Coffee-drink, first publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own head." On the east side of St. Michael's Alley are the church of St. Michael and the Rectory House. Here too is the Jamaica Coffee-house, formerly a noted subscription-house for merchants and captains engaged in the West India trade. "The African and Senegal Coffee-house, St. Michael's Alley," Cornhill, was the favourite dining-place of Porson in his last days, and when the hand of death was on him he managed to find his way here from the London Institution.

Michael's (St.), ALDGATE. [See Aldgate Pump.]

Michael's (St.) Bassishaw, or "St. Michael at Basinghall,” a church on the west side of Basinghall Street, in the ward of Bassishaw or Basinghall, destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt and completed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1679. It is a plain substantial building of brick and stone, without any striking features.

Michael's (St.), CHESTER SQUARE, PIMLICO, a Decorated Gothic church, erected by T. Cundy, 1844-1846. The schools in Ebury Square were built in 1870.

Michael's (St.), CORNHILL, a church on the south side of Cornhill and east side of St. Michael's Alley, destroyed (all but the tower) in the Great Fire of 1666. The tower of the old church was famous.1

Higher (as they suppose) than any steeple

In all this town, Saint Michaels or the Bow.

The Debate between Pride and Lowliness, circa 1570.

This hath been a fair and beautiful church, but of late years, since the surrender of their lands to Edward VI., greatly blemished by the building of lower tenements on the north side thereof towards the High Street, in place of a green churchyard, whereby the church is darkened and other ways annoyed. . . This parish church hath on the south side thereof a proper cloister, and a fair churchyard, with a pulpit cross, not much unlike to that in Paule's Churchyard.—Stow, pp. 74, 75. This was one of the churches in which the Duchess of Gloucester did penance in 1441, walking to it from Queenhithe. The body of the present church was built from the designs of Sir C. Wren in 1672. The tower, an imitation of that of Magdalen College, Oxford, was partly rebuilt at the same time; but an Act of Parliament was obtained 1718 to complete it, and it was finished 1721-1723: It measures 130 feet to the top of the pinnacles, and is considered to be one of Wren's best imitations of Gothic architecture. The church measures 70 feet by 60 feet, and is 35 feet high. The church was "restored 1858-1860 by Sir Gilbert Scott at a great cost, the interior entirely remodelled, and a new and very elaborate Gothic entrance porch added to the tower. The interior left by Wren was of а debased classic," it is now mediæval in character; the windows are filled with strongly coloured glass;

1 Of the old steeple, destroyed in 1421, a pen-andink drawing upon vellum is preserved on the fly

66

leaf of a vellum vestry-book (temp. Hen. V.), belonging to the parish. It is engraved in Wilkinson.

polychrome decoration is freely employed; and stalls have displaced the old pews. The carvings of these will repay inspection. They were all executed by the late Mr. Thomas Rogers, and represent the plants and flowers of the Scriptures copied with minute care and great artistic taste from actual specimens collected during a long residence in the Holy Land by members of Mr. Rogers's family. Our native plants and flowers and sacred symbols are also represented. The porch was added 1856-1857, at a cost of about £2500. G. G. Scott and

H. A. Mason, architects.

Eminent Persons interred in the Old Church and Churchyard.— Robert Fabian, the chronicler (d. 1511). The father and grandfather of John Stow (d. 1559, d. 1526); the grandfather, in his will, directs his "body to be buryed in the litell Grene Churchyard of the Paryshe Church of Seynt Myghel in Cornehill, betwene the Crosse and the Church Wall, nigh the wall as may be by my father and mother, systers and brothers, and also my own childerne."1 The tombs of greatest note in the old church were those erected to the younger branch of the noble family of Cowper. In the present church was buried Philip Nye, with "the thanksgiving beard;" "buried in the uppermost vault of the church," in 1672. Nye was curate of St. Michael's from 1620 to 1633, when, by not complying with the ecclesiastical constitution, he became obnoxious to the censure of the Ecclesiastical Court, and was ejected. The father of the poet Gray was buried in this church.

