2

Rookery, and long the abode of wretchedness, so that St. Giles has become synonymous for squalor and dirt) could show its pound, its cage, its round-house and watch-house, its stocks, its whipping-post, and at one time its gallows.

Adjoining the old church of St. Pancras is a burial-ground appertaining to the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, but now united to the adjoining burial-ground of St. Pancras, and converted into a garden open to the public. The chapel was built and the ground laid out in 1804. Here, distinguished by an altar or table-tomb of brick, surmounted by a thick slab of Portland stone, are the graves of John Flaxman, the sculptor, his wife and sister. Here also is the tomb of Sir John Soane, architect of the Bank of England.

Giles's (St.) Hospital, ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS, a hospital for lepers, founded in the year 1101, by Matilda, Queen of Henry I., and then and long after an independent house. Edward III., to ease his exchequer of a payment, made it a cell to Burton St. Lazar, in Leicestershire, and Henry VIII., soon after the dissolution of religious houses, converted the chapel of the hospital into a parish church of the name of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and granted the hospital itself to John Dudley, Lord L'Isle, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, beheaded in 1553. There is a letter from Queen Margaret of Anjou "to the Master of Saint Giles in the feld beind the Cite of London," desiring him to admit one "Robert Uphome of the age of xvii yere, late querester unto the reverende fader in God our beal uncle the cardinal, who is now by Godd's visitation become lepour."1 The north end garden wall of the hospital was long a place of public execution. Here Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was executed in the reign of Henry V., and Babington and his accomplices in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was the custom at this hospital to present prisoners on their way to execution at Tyburn with a great bowl of ale, as "their last refreshment in this life." [See Bowl Yard.] If Death should keep a tippling house

Giles's (St.) Pound, an old London landmark, near the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. It originally stood in the middle of High Street, but was removed in 1656, and was then placed on the broad space where St. Giles's, High Street, Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street meet. Originally it was what its name denotes, the Pound belonging to the parish. The cage adjoined the Pound when 1 Letters of Margaret of Anjou, Camden Soc., 1863, p. 95.

VOL. II

I

it stood in the High Street, and was used as a prison. Miles were measured from it in the same way as from the Standard in Cornhill, Hicks's Hall, and Hyde Park Corner.

The next object of notoriety is a large circular boundary stone let into the pavement in the middle of the highway, exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right angle. When the charity boys of St. Giles's parish walk the boundaries, those who have deserved flogging are whipped at this stone, in order that as they grow up they may remember the place, and be competent to give evidence should any dispute arise with the adjoining parishes. Near this stone stood St. Giles's Pound.-Smith's Book for a Rainy Day, p. 22.

Gillingham Street, VAUXHALL BRIDGE ROAD, PIMLICO. Sir John Ross, the arctic discoverer, died at No. 43 in this street, August 30, 1856, in his seventy-ninth year.

Giltspur Street, NEWGATE STREET, leading to Smithfield; otherwise KNIGHTRIDERS STREET, and so called, says Stow, "of the knights and others riding that way into Smithfield."1 It was originally a very short street, extending no farther than the east end of the Compter and Cock Lane; the highway beyond, as far as Smithfield, was called Pie Corner. Observe. On the west side, St. Sepulchre's Church; Cock Lane (the scene of "the Cock Lane ghost"); and the figure of a boy over a public-house, at the corner of Cock Lane, erected to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666.

And enter'd into Gilt Spur Street,
But such a Nosegay did I meet,
Arising from the Pig and Pork,
Of greasy Cooks at sweating Work,
Enough to 've made a faithless Jew,
Or freckly Scotch-man Keck or Spew,
Who are of Swine's-Flesh much affear'd,
E'er since the Devil drown'd the Herd,
And brought the Hogs he had possest,
To a bad Market at the best.

Hudibras Redivivus, 4to, 1707.

Giltspur Street Compter, a debtors' prison and house of correction, formerly on the east side of Giltspur Street (over against St. Sepulchre's Church), appertaining to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, and removed hither from Wood Street in the year 1791. Designed by George Dance, jun., the architect to the Corporation; it was a heavy rusticated stone building, somewhat resembling Newgate in character. It was taken down in 1855. A portion of the site was added to the grounds of Christ's Hospital.

