Walcott says: "On the north side of the Long Staple was a turning in a westerly direction leading into the Round Staple, at the south-east end of the present King Street." This must have been on the site of the present Great George Street. An attempt was made to establish a fish-market here in competition with Billingsgate, but the pre-established interest was too strong and the fish-market was abandoned.
There was a gateway at the end of the Staple. This was still in existence in 1741, when it was pulled down in view of the new bridge.
There has been much dispute as to the origin of the name of Cannon Row. Some hold that it was derived from the prebendal houses of the Canons of St. Stephen's Chapel, and others that it was a corruption of Channel Row, from the arm of the river which entered near the spot. There were many noble houses here at one time. The Earl of Derby in 1552 had two houses, with gardens stretching to the river, granted to him by Edward VI.
Anne, Duchess of Somerset, built a house here. The Marquis of Dorset's house gave its name to a court subsequently built on its site. In 1556-57 the Earl of Sussex lived here, and in 1618 a later Earl of Derby built a house, afterwards used as the Admiralty Office. The name is preserved in Derby Street. The Earl of Essex, Lord Halifax, and the Bishop of Peterborough were all residents in this row. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Duke of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, resided here also. At present the row is very dreary. The building in which the Civil Service examinations are held stands on the east side. This was erected in 1784 for the Ordnance Board, then given to the Board of Control, and finally to the Civil Service Commissioners.
The Victoria Embankment was begun in 1864, and completed about six years later. The wall is of brick, faced with granite and founded in Portland cement; it looks solid enough to withstand the tides of many a hundred years. The parapet is of granite, decorated by cast-iron standard lamps. St Stephen's Club is on the Embankment, close by Westminster Bridge Station. Further on is the huge building of the Police Commissioners, known as New Scotland Yard, built in 1890 from designs of Norman Shaw, R.A. It is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Force, and the architecture is singularly well in keeping with its object. The building is of red brick, with the tower floors cased in granite. It is in the form of a square, built round an inner courtyard, and has an immense bastion at each exterior angle. Besides the offices of the police force, the Lost Property Office, the Public Carriage Office, and the Criminal Investigation Department are here. The building communicates directly by telephone with the Horse Guards, Houses of Parliament, British Museum, and other public places, and has telegraphic communication with the twenty-two head-offices of the Metropolitan Police district. The Criminal Museum is open to the public under certain conditions.
Parliament Street and King Street have now been merged in one, and together have become a part of Whitehall, so that the very names will soon be forgotten. Yet King Street was once the direct land route to the Abbey and Palace from the north, and its narrow span was perforce wide enough for all the pageantry of funerals, coronations, and other State shows that passed through it. It must be remembered that King Street formerly ran right up to the Abbey precincts, from which it was separated by a gate-house, called Highgate, built by Richard II.; but the street was subsequently shorn of a third of its length, over which now grows green grass in smooth lawns. The street was very picturesque: "The houses rose up three and four stories high; gabled all, with projecting fronts, story above story, the timbers of the fronts painted and gilt, some of them with escutcheons hung in front, the richly blazoned arms brightening the narrow way." But it was also dirty: "The roadway was rough and full of holes; a filthy stream ran down the middle, all kinds of refuse were lying about." But what mattered that? No one went on foot who could possibly go by boat, and there lay the great highway of the river close at hand. We have said processions went down this street; among them we may number all the coronation processions up to the time when Parliament Street was cut through numerous small courts and by-streets in the reign of George II. Lord Howard of Effingham set out from King Street to fight the Spanish Armada. Charles I. came this way from Whitehall Palace to his trial at Westminster; he went back by the same route condemned to death; and later Cromwell's funeral procession followed the same route. Cromwell himself narrowly escaped assassination in this very street, where he had a house north of Boar's Head Yard. The story is told that he was in his state carriage, but owing to the crowd and narrow street he was separated from his guard. Suddenly Lord Broghill, who was with him, saw the door of a cobbler's stall open and shut, while something glittered behind it. He therefore got out of the carriage and hammered at the door with his scabbard, when a tall man, armed with a sword, rushed out and made his escape.
Anne Oldfield was apprenticed to a seamstress in King Street. Sir Henry Wootton also lived here; and Ben Jonson says that Spenser died here for "lack of bread," and that the Earl of Essex sent him "20 pieces" on hearing of his poverty, but the poet refused them, saying they came too late. Fletcher wrote of him: "Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died." But it seems hardly credible he was so badly off as to be destitute, for he was at the time a pensioner of the Crown. Thomas Carew the poet lived in King Street. Most of the taverns in Westminster seem to have clustered about this street; we have the names of the Bell, the Boar's Head, and the Rhenish Wine House still handed down as places of importance. There were innumerable courts and alleys opening out of King Street. On the west, south of Downing Street, were Axe Yard, Sea Alley, Bell Yard, Antelope Alley. Gardener's Lane ran parallel with Charles Street; here Hollar the engraver died in extreme poverty in 1677.
At the north end of King Street stood a second gate, called the King's Gate, and sometimes the Cockpit Gate. It stood at the corner of what is now Downing Street. It had four domed towers; on the south side were pilasters and an entablature enriched with the double rose, the portcullis, and the royal arms. The gate was removed in 1723.
In the year 1605 a solemn function took place in which the gate played a part:
"On January 4, 1605, when Prince Charles, Duke of Albany, then only four years old, was to be created Knight of the Bath, his esquires, the Earls of Oxford and Essex, with eleven noblemen who were to share in the honour, tooke their lodgings in the first Gate-house going to King's-streete, where they were all after supper, at which they sat by degrees, a row on the one side, with the armes of every of them over the seate where he was placed; and lodged upon severall pallets in one chamber, with their armes likewise over them, having their bathes provided for them in the chamber underneath. The next morning they went about through the gallory downe into the Parke in their hermits' weedes, the musitions playing, and the heralds going before them into The Court, and so into the Chapell, and there after solemn courtesies, like to the Knights of the Garter, first to the Altar, and then to the Cloath of Estate, every one took his place in the stalles of the Quier" (Walcott, p. 58).