Plays confuted in five actions, published about 1580, expressly mentions the comedies at the Blackfriars, and Lyly's Sapho and Phao, which was acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1584 "by her majesties children and the Boyes of Paules" was also performed in the Blackfriars, possibly in the house of one of the noble inhabitants. The opposition to the players arose among the Puritan inhabitants of the precinct, who, somewhat inconsistently with their religious opinions, as the actors and dramatists were never tired of telling them, followed the trade of feather-making, and yet were not without their excuses for so doing :

Mrs. Flowerdew. Indeed it sometimes pricks my conscience,

I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses.

Bird. I have their custom too for all their feathers:

Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors,

Should gain by infidels.-Randolph's Muses' Looking-glass, 4to, 1638.1 What say you to your feather-makers in the Friars that are of your faction of faith? Are not they with their perukes, and their puffs, their fans, and their huffs, as much pages of Pride, and waiters upon Vanity ?-Ben Jonson, Bart. Fair, Act v. Sc. 3. An upstart apocryphal captain

Whom not a Puritan in the Friars will trust

So much as for a feather !-Ben Jonson, Alchemist, Act i. Sc. I.

Burbage. Why do you conceal your feather, Sir?

Sly. Why, do you think I'll have jests broken upon me in the play, to be laughed at? This play hath beaten all the gallants out of the feathers: Blackfriars hath almost spoilt Blackfriars for feathers.-Webster, Induction to the Malcontent.

Both Ben Jonson and Webster have many other references to the Puritans of Blackfriars and their wares. Pilgrim Street seems to have

been the headquarters of the feather merchants.

But Puritans and players were not the only noteworthy personages who carried out their distinctive professions in Blackfriars at this period. The glass factory was famous at one time. It was likened to Hell by Dekker. The name remains in Glasshouse yard.

Like the glasse-house furnace in Blackefriers, the bone-fires that are kept there never goe out. Thomas Dekker, A Knight's Conjuring (Percy Soc., vol. vii. p. 21).

Is it because the Brethren's fires

Maintain a glass-house at Blackfriars?

Bishop Corbet, Upon Fairford Windows, Works, p. 237.

Ben Jonson dated the dedication to his Volpone "from my house in the Black Friars this 11th day of February 1607," and here he laid the scene of the Alchemist. In 1613 Shakespeare bought here a house from Henry Walker for £140.

The house was situated on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly otherwise termed Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, and it was either partially on or very near the locality now and for more than two centuries known as Ireland Yard. 2-Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 240.

1 Rabbi Busy, in Bartholomew Fair, is reminded and taunted with the feather-makers in the Friars.

2 Probably so named after the William Ireland,

a haberdasher, who occupied the house at the time of Shakespeare's purchase in 1613.-Outlines, vol. ii. p. 346.

Allowed the said Accomptante for Money by him yssued and paid for Workes and Reparacons donne and performed within the tyme of this Accompt at the Blackfryers in making a new Causey Way and a new paire of Staires for the King's Majesty to land to goe to St Anthoney Vandike's house there to see his Paintings, in the months of June and July 1635.-Audit Office Records, xx. li. ii.

Sir A. Vandyck lived at his house in the Blackfriars from his settlement in England in 1632 till his death in it in 1641. The rent of his house, "at a moderate value," was estimated, in 1638, at £20, and the tithe paid £1:6:8.2 His daughter Justina was born here December 1, 1641, and baptized in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, December 9, 1641, the day of her father's death. Before Vandyck, however, Blackfriars was the recognised abode of painters.

I'll go bespeak me straight a gilt caroch,
For her and you to take the air in : yes,

Into Hyde-Park, and thence into Blackfriars,

Visit the painters, where you may see pictures,

And note the properest limbs, and how to make them.

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. 3.

Cornelius Jansen (d. 1665), lived in the Blackfriars for several years. Isaac Oliver, the miniature painter, was a still earlier resident. He died here in 1617, and was buried in St. Anne's, Blackfriars. Lady Ayres, wishing to have a copy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's picture to wear in her bosom, 'gave it to Mr. Isaac Oliver the painter in Blackfriars, and desired him to draw it in little after his manner." Painters on glass, or glass-stainers, were among the artists settled here, but Bishop Corbet seems to class them with the Puritans.

66

Collectors as well as artists dwelt within the precinct.

October 23, 1654.—This day I saw one of the rarest collections of achates [agates], onyxes, and intaglios that I had ever seen either at home or abroad, collected by a conceited old hat-maker in Black Friers, especially one achat vase, heretofore the great Earl of Leicester's.-Evelyn.

