"not to bury them quick," to which James replied that the alternative would be equivalent to "burying him quick, for he could last no longer." So, Chamberlain adds, "they came home as they went, without doing anything."

Prujean Square, OLD BAILEY, on the west side, a few doors from Ludgate Hill, so named from the residence here of Sir Francis Prujean, an eminent physician, who was President of the College of Physicians 1650-1654. In the latter year, when Harvey declined the office on account of age and infirmity, Prujean was on his advice chosen for the fifth time. In Strype's Map it is called Prideaux Court, Dodsley calls it Prujean Court. Gunner, a fashionable hairdresser and perfumer, lived here, and in 1783 advertised that "ladies' maids, valets, and servants in general," are "taught to cut and dress hair in perfection in one month, at one guinea and a half each, at Gunner's Original Academy, No. 6 Prujean Square." Further, "Mr. Gunner is always at home to dress ladies at one shilling . . . best scented powder and pomatum included."

Pudding Lane, EASTCHEAP to LOWER THAMES STREET.

Then have ye one other lane called Rother Lane or Red Rose Lane, of such a sign there, now commonly called Pudding Lane, because the butchers of Eastcheap have their scalding houses for hogs there, and their puddings with other filth of beasts are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames. This lane stretcheth from Thames Street to Little East Cheap, chiefly inhabited by basket makers, turners and butchers, and is all of Billingsgate Ward.-Stow, p. 79.

Phil. Come, Sergeants, I'll step to my uncle's, not far off, hereby in Pudding Lane, and he shall bail me.-Westward Ho, Act i. Sc. 2.

Venus. Right, forsooth, I am Cupid's mother, Cupid's own mother, forsooth; yes, forsooth. I dwell in Pudding Lane.

Christmas. Good Lady Venus of Pudding Lane, you must go out for all this.— Ben Jonson, Masque of Christmas, 1616.

The Fire of London, commonly called the Great Fire, commenced on the east side of this lane between one and two in the morning of Sunday, September 2, 1666, in the house of Farryner, the King's baker. It was the fashion of the True Blue Protestants of the period to attribute the fire to the Roman Catholics, and when, in 1681, Oates and his plot strengthened this belief, the following inscription was affixed on the front of the house (No. 25), erected on the site of Farryner the baker's :

Here, by ye Permission of Heaven, Hell brake loose upon this Protestant City, from the malicious hearts of barbarous Papists by ye hand of their Agent Hubert, who confessed, and on the ruines of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged, viz., That here begun thet dreadful Fire which is described and perpetuated on and by the neighbouring Pillar.-Erected Anno 1681, in the Mayoralty of Sir Patience Ward, Kt.

This celebrated inscription, set up pursuant to an order of the Court of Common Council, June 17, 1681, was removed in the reign of James II., replaced in the reign of William III., and finally taken down, on account of the stoppage of passengers to read it." Entick,

who made additions to Maitland in 1756, speaks of it as "lately taken away." The house was "rebuilt in a very handsome manner." 1 The inscribed stone was buried in the cellar of the house in Pudding Lane, where it was found when the house was pulled down in 1876 and presented to the City Museum, where it is carefully preserved.

Hubert was a French Papist, of six-and-twenty years of age, the son of a watchmaker at Rouen in Normandy. He was seized in Essex, confessed he had begun the fire, and persisting in his confession, was hanged, upon no other evidence than his own. He stated in his examination that he had been "suborned at Paris to this action," and that there were "three more combined to do the same thing." They asked him if he knew the place where he had first put fire. He answered he "knew it very well, and would show it to anybody." He was then ordered to be blindfolded, and carried to several places of the City, that he might point out the house. They first led him to a place at some distance from it, opened his eyes, and asked him if that was it, to which he answered "No; it was lower, nearer to the Thames." "The house and all which were near it," says Clarendon, were so covered and buried in ruins, that the owners themselves, without some infallible mark, could very hardly have said where their own houses had stood; but this man led them directly to the place, described how it stood, the shape of the little yard, the fashion of the door and windows, and where he first put the fire; and all this with such exactness, that they who had dwelt long near it could not so perfectly have described all particulars." Tillotson told Burnet that Howell (the then Recorder of London) accompanied Hubert on this occasion, was with him, and had much discourse with him; and that he concluded it was impossible it could be a melancholy dream." This, however, was not the opinion of the judges who tried him. "Neither the judges," says Clarendon, "nor any present at the trial, did believe him guilty, but that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it this way." We may attribute the fire with safety to another cause than a Roman Catholic conspiracy. We are to remember that the flames originated in the house of a baker; that the season had been unusually dry; that the houses were of wood, overhanging the roadway, so that the lane was even narrower than it is now, and that a strong east wind was blowing at the time. of at first. Pepys put out his head from Seething Lane a few hours after it broke again, as if it were nothing more than an occurrence, and likely to be soon subdued. Thomas Bludworth) seems to have thought as late. People appear to have been paralysed, consequence was made to check its progress. it raged and gained ground, leaping after a house to house and street to street, at great distances from one another.

