THE OLD SOUTH SEA HOUSE.From a Print of the Period.
In the first debate the enemies of the South Sea Company were most violent. Lord Molesworth said he should be satisfied to see the contrivers of the scheme tied in sacks and thrown into the Thames. Honest Shippen, whom even Walpole could not bribe, looking fiercely in Mr. SecretaryCraggs' face, said "there were other men in high station who were no less guilty than the directors." Mr. Craggs, rising in wrath, declared he was ready to give satisfaction to any one in the House, or out of it, and this unparliamentary language he had afterwards to explain away. Ultimately a second committee was appointed, with power to send for persons, papers, and records. The directors were ordered to lay before the house a full account of all their proceedings, and were forbidden to leave the kingdom for a twelvemonth.
Mr. Walpole laid before a committee of the whole house his scheme for the restoration of public credit, which was, in substance, to ingraft nine millions of South Sea stock into the Bank of England, and the same sum into the East India Company, upon certain conditions. The plan was favourably received by the House. After some few objections it was ordered that proposals should be received from the two great corporations. They were both unwilling to lend their aid, and the plan met with a warm but fruitless opposition at the general courts summoned for the purpose of deliberating upon it. They, however, ultimately agreed upon the terms on which they would consent to circulate the South Sea bonds; and their report being presented to the committee, a bill was then brought in, under the superintendence of Mr.Walpole, and safely carried through both Houses of Parliament.
In the House of Lords, Lord Stanhope said that every farthing possessed by the criminals, whether directors or not, ought to be confiscated, to make good the public losses.
LONDON STONE
The wrath of the House of Commons soon fell quick and terrible as lightning on two members of the Ministry, Craggs, and Mr. Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was ordered, on the 21st of January, that all South Sea brokers should lay before the House a full account of all stock bought or sold by them to any officers of the Treasury or Exchequer since Michaelmas, 1719. Aislabie instantly resigned his office, and absented himself from Parliament, and five of the South Sea directors (including Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian) were ordered into the custody of the Black Rod.
The next excitement was the flight of Knight, the treasurer of the Company, with all his books and implicating documents, and a reward of £2,000 was offered for his apprehension. The same nightthe Commons ordered the doors of the House to be locked, and the keys laid on the table.
General Ross, one of the members of the Select Committee, then informed the House that there had been already discovered a plot of the deepest villany and fraud that Hell had ever contrived to ruin a nation. Four directors, members of the House—i.e., Sir Robert Chaplin, Sir Theodore Janssen, Mr. Sawbridge, and Mr. F. Eyles—were expelled the House, and taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. Sir John Blunt, another director, was also taken into custody. This man, mentioned by Pope in his "Epistle to Lord Bathurst," had been a scrivener, famed for his religious observances and his horror of avarice. He was examined at the bar of the House of Lords, but refused to criminate himself. The Duke of Wharton, vexed at this prudent silence of the criminal, accused Earl Stanhope of encouraging this taciturnity of the witness. The Earl became so excited in his return speech, that it brought on an apoplectic fit, of which he died the next day, to the great grief of his royal master, George I. TheCommittee of Secrecy stated that in some of the books produced before them, false and fictitious entries had been made; in others there were entries of money, with blanks for the names of the stockholders. There were frequent erasures and alterations, and in some of the books leaves had been torn out. They also found that some books of great importance had been destroyed altogether, and that some had been taken away or secreted. They discovered, moreover, that before the South Sea Act was passed there was an entry in the Company's books of the sum of £1,259,325 upon account of stock stated to have been sold to the amount of £574,500. This stock was all fictitious, and had been disposed of with a view to promote the passing of the bill. It was noted as sold on various days, and at various prices, from 150 to 325 per cent.
