interest of the spot that Sir Thomas More filled for three years the office of reader in Furnival's Inn. STAPLE INN, dependent on Gray's Inn, situated on the south side of Holborn, is known to have been an Inn of Chancery at least as early as the reign of Henry the Fifth. It has been supposed to derive its name from having been anciently a staple, or emporium, where the merchants of England exposed for sale their wool, cloth, and other commodities; the Society, in fact, having still for their arms a woolpack argent. Stow, however, confesses that the derivation of its name had escaped his researches. Staple Inn is divided into two Courts, with a pleasant garden behind. On the 27th of November, 1756, a fire broke out at No. 1, which destroyed four sets of chambers; two females and two children perishing in the flames. The hall, which fortunately escaped destruction, is a small but handsome building, in which are portraits of Charles the Second, Queen Anne, the Earl of Macclesfield, Lord Chancellor Cowper, and Lord Camden. To Miss Porter, Dr. Johnson writes on the 23rd of March, 1759-"I have this day moved my things, and you are now to direct me at Staple Inn, London." The removal in question was from Gough Square, Fleet Street, where Johnson had resided for ten years. In Staple Inn (No. 11) resided Isaac Reed, the commentator on Shakspeare; and here he formed his rare and valuable collection of books. BARNARD'S INN, also on the south side of Holborn, was originally called Mackworth's Inn, from John Mackworth, Dean of Lincoln, whose executors made it over to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, on condition of their finding a priest to perform divine service in the chapel of St. George in that cathedral, where the Dean lies interred. In the lifetime of Dean Mackworth it was leased to one Lionel Barnard, who seems to have been the last person who resided in it before it was converted into an Inn of Chancery, and from whom it derives its present name. In the hall is a fine full-length portrait of the upright and learned Lord Chief Justice Holt, for some time principal of Barnard's Inn; and also of Lord Burleigh, Lord Bacon, Lord Keeper Coventry, and other eminent men. During the famous Gordon Riots Barnard's Inn very nearly fell a sacrifice to one of those nightly and fearful acts of incendiarism, by which, on the eventful night of the 7th of June, 1780, so many public and private edifices were devoted to the flames. It adjoined the extensive premises of Mr. Langdale, an opulent distiller, who on two accounts was exposed to the fury of the mob; both as professing the Roman Catholic religion, and from the temptation of the intoxicating liquors on his premises. The attack on Langdale's distillery, and its subsequent destruction by fire,-rendered the more awfully vivid from the quantity of ardent spirits which fed the flames, was not among the least striking of those frightful scenes which occurred in various parts of the metropolis. Many of the rioters are said to have literally drunk themselves dead; women and children were seen on their knees drinking from the kennels, which flowed with gin and other intoxicating liquors; and many of the rabble, who had drunk themselves into a state of insensibility, perished in the flames. Dr. Warner, who passed the night in his chambers in Barnard's Inn, writes on the following morning to George Selwyn:-"The staircase in which my chambers are is not yet burnt down, but it could not be much worse for me if it were. However, I fear there are many scores of poor creatures in this town who have suffered this night much more than I have, and with less ability to bear it. Will you give me leave to lodge the shattered remains of my little goods in Cleveland Court for a time? There can be no living here, even if the fire stops immediately, for the whole place is a wreck; but there will be time enough to think of this. But there is a circumstance which distresses me more than anything; I have lost my maid, who was a very worthy creature, and I am sure would never have deserted me in such a situation by her own will; and what can have become of her is horrible to think! I fervently hope that you and yours are free from every distress. "Five o'clock. The fire, they say, is stopped, but what a rueful scene has it left behind! Sunt lachrymæ rerum, indeed; the sentence that struck me upon picking up a page of Lord Mansfield's "Virgil" yesterday in Bloomsbury Square. Sortes Virgiliana!* "Six o'clock. The fire, I believe, is nearly stopped, though only at the next door to me. But no maid appears. When I shall overcome the horror of the night, and its consequence, I cannot guess. But I know if you can send me word that things go well with you, that they will be less bad with me." Such was the result of one of those disgraceful scenes which, under the pretext of zeal for the interests of the Protestant religion, disgraced, only ninety years since, the character of the English people! "Our danger is at an end," writes Gibbon, "but our disgrace will be lasting; and the month of June, 1780, will ever be marked by a dark and diabolical fanaticism, which I had supposed to be extinct, but which actually subsists in Great Britain, perhaps beyond any country in Europe." Fortunately we live in a more enlightened age. Scarcely sixty years had elapsed after Gib Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury Square, together with his Lordship's fine library, had been burnt the day before by the mob. bon penned his indignant tirade, when a body of London masons were to be seen quietly engaged in erecting the high altar of a magnificent Roman Catholic Cathedral, on the very spot in St. George's Fields where the insane eloquence of Lord George Gordon excited that popular frenzy which very nearly had the effect of reducing London to a heap of ashes. RED LION SQUARE, GREAT ORMOND STREET, BLOOMSBURY SQUARE, &c. CROMWELL'S SUPPOSED GRAVE IN RED LION SQUARE. F ORMERLY there existed a favourite tradition among the inhabitants of Red Lion Square and its vicinity, that the body of Oliver Cromwell was buried in the centre of their square, beneath an obelisk which stood there till within a few years.* The likelihood of such a fact strikes us, at first thought, as improbable enough, and yet, on consideration, we are inclined to think that beneath this spot not improbably moulder, not only the bones of the great Protector, but also those of Ireton and Bradshaw, whose remains were disinterred at the same time from *Pennant speaks of the "clumsy obelisk" in Red Lion Square, and mentions that it was inscribed with the following lines : Obtusum Quid me respicis, viator? Vade. Could this quaint inscription have any hidden reference to the bones of Cromwell lying beneath it? We think not; but they are meant to mystify and what, therefore, do they mean? |