The next opening on the south side is Dyers' Buildings, with name reminiscent of some former almshouses of the Dyers' Company. Then a small entry, with "Mercer's School" above, leads into Barnard's Inn, now the School of the Mercers' Company. The first court is smaller than that of Staple Inn, and lacks the whispering planes, yet it is redolent of old London. On the south side is the little hall, the smallest of all those of the London Inns; it is now used as a dining-hall. In the windows is some ancient stained glass, contemporary with the building—that is to say, about 470 years old.
The exterior of this hall, with its steeply-pitched roof, is a favourite subject for artists. Beyond it are concrete courts, walls of glazed white brick, and cleanly substantial buildings, which speak of the modern appreciation of sanitation. A tablet on the wall records in admirably concise fashion the history of the Mercers' School and its various peregrinations until it found a home here in 1894. Before being bought by the Mercers' Company, the Inn had been let as residential chambers. It was also an Inn of Chancery, and belonged to Gray's Inn. It was formerly called Mackworth's Inn, being the property of Dr. John Mackworth, Dean of Lincoln. It was next occupied by a man named Barnard, when it was converted into an Inn of Chancery.
The further court is bounded on the east side by one of the few very old buildings left in London. This was formerly the White Horse Inn, but is now also part of the Mercers' School buildings.
Timbs quotes from Lord Eldon's "Anecdote Book," 1776, in which Lord Eldon says he came to the White Horse Inn when he left school, and here met his brother, Lord Stowell, who took him to see the play at Drury Lane, where "Lowe played Jobson in the farce, and Miss Pope played Nell. When we came out of the house it rained hard. There were then few hackney coaches, and we both got into one sedan-chair. Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane there was a sort of contest between our chairmen and some persons who were coming up Fleet Street.... In the struggle the sedan-chair was overset, with us in it."
The white boundary wall of the Mercers' School replaces the old wall of the noted Swan Distillery (now rebuilt). This distillery was an object of attack in the Gordon Riots, partly, perhaps, because of its stores, and partly because its owner was a Roman Catholic. It was looted, and the liquor ran down in the streets, where men and women drank themselves mad. Dickens has thus described the riot scene in "Barnaby Rudge":
"The gutters of the street and every crack and fissure in the stones ran with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, women with children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and drank until they died. While some stooped their lips to the brink and never raised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught, and danced half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of suffocation, until they fell and steeped their corpses in the liquor that had killed them."
Both the Holborn and Fleet Street ends of Fetter Lane were for more than two centuries places of execution. Some have derived the name from the fetters of criminals, and others from "fewtors," disorderly and idle persons, a corruption of "defaytors," or defaulters; while the most probable derivation is that from the "fetters" or rests on the breastplates of the knights who jousted in Fickett's Field adjoining.
An interesting Moravian Chapel has an entry on the east side of Fetter Lane. This has memories of Baxter, Wesley, and Whitefield. It was bought by the Moravians in 1738, and was then associated with the name of Count Zinzendorf. It was attacked and dismantled in the riots. Dryden is supposed to have lived in Fetter Lane, but Hutton, in "Literary Landmarks," says the only evidence of such occupation was a curious stone, existing as late as 1885, in the wall of No. 16, over Fleur-de-Lys Court, stating:
"Here lived
John Dryden,
Ye Poet.
Born 1631—Died 1700.
Glorious John!"
But he adds there is no record when or by whom the stone was placed. Otway is said to have lived opposite, and quarrelled with his illustrious neighbour in verse. In any case, Fleur-de-Lys Court lies outside the boundaries of the parish we are now considering. It may, however, be mentioned that the woman Elizabeth Brownrigg, who so foully tortured her apprentices, committed her atrocities in this court. Praise God Barebones was at one time a resident in the Lane, and in the same house his brother, Damned Barebones. The house was afterwards bought by the Royal Society, of which Sir Isaac Newton was then President, and the Royal Society meetings were held here until 1782.