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cool the ends of the Irons, and two forms for all officers to set their stuff on, then the Serjeant of the Cellar with Wine, Ale, and Beer; then the Serjeant of the Ewry with Bason, Ewre, and Towels: all things being thus prepared, Sir William Pickering, Knight Marshal, was commanded to bring in his prisoner Sir Edmund Knevet, to whom the Chief-Justice declared his offence, which the said Knevet confessed, and humbly submitted himself to the King's mercy; only he desired, that the King would spare his right hand and take his left, because (said he) if my right hand be spared, I may live to do the King good service: of whose submission and reason of his suit, when the King was informed, he granted him to lose neither of his hands, and pardoned him also of his lands and goods.—Baker's Chronicle, ed. 1674, P. 288.

A few years later (March 2, 1551) King Edward VI. notices in his Diary the committal "to ward" of "the Lord of Bergavenny" for striking the Earl of Oxford "in the Chamber of Presence." William, Earl of Devonshire (the patriot earl, and afterwards the first duke), was fined in the sum of £30,000 for caning Colonel Colepepper and pulling his nose in the Vane Chamber at Whitehall. "It is to be noted," says Sir John Bramston, "that this Colepepper had struck the Earl some months since, in the same or in the next room, and was tried for it at the Verge, and was sentenced to lose his hand, and was at the great instance of the Earl pardoned." The notorious Palace Court, long an oppressive tribunal for the adjudication of matters within the jurisdiction of this Board, was abolished in 1849. The name of "blackguard" is said to have its origin in the office of the Board of Green Cloth; the meanest drudges in royal residences, who carried coals, being called the "Blackguard."2 The term was afterwards applied to vicious, idle, and masterless boys and rogues; and was so used, as appears by the books in the Board of Green Cloth, as early as 1683, if not before. The following order, copied from the original Warrant Book of the Board, will show the nature of the duties of the Lord Steward at certain times :

BOARD OF GREEN CLOTH, June 12, 1681. Order was this day given, that the Maides of Honour should have Cherry Tarts instead of Gooseberry Tarts, it being observed that Cherrys are at threepence per pound.

It appears from the same books that Henry, Duke of Kent, when Lord Steward of the Household in part of the reign of George II., had £100 allowed him, and sixteen dishes daily at each meal, with wine and beer. The dishes have since been done away with; and the income of the Lord Steward is now a settled salary. The Poets Laureate used to receive their annual tierce of canary from this office. Cibber was the last who took the tierce; and since his time the Lord Steward has paid to the Poets Laureate an annual allowance in lieu of wine.

Board of Works. [See Metropolitan Board of Works; Woods and Forests; and Works, Office of.]

1 Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, p. 275.

2 Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. ii. p. 169.

Boar's Head, SOUTHWARK, one of the famous borough taverns, stood on the east side of the High Street, but the site is now covered by the approaches to London Bridge. The inn belonged to Sir John Falstolf, who lived in Southwark. Among the Paston Letters is one dated August 1479 from Henry Wyndesore, one of Falstolf's household, to John Paston, asking him to remind Sir John of his promise respecting the setting up of Wyndesore at the Boar's Head. The house became the property of Magdalen College, Oxford, "the gift of William Waynflete, late Bishop of Winchester, to the president and scholars, which he and others had of the gift of John Fastolfe, Knight, which he obtained for long services and course of justice.”—Ashburnham MS., British Museum. The inn was at one time leased to the father of John Timbs the antiquary, who let it out in tenements.

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Boar's Head Tavern, EASTCHEAP, a celebrated tavern, commemorated by Shakespeare, destroyed in the Great Fire, rebuilt immediately after, and finally demolished (to allow of the new London Bridge approaches) in 1831. It stood in Great Eastcheap, between Small Alley and St. Michael's Lane, four taverns filling up the intervening space The Chicken, near St. Michael's Alley; The Boar's Head; The Plough; and The Three Kings. The back part of the house looked upon the burying-ground of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane. The statue of William IV. nearly marks the site. Stow tells us, in a sidenote to his Survey (p. 82), that in the time of Henry IV. there was no tavern then in Eastcheap." Shakespeare alone refers to this tavern.1 It first appears as a tavern in a lease dated 1537, of "all that tavern called the Bore's Hedde, cum cellariis sollariis et aliis suis pertinentiis in Estchepe," etc. It was kept by Thomas Wright in 1588.-Index to Remembrancia, p. 355 (note). It was probably the best tavern in the street; it must have been of considerable size, as plays were acted in it. John Rhodoway, "Vintner at the Bore's Head," was buried, in 1623, in the adjoining church of St. Michael.2 The tavern was rebuilt of brick after the Great Fire, with its door in the centre, a window above, and then a boar's head cut in the stone, with the initials of the landlord (I. T.), and the date (near the snout) of 1668. This stone is now in the City Museum, Guildhall. Hutton, writing in 1785, says that "on each side of the doorway is a vine branch, carved in wood, rising more than three feet from the ground, loaded with leaves and clusters; and on the top of each a little Falstaff, eight inches high, in the dress of his day." The Boar's Head was subsequently