There were several good houses in the Friary; the chief was called "Hunsdon House," after Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth's cousin and Lord Chamberlain. Here, in an upper chamber, on Sunday, October 26, 1623, while the house was in the occupation of Comte de Tillier, the French ambassador, a sermon was preached by Father Drury, to, it is said, about three hundred people, a congregation too numerous for the strength of the room; for about the middle of the sermon the floor gave way, and ninety-four persons besides the preacher perished. This sad occurrence is familiarly known as "The Fatal Vespers." The Protestants considered the accident as a judgment on the Catholics, and the Catholics attributed it to a plot of the Protestants. Forty-seven bodies were buried by the French ambassador in the courtyard and garden of Hunsdon House.3 Lord Cobham entertained

1 From the same account the causeway would seem to have been 10 feet wide, and that to form it piles were driven into the bed of the Thames, and stones taken from the Crown stores in

Scotland Yard.

2 MS. Lambeth, 272.

3 Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. iii. p. 449.

Queen Elizabeth in his house at Blackfriars, June 26, 1600, on occasion of the marriage of Lord Herbert, when he presented Her Majesty with a masque of eight ladies, and the Queen herself danced, and afterwards. stayed the night there.1 The Earl and Countess of Somerset were living in the Blackfriars when Overbury was murdered.2

The Countess, when under arrest, October 1615, during the inquiry into the murder, selected the Lord Aubigny's house in the Blackfriars as her residence. She remained there, under Sir William Smith's charge, till removed to the Tower in the following April. Lord Herbert of Cherbury: his house was, about 1619, attacked at night by robbers, who called out to him, "Darest thou come down Welsh

Eminent Persons buried in the Blackfriars Monastery.-Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, the founder (d. 1242). He was originally buried at the Holborn House, but his body was removed here when the monastery changed its locality. Sir Thomas Brandon, K.G. (d. 1509); Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (beheaded 1470), one of Caxton's great encouragers, and Margaret his wife, daughter of the King of Scotland; the heart of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., with that of their son Alphonso; John of Eltham, Duke of Cornwall, brother of Edward III; the father and mother of Queen Katherine Parr.

The precinct no longer exists, but is now a part of the ward of Farringdon Within. The latest attempt to assert its privileges was made 1735, when in the July of that year the Court of Common Council brought an action in the Court of King's Bench against Daniel Watson for opening a shop and vending shoes in the Blackfriars without being free of the City. The defendant pleaded the privileges of the precinct, but the Court gave it in favour of the City. [See King's printing house; Times Newspaper Office (see Printing-house Square); Apothecaries' Hall; St. Anne's, Blackfriars; Playhouse Yard; Ireland Yard.]

Blackfriars Bridge. The original Blackfriars Bridge was the design of Robert Mylne, a native of Edinburgh, and originally called Pitt Bridge. [See Chatham Place.] The Act empowering its construction was passed in 1756; the first pile was driven June 7, 1760, and the first stone laid October 31, 1760. A question seriously discussed at the time was "whether a bridge from Blackfriars to Southwark would be a public benefit." On Wednesday, November 19, 1768, it was made passable as a bridle-way; and it was finally and generally opened on Sunday, November 19, 1769. The entire cost was about £300,000, of which little more than half was expended on constructing the bridge. There was a toll of one halfpenny for every foot-passenger, and one penny on Sundays, but this led to riots, in one of which, June 7, 1780, the mob broke into the toll houses, carried off the money, and then set them on fire. Government ultimately bought the toll, and on June 22, 1785, the bridge was made free. Mylne had Howes, ed. 1631, p. 1035. 2 Amos's Overbury, p. 41. 3 Life, p. 72.

