The old Bar is now a mere piece of useless and disused armour. Once a protection, then an ornament, it has now become an obstruction--the too-narrow neck of a large decanter--a bone in the throat of Fleet Street. Yet still we have a lingering fondness for the old barrier that we have seen draped in black for a dead hero and glittering with gold in honour of a young bride. We have shared the sunshine that brightened it and the gloom that has darkened it, and we feel for it a species of friendship, in which it mutely shares. To us there seems to be a dignity in its dirt and pathos in the mud that bespatters its patient old face, as, like a sturdy fortress, it holds out against all its enemies, and Charles I. and II., and Elizabeth and James I. keep a bright look-out day and night for all attacks. Nevertheless, it must go in time, we fear. Poor old Temple Bar, we shall miss you when you are gone! [Illustration: TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY (_see page 33_).] FOOTNOTES: [1] Amongst these we must not forget Joseph Sullivan, who was executed at Tyburn for high treason, for enlisting men in the service of the Pretender. In the collection of broadsides belonging to the Society of Antiquaries there is one of great interest, entitled "Perkins against Perkin, a dialogue between Sir William Perkins and Major Sulliviane, the two loggerheads upon Temple Bar, concerning the present juncture of affaires." Date uncertain. CHAPTER III. FLEET STREET--GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Frays in Fleet Street--Chaucer and the Friar--The Duchess of Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft--Riots between Law Students and Citizens--'Prentice Riots--Oates in the Pillory--Entertainments in Fleet Street--Shop Signs--Burning the Boot--Trial of Hardy--Queen Caroline's Funeral. Alas, for the changes of time! The Fleet, that little, quick-flowing stream, once so bright and clear, is now a sewer! but its name remains immortalised by the street called after it. Although, according to a modern antiquary, a Roman amphitheatre once stood on the site of the Fleet Prison, and Roman citizens were certainly interred outside Ludgate, we know but little whether Roman buildings ever stood on the west side of the City gates. Stow, however, describes a stone pavement supported on piles being found, in 1595, near the Fleet Street end of Chancery Lane; so that we may presume the soil of the neighbourhood was originally marshy. The first British settlers there must probably have been restless spirits, impatient of the high rents and insufficient room inside the City walls and willing, for economy, to risk the forays of any Saxon pirates who chose to steal up the river on a dusky night and sack the outlying cabins of London.