the lives of that good man now extant, though he certainly preached, for some time, at a Chapel in Southwark. Perhaps, however, this assertion may be explained by the following passage from the Preface affixed to the Index attached to the first volume of ‘The Labours of that eminent servant of Christ Mr. John Bunyan,’ London, 1692, folio. It is there stated, that in 1688 ‘he published six books, being the time of K. James 2d’s. liberty of conscience, and was seized with a sweating distemper, of which, after his some weeks going about, proved his death, at his very loving friend’s Mr. Strudwick’s, a Grocer,’—at the sign of the Star,—‘at Holborn Bridge, London, on August 31st.’ It is also recorded on the same page of ‘Wine and Walnuts,’ that ‘Master Abel, the great importer of wines, was another of the marvels of old London Bridge; he set up a sign, Thank God I am Abel, quoth the wag, and had, in front of his house, the sign of a bell.’ As I have also heard the same particulars repeated elsewhere, it is possible that there may be some traditionary authority for them; but upon carefully reading over the very rare tracts relating to Mr. Alderman Abel, preserved in the British Museum, I find nothing concerning his residence on London Bridge, and I should rather imagine, from their statements, that he lived at his Ticket, or Patent Office, situate in Aldermary Church-Yard. The same chapter, however, contains some authentic notices of Artists who really did live upon this venerable edifice. Of these, one of the most eminent was Hans Holbein, the great painter of the Court of Henry VIII.; but though we can hardly suppose that he inhabited the Nonesuch House, yet his actual residence here is certified by Lord Orford, in his ‘Anecdotes of Painting,’ vide his ‘Works,’ edit. London, 1798-1822, quarto, volume iii., page 72, note. ‘The father of the Lord Treasurer Oxford’—says the noble author in that place,—‘passing over London Bridge, was caught in a shower; and stepping into a goldsmith’s shop for shelter, he found there a picture of Holbein,—who had lived in that house,—and his family. He offered the goldsmith £100. for it, who consented to let him have it, but desired first to shew it to some persons. Immediately after, happened the fire of London, and the picture was destroyed.’ Another famous Artist of London Bridge, who is mentioned in both the works which I last cited, was Peter Monamy; so excellent a painter of marine subjects, as to be considered but little inferior to Vandevelde himself. Lord Orford says of him, at page 421, that he ‘received his first rudiments of drawing from a sign and house-painter on London Bridge;’—and that ‘the shallow waves, that rolled under his window, taught young Monamy what his master could not teach him, and fitted him to paint the turbulence of the ocean.’ This artist died at Westminster in 1749. We are also informed, by Edward Edwards, in his ‘Continuation of Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting,’ London, 1808, quarto, page 214, that Dominic Serres, the Marine Painter, who died in 1793, also once kept a shop upon London Bridge. To these celebrated men, the author of ‘Wine and Walnuts’ adds Jack Laguerre, the Engraver, ‘a great humourist, wit, singer, player, caricaturist, mimic, and a good scene-painter,’ son to that Louis, who painted stair-cases and saloons, where, as Pope says, ‘sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre.’ His residence, according to our lively author, who states that he received his information from ‘old Dr. Monsey and others,’ was on the first floor of the dwelling of a waggish bookseller, and author of all-work, named Crispin Tucker; the owner of half-a-shop on the East side, under the Southern gate. The artist’s studio was, chiefly, in a bow-windowed back room, which projected over the Thames, and trembled at every half-ebb tide; in which Hogarth had resided in his early life, when he engraved for old John Bowles, of the Black Horse in Cornhill. It resembled, we are told, on page 135 of the work and volume which I have already quoted, one of the alchemist’s laboratories from the pencil of the elder Teniers. It was ‘a complete smoke-stained confusionary, with a German-stove, crucibles, pipkins, nests of drawers, with rings of twine to pull them out; here a box of asphaltum, there glass-stoppered bottles, varnishes, dabbers, gravers, etching-tools, walls of wax, obsolete copper-plates, many engraved on both sides, caricatures, and poetry scribbled over the walls; a pallet hung up as an heir-loom, the colours dry upon it, hard as stone; an easel; all the multifarious arcanalia of engraving, and, lastly, a Printing-press!’ This curious picture is also from the information of Dr. Monsey, but I cannot produce you any other authority for its truth; and I shall likewise, therefore, leave you to read, and judge for yourself, the amusing account of Dean Swift’s and Pope’s visits and conversations with Crispin Tucker, of London Bridge, in chapters viii. and ix. of the work I have referred to.
