Old and New London Part 28

The origin of the memorable affray between the College of Physicians and the Company of Apothecaries is admirably told by Mr. Jeaffreson, in his "Book of Doctors." The younger physicians, impatient at beholding the increasing prosperity and influence of the apothecaries, and the older ones indignant at seeing a cla.s.s of men they had despised creeping into their quarters, and craftily laying hold of a portion of their monopoly, concocted a scheme to reinstate themselves in public favour. Without a doubt, many of the physicians who countenanced this scheme gave it their support from purely charitable motives; but it cannot be questioned that, as a body, the dispensarians were only actuated in their humanitarian exertions by a desire to lower the apothecaries and raise themselves in the eyes of the world. In 1687 the physicians, at a college meeting, voted "that all members of the college, whether fellows, candidates, or licentiates, should give their advice gratis to all their sick neighbouring poor, when desired, within the city of London, or seven miles round." The poor folk carried their prescriptions to the apothecaries, to learn that the trade charge for dispensing them was beyond their means. The physicians a.s.serted that the demands of the drug-vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced to meet the finances of the applicants, to the end that the undertakings of benevolence might prove abortive. This was, of course, absurd. The apothecaries knew their own interests better than to oppose a system which at least rendered drug-consuming fas.h.i.+onable with the lower orders. Perhaps they regarded the poor as their peculiar property as a field of practice, and felt insulted at having the same humble people for whom they had pompously prescribed, and put up boluses at twopence apiece, now entering their shops with papers dictating what the twopenny bolus was to be composed of. But the charge preferred against them was groundless. Indeed, a numerous body of the apothecaries expressly offered to sell medicines "to the poor within their respective parishes at such rates as the committee of physicians should think reasonable."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, WARWICK LANE (_see page 216_).]

But this would not suit the game of the physicians. "A proposal was started by a committee of the college that the college should furnish the medicines of the poor, and perfect alone that charity which the apothecaries refused to concur in; and, after divers methods ineffectually tried, and much time wasted in endeavouring to bring the apothecaries to terms of reason in relation to the poor, an instrument was subscribed by divers charitably-disposed members of the college, now in numbers about fifty, wherein they obliged themselves to pay ten pounds apiece towards the preparing and delivering medicines at their intrinsic value."

Such was the version of the affair given by the college apologists. The plan was acted upon, and a dispensary was eventually established (some nine years after the vote of 1687) at the College of Physicians, Warwick Lane, where medicines were vended to the poor at cost price. This measure of the college was impolitic and unjustifiable. It was unjust to that important division of the trade who were ready to vend the medicines at rates to be paid by the college authorities, for it took altogether out of their hands the small amount of profit which they, as _dealers_, could have realised on those terms. It was also an eminently unwise course. The College sank to the level of the Apothecaries' Hall, becoming an emporium for the sale of medicines. It was all very well to say that no profit was made on such sale, the censorious world would not believe it. The apothecaries and their friends denied that such was the fact, and vowed that the benevolent dispensarians were bent only on underselling and ruining them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTER COURT OF LA BELLE SAUVAGE IN 1828, FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING IN MR. GARDNER'S COLLECTION (_see page 221_).]

Again, the movement introduced dissensions within the walls of the college. Many of the first physicians, with the conservatism of success, did not care to offend the apothecaries, who were continually calling them in and paying them fees. They therefore joined in the cry against the dispensary. The profession was split up into two parties--Dispensarians and Anti-Dispensarians. The apothecaries combined, and agreed not to recommend the Dispensarians. The Anti-Dispensarians repaid this ill service by refusing to meet Dispensarians in consultation. Sir Thomas Millington, the President of the College, Hans Sloane, John Woodward, Sir Edmund King, and Sir Samuel Garth, were amongst the latter. Of these the last named was the man who rendered the most efficient service to his party. For a time Garth's great poem, "The Dispensary,"

covered the apothecaries and Anti-Dispensarians with ridicule. It rapidly pa.s.sed through numerous editions. To say that of all the books, pamphlets, and broadsheets thrown out by the combatants on both sides, it is by far the one of the greatest merit, would be scant justice, when it might almost be said that it is the only one of them that can now be read by a gentleman without a sense of annoyance and disgust.

