Haunted London — The Strand (South Side) Part 1

THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE).

Essex Street was formerly part of the Outer Temple, the western wing of the Knight Templars’ quarter.

The outer district of these proud and wealthy Crusaders stretched as far as the present Devereux Court; those gentler spoilers, the mediæval lawyers, having extended their frontiers quite as far as their rooted-out predecessors.

From the Prior and Canons of the Holy Sepulchre[35] it was transferred, in the reign of Edward II.

to the Bishops of Exeter, who built a palace here and occupied it till the reign of Henry VII.

or Henry VIII.

The first tenant of Exeter House was the ill-fated Walter Stapleton, Lord Treasurer of England, a firm adherent to the luckless Edward II.

, against his queen and the turbulent barons.

In 1326, when Isabella landed from France to chase the Spensers from her husband’s side, and advanced on London, the weak king and his evil counsellors fled to the Welsh frontier;

but the bishop held out stoutly for his king, and, as custos of the City of London, demanded the keys from the Lord Mayor, Hammond Chickwell, to prevent the treachery of the disaffected city.

The watchful populace, roused by Isabella’s proclamation that had been hung on the new cross in Cheapside, rose in arms, seized the vacillating mayor, and took the keys.

They next ran to Exeter House, then newly erected, fired the gates, and burnt all the plate, jewels, money, and goods.

The bishop, at that time in the fields, being almost too proud to show fear, rode straight to the northern door of St. Paul’s to take sanctuary.

There the mob tore him from his horse, stripped him of his armour, and dragging him to Cheapside, proclaimed him a traitor, a seducer of the king, and an enemy of their liberties, and lopping off his head, set it on a pole.

The corpse was buried without funeral service in an old churchyard of the Pied Friars.

[36] His brother and some servants were also beheaded, and their bleeding and naked bodies thrown on a heap of rubbish by the river side.

Exeter Place was shortly afterwards rebuilt, but the new house seemed a doomed place, and brought no better fortune to its new owners.

Lord Paget, who changed its name to Paget House, fought at Boulogne under the poet Earl of Surrey, was ambassador at the court of Charles V. , and on his return obtained a peerage and the garter.

He fell with the Protector Somerset, being accused of having planned the assassination of the Duke of Northumberland at Paget House.

Released from the Tower, he was deprived of the garter upon the malicious pretence that he was not a gentleman by blood.

Queen Mary, however, restored the fallen man to honour, made him Lord Privy Seal, and sent him on an embassy.

The next occupier of the unlucky house, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and son of the poet Earl of Surrey, maintained in its chambers an almost royal magnificence.

It was here he was arrested for conspiring, with the aid of Mary Queen of Scots, the Pope, and the King of Spain, to marry Mary and restore the Popish religion.

The duke’s ambition and treason were fully proved by his own intercepted letters; indeed, he himself confessed his guilt, though he had denounced Mary to Elizabeth as a “notorious adulteress and murderer.

” To crown his rashness, meanness, and treason, he wrote from the Tower the most abject letters to Elizabeth, imploring her clemency.

He was privately beheaded in 1572, but his estates were restored to his children.

[37] It was under the mat, hard by a window in the entry towards the duke’s bedchamber, that the celebrated alphabet in cipher[38] was hidden, which the duke afterwards concealed under a roof tile, where it was found, unmasking all his plans.

In the Tower the unhappy plotter had written affecting letters to his son Philip, bidding him worship God, avoid courts, and beware of ambition.

[39] The warning of the man whose eyes had been opened too late is touching.

The writer, speaking of court life, remarks, “It hath no certainty.

Either a man, by following thereof, hath too much worldly pomp, which in the end throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied, either that he cannot obtain to himself that he would, or else that he cannot do for his friends as his heart desireth.

” Poor Philip did not benefit much by these lessons, but remained simple Earl of Arundel, was repeatedly committed to the Tower, as by necessity an ill-wisher to Elizabeth, and eventually died there after ten weary years of imprisonment.

His initials are still to be found on the walls of one of the chambers in the Beauchamp Tower.

