ported I suppose after the destruction of the Company. The Triumph of Poverty was engraved by Vosterman, and copies of both are now at Strawberry Hill."-Walpole's Anecdotes, ed. Dallaway, vol. i. p. 152.

The merchants of the Steelyard formed a branch of the great Hanseatic League, and probably originally gave rise to this League. As early as 967 a regulation of King Ethelred ordains that "the emperor's men, or Easterlings, coming with their ships to Belingsgate, shall be accounted worthy of good laws." In the first charter of which we have record as being granted to the members of the Steelyard was that given by Henry III. in the following words :

Henry by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitain, etc. To the citizens of London to whom these Presents shall come, greeting: Know ye that, at the Instance of the most Serene Prince of the Roman Empire, our Brother, we have granted to these Merchants of Almain who have a House in our City of London, which is called commonly Guilda Aula Theutonicorum, that we will maintain them all and every one, and preserve them through our whole Kingdom, in all their Liberties and free Customs, which they have used in our Times, and in the Times of our Progenitors, and will not withdraw such Liberties and free Customs from them, nor suffer them to be at all withdrawn from them, etc. Witness my Self at Westminster the 15th of June in the 44th year of our Reign.

It is thus clear that at that date the Merchants of the Hanse were a fully recognised body possessed of distinct privileges. The term Steelyard as applied to the Guildhall of these merchants came into use towards the end of the 14th century.

99 66

"1

Other privileges were granted to them by the citizens of London, on condition of their maintaining one of the gates of the City, called Bishopsgate, in repair, and their sustaining a third of the charges, in money and men to defend it, "when need were." These privileges remained unimpaired till the reign of Edward VI., when, on the complaint of a society of English merchants called "The Merchant Adventurers," sentence was given that they had forfeited their liberties and were in like case with other strangers.' Great interest was made to rescind this sentence, and ambassadors from Hamburg and Lubeck came to the King, "to speak on the behalf of the Stilliard Merchants." 2 Their intercession was ineffectual. "The Stilliard men," says the King, "received their answer, which was to confirm the former judgment of my council." This sentence, though it broke up their monopoly, did not injure their Low Country trade in any great degree, and the merchants of the Steelyard still continued to export English woollen clothes, and to find as ample a market for their goods as either the Merchant Adventurers or the English merchants not Merchant Adventurers. The trade, however, was effectually broken by a proclamation of Queen Elizabeth, by which the merchants of the Steelyard were expelled the kingdom, and commanded to depart by February 28, 1597-1598.4 The after history of the building I find recorded in the Privy Council Register of the year 1598-1599, wherein, under

"3

1 King Edward's Diary, in Burnet, February 23, 1551. 2 Ibid., February 28.

3 Ibid., May 2.

4 Egerton Papers, p. 273.

January 30 in that year, the register records that a letter was sent to the Lord Mayor, requiring him to deliver up the house of the Steelyard to the officers of Her Majesty's navy, "after the avoydinge and departinge of the strangers that did possess the house. That the said house of the Stiliards should be used and employed for the better bestowing and safe custodie of divers provisions of the navy. The rent to be paid by the officers of the navy."1 In the church of Allhallows the Great, adjoining, is a handsome screen of oak, manufactured at Hamburg, and presented to the parish by the Hanse Merchants, in memory of the former connection which existed between them and this country. Sir Thomas More held the office of agent for the associated merchants.

Stephen's Alley, KING STREET, WESTMINSTER, ran between King Street and Canon Row. It was swept away when Parliament Street was formed: Derby Street, then called Derby Court, was a prolongation of it. Here lived and died (1650) Thomas May, the poet, and historian of the Long Parliament.

As one put drunk into the Packet boat,

Tom May was hurried hence and did not know't,
But was amaz'd on the Elysian side,
And with an eye uncertain gazing wide,
Could not determine in what place he was,
For whence in Steven's Alley, trees or grass,
Nor where the Pope's Head or the Mitre lay
Signs by which still he found and lost his way.

Andrew Marvell's lines "On Tom May's Death," Miscellaneous Poems, folio 1681, p. 35.

Stephen's (St.) Chapel. [See Houses of Parliament.]

Stephen's (St.), COLEMAN STREET, a church in Coleman Street Ward (on the left-hand side of Coleman Street, going up to London Wall), destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt in 1676, from the designs of Sir C. Wren.

