"King's Troop of Horse," commanded by the Duke of Monmouth; the Queen's Troop," by Sir Philip Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire; and the "Duke of York's," by the Marquis of Blanquefort, afterwards Earl of Feversham.

The gay Horse Guards whose clock of mighty fame
Directs the dinner of each careful dame

Where soldiers with red coats equipped

Are sometimes marched and sometimes whipped.

Rolliad, Probationary Odes, p. 88.

The clock at the Horse Guards was long unrivalled for accuracy, and was taken for an authority just as the Greenwich time-ball is now. Six by the Horse Guards! Old Georgy is lateBut come lay the table-cloth-zounds do not wait.

THOMAS MOORE.

Horselydown, SOUTHWARK, is a district that extends from the eastern end of Tooley Street to Dockhead, and from the Thames to the Tenter-ground, Bermondsey. It was formerly an exercise and grazing-ground for horses-hence the name. The horse pastures have been long built over. The name appears as a Horseway in an obit of the reign of Edward III., and as a Horshighdown in the Paston Letters, 1456. The letter implies that it was written from the house of Sir John Fastolfe, which was there. In the reign of Edward VI. the parish butts were at Horseydown for the exercise of archery in the parish of St. Olave. In 1626 it was the exercising ground, named "the Martial Ground." 1678 "Beasts are kept at Horsedown." In "waste ground at Horseydown people denied Christian burial were interred, as, for instance, Brownists and suicides." One "witness deposes of a woman who had hanged herself, that he buried her and drove a stake through her according to the custom," Dep. temp. James II. A plan of Horseyedown dated 1544 is in possession of the Governors of St. Olave's School, in it is shown a large piece of ground with the name Horseye Downe surrounded by tenements. The Free Grammar School of St. Olave's, first removed from Tooley Street, near to London Bridge, its original site, to Bermondsey Street, is now here. There was a once popular fair held at Horslydown, represented in a curious painting at Hatfield House, by Hofnagle, dating from the last years of Queen Elizabeth. Fair Street, in which Thomas Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital, was born, commemorates the site. Horslydown was separated from St. Olave's and constituted a distinct parish by Act of 6th George II. 1733. The church (St. John's), a large substantial brick and stone building, is chiefly remarkable for the ungainly Ionic column which does duty for a spire. In 1415 John Claydon, a carrier, one of the earliest Lollard martyrs, was burned at Smithfield, principally for having in his possession a volume of heretical sermons. He was not able to read, but he said he had "great affection for the book, for a sermon preached at Horsleydown that was written in the said book."-Foxe, vol. iii. p. 532.

Horsemonger Lane, SOUTHWARK, the first turning on the left beyond Blackman Street. "In a terrier of lands belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, 1536, is recorded as held by one John a legh v acres lying in Horse monger lande for which he paid rent 16s." Here was the County Gaol for Surrey, commonly called Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Between the gaol and Newington Causeway was the Surrey Sessions House. The buildings were erected at the suggestion of John Howard, from the designs of George Gwilt, under provisions of an Act passed in 1791, and were completed in 1798. They consisted of a quadrangle of three storeys. Three of the sides were appropriated to criminals, the fourth to debtors. Provision was made for over 400 prisoners. The prison walls enclosed an area of about 3 acres. The building, which was of a plain but solid character, was taken down in 1879 under the provisions of the Prisons Act, 1877. Leigh Hunt was confined in this prison for two years (1812-1814) for a libel on the Prince Regent in the Examiner newspaper. Here he received a visit from Lord Byron (meeting him for the first time); and here, in June 1813, Lord Byron and Thomas Moore dined with Hunt. While here Keats addressed a sonnet to him. Public executions for Surrey took place outside Horsemonger Lane Gaol, and Dickens has left a vivid description of the scene he witnessed at one, on the morning of November 13, 1849.

Horse Pool, WEST SMITHFIELD.

Horsepoole, in West Smithfield, was sometime a great water; and because the inhabitants in that part of the City did there water their horses, the same was in old records called Horsepoole; it is now much decayed, the springs being stopped up, and the land water falling into the small bottom, remaining inclosed with brick, is called Smithfield Pond.-Stow, p. 7.

It was into this pond that Quarlous proposed to dip Dame Ursula. Quarlous. Do you think there may be a fine cucking-stool in the Fair to be purchased; one large enough, I mean? I know there is a pond of capacity for her. -Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Act ii. Sc. I.

