Mathias describes Tom Payne as 'that Trypho emeritus,' and as 'one of the honestest men living, to whom, as a bookseller, learning is under considerable obligations.' Beloe, in his 'Sexagenarian,' states that at Tom Payne's and at Peter Elmsley's, in the Strand, 'a wandering scholar in search of pabulum might be almost certain of meeting Cracherode, George Steevens, Malone, Wyndham, Lord Stormont, Sir John Hawkins, Lord Spencer, Porson, Burney, Thomas Grenville, Wakefield, Dean Dampier, King of Mansfield Street, Towneley, Colonel Stanley,' and others. Savage professed to have picked up his 'Author to Let' at 'the Mews Gate on my way from Charing Cross to Hedge Lane.' Tom Payne (who was a native of Brackley) came into possession of his famous shop at the Mews' Gate through his marriage with Elizabeth Taylor, whose brother built and for some time occupied it. About 1776 Tom Payne ('Bookseller Extraordinary to the Prince Regent, and Bookseller to the University of Oxford') took his son into partnership, to whom fourteen years later he relinquished the business, and died in February, 1799, in his eighty-second year. Thomas Payne the younger (to whom Dibdin dedicated his 'Library Companion,' 1825) remained here until 1806, when he removed to Pall Mall; in 1813 he took Henry Foss, who had been his apprentice, into partnership. The former died in 1831, and was succeeded by his nephew, John Payne, and Henry Foss, who retired from the trade in 1850, when their stock came under the hammer at Sotheby's. In the preface to his 'Library Companion,' 1825, Dibdin speaks very highly of the catalogue of Payne and Foss: 'Since the commencement of this work, Messrs. Payne and Foss have published a catalogue of 10,051 articles. I have smiled, in common with many friends, to observe rare and curious volumes selling for large sums at auctions, when sometimes _better_ copies of them may be obtained in that incomparable repository in Pall Mall at two-thirds of the price. Whoever wants a _classical fitting out_ must betake themselves to this repository.' The bibliopolic history of the Mews Gate did not terminate with the younger Tom Payne. When he removed to a more aristocratic quarter, the shop passed into the occupation of William Sancho, the negro bookseller, whose father, Ignatius, was born in 1729 on board a ship in the slave trade soon after it had quitted the coast of Guinea. William Sancho died before 1817, and was succeeded at the Mews Gate by James Bain, who afterwards removed to No. 1, Haymarket, where the business is still carried on, 'in accordance with the best bookselling traditions, by his younger son, the second James Bain having died early in 1894.' The Mews was taken down in 1830, and was used in its latter days to shelter Cross's Menagerie from Exeter 'Change.