Being surprised to see so large an amount disposed of, at a time when the Company were not empowered to increase their capital, the committee determined to investigate most carefully the whole transaction. The governor, sub-governor, and several directors were brought before them and examined rigidly. They found that at the time these entries were made the Company were not in possession of such a quantity of stock, having in their own right only a small quantity, not exceeding £30,000 at the utmost. They further discovered that this amount of stock was to be esteemed as taken or holden by the Company for the benefit of the pretended purchasers, although no mutual agreement was made for its delivery or acceptance at any certain time. No money was paid down, nor any deposit or security whatever given to the Company by the supposed purchasers; so that if the stock had fallen, as might have been expected had the act not passed, they would have sustained no loss. If, on the contrary, the price of stock advanced (as it actually did by the success of the scheme), the difference by the advanced price was to be made good by them. Accordingly, after the passing of the act, the account of stock was made up and adjusted with Mr. Knight, and the pretended purchasers were paid the difference out of the Company's cash. This fictitious stock, which had chiefly been at the disposal of Sir John Blunt, Mr. Gibbon, and Mr. Knight, was distributed among several members of the Government and their connections, by way of bribe, to facilitate the passing of the bill. To the Earl of Sunderland was assigned £50,000 of this stock; to the Duchess of Kendal, £10,000; to the Countess of Platen, £10,000; to her two nieces, £10,000; to Mr. Secretary Craggs, £30,000; to Mr. Charles Stanhope (one of the Secretaries of the Treasury), £10,000; to the Sword Blade Company, £50,000. It also appeared that Mr. Stanhope had received the enormous sum of £250,000, as the difference in the price of some stock, through the hands of Turner, Caswall, and Co., but that his name had been partly erased from their books, and altered to Stangape.
The punishment fell heavy on the chief offenders, who, after all, had only shared in the general lust for gold. Mr. Charles Stanhope, a great gainer, managed to escape by the influence of the Chesterfield family, and the mob threatened vengeance. Aislabie, who had made some £800,000, was expelled the House, sent to the Tower, and compelled to devote his estate to the relief of the sufferers. Sir George Caswall was expelled the House, and ordered to refund £250,000. The day he went to the Tower, the mob lit bonfires and danced round them for joy. When by a general whip of the Whigs the Earl of Sunderland was acquitted, the mob grew menacing again. That same day the elder Craggs died of apoplexy. The report was that he had poisoned himself, but excitement and the death of a son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, were the real causes. His enormous fortune of a million and a half was scattered among the sufferers. Eventually the directors were fined £2,014,000, each man being allowed a small modicum of his fortune. Sir John Blunt was only allowed £5,000 out of his fortune of £183,000; Sir John Fellows was allowed £10,000 out of £243,000; Sir Theodore Janssen, £50,000 out of £243,000; Sir John Lambert, £5,000 out of £72,000. One director, named Gregsley, was treated with especial severity, because he was reported to have once declared he would feed his carriage-horses off gold; another, because years before he had been mixed up with some harmless but unsuccessful speculation. According to Gibbon the historian, it was the Tory directors who were stripped the most unmercifully.
"The next consideration of the Legislature," says Charles Mackay, "after the punishment of the directors, was to restore public credit. The scheme of Walpole had been found insufficient, and had fallen into disrepute. A computation was made of the whole capital stock of the South Sea Company at the end of the year 1720. It was found to amount to £37,800,000, of which the stock allotted to all the proprietors only reached £24,500,000. The remainder of £13,300,000 belonged to the Company in their corporate capacity, and was the profit they had made by the national delusion. Upwards of £8,000,000 of this was taken fromthe Company, and divided among the proprietors and subscribers generally, making a dividend of about £33 6s. 8d. per cent. This was a great relief. It was further ordered that such persons as had borrowed money from the South Sea Company upon stock actually transferred and pledged, at the time of borrowing, to or for the use of the Company, should be free from all demands upon payment of ten per cent. of the sums so borrowed. They had lent about £11,000,000 in this manner, at a time when prices were unnaturally raised; and they now received back £1,100,000, when prices had sunk to their ordinary level."
A volume (says another writer) might be collected of anecdotes connected with this fatal speculation. A tradesman at Bath, who had invested his only remaining fortune in this stock, finding it had fallen from 1,000 to 900, left Bath with an intention to sell out; on his arrival in London it had fallen to 250. He thought the price too low, sanguinely hoped that it would re-ascend, still deferred his purpose, and lost his all.
The Duke of Chandos had embarked £300,000 in this project; the Duke of Newcastle strongly advised his selling the whole, or at least a part, with as little delay as possible; but this salutary advice he delayed to take, confidently anticipating the gain of at least half a million, and through rejecting his friend's counsel, he lost the whole. Some were, however, more fortunate. The guardians of Sir Gregory Page Turner, then a minor, had purchased stock for him very low, and sold it out when it had reached its maximum, to the amount of £200,000. With this large sum Sir Gregory built a fine mansion at Blackheath, and purchased 300 acres of land for a park. Two maiden sisters, whose stock had accumulated to £90,000, sold out when the South Sea stock was at 790. The broker whom they employed advised them to re-invest in navy bills, which were at the time at a discount of twenty-five per cent.; they took his advice, and two years afterwards received their money at par.
