CHAPTER XXI.

_THE HAMLET OF KILBURN._

As only one side of this hamlet is in Hampstead parish, there is not much to be said of it here. It was rapidly increasing when Park wrote his description of it; but that was nothing to the proportion of its increase during the last ten years, when it has grown to the dimensions of a town. Its name comes from two Saxon words, _kele_, cold, and _bourn_, a rivulet.

By this cool stream,[298] which rose on the southern slope of Hampstead, hard by the forest-side, one Godwyn, in the time of Henry I., built himself a cell, and for a time at least led a hermit’s life.

There can be little doubt, from the fact of his ultimately making over this nucleus of the future nunnery, with the grounds belonging to it, to the Church of St. Peter of Westminster, in trust to the Abbot for the use and abode of three retired Maids of Honour to Queen Matilda (herself a Benedictine nun), that Godwyn was a penitent courtier or nobleman. Eventually he himself was made Warden of the abode and guardian of the maidens, Emma, Christiana, and Gunilda, who took upon themselves a holy life, though no particular monastic rule is mentioned, nor does it appear in the foundation deed that they were vowed to celibacy.

On the death of Godwyn some other person was to be chosen to his office, with the advice of the Abbot of Westminster, and with the consent of the nuns themselves; no one could be appointed without their approval, nor was to interfere with matters relative to their temporal affairs, nor with the affairs of the church, except at their desire.

The Abbot, Osbert de Clair, Prior of Westminster, augmented the grant to the cell of Kilburne by a rent of thirty shillings and land at Knightsbridge, after which it became a nunnery of the Benedictine Order, dedicated to the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. At the dissolution of the monasteries the lands of Kilburn nunnery at Hampstead and Kilburn were given by Henry VIII., in exchange for Paris Garden and other estates, to the Knights of Jerusalem, whose Order he soon after dissolved (1540).

Subsequent to the dissolution of the Knights of St. John it became the property of John, Earl of Warwick, who lost no time in alienating it to Richard Taverner, Esq. In 1604 Sir Arthur Atye died seized of Kilburn and Shuttop Hill. It was recently in the family of the Powells, an old name at Hampstead.

At no time does it appear to have been a religious house of any importance, though dignified with the name of Priory. Park states its revenue at the time of the Dissolution to have been under £200 per annum. Dugdale sets it down at £74 7s. 11d. per annum, and the whole building, inclusive of kitchen, larder, bakehouse, and brewhouse, beside the church, contained only twelve rooms.

From a rude but interesting etching in Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ of some parts of the domestic buildings, the only relics of it remaining, and which were standing in 1722, no idea can be formed of the appearance of the conventual structure, the site of which was distinguishable at the beginning of the present century by a rising bank in what was called the Abbey Fields, near the Tea Gardens.

No doubt the Kilburn well, a mild chalybeate, was one of the so-called holy wells with which the vicinity of London abounded in Catholic times. But it was not until 1714 that some speculator bethought him of converting the slightly-medicated waters to use.

The spring or well is situated at the south-western extremity of the parish of Hampstead. It rises about 12 feet below the surface, and is enclosed in a large brick reservoir, with the date cut in the keystone of the arch over the door. It is a simple saline water with too little iron to give it the character of a true chalybeate, as may be easily imagined when we read that in 1813 it was used chiefly for the domestic purposes of the adjoining tavern. In 1773 the Kilburn wells were attached to a tea-drinking house, ‘well known to the holiday folk of London,’ the advertisement of which, transcribed by Park from the _Public Advertiser_ in the July of that year, is amusing:

‘KILBURN WELLS, NEAR PADDINGTON.—The waters now in the utmost perfection; the gardens enlarged and greatly improved; the house and offices repaired and beautified in the most elegant manner.

‘The whole is now opened for the reception of the public, the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement of the politest companies; fit for music, dancing, or entertainments.

‘This happy spot, celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its waters, is most delightfully situated on the _scite (sic) of the once famous Abbey of Kilburn_, on the Edgware Road, at an easy distance, being but a _morning’s walk_ from the Metropolis, two miles from Oxford Street, the footway from Marybone across the fields still nearer. A plentiful larder is always provided, together with the best of wines and other liqueurs.

‘Breakfasting and hot loaves.

‘A printed account of the waters, as drawn up by an eminent physician, is given gratis at the Wells.’

Brewer tells us that this house was much frequented by holiday people from London.

We have noted elsewhere that Oliver Goldsmith had lodgings in a cottage near a place called The Priory at Kilburn. Poor Goldy had retired thither with the intention of practically studying the habits of some of the animals he was writing of in his ‘Animated Nature.’ His range of subjects must have been necessarily restricted, for, beyond the humble farmyard of his landlord, the rusticity of Kilburn appears at that point of time to have been limited to cow-keepers and market-gardens. It had an evil fame for dog-fights and pugilistic encounters, at which Hogarth is said to have been a frequent spectator—not from a love of such sights, but with a view to the work of humanity he was then doing, in displaying the coarse brutality and repulsively cruel features of those so-called sports with all the realism of his caustic pencil.

Many years later Kilburn lay heavy on the minds of the Middlesex magistrates, and during the first half of the present century its reputation was decidedly low, and its inhabitants, or the additional ones they sheltered, a frequent trouble to the constables of those days.

Time and the builders have amended all that, and the village of Kilburn is (1860) partly a suburb of genteel villas, and a struggling ground for newly-started professional men and tradesmen of large hope and small capital, with ultimate success as the prize for those who can play a losing game longest.

Before leaving Kilburn I may add that, in the spring of 1878, when the work of widening the London and North-Eastern Railway was going on at Kilburn, the workmen came upon a curious brass coffin-plate, bearing an effigy supposed to be that of an Abbess of Kilburn Nunnery. The nuns gave a touching reason for the dilapidated condition of their house (which lay close to the highway for wayfarers and pilgrims to the shrine of St. Alban’s) in the daily charity of the poor sisters to those of the poorer sort, a charge they were ill able to bear; and this fact, in connection with the well-known poverty of their house, exempted them from taxes to the Crown, which recompensed itself at the dissolution of the religious houses by taking the whole of the little they possessed. At this time the buildings of the priory consisted of the hall, the chamber next the church, the middle chamber between that and the Prioress’s chamber; the buttery, pantry, and cellar; the inner chamber to the Prioress’s room, the chamber between the latter and the hall, the kitchen, the larder-house, the brewhouse and bakehouse, the three chambers for the chaplain and the hinds or husbandmen, the confessor’s chamber, and the church. The orchard and cemetery, valued at ‘xx_s._ by the yere, and one horse of the coller of black at vs. For all these chambers 2 bedsteads of bordes, 1 featherbed, 2 matteres, 2 old coverlettes, 3 wollen blanketts, a _syller_ of old stained work, and 2 pieces of old hangings paynted,’ appear a sparse allowance of comfort. They were better off in the matter of church furniture and vestments, as not only altar-cloths, curtains, hangings, copes, which were nuns’ work, and very likely made by them, but chalices are enumerated; and they also possessed, closed in silver, and set with counterfeit stones and pearls, a relique of the Holy Cross, and a cross with certain other reliques, ‘wt silver gilded. Item, a case to keepe in reliques, plated and gilt ... and a clocke.’ These were the nuns’ small treasures, and all were confiscated.

In the ‘Romance of London,’ by the late industrious Mr. Timbs, there is a legend, quoted by Mr. Walford, of Kilburn Priory. He calls it traditionary, and says that Mr. Timbs could not trace it to any authentic source; yet it appears to have been well known to that enthusiastic collector of ancient ballads and legendary lore, Sir Walter Scott, who had written a lyrical version of the story long before Mr. Timbs produced his ‘Romance of London,’ though without publishing it. Here is the tale of its origin, according to Mr. H. G. Atkinson, who tells us the verses (which I give further on) remained unpublished till their appearance in the columns of the _Athenæum_, September 17, 1881:

‘My father, an architect, was a friend of Scott’s, and helped him, as a friend, in the decoration and finishings of Abbotsford. Scott would often dine with my father when in London, and was greatly interested in the garden. In one corner there was some rockwork, in which were inserted some fragments of stone ornaments of Kilburn Priory, and crowning all was an irregularly-shaped stone, having a deep red stain, no doubt of ferruginous origin. This stone was sent to my father by Lord Mulgrave in one of his cement vessels, my father having been struck with its appearance on the shore at Whitby, and from these simple, really unconnected facts Scott made out the following story in verse, which might be regarded as a kind of friendly offering in return for services rendered. Here are the lines; I had supposed them lost, but my sister, in turning over some old papers, found a copy.’

This I have taken the liberty to reproduce:

THE MUCKLE STAIN, OR BLEEDING STONE OF KILBURN PRIORY.

For the blessed rood of Sir Gervase the Good The nuns of Kilburn pray; But for the wretch who shed his blood No tongue a prayer shall say.

The bells shall ring, and the nuns shall sing, Sir Gervase to the blest; But holiest rites shall never bring His murderer’s soul to rest.

‘Now tell me, I pray, thou palmer gray, Why thou kneelest at this shrine; And why dost thou cry so eagerly Upon the help Divine?

‘Oh, tell me who the man may be, And what his deadly sin, That the Church’s prayer, for his soul’s despair, The mercy of Christ may win.’

‘I cry at this shrine on the help Divine To save the soul of one Who in death shall lie ere morning shine Upon this ancient stone.

‘Sir Gervase rode forth far in the north To Whitby’s holy see; In her bower alone his lady made moan, A fairer could not be.

‘His false brother came to the weeping dame: “Oh, I love you dearer than life.” “Hence! would you win to shame and sin Thy brother’s wedded wife?”

‘“He is far away, thou sweet ladie, And none may hear or see; So, lady bright, this very night, Oh, open your door to me.

‘“Sir Gervase rides forth far in the north, ’Tis long ere he comes back, And thine eyes shine bright like stars by night, From thy hair of raven black.”

‘“The fire shall burn at the door stone Ere I open my door to thee, And thy suit of hell to Sir Gervase I’ll tell, And a traitor’s death thou wilt die.”

‘“Then fare ye well, Dame Isabel, Thou lady of mickle pride; Thou shalt rue the day thou saidst me nay, When back to thee I ride.”

‘The day declined, the rising wind Sung shrill on Whitby sands; With ear down laid, and ready blade, Behind a rock he stands.

‘Sir Gervase rode on in thought alone, Leaving his men behind; The blow was sure, the flight secure, But a voice was in the wind:

‘“False brother, spur thy flying steed, Thou canst not fly so fast; But on this stone where now I bleed Thyself shall breathe thy last.”

‘That stone was then on Whitby’s shore, And now behold it here; And ever that blood is in my eye, And ever that voice in mine ear!’

‘Now, thou palmer gray, now turn thee, I pray, And let me look in thine eye. Alas! it burns bright with a fearful light— Like guilt about to die.

‘That stone is old, and o’er it has rolled The tempest of many years; But fiercer rage than of tempest or age In thy furrowed face appears.’

‘Oh, speak not thus, thou holy man, But bend and pray by me, And give me your aid in this hour of need, Till I my penance drie.

‘With book and beads, with ave and creed, Oh, help me while you may; When the bell tolls one, oh, leave me alone, For with me you may not stay.’

Sore prayed the friar by the gray palmer, As both knelt o’er the stone; And redder grew the blood-red hue, And they heard a fearful groan.

‘Friar, leave me now, on my trembling brow The drops of sweat run down; And alone with his sprite I must deal this night, My deadly guilt to atone.’

By the morning light the good friar came By the sinner’s side to pray; But his spirit had flown, and, stretched on the stone, A corse the palmer lay.

And still from that stone at the hour of one— Go visit it who dare— The blood runs red, and a shriek of dread Pierces the midnight air.

Mr. Timbs’ prose variant of the story, briefly told, is as follows:

At a place called Kilburn Priory, near St. John’s Wood, there was a stone of a blood colour, which stain was caused by the blood of Sir Gervase de Morton, or de Mortonne, who was slain by his brother centuries ago. The latter, Stephen de Morton, had sinfully fallen in love with the beautiful wife of Sir Gervase, whom he persecuted with his illicit passion, till at length she threatened to inform her husband. To prevent this, and enraged by hate and jealousy, the wicked brother lay in wait in a narrow lane through which Sir Gervase had to pass on his way home, and on one side of which was a quarry with some rocks projecting. Here Stephen de Morton lay in ambush, and, as soon as his brother passed, stepped from his concealment, and stabbed him in the back. Sir Gervase fell forward upon a part of the rock mortally wounded, and in dying recognised his brother in his murderer, who he solemnly predicted should also die upon that stone.

Stephen appears to have thought but lightly of his crime, and less of his murdered brother’s denunciation. He returned immediately to the prosecution of his design; but the lady was obdurate, and resented his insulting proposals with indignant scorn, upon which his base passion turned to hate, and he pitilessly consigned her to a dungeon.

Subsequently he strove to forget his crime, and the innocent cause of it, by riotous living, but all to no purpose; his conscience would not rest, and he suffered such an access of remorse that at length he caused the remains of his brother to be brought to Kilburn Priory, and ordered a handsome tomb to be erected to his memory. The stones used in building it were brought from the neighbourhood of the place where the murder was committed, and amongst them was the one on which the blood of Sir Gervase had flowed, and which, as soon as the wretched Stephen approached it, oozed out blood. Upon this the horrified man confessed his crime to the Bishop of London, submitted himself to severe penance, and bequeathed all his worldly possessions to Kilburn Priory. But all in vain; he soon after pined away and died, breathing his last upon the stone stained with the blood of his brother, and this miraculous stain was the ‘Bleeding Stone’ of Kilburn Priory. Not a word is said of the unfortunate lady’s release from her undeserved dungeon, from which we can only hope she was freed to find a place amongst the nuns, and be near the resting-place of her husband.

Mr. Atkinson, in writing of Sir Walter Scott’s verses, thinks their origin interesting, equally in an artistic, literary, and psychological point of view; but looking at Mr. Timbs’ independent presentation of the same story, the inference is that, the legend being known to Sir Walter, the juxtaposition of the red stone and the fragmentary relics from Kilburn Priory quickened the imagination of the poet, and helped him to produce the lines. In some place or other the tradition must have had an independent existence, or it could not have appeared in Timbs’ ‘Romance of London’ previous to its publication in the _Athenæum_.

APPENDIX.

HEATH HOUSE.

It would be doing injustice to a family long known and honoured in this neighbourhood to bid farewell to Hampstead and the Heath, without some special notice of Heath House, the present residence of Lord Glenesk, but in 1790 the home of Samuel Hoare, Esq.

It is a large, square, heavy-looking Georgian house of brown brick, surrounded by trees and shrubs, close to the Broad Walk on one side, and divided by a narrow roadway from Jack Straw’s Castle on the other. It stands upon the highest ridge of the Heath, at the same elevation as the tavern, and the windows command fine views east, west, and north, whilst from the flat, lead-covered roof one may see on a clear day, it is said, six counties.

In 1772 Mr. Hoare had joined the firm of Bland and Barnett, bankers, of 62, Lombard Street, in which his son, grandson, and great-grandsons were afterwards partners, when the bank was known as Barnett, Hoare and Co.

When the first Samuel Hoare moved to Heath House, his family consisted of himself and second wife, whom he had married two years previously; his only son Samuel, a boy seven years old; and a little daughter. The coming of this family to the Heath was an epoch in the social history of Hampstead.

Refined, intellectual, religious in the best sense of the phrase, yet largely liberal, the Quaker banker opened wide his hospitable doors to friends and neighbours, and brought into their midst the men and women then most distinguished in literature, philanthropy, and for high social aims. Nor were the poor forgotten in the ‘beneficent schemes that filled the mind of this benevolent man.’ Whatever could improve the condition, or help the needs of his humble neighbours had his earnest aid. England had been for some time conscience-smitten, and agitated with the wrongs inflicted on the unhappy negro race. Young Clarkson was calling the attention of every man of influence he could get at to their cause, and Wilberforce, one of his earliest converts, had become his eloquent and pertinacious second. It is well known that the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade presented to the House of Commons came from the people called Quakers. To this amiable and unobtrusive sect belongs the honour of having taken the initiative in the crusade against this barbarous traffic, and the young enthusiast Clarkson, who was preparing for the Church, but had chosen a wider platform for the diffusion of his impressions of Christian charity, found in Mr. Hoare, not a disciple, but an apostle already in close sympathy with his purpose, and daily working for its accomplishment.

Here at Heath House these ever-to-be-remembered men discussed with their host their trials, hopes, and disappointments; for during a series of sixteen or seventeen years the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which Wilberforce Session after Session presented to the House of Commons, was as constantly thrown out, and two years before the final triumph of their cause (1827) their associate and helper, Samuel Hoare senior, died (1825), aged seventy-five.

I have not seen it mentioned in the History or ‘Records of Hampstead,’ but find in a paragraph of the _Lady’s Magazine_, December, 1812, that ‘the Lancastrian school which Mr. Hoare, the banker, has erected at his own expense at Hampstead was opened a few days ago with about a hundred children. The establishment is capable of accommodating about one hundred and fifty, and promises to be soon filled up.’

