portico was added to the doorway, and some buildings erected at the back, on the west side of Savile Row. Bankers' Clearing House, POST OFFICE COURT, LOMBARD STREET, an office founded for facilitating the daily settlement of accounts between the several banking firms. The cheques, bills of exchange, and drafts on other bankers, paid during the day into any bank, being a member of the Clearing House, are sent from each banking house to the Clearing House every afternoon. These are there distributed to the accounts of the several bankers, to whom they are endorsed, balances are struck, the claims are set off or transferred from one account to another, the differences or balance of the several banks as between each other are ascertained, and paid by transfer-tickets, that is, by cheques on the Bank of England, where every banker who is a member of the Clearing House has an account. Transactions to the amount of millions daily are thus adjusted and settled by the simple transfer of the respective balances to the Bank of England, without the employment of either coin, notes, or bills. The magnitude of the dealings and the working of the Clearing House will be seen from the following brief statistics, compiled by the Hon. Secretary, Sir John Lubbock : The total amount of bills, cheques, etc. paid at the Clearing House during the year ended December 31, 1886, was £5,901,925,000. The payment on Stock Exchange account days form a sum of £1,198,557,000. The payments on Consols account days, for the same period, have amounted to £263,473,000. The amounts passing through on the 4ths of the month for 1886 have amounted to £215,519,000. The total amount of bills, cheques, etc. paid in 18671868, the first year in which statistics were collected, was £3,257,411,000. The largest amount paid in any year was £6,357,059,000, in 1881. Bankruptcy (Court of), LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. The business of the court is managed by a chief judge, a senior and three junior registrars. By the Bankruptcy Act 1883, Section 93, the London Bankruptcy Court was united and consolidated with and made to form part of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and the jurisdiction of the London Bankruptcy Court was transferred to the High Court of Justice, and by virtue of an order (dated January 1, 1884) made under Section 94 of the said Act, was assigned to the Queen's Bench division of the said court. The administrative functions are performed by the Board of Trade. Bankside (The), SOUTHWARK, comprehends that portion of ground on the river-bank between "Bank-end" by Barclay's brewery, and "Bank-end" by the Castle or Falcon, near Blackfriars Bridge. These appear in the Token-books of about 1600 respectively as the "hether end of the Bank" east and "Bancke-ende" west. Bankside was of old the chief seat of vice and dissipation in London, and contained the Stews, Bear Gardens, and Playhouses. [See Bear Garden, Globe, Hope, Rose, Stews, Swan.] In the caustic poem called Cocke Lorelles Bote, printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1506, this part of Southwark is distinguished as Stews Bank, but as early as 1363 the Stewes-banke here opposite the mansion of John de Mowbray was presented as a defective embankment. Even to our own time a lane exactly opposite, leading to the Thames, was known as Stews Lane. Near at hand was a plot of ground called the single-woman's churchyard, unconsecrated, for the burial of the inhabitants of these Stews; this plot was known until very lately as the Cross Bones. From the Clink prison and liberty which adjoined the Bishop of Winchester's house, extending westward, was a series of places of entertainment, dissipation, and profligacy.1 Bear gardens and bull-baiting grounds and houses were first used occasionally, and afterwards wholly as theatres. Bears were baited here from a very early period, and fencing matches and the like were of not uncommon occurrence. February 8, 1603.-Turner and Dun, two famous fencers, played their prizes this day at the Bankside, but Turner at last run Dun soe in the brayne at the eye, that he fell down presently stone dead: a goodly sport in a Christian state to see one man kill another.2 Kemp the actor, who lived on the Bankside, complained bitterly of the ballads made against him, and once he thought he had found the ballad-maker : I found him about the Bankside sitting at a play. I desired to speak with him, had him to a Taverne, charg'd a pipe with tobacco, and there laid this terrible accusation to his charge. He swels presently like one of the foure windes, the violence of his breath blew the tobacco out of the pipe, and the heate of his wrath drunk dry two bowlefuls of Rhenish wine. At length, having power to speake"Name my accuser," saith he, "or I defye thee, Kemp, at the quart staffe."3 The playhouses and bear gardens were nearly all put down in the time of the Commonwealth, one or two surviving to the time of Charles II. or a little later, until the sports were removed to Hockley in the Hole (which see). Afterwards the Bankside was chiefly occupied by gardens, riverside public-houses, and breweries, by founders, glassmakers, and largely by dyers. Henslowe, owner of the Rose, and interested in nearly all the other houses south of the river except the Globe, was a dyer, money-lender, and owner of houses. He lived- -as did many of the writers and actors of the time-on the Bankside, most of them on the part known as the Stewes Bank, which, notwithstanding the name, was inhabited by many of the most respectable sort. Mr. Halliwell Phillipps believes that Shakespeare himself lived near the Bear Garden in 1596.4 Beaumont and Fletcher both resided close to the Globe. 