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TEMPLE EXCHANGE COFFEE-HOUSE

359

At many periods the decorations of the Gate were of a very ghastly character. The mangled remains of Sir Thomas Armstrong, hanged at Tyburn June 20, 1684, the head and quarters of Sir William Parkins, and the quarters of John Freind were among the early ornaments of the present Bar. Armstrong was concerned in the Rye House Plot; Parkins and Freind in the assassination Plot against William III. The heads of the victims of the fatal "45" were the last placed upon the Bar. "I have been this morning at the Tower," Walpole writes to Montague, August 16, 1746, "and passed under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look." "I remember," said Johnson,1 "once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him:

Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.

When we got to the Temple Bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me :

Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."

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The last heads which remained on the Bar were those of Townley and Fletcher.2 Yesterday," says a news-writer of April 1, 1772, one of the rebels' heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now remaining." This last head fell shortly after. The interior of the Bar was leased from the City (at a yearly rental of £50) by Messrs. Child, the bankers, as a repository for the ledgers and cash-books of their house. Pynson the printer lived here, and (see Fleet Street) his first work states in the colophon that it was printed "the v day July the year of our lord god 1493 by me Richarde Pynson at the Temple barre of London."

The "Temple Bar Memorial," which marks the site of the old building, was unveiled, September 8, 1880, by H.R.H. the late Prince Leopold (afterwards Duke of Albany). It is 31 feet 6 inches high, 5 feet wide, and 7 feet 8 inches long, and is surmounted by a bronze dragon (commonly styled "the griffin ") by C. B. Birch, A.R.A. The architect was Sir Horace Jones, and the marble statues of the Queen and the Prince of Wales are the work of Mr. (now Sir E.) Boehm. The portrait medallions on the east and west sides are of the Prince of Wales and Sir Francis Wyatt Truscott, Lord Mayor. The last of the four reliefs, that on the south side, representing the procession of the Queen to the Guildhall Banquet on November 9, 1837, was inserted in place in December 1882, thus completing the memorial, the total cost of which was £10,690: 6:5.

Temple Church. [See The Temple.]

Temple Exchange Coffee-house, near TEMPLE BAR. Here the Fire of London stopped. Four of Goldsmith's letters (in 1757-1758) are dated from this house, which ceased to be a coffee-house about the year 1810.

1 Boswell, by Croker, p. 258.

2 Ann. Reg., fol. 1766, p. 52.

360

TEMPLE STAIRS, OR TEMPLE BRIDGE

Temple Stairs, or Temple Bridge, was a landing-place extending across two stone arches well into the Thames, within the Temple Grounds.1

In 18 Jac. [1621] the bridge and stairs to the Thames were made.-Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales.

We were no sooner come to the Temple Stairs but we were surrounded with a crowd of Watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready.—Spectator, No. 283.

For some time there appears to have existed a right-of-way through the "Templegate to Tempelbrygge," and in 1360 a complaint was made against the possessors of the Temple for preventing the use of this way. The petitioners were John de Hydyngham and eleven others :

Who say upon their oath that time out of mind the commonalty of the city aforesaid have been wont to have free ingress and egress with horses and carts, from sunrise to sunset, for carrying and carting all manner of victuals and wares therefrom to the water of Thames, and from the said water of Thames to the city aforesaid, through the Great Gate of the Templars, situate within Temple Bar in the Ward aforesaid, in the suburb of London; and that the possessors of the Temple were wont, and by right ought, to maintain a bridge at the water aforesaid.-Riley's Memorials, p. 308.

Tenison's (Archbishop) Chapel is situated on the west side of King Street, Golden Square. The approach from Regent Street is by Chapel Court, formerly called Hide Court. In Strype's Stow, 1720, this building is spoken of as "the Chapel of Ease, by some called The Tabernacle." It had a front in Regent Street, which was designed in 1823 by C. R. Cockerell, architect, and was turned into a shop about 1861.

February 19, 1693.-The Bishop of Lincoln [Tenison] preached in the afternoon at the Tabernacle near Golden Square, set up by him.—Evelyn.

December 3, 1693.—Mr. Bentley [the great critic] preached at the Tabernacle near Golden Square.-Evelyn.

Tenison's (Archbishop) Grammar School, LEICester Square. The school was founded in 1685, and occupied the same building as Archbishop Tenison's Library. It was removed to Leicester Square when Castle Street was pulled down, and it now occupies the site of Hogarth's house and the Sablonière Hotel. The school was reconstituted in 1871. In 1887 the income from payments for pupils was £1320, and endowment and interest only £220.