Some years before his father’s death, Samuel Hoare junior had married one of the famous Earlham sisters, Louisa, daughter of John Gurney, banker, of Norwich, and had gone to reside at the Hill, North End (the house a wedding-gift from his father). Later on Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who had married Hannah, another of the Miss Gurneys, also resided for some time at North End, at a house now known as Myrtle Wood, a delightful event for the sisters, their relatives, and friends. It is of Hill House, during the residence of Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton in its near neighbourhood (1820), that the celebrated Severen of Cambridge wrote: ‘More of heaven I never saw than in the two families at Hampstead’ (the Hoares and Buxtons).

Of course, the same circle of friends were received at the houses of both father and son; but when the death of Samuel Hoare senior occurred, though his widow and daughter continued to occupy Heath House, the delightful reunions that have made it memorable ceased.

Like his father and his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Samuel Hoare the second entered heartily into the views of his friends, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and gave their great scheme for the abolition of slavery his steady help and influence. He lived long after the cause they battled for so pertinaciously had been won, and, with his sympathetic wife, inaugurated various projects for bettering the condition of the poor of Hampstead, some of which I am told are still actively beneficial.

There are just two or three old inhabitants of Hampstead who remember the tall figure of the second Samuel Hoare, who used to go down to town on horseback followed by his servant; later on I am told the servant’s place was changed, and he rode very close to—indeed, side by side with—his master, who towards the end of his life was subject to sudden seizures.

This gentleman died December 26, 1846, at the comparatively early age of sixty-four, and Hill House became the property of his son Samuel, who did not live very long to enjoy it, dying in the twenty-sixth year of his age, October 27, 1833. The present Sir Samuel Hoare, Member for Norwich, is the fourth of the name, and the great-grandson of the first Samuel Hoare of Heath House, of which he is the owner, as well as of the Hill, and other property at Hampstead.

Mrs. Hannah Hoare, the second wife and widow of Samuel Hoare of the Heath, continued to reside there with her step-daughter for many years in the near neighbourhood of their relations at the Hill. There is something touchingly suggestive in the fact that they both died in the same year, the widow on January 21, and her step-daughter on October 21, 1833. Mr. Gurney Hoare, son of the second Samuel Hoare, lived at Hill House many years, and died there. The only representatives of this family now at Hampstead (1899) are Mrs. MacEnnis and her sister, Miss Greta Hoare, who reside at Wildwood Avenue.

WENTWORTH PLACE, JOHN STREET.

The now frequented thoroughfare of John Street has been long in coming into its inheritance—namely, the interest it derives from the fact that, after the death of his brother, John Keats resided here for nearly twelve months, and the last month of his life in England was spent here.

Wentworth Place lies on the right side of the road going from St. John’s Chapel (on Downshire Hill) to the station. It consisted of two adjoining houses, one of them occupied by Charles Armitage Brown, the personal friend and sympathetic admirer of the poet; the other by the Dilkes—Charles Wentworth Dilke, the critic, who was afterwards editor and part proprietor of the _Athenæum_, and his brother William.[299] A lady, born at Hampstead, and who resided there till twenty-two years of age, remembers that a low fence encircled the garden, within which was a hedge of laurustinus and China roses; latterly it was railed round.

I can imagine the road then, with only a few houses bordering it, each in its setting of greensward and evergreens, almost impinging on the green slope of South Hill, and leading round by Sol’s Row, where Wilkie at one time had lodgings, and where a great nobleman and his wife and daughter called upon him with a proposal for him to paint the portrait of one or both the ladies, to which the unsophisticated Scotchman bluntly replied that ‘he would think about it.’

Sol’s Row then looked out upon a wide stretch of meadow-land, beautiful with divisional elms and other trees, and had a fair-sized pond in the foreground.

It was with his friend Brown, as I have before said, that Keats visited Scotland, but had not strength left to attempt it a second season. He occupied the front sitting-room in his friend’s house, and here he wrote the greater part of ‘Hyperion,’ and the Odes to ‘Indolence’ and to ‘Psyche,’ ‘On a Grecian Urn,’ and to ‘A Nightingale.’ Here also he commenced the unfinished ‘Cap and Bells,’ and wrote ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’; and here, at a party given by the Dilkes, he met Miss Brawne, the lady who ‘was not Cleopatra, but was at least Charmian,’ and who, with her fine eyes and fine manners, and her rich Eastern looks, was fated to play so large a part in the inner tragedy of his short life.

The lady whom I have just now alluded to, who knew Miss Brawne till she herself was fifteen years of age, when the latter left England, describes her as a very striking, dignified-looking woman, fair, but pale, with bright dark eyes and light brown hair. She remembers her mother saying that Fanny Brawne was a lovely girl, but that she had lost her colour in an illness she had after her engagement with Keats was broken off—‘that mad boy Keats,’ as they used to call him.

When subsequently the Dilkes moved to Westminster, Mrs. Brawne and her daughter took their house, so that the lovers must have seen each other daily. Keats resided with his friend from 1818 to 1819, when, in order to be near Leigh Hunt, who had left the Vale of Health and was living at Kentish Town, he removed there. Afterwards, when Hunt left England for Italy, Keats made trial of a cheap lodging in College Street, Westminster, where he only remained a week, returning instinctively to Hampstead, where the Brawnes, from womanly compassion, received him (he was then hopelessly ill), and tenderly nursed him in the white bedroom, with the white curtains and white quilt, in which Haydon, the painter, saw him, the bright hectic of his flushed cheeks the only relief to the surrounding wanness. Here he remained a month, the last month of his life in England, and Hampstead and his lady-love possessed it.

If ever a spot of earth could claim as its own one whose charmed gift of poesy has impenetrated and irradiated the whole sphere of intellectual life, surely Hampstead may call Keats her own.

When the Brawnes left Wentworth Place, an actress of some eminence—a Miss Chester, who held the post of Reader to George IV.—took both houses, threw them into one, and called her home Lawn Bank, by which name it continued to be called till inquiries began to be made for Wentworth Place, which readers of the ‘Northern Heights of London’ will remember William Howitt could not find. The name has now been restored.

Upon this house the Society of Arts placed a memorial tablet of terra-cotta, inscribed:

JOHN KEATS, POET, LIVED IN THIS HOUSE. BORN 1795. DIED 1821.

Not a very clearly-expressed inscription, since anyone ignorant of the poet’s history might naturally infer that he had not only lived, but had been born and had died here. However, this is better than barren forgetfulness, and now John Street has its visitors, as Flask Road had in times gone by, but with far livelier interest, for he who lived and wrote some of his most lovely poems within these walls, to paraphrase his own prophecy, ‘lives among the English poets after death.’

Alas! it would seem that even this poor, long-delayed honour, the only one his countrymen have afforded him, was a mere mockery, for I find it stated in the public papers under the date of August 1, 1898, that Wentworth House has been sold on a building lease of ninety-nine years, with a proviso that only houses of a superior class shall be erected on the site.

VANE HOUSE.

It is generally believed that the fine old red-brick mansion to the left of the road as you ascend Rosslyn Hill, now the ‘Home of the Soldiers’ Daughters,’ is the veritable house which the unfortunate Sir Harry Vane built for himself on Hampstead Hill, a place in which he had hoped to pass the declining years of his life in peace.

Of the original house only an old staircase leading to the garden exists, but the interior of the mansion has suffered so many changes, both before and after it became the residence of the celebrated Dr. Butler, that, together with the alterations necessary to fit it for its present use, not one of the original apartments remains.

The south wing of the house has been cut off; the northern half is in good repair, and makes a commodious house. It has received the name of Belmont. When Baines wrote the ‘Records of Hampstead’ this was the home of H. J. Griffiths, Esq. The fine avenue of elms that anciently skirted Vane House, some of which were standing in quite recent years, has wholly disappeared.

The gardens and grounds were very extensive and well laid out, but these have been despoiled, though ‘one ancient mulberry-tree survives.’

When the grand old house was converted to its present use, two-thirds of the garden were taken for the children’s playground, and quite recently half an acre of the kitchen garden has been sold for £5,000!

It seems extraordinary that there should be any question as to the identity of the house. Its original owner was executed on June 14, 1662, just thirty years before the birth of Butler, who was born in 1692. The Bishop, who only lived to be sixty, dying in 1752, appears to have resided here for many years, and ornamented the windows with a quantity of painted glass.

One would imagine that a building of such distinction, so strikingly situated, and tenanted from time to time by important personages—it was afterwards the home of Mr. Thomas Neave and of J. Pilgrim, Esq.—without the tragic story attached to it, was not one to be lost sight of in the annals of the then small village. Its history might, one would think, even without the aid of highway and parish books, be fairly trusted to oral tradition from one generation to another, in a period covered by ninety years, from the date of Sir Harry Vane’s execution till the death of Dr. Butler. The architectural characteristics of the building when intact bore out its claim to have been built in the days of the Commonwealth.

Eliza Meteyard, in her ‘Hallowed Spots of Ancient London,’ a book deserving a better fate than it has met with, tells us that the famous avenue was the scene of Sir Harry’s arrest. Here on the evening of an early day in July, 1660, just as the sun was setting, Sir Harry walked and meditated, as was his wont, till the glowing splendour of the western sky gradually faded, as did the sounds of the cotter children at their play, the barking of a sympathetic dog, or some broken scrap of hymn, and still Sir Harry continued to pace beneath the elm-trees, the sweetness and the stillness deepening with the twilight, when the measured tramp of soldiers on the hill, some of whom marched straight to Vane House, whilst others guarded the exits, struck terror into the hearts of his humble neighbours, who, before night settled fully down, saw Sir Harry taken from his home, a prisoner on his way to the Tower, whence, after two years of torturing uncertainty, and removals from one place of captivity to another, he came forth on another summer’s day, June 14, 1662, to die by the hand of the executioner on Tower Hill, another martyr to the liberties of his country.

Readers will remember Pepys’ hurry to shut up his office that morning, and get off with his friends to see how the great Commonwealth man would comport himself on so public and so trying a platform as the scaffold. He is a witness, amongst others, to the calmness and self-command which the ill-used enthusiast exhibited in parting from mortality.

POND STREET.

POND STREET—evidently the fashionable street in the eighteenth century for the reception of visitors of the class dignified as the ‘quality’—appears to have been in the early years of this, the Harley Street of Hampstead. Here resided Baron Dimsdale, in a house on the left side of the road going down, the physician who inoculated the Empress Catherine of Russia for small-pox. It will be remembered, to the Empress’s credit, that she requested him to leave the country as soon as possible after the operation, as in the event of her death he would be held guilty of it.

Dr. Rodd, Dr. Lond, and various other medical men, lived in Pond Street.

I can remember it with a row of trees on the right-hand side of the way as you entered it from the highroad, and a strip of greensward running down it—a quiet street of formal appearance, with an air of genteel frigidity characteristic of its period.

It was in Pond Street that ‘poor Kirkman,’ as Keats sympathetically calls him, ‘fell amongst thieves,’ who stopped and beat and robbed him of his watch. He had been visiting the poet at Wentworth Place, and left about half-past eight in the evening, and was on his way to the London Road, probably intending to meet the coach there, when he was waylaid, maltreated and robbed. This was in 1818, so that the middle passage between Hampstead and the Metropolis was not even then without its danger.

Keats, writing to his brother some days after the event, tells him he had been to see Kirkman, who had not recovered of his bruises.

A FRAGMENT OF THE FLORA OF HAMPSTEAD.

In the reigns of Elizabeth and James the herbalists appear to have had Hampstead Heath very much to themselves. The laundresses must have had light feet, and children have been comparatively few.

Otherwise they did not wander so far as Bishop’s Wood, or the old Target Bank, where the lilies of the valley grew so plentifully in Johnson’s time. Johnson was the pupil of Gerard, and the editor of a new edition of his master’s work, the ‘Great Herbal.’ To this lover of Nature, an apothecary by profession, is due the honour of having prepared the first catalogue of local plants ever published in England, the locality of these plants being the Heath and the Woods of Hampstead; many of the plants have survived the predatory habits of London flower-vendors, and still flourish in their old habitats.

Of the survivors, we are glad to give the following list from personal acquaintance with them:

_March and April._

COMMON DAISY (_Bella perennis_).—Perennial everywhere. We gathered it on the East Heath January 26, 1874.

BLACKTHORN (_Prunus spinosa_).—Upper and West Heath.

MARSH MARIGOLD (_Caltha palustris_).—The borders of the old watercourse at the back of Jack Straw’s Castle. This watercourse is now extinct (1895).

PASQUE FLOWER (_Anemone Pulsatilla_).—On a bank at the edge of the Upper Heath. A small bed of it amongst the whitethorn-trees going to the Leg of Mutton Pond.

DANDELION (_Leontodon taraxacum_).—In grassy places. East and West Heaths, everywhere.

WOOD CROWFOOT, GOLDYLOCKS (_Ranunculus auricomus_).—Amongst the trees beyond the red viaduct, Lower Heath.

We look in vain for the primroses which adorned the hedgerows and overspread the woods in Gerard’s time, and the cowslips ankle-deep in the meadows between Kilburn and the Heath. Like the lilies of the valley, the orchids and ophreys, they have long since been exterminated by mendicant root-vendors, or buried under the foundations of modern streets.

_May._

WILD HYACINTH, BLUEBELL (_Hyacinthus non-scriptus_).—Plentiful on the grassy banks beside the New Road leading to Child’s Hill.

SPEEDWELL GERMANDER (_Veronica_).—In the same neighbourhood.

WOOD SORREL (_Oxalis acetosella_).—Under the shade of some old thorn-stocks, south side of the watercourse, Upper Heath.

BUTCHER’S BROOM (_Ruscus aculeatus_).—Bushy places about the neighbourhood of the pond, near the red viaduct, Lower Heath.

SHEPHERD’S PURSE (_Bursa pastoris_).—Common by roadsides everywhere.

CRAB APPLE (_Pyrus malus_).—On the right hand of the watercourse behind Jack Straw’s Castle, descending the Heath, near the pond.

HAWTHORN, HAGTHORN, MAYBUSH (_Crategus oxyacanthus_).—In the same neighbourhood, right and left.

DOG VIOLET (_Viola canina_).—In various places on the West Heath.

DWARF WILLOW (_Salix repens_, Smith, _Salex repens_, Bab.).—Near the bog opposite the grounds of Hill House, North End.

_June._

COMMON WATERCRESS (_Nasturtium officinalis_).—In a pool at the lower end of the watercourse.

RAGGED ROBIN (_Lychnis flos-cuculi_).—On the moist margin of the same place near the pond.

MARSH STITCHWORT (_Stellaria glauca_).—Same habitat as the above.

WATER RANUNCULUS (_R. aquatilis_).—In the pond at the bottom of the old watercourse.

NEEDLE GREEN-WEED, PETTY-WHIN (_Genista anglica_).—On high ground on the West Heath.

COMMON BROOM (_Cytisus scoparius_).—Frequent on both Heaths, making the gravelly hollows luminous. These now effaced (1895).

BUCK BEAN (_Menyanthes trifoliata_).—On the sphagnum by the watercourse.

MARSH RED RATTLE (_Pedicularis palustris_).—Beds of its rosy flowers in moist places frequent on the West Heath.

COTTON GRASS, DOWNY-STALKED (_Eriophorum pubescens_).—Once plentiful in May and June beside the watercourse, in the bed of which I found it lingering in the summer of 1873. Abundant June 3, 1874; lost 1895.

COTTON GRASS (_Eriophorum angustifolium_).—Same habitat.

MARSH PENNYWORT (_Hydrocotyle vulgaris_).—In damp places on the West Heath.

CUCKOO-FLOWER, LADY’S SMOCK (_Cardamine pratensis_).—On bogs on West Heath, of a beautiful deep lilac hue.

COMMON MILKWORT (_Polygala vulgaris_).—I call it gay-wings. Blue, pink, purple and white, disports itself in all the grassy hollows on the Western Heath.

SWEET WOODRUFF (_Asperula odorata_).—In the shade of the trees in the neighbourhood of the red viaduct, near Lord Mansfield’s grounds, Lower Heath.

SCARLET PIMPERNEL, SHEPHERD’S WEATHER-GLASS (_Anagallis arvensis_).—Borders of the sandy roadsides, fields and paths.

LESSER STITCHWORT (_Stellaria graminea_).—In the little dells on lower part of West Heath.

REST HARROW (_Ononis arvensis_).—On Upper Heath.

COMMON FURZE (_Ulex europæus_).—Everywhere amongst the gravelly mounds and hollows on the Upper Heath and North End Hill.

MARE’S-TAIL (_Hippurus vulgaris_).—Margins of ponds, Upper and Lower Heath.

BROOKLIME (_Veronica beccabunga_).—In channel of the old watercourse.

COMMON ELDER (_Sambucus nigra_).—Plentiful in hedgerows and lanes in the vicinity of the Heath. Constable noticed the beauty of its rounded cymes.

SPEEDWELL (_Veronica spicata_).—On West Heath, near Leg of Mutton Pond.

SHEEP’S SORREL (_Rumex acetosella_).—Abundant on West Heath, its deep red clustered spikes of flowers conspicuous above the yet unopened white ones of _Galium saxatile_, among which it frequently appears.

GREATER STITCHWORT (_Stellaria holostea_).—Amongst the bushes near the Leg of Mutton Pond, West Heath.

WHITE DUTCH CLOVER (_Trifolium repens_).—Sparsely on the West Heath, near the reservoir, and in the fields going to Parliament Hill.

