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The principal street of this ward [Aldgate Ward] beginneth at Aldgate, stretching west to sometime a fair well, where now a pump is placed.-Stow, p. 52.

The bailiff of Romford, in Essex, was executed in 1549, on a gibbet near "to the well within Aldgate." "I heard the words of the prisoner," says Stow, "for he was executed upon the pavement of my door where I then kept house." 1

"A draft (draught) on Aldgate Pump," a mercantile phrase for a bad note.-Fielding's Works ("Essay on the Character of Men”), vol. viii. p. 172.

The water from Aldgate pump long enjoyed great local celebrity; but being found by chemical analysis to be impure, the pump was closed by authority in 1876. A drinking fountain has since been erected on the site. Close to the pump, and beneath the pavement of the street and the house separating Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street, was the chapel or crypt (engraved in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, and in Gentleman's Magazine, 1789, vol. i. pp. 293, 495) of the church of St. Michael, Aldgate, built by Norman, Prior of St. Katherine of the Holy Trinity, about 1110. The crypt was about 48 feet by 16, the walls of hard chalk, the pillars of stone, with good early English vaulting. In 1870 the house above it was removed to widen the thoroughfare, when, the vaulting being considered insecure, it was removed, and the crypt filled in and destroyed.

Alfred Club, was held at No. 23 ALBEMARLE STREET. Established 1808; limited to 600 members. In December 1811 Byron mentions that it had 354 candidates for six vacancies.—Works, vol. ii. P. 99. It was formerly known by its cockney appellation of Half-read.

I was a member of the Alfred. It was pleasant; a little too sober and literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis D'İvernois; but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia, and many other pleasant or known people; and it was, upon the whole, a decent resource in a rainy day, in a dearth of parties, or parliament, or in an empty season.—Byron's Journal, 1816, Works, vol. iii. p. 233.

The Rev. William Beloe devoted several pages of his Sexagenarian to a notice of some of the chief members of the Club, viz., Sir James Mackintosh, George Ellis, William Gifford, John Reeves, and Sir William Drummond. He styled the Club the "Symposium," and the members "Symposiasts."

It never recovered from the blow dealt it by the establishment of the Athenæum, and its separate existence ended about 1855, when it was absorbed into the Oriental Club.

Alfred Place, BEDFORD SQUARE, ending in North and South Crescents. The ground is the property of the Corporation of London. The Place and Crescents were laid out 1790-1814 by George Dance, jun., then Clerk of the Works to the Corporation. Sheridan Knowles lived at No. 29 in 1838. His father, James Knowles, author of the English Dictionary, died there in 1842. Thomas Campbell, the poet. was in lodgings in Alfred Place in 1837.

1 Stow, p. 55.

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Alfrichbury.

Agreement between Master Roger de Horsete, Precentor of St. Paul's, and the master and brethren of the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, respecting certain land called "Alfrichburi," which the former claimed as belonging to the prebend of Portepol, A.D. 1240.-Report by H. C. Maxwell Lyte (Appendix to Ninth Report, Historical MSS. Comm. p. 25.

Alhambra Theatre, on the east side of LEICESTER SQUARE, oriental in character, with a central dome and lofty minarets at the angles, was erected as the Panopticon of Science and Art, in rivalry with the Polytechnic Institution. It was designed 1851-1853 by Messrs. Finden and T. Hayter Lewis, architects, at a cost of about £100,000. It was sold May 1857, and converted into a circus, music hall, etc., under the name Alhambra, and acquired notoriety by its ballet performances. It is now licensed as a theatre; but rests its attractiveness on music, ballets, comediettes, and refreshments. The building was destroyed by fire in September 1883, and was at once rebuilt by Messrs. Perry and Reed, architects.

Alice's Coffee House, WESTMINSTER HALL.

May 5, 1808.-Alice's Coffee House.

Excise Officer came to me to know if it was considered that this house was like Bellamy's, and did not require any license as a general victualler's. I answered, Yes; it was so to be considered, as only for Lords, Commons, and Barristers. To this the Excise Officer replied he was quite satisfied.-Lord Colchester's Diary, vol. ii. p. 148.

All Hallows. This name, which is attached to eight parishes in the city of London, is of great antiquity, and most if not all of these small parishes appear to have been divided off from a large mother parish of the east of London, extending outside the walls as far as Stepney. The Rev. W. J. Loftie, in a valuable article on the Church in Old London, writes :—

First we have the great mother parish, probably All Hallows, but sparsely settled, and all the property of the bishop, who commences to disintegrate it by giving a portion to Barking Abbey. Next we see it broken up into smaller portions, two of which become the manor or aldermanry of a city magnate.-Church Quarterly Review, July 1884.