John Hayward, at that time under-sexton of the parish of St. Stephen Coleman Street, carried or assisted to carry all the dead to their graves, which were buried in that large parish and who were carried in form; and after that form of burying was stopped, he went with the Dead-Cart and the Bell to fetch the dead-bodies from the houses where they lay, and fetched many of them out of the chambers and houses. For the parish was and is still remarkable, particularly above all the parishes in London, for a great number of alleys and thoroughfares, very long, into which no carts could come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the bodies a very long way; which alleys now remain to witness it; such as White's Alley, Cross Key Court, Swan Alley, Bell Alley, White Horse Alley, and many more. Here he went with a kind of hand-barrow, and laid the dead bodies on it, and carried them out to the carts; which work he performed and never had the distemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sexton of the parish to the time of his death.-Memoirs of the Plague, by Defoe, ed. Brayley, p. 128.

The old church contained a monument "To the Memory of that antient servant to the City with his Pen, in divers employments, especially the Survey of London, Master Anthony Munday, Citizen and

1 Harl. MS., 4182, fol. 185 B.

Draper of London" (d. 1633). Over the gateway into the churchyard is a representation in high-relief of the Last Judgment, a relic probably of the old church. The living is a vicarage. The right of presentation belongs to the parishioners, who in 1823 elected the Rev. Josiah Pratt, a popular evangelical preacher of that time. On his death in 1879 the parishioners elected his son, the Rev. J. W. Pratt, to succeed him. The church was cleaned and decorated in 1879.

Stephen's (St.), WALBROOK, in the ward of Walbrook, immediately behind the Mansion House, one of Sir C. Wren's most celebrated churches, of which the first stone was laid October 16, 1672. It was completed in 1679, and cost only £7652. The church was erected at the public expense; but the pews and wainscoting were supplied by the Grocers' Company, the patrons of the living, against the wish of the architect. The exterior is unpromising, but the interior is all elegance and even grandeur. The interior is an oblong, 75 feet by 56, with a circular dome on an octagonal base, which rests on eight Corinthian columns-an arrangement at once original and singularly rich, varied and graceful. The cupola-a little St. Paul's— is very effective; the lights are admirably disposed, and every one can see and hear to perfection. The walls and columns are of stone; the dome only of timber and lead. The dimensions of the church are 60 feet wide, 83 feet long, and 60 feet high. The diameter of the dome at the springing is 43 feet.

August 24, 1679.-Ordered that a present of Twenty Guineas be made to the lady of Sir Christopher Wren, as a testimony of the regard the parish has for the great care and skill that Sir Christopher Wren showed in the rebuilding of our church.Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors, p. 104.

On the north wall hangs West's masterpiece-the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, painted originally as the altarpiece. The east window is now filled with painted glass, by Willement, the gift of the Grocers' Company. Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect and wit, was buried (1726) in the family vault of the Vanbrughs in the north aisle. The church serves as well for the parish of St. Benet Sherehog.

Sir Robert Chicheley, alderman and twice Lord Mayor (1411, 1421), purchased the ground whereon St. Stephen's Church stands, and built the previous church. He gave the advowson to the Grocers' Company.1 Thomas Becon was instituted rector of this church, March 24, 1547, on the presentation of the Grocers' Company, but was ejected after the accession of Mary as a "married priest "and imprisoned in the tower. There is a tablet to the memory of Nathaniel Hodges, a physician and writer on the Plague (1629-1688). Dr. Wilson, rector of St. Stephen's in the last half of the 18th century, erected in the chancel of his church a statue of Mrs. Macaulay, the republican historian, while she was yet living. It was removed by his successor.2 Dr. Croly (d. 1860), author of Salathiel and other works 1 William Ravenhill's Short Account of the Company of Grocers, 1689. 2 Wright's Note to Walpole, vol. v. p. 146.

of fancy and imagination, was rector for many years. monument and bust by Behnes to his memory.

There is a

The church underwent a restoration in 1847-1848 (John Turner, architect). The high pews were removed and Mosaic pavement laid down in 1888, when extensive alterations were carried out under the direction of A. M. Peebles, architect.

Stephen's (St.), WESTMINSTER, on the south side of Rochester Row, between Greycoat Street and Vincent Square, a spacious Gothic church, erected and endowed, with the adjacent schools and buildings, by Miss (now the Baroness) Burdett Coutts. The first stone of the church was laid July 1, 1847, and it was completed in 1849. It was designed by Benjamin Ferrey, F.S.A.; is Decorated in style; a substantial stone structure, carefully finished in all the details and richly ornamented throughout. The body of the church is 82 feet long with a chancel 47 feet deep. The tower and spire are 200 feet high. The windows are filled with painted glass by Willement-some of his best work. The altar cloth was the gift of the Duke of Wellington. The adjoining schools, for 400 children, and connected buildings, correspond in style with the church, and the whole form an architectural and picturesque group.

