Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Leicester Square, as Mr Smith justly observes, has more the appearance of the Grande Place of some continental city than of a London square. The headquarters and chief rendezvous of aliens, especially of Frenchmen, it bears numerous and unmistakeable marks of its foreign occupancy. French hotels and restaurants replace taverns and chop-houses. French names are seen above shops; promises of French, German, and Spanish conversation, are read in the windows; and grimy-visaged, hirsute individuals, in plaited pantaloons and garments of eccentric cut, saunter, cigar in mouth, over the shabby pavement. It is curious to remark the different tone and station taken by English in Paris and French in London. In the former capital, nothing is too good for the intruding islanders. In the best and most expensive season, they throng thither, and strut about like lords of the soil, perfectly at home, and careless of the opinions of the people amongst whom they have condescended to come. The best houses are for their use; the most expensive shops are favoured with their custom; and if occasionally tormented by a troublesome consciousness of paying dearly for their importance, they easily console themselves by a malediction on the French voleurs, who thus take advantage of their long purses and open hands. How different is it with the Frenchman in London! He comes over, for the most part, at the dullest time of the year, in the autumn, when the town is foggy, and dreary, and empty; when the Parks are deserted, shutters shut, the theatres dull, and exhibitions closed. He has certain vague apprehensions of the tremendous expense entailed by a visit to the English capital. To avoid this, he makes a toil of a pleasure; wearies himself with economical calculations; and creeps into some inferior hotel or dull lodging-house, tempted by low prices and foreign announcements. We find French deputies abiding in Cranbourn Street, and counts contenting themselves with a garret at Pagliano's. Thence they perambulate westwards; and ignorant, or not choosing to remember, that London is out of town, and that they have selected the very worst possible season to visit it, they greatly marvel at the paucity of equipages, at the abundance of omnibuses and hack-cabs, and the scarcity of sunbeams; and return home to inform their friends that London is a ville monstre, with spacious streets, small houses, few amusements; very great, but very gloomy; and where the nearest approach to sunshine resembles the twinkling of a rushlight through a plate of blue earthenware.

"The foreign appearance of Leicester Square is not of recent growth. It seems to have been the favourite resort of strangers and exiles ever since the place was built. Maitland, who wrote more than a hundred years ago, describing the parish of St Anne's, in which it is situate, says – 'The fields in these parts being but lately converted into buildings, I have not discovered any thing of great antiquity in this parish. Many parts of it so greatly abound with French, that it is an easy matter for a stranger to imagine himself in France.'"

Sydney Alley is named after the Earls of Leicester, who had their town-house on the north side of the square, where Leicester Place has since been opened. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., occupied, for some years, this residence of the Sydneys. She also inhabited a house in Drury Place, where Craven Street now stands, which was built for her by Lord Craven. It was called Bohemia House for many years afterwards, and at last became a tavern, at the sign of the Queen of Bohemia. "The Earl of Craven was thought to have been privately married to the queen, a woman of great sweetness of temper and amiability of manners – a universal favourite both in this country and Bohemia, where her gentleness acquired her the title of 'The Queen of Hearts.' By right of their descent from her, the House of Hanover ascended the throne of this kingdom." Lord Craven was the eldest son of Sir William Craven, lord-mayor of London in 1611. He fought under Gustavus Adolphus with great distinction, and returned to England at the Restoration, when Charles II. made him viscount and earl. He commanded a regiment of the guards until within three or four years of his death, which occurred in 1697, at the advanced age of eighty-five. "He was an excellent soldier," says the advertisement of his decease in No. 301 of the Postman, "and served in the wars under Palsgrave of the Rhine, and also under the great Gustavus Adolphus, where he performed sundry warlike exploits to admiration; and, in a word, he was then in great renowne."