Fools never learn the lessons which Time tries so hard to beat into them.

Plotter succeeds plotter, and the rough lesson of the headsman seldom teaches the conspirator’s successor to cease from conspiring.

To the Norfolks succeeded Dudley, the false Earl of Leicester, the black or gipsy earl, as he was called from his swarthy Italian complexion.

Leicester, like the duke before him, plotted with Mary’s Jesuits and assassins, and at the same time contrived to keep in favour with his own jealous queen, in spite of all his failures and schemings in Holland, and his suspected assassinations of his enemies in England.

Leicester died of fever the year of the Armada (1588), on his return from the camp at Tilbury, leaving Leicester Place to Robert Devereux, his step-son, the Earl of Essex,[40] who succeeded to his favour at court, but was doomed to an untimely death.

It was to the great Lord of Kenilworth--that dark, mysterious man, who perhaps deserved more praise than historians usually give him--that Spenser dedicated his poem of “Virgil’s Gnat.

” In his beautiful “Prothalamion” on the marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Catherine Somerset, he speaks somewhat abjectly of Leicester, ingeniously contriving to remind Essex of his father-in-law’s bounty.

“Near to the Temple,” the needy poet says, “Stands a stately place, _Where I gayned giftes_ and the goodly grace Of that great lord who there was wont to dwell, Whose want too well now feels my friendless case;

But, ah!

here fits not well Old woes.

” Then the poet goes on to eulogise Essex, who, however, it is supposed, after all allowed him to die in want.

But there is a mystery about Spenser’s death.

He returned from Ireland, beggared and almost broken-hearted, in October or November 1599, and died in the January following, just as Essex was preparing to start to Ireland.

In that whirl of ambition, the poor poet may perhaps have been rather overlooked than wilfully slighted.

This at least is certain, that he was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer’s tomb, the Earl of Essex defraying the expenses of his public funeral.

It was in his prison-house near the Temple that the hair-brained Earl of Essex shut himself sulkily up, when Queen Elizabeth had given him a box on the ears, after a dispute about the new deputy for Ireland, in which the earl had shown a petulant violence unworthy of the pupil of Burleigh.

Far too much sympathy has been shown with this rash, imperious, and unbearable young noble.

He was sent to Ireland, and there concluded a disgraceful, wilful, and traitorous treaty with one of England’s most inveterate and dangerous enemies.

He returned from that “cursedest of all islands,” as he called it, against express command, and was with difficulty dissuaded from landing in open rebellion.

Generous and frank he may have been, but his submission to the mild and well-deserved punishment of confinement to his own house was as base and abject as it was false and hypocritical.

Alarmed, mortified, and enraged at the duration of his banishment from court, and at the refusal of a renewed grant for the monopoly of sweet wines, Essex betook himself to open rebellion, urged on by ill-advisers and his own reckless impatient spirit.

He invited the Puritan preachers to prayers and sermons; he plotted with the King of Scotland.

It was arranged at secret meetings at Drury House (then Sir Charles Daver’s) to seize Whitehall and compel the queen to dismiss Cecil and other ministers hostile to Essex.

Sir Christopher Blount was to seize the palace gates, Davies the hall, Davers the guard-room and presence-chamber, while Essex, rushing in from the Mews with some hundred and twenty adherents, was to compel the queen to assemble a parliament to dismiss his enemies, and to fix the succession.

All these plans were proposed to Essex in writing--the arch-conspirator was never himself present.

The delay of letters from Scotland led to the premature outbreak of the plot.

An order was at once sent summoning Essex to the council, and the palace guards were doubled.

On Sunday, February 7, 1601, Essex, fearing instant arrest, assembled his friends, and determined to arm and sally forth to St. Paul’s Cross, where the Lord Mayor and aldermen were hearing the sermon, and urge them to follow him to the palace.

On the Lord Keeper and other noblemen coming to the house to know the cause of the assembly, Essex locked them into a back parlour, guarded by musketeers, and followed by two hundred gentlemen, drew his sword and rushed into the street like a madman “running a-muck.