Gin Lane, ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS, a locality introduced here as Hogarth has made it a part of London by his well-known engraving. There was no Gin Lane in London before or after Hogarth's time. In the background he has drawn the church of St. George, Bloomsbury.

1 Stow, p. 139.

Girdlers' Hall, 39 BASINGHALL STREET, CITY, the hall of "The Master and Wardens or Keepers of the Art or Mystery of the Girdlers of London," a Company incorporated by Henry VI. in 1449, and confirmed by Queen Elizabeth in 1568, when the pinners and wire-drawers were incorporated with them. "They seem to have been," says Strype, "a fraternity of St. Laurence, because of the three gridirons, their arms;" but Mr. Thoms is of opinion, and those north country readers who know what a girdle-iron is will probably agree with him in thinking, that the gridirons or girdle-irons are borne with reference to the name of the Company.1 The hall, on the east side of Basinghall Street, was built, 1681-1682, in place of the hall destroyed in the Great Fire, and was restored and remodelled in 1878-1879. The entrance is by a handsome gateway, which forms the centre of a large block of warehouses and offices (of red brick and stone in the fashionable Queen Anne style), erected at the same time by the Company.

Glass House Alley, WHITEFRIARS and BLACKFRIARS.

One James Verselyn, a stranger, a Venetian, about the year 1580, or perhaps somewhat before, was the first that set up a Glass-house in London for making Venice Glasses; for which the Queen granted him a privilege under her Great Seal. But the Glass Sellers in London were much aggrieved at this, and showed the Lords of the Privy Council that it was the overthrow of fifty households using only the trade of selling of glasses. There was a Prohibition in the Patent, that none should sell such glasses but the said Verselyn only.-Strype, B. v. p. 240.

The first making of Venice Glasses in England began at the Crotched Friars in London, about the beginning of the raigne of Queene Elizabeth, by one Jacob Venalinie, an Italian.-Stow, by Howes, ed. 1631, p. 1040.

Like the glass-house furnace in Blackfriars, the bone-fires that are kept there never go out, inasmuch that all the inhabitants are almost broyled like carbonadoes with the sweating sickness.-Dekker, 1607; A Knight's Conjuring (Percy Soc.), p. 21. Is it because the Brethren's fires

Maintain a glass-house at Blackfryars?

Bishop Corbet (d. 1635), On Fairford Windows, Works, p. 237.

February 23, 1668-1669.-To the Duke of York's playhouse, and there finding the play begun, we homeward to the Glass-house, and there showed my Cosins the making of glass, and had several things made with great content; and, among others, I had one or two singing-glasses made, which make an echo to the voice, the first that ever I saw; but so thin, that the very breath broke one or two of them.-Pepys.

The Whitefriars Glass-works (Messrs. Powell and Sons) are still on the old site (now Temple Street) and maintain their eminence.

Glass House Street, PICCADILLY. Built circ. 1679. Here in 1723 lived Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery (d. 1731), the editor of the spurious Letters of Phalaris, now only remembered by the attack of Bentley and the defence of Atterbury. When Atterbury was sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason, Boyle's house in this street was searched for concealed papers.

Glass Sellers' Company. This guild was incorporated in 1664, by the style of the Master, Wardens, Assistants and Commonalty of

1 Stow, p. 107.

the Glass Sellers of London. They obtained a grant of livery in 1712, and the number of the livery was increased in 1825. They have no hall.

Glaziers' Company. The glaziers and glass-painters of London were united as a fraternity and incorporated by Charter of Charles I., 1637, by the title of the Master, Wardens and Commonalty of the Art or Mystery of Glaziers and Painters of Glass in the City of London. It is the fifty-third in rank of the City Companies. The hall was burned in the Great Fire and not rebuilt.

Globe Alley, now GLOBE COURT, MAID LANE, SOUTHWARK, SO called from the Globe Theatre. In 1600 this place was known as Brand's Rents.

Globe Alley, on the W. side of Deadman's Place, Southwark, a passage to Maid Lane.-Hatton, p. 33.

Globe Alley, long and narrow, and but meanly built; hath a passage into Maiden Lane.-Strype, B. iv. p. 28.

