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" Widened at the expence of The Corporation of London. Harvey Christian Combe, Mayor.

1800."

In digging the foundation of the new houfes at the corner after the fire, parts of the old building were found, which were evidently a continuation of the vaults of which the view referred to is an accurate fpecimen, and which, from their mode of conftruction, feemed to have promifed a much longer duration. The church of St. James, at the back of these ruins, rofe upon the dilapidation of Trinity Priory and Norfolk Houfe, in the mayoralty of Sir Edward Barkham, in the reign of James the Firft. There is a poetical infcription over the door on the north fide the chancel, which gives us no very favourable idea of the literature of this, as it has been termed, learned age. The last four lines may be fufficient to give the reader a tale of the style of the whole poem, which extends to forty.

"The Cities first Lord Mayor lies buried here,

Fitz Alwin of the Drapers Company. And the Lord Mayor whofe fame fhines now fo clear,

Barkham, is of the fame fraternity." At the bottom of this court, a paffage runs betwixt the Jewish foup-house and the Mitre public-houfe into Duke's Place, which it is well known is the quarter wherein the lower order of Jews have been driven from other parts of the city, and which contains, be. fides the parish-church of St. James already noted, I think, two fynagogues, and a number of houfes not more noted

for the cleanliness than the morality of their inhabitants.

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.. This priory, church, and houfe, feemed to flourish in confequence of the fuppreflion of the order of the Knights Templars; for although they were founded in the year 1100, they owed their fplendour to the revenues of this religious and military fociety, with whofe lands they were endowed. It would be deemed ufelefs to repeat the history of a place which has been fo frequently noticed in our civic an

Encaustica Pictura. Pliny.

nals; neither is it very eafy, were it material, to trace the precife boundaries of the priory, which were certainly much more extenfive than the fpace comprehended within the Close. One of the exterior gates of the monaftery is ftill standing, and it is stated by Stow, that, with the priory and church (upon the fite of which the present fmall parochial edifice, dedicated to St. John, is probably built), it was preferved from the general fpoil and dilapidation of religious houfes fo long as King Henry the VIIIth reigned, and alfo that a part of these buildings was used as a fore-houfe for the King's toyls and tents, for hunting and for the wars; but that in the reign of Edward the VIth, the greater part of the church, that is, the body and ide aifles, with the large bell tower, most curious piece of workmanship, graven, gilt, and enamelled (to the great beautifying this city, furpaffing all others), were undermined, and blown up with gunpowder, and the stone tector's houfe in the Strand." employed in building the Lord Pro

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This short notice of an establishment of which even the most permanent materials have been long fince annihilated, would certainly not have been drawn forth as an object of public attention, had it not been deemed at least a curious fpeculation to confider the nature of the ornamental part of this beautiful edifice. It has been stated, that the decorations were graven, gilt, and enamelled. With respect to the first, I apprehend the term was aptly applied to the fculptured figures and carved ornaments; as, in the fecond article of the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image." Upon that term, or the fecond of gilding, there can be no difficulty, as they are fufficiently explanatory of the ideas they were meant to convey; but I do not imagine the defcription of enamelled ornaments to be quite so clear, and shall, therefore, fay a word or two upon the fubject, as they will refer to an art which, I conceive, in the mode of application meant by the author alluded to, is nearly loft.

Enamelling, by the ancients termed encauftic, is known to be an art of very remote antiquity; as early as the

• Pliny also observes, that ships were painted refolutis igni coris; from which an

ingenious

the age of Porfenna *, King of Tufcany, we hear of exquifitely-formed vafes, made of earthen, or potters ware, in his dominions, and enamelled with various figures we have alfo heard, and perhaps feen, fome, inferior, as it is faid, to the others, the production of manufactures at Faenza and Castle Durante, in the dutchy of Urbino, in the time of Raphael † and Michael Angelo, fuppofed to have been painted by these celebrated artists, and fince well known by this name of "Ra. phael's ware. There are alfo fome fpecimens of large enamelling upon dishes and plates extant, which were faid to be executed in France about the age of Francis the Firft; but I have heard of few of a later date. This mode of enamelling upon earthen ware and porcelain, has been lately, by Mr. Wedgewood and others, brought to a perfection unknown to any former age or country; that of painting portraits and historical fubjects upon plates of gold and other metals, has been carried to a height of beauty and correctness that caufes the works of Petitot, and other artists of the feventeenth century, to be no longer confidered as inimitable. But it will be recollected, that even the ware of Raphael, the vafes of Wedgewood, and the fpecimens of the Drefden manufactory, were comparatively small. The portraits of Zinck, Spencer, Meyer, and the beautiful hiftorical compofitions of Mofer (many of which his Majefty now has in his collection) were miniatures. The enamel pictures that are faid to have adorned the bell tower of a church must have been of a very large fize, and the confequent difficulty of forming the ground plates, and firings, as it is termed, i. e. melting the colours, when laid on the work, must have been immenfe. Revolving this fubject in my mind, it occurred to me, that the enamelling here alluded to was, in a confiderable degree, different in its operation from that which has

