“Sir John Spencer, having but a poor opinion of the Compton family in that day, positively forbade the first Earl of Northampton to pay his addresses to his daughter, who was the greatest heiress in England. One day, at the foot of the staircase, Sir John met the baker’s boy with his covered barrow, and, being pleased at his having come punctually when he was ordered, he gave him sixpence; but the baker’s boy was Lord Northampton in disguise, and in the covered barrow he was carrying off the beautiful Elizabeth Spencer. When he found how he had been duped, Sir John swore that Lord Northampton had seen the only sixpence of his money he should ever receive, and refused to be reconciled to his daughter. But the next year Queen Elizabeth, having expressed to Sir John Spencer the sympathy which she felt with his sentiments upon the ingratitude of his child, invited him to come and be “gossip” with her to a newly-born baby in which she was much interested, and he could not refuse; and it is easy to imagine whose that baby was. So the Spencer property came to the Comptons after all” (Hare, vol. i. pp. 284-85). [Illustration: CORNHILL MILITARY ASSOCIATION, WITH A VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ST. HELEN’S AND LEATHERSELLERS’ HALL ] In 1642 the Earl of Northampton was killed at Hopton Heath, beside the King. Here lived the Countess of Pembroke, Sidney’s sister, immortalised by Ben Jonson’s epitaph. In 1640 Sir John Langham, sheriff in 1642, leased the house; it is said to have been used as a prison for Royalists. His son, Sir Stephen Langham, succeeded, and in his time a great part of the house was destroyed by fire. In 1672, its great hall became a Presbyterian meeting-house; it was then turned into a packers’ warehouse. In 1831 it was converted into an institute for lectures and is now a restaurant.[3] [Illustration: COUNCIL ROOM, CROSBY HALL, 1816 ] The streets and courts leading out of Bishopsgate Street Within are neither important nor numerous. On the west side going south from the gate were inns called the Vine, the Four Swans, the Green Dragon, the Black Bull, and the Cross Keys (in Gracechurch Street).