“Evelyn records the consecration here of Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, in 1668, when the famous Dr. Tillotson preached; and here, on the 27th April, 1693, Evelyn’s daughter Susannah, was married to William Draper, Esq., by Dr. Tenison, then Bishop of Lincoln.
“At the south-east corner of Middle Row (now in course of demolition), Sir James Branscomb kept a lottery office sixty years ago; and at the ‘Golden Anchor,’ Holborn Bars, Dr. Johnson lived in 1748.
“At Ely House, ‘Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster’ died, February 13, 1399, and Shakspeare has made it the scene of Lancaster’s last interview with Richard II. Here were kept divers feasts by the serjeants-at-law in olden times. At an entertainment given by them in 1495, Henry VII. was present with his Queen; and again in 1531, on the occasion of his making eleven new serjeants, Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine were banqueted here with great splendour, ‘wanting little of a feast at a coronation,’ and open house was kept for five days. In 1576, at the mandatory request of Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Cox leased to Sir Christopher Hatton, for twenty-one years, the greater portion of the demesne, on payment at Midsummer-day of a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10 per annum, the Bishop reserving to himself and his successors the right of walking in the gardens and gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly. Hatton largely improved the estate, and then petitioned the Queen to require the Bishop to make over the whole property, whereupon ensued the Bishop’s remonstrance, and the Queen’s threat to ‘unfrock’ him.(A) In 1578, the whole property was conveyed to Hatton, and Elizabeth further retaliated by keeping the See of Ely vacant for eighteen years from the death of Bishop Cox, in 1591.
“An old map, still in existence, shows the vineyard, meadow, kitchen garden, and orchard of Ely Place, to have extended northward from Holborn Hill to Hatton Wall and Vine Street, and east and west from Saffron Hill to nearly as far as Leather Lane; but except a cluster of houses (Ely Rents), on Holborn Hill, the surrounding ground was entirely open and unbuilt on. The Bishops of Ely made several attempts to recover the entire property, but during the imprisonment of Bishop Wren by the Long Parliament, most of the palatial buildings were taken down, and upon the garden were built Hatton Garden, Great and Little Kirby Streets, Charles Street, Cross Street, and Hatton Wall. During the interregnum, Hatton House and offices were used as a prison and hospital. In 1772 the estate was purchased by the Crown; a town house was built for the Bishops of Ely in Dover Street, Piccadilly; and the present Ely Place was built about 1775, the Chapel remaining on the west side. At Ely House was arranged the grand masque given by the four Inns of Court to Charles I. and Queen Henrietta Maria at Whitehall on Candlemas-day, 1634, at a cost of £21,000, when the masquers, horsemen, musicians, dancers, with the grand committee, including the great lawyers, Whitelocke, Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon), and Selden, went in procession by torchlight from Ely House, down Chancery Lane, along the Strand, to Whitehall.
“Holborn, in past times, was famed for its fruit gardens. Before 1597, John Gerrard, ‘citizen and surgeon,’ had a large physic garden near his house in Holborn, where he raised 1,100 plants and trees—‘a proof,’ says Oldys, ‘that our ground could produce other fruits besides hips and haws, acorns and pig-mess.’ Baldwin’s Gardens were so named after Richard Baldwin, one of the Royal gardeners, who began building here in 1589. Gray’s Inn Gardens were laid out under the direction of Lord Bacon, and in these gardens he erected a summer-house, where it is probable he frequently mused upon the subjects of those great works which have rendered his name immortal. At the corner of Furnival’s Inn, and in Queen Street, Cheapside, Mr. Edward Kidder, the famous pastry-cook, who died in 1739, had two schools, in which he taught 6,000 ladies the art of making pastry.
“The Holborn end of Fetter-lane was formerly a place of execution. Proceeding farther eastward we come to a part which was once supposed to be the worst part of London, and where stood Field Lane, described as ‘an infamous rookery of the dangerous classes,’ which extended from the foot of Holborn Hill northward, parallel with the Fleet Ditch. In 1844 was taken down the first part of Old Chick Lane, which turned into Field Lane. Here was a notorious thieves’ lodging-house, which was formerly the ‘Red Lion’ Tavern, where were various contrivances for concealment, and the Fleet Ditch in the rear, across which the pursued often escaped by a plank into the opposite knot of courts and alleys. But these places, in common with the Fleet Prison, are now nearly forgotten. Dickens, writing about Field Lane in 1837, thus describes it:—‘It is a commercial colony of itself—the emporium of petty larceny, visited, at early morning and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back parlours, and go as strangely as they come.’
“Skinner Street and Snow Hill would hardly now be recognised by their old inhabitants. Skinner Street, extending from Newgate Street to Holborn Hill, was built at the commencement of the present century, to avoid the circuit of Snow Hill. In Skinner Street, in 1817, was hung Cashman the sailor, who had joined a mob in plundering a gunsmith’s shop (No. 58). At the sign of the ‘Star’ on Snow Hill, at the house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer, died on the 12th of August, 1688, the famous John Bunyan, and was buried in that friend’s vault in Bunhill-fields burial-ground.
“The foregoing are only a few of the many interesting circumstances connected with this immediate locality; and no doubt, as improvements rapidly progress, very little of this portion of ‘Old London’ will be allowed to remain standing, and large mercantile buildings will be erected on the few spots where small tenements are now standing, and Holborn will be only a reminiscence of the past.”
(A) Sir Harris Nicolas, in his life of Sir Christopher Hatton, written to expose and disprove the almost innumerable blunders of Lord Campbell in his lives of the Chancellors of England, gives the exact words of this celebrated letter.
“Proud Prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement; but I would have you to know that I who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement by G—— d, I will immediately unfrock you.