Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/137

12 s.x. FEB. ii, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 107 New England, Mariner. Consid. £52 19s. 25 Mar. 1719. (Inl. 1/6-198.)

Bethell, William, son of William Bethell late of Jamaica, Merchant. App. to Alex Tinlater of Epsom, Apothecary. Consid. £50. 6 Oct. 1719. (Inl. 1/7-43.)

—Readers who ask for more intimate particulars of the old "coffee-houses" without the eastward gate of the City of London in late Stuart and early Georgian times should remember that these places of common assembly for business or pleasure or play were not so numerous in the Port of London as in more fashionable quarters of the metropolis. "Town" habits were not possible much beyond Whitechapel Bars and Spitalfields Church, or, along shore, beyond Wapping; and "coffee-houses"—the incipient clubs—were not frequented by the classes—wits, poets, pamphleteers, politicians and gamesters—who made the "coffee-houses" of St. James's famous in English social and literary history. The "coffee-houses" of Wapping, Goodman's Fields, the Minories, Aldgate and Spitalfields were the meeting-places of merchants, brokers, lottery agents, money-lenders, ship-owners, seamen, soldiers, bravoes, cheats and thieves, with a very large admixture of the several sorts of not always dubious adventurers who lurked in London's Port during the brief intervals in the long wars on sea and land; and practically none of these were, by nature or by early training, recorders. They needed such as Daniel Defoe to piece out their stories, and probably he knew much more about "coffee-houses" by the stairs to the river than he ever told, though he made great use of the "characters" of both sexes he found in them. So when, in the process of a century, the great historic "coffee-houses " of St. James's and the City became segregated into specific and exclusive coteries, and were turned into political, social, racing or gaming clubs, the humble "coffee-houses" of East London faded away and were either closed or were converted into inns and taverns, but few of which exist in any form to the present time. For the rest, there is now no record recoverable, and it is only certain that their conduct and management were similar to the institutions in St. James's, where for a few penceworth of "coffee" the company of one's fellows could be enjoyed without reference to rank, station or means, and, perhaps, a job picked up. The Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Hanoverian, Prussian, Dutch and, later, American captains and factors in London Port gradually set up rialtos, places of exchange and conference on the model of the English "coffee-houses" near to the dwellings of the respective agents or ambassadors of their national governments. These, changing with the times, existed to a period within living memory—as witness America Square—and their names and situation are preserved in place-names in the locality.



—In the Jews' market in Rome, on the Wednesday before Christmas last, I picked up an interesting little miniature of the above painted on ivory. It represents what were supposed to be the relations of the Virgin Mary. During the period 1480 to 1520, when the legend of the three marriages of St. Anne was current, some few pictures and miniatures of the subject were painted. Two of these pictures are referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her 'Legends of the Madonna,' and two of the Flemish school are in the Cologne Museum. Such a picture usually consists of seven figures of women within a screen, with whom are eight or nine children; and, behind the screen, ten men, who, in one of the pictures in the Cologne Museum, each point towards their respective wives, with the exception, of course, of one.

According to the legend Anne is supposed to have married, first, Cleophas, by whom she had a daughter, Mary, married to Alpheus, whose children were Judas Thaddeus, James the Minor and Joseph Justus. Anne married, secondly, Salome, by whom she had a daughter, Mary, married to Zebedee, whose children were James the Major and John the Evangelist. Anne married, thirdly, Joachim, by whom she had Mary the Virgin. Beside these there appear in the picture Zacharias and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist; and amongst the children is Simon Zelotes. The men, therefore, are Joseph, Joachim,