There is no point of view from which the medical profession appears in a more humiliating and contemptible light than that which the literature of this memorable squabble presents to the student. Charges of ignorance, dishonesty, and extortion were preferred on both sides.

And the Dispensarian physicians did not hesitate to taunt their brethren of the opposite camp with playing corruptly into the hands of the apothecaries--prescribing enormous and unnecessary quant.i.ties of medicine, so that the drug-vendors might make heavy bills, and, as a consequence, recommend in all directions such complacent superiors to be called in. Garth's, unfair and violent though it is, nowhere offends against decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, and is now deservedly forgotten, although it has many good lines and some felicitous satire. Garth lived to see the apothecaries gradually emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the ignominious regulations to which they consented when their vocation was first separated from the grocery trade. Four years after his death they obtained legal acknowledgment of their right to dispense and sell medicines without the prescription of a physician; and six years later the law again decided in their favour with regard to the physicians' right of examining and condemning their drugs. In 1721, Mr. Rose, an apothecary, on being prosecuted by the college for prescribing as well as compounding medicines, carried the matter into the House of Lords, and obtained a favourable decision; and from 1727, in which year Mr. Goodwin, an apothecary, obtained in a court of law a considerable sum for an illegal seizure of his wares (by Drs.

Arbuthnot, Bale, and Levit), the physicians may be said to have discontinued to exercise their privileges of inspection.

In his elaborate poem Garth cruelly caricatures the apothecaries of his day:--

"Long has he been of that amphibious fry, Bold to prescribe, and busy to apply; His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestic toys.

Here mummies lay, most reverently stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail; Not far from some huge shark's devouring head The flying-fish their finny pinions spread.

Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung, And near, a scaly alligator hung.

In this place drugs in musty heaps decay'd, In that dried bladders and false teeth were laid.

"An inner room receives the num'rous shoals Of such as pay to be reputed fools; Globes stand by globes, volumes on volumes lie, And planetary schemes amuse the eye.

The sage in velvet chair here lolls at ease, To promise future health for present fees; Then, as from tripod, solemn shams reveals, And what the stars know nothing of foretells.

Our manufactures now they merely sell, And their true value treacherously tell; Nay, they discover, too, their spite is such, That health, than crowns more valued, cost not much; Whilst we must steer our conduct by these rules, To cheat as tradesmen, or to starve as fools."

Before finally leaving Blackfriars, let us gather up a few reminiscences of the King's and Queen's printers who here first worked their inky presses.

Queen Anne, by patent in 1713, const.i.tuted Benjamin Tooke, of Fleet Street, and John Barber (afterwards Alderman Barber), Queen's printers for thirty years. This Barber, a high Tory and suspected Jacobite, was Swift's printer and warm friend. A remarkable story is told of Barber's dexterity in his profession. Being threatened with a prosecution by the House of Lords, for an offensive paragraph in a pamphlet which he had printed, and being warned of his danger by Lord Bolingbroke, he called in all the copies from the publishers, cancelled the leaf which contained the obnoxious pa.s.sage, and returned them to the booksellers with a new paragraph supplied by Lord Bolingbroke; so that when the pamphlet was produced before the House, and the pa.s.sage referred to, it was found unexceptionable. He added greatly to his wealth by the South Sea Scheme, which he had prudence enough to secure in time, and purchased an estate at East Sheen with part of his gain. In principles he was a Jacobite; and in his travels to Italy, whither he went for the recovery of his health, he was introduced to the Pretender, which exposed him to some danger on his return to England; for, immediately on his arrival, he was taken into custody by a King's messenger, but was released without punishment. After his success in the South Sea Scheme, he was elected Alderman of Castle Baynard Ward, 1722; sheriff, 1730; and, in 1732-3, Lord Mayor of London.

John Baskett subsequently purchased both shares of the patent, but his printing-offices in Blackfriars (now Printing House Square) were soon afterwards destroyed by fire. In 1739 George II. granted a fresh patent to Baskett for sixty years, with the privilege of supplying Parliament with stationery. Half this lease Baskett sold to Charles Eyre, who eventually appointed William Strahan his printer. Strahan soon after brought in Mr. Eyre, and in 1770 erected extensive premises in Printer Street, New Street Square, between Gough Square and Fetter Lane, near the present offices of Mr. Spottiswoode, one of whose family married Mr.

