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RENDLESHAM HOUSE, SUFFOLK. The Seat of Lord Rendlesham.

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169

VESTIGES,

COLLECTED AND RECOLLECTED,

BY JOSEPH MOSER, ESQ.
No. LV.

A PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL VIEW OF
ANCIENT AND MODERN LONDON.

WITH NOTES, &c.

Chapter XX

TH THE allegorical description of London to which in our last we alluded, as it is displayed under the appellation of Amaurot, in the UTOPIA of Sir Thomas More, does not, at least to our apprehension, notwithstanding the respectable antiquarian authority that we have quoted, seem to exhibit much of the character of the City in the sixteenth century. In fact, the author of the work that we have mentioned, although a great, was certainly a very singular genius *, and eccentric

The singularity of Sir Thomas More was not only conspicuous in his writings, but in his conversation, his professional exertions, and even in his devotion. Born to inherit a genius, far, far indeed, elevated above those of the common cast of mankind, he was yet very frequently so mentally dazzled by the bril hancy and velocity of his own ideas, that when he was placed in situations where they could not burst into corruscations of wit and humour,they,in their clash with gravity, became oppressive, and created a verbal confusion which did not always meet with the tendercst interpretation. To this he probably alludes, when, speaking of the different tastes of men,

he

says, in his epistle to Peter Giles, "Many know nothing of learning, others despise it. A man that is accustomed to a coarse and harsh stile thinks every thing is smooth that is not barbarous. Our trifling pretenders to learning think all is slight that is not dressed up in words that are worn out of use. Some love only odd things, and many like nothing but what is their own. Some are so sour that they can allow no jests, and others are so dull that they can endure nothing that is sharp; and some are as much afraid of any thing that is quick or lively as a man bit with a maď dug is of water." While we are upon the subject of UTOPIA, we cannot help hunting an idea that strikes us, which is, that the grave kind of allegory which pervades this work, seems to have been impressed upon the mind of Swift, and, although in that vehicle it obtained a more humorous tincture, to have been the basis upon which. he founded his description of LAPUTA. It , we think, easy to trace the same cast Europ. Mog. Fol LI. March 1807.

in most of his pursuits. He appears, in his ideal city, rather to have stated what

of reflection, the same kind of political allu-, sion through the means of serious fiction, and, in some instances, the same turn of thought, in both. If in the latter production there is more humour, it is because Swift. meant his piece as a satire upon solemn, though local and individual, absurdities; and Sir Thomas More his as upon a more general plan, blending extensive observation with almost universal reflection.

This great, this little man, (for in his procolloquial observations, he was certainly fessional conduct, in his writings, and in his great, while in his superstitious observances, and in his singing in a surplice with the in scourging heretics with his own hand, choristers, he was surely little,) has left many apophthegms; most of which appear to be the emanations of an experienced, though in some instances an irregular, mind. Tracing the chaff of human ideas as it has floated: similar to many that are termed luconic, down the stream of time, they are extremely

which are to be found in the Morals of Plutarch.

With the apophthegms of Sir Thomas More we could, were we so mclmed, easily crowd our pages, but they are, generally speaking, too well known to answer any new purposes, either of instruction or entertainment; the, same observation will apply to the anecdotes of him, which are already very numerous. He seems, in a very peculiar manner, to have who was, perhaps, the strangest compound been the object of the caprice of a Monarch, of luxury, libidinousness, hypocrisy, cruelty, credulity, and superstition, that ever the Almighty stamped with the image of man, or fortune blazoned with the title of Sovereign. In the year 1520, Sir Thomas settled with his family at Chelsea, having purchased an estate there. He had resided in Chancery-lane, probably at the house termed "the Chancery. VIIIth would sometimes, uninvited, dine Mansion." At Chelsea, it is said, Henry the with the man, whom he afterward, upon the most frivolous pretence, consigned to the block.

The account which Erasmus gives Chelsea, exhibits a picture of domestic hapof the manner of Sir Thomas More's living at piness. "His house," he says, "was $Ituated near the water-side," neither so mean as to be entitled to contempt, nor so magnificent as to become the subject of envy. "There he converscth with his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their three husbands, with cleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he; and he loveth his old wife as well as if she was a young maid.".

Thomas, Lord Cromwell, (which, though not In the play of the Life and Death of written by Shakspeare, was of his age, and therefore performed at a period when the Z

he wished his metropolis should be, than what it really was. To us it appears astonishing that the plan of a city which ranked so high in the European scale, and which in a few years after was actually the subject of proclamations for being overbuilt, should have been so contracted. Turning our eyes to its western suburb, of which we have the print of Holbein now before us, what do we behold but a large extent of fields stretching from the village of Charing to the hospital of ST. JAMES, on the site of which the palace now stands? To the left, the un-towered fabric of the Abbey, the gable roof of the Hall, and the square pinnacle of the

memory of Sir Thomas More was recent, and his sayings common in colloquial conversation,) there is a scene wherein Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More dine with Sir Christopher Hales, (then said to be Master of the Roils;) where the propensity of Sir Thomas to apophthegmatize appears in several instances, which, however poor the language, however flimsey the texture of the scene, and we do not mean to defend either, were unquestionably characteristic, and, as such, no doubt highly relished by the audience:

e. g.

" were

church of ST. MARGARET, rising above
a cluster of houses and trees, denote the
city of Westminster. On the foreground
a few small dwellings shaded with large
trees, and some contiguous ruins, discri-
minate the chapel of "Our Lady of
the Pew;" close to which there was
a house, wherein, Stow says,
distracted and lunatic people;" but
that some King of England, not liking
to have such objects so near his palace,
caused them to be removed to Bethlem.
Near this chapel stood the hospital of
St. Mary Rouncival*; a cell to the
priory and convent of that name at
Navarre, situated exactly opposite St.
Martin's lane, and occupying the site
whereon Northumberland House now
stands.

