LXVII. ST. GILES'S, PAST AND PRESENT. THE sententious Maitland says, of the Church of St. Giles in the Fields, that it " is denominated from St. Giles, a Grecian;" which may be the reason why so many "foolish Greeks" (vide Shakspere's What you will ') have both in ancient and modern times congregated around it. It is scarcely to be wondered at that, among so numerous a company as the Saints of the Roman Church (half-a-dozen for every day in the year, besides a numerous corps de reserve to supply any vacancies that might occur, packed away in the day of All Saints), some of them should occasionally fall into indifferent company. But there are one or two of them who, with every inclination to make allowance for human frailty even in Saints, have stretched their licence rather too far. St. Julian's connection with thieves is matter of notoriety; St. Nicholas's conduct has led to his name being conferred upon one whom, according to old saws, it is not very safe to mention ; and as for St. Giles, if in any town possessed of more than three or four churches there be one set apart for him, it is odds but you find the most questionable characters in the town dwelling in its neighbourhood. Without going out of our own island to seek for examples, we may remark that in Edinburgh the "Heart of Mid Lothian" stood, and the Parliament House still stands, close to the shrine of VOL. III. S St. Giles; and here, in London, he is the central point of a population—“ of whom more anon," as Baillie Nichol Jarvie said of the sons of Rob Roy. 66 St. Giles appears to have come in with the Conqueror, or soon after, which may account for his sympathy with marauders: " By the village of St. Giles's not appearing in 'Domesday Book,' I imagine it is not coeval with the Conquest," says Maitland; and here, for the information of those who, not being deeply read in this historian, may not be acquainted with his peculiar use of the English language, "not coeval with" means, in his mouth, what did not exist before." 'The Beauties of Maitland' would be an interesting book, and one of them follows close in the wake of the piece of intelligence just cited: "That the parish is of great antiquity is manifest by the decretal sentence of Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, &c., anno 1222, in the great controversy between Eustace, Bishop of London, &c., and William, Abbot of Westminster, &c., in which sentence this parish is expressly mentioned; but I imagine it was not converted into a parishchurch till the 20th of April, anno 1547." By what process a parish can be converted into a parish-church it is not very easy to conceive; but as, in the same breath, the soaring imagination (“I imagine") of the author leads him to decide that the parish prophetically mentioned in a judicial sentence of 1222 did not exist till 1547, this is a trifle. The church and village of St. Giles are supposed to have sprung from an hospital for lepers founded there by Matilda, wife of Henry I., about the year 1117. As in the sentential award made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, already alluded to, the garden of the hospital appears to have been situated between St. Giles's High Street, the Pound, and Hog Lane (now dignified by the appellation of Crown Street, thereby plainly showing that in London, at least, men know how to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear), Maitland concludes that the hospital itself stood near the west end of the present church. In 1354 Edward III. granted this hospital to the master and brethren of the order of Burton St. Lazar of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire. When the gallows was removed from the Elms in Smithfield, about the year 1413, it was erected at the north end of the gardenwall of St. Giles, near the junction of St. Giles's High Street and Crown Street. When it was again removed, still in a western direction, which may have helped, along with other observations, to lead Bishop Berkeley to the conclusion, "westward the course of empire holds its way," St. Giles's became a sort of half-way house for the heroes who travelled that dark road. "The condemned criminals, in their way to the place of execution, usually stopped at this hospital, where they, as their last refreshment, were presented with a large bowl of ale.” It is probably owing to this combination of circumstances to its being selected as a place of retreat for noisome and squalid outcasts, and associated in various ways with the carcers of those who lived in hostility with the law-that the character which St. Giles's has retained