Nor did Charles's reign bring any quiet to Fleet Street, for then the Templars began to lug out their swords. On the 12th of January, 1627, the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went out late at night into Fleet Street to collect his rents. At every door the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, "Give fire, gunner," and a sturdy smith burst the pannels open with a huge sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived, attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare Alley (now Hare Court). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to him, but Palmer, omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule had, nevertheless, to refund all the five shillings' he had exacted, and repair all the Fleet Street doors his too handy gunner had destroyed. The very next year the quarrelsome street broke again into a rage, and four persons lost their lives. Of the rioters, two were executed within the week. One of these was John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the other Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about politics, and the courtiers seem to have been the offenders.
In Charles II.'s time the pillory was sometimes set up at the Temple gate; and here the wretch Titus Oates stood, amidst showers of unsavoury eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see the horror of his crimes. Well said Judge Withers to this man, "I never pronounce criminal sentence but with some compassion; but you are such a villain and hardened sinner, that I can find no sentiment of compassion for you." The pillory had no fixed place, for in 1670 we find a Scotchman suffering at the Chancery Lane end for telling a victualler that his house would be fired by the Papists; and the next year a man stood upon the pillory at the end of Shoe Lane for insulting Lord Ambassador Coventry as he was starting for Sweden.
In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the "Mohocks," seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken desperadoes—the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers—used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the emperor and his black men," who had followed him half-way down Fleet Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet lodgings.
From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with great industry, collected the following curious enumeration:—
"Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, "in Every Man in his Humour, speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street mandrakes' were to be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders of Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a model of Amsterdam, thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which had taken twelve years in making, was exhibited in Bell Yard; a child, fourteen years old, without thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen 'at the "Eagle and Child," a grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane;' a great Lincolnshire ox, nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was on view 'at the "White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;' and 'between the "Queen's Head" and "Crooked Billet," near Fleet Bridge,' were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous creatures—an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In 1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' in Fleet Street (by Shoe Lane), was exhibited the 'moving picture' mentioned in the Tatler; and here, in 1711, 'the great posture-master of Europe,' eclipsing the deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London. 'He extends his body into all deformed shapes; makes his hip and shoulder-bones meet together; lays his head upon the ground, and turns his body round twice or thrice, without stirring his face from the spot; stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a foot below his heels, having nothing to balance his body but his feet; with several other postures too tedious to mention.'
"And here, in 1718, De Hightrehight, the fire-eater, ate burning coals, swallowed flaming brimstone, and sucked a red-hot poker, five times a day!
"What will my billiard-loving friends say to the St. Dunstan's Inquest of the year 1720? 'Item, we present Thomas Bruce, for suffering a gaming-table (called a billiard-table, where people commonly frequent and game) to be kept in his house.' A score of years later, at the end of Wine Office Court, was exhibited an automaton clock, with three figures or statues, which at the word of command poured out red or white wine, represented a grocer shutting up his shop and a blackamoor who struck upon a bell the number of times asked. Giants and dwarfs were special features in Fleet Street. At the 'Rummer,' in Three Kings' Court, was to be seen an Essex woman, named Gordon, not nineteen years old, though seven feet high, who died in 1737. At the 'Blew Boar and Green Tree' was on view an Italian giantess, above seven feet, weighing 425 lbs., who had been seen by ten reigning sovereigns. In 1768 died, in Shire Lane, Edward Bamford, another giant, seven feet four inches in height, who was buried in St. Dunstan's, though £200 was offered for his body for dissection. At the 'Globe,' in 1717, was shown Matthew Buckinger, a German dwarf, born in 1674, without hands, legs, feet, or thighs, twenty-nine inches high; yet can write, thread a needle, shuffle a pack of cards, play skittles, &c. A facsimile of his writing is among the Harleian MSS. And in 1712 appeared the Black Prince and his wife, each three feet high; and a Turkey horse, two feet odd high and twelve years old, in a box. Modern times have seen giants and dwarfs, but have they really equalled these? In 1822 the exhibition of a mermaid here was put a stop to by the Lord Chamberlain."
In old times Fleet Street was rendered picturesque, not only by its many gable-ended houses adorned with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in patterns, but also by the countless signs, gay with gilding and painted with strange devices, which hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry exhausted all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades. Lions blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day these huge masses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane, Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement, suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till 1761 (George III.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to be placed flat against the walls of the houses.
When Dr. Johnson said, "Come and let us take a walk down Fleet Street," he proposed a no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the wall. In 1766, when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and put up at that humble hostelry the "White Horse," in Fetter Lane, he describes coming home from Drury Lane with his brother in a sedan. Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, some rough fellows pushed against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pass first. Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post he passed was cured in 1766, by the laying down of side-pavements. On that occasion it is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet that they would pave more in a day than four Scotchmen could. By three o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work, won the wager.
In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the centre of Fleet Street, in ridicule of Lord Bute; but a more serious affray took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy Wilkites closed the Bar, to stop a procession of 600 loyal citizens en route to St. James's to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition and uproot the constitution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud. Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in "Nando's Coffee House." About 150 of the frightened citizens, passing up Chancery Lane, got to the palace by a devious way, a hearse with two white horses and two black following them to St. James's Palace. Even there the Riot Act had to be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm fled into "Nando's," in his alarm, he sent home his carriage containing the address. The mob searched the vehicle, but could not find the paper, upon which Mr. Boehm hastened to the Court, and arrived just in time with the important document.