been laft mentioned, and, like the ware of Raphael, &c. ought more properly to be termed glazing; that the progrefs of its execution was, in the firft inftance, the formation of very large. plates of potters, or, perhaps, what is now termed Stourbridge clay, which was lefs liable to crack in annealing;. thefe might be formed of any fhape, and adapted to any situation, uron them there was then laid a ground of foft white glass fluxed with lead, they were fired, perhaps, in a common tile-kiln, and afterwards painted with colours prepared with the fame kind of flux, and fome effential oil, which rendered them as free from the pencil as common oil colours. Afterwards they were again returned to the kiln, or reverberatory furnace, where the colours were melted; which probably finished the work.

I have many years fince feen fpecimens of this kind of coarfe painting in enamel, which, I believe, from its durability, would have been more used by our ancestors in external decorations, had not the difficulty which attended its execution impeded the progress of the art. Of this compofition, I have no doubt, were the enamelled pictures faid to adorn the bell tower of the Priory of St. John of Jerufalem. Many of my readers will recollect, that fome very excellent veftiges of this art were exhibited upon, and were indeed a confiderable ornament to, the gate that once stood cross a part of the highway betwixt the Treafury and the end of King-street, Weftminster. This gate, which is by hiftorians faid to have been built in the reign of Henry the VIIIth, but which, I fhould conjecture, was ftill more ancient, was adorned with feveral of thofe pictures in enamel, reprefenting portraits of Kings, &c. They were, I have been informed, admirably executed in foft colours ‡, upon a ground of potters, or Stourbridge clay, baked in a kiln : indeed, the whole of this building (which had

ingenious philofopher, who wrote upon the subject of encaustic painting fome years fince, inferred, that the faid fhips were enamelled; a term which might with almost equal propriety have been applied to the paying our fhips with pitch.

An V. C. 246.

There was, at the time when Keyfler wrote his travels, among an infinite number of beautiful fpecimens of the art of painting in enamel, in the palace at Drefden, an apartment filled entirely with veffels of porcelain, faid to have been painted by Raphael.

That is, mineral or metallic colours, mixed with a flux of cerufe, iitharge, or erpiment.

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been used as a state paper office) was fo admirable in its construction, that when it was to be taken down, I have heard that the then Duke of Cumberland purpofed to have it removed, and again erected at Windfor: this, although I think the late T. Sanby, Efq. has made drawings of it, was, I believe, never executed.

The tatte of the age having within thefe laft forty years run much in favour of painting in enamel and upon glafs, which was an art that had nearly funk into oblivion, till revived by Jervais, Pearson, Eggington, and fome other eminent artists, I have often wondered that fome attempts have not been made to introduce the kind of painting which I have defcribed upon a large fcale, as the colours, fluxes, &c. are now fo well known, and as, if brought to perfection, it would have the durability of that mode of copying the works of celebrated matters which is termed MOSAIC, and would fix, as may be faid, the fleeting and evanefcent tints of oil or crayon pictures, by a procefs that could not be attended with a hundredth part of the trouble or expence that must be concomitant to the accurately copying any fubject by arranging fmall pins of glafs, or other vitrified fubitances, fo as to blend and connect the high lights with the deep fhades, middle tints, dome tints, reflexes, &c. and to unite and harmonize all the variety of colouring, preferving, at the fame time, by this mechanical procefs, the grace and correctness of contour, the perfpective, keeping, and every other appendage and attribute neceflary to form a perfect whole.

The flight hint which I gathered from an ancient defcription of the Priory of St. John of Jerufalem, has, almoft unawares, led me to defcant on an art of which few fpecimens were originally made, and confequently few veftiges remain. If this brief notice fhould lead those whofe habits of life, and fuperior intelligence, are better adapted to the purfuit, more accurately to investigate the fubject, their refearches may, by extending the circle of human knowledge, be, I am inclined to think, both in a fcientific and a commercial point of view, rendered beneficial to the country.

CROSBY-HOUSE.