Strahan's daughter. Strahan died a year after his old friend, Dr.

Johnson, at his house in New Street, leaving 1,000 to the Stationers'

Company, which his son Andrew augmented with 2,000 more. This son died in 1831, aged eighty-three.

William Strahan, the son of a Scotch Customhouse officer, had come up to London a poor printers' boy, and worked his way to wealth and social distinction. He was a.s.sociated with Cadell in the purchase of copyrights, on the death of Cadell's partner and former master, Andrew Millar, who died _circa_ 1768. The names of Strahan and Cadell appeared on the t.i.tle-pages of the great works of Gibbon, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Blackstone. In 1776 Hume wrote to Strahan, "There will be no books of reputation now to be printed in London, but through your hands and Mr. Cadell's." Gibbon's history was a vast success. The first edition of 1,000 went off in a few days. This produced 490, of which Gibbon received 326 13s. 4d. The great history was finished in 1788, by the publication of the fourth quarto volume. It appeared on the author's fifty-first birthday, and the double festival was celebrated by a dinner at Mr. Cadell's, when complimentary verses from that wretched poet, Hayley, made the great man with the b.u.t.ton-hole mouth blush or feign to blush. That was a proud day for Gibbon, and a proud day for Messrs.

Cadell and Strahan.

The first Strahan, Johnson's friend, was M.P. for Malmesbury and Wootton Ba.s.sett (1775-84), and his taking to a carriage was the subject of a recorded conversation between Boswell and Johnson, who gloried in his friend's success. It was Strahan who, with Johnston and Dodsley, purchased, in 1759, for 100, the first edition of Johnson's "Ra.s.selas, Prince of Abyssinia," that sententious story, which Johnson wrote in a week, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral.

Boswell has recorded several conversations between Dr. Johnson and Strahan. Strahan, at the doctor's return from the Hebrides, asked him, with a firm tone of voice, what he thought of his country. "That it is a very vile country, to be sure, sir," returned for answer Dr. Johnson.

"Well, sir," replied the other, somewhat mortified, "G.o.d made it."

"Certainly he did," answered Dr. Johnson again; "but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and--comparisons are odious, Mr.

Strahan--but G.o.d made h.e.l.l."

Boswell has also a pretty anecdote relating to one of the doctor's visits to Strahan's printing-office, which shows the "Great Bear" in a very amiable light, and the scene altogether is not unworthy of the artist's pencil.

"Mr. Strahan," says Boswell, "had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon Johnson's recommendation. Johnson having inquired after him, said, 'Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I'll give this boy one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it is a sad work. Call him down.' I followed him into the courtyard, behind Mr. Strahan's house, and there I had a proof of what I heard him profess--that he talked alike to all. 'Some people will tell you that they let themselves down to the capacity of their hearers. I never do that. I speak uniformly in as intelligible a manner as I can.'

'Well, my boy, how do you go on?' 'Pretty well, sir; but they are afraid I'm not strong enough for some parts of the business.' Johnson: 'Why, I shall be sorry for it; for when you consider with how little mental power and corporal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear? Take all the pains you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There's a guinea.' Here was one of the many instances of his active benevolence. At the same time the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick, short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy's awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions."

In Ireland Yard, on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, and in the parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars, stood the house which Shakespeare bought, in the year 1612, and which he bequeathed by will to his daughter, Susanna Hall. In the deed of conveyance to the poet, the house is described as "ab.u.t.ting upon a street leading down to Puddle Wharf, and now or late in the tenure or occupation of one William Ireland"

(hence, we suppose, Ireland Yard), "part of which said tenement is erected over a great gate leading to a capital messuage, which some time was in the tenure of William Blackwell, Esq., deceased, and since that in the tenure or occupation of the Right Honourable Henry, now Earl of Northumberland." The original deed of conveyance is shown in the City of London Library, at Guildhall, under a handsome gla.s.s case.

The street leading down to Puddle Wharf is called St. Andrew's Hill, from the Church of St. Andrew's-in-the-Wardrobe. The proper name (says Cunningham) is Puddle Dock Hill.

CHAPTER XIX.

LUDGATE HILL.

