salt" given by Daniel Waldo in 1660, and a famous John Bull punchbowl. The archives of the Company are rich, well preserved, and very curious, among them being the ordinances of the separate companies of shearmen and fullers as well as those of the united guild.

The Company was first incorporated by letters patent of Edward IV. in 1482, as the "Fraternity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Shearmen [i.e. cloth-shearers] of London," and by Charter of 28 Henry VIII., 1528, were united with the Fullers, and were "thenceforward to become . . . and be in future, for ever, in deed and name, one body, one art, one mystery, one fraternity, and one perpetual commonalty, by the name of Clothworkers only, and no other." This Charter was confirmed, and others granted in the reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, and Charles I. The Company is governed by a master, wardens, and court of assistants; has large estates and expends a considerable amount annually in charities. Of late years it has done much for the introduction and extension of technical instruction. In 1872 it founded and endowed a Textile Industries Department in the Yorkshire College, Leeds, and this having proved successful, it in 1877 erected a new building for the special use of the department at a cost of upwards of £30,000. It has also subsidised the Chair of Chemistry at Bristol in connection with the dyeing industries of the West of England, and has largely contributed towards the building and maintenance of technical schools and colleges at Bradford, Huddersfield, Keighley, Dewsbury, and other towns of Yorkshire. The Clothworkers' Company was also foremost in establishing the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, contributing £12,000 to the building and establishment fund, besides an annual subsidy of £4200.

Cloudesley Square, LIVERPOOL ROAD, ISLINGTON, derives its name from an ancient tenure connected with the old Cloudesley family. The church in the centre of this square, erected in 1826-1829 at a cost of £11,535, was one of Sir Charles Barry's first Gothic designs.

Coachmakers' Hall, on the east side of NOBLE STREET, FOSTER LANE, originally built by the Scriveners' Company, but afterwards sold to the Coachmakers for £1600. In the last half of the 18th century it was let for various purposes, and was successively an auction room, a dancing academy, and the meeting-place of a debating society. at which Sir William Grant is said to have made his first appearance as a public speaker. Boswell calls it "a kind of religious Robin Hood Society, which met every Sunday evening for free debate," and at which on the Sunday he was present "the text which relates, with other miracles, what happened at our Saviour's death," was freely discussed.1 Here "the Protestant Association" held its meetings; and here originated the riots of the year 1780. The Protestant Association was formed in February 1778, in consequence of a Bill brought into the House of Commons to repeal certain penalties and liabilities imposed

1 Boswell, by Croker, p. 684.

upon Roman Catholics. When the Bill was passed, a meeting was held in this hall, May 29, 1780, and a resolution carried "That the whole body of the Protestant Association do attend in St. George's Fields, on Friday next, at 10 of the clock in the morning, to accompany Lord George Gordon to the House of Commons, on the delivery of the Protestant petition." His lordship, who was present, observed, "If less than 20,000 of his fellow-citizens attended him on that day, he would not present their petition." On the day appointed (Friday, June 2) the Association assembled in St. George's Fields. From 60,000 to 100,000 persons are said to have been present; these were marshalled in three bands, and then followed those scenes of pillage, destruction, and horror which are only too well known.1 The hall was rebuilt in 1841, but gave place in 1870 to the present more commodious structure. The Company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was incorporated in 1677, and ranks seventy-ninth in order of precedence among the City Companies. The Company has taken an active share in the recent efforts to advance technical instruction. It has formed a good library of reference for coachmakers, held exhibitions of carriages and designs, and given prizes for the best designs and working drawings.

Coade's Row, LAMBETH, the name originally given to a number of houses on the north side of the Westminster Bridge Road, near the bridge foot, opposite Astley's amphitheatre. They marked the site of the Artificial Stone Manufactory founded by Messrs. Coade in 1768, in which John Bacon, the sculptor, previous to his election in 1770 into the Royal Academy, worked for many years. Flaxman also modelled here for a time, and so did Benjamin West, maintaining that painters made the best sculptors. It was here that the art of terra cotta was revived in England.