DWARF MALLOW (_Malva rotundifolia_).—Under the garden-wall of Hill House, North End.

_July._

DEVIL’S-BIT SCABIOUS (_Scabiosa succisa_).—On the higher part of West Heath.

COMMON EYE-BRIGHT (_Euphrasia officinalis_).—On the high ground under the western plateau of the Heath. One of Milton’s flowers.

COMMON BUGLE (_Ajuga reptans_).—In moist places; abundant over all the Heath; perennial.

UPRIGHT ST. JOHN’S WORT (_Hypericum pulchrum_).—On the dry banks above Leg of Mutton Pond, at the foot of the watercourse.

COMMON FILAGO (_F. germanica_).—Frequent about the gravel-pits, Upper Heath.

WOOD SAGE (_Teucrium scorodonia_).—Abundant on Upper Heath.

COMMON BIRD’S-FOOT TREFOIL (_Lotus corniculatus_).—Abundant on the West Heath.

GREATER BIRD’S-FOOT TREFOIL (_Lotus major_).—Near the old watercourse, towards the pond.

PURPLE SANDWORT (_Arenaria rubra_).—On the sandy paths and hillocks east of Jack Straw’s Castle, Lower Heath.

TORMENTILLA (_T. reptans_).—Its red trailing stems, strawberry-shaped leaves, and bright yellow flowers, common everywhere upon the Heath all summer.

HEATH BEDSTRAW (_Gallium saxatile_).—Great spaces on the high ground of the Upper Heath snowy white with the dense panicles of this lovely little plant.

HAREBELL (_Campanula rotundifolia_).—Common over all the upper parts of the Heath.[300]

LESSER SPEARWORT (_Ranunculus flammula_).—Along the margins of the old watercourse.

CELERY-LEAVED CROWFOOT (_R. sceleratus_).—In the same neighbourhood.

GREAT REEDMACE, OR CAT’S-TAIL (_Typha latifolia_).—In the pond on Lord Mansfield’s grounds, beside the viaduct, where an old boat lies stranded (1856).

WATER VIOLET (_Viola palustris_).—Margin of the same pond, and in the pool at the bottom of the watercourse behind Jack Straw’s Castle.

MEADOWSWEET, QUEEN OF THE MEADOW (_Spiræa ulmaria_).—In the bed of an old runnel on the right of the New Road going to Child’s Hill.

SUNDEW (_Drosera rotundifolia_).—Boggy places amongst sphagnum beds in the vicinity of the watercourse, West Heath.

COMMON YARROW, MILFOIL (_Achillea millefolium_).—Almost everywhere on the Heath.

MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED (_Hieracium pilosella_).—Runs over all the little mounds and hillocks on the Western Heath; abundant all the summer.

_August._

COMMON CHAMOMILE (_Anthemis nobilis_).—In many places on the Upper Heath.

DODDER (_Cuscuta epithymum_).—Found on furze bushes on the Upper Heath August, 1859.

BETONY (_Betonica officinalis_).—Amongst furze clumps in a line with the old watercourse.

FINE-LEAVED HEATH (_Erica cinerea_).—On the West Heath in gravelly, grass-grown hollows.

LING (_Calluna vulgaris_).—Amongst the gravel-beds frequent.

YELLOW WATER-LILY (_Nuphar lutea_).—In the pond at the viaduct, Lower Heath. Note its flask-like seed-vessels, which have libelled it with the name of ‘brandy-bottle.’

COMMON ARROW-HEAD (_Sagittaria sagittifolia_).—Margins of the same pond.

SMALL-FLOWERED HAIRY WILLOW HERB (_Epilobium parviflorum_).—Lower end of old watercourse.

SWEETGALE (_Myrica_).—On West Heath.[301]

To this list I may add a few other plants found on the Heath and its vicinity by Messrs. Bliss, Hunter and others, leaving out those proper to Caen Wood, which is still rich in the plants that flourished on the Heath and in the woods when Gerard wrote:

HENBANE (_Hyoscyamus niger_).—Near the Vale of Health.

LESSER CENTAURY (_Erythræa pulchella_).—In the same habitat and on the West Heath.

GREAT YELLOW LOOSESTRIFE (_Lysimachia vulgaris_).—In a field near North End.

LESSER PERIWINKLE (_Vinca minor_).—Under the hedge in Belsize Lane.

BOG PIMPERNEL (_Anagallis tenella_).—Boggy places on the Heath, west side.

BLACK WHORTLEBERRY, OR WHINBERRY (_Vaccinium myrtillus_).—On several parts of the Heath.

LESSER SKULLCAP (_Scutellaria minor_).—Among the bushes near the bogs on the west side of the Heath, and very abundant on the east side between the Vale of Health and Well Walk.

MUSK MALLOW (_Malva moschata_).—In a field between Turner’s Wood and North End.

Only two species of moss were said to grow in a bog to the west of the Heath, and these I found still growing there, viz.: _Hypnum stramineum_, straw-like feather moss, and _Hypnum cuspidatum_, pointed bog feather moss. In 1895, the researches of the London Natural History Club added quite a long list to them, and they appear to be as numerous in the bogs and on the Heath as in the strictly preserved precincts of Caen Wood.

BENEFACTORS OF HAMPSTEAD AND THE CHARITIES.

One of the earliest benefactors of Hampstead was Elizabeth, Dowager Viscountess Campden, widow of Sir Baptist Hicks, the donor of Hicks’s Hall to the county of Middlesex, and Lord of the Manor of Hampstead (whose town house, by the way, was Campden House, Kensington), ‘with whom, in all peace and contentment, she lived, his dear consort and wife, for the space of forty-five years.’

She bequeathed by will, dated February 14, 1643, the sum of £200 to trustees for the purchase of land of the clear yearly value of £10, ‘in trust to pay yearly for ever one moiety towards the better relief of the most poor and needy people that be of good name and conversation, inhabitants of the Parish of Hampstead; to be paid to them half yearly at or in the Church porch. The other moiety to put forth annually one poor boy, or more, of the said Parish to apprenticeship.’ To this gift was joined the sum of £40, bequeathed by an unknown but eccentric gentlewoman in the same year, for the purpose of distributing a halfpenny loaf (probably a crossed bun) annually on Good Friday morning to the inhabitants of Hampstead, rich and poor. Mad as a March hare! for what did the rich inhabitants of Hampstead want of a halfpenny loaf on Good Friday, or any other morning, even in the days when a crossed bun was a panacea for almost every ailment? Yet the bequest proved as bread cast upon the waters, and seen after many days; for being joined to Lady Campden’s £200, the whole was laid out in the purchase of fourteen acres of meadow-land at Child’s Hill, in the parish of Hendon, of the clear value of 10s. per acre.

When Park wrote, this estate was rented at £84 per annum; at the present day it must be worth much more, though on inquiry being made on the part of the Vestry into the management of this charity in 1873, it was said that it had not been developed.

Next on the list of Hampstead benefactions, in point of time, but far beyond the Campden charity in its importance, is what is called the Wells Charity, that gift of ‘six acres of waste land lying about and encompassing the Well of Medicinal Water,’ which the Hon. Susanna Noel of the one part, and the grantees of a piece of waste ground on the Heath of the other (on behalf of Baptist, Earl of Gainsborough, her son, then an infant), bestowed with all the improvements of the same in trust to the sole use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead.

On this land stand the houses and chapel in Well Walk, which when Park lived there produced £95 per annum, the trustees having at that period £1,100 stock in the Three per Cents. In 1859 the estate was said to be capable of producing from £2,000 to £3,000 per annum.

This charity is applied—or at least a portion of it—to apprenticing poor children of both sexes. The parents of the children must have been parishioners (not receiving parochial relief) for three years. The boys must be fourteen, the girls twelve years of age; and in order to enter an application it is necessary to obtain a recommendation from one of the trustees.

Appertaining to this charity there is also a fund for charitable distribution. Besides these gifts, certain poor widows and housekeepers were to be maintained and assisted by the benefactions of Elizabeth Shooter, spinster, the possible foundress of one or other of the four almshouses formerly existing at Hampstead, and one of which, being removed from a part of the Heath by Sir Francis Willes, and the site taken into his grounds at North End, was rebuilt by him in the Vale of Health. A Mrs. Mary Arnsted, of Hampstead, widow, assisted in this charity.

Francis Marshall, Esq., of Hampstead, in 1772 left £100 in the Three per Cents., to be distributed to poor housekeepers annually on Easter Day. Besides these, there is another important bequest, known as Stock’s Charity.

One would like to know the ancient whereabouts of the donor, John Stock, Esq., paper-stainer, citizen, draper, and philanthropist, while resident at Hampstead, who, having, as the white marble tablet in the north-east corner of Christ Church, London, tells us, ‘acquired with the strictest integrity considerable wealth, bequeathed the greater part of it at his death, September 21, 1781, for the promotion of religion and virtue ... the advancement of literature and art ... the relief of the decrepit and comfort of the blind.’ He specially bequeathed £1,000 (which, with the dividends that had accrued, and some donations from the trustees, purchased £2,000 in the Three per Cents.) to the minister and gentlemen parishioners of Hampstead for the purpose of clothing, educating, and putting out apprentice ten poor fatherless children of the parish—viz., six boys and four girls, the former to receive £5 as an apprentice-fee, the latter £2. Eight boys and seven girls received the benefit of this fund in 1812, and as it increased a proportionate number have benefited since then.

To these generous and useful charities many a poor widow has been indebted for the training and suitable settling in life of her otherwise destitute children; but for them many a household would have been broken up and scattered, and decently-born children and respectable matrons reduced to the dead-level of the poor-house. But the large compassion of those ancient benefactors of the beautiful village, and the more recent charities of honest John Stock,[302] have enlarged and widened, as it were, with the years and the number of the necessitous, and continue to strengthen the hands and comfort the hearts of the widows and fatherless with timely and efficient aid.

The funds of the Wells Charity have grown out of all proportion to the original intentions of the donor of them, and proposals have been made to utilize them for the benefit of a class above those whom the foundress desired to benefit. But the working classes themselves, or their representatives, have suggested many ways of using them without wresting them from their proper channel, by which not only they themselves, but the whole community, will be advantaged. It has been suggested to build baths and wash-houses, and a working men’s hall and institute; and who can doubt the reciprocal blessings to rich and poor that must spring from cleanliness, temperance, and those mental improvements which come of intelligent association and rational means of amusement?

Other charities exist in the parish—various bequests of small sums, which if amalgamated, like the Campden Fund with the £40 for annually bestowing halfpenny loaves, would create useful stock, and go far to relieve the ratepayers of the parish.

While these lines were being penned, we had the pleasure to see that a memorial to the Attorney-General, with Mr. Gurney Hoare at its head, had been signed to provide a working men’s club and institute at Hampstead with a portion of the revenue of the Wells Charity.

It has also been suggested, in accordance with the necessities of the times, that a larger premium be given with apprentices, to ensure better masters and mistresses. Some persons have even advocated a plan for improving the dwellings of the local poor, and others, again, a middle-class school for poor tradesmen’s children; but, unless the funds are capable of extension to cover the whole of these plans, the middle-class school scarcely seems to come within the scope of the Hon. Susanna Noel’s intentions. It appears the germ of a working men’s unsectarian club has been for some little time in existence, and that the want of class-rooms and other suitable premises has made the members, and the projectors and encouragers of it, actively alive to the prospect so appositely thrown open to them.

Soon, therefore, we may hope that a handsome building will arise—an ornament to the town and a monument to the memory of the foundress of the Wells Charity.

We have already alluded to the practical services rendered by Mr. Perceval and Mr. Montagu during their residence at Hampstead and in its neighbourhood. It would not be difficult to trace the seeds of the present anxiety for mental and social improvement on the part of local working men, and the desire to aid them in their advance on the part of their employers and friends, to the discussions of the Philo-Investigists, and the Sunday and night schools on Rosslyn Hill. Mr. Fearon’s philanthropy took a wider field: it belonged to no party, or time, or class; his efforts were for the freedom of human intellect, and the advancement through education of all. He belongs by right of residence to Hampstead.

There is in the churchyard a monument to two children of the Hon. and Rev. Edward John Tornour, a member of the noble family of that name, the seventh and, at that time, the only child of the Right Hon. Edward Garth Tornour, Earl of Winterton, Viscount Tornour, and Baron Winterton, who had been resident at Green Hill, Hampstead, for several years. Benevolence seems to have been a hereditary virtue of this noble family. Mr. Tornour took Holy Orders for love of the sacred office, and not for the emoluments of the Church; and previous to becoming a permanent resident of London, whither he was obliged to move for the sake of his health, he had accepted the offices of curate, afternoon preacher, and evening lecturer at Hampstead, where he resided till he could no longer bear the sharp air. While there he acted as a county magistrate and guardian of the poor. It is impossible to look at the engraved portrait of him, after a painting by Drummond, without feeling the fine nature of the man; the broad, full, philanthropical forehead, the large, sweet, compassionate eyes and kindly mouth, are full of benignity and goodness, though we are not aware that he benefited the parish he served pecuniarily. He was living there about, or shortly before, the date of Park’s History. The tears and blessings of the poor do not follow the unreal Christian minister, nor the unworthy magistrate, nor the uncompassionate guardian, and from the character given of him on his death, and which may be seen in the pages of the _European Magazine_, we venture to regard him as one of the Hampstead worthies.

We find the following notice in the columns of the _Grub Street Journal_:

‘Yesterday [April 16, 1736], of the gout in his stomach, Mr. Andrew Pitt, of Hampstead, one of the most eminent of the people called Quakers.’ After thirty years’ attention to business, he had, in the language of Voltaire, who corresponded with him, ‘the wisdom to prescribe limits to fortune and his desires, and settle in a little solitude at Hampstead.’ Ceasing from business, however, by no means prevented his active occupations in other ways.

At the beginning of this year (1736) all the Nonconformists of England were petitioning against the cruel Test Act, and Tithe Bill, and Mr. Pitt, as the representative of his ‘people,’ waited upon the Prince of Wales to solicit His Highness’s favour in support of the Quakers’ Tithe Bill. Perhaps there is no greater proof of the charm of manner ascribed to the Prince, and the tact with which he could soften even the refusal of a request when so minded, than the fact that, though Mr. Pitt failed, he came away greatly pleased with the Prince’s reply and his excellent notions of liberty.

It is evident that Voltaire had personally known Mr. Pitt.[303] He describes him as hale and ruddy, a perfect stranger to intemperance of any kind, and as never having suffered from sickness.

Another inhabitant who deserves notice was Mr. Thomas Hayes, who as a poor lad began life in the humble and unpromising capacity of a pot-boy at a local public-house, from which post he raised himself, ‘entirely by his own merit,’ to that of a surgeon. He received his knowledge of pharmacy from Collins, whom Park calls ‘the glossarial stalking-horse of Steevens.’ Mr. Hayes died May 7, 1787, beloved and regretted by his friends and neighbours, respected and unenvied. He was laid in his native churchyard in Maiden Lane.

Another inhabitant of Hampstead who has won the right to be remembered in a description of it was Mr. Thomas Mitchell, for twenty of his forty-eight years of life a schoolmaster in the town. He was the real founder of the Sunday-school, ‘and, by great application and attention to its interests, left it supported on a firm basis.’ He appears to have carried out with great earnestness the spirit of his self-made motto, ‘Do all the good you can.’ The poor were special objects of his care, and, without the aid of money, his practical good sense and actively philanthropical nature enabled him to strike out permanent means of assisting them. He was one of the Society of the Philo-Investigists, a society which, as we have elsewhere said, aimed at intellectual improvement, and suggested the benefit society afterwards known as the Flock of the Philo-Investigists. He did not live to see his benevolent scheme in action; but some years after his death, in 1799, it came into effect under the name of the Parochial Benefit Society.

In 1802 Josiah Boydell appears to have taken a very keen interest and an active part in the care of the poor inhabitants of Hampstead, and to have materially aided in procuring better quarters than the old workhouse at Frognal for the superannuants and ailing pensioners of the parish.

THE FATE OF A REFORMER.

I have had occasion to speak of Mr. Abrahams’ pamphlet[304] several times in the course of these pages, a publication that fell like a bomb in an unexpectant place, and aroused among the well-to-do inhabitants of Hampstead anything but gratitude.

This gentleman, who had ‘a way,’ he tells us, ‘of looking into things for himself,’ having become a parishioner of St. John’s, proceeded to act as he had done when resident in St. Luke’s, London, where his scrutiny into parochial transactions had resulted in a saving to Government of upwards of £2,000, and a reduction of the poor rates from 4s. 8d. in the pound to 3s., a result that led to an annual commemoration of the event at Canonbury House.

But the people of Hampstead did not desire to be saved from themselves, and resented this new inhabitant’s interference with indignation. There is something very amusing in Mr. Abrahams’ account of the proceedings.

Provided with a list of the names of the inhabitants, he called on the overseer of the parish and requested he would return it to him with the figures at which they were rated to the poor. Whereupon the irate overseer demanded to know if he came to disturb the harmony that existed among the parishioners in a parish where everything was properly conducted; they wanted no looking after, and therefore he should treat his request and the list accompanying it with the contempt they deserved by setting his pipe alight with the latter. Upon which Mr. Abrahams made no more requests to the courteous official, but possessed himself by other means of the amounts to which the inhabitants were assessed, and drew public attention to the matter by the publication of his pamphlet. It would have been well for parishes generally had they possessed a representative as energetic as this new parishioner of St. John’s, for the ignorance and dishonesty his pamphlet disclosed appears to have been pretty general.

