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November 1660.—The King [Charles II.], Queen, Duke of York, and the rest of the royal family, supped at Fisher's Folly at the old Countess of Devonshire's.Addit. MSS., 10116.

In a broadside ballad of 1660 entitled, "The Entertainment of the Lady Monk at Fisher's Folly," occur these lines :

Y'are a welcome Guest

Unto our board, whose presence makes us jolly,
Since you vouchsafe to come to Fisher's Folly;

So called from the Founder, a lackwit

Who built the house, but could not finish it.

Our George [Monk] a greater work hath well begun

And scorns to leave it till its thoroughly done.

During the Civil Wars it was converted into a Presbyterian and Baptist Meeting-house. Butler describes the Rump Parliament as a kind of "Fisher's Folly Congregation":

And when they've packed a Parliament

That represent no part o' th' nation
But Fisher's Folly Congregation

Are only tools to our intrigues,

And sit like geese to hatch our eggs.

Hudibras, pt. iii. c. 3. p. 894.

In 1670 it was seized upon under the "Act for the Suppression of Conventicles," and was one of the places "appointed to be used every Lord's day for the celebration of divine worship by approved orthodox ministers appointed by the Bishop of London." In a few years it reverted to its former owners, and it continued to be used as a Baptist Chapel till 1870, when the congregation migrated to a new chapel at Stoke-Newington, the building in Devonshire Square having been purchased by the Metropolitan Railway Company. [See Devonshire Square.]

Fishmongers' Hall, a large semi-classical edifice, which not unworthily occupies a commanding position at the north-west angle of London Bridge; the hall of the fourth on the list of the Twelve Great Companies, erected 1831-1833, from the designs of Henry Roberts, near the site of the old hall built after the Great Fire by Edward Jerman, the City surveyor. The original hall of the Company had been the mansion of Lord Fanhope, but was at different times added to and altered to suit the Company's requirements. It was entirely destroyed in the Great Fire. Jerman's hall is the scene of Plate VIII. of Hogarth's "Industry and Idleness." The chief feature of the interior of the present building is the banqueting hall, a superb room, 73 feet long, 38 wide, and 33 high, and very richly decorated. The Court Drawing Room is 40 feet by 25 feet, and the Court Dining Room 43 feet by 30 feet, and 20 feet high. Fishmongers' dinners are among the most famous of the City banquets. Often they have been the occasion of great oratorical displays, and sometimes it is reported of equally great failures. Erskine, though

so brilliant at the bar and in the House, was not a good afterdinner speaker. On one occasion at Fishmongers' Hall he made such sad work of a speech that Jekyll asked him if it was in honour of the Company that he floundered so. The earliest extant charter of the Company is a patent of the 37th of Edw. III. (1364); while the acting Charter of Incorporation is dated 2d of James I. (1604). Besides the Fishmongers' Company there was a Company of Stock-fishmongers, incorporated by a charter of 24 Henry VII. Thames Street was known as "Stock-Fishmonger Row," and the old Fish Market of London was "above bridge," in what is now called Old Fish Street Hill, in the ward of Queenhithe, not as now "below bridge," in Thames Street in the ward of Billingsgate. The two companies were definitely united by a Charter of Incorporation, 27 Henry VIII. (1537). The Company is divided into liverymen (about 450 in number) and freemen. The ruling body consists of thirty-fourthe prime warden, five wardens, and twenty-eight assistants. The freedom is obtained by patrimony, servitude, redemption (for defective service) or gift. The fees for taking up the freedom of Company are: by patrimony or servitude, £1: 13s.; redemption, 113: 10:6; upon admission to livery, £31: 15s. ; election to the Court, £33: 12s. The Company is well endowed and wealthy, and expends large sums annually in the relief of poor members, the support of almshouses and schools, exhibitions to Oxford and Cambridge, loans of from £50 to £300 to young freemen, and general benevolent purposes. Eminent Members. Sir William Walworth, who slew Wat Tyler; Isaac Pennington, the turbulent Lord Mayor (1643) of the Civil War; Doggett, the comedian, who (1721) bequeathed a sum of money for the purchase of a "coat and badge" to be rowed for every 1st of August from the Swan at London Bridge to the Swan at Chelsea, in remembrance of George I.'s accession to the throne. Observe. A funeral pall or hearse-cloth of the age of Henry VIII., very fine, and carefully engraved by Shaw; original drawing of a portion of the pageant exhibited by 'the Fishmongers' Company, October 29, 1616, on the occasion of Sir John Leman, a member of the Company, entering on the office of Lord Mayor of the City of London; statue of Sir William Walworth, by Edward Pierce; portraits of William III. and Queen, by Murray; George II. and Queen, by Shackleton; Duke of Kent, by Beechey; Earl St. Vincent (the Admiral), by Beechey; and Queen Victoria, by Herbert Smith.