Even the poets did not escape. Gay (says Dr. Johnson, in his "Lives of the Poets") had a present from young Craggs of some South Sea stock, and once supposed himself to be the master of £20,000. His friends, especially Arbuthnot, persuaded him to sell his share, but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year for life, "which," said Fenton, "will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." This counsel was rejected; the profitand principal were both lost, and Gay sunk so low under the calamity that his life for a time became in danger.
Pope, always eager for money, was also dabbling in the scheme, but it is uncertain whether he made money or lost by it. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was a loser. When Sir Isaac Newton was asked when the bubble would break, he said, with all his calculations he had never learned to calculate the madness of the people.
Prior declared, "I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people are justly put together. It is all wilder than St. Anthony's dream, and the bagatelle is more solid than anything that has been endeavoured here this year."
In the full heat of it, the Duchess of Ormond wrote to Swift: "The king adopts the South Sea, and calls it his beloved child; though perhaps, you may say, if he loves it no better than his son, it may not be saying much; but he loves it as much as he loves the Duchess of Kendal, and that is saying a good deal. I wish it may thrive, for some of my friends are deep in it. I wish you were too."
Swift, cold and stern, escaped the madness, and even denounced in the following verses the insanity that had seized the times:—
"There is a gulf where thousands fell,Here all the bold adventurers came;A narrow sound, though deep as hell—Change Alley is the dreadful name."Subscribers here by thousands float,And jostle one another down;Each paddling in his leaky boat,And here they fish for gold and drown."Now buried in the depths below,Now mounted up to heaven again,They reel and stagger to and fro,At their wit's end, like drunken men."
Budgell, Pope's barking enemy, destroyed himself after his losses in this South Sea scheme, and a well-known man of the day called "Tom of Ten Thousand" lost his reason.
Charles Lamb, in his "Elia," has described the South Sea House in his own delightful way. "Reader," says the poet clerk, "in thy passage from the Bank—where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)—to the 'Flower Pot,' to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other shy suburban retreat northerly—didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome brick and stone edifice, to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? Idare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals, ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out—a desolation something like Balclutha's.[11]This was once a house of trade—a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here—the quick pulse of gain—and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul has long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces—deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers; directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands, long since dry; the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams; and soundings of the Bay of Panama! The long passageshung with buckets, appended, in idle row to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last conflagration; with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight once lay, 'an unsunned heap,' for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal—long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous Bubble.
"Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! Situated as thou art in the very heart of stirring and living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation—with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, theirpoor neighbour out of business—to the idle and merely contemplative—to such as me, Old House! there is a charm in thy quiet, a cessation, a coolness from business, an indolence almost cloistral, which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spake of the past; the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life."
FOOTNOTES:[11]"I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." (Ossian.)
[11]"I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." (Ossian.)
[11]"I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." (Ossian.)
CANNON STREET
London Stone and Jack Cade—Southwark Bridge—Old City Churches—The Salters' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History—Oxford House—Salters' Banquets—Salters' Hall Chapel—A Mysterious Murder in Cannon Street—St. Martin Orgar—King William's Statue—Cannon Street Station.
London Stone and Jack Cade—Southwark Bridge—Old City Churches—The Salters' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History—Oxford House—Salters' Banquets—Salters' Hall Chapel—A Mysterious Murder in Cannon Street—St. Martin Orgar—King William's Statue—Cannon Street Station.
Cannon Street was originally called Candlewick Street, from the candle-makers who lived there. It afterwards became a resort of drapers.
London Stone, the old Romanmilliarium, or milestone, is now a mere rounded boulder, set in a stone case built into the outer southern wall of the church of St. Swithin, Cannon Street. Camden, in his "Britannia," says—"The stone called London Stone, from its situation in the centre of the longest diameter of the City, I take to have been a miliary, like that in the Forum at Rome, from whence all the distances were measured."
Camden's opinion, that from this stone the Roman roads radiated, and that by it the distances were reckoned, seems now generally received. Stow, who thinks that there was some legend of the early Christians connected with it, says:—"On the south side of this high street (Candlewick orCannon Street), near unto the channel, is pitched upright a great stone, called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken and the stone itself unshaken. The cause why this stone was set there, the time when, or other memory is none."