Tenison's (Archbishop) Library, CASTLE STREET, St. Martin's LANE, immediately behind the National Gallery, founded in 1684, and partly endowed by Dr. Tenison, then vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The origin of the library is related by Evelyn :

February 15, 1683-1684.-Dr. Tenison'communicated to me his intention of erecting a Library in St. Martin's parish, for the public use, and desired my assistance, with

1 A good view of the Temple Stairs is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, October 1768.

"

Sir Christopher Wren, about the placing and structure thereof. A worthy and laudable design. He told me there were 30 or 40 young men in Orders in his parish, either governors to young gentlemen, or chaplains to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting taverns or coffee-houses, told him they would study or employ their time better if they had books. This put the pious Doctor on this design.-Evelyn.

February 23, 1683-1684.-Afterwards I went with Sir Christopher Wren to Dr. Tenison, where we made the drawing and estimate of the expence of the Library, to be begun this next Spring neere the Mewes.-Evelyn.

The library, of 4000 volumes, was open to the parishioners of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; St. James's, Westminster; St. Anne's, Soho; and St. George's, Hanover Square. An early Chaucer MS. was the chief treasure of the collection; but there were also early editions of Wiclif, Bacon, and other old writers, and copies of many rare and valuable theological works. The house was pulled down in 1861 to make room for the extension of the National Gallery; and the MSS. and printed books were, by order of the Charity Commissioners, sold by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson.

Tennis Court, HOLBORN, on the south side of the street, nearly opposite Gray's Inn Lane. It led into Southampton Buildings, but is now closed. It marks the site of the Tennis Court of Southampton House.

Mr. Julian Marshall, in his Annals of Tennis (1878), gives a curious list of fourteen Tennis Courts in London in 1615 from a MS. of Lord Leconfield's at Petworth. They are as follows: Whitehall (two, covered and uncovered), Somerset House, Essex House, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, Blackfriars, Southampton, Charterhouse, Powles Chaine, Abchurch Lane, Lawrence Pountney, Fenchurch Street and Crutched Friars.

Tennis Court Theatre, SOUTHWARK.

Afterwards [1778] I acted for a few nights at the Tennis Court in the Borough, which was soon shut up by the Surrey Magistrates.-George F. Cooke, Life, vol. i. p. 26. There is still a place named Tennis Court between 56 and 57 Newcomen Street, Borough.

Terry's Theatre, 105 and 106 STRAND, was built in 1887 (Walter Emden, architect). The accommodation is for 800 persons, and special arrangements are made for escape in case of fire, and the total exit accommodation is equal to 3500 persons. The whole building, including the roof, is constructed of concrete and iron, no wood being used in the auditorium except for doors and windows.

Thames (The), the longest of our rivers, to which London is so largely indebted for its commercial importance, rises on the southeastern slopes of the Cotswold Hills, and after an easterly course of 225 miles in length, in which it passes Oxford, Windsor, Hampton Court, Twickenham, Richmond, London and Greenwich, etc., flows into the North Sea at the Nore, a distance of 60 miles below London. The derivation of the word Thames was for a long time almost

universally misunderstood. When Spenser in his Faerie Queene made the word a combination of Thame and Isis, he only put into a poetic form the idea then generally current that this river only bore the name Thames after the confluence of the Thame and Isis at Dorchester.

Soon after whom the lovely bridegroom came,

The noble Thames, with all his goodly traine,
But him before there went, as best became,

His auncient parents, namely th' auncient Thame;
But much more aged was his wife than he,

The Ouze, whom men do Isis rightly name.

Faerie Queene, B. iv. canto xi. stanza 24.

Bishop Gibson in his Additions to Camden first pointed out the error and showed that Isis is quite a misnomer, and that the river is the Thames from its source to its mouth.