Then these parishes became separated by the formation of others dedicated to favourite saints of the time.

Allhallows Barking, a church at the east end of Great Tower Street, in the ward of that name, dedicated to Allhallows and St. Mary, said to be "the most complete medieval church remaining in London.” The distinguishing title of Barking was appended thereto by the Abbess and Convent of Barking, in Essex, to whom the vicarage originally belonged. Richard I. added a chapel to the building, and Edward I. a statute of "Our Lady of Barking" to the treasures of the church. Richard III. rebuilt the chapel, and founded a college of priests, suppressed and pulled down in the 2d of Edward VI. It is 180 feet long, 67 wide, and 35 high; the tower (rebuilt 1659) rises about 80 feet from the ground. The whole building had a narrow escape at

the Great Fire, for, as Pepys records, the dial and porch were burnt, and the fire there quenched. This church, from its near neighbourhood to the Tower, was a ready receptacle for the remains of those who fell on the scaffold on Tower Hill. The headless bodies of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (the poet), Bishop Fisher, and Archbishop Laud were buried here, but have been long since removed. The body of Fisher was carried on the halberds of the attendants and buried in the churchyard. Laud's body was removed after the Restoration to the chapel of St. John's College, Oxford. John Kettlewell the nonjuror was buried here, April 1695. The brasses (some six or seven in number) are among the best in London. The finest is a Flemish brass to Andrew Evyngar and wife (circ. 1535, and well engraved in Waller's Brasses), but the most interesting is one injured and inaccurately relaid, representing William Thynne, Esq., and wife. We owe the first edition of the entire works of Chaucer to the industry of this William Thynne, who in 1532 (when the fine old folio was published) was "chefe clerk of the kechyn" to King Henry VIII. The cover to the font is of carved wood, and much in the manner of Grinling Gibbons. Three cherub-shaped angels are represented supporting with upheld hands a festoon of flowers surmounted by a dove. The wreaths about the altar are evidently by the same hand. The organ, by Harris, 1677, was enlarged by Gerard Smith in 1720, again by England in 1813, and lastly by Bunting in 1878. The interior of the church was restored, the west gallery removed, and the walls decorated under Messrs. Francis, architects, in 1870, and painted glass inserted in some of the windows. William Penn, the Quaker, was baptized in this church on October 23, 1644.

On May 23, 1667, George Jeffreys (the judge) was married here to his first wife, Sarah Masham. This marriage is not mentioned in Maskell's History of Allhallows Barking, 1864, but the marriage of John Quincy Adams (afterwards sixth President of the United States) to Louisa Catherine Johnson, on July 26, 1797, is there noted. The living is a vicarage, valued at £2000 a year, in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Over against the wall of Barking churchyard, a sad and lamentable accident befel by gunpowder, in this manner. One of the houses in this place was a shipchandler's, who upon January 4, 1649, about 7 of the clock at night, being busy in his shop about barrelling up of gunpowder, it took fire and in the twinkling of an eye blew up not only that, but all the houses thereabouts to the number (towards the street and in back alleys) of 50 or 60. The number of persons destroyed by this Blow could never be known, for the next house but one was the Rose Tavern, a House never (at that time of night) but full of company; and that day the parish dinner was at that house. And in three or four days after, digging, they continually found heads, arms, legs, and half bodies miserably torn and scorched, besides many whole bodies, not so much as their clothes singed.-Mr. Leyborne, in Strype, B. ii. p. 36, and see Maskell's History of Allhallows Barking.

Dr. George Hickes, whose Thesaurus is so well known, was vicar

1 Life of Jeffreys, p. 24.

of this church between 1681 and 1686. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, was born in this parish, 1555.

Allhallows, BREAD STREET, a church in Bread Street Ward, at the corner of Bread Street and Watling Street, erected from designs by Sir C. Wren, 1680-1684, for £3348:7: 2. It was 72 feet long, 35 wide, and 30 high, and had a tower 86 feet high. The style was semi-classic. Inside was some good carving. Among the rectors have been-William Lyndwood, Bishop of St. David's, and keeper of the Privy Purse to Henry V. (d. 1446); Thomas Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and benefactor of Pembroke, Clare, and Queen's Colleges, Oxford (d. 1500); Robert Horne, Dean of Durham and Bishop of Winchester (d. 1580); and Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester. Lawrence Saunders, collated to the living by Archbishop Cranmer in 1553, was arrested by order of Bonner, and, after lying in prison for fifteen months, burned for heresy, February 8, 1555. His successor in the rectory was Bonner's chaplain, William Chedsey, who was, however, ejected on the accession of Elizabeth. There is a tablet to Saunders in the vestry. Sir Arthur Haselrigg was married at this church, June 26, 1634.