"For discontinuing the passage through Globe Alley.”—Preamble, 26 Geo. III., c. 170.

Globe Theatre (The), on the BANKSIDE, SOUTHWARK, the summer theatre of Shakespeare and "his fellows," was built, not in 1594, as stated by Malone, but in 1599, as proved by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps.1 Richard Burbage and Peter Street brought the materials for building from the theatre at Shoreditch, and in the contract between Henslow and Alleyn and Peter Street for the erection of the Fortune Theatre, dated January 8, 1599-1600, mention is made of "the late erected plaie-howse on the Bank in the saide parishe of Sainte Sacviours called the Globe."2 [See Theatre.] On June 29, 1613, it was destroyed by fire, some lighted paper, thrown from a piece of ordnance, having fallen during a performance on the thatch of the building.

Let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Banke-side. The King's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage, the knights of the order with their Georges and garters, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like. Now King Henry meeting a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain chambers being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming in less than an hour the whole house to the very ground; nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks and one man had his breeches set on fire.Sir Henry Wotton to Sir Edmund Bacon, July 2, 1613.

The burning of the Globe playhouse on the Bankside, on St. Peter's day. .. which fell out by a peal of chambers that, I know not upon what occasion, were to be used in the play: the tompin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that covered the house, burned it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a 1 Ibid. vol. i. p. 305.

1 Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. 1887, vol. i. pp. 180, 181.

dwelling-house adjoining; and it was a great marvaile and fair grace of God that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.-Chamberlaine to Sir Ralph Winwood, July 8, 1613.

The Globe, the glory of the Bank!

Which though it were the fort of the whole parish

Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish,

I saw with two poor chambers taken in,

And razed; ere thought could urge, this might have been !

See the world's ruins! nothing but the piles

Left, and wit since to cover it with tiles.

Ben Jonson, An Execration upon Vulcan, Underwood's ed., 1631, p. 212. The Globe was, without delay, rebuilt in a superior style, and this time with a roof of tile, "King James and many noblemen and others contributing liberally to the cost. "The new Globe play-house," says Chamberlaine, writing to Alice Carleton (June 30, 1614), "is said to be the fairest in England."

As gold is better that's in fire tried

So is the Bankside Globe that late was burn'd,
For, where before it had a thatched hide,

Now to a stately Theator 'tis turn'd,

Which is an emblem that great things are won

By those that dare through greatest dangers run.

Taylor (Water Poet), Epigrams, 1630, p. 31.

Ben Jonson, in the conclusion of Every Man out of his Humour (as originally printed), refers to it as "this fair-filled Globe." In a list of tenements situate in the Liberty of the Clink, drawn up on February 27, 1634, in obedience to an order from the Earl of Arundel and Inigo Jones, of the 5th of the same month, is the entry:

The Globe Playhouse, nere Maid Lane, built by the Company of Players, wth timber, about 20 yeeres past, uppon an old foundacon, worth 20li pr ann., being the inheritance of Sr. Matthew Brand, Kn't. - MS. Papers at St. Saviour's, Southwark.

Malone says that the Globe stood "in" Maid Lane.1 "On the contrary," says Chalmers, "I maintain that the Globe was situated on the Bank, within eighty paces of the river, which has since receded from its former limits; that the Globe stood on the site of John Whatley's Windmill, as I was assured by an intelligent manager of Barclay's brewhouse, which covers in its ample range part of Globe Alley."2 There can be scarcely any doubt that the site is identical with that of the Globe Alley Meeting-house where Baxter preached in 1676-1677, and with the Windmill mentioned above. It was swallowed up by Barclay and Perkins's Brewery. It occurs in the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Saviour's, with Lord Arundel's original letter of February 5. The theatre was distinguished by a figure of Hercules supporting the Globe, under which was written, Totus Mundus agit Histrionem. During the hours of performance a flag, with the cross of St. George upon it, was unfurled from the roof.3 This celebrated theatre was "pulled doune to the ground by Sir Matthew Brand, on Monday, April 15, 1644, to make 1 Malone's Inquiry, p. 84. ? Chalmers's Apology, p. 114. 3 Apology, p. 275.