Michael's (St.), CROOKED LANE, a church in Candlewick Ward, destroyed in the Great Fire, rebuilt under Sir C. Wren, and ultimately taken down to make way for the new London Bridge approaches. Service was performed in the church for the last time on Sunday, March 20, 1831. It was a substantial stone edifice, with a tower 100 feet high, and was generally reputed to be one of the handsomest of Wren's City churches. Sir William Walworth, who slew Wat Tyler, resided in this parish, as we learn from a record preserved at Guildhall, by which it appears that Alice, wife of Robert Godrich, "maliciously compassing how to aggrieve and scandalize William Waleworth," went on June 27, 1379, to "his house in the parish of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, and did horribly raise the hue and cry upon the said William." She was sentenced to the pillory, called the thewe, and to stand with a whetstone round her neck, but the punishment was remitted at Walworth's earnest request. Walworth founded a college in the old church, and dying (1385), was "buried in the north chapel by the choir." An aisle or chapel on the south of the chancel in the old church was called the "Fishmongers' Aisle."

The church of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, standing a short distance from Billingsgate, is enriched with the tombs of many fishmongers of renown; and as every profession has its galaxy of glory, and its constellation of great men, I presume the monument of a mighty fishmonger of the olden time is regarded with as much

1 Strype, B. ii. p. 145.

reverence by succeeding generations of the craft, as poets feel on contemplating the tomb of Virgil, or soldiers the monument of a Marlborough or Turenne.— Washington Irving, Sketch Book.

Michael's (St.) Paternoster Royal, or, ST. MICHAEL'S, COLLEGE HILL, a church in Tower Royal [see Tower Royal] in Vintry Ward, rebuilt and made a collegiate church (hence College Hill) by the executors of Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor; destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt under Sir C. Wren 1677-1678. It is a large well-built structure, the special work of Edward Strong, master-mason. The interior, 67 feet long, 47 wide and 38 high, is lighted by eight tall windows, and enriched with some of Grinling Gibbons's fine carvings. The steeple is 128 feet 3 inches high to the top of the pedestal on it. In 1866 the church was "restored, and the interior wholly rearranged" by Mr. W. Butterfield. At the same time a painted glass window was erected as a memorial of Whittington; and the organ, built by Renatus Harris for Whitehall and removed to this church about 1780, was enlarged and improved by Gray and Davison. The altar-piece, Mary Magdalen anointing the feet of Christ, was painted by W. Hilton, R.A., and presented to the church by the directors of the British Institution in 1820.

Richard Whittington was in this church three times buried: first by his executors under a fair monument; then, in the reign of Edward VI., the parson of that church, thinking some great riches (as he said) to be buried with him, caused his monument to be broken, his body to be spoiled of his leaden sheet, and again the second time to be buried; and, in the reign of Queen Mary, the parishioners were forced to take him up, to lap him in lead as before, to bury him the third time, and to place his monument, or the like, over him again, which remaineth, and so he resteth.-Stow, p. 91.

John Cleveland, the unsparing satirist of the Parliamentary party in the time of the great Civil War, was buried in this church in the year 1658.1 It serves as well for St. Martin's, Vintry, and the right of presentation belongs, alternately, to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury for St. Michael's, and the Bishop of London for St. Martin's.

Michael's (St.) Queenhithe, a church in Upper Thames Street, in the ward of Queenhithe, destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt under Sir C. Wren in 1677. This church, which stood on the north side of Thames Street, between Little Trinity Lane and Huggin Lane, was condemned under the provisions of the Union of City Benefices Act and the parish united to that of St. James Garlickhithe. The last services were held in the church in December 1875; the building was dismantled and the materials sold by auction in September 1876, and shortly afterwards cleared away. It was a good plain building, with a tower and spire 135 feet high to the top of the vane. This vane, in the form of a ship, was capable of containing a bushel of grain, the great article of traffic still at Queenhithe, opposite to which the church

1 Aubrey says that Cleveland was buried in St. Andrew's, Holborn; but the contemporary authorities agree that his body was removed from

Hunsdon House to St. Michael's-at that time a popular place with devout loyalists.

stood. There was some good carving, attributed to Grinling Gibbons, over a doorway at the east end of the church.

Michael (St.) le Querne, AD BLADUM, or, AT THE CORNE, a church in the ward of Farringdon Within.

St. Michael ad Bladum, or at the Corne (corruptly at the Querne), so called because in place thereof was sometime a corn market, stretching by west to the shambles... at the east end of this church stood a cross, called the Old Cross in West Cheape, which was taken down in the year 1390. . . In place of the old cross is now a Water Conduit placed . . . called the Little Conduit, in West Cheape, by Paule's Gate.-Stow, p. 128.

St. Michael in the Quern, at the upper end of Cheapside, was built from the foundation of free stone, and the pulpit, pewes and galleries all made new in the year 1638, and the Cundit adjoyning unto it began to be built from the foundation with free stone in the year 1643 in the maioralty of Sir John Wollestonne, grocer, and was finished in the year 1644 in the maioralty of Thomas Atkins, mercer.-Notes on London Churches 1631-1658; Harrison's England, vol. ii. p. 205 (New Shakspere Society).

