"I am sorry (he said) to be obliged to such a presumption as to name my family in the same leaf with your lordship's; but my father had the honour in one instance to resemble you, for he was a younger brother. He did not indeed think it a happiness to bury his elder brother, though he had one, who wanted some of those good qualities which yours possessed. How sincerely glad should I be to pay to that young nobleman's memory the debt I owed to his friendship, whose early death deprived your family of as much wit and honour as he left behind him in any branch of it. But as to my father, I could assure you, my lord, that he was no mechanic (neither a hatter, nor, which might please your lordship yet better, a cobbler), but, in truth, of a very tolerable family, and my mother of an ancient one, as well born and educated as that lady whom your lordship made use of to educate your own children, whose merit, beauty, and vivacity (if transmitted to your posterity) will be a better present than even the noble blood they derive from you. A mother, on whom I was never obliged so far to reflect as to say, she spoiled me; and a father, who never found himself obliged to say of me, that he disapproved my conduct. In a word, my lord, I think it enough, that my parents, such as they were, never cost me a blush; and that their son, such as he is, never cost them a tear."
The house of Pope's father was afterwards occupied by the well-known chemists, Allen, Hanbury, and Barry, a descendant of which firm still occupies it. Mr. William Allen was the son of a Quaker silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. He became chemical lecturer at Guy's Hospital, and an eminent experimentalist—discovering, among other things, the proportion of carbon in carbonic acid, and proving that the diamond was pure carbon. He was mainly instrumental in founding the Pharmaceutical Society, and distinguished himself by his zeal against slavery, and his interest in all benevolent objects. He died in 1843, at Lindfield, in Sussex, where he had founded agricultural schools of a thoroughly practical kind.
The church of St. Edmund King and Martyr (and St. Nicholas Acons), on the north side of Lombard Street, stands on the site of the old Grass Market. The only remarkable monument is that of Dr. Jeremiah Mills, who died in 1784, and had been President of the Society of Antiquaries many years. The local authorities have, with great good sense, written the duplex name of this church in clear letters over the chief entrance.
The date of the first building of St. Mary Woolnoth of the Nativity, in Lombard Street, seems to be very doubtful; nor does Stow help us to the origin of the name. By some antiquaries it has been suggested that the church was so called from being beneath or nigh to the wool staple. Mr. Gwilt suggests that it may have been called "Wool-nough," in order to distinguish it from the other church of St. Mary, where the wool-beam actually stood.
The first rector mentioned by Newcourt was John de Norton, presented previous to 1368. Sir Martin Bowes had the presentation of this church given him by Henry V., it having anciently belonged to the convent of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. From the Bowes's the presentation passed to the Goldsmiths' Company. Sir Martin Bowes was buried here, and so were many of the Houblons, a great mercantile family, on one of whom Pepys wrote an epitaph. Munday particularly mentions that the wills of several benefactors of St. Mary's were carefully preserved and exhibited in the church. Strype also mentions a monument to Sir William Phipps, that lucky speculator who, in 1687, extracted £300,000 from the wreck of a Spanish plate-vessel off the Bahama bank. Simon Eyre, the old founder of Leadenhall Market, was buried in this church in 1549.
Sir Hugh Brice, goldsmith and mayor, governor of the Mint in the reign of Henry VII., built or rebuilt part of the church, and raised a steeple. The church was almost totally destroyed in the Great Fire, and repaired by Wren. Sir Robert Viner, the famous goldsmith, contributed largely towards the rebuilding, "a memorial whereof," says Strype, "are the vines that adorn and spread about that part of the church that fronts his house and the street; insomuch, that the church was used to be called Sir Robert Viner's church." Wren's repairs having proved ineffectual, the church was rebuilt in 1727. The workmen, twenty feet under the ruins of the steeple, discovered bones, tusks, Roman coins, and a vast number of broken Roman pottery. It is generally thought by antiquaries that a temple dedicated to Concord once stood here. Hawksmoor, the architect of St. Mary Woolnoth, was born the year of the Great Fire, and died in 1736. He acted as Wren's deputy during the erection of the Hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich, and also in the building of most of the City churches. The principal works of his own design are Christ Church, Spitalfields, St. Anne's, Limehouse, and St. George's, Bloomsbury. Mr. J. Godwin, an excellent authority, calls St. Mary Woolnoth "one of the most striking and original, although not the most beautiful, churches in the metropolis."
On the north side of the communion-table is a plain tablet in memory of that excellent man, the Rev. John Newton, who was curate of Olney, Bucks, for sixteen years, and rector of the united parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch twenty-eight years. He died on the 21st of December, 1807, aged eighty-two years, and was buried in a vault in this church.
On the stone is the following inscription, full of Christian humility:—
"John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy."
Newton's father was master of a merchant-ship, and Newton's youth was spent in prosecuting the African slave-trade, a career of which he afterwards bitterly repented. He is best known as the writer (in conjunction with the poet Cowper) of the "Olney Hymns."