The apothecaries' street is also mentioned in Westward Ho! that dangerous play that brought Ben Jonson into trouble:—
"Mrs. Tenterhook. Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it."
And Ben Johnson, in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, says:—
"Nor have my title-leaf on post or walls,
Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man,
Who scarce can spell th' hard names, whose knight less can.
If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well."
That good old Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, also alludes to the herbalists' street in his wonderful "Religio Medico:"—"I know," says he, "most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE MANSION HOUSE
The Palace of the Lord Mayor—The old Stocks' Market—A Notable Statue of Charles II.—The Mansion House described—The Egyptian Hall—Works of Art in the Mansion House—The Election of the Lord Mayor—Lord Mayor's Day—The Duties of a Lord Mayor—Days of the Year on which the Lord Mayor holds High State—The Patronage of the Lord Mayor—His Powers—The Lieutenancy of the City of London—The Conservancy of the Thames and Medway—The Lord Mayor's Advisers—The Mansion House Household and Expenditure—Theodore Hook—Lord Mayor Scropps—The Lord Mayor's Insignia—The State Barge—The Maria Wood.
The Lord Mayors in old times often dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Old Jewry; but in 1739 Lord Mayor Perry laid the first stone of the present dull and stately Mansion House, and Sir Crisp Gascoigne, 1753, was the first Lord Mayor that resided in it. The architect, Dance, selected the Greek style for the City palace.