Strype describes it in his day as already set in its case. "This stone, before the Fire of London, was much worn away, and, as it were, but a stump remaining. But it is now, for the preservation of it, cased over with a new stone, handsomely wrought, cut hollow underneath, so as the old stone may be seen, the new one being over it, to shelter and defend the old venerable one."
It stood formerly on the south side of Cannon Street, but was removed to the north, December 13th, 1742. In 1798 it was again removed, as an obstruction, and, but for the praiseworthy interpositionof a local antiquary, Mr. Thomas Malden, a printer in Sherborne Lane, it would have been destroyed.
This most interesting relic of Roman London is that very stone which the arch-rebel Jack Cade struck with his bloody sword when he had stormed London Bridge, and "Now is Mortimer lord of this city" were the words he uttered too confidently as he gave the blow. Shakespeare, who perhaps wrote from tradition, makes him strike London Stone with his staff:—
"Cade.Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls me Lord Mortimer."—Shakespeare, Second Part of Henry VI., act iv., sc. 6.
"Cade.Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls me Lord Mortimer."—Shakespeare, Second Part of Henry VI., act iv., sc. 6.
Dryden, too, mentions this stone in a very fine passage of his Fable of the "Cock and the Fox:"—
"The bees in armsDrive headlong from the waxen cells in swarms.Jack Straw at London Stone, with all his rout,Struck not the city with so loud a shout."
Of the old denizens of this neighbourhood in Henry VIII.'s days, Stow gives a very picturesque sketch in the following passage, where he says:—"The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now liveth, hath been noted within these forty years to have ridden into this city, and so to his house by London Stone, with eighty gentlemen in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognizance of the blue boar embroidered on their left shoulder."
A turning from Cannon Street leads us to Southwark Bridge. The cost of this bridge was computed at £300,000, and the annual revenue was estimated at £90,000. Blackfriars Bridge tolls amounted to a large annual sum; and it was supposed Southwark might fairly claim about a third of it. Great stress also was laid on the improvements that would ensue in the miserable streets about Bankside and along the road to the King's Bench. We need scarcely remind our readers that the bridge never answered, and was almost disused till the tolls were removed and it was thrown open to general traffic.
"Southwark Bridge," says Mr. Timbs, "designed by John Rennie, F.R.S., was built by a public company, and cost about £800,000. It consists of three cast-iron arches; the centre 240 feet span, and the two side arches 210 feet each, about forty-two feet above the highest spring-tides; the ribs forming, as it were, a series of hollow masses, or voussoirs, similar to those of stone, a principle new in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and verysuccessful. The whole of the segmental pieces and the braces are kept in their places by dovetailed sockets and long cast-iron wedges, so that bolts are unnecessary, although they were used during the construction of the bridge to keep the pieces in their places until the wedges had been driven. The spandrels are similarly connected, and upon them rests the roadway, of solid plates of cast-iron, joined by iron cement. The piers and abutments are of stone, founded upon timber platforms resting upon piles driven below the bed of the river. The masonry is tied throughout by vertical and horizontal bond-stones, so that the whole rests as one mass in the best position to resist the horizontal thrust. The first stone was laid by Admiral Lord Keith, May 23rd, 1815, the bill for erecting the bridge having been passed May 16th, 1811. The iron-work (weight 5,700 tons) had been so well put together by the Walkers of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry by the contractors, Jolliffe and Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about one inch to one and a half inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March 24th, 1819, as the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral tolled midnight. Towards the middle of the western side of the bridge used to be a descent from the pavement to a steam-boat pier."
Mr. Charles Dickens, in one of the chapters of his "Uncommercial Traveller," has sketched, in his most exquisite manner, just such old City churches as we have in Cannon Street and its turnings. The dusty oblivion into which they are sinking, their past glory, their mouldy old tombs—everything he paints with the correctness of Teniers and the finish of Gerard Dow.
"There is," he says, "a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family. And who were they? Jane Comfort must have married young Dowgate, and come into the family that way. Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comfort when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf. If Jane were fond of young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Comfort,had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy; and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success as was expected.
THE FOURTH SALTERS' HALL
"The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then find to my astonishment that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes: the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as death itis! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half-choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him.
"In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes asubtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.
CORDWAINERS' HALL
"The dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressionson my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! And the old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old master of the old company, on which it drips. His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out."
