The Present Whitefriars--The Carmelite Convent--Dr. Butts--The Sanctuary--Lord Sanquhar Murders the Fencing-Master--His Trial--Bacon and Yelverton--His Execution--Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel"--Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_--A Riot in Whitefriars--Elizabethan Edicts against two Ruffians of Alsatia--Bridewell--A Roman Fortification--A Saxon Palace--Wolsey's Residence--Queen Catherine's Trial--Her Behaviour in Court--Persecution of the First Congregationalists--Granaries and Coal Stores destroyed by the Great Fire--The Flogging in Bridewell--Sermon on Madame Creswell--Hogarth and the "Harlot's Progress"--Pennant's Account of Bridewell--Bridewell in 1843--Its Latter Days--Pictures in the Court Room--Bridewell Dock--The Gas Works--Theatres in Whitefriars--Pepys' Visits to the Theatre--Dryden and the Dorset Gardens Theatre--Davenant--Kynaston--Dorset House--The Poet-Earl. So rich is London in legend and tradition, that even some of the spots that now appear the blankest, baldest, and most uninteresting, are really vaults of entombed anecdote and treasure-houses of old story. Whitefriars--that dull, narrow, uninviting lane sloping from Fleet Street to the river, with gas works at its foot and mean shops on either side--was once the centre of a district full of noblemen's mansions; but Time's harlequin wand by-and-by turned it into a debtors' sanctuary and thieves' paradise, and for half a century its bullies and swindlers waged a ceaseless war with their proud and rackety neighbours of the Temple. The dingy lane, now only awakened by the quick wheel of the swift newspaper cart or the ponderous tires of the sullen coal-wagon, was in olden times for ever ringing with clash of swords, the cries of quarrelsome gamblers, and the drunken songs of noisy Bobadils.