ground-a line there to be drawn-a trench to be cast-a foundation laid—and a high brick wall to be built. My father had a garden there, and a house standing close to his south pale. This house they loosed from the ground, and bare upon rollers into my father's garden twenty-two feet, ere' my father heard thereof. No warning was given him, nor other answer when he spake to the surveyors of that work, but that their master, Sir Thomas, commanded them so to do. No man durst go to argue the matter, but each man lost his land; and my father paid his whole rent, which was six shillings and eightpence the year, for that half which was left." After the fall of Cromwell his mansion and gardens were purchased of the Crown by the Drapers' Company, whose Hall now occupies their site. It was from this company that the first Lord Mayor of London, Henry Fitz-alwyn, was elected. In their hall is a large and interesting picture, ascribed to Zuchero, said to represent Mary Queen of Scots and her son, afterwards James the First. As the unfortunate Queen, however, never beheld her child after he was a twelvemonth old, the portrait, of course, could not have been drawn from the life. Lothbury, a continuation of Throgmorton Street, was, according to Stow, anciently called Lathberie or Loadberie, probably from the name of some person who kept a court or berry here. "This street," says Stow, "is possessed for the most part by founders, that cast candlesticks, chafing-dishes, spice-mortars, and such like copper or laton works, and do afterwards turn them with the foot, and not with the wheel, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a lothsome noise to the bypassers that have not been used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully called Loth-berie.” THE PLAGUE IN LOTHBURY. "This night I'll change All that is metal, in my house, to gold: To buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury For all the copper."---BEN JONSON: The Alchemist. 367 This street, as well as the narrow and populous thoroughfares adjoining it, appear to have suffered dreadfully during the visitation of the great plague. "In my walks," writes Defoe, "I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screechings of women, who in their agonies would throw open their chamber-windows, and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. Passing through Tokenhouse-yard in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried 'Oh death, death, death!' in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me with horror, and a chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, nor could anybody help one another. Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window; but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women and children. run screaming about the rooms like distracted; when a garret window opened, and somebody from a window on the other side the alley called and asked, 'What is the matter?' upon which, from the first window it was answered, 'O Lord! my old master has hanged himself.' The other asked again, ‘Is he quite dead?' and the first answered, 'Ay, ay, quite dead and cold!' This person was a merchant, and a deputyalderman, and very rich. But this is but one. It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families 368 TOKENHOUSE YARD. every day. People, in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, oftentimes laid violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief, as a passion; some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and lunacy; others into melancholy madness." In the reign of Henry the Eighth, we find a conduit erected in Lothbury, which was supplied with water from "the spring of Dame Anne's the Clear," at Hoxton, but mo trace of it now exists. Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury, was built in the reign of Charles the First, on the site of the princely mansion of Thomas, twentieth Earl of Arundel, the collector of the famous Arundel marbles. He subsequently removed to a suburban mansion on the banks of the Thames, of which Arundel Street in the Strand points out the site. OLD JEWRY, ST. LAWRENCE CHURCH, MANSION HOUSE, LONDON STONE, &c. OLD JEWRY, THE ORIGINAL BURIAL PLACE OF THE JEWS.-EXPULSION OF THE JEWS.-DR. LAMBE AND THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.-ST. OLAVE'S CHURCH.-ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY.-ST. THOMAS OF ACON.-GILBERT A BECKET.-MERCERS' COMPANY.-THE POULTRY.-MANSION HOUSE.-STOCKS MARKET.--SIR JOHN CUTLER.-BUCKLERSBURY.-INDIAN HOUSES.ST. STEPHEN'S WALBROOK. LONDON STONE. PRIOR OF TORTINGTON'S "INNE." O the west of Lothbury is the Old Jewry, so intimately associated with the persecution of the Jews in England during the reign of our Norman sovereigns. Previously to the reign of Henry the First, the only burialplace which the bigotry of our ancestors permitted to the Jews in England was in London, whither, in the words of Holinshed, they were "constrained to bring all their dead corpses from all parts of the realm." It was not till the year 1117, that they "obtained from King Henry a grant to have a place assigned them, in every quarter where they dwelled, to bury their dead bodies."* In the Old Jewry was their great synagogue, and in this quarter they continued to increase and multiply till 1283, when John Perkham, Archbishop of Canterbury, commanded the Bishop of London to destroy all the Jews' synagogues in the metropolis. Seven years afterwards, Edward the First, on his return from France, issued his famous edict which drove the *Holinshed's "Chronicles," vol. ii., p. 175. VOL. II. 24 Jews from the kingdom. The number thus expelled is said to have been fifteen thousand and sixty. Whether rightfully or wrongfully, they were accused, not only of having practised usury to a ruinous extent, but also of having adulterated the coin of the realm. Suddenly, then, their persons were seized in every part of England; their property was confiscated, and a moiety of it only bestowed on those who consented to embrace Christianity. To the honour of the Jews be it spoken, that, notwithstanding the temptation of retaining possession of their darling gold, only a few were to be found who consented to purchase their lives, and all that makes life palatable, at the expense of their conscience. Two hundred and eighty were hanged in London alone. The remainder, after having been stripped of their possessions, were driven forth to seek asylums in other countries. It was not till the seventeenth century that the Jews again appeared in any numbers in England. The "Jewerie,” as it was styled, appears to have extended along both sides of what is now Gresham Street, from St. Lawrence Lane and the church of St. Lawrence on the west, to Basinghall Street and the Old Jewry on the east, and southward between the Old Jewry and Ironmonger Lane as far as Church Court. The detestation in which, in the olden time, the Jews were held by the common people of England, led to more than one furious attack on their colony in the "Jewerie." In 1262, a quarrel having taken place in one of the neighbouring churches between a Christian and a Jew, in which the Christian was mortally wounded, the Jew flew for refuge to his own people, but, having been overtaken by the neighbours of the deceased, was summarily put to death. Not satisfied, however, with this act of revenge, the infuriated mob poured into the "Jewerie," and indiscriminately pillaged and slew every Jew whom they |