Six years later (1817) we find Sir Walter Scott writing to his friend Mr. Moratt, who had himself written a pamphlet on the subject, ‘Pray let me have your pamphlet on the poor-rates as soon as it is out. It is an Augean stable; it is the very canker in the bosom of the country, and no small claim will he have on the gratitude of England who can suggest a practical remedy.’

But the people of Hampstead, until they had tasted the fruits of Mr. Abrahams’ interference, thought otherwise. At that time they were paying from the inequalities of the rates 4s. 8d. in the pound poor rates, and 1s. 9d. in the pound for lighting, watching, and repairing the roads.

In the happy days which preceded the appearance of this reformer, neither the parson, vestry clerk, nor beadle paid rates, and, as has elsewhere been said, the landlord of the Spaniards Inn enjoyed the same pleasant immunity. The Lady of the Manor (Lady Wilson) was rated at £100 for the Heath, to which the critical Abrahams objects that ‘when the rate was made, and till within the last few years, when _so great an impetus had been given to building_, sand, that now sold at 4s. 6d. a load, and gravel[305] at 6s. per load, had sold for 2s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.;’ he rated the Heath therefore at five times the sum, £500.

Lord Erskine’s house, garden, pleasure-grounds, stables, coach-house, etc., were also rated at £100, and very few proprietors were rated higher.

The following are the places named in his report: Church Street, Hampstead Hill, the Lower Flask Walk, New End, the Well Walk and thereabouts, the Square, part of the Heath, the Terrace, Nag’s Head side, Frognal, the Heath, and North End, the whole of which produced at that time £21,078, but might, according to Mr. Abrahams’ rating, produce above a fourth more, or £26,788, and reduce the poor rate by 1s. 2d. in the pound. Amongst the land-owners mentioned at this period are the names of Neave, Todd, Milligen, Holford, Hoare, Lord Mansfield; Everett (late Perceval), Belsize House, Haverstock Hill; Lady Watson, Well Park—a list not very different from Carey’s notes of the inhabitants a twelvemonth later, in the fifth edition of his ‘Book of the Road,’ 1812.[306] He is describing the Barnet road, which led up to and skirted Hampstead Heath:

‘On the left of the three-mile stone from St. Giles’s Pound, Pryor, Esq.’ (a name retained in the ‘Pryors,’ the present home of Walter Field, Esq.), ‘whose family have been for some time resident at Hampstead.’ ‘A little further on Belsize House, William Everett, Esq., and C. Todd, Esq., nearly opposite to which is T. Cartright, Esq. Farther on the left Roberts, Esq., and Coke, Esq. An eighth of a mile on the left, Rosslyn House, Mrs. Milligen. On the top of Red Lion Hill, to the right, is T. Gardner, Esq.; opposite is Pilgrim, Esq., adjoining to which is Mrs. Key. On the entrance to the Heath, T. Sheppard, Esq., M.P. for Frome’ (who resided in Steevens’ old house, now the home of the Misses Lister); and ‘across the Heath, S. Hoare, Esq., and a distant view of Caen Wood, with the seats of Charles Bosanquet, Esq., and Lord Erskine.’

He does not mention Edward Coxe, the poet, who was their neighbour the preceding year. ‘On the right is Caen Wood, Earl of Mansfield, and near it Fitzroy Farm, Lord Southampton. Between the Castle (Jack Straw’s) and North End, on the left, Kerney, Esq.; adjoining Ware, Esq., and opposite S. Hoare junior, Esq., Hill House, and James Kesteven, Esq. On the right Robert Ward, Esq., and opposite John Thompson, Esq., The Priory; and beyond the Hoop on Golder’s Green are seats of Henry Woodthorpe, Esq., Beck, Esq., and Amand, Esq.’

Abrahams tells us that in 1811 Church Street (as he calls it) had 25 residences; Flask Walk, 58; New End, 59; the Well Walk and thereabouts, 39; the Square, 20; part of the Heath, 20; the Terrace, 58; Nag’s Head side, 74; the Heath and North End, 38; Heath Street is not mentioned.

In this year it is stated in the _Lady’s Magazine_:

‘We hear that it is in contemplation to form a new Ranelagh and Vauxhall near Chalk Farm, and a contract has been entered into for forty acres of land to be appropriated to that purpose.’

New Georgia had long gone to increase Lord Mansfield’s demesne and the acreage of Caen Wood. North End Hall and Well had proved a failure; but the people of Hampstead and its neighbourhood still hankered after the flesh-pots of Egypt, and regretted the affluent days of the Wells fashion, and the bankruptcy of Belsize. Nothing, however, appears to have come of the idea, and long years passed before the beautiful meadows in the neighbourhood of Chalk Farm disappeared.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HEATH.

As early as 1829 we find the freeholders and copyholders of the Manor of Hampstead meeting at the Assembly Rooms on Holly-bush Hill, to discuss the best means to prevent further damage being done to the Heath, by destruction of the herbage, and digging sand and gravel thereon, as well as to inaugurate a subscription to try by law the right of the Lord of the Manor to so disturb and destroy it, or to build on or enclose any part of it.

Even prior to this date there seems to have subsisted an ill-feeling between the inhabitants of Hampstead and Sir Thomas Wilson. The copyholders claimed the right to improve their own copyholds by building on them, or otherwise, as also to get materials for such purposes off their own land, or from the waste. This matter had been tried between Lady Wilson and Sir Francis Willes, and had gone against the latter, because his removing the herbage had been detrimental to the rights of the other copyholders, who on certain parts of the Heath had a right to turn in their cattle, _levant et couchant_. Yet from the beginning of the century, as we have seen, the digging of sand and gravel for the benefit of Lady Wilson, and subsequently for the Lord of the Manor, had been going on without stint, and with scarcely any intermission, though in doing so (to quote the phrase of Professor Vaughan of Oxford, a resident near the Heath) they were carting away the climate and the drainage, and therefore the health of the neighbourhood, which depended on the sand and gravel.

But the then Lord of the Manor was not living for posterity, but for himself. In the May previous to the meeting we have mentioned, without even the courtesy of giving the usual notice to the copyholders, Sir Thomas Wilson had brought his Estate Bill before Parliament, by which he sought to abrogate the privileges of the copyholders, and appropriate to himself the power of granting licenses to improve their customary estates, and licenses to get materials for that purpose from their own copyholds, upon payment of 40s. fine to the Lord of the Manor, and £3 3s. fee to the steward for every such license. The Bill also sought power to grant building leases of the Heath, or other wastes of the manor, and to extend the power of granting building leases over certain lands formerly part of the waste, which were granted by the Lord of the Manor to himself, in the name of a trustee, with the consent of the homage, upon the express condition _that no buildings should at any time be erected on them_.

It was by mere accident, it is said, that the people of Hampstead heard of this Bill being before the House, and only just in time to oppose its being carried through surreptitiously.

No wonder that there were meetings in hot haste, and resolutions passed to defend the rights and privileges of the freeholders and copyholders, and at the same time those of the inhabitants and visitors. The sympathy of the public, as well as of the principal residents in the neighbourhood, was with them. Lord Clifton favoured the opposition. Lord Mansfield headed the subscription, as we have elsewhere said, with a donation of £50.

The inhabitants, well aware how much of their prosperity was due to the natural beauty of the Heath and its surroundings, gave with no niggard hands towards the fund for its protection. But, as we subsequently learn, the £3,000 raised by voluntary contributions was expended with no other result than the prospect of endless litigation.

It was impossible for this state of things to exist without a certain degree of personal ill-feeling being imported into it. Sir Thomas was rich and resolute, but the copyholders had their rights, and determined to hold by them. The years ran on without any radical adjustment of the questions at issue.

Every now and again, not Hampstead only, but the heart of Nature-loving London, was shaken by reports that the Heath was forthwith to be built on, and then would come appeals for further subscriptions, with the hope of purchasing it, appeals headed grandiloquently, but earnestly, ‘Awake! arise! or lose the Heath for ever!’ and thenceforth other meetings would ensue, fresh resolutions be declared, but to little apparent purpose, so far as the assurance of the preservation of the Heath was concerned. Happily, in the meantime, Government had taken up the question of public parks and recreation-grounds for the people, and measures were being adopted for the preservation of the commons at Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Clapham, Tooting, and Putney.

The Hampstead Heath Committee put themselves into communication with the Board of Works, and authorized it to negotiate the purchase of the Heath with the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead.

But though propositions had been made for its purchase in 1856, it was not till the latter end of 1866 that, from information received, the Board imagined that the time had arrived when Sir Thomas Wilson might be willing to negotiate for the sale of his rights in the Heath. Accordingly an interview was arranged between the then Chairman of the Board of Works, Sir John Thwaites, and the Lord of the Manor, upon what proved to be wholly delusive premises. Instead of being willing to listen to overtures on the subject, Sir Thomas was altogether indisposed to entertain any such proposition, or to acquiesce with the Board in any application for the necessary powers to deal with the Heath.

Though himself having only a life-interest in the estate, he insisted on regarding it as building land, and modestly estimated the value of the property at from £5,000 to £10,000 per acre, a prohibitory price, of course, to those who sought the purchase of the Heath.

At the commencement of 1870 there stepped in an unexpected arbitrator, or, as one of the vestrymen expressed it, ‘the hopes of Hampstead people were brightened by the death of Sir Thomas Wilson.’ His brother succeeded to the estate, and once more, and with reason in this instance, it was said that if an offer of £50,000 was made by the Board to the new Lord of the Manor, Sir John Maryon Wilson would be disposed to accept of that sum, and surrender all his rights and interest in the property, comprising an area of about 240 acres.

In consequence of this belief, negotiations were renewed at the suggestion of Mr. Le Breton, the representative of Hampstead at the Metropolitan Board, an honoured name in the neighbourhood from its associations with that of the Aikins family, Mrs. Barbauld’s grand-niece being the wife of Mr. Le Breton.

This gentleman, in conjunction with Mr. Gurney Hoare, and a committee of the influential lease and copy holders, reopened the overtures for the purchase of the Heath, which had so signally fallen through with the late Lord of the Manor (Sir Thomas Wilson), and happily with success.

Sir John Maryon Wilson and his son, Mr. Spencer Wilson, agreed to give up all the rights of the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead in the Heath for the sum of £45,000—costs to solicitors, surveyors, etc., not to exceed £2,000.

The Lord only reserved certain defined portions for the making new roads, which will not affect the enjoyment of the public.

Thus the struggle between the Lord of the Manor and the people of Hampstead—we may say, the people of the Metropolis—came to a final close. The Bill for the Preservation of the Heath passed the Houses of Parliament in the next spring, and the Act by which the ownership of Hampstead Heath was transferred to the Metropolitan Board of Works in trust to maintain it for ever as an unenclosed space for the purpose of health and recreation received the Royal Assent June 29, 1871, a day to be long remembered in the annals of Hampstead.

Very general pleasure and gratification was felt on the occasion by all who knew the lovely suburb, and regarded it as a pleasure spot of the Metropolis; and when the fears which the name of the Board of Works evoked, of straight lines, gravel-paths, and frigid plantations, had spent themselves in deprecating any attempt to make it other than itself, a wild heath, disfigured by turf and gravel-digging, scarred in all directions, and naked in parts, but with sufficient recuperative strength, if let alone, to renew its greensward and gorse and heather, and to restore the vigour of trees and undergrowth, a formal taking possession of it, and dedicating it to the use of the public for ever, was resolved on.

The circuit of its extent was marked out with flags. The officers of the Board of Works and local authorities were to perambulate it. But the free atmosphere of the vagrant Heath seemed to resent the intended formalities, and a downpour of rain put an end to the whole programme. Flags and bands and festive company were out of the question, and the ceremony consisted of a few officials and other gentlemen in close carriages making the partial circuit of the Heath, pausing at certain points where alterations and amendments were to be made, but eventually taking the shortest road to the Flagstaff and Jack Straw’s Castle, where the Vestry were about to entertain the officers of the Board of Works, the local authorities, and other guests at a handsome déjeûner. At the Flagstaff Colonel Hogg, in a brief but graceful speech, proclaimed the fact that Hampstead Heath was dedicated to the free use and recreation of the people for ever, and expressed a hope that it would prove that blessing which had been so long and fondly desired by the great Metropolitan community, the spirit of which speech, no doubt, the hearts of all present echoed.

Having thus far traced the story of this loveliest of London suburbs, we, too, rejoice that its wide views on three sides can never be impeded, but that, as in the days of Defoe, visitors to the Heath may on a clear day distinguish in the north-west Hanslip steeple, which is only eight miles distant from Northampton, and see the Langden Hills in Essex to the east—objects which lie at least sixty-six miles apart. Then there is the prospect of London, and beyond to Banstead Downs, Shooter’s Hill, and Redhill; while on the west the view is uninterrupted to Windsor Castle. But to the north topographers tell us we can see no further than Barnet, which is only six miles distant.

But, unfortunately, there were other troubles to be encountered. The Board of Works were privileged to make grants of some portions of the Heath, a privilege that resolved itself into helping certain influential individuals to enclose some of the loveliest and most interesting portions of it into their own premises. The angle of ground on which stood the famous group of trees, the Nine Elms, was made over to the late Lord Mansfield, with what result we all know. Another gentleman, before a voice could be raised against it, was allowed to enclose the loveliest bit of North End, known for generations as the Lovers’ Walk, in his demesne. And just when a third claimant was bargaining for the historic grove of trees called the Judge’s Walk, the remnant of which recalls a memorable fact, not only in the history of Hampstead, but of England,[307] Mr. Le Breton, who had fortunately heard of the transaction, was enabled to interfere and frustrate it.

A similar piece of good fortune helped the inhabitants to preserve the remains of the Old Avenue at North End from being enclosed in an adjacent demesne. The committee of the Hampstead Heath Protection Society, who now charge themselves with looking after the Heath and maintaining it intact for the people, are resolved on getting back as many of its original acres as possible. When, therefore in the summer of the year 1898 the beautiful estate of Golder’s Hill, the residence of the late Sir Spencer Wells, was to be sold, the inhabitants of Hampstead were naturally disturbed by the report that a syndicate of builders were plotting its purchase, with the intention of covering the charming grounds with streets of houses.

Part of these grounds impinge upon the Heath, and it was said included the Flagstaff Hill, the very crowning point of view upon it, the threatened loss of which affected all the inhabitants, and roused, says my authority, a collective spirit of resistance. A letter from Mrs. Hart, widow of the artist, who had left a sum of money for such contingencies, appeared in some of the London papers, and called popular notice to the threatened vandalism. A committee was formed, and subscriptions were raised, to which the local and London County Councils, as well as many of the inhabitants of Hampstead, generously contributed, till the whole of the purchase-money, £40,500, was in a very short time happily provided.

It is intended to let the house, but the picturesque grounds are to be kept in their integrity and added to the Heath, from which, the new ride now divides them. The cost of the ground purchased averages about £1,000 per acre. This was the price paid to Lord Mansfield for 209 acres of the Heath, while Sir Spencer Wilson received £100,000 for sixty-one acres, making together, with all extra expenses in the purchase of the Heath, £302,000.

Everyone who knows the pleasant suburb must rejoice that a neighbourhood which has delighted the people of successive ages, as well as our own, is reserved to give enjoyment to those who shall come after us, and that henceforth, from generation to generation, each being, we may hope, more able to appreciate its natural beauty than the last, Hampstead will continue to be the scene of unnumbered holidays; the Heath,

‘Where sweet air stirs Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold,’[308]

with its wide margin of hundreds of added acres, under the wise supervision of skilled conservators, growing year by year into fuller beauty of Nature-planted wild-flowers and indigenous furze and ferns.

Long may the people of the close courts and alleys of London come hither in their tens of thousands on the gold-letter days of their sparse holidays, to revel in the winnowing freshness of its breezy height, and pleasant groves and lanes and grassy nooks, and take back with them to their crowded homes a measure of the health that ‘floats upon the genial atmosphere.’ So shall Hampstead still (as in old Drayton’s time) ‘remain the noblest hill.’

The old Heath covered 220 acres, so that 261 acres acquired by recent purchase up to 1889, have more than doubled the expanse of the old Heath (1899).

FOOTNOTES

[1] One find I specially remember in connection with this neighbourhood of peculiar interest with reference to the great forest that once covered the site: When making the railway through Gospel Oak Fields, a hillock had to be cut through; some gigantic roots of trees, hard as ebony and black as bog-oak, were unearthed, bearing witness to the ancient woodlands that had covered it.

[2] Written 1855-60.

[3] Built in 1845-46.

[4] Quoted by Park.

[5] No cause is mentioned for the great increase of deaths.

[6] ‘Pomander’: a round, perforated box, filled with musk, ambergris, civet, or other sweet-scented ingredients. It was used to perfume apartments, and was frequently made of some precious material. Doctors used them for the head of the cane they usually carried as a prophylactic.

[7] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead.’