Stephen Street, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, west side, the next street south of Percy Street. George Morland, the painter, was living with his father, Henry Robert Morland, at No. 14 in this street (now a rag and bottle merchant's) in the years 1780-1786.1 Stephen Street and the adjacent Gresse Street were so named from Stephen Gaspar Gresse (father of John Alexander Gresse, drawing-master to the daughters of George III.), who purchased a long lease of the sitewhich was then "divided into small portions and let for smoke-a-pipe gardens to various tradesfolks " 2. -and let it on building leases.

Stepney, a parish lying east of Whitechapel, was originally of very much larger extent than at present, and included Stratford-le-Bow, Whitechapel, Shadwell, Mile End, Poplar, Blackwall, Spitalfields, Ratcliff, Limehouse, and Bethnal Green. It is the mother parish of the whole of what is now called "East London." The etymology of the name Stepney is doubtful. In the Domesday Book this parish is entered as a manor under the name of Stibenhede. It has been variously written as Stevenhethe,3 Stebenhuthe, Stebenhethe,5 Stebenhythe and Stebunhethe. That the termination is the old Saxon word hyth, a wharf or haven, there can be little doubt, but the rest of the word is by no means so clear. Lysons suggests that it may be derived from steb, a trunk, and thus be the timber-wharf; others believe it to be a corruption of Steven, and the word thus means St. Stephen's Haven.

1 Catalogues of the Royal Academy.

2 MS. Recollections of the late Robert Hills, the water-colour painter.

4

The whole parish in 1794 contained about 1530 acres of land (exclusively of the site of buildings), of which about 80 acres were then arable, about 50 occupied by market-gardeners, and the remainder meadow-pasture and marsh land.-Lysons's Environs, vol. iv. p. 678.

All its pastures and market-gardens have long since disappeared, and Stepney is now one of the most populous parishes in London. In 1881 its population was 58,500.

The great plague of 1665 was particularly severe in this part of London. Clarendon, in speaking of the difficulty of obtaining seamen in the following year, says that "Stepney and the places adjacent, which were their common habitations, were almost depopulated."

The church is dedicated to St. Dunstan (which see). Stepney meeting-house was erected for Mathew Mead (buried in the churchyard of St. Dunstan's), and during his time was one of the most noted of the nonconformist places of worship. It has lately been rebuilt. Near the church stood a spacious mansion, the seat of Henry, first Marquis of Worcester. It was in the two-storied dwelling above the gateway of this mansion that Mathew Mead lived, and here that his still more famous son, Dr. Richard Mead, the "prince of English physicians," and the friend and successor in practice of Dr. Radcliffe, the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford-was born in 1673. William King, LL.D., who delivered the Latin oration at the dedication of the above library in 1749, was also a native of Stepney.

Sterling Club, a social club, founded in 1838 by John Sterling as the Anonymous Club, where he and his friends might meet monthly and talk together over a frugal dinner. The original members included, besides the founder and James Spedding the secretary, Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson, Frederick Maurice, John Stuart Mill, Archdeacon Hare, Bishop Thirlwall, Lord Lyttleton, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), and Sir C. L. Eastlake; to whom were shortly afterwards added Bishop Wilberforce, Chenevix Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), and Archdeacon (now Cardinal) Manning.1 The history of the club is sufficiently told by Carlyle :

In order to meet the most or a good many of his friends at once on such occasions [his visits to London], he now, furthermore, contrived the scheme of a little Club where monthly over a frugal dinner some reunion might take place; that is, where friends of his, and withal such friends of theirs as suited-and in fine, where a small select company definable as persons to whom it was pleasant to talk together,-might have a little opportunity of talking. The scheme was approved by the persons concerned I have a copy of the Original Regulations, probably drawn up by Sterling, a very solid lucid piece of economics; and the List of the proposed Members, signed "James Spedding, Secretary," and dated "August 8, 1838." The Club grew; was at first called the Anonymous Club; then, after some months of success, in compliment to the founder, who had now left us again, the Sterling Club, under which latter name, it once lately, for a time, owing to the Religious Newspapers, became rather famous in the world! In which strange circumstances the name was again altered, to suit weak brethren; and the Club still subsists, in a sufficiently flourishing, though happily once more a private condition. That is the origin and genesis of poor

1 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 208; Ashwill's Life of Bishop Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 142.