1 The Boar's Head is not named by Shakespeare in the text of either the first or second part of Henry IV. The scene headings (Henry IV. part i. Act ii. Sc. 4, and elsewhere)-"Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar's Head Tavern," does not occur in the early editions; but a passage in the second part of Henry IV., Act. ii. Sc. 2, where Prince Henry inquires after Falstaff, supports the tradition:

P. Hen. Where sups he? doth the old boar feed in the old frank?

Bard. At the old place, my lord; in Eastcheap. 2 In his will (in Doctors' Commons), he calls himself "Citizen and Vintner," but does not mention "The Boar's Head."

3 Hutton's Journey from Birmingham to London, 1785.

divided into two and ceased to be a tavern. At the time of its demolition the house was occupied by a gunsmith.

There was with me at that time [June 1588] out of the school [Merchant Taylors'], George Wrighte, son of Thomas Wrighte, of London, Vintner, that dwelt at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, who sithence having good inheritance, descended to him, is now clerk of the King's Stable, and a knight, and a very discreet and honest gentleman.-Liber Familiaris of Sir James Whitelocke (Cam. Soc.), p. 12.

March 31, 1602.-Letter from the Lords of the Council to the Lord Mayor, granting permission to the Servants of the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Worcester to play at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap.-Remembrancia, p. 54.

I mentioned a club in London at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, the very tavern where Falstaff and his joyous companions met; the members of which all assume Shakespeare's characters. One is Falstaff, another Prince Henry, another Bardolph, and so on. Johnson :-"Don't be of it, Sir. Now that you have a name you must be careful to avoid many things not bad in themselves, but which will lessen your character."-Boswell, by Croker, p. 348.

Among the many convivial parties which have assembled in this old tavern, one deserves particular mention :

He [William Pitt] was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire control. Others appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images; but every possible combination of images seemed always present to his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap. Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the readiest and most apt in the general allusions.—Wilberforce [1780], Life, vol. i. p. 18.

Goldsmith wrote A Reverie in this tavern (Essay No. 4); and Washington Irving an entertaining paper in The Sketch Book. The former, forgetting the Fire, fancied himself (Boswell, we have seen, did the same) in the very tavern that Falstaff frequented; and the latter, in his enthusiasm, has converted a sacramental cup, preserved at that time in the vestry of St. Michael's, into Dame Quickly's parcel-gilt goblet.

Bolt Court, on the north side of FLEET STREET, over against The Bolt-in-Tun, from which circumstance it perhaps derives its name.

Bolt Court, very good and open, with a freestone pavement; hath good houses, well-inhabited.-Strype, B. iii. p. 277, ed. 1720.

Eminent Inhabitants.-Dr. Johnson, in No. 8, on the right-hand side as you ascend from Fleet Street, from 1776 till his death in 1784. He died in the back room of the first floor. Johnson's house, for which he paid £40 a year to Allen, the printer, was afterwards inhabited by Mr. Bensley, Allen's successor in his printing business in Bolt Court. A fire (November 1807) nearly destroyed Johnson's rooms. A second fire (June 26, 1819) destroyed them entirely. Mr. Bensley rebuilt the house as a printing office, but it was sold in 1858, with three adjoining houses, to the Stationers' Company, whose excellent Middle-Class School (opened 1861) now occupies the site. Long before Dr. Johnson went to live in Bolt Court his blind friend Miss Williams had lodgings there, and Boswell describes him in 1763

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as drinking tea with her every night before he went home to the Temple, however late it was, and that she always sat up for him.1 Miss Williams became an inmate of his house in Bolt Court, along with his other pensioners, who however could not agree among them"We have selves, and hardly with their forbearing benefactor. tolerable concord at home," he writes to Mrs. Thrale, November 14, 1778, "but no love. Williams hates everybody. Lovet hates Desmoulines, and does not love Williams. Desmoulines hates them both. Poll loves none of them." And a year later (October 16, 1779) he writes, "Discord and discontent reign in my humble habitation as in the palaces of monarchs." 2

Behind it was a garden, 3 which he took delight in watering; a room on the ground floor was assigned to Mrs. Williams, and the whole of the two pair of stairs floor was made a repository for his books, one of the rooms thereon being his study. -Sir John Hawkins, p. 530.

He [Johnson] particularly piqued himself upon his nice observance of ceremonious A remarkable instance of this was his never suffering any punctilios towards ladies. lady to walk from his house to her carriage through Bolt Court, unattended by himself to hand her into it; and if any obstacle prevented it from driving off, there he would stand by the door of it, and gather a mob around him; indeed they would begin to gather the moment he appeared handing the lady down the steps into Fleet Street. Sometimes he exhibited himself at the distance of eight or ten doors from Bolt Court to get at the carriage, to the no small diversion of the populace.-Miss Reynolds.

