Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/483

 9* S. IV. Dec. 23, '99.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 511 LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER «. 1899. CONTENTS. —No. 104. NOTES :—St. Mary's, Moorfields, 511—Lincoln's Inn Fields, 512—Gold Coins of the Forum, 513 —Iron Pavement- Statue in Bergen—"To Priest"—"Pock-fretten"—Names of Bricks, 514—" Papaw "—Bibliography of Christmas- Christmas Drinking, 515 — " Better ''=lmprove— Brown- ing's ' Luria '—Ancient Tin Trade—" Soft as a toad," 516. QUERIES:—"Hoon aff " — "Hoodock" - Sampler— 'A Day's Ride '—Source of Quotation—Numlier of Baronets- Church Registers of New Jersey, 517 — Evans's Cheap Repository — " The Energetic Old Man "—" Doctor "— Buckeridge — Grolier Bindings— Scott Quotation—Mar- riage and Baptism Superstitions—Title of Novel, 518— Anker-holds — Cardinal Easton — Robert Henley — ' Way- side Posies '—Blakemore, 519. REPLIES : —South African Names, 519—"Bucks" and "Good Fellows," 520—"Halves"—Armorial—Epitaph at Gawsworth — "A good pennyworth " — " Grim " — Les Detenus, 522 —Breton Calvaries — " People of the Red- letter "—Preservation of Silk Banners — Entwisle—'An Apology for Cathedral Service,' 523—The Devil and St. Dominic — " Ce canaille de D— "—Bibury, 824—" Piert "— Hordon—'Pickwickian Studies '—Cure for Warts—Cricket between Female Teams, 525 — A Flaming Beryl — First Halfpenny Newspaper — "Soy " —King of Bantam — Pewter and its Marks—George and Mary Boole—Birth- Flace of Lord Beaconsfleld, 526—"Barnyard "—Bleeding mage, 527—The Devil's Door—Churches' washed away by the Sea—"Gentlemen and Ladies"—" Heudin " — St. Mildred's, Poultry, 528 — Double - name Signatures for Peers, 529. NOTES ON BOOKS i—Arber's ' Dryden Anthology' and • Pope Anthology '—Callow's ' From King Orry to Queen Victoria ' — Searle's * Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings, and Nobles ' — ' Who 's Who — Manwaring's ' Marathi Pro- verbs.' Notices to Correspondents. ST. MARY'S, MOORFIELDS. The closing for public worship of the church of St. Mary in Moorfields—an event which took place on Sunday, 12 November — marks an epoch in the history of Koman Catholicism in London, and par- ticularly in that of the archdiocese of Westminster. A few particulars regarding the origin of this edifice, before it disappears from the face of the earth, may therefore be of interest to the readers of ' N. & Q.' The church of St. Mary in Moorfields is the lineal descendant of the humble taber- nacles in which the adherents of the old faith worshipped when under more liberal and humane ideas the application of the penal laws began to be relaxed. White Street and Ropemakers' Alley saw the begin- nings of this movement. In Ropemakers' Alley there were as early as 1744 two chapels, known to the initiated as Father Dillon and Father Fuller's chapel, and Father Bernard and Father Dunn's chapel respec- tively ; but for reasons which may be easily imagined they were commonly called " Brown and Thompson's Penny Hotels." There was a third chapel in White Street close by. Though the City magistrates winked at these " unlawful assemblies," it was not advisable to obtrude them too much upon the public eye, and, as it was, the priests seem to have suffered much from that pest of the time, the common informer. One of these detest- able spies—a man named Payne—in 1764 laid an information against the London priests. The Lord Mayor (Sir William Stephenson), to his honour be it said, refused to issue a warrant: but the disappointed priest-hunter succeeded three years later in convicting at the Croydon Sessions a certain John Baptist Mahoney for celebrating mass, and sending him away to lifelong banish- ment, while the scoundrel himself pocketed a hundred pounds of blood-money. Lord Mansfield, however (than whom a more just and humane judge never lived), gave the coup de grdce to this atrocious system in 1768, when at the instigation of Payne four priests, among whom was Father Dillon, were brought before him in the Court of Queen's Bench. The judge insisted upon the strictest legal evidence of every item in the indictment: this the prosecution failed to give, and the prisoners were accordingly acquitted. In 1771 a last attempt at prosecution failed, Payne becoming so confused as to describe Fathers Dillon and Fuller by the names of "Dilton" and "Fowler," and exhibiting other flaws in his evidence. The oppressive Acts were repealed in 1778.* The Gordon Riots, of course, tried the Catholics of Moor- fields considerably. On 4 June, 1780, the mob attacked the chapel and dwelling- houses of the Catholics. " They stripped their houses of furniture, and their chapel, not only of the ornaments, and insignia of religion, but tore up the altars, pews, and benches, and made fires of them, leaving nothing but the bare walls." Father Dillon was so savagely beaten that he died a few weeks afterwards, t A large house in White Street, on the right- hand side going towards Moor Lane, was afterwards rented as a church; but this proving insufficient for the purpose, efforts were made to raise a still larger edifice, and St. Mary's, Moorfields, was ultimately erected on the ground from which it is about to be removed. It is a building of some preten- sions, more beautiful, perhaps, within than without, and it seems scarcely to merit the description, as " a successful effort of modern architecture and modern embellishment of structures for public worship," which is bestowed upon it by Britton and Pugin. fields,' 1881. t 'Annual Register,' 17S0.
 * See Fleming's 'History of St, Mary's, Moor-