Coal Exchange, in LOWER THAMES STREET, nearly opposite Billingsgate, established pursuant to 47 Geo. III., c. 68. The first stone of the present building (J. B. Bunning, architect) was laid December 14, 1847, and the building opened by Prince Albert, in person, October 30, 1849. In making the foundations a Roman hypocaust was laid open, perhaps the most interesting of the many Roman remains discovered in London. It has been arched over, so as to continue easy of inspection. The building is a rotunda 60 feet in diameter, with a cupola roof 74 feet high. The interior decorations of the Exchange are by F. Sang, and represent the various species of ferns, palms, and other plants found in strata of the coal formation; the principal collieries and mouths of the shafts; portraits of men who have rendered service to the trade; colliers' tackle, implements, etc. The floor is laid in the form of the mariner's compass, and consists of upwards of 40,000 pieces of wood. The black oak portions were taken from the bed of the Tyne, and the mulberry wood introduced as the blade of the dagger in the City shield was taken from a tree said to have been 1 Lord Stanhope's Hist. of England, 3d. ed. vol. vii. pp. 14, 16, etc.

planted by Peter the Great when in this country. There is a museum open from twelve to four on the first Monday in each month.

Coal Yard (The), DRURY LANE, the last turning on the east side, near the St. Giles's end of the lane. Here, it is said by Oldys, Nell Gwynne was born. The tradition that she was a native of Hereford rests on very slender authority. The place is now named Goldsmith Street.

Cobourg Theatre, WATERLOO BRIDGE ROAD, LAMBETH (afterwards the Victoria Theatre and now the Victoria (Temperance) Music Hall), was so called after Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (husband of the Princess Charlotte of Wales), who laid the first stone, by proxy, on September 14, 1816. The architect's name was Rudolph Cabanel. It was first opened May 11, 1818. The original promoters were Jones and Dunn of the Circus, or Surrey Theatre, and the first drop scene was a view of Claremont. There is a view of the interior by Schnebbelie in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, vol. ii. [See Victoria Theatre.]

Cock Lane, SHOREDITCH, now BOUNDARY STREET, the first turning from Shoreditch on the north side of Church Street. It extends to Shoreditch Church.

Cock Lane, a pleasant one, on the east side of Shoreditch, leading to Swan Close.-Hatton (1708), p. 19.

She [Deborah, Milton's daughter] had seven sons and three daughters, but none of them had any children except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spitalfields, and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty grocer's or chandler's shop in Cock Lane, near Shoreditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, and that little was not good. In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit.-Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton.

Such is the caprice of fortune, this grand-daughter of a man who will be an everlasting glory to the nation, has now for some years, with her husband, kept a little chandler's or grocer's shop, their subsistence, lately at the Lower Holloway in the road between Highgate and London, and at present in Cock Lane not far from Shoreditch Church.-Newton.

The benefit at the theatre, for which Johnson wrote a prologue, produced £130; but Mrs. Foster "relapsed into indigence and the obscurity of her shop," and died in poverty at Islington, May 9, 1754. [See Pelham Street.]

Cock Lane, WEST SMITHFIELD.

Over against the said Pie-corner lieth Cock Lane, which runneth down to Oldbourne Conduit.-Stow, p. 139.

On the Fortune of War public-house at the corner of Cock Lane and Giltspur Street is an inscription indicating that this was Pye Corner, where the Great Fire ceased. In the Ordinances of the City, 7 Richard II. 1383-1384, Cokkes Lane, then just outside the City wall, is marked out as the only allowed place of abode for courtesans on this side of

1 Symmons' Life of Milton, p. 529.

the City; hence Davenant's reference to "the silk mantles of Cock Lane." 2

This narrow lane was the scene, in the months of January and February 1762, of the celebrated imposture called "the Cock Lane Ghost." The story was as follows: A girl of twelve years old, the daughter of a man named Parsons, the officiating clerk of the adjoining church of St. Sepulchre, was continually disturbed at night by the knocking and scratching of some invisible agent against the wainscot of whatever room she happened to be in. These noises were made, it was said, by the departed spirit of a young gentlewoman of Norfolk, buried in the vaults of the church of St. John, Clerkenwell. She was said to have been poisoned by her husband in a glass of drugged purl; and the girl Parsons had been her bedfellow when her husband was from home. The story soon got wind, and Parson's house in Cock Lane was visited by thousands of people-many from mere curiosity, and others, perhaps, with a higher object in view. At last the Rev. Mr. Aldrich of Clerkenwell took the matter up, and as the ghost had consented by an affirmative knock to indicate her presence in the vault by a similar rap on the lid of her coffin, he invited a number of gentlemen and ladies eminent for their rank and character to accompany him in the investigation. Dr. Johnson was among the number, and the following is his account of what they saw and heard :—

