I dined the other day with a lady of quality, who told me she was going that evening to see the "finest fireworks!" at Mary bone. I said fireworks was a very odd refreshment for this sultry weather; that, indeed, Cuper's-gardens had been once famous for this summer entertainment; but then his fireworks were so well understood, and conducted with so superior an understanding, that they never made their appearance to the company till they had been well cooled, by being drawn through a long canal of water, with the same kind of refinement that the Eastern people smoke their tobacco through the same medium.—Warburton to Hurd, July 9, 1753

Bishop Hurd no doubt understood his brother prelate's account of the entertainment at Cuper's Gardens, but to the lay mind it is not easy to determine whether it was the fireworks or the company that were well cooled by being drawn through the long canal of water; in either case 66 the refreshment was singular.

Dr. Johnson: Beauclerk, and I, and Langton, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk, mother to our friend, were one day driving in a coach by Cuper's-gardens, which were then unoccupied. I, in sport, proposed that Beauclerk, and Langton, and myself, should take them, and we amused ourselves with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady Sydney grew angry and said, "An old man should not put such things in young people's heads." She had no notion of a joke, sir; had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding.-Boswell, by Croker, p. 366.

Lord Bath and Lord Sandys have had their pockets picked at Cuper's Gardens. I fancy it was no bad scene the avarice and jealousy of their peeresses on their return.-Horace Walpole to G. Montagu, June 24, 1746.

On the site of the gardens Messrs. Beaufoy formed their great works for the manufacture of British wines and vinegar, removed to South Lambeth on the erection of Waterloo Bridge. The present Waterloo Bridge Road runs over the very centre of Cuper's Gardens.

Cure's College or Almshouses, SOUTHWARK. These almshouses were founded in 1584 by Thomas Cure, saddler to Edward VI. and Mary and Elizabeth, and M.P. for Southwark (d. 1588), for the reception of sixteen poor men and women.

1621. It is ordered by the vestry that a fitting inscription is to be set up over the new gate leading into the College churchyard in Deadman's Place that “Thomas Cure was a good benefactor in building the said college and almshouses."-Quoted in Rendle's Old Southwark, p. 185.

The almshouses were removed and rebuilt at Norwood in 1854. They are now styled the United St. Saviour's Almshouses, and the number of inmates has been raised to thirty-eight.

Curriers' Hall, No. 6 LONDON WALL, near Philip Lane. In the original Hall Calamy's son, in the reign of Charles II., preached every Sunday to a little flock of serious Dissenters. In the Commonwealth

time Curriers' Hall was the headquarters of the seventh day, or "Sabbatarian" Baptists, who kept their Sabbath on Saturday. The late learned antiquary, Mr. W. H. Black, F.S.A., was for a long series of years the pastor of this peculiar sect in Mill Yard, Goodman's Fields. Curriers' Hall was, however, noted for its connection with Puritanism as early as the reign of James I.

I am old Gregory Christmas still, and though I come out of Pope's Head Alley, as good a Protestant as any in my parish. The truth is, I have brought a Masque here out o' the city, of my own making, and do present it by a set of my sons, that come out of the lanes of London, good dancing boys all. It was intended, I confess, for Curriers' Hall; but because the weather has been open, and the Livery were not at leisure to see it till a frost came, that they cannot work, I thought it convenient, with some little alterations, and the Groom of the Revels' hand to it, to fit it for a higher place.—Ben Jonson's Christmas his Masque, 1616.

The original hall was burnt in the Great Fire, and a new hall, a plain brick pile, was, according to the inscription, "new built and glassed in the yere 1670." This hall was taken down and a new one, of Bath stone, designed by Messrs. Belcher, erected on a site nearer the main street in 1874. It is French-Gothic in style, has a turret at one end, a clock tower at the other, and an elaborately carved central doorway. Of the interior the chief features are the grand staircase and the dining-hall to which it leads, a handsome room 40 feet long and 21 wide, with a groined ceiling. The site of the old hall now forms part of a warehouseman's premises. The curriers, a guild by prescription, were incorporated by James I. in 1605.

Cursitors' Office or Inn, CHANCERY LANE, founded by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, and father of the great Lord Bacon.

In this street [Chancery Lane] the first fair building to be noted on the east side is called the Coursitors' Office; built with divers fair lodgings for gentlemen, all of brick and timber, by Sir Nicholas Bacon, late Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.— Stow, p. 163.

Coke (2d Institute, 670) calls the Cursitors "Coursetours, Clerici de Cursu," and this derivation is adopted by Blount in his Law Dictionary. The Cursitors were twenty-four in number, and their office was to make out and issue writs in the name of the Court of Chancery.

