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NOTES AND QUERIES. uo s. XL MAR. e, im

SPENSER'S ' FAERIE QUEENE.' We have heard that there are three supplemental cantos to ' The Faerie Queene,' not by Spenser, but by another and inferior hand, and that the manuscript is in the public library at Cambridge. Is this true ? and if it is, has this continuation ever been published ? N. M. & A.

FALCON COURT, SHOE LANE.

(10 S. xi. 128.)

THE falcon in ancient days was evidently a favourite sign. There is a Falcon Court on the south side of Fleet Street, nearly opposite Fetter Lane ; and MR. AUSTEN LEIGH'S inquiry bears witness to the fact that another Falcon Court lay on the north side of the street. This second Falcon Court probably opened into Shoe Lane. There are now two inns near the same spot called "The Falcon." 'The History of Sign- boards ' states that the sign of " The Falcon" was used by Wynkyn de Worde over his shop in Fleet Street "close to St. Bride's Church," according to 'D.N.B.' ; but when, in 1500, Worde moved from Westminster to Fleet Street, " The Sun " seems to have been the sign he adopted, not " The Falcon." Hotten states that in 1565 William Griffiths published a book which was " imprynted at London in Flete Strete at the sign of the Faucon " ; also, that in 1612 Wm. Dight was publishing at the sign of " The Falcon " in Shoe Lane. A work on the old printers would probably indicate whether or not Dight succeeded to the business and sign of Griffiths, but it would look as ifDight's house had been rebuilt in 1671, with, inserted in it, a stone sign of the Falcon bearing that date, and, according to the querist, later built into a more recent building, presumably on the ancient site. Hotten suggests that these printers may have borrowed their sign from the falcon volant in the Stationers' arms.

It is evident that about the time of Worde the great printing industry was started, which is now centred between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane, both north and south of Fleet Street ; it seems probable that Messrs. Spottiswoode's business has come down from other like businesses established four centuries ago upon this site a site which is the focus of many so-called " courts" opening into Fleet Street, and doubtless formerly into Shoe Lane. Probably there

were at one time more of them, but the merging of ownerships tends to the dis- appearance of courts. Quite recently, for example., a court has thus been built over on the south side near Temple Bar Thanet Court (or Place), I think it was called. But many still exist, and their names are quaint enough. I have read somewhere that the old houses used to stand back from the road, with a garden at front and back, and that when the frontage on the road became valuable, a house would be built on the garden, fronting on (and I dare say stealing some of) the road, the remainder of the garden forming a courtyard between the old house and the new. A narrow passage would have to be left along the side of the new house, to give access to the court, and this passage would, I take it, be known by the name of the court to which it led, the name of the court being that of the sign borne by the house. In the short space between Ludgate Circus and Fetter Lane on the north, there are eleven such courts, besides gateway entrances which are now blind, but at one time may also have been passages to a court behind. Of these eleven courts, nine bear names which seem to hand down to us the sign of the first-built garden house : Poppin (Puppet or Doll), Racquet, Cheshire ( ? Cheese : old inn still there), Hind, Three Kings, Bolt, St. Dun- stan's, Red Lion, and Crane, -all or most of them, it is to be supposed, house-signs. Probably in many cases the passage from the front which ran into the court was carried round the old house to a junction with a back-garden access to a lane, and this would account for the fact that while many courts are culs-de-sac, others, though called courts, are more properly alleys, passages or foot- lanes.

The ground plans and title-deeds of the Goldsmiths' Company would presumably throw much light on this very interesting part of old London, which even to-day re- mains a labyrinth of courts and passages indicative of anciently scattered tenements. DOUGLAS OWEN.

Years ago I tried to ascertain something of the history of Falcon Court, Shoe Lane, but could find only brief mention of it in three or four early eighteenth-century books. For instance, Hatton in his ' New View of London,' 1708, refers to " Falcon court, on the W. side of Shoe lane about the middle, a passage into New str." ; Strype in his edi- tion of Stow's ' Survey,' 1720, speaks of it as " but ordinarv, near unto the corner of