However indifferently Leicester Square may at present be inhabited, and notwithstanding its long-standing reputation as a foreign colony, it has been the chosen abode of many distinguished men. Hogarth and Reynolds lived and died there. Hogarth's house is now part of the Sablonière Hotel. Sir Joshua's was on the opposite side of the square; and both of them, especially the latter, were much resorted to by the wits and wise men of the day. Johnson, Boswell, and, at times, Goldsmith, were constant visitors to Reynolds. John Hunter, the anatomist, lived next-door to Hogarth's house; and in 1725, Lords North and Grey, and Arthur Onslow, the Speaker, also inhabited this square. Leicester House, where the Queen of Bohemia lived, is called by Pennant the "pouting-place of princes." George II. retired thither when he quarrelled with his father; and his son Frederick, the father of George III., did the same thing for the same reason. Whilst Prince Frederick and the Princess of Wales lived there, they received the wedding visit of the Hon. John Spencer, ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, and of his bride, Miss Poyntz. Contrary to established etiquette, the bridal party went to visit the Prince before paying their respects to the King. They came in two carriages and a sedan chair; the latter, which was lined with white satin, contained the bride, and was preceded by a black page, and followed by three footmen in splendid liveries. The diamonds presented to Mr Spencer, on occasion of his marriage, by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, were worth one hundred thousand pounds. The bridegroom's shoe-buckles alone cost thirty thousand pounds. An old gentleman, born more than a century ago, from whom Mr Smith obtained some of these particulars, informed him, that about that time the neighbourhood was so thinly built, that when the heads of two men, executed for participation in the Scotch rebellion, were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields with a telescope, to give the boys a sight of them for a penny a-piece.

A house in Leicester Fields was the scene of some of the eccentricities of that semi-civilised hero, Peter the Great of Russia. It belonged to the Earl of Aylesbury, and was inhabited, during the Czar's visit to this country, by the Marquis of Carmarthen, who gave a grand ball there, on the 2d April 1698, in honour of the imperial stranger. The Marquis was Peter's particular chum and boon companion, and the Czar preferred his society to all the gaieties and visitors that beset him during his residence in England. Peter was very shy of strangers, and when William the Third gave him a magnificent entertainment at St James's, he would not mix with the company, but begged to be put into a cupboard, whence he could see without being seen. He drank tremendously, and made Lord Carmathen do the same. Hot brandy, seasoned with pepper, was his favourite drink. Something strong he certainly required to digest his diet of train-oil and raw meats. On one occasion, when staying in Leicester Fields with the Marquis, he is said to have drunk a pint of brandy and a bottle of sherry before dinner, and eight bottles of sack after it, and then to have gone to the play, seemingly no whit the worse. He lodged in York Buildings, in a house overlooking the river, supposed by some to be that at the left-hand corner of Buckingham Street. A house in Norfolk Street also had the honour of sheltering him. "On Monday night," says No. 411 of the Postman "the Czar of Muscovy arrived from Holland, and went directly to the house prepared for him in Norfolk Street." His principal amusement was being rowed on the Thames between London and Deptford; and at last, in order to live quietly and avoid the hosts of visitors who poured in upon him, he took Admiral Benbow's house at the latter place. It stood on the ground now occupied by the Victualling Office, and was the property of the well-known John Evelyn.

"Horne Tooke," says Mr Smith, "in his Diversions of Purley, derives the word Charing from the Saxon Charan, to turn; and the situation of the original village, on the bend or turning of the Thames, gives probability to this etymology." Every body knows that Charing, now so central a point, was once a little hamlet on the rural high-road between London and Westminster, and that the "Cross" was added to it by Edward the First, who, when escorting his wife's remains from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey, erected one at each place where the beloved corpse rested. The first cross, which was of wood, and probably of rude enough manufacture, gave way to one of stone, designed by Cavalini. About the middle of the seventeenth century, that period of puritanical intolerance, this was removed by order of the Commons' House, an order which the royalists took care to ridicule by song and lampoon. According to Lilly the astrologer and quack, the workmen were three months pulling it down, and some of the stones were used for the pavement before Whitehall. Others were made into knife-handles, and Lilly saw some of them which were polished and looked like marble. Those were days in which kingly memorials found as little favour as popish emblems; and after the death of Charles the First, the statue that now stands at Charing Cross, and which had been cast by Le Sueur in 1633 for the Earl of Arundel, was sold and ordered to be broken up. It was bought by one Rivet, a brazier, who, instead of breaking, buried it. This did not prevent the ingenious mechanic from making a large and immediate profit by the effigy of the martyred monarch; for he melted down old brass into knife and fork-handles, and sold them as proceeding from the King's statue. Roundheads and cavaliers all flocked to buy; the former desiring a trophy of their triumph, the latter eager to possess a memento of their lamented sovereign. In 1678, £70,000 was voted by Parliament for the obsequies of Charles I., and for a monument to his memory, and with a portion of this sum, how large a one is not known, the statue was repurchased.