The Salters, who have anchored in Cannon Street, have had at least four halls before the present one. The first was in Bread Street, to benear their kinsmen, the Fishmongers, in the old fish market of London, Knightrider Street. It is noticed, apparently, as a new building, in the will of Thomas Beamond, Salter, 1451, who devised to "Henry Bell and Robert Bassett, wardens of the fraternity and gild of the Salters, of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Church of All Saints, of Bread Street, London, and to the brothers and sisters of the same fraternity and gild, and their successors for ever, the land and ground where there was then lately erected a hall called Salters' Hall, and six mansions by him then newly erected upon the same ground, in Bread Street, in the parish of All Saints." The last named were the Company's almshouses.
This hall was destroyed by fire in 1533. The second hall, in Bread Street, had an almshouse adjoining, as Stow tells us, "for poore decayed brethren." It was destroyed by fire in 1598. This hall was afterwards used by Parliamentary committees. There the means of raising new regiments was discussed, and there, in 1654, the judges for a time sat. The third hall (and these records furnish interesting facts to the London topographer) was a mansion of the prior of Tortington (Sussex), near the east end of St. Swithin's Church, London Stone. The Salters purchased it, in 1641, of Captain George Smith, and it was then called Oxford House, or Oxford Place. It had been the residence of Maister Stapylton, a wealthy alderman. The house is a marked one in history, as at the back of it, according to Stow, resided those bad guiding ministers of the miser king Henry VII., Empson and Dudley, who, having cut a door into Oxford House garden, used to meet there, like the two usurers in Quintin Matsys' picture, and suggest war taxes to each other under the leafy limes of the old garden. Sir Ambrose Nicholas and Sir John Hart, both Salters, kept their mayoralties here.
The fourth hall, built after the Great Fire had made clear work of Oxford House, was a small brick building, the entrance opening within an arcade of three arches springing from square fluted pillars. A large garden adjoined it, and next that was the Salters' Hall Meeting House. The parlour was handsome, and there were a few original portraits. This hall, the clerk's house, with another at the gate of St. Swithin's Lane, were pulled down and sold in 1821. The present hall was designed by Mr. Henry Carr, and completed in 1827.
As a chartered company there is no record of the Salters before the 37th year of Edward III., when liberties were granted them. In the 50th of Edward III. they sent members to the common council. Richard II. granted them a livery, butthey were first incorporated in 1558 by Elizabeth. Henry VIII. had granted them arms, and Elizabeth a crest and supporters. The arms are:—Chevron azure and gules, three covered salts, or, springing salt proper. On a helmet and torse, issuing out of a cloud argent, a sinister arm proper, holding a salt as the former. Supporters, two otters argent plattée, gorged with ducal coronets, thereto a chain affixed and reflected, or; motto, "Sal sapit Omnia." "A Short Account of the Salters' Company," printed for private distribution, rejects the otters as supporters, in favour of ounces or small leopards, which latter, it states, have been adopted by the assistants, in the arms put up in their new hall; and it gives the following, "furnished by a London antiquary," as the Salters' real supporters:—Two ounces sable besante, gorged with crowns and chased gold. The Salters claim to have received eight charters.
The Romans worked salt-pits in England, and salt-works are frequently mentioned in Domesday Book. Rock or fossil salt, says Herbert, was never worked in England till 1670, when it was discovered in Cheshire. The enormous use of salt fish in the Catholic households of the Middle Ages brought wealth to the Salters.
In a pageant of 1591, written by the poet Peele, one clad like a sea-nymph presented the Salter mayor (Webb) with a rigged and manned pinnace, as he took barge to go to Westminster.
In the Drapers' pageant of 1684, when each of the twelve companies were represented by allegorical figures, the Salters were figured by Salina in a sky-coloured robe and coronation mantle, and crowned with white and yellow roses. Among the citizens nominated by the common council to attend the mayor as chief butler, at the coronation of Richard III., occurs the name of a Salter.
The following bill of fare for fifty people of the Company of Salters,A.D.1506, is still preserved:—
s.d.36 chickens461 swan and 4 geese709 rabbits142 rumps of beef tails026 quails162 ounces of pepper022 ounces of cloves and mace041½ ounces of saffron063 lb. sugar082 lb. raisins041 lb. dates041½ lb. comfits02Half hundred eggs02½4 gallons of curds041 ditto gooseberries022 dishes of butter044 breasts of veal15Bacon06Quarter of a load of coals04Faggots023½ gallons of Gascoyne wine241 bottle muscadina08Cherries and tarts08Salt01Verjuice and vinegar08Paid the cook34Perfume021½ bushels of meal08Water03Garnishing the vessels03
In the Company's books (says Herbert) is a receipt "For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at yeFeste of Chrystemasse" (17th Richard II.,A.D.1394). A pie so made by the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced meats, and egg balls, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled up with gravy made from the various bones.
