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Now for the Black friers that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great charge and troble; which after was leased out to one Evans that first sett upp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell. In processe of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the King's service; and the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered that the house would be as fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakespeare, etc.-Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 317.

1

In the year 1619 the Lord Mayor and the Council of London took upon themselves to order "the discontinuance of the playhouse at Blackfriars, on petition of the inhabitants representing the inconvenience and blocking up of the thoroughfares occasioned by the great resort of people." The order is printed in Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 311. In spite, however, of the order, the players were able to keep the theatre open on the plea that it was a private house. In 1629 a mixed French company of men and women played there, and "were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage." It is to them that Prynne refers in his Histriomastix (1633) when he writes of "some French women, or monsters rather [who] attempted to act a French play . . . an impudent, shameful, unwomanly and graceless attempt." Garrard writes to the Lord-Deputy Wentworth, January 9, 1634:

Here hath been an order of the Lords of the Council hung up in table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all that resort to the Playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter's Lane, the Conduit in Fleet Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they must trot afoot to find their coaches; 'twas kept very strictly for two or three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again.-Strafford's Letters, vol. i. p. 175.

Here is a cloak cost fifty pounds, wife,

Which I can sell for thirty, when I have seen
All London in't, and London has seen me.
To-day I go to the Blackfriars Playhouse,
Sit in the view, salute all my acquaintance;
Rise up between the acts; let fall my clock;
Publish a handsome man, and a rich suit.

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass.

March 23, 1637.-Upon a little abatement of the plague, even in the first week of Lent, the players set up their bills, and began to play in the Blackfryars and other houses. But my Lord of Canterbury quickly reduced them to a better order; for at the next meeting of Council his Grace complained of it to the King, declared the solemnity of Lent, the unfitness of that liberty to be given, both in respect to the time and the sickness, which was not extinguished in the City, concluding that if His Majesty did not command him to the contrary he would lay them by the heels if they played again. My Lord Chamberlain [Pembroke and Montgomery] stood up and said that my Lord's Grace and he served one God and one King; that he hoped his Grace would not meddle in his place no more than he did in his; that players were under his command. My Lord's Grace replied that what he had spoken in no way touched upon his place, etc., still concluding as he had done before, which he did with some solemnity reiterate once or twice. So the King put an end to the

1 Cal. State Papers, 1619-1623, p. 7.

business by commanding my Lord Chamberlain that they shall play no more.Garrard to Wentworth (Strafford Letters, vol. ii. p. 56).

Troublous times were at hand and the players felt them. By an Ordinance of the Lords and Commons of September 2, 1642, "public stage-plays" were suppressed, and the players' vocation was for a time at an end.

Queen-Hythe, Paul's Wharf, and the Fryers also,
Where now the Players have little to do,
Let him pass without any tokens of woe

Which nobody can deny.

Ballad on Admiral Dean's Funeral, June, 1653.

Two years later, August 5, 1655, the Blackfriars Theatre was pulled down and tenements built in the room.1 Part of the ground on which it stood is still called Playhouse Yard. There was a void piece of ground before the Theatre "to turne coaches in." 2

Blacklands, Chelsea. The former name of a district which still survives in the name of a house. When Henry Holland, architect, in 1777 was about to lay out the new portion of Chelsea to be called Hans Town, he took a lease from Lord Cadogan of 100 acres of Blacklands. The site extended from the west of Lowndes Square to Marlborough Road, and from Knightsbridge Road to the Five Fields. The buildings then erected included Sloane Street, Sloane Square, Cadogan Place, and Hans Place. Blacklands House, in Blacklands Terrace, on the north side of Marlborough Road, is supposed to have been the residence of Charles Cheyne, afterwards Lord Cheyne, and Viscount Newhaven, about 1655, before he purchased Chelsea Place. The house, according to Bowack, was occupied as a French boarding school in 1705. It has been enlarged and is now a lunatic asylum.

Blackman Street, SOUTHWARK, extends southward from Borough High Street to Stones End. Blackman Street is mentiond by name in a Terrier of St. Thomas's Hospital, 1536-1537, and in the Charter of 4 Edward VI. (1550), by which he granted the Great Liberty Manor of Southwark to the Corporation of London.3

Farewel to the Bankside,

Farewel to Blackman's Street,
Where with my bouncing lasses

I oftentimes did meet.

The Merry Man's Resolution, Roxburgh Ballads, p. 319.