[8] The present sign, the copy of an older one, represents her in a red conical hat, with a glass of ale in her hand. Her modern memorialist says:

‘She was an old camp-follower through the campaignes of the Duke of Marlborough, and set up a hedge alehouse after the Peace of Utrecht, with her own portrait as a sign.’—_Ante_ ‘The Anecdote Library.’

[9] Blake.

[10] Mr. Rhodes died at a house on Muswell Hill. Rhodes of Rhodesia is said to be a near descendant.

[11] This house appears in Hogarth’s ‘March to Finchley.’

[12] For some years Portland Place was used as a fashionable promenade by the rank and fashion of the town.

[13] Gray’s ‘Letters.’

[14] Romilly’s childhood’s home was in the High Street, Marylebone, then a small village about a mile and a half from London, with the cheerful country close to it. Sir Samuel was born 1757; he died 1818.

[15] At the present time it is said to contain 2,245 acres.

[16] The charter of Ethelred II. (who began to reign 979) to St. Peters, Westminster, A.D. 986: ‘Starting from Sandgate east to Bedgar’s “Stywei” (? lea); then south to Dermod’s house; from Dermod’s house to middle Hamstead: so forward along the hedge to the rushes; from the rushes west by the side of the marsh to the _barrow west_ along the boundary to the stone pit; from the stone pit to Watling Street, so north along Watling Street to the boundary brook, back east by the boundary to Sandgate.’

This last document has only lately become accessible. It is one of the Stowe MSS. recently secured by the British Museum. This charter has, I believe, never before been printed, except in Mr. Maude Thompson’s catalogue of the Stowe MSS. It is No. 10 in that catalogue.—Article by Professor J. W. Hales, M.A., F.S.A., in Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead.’

[17] ‘The Common-place Book’ of the late Miss Catherine Fry.

[18] ‘Planché, who has gone deeper into the subject of the Peverels than either Eyton, the Shropshire historian, or Mr. E. Freeman (who rejects this supposition with contempt and indignation), puts it in this wise: “During all the battles and commotions in Normandy preceding the Conquest, we hear nothing of the Peverels. No land is called by their name, nor do we hear of it till that of Ranulph, in Domesday Book, when he figures as the lord of sixty-four manors. Planché suggests what Mr. Eyton has overlooked that the Saxon lady of rank might have visited Normandy before 1051, a circumstance that would remove the only serious difficulty in the story. The latter Ranulph Peverel was the founder of Hatfield Peverel, in Essex, as shown by Camden, Glover, Dugdale, Sandford, Weever and others.”’ The author of the ‘Roman de la Rose’ makes no mention of Peverel.

[19] Norden.

[20] London was a city long before the Romans entered it. Ammianus Marcellinus says that 1200 years before his time it was a city, _i.e._, about 900 B.C., which, if correct, would make it 200 years older than Rome itself.—C. A. W.

[21] Unfortunately, when copying this account, having no idea of using it, I neglected to note the date or number of the magazine, but I believe it was during Mr. Ainsworth’s editorship.

[22] Where was Roman Lane, which Dr. Hughson must have known?

[23] ‘Bordarii,’ I think, Park scarcely understood for a Domesday Book word. These would not be bordarii before, but Saxon churls; and ‘hame stead’ is ‘home station,’ _i.e._, the outhouses or cots to the big lord’s residence.—C. A. W.

[24] Hughson thinks that it possibly referred, by way of pre-eminence, to the residence of the Lord of the Manor.

[25] Sanctus Albanus Verolamiensis.

[26] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead.’

[27] In the reign of Henry VI., in the fifteenth century.

[28] See Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ pp. 100, 101.

[29] ‘Eccles. Hist.,’ ii. 324, quoted by Park, ‘History of Hampstead,’ p. 21.

[30] Lysons.

[31] The Heath was generally so called. Lord Erskine speaks of his house on Hampstead Hill, The Evergreens, near the Spaniards.

[32] Park.

[33] _Daily Advertiser_, July 19, 1748: ‘To-morrow, the 20th inst., will be run for on Hampstead Course, a considerable sum, between two poneys, at the Castle on Hampstead Heath. There are great bets depending. The poneys will be rubbed down at the Castle aforesaid.’ In reference to this race we read: ‘On Wednesday a race was run on Hampstead Heath between a bay poney belonging to Lord Blessington, and a gray poney of Mr. Woods, of Jack Straw’s Castle, for a considerable sum of money, which was won by the former.’

[34] Horace Walpole’s Letters.

[35] Hampstead, July, 1810. It is stated in the _Morning Post_ that the Hampstead Volunteers, who had been practising firing at a large target on the Heath, ‘had fired many excellent shots, some of which nearly entered the bull’s eye.’ They have improved upon this since then, as have also their firearms.

[36] Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights of London.’

[37] Morden’s Map of Middlesex, 1593, shows this road, which skirts the Fleet for a short distance in the neighbourhood of old St. Pancras, and runs up Tottenhall or Tottenham Court Road, passing by Lower Chalcot and Upper Chalcot to Pond Street.

[38] Burnet’s ‘History of his own Times.’

[39] See Macaulay’s ‘Essays.’

[40] Steele had his office at the Cockpit, in Whitehall. He held the post of Gazetteer and Commissioner of Stamps.

[41] There has been a question as to the burial-place of Steele, which the following note, kindly forwarded me through a friend, sets at rest: ‘Sir R. Steele was buried in the church at Carmarthen, and only in August, 1876, was there a memorial tablet placed over his remains by a gentleman of the name of Davies. It bears the inscription:

‘“SIR RICHD. STEELE, KNIGHT,

Author, Essayist, and first chief promoter of the periodical press of England.

Born in Dublin, March 12, 1671.

Buried in this church, and below this tablet.”’

[42] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[43] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[44] A contributor to Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead’ states: ‘Under an old thorn-tree, near the house, on the north side of the avenue, there was within the memory of living people a dipping-well for public use.’ Is this, I wonder, the small fountain of delicious water, the footpath to which from the High Street Lord Rosslyn tried to stop? But, though on the Woolsack, he failed to do so. The case appeared in a _Times_ newspaper of 1878.

[45] At the present (1899), only one of the beautiful trees is standing.

[46] Subsequently Sir Rowland Hill resided at Bartrum Park, a little to the east of the green, on the same side of the way.

[47] Where the small-pox sheds stood, the Hampstead Hospital for Fever and Small-pox stands now (1899).

[48] There is an engraving of this house in Mr. Gardener’s collection, copied in Mr. Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights of London.’

[49] An engraving of this picture appeared in the _European Magazine_.

[50] See Appendix.

[51] The father of this gentleman, the second Thomas Norton Longman, resided here. He was unfortunately killed by a fall from his horse about 1842. Soon after his daughters came to live at Frognal Rise.

[52] ‘The Presbyterian Chapel on Rosslyn Hill was built by Isaac Honeywood, Esq., who inhabited the adjoining mansion, and died there, November 8, 1740. He was cousin-german to Sir Edward Honeywood, the first baronet. Frazer Honeywood and Sir John Honeywood, of the same family, were subsequently resident at Hampstead.’—Baines, ‘Records of Hampstead.’

[53] ‘Worthies of Middlesex.’

[54] James I., in his speech to Parliament, 1609, says that on his entrance to England he made knights by hundreds and barons in great numbers.

[55] This was called Hicks’s Hall; many of the milestones were reckoned from it.

[56] Stowe.

[57] This family held the Manor of Hampstead for nearly a century.

[58] See _Notes and Queries_, s.s. viii. 511.

[59] Park, 1813.

[60] Spencer Perceval, who was shot by Bellingham, and is buried at Charlton in Kent, had married the youngest of the three daughters of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson.

[61] Howitt.

[62] W. Howitt.

[63] ‘There are periods in which the human mind seems to slumber, but this is not one of them. A keen spirit of research is abroad, and demands reform. Perhaps in none of the nations of Europe will their articles of faith, or their Church establishments, or their models of worship, maintain their ground for many years in exactly the same position in which they stand at present. Religion and manners act upon one another. As religion, well understood, is a most powerful agent in ameliorating and softening our manners; so, on the other hand, manners, as they advance in cultivation, tend to correct and refine our religion. Thus, to a nation in any degree acquainted with the social feelings, human sacrifices and sanguinary rites could never long appear obligatory. The mild spirit of Christianity has, no doubt, had its influence in softening the ferocity of the Gothic times; and the _increasing humanity of the present period_ will, in its turn, produce juster ideas of Christianity, and diffuse through the solemnities of our worship, the celebrations of our Sabbaths, and every observance connected with religion, that air of amenity and sweetness which is the offspring of literature and the peaceful intercourse of society. The age which has demolished dungeons, rejected torture, and given so fair a prospect of abolishing the iniquity of the slave-trade, cannot long retain among its articles of belief the gloomy perplexities of Calvinism, and the heart-withering perspective of cruel and never-ending punishment.’ This is very clever writing for her, but how absurdly wrong she is in the total!

[64] Miss Aikin published her ‘Life of Queen Elizabeth,’ 1813.

[65] A great man, and student of Swedenborg.

[66] In 1461 we find the Abbot and Convent of Westminster instituting John Barton to the Rectory of Hendon _cum capella de Hamsted_ eidum annexa.—PARK.

In the time of Edward VI., the curacy of Hampstead was valued at £10 per annum; but up till that time the inhabitants chiefly consisted of laundresses and their families.

[67] Park’s ‘History.’

[68] He built St. Giles’s Church.

[69] For a portrait of Harrison, see the _European Magazine_, October, 1789.

[70] I regret that on my recent visit to the churchyard I found this description no longer true. An air of neglect, very painful to one who remembers its appearance thirty years ago, pervades it now; and all the neatness and care seems to be transferred to the newer portion of the graveyard on the opposite side of the church.

[71] On the last occasion of my visiting the graveyard (1896), I could not find this tomb.

[72] Copied for me by Mrs. Godfrey Turner.

[73] The toll is still exacted. Several attempts have been made by the parish authorities to extinguish the right, but they have never come to terms with the successor of Miss Sullivan (1899).—G. W. P.

[74] The church now St. John’s. Rebuilt in 1745.

[75] Lysons, ‘Environs of London.’

[76] The Rev. Samuel White, at that time resident at Frognal.

[77] ‘At the above date Hampstead, with many other parishes, took advantage of a statute passed in the reign of George I., which, with the consent of the major part of the parishioners, empowered the churchwardens and overseers of parishes to purchase or hire any house in the parish, or to contract with any person to lodge and keep and employ the poor ... hiring them, in fact, to contractors. The system, for a while, appeared to work well, but after a time ceased to be useful.’—HOWITT, ‘Northern Heights.’

[78] It was he who built the magnificent Chesterfield House, Mayfair.

[79] Park, p. 342.

[80] Obituary, _European Magazine_, 1804. Haydn says 1805, which is wrong.

[81] Howitt, ‘Northern Heights of London.’

[82] Every ticket was sold before the drawing took place.

[83] Obituary, _European Magazine_, of this month and year. Haydn says 1805.

[84] Fenton House has had many tenants in modern times, amongst them the Honourable Miss Murrays and the Baroness Grey. It has been called the Clock House, a resident, some thirty years ago, having placed a sham dial-plate on the front of the entrance porch.

[85] Park, the historian of Hampstead, so often referred to in these pages.—C. W.

[86] I have a clinging impression that much of the ‘Vanity of Human Wishes’ was composed in Greenwich Park without being committed to paper, but I cannot refer now.—Note by C. A. Ward, Esq.

[87] Mrs. Desmoulins had lived with Mrs. Johnson for some before her marriage with the Doctor.

[88] Mr. G. W. Potter reminds me that a very interesting discussion and much correspondence has recently (May, 1899) taken place as to the house inhabited by Dr. Johnson, the result being that Park’s account is believed to be quite correct, viz., that it was the last house south in Frognal. Park’s father had lived for years in Hampstead, and at the same time as Dr. Johnson; he must, therefore, have given his son accurate information on the point. The house in question is now called Priory Lodge, and the difficulty arose from its being a large house with a very large garden and stabling. ‘I was enabled,’ continues my correspondent, ‘to point out that the large garden and stables were taken from Frognal Hall only some thirty-five years since, and that at the same time large additions were made to the house itself. A Mr. Watson, whose father I well remember, saw my letter in the _Hampstead Express_, and corroborated it, saying that his father, who had lived in it—_i.e._, Priory Lodge—some fifty years ago, had also enlarged it. An inspection of the house shows that it has grown from a very moderate-sized house to a much larger building.’

[89] Howitt.

[90] In 1868 Frognal House was used as the Sailors’ Daughters Orphan School, and continued for some twelve years to be so used, till the house on Green Hill was ready for their occupation.

[91] The original house was known as North Court, and a public well which existed on Branch Hill, Park tells us, was known as North Hole.

[92] Lord Burlington was the friend of Handel, who lived in his house for three years. ‘He used to drive down to the Foundling Hospital with Gay in his coach-and-four, to hear Leveridge sing there—“Leveridge, with his voice of thunder.”’ Lord Burlington patronized music, literature, painting, and architecture.

[93] Exactly opposite Montagu House is the modern North London Consumption Hospital, on Mount Vernon.

[94] Park, ‘History of Hampstead.’

[95] The first charity school was established in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 1688.

[96] Henry James, _Harper’s Magazine_, September, 1897.

[97] At one period Miss Jane Porter occupied Grove House.

[98] Constable painted it, and subsequently exhibited his picture, ‘A Romantic House, Hampstead.’

[99] Hone, of the ‘Table-Book,’ has given an account of Thompson.

[100] It was said that Soho Square and many streets in its neighbourhood belonged to him.

[101] A Jacobean porch said to have belonged to an old Shropshire manor-house.

[102] I believe Thompson did bequeath to the Queen a beautiful bedstead of ivory or some costly material.—C. A. Ward.

[103] _Vide_ Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights.’

[104] T. Norton Longman, who died at Hampstead, February 5, 1797, aged sixty-six, and was buried at Barnet. Nichols gives an account of him in ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ vi. 439. _Vide_ Park.

[105] The sketch referred to is now in the collection of Landseer’s early drawings in the South Kensington Museum. It is said to be wonderfully lifelike.

[106] Park.

[107] I am informed by Mr. G. W. Potter, who was a member of the court for thirty years, that the manorial courts are still held at Manor Lodge, which is in the lane near Frognal, and which is said to stand on the site of the old manor-house.

[108] It now stands an empty and desolate building. The tenant, for some breach of the law, forfeited his license about three years ago, and the disreputable old inn is now (1899) advertised for sale as a building site.—G. W. P.

[109] This year (1896) it is said that this is to make room for a new road.

[110] Mr. Joseph Hoare died at Child’s Hill House in 1886.

[111] This house is now let as a school for young gentlemen.

[112] Her real name was Mrs. Hemet, Lessingham being the name she adopted for the stage.

[113] In January, 1773, Mrs. Lessingham was playing Lucy in ‘The Rivals,’ at Covent Garden.

[114] This gentleman died some twenty years ago, and the house is now occupied by its owner, Mr. Gross.

[115] Mrs. Miles, widow of John Miles, Esq., was buried in the family vault in Hampstead Parish Church, which was specially opened for the purpose.

[116] Neither Park nor Abrahams mentions Heath Street, though many of the houses look very old.

[117] This is now the middle of Heath Street, and divides old or Upper Heath Street from Lower Heath Street, leading to Fitzjohn’s Avenue.

[118] It has been suggested to me that it was so called from Kit’s cates.

[119] Cunningham says _circa_ 1700.

[120] ‘Dunciad.’

[121] ‘Mirror.’

[122] It was Dr. Garth who, being present on an occasion when the Duchess of Marlborough was pressing the Duke to take a medicine, and, with her accustomed warmth, added, ‘I’ll be hanged, Duke, if it do not prove serviceable!’ exclaimed, ‘Do take it, my Lord Duke, for it must be of service in one way or the other!’

[123] Lately blown down and destroyed (1895).

[124] Park.

[125] Edward Coxe.

[126] Mr. Steevens left the greater part of his property to his niece, Miss Steevens, who died at Hampstead.

[127] Locally memorable as the last person who wore a pigtail at Hampstead.

[128] Park.

[129] C. Deane was another artist who loved and painted Hampstead Heath. He exhibited a scene from Hampstead at the British Gallery in 1823—a most perfect representation of local scenery. I owe this note to an odd number of the _Literary Gazette_.

[130] Alfred Edward Chalon proposed to give, in 1859, to the inhabitants of Hampstead his own large collection of sketches, and his brother’s unsold works, and some endowment to uphold the collection, if they would provide suitable premises; but it fell through by their default, and he died on October 3, 1860.

[131] Varley was very chary of drawing horoscopes. He was often terrifically right.

[132] ‘A copy of the ancient customs used in the Manor of Hampstead was made, February 14, 1753, from a paper found by Mr. Tims at Jack Straw’s Castle, where several of the bailiffs of the manor had lived, and, from the style of the writing, appeared to have been written eighty or ninety years before.’—Baines, ‘Records of Hampstead.’

[133] ‘Pickwick Papers.’

[134] There is a quaint detached tea-room at the Spaniards, approached by an outside flight of wooden steps. Until about thirty years ago there was inscribed on one of the panes of glass in the end window the autograph of the late Emperor of the French. He is said to have cut this inscription with a diamond ring, about 1845-46, when in exile here as Prince Louis Napoleon. The window has been altered, and the pane has disappeared.—G. W. P.