An Ugly Bridge and "Ye Belle Savage"--A Radical Publisher--The Princ.i.p.al Gate of London--From a Fortress to a Prison--"Remember the Poor Prisoners"--Relics of Early Times--St. Martin's, Ludgate--The London Coffee House--Celebrated Goldsmiths on Ludgate Hill--Mrs.

Rundell's Cookery Book--Stationers' Hall--Old Burgavenny House and its History--Early Days of the Stationers' Company--The Almanacks--An Awkward Misprint--The Hall and its Decorations--The St. Cecilia Festivals--Dryden's "St. Cecilia's Day" and "Alexander's Feast"--Handel's Setting of them--A Modest Poet--Funeral Feasts and Political Banquets--The Company's Plate--Their Charities--The Pictures at Stationers' Hall--The Company's Arms--Famous Masters.

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct--that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber. Let us hope that a time will come when all designs for City improvements will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and win the approval of a committee of taste. The useful and the beautiful must not for ever be divorced. The railway bridge lies flat across the street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings in London. The five girders of wrought iron cross the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the span is sixty feet, in order to allow of future enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work, decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions, and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination that only the unsettled and imitative art of the ruthless nineteenth century could have put together. Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs did with granite! and observe what we Englishmen of the present day do with iron. Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did with colour in the courts of the Alhambra! A viaduct was necessary, we allow, but such a viaduct even the architect of the National Gallery would have shuddered at. The difficulties, we however allow, were great. The London, Chatham, and Dover, eager for dividends, was bent on wedding the Metropolitan Railway near Smithfield; but how could the hands of the affianced couple be joined? If there was no viaduct, there must be a tunnel. Now, the bank of the river being a very short distance from Smithfield, a very steep and dangerous gradient would have been required to effect the junction. Moreover, had the line been carried under Ludgate Hill, there must have been a slight detour to ease the ascent, the cost of which detour would have been enormous. The tunnel proposed would have involved the destruction of a few trifles--such, for instance, as Apothecaries' Hall, the churchyard adjoining, the _Times_ printing office--besides doing injury to the foundations of St. Martin's Church, the Old Bailey Sessions House, and Newgate. Moreover, no station would have been possible between the Thames and Smithfield. The puzzled inhabitants, therefore, ended in despair by giving evidence in favour of the viaduct. The stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian hideousness.

The enormous sum of upwards of 10,000 was awarded as the Metropolitan Board's quota for removing the h.o.a.rding, for widening the pavement a few feet under the railway bridge over Ludgate Hill, and for rounding off the corner.

An incredible quant.i.ty of ink has been shed about the origin of the sign of the "Belle Sauvage" inn, and even now the controversy is scarcely settled. Mr. Riley records that in 1380 (Richard II.) a certain William Lawton was sentenced to an uncomfortable hour in the pillory for trying to obtain, by means of a forged letter, twenty s.h.i.+llings from William Savage, Fleet Street, in the parish of St. Bridget. This at least shows that Savage was the name of a citizen of the locality. In 1453 (Henry VI.) a clause roll quoted by Mr. Lysons notices the bequest of John French to his mother, Joan French, widow, of "Savage's Inn," otherwise called the "Bell in the Hoop," in the parish of St. Bride's. Stow (Elizabeth) mentions a Mrs. Savage as having given the inn to the Cutlers' Company, which, however, the books of that company disprove.

This, anyhow, is certain, that in 1568 (Elizabeth) a John Craythorne gave the reversion of the "Belle Sauvage" to the Cutlers' Company, on condition that two exhibitions to the university and certain sums to poor prisoners be paid by them out of the estate. A portrait of Craythorne's wife still hangs in Cutler's Hall. In 1584 the inn was described as "Ye Belle Savage." In 1648 and 1672 the landlords' tokens exhibited (says Mr. n.o.ble) an Indian woman holding a bow and arrow. The sign in Queen Anne's time was a savage man standing by a bell. The question, therefore, is, whether the name of the inn was originally derived from Isabel (Bel) Savage, the landlady, or the sign of the bell and savage; or whether it was, as the _Spectator_ cleverly suggests, from La Belle Sauvage, "the beautiful savage," which is a derivation very generally received. There is an old French romance formerly popular in this country, the heroine of which was known as La Belle Sauvage; and it is possible that Mrs. Isabel Savage, the ancient landlady, might have become in time confused with the heroine of the old romance.

