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That no merchant, denizen or stranger, whatever he may be, shall go to the Pole, or any other place in the Thames, to meet wines or other merchandize, or go on board of vessels to buy wines or other things, until such time as they shall have come to land, under pain of losing the article.-Liber Albus, p. 230; and see Riley's Memorials, p. 298.

Goldwire. The ship is safe in the Pool then.-Massinger, The City Madam.

Pope's Head Alley, a footway from Cornhill-opposite the southwest corner of the Royal Exchange-to Lombard Street, and so called from the Pope's Head Tavern, of which the earliest mention occurs in the particulars of a wager made in the fourth year of Edward IV. (1464), between an Alicant goldsmith and an English goldsmith; the Alicant stranger contending, "in the tavern called the Pope's Head, in Lombard Street, that Englishmen were not so cunning in workmanship of goldsmithry as Alicant strangers," and undertaking to make good his assertion by the superior work he would produce. The wager was decided in favour of the Englishman.1

The Pope's Head Tavern, with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been all in one, pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the King of this realm, as may be supposed both by the largeness thereof, and by the arms, to wit, three leopards, passant, gardant, which were the whole arms of England before the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the arms of France, three fleur-de-lis. These arms of England, supported between two angels, are fair and largely graven in stone on the fore front towards the high street, over the door or stall of one great house lately for many years possessed by Mr. Philip Gunter. The Pope's Head tavern is on the back part thereof towards the south, as also one other house called the Stone House in Lombard Street. Some say this was King John's house, which might so be; for I find in a written copy of Matthew Paris' History, that in the year 1232, Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, to Cornehill in London, there to answer all matters objected against him, where he wisely acquitted himself. The Pope's Head tavern hath a footway through from Cornhill into Lombard Street.-Stow (1603), p. 75.

In the year 1615 Sir William Craven (the father of the first Earl Craven) left the Pope's Head to the Merchant Tailors' Company, for charitable purposes, and the rents of nine houses in the alley are still received by the Company. The tavern was in existence under the same name in 1756.2

Early in the 17th century Pope's Head Alley was noted for its booksellers' shops. The History of the Two Maids of More-Clacke, 1609, was "printed by N. O. for Thomas Archer, and is to be sold. at his shop in Pope's Head Pallace," perhaps a part of the large edifice mentioned by Stow. The first edition of Speed's Great Britain (fol. 1611) was "sold by John Sudbury and George Humble, in Pope's Head Alley, at the signe of the White Horse." Sudbury and Humble were the first printsellers established in London. Ben Jonson, in his Execration upon Vulcan, recommends "the Captain Pamphlets horse

and foot

that sally

Upon the Exchange still out of Pope's Head Alley,"

1 Herbert's Livery Companies, vol. ii. p. 197.

2 Public Advertiser of March 16, 1756.

to the wrath of the lame Lord of Fire. Some of these were political pamphlets. On February 15, 1624, Lord Keeper Lincoln writes to Secretary Conway :—

"The King is very sensible of the wicked libel. . . . The author might perhaps be detected by employing Mr. Bill to find out by the type where it was printed. All the copies met with must be suppressed." And Conway at once sends to the Recorder of London desiring him to "make search for a book [The Supplication of the Scottish Ministers] in Pope's Head Alley."-Cal. State Pap., 1619-1623, p. 321; 1623-1625, p. 163.

Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman, refers the print-collector, curious in the works of Golzius, to Pope's Head Alley, where "his prints are commonly to be had."

I am old Gregory Christmas, and though I come out of Pope's Head Alley as good a Protestant as any in my parish.-Ben Jonson, Masque of Christmas.

Gresham. Let's step to the Pope's Head,
We shall be dropping dry if we stay here.

Heywood, If You Know not Me.

November 21, 1660.-I to Pope's Head and bought me an aggate-hafted knife, which cost me 5s.-Pepys.

February 4, 1662.-Sir W. Pen and I and my wife in his coach to Moore Fields, where we walked a great while . . . and after our walk, we went to Pope's Head, and eat cakes and other fine things.-Pepys.

June 20, 1662.-To Pope's Head Alley, and there bought me a pair of tweezers cost me 14s., the first thing like a bawble I have bought a good while.-Pepys.

July 28, 1666.-To the Pope's Head, where my Lord Brouncker and his mistress dined, and Commissioner Pett, Dr. Charleton and myself were entertained with a venison pasty by Sir W. Warren.-Pepys.

The Pope's Head was destroyed in the Great Fire, but rebuilt in a more costly manner.