Cursitor Street, CHANCERY LANE. [See Cursitors' Office.] "Here was my first perch," said Lord Chancellor Eldon, passing through Cursitor Street with his secretary; "Many a time have I run down to Fleet Market to get six pennyworth of sprats for supper! "> 1 One of Swift's "Instructions to a porter how to find Mr. Curll's authors" is "At the laundress's at the Hole in the Wall in Cursitor's Alley, up three pair of stairs, the author of my Church History. . . . You may also speak to the gentleman who lies by him in the flock bed, my Index Maker." The north side of this street was rebuilt when the new Law Courts were commenced.

1 Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 96.

Curtain (The), HOLYWELL LANE, SHOREDITCH, a theatre built about 1576, and so named from a piece of ground in Shoreditch, commonly called the Curtayne," and "sometime appertaining to the Priory of Haliwell now dissolved." 1 The name points to a fortification in connection with the outworks of the old London Wall. It survives in Curtain Road.

Doe you speake against those places also, whiche are made vppe and builded for such playes and enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is, and other such lyke places besides. A Treatise against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, etc., 4to, p. 1577.

And neare thereunto [Holywell Priory] are builded two publique-houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories for recreation. Whereof one is called the Courtein, the other the Theatre, both standing on the south-west side towards the field.-Stow, ed. 1598, p. 349.

In 1600 the Lords of the Council gave orders for the demolition of the Curtain, but they were not obeyed. On June 22 of that year they wrote to the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex as follows:

As wee have done our partes in prescribinge the orders, so unlesse yow perfourme yours in lookinge to the due execution of them, we shall loose our labor.-Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. 1887, vol. i. p. 367.

The Curtain seems to have fallen into disuse about the commencement of the reign of Charles I., and Malone states (without citing his authority) that it was soon employed only for the exhibition of prize-fighters.-Collier's Annals, vol. iii. p. 272.

It has been generally believed that Shakespeare alludes to the Globe Theatre when he refers to "this wooden O" in Henry the Fifth, but, apart from the improbability of his making a disparaging allusion to the size of his company's new edifice it is not at all likely that the building could have been completed before the return of Lord Essex from Ireland in September 1599. The letter O was used in reference to any object of a circular formation, and there is every probability that it would have been applicable to the Curtain. Now Armin, who was one of Shakespeare's company playing at the Globe in 1600, speaks of himself in his Foole upon Foole published in that year, as the clown at the Curtain Theatre. It may then be inferred that the former Theatre was opened in 1600, and at some time before March 25, the latest date that can be assigned to Every Man out of his Humour.-Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines, 7th ed. 1887, vol. ii. p. 393.

Curtain Road, SHOREDITCH, leading from Worship Street to Old Street Road. [See Curtain Theatre.]

Porter, which was first brewed in the neighbouring High Street, Shoreditch, was first retailed at the "Blue Last," Curtain Ditch. It was numbered 84, and stood at the corner of New Inn Yard. An Act was passed in 1752 to widen, repair, and keep in repair the road from the Red Lion on Windmill Hill, by the east end of the Artillery Ground Walk, to the end of Thunderbolt Alley, and thence through Worship Street and the Curtain to the Ditchside next to the east side of Holywell Mount. St. James's Church in this road was built in 1839 from the designs of Mr. George Vulliamy, architect.

Curzon Street, MAY FAIR, was so called after the ground landlord, George Augustus Curzon, third Viscount Howe (d. 1758), ancestor of the present Earl Howe. Eminent Inhabitants.-Pope's Lord Marchmont. Richard Stonehewer, the friend and correspondent 1 Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. 1887, vol. ii. p. 364.

t

of Gray, in No. 14. Mason, the poet, in 1775, when he wrote to Mr. Nicholls coolly proposing that the originals of his letters from Gray "should be so disposed of as not to impeach the editor's fidelity."

December 15, 1786.-I was at Lady Macartnay's last night. They have got a charming house in Curzon Street, and cheap as old clothes. It was Lord Carteret's, and all antiqued and grotesqued by Adam, with an additional room in the court, fourscore feet long, then dedicated to orgies and now to books.-H. Walpole to Lady Ossory, vol. ix. p. 83.