” Temple Bar was opened for him; but at St. Paul’s Cross he found no meeting.

The citizens crowded round him, but did not join his band.

When he reached the house of Sheriff Smith, the crafty Sheriff had stolen away.

In the meantime Lord Burleigh and the Earl of Cumberland, with a herald, had entered the City and proclaimed Essex a traitor; a thousand pounds being offered for his apprehension.

Despairing of success, the mad earl then turned towards his own house, and finding Ludgate barricaded by a strong party of citizens under Sir John Levison, attempted to force his way, killing two or three citizens, and losing Tracy, a young friend of his own.

Then striking down to Queenhithe, the earl and some fifty followers who were left took boat for Essex Gardens.

On entering his house, he found that his treacherous confidant, Sir Ferdinand Gorges, had made terms with the court and released the hostages.

Essex then, by the advice of Lord Sandys, resolved to fortify the place, hold out to the last extremity, and die sword in hand.

In a few minutes, however, the Lord Admiral’s troops surrounded the building.

A parley ensued between Sir Robert Sidney in the garden, and Essex and his rash ally, Shakspere’s patron, the Earl of Southampton, who were on the roof.

The earl’s demands were proudly refused, but a respite of two hours was given him, that the ladies and female servants might retire.

About six the battering train arrived from the Tower, and Essex then wisely surrendered at discretion.

[41] The night being very dark, and the tide not serving to pass the dangers of London Bridge, Essex and Southampton were taken by boat to Lambeth Palace, and the next morning to the Tower.

Essex had fully deserved death.

He was executed privately, by his own request, at the Tower, February 25, 1601. Meyrick, his steward, and Cuffe, his secretary, were hanged and quartered at Tyburn.

Sir Charles Davers and Sir Christopher Blount perished on Tower Hill.

Other prisoners were fined and imprisoned, and the Earl of Southampton pined in durance till the accession of James I. (1603).

Among the even older tenants of Essex House, we must not forget that unhappy woman, the earl’s mother, who, first as Lettice Knollys, then as Countess of Essex, afterwards as Lady Leicester, and next as wife of Sir Christopher Blount, was a barb in Elizabeth’s side for thirty years.

Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave up her honour to a seducer, and there is reason to think that she consented to the taking of his life.

While Devereux lived, she deceived the queen by a scandalous amour, and, after his death, by a clandestine marriage with the Earl of Leicester.

While Dudley lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher Blount, his groom of the horse.

When her second husband expired in agony at Cornbury, not an hour’s gallop from the place in which Amy Robsart died, she again mortified the queen by a secret union with her last seducer, Blount.

Her children rioted in the same vices.

Essex himself, with his ring of favourites, was not more profligate than his sister Penelope, Lady Rich.

[42] This sister was the (Platonic?

) mistress of Sydney, whose stolen love for her is pictured in his most voluptuous verse.

On his death at Zütphen, she lived with Lord Montjoy, though her husband, Lord Rich, was still alive.

Nor was her sister Dorothy one whit better.

After marrying one husband secretly and against the canon, she wedded Percy, the wizard Earl of Northumberland, whom she led the life of a dog, until he indignantly turned her out of doors.

[43] It is not easy, observes Mr. Dixon, except in Italian story, to find a group of women so depraved and so detestable as the mother and sisters of the Earl of Essex.

Essex, the rash noble, who died at the untimely age of thirty-three, had a dangerous, ill-tempered face, if we may judge by More’s portrait of him.

He stooped in walking, danced badly, and was slovenly in his dress;[44] yet being a generous, frank friend, an impetuous and chivalrous if not wise soldier, and an enemy of Spain and the Cecils, he became a favourite of the people.

The legend of the ring sent by Essex to the queen,[45] and maliciously detained by the Countess of Nottingham, we shall presently discuss.

No applications for mercy by Essex (and he made many during his trial) affect the question of his deserving death.

That the queen consented with regret to the death of Essex, on the other hand, needs no doubtful legend to serve as proof.