Fitchett's Court, on the east side of NOBLE STREET, City.

Fitche's Court, a good handsome broad place, with a free-stone pavement; hath pretty good houses, with inhabitants answerable. At the upper end is an old timberhouse, where formerly Tichborn, sometime Alderman and Lord Mayor, dwelt. This house strangely escaped burning in the dreadful Fire of London, when all the houses round about it were quite consumed.-Strype's Stow, B. iii. p. 121.

Fitzroy Square, between Charlotte Street and the Euston Road, is one of the smaller squares, being about 4 acres in area, and was

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built from the design of Robert and James Adam, by whom the houses on the south and east sides (those with stone fronts) were erected, 17901794. The north side was not built until 1825. It was named from the Fitzroys, Dukes of Grafton, the owners of the manor of Tottenham Court. At one time Fitzroy Square was a favourite residence with painters. Sir Charles L. Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy and Director of the National Gallery, resided for many years, and till his death in December 1865, at No. 7. Sir William C. Ross, miniature painter to the Queen, lived and died (1860) at No. 38. David Roberts, the eminent landscape painter, lived at No. 7 Fitzroy Street.

Five Fields (The), PIMLICO, certain fields, through which what was called the King's Road ran, and on which Eaton Square, Belgrave Square, and the several handsome streets and terraces adjoining have been built since 1829. They retained their name and their mud-bank boundaries as late as 1825. The name is due to the circumstance that the fields were divided into five parts by the paths that intersected them.

I fancied I could give you an immediate description of this village [Chelsea], from the Five Fields, where the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee-house, where the literati sit in council.-The Tatler, No. 34.

I met, the other day, in the Five Fields, towards Chelsea, a pleasanter tyrant than either of the above represented. A fat fellow was puffing on in his open

waistcoat; a boy of fourteen in a livery, carrying after him his cloak, upper coat, hat, wig, and sword. The poor lad was ready to sink with the weight, and could not keep up with his master, who turned back every half-furlong, and wondered what made the lazy young dog lag behind.-The Spectator, No. 137.

I saw Coan the Norfolk dwarf at Chelsea; he did not show himself for hire, but kept a little tea-house, in what was then called the Five Fields. He used to walk about on the tea tables, among the cups and saucers, and so converse with the company as they were sitting around sipping their tea, his face being on a level with them. A sign of him was up at the house.-O'Keefe's Recollections, 1762.

Abel Boyer, the author of the French Dictionary, died November 16, 1729, in a "house he had built for himself in Five Fields, Chelsea." In 1803, when Campbell the poet was courting his future wife, Matilda Sinclair, he lived with her father in what Lockhart calls "a small house somewhere in the Five Fields, that is, the desolate region since covered with the solemn squares of Belgravia.” 1

Five Foot Lane, BERMONDSEY, now known as Russell Street, and so named after the rich and eccentric Richard Russell of Bermondsey, whose will, with his portrait, was published in 1784.

Sessions of Sewers held at St. Margaret's Hall in Southwark 1640-wharfing two rods of the sewer by the side of Five-foote Lane-penalty if not done.-MS.

Guildhall.

Five foot lane near Savory's dock . . . the Savory's Dock-Head the west side of Five foot lane to Dog Lane."-New Remarks, p. 172.

1 Quarterly Review, vol. lxxx. p. 58.

The place is marked in the plan of St. Olave and Bermondsey in Strype's Stow, 1720.

Five Foot Lane, north side of UPPER THAMES STREET (between Old Fish Street Hill and Bread Street), leading into Lambeth Hill, now called FYEFOOT LANE.

This lane is called Finimore Lane or Five Foot Lane, because it is but five feet in breadth at the west end.-Stow, p. 132.

Flaxman Gallery, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, GOWER STREET. A collection of plaster casts and compositions in alto and basso relievo by the great sculptor John Flaxman, R.A., which were presented to the College by the executrix, Miss Maria Denman. The cast of the shield of Achilles, designed by him, was presented by Professor C. R. Cockerell, R.A., and in 1862 a large number of his drawings and sketches were purchased by subscription and added to the collection. The gallery is open free to the public on Saturdays in May, June, July, and August, from ten to four, and at other times on special application to the Secretary.

Fleece Tavern, CORNHILL. In the great bubble year, 1720, subscriptions were open " at the Fleece Tavern, Cornhill," for £1,200,000," "for carrying on the undertaking business for furnishing funerals."