from first to last during the whole period that anything is known of it has been so ineradicably burned into it. St. James's, which was also originally a lazar-house, has become a kingly residence, and Tyburn too has in its day been the shambles or sacrificial altar (which you will) of the law all traces, however, of the disagreeable associations which clung to the one locality, and are still conjured up by the name of the other, have vanished. But St. Giles's combined within itself what was repulsive about both, and accordingly St. Giles remains true to itself, " unchanged, unchangeable." It cannot be said that no attempt has been made to reclaim it. In the days of Charles II. the place subsequently denominated Seven Dials was erected, in the expectation that it would become the abode of the gay and the wealthy. Nor did the hope seem altogether groundless. Close at hand were Soho Square and Covent Garden, then aristocratical resorts, and on the other side were the mansions of the Bedford and other noble families, upon the ruins of which the seemly district of St. George's, Bloomsbury, has since arisen. There was good society enough to keep the Seven Dials from turning haggard. But the atmosphere of St. Giles's was too powerful for such counter-agents, and the Seven Dials soon became nearly, though not altogether, as bad as its neighbours in the Rookery. During the ascendency of the Puritans a stout effort was made to reform the morals of the denizens of St. Giles's, as well as other places; but it appears from the parish books that a stout resistance was made by these turbulent worthies. Mr. Brayley furnishes us with a few illustrative extracts : "1641. Received of the Vintner at the Catt in Queen Street, for permitting of tippling on the Lord's-day 1644. Received of three poor men for drinking on the Sabbath-day 1645. Received of John Seagood, constable, which he had of a Received of Mrs. Thunder, by the hands of Francis Potter, 1646. Received of Mr. Hooker, for brewing on a Fast-day 1 10 0 04 0 030 0 12 0 0 26 on the Sabbath-day 1648. Received from the City Marshall, sent by the Lord Mayor, for 1652. Received of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Norris, who were 1654. Received of William Glover, in Queen Street, and of Isaac 1655. Received of a maid taken in Mrs. Jackson's ale-house on the riding 0 11 0 Received of a Scotchman drinking at Robert Owen's on the 020 1658. Received of Joseph Piers, for refusing to open his doors to have 1659. (An entry occurs of one Brooke's goods sold for breach of "Think of that, Master Brook," as a congenial spirit would doubtless have exclaimed, had he not long ere this been "all cold as any stone." So, too, would his co-mates; but Bardolph and Nym were hanged for pyx of little price:" Mrs. Pistol (the quondam Quickly) was dead; and Pistol himself had doubtless fired his last shot, for at our farewell interview with him he was complaining— "Old do I wax, and from my weary limbs It was clear, from the subdued and despondent tone of his voice, that "his heart was fracted and corroborate," and that he was soon to die the death of his old master. They had left, however, kindred souls behind them, who bade defiance alike to the Ironsides of Cromwell and the whole Assembly of Divines at Westminster. The vintner at the "Cat" kept his doors open on the sly, notwithstanding the fine of thirty good shillings imposed upon him; Mrs. Thunder (appropriate name) continued to tipple and swear, at the rate of five shillings for cach jollification, and a shilling for every oath; the Frenchman kept spitting out "sacres" as fast as the sparks from a Catherine-wheel; and the worthies who broke the two halberts of Lyn's watchmen (and, though the parish records gloss over the defeat of their officers, swinged the watchmen), survived to lead a gallant troop down Drury Lane, and along the Strand, to assist in burning the rumps at Temple Bar. The only recusant was the Scotchman, who was reclaimed, by the outlay of two shillings English, from all such backslidings; though the maid taken in Mrs. Jackson's alehouse, despite her five shillings, and Isabel Johnston, despite her four, continued rebellious "malignants" to the last. Nor is this so much to be wondered at, when we consider that, as early as 1641, "the correcting Parliament" had excited the jealousy of the sellers and drinkers of ale by appearing to mete to the sellers of lordly wine, and to the sellers of yeomanly beer, with a different measure. The vintners were relieved from the pressure of the wine monopoly at the very time that the alehouse-keepers were subjected to a rigorous police; and the roisterers of St. Giles's, not unnaturally, jumped at the conclusion that the rigid morality of the Parliament was like the sobriety of the vice-president of a Temperance Society whom we knew well in our younger and more foolish days-the office-bearers of such societies have since become more consistent. Worthy man!