Elizabeth had forgiven the earl’s joining the Cadiz fleet against her wish, she forgave his secret marriage, she forgave his shameful abandonment of his Irish command and even his dishonourable treaty with Tyrone, but she could not forgive an open and flagrant rebellion at a time when she was so surrounded by enemies.

An historical writer, gifted with an eminently analytical mind, Mr. Hepworth Dixon, has lately, with great ingenuity, endeavoured to refute the charges of ingratitude brought against Bacon for his time serving and (to say the least) undue eagerness in aggravating the crimes of his old and generous friend.

There can be, however, no doubt that Bacon too soon abandoned the unfortunate Essex, and, moreover, threw the weight of much misapplied learning into the scale against the prisoner.

No minimising of the favours received by him from Essex can in my mind remove this stain from Bacon’s reputation.

In Essex House was born a less brilliant but a happier and a more prudent man--Robert, Earl of Essex, afterwards the well-known Parliamentary general.

A child when his father died on the scaffold, he was placed under the care of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, and was afterwards at Eton under the severe Saville.

A good, worthy, heavy lad, brought up a Presbyterian, he was betrothed when only fourteen to Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was herself only thirteen.

The earl travelled on the Continent for four years, and on his return was married at Essex House.

It was for this inauspicious marriage that Ben Jonson wrote one of his most beautiful and gorgeous masques, Inigo Jones contributing the machinery, and Ferrabosco the music.

The rough-grained poet seems to have been delighted with the success of the entertainment, for he says, “Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture a complement, either in riches or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music.

”[46] The countess was already, even at this time, the mistress of Robert Carr, the handsome minion of James I. She obtained a divorce from her husband in 1613, and espoused her infamous lover.

The cruel poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury for opposing the new marriage followed; and the earl and countess, found guilty, but spared by the weak king, lingered out their lives in mutual reproaches and contempt, loathed and neglected by all.

Fate often runs in sequences--the earl was unhappy with his second wife, from whom he also was divorced.

Essex emerged from a country retirement to turn general for the Parliament.

Just, affable, and prudent, he was a popular man till he became marked as a moderatist desirous for peace, and was ousted by the artful “Self-denying Ordinance.

” If he had lived it is probable he would either have lost his head or have fled to France and turned cavalier.

His death during the time that Charles I. remained a prisoner with the Scotch army at Newcastle saved him from either fate.

With him the Presbyterian moderatists and the House of Peers finally lost even their little remaining power.

When the earl resigned his commission, the House of Commons went to Essex House to return their ex-general thanks for his great services.

A year later they followed him to the grave (1646), little perhaps thinking how bitterly the earl had reproached them for ingratitude, and what plans he had devised to reform the army and to check Cromwell and Fairfax.

[47] On the earl’s death, his Royalist brother-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford, attempted to seize his ready money and papers, but was frustrated by the Parliament.

[48] Whether the next earl, who on being arrested for sharing in the Rye-House plot destroyed himself at the Tower, lived in his father’s house, I do not know, but the mansion, so unlucky to its owners, was occupied by families of rank for some time after the Restoration, and then falling into neglect and ruin, as fashion began to flow westward, was subdivided, and a street, called Essex Street, was built on part of its site.

Samuel Patterson, the bookseller and auctioneer, lived in Essex Street, in 1775, in rooms formerly the residence of Sir Orlando Bridgeman.

He was originally a bag-maker.

Afterwards Charles Dibdin commenced his entertainments in these rooms, and here his fine song of “Poor Jack” became famous.

[49] Patterson’s youngest child was Dr. Johnson’s godson, and became a pupil of Ozias Humphrey.

[50] Patterson wrote a book of travels in Sterne’s manner, but claimed a priority to that strange writer.

George Fordyce, a celebrated epicurean doctor of the eighteenth century, lived in the same street.

For twenty years he dined daily at Dolly’s Chop-house, and at his solitary meal he always took a tankard of strong ale, a quarter of a pint of brandy, and a bottle of port.

After these potations, he walked to his house and gave a lecture to his pupils.

[51] Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, formed a club in Essex Street, at the Essex Head, a tavern kept by an old servant of his friend, Thrale, the brewer.

