HISTORICAL AND LITERARY MEMORIALS OF THE CITY OF LONDON VOLUME I. By John Heneage Jesse CHAPTER I PICCADILLY. Traditions of Hyde Park Corner Sir Thomas Wyatt Charles the Second and the Duke of York Sir Samuel Morland Winstanley Pope Lord Lanesborough Apsley House The " Pillars of Hercules " Origin of the Name Piccadilly Eminent Persons Who Lived in the Neighbourhood. HYDE PARK CORNER, as the great western approach to London, seems to be the most appropriate place for commencing our antiquarian rambles. The spot, too, in itself, possesses great interest. It was here that Sir Thomas Wyatt "planted his ordnance" in his famous attempt on London in 1554; and here also, on the threatened approach of the royal army in 1642, the citizens of London hastily threw up a large fort, strengthened with four bastions ; in which zealous work of rebellion they were enthusiastically aided by their wives and daughters. Butler tells us, in his inimitable " Hudibras : " " From ladies down to oyster-wenches, Laboured like pioneers in trenches ; Fell to their pickaxes and tools, And helped the men to dig like moles." I have seldom crossed the road between Constitution Hill and Hyde Park, without calling to mind the well-known retort which Charles the Second /gave his,' brother:, the Duke of York, on this particular spot! Charles, who was as fond of /jX^lltuig'' -as; h'i4 brother was of riding, after taking two or three turns, and amusing himself with feeding the birds in St. James's Park, proceeded* up Constitution Hill, accompanied by the Duke of Leeds and Lord Cromarty, into Hyde Park. He was in the act of crossing the road, when he was met by the Duke of York, who had been hunting on Hounslow Heath, and who was returning in his coach, attended by an escort of the royal horse guards. The duke immediately alighted, and after paying his respects to the king, expressed his uneasiness at seeing him with so small an attendance, and his fears that his life might be in danger from the hands of an assassin. " No kind of danger," said the merry monarch, " for I am sure that no man in England will take away my life to make you king." x Close to Hyde Park Corner, the well-known mechanist, Sir Samuel Morland, had a country house. A letter of his, addressed to the highminded and ingenious philosopher, John Evelyn, is dated from his "hut near Hyde Park Gate." It was to the town house of Sir Samuel, at Lambeth, that Charles the Second passed from the palace of Whitehall by water, to pass the first night of his almost miraculous Restoration with Mrs. Palmer, afterward the too celebrated Duchess of Cleveland. Winstanley, another ingenious mechanist, who lived in the reign of Queen Anne, had also a " water theatre " near Hyde Park Corner, conspicuous from its being surmounted by a large weathercock ; and here, we are told, the town was accustomed to crowd of an evening to witness his hydraulic experiments. Steele mentions him in one of his papers in the Tatler, and Evelyn has thought the projector worthy of praise. One would be glad, but the wish is a vain one, to ascertain the exact spot, "by Hyde Park Corner," which was the scene of the schoolboy days of Pope, where the poet forgot the " little " which he had learnt from his Roman Catholic preceptor, Bannister ; from whence he used to stroll to the playhouse, to delight himself with theatrical exhibitions ; and where the youthful bard composed his juvenile play from " Ogildby's Iliad," in which his schoolfellows were the principal performers, and his master's gardener was the personator of Ajax. Since we are unable to point out the exact spot where the great poet "lisped in numbers," it is but small consolation to be able to fix the residence of one whose follies have been immortalised by his verse. This was Theophilus, first Lord Lanesborough : " Sober Lanesborough dancing with the gout" His country residence was on the site of the present St. George's Hospital, and originally formed the centre of the old hospital, to which two wings were afterward added on its being adapted to charitable purposes. So paramount is said to have been Lord Lanesborough' s passion for dancing, that, when Queen Anne lost her consort, Prince George of Denmark, he seriously advised her to dispel her grief by applying herself to his favourite exercise. He died here on the nth of March, 1723. Apsley House, which stands on the site of the old Ranger's Lodge, was built by Lord Chancellor Apsley, afterward second Earl of Bathurst, about the year 1770. Almost adjoining, and to the east of Apsley House, formerly stood a noted inn, the " Pillars of Hercules," which will always be memorable as the place where Squire Western took up his abode, when he came to