“It was, however, not only the ordinary buildings in the Bridge-street, which were formerly occupied as shops and warehouses, but even the Chapel of St. Thomas, which, in its later years, was called Chapel-House, and the Nonesuch-House, were used for similar purposes before they were taken down. Mr. John Nichols, in his ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ tells us, volume vi., part i., page 402, note, on the authority of Dr. Ducarel, that ‘the house over the Chapel belonged to Mr. Baldwin, Haberdasher, who was born there; and when, at seventy-one, he was ordered to go to Chislehurst for a change of air, he could not sleep in the country, for want of the noise,’—the roaring and rushing of the tide beneath the Bridge,—‘he had been always used to hear.’ My good friend, Mr. J. T. Smith, too, in his very interesting volume of the ‘Ancient Topography of London,’ which you have already quoted, page 26, has also the following observations concerning the modern use of this Chapel. ‘By the Morning Advertiser,’ says he, ‘for April 26th, 1798, it appears that Aldermen Gill and Wright had been in partnership upwards of fifty years; and that their shop stood on the centre of London Bridge, and their warehouse for paper was directly under it, which was a Chapel for divine service, in one of the old arches; and, long within legal memory, the service was performed every sabbath and Saint’s day. Although the floor was always, at high-water mark, from ten to twelve feet under the surface; yet such was the excellency of the materials and the masonry, that not the least damp, or leak, ever happened, and the paper was kept as safe and dry as it would have been in a garret.’ In that ‘Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster,’ printed in 1734, and purporting to have been compiled by Robert Seymour, Esq., but which was in reality the production of the Rev. John Motley, the famous collector of Joe Miller’s Jests, it is stated in volume i., book i., page 48, that at that time one side of the Nonesuch House was inhabited by Mr. Bray, a Stationer, and the other by Mr. West, a Dry-Salter. So much then, Mr. Barnaby, for the few anecdotes which I have been able to collect of the dwellings and inhabitants of old London Bridge.”
“And a very fair Memorial too, Master Geoffrey,” answered the Antiquary, “especially when we consider the extreme difficulty of procuring such information as this is: but, to carry on our history, I must now enter upon a less amusing subject; the summary of the Bridge Accounts for the years 1624 and 1625, taken from the printed sheet which I have so often cited. ‘1624. To John Langley, and Richard Foxe, Bridge-Masters, half a year’s fee at our Lady-day, £50: and for the other half year augmented by order of the Court of Aldermen, £66. 8s. 4d., and for their Liveries, &c. £6. Total £122. 8s. 4d. Rental £2054. 4s. 2d.—1625. To the said Bridge-Masters, £133. 6s. 8d. Liveries, &c. £6. Total to each of them, £69. 3s. 4d. Rental, £2054. 4s. 2d.’ These notices of the prosperity of this edifice, conduct us down to the time when so much of its glory was lost in devastating flames and mouldering ruins.
“The year 1632-33 must be ever memorable in the history of London Bridge: for scarcely in the awful conflagration which consumed almost the whole City, did our brave old edifice suffer so severely. And now, Mr. Barbican, you must forgive me if I be a little prolix in describing that desolating fire, since it not only destroyed more than a third part of the Bridge Houses, but, at one time, its ravages were feared even in the City itself. I shall commence my account then by reminding you that Richard Bloome, one of Stow’s continuators, on page 61 of his ‘Survey,’ thus speaks of the calamity. ‘On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St. Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over. Beneath, in the vaults and cellars, the fire remained glowing and burning a whole week after.’
“There are not wanting several general views of London taken before this fire, by which we are made acquainted with those extensive piles of dwellings it destroyed; several of which I have already mentioned to you. Another also, which is most excellent and rare, is that entitled in Latin, ‘London the most flourishing City of Britain, and the most celebrated emporium of the whole world.’ It was engraven by John Visscher in 1616, and published in Holland, ‘by Jud. Hondius at the sign of the Watchful Dog;’ a four sheet print measuring 7 feet 1½ inch by 1 foot 4¾ inches, with an English description beneath it. ‘A Capital View,’ adds Gough, in his ‘British Topography,’ already cited, volume i., page 749, ‘the plates destroyed in Holland about twenty years ago. T. Davies sold the only impression of it to the King for ten guineas.’ There is, likewise, a variation of this view, without a date, having eight Latin verses at either corner, with the name of ‘Ludovicus Hondius Lusitt.’ It is, says Mr. J. T. Smith, in his ‘Ancient Topography of London,’ page 25, ‘extremely well executed, and exhibits a wind-mill standing in the Strand, very near where the New Church is now erected; and another above the Water-works at Queenhithe.’ He considers it as earlier than the productions of Hollar, from the circumstance that the Palace of Whitehall appears in its original state, before the Banquetting House and York and Somerset Water-gates were erected by Inigo Jones. It is also shewn to be a view of the time of King James I., by a royal procession being introduced on the water, in which the royal barge is surmounted by the thistle. London Bridge forms a very large and important feature in this engraving, and I have been informed, that the edifice alone was copied in quarto, for the work entitled ‘London before the Great Fire;’ but as that publication stopped with the second number, it was never exhibited for sale.
Of the very curious print by Visscher, however,—and I must not forget to observe that a fine impression of it is in the possession of John Dent, Esq.—there was also an imitation of the same size, but somewhat inferior, called, from the place where it was engraven, ‘the Venetian copy of Visscher’s View.’ It is, like its prototype, entitled in Latin, ‘London the most flourishing City in Britain,’ &c. to which is added, ‘Printed in Venice, by Nicolo Misserini, 1629, Franco Valegio fecit:’ it also contains a Latin dedication, and a description in Italian. There is an impression, probably, of this latter print, preserved in volume xiii. of the famous illustrated Pennant’s London, bequeathed by the late Charles Crowle, Esq. to the British Museum; but all the inscriptions have been cruelly cut away, and the print itself doubled in numerous folds to make it fit to the size of the volume! This engraving, however, bears the name of Rombout Vanden Hoege, and shews us, with great minuteness, on rather a large scale, the Group of Buildings on London Bridge, burned down in 1632-33,