The historian of the streets and houses of a great and ancient city, has, in many ways, a most difficult task to perform. Not only must he read much, observe closely, and diligently inquire, display ingenuity in deduction and judgment in selection, but he must be steadfast to resist temptation. For, assuredly, to the lover of antiquarian and historical lore, the temptation is immense, whilst culling materials from quaint old diaries, black-letter pamphlets, and venerable newspapers, to expatiate and extract at a length wholly inconsistent with the necessary limits of his work. Some writers are at pains to dilate their matter – his chief care must be to compress. What would fairly fill a sheet must be packed into a page – the pith and substance of a volume must be squeezed into a chapter. The diligent compiler should not be slightly considered by the creative and aspiring genius. Like the bee, he forms his small, rich store, from the fragrance of a thousand flowers – adopting the sweet, rejecting the nauseous and insipid. Nor must he dwell too long on any pet and particular blossom, lest what would please in due proportion should cloy by too large an admixture. To vary the metaphor, the writer of such a work as this Antiquarian Ramble, should be a sort of literary Soyer, mixing his materials so skilfully that the flavour of each is preserved, whilst not one unduly predominates. He must not prance off on a hobby, whether architectural, historical, social, or romantic, but relieve his cattle and his readers by jumping lightly and frequently from one saddle to another.

How many books might be written upon the themes briefly glanced at in Mr Smith's book! Let us take, for instance, the places of public executions in London. Charing Cross was for centuries one of them, and its pillory was the most illustrious amongst the many that formerly graced the capital – illustrious by reason of the remarkable evil-doers who underwent ignominy in its wooden and unfriendly embrace. The notorious Titus Oates, and Parsons, the chief contriver of the Cock-Lane Ghost, were exposed in it. To the rough treatment which, in former days, sometimes succeeded exposure in the pillory, the following paragraph, from the Daily Advertiser of the 11th June 1731, abundantly testifies: – "Yesterday Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, stood on the pillory for the space of one hour; after which he was seated in an elbow-chair, and the common hangman cut both his ears off with an incision knife, and showed them to the spectators, afterwards delivered them to Mr Watson, a sheriff's officer; then slit both his nostrils with a pair of scissors, and sear'd them with a hot iron, pursuant to his sentence. He had a surgeon to attend him to the pillory, who immediately applied things necessary to prevent the effusion of blood. He underwent it all with undaunted courage; afterwards went to the Ship tavern at Charing Cross, where he stayed some time; then was carried to the King's Bench Prison, to be confined there for life. During the time he was on the pillory he laughed, and denied the fact to the last." Petty punishments these, although barbarous enough, inflicted for paltry crimes upon mean malefactors. Criminals of a far higher grade had, previously to that, paid the penalty of their offences at the Cross of Charing. Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, was there hung, as were Scrope, Jones, Harrison, and others of the king-killers. Long had been their impunity; but vengeance at last overtook them. To the end they showed the stern fanatical resolution of Oliver's iron followers. "Where is your Good Old Cause?" cried a scoffer to Harrison, as he was led to the scaffold. "Here!" he replied, clapping hand on breast; "I go to seal it with my blood." At the foot of the ladder, which he approached with undaunted mien, his limbs were observed to tremble, and some amongst the mob made a mockery of this weakness. "I judge," said Harrison, "that some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you NO! but it is by reason of much blood that I have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves." And he spoke further, and told the populace how he gloried in that he had done, and how, had he ten thousand lives, he would cheerfully lay them down in the same cause. "After he was hanged, a horrible scene took place. In conformity to the barbarous sentence then, and for many years afterwards, executed upon persons convicted of treason, he was cut down alive and stripped, his belly was cut open, his bowels taken out and burned before his eyes. Harrison, in the madness of his agony, rose up wildly, it is said, and gave the executioner a box on the ear, and then fell down insensible. It was the last effort of matter over mind, and for the time it conquered." The other regicides died with the same firmness and contempt of death. "Their grave and graceful demeanour," says the account in the state trials, "accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the spectators." So much so, and so strong was the sympathy excited, that the government gave orders that no more of them should be executed in the heart of London. Accordingly the remainder suffered at Tyburn.