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"ceremonious punctilios But there was refined courtesy as well as When Mrs. Siddons called upon in his behaviour to his fair visitors. him in Bolt Court and Frank Barber could not immediately provide her with a chair, he said, "You see, Madam, wherever you go there are Among his visitors at Bolt Court was John no seats to be got." Howard, who (April 1784) brought him the enlarged edition of his work on Prisons.

James Ferguson, the astronomer, at No. 4, where he died in November, 1776. William Cobbett, at No. 11: here he published his Register.

Bolt-in-Tun, FLEET STREET, a noted inn and coach office, No. 64, on the south side. The inn is gone; the coach office has become The a railway office, and only the name is left of Bolt-in-Tun Yard. Bolt-in-Tun was the rebus of the Bolton family. The White Friars had a grant of the "Hospitium vocatum Le Bolt en ton" in 1443.4

Bolton Street, PICCADILLY, the second turning west of DevonIt was built circ. 1699,5 and shire House; at the top is Bolton Row.

described in 1708 as "the most westerly Street in London, between

1 Croker's Boswell, p. 143.

2 There is a view of the house and of Johnson's sitting-room in vol. vii. of Croker's Boswell, ed. of 1835. An engraving in vol. Ivii. of the European Magazine (1810) shows the house as it was before injury by fire or alteration.

3 There are several references to the garden in

On one

Boswell, and in Johnson's letters.
occasion he writes to Mrs. Thrale (August 14,
1784), "I have three bunches of grapes on the
vine in my garden."

4 Rot. Pat. 21 Hen. VI.; and Coll. Top. et Gen. v. 383.

5 Rate-books of St. Martin's.

the road to Knightsbridge, south, and the Fields, north."1 Eminent Inhabitant. The celebrated Earl of Peterborough, from 1710 to 1724.2

I lie at my Lord Peterborough's, in Bolton Street, where any commands of your's will reach me.-Pope, Works, ed. Roscoe, vol. vii. p. 126.

The extraordinary Choice Collection [of Mr. Streeton late Serjeant Painter] consisting of models, figures, etc. . . . will be sold by Auction on the 5th Inst. at 3 in the afternoon, at his late dwelling-house Next Bolton Street in Hide Park Road.-Advertisement in Spectator of October 2, 1711 (No. 185).

About 1715 Pope writes to Martha and Theresa Blount as the "Young Ladies in Bolton Street." George Grenville the minister (d. 1770) lived here for several years before his death. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, died here in 1778. Madame D'Arblay removed here, October 8, 1818, shortly after her husband's death. Rogers took Sir Walter Scott to visit her here, and the latter found she had not lost the power of saying pleasant things. "She told me she had wished to see two persons-myself, of course, being one, the other George Canning. This was really a compliment to be pleased with." 3 Lord Melbourne lived here, and here gave his noted "little dinners." The young Pretender in his asserted visit to London in 1760 is said to have lodged in Bolton Street. Watier's Club was held in Bolton Street. Watier was cook to the Prince of Wales, under whose auspices the club was started. The dinners were unequalled in London. Mrs. Delaney was living in Bolton Row in 1753; and Mrs. Vesey gave her fashionable and literary evening parties (conversations) at her house in Bolton Row till her removal to Clarges Street in 1780.

4

Bond Street (OLD), PICCADILLY, built 1686, and so called after Sir Thomas Bond, of Peckham, in the county of Surrey, Bart., Comptroller of the Household to the Queen-Mother (Henrietta Maria). The Street occupies part of the site of Clarendon House. The east side was the last built, previously to which the west side was known as Albemarle Buildings. Hatton (1708) calls it "a fine new street mostly inhabited by the nobility and gentry."

Clarendon House, built by Mr. Pratt; since quite demolished by Sir Thomas Bond, etc., who purchased it to builde a streete of tenements to his undoing.Evelyn, Note to his copy of a letter to Lord Cornbury. [See Clarendon House.]

Eminent Inhabitants.—The first Duke of St. Albans (d. 1726), the son of Nell Gwynne and Charles II.

To be let or sold . . . A House in Old Bond Street, Piccadilly, of four Rooms on a Floor with Closets, good Cellar, and all other conveniences. Being the House in which the late Duke of St. Alban's lived. Inquire at the said House.-London Gazette, June 27; July 1, 1727.

Lavinia Fenton, original Polly in the Beggar's Opera. She came here in September 1730, taking the house "in which the Lady

1 Hatton, 8vo, 1708, p. 815.

2 Rate-books of St. Martin's.

3 Diary in Lockhart's Life of Scott, chap. 72.

4 Rate-books of St. Martin's.

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