Horseshoe Alley, BANKSIDE, SOUTHWARK. Augustine Phillips, the actor, was living in Horseshoe Court, as it was then called, in 1593, 1595, and 1604. He died in 1605, giving and bequeathing "to my fellowe William Shakspeare a thirty shilling piece in gould." It is fair to presume that the immortal legatee had often been in Horseshoe Alley. In 1601 Phillips was living in "the Close," and in 1602 in "Bradshaw's Rents." Three other of the Shakesperian actors, Slye, Jones, and Dowton, were living in this alley at the same time as Augustine Phillips.

Horse Shoe Alley was for this neighbourhood a centre in which Dutch emigrants had settled; here was their hospital or almshouse, "The Dutchman's house in the Clink," the "Dutch Congregation House for the poor in Horse Shoe Alley."Rendle and Norman's Inns of Old Southwark, 1888, p. 328.

Horticultural Society (Royal), 117 VICTORIA STREET, established 1804, and incorporated by Royal Charter 1809. The Society

has annual exhibitions of flowers and fruit, and distributes medals, money prizes, and certificates of honour to the most successful exhibitors. These exhibitions were held at the Society's garden at Chiswick until 1861, when they were removed to Kensington, where the Society had obtained a lease of a portion of the ground purchased by the Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851. This ground, about 22 acres in extent, was laid out as an ornamental garden by Mr. Nesfield, at a cost of £70,000, defrayed by the Government. The gardens were opened by the Prince Consort (who was accompanied by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, and the Princesses Alice, Helena, and Louise) on June 5, 1861. At the north end was a great conservatory, 263 feet long, 75 feet high, and 96 feet wide. The north and central colonnades were designed by Mr. Smirke, and the south arcades by Captain Fowke, R.E. In the garden was a memorial statue of the Prince Consort, which will be placed in the opening leading to the new entrance of the Royal Albert Hall. The gardens are now occupied by the buildings of the Imperial Institute, and Imperial Institute Road has been driven through them. The connection of the Society with the Gardens has The Chiswick garden is maintained as an experimental and training garden.

now ceased.

Hosier Lane, CHEAPSIDE, an old name of "the Cheape end" of Cordwainer Street, now called Bow Lane.1

Hosier Lane runs from the west side of SMITHFIELD into King Street. It is mentioned in a Corporation Letter Book of 1367.

Hosier Lane, a place not over-well built or inhabited, having all Old Timber Houses. This place is of a great resort during the time of Bartholomew Fair, all the houses generally being made Publick for Tippling and Lewd sort of people.— R.B., in Strype, B. iii. p. 284.

Also the same yere [16th Henry VI., 1437-1438] on William Goodgrom, of London, corsour, for scleynge of a man of court in Hosyere Lane be syde Smythfeld, was hangen at Tybourne.-A Chronicle of London, edited by Nicolas, p. 123.

On the night of June 27-28, 1869, William Duggan and his wife destroyed themselves and their six children with prussic acid at No. 15 in this street. Such a wholesale slaughter in one family the Coroner considered quite unprecedented.

Hospital for Invalid Soldiers, PIMLICO. Dr. Armstrong the Poet was appointed in 1746 "one of the physicians to the Hospital for Invalid Soldiers, behind Buckingham House"; and in a Map of 1764 "The Duke's Hospital" occupies the open space between what is now Grosvenor Place and the present St. Peter's Church. Between the Duke's Hospital and St. George's Hospital there are two ponds and the Lock Hospital. "The Duke" of 1764 was of course Mr. Carlyle's "Fat Boy," the Duke of Cumberland.

Houghton Street, CLARE MARKET. [See Haughton Street and Clare Market.]

1 Stow. P. 94.

Houndsditch, a street running from Aldgate Church to Bishopsgate, along the site of the moat or ditch which bounded the City wall. In the 14th century Houndsditch appears to have been a name common to all parts of the town ditch. Thus in the City Records of 1371 mention is made of the "Foss of Houndesdiche, between Newgate and Ludgate;" in 1372 "Houndesdiche, without Aldersgate;" in 1378 "the Foss of Hundesdych in Cripplegate." But in the later centuries the term was limited to the ditch between Aldgate and Bishopsgate.

From Aldgate north-west to Bishopgate, lieth the ditch of the City, called Houndsditch, for that in old time, when the same lay open, much filth (conveyed forth of the City), especially dead dogs, were there laid, or cast; wherefore of later times a mud wall was made, inclosing the ditch, to keep out the laying of such filth as had been accustomed.-Stow, p. 49.