-Ardent spirits he would not allow to enter his house, except in homoeopathic doses in an apothecary's phials, but many a good bottle of Edinburgh ale have we shared with him when we chanced to drop in on him at his house for luncheon; and at one serious tête-à-tête did we finish three bottles of claret-he drinking glass for glass, while he urged upon us, with weighty arguments, the propriety of joining the Society. That this suspicion lent vigour to the resistance offered in St. Giles's to all attempts on the part of the parish dignitaries to amerce them into sobriety, appears from a dialogue, the scene of which is laid in this neighbourhood, published in 1641, under the imposing title of The Tapster's Downfall and the Drunkard's Joy; or, a Dialogue between Leatherbeard, the Tapster of the Sheaves, and Rubynose, one of his ancient acquaintance, who hath formerly eaten three stone of roastbeef on a Sunday morning, but now (being debarred that privilege) slights him, and resolves to drink wine altogether.' The communing of these worthies begins as follows: "Leatherbeard. Whither away, Mr. Ruby? Will you not know your old friends, now they grow poor? 66 Rubynose. Now you grow poor, I hold it a gentle garb to be willing to forget you. "L. What! not one cup more of our brisk beer, which hath set that tincture in your well-dyed scarlet face? Are you resolved to leave us so? This is most discourteously done of you. "R. I cannot stay, i' faith. More serious employments draw me away. L. Truly, Mr. Rubynose, you do not well to jeer your poor friends, now they are in misery. With a most sorrowful heart I will relate to you the saddest news that ever befel unto us squires of the drawing society of the tap. "R. Good Small-beer, proceed. "L. Why, you know the benefit my poor master's widow got every Sunday morning by her thin-cut slices of roasted beef; how she made the gents to pay for the vinegar and pepper they ate with the roast-beef at prayer-time; and how I sold my ale and beer all that time at double prices. "R. I am very sensible of it. "L. I know likewise you are not ignorant of what innumerable numbers of mince-pies we sold every Sunday at dinner, and what benefit we made of the refuse of the slashed roast-beef. "R. I know of all this very well. "L. Nay, one of the chiefest matters is behind; how many great gross of plum-cakes and cheese-cakes, what stewed prunes and custards, we have sold every Sunday at prayer-time in the afternoon, and what doings we have had all the day after-oh, in those days I was a man of great calling! I assure you we have taken more money on a Sunday than all the week after. "R. Why, all this I confidently believe; therefore, I pray, what of it? "L. Oh, sir, those days are done; we must now fall to our prayers on a Sunday, and keep our doors shut all the day long, and sing psalms if we please, but we have never a room to the street. "R. Why, how cometh that about, you have not liberty to open your doors on a Sunday as formerly? "L. The correcting Parliament, that hath a sight on all trades, hath made an order to the contrary, which is put in strict execution: we are now in more fear of the churchwarden than of all the back-clappers and clenching tenter-neck bailies of the town. R. Why, you may fee the churchwardens, and regain your privilege. "L. No, Sir; they are not so mercenary as the promoting paritor is: six shillings a quarter and free access to a lusty chine of roast-beef will not give them content." And thereupon Rubynose tells the complaining man that, if things remain in that way, he must break, and to render him still more malcontent, leaves him, after communicating the information that Parliament has extended the privileges of vintners, and thus rendered wine cheap, and that he, Rubynose, is resolved for the future to abjure both meat and malt potations, and spend every farthing he has or can get upon the juice of the grape. And by such means was St. Giles's and all its worshippers of John Barleycorn rendered ripe for revolt. They saw the wine-bibber favoured, and themselves, unaccused, untried, treated worse than the convicted felon who passed through their village on his way to Tyburn-stinted in their bowls of ale. Like one of the great men with whom |