[69] Saunders Welch, the father of Mrs. Nollekens, was educated in Aylesbury workhouse, and for many years was a grocer in Museum Street, then Queen Street. He succeeded Fielding as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. Smith says in his _Nollekens_ that he met many people who recollected seeing him as High Constable of Westminster, “dressed in black, with a large, nine-storey George the Second’s wig highly powdered, with long flowing curls over his shoulder, a high three-cornered hat, and his black baton tipped with silver at either end, riding on a white horse to Tyburn with the malefactors.” A long and warm friendship existed between Saunders Welch and Dr. Johnson. “Johnson, who had an eager and unceasing curiosity to know human life in all its variety, told me that he attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examinations of the culprits” (Boswell). [70] To-day, High Street, Marylebone, is perhaps the most perfect High Street left in London. Neither from its north end in Marylebone Road nor from Oxford Street does it receive heavy traffic; its shops exist for the fine streets and squares around it, and it offers them the best of most things, from a tender chicken to a county history. [71] “In the year 1741, the old church in which Hogarth has introduced his “Rake at the Altar with the Old Maid” was taken down, and the present one built on its site; so that the writers who have stated that the scene took place in the present edifice must acknowledge their error, if they will take the trouble to refer to Hogarth’s fifth plate of the Rake’s Progress, where they will find its publication to have taken place June 25, 1735.”--S. [72] Probably Christopher Norton, of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy. [73] Tradition reports that from Elizabeth it came to the Forsyths, and thence to the Duke of Portland. In his _Marylebone and St. Pancras_, Mr. Clinch writes: “In the year 1703 a large school was established here by Mr. De la Place. That gentleman’s daughter married the Rev. John Fountayne, Rector of North Sidmouth, in Wiltshire, and the latter succeeded Mr. De la Place in the school. The school is said to have obtained a considerable reputation among the nobility and gentry, whose sons there received an educational training previously to their removal to the universities.” [74] “Mr. Fountayne had one son, afterwards Dean of York, and three daughters, viz. Mrs. Hargrave, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Metz. Mrs. Hargrave was lately living; she was the wife of Counsellor Hargrave, and was esteemed a great beauty. Another daughter of Monsieur De la Place married the Rev. Mr. Dyer, brother to the author of _Grongar Hill_, to whose nephew, the late Mr. Dyer, the printseller, I am obliged for some parts of the above information.”--S. [75] Reproduced in Mr. Clinch’s _Marylebone and St. Pancras_ (1890).