About ten at night, the gentlemen met in the chamber in which the girl, supposed to be disturbed by a spirit, had with proper caution been put to bed by several ladies. They sat rather more than an hour, and hearing nothing, went downstairs, where they interrogated the father of the girl, who denied in the strongest terms any knowledge or belief of fraud. While they were inquiring and deliberating, they were summoned into the girl's chamber by some ladies who were near her bed, and who had heard knocks and scratches. When the gentlemen entered, the girl declared that she felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back, when the spirit was very solemnly required to manifest its existence by appearance, by impression on the hand or body of any present, or any other agency; but no evidence of any preternatural power was exhibited. The spirit was then very seriously advertised that the person to whom the promise was made of striking the coffin was then about to visit the vault, and that the performance of the promise was then claimed. The company at one o'clock went into the church, and the gentleman to whom the promise was made went with another into the vault. The spirit was solemnly required to perform its promise, but nothing more than silence ensued; the person supposed to be accused by the spirit then went down with several others, but no effect was perceived. Upon their return they examined the girl, but could draw no confession from her. and three she desired and was permitted to go home with her father. the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.—Dr. Johnson (Abridged by Boswell from Gentleman's Magazine, February 1762). This solemn inquiry having undeceived the world, the next step was to punish the contrivers of the imposture. Parsons, the father of the girl, was sentenced to stand three times in the pillory at the end of the lane and to be confined for one year in the King's Bench Prison. But London mobs are curiously composed, and instead of pelting the man they collected a subscription for him! Among other visitors to 2 Davenant's Wits, 4to, 1637, the passage is omitted in the fol. 1673.

1 Liber Albus, p. 395.

Between two It is therefore

Cock Lane was Horace Walpole, whose lively description will admit of slight abridgment :

I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition but an audition. We set out from the Opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney coach, and drove to the spot; it rained torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope dancing between the acts. We heard nothing; they told us (as they would at a puppet show), that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is when there are only prentices and old women. We stayed, however, till half an hour after one. The Methodists have promised contributions; provisions are sent in like forage, and all the taverns and ale-houses in the neighbourhood make fortunes.-Walpole to Montagu, February 2, 1762.

In Hogarth's Plate of "Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, a Medley," the top of the barometer is divided into two portions, in onehalf of which the girl is seen in bed, and in the other the ghost knocking to announce her arrival. Churchill too, as Macaulay says, "confident in his powers, drunk with prosperity, and burning with party spirit," jumped at the opportunity afforded by "a naughty girl of eleven making fools of so many philosophers," and celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in a poem of three cantos.

Goldsmith received three guineas from Newbery for a pamphlet on the imposture, and Mr. Crossley supposed this to be a tract of thirtyfour pages, a copy of which he possessed. It is entitled "The Mystery Revealed, containing a Series of Transactions and Authentic Memorials respecting the supposed Cock Lane Ghost," printed for W. Bristow in St. Paul's Churchyard.—Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. v. p. 77.

One of Johnson's associates in the investigation was Dr. Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and as he twice mentions the fact of two negroes being present it is probable that Sir Joshua Reynolds was also of the party. The house was about half-way up on the south side of the street, and has long since been taken down. The daughter of Parsons was twice married, and died at Chiswick about 1806.

Cock (The) Tavern, Bow STREET. [See Bow Street.]

Cock (The) Tavern and Ordinary, CHARING CROSS, at the end of Suffolk Street, may have helped to give the name to Cockspur Street. Pepys, who calls it "a great ordinary, mightily cried up," dined there with Will. Hewer, and on one occasion treated Mrs. Turner, Betty and Talbot Pepys, Sir Dennis Gauden and Gibson, when they dined and were "mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, and particularly pease-porridge."

VOL I

1 Pepys, March 15, April 7, and April 23, 1669.

2 F