Upon this first mention of the river Thames, it will not be improper to observe, that, though the current opinion is that it had that name from the conjunction of the Thame and the Isis, it plainly appears that the river was always called Thames or Tems, before it came near the Thame. For instance, in an ancient charter granted to Abbot Aldhelm, there is particular mention made of certain lands upon the east part of the river, "cujus vocabulum Temis, juxta vadum qui appellatur Summerford" (the name of which is Thames, near the ford called Somerford), and this ford is in Wiltshire. The same thing appears from several other charters granted to the Abbot of Malmesbury, as well as that of Evesham; and from old deeds relating to Cricklade. And, perhaps, it may with safety be affirmed, that in any charter or authentic history it does not ever occur under the name of Isis, which, indeed, is not so much as heard of but among scholars; the common people all along from the head of it to Oxford calling it by no other name but that of Thames. So also the Saxon Tamese (from whence our Tems immediately comes) is a plain evidence that people never dreamt of any such conjunction. But further, all our historians who mention the incursions of Aethelwold into Wiltshire, A.D. 905, or of Canute, A.D. 1016, tell us that they passed over the Thames at Cricklade.-Gibson's Camden's Britannia, vol. i. p. 194, ed. 1772.

The scholarly name Isis for the upper river was probably taken from the ending of the Latin form Tamesis or Tamisis.

From London Bridge to King's Head Stairs, at Rotherhithe, is called the Upper Pool; from thence to Cuckold's Point, the Lower Pool; thence to Deptford, Limehouse Reach; thence to Enderby's Ropehouse, Greenwich Reach; thence to Blackwall Point, Blackwall Reach. At very high tides, and after long easterly winds, the water at London Bridge is very often brackish. Spenser calls it "The silver-streaming Thames ; Middleton and Herrick, "The silver-footed Thamasis." Denham has sung its praises in some noble couplets :—

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O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

SIR JOHN DENHAM.

and Pope described its banks with the accuracy of a Dutch painter in his ludicrous imitation of Spenser's manner.

I take it ill you should say anything against the Mole; it is a reflection, I see, cast at the Thames. Do you think that rivers which have lived in London and its

neighbourhood all their days, will run roaring and tumbling about like your Tramontane torrents in the North. No, they only glide and whisper.-Gray (the poet) to Mr. Wharton, August 13, 1754.

...

The morning was fair and bright, and we had a passage thither [from London to Gravesend] I think as pleasant as can be conceived; for take it with all its advantages, particularly the number of fine ships you are always sure of seeing by the way, there is nothing to equal it in all the rivers of the world. The yards of Deptford and Woolwich are noble sights. . . . We saw likewise several Indiamen just returned from their voyage. The colliers likewise, which are very numerous and even assemble in fleets, are ships of great bulk; and if we descend to those used in the American, African, and European trades, and pass through those which visit our own coasts, to the small craft that plie between Chatham and the Tower, the whole forms a most pleasing object to the eye, as well as highly warming to the heart of an Englishman, who has any degree of love for his country, or can recognise any effect of the patriot in his constitution.-Fielding, A Voyage to Lisbon.

An alderman of London reasonably (as methought) affirmed that although London received great nourishment by the residence of the prince, the repair of the parliament and the courts of justice, yet it stood principally by the advantage of the situation upon the river; for when, as on a time, it was told him by a courtier that Queen Mary, in her displeasure against London, had appointed to remove with the parliament and term to Oxford, this plain man demanded whether she meant also to divert the river Thames from London or no? and when the gentleman had answered "No;" "Then," quoth the alderman, "by God's grace we shall do well enough at London whatsoever become of the term and parliament.—An Apology for the City of London: in Stow's Survey, 1598.

Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond, and her body was brought with great pomp by water to Whitehall :

The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall;

At every stroke the oars did tears let fall:

More clung about the barge; fish under water
Wept out their eyes of pearl, and swum blind after.
I think the bargemen might with easier thighs
Have rowed her thither in her people's eyes.

For howsoe'er, thus much my thoughts have scan'd
Sh'ad come by water, had she come by land.

Contemporary Epitaph, in Camden's Remains, p. 388. Cowley died at Chertsey, on the Thames, and his body was carried by water to Whitehall :

Oh, early lost! what tears the river shed

When the sad pomp along his banks was led,

Pope, Windsor Forest. Nelson's body was brought in great state by water from Greenwich to Whitehall. State prisoners, committed from the Council Chamber to the Tower or the Fleet, were invariably taken by water. The Thames, that carried, in the reign of James II., the seven bishops to the Tower, was made the repository of the Great Seal of England, which James, in his flight, threw into the river while crossing in a small boat from Millbank to Lambeth. It was accidentally fished up a few months after. The Thames was frozen over in the winters of 1564, 1608, 1634-1635, 1683-1684, 1715-1716, 1739-1740, 1789, and 1814. The frost of 1683-1684 is known as Frost or Blanket Fair, and was kept with peculiar honours, such as the establishment of a printingpress and the roasting of an ox whole.

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