1 See Ben Jonson's Execration of Vulcan and Masque of Augurs, and Shirley's Prologue to the Doubtful Heir. 2 Manningham's Diary, p. 130. 3 Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder, performed in a Daunce prom London and Norwich, London, 1600. 4 Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., 1887, vol. i. p. 130. There was a wonderful consimility of pliansy between him [Beaumont] and Mr. Jo Fletcher. They lived together on the Bankside not far from the playhouse, both batchelors together. . . they wore the same cloathes and cloke etc. between them.1 In St. Saviour's Token books, quoted by Mr. Rendle, Fletcher is set down as living in Addison's Rents, near the Bear Garden. Lawrence Fletcher the player, Edmund Shakespeare, William's younger brother, and Edward Alleyn, Henslowe's partner and successor, and the founder of Dulwich College, all lived at Bankside. Philip Massinger was also an inhabitant, and, dying at his house in Bankside, was buried at St. Mary Overy. In 1757, when Goldsmith "rose from the apothecary's drudge to be a physician in a humble way,” he practised in Bankside. Banqueting House. [See Whitehall.] Banqueting House (Lord Mayor's). [See Stratford Place.] Barber-Surgeons' Hall, MONKWELL STREET, CITY. The semicircular termination rests on the basement of a tower of old London Wall. Of the old hall, rebuilt 1678, only the carved doorway and court-room remain (the latter was rebuilt, 1752, under the superintendence of the Earl of Burlington), the rest having been taken down, and the court-room restored and redecorated in 1863-1864, under the direction of Mr. C. J. Shoppee, architect. The old dining-hall was partly incorporated in the pile of warehouses built 1864, on the site. The entrance is by a rich and projecting shell canopy, characteristic of the age of Charles II. The Theatre, 1636-1637, called by Walpole, "one of the best of Inigo's works," was pulled down in 1783. The Theatre is commodiously fitted with four degrees of cedar seats, one above another, in elliptical form, adorned with the figures of the seven Liberal Sciences, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and a bust of King Charles I. The roof is an elliptical cupola.-Hatton, p. 597. Letters do you term them? They may be Letters Patent well enough for their tediousness; for no Lecture at Surgeons' Hall upon an Anatomie may compare with them in longitude.-Nash's Have with you to Saffron Walden, 1596, 4to. In the court-room is one of the most remarkable of Holbein's works in this country Henry VIII. giving the Charter to the Company, 1541. It is painted on vertical oak panels; is about 6 feet by 10 feet 3 inches, and contains nineteen figures the size of life, the King, however, being much above the rest in stature. Respecting the merits of the picture and Holbein's share in its production there has been much difference of opinion. The notion that it was entirely from the pencil of Holbein is now generally given up. Van Mander, the earliest writer on Holbein, in a passage quoted by Woltmann,2 says that some even then asserted that Holbein did not finish the picture, but that it was completed by another painter; and with this Woltmann entirely agrees. He holds that Holbein did little more than paint in 1 Aubrey's Letters, and see the extract from Shadwell's Bury Fair, in Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. xxvi. 2 Holbein und seine Zeit, and Fortnightly Review, September 1866. the outline and the heads from the life of some members of the Company, and this, as he acutely points out, agrees with historical data. The Act of Parliament which conferred corporate rights on the Company was not passed till the 32d year of Henry VIII. (1541); · the picture which represents the gift of the Charter was not likely to be ordered till some time after, and Holbein, as painter to the King, a man overwhelmed with work, died in 1543, and the progress of so large a picture, containing so many portraits, it may be assumed, could only be slow. Mr. Wornum thinks that "there can be no question of the genuineness of the picture in its foundations," but he is "disposed to believe that Holbein never did finish it;" whilst from the great inferiority of the second series of heads on the left of the King, in which there is no trace of Holbein's hand, he considers that "these must have been added later." It is not to be supposed that the King sat to Holbein for this portrait; it is the stock portrait of the time; the King is not looking at the master, Vycary, to whom he is handing the Charter, but straight before him. The composition is a mere portrait piece, got up for the sake of the portraits. . . . The principle of the composition is somewhat Egyptian, for the King is made about twice the size of the other figures, though they are in front of him.