Paffing through Bifhopfgate-ftreet, and feeing the name of Crosby-square painted upon a gateway, I was naturally attracted towards a place which, from the hiftorical and poetical figure that it makes in our literature, may be termed claffic ground. Entering the gate, it was with concern I found, that of the magnificent palace wherein Richard the Third, when Duke of Gloucester, was formerly lodged, the only remaining veftige was part of the ancient hall; for I conceive the inner gate and ftairs may, in comparison to the building, be deemed modern. Of this fabric, though only one fide is to be seen, the fmall specimen till standing is fufti cient to give to an eye ufed to this kind of obfervation a tolerable accurate idea of the architectural style of the whole edifice, which was erected at a period when it appears, by more perfect buildings of nearly the fame date, the purity † of the Gothic talte

• A treatise, publifhed by a Mr. Muntze, near forty years fince, on encaustic, in which it was proposed to render colours more durable, and fix crayons by the means of wax, has long been forgotten.

My architectural friends will pardon me for applying this epithet to a fyle which has, in comparison with the Grecian, Roman, and more modern Italian fchools, been much deprecated. It would be very eafy to fly with the reader from this fubject to the temple of Diana at Ephefus, of Thefeus at Athens, ramble round the ancient and modern world in search of examples of beautiful structures, from the Tower of Babel to Somerfet Place, and after a vaft expence of time and ingenuity, return as wife as we fet out. The queftion, Which is preferable, the Grecian or Gothic ftyles of building? though often agitated, never has, nor never can be fettled. Each has its intrinfic merits, adapted to fituation, climate, use, and a hundred other local circumstances: each, too, has its particular fyftem. We have feen architecture, faid to be of the Grecian fchools, which could not with propriety be claimed by any fchool at all: we have likewise seen clumfy and eccentric Gothic but whomever has contemplated thofe buildings in Westminster, and many other places, where the ftyle is carried to its acme of perfection, must allow there is a purity in the tafle of them adapted to the purposes for which they are appropriated, equal, if not superior, to that of any other mode of building.

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of architecture was a little fullied by the admiffion of heterogeneous mould. ings, cornices, and adventitious decorations, which in confequence of the revival, though unfettled ftate, of the arts in the fifteenth century, began to be very profufely adopted.

The manfion under confideration was built at this period, namely, about the year 1446, by Sir John Crosby, who was one of the Sheriffs, and an Alderman of London, in the year 1470, knighted by Edward the Fourth in 1471, and died in 1475, leaving five hundred marks for the repairing the parish-church of St. Helen, where he was buried.

The finall part which remains of this edifice may, as I have obferved. be confidered as a fair fpecimen of the whole; and as from a limb, nay indeed (as it is faid) from the finger, of an ancient statue, a skilful fculptor could delineate the proportions of the whole figure, fo from this vestige a conjecture may be formed that this fabric was once of large dimentions. I am not enthufiaft enough to fuppofe, that from what remains the original plan could be dif. covered, or the original building reftored, but only mean to observe, that fufficient traces are still apparent to warrant the conjecture, that its ancient fite extended to the convent of Little St. Helen's one way, and on the other fide included the whole of the ground on which Crosby-square (built in 1677) is erected.

Thefe, I believe, were the primary boundaries of the demefnes of Crotby House; but in the 34th of Henry the Eighth, it appears, by a grant of this place to Andrew Bonvice, a rich Italian merchant, that they were much more extentive, and confifted of gardens, lanes, meffuages, void pieces of land, &c. Of all these, as I have itated, the only remaining veftiges are a part of the hall, now converted into a packer's warehoufe, which extends to Great St. Helen's, in which part of the fide wall of the edifice, and a finail door, probably leading to the lower offices, are still to be feen, and the fite of the fquare, which was unquestionably a fmall part of the garden.

With refpect to the fide of the ancient hall, which is fill apparent, the

fpectator, at entering from Bishopfgateftreet, is ftruck with the fingularity of the building, which confiits of part of what was, I believe, once an octagonal tower, at the northern extremity, and the fide wall, the windows in which feem to have been in a taste at lealt equal to many of the fame period; a flight of steps on the left hand of the door leads to this apartment, but I exceedingly doubt whether this was the principal entrance to the palace, probably the grand front was toward the garden; that the part I am now confidering was only a wing which had a correfponding one with a fimilar entrance on the fouth fide, leading, it is not unlikely, to a chapel and octagonal tower, while a magnificent gate in the centre opened into a lower hall upon the ground floor, that had, through another of equal dimenfions, communication with the garden, which, it appears from records, extended from the east fide of the palace to the fouth corner of the priory close, where it was bounded by a lane or paffage running betwixt them to offices, &c. ftill more remote.