It stood in the High Street of Cheapside, at the extreme east end of Paternoster Row, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. Leland, the antiquary, was buried in this church; and Sir Thomas Browne, author of Religio Medici, whose father was a merchant in the parish, was baptized in it. The church of the parish is St. Vedast's, Foster Lane.

Michael's (St.), WOOD STREET, at the Corner of Huggin Lane, a church in Cripplegate Ward, destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt under Sir C. Wren in 1673. It is of stone, with a porch and four windows on the south; the north side is unlighted. At the east end four Ionic columns support a pediment, beneath which is a circular window. The tower, 130 feet high, is crowned by a mean spire, a modern substitute for the turret of Wren's erection. The interior is 62 feet long, 40 wide and 30 high. It serves also for the parish of St. Mary Staining. The head of James IV. of Scotland was, it is said, buried in this church; but whether the head so buried was really that of the Scottish King is very doubtful.

There is also (but without any outward monument) the head of James, the fourth King of Scots of that name, slain at Flodden Field, and buried here by this occasion: after the battle the body of the said King being found, was enclosed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and so to the Monastery of Shene in Surrey, where it remained for a time, in what order I am not certain; but since the dissolution of that house in the reign of Edward VI., Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, being lodged and keeping house there, I have been shewn the same body so lapped in lead, close to the head and body, thrown into a waste room amongst the old timber, lead, and other rubble. Since the which time, workmen there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head; and Launcelot Young, master glazier to her Majesty, feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and seeing the same dried from all moisture, and yet the form remaining, with the hair of the head, and beard

1 A curious view of this church, with the Little Conduit and the surrounding buildings, is en

graved in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, from

a drawing, signed "R. Tresswell, 1585."

red, brought it to London to his house in Wood Street, where for a time he kept it for the sweetness, but in the end caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out of their charnel, etc.-Stow, p. 112.

The church was renovated in 1888 when the high pews were abolished.

Middle Exchange, in the STRAND, a kind of New Exchange, but considerably smaller. It stood (hence the name) between the Royal Exchange and the New Exchange, on part of old Salisbury House, and is rated for the first time in the parish books of St. Martin's in the year 1672.

Middle Row, HOLBORN, an insulated row of houses in Holborn, abutting upon Holborn Bars, and nearly opposite Gray's Inn Road.

Middle Row, so called as being a parcel of buildings raised up in the middle of the street, next the Bars, and reacheth to the King's Head Tavern, but more to the southward of the street, making but a narrow passage betwixt the houses on the south side, and this Middle Row; which said passage hath a freestone pavement, and is a place of a very good trade for retailers, as comb makers, cutlers, brokers, etc.-Strype, B. iii. p. 252.

Middle Row narrowed Holborn at this point, and as it became most inconvenient for carriage traffic and for foot passengers, it was decided to remove it as an obstruction; its demolition was begun on the last day of August 1867, and the roadway over it was opened in the following December. The removal cost £61,000.

Middle Temple. [See Temple.]

Middle Temple Lane, a narrow lane leading from Fleet Street to the Thames. Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, had. chambers in this lane. On January 26, 1679, a fire began in the next chamber to Ashmole's, in which he lost the library he had been thirty-three years collecting, 9000 coins, ancient and modern, and "all his vast repository of seals, charters, and other antiquities." His invaluable collection of manuscripts was fortunately at his house at Lambeth.

Middlesex Hospital, MORTIMER STREET, a hospital for the reception and gratuitous treatment of sick, lame, and cancer patients, originated, in the year 1745, in the benevolent exertions of a few individuals. The hospital consisted at first of a building in Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road, but soon a convenient site was found in the Marylebone Fields, and a lease of 999 years was obtained from Mr. Charles Berners. The building, after the design of J. Paine, architect, was commenced, the first stone being laid, May 18, 1755. The building of the wings was not complete until 1775. Enlargements were made in 1800, 1815, 1834, 1848, and 1859. In the Jacobites Journal, May 14, 1748, Fielding records that a man, thrown from a cart near St. Giles's Pound, had his arm amputated "at the Middlesex Hospital in the road from St. Giles' Church to Hampstead." The hospital was incorporated in 1836 and enlarged in 1848. Originally the funds could only support eighteen beds, but means increasing, in 1800