Down the long, narrow passage, I found a bare, uncompromising chapel, with a high, wooden pulpit, that I looked at with more respect than its ugliness warranted, remembering that Baxter had preached here in 1672, and that John Wesley and Whitefield had addressed crowded congregations during the year Wesley spent with the Moravians between the time that he left the Church of England and the founding of the Methodist persuasion in 1740. The boundary line between St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, and St. Dunstan’s in the West is just in front of the pulpit, so the preacher and his congregation are in different parishes. The chapel has been used by the Moravian sect since 1738, and as their lease does not expire for about another 250 years, it is not likely to change ownership, in spite of the dwindling congregation. It has been so many times restored and rebuilt that one gets a much better idea of the antiquity of the building from the back entrance in Nevill’s Court, for this is the only part that could possibly have existed before the Great Fire. CLIFFORD’S INN “Oh! London! London! our delight, Great flower that opens but at night.” R. LE GALLIENNE. Between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane is the entrance to Clifford’s Inn, the oldest of all the Inns of Chancery. In January, 1921, big flaunting notice-boards announced that Clifford’s Inn would be sold by auction, but no immediate purchaser was found, and this quiet corner is still unmolested, though by the time this book is printed it may have received its _coup de grâce_ from the pickaxe. Go and look at it while you may. It was founded in 1345 and takes its name from a certain Robert Clifford of Edward II.’s reign. Sir Edward Coke, the great Elizabethan lawyer, was a member of Clifford’s Inn and left it for the Middle Temple in 1572. Some of the Inn survived the Great Fire, and in the crazy-looking little old hall the judges sat who decided the many boundary disputes after that catastrophe. At the moment it is the headquarters of some society “duquel je ne sçais pas le nom.” Samuel Butler lived at No. 15 Clifford’s Inn for thirty-eight years, and many an admirer of the genius of the man who wrote _Erewhon_ and _The Way of all Flesh_ has made a pilgrimage to the quiet corner hidden away a few yards from bustling Fleet Street. CHAPTER VIII THE CHARTERHOUSE AND ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S “At length they all to mery London came, To mery London my most kyndley nurse.” SPENSER. In days of old, when London’s present meatmarket was the fashionable jousting-ground of the time, the knights and squires used to ride to Smithfield up a road still called Giltspur Street, either from the armourers who dwelt there, or from the jingling of the champions’ spurs as they clattered by.