The last of our story is not yet. Certain places still assumed the right of giving shelter against civil process. When the bailiffs invaded the liberty, the whole population forthwith set on, and pommelled them so lustily that they were fortunate if they escaped sound in limb. The precincts of Whitefriars and the Savoy were the worst places in London. The first, renowned in slang, nay, in literature, as Alsatia, because (some explained) it neighboured the Temple on the East, as Alsace did France, was a base and villainous Bohemia. Ram Alley (now Mitre Court), a local Lombard Street, Salisbury Court (now Salisbury Square) were its chief ways, though probably all between Fleet Street and the river, which was not the Temple, held of this lawless republic. A bully or bravo, or squire of Alsatia was a cant name for a penniless and violent fellow of the time. He is pictured by Otway in his _Soldier's Fortune_ with flopping hat pinned up on one side, with a tawdry weather-beaten peruke, dirty linen, and a long scandalous iron sword jangling at his heels. The sheriff with the _posse comitatus_ did on occasion raid Alsatia, but his prey, if too weak to fight, had ever timely warning to escape by land or water to some other like burrow. _The Fortunes of Nigel_ tells as much of the place as the general cares to know, and there is much curious matter mined out by the zealous antiquary as to other like places of refuge in the capital. Thus Fullwood's, sometime Fuller's Rents, was related to Gray's Inn as Alsatia to the Temple. In 1673 the gentlemen of that ancient house so far forgot themselves as to engage in "pumping" some bailiffs who attempted to take goods from out the Rents upon an execution. "They were charged with a body of thirty lusty bailiffs," and a "strong ryot" ensued. Possibly they recollected that their most illustrious fellow-member, "broad-browed Verulam," had taken refuge there some sixty years before, a circumstance which gave my Lord Coke occasion to "gall the kibe"--as indeed he never lost any chance to do--of his great contemporary. Then there was the mint in Southwark, whereto an ex-poet laureate, "poor Nahum Tate," as Dr. Johnson calls him, was driven by extreme poverty. Pope's cruel satire pictures it half Grub Street half Bedlam, the last refuge of the hack and the poetaster. The Clink and Deadman's place are now forgotten, whilst Baldwin's Gardens and the Minories have a more commonplace reputation. About a century after James's Act, Parliament again interfered, and professed to strip the "pretended privileged places" of every shred of exemption, but it required two other statutes, the 9 Geo. I. c. 28, 1722, and the 11 Geo. I. c. 22, 1724, to make the law's process as effectual there as elsewhere. TRIAL BY ORDEAL