The original congregation of Salters' Hall Chapel assembled at Buckingham House, College Hill. The first minister was Richard Mayo, who died in 1695. He was so eloquent, that it is said even the windows were crowded when he preached. He was one of the seceders of 1662. Nathaniel Taylor, who died in 1702, was latterly so infirm that he used to crawl into the pulpit upon his knees. "He was a man," says Matthew Henry, "of great wit, worth, and courage;" and Doddridge compared his writings to those of South for wit and strength. Tong succeeded Taylor at Salters' Hall in 1702. He wrote the notes on the Hebrews and Revelations for Matthew Henry's "Commentary," and left memoirs of Henry, and of Shower, of the Old Jewry. The writer of his funeral sermon called him "the prince of preachers." In 1719 Arianism began to prevail at Salters' Hall, where a synod on the subject was at last held. The meetings ended by the non-subscribers calling out, "You that are against persecution come up stairs:" and Thomas Bradbury, of New Court, the leader of the orthodox, replying, "You that are for declaring your faith in the doctrine of the Trinity stay below." The subscribers proved to be fifty-three; the "scandalous majority," fifty-seven. During this controversy Arianism became the subject of coffee-house talk. John Newman, who died in 1741, was buried at Bunhill Fields, Dr. Doddridge delivering a funeral oration over his grave. Francis Spillsbury, another Salters' Hall minister, worked there for twenty years with John Barker, who resigned in 1762. Hugh Farmer, another of this brotherhood, was Doddridge's first pupil at the Northampton College. He wrote an exposition on demonology and miracles, which aroused controversy. His manuscripts were destroyed at his death, according to the strict directions of his will.
When the Presbyterians forsook Salters' Hall, some people came there who called the hall "the Areopagus," and themselves the Christian Evidence Society. After their bankruptcy in 1827, theBaptists re-opened the hall. The congregation has now removed to a northern suburb, and their chapel bears the old name, "so closely linked with our old City history, and its Nonconformist associations."
In April, 1866, a mysterious murder took place in Cannon Street. The victim, a widow, named Sarah Millson, was housekeeper on the premises of Messrs. Bevington, leather-sellers. About nine o'clock in the evening, when sitting by the fire in company with another servant, the street bell was heard to ring, on which Millson went down to the door, remarking to her neighbour that she knew who it was. She did not return, although for an hour this did not excite any suspicion, as she was in the habit of holding conversations at the street door. A little after ten o'clock, the other woman—Elizabeth Lowes—went down, and found Millson dead at the bottom of the stairs, the blood still flowing profusely from a number of deep wounds in the head. Her shoes had been taken off and were lying on a table in the hall, and as there was no blood on them it was presumed this was done before the murder. The housekeeper's keys were also found on the stairs. Opening the door to procure assistance, Lowes observed a woman on the doorstep, screening herself apparently from the rain, which was falling heavily at the time. She moved off as soon as the door was opened, saying, in answer to the request for assistance, "Oh! dear, no; I can't come in!" The gas over the door had been lighted as usual at eight o'clock, but was now out, although not turned off at the meter. The evidence taken by the coroner showed that the instrument of murder had probably been a small crowbar used to wrench open packing-cases; one was found near the body, unstained with blood, and another was missing from the premises. The murderer has never been discovered.
St. Martin Orgar, a church near Cannon Street, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. It had been used, says Strype, by the French Protestants, who had a French minister, episcopally ordained. There was a monument here to Sir Allen Cotton, Knight, and Alderman of London, some time Lord Mayor, with this epitaph—
"When he left Earth rich bounty dy'd,Mild courtesie gave place to pride;Soft Mercie to bright Justice said,O sister, we are both betray'd.White Innocence lay on the ground,By Truth, and wept at either's wound."Those sons of Levi did lament,Their lamps went out, their oyl was spent.Heaven hath his soul, and only weSpin out our lives in misery.So Death thou missest of thy ends,And kil'st not him, but kil'st his friends."