Lord Macartnay died at this house (No. 30) in 1806. General Eliott (Lord Heathfield) was living here in 1782. No. 16 was the residence for twenty-five years of Sir Henry Halford, the distinguished physician, and he died here, March 9, 1844. Sir Francis Chantrey, when a young man and undistinguished, in an attic in No. 24. Here

he modelled his head of Satan and his bust of Earl St. Vincent. At this period of his life he derived his chief support from a Mrs.. D'Oyley, the friend of Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Vesey, etc., who lived at No. 21. "In an hour," writes Baron Bunsen, June 24, 1841, “I shall move to No. 8 Curzon Street, Miss Berry's house."1 He stayed there till August 15. The Miss Berrys, Mary and Agnes-Horace Walpole's Berrys-continued to reside at No. 8 till their deaths in 1852-Agnes in January, Mary in November. Madame Vestris, when at the height of her popularity and beauty lived at No. 1, pulled down about 1849. Observe.-Curzon Chapel. [See May Fair.] In the retiring house, opposite the chapel, lived Lord Wharncliffe, the great-grandson of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and editor of her Works. Mr. Edward Shepherd (the builder of Shepherd's Market) lived at this house in 1708. Opposite to May Fair Chapel was the chapel of "the Rev. Alexander Keith," where marriages were performed in the same manner as that which has made the Fleet notorious, until the Marriage Act in 1753 put an end to them, Here the Duke of Kingston married Miss Chudleigh, and James, fourth Duke of Hamilton, the younger of the two beautiful Miss Gunnings.

To prevent mistakes the little new chapel in May Fair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner house opposite to the city side of the great chapel, and within ten yards of it. The minister and clerk live in the same corner house where the little chapel is; and the licence on a crown stamp, minister and clerk's fees, together with the certificate amount to one guinea, as heretofore at any house, till four in the afternoon, and that it may be better known, there is a porch at the door like a country church porch.-Keith's Advertisement.

The Earl of Beaconsfield removed to No. 19 Curzon Street at the beginning of 1881, and died there on the morning of April 19 following.

Custom House (The), in LOWER THAMES STREET, for the collection of the customs, one of the three great branches of the revenue of this country, was erected 1814-1817, from the designs of David Laing, but in consequence of some defects in the piling, the

1 Life of Bunsen, vol. i. p. 606.

original centre was taken down, and the present front, to the Thames, erected from the designs of Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., architect.

The first Custom House of which we have any account was "new built" by John Churchman, Sheriff of London in 1385,1 and stood on "Customers'-key," to the east of the present building, and therefore much nearer Tower Wharf. In Strype's Map the site of the present building is taken up by a series of small quays, called respectively (commencing at the east) Porters, Great Bear, Little Bear, Young's, Wiggin's, Ralph's, Temple, Little Dice, Great Dice, and Smart's. Another and larger edifice on the same site, erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was burnt in the Great Fire of 1666. The new house designed by Wren in its place was "a commodious and substantial building of brick and Portland stone."-Elmes. It was completed in 1671.

September 22, 1671.- Returning home I went on shore to see the Custome House, now nearly rebuilt since the dreadful conflagration.-Evelyn's Diary.

Wren's Custom House was destroyed by fire in 1718, and Ripley's, which succeeded Wren's, was destroyed in the same way on February 12, 1814. It was the practice formerly to let the customs of the kingdom to certain persons who farmed them.

The Farmers of the Customs have been very liberal in their New-year's gift to the King; besides their ordinary gift of 2000 pieces, they gave him a diamond unset, that cost them 5000li., and also 5000li. in pieces.-Garrard to Lord Strafford, January 11, 1634, p. 395.

The "Long Room," is 185 feet long by 66 broad, and 55 feet high.

In the long room it's a pretty pleasure to see the multitude of payments that are made there in a morning. I heard Count Tallard say, that nothing gave him so true and great an idea of the richness and grandeur of this nation as this, when he saw it after the peace of Ryswick.-Macky, A Journey through England, 8vo, 1722, vol. i. p. 237.

The quay is a broad and pleasant walk fronting the Thames. Here Cowper, the poet, came intending to make away with himself.2

Cutlers' Hall, No. 8 CLOAK LANE, City. This hall was of brick, small but commodious, built 1667-1668 on the site of a former hall destroyed in the Great Fire.

They of this Company were of old time divided into three arts or sorts of workmen to wit, the first were smiths, forgers of blades, and therefore called bladers. The second were makers of hafts, and otherwise garnishers of blades. The third sort were sheathmakers, for swords, daggers, and knives. In the 10th of Henry IV., certain ordinances were made betwixt the Bladers and the other Cutlers; and in the 4th of Henry VI. they were all three companies drawn into one fraternity or brotherhood by the name of Cutlers.—Stow, p. 92.

In 1382 one John Foxtone was charged with fraud, in having undertaken to assist William Warde, cuteler of York, in obtaining admission as freeman of the Company of Cutlers of London, "but afterwards he deceitfully caused him to be admitted into another trade, . . . the trade, namely, of the Bladers." For this deceit was fined 60s.,

1 Stow, p. 109.

2 Southey's Cowper, vol. i. p. 124.