[135] When Gibson wrote his additions to Camden, 1695, Mother Huffs was a house of entertainment on Hampstead Heath. I have recently learned that in an old map of 1630 a small house near the Elms is marked ‘Mother Houghs.’

[136] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[137] It was Martin who inaugurated the idea.

[138] This house was occupied for many years by Captain Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic explorer, who was connected by marriage with the Hoare family.—G. W. P.

[139] ‘Sylvan Sketches,’ by the author of ‘Flora Domestica,’ 1825.

[140] ‘Collins’ and Tooly’s Farm were two adjoining but separate grass-farms; now they are one, in the occupation of the late Mr. Tooly’s son. Mr. Collins was the occupant of the other, and lived in the farmhouse, or cottage, where Dickens and so many other famous men have lived. This cottage is now occupied by Mr. Arthur Wilson, the son of the late Rev. Daniel Wilson. He has added to the cottage without in any way spoiling it.’—G. W. P.

[141] The new paling at the end of the holly hedge shows the place where the nine elms and the old seat stood.

[142] Said by some writers to have been married in 1776—a statement disproved by the magazines of the day, and by the fact of Mrs. Crewe’s magnificent masquerade in 1775. There is a portrait of Mrs. Crewe painted by Reynolds.

[143] The members of this celebrated club included the Dukes of Roxburghe and Portland, the Earl of Strathmore (whose encounter with the highwaymen on Finchley Common I have alluded to), Mr. Crewe, Fox, Sheridan, Lord Carlisle, and others. The club was established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the proprietor in 1775 founded the present Brooks’s, in St. James’s Street.

[144] Mirabeau, in one of his letters, tells of two ladies just arrived from Paris with tall feathers in their hats, who, as he was conducting them from the Bell Inn, Holborn, to Hatton Garden, were surrounded by a mob, from whom they were only rescued by some English gentlemen on horseback, who used their whips on the crowd, and thus dispersed it.

[145] Sir Aston Lever, who had just made a present of his collection to the British Museum.

[146] Fox’s verses to Mrs. Crewe were printed at Strawberry Hill.

[147] On his death-bed Fox observed: ‘There are two things I wish heartily to see accomplished—peace with Europe, and the abolition of the slave-trade; but of the two, I wish the latter.’

[148] While rewriting this chapter, a sale of Romney’s engravings took place at Christie’s, when Lady Hamilton as ‘Nature,’ engraved in colours by Meyer, sold for 100 guineas (May, 1894).

[149] This picture, I am told, is not by Romney.

[150] It must be patent to everyone that, had the Assembly House been originally built for that purpose, a proper entrance would have formed an essential part of it, whereas, as I have said, it was without one till quite modern times.

[151] I am indebted to Mr. G. W. Potter for the above information.

[152] The birch-tree, with its light sprays and silvery bark, is very frequently styled the ‘Lady of the Woods.’ Constable used the appellation in connection with the beautiful ash metaphorically.

[153] ‘Goldsmith’s English, when English comes to be the sole tongue wanted to run the wide world round, as it spins by day and night under the sun, will necessarily be more and more resorted to as the best model to be had of plain and simply effective speech. His “Village” and his “Vicar” will be carefully searched into to help counteract the ever-augmenting virus of vulgar dialectical debasement from oversea offshoots, colonial or enfranchised, that is to-day poisoning the living font of Chaucer. Addison will then be less read than even now he is, and Johnson will never be sought for at all out of Boswell. The huge autocrat of yesterday is with the worms to-morrow, and Oliver, “who talked like poor Poll,” will then sit enthroned as preceptor of English to the universe.’—Mr. C. A WARD.

[154] I am reminded that Mr. Richardson, the friend and correspondent of Sir W. Scott, resided here for several years.

[155]

DE MONTFORT: A TRAGEDY.

PLAYED FOR THE FIRST TIME AT DRURY LANE, APRIL 29, 1800.

_Characters._

De Montfort Mr. Kemble. Rezenvelt Mr. Talbot. Albert Mr. Barrymore. Manuel Mr. Powell. Jerome Mr. Dowton. Conrad Mr. Caulfield. Jane de Montfort Mrs. Siddons. Countess Miss Heard.

[156] ‘Life of Sir Walter Scott,’ vol. ii., pp. 267, 268.

[157] Sir Walter Scott paid his last visit to Hampstead and Joanna Baillie in April, 1828. It might have been on this occasion that Mrs. Howitt met him.

[158] To-day the inscription on her tomb needs the tender hand of Old Mortality to remove the lichen that hides it!

[159] _Athenæeum_, March 20, 1861.

[160] There is but one good portrait of Goldsmith—that painted by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, now at Knowle.

[161] Loggan had been dwarf to the Princess of Wales. He kept a hairdresser’s shop on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, and painted fans, which were ornamented with likenesses of all the most important persons who appeared there.

[162] See p. 165.

[163] At this time Miss Aikin had published her ‘Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth,’ and Miss Edgeworth was writing ‘Comic Dramas.’

[164] It will be remembered that the Hoare family allied themselves by marriage with the Norfolk Gurneys, the Buxtons, and the Frys.

[165] This name is now given to a row of poor little modern dwellings at North End.

[166] I find it is a tradition in one of the oldest families on Hampstead Heath that this avenue formerly belonged to Lord North’s House.

[167] Mr. G. W. Potter tells me a very aged walnut-tree still stands in this paddock, and may be the tree referred to.

[168] It shows a want of archæological interest to have altered the name.

[169] Dryden.

[170] North End House is now the residence of Mr. Figgis; and I read in Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead’ that the room fraught with such sad interest is used as a day-nursery.

This does not appear to be the description of a room that would adapt itself, or be capable of adaptation to the uses of a day-nursery; and we sincerely hope that Mr. Baines has been misinformed, and that the room remains as when Mr. Howitt described it, sacred to the memory of the great orator.

[171] I have several times been in this historic room, and visited it only last summer with the Hampstead Antiquarian Society. The room is a double one: the smaller apartment has the double-hatch door, and the larger room opening from it is quite large enough for a nursery. The tradition is that the Earl of Chatham occupied the double apartment.—G. W. P.

[172] Horace Walpole, who also vindicated Byng, and regarded his fate as a gross injustice, or, rather, we should say, a judicial murder, tells us that, being with Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia at her villa of Gunnersbury, amongst other interesting anecdotes, she told him that while Byng’s affair was depending, the Duchess of Newcastle sent Lady Sophia Egerton (the wife of a clergyman, by the way) to beg her to be for the execution of the Admiral. ‘And, indeed,’ she continued, ‘I was already for it. The officers would never have fought if he had not been executed; nor would Lord Anson have been head of the Admiralty.’

[173] I have seen it this year (1895), and rejoice at its healthy appearance.

[174] Tom Hood.

[175] The bower or seat at the Bull and Bush is about 12 feet from the ground, among the branches of the yew-tree, and is reached by a rude staircase. The tree was a very ancient one, but a ring of young shoots have sprung up from the roots, and are growing vigorously round the spot where the old trunk stood.—G. W. P.

[176] Hughson’s ‘History of London,’ 1809.

[177] This well-known physician has died since these lines were written.

[178] These fields are now covered with houses.

[179] Mrs. Barbauld’s ‘Richardson’s Correspondence.’

[180] I believe the elm has been preserved, but the house has been removed.

[181] Mr. Le Breton, who heard him, says it was the first large elm-tree on the Heath.

[182] The Park, Brussels.

[183] Said to have been one of the most reliable of Charles Kean’s stock pieces.

[184] Leigh Hunt and his brother had been condemned to two years’ imprisonment each, and a fine of £1,000, for having, as he ludicrously phrases it, contrasted the _Morning Post’s_ description of the Regent as an Adonis in appearance, and the Mæcenas of his age, with the old real, fat state of the case, and for having said that H.R.H. had lived for fifty years without doing anything to deserve the admiration of his contemporaries or the gratitude of posterity.

[185] A tradition of the inhabitants of the cottage when I saw it.

[186] These lines do not appear in ‘Sleep and Poetry,’ in Moxon’s edition in the Pocket Series.

[187] Old John Cleave, the publisher, and friend of Douglas Jerrold and William Linton, who visited Leigh Hunt in his Surrey cage, told me that not only were the walls covered with a rose-patterned paper, but that the poet had trained living roses on them.

[188] _Vide_ Mary Cowden Clarke.

[189] Millfield Lane is said to be a very ancient road. This was the road traversed by the mounted messenger in 1780 who was despatched for the military, while the would-be wreckers of Lord Mansfield’s house were being regaled by the landlord of the Spaniards Inn.

[190] A fungus so called.

[191] Hammond’s house was in Elm Row.

[192] Some persons have asserted that Lord Byron was one of Leigh Hunt’s visitors in the Vale of Health, but Hunt himself tells us that though Lord Byron visited him in Horsemonger Lane Gaol, he did not afterwards. His interviews with Lord Byron took place at his lordship’s town-house.

[193] In the garden of which her three-year-old son celebrated his mother’s birthday by eating laburnum seeds, which nearly killed him.

[194] Those who have had experience of forestry consider the mighty beeches and oaks in Caen Wood to be the real descendants of the primeval giants of the old Forest of Middlesex.

[195] Lloyd’s ‘Caen Wood and its Associations.’ A lecture.

[196] State Calendars of Charles I. and II., April 24, 1630, and September 21, 1660.

[197] There is a tradition that the ponds were enlarged, if not made, by the Monks (Lloyd).

[198] The old mill has still a local tradition in Millfield Lane, by which it was approached from the hamlet of Green Street, Kentish Town (_ibid._).

[199] Haydn.

[200] The South Sea Scheme, thus called.

[201] Lloyd.

[202] It was Lord Bute who granted Dr. Johnson a literary pension of £300 a year.

[203] Here are all the letters—Kaen, Caen.

[204] The inscription was as follows: ‘I, Robert Caxton, begun this place in a wild wood ... stubbed up the wood, digged all the ponds, cut all the walks, made all the gardens, built all the rooms with my own hands. Nobody drove a nail here, or laid a brick, or a tile, but myself; and ... thank God for giving me strength at sixty-four years of age, when I began it,’ etc.

[205] Edited by Colley Cibber.

[206] Mr. G. W. Potter informs me, that while a skating pond was being enlarged about seven or eight years ago, traces of this strange building were found.

[207] It was said of Murray, that he had less law than many lawyers, but more practice than any. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was one of his clients.

[208] Referred to in a speech, at a City banquet, by Sir Bartle Frere, July, 1874.

[209] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[210] _Ibid._

[211] That of the claimant to the Tichborne baronetcy.

[212] It is curious to notice the different description of the event which Mrs. Delany (writing at the same time as Horace Walpole) gives us, the latter averring that the Guards, a thousand strong, had been despatched to prevent the intended arson, whilst the lady writes that the mob was met by a regiment of militia on the march, who turned them back. It is plain that Horace Walpole’s description was correct, otherwise there would have been no obligation to the landlord of the Spaniards, which, it is said, Lord Mansfield never forgot.

[213] Abraham states that the Spaniards Tavern paid no poor rate. There may be no relation between the facts, but as cause is wanted for this exemption, one wonders if the saving of Caen Wood had anything to do with it.

[214] More than £30,000 by the burning of his house.

[215] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[216] Lambert tells us that amongst the celebrated cedars of Lebanon at Caen Wood, young when he saw them, was one planted by Lord Mansfield himself.

[217] The ‘Man Milliner,’ as a correspondent of the _European Magazine_ writes himself, suggests in the August number of that year (1781) that Lord Southampton at Fitzroy Farm might with advantage stucco the front of his three rooms to the west. His neighbour Lord Mansfield’s south front will show him the permanent beauty of the _new stucco_.

[218] I have been told that this portrait is still preserved at Caen Wood House.

[219] The freeholders and copyholders of the manor did not even receive the courtesy of a notice of the intention to bring in the Bill, which was almost surreptitiously passed through the House.

[220] Prints of the handsome arch were treasured in Hampstead homes long after the event. One of them, coloured and gilt, is now before me, rather the worse for sixty-three years’ wear and tear.

[221] The Styrian Hunters were a band of foreign musicians so called, very popular in London just then.

[222] This was written in 1872 before the great hillocks had been levelled, or the pits and hollows filled up.

[223] It is the belief of geologists that the whole of Middlesex was the bed of an estuary of the sea, from which the waters subsided into the Thames.

[224] A lady whose girlhood was spent at Hampstead tells me she used to find bright little stones amongst the gravel, locally known as ‘Hampstead diamonds’; a ring made of them, in her possession, still sparkles very prettily.

[225] These have been found in the gravel-pits, and also a specimen of _Concha rugosa_.

[226] Authors of the ‘History of Clerkenwell,’ London, 1828.

[227] So called because formed of the united streams which supplied the city and suburbs with clear, sweet, and wholesome water in the west part, whose first decay was owing to certain mills erected thereon by the Knights of St. John, and by degrees gave it the name of Turnmill Brook, which name is still preserved in Turnmill Street, through part of which it took its course. In time this name was lost in that of Fleet Dyke or Ditch.

[228] There is a mystery about this Walk which, when I first knew Hampstead, I often heard spoken of. Now I am told, on very reliable authority, that no such Walk exists; yet the above traditional account of the course of the Fleet was given me as late as 1895 by a very intelligent inhabitant, and he spoke of Willow Walk as if he knew it.

[229] After great falls of snow or heavy rains, the Fleet frequently overflowed the Pancras valley and the Bagnigge Wells Road, rendering them impassable in places.

[230] The Holborn Bars are removed, but the posts stand.

[231] These latter buildings, or part of them, I am told, are still in being, and used for their original purpose.

[232] A celebrated house, much frequented by the wits. This mention of Nando’s Coffee-house reminds me that it figures in one of the amusing papers in the _Tatler_ (No. 180), which Steele had started in 1709. In this paper the public are informed that ‘a coach runs daily from Nando’s Coffee House to Mr. Tiptoe’s Dancing School’; and then is added by way of postscript, ‘Dancing shoes not exceeding four inches height in the heels, and periwigs not exceeding three feet in length, are carried in the coach box gratis,’ a satire upon the high heels and exaggerated wigs then in vogue.

[233] There was, I am told, an old weather-boarded house opposite the Wells Tavern called _Willow_ House, which remained till some twenty years ago, when its site, and that of its large garden, were built upon, and six or more houses were erected there. This was probably the type of the early houses in Well Walk.

[234] There was a coach running in 1708.

[235] See Haydn’s ‘Dictionary of Dates.’

[236] Bank Holidays, though in the near future, had not been inaugurated when this was first written.

[237] Gibson, who published his additions to Camden at the Black Swan, Paternoster Row, 1695, tells us that Mr. Pittiver found what he calls cluster-headed goldy-locks (_Ranunculus bulbosus?_) in going from Mother Huffs’ to Highgate. Mother Huffs’ would seem to have been situated pretty near the Spaniards Inn, and was in all likelihood a tea-drinking house.

[238] The murderer of a Mr. Posto.

[239] The Bird-in-Hand, like the old post-office, was said to be of the same age as the Chicken House.

[240] This ungraceful adjunct to dress was flourishing when these lines were first written (1852-53).

[241] I respect the unknown hand that appended the above newspaper cutting to Soames’ ‘Treatise on the Hampstead Wells,’ in the reference-room of the Hampstead Library.

[242] In 1721 the tavern in Well Walk was called the White Stone Inn.

[243] Anderson’s ‘Life of Gay.’

[244] In this same year, 1722, I find Gay writing to Swift that he is persuaded Pope had borne his share in the loss of the South Sea—a sentence that says much for the fortitude and unselfish forbearance of the latter who had taught himself in this instance to forget his own loss in endeavouring to strengthen and comfort his friend and fellow-sufferer.

[245] Lady Betty Germain, second daughter to Earl Berkeley, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, to whom Swift was either private secretary or chaplain, or both(?). Visitors to Knowle will remember Lady Betty’s chamber, and the bed-hangings, chair-covers, etc., of the lady’s own embroidering.

[246] This description is repeated in every edition of this work, long after the Assembly-room had ceased to exist, and is given verbatim in several topographical descriptions of Hampstead.

[247] That this too ambidextrous individual visited Hampstead is well known. But so she did Belsize and Ranelagh, as well as the opera, the theatres, and, indeed, the churches—every place, in fact, where well-dressed persons congregated. Many years ago an old inhabitant of Hampstead lent me a scrap-book in which was a likeness of Jenny Diver, a by no means unpleasant-looking woman. She was represented with an ostentatious display of pearls and other ornaments round her neck and waist. She held a watch in one hand, and a purse in the other, and under a cap wore her hair turned back from a rather clever forehead; the remainder, while tied behind with a ribbon, fell in loose curls upon her neck. Gay introduces her in the ‘Beggars’ Opera.’ According to the text, she was demure-looking. March, 1740, closed Jenny’s career at Tyburn.

[248] The daughters of Mrs. Hervey.

[249] It could not have been the Marriage Act that put an end to it, as that was not passed till 1753, and Sion Chapel had ceased to be before 1725.

[250] _Connoisseur._

[251] Dr. Arbuthnot died in March, 1734-35.