The beautiful cross, one of those erected by Edward the 1st to the memory of his Queen, does not appear in the print.

However Henry the VIIIth might, in general, delight in dilapidation, Westminster seems, after her escape from the rapacity of his courtiers, to have become his favourite, and to have owed to him not only some of her architectural and rural advantages, but her civic distinction. The Monarch's idea of enclosing the park of St. James for the accommodation of his new built palace there, and his newly acquired palace of Whitehall, and also for the public, is one of those circumstances by which, as by the legacy of Julius Cæsar, the taste and liberality of the Yet have they force to force men to the projector have been felt and acknow

"Hales. My Lords! with welcome I pre

sent your Lordships a solemn health. More. I love healths well, but when as healths do bring

Pain to the head, and body's surfeiting, Then cease I healths: Nay, spill not, friend! for tho' the drops be small,

wall."

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As

ledged by every succeeding age.
soon as the Park was finished, he erect-
ed the beautiful gate near the Treasury,
which many may yet remember: it had
a house that ranged on its south side,
and crossed the street opposite the Ban-
queting-House. This fabric was large,

* Founded and endowed by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, in the reign of Henry the IIld; suppressed by Henry the Vth; refounded by Edward the IVth; at length totally suppressed at the general dissolution of religious houses by Henry the VIIIth. As a part of his hereditary share of the ecclesiastical plunder, it came to Howard, Earl of Northampton, who caused it to be totally demolished, and erected Northamp ton House (since changed to Northumberland House,) on the spot, in the tune of James the Ist. At first it consisted of only three sides. It appears, from some kreis discovered when the front was rebuilt, that one Miles Glover was the architect.

and had three windows in each story, fronting the entrance of Westminster: it had also white rails before it, and a small enclosed garden on the side toward Whitehall, which consequently narrowed the street betwixt that and the palace. Yet although we could have parted with this house and appurtenances without regret, when we consider the contiguous gate, which exhibited a perfect specimen of the best stile of Gothic architecture, and contemplate the significant variety of its ornamental appendages, we cannot but lament that this elegant proof of the genius and talents of our ancestors was not suffered still to remain, as an ornament to a city which is now supposed to stand much in need of architectural decoration.

In the central point of the foreground of the print of Holbein, to which we have already adverted, is the Hermitage: a hermitage at Charing-cross now seems to us as strange as at Aldgate, or near the Tower. Yet so it was. It appears, however, to have been but a small cell, and was, in fact, annexed to the chapel of St. Catherine over against the Cross.

It is a pleasing, and, in a moral point of view, a useful speculation, to contemplate the changes that have, in the lapse of ages, occurred in landed property, and the different modes in which the sites of buildings have been covered, the transactions that have taken place upon particular spots, and the events that have happened in different mansions. In the continual fluctuation of human affairs, we have scen magnificence and elegance arise from dunghills and laystalls, and cover the places that were before the retreats of indigence or the haunts of profligacy; and edifices which united the properties of taste and convenience, sink into ruins under the wand of caprice: therefore the fleeting anecdotes of fabrics either formerly, or at present, distinguished, are not only pleasant, but valuable; pleasant to this age, and valuable, as having in prospect their descent to posterity.

The London lodging of the Bishop of Norwich, or, as it was called, The Bishop of Norwich's Inne *,"

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* Inn (from the Saxon) meant a chumber, or lodging, and was not applied to a house, unless divided, until after the Norman Conquest, when the Inns of Chaucery and of

tuated "neare Hungerforde House *:"
and although it had belonged, for a
considerable time, to the see of Nor-
wich, it came, or rather returned, to
the Archbishop of York, whose INNE
it had been termed in 1399.
It has, in

Court were first established. We find that "K. Edw. I. did specially appoint John de Metingham (then Ld. Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) and the rest of his fellow justices (of that Court,)" that they should ordain and appoint seven score attorneys and lawyers, or more at their discretion, who might do service to the King and justice to the people. These, it appears, settled in houses which became inns of court, &c.; or, as Fortescue terms them collectively, the university for the laws. In this sense the word Inn, or Hostel, were commonly understood, until the latter term, derived from the French, became more generally applicable to houses of entertainment, and lun was applied not only to the connected apartments of the students of the law, but to the town residences of the Nobility, &c.: though we have an idea that this term was only applied to those buildings that were of wood, and that those of stone were either termed houses, mansions, or places, as York Place, Winchester Place, &c. We have still in recollection a drawing of this part of the Strand, in which Norwich Inn, evidently a wooden building, with four gables or pediments, a front court wall, and low gates, appeared. The Bishop of London's Inn, Aldersgate-street, had the same appearance, and was also of wood. There was also in Butcher-row, an Inn which which, we remember, was of wood, and of the had belonged to a Bishop; the back front of same construction. Indeed, many other instances might be adduced to prove that the term Inn was only applied to wooden buildings, and that the ins for the accommodation of travellers were also of wood; though after the conquests in France the terin Hostel was more frequently applied to them.

*This was a very large old house, which stood on the site of Hungerford Market, and was the residence of Sir Edward Hun

gerford; the bust of one of whose family, in a large wig, adorns the present markethouse. It had a large garden, upon which all the surrounding buildings are erected. This market was a speculation intended to rival Covent Garden, then rising into estimation, by intercepting the fruit and other vegetables as they were lauded at the adjacent stairs, and affording to the dealers a place of traffic without subjecting them to the expense of carriage. But it appears that Covent Garden had got the start, and had become not only the mart for garden stuff but gallantry; while Hungerford, in both, was only supposed to vend the worst commodi tits.

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