—Wornum, Life and Works of Hans Holbein, p. 349. Of Holbein's public works in England I find an account of only four. The first is that capital picture in Barber-Surgeons' Hall of Henry VIII. giving the Charter to the Company of Surgeons. The character of His Majesty's bluff haughtiness is well represented, and all the heads are finely executed. The picture itself has been retouched, but is well known by Baron's print. The physician in the middle, on the King's left hand, is Dr. Butts, immortalised by Shakespeare.— Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol. i. p. 136. Walpole described the picture from Baron's print, in which the figures are reversed. Dr. Butts is on the King's right hand in the picture. The other two figures on the right of the King are his physicians, Chambers and Alsop. Among the members of the Company represented are Sir John Ailiffe, E. Harman, J. Montfort, R. Sympson, J. Pen, Alcoke, Fereis, Pamon, and Tylly. Pepys had some thoughts of buying the picture : August 29, 1668.-Harris (the actor) and I to Chyrurgeons' Hall, where they are building it new very fine; and there to see their Theatre, which stood all the Fire, and (which was our business) their great picture of Holbein's, thinking to have bought it, by the help of Mr. Pierce (a surgeon), for a little money: I did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1000, but it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and is not a pleasant, though a good picture.-Pepys. From his reference to the picture being "so spoiled he had no mind to it," it appears probable that it had been damaged by removal at the Great Fire, as he had seen it a few years earlier and made no comment on its spoiled condition. February 27, 1662-1663.—To Chyrurgeons' Hall . . . where we had a fine dinner and good learned company, many Doctors of Physique, and we used with extraordinary great respect. Among other observables, we drunk the King's health out of a gilt cup given by King Henry VIII. to this Company, with bells hanging at it, which every man is to ring by shaking after he hath drunk up the whole cup. There is also a very excellent piece of the King, done by Holbein, stands up in the Hall, with the officers of the Company kneeling to him to receive their Charter.-Pepys. The barbers of London and the surgeons of London were formerly distinct companies, and were first united when Holbein's picture was painted, in the 32d of Henry VIII. This union of corporate interests was dissolved in 1745, but barbers continued for many years to let blood; though it would be difficult now, even in a remote country town, to find the two misteries united in any other shape than a barber's pole. Among the plate belonging to the BarberSurgeons, in addition to the cup mentioned by Pepys, is a silver-gilt cup and cover "of ye value of £150," presented to the Company in 1676 by Charles II., on the humble petition of John Knight, Esq., Serjeant-Chirurgeon, and James Pearse, Esq., Chirurgeon in ordinary to His Majesty's household, and Master in 1676 to the Company of Barber-Surgeons. The shape is curious. The trunk of the royal oak forms the handle, and the body of the tree, from which hang gilt acorns, the cup itself. The cover is the royal crown. The large silver bowl on the sideboard was the gift of Queen Anne. Barbican, that portion of the main line of street leading from Smithfield to Finsbury Square, which lies between Aldersgate Street and Red Cross Street and Golden Lane. The name was derived from a watch-tower or barbican of the ancient City wall which stood there, forming an outwork, such as may still be seen at York. Barbican, a good broad street, well inhabited by tradesmen, especially salesmen, for apparel both new and old; and fronting Red Cross Street is the Watchhouse, where formerly stood a watchtower, called burgh-kenning, i.e. Barbican.-R. B., in Strype, B. iii. p. 93. Here Dryden has laid the scene of his Mac Flecknoe : A watch-tower once; but now, so fate ordains, Of all the pile an empty name remains ; Scenes of lewd loves and of polluted joys. The place is referred to by Massinger (Works, vol. iv. p. 34) and by Carew (Verses to A. T., see Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. 17). Nor is it overlooked by the Messrs. Smith, in their excellent imitation of Sir Walter Scott: The mansion of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, passed to the Bertie family by the marriage of his widow, Catherine, with Richard Bertie, the ancestor of the Dukes of Ancaster. The Duchess, in her own right Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, was noted for her zeal for the reformed doctrines, and in the reign of Edward VI. had incurred the enmity of Bishop Gardiner, who, shortly after the accession of Mary, sent for Bertie, and questioning him about his religion, inquired "whether the Lady, his wife, was now as ready to set up mass as she |