January 18, 1668-1669.—To the Pope's Head Tavern, there to see the fine painted room which Rogerson told me of, of his doing; but I do not like it all, though it be good for such a public room.-Pepys.

Before the Great Fire of 1666 Pope's Head Alley possessed a good trade for toys and turners' wares.1 In Strype's time (thirty years later) it was chiefly inhabited by cutlers.2

I cannot but consider that Athens in the time of Pericles . . . held nothing that equalled the Royal or New Exchange, or Pope's Head Alley, for curiosities and toy. shops. Dr. King's Third Letter to Lister.

In the Pope's Head Tavern, in Cornhill, April 14, 1718, Quin, the actor, killed in self-defence his fellow comedian, Bowen. Bowen, a clever but hot-headed Irishman, was jealous of Quin's reputation, and in a moment of great anger sent for Quin to the Pope's Head Tavern, when, as soon as he had entered the room, he placed his back against the door, drew his sword, and bade Quin draw his. Quin, having mildly remonstrated to no purpose, drew in his own defence, and endeavoured to disarm his antagonist. Bowen received a wound, of which he died in three days, having acknowledged his folly and madness, when the loss of blood had reduced him to reason. Quin was tried and acquitted.

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In 1771 the New Lloyds fixed their place of meeting in Pope's Head Alley, and there they remained until March 1774, when they moved into their new rooms in the Royal Exchange. [See Lloyd's Subscription Rooms.]

The Pope's Head, Cornhill, was not the only house with that sign. There was a Pope's Head Tavern in Chancery Lane; and Edmund Burke, about 1756, when he met Yuseph Emin in distress in Hyde Park, gave him the only half-guinea he possessed, "took him home to his apartments at the Pope's Head, a bookseller's near the Temple."1

Poplar, a parish in Middlesex so called, originally a hamlet of Stepney, from whence it was separated in 1817, and called by the name of All Saints' Poplar. With the growth of the manufacturing industry of the district the population largely increased (in 1881 there were 55,120 inhabitants in the parish), and the district parishes of Christ Church, St. Matthias, St. Mary, St. Saviour, and St. Stephen have been formed. All Saints', the mother church, was erected from the designs of Charles Hollis and consecrated by the Bishop of London, July 3, 1823. It is a substantial stone edifice, and has a well-proportioned spire 161 feet high. The parish includes the hamlet of Blackwall, the Isle of Dogs, the East and West India and Millwall Docks, the Trinity House stores and lighthouse works, several shipbuilding yards and various large manufacturing establishments. There is a good Town Hall, Sailors' Home, Hospital, Baths, Wash-houses, stations on the North London and on the London and Blackwall Railway, and a statue of Richard Green, the shipbuilder of Blackwall Yard, and a great benefactor to the district. Here were the East India Almshouses and Chapel. In this Chapel George Steevens, the Shakespeare commentator, son of George Steevens of Poplar, mariner, was baptized on May 19, 1736, and was buried in it, January 1800. There is a fine bas-relief to his memory, by Flaxman, in the north aisle. The inscription is by Hayley. Here also were buried Robert Ainsworth (d. 1743), compiler of the Latin Dictionary which bears his name; and Dr. Gloster Ridley (d. 1774), author of the Life of Bishop Ridley, and for many years chaplain of Poplar Chapel. In 1866 the ecclesiastical district of St. Matthias was formed, and the East India Company's Chapel (built in 1654) was made the district church. In 1875 the church was enlarged and a chancel added to it. The chapel, cemetery and grounds of the East India Almshouses have been converted into a Public Recreation Ground.

Popler, or Poplar, is so called from the multitude of Poplar Trees (which love a moist soil) growing there in former times. And there be yet [1720] remaining, in that part of the hamlet which bordereth upon Limehouse, many old bodies of large Poplars standing, as testimonials of the truth of that etymology.-Dr. Josiah Woodward, in Strype (Circuit Walk, p. 102).

1 Prior's Life of Burke, ed. 1854, p. 43.

Poppin's Court, FLEET STREET, the first thoroughfare (under an archway) on the north side from Ludgate Circus. It is called Poppin's Alley in Hatton, 1788, but in Strype's Map, 1720, it figures as Popinjay Court; Dodsley, 1761, mentions a Cockpit Alley leading out of it, and the turning next to it is still called Racket Court. It appears to have been a neighbourhood devoted to manly sports; but recently a restaurant called "The Popinjay" has been built at the corner of the court, and a legend inscribed on the front which asserts that on the site stood the inn of a religious fraternity whose crest was the popinjay. The north end of Poppin's Court was cut off in 1870 in forming the new street from Holborn Circus to Ludgate Circus.