Under the Long Parliament there was constructed "a large fort with four bulwarks near the end of Blackman Street." The Southwark Police Court is in Blackman Street; the Queen's Bench Prison was at its south-western extremity; St. George's church is at its north-east end.

I Notes on London Churches and Buildings, A.D. 1631-1658. Harrison's England, vol. ii. (New Shakspere Society).

2 Collier's New Facts, p. 28.

3 Brayley's Surrey, vol. v. p. 329; Norton, p.

386.

Blacksmiths' Hall, was in LAMBETH HILL, DOCTORS' COMMONS. The business of the Company (the fortieth on the list) is conducted at Guildhall. The Company was in existence as early as 1325; was united with the Spurriers Company and incorporated by Act of 13 Eliz., 1571; and reincorporated in 1639. The motto of the Company is significant-" By Hammer and Hand all Arts do stand."

Blackwall.

To Poplar adjoineth Blackwall, a notable harbour for ships, so called, because it is a wall of the Thames, and distinguished by the additional term Black, from the black shrubs which grew on it, as on Blackheath, which is opposite to it on the other side of the river [or perhaps from the bleakness of the place and situation].—Dr. Woodward and Strype, in Strype's Appendix, vol. ii. p. 102.

The place taketh name of the blackness or darkness of the water bankes, or wall, at that place.-Norden's Speculum Britanniæ (Middlesex).

From an early date Blackwall was a great place for ships, shipbuilding, and docks. It is often mentioned in Sir Walter Raleigh's Letters to Cecil, and is spelt indifferently Blakwale, Blakewale, and Bralkwale. Thus on May 3, 1596, he writes, "From Blakewale, reddy to go down agayne this tyde;" in the body of the letter he spells it Bralkewale. He was then toiling to organise the expedition against Cadiz, and on the following day he writes from Northfleet, "if this strong wind last I will steale to Blakewale to speak with you and to kiss your hands."

January 17, 1661.-So after a cupp of burnt wine at the taverne there [Woolwich] we took barge and went to Blackwall, and viewed the dock and the new West Dock, which is newly made there, and a brave new merchantman which is to be launched shortly, and they say to be called the Royal Oake.—Pepys.

September 22, 1665.-At Blackwall. Here is observable what Johnson tells us, that in digging the late Docke, they did, 12 feet under ground, find perfect trees overcovered with earth. Nut-trees, with the branches and the very nuts upon them; some of whose nuts he showed us. Their shells black with age; and their kernell, upon opening, decayed, but their shell perfectly hard as ever. And a yew-tree, upon which the very ivy was taken up whole about it, which, upon cutting with an addes [adze], we found it to be rather harder than the living tree usually is. The armes, they say, were taken up at first whole about the body, which is very strange.— Pepys.

Here is a well-known wet dock, called Blackwall Dock, belonging to Sir Henry Johnson, very convenient for building and receiving of ships.-Strype's Stow, 1720, B. iv. p. 42.

In the last century Perry's ship-building yard, which afterwards passed into the hands of Sir Robert Wigram, and later of Wigram and Green, was, as long as ships were built of wood, the most important ship-building yard on the Thames, the larger proportion of the EastIndia Company's magnificent fleet and many men-of-war being built there. In process of time there was a division, and the firms of Money, Wigram and Green had distinct yards each, launching ships of the largest size, and building them of iron as well as wood. The yard of Money, Wigram and Co. was sold in 1872 to the Midland Railway Company to form a great depôt, comprising a shipping basin, wharfs and warehouses. At Blackwall (but not wholly within its boundaries)

are the East and West India Docks, and Millwall Dock; the river-side depôts of the Midland, Great Northern and Great Eastern Railways, and large iron-works and engineering and other establishments. Brunswick Steam Wharf is at the terminus of the Blackwall Railway, and in communication with the Great Eastern and North London lines. The view of the Reach of the river from the Wharf is very fine. Here was Lovegrove's Tavern (the Brunswick), famous for its fish and especially its white-bait dinners; but the tavern was closed some few years ago, and converted into an Emigrant Depôt for (assisted) steerage passengers to New Zealand. The emigrants are lodged and fed here till the sailing of their ship from the adjacent East India Dock. On an average nearly a thousand a month are provided for in the depôt. East India Docks are the Trinity Wharf and Stores.