66

It was thought very little his bedroom window in out, and returned to bed ordinary fire, a common The Lord Mayor (Sir little of it till it was too and no attempt of any For four successive days prodigious manner from

1 Dodsley's London, 8vo, 1761, vol. v. p. 232.

Houses were at length pulled down, and the flames still spreading westward, were at length stopped at the Temple Church, in Fleet Street, and Pie Corner in Smithfield. In these four days 13,200 houses, 400 streets, and 89 churches, including the cathedral church of St. Paul, were destroyed, and London lay literally in ruins. The loss was so enormous that we may be said still to suffer from its effects. Yet the advantages were not a few. London was freed from the plague ever after; and we owe St. Paul's, St. Bride's, St. Stephen's, Walbrook, and all the architectural glories of Sir Christopher Wren to the desolation it occasioned.

Pudding Lane is now almost entirely occupied by wholesale fruit merchants and brokers.

Puddle Dock (originally PUDDLE WHARF), at the foot of St. Andrew's Hill, Upper Thames Street, Blackfriars, in Castle Baynard Ward.

Then a water gate at Puddle Wharf, of one Puddle that kept a wharf on the west side thereof, and now of Puddle water by means of many horses watered there.Stow, pp. 16, 136.

The town house of the Earl of Rutland, temp. Elizabeth, seems to have been here.1 Rutland Place and Rutland Yard (now Rutland Wharf), to the east of Puddle Dock, commemorate the fact. Sir Dudley Carleton was living at Puddle Wharf in 1600. On December 17, 1609, the Lady Arabella Stuart wrote to Cecil from Puddle Wharf beseeching that her Patent (of the "privilege of nominating such persons as shall sell wines, aquavitæ or usquebagh" for twenty-one years) may speedily pass the Great Seal.2 The house which Shakespeare bought in the Blackfriars, and which he bequeaths by will to his daughter, Susannah Hall, is described in the Conveyance as "abutting upon a streete leading down to Puddle Wharffe on the east part, right-against the King's Maiesty's Wardrobe "-" and now or late in the tenure or occupacon of one William Ireland, or of his assignee or assignes."3 [See Ireland Yard.]

I gyve will bequeath and devise unto my daughter Susannah Hall . . . all that messuage or tenemente with the appurtenances wherein one John Robinson dwelleth scituat lying and being in the Blackfriars in London neare the Wardrobe."Shakespeare's Will.

Puddle Wharf,

Which place we'll make bold with to call it our Abydos,

As the Bankside is our Sestos.

Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Act v; see also Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. ii. p. 167. H' had been both friend and foe to crimes;

Clodpate. Is not this better than anything in that stinking Town [London]? Lucia. Stinking Town! I had rather be Countess of Puddle-Dock than Queen of Sussex.-T. Shadwell, Epsom Wells, 4to, 1676.

Swift also introduces the Countess of Puddle Dock in his Polite Conversation, and Hogarth a Duke of Puddle Dock in his Trip to Gravesend.

But what most pleased us was his Grace

Of Puddle Dock, a porter grim,

Whose portrait Hogarth in a whim
Presented him in caricature

And pasted on the cellar door.-Hogarth's Trip.

The Duke of Puddle Dock was probably at this time a notorious personage, as there was published in 1739 "The Popular Convention, a Poem by the Duchess of Puddle Dock."1

Puddle Hill, PUDDLE WHARF, BLACKFRIARS.

lived the father of Archbishop Leighton.