[252] He was a Scotchman. Letter of Mr. Pulteney to Swift. See ‘Correspondence.’

[253] I am told that this custom is still maintained.

[254] This is precisely the language of Jonas Hanway, the traveller, and introducer of that useful article, the umbrella. This was also the favourite argument of the clergy, when preaching against the use of tea, as they also did against vaccination.

[255] I am told by an old resident that as late as 1830 there was but one butcher’s shop in Hampstead.

[256] A ridiculous custom, of which an account will be found in Hone’s ‘Table Book.’

[257] _Connoisseur._

[258] Quoted in ‘Hampstead and the Heath,’ which appeared in _Sharpe’s Magazine_ early in the sixties.

[259] Twelve months later, 1736, Turpin rides on the Highgate road, wearing an open gold-laced hat, while his companion (who sometimes passes for his man) has a plain gold-laced hat.

[260] He was Court painter to George II., and the translator of ‘Don Quixote.’ Sir Joshua Reynolds thought so little of his paintings that when asked where they were to be seen he replied, ‘In the garret.’

[261] Tried for bigamy, and found guilty, 1776.

[262] The Duke of Grafton was Lord Chamberlain.

[263] Mrs. Donnellan (the prefix Mrs. was then frequently applied to unmarried ladies) was the daughter of Chief Justice Donnellan, and sister to the Bishop, of Killala. Dr. Clayton married her sister, and gave his wife’s fortune to Mrs. Donnellan, who seems to have passed a great part of her life in England, making Hampstead a frequent place of residence.

[264] The rich and beautiful Widow Pendarves married the Irish Dean Delany, 1732, to the great disgust of John Gay. See his letter to Swift in the correspondence of the latter. ‘As Dr. Delany hath taken away a fortune from us, I expect to be recommended in Ireland. If authors of godly books are entitled to such fortune, I desire you would recommend me as a moral one—I mean in Ireland, for that recommendation would not do in England’ (Swift’s Correspondence).

[265] I have seen it stated that the burial-place of Pope is unknown.

[266] Clergymen extolled ‘Clarissa’ in the pulpit, and Pope observed of ‘Pamela’ that it would do more good than all their sermons.

[267] The _Daily Advertiser_, September 26, 1748.

[268] William Moray, for robbing John Head, a farmer’s boy, of sixpence (_Universal Magazine_, February 15, 1775).

[269] About nine o’clock on a July morning, Turpin was seen by two gentlemen who knew him, at Tottenham High Cross, mounted on a gray horse, with a boy behind as servant on a brown horse, with a black velvet cap and silver tassel. He rode through the town without molestation.—_Grub Street Journal_, 1736, No. 397.

[270] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ published when the author was little more than of age.

[271] Mr. Baines, in his ‘Records of Hampstead,’ has remedied this oversight, and has given some interesting particulars of the young historian’s after-life.

[272] Then the Green Man.

[273] I am told upon excellent authority that the house Constable lived in was taken down and rebuilt about six years ago; this house is now 44, Well Walk.

[274] Sion Chapel.

[275] Mr. G. W. Potter.

[276] Now Tooley’s Farm.

[277] Lintot.

[278] Hogarth is said to have painted this picture at Hampstead.

[279] Mrs. Delany was a Granville.

[280] Richardson’s ‘Correspondence’

[281] ‘Gray was a little man of very ungainly appearance.’—HORACE WALPOLE.

[282] The name of one of his poems.

[283] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’

[284] Wordsworth.

[285] Charles and Mary Lamb were at this time living in Russell Street, over a brazier’s shop.

[286] The fields commonly called the Conduit Fields lie under Fitzjohn’s Avenue, and a fountain at a corner of it represents the conduit.

[287] Keats.

[288] Brewer’s ‘Middlesex.’

[289] Park calls him her second husband, which is wrong. See Pepys’ ‘Diary,’ vol. i., p. 6.

[290] See Lord Braybrooke’s ‘Notes to Pepys’ Diary,’ vol. iv.

[291] Not his son, as a recent writer on Belsize asserts.

[292] These gentlemen were German Lavie, James Abel, Thomas Roberts, and Thomas Forsyth, Esqs., of Hampstead.

[293]

‘And on each side the gate a grenadier; Howe’er, they cannot speak, nor see, nor hear; But why they’re posted there no mortal knows, Unless it be to fright jackdaws and crows.’

A modern writer on the neighbourhood appears to have been misled by these lines into the supposition that the gates were guarded by living soldiers.

[294] Belsize House stood at the bottom of the present avenue. One of the last inhabitants was old Mr. Martinez, of the famous firm of port-wine shippers, Martinez, Gassiot and Co, Mark Lane, about 1847.—C. A. Ward, Esq.

[295] When Lysons wrote his ‘Environs of London,’ 1812, Belsize was a subrural place, the house modern.

[296] There was a little stile in the lane, at the south-west corner of the estate, and this was the spot of the murder, just as Delarue was mounting it.

[297] Letter of Lucy Aiken to Mrs. Mallett, Hampstead, September, 1845.

[298] The Kilburne rises near West End, Hampstead, and passes through Kilburn to Bayswater, supplying the Serpentine River, Hyde Park; and in Park’s time it flowed through the fields to the Thames at Ranelagh.

‘In a note sewn into a copy of the “Speculum Britanniæ,” wrought by Travaile, and view of John Norden of Fulham, in the year 1596,’ the name is spelt three different ways—Kylburne, Keylbourne, Kulleburne (quoted from Baines’ ‘Records,’ etc.).

[299] Great-uncles to the present Sir Charles Dilke.

[300] The author of the ‘Saturday Half-Holiday Guide’ mentions a pure white variety of _Campanula rotundifolia_ growing on the Heath, but I never had the good fortune to meet with it.

[301] All the plants enumerated in this catalogue have been found by the writer in the habitats indicated on Hampstead Heath.

[302] In reference to this charity, the following paragraph from the ‘Monthly Chronicle’ of the _European Magazine_ for January, 1790, is interesting: ‘At a meeting held in London of the trustees of John Stock, Esq., of Hampstead, who bequeathed a bounty of £100 a year to be divided amongst ten poor curates of the Church of England, whose incomes should not exceed £40 per annum ... thirty-eight petitions were presented and read from poor curates to partake of his benevolence, many of whose stipends were not more than £25 yearly, with which they have to support numerous and burdensome families. As ten only could receive the gift, twenty-eight were unsuccessful candidates.’

[303] In the winter of 1727 Voltaire was lodging at the White Peruke, Covent Garden, and visiting Pope at Twickenham. It may have been on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Mr. Pitt.

[304] ‘A Pamphlet on the Unequal and Partial Assessments; or, The Book of Assessments to the Poor Rates of the Parish of St. John, Hampstead, in the County of Middlesex, laid open by A. Abrahams, 1811, with a view to Meliorate the Situation of the Middling and Lower Classes by a New Assessment.’

[305] At this time twenty loads per day passed through Hampstead, besides what went other ways.

[306] Abrahams mentions Miss Baillie at Frognal, and G. Paxon the Flask—the Lower Flask, of course.

[307] The reason for the name of this avenue has been gravely questioned, and the legend attached to it is looked upon as a mere fable. But in 1859 Sir Francis Palgrave, then Deputy-Keeper of the Record Office, discovered a full account of the assize which was held under these memorable trees in the year 1662—Communicated by G. W. Potter, Esq.

[308] ‘Endymion.’

INDEX.

Abbey Fields, 346

Abel, James, 100, 333

Abraham, Mr., ‘Book of Assessment’ by, 66

Adam and Eve, The, 15

Adelaide, Queen, visits Hampstead, 231-233

Addison, 45, 121, 261, 280

‘Additional Notes,’ Crosby’s, 2

Aikin, Dr., 67

Aikin, Dr. John, 67

Aikin, Lucy, 67, 75, 166, 343

Ainsworth, Harrison, 4, 14

Airy, Julius Talbot, 89

Akenside, Dr., 95, 176, 314

Albert, Prince, 56

Alexander, William, 87

Alfred, King, 6

Alvanley, Lady, 36, 89

Alvanley, Lord, 89

Ampthill Square, 14

Andrews, Alderman Sir J. W., 90

Angler’s Lane, 3

Arbuthnot, Dr., 121, 261, 272, 273, 280

Argyle, Duke of, 219

Armstrong, Dr., 312

Askew, Dr., 83

Assembly Room, 145, 270, 300-302

Assessment, Abraham’s Book of, 66

Atye, Sir Arthur, 345

Baillie, Agnes, 157

Baillie, Dorothea, 153

Baillie, James, D.D., 153

Baillie, Joanna, 81, 100, 143, 154-158, 315

Baillie, Matthew, 153

Baillie, W. H., 158

Baines, 2 _et passim_

Baker, William, 121

Ballantyne, Mr., 76

Barbauld, Mrs., 67, 153, 159, 313

Barbauld, Rochemont, 58, 67

Bartholomew, Valentine, 15

Battle Bridge, 13

Baxter, John, Gent., 10

Beattie, Dr., 313

Bedford Garden, 18

Bedford House, 13, 18

Bedingfield, Daniel, 80

Bell, Mr., 49

Bellingham, assassin of Spencer Perceval, 340

Belsize, 11, 329-343

Belsize Avenue, 50, 341

Belsize Crescent, 341

Belsize Gardens, 50, 181, 335, 341

Belsize Grove, 50, 53

Belsize House, 333-341

Belsize Lane, 53, 341, 342

Belsize Square, 341

Benefactors of Hampstead, 368

Bentham, General Sir Samuel, 110

Bergh, 297

Besant, Sir Walter, 101

Bill, John, sen. and jun., 5, 11, 216

Bird in Hand, The, 58, 259

Bishop’s Wood, 195

Blackmore, Sir Richard, 121

Blackwood, Mrs. _See_ Dufferin, Lady Helen

Blackwood, Sir Stevenson Arthur, K.C.B., 53

Blake, William, 14, 43, 126, 136

Bliss, John, 298

Bockett family, The, 97

Bolton House, 143, 144, 158

Booth, Barton, 87, 122, 310

Bosanquet, Charles, 135

Boswell, James, 308

Bowes, Andrew Robinson, 15

Bowling Green House, 13

Boydell, Alderman, 90

Boydell, Colonel Josiah, 36, 88, 117

Branch Hill, 97

Branch Hill Lodge, 97, 98

Bremer, Frederika, 326

Brewer quoted, 55 _et passim_

Bridges, William, 218

Brill Tavern, 13

Britton, 12

Broad Walk, 115

Brown’s Dairy, 15

Brown’s Well, 45

Buckingham, Duke of, 56

Bull and Bush, The, 47, 174

Burford Lane, 58

Burleigh, Lord Treasurer, 61

Burlington, Lord, 99

‘Burlington Harry,’ 79, 98

Burney, Frances, 70, 138, 313

Bute, Lord, 219

Buxton, Sir Fowell, 180

Buxton, Mrs. Charles, 180

Byron, Lord, 198, 209, 315

Caen Wood, 6, 10, 11, 19, 133, 203, 206, 215-235

Caen Wood House, 220

Caenwood Farm, 191

Camden, 23

Camden Town, 14, 16, 50

Campbell, Lord, 50

Campden Charity, The, 115, 186

Cannon Place, 190

Cantleowes, Manor of, 216

Carey, John, 124

Carey’s ‘Book of the Roads,’ 43

Carlton Road, 4

Carr, Thomas, 100

Cattle Market, The new, 50

Causton, Robert, 220, 284

Cedar Lawn, 115, 164

Chalk Farm, 321; Old, 322

Chalon, Alfred Edward, 125

Chalons Brothers, 297

Chapone, Mrs., 70, 313

Charities of Hampstead, 368. _See_ Campden

Charles, Elizabeth Rundle, 102

Charter of Ethelred II. to St. Peter’s, Westminster, 21

Chatham, Lord, 169-172

Chesterfield, Earls of, 52, 332, 333

Chicken House, The, 55, 221, 311

Child’s Hill, 113, 183

Child’s Hill House, 113

Child’s Hill Lane, 185

Christchurch, 295

Christian, Princess, 102

Chronometer, John Harrison, inventor of the, 80

Church, The, 65

Church Lane, 65

Church Row, 65, 77

Cibber, Colley, 87, 122, 281, 309, 311

Clarke, Charles Cowden, 202, 208, 316

Clarke, Mrs. Cowden, 208

Clarke, Sir Thomas, 97

Clock House, 93

Cock and Hoop, The, 111

Codrington, Robert, 31

Cole, Mr., 89

Coleridge, S. T., 134, 205

Collins, 53 _et passim_

Collins’ Farm, 136

Collins, Wilkie, 76

Collins, William, 135, 178, 204

Combe Edge, 101

Common Rights, 116; struggle for, 231, 377

Conduit Fields, 54, 55, 321

Consort, Prince, 235

Constable, John, R.A., 81, 102, 125, 149, 188, 204, 294-296

Consumption Hospital, North London, 99, 101

Copenhagen Fields, 50

Copenhagen House, 50

Coram, Captain, 307, 311

Cort, Henry, and the iron trade, 80

Coxe, Edward, 134, 137, 324

Crabbe, Dr. George, 313

Craddock’s Coffee-house, 250

Craik, Mrs., 180

Crewe, Mrs., 138, 314

Crewe, John, 139

Crokesley, Richard de, Abbot of Westminster, 27

Crosby, 2

Crump, Miss, 320

D’Aumont, Duc, French Ambassador, 333

Davy, Sir Humphry, 100

Day, author of ‘Sandford and Merton,’ 176

Defoe, 25

Delany, Mrs., 69, 225, 283

Delarue, James, Murder of, 342

Denman, Lord, 71

Dickens, Charles, 129, 136

Disney, Admiral, 52

Diver, Jenny, 269

Dobson, Austin, 76

Doddridge, Dr., 67

Domesday Book, 8

Donnellan, Mrs., 282, 309, 312

Downing, Sir George, 11

Downshire Hill, 54

Drayton, Michael, 25

Dufferin, Lady Helen (Mrs. Blackwood), 211

Du Maurier, George, 101

Dyson, Hon. Jeremiah, 176

East Heath, 124

East Heath Tavern, 196

Edgeworth, Lovell, 176

Eleven Sisters, The, 168

Elizabeth House, 58

Elm, Irving’s, 187

Elm, The Great Hollow, 31

Elm Row, 119

Elms, The Nine, 323

Enfield, Dr., 67

England’s Lane, 49

Erskine House, 130

Erskine, Lady, 83

Erskine, Lord, 130, 133, 227, 314

Ethelred II., Charter of, to St. Peter’s, Westminster, 21

Euston Road, 13

Evelyn, John, 23, 24, 333

Everett, Mr., 340

Evergreens, or Evergreen Hill, 131, 314

Faux, Guy, 5

Fearon, Henry Bradshaw, 107

Fenton House, 91, 165

Fenton, Philip Robertson, 93

Ferns, The, 107

Finchley Common, 45

Finchley Road, 183

Fir-tree Avenue, 148

Fisher, Mr., 166

Fitzjohn’s Avenue, 321

Fitzstephen, 23

Flagstaff, The, 127

Flask Walk, 4

Flaxman, 136

Fleet, The, 2, 29, 241

Fleet Road, 2, 49

Flitcroft, Mr. (‘Burlington Harry’), 79, 98

Flora of Hampstead, A fragment of the, 362-368

Foley House, 18

Foley, Lord, 18

Folkard, Master, and common rights, 116

Footpads, 14, 16, 18, 34, 111, 129, 183, 254, 264, 280, 289-291

Forbes, Lord William, 219

Forsyth, Thomas, 333

Fortune Green, 109

Foundling, The, 13

Fox, Charles James, 71

Francis Street, 14

Francis’s Fields, 14

Frazer, Colonel, 118

Freeling, Sir Francis, 52

Friars, Preaching, 2

Frognal, 23, 85 _et seq._

Frognal End, 101

Frognal Grove, 86, 99

Frognal Hall, 86, 89, 95

Frognal House, 86, 89, 97

Frognal Lodge, 86

Frognal Priory, 102-106

Frognal Rise, 87, 97

Fry, Miss Catherine, 22

Fuller quoted, 61

Gainsborough, Baptist, third Earl of, 62, 249, 303

Gainsborough Gardens, 292

Gainsborough Mansions, 292

Gale, the antiquary, 56

Galloway, Earl of, 52, 54

Games, William Langhorne, 63

Garrick, 310

Garth, Dr., 121, 261

Gate-house, The, or Park Gate-house, 128

Gay, 14, 17, 280, 286, 338

Gayton Road, 58

Gell, Sir William, 71.