Beyond the

Blackwall Railway, FENCHURCH STREET to Brunswick Wharf. Five miles 17 chains in length; built upon arches, and worked originally by two pairs of stationary engines-one at the Minories station, and one at Blackwall. The original rope was of hemp, but as this was frequently breaking, a wire rope was introduced about two years after the line had been opened. The rope extended along the whole length of the railway, guided by grooved pulleys, and coiled alternately at each extremity on drums. The expense of working the engines and ropes was about fourteenpence per train per mile. The carriages (attached to the ropes by "grips ") travelled alternately along either line, and the signals for starting and the general working of the line were given by the electric telegraph. But this was found an expensive process. The stationary engines were therefore discontinued early in 1849, and the usual railway engines introduced in their stead. The portion of the line from Fenchurch Street to the Minories, a distance of only 450 yards, cost £250,000.

Blackwell Hall. [See Bakewell Hall.]

Bladder Street, NEWGATE STREET. [See Blowbladder Street.]

Blanch Appleton, in ALDGATE WARD, was on the east side of Mark Lane near Fenchurch Street. Strype,2 1720, describes it as "a large open square place, with a passage to it for carts, which is called Blanch Appleton Court, having pretty good timber houses, which are indifferently well inhabited. It hath a turning passage on the south side by an alley which encompasseth some of the houses."

was derived from the manor of Blanch Appleton, which belonged in the reign of Richard II. to Sir Thomas Roos of Hamelake. It is enumerated (9th of Henry V.) in "The Partition of the Inheritance of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex," under the head of "London-Blaunchappulton."4 Hall, in his Chronicle (ed. 1548),

I The Artichoke Tavern, where white-bait was first eaten-'tis 60 years since-is still a noted white-bait house.

2 B. ii.
p. 82.

3 Stow, p. 56.

Charters of Duchy of Lancaster, p. 175.

writes it Blanchechapelton. In Strype's Map, 1720, it is given as Blanch Chaplin Court; the further corruption was into Blind Chapel Court, by which it appears to have been commonly known.1 The Common Council of London ordered, October 12, 1464, that "basket makers, gold wire-drawers, and other foreigners [ie. persons not having the freedom of the City] using mysteries within the City, shall not henceforth hold shops within the liberty of the City, but only at Blanch Appulton, so as they might have sufficient dwelling there."

Blandford Court, PALL MALL. So called from the second title of the Marlborough family. No trace of it now remains.

Now to the serious business of life. Up a court (Blandford Court), in Pall Mall (exactly at the back of Marlborough House), with iron gate in the front, and containing two houses, at No. 2 did lately live Lewisham, my tailor. He is moved somewhere in the neighbourhood, devil knows where. Pray find him out.-Charles Lamb to E. Moxon.

Some then of the famous snuff-coloured suits of Elia were made in what is now a portion of the Court Yard of Marlborough House.

Blandford Place, REGENT'S PARK (by Dorset Square). Coleridge writes from here, March 1, 1821.

S. T.

Blandford Square, REGENT'S PARK (west of Dorset Square). G. H. Lewes and George Eliot lived at No 16. Here the latter wrote Romola and Felix Holt. Sir George Hayter, the painter, who died in the Marylebone Road in 1871, lived in this square for a time.

Blandford Street, PORTMAN SQUARE, runs from Baker Street to Manchester Square. Michael Faraday in 1804 was engaged as an errand boy by Mr. Riebau, bookseller, at No. 2 in this street, and after a year's trial was taken, October 1805, as an apprentice without premium for seven years, to learn the trade of bookbinder and stationer. The shop is still (1888) that of a "bookseller and binder."

Bleeding Heart Yard, familiar to the readers of Little Dorrit, is on the south side of CHARLes Street, HATTON GARDEN. One of the Ingoldsby Legends, entitled "The House-Warming, a Legend of BleedingHeart Yard," relates how Lady Hatton, the wife of Sir Christopher Hatton, was carried away by the devil, with whom she was in league, and how her heart was found bleeding in the neighbourhood of Hatton House.

The last piece of advice which I'd have you regard
Is don't go of a night into Bleeding Heart Yard,
It's a dark, little, dirty, black, ill-looking square,
With queer people about, and unless you take care,

You may find when your pocket's clean'd out and left bare,
That the iron one is not the only pump there!

Blenheim Street, OXFORD STREET, runs out of Great Marlborough Street, and was so called in compliment to the great Duke of Marlborough, who was alive when it was built. Henry Cavendish, the

1 Hatton, 1708, so writes it in his list of streets.

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