Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
Besides the Caesars, Cecils, Throckmortons, Lincolns, Sir John Franklin,
and Edward Reeve, who, according to Mr. Noble, all resided in Chancery
Lane, when it was a fashionable legal quarter, we must not forget that
on the site of No. 115 lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the ambassador sent
by Charles II. to arrange his marriage with the Portuguese princess.
This accomplished man, who translated Guarini's "Pastor Fido," and the
"Lusiad" of Camoens, died at Madrid in 1666. His brave yet gentle wife,
who wrote some interesting memoirs, gives a graphic account of herself
and her husband taking leave of his royal master, Charles I., at Hampton
Court. At parting, the king saluted her, and she prayed God to preserve
his majesty with long life and happy years. The king stroked her on the
cheek, and said, "Child, if God pleaseth, it shall be so; but both you
and I must submit to God's will, for you know whose hands I am in." Then
turning to Sir Richard, Charles said, "Be sure, Dick, to tell my son all
that I have said, and deliver these letters to my wife. Pray God bless
her; and I hope I shall do well." Then, embracing Sir Richard, the king
added, "Thou hast ever been an honest man, and I hope God will bless
thee, and make thee a happy servant to my son, whom I have charged in my
letter to continue his love and trust to you; and I do promise you, if I
am ever restored to my dignity, I will bountifully reward you both for
your services and sufferings." "Thus," says the noble Royalist lady,
enthusiastically, "did we part from that glorious sun that within a few
months after was extinguished, to the grief of all Christians who are
not forsaken of their God."
No. 45 (east side) is the "Hole in the Wall" Tavern, kept early in the
century by Jack Randal, _alias_ "Nonpareil," a fighting man, whom Tom
Moore visited, says Mr. Noble, to get materials for his "Tom Cribb's
Memorial to Congress," "Randal's Diary," and other satirical poems.
Hazlitt, when living in Southampton Buildings, describes going to this
haunt of the fancy the night before the great fight between Neate, the
Bristol butcher, and Hickman, the gas-man, to find out where the
encounter was to take place, although Randal had once rather too
forcibly expelled him for some trifling complaint about a chop. Hazlitt
went down to the fight with Thurtell, the betting man, who afterwards
murdered Mr. Weare, a gambler and bill-discounter of Lyon's Inn. In
Byron's early days taverns like Randal's were frequented by all the men
about town, who considered that to wear bird's-eye handkerchiefs and
heavy-caped box coats was the height of manliness and fashion.
Chichester Rents, a sorry place now, preserves a memory of the site of
the town-house of the Bishops of Chichester. It was originally built in
a garden belonging to one John Herberton, granted the bishops by Henry
III., who excepted it out of the charter of the Jew converts' house, now
the Rolls Chapel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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