Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/470

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. DEC. 9, wie.

customary discount of 3 per cent, and reinstated it at a cost of 650Z. At his death the annual rental was 65Z. Baker's Eating House and the George and Vulture were damaged, and in connexion with the latter it is interesting to note from the plan that at the date of the fire the main premises, at least, of the George and Vulture were on the ast side of George Lane and opposite Thomas's and the George and Vulture Chop House.

Eighty houses were burnt and fourteen or fifteen damaged, and the property loss was stated to have been 200,OOOZ. A fund for the sufferers was opened, and 5,1151. collected ; claims on this were lodged for 8,OOOZ., 172 householders not applying, and a committee was appointed to distribute the fund. Losses up to 20Z. were paid in full, and in the case of those above 201., 10s. in the 1Z. was -paid up to 350Z. For the benefit of the sufferers ' Othello ' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre and Quin came up from Bath to play the title r6le. Cornhill and its taverns must have had melancholy associa- tions for Quin, for at the Pope's Head in 1718 he had been attacked by a jealous actor named Bowen and in his endeavours to disarm his antagonist he mortally wounded him. Quin was tried and honourably acquitted, Bowen, before his death having admitted that he alone was to blame.

The City authorities were empowered to permit as many non-freemen in the building trade as seemed necessary to be employed in the rebuilding of the destroyed premises, .any law to the contrary notwithstanding.

The fire of Nov. 7, 1765, broke out also at the house of a peruke maker in Bishops- gate Street. It set alight the four corner 1 ouses of Cornhill, Bishopsgate, Leadenhall, and Gracechurch Streets, and spread up Bishopsgate Street nearly to the back of Threadneedle Street, damaging St. Mary- Out wich (on the site of which the Capital and Counties Bank now stands) and Mer- chant Taylors' Hall. It extended down the north side of Cornhill nearly to Sun Court, destroying White Lyon Court and the White Lyon Tavern, which had been sold the night before for 3,OOOZ. Both sides of Bishopsgate Street were involved, and the Nag's Head Tavern and a block of buildings on the north side of Leadenhall Street.

More than a hundred houses were de- stroyed, the damage, according to The Annual Register, amounting to 100,OOOZ., and more than that of the fire of 1748 (which does not tally with the 200,OOOZ. property loss referred

o above) ; the salvage was by the Lord Mayor's orders deposited in the Royal Exchange.

A subscription of 3,OOOZ. was raised for the relief of the sufferers, to which the King contributed l.OOOZ.

The Annual Register of 1773 records on June 6 a fire which occurred at one Kent 's, a nosier, in Cornhill, which, after destroying the two neighbouring houses, spread to Lombard Street and burnt three houses there. I have not been able to trace the situation of the shop of the unfortunate Kent, but, from the description of the fire, it was probably at the extreme west end of Cornhill.

The last fire to which I propose to refer, that of Dec. 1, 1778, covered to some extent the area of that of 1748. It broke out in Pope's Head Alley, extending almost to Lombard Street, burnt through into Change Alley, and damaged the back parts of the houses in Cornhill. Seymour's and Sam's Coffee - Houses, the Pope's Head Eating House, and several lottery offices were con- sumed. Baker's Eating House, still, we are thankful to say, with us, was again damaged, but the fire was not of the extent of, nor seems to have caused, as much damage as, those of 1748 and 1765.

Before closing I should like to bear witness to the valuable assistance received from Mr. F. G. Hilton Price's prper on ' Cornhill and its Vicinity,' published in The Institute t>/ Bankers' Magazine in 1 887, and also to express regret that the very limited spare time at my disposal has not permitted of the researches which I had originally hoped to have been allowed to make in the records of the older insurance companies. Perhaps when peace has been achieved and normal conditions return, some supplemental notes on this subject may be forthcoming.

Louis R. LETTS.

Phoenix Fire Office.

PEELE'S AUTHORSHIP OF

' ALPHONSUS, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.'

' THE Tragedy of Alphonsiis, Emperor of Germany,' was published by Humphrey Moseley in 1654 as Chapman's. It was in the same year that the publisher Richard Marriot fraudulently issued Glapthome's ' Revenge for Honour ' with the same author's name on the title-page. That both these dramas should ever since the date of their publication continue even though more or less diffidently to have been