Porridge Island, a paved alley or footway, near the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, destroyed in 1829, when the great rookery (of which Bedfordbury was till lately a sample) was removed from about the Strand and St. Martin's Lane. [See Bermudas.] It was filled with cooks' shops, and was a cant name.

The fine gentleman, whose lodgings no one is acquainted with; whose dinner is served up under cover of a pewter plate, from the Cook's shop in Porridge Island; and whose annuity of a hundred pounds is made to supply a laced suit every year, and a chair every evening to a rout; returns to his bed-room on foot, and goes shivering and supperless to rest, for the pleasure of appearing among people of equal importance with the Quality of Brentford.-The World, Thursday, November 29, 1753.

In Foote's comedy of Taste (1752), when Puff the auctioneer and Carmine the painter quarrel, the former exclaims, "Genius! Here's a dog! Pray how high did your genius soar? To the daubing diabolical Angels for alehouses, Dogs with chains for tanners' yards, Rounds of Beef and Roasted Pigs for Porridge Island?" In the Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft is an amusing account of a club called the Cameronian, which he and Shield the composer set up at a beef shop "at the corner of a little bye-court called Porridge Island."

Porridge Pot Row, OLD STREET, now ANCHOR YARD, on the north side, a few yards west of St. Luke's Church. Elmes notes it as called by the former name in 1831. Dodsley has an entry of Porridge Pot Alley, Aldersgate Street," in 1761.

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Port of London, a term frequently used very vaguely.

What is legally termed the Port of London extends six-and-a-half miles below London Bridge to Bugsby's Hole beyond Blackwall; though the actual Port, consisting of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Pools, does not reach beyond Limehouse. —J. R. M'Culloch, Dict. of Commerce, 1851.

This is the usual but scarcely the legal acceptation of the term, and is manifestly unsuitable even for mercantile purposes, as it would shut out the East India and the Albert and Victoria Docks. The strictly legal limits are much more extensive. There having been frequent disputes as to the limits of the Port an Act was passed, 13 and 14 Charles II., c. 11, for appointing Commissioners with powers to fix the

limits of the Port and to make arrangements respecting quays and landing-places. The Commissioners made their Report, May 24, 1665, and in it

To prevent all further differences and disputes touching the extent and limits of the Port of London . . . the said Port is declared to extend and to be accounted from the promontory or point called the North Foreland in the Isle of Thanet, and from thence by a supposed right line from the opposite promontory or point called the Nase, beyond the Gun-fleet upon the coast of Essex, and continued westward, through the river Thames, and the several rivers, channels, streams, and rivers falling into it, to London Bridge.

In like manner a Commission appointed in 1819, in a Return made to the Court of Exchequer, June 30, 1819, setting out "the Limits of the Port of London," declare that eastward "The Port of London shall commence at the distance of four miles from the North Foreland Lighthouse," and on the opposite shore at a distance of three miles from the Naze Tower, and be continued westwardly to highwater mark throughout the river Thames, and the several channels, streams, and rivers falling into it, to London Bridge."

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For certain port dues "the Port of London terminates near Gravesend, at a spot called the Bound, or by corruption the Round, Tree, but this having been destroyed by time and accidents, a stone has been erected in its place." 1

In Reports of Committees of the House of Commons, vol. xiv. (1803), is a full history of the Port of London.

Portland Chapel. [See St. Paul's, Portland Place.]

Portland Club, No. 1 STRATFORD PLACE, "the Whist Club par éminence since the dissolution of Graham's." 2 Members limited to 250 in number; election by ballot, one black ball in ten excludes; entrance fee, 20 guineas; annual subscription, 7 guineas. Play at whist not to exceed £1 points.

Portland Market. [See Oxford Market.]

Portland Place, REGENT'S PARK, a thoroughfare 125 feet wide and 600 feet long. It was designed by the brothers Adam, circ. 1778, and so named after the then Duke of Portland, the ground landlord. The Adams only built the portion of the place from Devonshire Street to Duchess Street. The great width was owing to a clause in Lord Foley's lease, which precluded the Duke of Portland from erecting any buildings to intercept the view from Foley House [which see]. The original house stood on the site of the Langham Hotel. No. 8 is now styled Foley House, but this is a modern name. When first built

Portland Place was in the highest fashion.

1 Cruden's Hist. of Gravesend and Port of London, p. 37.
2 Hayward's Select Essays, vol. ii. p. 106.

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