Page:Old and New London, vol. 1.djvu/53

 nature was roused at this; he committed the principal governors of Furnival's, Clifford's, and Barnard's inns to the castle of Hertford, and sent for several aldermen to Windsor Castle, where he either rated or imprisoned them, or both.

Fleet Street often figures in the chronicles of Elizabeth's reign. On one visit it is particularly said that she often graciously stopped her coach to speak to the poor; and a green branch of rosemary given to her by a poor woman near Fleet Bridge was seen, not without marvellous wonder of such as knew the presenter, when her Majesty reached Westminster. In the same reign we are told that the young Earl of Oxford, after attending his father's funeral in Essex, rode through Fleet Street to Westminster, attended by seven score horsemen, all in black. Such was the splendid and proud profusion of Elizabeth's nobles.

James's reign was a stormy one for Fleet Street. Many a time the ready 'prentices snatched their clubs (as we read in "The Fortunes of Nigel"), and, vaulting over their counters, joined in the fray that surged past their shops. In 1621 particularly, three 'prentices having abused Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, as he passed their master's door in Fenchurch Street, the king ordered the riotous youths to be whipped from Aldgate to Temple Bar. In Fleet Street, however, the apprentices rose in force, and shouting "Rescue!" quickly released the lads and beat the marshalmen. If there had been any resistance, another thousand sturdy 'prentices would soon have carried on the war.

Nor did Charles's reign bring any quiet to Fleet Street, for then the Templars began to draw out their swords. On the 12th of January, 1627, the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went out late at night into Fleet Street to collect his rents. At every door the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, "Give fire, gunner!" and a sturdy smith burst the panels open with a huge sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived, attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare Alley, now Hare Court. The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to him; but Palmer omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule had, nevertheless, to refund all the five shillings' he had exacted, and repair all the Fleet Street doors his too handy gunner had destroyed. The very next year the quarrelsome street broke again into a rage, and four persons lost their lives. Of the rioters, two were executed within the week. One of these was John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the other Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about politics, and the courtiers seem to have been the offenders.

In Charles II.'s time the pillory was sometimes set up at the Temple gate; and here the wretch Titus Oates stood, amidst showers of unsavoury eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see the horror of his crimes. Well said Judge Withers to this man, "I never pronounce criminal sentence but with some compassion; but you are such a villain and hardened sinner, that I can find no sentiment of compassion for you." The pillory had no fixed place, for in 1670 we find a Scotchman suffering at the Chancery Lane end for telling a victualler that his house would be fired by the Papists; and the next year a man stood upon the pillory at the end of Shoe Lane for insulting Lord Coventry, as he was starting as ambassador for Sweden.

In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the " Mohocks," seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken desperadoes — the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers — used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the emperor and his black men," who had followed him half-way down Fleet Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet lodgings.

From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with great industry, collected the following curious enumeration : —

"Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, "in Every Man in his Humour, speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street