It was less select than the Literary Club, but cheaper.

Johnson, writing to Sir Joshua Reynolds to join it, says, “the terms are lax and the expences light--we meet thrice a week, and he who misses forfeits twopence.

”[52] Sir John Hawkins spitefully calls it “a low ale-house association;” but Windham, Daines Barrington, Horsley, Boswell, and Brocklesby were members of it; for rich men were less luxurious than they are now, and enjoyed the sociable freedom of a tavern.

Sir Joshua refused to join, probably because Barry, who had insulted him, and was very pugnacious, had become a member.

[53] It went on happily for many years, says Boswell, whom Johnson, when he proposed him for election, called “a clubable man.

” Towards the end of his life the great lexicographer grew more and more afraid of solitude, and a club so near his home was probably a great convenience to him.

Near Devereux Court are the premises of the well-known tea-dealers, Messrs. Twining.

The graceful recumbent stone figures of Chinamen over the Strand front have much elegance, and must have come from some good hand.

One of this family was a Colchester rector, and a translator of Aristotle’s _Poetics_.

He was an excellent man, a good linguist and musician, and a witty companion.

He was contemporary with Gray and Mason, the poets, at Cambridge.

In the back parlour is a portrait of the founder of the house.

A century and a half ago ladies used to drive to the door of Twining’s and drink tiny cups of the new and fashionable beverage as they sat in their coaches.

There is an epigram extant, written either by Theodore Hook or one of the Smiths; the point of it is, that if you took away his T, Twining would be Wining.

In 1652 Constantine, the Greek servant of a Levant merchant, opened in Devereux Court a coffee-house, which became known as “The Grecian.

” In 1664-5 advertised his Turkey “coffee bery,” chocolate, “sherbet,” and tea, as good and cheap, and announced his readiness to give gratuitous instructions in the art of preparing the said liquors.

[54] In the same year, a Greek named Pasqua Rosee had also established a house in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, for the sale of “the coffee drink.

”[55] John Evelyn describes a Greek fellow-student, afterwards Bishop of Smyrna, drinking coffee when he was at college in about 1637. [56] In April 1709 Steele, in No. 1 of the _Tatler_, announces that he shall date all learned articles from the “Grecian,” all gallantry from “White’s,” all poetry from “Wills’s,” all foreign and domestic news from “St. James’s. ” In 1710-11 Addison, starting the “_Spectator_ along with Steele,” tells us his own grave face was well known at the Grecian; and in No. 49 (April 1711), the _Spectator_ describes the spleen and inward laughter with which he views at the Grecian the young Templars come in, about 8 A. M.

, either dressed for Westminster, and with the preoccupied air of assumed business, or in gay cap, slippers, and particoloured dressing-gowns, rising early to publish their laziness, and being displaced by busier men towards noon.

Dr. King relates a story of two hot-blooded young gentlemen quarrelling one evening at this coffee-house about the accent of a Greek word.

Stepping out into Devereux Court, they fought, and one of them being run through the body, died on the spot.

[57] This Dr. King was principal of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, and a staunch Tory.

It is he who relates the secret visit of the Pretender to London.

He died in 1763. Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds topographer, met Dr. Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society, by appointment at the Grecian in May 1712; and again in June he describes retiring to the Grecian after a meeting of the Royal Society, of which he was a fellow, with the president, Sir Isaac Newton,[58] Dr. Halley, who published the _Principia_ for Newton, and Keill, who opposed Leibnitz about the invention of Fluxions, and defended Newton’s doctrines against the Cartesians.

(The Royal Society held its meetings at this time in Crane Court, Fleet Street.

) Roger North, Attorney-General under James II.

, who died in 1733, describes in his _Examen_ the Privy Council Board, as held at the Grecian coffee-house.

The Grecian was closed in 1843, and has been since turned into the Grecian Chambers.

On what was once the front of the coffee-house frequented by Steele and Addison, there is a bust of Essex, with the date 1676. In this court, at the house of one Kedder, in 1678, died Marchmont Needham, a vigorous but unprincipled turncoat and newspaper writer, who three times during the civil wars changed his principles to save his worthless neck.

