Club Life of London, Vol. 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th CenturiesTimbs, John
History
Club Life of London, Vol. 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
Timbs, John
Clubs -- England -- London; Literary landmarks -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
About forty years since there stood at a short distance north of St.
Botolph's Church, a large old _hostelrie_, according to the date it
bore (1480), towards the close of the reign of Edward IV. Stow, in
1598, describes it as "a fair inn for receipt of travellers, next unto
the Parish Church of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate." It preserved
much of its original appearance, the main front consisting of three
bays of two storeys, which, with the interspaces, had throughout
casements; and above which was an overhanging storey or attic, and the
roof rising in three points. Still, this was not the original front,
which was altered in 1787: upon the old inn yard was built White Hart
Court. In 1829, the Tavern was taken down, and rebuilt, in handsome
modern style; when the entrance into Old Bedlam, and formerly called
Bedlam Gate, was widened, and the street re-named Liverpool-street. A
lithograph of the old Tavern was published in 1829.
Somewhat lower down, is the residence of Sir Paul Pindar, now
wine-vaults, with the sign of Paul Pindar's Head, corner of
Half-moon-alley, No. 160, Bishopsgate-street Without. Sir Paul was a
wealthy merchant, contemporary with Sir Thomas Gresham. The house was
built towards the end of the 16th century, with a wood-framed front
and caryatid brackets; and the principal windows bayed, their lower
fronts enriched with panels of carved work. In the first-floor front
room is a fine original ceiling in stucco, in which are the arms of
Sir Paul Pindar. In the rear of these premises, within a garden, was
formerly a lodge, of corresponding date, decorated with four
medallions, containing figures in Italian taste. In Half-moon-alley,
was the Half-moon Brewhouse, of which there is a token in the Beaufoy
Collection.
THE MITRE, IN FENCHURCH STREET,
Was one of the political taverns of the Civil War, and was kept by
Daniel Rawlinson, who appears to have been a staunch royalist: his
Token is preserved in the Beaufoy collection. Dr. Richard Rawlinson,
whose Jacobite principles are sufficiently on record, in a letter to
Hearne, the nonjuring antiquary at Oxford, says of "Daniel Rawlinson,
who kept the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch-street, and of whose being
suspected in the Rump time, I have heard much. The Whigs tell this,
that upon the King's murder, January 30th, 1649, he hung his sign in
mourning: he certainly judged right; the honour of the mitre was much
eclipsed by the loss of so good a parent to the Church of England;
these rogues [the Whigs] say, this endeared him so much to the
Churchmen, that he strove amain, and got a good estate."
Pepys, who expressed great personal fear of the Plague, in his Diary,
August 6, 1666, notices that notwithstanding Dan Rowlandson's being
all last year in the country, the sickness in a great measure past,
one of his men was then dead at the Mitre of the pestilence; his wife
and one of his maids both sick, and himself shut up, which, says
Pepys, "troubles me mightily. God preserve us!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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