In the ante-Shakespearean days our early actors performed in inn-yards, the courtyard representing the pit, the upper and lower galleries the boxes and gallery of the modern theatre. The "Belle Sauvage," says Mr.

Collier, was a favourite place for these performances. There was also a school of defence, or fencing school, here in Queen Elizabeth's time; so many a hot Tybalt and fiery Mercutio have here crossed rapiers, and many a silk b.u.t.ton has been reft from gay doublets by the quick pa.s.sadoes of the young swordsmen who ruffled it in the Strand. This quondam inn was also the place where Banks, the showman (so often mentioned by Nash and others in Elizabethan pamphlets and lampoons), exhibited his wonderful trained horse "Marocco," the animal which once ascended the tower of St.

Paul's, and who on another occasion, at his master's bidding, delighted the mob by selecting Tarleton, the low comedian, as the greatest fool present. Banks eventually took his horse, which was shod with silver, to Rome, and the priests, frightened at the circus tricks, burnt both "Marocco" and his master for witchcraft. At No. 11 in this yard--now such a little world of industry, although it no longer rings with the stage-coach horn--lived in his obscurer days that great carver in wood, Grinling Gibbons, whose genius Evelyn first brought under the notice of Charles II. Horace Walpole says that, as a sort of advertis.e.m.e.nt, Gibbons carved an exquisite pot of flowers in wood, which stood on his window-sill, and shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that pa.s.sed beneath. No man (says Walpole) before Gibbons had "ever given to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, or linked together the various productions of the elements with a free disorder natural to each species." His _chef d'oeuvre_ of skill was an imitation point-lace cravat, which he carved at Chatsworth for the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re.

Petworth is also garlanded with Gibbons' fruit, flowers, and dead game.

Belle Sauvage Yard no longer re-echoes with the guard's rejoicing horn, and the old coaching interest is now only represented by a railway parcel office huddled up in the left-hand corner. The old galleries are gone over which pretty chambermaids leant and waved their dusters in farewell greeting to the handsome guards or smart coachmen. Industries of a very different character have now turned the old yard into a busy hive. It is not for us to dilate upon the firm whose operations are carried on here, but it may interest the reader to know that the very sheet he is now perusing was printed on the site of the old coaching inn, and published very near the old tap-room of La Belle Sauvage; for where coach-wheels once rolled and clattered, only printing-press wheels now revolve.

The old inn-yard is now very much altered in plan from what it was in former days. Originally it consisted of two courts. Into the outer one of these the present archway from Ludgate Hill led. It at one period certainly had contained private houses, in one of which Grinling Gibbons had lived. The inn stood round an inner court, entered by a second archway which stood about half-way up the present yard. Over the archway facing the outer court was the sign of "The Bell," and all round the interior ran those covered galleries, so prominent a feature in old London inns.

Near the "Belle Sauvage" resided that proud cobbler mentioned by Steele, who has recorded his eccentricities. This man had bought a wooden figure of a beau of the period, who stood before him in a bending position, and humbly presented him with his awl, wax, bristles, or whatever else his tyrannical master chose to place in his hand.

To No. 45 (south side), Ludgate Hill, that strange, independent man, Lamb's friend, William Hone, the Radical publisher, came from s.h.i.+p Court, Old Bailey, where he had published those blasphemous "Parodies,"

for which he was three times tried and acquitted, to the vexation of Lord Ellenborough. Here, having sown his seditious wild oats and broken free from the lawyers, Hone continued his occasional clever political satires, sometimes suggested by bitter Hazlitt and ill.u.s.trated by George Cruikshank's inexhaustible fancy. Here Hone devised those delightful miscellanies, the "Every-Day Book" and "Year Book," into which Lamb and many young poets threw all their humour and power. The books were commercially not very successful, but they have delighted generations, and will delight generations to come. Mr. Timbs, who saw much of Hone, describes him as sitting in a second-floor back room, surrounded by rare books and black-letter volumes. His conversion from materialism to Christianity was apparently sudden, though the process of change had no doubt long been maturing. The story of his conversion is thus related by Mr. Timbs:--"Hone was once called to a house, in a certain street in a part of the world of London entirely unknown to him. As he walked he reflected on the entirely unknown region. He arrived at the house, and was shown into a room to wait. All at once, on looking round, to his astonishment and almost horror, every object he saw seemed familiar to him. He said to himself, 'What is this? I was never here before, and yet I have seen all this before, and as a proof I have I now remember a very peculiar knot behind the shutters.' He opened the shutters, and found the very knot. 'Now, then,' he thought, 'here is something I cannot explain on any principle--there must be some power beyond matter.'" The argument that so happily convinced Hone does not seem to us in itself as very convincing. Hone's recognition of the room was but some confused memory of an a.n.a.logous place. Knots are not uncommon in deal shutters, and the discovery of the knot in the particular place was a mere coincidence. But, considering that Hone was a self-educated man, and, like many sceptics, was incredulous only with regard to Christianity, and even believed he once saw an apparition in Ludgate Hill, who can be surprised?