London in search of Sophia, and was bursting with vengeance against Tom Jones. About the middle of the last century, the " Pillars of Hercules " was a fashionable dining place, especially for military men. It was also much frequented by country gentlemen from the West of England, which was probably the reason that Fielding made Squire Western take up his quarters there. The space between the "Pillars of Hercules" and Hamilton Place was formerly occupied by a row of mean houses, one of which was a publichouse called the "Triumphant Chariot." This was, in all probability, the "petty tavern" to which the unfortunate Richard Savage was conducted by Sir Richard Steele, on the well-known occasion of their being closeted together for a whole day composing a hurried pamphlet, which they were compelled to sell for two guineas before they could pay for their dinner. Piccadilly Terrace now stands on the site of the row of houses we have referred to. At No. 13, Lord Byron resided shortly after his marriage : here occurred his memorable separation from Lady Byron ; and here he seems to have composed " Parisina," and "The Siege of Corinth." According to the authority of almost every person who has written on the subject of the streets of London, and I am sorry to disturb an opinion so long received, Piccadilly derives its name from Peccadilla Hall, a repository for the sale of the fashionable ruffs for the neck, entitled piccadillies or turnovers, which were introduced in the reign of James the First. Barnabe Rice, in his " Honestie of the Age," speaks of the " bodymakers that do swarm through all parts, both of London and about London." "The body," he says, " is still pampered up in the very dropsy of excess. He that some forty years since should have asked after Piccadilly, I wonder who would have understood him ; or who could have told what a Piccadilly had been, either fish or flesh." In Ben Jonson's " Devil is an Ass ; " in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Pilgrim ; " and in Drayton's satirical poem, " The Moon Calf," will be found more than " one allusion to the fashionable ' pickadel,' or pickadilly." It must be remarked, however, that the earliest of these productions (and they have all evidently reference to a ridiculous and ephemeral fashion of recent introduction) dates no further back than 1616; and, moreover, according to every evidence which I have been able to collect on the subject, the introduction of the "Piccadilly" was at least not of an earlier period than 1614. When we are able, therefore, to prove that the word "Pickadilla" was in common use as far back as 1596 (our authority is Gerard's " Herbal," where the "small wild buglosse," or oxtongue, is spoken of as growing upon the banks of the dry ditches "about Pickadilla"), we are compelled to disturb the old opinion that the present street derives its name from a fashionable article of dress which we find was not introduced till nearly twenty years after "Pickadilla" had become a familiar name, and which, moreover, was little likely to be sold in so rural a district as Piccadilly was in the days of James the First. Let us be allowed to throw out one suggestion on the subject. Pickadilla House, which stood nearly on the site of the present Panton Square, was a fashionable place of amusement, apparently as far back as the reign of Elizabeth, and continued to be so nearly till the time of the Commonwealth. 1 It has been the custom of all countries to confer an alluring name on places of amusement, as, for instance, we find the fashionable " Folly " floating on the Thames in the days of Charles the Second, and I cannot, therefore, but think that Pickadilla House derived its name simply from the Spanish word peccadillo, literally meaning a venial fault, but which was intended, perhaps, to imply more than met the eye. Under all circumstances, it seems far more reasonable to suppose that the newly invented ruff should have derived its name from being worn by the fair ladies and silken gallants who frequented Pickadilla House, than that a trifling article of dress should have given a name, first to the suburban emporium in which it is asserted to have been sold, and afterward to one of the principal streets in Europe. Why, indeed, should a ruff have been called a pickadilla, unless from some such reason as we have mentioned? Or what lady is there who ever went into the fields to buy her attire? And, in the days of Elizabeth and James the First, Pickadilla House stood literally in the fields. The fact, however, that " Pickadilla " was a well-known spot, nearly twenty years before the introduction of the " pickadel," or " turnover," at least puts one part of the argument at rest.