Or it may have been so called from the City kennels, in which the hounds for the City hunts were kept, being placed here. From Arnold's Chronicle we know that at the end of the 15th century the hounds were kept in the moat, and were a great nuisance. Stow, whose early days were spent in this neighbourhood, adds to this rather unpleasant notice of Houndsditch a passage of much interest and beauty :

Over against this mud wall, on the other side of the street, was a fair field, sometime belonging to the Priory of the Trinity. . . . This field (as all other about the City) was inclosed, reserving open passage thereinto for such as were disposed. Towards the street were some small cottages, of two storeys high, and little garden-plots backward, for poor bed-rid people, for in that street dwelt none other, built by some prior of the Holy Trinity, to whom that ground belonged. In my youth, I remember, devout people, as well men as women of this city, were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Fridays, weekly to walk that way purposely to bestow their charitable alms; every poor man or woman lying in their bed within their window, which was towards the street, open so low that every man might see them, a clean linen cloth lying in their window, and a pair of beads, to show that there lay a bed-rid body, unable but to pray only. This street was first paved in the year 1503.—Ibid.

Brokers and sellers of old apparel took up their residence here immediately after the street was formed.

Wellbred. Where got'st thou this coat, I marle?

Brainworm. Of a Houndsditch man, sir, one of the devil's near kinsmen, a broker. Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour.

Tell all the Brokers in Long Lane, Houndsditch, or elsewhere.

Dekker's Knight's Conjuring, 1607.

But into Houndsditch, to the Brokers' roe.

Rowland's Liking of Humours, etc., 1611.

Antony Munday is outrageous against the increasing usury of the place, and Fletcher, in the Woman's Prize, call it Dogsditch

more knavery and usury,

And foolery, and brokery, than Dogsditch.

Taylor, the Water Poet, declares that its very name is due to the popular hatred of the brokers dwelling in it.

Was Houndsditch Houndsditch call'd, can any tell,
Before the Brokers in that streete did dwell?

No sure it was not, it hath got that name

From them, and since that time they thither came;
And well it now may be called Houndsditch,

For there the hounds will give a vengeance twitch.

John Taylor's Brood of Cormorants.

Ludowick Muggleton (d. 1697), the founder of the sect of Muggletonians, a tailor by trade, worked for a while at a broker's in Houndsditch.

I went to work in a Broker's shop in Houndsditch, who made cloaths to sell, and did lend money upon pawns, called a pawn broker.Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses, p. 8.

Houndsditch was one of the places that suffered most severely in the great plague of 1665. The narrator of Defoe's History of the Plague lived on the north side of Aldgate Without, close by Houndsditch, and it is the theatre of some of his most striking incidents. In Aldgate, he says, the plague raged with more violence and the number to be buried was greater than in any other parish. The trenches which were first cut for graves being inadequate, the churchwardens had "a dreadful gulf dug, for such it was rather than a pit," and in "just two weeks they had thrown into it 1114 bodies, when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface." The "mark" of this dreadful gulf, he says, was many years to be seen in the churchyard on the surface, lying in length, parallel with the passage which goes by the west wall of the churchyard, out of Houndsditch, and turns again into Whitechapel, coming out near the Three Nuns inn." Writing in 1720, Stow says:

Houndsditch is now built into houses, and is taken up by brokers, joyners, braziers, and such as deal in old clothes, linen, and upholstery, for which it is at present a place of considerable trade.-Strype, B. i. p. 127.

Gunfounders cast brass ordnance here in the reign of Henry VIII. ; when Strype wrote braziers worked here, and still there is, as there has been from time immemorial, a great coppersmiths' establishment. Now many of the better houses-and within the last few years several large and costly houses have been built-are occupied by warehousemen, "importers," and wholesale dealers in toys, and Birmingham and Sheffield wares, but there are still many brokers and clothiers. On afternoons the pavement, about half-way down, is cumbered with Hebrew and Hibernian dealers in old clothes, bearing their wares over their left arms, and eagerly bargaining or trying to bargain with each other or with chance customers. But the true old clothes mart, The Clothes Exchange, as it calls itself, is in a passage off the east side of Houndsditch (between Nos. 106 and 107), and in Cutler Street, where, in market hours, or on Sunday mornings, those whose nerves will bear the pushing and crowding, confusion, Babel of sounds, and fermentation of all unsavoury odours, may witness a curious spectacle, and perhaps acquire a little experience. To understand the locality, and especially