A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the erection of a church for the French Protestants in the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire, the parishioners offered reasons to the Parliament against it; declaring that they were not against erecting a church, but only against erecting it in the place mentioned in the Bill; since by the Act for rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St. Martin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the parish.
The tame statue of that honest but commonplace monarch, William IV., at the end of King William Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr. Nixon. It cost upwards of £2,000, of which £1,600 was voted by the Common Council of London. It is fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twentytons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site of the famous "Boar's Head" tavern.
The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Railway, September, 1866, provided a communication with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The bridge across the Thames approaching the station has five lines of rails; the curves branching east and west to Charing Cross and London Bridge have three lines, and in the station there are nine lines of rails and five spacious platforms, one of them having a double carriage road for exit and entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the Cannon Street station extends from one side of the bridge to the other, and has a range of over eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and green for safety and going out. The hotel at Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, is after the design by Mr. Barry. Arrangements were made for the reception of about 20,000,000 passengers yearly.
CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP
Budge Row—Cordwainers' Hall—St. Swithin's Church—Founders' Hall—The Oldest Street in London—Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob—The Queen's Wardrobe—St. Antholin's Church—"St. Antlin's Bell"—The London Fire Brigade—Captain Shaw's Statistics—St. Mary Aldermary—A Quaint Epitaph—Crooked Lane—An Early "Gun Accident"—St. Michael's and Sir William Walworth's Epitaph—Gerard's Hall and its History—The Early Closing Movement—St. Mary Woolchurch—Roman Remains in Nicholas Lane—St. Stephen's, Walbrook—Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops—The "Boar's Head"—Prince Hal and his Companions—A Giant Plum-pudding—Goldsmith at the "Boar's Head"—The Weigh-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers—Reynolds, Clayton, Binney.
Budge Row—Cordwainers' Hall—St. Swithin's Church—Founders' Hall—The Oldest Street in London—Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob—The Queen's Wardrobe—St. Antholin's Church—"St. Antlin's Bell"—The London Fire Brigade—Captain Shaw's Statistics—St. Mary Aldermary—A Quaint Epitaph—Crooked Lane—An Early "Gun Accident"—St. Michael's and Sir William Walworth's Epitaph—Gerard's Hall and its History—The Early Closing Movement—St. Mary Woolchurch—Roman Remains in Nicholas Lane—St. Stephen's, Walbrook—Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops—The "Boar's Head"—Prince Hal and his Companions—A Giant Plum-pudding—Goldsmith at the "Boar's Head"—The Weigh-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers—Reynolds, Clayton, Binney.
Budge Row derived its name from the sellers of budge (lamb-skin) fur that dwelt there. The word is used by Milton in his "Lycidas," where he sneers at the "budge-skin" doctors.
Cordwainers' Hall, No. 7, Cannon Street, is the third of the same Company's halls on this site, and was built in 1788 by Sylvanus Hall. The stone front, by Adam, has a sculptured medallion of a country girl spinning with a distaff, emblematic of the name of the lane, and of the thread used by cordwainers or shoemakers. In the pediment are their arms. In the hall are portraits of King William and Queen Mary; and here is a sepulchral urn and tablet, by Nollekens, to John Came, a munificent benefactor to the Company.
The Cordwainers were originally incorporated by Henry IV., in 1410, as the "Cordwainers and Cobblers," the latter term signifying dealers in shoes and shoemakers. In the reign of Richard II., "every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on Sunday was to pay thirty shillings." Among the Company's plate is a piece for which Camden, theantiquary, left £16. Their charities include Came's bequest for blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and clergymen's widows, £1,000 yearly; and in 1662 the "Bell Inn," at Edmonton, was bequeathed for poor freemen of the Company.
The church in Cannon Street dedicated to St. Swithin, and in which London Stone is now encased, is of a very early date, as the name of the rector in 1331 is still recorded. Sir John Hind, Lord Mayor in 1391 and 1404, rebuilt both church and steeple. After the Fire of London, the parish of St. Mary Bothaw was united to that of St. Swithin. St. Swithin's was rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire. The Salters' Company formerly had the right of presentation to this church, but sold it. The form of the interior is irregular and awkward, in consequence of the tower intruding on the north-west corner. The ceiling, an octagonal cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. In 1839 Mr. Godwin describes an immense sounding-board over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved oak, guarded by two wooden figures of Moses andAaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen Winmill, twenty-four years parish clerk; and a tablet commemorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two wives, with the following distich:—