adopted the elliptical arch, Gwyn, his competitor, the semicircular one: the press took up the matter, and Dr. Johnson (the friend of Gwyn) wrote three several letters in the Gazetteer in opposition to Mylne. Blackfriars Bridge consisted of nine elliptical arches, the piers of which were adorned with Ionic columns, and was 955 feet in length from wharf to wharf. Sixty years had scarcely passed before the bridge showed signs of insecurity, mainly due to the increased scour caused by the removal of Old London Bridge. In 1833 a thorough examination of it was made by Messrs. Walker and Burges, who reported that it needed immediate and extensive repairs, which they were directed to carry out. The foundations were strengthened, the cutwaters recased, the roadway lowered, and a solid parapet substituted for the open balustrade. These works cost close upon £100,000. It was admitted that the picturesque beauty of the bridge was destroyed, but it was said that it had been rendered more convenient and would now last for centuries. An idle prophecy: these works were completed at the end of 1840, and as early as 1860 the demolition of the bridge was declared to be urgent. It was taken down and a temporary wooden bridge substituted. The designs of Mr. J. Cubitt, C.E., being adopted, the foundation stone of the new Blackfriars Bridge was laid by the Lord Mayor on July 20, 1865; and it was opened by the Queen in state on November 6, 1869. It consists of five iron arches, the shore arches being 155 feet in span, the next 175 feet each, and the centre arch 185 feet. A cast-iron balustrade surmounts the arches. In front of each pier is a short shaft, 7 feet in diameter, of polished granite with Portland stone capitals: these were intended to carry bronze groups, and some such crowning ornaments seem essential to the completion of the design, but have not as yet been supplied. The bridge is 75 feet wide between the parapets. The effect of the bridge is much injured by the proximity of the ugly lattice-girder bridges carrying the London, Chatham and Dover Railway across the Thames, which shut out the view of St. Paul's, so striking from the original Blackfriars Bridge.

Blackfriars Road. An Act was passed 1769 to make a road from the south end of Blackfriars Bridge to the turnpike road across St. George's Fields, and near to the house called the Dog and Duck. It was known as Great Surrey Street until about 1829. It is about two-thirds of a mile in length. West Side.-Rotunda, built for the Leverian Museum; afterwards converted into the Surrey institution [which see]. Christ Church, Surrey, built about 1740; the site of the church is a part of Old Paris Garden. Great Charlotte Street. Stamford Street. Peabody Square—the great square of model tenements erected by the Trustees of the Peabody Fund on the site of the Magdalen Hospital. Surrey Theatre. East Side.-Goods Depôt of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Starting place for the South London tramcars. Southwark Street. Surrey Chapel, an octagonal building at the corner of Charlotte Street, built by the

eccentric but excellent Rowland Hill, and opened June 8, 1783. The congregation removed in 1876 to a new building, called Christ Church, Westminster Road; but Surrey Chapel was continued as a place of worship till March 23, 1881, when it was finally closed. The Rev. Rowland Hill died at his house in the Blackfriars Road, April 11, 1833, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in a vault "underneath the pulpit" in which he had preached for nearly fifty years. Here his corpse remained for nearly another half century, until on the closing of the chapel it was removed, April 14, 1881, and reinterred "under the Lincoln Tower" of Christ Church, Westminster Road. Over the door at the opposite corner of Charlotte Street, is the figure of a dog with his head in a pot. The Dog's Head in the Pot is mentioned as an old London sign in a curious old tract printed by Wynkyn de Worde, called "Cocke Lorelles Bote." Obelisk at the south end of the road, erected in 1771 in honour of Brass Crosby, Lord Mayor, who was imprisoned in the Tower by the House of Commons for committing a messenger of the House into custody.

Blackfriars Theatre was founded by James Burbage in 15961597, and not in 1576 as is usually stated on the authority of Mr. Payne Collier. Sir William More of Loseley conveyed to Burbage a large portion of a house in the precinct of the Blackfriars, formerly belonging to Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels, and this Burbage converted into a theatre. The deed of feoffment from Sir William More of Loseley, county Surrey, to James Burbage, dated February 4, 1596, was discovered by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps at the Lord Chamberlain's office, and is printed in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. vol. i. p. 299. The deed specifies very fully what the property really was, for instance :

Seaven greate upper romes as they are nowe devided, beinge all uppon one flower, and sometyme beinge one greate and entire rome, with the roufe over the same covered with lead. Also all that greate payre of wyndinge stayres, with the stayre-case thereunto belongeinge which leadeth upp unto the same seaven greate upper romes out of the greate yarde there, which doth lye nexte unto the Pype-office.

The information contained in this deed is corroborated by "a Petition to the Privy Council from the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, November 1596, against the theatre which was then about to be established by Burbage," in which it is directly stated

that there hath not at any tyme heretofore been used any comon play house within the same precinct; but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the Cittie by reason of the great inconveniences and ill rule that followeth them, they now thincke to plant themselves in liberties.1

From the Petition of Cuthbert Burbage and Winifrid, widow of his brother Richard Burbage (dated 1635), we learn that the Burbages leased the theatre to Henry Evans for the performances of the Children of the Chapel, and that the King's servants acted there after the departure of the children.

1 Petition printed in Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. vol. i. p. 304.