He was alternately the author of the _Mercurius Britannicus_ for the Presbyterians, _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ for the king, and _Mercurius Politicus_ for the Independents.

The great champion of the late usurper, as the Cavaliers called him, “whose pen, compared with others’, was as a weaver’s beam,” latterly practised as a physician, but with small success.

[59] There is a letter of Pope addressed to Fortescue, his “counsel learned in the law,” at Tom’s coffee-house, in Devereux Court.

Fortescue, the poet’s kind, unpaid lawyer, was afterwards (in 1738) Master of the Rolls.

Pope’s imitation of the first satire of Horace, suggested by Bolingbroke, was addressed to Mr. Fortescue, and published in 1733. This lawyer was the author of the droll report in _Scriblerus_ of “Stradling _versus_ Styles,” wherein Sir John Swale leaves all his black and white horses to one Stradling, but the question is whether this bequest includes Swale’s piebald horses.

It is finally proved that the horses are all mares.

[60] Dr. Birch, the antiquary, the dull writer but good talker, frequented Tom’s; and there Akenside--short, thin, pale, strumous, and lame, scrupulously neat, and somewhat petulant, vain, and irritable--spent his winter evenings, entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable situations.

[61] Akenside was a contradictory man.

By turns he was placid, irritable; simple, affected; gracious, haughty; magnanimous, mean;

benevolent, yet harsh, and sometimes even brutal.

At times he manifested a childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance made him seem almost a madman.

[62] Gay, in his _Trivia_, describes Milford Lane so faithfully that it might pass for a yesterday’s sketch of the same place.

He writes-- “Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, Whose straitened bounds incroach upon the Strand;

Where the low pent-house bows the walker’s head, And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread;

Where not a post protects the narrow space, And strung in twines combs dangle in thy face.

Summon at once thy courage--rouse thy care;

Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware!

Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier’s steeds Drag the black load; another cart succeeds;

Team follows team, crowds heap’d on crowds appear.

” Stow mentions Milford Lane, but gives no derivation for its name.

[63] The coarse poem by Henry Savill, commonly attributed to the witty Earl of Dorset, beginning-- “In Milford Lane, near to St. Clement’s steeple.

”[64] gave the street for a time such a disagreeable notoriety as the pillory gives to a rogue.

Arundel House, in the Strand, was the old inn or town-house of the Bishops of Bath, stolen by force in the rough, greedy times of Edward VI.

, by the bad Lord Thomas Seymour, the admiral, and the brother of the Protector;

from him it derived the name of Seymour Place, and must have been conveniently near to the ambitious kinsman who afterwards beheaded him.

This Admiral had married Henry VIII.

’s widow, Catherine Parr; and she dying in childbed, he began to woo, in his coarse boisterous way, the young Princess Elizabeth, who had been living under the protection of her mother-in-law, who was indeed generally supposed to have been poisoned by the admiral.

His marriage with Elizabeth would have smoothed his way to the throne in spite of her father’s cautious will.

It was said that Elizabeth always blushed when she heard his name.

He died on the scaffold.

Old Bishop Latimer, in a sermon, declared “he was a wicked man, and the realm is well rid of him.

”[65] It is certain that, whatever were his plots, he had projected a marriage between Lady Jane Grey and the young king.

The admiral’s house was bought, on its owner’s fall, by Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, for the nominal sum of £41: 6: 8, with several other messuages and lands adjoining.

[66] The earl dying in 1579, was succeeded by his grandson, Philip Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, the owner of Essex House adjoining, who was beheaded for his intrigues with Mary of Scotland.

He died in the Tower in 1598. The house then passed into the keeping of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth,[67] during the minority of Thomas Howard, Philip’s son.

In Arundel Palace, in 1603, died the Countess of Nottingham, sister of Sir Robert Cary;[68] she was buried at Chelsea.

It is of this countess that Lady Spelman, a granddaughter of Sir Robert Cary, used to tell the doubtful legend of the ring[69] given by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Essex, which an acute writer of the present day believes to be a pure fabrication of the times of James I.