Geology of the Heath, 236-240

George Inn, Kilburn, 346

Gibbet Elm, 172

Gibbons, Dr., 194, 251 _et seq._

Gilchrist, 124

Gillies, The Misses, 75

Gipsies, 115, 327

Godfrey, Sir Edmondbury, 43

Godwyn, a hermit, 344

Golden Square, 119

Golder’s Green, 182

Golder’s Hill, 177, 182

Goldsmith, Oliver, 122, 128, 151, 160, 310, 347

Goodwin, Dr., 298

Gordon Rioters and Lord Mansfield, 225

Gospel Oak Fields, 2, 6

Granville, Lord, 182

Gray, Thomas, 18, 312

Gray’s Inn Road, 13

Great Plague, The, 10, 14

Green Hill, 57, 58

Greening, Mr., 148

Gregory, proprietor of the _Satirist_, 104

Greville, Fulke, 138

Grey, Baroness, 93

Grisoni, Signore, 56

Gross, Mr., 116

Grove Passage, 119

Gunpowder Plot conspirators, 5

Guyon family, The, 89

Hales, Professor J. W., 21

Hall Oak Farm, 110

Hall, Rev. Newman, 190

Hamilton, Duchess of, 118

Hampstead, Benefactors of, 368

Hampstead Fair, 256

Hampstead, Flora of, 362-368

Hampstead Gardens, 54

Hampstead, Geology of, 236-240

Hampstead Green, 53

Hampstead Hill, 33, 161, 289, 383

Hampstead, Old, 1-11; population, 1811-1891, 12; early history, 20-32; in the Great Plague, 32; view of the Great Fire from, 33; volunteers in 1803-4, 36; and the Church, 60

Hampstead, Old Ways to, 41

‘Hampstead, Records of,’ Baines’s, 2

Hampstead Road, 17

Hampstead Water Company, 242

Hampstead Woods, 30

Harraden, Miss, 76

Harrington, Sir James, 5, 216

Harrington Square, 14

Harrison, John, inventor of the chronometer, 80

Harrison, Mrs., 191

Hart, Mrs., 382

Hart, Sir John, 242

Haverstock Hill, 43, 49, 50, 145

Haverstock Terrace, 50

Hay, Lord, 218

Haydon, 109, 202

Hazlitt, W., 202

Heath, The, encroachments on, and Sir Maryon Wilson’s Estate Bill, 231; the struggle for the, 377

Heath Cottages, 191

Heath End House, 134

Heathfield House, 124

Heath House, 354-357

Heath Lodge, 115, 173

Heath Street, 58, 119

Hendon, 8

Henry VIII.’s Palace, 15

Henry VIII., Hampstead in reign of, 8; proclamation of, regarding game at Hampstead, 28

Hicks’s Hall, 61 _et passim_

Hicks, Michael, 61

Hicks, Sir Baptist, 61

Highgate, 50

Highgate Hill, 6

Highgate Ponds, 204

High Street, The, 58

Hill, The, or Hill House, 115, 164, 166

Hill, Sir Rowland, 53

Hindley, John, complacent egotism of his tombstone, 84

Hoare, Francis, 164

Hoare, Gurney, 168

Hoare, Joseph, 113

Hoare, Samuel, 340, 354

Hocker, Thomas Henry, murderer, 342

Hodgson, Mrs., 164

Hogarth, 230, 307, 347

Holford, Charles, 296

Holford, George, 148

Holford, Major Charles, 36

Holford, Mr., 340

Holford Road, 124, 137, 190

Holly-bush Assembly Room, 143-145

Holly-bush Hill, 143, 149

Honey, Maria, 81

Honeywood, Frazer, 58

Honeywood, Isaac, 58

Honeywood, Sir Edward, 58

Honeywood, Sir John, 58

Hooker, W. J., 23

Howell, Mr., an eighteenth-century Barnum, 334

Howitt, Mary, 326

Howitt, William, 2; ‘Northern Heights of London,’ 52 _et passim_

Hughson, Dr., 26

Hunt, Leigh, 16, 109, 196-211, 316

Incledon, 82

Inns. _See_ Taverns

Iron Trade, Henry Cort and the, 80

Irving, Edward, 187

Irving’s Elm, 187

Jackson, The Misses, 293

Jack Straw’s Castle, 34, 126

James I., 56

Jeffrey, Lord, 43

Johnson, Dr., 70, 93, 94, 95, 122, 152, 305, 313, 324

Johnstone, Mrs., 187

Judd Street, 15

Judges’ Walk, 76, 137, 188, 325

Keate, Thomas, 256

Keats, 200, 202, 293, 316, 317; bust of, 83

Kelly, Miss, ‘the beautiful Irish girl,’ 266

Ken Wood. _See_ Caen Wood

Kentish Town, 3, 14

Kestevan, Thomas, 100

Kilburn, Hamlet of, 344-353

Kilburn Priory, 122, 347, 349-353

Kilburn Nunnery, 345, 348

Kilburn Wells, 346, 347

King’s Cross, 3

King’s Hill, 30

Kirkhoven, Poliander de, 332

Kirkhoven, Charles Henry, created Lord Wotton, 332

Kit-Cat Club, 43, 120, 254

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 121, 122, 261, 281

Lamb, Charles, 36, 202, 209, 316

Landseer, Sir Edwin, 108, 124

Langhorne, Sir William, 62

Lavie, German, 100, 333

Le Breton, Mrs., 73

Le Breton, P. H., 75, 157, 243

Leg of Mutton Pond, 114, 115, 326

Leggett, Mrs., 88, 192

Leslie, 124, 149, 204

Lessingham, Mrs., 115

Lime-tree Avenue, 308

Linnell, 124

Lister, Mrs., 124

Lloyd, Mr., 5

Load of Hay, The, 43, 45

London, Predicted destruction of, in 1750, 35

‘London Improved’ (1766), 12

Long Room, The, 253, 269, 278, 281, 295, 297, 308, 314

Longman, T. Norman, 108, 111

Longman, William, 57

Loughborough, Lord. _See_ Rosslyn, Lord

Lovells, The, 212

Lovers’ Bank or Walk, 180

Lower Flask Walk, 58, 194

Lower Heath, The, 43

Lyndhurst Road, 53

Lysons, 2 _et passim_

Macclesfield, Lord Chancellor, 97

Manor Farm, 110

Manor House, The, 108

Manor Lodge, 111

Mansfield, Lord, 5, 56, 129, 221-235, 314

Mansion, The, Frognal, 85

Marsham, Henry, Lord Scrope of, 8

Martinez, Mr., 340

Maryon, Mrs. Margaret, 63

Maryon, Rev. John, 63

May, Richard, 61

Meteyard, Eliza, 47, 76, 180

Middlesex, Elections for, on top of Hampstead Heath, 33

Miles, John, 117

Millfield Lane, 204

Milligan, Mrs., 52

Mitchell, Thomas, 100

Montagu, Edward, 99

Montagu House, 98

Montague, Mrs., 72, 284, 310

Montgomery, ‘Satan,’ 314

Moore, Tom, 43

More, Mrs. Hannah, 313

Morel, L’Abbé, 85

Morland, 136

Mother Huffs’, 258, 285

Mount, The, 119

Mount Vernon, 87

Mulock, Dinah, 180

Murray, Hon. Misses, 93

Neave, Thomas, 98

Netley Cottage, 152

Netmaker, Mr., 10

New End, 192, 193

New Georgia, 220

New Grove House, 101

New North End Hall Wells, 181

New Reservoir, 124

New Road, 13

New West End, 113

Newton, Sir Adam, 63

Nicoll, Miss Christian, 77

Nine Elms, The, 137, 323

Noel, Hon. Susannah, 249, 303

Noel, Sir Edward, 62

Norden, 24, 25

North Court, 98

North End, 135, 160

North End Hill, 34, 115, 326

North End House, 168, 170, 182

North End Road, 115, 182

‘Northern Heights,’ Howitt’s, 2 _et passim_

North Heath, 135

North Hole, 98

North London Consumption Hospital, 99, 101

North, Lord, 169

Norway House, 58

Nunnery, Kilburn, 345, 348

Oak Hill House, 187

Oak Hill Lodge, 187

Ogilby’s Guide, 17

Old Mother Red Cap, The, 13, 15

Old Ways to Hampstead, 41

Ollier, 202

O’Neale, Daniel, 331

Otley, Richard, 192

Oussulston, Hampstead in Hundred of, 20

Oxford Street, 14, 18

Palgrave, —, 18

Palgrave, Sir Francis, 53

Palmer, Sir Geoffrey, 11, 331

Pancras, St., boundaries of Hampstead, 2

Pancras Vale, 17

Parish Church, 78, 82

Park, 2 _et passim_

Park Gate-house, 128

Park Road, 49

Park, Thomas, 292

Parker, Colonel, 98

Parliament Hill, 4, 5, 217

Parnell, 121

Parry, Sir Edward, 134

Patmore, Coventry, 181

Pavilion Cottage, 211

Paxon, Mr., 197

Pelham, Diana, 217

Pennant, —, 18

Pepys, 11, 330

Perceval, Spencer, 64, 340

Perrin’s Court, 65

Peverel, Ranulph, 21, 22

Peverel, William, 22

Piozzi, Mrs., 70, 184

Plague, The Great, 10, 14

Platt, Thomas, 113

Platt’s Lane, 113

Pond Street, 43, 53, 194, 361, 362

Ponds and Waterworks, The, 241-248

Pool, Thomas, 111

Poor Robin’s Almanack, 18

Pope, 14, 45, 121, 280, 285, 286, 324

Portland, Duke of, 18

Portland Place, 18

Potter, G. W., 95, 303

Povey, Charles, 333

Powell, D., 116

Powell family, The, 345

Preaching Friars, 2

Priestley, Dr., 67

Prince Arthur’s Road, 57

Priory, The, at Kilburn, 122, 347; legend of, 349-353

Priory Lodge, 95, 96

Prospect Terrace, 188

Pump-House School, 297

Pump Room, The, 300-302

Queen Square, 13, 18

Race-course, The, 34

Raresby, 218

Red Lion Hill, 58, 67

Reformer, The fate of a, 374-377

Reynolds, Miss, 310

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 151

Rhodes, Mr., 14

Rich, Lady Charlotte, 123

Richardson, Samuel, 162, 283, 287, 309, 311

Roads, Carey’s Book of the, 43

Robarts, Abraham, 180

Roberts, Thomas, 333

Robinson, Crabb, 71 _et passim_

Rogers, Samuel, 314

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 19

Romney, 143, 145

Rosslyn Hill, 56, 67

Rosslyn Hill Schools, 57

Rosslyn House and Park, 19, 50, 314

Rosslyn Lodge, 54

Rosslyn, Lord Loughborough, Earl of, 50, 314

Rosslyn Street, 54, 56

Rous, Mr., 271

Routh, Mr., 253

Russell, Admiral Lord Edward, 33

Rye, Walter, 87, 97

Sadleir, John, M.P., suicide of, 38

Sailors’ Daughters Orphan School, 97

St. Giles’s Pound, 17

_St. James’s Gazette_, 1685, 11

St. John’s Parish Church, 78, 107

St. John’s Wood, 30

St. Mary, Frognal, 85

St. Pancras, 13, 29

St. Peter’s Westminster. _See_ Westminster

‘Sandford and Merton,’ Day, author of, 176

Sandy Road, 135

Saunderson, Mr., and St. John’s Church, 79

Schemelpennick, Mrs., 72

Scott, Sir Gilbert, 101

Scott, Sir Walter, 315

Scrope of Marsham, Henry, Lord, 8

Sedley, Sir Charles, 45

Selwyn’s ‘Diary’ quoted, 51

Seward. Miss, 313

Sewell, Dr. George, 175

Sharp, Henry, 101

Shelford Lodge, 52

Shelley, 200, 202, 316

Shelley, Mary, 4, 203

Shepherd’s Fields, 321

Shepherds’ Well, 54

Sheppard, Thomas, 124

Shipton, Mother, 324

Shoolbred’s, 14

Shuttop Hill, 345

Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 82

Silver Street, 119

Sion Chapel, 253-255, 270

Smith, Horace and James, 202

Soames, Dr., 273-278

South End, 320

South End Green, 4, 245

South End Road, 3

South Hill Park, 4

Southampton, Lord, 84

Spaniards, The, 119, 226

Spaniards Garden, 128

Spaniards Road, 164

Spark, Michael, 32

Sports at Belsize House, 335, 339

Squire’s Mount, 4, 164

Stanfield, Clarkson, 57

Stanfield House, 57

Stanhope, Arthur, 333

Stanhope, Colonel James Hamilton, suicide of, 235

Stanhope, Lord Henry, 331

Stanhope, Philip, 333

Stanton, Samuel, 122

Steele, Sir Richard, 43, 121, 254, 261, 280

Steele’s Terrace, 48

Steevens, George, 100, 116, 123

Stephenson, Benj. Charles, F.S.A., 93

Stormont, Lord, 234

Strathmore, Lady, 15

Sullivan family, The, 85

Sullivan, Miss, her toll-gate, 77

Swift, Dean, 49, 121, 261, 266, 273, 280, 286, 332

Talfourd quoted, 36

Taverner, Richard, 345

Taverns and Tea-houses: Adam and Eve, 15; Bird in Hand, 58, 259; Bull and Bush, 47, 174; Cock and Hoop, 111; Copenhagen House, 50; Craddock’s, 250; East Heath Tavern, 196; Flask Tavern, 99; George Inn, 346; Jack Straw’s Castle, 126; Load of Hay, 43, 45; Mother Huffs’, 258; New Georgia, 220; Old Mother Red Cap, 13, 15; Spaniards, 119, 226; Tea-gardens at Kilburn, 346; Upper Flask, 120; Whitestone Inn, 265

Taylor, the Water-poet, 33

Tea-gardens, Kilburn, 346

Tea-houses. _See_ Taverns

Telford, 202

Thompson, ‘Memory Corner,’ 103

Thompson, Mr. Maude, 21

Thurlow, Lord, 270, 314

Thurlow Road, 54

Toll-gate, Miss Sullivan’s, 77

Tolmer Square, 16

Tonson, Jacob, 121

Tooly’s Farm, 136

Tottenham Court Road, 13-15, 17

Tottenham Fields, 14

Toupees, The, 311

Tradescants, The, 331

Traitors’ Hill, 4, 50

Trimmer, Mrs., 71

Turner, Mr., 135

Turner’s Wood, 220, 284

Upper and Lower Flask, Origin of, 250

Upper Bowling-green House, 122

Upper Flask Tavern, 43, 47, 99, 100, 119, 120, 325

Upper Heath, 100, 126

Upper Park Road, 49

Upper Terrace, 113

Vale of Health, 109, 110, 194, 213

Vale Lodge, 212

Vane House, 56, 235, 359

Vane, Sir Henry, 11, 53, 359

Varley, 126, 136

Veil, Colonel Sir John de, 17, 289

Venner, 218

Vivian, John, 180

Volunteers, Hampstead, 1803-4, 36, 299

Waad, Armigall, 329

Waad or Wood family, The, 329

Waad, Lady Anne, 330

Wales, Prince and Princess of, at Belsize Gardens in 1721, 335

Walk, The Judges’, 76, 137, 188, 325

Walker, Thomas, 98

Walpole, Horace, 35 _et passim_

Walpole, Lord, 100

Walpole, Mrs., 118

Ware, Isaac, 88

Warwick, Earl of, 122

Warwick, John, Earl of, 345

Water Company, Hampstead, 242

Waterworks, The Ponds and, 241-248

Watling Way, The, 23, 24

Watts, Mr., Curate and Lecturer, 276

Weatherall Place, 253

Wedderburne, Mr., afterward Lord Rosslyn, 50

Well Walk, The, 191; early period, 249-267; second period, 268-291; the modern, 292-303

Weller, Margaret Marie, 63

Weller, Jane, 63

Welling’s Farm, 14

Wells Chapel, 299

Wells Charity, 78, 249, 302, 303

Wells, Sir Spencer, 182

Wells, The, 12, 32, 47; New North End Hall, 181

Wentworth Place, John Street, 357

West End, 85 _et seq._, 107

West End Green and fair, 112

West End House, New and Old, 117

West End Lane, 107, 109

West Heath Road, 97, 115

Westminster, St. Peter’s, Charter of Ethelred II. to, 21

Westminster, Richard de Crokesley, Abbot of, 27

Whichello, Abel, 278, 279

White, Charles, engraver, 17

White, Rev. Samuel, 87

White, Robert, engraver, 17

Whitestone Inn, 265

Whitestone Pond, 124, 188, 323

Whitfield, George, 34

Wildwood Avenue, 137, 168

Wildwood Corner, 17, 254

Wildwood Cottage, 168

Wildwood Grove, 167

Wildwood Lodge, 174

Wilkinson, Mr. Garth, 76

Wilkes, the actor, 87, 122

Willes, Sir Francis, 182

William IV. and Queen Adelaide visit Hampstead, 231-235

Willow House, 252

Willow Walk, 245

Wilson, Arthur, 136

Wilson, General Sir Thomas Spencer, 63

Wilson, Lady, 182

Wilson, Sir John, 243

Wilson, Sir John Maryon, 64

Wilson, Sir Maryon, 7

Wilson, Sir Spencer Maryon, 64

Wilson, Sir Spencer Pocklington Maryon, 64

Wilson, Sir Thomas Maryon, 63

Wilson, Thomas, 89

Windmill Hill, 143, 152

Winford, Lady Cook, 17

Withers, Mr., 218

Wood, Anthony à, 45

Wood, Mr., 271

Woods, Hampstead, 30

Wordsworth, 100, 109, 315

Wotton, Catherine, 331

Wotton, Lord, 11, 331

Wotton, Lord Charles, 331

Wotton, Lord Thomas, 331

Wright, Henry, 340

Wroth, John, 61

Wroth, Sir Thomas, Kt., 60, 181

Young, Dr., 310

_Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, London._