In Harl. MS., No. 6191 (f. 22), is a warrant (dated October 27, 1552), to pay "Mr. Knox, Preacher in the north," the sum of £40, and also a letter (dated February 2, 1552-1553) to the Archbishop of Canterbury, "in favour of Mr. Knox, to be presented to the vicaridge or parsonage of Allhallowes in Bread Street, in his disposition by the preferment of Thomas Sampson to the Deanery of Chichester." The old church, in which Milton was baptized, was destroyed in the Great Fire, but the register preserves the entry of the poet's baptism.

The xxth daye of December, 1608, was baptized John the sonne of John Milton, scrivener.

On the external wall of the church, about 6 feet from the ground, was a tablet, with the following inscription, which is now fixed on Bow church :—

Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn ;
The first in loftiness of thought surpasst,
The next in majesty-in both the last,
The force of Nature could no further go:
To make a third she joined the former two.
John Milton

was born in Bread Street on Friday, the 9th day of December, 1608, and was baptized in the parish church of All Hallows, Bread Street, on Tuesday, the 20th day of December 1608.

The great non-conformist divine, John Howe, was buried here in 1705.

Stow gives a list of some of the monuments in the old church. More to be noted of this church, which had a fair spired steeple of stone. In the year 1559, the 5th of September, about mid-day fell a great tempest of lightning, with a terrible clap of thunder, which struck the said spire about 9 or 10 feet beneath the top; out of the which place fell a stone that slew a dog and overthrew

a man that was playing with the dog. The same spire being but little damnified thereby, was shortly after taken down, for sparing the changes of reparation.—Stow's Survey, 1603.

Wren's church has disappeared as entirely as its predecessor. In 1876 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners decided to demolish Allhallows Church, sell the site, and appropriate a portion of the proceeds to the erection of a new Allhallows Church beyond the city, but within the limits of the Metropolis; the rectory of Allhallows, Bread Street, being joined to the united rectory of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Pancras, Soper Lane, Allhallows, Honey Lane, and St. John the Evangelist.

Accordingly, the ceremony of "deconsecration," as it was called, was performed in Allhallows Church on Thursday, October 19, 1876, by Bishop Piers Claughton, who preached a sermon from Luke ix. 59. The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs attended the service in state. In the course of the service a man stood up and exclaimed, "I protest against this service as a farce;" but he was at once removed from the church by the police. The remains of the dead were removed from their graves, and reinterred in Ilford Cemetery. The materials were sold and the church demolished in the autumn of 1877; and on March 20, 1878, the site, which, the auctioneer said, contained "a ground area of 3270 superficial feet," was sold at the Auction Mart for £32,254 £4000 of this has been appropriated for the augmentation of the endowment of the proposed church of Allhallows, East India Docks. A massive block of warehouses has been built on the site, and a tablet placed on the corner house with the inscription "John Milton, born in Bread Street, 1608; baptized in the church of Allhallows which stood on this spot."

Allhallows the Great, a church in UPPER THAMES STREET, immediately east of the South-Eastern Railway Station. Stow calls it ALLHALLOWS THE MORE (for a difference from Allhallows the Less, in the same street). The church was erected in 1683, from a design by Sir Christopher Wren, at a cost of £5641. It is 87 feet long, 60 feet broad, and 33 feet high, and is of the Tuscan order. The tower, of five stages, which stood on the north side of the church, was said to owe its peculiar character to the builder, who improved on Wren's design; it was taken down in 1876, in order to widen Upper Thames Street. A new tower and vestry were built on the south side of the church, the interior was entirely renewed, and the church was reopened, October 18, 1877. The old church, destroyed in the Great Fire, was also known as "Allhallows-in-the-Ropery," from the ropes made and sold near thereunto at Hay Wharf, and in the High Street. The interior is remarkable for a carved oak screen, extending across the whole width of the church; manufactured, it is said, at Hamburg, and presented to the church by the Hanse merchants in memory of the former connection which existed between them and this country. No mention of the date of presentation appears in the parish books. [See Steelyard.] Pepys speaks of Allhallows the Great as one of the first

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