Upon the old Westminster market-place a most barbarous event occurred in the time of that tyrannical, acetous old virgin, Queen Bess, who assuredly owes her renown and the sort of halo of respect that surrounds her memory, far less to any good qualities of her own, than to the galaxy of great men who flourished during her reign. The glory that encircles her brow is formed of such stars as Cecil, Burleigh and Bacon, Drake and Raleigh, Spencer, Shakspeare, and Sydney. Touching this barbarity, however, enacted by order of good Queen Bess. At the mature age of forty-eight, her majesty took it into her very ordinary-looking old head to negotiate a marriage with the Duke of Anjou. Commissioners came from France to discuss the interesting subject, and were entertained by pageants and tournaments, in which Elizabeth enacted the Queen of Beauty; and subsequently the duke came over himself, as a private gentleman, to pay his court to the last of the Tudors. The duke being a papist, the proposed alliance was very unpopular in England, and one John Stubbs, a barrister of Lincoln's-Inn, wrote a pamphlet against it, entitled, "The Discoverye of a gaping gulphe, whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns, by letting her Majestye see the sin and punishment thereof." Certain expressions in this imprudent publication greatly angered the Queen; Stubbs and his servant, Page, were brought to trial, and condemned to lose their right hands. This cruel and unusual sentence was carried into effect on the market-place at Westminster, and witnessed by Camden, who gives an account of it. Both sufferers behaved with great fortitude and courage. Their hands were cut off with a butcher's cleaver and mallet, and as soon as Stubbs had lost his, he pulled off his cap with his left, waved it in the air, and cried – "God save the Queen!" He then fainted away. It took two blows to sever Page's hand, but he flinched not, and pointing to the block where it lay, he exclaimed – "I have left there the hand of a true Englishman!" And so he went from the scaffold, says the account, "stoutlie and with great courage."

Amongst spots of sanguinary notoriety, Smithfield, of course, stands prominent. The majority of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons burned for heresy during Mary's short reign, suffered there; and here also, upon two occasions, the horrible punishment of boiling to death, formerly inflicted on poisoners, was witnessed. In France this was the punishment of coiners, and there is still a street at Paris known as the Rue de l'Echaudé. In Stow's Annals it is recorded, that on the fifth of April 1531, "one Richard Rose, a cook, was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning of divers persons, to the number of sixteen or more." Two only of the sixteen died, but the others were never restored to health. If any thing could reconcile us to torture, as a punishment to be inflicted by man on his offending brother, it is such a crime as this.

If the punishments of our ancestors were cruel, if trials were sometimes over hasty, and small offences often too severely chastised, on the other hand, culprits formerly had facilities of escape now refused to them. The right of sanctuary was enjoyed by various districts and buildings in London. Pennant and many other writers have stigmatised this practice as absurd; Mr Smith defends it upon very reasonable grounds. "In times when every man went armed, when feuds were of hourly occurrence in the streets, when the age had not yet learned the true superiority of right over might, and when private revenge too often usurped the functions of justice, it was essential that there should be places whither the homicide might flee, and find refuge and protection until the violence of angry passions had subsided, and there was a chance of a fair trial for him." Not all sanctuaries, however, gave protection to the murderer, at least in later times. Whitefriars, for instance, once a refuge for all criminals, except traitors, afforded shelter, after the fifteenth century, to debtors only. In 1697 this sanctuary was abolished entirely, at the same time with a dozen others. It is not well ascertained how it acquired the slang name of Alsatia, which is first found in a play of Shadwell's, The Squire of Alsatia. Immortalised by the genius of Scott, no sanctuary will longer be remembered than Whitefriars. It was one of the largest; many others of the privileged districts being limited to a court or alley, a few houses or a church. Thus Ram Alley and Mitre Court in Fleet Street, and Baldwin's Gardens in Gray's Inn Lane, were amongst these refugees of roguery and crime. Whitefriars was much resorted to by poets and players, dancing and fencing masters, and persons of the like vagabond and uncertain professions. The poets and players were attracted by the vicinity of the theatre in Dorset Gardens, built after the fire of London, by Sir Christopher Wren, upon the site of Dorset House, the residence of the Sackvilles. Here Sir William Davenant's company of comedians – the Duke of York's servants, as they were called – performed for a considerable time. It appears, however, that even before the great fire, there was a theatre in that neighbourhood. Malone, in his Prologomena to Shakspeare, quotes a memorandum from the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels to King Charles I. It runs thus: – "I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th of February 1634, to the Marshalsey, for lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the players in Salisbury Court, to represent a Flamen, a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission and acknowledgement of his faults, I released him the 17th of February 1634."

