THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 71 poor prisoners In 1584 the inn The sign in Queen University and certain sums to should be paid out of the estate. was called "Ye Belle Savage." Anne's time was a savage man standing by a bell. In the old coaching days was heard the cheery horn of the guard, where now the printing press in its busy life has supplanted the rattle of coach wheels rolling in and out of the old inn yard. Here lived, in the days of Charles II., the great woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons. The inn appears to have been built round a spacious courtyard, and had balconies running along the entire length of the main portion of the building. The walls of the Royal Exchange have been of late years decorated with paintings by artists of repute, representing various episodes connected with the City of London and the commerce of the country. I think the first panel was painted by Lord Leighton; it depicts the Phoenicians bartering with the ancient Britons in Cornwall. Then, there are the panels of Brangwyn, Seymour Lucas, Ernest Normand and his wife, Henrietta Ray, S. J. Solomon, Stanhope Forbes, R. W. Macbeth, Sigismund Goetze, and, last but not least, Abbey. The intention is to fill in all these large panels with paintings of of a like character. These mural 72 FAMILIAR LONDON decorations are no doubt a great enrichment to the arcades of the Exchange, and form a feast for the eye that delights in colour. In Threadneedle Street we find the Merchant Taylors' Hall, the largest of the various London Companies' halls. Here there are several good portraits of various celebrities-notably Henry III., Charles I., Charles II., the Duke of York, the Duke of Wellington, James II., William III., Queen Anne, George III. and his wife. Then we come to Broad Street, with its banking houses, and farther on to Austin Friars, where (at No. 18) lived James Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses. After he had been resident here for several years, another James Smith came to live in the place; and this fact produced some confusion. The new-comer called on the author, and hinted that, to avoid inconvenience, one or the other of them had better leave the locality, saying also that he should prefer to stay. "No," said the wit: "I am James the First; you are James the Second: you must abdicate." The district of Austin Friars is rich in antiquarian lore. Here was founded in 1243 the old Priory of Begging Friars by Humphrey Bohun, AUSTIN FRIARS 73 Earl of Hereford and Essex. At the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII. bestowed the Friars' house and gardens on the first Marquis of Winchester, who made the place his town residence. “Here,” says Mr Jesse, "lies the pious founder of the Priory, Humphrey de Bohun, who stood godfather at the font for Edward I., and who afterwards fought against Henry III. . . . . Here rests Edmund, son of Joan Plantagenet, the fair maid of Kent,' and half-brother to Richard II. Here lies the headless trunk of the gallant Fitzallan, tenth Earl of Arundel, who was executed at Cheapside in 1397. Here also rest the mangled remains of the barons who fell at the battle of Barnet in 1471, and who were interred together in the body of the church; of John de Vere, twelfth Earl of Oxford, who was beheaded on Tower Hill with his eldest son, Aubrey, in 1461; and, lastly, of the gallant and princely Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham- poor Edward Bohun-who, having fallen a victim to the vindictive jealousy of Cardinal Wolsey, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1521." The old conventual church of Austin Friars seems to have been almost cathedral-like in its magnificence. Lord Winchester died in 1571 or 74 FAMILIAR LONDON 1572, "and his son, having sold the monuments at Austin Friars for £100, took the lead off the roof and made stabling of the Church Ground” (Thornbury). The first Lord Winchester was the builder of Winchester House, and he founded Basing House. He died in 1527, in his ninety-seventh year, having lived under nine sovereigns. When he was once asked how he had come unscathed through such troublous times, retaining royal favour and power under so many sovereigns, he answered, "By being a willow and not an oak." Mr Jesse tells us that he visited the old house before it was demolished, in 1839, and found the old Paulet motto, "Aimez Loyaulte," on many of the stained-glass windows. This was the motto that, during the gallant defence of Basing House, was cut, with a diamond, by Lord Winchester on every window of his mansion. In Bishopsgate Street, not many years ago, stood the beautiful old house which belonged to Sir Paul Pindar. It was in its last days used as a public-house called "Sir Pindar's Head." Happily, the beautiful front of the house was carefully taken down, and now may be seen at the South Kensington Museum. The great surgeon, Sir Astley Cooper, used to |