"Lord Herbert, son of William, fourth Earl of Worcester," says Pennant, "had a house in Blackfriars, which Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, honoured with her presence, on occasion of his nuptials with the daughter and heiress of John, Lord Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The queen was met at the waterside by the bride, and carried to her house in a lectica by six knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped in the same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham, where there was 'a memorable maske of eight ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their attire is this: each hath a skirt of cloth of silver, a mantell of coruscian taffete, cast under the arme, and their haire loose about their shoulders, curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton leade. These eight ladys maskers choose eight ladies more to dawnce the measures. Mrs. Fitton went to the queen and woed her dawnce. Her majesty (the love of Essex rankling in her heart) asked what she was? "Affection," she said. "Affection!" said the queen; "affection is false"; yet her majestie rose up and dawnced. At this time the queen was sixty. Surely, as Mr. Walpole observed, it was at that period as natural for her as to be in love! I must not forget that in her passage from the bride's to Lord Cobham's she went through the house of Dr. Puddin, and was presented by the doctor with a fan."
LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1760, FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT
Old Blackfriars Bridge, pulled down a few years since, was begun in 1760, and first opened on Sunday, November 19, 1769. It was built from the design of Robert Mylne, a clever young Scotch engineer, whose family had been master masons to the kings of Scotland for five hundred years. Mylne had just returned from a professional tour in Italy, where he had followed in the footsteps of Vitruvius, and gained the first prize at the Academy of St. Luke. He arrived in London friendless and unknown, and at once entered into competition with twenty other architects for the new bridge. Among these rivals was Smeaton, the great engineer (a protégé of Lord Bute's), and Dr. Johnson's friend, Gwynn, well known for his admirable work on London improvements. The committee were, however, just enough to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown Scotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly it was known that Mylne's arches were to be elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three letters to the printer of the Gazetteer, praising Gwynn's plans and denouncing the Scotch conqueror. Gwynn had "coached" the learned Doctor in a very unsatisfactory way. In his early days the giant of Bolt Court had been accustomed to get up subjects rapidly, but the science of architecture was not so easily digested. The Doctor contended "that the first excellence of a bridge built for commerce over a large river is strength." So far so good; but he then went on to try and show that the pointed arch is necessarily weak, and here he himself broke down. He allowed that there was an elliptical bridge at Florence, but he said carts were not allowed to go over it, which proved its fragility. He also condemned a proposed cast-iron parapet, in imitation of one at Rome, as too poor and trifling for a great design. He allowed that a certain arch of Perault's was elliptical, but then he contended that it had to be held together by iron clamps. He allowed that Mr. Mylne had gained the prize at Rome, but the competitors, the arrogant despot of London clubs asserted, were only boys; and, moreover, architecture had sunk so low at Rome, that even the Pantheon had been deformed by petty decorations. In his third letter the Doctor grew more scientific, and even more confused. He was very angry with Mr. Mylne's friends for asserting that though a semi-ellipse might be weaker than a semicircle, it had quite strength enough to support a bridge. "I again venture to declare," he wrote—"I again venture to declare, in defiance of all this contemptuous superiority" (how arrogant men hate other people's arrogance!), "that a straight line will bear no weight. Not even the science of Vasari will make that form strong which the laws of nature have condemned to weakness. By the position that a straight line will bear nothing is meant that it receives no strength from straightness; for that many bodies laid in straight lines will support weight by the cohesion of their parts, every one has found who has seen dishes on a shelf, or a thief upon the gallows. It is not denied that stones may be so crushed together by enormous pressure on each side, that a heavy mass may be safely laid upon them; but the strength must be derived merely from the lateral resistance, and the line so loaded will be itself part of the load. The semi-elliptical arch has one recommendation yet unexamined. We are told that it is difficult of execution."
In the face of this noisy newspaper thunder, Mylne went on, and produced one of the most beautiful bridges in England for £152,640 3s. 10d., actually £163 less than the original estimate—an admirable example for all architects, present and to come. The bridge, which had eight arches, and was 995 yards from wharf to wharf, was erected in ten years and three quarters. Mylne received £500 a year and ten per cent. on the expenditure. His claims, however, were disputed, and not allowed by the grateful City till 1776. The bridge-tolls were bought by Government in 1785, and the passage then became free. It was afterwards lowered, and the open parapet, condemned by Johnson, removed. It was supposed that Mylne's mode of centreing was a secret, but in contempt of all quackery he deposited exact models of his system in the British Museum. He was afterwards made surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1811 was interred near the tomb of Wren. He was a despot amongst his workmen, and ruled them with a rod of iron. However, the foundations of this bridge were never safely built, and latterly the piers began visibly to subside. The semi-circular arches would have been far stronger.
The foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge was laid by Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor, on the 31st of October, 1760. Horace Walpole, always Whiggish, describing the event, says:—"The Lord Mayor laid the first stone of the new bridge yesterday. There is an inscription on it in honour of Mr. Pitt, which has a very Roman air, though very unclassically expressed. They talk of the contagion of his public spirit; I believe they had not got rid of their panic about mad dogs." Several gold, silver, and copper coins of the reign of George II. (just dead) were placed under the stone, with a silver medal presented to Mr. Mylne by the Academy of St. Luke's, and upon two plates of tin—Bonnel Thornton said they should have been lead—was engraved a very shaky Latin inscription, thus rendered into English:—
On the last day of October, in the year 1760,
And in the beginning of the most auspicious reign of
George the Third,
Sir Thomas Chitty, Knight, Lord Mayor,
laid the first stone of this Bridge,
undertaken by the Common Council of London
(amidst the rage of an extensive war)
for the public accommodation
and ornament of the City;
Robert Mylne being the architect.
And that there might remain to posterity
a monument of this city's affection to the man
who, by the strength of his genius,
the steadiness of his mind,
and a certain kind of happy contagion of his
Probity and Spirit
(under the Divine favour
and fortunate auspices of George the Second)
recovered, augmented, and secured
the British Empire
in Asia, Africa, and America,
and restored the ancient reputation
and influence of his country
amongst the nations of Europe;
the citizens of London have unanimously voted this
Bridge to be inscribed with the name of
William Pitt.
On this pretentious and unlucky inscription, that reckless wit, Bonnel Thornton, instantly wrote a squib, under the obvious pseudonym of the "Rev. Busby Birch." In these critical and political remarks (which he entitled "City Latin") the gay scoffer professed in his preface to prove "almost every word and every letter to be erroneous and contrary to the practice of both ancients and moderns in this kind of writing," and appended a plan or pattern for a new inscription. The clever little lampoon soon ran to three editions. The ordinary of Newgate, my lord's chaplain, or the masters of Merchant Taylors', Paul's, or Charterhouse schools, who produced the wonderful pontine inscription, must have winced under the blows of this jester's bladderful of peas. Thornton laughed most at the awkward phrase implying that Mr. Pitt had caught the happy contagion of his own probity and spirit. He said that "Gulielmi Pitt" should have been "Gulielmi Fossæ." Lastly, he proposed, for a more curt and suitable inscription, the simple words—
"Guil. Fossæ,
Patri Patriæ D.D.D. (i.e., Datur, Dicatur, Dedicatur)."