When the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was presented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of Wanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest telescope then known.
From this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the Dunciad:
"Amidst the area wide they took their stand,
Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand;
But now, as Anne and piety ordain,
A church collects the saints of Drury lane."
In the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of France, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the poet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married. Simon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where kings, archbishops, and high nobles once walked and held high council, pickles are now sold, printing types set up, and glass rolled out and spun.
Wat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of barrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money, alas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great hall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social reformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.
Henry VII. instituted within its precincts a house of refuge for every indigent person passing down the River-side-road, and by a natural process of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it. Loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both sexes begged abroad all day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward VI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and Christ's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much to the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn disagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and they had to look out for victims in other quarters.
The building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and knavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent debtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such chaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the Public Advertiser this precious document put forth by them:
"BY AUTHORITY.—Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea, the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways to this chapel by land, and two by water."
Wither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the restoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, petitioning for his life, used this ingenious device: "As long as Wither lives, I shall not be considered the worst poet in England."