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INNER COURT OF THE BELLE SAUVAGE. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING IN MR. CRACE'S COLLECTION.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MUTILATED STATUES FROM LUD GATE, 1798 (_see page 226_).]

At No. 7, opposite Hone's, "The Percy Anecdotes," that well-chosen and fortunate selection of every sort of story, were first published.

Lud Gate, which Stow in his "Survey" designates the sixth and princ.i.p.al gate of London, taken down in 1760 at the solicitation of the chief inhabitants of Farringdon Without and Farringdon Within, stood between the present London Tavern and the church of St. Martin. According to old Geoffry of Monmouth's fabulous history of England, this entrance to London was first built by King Lud, a British monarch, sixty-six years before Christ. Our later antiquaries, ruthless as to legends, however romantic, consider its original name to have been the Flood or Fleet Gate, which is far more feasible. Lud Gate was either repaired or rebuilt in the year 1215, when the armed barons, under Robert Fitzwalter, repulsed at Northampton, were welcomed to London, and there awaited King John's concession of the Magna Charta. While in the metropolis these greedy and fanatical barons spent their time in spoiling the houses of the rich Jews, and used the stones in strengthening the walls and gates of the City. That this tradition is true was proved in 1586, when (as Stow says) all the gate was rebuilt.

Embedded among other stones was found one on which was engraved, in Hebrew characters, the words "This is the ward of Rabbi Moses, the son of the honourable Rabbi Isaac." This stone was probably the sign of one of the Jewish houses pulled down by Fitzwalter, Magnaville, and the Earl of Gloucester, perhaps for the express purpose of obtaining ready materials for strengthening the bulwarks of London. In 1260 (Henry III.) Lud Gate was repaired, and beautified with images of King Lud and other monarchs. In the reign of Edward VI. the citizens, zealous against everything that approached idolatry, smote off the heads of Lud and his family; but Queen Mary, partial to all images, afterwards replaced the heads on the old bodies.

In 1554 King Lud and his sons looked down on a street seething with angry men, and saw blood shed upon the hill leading to St. Paul's. Sir Thomas Wyat, a Kentish gentleman, urged by the Earl of Devon, and led on by the almost universal dread of Queen Mary's marriage with the bigoted Philip of Spain, a.s.sembled 1,500 armed men at Rochester Castle, and, aided by 500 Londoners, who deserted to him, raised the standard of insurrection. Five vessels of the fleet joined him, and with seven pieces of artillery, captured from the Duke of Norfolk, he marched upon London. Soon followed by 15,000 men, eager to save the Princess Elizabeth, Wyat marched through Dartford to Greenwich and Deptford. With a force now dwindled to 7,000 men, Wyat attacked London Bridge. Driven from there by the Tower guns, he marched to Kingston, crossed the river, resolving to beat back the Queen's troops at Brentford, and attempt to enter the City by Lud Gate, which some of the Protestant citizens had offered to throw open to him. The Queen, with true Tudor courage, refused to leave St. James's, and in a council of war it was agreed to throw a strong force into Lud Gate, and, permitting Wyat's advance up Fleet Street, to enclose him like a wild boar in the toils. At nine on a February morning, 1554, Wyat reached Hyde Park Corner, was cannonaded at Hay Hill, and further on towards Charing Cross he and some three or four hundred men were cut off from his other followers. Rus.h.i.+ng on with a standard through Piccadilly, Wyat reached Lud Gate. There (says Stow) he knocked, calling out, "I am Wyat; the Queen has granted all my pet.i.tions."