“Merry Whitefoord, farewell! for thy sake I admit That a Scot may have humour--I’d almost said wit; This debt to thy memory I cannot refuse, Thou best-humour’d man with the worst-humour’d Muse.” Whitefoord became Vice-President of the Society of Arts. Anthony Pasquin (Williams), a celebrated art critic and satirist of Dr. Johnson’s time, was articled to Matt Darley, the famous caricaturist of the Strand, to learn engraving.[250] The old name of Northumberland Street was Hartshorne Lane or Christopher Alley.[251] Here Ben Jonson lived when he was a child, and after his mother had taken a bricklayer for her second husband. At the bottom of this lane Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had his wood wharf. This fact shows how much history is illustrated by topography, for the residence of the unfortunate justice explains why it should have been supposed that he had been inveigled into Somerset House. In 1829 Mr. Wood, who kept a coal wharf, resided in Sir Edmondbury’s old premises at the bottom of Northumberland Street. It was here the court justice’s wood-wharf was, but his house was in Green’s Lane, near Hungerford Market.[252] During the Great Plague Sir Edmondbury had been very active; on one occasion, when his men refused to act, he entered a pest-house alone to apprehend a wretch who had stolen at least a thousand winding-sheets. Four medals were struck on his death. There is also a portrait of the unlucky woodmonger in the waiting-room adjoining the Vestry of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.[253] He wore, it seems, a full black wig, like Charles II. Three men were tried for his murder--the cushion-man at the Queen’s Chapel, the servant of the treasurer of the chapel, and the porter of Somerset House. The truculent Scroggs tried the accused, and those infamous men, Oates, Prance, and Bedloe, were the false witnesses who murdered them. The prisoners were all executed. Sir Edmondbury’s corpse was embalmed and borne to its funeral at St. Martin’s from Bridewell. The pall was supported by eight knights, all justices of the peace, and the aldermen of London followed the coffin. Twenty-two ministers marched before the body, and a great Protestant mob followed. Dr. William Lloyd preached the funeral sermon from the text 2 Sam. iii. 24. The preacher was guarded in the pulpit by two clergymen armed with “Protestant flails.” [Illustration: YORK STAIRS, WITH THE HOUSES OF PEPYS AND PETER THE GREAT, AFTER CANALETTI (CIRCA 1745).]