The ancient sanctuary at Westminster is of historical and Shaksperian celebrity, as the place where Elizabeth Grey, Queen of Edward the Fourth, took refuge, when Warwick the king-maker marched to London to dethrone her husband, and set Henry the Sixth on the throne. It was a stone church, built in the form of a cross, and so strongly, that its demolition, in 1750, was a matter of great difficulty. The precinct of St Martin's-le-Grand was also sanctuary. Many curious particulars respecting it are to be found in Kempe's Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church, or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of St Martin's-le-Grand, London, published in 1825. In the reign of Henry the Fifth, this right of sanctuary gave rise to a great dispute between the Dean of St Martin's and the city authorities. "A soldier, confined in Newgate, was on his way to Guildhall, in charge of an officer of the city, when on passing the south gate of St Martin's, opposite to Newgate Street, five of his comrades rushed out of Panyer Alley, with daggers drawn, rescued him, and fled with him to the holy ground." The sheriff had the sanctuary forced, and sent rescued and rescuers to Newgate. The Dean of St Martin's, indignant at this violation of privilege, complained to the king, who ordered the prisoners to be liberated. Thereat the citizens, ever sticklers for their rights, demurred, and at last it was made a Star-Chamber matter. The dean pleaded his own cause, and that right skilfully and wittily. He denied that the chapel of St Martin's formed any part of the city of London, as claimed by the corporation; quoted a statute of Edward III. constituting St Martin's and Westminster Abbey places of privilege for treason, felony, and debt; and mentioned the curious fact, that "when the King's justices held their sittings in St Martin's Gate, for the trial of prisoners for treason or felony, the accused were placed before them, on the other side of the street, and carefully guarded from advancing forward; for if they ever passed the water-channel which divided the middle of the street, they might claim the saving franchise of the sacred precinct, and the proceedings against them would be immediately annulled." The dean also expressed his wonder that the citizens of London should be the men to impugn his church's liberties, since more than three hundred worshipful members of the corporation had within a few years been glad to claim its privilege. The Star-Chamber decided against the city, and the prisoners were restored to sanctuary. The Savoy was another sanctuary; and it was the custom of the inhabitants to tar and feather those who ventured to follow their debtors thither.

In the theatrical district of London, Mr Smith lingers long and fondly; for there each house, almost every brick, is rich in reminiscences, not only of players and playhouses, but of wits, poets, and artists. In the burial-ground of St Paul's, Covent-Garden, repose not a few of those who in their lifetime inhabited or frequented the neighbourhood. There lies the author of Hudibras. "Mr Longueville, of the Temple, Butler's steady friend, and who mainly supported him in his latter days, when the ungrateful Stuart upon the throne, whose cause he had so greatly served, had deserted him, was anxious to have buried the poet in Westminster Abbey. He solicited for that purpose the contributions of those wealthy persons, his friends, whom he had heard speak admiringly of Butler's genius, and respectfully of his character, but none would contribute, although he offered to head the list with a considerable sum." So poor Butler was buried in Covent-Garden, privately but decently. He is in good company. Sir Peter Lely, the painter of dames, the man who seemed created on purpose to limn the languishing and voluptuous beauties of Charles the Second's court, is also buried in St Paul's; as are also Wycherley and Southerne, the dramatists; Haines and Macklin, the comedians; Arne, the musician; Strange, the engraver; and Walcot, alias Peter Pindar. Sir Peter Lely lived in Covent-Garden, in very great style. "The original name of the family was Vandervaes; but Sir Peter's father, a gallant fellow, and an officer in the army, having been born at a perfumer's shop, the sign of the Lily, was commonly known by the name of Captain Lily, a name which his son thought to be more euphonious to English ears than Vandervaes, and which he retained when he settled here, slightly altering the spelling." Wycherley, a dandy and a courtier, as well as an author, had lodgings in Bow Street, where Charles II. once visited him when he was ill, and gave him five hundred pounds to go a journey to the south of France for the benefit of his health. When he afterwards married the Countess of Drogheda, a young, rich, and beautiful widow, she went to live with him in Bow Street. She was very jealous, and when he went over to the "Cock" tavern, opposite to his house, he was obliged to make the drawer open the windows, that his lady might see there was no woman in the company. This "Cock" tavern was the great resort of the rakes and mohocks of that day; of Buckhurst, Sedley, Killigrew, and others of the same kidney. In fact, Bow Street was then the Bond Street of London; and the "Cock," its "Long's" or "Clarendon." Dryden, in an epilogue, talks of the "Bow Street beaux," and several contemporary writers have similar allusions. Like most places where the rich congregate, this fashionable quarter was a fine field for the ingenuity of pick-pockets, and especially of wig and sword-stealers, a class of thieves that appeared with full-bottomed periwigs and silver-hilted rapiers. In those days, to keep a man's head decently covered, cost nearly as much as it now does to fill his belly and clothe his back. Wigs were sometimes of the value of forty or fifty pounds. Ten or fifteen pounds was an exceeding "low figure" for these modish incumbrances. Out of respect to such costly head-dress, hats were never put on, but carried under the arm. The wig-stealers could demand no more. Mr Smith quotes a passage from Gay, describing their manœuvres: —