Of the priory dedicated to St. Helen, once the refidence of a fociety of black nuns, the only parts which remain are two or three finall pieces of broken and dilapidated arches adjoining the hall of the Leatherfellers Company, and the church, in which there are fufficient attractions to arreft the attention of the antiquarian fpectator. The house to which they belonged, or were adjuncts, is, with its appendages, totally destroyed, and even the materials entirely removed.

In reviewing a fpot once fo famous as the fite of Crosby House, the mind naturally recurs to former ages, to former fyftems of morals, religion, and government, and confiders their operation upon perfons and things; it naturally, or rather ideally, rebuilds the palace, recalls its inhabitants from their tombs, and confiders the various fituations in which they have been placed, and the various fcenes in which they have acted. The aid of the hiftorian or peet is folicited, and we con.. template with double pleasure places which have attracted their attention, fuch as the house which I am now con

Though the building, as it now ftands, on a curfory view, appears plain, fufficient marks may be difcovered. upon a more accurate investigation, which shew that it was once much more ornamented.

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fidering, and which the historic record, but ftill more the poetic pen of Shak fpeare, has, although the greater part of even its walls, and every trace of its magnificence, have long fince mouldered into duft, indelibly fixed in our imaginations, by having recorded it in the interview betwixt the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Ann; a fcene wherein he, with great poetic art (for it is entirely the art of the poet), diffuades her from attending the funeral of Henry the Sixth to Chertfey, and prevails on her to repair to Crosby Houfe, where they were afterwards married.

How long the Duke refided here is uncertain. When he ufurped the Crown, we find him in Baynard's Caftle; though it is stated by Seymour, that his interview with the Citizens was at this palace.

Crosby House, it has been already mentioned, became in the reign of Henry the Eighth the refidence of a merchant. It next came into the poffeflion of William Bond, Alderman, who made confiderable additions to the building. In the year 1586, we find it occupied by Henry Romelius, Chancellor of Denmark; then by Sir John Spencer, Knt. who kept his mayoralty in it. The ft of James the Firft, Monfieur de Rofny*, Grand Trea furer of France, was its tenant. After. ward, the youngest fon of William Prince of Orange, Monfieur Fulke, and the learned Monfieur Barnevelt. Sic tranfit gloria mundi. This palace, that was once the habitation of royalty, the fcene of gaiety, festivity, and iplen. dour, wherein Princes, Nobles, Amballadors, and the first of Civic Magiftrates, have refided, has been, through a long period of years, declining, and in its prefent dilapidated ftate has be. come a warehoufe for merchandize, its remaining chambers probably converted to counting-houses, and its once mag. nificent hall dedicated to the reception of bales of cloth. Such are the tranfitions of terrestrial grandeur, the fluctuations of property, and fuch the revolu. tions of a houfe wherein, as in a thea tre many of the good and evil circum

ftances of life have been exhibited a house whofe diftinguished occupants have long fince receded from this bufy fcene, have long fince become infenfible to the pains and pleasures attendant upon humanity, and have left in these veftiges another example of the inftability of unbounded opulence, and the futility of inordinate ambition.

ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT.

JOHN STOW.

Happening the other day to go into the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, Leadenhall-ftreet; indeed with a view to infpect an edifice which, from having been the place where the city apprentices, and other diffolute perfons, affembled on evil May Day 1517, at the Shaft or May Pole, from which the church derives its additional distinction, and whence they commenced their depredations against aliens, &c. has made a confiderable figure in our civic hiftories; I was ftruck with the neatness, beauty, and elegance, of its interior decorations. Thefe have been fo frequently described, that it would be a waste of time to enumerate them; I fhall therefore only observe, that the window over the altar, containing in compartments the pictures of the five Monarchs, viz. Edward the Sixth, Elizabeth, James the First, Charles the Firft, and Charles the Second, affords a fair fpecimen of the art of painting on glafs in the feventeenth century; while a figure of St. Andrew lately finished, and placed in an upper compartment of the fame window, ferves also to shew, the progrefs which that art has made at the clofe of the eighteenth; or at leaft if it should not be deemed one of the most elaborate effufions of this fyftem of painting, it certainly marks, in a very peculiar manner, the difference betwixt the ancient and modern ftyles.

I think the braffes formerly upon the monuments of Nicholia de Nale, buried January 1566, Henry Mann, D. D. buried October 1566, and perhaps many others, have been torn away; a circumftance which, whether

It appears, as ftated in No. I. of thefe Veftiges, that this Nobleman first occupied a house of the Count Beaumont, in Butcher-row, and then removed to Arundel Palace. Whether his refidence in Crosby Houfe, which is stated upon the authority of Stow, who himself lived near the spot, was before his removal to Arundel Houle is uncertain. I rather think it was, as his refidence there was certainly in the first of James the Fien.

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