Here in 1628

To his kind and loving Father, Mr. Alexander Leighton, Dr. of Medicine, at his house on the top of Pudle Hill, beyond the Black Friars Gate, near the King's Ward-robe, these.—Archbishop Leighton to his Father from Edinburgh, 1628,

Pullin's Row, ISLINGTON. A few houses on the east side of Upper Street, were so called.

Ben. The young gentleman in Pullin's Row, Islington, that has got the consumption, has sent to know if you can let him have a sweetbread.-Charles Lamb's farce, The Pawnbroker's Daughter.

Pulteney Street (Little), GOLDEN SQUARE, was originally called Knaves Acre.2 Sir William Pulteney, Knt., an inhabitant of St. James's parish, held the site of this street and adjacent property by lease from the Crown, part of which he demised in 1685 to Thomas Beake, a carpenter,—hence Beak Street. A "Mr. Poultney of St. James's" is recorded as the owner of "certain messuages and tenements in a certain place called Soehoe" as early as 1645. In 1720 Strype says "The Knave's Acre is but narrow and chiefly inhabited by those that deal in old goods and glass bottles." It is still marked Knave's Acre in Roque's Map of 1745, although it is figured as Pultney Street in Strype's Map of 1720. The present Great Pulteney Street was of later construction. At his house here died, July 9, 1742, John Oldmixon, the historian and party writer. Great Pulteney Street is peculiarly interesting to the musician from Joseph Haydn having resided at No. 18 (lately rebuilt), when he visited England; and from Shudi (properly Tschudi), the harpsichord maker and friend of Handel, having founded his business at No. 33 as early, according to the family tradition, as 1732. The sign of the house was "The Plume of Feathers." Shudi's son-in-law, John Broadwood, who founded the pianoforte business, succeeded to it in 1769, and it still remains occupied by his descendants' firm. There is a room shown in this house to which Haydn used to retire to compose.

1 Burn, Tokens, p. 495.

2 Hatton, p. 66,

Pump Court, TEMPLE, was so called from the pump in the centre. The present buildings were erected in 1826.

January 27, 1678-1679.—In the night the greatest part of the Middle Temple in London, consumed by a dreadful fire which began in the south-west corner of Pump Court.-Dugdale's Diary, in Hamper.

In 1710, when the future Lord Chancellor Hardwicke began to study for the Bar, he took chambers in this Court; and in 1715, when commencing to practice, he moved into a fresh set of chambers, but still in Pump Court.

When, in June 1740, Fielding was called to the Bar he had chambers assigned him in this Court.

Pur Alley.

Now Post and Pair, old Christmas heir,
Doth make and a gingling sally;

And wot you who, 'tis one of my two

Sons, card-makers in Pur Alley.

Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas.

There was a Pur (or Pur's) Court on the east side of Old Change near Cheapside; and Pur Field was the old name of a portion of Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Purim Place, MILE END, on the east side of the Cambridge Road.

The names of streets will often be found connected with some singular event or the character of some person. Not long ago a Hebrew, who had a quarrel with his community about the manner of celebrating the Jewish festival in commemoration of the fate of Haman, built a neighbourhood at Bethnal Green, and retained the subject of his anger in the name which the houses bear of Purim Place. This may startle some theological antiquary at a remote period, who may idly lose himself in abstruse conjectures on the sanctity of a name, derived from a well known Hebrew festival; and perhaps in his imagination be induced to colonize the spot with an ancient horde of Israelites.-I. D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. p. 360.

On this passage Mrs. Piozzi has a note (Piozziana, p. 207) which may serve to show that theological antiquaries are not the only people likely to idly lose their way when embarking on abstruse etymological conjectures.

Pye Street (Old), WESTMINSTER, runs from St. Anne's Street to Duck Lane, and was so called from Sir Robert Pye (the husband of John Hampden's daughter), who resided here. Strype in 1720 described the street as "better built than inhabited." At No. 8 lived Isaac De Groot.1 "I have known him many years," wrote Dr. Johnson. "He has all the common claims to charity, being old, poor, and infirm to a great degree. He has likewise another claim, to which no scholar can refuse attention; he is by several descents the nephew of Hugo Grotius; of him from whom, perhaps, every man of learning has learnt something."

1 Boswell, by Croker, p. 535.