Fleece Tavern, COVENT GARDEN, was on the west side of Brydges Street, but as Aubrey speaks of it as in York Street, it may possibly have had an entrance from that street. After the Restoration it acquired notoriety on account of the turbulence of its frequenters.

December 1, 1660.-There fell into our company old Mr. Flower and another gentleman, who did tell us how a Scotch Knight was killed basely the other day at the Fleece in Covent Garden, where there had been a great many formerly killed.-Pepys.

From Rugge's Diurnal it would appear that the knight's name was Sir John Gooscall, and the murderer one Balendin, a Scotchman. L'Estrange in 1667 alludes to the notoriety of the Fleece for broils and tumults, and Aubrey, writing in 1692, says that "the Fleece Tavern in Covent Garden (in York Street) was very unfortunate for homicides; there have been several killed there in my time. It is now a private house."1 Pepys, however, seems to have had a liking for the house; the name in the first extract is noticeable.

February 8, 1660-1661. —Captain Cuttle, and Curtis, and Mootham, and I, went to the Fleece Taverne to drink; and there we spent till four o'clock; telling stories of Algiers, and the manner of life of slaves there.-Pepys.

November 25, 1661.-After partaking of "oysters and good wine" with Captain Lambert at The Dog, and dinner with Sir William Pen, General Massy, and another Knight at the Swan in Palace Yard, "After dinner . . to the Theatre and there saw 'The Country Captain,' a dull play, and that being done, I left Sir W. Pen with his Torys and went to the Opera, and saw the last act of 'The Bondman' and there found Mr. Sanchy and Mrs. Mary Archer, sister to the fair Betty, whom I did admire at Cambridge, and thence took them to the Fleece in Covent Garden; but Mr. Sanchy

1 L'Estrange's trans. of Quevedo's Visions; Aubrey's Miscellanies, p. 31.

could not by any argument get his lady to trust herself with him into the taverne, which he was much troubled at, and so we returned immediately into the City by coach, and then set her at her uncle's in the Old Jewry."-Pepys.

Fleet, the stream which, having its source in the Hampstead and Highgate Hills, or Caen Wood, Hampstead, flowed through Kentish Town, Camden Town, and St. Pancras to Battle Bridge, and thence by Bagnigge Wells, Cold Bath Fields, Clerkenwell, to Holborn Bridge, where it received the Holbourne, and passing under Hockley-in-the-Hole and Turnmill Street and Fleet Bridge, joined the Town Ditch by Fleet Lane, and passed into the Thames at Blackfriars. The name probably comes from the A.-S. fleotan, to float, and as the name appears to have been mostly if not wholly confined to its lower, and in early days navigable, portion, it may be fléot, a place where vessels float, the mouth of a river.1 Below Bagnigge Wells the brook was so much augmented by the waters of the springs in that suburb of the City, Clerkenwell, Skinnerswell, Fagswell, Todwell, Loderswell, and Radwell, that it was known from a very early time as "the River of Wells," a name by which it is designated in records reaching back to Norman times and in our earliest maps. Later it came to be known in this part of its course as Turnmill Brook, from the mills on its banks. In the 13th century the river was "of such breadth and depth that ten or twelve ships at once, with merchandise, were wont to come to the Bridge of Fleet, and some of them to Holborn Bridge."-Strype. But as the population increased about Clerkenwell and Holborn the waters of the wells were diverted from their former channel, the stream itself was encroached on by wharfs, its waters were employed to turn the mills along it, and it became a receptacle for every description of tanners' refuse, house sewage, and all kinds of offal. Stow enumerates several attempts that were made by Parliament in the 35th Edward I. (1307) and in subsequent reigns to clean it and to keep it clean, so that boats and barges might pass and unload their cargoes at Fleet Bridge and Holborn Bridge as before; and the City authorities issued many ordinances to the same purpose.2 All, however, would appear to have been ineffectual. "It creepeth slow enough," says Fuller, "not so much for age as the injection of city excrements wherewith it is obstructed." 3 There were other obstructions than Fuller thought proper to refer to; and Ben Jonson tells us what they were in The Famous Voyage, describing the hair-brained adventure of Sir Ralph Shelton and Sir Christopher Heyden, who undertook to row from Bridewell to Holborn, and, more extraordinary still, performed their voyage:

All was to them the same; they were to pass,
And so they did, from Styx to Acheron
The ever-boiling flood; whose banks upon,
Your Fleet Lane Furies and hot Cooks do dwell,

That with still-scalding steams make the place Hell;

1 Bosworth, A.-S. Dictionary; Skeat's Etymological Dictionary.

2 Riley, Memorials; Liber Albus.
3 Worthies, London.

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